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Study: Whales Are Ecosystem "Engineers"

Posted by samzenpus on from the starting-from-the-top dept.

An anonymous reader writes Researchers had previously thought that, being excessively uncommon and migrant, whales didn't have much of an effect on the more extensive marine environment. However, a new study distributed in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment gives whales a role as "engineers" of the oceans. In the study, scientists from the University of Vermont suggest that the 13 types of extraordinary whale have an essential and positive impact on the capacity of seas, on carbon storage, and on the state of fisheries around the globe. "The decline in great whale numbers, estimated to be at least 66% and perhaps as high as 90%, has likely altered the structure and function of the oceans, but recovery is possible and in many cases is already underway," researchers wrote in an article announcing their investigation.

19 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. As an Engineer,,, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As an Engineer I feel that the title is being misused more and more.

    1. Re:As an Engineer,,, by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 3, Funny

      Get back on your choo choo train and quit yer bitching.

    2. Re:As an Engineer,,, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nah, he just wants the money he wasted on the sheepskin to mean something. It's a status thing.

      Umm no. If he's a PE or otherwise licensed engineer (non-USA), it's a bit more than a sheepskin.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

    3. Re:As an Engineer,,, by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 2

      Engineers don't do things accidentally unless they fuck up. So unless we can prove the whales know what they're doing, they're acting more like the pre-agricultural humans who accidentally spread seeds wherever they spit and shit. Not quite agriculture.

    4. Re:As an Engineer,,, by fractoid · · Score: 2

      Exactly. Calling them "engineers" of the ocean ecosystem implies that they are intentionally manipulating ocean ecosystems to further some goal. When you read the actual article, it's mostly about the fact that they shit everywhere.

      --
      Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
  2. Yep. by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Large apex predators change their environment. Change the numbers of the apex predators and the environment changes.

    - So far, so good. Ecology 101.

    "Engineers of the ocean" - now we're starting to anthropomorphize. Engineering, at least in the classic sense of human engineering, is a directed, (generally) intelligent effort to change the environment. Now, cetaceans are very likely intelligent (at least smarter than the average Internet user by all accounts), but the TFS doesn't give any indications that the whales are doing this purposely to change things, they're just being apex predators.

    Grrr. I hate stuff like this. Perhaps the paywalled article is better, but TFS does not impress.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    1. Re:Yep. by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      now we're starting to anthropomorphize

      Yes, calling engineers "whales" makes them sensitive to their weight problems.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Yep. by kaliann · · Score: 2

      "Ecosystem engineer" is an ecology term, and it's meant to be descriptive not precisely literal. It doesn't necessarily indicate any intention. TFA did a poor job of conveying the fact that this is a field-specific usage, not a description of "engineering" by animals.

      Some animals have disproportionately large effects on the integrity of their ecosystem - disproportionate to their biomass and physical presence, at least. These animals are called "keystone species". Apex predators are often keystone species due to their effects on prey behavior and their strong actions as selective pressure.

      Some keystone species provide specific metabolites that are critical to their ecosystem. You could argue that the organisms that allow termites to digest cellulose are probably keystone species. Nitrogen-fixing organisms would be there as well. Those examples, though have very localized effects.

      Some species are keystones for reasons other than simple predator-prey relationships. Animals who significantly physically change their environment are frequently referred to as "ecosystem engineers". Burrowing animals whose dens are required by other critters are one example (in the US, tortoises and ground squirrels are notorious for this). Beavers, as mentioned above, are as well. Underwater, the composition of the water itself is the environment, and changing that composition can have a huge effect on the ecosystems involved. Use of the term "ecosystem engineer" in this context is simply meant to convey how critical whales are to maintaining a healthy and diverse ocean ecosystem, despite previous assumptions that their relatively low biomass (because of their rarity) implied that they were not particularly integral.

  3. No they're not by kruach+aum · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Whales shape their environment, just as their environment has shaped them. That's how evolution works. Evolution is nothing but the establishment of equilibria between niches and the creatures occupying those niches. When either the niche or the creature (or the number of creatures) changes, of course the other will follow suit.

    The new information in this article is that scientists have discovered a way in which whales influence their environment. Engineering has nothing to do with it.

    1. Re:No they're not by TheLink · · Score: 2

      I don't see anything new or interesting in the articles to consider it a "discovery of a way" (e.g. http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/?Pag... )

      In contrast this is a better article with more detail on how whales could _actually_ affect ecosystems significantly: http://www.newscientist.com/ar...
      And that's a 4 year old article.

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  4. Sooo.... by king+neckbeard · · Score: 2, Funny

    Sooo... Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was kind of right?

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  5. Re:Engineers by ericloewe · · Score: 2

    The invention of waterproof calculators allowed for whales to more easily perform tedious calculations.

  6. If whales are engineers... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    ...what does that make beavers?

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:If whales are engineers... by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...what does that make beavers?

      A dam nuisance.

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    2. Re:If whales are engineers... by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

      Beavers are the Koch Brothers. They directly cause global warming by cutting down trees that safely sequester greenhouse gases. When they eat and digest the trees, the greenhouse gases are released again as beaver flatulence.

      Beavers build dams blocking our natural beautiful rivers, which make our own hydroelectric facilities less efficient. This makes us more dependent on Big Coal, and forces us to build a nuke In Your Backyard.

      Beavers build low-cost sub prime mortgage McMansions, which will cause another Savings & Loan bailout crisis recession.

      Beaver rhymes with Bieber, and The Bieber is ripped to his tits on cough sirup most of the time.

      Save the whales, nuke The Bieber.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  7. translation by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

    They're using unfamiliar units to define their made up measurements.

    The oceans are 1.3 billion cubic kilometers (that's a lot of engineering!)
    That's 45,909,066,700,000,000,000 square feet
    The Library of congress is 2,100,000 square feet
    So the whales are engineering over 21 trillion libraries of congress!

    1. Re:translation by Charliemopps · · Score: 3, Funny

      With Science!

  8. Whales are mammals... by zyche · · Score: 2
    All mammals have hair...

    Shave the whales.

  9. Re:How dare they by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, there are quite a number of regulations concerning human activity in and around whales. Come to think of it, if engineers had those same regulations apply to them (mostly don't bother the whale, stay at least 100 yards away, no nearby explosions and such), then engineers might have a better chance of getting something useful accomplished.

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