Ancient poems reveal the history of the Marsopoise Yangtze in danger of extinction
The mentions of the non -purpose yangtze marsopunas
Yangtze without endless fin.
Around 1745, the Chinese emperor and poet Qianlong sailed on the Yangtze River to the eastern city of Zhenjiang when he found an impressive view: a group of what we now call Yangtze final marsopepas (Neofocaena Asiaeorientalis Asiaeorientalis) Emerged from the surface of the water. “Espoisses pursued the moonlight on the silver tides, while the dragons summoned the storm clouds in sight,” Hey was published later in the Imperial Poems Collection, Volume II.
Almost 300 years later, scientists wanted to draw the historical range of this cetaceans in danger of critically endangered extinction and with the head-soho-soho that combed hungry of ancient Chinese poems to seek mentions, with the hope of mapping the subspecies of destruction of inhibition of ITSTENS. Found exclusively in the Yangtze River in China, it is the only freshwater marsoup in the world. Around 1,250 individuals remain in nature.
“Having access to the data allows us to detect when the decrease was committed and correlates these changes with possible threats such as habitat destruction, climate change, overhcil, disease or the introduction of invasive species,” says the Academy of Sciences of Yayio Zhangtome.
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A printed wooden illustration of the Ming dynasty of “Sancai Tuhui” (in English, compendium of the three powers), compiled by Wang Qi (1573-1620), which is a book of 49 volumes of poems and birds and animals. This poem meticulously documes Marsopoise without Yangtze fins through morphological details, surface postures and maternal care behaviors.
“Sancai Tuhui”, compiled by Wang Qi (1573–1620) (CC by-SA)
Zhang and his colleagues resorted to old poems because the official records rarely mentioned these animals. Using an online database of Chinese literature, “we look for several historical names of the Marsopa without Yangtze through dynastic poetry, manually verifying each mention to ensure that it referred to the Marsopa and not other animals.
“The poets vividly described the real behaviors of the Marsopas [using language] As ‘blow waves …’ ‘growing waves …’ and ‘bowing to the wind’, “he adds.
Research, published on Monday Current biologyHe revealed 724 ponds mentioned by the Marsopapas. Half contained information about where they were seeing.
This window to the past revealed that the rank of the Marsopas has decreased by about 65 percent by more than 1,400 years, with an accelerated decrease in the last century. The poems of the distant adjustments mentioned these animals that live in tributaries and lakes throughout the Yangtze, but in more recent poems, these references decreased dramatic. The researchers concluded that the rank of subspecies in these tributaries and lakes has decreased by 91 percent.
A Porpoise hunt without Yangtze fins on Lake Poyang.
The Study “Builds on MANY Prior Example on How Historical Texs or Varous Child Can Help Understand Fits Species Distribes And, Not Least, Human-Caaed Biodiversity Losses,” Says Jens-Christian Svenning, a macrocist at aarhus University in denMark in denMark in denmark in denmark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denMark in denmark Denmark, for Example, Scientists reconstruction the former composition of fauna in grece with the aid of descriptions of ancient epic ponds. He thought there may be challenges in this approach, and sometimes inaccuracies, there are certainly a lot of potential “to apply this method to other species and in other areas of the world, says Svenning.
For her next step, Zhang says that she and her team plan to deepen the poems they gathered to find information about “how the river looked in the past, how big they used to be and the Marsopas groups and before Bepred.” “
