<
https://theconversation.com/east-africas-soda-lakes-are-rising-threatening-their-iconic-flamingos-227810>
"Huge pink flocks of millions of flamingos – flamboyances of flamingos – are
one of nature’s great spectacles. But colleagues and I have uncovered worrying
trends in the salty and highly-alkaline “soda lakes” of east Africa where most
of these birds live.
Lesser flamingos are the most numerous of the six species of flamingo found
across the world, and more than three quarters are found in the soda lakes of
Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. Despite their numbers, with estimates ranging
between 2 million and 3 million birds, the species is in decline and officially
classified as “near threatened”.
The causes of the population decline have been difficult to identify due to the
remoteness of many soda lakes and the nomadic nature of the birds. They often
fly at night between the soda lakes in search of new feeding sites, in response
to the boom and bust nature of the cyanobacteria they feed on, commonly known
as blue-green algae.
However, rising water levels at many of the feeding lakes are decimating the
cyanobacteria the birds have evolved to eat. In research now published in the
journal
Current Biology, my colleagues and I found that only half of the
lakes that provided high-quality feeding habitat in 2000 were still suitable
feeding lakes in 2022.
Lesser flamingos feed by turning their heads upside down, pumping water through
fine hair-like structures called lamellae in their beaks and catching only
cyanobacteria of a certain size. This highly specialised tactic means the birds
are heavily dependent on certain cyanobacteria species such as spirulina.
This is the same vitamin-rich spirulina you might have seen in smoothies or
supplements. In nature, the species that flamingos feed on only grows in highly
salty and alkine conditions, and in soda lakes it grows in such numbers that
these lakes are some of the most productive ecosystems on the planet.
But these lakes are especially sensitive to change because they often have no
outflowing rivers. And as their waters rise they are diluted, reducing their
salinity and alkalinity and limiting the growth of the cyanobacteria the
flamingos depend on."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
