• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Saturday, September 6, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Chemistry

Chemistry in the ground affect how many kids wild animals have

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
February 28, 2024
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 5 mins read
0
Musk oxen in Greenland
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

When humans get pregnant we go to the pharmacy and buy supplements. We know that pregnant women need supplementary folic acid, iron and D-vitamin. 

Musk oxen in Greenland

Credit: Lars Holst Hansen

When humans get pregnant we go to the pharmacy and buy supplements. We know that pregnant women need supplementary folic acid, iron and D-vitamin. 

But wild animals can’t do that.

Instead they tend to go to areas where the ground and therefore also the plants contain more of the essential minerals that they need. 

In a newly published large study from Greenland musk oxen have been followed for 25 years to see how their feeding habits affect their reproductive success. And it turns out that when they go to areas with more copper and selenium in the ground, they have more calves.

One of the researchers behind the new study, senior researcher Floris M. van Beest from the Department of Ecoscience at Aarhus University, explains why the results are important for our understanding of wild animals.

–  Usually researchers look at the quality of the plants that the animals forage on. They measure major components of the plants such as nitrogen. But we dig a little deeper. We look at trace elements such as copper and selenium in the plants, but also if they are present in the ground beneath the plants.

First study of its kind 

The study is the first time that the chemical composition of the ground has been coupled with the reproductive success in animals.

Because of better technology for measuring very low concentration of these elements, it’s now possible to do these kinds of studies, explains Sophia V. Hansson, a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Toulouse, France. She’s also one of the researchers behind the study.

– From a geochemical perspective it’s interesting to look at essential and non-essential elements together. Usually, studies tend to focus on the pollutants or the major elements like carbon and nitrogen, but here we look at the essential smaller components – trace elements such as copper and selenium – as well. 

– Thanks to technological improvements we can now detect even very low concentrations of such elements. Better than we could 10 years ago.

She hopes that this study is only the first in a long line of similar research projects mapping the chemical composition of the ground and the effect it has on animals.

– It’s a truly interdisciplinary study, combining chemistry, geology and ecology, and I hope that the approach will be used in other areas as well. Here, we’ve only mapped 25 square kilometers of Greenland, but much more of the arctic area could be mapped in a similar way, she says.

How did the researchers do it?

So how did the researchers show how the chemistry of the ground affects the reproductive success of the musk oxen?

To do so they needed four sets of data. They needed to know where the musk oxen were at different times. They needed to know the number of animals and how the population expanded or decreased over time. They needed to know which plants were abundant in the different areas. And they needed to know the chemical composition of the ground and the plants.

Luckily the musk oxen in Greenland have been studied closely for the last 25 years. Some of the animals have GPS-trackers on them, allowing the researchers to know where the animals go to forage. Also, every summer a field crew of researchers perform visual counts of all the musk oxen they find in the area and make a note of how many adults, males, females and calves they see.

The data from 25 years of studying musk oxen were then paired with maps created from the chemical composition of vegetation and soil samples gathered at 50 different spots.

Bad chemicals on the tundra

Not all the areas in the tundra of southern Greenland where the musk oxen feed is filled with good chemicals. The researchers also found areas where higher levels of contaminants such as arsenic and lead were present.
 
And that is not a good thing for the oxen, Floris M. van Beest explains.

– In some areas we found arsenic and lead and we know that it can reduce the reproductive success of the musk oxen. However, we did not find a causal effect here. Normally it would cause the reproductive organs to collapse, but there are still musk oxen present, so somehow they found a way to survive, he says.

Typically contaminants such as lead and arsenic are more concentrated in the heathlands further up the mountains. Normally the musk oxen prefer to stay in the valleys foraging on grass and dwarf willow. But not always.

– We can see that the reproductive success of the musk oxen is higher when they stay in the valleys and eat grass. When they migrate into the mountains and forage on heathlands, they have fewer calves, he says.

Applies to other animals as well

Even though the results only cover musk oxen in Greenland, both Floris M. van Beest and Sophia V. Hansson stress that other animals must be affected by the chemistry of the ground in a similar manner.

– We don’t know much about how this works in the wild. But from veterinarians and zoos we do know something. They have given animals supplemental food for a long time and know some of the effects. But, of course, it’s different for wild animals, Sophia V. Hansson says. 

The next step would be to study other animals and other areas with different chemical compositions in the ground. 

– Not every animal needs the same amount of elements. But you can use the approach in other areas. Now we know a little more about how these elements are spread through the ecosystem and how they affect the animals. Next step would be to use the same approach to map out other areas in Europe, Floris M. van Beest says.



DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166567

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Geochemical landscapes as drivers of wildlife reproductive success: Insights from a high-Arctic ecosystem

Article Publication Date

10-Dec-2023

COI Statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Scientists Convert Plastic Waste into High-Performance CO2 Capture Materials

Scientists Convert Plastic Waste into High-Performance CO2 Capture Materials

September 5, 2025
Decoding Orderly and Disorderly Behavior in 2D Nanomaterials: Paving the Way for AI-Driven Custom Designs

Decoding Orderly and Disorderly Behavior in 2D Nanomaterials: Paving the Way for AI-Driven Custom Designs

September 5, 2025

Physicists Develop Visible Time Crystal for the First Time

September 5, 2025

Adaptive Visible-Infrared Camouflage Enables Wide-Spectrum Radiation Control for Extreme Temperature Environments

September 5, 2025

POPULAR NEWS

  • blank

    Breakthrough in Computer Hardware Advances Solves Complex Optimization Challenges

    150 shares
    Share 60 Tweet 38
  • Molecules in Focus: Capturing the Timeless Dance of Particles

    142 shares
    Share 57 Tweet 36
  • New Drug Formulation Transforms Intravenous Treatments into Rapid Injections

    116 shares
    Share 46 Tweet 29
  • First Confirmed Human Mpox Clade Ib Case China

    54 shares
    Share 22 Tweet 14

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Phase II Study Finds Iza-Bren Plus Osimertinib Achieves 100% Response Rate in EGFR-Mutated NSCLC

Novel Antibody-Drug Conjugate Demonstrates Promising Efficacy in EGFR-Mutated NSCLC Patients

COMPEL Study Finds Adding Chemotherapy to Osimertinib After Progression Enhances Progression-Free Survival in EGFR-Mutated NSCLC

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.