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Two Science papers built around international collaboration
12 June 2012
Teamwork: Dr Lynne Shannon (left) with Dr Yunne-Jai Shin of the French Institute of Research for Development, one of her many collaborators in recent years.
Getting one research paper published in the prestigious journal Science is a feat for any life scientist, but UCT zoologist Dr Lynne Shannon has celebrated two articles in the journal, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, just a few months apart.
In August, Shannon, of the Marine Research Institute (MA-RE) and the Department of Zoology, was among 12 researchers who toasted the publication of a paper - Impacts of Fishing Low-Trophic-Level Species on Marine Ecosystems - in the famed journal. The ink had barely dried before Shannon's name graced the journal's pages in December, one of 14 authors of the paper Global Seabird Response to Forage Fish Depletion - One-Third for the Birds.
Science's impact factor for 2010 was set at over 30, making it one of the highest in the world, mentioned only in the same breath as close rival Nature.
Shannon puts the achievement down to decades of collaboration - and being in the right place at the right time, namely UCT, and Marine and Coastal Management, where she was key to the formation of the South African Working Group on Ecosystem Approaches for Fisheries Management.
She also co-chairs the international IndiSeas (Indicators for the Seas) Working Group, which examines the effects of fishing and natural variability on marine ecosystems.
The authors of the first Science paper work in Australia, France, Peru, the US and the UK while the second group hails from Canada, France, Namibia (including UCT colleague Jean-Paul Roux of the Animal Demography Unit), Norway, South Africa, Sweden and the US.
Though there was variability in the five far-flung ecosystems (Peru, the North Sea, South African waters and the Southern Ocean), there was a clear and common pattern across the first study, which covered the impact on those ecosystems of potential over-fishing of forage fish. These are anchovy, sand eels, sardines and krill. (These fish are key in the food web as they are the 'middlemen' between plankton and a whole suite of larger, predatory fish, mammals and seabirds.)
Such was the common ground that the authors could produce specific numbers applicable across the ecosystems. Halving exploitation rates, they concluded, would result in much lower impacts on all the marine ecosystems in question, while still achieving 80% of maximum sustainable yields.
The second band of researchers also found mutual features. In that study on the impact that the depletion of forage fish would have on seabirds, they identified a threshold in prey abundance (ie the number of forage fish) below which breeding success took a substantial dive, and at which breeding patterns were more unstable and unpredictable.
This response was common to all seven ecosystems and 14 bird species examined within the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Oceans."
As Shannon points out, universal findings across international boundaries and ecosystems are handy when it comes to shaping local policy.
"Proposals are more respected when they come from such a broad group," she says. "And in the end it's not about getting into Science, but about seeing that your work is useful."
