Australasian Science 11-1

8 | JAN/FEB 2016

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Oil Spill Rehab Is Worth It

New Zealand researchers have justified the costs of wildlife responses

to oil spills by demonstrating that penguins that were rehabilitated after

the 2011 Rena oil spill in the Bay of Plenty have returned to normal

behaviours.

In the study, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin

(tinyurl.com/qbteuwb), members of Massey University’s Wildbase Oil

Response Team used tracking devices to show that both rehabilitated

and unaffected little blue penguins were diving to similar depths in

similar locations. By analysing the carbon and nitrogen levels in the

birds’ feathers, they were also able to show that the penguins were

feeding on similar prey.

Co-author Dr Louise Chilvers said it’s necessary to evaluate the

behaviour of animals affected by oil spills, and not just the overall survival

rates. “Oil pollution not only affects the larger animals, like the little blue

penguins, but can have severe impacts on all levels of the food chain, from

krill all the way through to fish. Obviously, an animal’s ability to forage

affects their long-term survival.”

This study, along with other research done over the past 2 years,

indicates that the penguins are finding and eating enough prey to gain

the nutrients and energy they need to survive and reproduce at similar

rates to other populations of little blue penguins in Australia and New

Zealand.

Chilvers says this study justifies the need to continue supporting

oiled wildlife response. “Opponents of oiled wildlife response argue

that rehabilitation is an expensive anthropogenic need to lessen the

stress of oiled wildlife and has very little or no conservation value. This

research shows rehabilitation and intervention is effective both in the

short and long term.”

Data Archiving Errors

Limit Scientific Scrutiny

Researchers have reported that more than half of the public

data sets provided with scientific papers are incomplete,

preventing reproducibility tests and follow-up studies. However

the study, published in PLOS Biology(tinyurl.com/omez64y),

found that only slight improvements to research practices could

make a big difference.

Dr Dominique Roche of The Australian National University

explained that many peer-reviewed biological journals now

require authors to publicly archive their data when a paper is

published. Making research data available improves the

transparency and reproducibility of research results and avoids

unnecessary duplication of data collection. “Unfortunately, our

study suggests that many public data sets may be unusable,” he

said.

The survey of 100 papers published in leading journals in

ecology and evolution found that more than 50% of the data

sets associated with these studies were incomplete due to

missing data or essential information needed to interpret the

data.

While making the data public is extremely useful, Roche said

that the process is often compromised by simple errors made by

researchers. “Many scientists, including myself, lack proper

training in public data archiving and open science practices.

These are new practices for most researchers,” he said.

“Biologists often deal with large and complex data sets that

require good organisational skills to present in ways that others

can use them. The archived data sets can be just as important as

the published paper.”

But Roche said “many of the problems we encountered in our

study can be fixed relatively quickly and easily”. These include

providing basic but complete data descriptors, using standard

file formats such as comma-separated values (CSV) rather than

PDFs or Excel files, and archiving data sets in an established,

searchable online database instead of as an appendix to the

research paper.

Co-author Prof Loeske Kruuk of ANU said the paper

recommended rewarding researchers that work transparently

and collaboratively. “Journals and databases don’t have the

resources to check whether archived data sets are adequate,”

she said. “The quality of the archived data sets relies on

researchers’ goodwill.”