According to a study led by the University of South Florida, the average lifespan of a Florida horse conch is between eight and 10 years, and it doesn’t start reproducing until about age six, giving birth to up to 28,000 offspring each year. This is a dramatic shift from previous belief that a horse conch could live for half a century — meaning far fewer offspring are born to replace those removed as a result of harvest or natural causes.

The interdisciplinary research team, which includes the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and current and former USF graduate students, also found that the largest Florida horse conch is no more than 16 years old. The two-foot shell is on display at the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum in Sanibel. The team’s results, published in PLOS ONE, were based on analyses of museum specimens, reducing harm to an already fragile population if they removed shells from the wild.

To estimate horse conch ages, researchers analyzed chemical bands in the shell, which track water temperature as the snail grows and can be counted like tree rings to measure the passage of time. Unlike tree rings, which are visible, the chemical bands can only be determined by geochemical analysis.

The team was also able to determine the horse conch’s amount of growth each year by wrapping string around each coil and then straightening and measuring the string. They found females grow rapidly each year of their lives, whereas males slow down early and mature at a much smaller size. Researchers determined that female horse conchs start laying eggs at about age six, based on spikes in shell carbon levels.

“Our research shows that horse conch reproduction is less likely to keep pace with intense harvest than previously thought,” said lead author Greg Herbert, associate professor from the USF School of Geosciences. “Horse conch populations are important. They create habitat for other species by leaving empty shells of dead prey around for fish, crabs and other animals to use as homes. They also contribute to the unique experience that we have in Florida of being able to go to the beach and seeing one of the largest seashells in the world at the water’s edge.”

Data from FWC shows that there has been a steady population decline since the mid-1990s. Commercial fishermen reported a peak count of 14,511 Florida horse conchs in 1996, followed by 6,124 in 2000, 1,461 in 2015 and just 67 in 2020.

“We still know very little about how many horse conchs exist and where their preferred habitats or what their optimal environmental conditions are,” said co-author Stephen Geiger, research scientist at the FWC. “Because we have no dedicated funding for more than 1,500 species of mollusks found in the waters that surround Florida, we continue to seek grants that enable us to study their biological traits, including those that will help managers decide if some species are in need of better protection.”

The shells that were studied were collected from the Dry Tortugas, Vaca Key, Sanibel Island and Cape Romano. Researchers say the further north you go, the smaller the Florida horse conch, possibly due to overexploited fisheries and recreational collecting.

An international team of researchers including John Dattilo — professor of recreation, park, and tourism management at Penn State — has been studying how to increase leisure and reduce loneliness during the pandemic among both international college students and older adults.

Across two different studies, the researchers found that people who had meaningful, challenging experiences were less lonely — even when higher levels of social contact and support were not available.

“There is a well-known saying: ‘Time flies when you are having fun,'” said Dattilo. “The unspoken corollary is that time drags when you are bored. Our research shows that both of these ideas are true. By engaging in meaningful activities during free time that demand focus, people can reduce loneliness and increase momentary happiness.”

Loneliness and the pandemic

Despite — or perhaps in part because of — technology that can connect people anywhere at any time, previous research has shown that loneliness has increased over recent decades.

Loneliness touches people of all ages, from children to young adults to older adults. The COVID-19 pandemic, which caused many people to alter their social behavior to prevent the spread of disease, exacerbated the problem of loneliness around the world.

“Loneliness is very connected to our health,” Dattilo explained. “Psychological, emotional, and cognitive health are all challenged when people are lonely. Loneliness is associated with depression and other mental health challenges.”

“Troublingly,” continued Dattilo, “there is a loneliness epidemic. And while the COVID-19 pandemic has increased loneliness for many people, the silver lining is that the pandemic has also exposed the scope of the loneliness problem. Anything we can do as a society to reduce loneliness should improve health and happiness for people everywhere.”

In a new article that appears in Leisure Sciences, the researchers explored loneliness among international university students in Taiwan. The same research team also published an article about reducing loneliness among nursing home residents late in 2021.

Prior research has shown that loneliness among international university students is common around the world. International students are removed from their social networks and live in a different culture, often one that speaks a different language. Typically, international students can prevent loneliness by participating in social activities to receive ‘social support,’ the sense that they are cared for by the people with whom they socialize. During the pandemic, however, many group-based activities and social gatherings have been cancelled or prohibited.

Additionally, the researchers identified that the online social opportunities that became available in the pandemic may be less accessible to international students because of language and cultural differences.

Flow reduces loneliness

According to the researchers, reduced loneliness is associated with engaging in enjoyable activities that require both concentration and skill.

“When people become engrossed in what they are doing, they enter a state that is called ‘flow,'” Dattilo explained. “Flow can be achieved by engaging in mental or physical activities that we value and that require us to concentrate fully to use our skills.”

For people to achieve a state of flow, an activity must require a good deal of their skill but not be so difficult that it seems impossible. Additionally, it must demand concentration to execute and be meaningful to the participant. Artistic endeavors like playing the piano or painting can induce flow. So can physical activities like skiing or chopping wood, along with mental tasks like writing or storytelling. What induces flow differs from person to person based on individual skills and values.

“When we enter a state of flow, we become absorbed and focused, and we experience momentary enjoyment,” Dattilo continued. “When we leave a state of flow, we are often surprised by how much time has passed.”

People with extensive free time — like college students who are locked down during a pandemic, or people who live in a nursing home — can achieve flow when they engage in activities they find to be meaningful. In this way, time passes quickly for them, their life has meaning, and their experience of loneliness is reduced, according to the researchers.

Social support from friends and acquaintances is a primary way that people reduce loneliness. For many people, however, obtaining adequate social support can be challenging. Though the researchers found that students with high levels of social support were less lonely, they found that flow was even more important to reducing loneliness. Helping people achieve flow can reduce loneliness in situations where social support is insufficient. More importantly, it can reduce loneliness for people in any situation.

Encouraging flow for everyone

Some activities never induce flow, while other activities may or may not, depending on the individual. According to Dattilo, there is nothing wrong with watching television, but, typically, it does not help people enter a state of flow because they are unlikely to experience any challenges. Additionally, different people find different activities meaningful and enjoyable. Nursing home residents are unlikely to enjoy playing bingo if they did not enjoy similar games when they were younger, said Dattilo.

“Learning which activities might enable someone to enter a state of flow requires asking questions and listening,” said Dattilo. “People tend to thrive on healthy engagement and challenge. My collaborators and I hope that this research will help people live fuller, happier, healthier lives.”

This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan. Liang-Chih Chang of National Open University in New Taipei City, Taiwan was the lead author of this research. Pei-Chun Hseih of Brock University in Ontario, Canada and Fei-Hsin Huang of Lungwha University of Science and Technology in Taoyuan City, Taiwan also contributed to this research.

The research includes data from a large and well-characterized prospective cohort of elderly individuals, with detailed data on dietary intake, inflammation, and incidence of CVD. The research confirmed previously observed associations between dietary fiber and CVD and extended those investigations to include the source of the fiber, the relationship of fiber with multiple inflammatory markers, and to test whether inflammation mediated the relationship between dietary fiber and CVD.

Of the 4125 adults enrolled in the Cardiovascular Health Study from 1989 to 1990 participants received a food frequency questionnaire that was administered to those without prevalent CVD at enrollment and then were followed up visits for development CVD (stroke, myocardial infarction, and atherosclerotic cardiovascular death) through June 2015. Blood samples were assessed for markers of inflammation.

“Higher intakes of dietary fiber is associated with lower CVD risk. A common hypothesis has been that higher fiber intakes reduce inflammation, subsequently leading to lower CVD risk” said Rupak Shivakoti, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School. ‘With findings from this study, we are now learning that one particular type of dietary fiber — cereal fiber — but not fruit or vegetable fiber was associated with lower inflammation. With findings from this study we now are learning that cereal fiber has the potential to reduce inflammation and will need to be tested in future interventional studies.”

Although there are data to suggest that fiber in general might have anti-inflammatory effects by improving gut function, modifying diet and satiety (eg, reduced fat and total energy intake), and improving lipid and glucose profile metabolism, why cereal fiber but not vegetable or fruit fiber is associated with lower inflammation is not clear and warrants further investigation, noted Shivakoti. Further, he notes that it is not clear whether cereal fiber per se or other nutrients in foods rich in cereal fiber are driving the observed relationships.

“Additionally, we learned that inflammation had only a modest role in mediating the observed inverse association between cereal fiber and CVD,” observed Shivakoti. “This suggests that factors other than inflammation may play a larger role in the cereal fiber-associated reduction in CVD and will need to be tested in future interventions of specific populations.

Co-authors are from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; University of Washington; Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Harvard Medical School; Boston Veterans Healthcare; Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont; San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System; University of California-San Francisco; Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute; New York Academy of Medicine; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and Harvard Chan School of Public Health,

The research was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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Materials provided by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.