What are India's citizen scientists looking for?
By: Lhendup G Bhutia
Date: 2011-11-14, MidDay.com
Place: Mumbai
Computer geeks, school children and professionals from different fields, who have otherwise no inkling of science and research, are turning into its latest foot soldiers. Meet the country's citizen scientists.
Dr Ceaser Sengupta, a pathologist and General Manager with what's considered to be the world's largest thyroid testing laboratory, Thyrocare Technologies Limited, leads a busy life. When he's not at his Turbhe office, his attention is divided between his six year-old daughter, his father and wife, with whom he resides in a swanky highrise in CBD Belapur.
Researchers belonging to Lost Amphibians of India look for amphibians
in the remote area of Latpanchar in North Bengal. The group that
comprises mostly individuals from non-research backgrounds is
undertaking a pioneering project in trying to locate Indian amphibian
species that are feared to have gone extinct.
All this might seem terribly ordinary if you didn't know about Sengupta's parallel life. Occasionally, the 37 year-old takes off to far flung areas of the country, especially forests and swamps, carrying with him a sleeping bag, a supply of dry fruit, and a pair of leather boots that reach his knees, protecting him from snake bites. If unable to locate a cow shed to sleep in, the sleeping bag comes in handy.
On these trips that often last between four days to a month and a half, Sengupta, along with other skilled urban professionals from a variety of career fields, transforms into a 'citizen scientist' or amateur researcher.
Sengupta's task is as ambitious in nature as it is vital. He, along with 500 urban professionals, mostly from non-science and research backgrounds, are part of Lost Amphibians of India (LAI), a group that is searching for 50 Indian amphibian species, mostly frogs and caecilians, that are thought to have gone extinct. While several species have been sighted in the last 10 years, some have eluded researchers for over 169 years.
"It is an extremely important programme. Most Indians are concerned about certain 'prestigious' animals, and hardly ever give a thought to amphibians. Some of the species we are searching for have not been sighted for years. We need to see if they are still around," says Sengupta.
LAI, which was launched in November 2010, has seen an excited response from common citizens. With its 500 members, it has already conducted 30 expeditions, one of which lasted a month-and-a-half in Arunachal Pradesh. The next one, which will be led by Sengupta, is days away and will take him to Maharashtra's Phandsad Wildlife Sanctuary.
LAI is not the only science programme that has seen support from commoners. Snigdha Kar, a 27 year-old Delhi-based employee of UNESCO, who is involved in the coordination and organising of various research programmes for the body, is a researcher in her own right. For the last four years, she has been part of MigrantWatch, a programme with over 1,300 members across the country, that is tracking one of nature's most spectacular events -- the migration of birds.
The programme hopes to ascertain if climate change is affecting the migratory patterns of birds. Kar earlier worked for the Delhi chapter of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and, despite being an amateur, has a keen interest in birds and has been keeping track of 20 different species that regularly fly into Delhi.
To spot these birds, Kar often continues her research when she travels out of Delhi on vacation, and consults books by experts, apart from looking up birds' features on websites. Out of the 20 species of migratory birds that she frequently reports about, Kar finds one particularly tough to spot. "The Greenish Warbler is very tough to identify. It's a small forest bird and we (bird watchers) have hours of discussion just to reach a consensus that it's the Greenish Warbler."
According to Suhel Quader, founder of MigrantWatch that is run by the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, the growing number of Indians from non-research backgrounds getting interested in the natural world provides a great opportunity for both, professional and amateur researchers, to work together.
"For many ecological changes, in particular, documenting what is happening over large spans of space and time is most effectively done through a participatory approach, where interested people volunteer their time and effort in working towards a common goal even though they are distributed throughout the country. When we started, it was obvious that seeking the help of bird watchers was the best way forward," says Quader.
While many have spoken about how eclipses affect the behaviour of animals, few have ever sought to ascertain if this claim is true. Earlier last year, during the January 15 solar eclipse, NCBS tried to do just that.
Over 100 volunteers took part in EclipseWatch, from locations as diverse as Itanagar, Thiruvananthapuram to Mumbai, to find that the only clear change in animal behaviour occurred in areas where the maximum eclipse was almost complete (more than 88 per cent coverage of the sun). In these areas, there was a marked reduction in the activity of birds and animals.
Banking on such models, another programme is being run across Kerala schools, before it can be replicated across the country. And it invites adult participation too. Called SeasonWatch, the programme that launched in November 2010, seeks to learn if climate change is affecting the seasonality of trees.
A total of 100 different trees are on their list, and volunteers monitoring them, regularly update findings on the programme website, including the timing of the flowering, fruiting and leaf-flush of the trees. Arun Elassery, SeasonWatch's programme manager, says, "We often hear of trees blooming before hand, or summers lasting longer. We are trying to learn more about these happenings by taking the help of volunteers."
More often than not, volunteers come with a keen interest in nature. Kar, for instance, was troubled to see how a large number of jackals were being run over by vehicles whenever she drove down the narrow Suraj Kund Road that cut across Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, connecting Tuglaqabad to Kant Enclave, "I spotted at least six jackals being run over.
I would always get out of my vehicle, and photograph them while others would continue running over them. Using the photos, I requested the sanctuary officials to lower speed limits on that road but it hardly helped." Later on June 1, when the Nature Conservation Foundation launched a two month-long survey to find out about the numbers and location of Golden Jackals in India, Kar was able to make an invaluable contribution with her notes and photographs.
LAI's team of amphibian scientists are working and using several scientific parameters to identify the Lost! Amphibians of India. Announcements of rediscovered species are expected very soon. In the case of MigrantWatch, it is too early for results of any kind to emerge. As Quader explains, "We have begun formally documenting existing migration timings -- and this will form a baseline against which future patterns can be compared."
Even in Mumbai, smaller programmes that are as much educational in nature as they are research-oriented, are emerging. For instance, Dr V Subhalaxmi, general manager at BNHS -- Education Department, helped launch in February this year, their Be A Scientist For A Day (BASFAD) programme. Here, a few professional researchers lead a group of volunteers into the 33-acre BNHS Nature Reserve in Goregaon to conduct field trips.
Sachin Chogre, an educational officer who conducts research programmes on moth studies, says, "Here, once every month, we organise research groups to study moths, amphibians, birds and flora of the region. We started it, knowing that we'd get a good response. Besides, it's a great way to document changes unfolding in these regions."
Sameer Patil, a freelance computer programmer from Thane, who attended a session of bird spotting, is planning to join another one soon. "Earlier, I could hardly ever identify birds. That day, we were taught about various species and how to identify them from their calls and features. We spread out and were able to document various species that frequent the area," he says. After a period of time, all findings made during the BASFAD programme, will be compiled into a report.
Dr Sengupta says, "When I return home from exhibitions, my body is marked with mosquito bites. But it is all worth it."
Showing posts with label Scientific Research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scientific Research. Show all posts
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Herbicide Atrazine Spurs Reproductive Problems in Many Creatures (Via Herp Digest)
Herbicide Atrazine Spurs Reproductive Problems in Many Creatures, Report Finds
ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2011) - An international team of researchers has reviewed the evidence linking exposure to atrazine -- an herbicide widely used in the U.S. and more than 60 other nations -- to reproductive problems in animals. The team found consistent patterns of reproductive dysfunction in amphibians, fish, reptiles and mammals exposed to the chemical.
Atrazine is the second-most widely used herbicide in the U.S. More than 75 million pounds of it are applied to corn and other crops, and it is the most commonly detected pesticide contaminant of groundwater, surface water and rain in the U.S.
The new review, compiled by 22 scientists studying atrazine in North and South America, Europe and Japan, appears in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
The researchers looked at studies linking atrazine exposure to abnormal androgen (male hormone) levels in fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals and studies that found a common association between exposure to the herbicide and the "feminization" of male gonads in many animals.
The most robust findings are in amphibians, said University of Illinois comparative biosciences professor Val Beasley, a co-author of the review. At least 10 studies found that exposure to atrazine feminizes male frogs, sometimes to the point of sex reversal, he said.
Beasley's lab was one of the first to find that male frogs exposed to atrazine in the wild were more likely to have both male and female gonadal tissue than frogs living in an atrazine-free environment. And in a 2010 study, Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the review, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that atrazine exposure in frogs was associated with "genetic males becoming females and functioning as females," Beasley said.
"And this is not at extremely high concentrations," he said. "These are at concentrations that are found in the environment."
The new review describes the disruptions of hormone function and sexual development reported in studies of mammals, frogs, fish, reptiles and human cells exposed to the herbicide. The studies found that atrazine exposure can change the expression of genes involved in hormone signaling, interfere with metamorphosis, inhibit key enzymes that control estrogen and androgen production, skew the sex ratio of wild and laboratory animals (toward female) and otherwise disrupt the normal reproductive development and functioning of males and females.
"One of the things that became clear in writing this paper is that atrazine works through a number of different mechanisms," Hayes said. "It's been shown that it increases production of (the stress hormone) cortisol. It's been shown that it inhibits key enzymes in steroid hormone production while increasing others. It's been shown that it somehow prevents androgen from binding to its receptor."
The review also consolidates the evidence that atrazine undermines immune function in a variety of animals, in part by increasing cortisol.
"Cortisol is a nonspecific response to chronic stress," Beasley said. "But guess what? Wildlife in many of today's habitats are stressed a great deal of the time. They're stressed because they're crowded into little remnant habitats. They're stressed because there's not enough oxygen in the water because there are not enough plants in the water (another consequence of herbicide use). They're stressed because of other contaminants in the water. And the long-term release of cortisol causes them to be immuno-suppressed."
There also are studies that show no effects -- or different effects -- in animals exposed to atrazine, Beasley said. "But the studies are not all the same. There are different species, different times of exposure, different stages of development and different strains within a species." All in all, he said, the evidence that atrazine harms animals, particularly amphibians and other creatures that encounter it in the water, is compelling.
"I hope this will stimulate policymakers to look at the totality of the data and ask very broad questions," Hayes said. "Do we want this stuff in our environment? Do we want -- knowing what we know -- our children to drink this stuff? I would think the answer would be no."
ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2011) - An international team of researchers has reviewed the evidence linking exposure to atrazine -- an herbicide widely used in the U.S. and more than 60 other nations -- to reproductive problems in animals. The team found consistent patterns of reproductive dysfunction in amphibians, fish, reptiles and mammals exposed to the chemical.
Atrazine is the second-most widely used herbicide in the U.S. More than 75 million pounds of it are applied to corn and other crops, and it is the most commonly detected pesticide contaminant of groundwater, surface water and rain in the U.S.
The new review, compiled by 22 scientists studying atrazine in North and South America, Europe and Japan, appears in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
The researchers looked at studies linking atrazine exposure to abnormal androgen (male hormone) levels in fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals and studies that found a common association between exposure to the herbicide and the "feminization" of male gonads in many animals.
The most robust findings are in amphibians, said University of Illinois comparative biosciences professor Val Beasley, a co-author of the review. At least 10 studies found that exposure to atrazine feminizes male frogs, sometimes to the point of sex reversal, he said.
Beasley's lab was one of the first to find that male frogs exposed to atrazine in the wild were more likely to have both male and female gonadal tissue than frogs living in an atrazine-free environment. And in a 2010 study, Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the review, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that atrazine exposure in frogs was associated with "genetic males becoming females and functioning as females," Beasley said.
"And this is not at extremely high concentrations," he said. "These are at concentrations that are found in the environment."
The new review describes the disruptions of hormone function and sexual development reported in studies of mammals, frogs, fish, reptiles and human cells exposed to the herbicide. The studies found that atrazine exposure can change the expression of genes involved in hormone signaling, interfere with metamorphosis, inhibit key enzymes that control estrogen and androgen production, skew the sex ratio of wild and laboratory animals (toward female) and otherwise disrupt the normal reproductive development and functioning of males and females.
"One of the things that became clear in writing this paper is that atrazine works through a number of different mechanisms," Hayes said. "It's been shown that it increases production of (the stress hormone) cortisol. It's been shown that it inhibits key enzymes in steroid hormone production while increasing others. It's been shown that it somehow prevents androgen from binding to its receptor."
The review also consolidates the evidence that atrazine undermines immune function in a variety of animals, in part by increasing cortisol.
"Cortisol is a nonspecific response to chronic stress," Beasley said. "But guess what? Wildlife in many of today's habitats are stressed a great deal of the time. They're stressed because they're crowded into little remnant habitats. They're stressed because there's not enough oxygen in the water because there are not enough plants in the water (another consequence of herbicide use). They're stressed because of other contaminants in the water. And the long-term release of cortisol causes them to be immuno-suppressed."
There also are studies that show no effects -- or different effects -- in animals exposed to atrazine, Beasley said. "But the studies are not all the same. There are different species, different times of exposure, different stages of development and different strains within a species." All in all, he said, the evidence that atrazine harms animals, particularly amphibians and other creatures that encounter it in the water, is compelling.
"I hope this will stimulate policymakers to look at the totality of the data and ask very broad questions," Hayes said. "Do we want this stuff in our environment? Do we want -- knowing what we know -- our children to drink this stuff? I would think the answer would be no."
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Whiskers Marked Milestone in Evolution of Mammals from Reptiles (Via Herp Digest)
Whiskers Marked Milestone in Evolution of Mammals from Reptiles
The story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Sheffield. (Nov. 10, 2011) - Research from the University of Sheffield comparing rats and mice with their distance relatives the marsupial, suggests that moveable whiskers were an important milestone in the evolution of mammals from reptiles.
Using high-speed digital video recording and automatic tracking, the research team, which was led by Professor Tony Prescott from the University´s Department of Psychology, have shed light on how rodents such as mice and rats move their whiskers back-and-forth at high speed and in varying ways to actively sense the environment around them in a behaviour known as whisking. Whisking allows mice or rats to accurately determine the position, shape and texture of objects, make rapid and accurate decisions about objects, and then use the information to build environmental maps.
When running in a straight line, rats and mice move their whiskers back-and-forth the same amount on both sides. However when turning, they bias their whisker movements in the direction of the turn, and when the whiskers on one side of the head contact an object, those on the opposite side sweep round to gather more information. These active sensing strategies boost the information gained by the whiskers helping the animals to better understand their world through touch.
In their latest research, the team have shown that whisking like that of rodents, using these active sensing strategies, is also seen in a small South American marsupial -- the grey short-tailed opossum. This animal has many similarities to an early mammal that would have lived more than 125 million years ago; that is, around the same time that the evolutionary lines leading to modern rodents and marsupials diverged.
This evidence suggests that some of the first mammals may also have whisked like a modern mouse or rat, and that the appearance of moveable whiskers was pivotal in the evolution of mammals from reptiles. The research is published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on 12 November 2011 and will also be presented on the same day at the Society for Neuroscience conference.
The earliest mammals were nocturnal, and tree-living. In order to successfully move around and thrive in this challenging environment these animals needed to effectively integrate information from multiple senses -- sight, sound, smell, and touch. Facial whiskers provided mammals with a new tactile sense not available to reptiles that could help them to get around in the dark.
In addition to continuing to investigate the similarities and differences between rodents and marsupials, the team is also using these insights from biological whisker sensing to develop animal-like robots that can use artificial whiskers to navigate without vision. These robots could have applications in search-and-rescue, particularly in environments, such as disaster sites, where vision is compromised by smoke or dust.
Professor Tony Prescott said: "This latest research suggests that alongside becoming warm-blooded, giving birth to live young, and having an enlarged brain, the emergence of a new tactile sense based on moveable facial whiskers was an important step along the evolutionary path to modern mammals. Although humans no longer have moveable whiskers they were a critical feature of our early mammalian ancestors."
The story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Sheffield. (Nov. 10, 2011) - Research from the University of Sheffield comparing rats and mice with their distance relatives the marsupial, suggests that moveable whiskers were an important milestone in the evolution of mammals from reptiles.
Using high-speed digital video recording and automatic tracking, the research team, which was led by Professor Tony Prescott from the University´s Department of Psychology, have shed light on how rodents such as mice and rats move their whiskers back-and-forth at high speed and in varying ways to actively sense the environment around them in a behaviour known as whisking. Whisking allows mice or rats to accurately determine the position, shape and texture of objects, make rapid and accurate decisions about objects, and then use the information to build environmental maps.
When running in a straight line, rats and mice move their whiskers back-and-forth the same amount on both sides. However when turning, they bias their whisker movements in the direction of the turn, and when the whiskers on one side of the head contact an object, those on the opposite side sweep round to gather more information. These active sensing strategies boost the information gained by the whiskers helping the animals to better understand their world through touch.
In their latest research, the team have shown that whisking like that of rodents, using these active sensing strategies, is also seen in a small South American marsupial -- the grey short-tailed opossum. This animal has many similarities to an early mammal that would have lived more than 125 million years ago; that is, around the same time that the evolutionary lines leading to modern rodents and marsupials diverged.
This evidence suggests that some of the first mammals may also have whisked like a modern mouse or rat, and that the appearance of moveable whiskers was pivotal in the evolution of mammals from reptiles. The research is published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on 12 November 2011 and will also be presented on the same day at the Society for Neuroscience conference.
The earliest mammals were nocturnal, and tree-living. In order to successfully move around and thrive in this challenging environment these animals needed to effectively integrate information from multiple senses -- sight, sound, smell, and touch. Facial whiskers provided mammals with a new tactile sense not available to reptiles that could help them to get around in the dark.
In addition to continuing to investigate the similarities and differences between rodents and marsupials, the team is also using these insights from biological whisker sensing to develop animal-like robots that can use artificial whiskers to navigate without vision. These robots could have applications in search-and-rescue, particularly in environments, such as disaster sites, where vision is compromised by smoke or dust.
Professor Tony Prescott said: "This latest research suggests that alongside becoming warm-blooded, giving birth to live young, and having an enlarged brain, the emergence of a new tactile sense based on moveable facial whiskers was an important step along the evolutionary path to modern mammals. Although humans no longer have moveable whiskers they were a critical feature of our early mammalian ancestors."
Variation in male, female turtle shells provides advantage when facing predators (Via Herp Digest)
Variation in male, female turtle shells provides advantage when facing predators
Released: 11/15/2011 2:00 PM EST
Source: Allen Press Publishing Services
News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Newswise - Herpetologica - One way to tell a male turtle from a female turtle is a difference in the shape of their shells. While this pattern of sexual dimorphism is common among turtle species, it could have other effects on turtle biology. The differing shell designs may exhibit different strengths in standing up to the attack of a predator, and therefore the survival rate of one sex over the other.
The current issue of the journal Herpetologica reports on the mechanical implications of shell shape differences between two species of male and female turtles. The Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) is an aquatic species, and the Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) is a terrestrial species.
Females turtles tend to have larger, domed shells, which may indicate the ability to hold large clutches of eggs. Males, on the other hand, typically have flatter shells and larger openings for their limbs, allowing them greater movement. This improves their success in courtship and mating.
To test the strength of these varying shells, researchers created digital models of the shells for finite element analysis. This computer model uses simple geometric shapes to create a complex structure-the turtle shell in this case. It then calculates the response of those elemental shapes to create the response of the shell as a whole. Twelve load conditions, representing the bite of a predator at different locations, were applied.
The females of both species fared better than the males, although male and female Wood Turtles were more evenly matched. Female shells showed less stress than male shells. The concave shape of the plastron, or underside, of the male Wood Turtle's shell in particular exhibited significantly increased stress, indicating it would be more easily punctured by a predator.
These differences between sexes may stem from selection based on other factors besides predation. Currently, there are no data showing that females are more likely to encounter predators, for instance, and that therefore their shells have become better able to withstand such attacks. However, these variations can have an effect on turtles' lives and offer important implications for turtle conservation efforts.
Full text of the article "Dimorphism in Shell Shape and Strength in Two Species of Emydid Turtle," Herpetologica, Volume 67, Issue 4, November 2011, is available at: http://www.hljournals.org/
Released: 11/15/2011 2:00 PM EST
Source: Allen Press Publishing Services
News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Newswise - Herpetologica - One way to tell a male turtle from a female turtle is a difference in the shape of their shells. While this pattern of sexual dimorphism is common among turtle species, it could have other effects on turtle biology. The differing shell designs may exhibit different strengths in standing up to the attack of a predator, and therefore the survival rate of one sex over the other.
The current issue of the journal Herpetologica reports on the mechanical implications of shell shape differences between two species of male and female turtles. The Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) is an aquatic species, and the Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) is a terrestrial species.
Females turtles tend to have larger, domed shells, which may indicate the ability to hold large clutches of eggs. Males, on the other hand, typically have flatter shells and larger openings for their limbs, allowing them greater movement. This improves their success in courtship and mating.
To test the strength of these varying shells, researchers created digital models of the shells for finite element analysis. This computer model uses simple geometric shapes to create a complex structure-the turtle shell in this case. It then calculates the response of those elemental shapes to create the response of the shell as a whole. Twelve load conditions, representing the bite of a predator at different locations, were applied.
The females of both species fared better than the males, although male and female Wood Turtles were more evenly matched. Female shells showed less stress than male shells. The concave shape of the plastron, or underside, of the male Wood Turtle's shell in particular exhibited significantly increased stress, indicating it would be more easily punctured by a predator.
These differences between sexes may stem from selection based on other factors besides predation. Currently, there are no data showing that females are more likely to encounter predators, for instance, and that therefore their shells have become better able to withstand such attacks. However, these variations can have an effect on turtles' lives and offer important implications for turtle conservation efforts.
Full text of the article "Dimorphism in Shell Shape and Strength in Two Species of Emydid Turtle," Herpetologica, Volume 67, Issue 4, November 2011, is available at: http://www.hljournals.org/
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Python circulating fatty acids study could benefit diseased human heart (Via Herp Digest)
Python circulating fatty acids study could benefit diseased human heart
Press Relese 10/21/11, Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder professor Leslie Leinwand and her team have discovered that huge amounts of fatty acids circulating through the bloodstreams of feeding pythons promote healthy heart growth in the constricting snake, a study with implications for human heart heath. Credit: Photo by Thomas Cooper
A surprising new University of Colorado Boulder study shows that huge amounts of fatty acids circulating in the bloodstreams of feeding pythons promote healthy heart growth, results that may have implications for treating human heart disease.
CU-Boulder Professor Leslie Leinwand and her research team found the amount of triglycerides -- the main constituent of natural fats and oils -- in the blood of Burmese pythons one day after eating increased by more than fifty-fold. Despite the massive amount of fatty acids in the python bloodstream there was no evidence of fat deposition in the heart, and the researchers also saw an increase in the activity of a key enzyme known to protect the heart from damage.
After identifying the chemical make-up of blood plasma in fed pythons, the CU-Boulder researchers injected fasting pythons with either "fed python" blood plasma or a reconstituted fatty acid mixture they developed to mimic such plasma. In both cases, the pythons showed increased heart growth and indicators of cardiac health. The team took the experiments a step further by injecting mice with either fed python plasma or the fatty acid mixture, with the same results.
"We found that a combination of fatty acids can induce beneficial heart growth in living organisms," said CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Cecilia Riquelme, first author on the Science paper. "Now we are trying to understand the molecular mechanisms behind the process in hopes that the results might lead to new therapies to improve heart disease conditions in humans."
The paper is being published in the Oct. 28 issue of the journal Science. In addition to Leinwand and Riquelme, the authors include CU postdoctoral researcher Brooke Harrison, CU graduate student Jason Magida, CU undergraduate Christopher Wall, Hiberna Corp. researcher Thomas Marr and University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Professor Stephen Secor.
Previous studies have shown that the hearts of Burmese pythons can grow in mass by 40 percent within 24 to 72 hours after a large meal, and that metabolism immediately after swallowing prey can shoot up by forty-fold. As big around as telephone poles, adult Burmese pythons can swallow prey as large as deer, have been known to reach a length of 27 feet and are able to fast for up to a year with few ill effects.
There are good and bad types of heart growth, said Leinwand, who is an expert in genetic heart diseases including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the leading cause of sudden death in young athletes. While cardiac diseases can cause human heart muscle to thicken and decrease the size of heart chambers and heart function because the organ is working harder to pump blood, heart enlargement from exercise is beneficial.
"Well-conditioned athletes like Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and cyclist Lance Armstrong have huge hearts," said Leinwand, a professor in the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department and chief scientific officer of CU's Biofrontiers Institute. "But there are many people who are unable to exercise because of existing heart disease, so it would be nice to develop some kind of a treatment to promote the beneficial growth of heart cells."
Riquelme said once the CU team confirmed that something in the blood plasma of pythons was inducing positive cardiac growth, they began looking for the right "signal" by analyzing proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and peptides present in the fed plasma. The team used a technique known as gas chromatography to analyze both fasted and fed python plasma blood, eventually identifying a highly complex composition of circulating fatty acids with distinct patterns of abundance over the course of the digestive process.
In the mouse experiments led by Harrison, the animals were hooked up to "mini-pumps" that delivered low doses of the fatty acid mixture over a period of a week. Not only did the mouse hearts show significant growth in the major part of the heart that pumps blood, the heart muscle cell size increased, there was no increase in heart fibrosis -- which makes the heart muscle more stiff and can be a sign of disease -- and there were no alterations in the liver or in the skeletal muscles, he said.
"It was remarkable that the fatty acids identified in the plasma-fed pythons could actually stimulate healthy heart growth in mice," said Harrison. The team also tested the fed python plasma and the fatty acid mixture on cultured rat heart cells, with the same positive results, Harrison said.
The CU-led team also identified the activation of signaling pathways in the cells of fed python plasma, which serve as traffic lights of sorts, said Leinwand. "We are trying to understand how to make those signals tell individual heart cells whether they are going down a road that has pathological consequences, like disease, or beneficial consequences, like exercise," she said.
The prey of Burmese pythons can be up to 100 percent of the constricting snake's body mass, said Leinwand, who holds a Marsico Endowed Chair of Excellence at CU-Boulder. "When a python eats, something extraordinary happens. Its metabolism increases by more than forty-fold and the size of its organs increase significantly in mass by building new tissue, which is broken back down during the digestion process."
The three key fatty acids in the fed python plasma turned out to be myristic acid, palmitic acid and palmitoleic acid. The enzyme that showed increased activity in the python hearts during feeding episodes, known as superoxide dismutase, is a well-known "cardio-protective" enzyme in many organisms, including humans, said Leinwand.
The new Science study grew out of a project Leinwand began in 2006 when she was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and awarded a four-year, $1 million undergraduate education grant from the Chevy Chase, Md.-based institute. As part of the award Leinwand initiated the Python Project, an undergraduate laboratory research program designed to focus on the heart biology of constricting snakes like pythons thought to have relevance to human disease.
Undergraduates contributed substantially to the underpinnings of the new python study both by their genetic studies and by caring for the lab pythons, said Leinwand. While scientists know a great deal about the genomes of standard lab animal models like fruit flies, worms and mice, relatively little was known about pythons. "We have had to do a lot of difficult groundwork using molecular genetics tools in order to undertake this research," said Leinwand.
CU-Boulder already had a laboratory snake facility in place, which contributed to the success of the project, she said.
"The fact that the python study involved faculty, postdoctoral researchers, a graduate student and an undergraduate, Christopher Wall, shows the project was a team effort," said Leinwand. "Chris is a good example of how the University of Colorado provides an incredible educational research environment for undergraduates." Wall is now a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego.
Press Relese 10/21/11, Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder professor Leslie Leinwand and her team have discovered that huge amounts of fatty acids circulating through the bloodstreams of feeding pythons promote healthy heart growth in the constricting snake, a study with implications for human heart heath. Credit: Photo by Thomas Cooper
A surprising new University of Colorado Boulder study shows that huge amounts of fatty acids circulating in the bloodstreams of feeding pythons promote healthy heart growth, results that may have implications for treating human heart disease.
CU-Boulder Professor Leslie Leinwand and her research team found the amount of triglycerides -- the main constituent of natural fats and oils -- in the blood of Burmese pythons one day after eating increased by more than fifty-fold. Despite the massive amount of fatty acids in the python bloodstream there was no evidence of fat deposition in the heart, and the researchers also saw an increase in the activity of a key enzyme known to protect the heart from damage.
After identifying the chemical make-up of blood plasma in fed pythons, the CU-Boulder researchers injected fasting pythons with either "fed python" blood plasma or a reconstituted fatty acid mixture they developed to mimic such plasma. In both cases, the pythons showed increased heart growth and indicators of cardiac health. The team took the experiments a step further by injecting mice with either fed python plasma or the fatty acid mixture, with the same results.
"We found that a combination of fatty acids can induce beneficial heart growth in living organisms," said CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Cecilia Riquelme, first author on the Science paper. "Now we are trying to understand the molecular mechanisms behind the process in hopes that the results might lead to new therapies to improve heart disease conditions in humans."
The paper is being published in the Oct. 28 issue of the journal Science. In addition to Leinwand and Riquelme, the authors include CU postdoctoral researcher Brooke Harrison, CU graduate student Jason Magida, CU undergraduate Christopher Wall, Hiberna Corp. researcher Thomas Marr and University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Professor Stephen Secor.
Previous studies have shown that the hearts of Burmese pythons can grow in mass by 40 percent within 24 to 72 hours after a large meal, and that metabolism immediately after swallowing prey can shoot up by forty-fold. As big around as telephone poles, adult Burmese pythons can swallow prey as large as deer, have been known to reach a length of 27 feet and are able to fast for up to a year with few ill effects.
There are good and bad types of heart growth, said Leinwand, who is an expert in genetic heart diseases including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the leading cause of sudden death in young athletes. While cardiac diseases can cause human heart muscle to thicken and decrease the size of heart chambers and heart function because the organ is working harder to pump blood, heart enlargement from exercise is beneficial.
"Well-conditioned athletes like Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and cyclist Lance Armstrong have huge hearts," said Leinwand, a professor in the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department and chief scientific officer of CU's Biofrontiers Institute. "But there are many people who are unable to exercise because of existing heart disease, so it would be nice to develop some kind of a treatment to promote the beneficial growth of heart cells."
Riquelme said once the CU team confirmed that something in the blood plasma of pythons was inducing positive cardiac growth, they began looking for the right "signal" by analyzing proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and peptides present in the fed plasma. The team used a technique known as gas chromatography to analyze both fasted and fed python plasma blood, eventually identifying a highly complex composition of circulating fatty acids with distinct patterns of abundance over the course of the digestive process.
In the mouse experiments led by Harrison, the animals were hooked up to "mini-pumps" that delivered low doses of the fatty acid mixture over a period of a week. Not only did the mouse hearts show significant growth in the major part of the heart that pumps blood, the heart muscle cell size increased, there was no increase in heart fibrosis -- which makes the heart muscle more stiff and can be a sign of disease -- and there were no alterations in the liver or in the skeletal muscles, he said.
"It was remarkable that the fatty acids identified in the plasma-fed pythons could actually stimulate healthy heart growth in mice," said Harrison. The team also tested the fed python plasma and the fatty acid mixture on cultured rat heart cells, with the same positive results, Harrison said.
The CU-led team also identified the activation of signaling pathways in the cells of fed python plasma, which serve as traffic lights of sorts, said Leinwand. "We are trying to understand how to make those signals tell individual heart cells whether they are going down a road that has pathological consequences, like disease, or beneficial consequences, like exercise," she said.
The prey of Burmese pythons can be up to 100 percent of the constricting snake's body mass, said Leinwand, who holds a Marsico Endowed Chair of Excellence at CU-Boulder. "When a python eats, something extraordinary happens. Its metabolism increases by more than forty-fold and the size of its organs increase significantly in mass by building new tissue, which is broken back down during the digestion process."
The three key fatty acids in the fed python plasma turned out to be myristic acid, palmitic acid and palmitoleic acid. The enzyme that showed increased activity in the python hearts during feeding episodes, known as superoxide dismutase, is a well-known "cardio-protective" enzyme in many organisms, including humans, said Leinwand.
The new Science study grew out of a project Leinwand began in 2006 when she was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and awarded a four-year, $1 million undergraduate education grant from the Chevy Chase, Md.-based institute. As part of the award Leinwand initiated the Python Project, an undergraduate laboratory research program designed to focus on the heart biology of constricting snakes like pythons thought to have relevance to human disease.
Undergraduates contributed substantially to the underpinnings of the new python study both by their genetic studies and by caring for the lab pythons, said Leinwand. While scientists know a great deal about the genomes of standard lab animal models like fruit flies, worms and mice, relatively little was known about pythons. "We have had to do a lot of difficult groundwork using molecular genetics tools in order to undertake this research," said Leinwand.
CU-Boulder already had a laboratory snake facility in place, which contributed to the success of the project, she said.
"The fact that the python study involved faculty, postdoctoral researchers, a graduate student and an undergraduate, Christopher Wall, shows the project was a team effort," said Leinwand. "Chris is a good example of how the University of Colorado provides an incredible educational research environment for undergraduates." Wall is now a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tortoises Yawn-But It's Not Contagious (Via Herp Digest)
Tortoises Yawn-But It's Not Contagious - Ludwig Huber and colleagues earned the 2011 Ig Nobel in physiology for determining that yawning isn't contagious among red-footed tortoises
Copy upon request.
A wasabi alarm, beer bottle-loving beetles, and doomsday math were among the scientific advances honored Thursday with 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes.
National Geographic News, 10/6/11- The unique annual awards go to real research "that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think." The scientific celebration, now in its 21st year, was hosted by the Annals of Improbable Research and several Harvard University student groups.
As usual, more than a half dozen genuine Nobel laureates were onstage at Harvard's Sanders Theater to hand out the coveted prizes.
Tortoises Yawn-But It's Not Contagious
Ludwig Huber and colleagues earned the 2011 Ig Nobel in physiology for determining that yawning isn't contagious among red-footed tortoises-perhaps coming a bit closer to understanding what's behind the common but mysterious behavior.
Tortoises that watched another animal detour around an object to get food were able to learn the behavior by observation and duplicate it rather easily, said Huber, of the University of Vienna in Austria. The tortoises also followed the gazes of others, showing that they attend to what their fellow animals are doing.
But the reptiles did not yawn in response to other tortoises yawning [PDF], as humans and other higher primates have been observed to do. Huber says that combination of results is telling: "We can say that contagious yawning is not purely a simple reflex, because otherwise they would have shown it here," he explained. "We might say that it's based on a more complex kind of social behavior."
Copy upon request.
A wasabi alarm, beer bottle-loving beetles, and doomsday math were among the scientific advances honored Thursday with 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes.
National Geographic News, 10/6/11- The unique annual awards go to real research "that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think." The scientific celebration, now in its 21st year, was hosted by the Annals of Improbable Research and several Harvard University student groups.
As usual, more than a half dozen genuine Nobel laureates were onstage at Harvard's Sanders Theater to hand out the coveted prizes.
Tortoises Yawn-But It's Not Contagious
Ludwig Huber and colleagues earned the 2011 Ig Nobel in physiology for determining that yawning isn't contagious among red-footed tortoises-perhaps coming a bit closer to understanding what's behind the common but mysterious behavior.
Tortoises that watched another animal detour around an object to get food were able to learn the behavior by observation and duplicate it rather easily, said Huber, of the University of Vienna in Austria. The tortoises also followed the gazes of others, showing that they attend to what their fellow animals are doing.
But the reptiles did not yawn in response to other tortoises yawning [PDF], as humans and other higher primates have been observed to do. Huber says that combination of results is telling: "We can say that contagious yawning is not purely a simple reflex, because otherwise they would have shown it here," he explained. "We might say that it's based on a more complex kind of social behavior."
How to Scientifically Know where to Allocate Limited Resources to Save Species (Via Herp Digest)
How to Scientifically Know where to Allocate Limited Resources to Save Species - Also known, as Triage - How to Scientifically decide which species are worth saving which aren't. - New Study
Summary of Original Paper published in the Journal Nature Climate Change. by Allen Salzberg--9/30/11 More species could be saved from extinction under climate change thanks to a new model scientists have developed to guide allocation of conservation funding. The international team, led by Dr Brendan Wintle of the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, is the first to develop a pioneering decision-support model that incorporates both ecological and economic information to guide conservation investment in the face of climate change.
Although scientists knew that high extinction rates were predicted to increase under climate change, there was little advice to guide how money could be best spent to minimise extinctions.
Dr Wintle said "The best part about this model is that it can be applied to a range of environments, including many of Australia's native ecosystems, to suggest how to allocate funding. Our analysis supports the existing evidence that climate change will substantially accelerate extinction rates. So the first step is that we urgently need to limit global warming to avoid a mass extinction. Given that we are probably committed to a two degree warming by 2050, we need to develop effective strategies for minimizing the number of species that go extinct as a result.
"We only have a limited amount of money to spend on managing biodiversity, so the question becomes, how do we most effectively allocate these funds? We needed a systematic approach to guide conservation investment to minimize extinctions and avoid wasting money. An advantage of our approach is that it makes the costs of a plan explicit, reducing the opportunity for politicization of decisions."
The scientists combined ecological predictions with an economic decision framework to prioritize conservation activities, and tested the model on one of world's most biodiverse and highly threatened ecosystems; the South African fynbos.
"An interesting result of our analysis is that the optimal allocation of money depends strongly on the yearly conservation budget. For example if budgets were small then the whole budget would be dedicated to fire-fighting capacity. However, if more money were available, investment would be directed toward avoiding habitat loss due to clearing and weed invasion," Dr Wintle said.
The team included scientists from the University of Melbourne, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, CSIR South Africa, the NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, RMIT University, NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, University of NSW, the University of Queensland and a group of European researchers.
The work is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Summary of Original Paper published in the Journal Nature Climate Change. by Allen Salzberg--9/30/11 More species could be saved from extinction under climate change thanks to a new model scientists have developed to guide allocation of conservation funding. The international team, led by Dr Brendan Wintle of the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, is the first to develop a pioneering decision-support model that incorporates both ecological and economic information to guide conservation investment in the face of climate change.
Although scientists knew that high extinction rates were predicted to increase under climate change, there was little advice to guide how money could be best spent to minimise extinctions.
Dr Wintle said "The best part about this model is that it can be applied to a range of environments, including many of Australia's native ecosystems, to suggest how to allocate funding. Our analysis supports the existing evidence that climate change will substantially accelerate extinction rates. So the first step is that we urgently need to limit global warming to avoid a mass extinction. Given that we are probably committed to a two degree warming by 2050, we need to develop effective strategies for minimizing the number of species that go extinct as a result.
"We only have a limited amount of money to spend on managing biodiversity, so the question becomes, how do we most effectively allocate these funds? We needed a systematic approach to guide conservation investment to minimize extinctions and avoid wasting money. An advantage of our approach is that it makes the costs of a plan explicit, reducing the opportunity for politicization of decisions."
The scientists combined ecological predictions with an economic decision framework to prioritize conservation activities, and tested the model on one of world's most biodiverse and highly threatened ecosystems; the South African fynbos.
"An interesting result of our analysis is that the optimal allocation of money depends strongly on the yearly conservation budget. For example if budgets were small then the whole budget would be dedicated to fire-fighting capacity. However, if more money were available, investment would be directed toward avoiding habitat loss due to clearing and weed invasion," Dr Wintle said.
The team included scientists from the University of Melbourne, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, CSIR South Africa, the NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, RMIT University, NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, University of NSW, the University of Queensland and a group of European researchers.
The work is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Row As Firm Moves To Breed Beagles For Tests
Controversial plans to breed more beagles for use in scientific research are being considered by the Government.
The proposals by East Yorkshire company B&K Universal are being looked at by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
Anti-vivisection groups claim the plans would lead to more dogs being used in laboratory experiments, but the company insists it wants to reduce the number of animals being imported.
Sky News was given exclusive access to the firm's beagles bred for use in animal testing - the first time in its 37-year history that cameras have been allowed on the site.
The dogs are housed in a compound on the edge of the remote village of Grimston, east of Hull, and are shielded from animal rights extremists by razor wire, CCTV cameras and guards.
Behind three separate doors, inside a modern low-rise building, more than a dozen beagles are kept in groups of twos and threes in metal cages against the walls.
To protect them from disease, the dogs are never allowed outdoors and staff and visitors have to wear overclothes.
In the centre of the room is a bright plastic slide which the dogs can play on when they are let out for what the firm calls "socialisation" and when their cages are being cleaned.
The animals are ex-breeding stock imported from America or Europe and are used to supply blood for sale to laboratories.
If planning permission is granted, the cages will be moved to the new buildings and will house breeding dogs and their offspring, which will be sold for drug and product testing as well as medical research.
Known as Marshall beagles, they are a strain bred especially for research purposes by B&K's American parent company, Marshall Bioresources, which bought the firm in 2009 with the aim of establishing a breeding colony and expanding into the UK market.
According to the Home Office, 3,704 beagles were used in animal research procedures in the UK last year, with some 800 procedures carried out on imported dogs.
A well-placed source told Sky News the beagles sell for around £1,600 each, making the market worth up to £6m a year in the UK alone.
"To meet the demand these days we're having to import animals from long distances away and we'd like to avoid that," B&K's general manager, Roy Sutcliffe, said.
"(Our redevelopment) won't increase the numbers of dogs that are needed for research, it will just make it more convenient for the UK researchers to source them in the UK."
Although the use of animals for testing cosmetics is banned in the UK and the Government says it is committed to phasing out the testing of household products and reducing the use of animals in laboratories, the law states new drugs must still be tested on animals for safety.
A planning application to redevelop the Grimston site was refused by East Riding Council in June, and an appeal by the firm has been called in by the Department for Communities and Local Government over the controversy.
The company refuses to say how many dogs it would breed on the site if its appeal is successful, but campaigners claim it could be up to 2,000.
Michelle Thew, chief executive of anti-vivisection group BUAV, said 28,000 people signed their petition objecting to the plans.
"A decision to accept the facility would fly in the face of public opinion and the recent Government pledge to reduce the numbers of animals in experiments," she said.
"People will be shocked to learn of the unnatural conditions in which these beagles are bred. Tragically they are viewed simply as products with a price tag on their heads."
The Department for Communities and Local Government said the appeal is being assessed by a planning inspector and will be approved or rejected in line with planning legislation.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/row-firm-moves-breed-beagles-tests-225353353.html
The proposals by East Yorkshire company B&K Universal are being looked at by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
Anti-vivisection groups claim the plans would lead to more dogs being used in laboratory experiments, but the company insists it wants to reduce the number of animals being imported.
Sky News was given exclusive access to the firm's beagles bred for use in animal testing - the first time in its 37-year history that cameras have been allowed on the site.
The dogs are housed in a compound on the edge of the remote village of Grimston, east of Hull, and are shielded from animal rights extremists by razor wire, CCTV cameras and guards.
Behind three separate doors, inside a modern low-rise building, more than a dozen beagles are kept in groups of twos and threes in metal cages against the walls.
To protect them from disease, the dogs are never allowed outdoors and staff and visitors have to wear overclothes.
In the centre of the room is a bright plastic slide which the dogs can play on when they are let out for what the firm calls "socialisation" and when their cages are being cleaned.
The animals are ex-breeding stock imported from America or Europe and are used to supply blood for sale to laboratories.
If planning permission is granted, the cages will be moved to the new buildings and will house breeding dogs and their offspring, which will be sold for drug and product testing as well as medical research.
Known as Marshall beagles, they are a strain bred especially for research purposes by B&K's American parent company, Marshall Bioresources, which bought the firm in 2009 with the aim of establishing a breeding colony and expanding into the UK market.
According to the Home Office, 3,704 beagles were used in animal research procedures in the UK last year, with some 800 procedures carried out on imported dogs.
A well-placed source told Sky News the beagles sell for around £1,600 each, making the market worth up to £6m a year in the UK alone.
"To meet the demand these days we're having to import animals from long distances away and we'd like to avoid that," B&K's general manager, Roy Sutcliffe, said.
"(Our redevelopment) won't increase the numbers of dogs that are needed for research, it will just make it more convenient for the UK researchers to source them in the UK."
Although the use of animals for testing cosmetics is banned in the UK and the Government says it is committed to phasing out the testing of household products and reducing the use of animals in laboratories, the law states new drugs must still be tested on animals for safety.
A planning application to redevelop the Grimston site was refused by East Riding Council in June, and an appeal by the firm has been called in by the Department for Communities and Local Government over the controversy.
The company refuses to say how many dogs it would breed on the site if its appeal is successful, but campaigners claim it could be up to 2,000.
Michelle Thew, chief executive of anti-vivisection group BUAV, said 28,000 people signed their petition objecting to the plans.
"A decision to accept the facility would fly in the face of public opinion and the recent Government pledge to reduce the numbers of animals in experiments," she said.
"People will be shocked to learn of the unnatural conditions in which these beagles are bred. Tragically they are viewed simply as products with a price tag on their heads."
The Department for Communities and Local Government said the appeal is being assessed by a planning inspector and will be approved or rejected in line with planning legislation.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/row-firm-moves-breed-beagles-tests-225353353.html
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
New study says birds learn how to build nests
A new study has found birds learn the art of nest-building, rather than it being just an instinctive skill. Researchers from Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews Universities studied film of southern masked weavers recorded by scientists in Botswana. This colourful species was chosen because individual birds build many complex nests in a season.Dr Patrick Walsh of Edinburgh University said the study revealed "a clear role for experience".
Read on...
Picture source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ploceus_velatus_1.jpg
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Ticks can thrive on water reptiles (Via Herp Digest)
Ticks can thrive on water reptiles
8/30/11 Written by, Staff report,news@thenewsstar.com
Most Louisianans are familiar with ticks - those pesky, blood-sucking arachnids that thrive in humid environments, particularly wooded or grassy areas. New evidence is emerging, however, indicating that ticks can thrive on a reptile whose entire life is spent in or near the water.
For six weeks this summer, Lisa Brown, 25, a graduate student of biology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, studied the biogeographic phenomenon at two field sites, including a small tropical island off the Pacific coast of Colombia, South America, where an aquatic turtle of the genus Rhinoclemmys, carried the parasite.
"Leeches typically fill that niche on aquatic turtles, but there are no leeches on the island," Brown explained. "I just thought it seemed interesting and really bizarre. I started doing research to see if anything had been documented about it, and I only found a couple of papers that described it in certain mammals. I got more excited because it seemed like a really unique project to take on."
She says the ticks may have gills enabling them to breathe under water and presented her findings at the Ninth Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles, Aug. 14-17, the joint annual meeting of the Turtle Survival Alliance and the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.
In an unusual twist, on the Colombian mainland the same species of turtle is virtually devoid of the ticks, and instead boasts a large number of leeches, according to Brown. Brown finished her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Tyler and is scheduled to graduate ULM in May 2012.
8/30/11 Written by, Staff report,news@thenewsstar.com
Most Louisianans are familiar with ticks - those pesky, blood-sucking arachnids that thrive in humid environments, particularly wooded or grassy areas. New evidence is emerging, however, indicating that ticks can thrive on a reptile whose entire life is spent in or near the water.
For six weeks this summer, Lisa Brown, 25, a graduate student of biology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, studied the biogeographic phenomenon at two field sites, including a small tropical island off the Pacific coast of Colombia, South America, where an aquatic turtle of the genus Rhinoclemmys, carried the parasite.
"Leeches typically fill that niche on aquatic turtles, but there are no leeches on the island," Brown explained. "I just thought it seemed interesting and really bizarre. I started doing research to see if anything had been documented about it, and I only found a couple of papers that described it in certain mammals. I got more excited because it seemed like a really unique project to take on."
She says the ticks may have gills enabling them to breathe under water and presented her findings at the Ninth Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles, Aug. 14-17, the joint annual meeting of the Turtle Survival Alliance and the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.
In an unusual twist, on the Colombian mainland the same species of turtle is virtually devoid of the ticks, and instead boasts a large number of leeches, according to Brown. Brown finished her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Tyler and is scheduled to graduate ULM in May 2012.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
'Gas-less' kangaroo secret sniffed out
Scientists have gone some way to explaining why kangaroos produce much less methane in their burps, flatus and manure than farm animals such as cows.
They identified a bacterium in the gut of the Tammar wallaby - a member of the kangaroo family - that processes their food without making methane.
Read on...
They identified a bacterium in the gut of the Tammar wallaby - a member of the kangaroo family - that processes their food without making methane.
Read on...
Friday, June 24, 2011
Snake Genome Suggests Treatments for Human Heart Disease (Via HerpDigest)
Snake Genome Suggests Treatments for Human Heart Disease
By Katherine Harmon Jun 21, 2011 01:10 PM
NORMAN, Okla.-Snakes have been around for some 150 million years, but their ancient physiology might hold some important clues to developing new drugs. Aside from their sleek exteriors, snakes' internal physiology is perhaps even more intriguing. "It's a really fun model for studying the extremes of adaptation," Todd Castoe, a researcher at the University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine's biochemistry and molecular genetics department, said June 20 at the Evolution 2011 annual conference in Norman, Okla.
In addition to the wow-factor of deciphering the snakes' interesting innards, the strange systems could help us better understand our own biology. As infrequent feeders, snakes have a highly variable metabolism, which can dip down to one of the lowest-known rates of any vertebrate. In particular, "the Burmese python is the quintessential model of the extreme version of this," Castoe said.
They can increase and decrease their metabolism by some 44-fold and their heart size by more than 50 percent depending on their energy demands. Behind all of these unusual evolutionary assets are the genes that make these feats possible. However, even as new genetic sequencing technology has allowed researchers to amass an impressive collection of plant and animal genomes, "reptiles have been really over looked by the bulk of sequencing," Castoe noted.
Earlier this year he and his colleagues published the first draft of a snake genome-the Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus)-and it has divulged some interesting details about this species' agile metabolism. The snake's mitochondria, which are in charge of energy use in cells, "have undergone the single most extensive change that we're aware of," Castoe said.
To learn more about how the Burmese python heart undergoes such vast changes, Castoe and his team looked specifically at cardiac gene expression. Over the 72-hour metabolic cycle, they found many rapid changes in gene expression in the heart. In just a 24-hour sample, there were 1,852 unique transcriptomes (expressed RNAs in the tissue)-261 of which were up-regulated more than five fold.
These changes might help shed light on human heart development and disease. "We're pretty excited to not look at this in a vacuum," Castoe said. Some heart growth in humans is a good thing, such as that which occurs in childhood and due to exercise-what Castoe calls "Lance Armstrong-style heart growth." But other heart enlargement, such as that caused by heart disease, cardiac hypertrophy, is a definite negative and the target of much drug development. "If we are able to understand the genetic cues involved in rapid python heart muscle increases and decreases, that to be says there is the potential to develop therapeutics for humans,"
Leslie Leinwand, director of CU Boulder's Cardiovascular Institute, said in a prepared statement in 2008, before the genome had been completed. More work remains to be done before these new findings can be translated into potential drugs for heart disease in humans.
And as researchers digest more of these big snakes' genome, more medical applications might also emerge. A second and more thoroughly annotated draft of the python genome is expected out this fall. And other snakes are set to join the ranks of the sequenced, including the garter snake, the rattlesnake and the king cobra. Castoe notes that the field only keeps getting more interesting, adding: "If you're not studying snakes already, you should start."
By Katherine Harmon Jun 21, 2011 01:10 PM
NORMAN, Okla.-Snakes have been around for some 150 million years, but their ancient physiology might hold some important clues to developing new drugs. Aside from their sleek exteriors, snakes' internal physiology is perhaps even more intriguing. "It's a really fun model for studying the extremes of adaptation," Todd Castoe, a researcher at the University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine's biochemistry and molecular genetics department, said June 20 at the Evolution 2011 annual conference in Norman, Okla.
In addition to the wow-factor of deciphering the snakes' interesting innards, the strange systems could help us better understand our own biology. As infrequent feeders, snakes have a highly variable metabolism, which can dip down to one of the lowest-known rates of any vertebrate. In particular, "the Burmese python is the quintessential model of the extreme version of this," Castoe said.
They can increase and decrease their metabolism by some 44-fold and their heart size by more than 50 percent depending on their energy demands. Behind all of these unusual evolutionary assets are the genes that make these feats possible. However, even as new genetic sequencing technology has allowed researchers to amass an impressive collection of plant and animal genomes, "reptiles have been really over looked by the bulk of sequencing," Castoe noted.
Earlier this year he and his colleagues published the first draft of a snake genome-the Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus)-and it has divulged some interesting details about this species' agile metabolism. The snake's mitochondria, which are in charge of energy use in cells, "have undergone the single most extensive change that we're aware of," Castoe said.
To learn more about how the Burmese python heart undergoes such vast changes, Castoe and his team looked specifically at cardiac gene expression. Over the 72-hour metabolic cycle, they found many rapid changes in gene expression in the heart. In just a 24-hour sample, there were 1,852 unique transcriptomes (expressed RNAs in the tissue)-261 of which were up-regulated more than five fold.
These changes might help shed light on human heart development and disease. "We're pretty excited to not look at this in a vacuum," Castoe said. Some heart growth in humans is a good thing, such as that which occurs in childhood and due to exercise-what Castoe calls "Lance Armstrong-style heart growth." But other heart enlargement, such as that caused by heart disease, cardiac hypertrophy, is a definite negative and the target of much drug development. "If we are able to understand the genetic cues involved in rapid python heart muscle increases and decreases, that to be says there is the potential to develop therapeutics for humans,"
Leslie Leinwand, director of CU Boulder's Cardiovascular Institute, said in a prepared statement in 2008, before the genome had been completed. More work remains to be done before these new findings can be translated into potential drugs for heart disease in humans.
And as researchers digest more of these big snakes' genome, more medical applications might also emerge. A second and more thoroughly annotated draft of the python genome is expected out this fall. And other snakes are set to join the ranks of the sequenced, including the garter snake, the rattlesnake and the king cobra. Castoe notes that the field only keeps getting more interesting, adding: "If you're not studying snakes already, you should start."
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Living, biological raygun produced in lab
Glowing mammal-jellyfish chimera-blob emits laser beam
By Lewis Page
Posted in Biology, 13th June 2011 11:52 GMT
Beings or creatures able to emit beams of focused energy from their own living bodies: fiction, right? Comic-book, X Men stuff, right?
Wrong. Boffins in America have announced that they have successfully produced laser light from living cells under laboratory conditions, paving the way - they say - for living lasers to be implanted or grown within human patients, or for the production of living machinery able to interface with optical communications networks.
"Since they were first developed some 50 years ago, lasers have used synthetic materials such as crystals, dyes and purified gases as optical gain media, within which photon pulses are amplified as they bounces back and forth between two mirrors," says Seok Hyun Yun, a top boffin from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Ours is the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell."
Yun and his colleague Malte Gather created their lasercyte by meddling with some unspecified mammal cells to make them produce suitable amounts of green fluorescent protein (GFP). GFP, originally discovered in jellyfish, does what it says on the tin - it emits light. In order to make this light coherent, the two boffins placed a lasercyte inside a tiny spherical device rigged with mirrors at the ends, as in a regular laser.
According to a statement issued by Massachusetts General:
Gather, on the other hand, is thinking more of making biological machinery that might one day let you plug an optical fibre straight into your brain, or similar.
"One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology," explains the scientist. "That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms."
Yun and Gather's study is published online by Nature Photonics. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/13/lasercyte/
By Lewis Page
Posted in Biology, 13th June 2011 11:52 GMT
Beings or creatures able to emit beams of focused energy from their own living bodies: fiction, right? Comic-book, X Men stuff, right?
Wrong. Boffins in America have announced that they have successfully produced laser light from living cells under laboratory conditions, paving the way - they say - for living lasers to be implanted or grown within human patients, or for the production of living machinery able to interface with optical communications networks.
"Since they were first developed some 50 years ago, lasers have used synthetic materials such as crystals, dyes and purified gases as optical gain media, within which photon pulses are amplified as they bounces back and forth between two mirrors," says Seok Hyun Yun, a top boffin from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.
"Ours is the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell."
Yun and his colleague Malte Gather created their lasercyte by meddling with some unspecified mammal cells to make them produce suitable amounts of green fluorescent protein (GFP). GFP, originally discovered in jellyfish, does what it says on the tin - it emits light. In order to make this light coherent, the two boffins placed a lasercyte inside a tiny spherical device rigged with mirrors at the ends, as in a regular laser.
According to a statement issued by Massachusetts General:
Not only did the cell-based device produce pulses of laser light [but] the researchers also found that the spherical shape of the cell itself acted as a lens, refocusing the light and inducing emission of laser light at lower energy levels ... The cells used in the device survived the lasing process and were able to continue producing hundreds of pulses of laser light."The ability to generate laser light from a biocompatible source placed inside a patient could be useful," comments Yun, though at the moment he is thinking more of medical imaging and such like as opposed to the ability to emit deadly energy rays from one's eyes or similar.
Gather, on the other hand, is thinking more of making biological machinery that might one day let you plug an optical fibre straight into your brain, or similar.
"One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology," explains the scientist. "That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms."
Yun and Gather's study is published online by Nature Photonics. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/13/lasercyte/
Francis Galton: The man who drew up the 'ugly map' of Britain
16 June 2011
One hundred years after the death of Francis Galton, the "father of eugenics", geneticists are increasingly baffled by the nature versus nurture debate, writes Professor Steve Jones.
Type the phrase "scientists find the gene for" into Google and 68,000 results appear. Most of the hits are about human beings - which is a pretty impressive number, given that we have only 20,000 genes altogether.
The hits include genes for depression, religiosity, insomnia, marital failure and, perhaps surprisingly, premature ejaculation.
Does what we are born with make us what we will become, or is it the way we live? Newspapers tend to believe in nature - DNA, while sociologists go for nurture - the environment.
As they learn more, geneticists are finding that they have less and less of an idea about which is more important, or whether the question means anything in the first place.
Charles Darwin had an equally brilliant, but less well-known, cousin. He died 100 years ago in 1911.
This year is Galton year - a celebration of Francis Galton, a genius - but a flawed genius. He did many surprising things. He was the first person to use fingerprints in detective work and the first to publish a weather map, in the Times newspaper in 1875.
Galton is best known for his interest in inheritance. His book Hereditary Genius is sometimes said to have founded human genetics, and Galton founded the science (if that is the right word) of eugenics.
Its main aim was "to check the birth rate of the Unfit and improve the race by furthering the productivity of the fit by early marriage of the best stock".
Beauty map
At his death, he left the then enormous sum of £45,000 to found the Laboratory of National Eugenics at University College London (UCL).
The term was soon abandoned by UCL, although we still have a Galton Professorship. Even so eugenical ideas of good genes, bad genes, and all the rest is still very much in the public mind.
In fact, the most important part of Galton's work had nothing to do with eugenics, for he was one of the first to realise that science - biology as much as physics - needs maths rather than words. He was one of the founders of the science of statistics, and he measured many things.
He made statistical inquiries into the efficacy of prayer - he got into trouble for that for he found that those people frequently prayed for, like monarchs, lived no longer than anyone else.
He even made a beauty map of Britain, based on a secret grading of the local women on a scale from attractive to repulsive (the low point was in Aberdeen).
In a letter to Nature in 1879 entitled The Average Flush of Excitement, Galton recounts a visit to the Derby. He noted that while he was there he was able to assess what he called "the average tint of the complexion of the British upper classes" by observing the distant crowd through his opera glass.
He observed that after the race started, the crowd became "suffused with a strong pink tint, just as though a sun-set glow had fallen upon it". Galton found that he could work out the mood of a mass of people even without being able to distinguish one person from the next.
Some of his work has a strong resonance in modern science. Everyone knows that tall parents tend to have tall children, but Galton was the first to do some measuring.
He noted that the children of two six-footers tended to be tall, but not quite as tall as their parents. He called that "regression to the mean" and we now know that it happens because lots of genes are involved, with some hidden by others.
Sex is a way of mixing those genes - of reshuffling the genetic cards - and the child tends to inherit a more average kind of hand than that received by either of their exceptionally tall parents.
Of course, the environment is involved too. Food, exercise, good health, all are important in deciding how tall one will become. For height, and for almost anything else, nature and nurture always work together. It makes no sense to try to separate them.
That has not percolated into the public mind, as the Google search for "scientists find the gene for" shows. The three letter word for - the gene FOR something - is the most dangerous word in genetics. As Galton did not realise and as headline writers still do not, it is almost entirely ambiguous.
'A gamble'
A few months ago, the press reported with impressive unanimity that "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is genetic". To the rolling of publicists' drums (and geneticists' eyes) came the news that some children behave outrageously because they inherit damaged DNA.
The Daily Mail came out with a hand-wringing piece entitled "Are some children just born bad?", which claimed "previous thinking was flawed and that some children, through no fault of the parents, are simply bad seeds".
That's an outrageous statement. Geneticists need to remind the public how little the word "genetic" actually means. One gene can do very different things, and the same thing can be under the influence of many genes - and nurture nearly always gets a look-in.
With all the fantastic technology now available, within a year we should be able to read a whole human genome in 15 minutes. But the biggest problem faced by geneticists is that we are not finding the genes.
Take height. As Galton noticed, height is highly heritable. We can now reach the scene of crime - the DNA - with the greatest of ease. The mappers have used their molecular tape measures on about 30,000 people.
They have found more than 50 different genes associated with being tall or short but altogether they account for only one-twentieth of the total variation needed to explain the similarity of children to their parents.
Where are the missing genes? We do not know.
Take adult diabetes, now a major health problem, and one that certainly runs strongly in families. Genome scans reveal scores of different bits of chromosome as possible culprits but together they explain just one part in 20 of the overall inherited liability to the disease.
The chance of being born with a predisposition to a common illness such as diabetes or depression is a gamble with huge numbers of cards.
So many small cards can be shuffled that everyone who falls ill fails in their own fashion and no gene says very much about whether or not you will get the gene (although the number of cheeseburgers you eat certainly does).
Steve Jones is a professor of genetics at University College London
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13775520
One hundred years after the death of Francis Galton, the "father of eugenics", geneticists are increasingly baffled by the nature versus nurture debate, writes Professor Steve Jones.
Type the phrase "scientists find the gene for" into Google and 68,000 results appear. Most of the hits are about human beings - which is a pretty impressive number, given that we have only 20,000 genes altogether.
The hits include genes for depression, religiosity, insomnia, marital failure and, perhaps surprisingly, premature ejaculation.
Does what we are born with make us what we will become, or is it the way we live? Newspapers tend to believe in nature - DNA, while sociologists go for nurture - the environment.
As they learn more, geneticists are finding that they have less and less of an idea about which is more important, or whether the question means anything in the first place.
Charles Darwin had an equally brilliant, but less well-known, cousin. He died 100 years ago in 1911.
This year is Galton year - a celebration of Francis Galton, a genius - but a flawed genius. He did many surprising things. He was the first person to use fingerprints in detective work and the first to publish a weather map, in the Times newspaper in 1875.
Galton is best known for his interest in inheritance. His book Hereditary Genius is sometimes said to have founded human genetics, and Galton founded the science (if that is the right word) of eugenics.
Its main aim was "to check the birth rate of the Unfit and improve the race by furthering the productivity of the fit by early marriage of the best stock".
Beauty map
At his death, he left the then enormous sum of £45,000 to found the Laboratory of National Eugenics at University College London (UCL).
The term was soon abandoned by UCL, although we still have a Galton Professorship. Even so eugenical ideas of good genes, bad genes, and all the rest is still very much in the public mind.
In fact, the most important part of Galton's work had nothing to do with eugenics, for he was one of the first to realise that science - biology as much as physics - needs maths rather than words. He was one of the founders of the science of statistics, and he measured many things.
He made statistical inquiries into the efficacy of prayer - he got into trouble for that for he found that those people frequently prayed for, like monarchs, lived no longer than anyone else.
He even made a beauty map of Britain, based on a secret grading of the local women on a scale from attractive to repulsive (the low point was in Aberdeen).
In a letter to Nature in 1879 entitled The Average Flush of Excitement, Galton recounts a visit to the Derby. He noted that while he was there he was able to assess what he called "the average tint of the complexion of the British upper classes" by observing the distant crowd through his opera glass.
He observed that after the race started, the crowd became "suffused with a strong pink tint, just as though a sun-set glow had fallen upon it". Galton found that he could work out the mood of a mass of people even without being able to distinguish one person from the next.
Some of his work has a strong resonance in modern science. Everyone knows that tall parents tend to have tall children, but Galton was the first to do some measuring.
He noted that the children of two six-footers tended to be tall, but not quite as tall as their parents. He called that "regression to the mean" and we now know that it happens because lots of genes are involved, with some hidden by others.
Sex is a way of mixing those genes - of reshuffling the genetic cards - and the child tends to inherit a more average kind of hand than that received by either of their exceptionally tall parents.
Of course, the environment is involved too. Food, exercise, good health, all are important in deciding how tall one will become. For height, and for almost anything else, nature and nurture always work together. It makes no sense to try to separate them.
That has not percolated into the public mind, as the Google search for "scientists find the gene for" shows. The three letter word for - the gene FOR something - is the most dangerous word in genetics. As Galton did not realise and as headline writers still do not, it is almost entirely ambiguous.
'A gamble'
A few months ago, the press reported with impressive unanimity that "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is genetic". To the rolling of publicists' drums (and geneticists' eyes) came the news that some children behave outrageously because they inherit damaged DNA.
The Daily Mail came out with a hand-wringing piece entitled "Are some children just born bad?", which claimed "previous thinking was flawed and that some children, through no fault of the parents, are simply bad seeds".
That's an outrageous statement. Geneticists need to remind the public how little the word "genetic" actually means. One gene can do very different things, and the same thing can be under the influence of many genes - and nurture nearly always gets a look-in.
With all the fantastic technology now available, within a year we should be able to read a whole human genome in 15 minutes. But the biggest problem faced by geneticists is that we are not finding the genes.
Take height. As Galton noticed, height is highly heritable. We can now reach the scene of crime - the DNA - with the greatest of ease. The mappers have used their molecular tape measures on about 30,000 people.
They have found more than 50 different genes associated with being tall or short but altogether they account for only one-twentieth of the total variation needed to explain the similarity of children to their parents.
Where are the missing genes? We do not know.
Take adult diabetes, now a major health problem, and one that certainly runs strongly in families. Genome scans reveal scores of different bits of chromosome as possible culprits but together they explain just one part in 20 of the overall inherited liability to the disease.
The chance of being born with a predisposition to a common illness such as diabetes or depression is a gamble with huge numbers of cards.
So many small cards can be shuffled that everyone who falls ill fails in their own fashion and no gene says very much about whether or not you will get the gene (although the number of cheeseburgers you eat certainly does).
Steve Jones is a professor of genetics at University College London
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13775520
Friday, June 10, 2011
Spitting and urinating chimps 'replay Aesop's fable'
9 June 2011
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News
Chimps have "replayed" an ancient fable, a team says in Plos One journal.
In Aesop's 2,000-year-old tale, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher to reach the liquid so as to quench its thirst.
But when given a similar set up, chimps were able to attain an out-of-reach, floating peanut by spitting water taken from a dispenser into a vertical tube.
One hungry chimp went even further by urinating into the vessel to get hold of the prized snack.
"He was spitting water into the tube, then got frustrated," explained lead researcher Daniel Hanus from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany.
"So he started peeing and then he realised: 'Wait a minute, if I move in that direction, that fills up the tube'."
The chimp's unusual method proved successful, the scientist said. The fact that the peanut was urine-sodden did not deter the animal from eating it, he added.
The study was carried out with gorillas and chimpanzees.
The primates were presented with a vertical glass tube, which was secured to a cage so it could not be moved or broken. At the bottom was a peanut, floating on a small amount of water.
They were also given access to a water dispenser.
The idea was that the animals would take water from the dispenser in their mouths, and then spit it into the tube to raise the water level.
It would take several visits back and forth between the dispenser and tube to gather enough water to get to the peanut.
The team found that none of the five gorillas was able to complete the task.
Chimps however were more successful. Out of 43 chimps, based in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, in Uganda, and Germany's Leipzig Zoo, 14 worked out that they needed to take the water in their mouths and spit it into the tube, and seven did this enough times to successfully obtain a peanut.
Dr Hanus said the study highlighted the chimps' ability to solve problems.
He explained: "You cannot explain it by trial-and-error learning. They weren't just spitting water around the room and some fell in by accident.
"Instead, they were standing in front of the problem, trying to work out the solution - at first by trying to use their fingers, or trying to break it.
"But some, then went to the drinker and got the mouthful of water and came back and spat it directly into the tube, and a few did it enough times to get the peanut."
He added: "I think it is quite impressive - I call it insightful behaviour."
The urinating chimp, he said, was an interesting case.
The animal had initially solved the problem using the standard spitting technique, but when tested again, he was struggling to direct the water into the tube.
The urine did the trick, said Dr Hanus.
He said: "He seemed like he understood. He was like: 'That's cool, this helps me'."
Child's play
The team also repeated the study with children of varying ages.
Dr Hanus said: "Whenever we talked to people about this task, they'd say: 'Well, this is a demanding task, it is tricky - I don't know if I could solve that'.
"So we decided to test four, six and eight-year-olds."
This time, the subjects were given a watering can to fill up the tube rather than rely on a water dispenser and a refined spitting technique.
The researchers found that the four-year-olds were outperformed by the chimps: only two out 24 younger children could solve the problem.
Six-year-olds did better, with 10 out of the 24 managing to work out they needed to use the water. And eight-years-olds did the best, 14 children - 58% - completed the task.
Dr Hanus said: "Even the older children found it hard. It was interesting and impressive to see how difficult it was for them."
This research follows a similar study carried out with orangutans in 2007. They were very good at solving this problem: five out of the five primates tested could successfully complete the task.
The team said the difference between the three primate species was striking - although they plan to test the gorillas again using a slightly different set-up.
Birds too have been able to carry out this task.
A paper published in 2009 revealed that rooks were highly successful at working out a solution to this problem.
With a slightly different experiment design, where the birds had to drop stones into the water, and a peanut exchanged for a floating maggot, the team found that all four of the rooks tested could complete the task.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13560247
By Rebecca Morelle
Science reporter, BBC News
Chimps have "replayed" an ancient fable, a team says in Plos One journal.
In Aesop's 2,000-year-old tale, a crow uses stones to raise the water level in a pitcher to reach the liquid so as to quench its thirst.
But when given a similar set up, chimps were able to attain an out-of-reach, floating peanut by spitting water taken from a dispenser into a vertical tube.
One hungry chimp went even further by urinating into the vessel to get hold of the prized snack.
"He was spitting water into the tube, then got frustrated," explained lead researcher Daniel Hanus from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig, Germany.
"So he started peeing and then he realised: 'Wait a minute, if I move in that direction, that fills up the tube'."
The chimp's unusual method proved successful, the scientist said. The fact that the peanut was urine-sodden did not deter the animal from eating it, he added.
The study was carried out with gorillas and chimpanzees.
The primates were presented with a vertical glass tube, which was secured to a cage so it could not be moved or broken. At the bottom was a peanut, floating on a small amount of water.
They were also given access to a water dispenser.
The idea was that the animals would take water from the dispenser in their mouths, and then spit it into the tube to raise the water level.
It would take several visits back and forth between the dispenser and tube to gather enough water to get to the peanut.
The team found that none of the five gorillas was able to complete the task.
Chimps however were more successful. Out of 43 chimps, based in the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, in Uganda, and Germany's Leipzig Zoo, 14 worked out that they needed to take the water in their mouths and spit it into the tube, and seven did this enough times to successfully obtain a peanut.
Dr Hanus said the study highlighted the chimps' ability to solve problems.
He explained: "You cannot explain it by trial-and-error learning. They weren't just spitting water around the room and some fell in by accident.
"Instead, they were standing in front of the problem, trying to work out the solution - at first by trying to use their fingers, or trying to break it.
"But some, then went to the drinker and got the mouthful of water and came back and spat it directly into the tube, and a few did it enough times to get the peanut."
He added: "I think it is quite impressive - I call it insightful behaviour."
The urinating chimp, he said, was an interesting case.
The animal had initially solved the problem using the standard spitting technique, but when tested again, he was struggling to direct the water into the tube.
The urine did the trick, said Dr Hanus.
He said: "He seemed like he understood. He was like: 'That's cool, this helps me'."
Child's play
The team also repeated the study with children of varying ages.
Dr Hanus said: "Whenever we talked to people about this task, they'd say: 'Well, this is a demanding task, it is tricky - I don't know if I could solve that'.
"So we decided to test four, six and eight-year-olds."
This time, the subjects were given a watering can to fill up the tube rather than rely on a water dispenser and a refined spitting technique.
The researchers found that the four-year-olds were outperformed by the chimps: only two out 24 younger children could solve the problem.
Six-year-olds did better, with 10 out of the 24 managing to work out they needed to use the water. And eight-years-olds did the best, 14 children - 58% - completed the task.
Dr Hanus said: "Even the older children found it hard. It was interesting and impressive to see how difficult it was for them."
This research follows a similar study carried out with orangutans in 2007. They were very good at solving this problem: five out of the five primates tested could successfully complete the task.
The team said the difference between the three primate species was striking - although they plan to test the gorillas again using a slightly different set-up.
Birds too have been able to carry out this task.
A paper published in 2009 revealed that rooks were highly successful at working out a solution to this problem.
With a slightly different experiment design, where the birds had to drop stones into the water, and a peanut exchanged for a floating maggot, the team found that all four of the rooks tested could complete the task.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13560247
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Birch Mouse Ancestor Discovered in Inner Mongolia Is New Species of Rare 'Living Fossil'
 |
| Paleontologist Yuri Kimura, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, identified a new species of birch mice, Sicista primus, from 17 tiny teeth. A single molar is about the size of half a grain of rice. The teeth, however, are distinctive among the various genera of rodents known as Dipodidae. Cusps, valleys, ridges and other distinguishing characteristics on the surface of the teeth are identifiable through a microscope. (Credit: Yuri Kimura/Southern Methodist University) |
Fossils of the new species were discovered in sediments that are 17 million years old, said Kimura, who identified the new species and named it Sicista primus to include the Latin word for "first."
Previously the oldest prehistoric ancestor of the modern-day birch mouse was one that inhabited Inner Mongolia 8 million years ago.
Adding 9 million years to the ancestry of the rodent family that includes birch mice and jumping mice distinguishes this genus, Sicista, as a "living fossil," Kimura said. That places the genus among some of the most unique rodents on earth -- those whose ancestry spans 2 to 3 times the average, she said.
Kimura identified Sicista primus from 17 tiny teeth, whose size makes them difficult to find. A single molar is about the size of half a grain of rice. The teeth, however, are distinctive among the various genera of rodents known as Dipodidae. Cusps, valleys, ridges and other distinguishing characteristics on the surface of the teeth are identifiable through a microscope.
"We are very lucky to have these," Kimura said. "Paleontologists usually look for bones, but a mouse is very tiny and its bones are very thin and fragile. The teeth, however, are preserved by enamel. Interestingly, small mammal teeth are very diverse in terms of their structure, so from that we can identify a species."
Kimura reported the new species in the scientific journal Naturwissenschaften. Images of the research and expedition are posted on the SMU Research flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/52146845@N06/sets/72157626764403486/). SMUVideo's "Inner Mongolia yields 'living fossil'" featuring Kimura discussing the research is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khkx11WlKaw).
An SMU doctoral student in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Kimura was part of the international team that discovered the fossils during expeditions to Inner Mongolia in 2004, 2005 and 2007.
Microscopic evidence of a living fossil
The new fossils of Sicista primus from the Early Miocene age are also now the earliest known record of Sicista, the birch mouse genus that comprises 13 modern and 7 fossil species, said Kimura. As a result, Sicista now boasts the most ancient ancestry of the 326 genera in the largest rodent suborder to which it belongs, Myomorpha. The suborder includes laboratory mice and rats.
"The birch mouse is a rare case of a small mammal genus persisting from the Early Miocene without significant morphological changes," Kimura said in reporting the findings.
Rodents, both modern and prehistoric, rank as the most prolific mammals on earth. After the reign of dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, rodents evolved and dispersed worldwide during the Cenozoic, the "Age of Mammals." They comprise about 42 percent of all living mammals. Scientists know now that only 1.5 percent of modern rodent genera, however, go as far back as the Early Miocene or older.
"Diversity within a rodent genus is not unusual, but the long record of the genus Sicista, first recognized at 17 million years ago, is unusual," said Kimura. "The discovery of Early Miocene S. primus reveals that Sicista is fundamental to understanding how a long-lived genus persisted among substantially fast-evolving rodent groups."
Birch mice migrated from Asia to North America
Previously the record for the oldest species of Sicista belonged to an 8 million-year-old species identified in Eurasia, Kimura said.
In identifying the new species, Kimura also reverses the long-held hypothesis that ancestors of birch mice migrated from North America to Asia. That hypothesis has been based on a 14.8 million-year-old specimen from South Dakota, which was identified in 1977 as the separate rodent genus Macrognathomys. Kimura's analysis, however, concludes that Macrognathomys is actually Sicista. For that reason, she concluded, Sicista first inhabited the forests and grasslands of prehistoric Asia and then dispersed to North America via the Bering Land Bridge, Kimura said.
In a comparison of the molars and premolars from Macrognathomys and Sicista primus, Kimura reported finding 12 shared dental characteristics. In addition, phylogenetic analysis to identify evolutionary relationships indicated that both belong to the same genus, Sicista, she said.
Reconnaissance of earlier Central Asiatic Expedition localities yields small mammals
The teeth of Sicista primus were discovered in fine sediments gathered from Gashunyinadege, a fossil locality in the central region of Inner Mongolia.
Gashunyinadege is one of several fossil localities near Tunggur, a fossil site discovered in the 1920s by the Central Asiatic Expedition, which was led by Roy Chapman Andrews from the American Museum of Natural History.
Kimura is a member of an international scientific team sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The team's expeditions have been led by paleontologists Qiu Zhuding, IVPP; Wang Xiaoming, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; and Li Qiang, IVPP. Their expeditions retrace important classic localities, as well as prospect new fossil localities.
Kimura and other members of the team discovered the birch mouse fossils by first prospecting Gashunyinadege for small mammal fossils visible to the naked eye. Those fossils indicated the possibility of even smaller mammal fossils, so the team gathered 6,000 kilograms, more than 13,000 pounds, of Early Miocene sediment. Using standing water from recent rains, they washed the sediments repeatedly through continually smaller screens to separate out small fossils. Bags of concentrate containing particles the size of mouse teeth were returned to IVPP laboratories to hunt for fossils with a microscope.
The research was funded by the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at SMU, Dallas Paleontological Society, Geological Society of America, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110524153420.htm
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Woolly mammoth may have interbred with elephants
 |
A model of a wooly mammoth stands at the exhibition 'Ice Age Giants' in Garding, Germany, on May 31. Newscom |
By Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience Contributor / June 2, 2011
The woolly mammoth may surprisingly have regularly interbred with a completely different and much larger elephant species, researchers now find.
Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) roamed the planet for more than a million years, ranging from Europe to Asia to North America. Nearly all of these giants vanished from Siberia by about 10,000 years ago, although dwarf mammoths survived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until 3,700 years ago.
Although woolly mammoths lived in the cold of the tundra, the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) preferred the more temperate regions of southern and central North America. The Columbians were much larger than woollies, with Columbian males reaching one-and-a-half to two times that of woolly males.
"We are talking about two very physically different species here," said researcher Hendrik Poinar, an evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. "You have roughly 1 million years of separation between the two, with the Columbian mammoth likely derived from an early migration into North America approximately 1.5 million years ago, and their woolly counterparts emigrating to North America some 400,000 years ago."
Poinar and his colleagues investigated the evolution of Columbian mammoths by analyzing DNA retrieved from the tusks, bone and teeth of two approximately 11,000-year-old fossil specimens, one found in the Huntington Reservoir in Utah and the other found near Rawlins, Wyo. The researchers concentrated on the genomes of the mitochondria, the "powerhouses" of the cells, which have their own unique DNA and are inherited from the mother.
Surprisingly, they discovered the mitochondrial genome of the Columbian mammoth was nearly indiscernible from that of its northern woolly counterparts. [Album: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts]
"At first I thought, 'Oh crap, there's contamination of some sort,'" Poinar said.
However, any minor contamination they found could not explain the extensive genetic evidence they uncovered, and they replicated their results in an independent lab. "I think we were very lucky," Poinar told LiveScience.
"We think we may be looking at a genetic hybrid," said researcher Jacob Enk, a graduate student in the McMaster Ancient DNA Center.
When glacial times got nasty, woollies likely moved to more pleasant conditions southward, where they came into contact with the Columbian mammoths.
"Living African elephant species hybridize where their ranges overlap, with the bigger species out-competing the smaller for mates," Enk added. The offspring are perfectly fertile, Poinar added.
Since woollies and Columbians overlapped in time and space, it is not unlikely that they interbred in much the same manner.
"It reminds me a bit of high-school days — the larger males are more successful at meeting women across the dance floor than the rest of us," Poinar said.
These findings could explain why some mammoth fossils had features intermediate between woollies and Columbians, although the genomes of both species should be sequenced to tell for sure. The researchers also want to look at Columbian mammoth specimens from farther south where no woollies ever ventured, to get an idea of what nonhybrid samples might look like.
The scientists detailed their findings online May 31 in the journal Genome Biology.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0602/Woolly-mammoth-may-have-interbred-with-elephants
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Researchers Say Bear Was Killed By Coyote Bite
May 31, 2011 5:25 PM
ELY, Minn. (WCCO) – Researchers in Ely said Tuesday they have figured out what caused Lily’s black bear cub to die.
Bear Researcher Dr. Lynn Rogers said he believes a coyote pulled the cub from a tree by its leg and bit it on the head.
“About the time he would be screaming in pain from that, Lily would come running back just in time to save him from the bite to the head, which was just minimal, but enough to puncture that thin little skull,” Rogers said. “So he died from a brain infection from that, four days later.”
The birth of Lily’s cub, known as Jason, was captured by a live webcam over the winter.
Rogers said Lily, her daughter Hope and the remaining twin cub Faith are now browsing the spring greens in the woods.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/05/31/researchers-say-bear-was-killed-by-coyote-bite/
ELY, Minn. (WCCO) – Researchers in Ely said Tuesday they have figured out what caused Lily’s black bear cub to die.
Bear Researcher Dr. Lynn Rogers said he believes a coyote pulled the cub from a tree by its leg and bit it on the head.
“About the time he would be screaming in pain from that, Lily would come running back just in time to save him from the bite to the head, which was just minimal, but enough to puncture that thin little skull,” Rogers said. “So he died from a brain infection from that, four days later.”
The birth of Lily’s cub, known as Jason, was captured by a live webcam over the winter.
Rogers said Lily, her daughter Hope and the remaining twin cub Faith are now browsing the spring greens in the woods.
http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2011/05/31/researchers-say-bear-was-killed-by-coyote-bite/
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Nazis tried to build army of talking dogs to help win World War Two
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| Dr Jan Bondeson's dog research has revealed Nazi canine to human telepathy experiments (Pic: BNPS) |
Daniella Graham - 24th May, 2011
Adolf Hitler apparently felt man's best friend could be the Allies' worst enemy with a little bit of help, so a special 'dog school' was set up by the Germans where gifted mutts could hone their talents.
The Nazi canine recruits were trained to speak and tap out signals using their paws, with one reportedly able to say 'Mein Fuhrer' when asked to identify the Nazi dictator himself.
The Daily Telegraph reports that the school, named the Tier-Sprechschule, was set up in the 1930s and ran throughout the war period.
And while the dogs were intended to help officers in concentration camps, one plucky canine decided he had other priorities – barking the German for 'Hungry! Give me cakes.'
Dr Bondeson uncovered the extraordinary story while researching for his latest book, Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities.
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/864232-nazis-tried-to-build-army-of-talking-dogs-to-help-win-world-war-two
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Bones of elephant ancestors discovered in Oman
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| Fossil discovered in Dhofar region in south of Oman. |
Staff Report
Published: 17:13 May 21, 2011
Muscat: A team of geologists from the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) have confirmed discovery of remains of the oldest ancestors of elephant (Barhtyerium), according to a press release from the university Saturday.
The Omani Barytherium, the first one to be found in Oman, was discovered in Aidum area in Dhofar by a joint team of archaeologists from the Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Stony Brook University, US, and geologists from SQU.
The archaeological team was led by Dr Erick Seifert from the Stony Brook University.
The SQU team of geologists, including Prof Dr Sobhi Nasir and Dr Abdulrahman Al Harthy joined the Heritage Ministry consultant at the site in south of the country and assisted in establishing the discovery.
The joint team found a huge area of elephant bones, known as elephant grabs, and collected large quantities of bones to be identified in a laboratory at the SQU.
The group of researchers from SQU, SBU and the Ministry of Heritage are still working on these bones and are expecting new discoveries in the area.
The team has said that this finding is extremely important as it gives the first evidence of the oldest ancestor of elephant found in the world.
The scientists named the new finding as Barytherium Omansi.
Barytherium (meaning heavy beast) is a genus of an extinct family (Barytheriidae) of primitive proboscidean that lived during the late Eocene and early Oligocene in North Africa. The Barytheriidae were the first large size proboscideans to appear in the fossil records and were characterised by a strong sexual dimorphism.
The only known species within this family is Barytherium grave, found at the beginning of the 20th century in the Fayum, Egypt.
More complete specimens have been found since then, at Dor el Talha Libya. In some respects, these animals would have looked similar to a modern Asian Elephant, but with a more slender build.
Eight tusks
The most visible difference, however, would have been the tusks Barytherium had eight very short tusks, four each in the upper and lower jaws, which resembled those of a modern hippopotamus more than those of an elephant. The upper pairs were vertical, while the lower pairs projected forwards from the mouth horizontally. Together, these would have created a shearing action for cropping plants.
Palaeontologists know a lot more about Barytherium's tusks, which tend to preserve better in the fossil record than soft tissue, than they do about its trunk.
This prehistoric elephant had eight short, stubby tusks, four in its upper jaw and four in its lower jaw, but to date no one has unearthed any evidence for its proboscis (which may or may not have looked like that of a modern elephant).
http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/oman/bones-of-elephant-ancestors-discovered-in-oman-1.810855
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