The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

Parasites and the evolution of primate culture: "Learning from others and innovation have undoubtedly helped advance civilization. But these behaviors can carry costs as well as benefits. And a new study by an international team of evolutionary biologists sheds light on how one particular cost — increased exposure to parasites — may affect cultural evolution in non-human primates. The results of the study suggest that species with members that learn from others suffer from a wider variety of socially transmitted parasites, while innovative, exploratory species suffer from a wider variety of parasites transmitted through the environment, such as in the soil or water."

Birds conform to local 'traditions': "Birds learn new foraging techniques by observing others in their social network, 'copycat' behavior that can sustain foraging 'traditions' that last years, according to a study of how innovations spread and persist in wild great tits — Parus major."

Scientists reveal parchment's hidden stories (w/ Video): "Millions of documents stored in archives could provide scientists with the key to tracing agricultural development across the centuries, according to new research completed at Trinity College Dublin and the University of York.

Amazingly, thanks to increasingly progressive genetic sequencing techniques, the all-important historical tales these documents tell are no longer confined to their texts; now, vital information also comes from the DNA of the parchment on which they are written.

Researchers used these state-of-the-art scientific techniques to extract ancient DNA and protein from tiny samples of parchment from documents from the late 17th and late 18th centuries. The resulting information enabled them to establish the type of animals from which the parchment was made, which, when compared to genomes of their modern equivalents, provides key information as to how agricultural expansion shaped the genetic diversity of these animals."

New model for snake venom evolution proposed: "Researchers have found genetic evidence that highly toxic venom proteins were evolutionarily 'born' from non-toxic genes, which have other ordinary jobs around the body, such as regulation of cellular functions or digestion of food."

Hummingbird's hover surprisingly easy to hack: "Hummingbirds’ remarkable ability to hover in place is highly contingent on the tiny bird having a completely stationary visual field, according to new research."

Gift List Circa 50,000 B.C.: Photos: "Ancient artifacts suggest that early humans coveted some items not always directly linked to personal survival.

Like people today, our ancestors may have just enjoyed objects that were beautiful, eye-catching, status-lifting, fun or all of the above.

The geode, described in the latest issue of Comptes Rendus Palevol, was found in the Cioarei-Boroşteni Cave, Romania. A Neanderthal had painted it with ochre."

Monkey-style 'bromance' helps macaques weather life's hard knocks: "When it comes to weathering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, male macaques get by with a little help from their fellow dudes, according to new research.

After getting the stink-eye stare from a dominant male or freezing their tail fur off in a cold cedar forest, male Barbary macaques who bonded with long-time male associates appear to suffer less stress than their loner counterparts, according to a paper published Monday in the journal PNAS."

Researchers use X-ray video of guineafowl walking through poppy seeds to create a 3-D model of how tracks get made: "A pair of researchers with Brown University used X-ray video techniques to capture the way a guineafowl makes tracks as part of a project aimed at learning more about preserved dinosaur footprints. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Peter Falkingham and Stephen Gatesy describe how they created their videos and what they learned by watching them and comparing what they found to real dinosaur tracks."

Ancient balloon-shaped animal fossil sheds light on Earth's ancient seas: "A rare 520 million year old fossil shaped like a 'squashed bird's nest' that will help to shed new light on life within Earth's ancient seas has been discovered in China by an international research team - and will honour the memory of a University of Leicester scientist who passed away earlier this year.

The fossil, from Chengjiang in southern China, is of a probable 'chancelloriid', a group of bizarre, balloon-shaped animals with an outer skeleton of defensive spines. The animal was flattened during the fossilisation process so that it looks like a squashed bird's nest."

New pufferfish species named: "When researchers discovered the pufferfish was the answer to a long-standing underwater puzzle, their documentation also showed the culprit to be very different from any of its known relatives.

Beautiful circular designs have been spotted on the Japanese sea bed since 1995, but until recently their origins remained a mystery.

Finally a pufferfish was observed building the sandy structures and last year the behaviour was shown to be a tactic for attracting mates."

Orcas and whales seen in fight to the death: "For a start it has been unclear whether orcas, also known as killer whales, really hunt whales, and how often. Nor did we know how the whales themselves might react to such attacks.

Now for the first time, scientists have recorded orcas attacking and killing humpback whales, specifically young calves. The results are published in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

What's more, the humpback whales themselves aren't passive victims. They aggressively turn to battle the orcas, and even recruit "escort" whales to help fight off the attacks."

Can organic crops compete with industrial agriculture?: "A systematic overview of more than 100 studies comparing organic and conventional farming finds that the crop yields of organic agriculture are higher than previously thought. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, also found that certain practices could further shrink the productivity gap between organic crops and conventional farming.

The study, to be published online Wednesday, Dec. 10, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, tackles the lingering perception that organic farming, while offering an environmentally sustainable alternative to chemically intensive agriculture, cannot produce enough food to satisfy the world's appetite."

Fathering offspring is more than just a race to the egg: "The chance of a male fathering offspring may not be a simple race to the egg, but is influenced by the length of the male's sperm, say scientists from the University of Sheffield.

Using a captive population of zebra finches, the researchers carried out sperm competition experiments between pairs of males, where one male consistently produced long sperm and the other male always produced short sperm. These experiments showed that more long sperm reached and fertilised the eggs compared to short sperm. The long sperm advantage was evident even when the short sperm males mated with the females first, and were effectively given a 'head start'."

You are what you eat—if you're a coral reef fish: "In a world first study researchers have found a coral-eating fish that disguises its smell to hide from predators."

Researchers document aviary eggshell with iridescence for the first time: "A team of researchers with members from New Zealand, Czech Republic and the U.S. has documented for the first time an example of an aviary egg that has iridescence. In their paper published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the team describes their study of eggs laid by great tinamou, which revealed the nature of the egg coloring."

Oldest horned dinosaur species in North America found in Montana: Hooked beak, sharply pointed cheeks distinguishes neoceratopsian species: "Scientists have named the first definite horned dinosaur species from the Early Cretaceous in North America. The limited fossil record for neoceratopsian—or horned dinosaurs—from the Early Cretaceous in North America restricts scientists' ability to reconstruct the early evolution of this group."

Phenomenal fossil and detailed analysis reveal details about enigmatic fossil mammals: "Mammals that lived during the time of the dinosaurs are often portrayed as innocuous, small-bodied creatures, scurrying under the feet of the huge reptiles. In reality, this wasn't the case, and a new fossil from Madagascar further underscores this point, revealing fascinating perspectives on the growing diversity of Mesozoic mammals."

Dragonflies on the hunt display complex choreography: "The dragonfly is a swift and efficient hunter. Once it spots its prey, it takes about half a second to swoop beneath an unsuspecting insect and snatch it from the air. Scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus have used motion-capture techniques to track the details of that chase, and found that a dragonfly's movement is guided by internal models of its own body and the anticipated movement of its prey. Similar internal models are used to guide behavior in humans.

'This highlights the role that internal models play in letting these creatures construct such a complex behavior,' says Janelia group leader Anthony Leonardo, who led the study. 'It starts to reshape our view of the neural underpinnings of this behavior.' Leonardo, postdoctoral fellows Matteo Mischiati and Huai-Ti Lin, and their colleagues published the findings in the December 11, 2014, issue of the journal Nature."

New mollusc group discovered: "Shells recovered from the bottom of the Arctic Ocean are identified as a new genus of bivalve mollusc that lived in seas more than 1.8 million years ago."

edited 11th Dec '14 12:59:27 AM by rmctagg09

Biologists map crocodilian genomes: "Understanding the crocodilian genome can help scientists better understand birds. The DNA in alligators, crocodiles and gharials is about 93 percent identical across the genome. By comparison, a human shares about 93 percent of his or her DNA with a macaque."

International team maps 'big bang' of bird evolution: "The genomes of modern birds tell a story of how they emerged and evolved after the mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs and almost everything else 66 million years ago. That story is now coming to light, thanks to an ambitious international collaboration that has been underway for four years."

The story of a bizarre deep-sea bone worm takes an unexpected twist: "The saga of the Osedax "bone-eating" worms began 12 years ago, with the first discovery of these deep-sea creatures that feast on the bones of dead animals. The Osedax story grew even stranger when researchers found that the large female worms contained harems of tiny dwarf males.

In a new study published in the Dec. 11 issue of Current Biology, marine biologist Greg Rouse at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and his collaborators reported a new twist to the Osedax story, revealing an evolutionary oddity unlike any other in the animal kingdom. Rouse's collaborators included Nerida Wilson (formerly based at Scripps and now at the Western Australian Museum), Katrine Worsaae of the University of Copenhagen, and Robert Vrijenhoek of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).

Examining bone worms collected at 700 meters (2,296 feet) depth by an MBARI remotely operated vehicle, Rouse observed a surprising new type of Osedax species. Females of the new species are roughly the same size as their previously studied relatives, but males are tens of thousands of times larger than those of other Osedax worms, and are roughly the same size as the females."

March of the penguin genomes: "Two penguin genomes have been sequenced and analyzed for the first time. The study reveals insights into how these birds have been able to adapt to the cold and hostile Antarctic environment.

Using the historical genetic record within the DNA across bird species, the researchers estimate that penguins first appeared around 60 million years ago. The study shows that the Adélie penguin population increased rapidly about 150,000 years ago when the climate became warmer, but later declined by 40% about 60,000 years ago during a cold and dry glacial period. In contrast, the emperor penguin population remained stable, suggesting that they were better adapted to glacial conditions, for example, by being able to protect their eggs from freezing temperatures and incubate them on their feet."

Before an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, Earth experienced a short burst of intense volcanism: "Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid more than five miles wide smashed into the Earth at 70,000 miles per hour, instantly vaporizing upon impact. The strike obliterated most terrestrial life, including the dinosaurs, in a geological instant: Heavy dust blocked out the sun, setting off a cataclysmic chain of events from the bottom of the food chain to the top, killing off more than three-quarters of Earth's species—or so the popular theory goes.

But now scientists at MIT and elsewhere have found evidence that a major volcanic eruption began just before the impact, possibly also playing a role in the extinction.

The team precisely dated rocks from the Deccan Traps—a region of west-central India that preserves remnants of one of the largest volcanic eruptions on Earth. Based on their analysis, the researchers determined that the eruption began 250,000 years before the asteroid strike and continued for 500,000 years after the giant impact, spewing a total of 1.5 million square kilometers of lava."

Mystery Solved for How Birds Lost Their Teeth: "'DNA from the crypt' has revealed the lack of teeth in all living birds can be traced back to a common ancestor who lost its choppers about 116 million years ago.

The finding is reported in one of eight studies published today in Science by the Avian Phylogenomics Consortium, an international collaboration examining the evolution of living birds."

Israeli cave offers clues about when humans mastered fire: "Mastering fire was one of the most important developments in human prehistory. But it’s also one of the hardest to pin down, with different lines of evidence pointing to different timelines. A new study of artifacts from a cave in Israel suggests that our ancestors began regularly using fire about 350,000 years ago—far enough back to have shaped our culture and behavior but too recent to explain our big brains or our expansion into cold climates."

Are massive squid really the sea monsters of legend?

I'll make this short: Not really.

edited 12th Dec '14 9:49:43 AM by rmctagg09

Because Chicxulub does, by all account, have enough strength to cause the mass extinction by itself.

How birds get by without external ears: "Unlike mammals, birds have no external ears. The outer ears have an important function: they help the animal identify sounds coming from different elevations. But birds are also able to perceive whether the source of a sound is above them, below them, or at the same level. Now a research team has discovered that birds are able to localize these sounds by utilizing their entire head."

Genes tell story of birdsong and human speech: "A massive international effort to sequence and compare the entire genomes of 48 species of birds, representing every major order of the bird family tree, reveals that vocal learning evolved twice or maybe three times among songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds. Even more striking, the set of genes employed in each of those song innovations is remarkably similar to the genes involved in human speaking ability."

Oil-dwelling bacteria are social creatures in Earth's deep biosphere, new study shows: "Oil reservoirs are scattered deep inside the Earth like far-flung islands in the ocean, so their inhabitants might be expected to be very different, but a new study led by Dartmouth College and University of Oslo researchers shows these underground microbes are social creatures that have exchanged genes for eons.

The study, which was led by researchers at Dartmouth College and the University of Oslo, appears in the ISME Journal.

The findings shed new light on the 'deep biosphere,' or the vast subterranean realm whose single-celled residents are estimated to be roughly equal in number and diversity to all the microbes inhabiting the surface's land, water and air. Deep microbial research may also help scientists to better understand life's early evolution on Earth and aid the search for life on Mars and other planets."

A complete woolly mammoth skeleton has been recovered from the North Sea: "During the last Ice Age, woolly mammoths roamed the frozen tundra between England and Holland - an area that is now covered by the North Sea. Archaeologists have now managed to recover a complete mammoth skeleton from its resting place here 30 metres below the water.

Collected over the past two years by North Sea Fossils, a Netherlands-based team of archaeologists and palaeontologists, the 3.4 metre-tall skeleton has been carbon dated to 40,000 years old."

Here's the tiny human twig in the Tree of Life: "Created as part of a collaboration between the Tree of Life Web Project and designer Leonard Eisenberg, this epic infographic is one monster family tree, showing the history of 3.5 billion years of life on Earth.

The Tree of Life Web Project aims to collect pictures, text and other information on every species, both living and extinct, with the help of expert and amateur contributors. Here they show how all of life - from plants and fungi to sharks, fish, mammals, and humans - all sprung from the humble bacterium, a creature that has spent billions of years spreading to every corner of the Earth."

Scientists Put A Worm's Mind Into A Robot's Body: "Beneath the skin of a simple worm with transparent skin, there are 302 neurons that have been mapped meticulously by researchers in what is known as a connectome. This tiny, one millimeter-long worm has been studied in laboratories around the world, and now it's nervous system has been transplanted into the body of a Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot. The worm they used is Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans).

Why? According to OpenWorm—an organization dedicated to creating the world’s first virtual organism in a computer—to understand the human brain, we must first be able to comprehend a simple worm. To do so, their scientists essentially reverse-engineered the worm’s neural networks using sensors and software. The model makes use of UDP packets to fire neurons. For example, the sonar sensor on the robot is wired to be like the worm’s nose, which means if the robot comes within 20 centimeters of an object, sensory neurons are activated with UDP packets."

edited 15th Dec '14 11:54:06 AM by rmctagg09

New insights into origins of agriculture could help shape future of food: "Agricultural decisions made by our ancestors more than 10,000 years ago could hold the key to food security in the future, according to new research. Scientists, looking at why the first arable farmers chose to domesticate some cereal crops and not others, studied those that originated in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of land in western Asia from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf."

I welcome our cybernetic worm overlords.

Reshaping the horse through millennia: Sequencing reveals genes selected by humans in domestication: "Whole genome sequencing of modern and ancient horses unveils the genes that have been selected by humans in the process of domestication through the last 5,500 years, but also reveals the cost of this domestication. An international research group reports that a significant part of the genetic variation in modern domesticated horses could be attributed to interbreeding with the descendants of a now extinct population of wild horses. This population was distinct from the only surviving wild horse population."

Dental plaque reveals key plant in prehistoric Easter Island diet: "A University of Otago, New Zealand, PhD student analysing dental calculus (hardened plaque) from ancient teeth is helping resolve the question of what plant foods Easter Islanders relied on before European contact.

Known to its Polynesian inhabitants as Rapa Nui, Easter Island is thought to have been colonized around the 13th Century and is famed for its mysterious large stone statues or moai.

Otago Anatomy PhD student Monica Tromp and Idaho State University's Dr John Dudgeon have just published new research clearing up their previous puzzling finding that suggested palm may have been a staple plant food for Rapa Nui's population over several centuries."

edited 15th Dec '14 11:28:54 PM by rmctagg09

A lot or a little? Wolves discriminate quantities better than dogs: "Being able to mentally consider quantities makes sense for any social species. Scientists studied how well dogs can discriminate between different quantities and discovered that wolves perform better than dogs at such tasks. Possibly dogs lost this skill, or a predisposition for it, during domestication."

Intensive agriculture may have exacerbated drought in ancient Maya city: "The ancient Maya city of Tikal may have used intensive agricultural practices to maintain its large population, according to a study by David Lentz of the University of Cincinnati and colleagues. While these practices enabled sustainable population growth for some time, they may eventually have exacerbated a drought that caused the abandonment of the city. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Biologist reveals how whales may 'sing' for their supper: "Humpback whales have a trick or two, when it comes to finding a quick snack at the bottom of the ocean. Even in the dark. Biologists have been studying these unique feeding behaviors. Her research emphasizes the importance of specific auditory cues that these mammoth creatures emit, as they search the deep ocean for their prey."

Big-data analysis reveals gene sharing in mice: "Scientists have detected at least three potential hybridization events that likely shaped the evolutionary paths of 'old world' mice, two in recent times and one in the ancient past. The researchers think these instances of introgressive hybridization — a way for genetic material and, potentially, traits to be passed from one species to another through interspecific mating — are only the first of many needles waiting to be found in a very large genetic haystack. While introgressive hybridization is thought to be common among plants, the finding suggests that hybridization in mammals may not be the evolutionary dead end biologists once commonly thought."

Unraveling the light of fireflies: "How do fireflies produce those mesmerizing light flashes? Using cutting-edge imaging techniques, scientists from Switzerland and Taiwan have unraveled the firefly's intricate light-producing system for the first time. Fireflies used rapid light flashes to communicate. This 'bioluminescence' is an intriguing phenomenon that has many potential applications, from drug testing and monitoring water contamination, and even lighting up streets using glow-in-dark trees and plants.

Fireflies emit light when a compound called luciferin breaks down. We know that this reaction needs oxygen, but what we don't know is how fireflies actually supply oxygen to their light-emitting cells. Using state-of-the-art imaging techniques, scientists from Switzerland and Taiwan have determined how fireflies control oxygen distribution to light up their cells. The work is published in Physical Review Letters.

The firefly's light-producing organ is called the 'lantern', and it is located in the insect's abdomen. It looks like a series of tubes progressing into smaller ones and so one, like a tree's branches growing into twigs. The function of these tubes, called, is to supply oxygen to the cells of the lantern, which contain luciferase and can produce light. However, the complexity of the firefly's lantern has made it difficult to study this mechanism in depth, and reproduce it for technological applications."

Research shows Jaws didn't kill his cousin: "New research suggests our jawed ancestors weren't responsible for the demise of their jawless cousins as had been assumed. Instead Dr Robert Sansom from The University of Manchester believes rising sea levels are more likely to blame. His research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

He says: 'When our jawed vertebrate ancestors overtook their jawless relatives 400 million years ago, it seems that it might not have been through direct competition but instead the inability of our jawless cousins to adapt to changing environmental conditions.'

In this research, Dr Sansom, PhD student Emma Randle and Phil Donoghue from the University of Bristol studied the patterns of diversity of fossil jawless fish. These boney fish with a tank like construction (ostracoderms) were dominant and diverse in ancient seas. The team found that patterns of ostracoderm diversity were correlated with changing environmental and geological conditions; the fish were strongly reliant on the availability of shallow water seas and ecosystems."

Study shows starving mantis females attract more males: "A study done by Katherine Barry an evolutionary biologist with Macquarie University in Australia has led to the discovery that a certain species of female mantis attracts more males when starving, then do those who are well fed. In her paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, she describes experiments she carried out that contradicted conventional thinking."

550-million-year-old fossils provide new clues about fossil formation: "A new study from University of Missouri and Virginia Tech researchers is challenging accepted ideas about how ancient soft-bodied organisms become part of the fossil record. Findings suggest that bacteria involved in the decay of those organisms play an active role in how fossils are formed—often in a matter of just a few tens to hundreds of years. Understanding the relationship between decay and fossilization will inform future study and help researchers interpret fossils in a new way."

Birds sensed severe storms and fled before tornado outbreak: "Golden-winged warblers apparently knew in advance that a storm that would spawn 84 confirmed tornadoes and kill at least 35 people last spring was coming, according to a new report. The birds left the scene well before devastating supercell storms blew in."

Asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs may have nearly knocked off mammals, too: "The classic story is that mammals rose to dominance after the dinosaurs went extinct, but a new study shows that some of the most common mammals living alongside dinosaurs, the metatherians, extinct relatives of living marsupials, were also nearly wiped out when an asteroid hit the planet 66 million years ago."

Fish Converts Oyster Shell Into Speaker, Blasts Noise: "A clever fish has figured out that if it produces sounds in an oyster shell, the noises will carry over long distances, according to new research.

The study, published in The Journal of Experimental Biology, is just the latest to show that fish are far from being silent. Many can produce sounds by vibrating their swimbladders and, like a fishy form of Morse Code, they can create different meanings based on the sounds.

Pearlfish in waters off the remote Makemo Island atoll in French Polynesia take this to a whole other level. Researcher Loic Kéver of the University of Liège and colleagues discovered that the fish move into black-lip pearl oysters. Once inside the oysters, their vibrations substantially increase in volume."

No 'bird brains'? Crows exhibit advanced relational thinking, study suggests: "Crows have the brain power to solve higher-order, relational-matching tasks, and they can do so spontaneously, according to new research. That means crows join humans, apes and monkeys in exhibiting advanced relational thinking, according to the research."

Scientists have translated a primate language into English: "Researchers have used human linguistic tools to translate the language of Campbell’s monkeys (Cercopithecus campbelli), primates found in western Africa.

For years primatologists and linguists have been studying their advanced language to try to crack the code of monkey vocabulary, but now a team of researchers believe they may have finally done it, all thanks to the monkey term 'Krak'.

They found that Campbell's monkeys in the Ivory Coast’s Tai Forest use the term krak to indicate that a leopard is nearby, and the sound 'hok' to warn others that there’s an eagle circling overhead."

edited 22nd Dec '14 10:19:21 AM by rmctagg09