The Biology, Agriculture, and Paleontology thread

Fossils from heart of Amazon provide evidence that South American monkeys came from Africa: "The early evolutionary history of monkeys in South America is cloaked in mystery. Long thought to have journeyed from Africa, evidence for this hypothesis was difficult to support without fossil data. A new discovery now unveils a key chapter of their evolutionary saga. The discovery of three new extinct monkeys from eastern Peru hints strongly that South American monkeys have an African ancestry."

Scientists reprogram plants for drought tolerance: "Plant biologists report that drought tolerance in plants can be improved by engineering them to activate water-conserving processes in response to an agrochemical already in use — an approach that could be broadly applied to other parts of the same drought-response pathway and a range of other agrochemicals. The finding illustrates the power of synthetic biological approaches for manipulating crops, opening new doors for crop improvement."

Giant rodent used incisors like tusks: "The largest rodent ever to have lived may have used its front teeth just like an elephant uses its tusks, a new study has found. "We concluded that Josephoartigasia must have used its incisors for activities other than biting, such as digging in the ground for food, or defending itself from predators. This is very similar to how a modern day elephant uses its tusks," an investigator said."

Sea slug has taken genes from algae it eats, allowing it to photosynthesize like a plant: "How a brilliant-green sea slug manages to live for months at a time 'feeding' on sunlight, like a plant, is clarified in a recent study. The authors present the first direct evidence that the emerald green sea slug's chromosomes have some genes that come from the algae it eats."

Study shows cockroaches have individual personalities that impact group dynamicscockroaches: "A team of researchers working at Université libre de Bruxelles has found that not only do cockroaches have unique individual personalities, but their differences can also have an impact on group dynamics. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes the experiments they conducted as part of their study and why what they learned might help explain why roaches are so good at surviving in different types of environments.

Prior research has shown that humans are not the only ones with unique personalities, other animals such as dogs and cats and many other mammals have been found to behave differently depending on their personality—also, scientists have found that a host of invertebrates also have unique personalities. In this new study the researchers sought to discover if the same was true for cockroaches.

To find out, the group assembled 19 groups of cockroaches with 16 individual same-age males in each. All had tiny transmitters attached so that their movements could be precisely tracked. Each group was released into a plastic arena (three times a week) from which they could not escape—which was initially completely dark. Just above the arena, the team placed several disks that would cast shadows down below when the lights were turned on. This allowed the researchers to track the roaches as they sought to hide in the shadows, or not, both individually, and when they were members of a group."

Scientists have created a see-through eggshell to watch embryo development: "In an effort to make scientific research cheaper and easier, an array of ‘on-a-chip’ technologies have been developed over the past few years. The idea is to use stem cells to build a miniature replica of a real-life human organ so you can observe its reactions to as many new drugs and treatments as you like. The benefit is these little organs-on-a-chip offer a much more accurate view of how real human organs might respond to these treatments than testing them on lab animals would - and they do it much more cheaply, and humanely."

Malocclusion and dental crowding arose 12,000 years ago with earliest farmers: "Hunter-gatherers had almost no malocclusion and dental crowding, and the condition first became common among the world's earliest farmers some 12,000 years ago in Southwest Asia, according to findings published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

By analysing the lower jaws and teeth crown dimensions of 292 archaeological skeletons from the Levant, Anatolia and Europe, from between 28,000-6,000 years ago, an international team of scientists have discovered a clear separation between European hunter-gatherers, Near Eastern/Anatolian semi-sedentary hunter-gatherers and transitional farmers, and European farmers, based on the form and structure of their jawbones.

'Our analysis shows that the lower jaws of the world's earliest farmers in the Levant, are not simply smaller versions of those of the predecessor hunter-gatherers, but that the lower jaw underwent a complex series of shape changes commensurate with the transition to agriculture,' says Professor Ron Pinhasi from the School of Archaeology and Earth Institute, University College Dublin, the lead author on the study."

The oldest society on Earth: "The oldest society on earth was first created some 200 million years ago.

A long, long time before the evolution of humankind, and long before even that of ants.

It originated with the appearance of the termites, the first social insects, which began to set a few basic ground rules for their behavior, organising themselves into different roles, each insect contributing something to the greater good.

Termite society has since become, by almost every measure, extremely successful. More than 3000 termite species survive today, colonising most continents, living in societies that can number several million individuals.

Key to their survival is how termites get along with each other.

But just as important might be how these insects deal with conflict, and what happens when a termite society faces a crisis.

And that is something that scientists have just tested by causing crowds of termites to panic, to see how they react."

Neanderthals disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula before than from the rest of Europe: "Until a few months ago different scientific articles dated the disappearance of the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) from Europe at around 40,000 years ago. However, a new study shows that these hominids could have disappeared before then in the Iberian Peninsula, closer to 45,000 years ago."

15-million-year-old mollusk protein found: "Scientists have found 'beautifully preserved' 15-million-year-old thin protein sheets in fossil shells from southern Maryland. The team collected samples from Calvert Cliffs, along the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay, a popular fossil collecting area. They found fossilized shells of a snail-like mollusk called Ecphora that lived in the mid-Miocene era."

Science dates old dogs with new tricks: "Man's best friend has not been around for nearly as long as thought, according to a study Thursday that brings the emergence of modern dogs forward by some 15,000 years.

The finding follows the reclassification of two fossil skulls, one more than 30,000 years old, that were the basis for dating dog domestication to a long-gone era when early humans were still roaming hunter-gatherers.

New 3D analysis of the skulls showed they were in fact those of wolves—not the earliest dogs as postulated in other studies, a research team wrote in the Nature journal Scientific Reports."

After merger, chimpanzees learned new grunt for 'apple': "Chimpanzees have special grunts for particular types of foods, and their fellow chimps know exactly what those calls mean. Now, by studying what happened after two separate groups of adult chimpanzees moved in together at the Edinburgh Zoo, researchers have made the surprising discovery that our primate cousins can change those referential grunts over time, to make them sound more like those of new peers."

Mapping of the canary genome: "Nature lovers are fascinated by the increasing number of singing birds when spring is approaching. Scientists also take advantage of this seasonal phenomenon because they are able to investigate the underlying mechanism; however the evolutionary and molecularbiological background is largely unknown. Biologists have now sequenced the genome of the canary."

And that should clue them that they should stop calling them "grunts" and call them what they are, words.

Except that the existence of actual words implies the existence of an actual language, which necessiates the existence of grammar and similar linguistic rules that only with which can words be strung together into meaningful sentences. Besides, even we humans use "grunts" and similar vocalizations that do not count as words even though they carry meaning (e.g. to say "yes" or "no" without actually saying the words, for whatever reason).

No, what happens is that you start with the words, and then you begin to string them together into more complex patterns where grammar becomes a thing. Saying you can't have words without language is like saying you can't have an engine without a car.

Semantic argument, oh yeah. Fight, Fight, Fight, Kiss, Kiss.

edited 7th Feb '15 3:20:08 PM by Ekuran

Whale social network reveals surprising allies: "When you spend your days battling giant squid, it’s good to have friends you can rely on. New research from the Caribbean suggests that female sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus, pictured) swim with favored companions and form long-term family allegiances."

The Hives of Others: Bees Wage War across Species: "Jane Goodall discovered 40 years ago that chimpanzees wage war. Until then, she thought they were “rather nicer” than humans. But her shocking observation of animal warfare was not the first. It was the second. By then scientists had known for at least 80 years that we were not the only species to kill others of our own kind. Some insects do it, too.

The Australian stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria is notorious for inciting war, usually to usurp the hive of another. Instead of wasting time building their own hives, they just steal one and redecorate. The fights between stingless bee colonies are epic in scale, according to John Paul Cunningham of Queensland University of Technology in Australia, with 'swarms from the attacking and defending hives colliding midair and fighting bees falling to the ground locked in a death grip from which neither combatant survives.'

While studying such skirmishes, Cunningham and his colleagues were surprised to find that the stingless bees were being attacked not only by other colonies of their own species but also by colonies of a different species entirely, Tetragonula hockingsi. This insight marks the first known description of interspecies warfare in bees—the only other instance of this type of conflict observed throughout the animal kingdom occurs among some ant species."

Cat shelter findings: Less stress with box access: "Out of all those cat videos that keep your eyes glued to the screen far longer than you would care to acknowledge, you may have seen some showing little and big cats trying their best to snuggle into big and too-little cardboard boxes. What makes them so content about being in a box? Scientists have spent much time looking for answers. 'Will a hiding box provide stress reduction for shelter cats?' That is one such exploration, published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, the journal of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE).

The three authors, from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Utrecht, studied stress in shelter cats and found that hiding boxes reduced stress, at least on the short term. They chose shelters as their investigation site because that is where the stress levels for domestic cats can be serious. The researchers assessed the effect of a hiding box on stress levels of newly arrived cats in a Dutch animal shelter. Ten cats had a box; nine did not. They found a significant difference between the two groups on observation days 3 and 4. The cats with the hiding box were able to recover faster in their new environment."

Parasitic wasps show sexy side

A Funeral for Crows

More or less, it's complicated.

Amber fossil links earliest grasses, dinosaurs and fungus used to produce LSD: "A perfectly preserved amber fossil from Myanmar has been found that provides evidence of the earliest grass specimen ever discovered - about 100 million years old - and even then it was topped by a fungus similar to ergot, which for eons has been intertwined with animals and humans.

Ergot has played roles as a medicine, a toxin, and a hallucinogen; been implicated in everything from disease epidemics to the Salem witch trials; and more recently provided the hallucinogenic drug LSD.

Apparently both ergot and the grasses that now form most of the diet for the human race evolved together.

And if they already seemed a little scary, imagine a huge sauropod dinosaur that just ate a large portion of this psychotropic fungus, which in other animal species can cause anything from hallucinations to delirium, gangrene, convulsions or the staggers. The fungus, the grasses it lived on and dinosaurs that ate grass co-existed for millions of years."

How modern humans ate their way to world dominance: "The difference between humans and their closest relatives is partly a matter of taste. Yams, pumpkins, and squash are as bland as potatoes to our tongues today, but to a chimp and our ancestors, wild varieties were bitter and yucky. Now scientists have pinpointed some of the genetic changes that allowed our ancestors to diversify their palates, potentially allowing them to take better advantage of a wide range of foods—and conquer the world.

As humans adapted to new habitats, they had to become open to new culinary experiences. They ate more starchy tuberous roots, learned to cook their meat and bitter root vegetables, and eventually domesticated plants and animals. Those dietary revolutions helped make us human, giving our bodies the extra calories that enlarged our brains, while allowing our guts, jaws, and teeth to shrink as we ate softer, more easily digestible food.

To figure out how these changes evolved, anthropological geneticist George Perry of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and his colleagues compared the genomes of modern humans and chimpanzees to the newly published genomes of a Neanderthal and one of its close relatives, a mysterious human ancestor known as a Denisovan, known only from a few bones found in a Russian cave. All three groups of humans had lost two bitter taste genes, TAS2R62 and TAS2R64, that are still present in chimpanzees, the team reports this month in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Weird giant sunfish reveals secrets: "They are called sunfish because they spend almost half their day basking motionless at the ocean's surface, seemingly catching some rays.

But until now it was not understood why they sunbathed, or exactly what they get up to in the deep ocean.

New research shows that they forage for marine hydrozoans (Greek for sea serpent), which are small groups of predatory animals related to jellyfish. The fish take siphonophores, a type of hydozoan, most frequently at depths of between 50-200m. After their hunt they go back to the surface to top up their body temperatures by basking in the sun.

It's the first evidence that sunfish graze on these creatures in deep water. It was also previously believed they only ate jellyfish."

edited 9th Feb '15 2:08:54 PM by rmctagg09

Swimming reptiles make their mark in the Early Triassic: "Vertebrate tracks provide valuable information about animal behavior and environments. Swim tracks are a unique type of vertebrate track because they are produced underwater by buoyant trackmakers, and specific factors are required for their production and subsequent preservation. Early Triassic deposits contain the highest number of fossil swim track occurrences worldwide compared to other epochs, and this number becomes even greater when epoch duration and rock outcrop area are taken into account."

Team finds earliest evidence of large-scale human-produced air pollution in South America: "In the 16th century, during its conquest of South America, the Spanish Empire forced countless Incas to work extracting silver from the mountaintop mines of Potosí, in what is now Bolivia—then the largest source of silver in the world. The Inca already knew how to refine silver, but in 1572 the Spanish introduced a new technology that boosted production many times over and sent thick clouds of lead dust rising over the Andes for the first time in history."

Pregnancy in mammals evolved with help from roving DNA: "Roving pieces of DNA helped early mammals ditch egg-laying in favor of giving birth to live young. These “jumping genes,” or transposable elements, flipped the switch on thousands of genes, turning off ones that build hard eggshells and turning on ones that allow a fetus to develop in the uterus. Researchers report the finding in the Feb. 3 Cell Reports."

Down syndrome theory on Hobbit species doesn't hold to scrutiny: "Claims that bones found in an Indonesian cave are not the remains of a new species of extinct hominin but more likely modern humans suffering from a chromosomal disorder have been disputed by a new look at the evidence."

Love in the Air

On birds and sexual reproduction.

Tapeworms battle it out to control shared host: "If two tapeworms infect the same host, they can team up to boost their influence over its behaviour. But if they find themselves at cross-purposes, they may actively sabotage each other in a competition to seize control, researchers have suggested."

'Stressed' young bees could be the cause of colony collapse: "Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a major threat to bee colonies around the world and affects their ability to perform vital human food crop pollination. It has been a cause of urgent concern for scientists and farmers around the world for at least a decade but a specific cause for the phenomenon has yet to be conclusively identified. Pressure on young bees to grow up too fast could be a major factor in explaining the disastrous declines in bee populations seen worldwide."

Crocodiles just wanna have fun, too: "Turns out we may have more in common with crocodiles than we'd ever dream. According to research by a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, crocodiles think surfing waves, playing ball and going on piggyback rides are fun, too.

Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor in psychology, has studied crocodiles for a decade. While doing so, he has observed the animals engaging in play-like behavior. To get more data, he conducted an informal survey of crocodilian-themed groups on social media and various conferences.

His results show a softer side of the intimidating creatures—one that includes romping around with river otters and people. The findings could shed light on how intelligence has evolved."

A first of its kind tool to study the histone code: "University of North Carolina scientists have created a new research tool, based on the fruit fly, to help crack the histone code. This research tool can be used to better understand the function of histone proteins, which play critical roles in the regulation of gene expression in animals and plants.

This work, published in the journal Developmental Cell, opens the door to experiments that are expected to uncover new biology important for a host of conditions, such as neurological diseases, diabetes, obesity, and especially cancer, which has become a hotbed of epigenetic research."

The Champion Egg-Layers of the Bird World: "Researchers have just scrambled a long-held belief about eggs, one that could make biologists reconsider which birds are the true reproductive champs.

Traditionally, biologists have measured reproductive investment—the amount of effort a bird puts into procreation—by the number of eggs in each clutch. The higher the number, the bigger a bird’s investment was assumed to be. But that approach carries limitations. 'This measure is quite coarse and ignores many other aspects of variation in breeding effort,' says Watson.

In a new Plos One paper, David Watson and his colleagues took a different tack from other ornithologists and measured total clutch volume instead of egg numbers alone. To do this, they studied the eggs of 1,364 species, randomly selected from 204 avian families. “We calculated the volume of an egg and multiplied that by the average number of eggs laid in a clutch,” Watson, who is an ecologist from Charles Sturt University in Australia, explains. 'In basic terms, this equates to the amount of ‘stuff’ a female bird produces in a reproductive bout, and is sensitive to changes in both the number of eggs laid and their size.' This technique allowed a more refined—and somewhat fairer—measurement of the effort different birds really put in to making their eggs."

Temperature dependence and the thermal limits of embryogenesis: "Raising the temperature is one easy way to get chemical reactions to speed up. This temperature dependence can be accurately described by a simple exponential relation known as the Arrhenius equation. A commonly accepted generalization of this equation is that the reaction rate tends to double for every 10 degree Celsius temperature increase. Many biological phenomena, like rates of firefly flashes or the speeds of working ants, have also been shown to follow similar kinetics. A recent paper in Cell Reports now shows that not only does the timing of cell division cycles in the early embryo follow the temperature prescription called for by Arrhenius, but that this developmental dependence is what ultimately constrains the thermal limits of the organism itself."

Hummingbird's sweet survival trick: "Rufous hummingbirds stay close to red-breasted sapsuckers to guarantee a potentially life-saving meal"

Which life form inhabits Earth

Wasp virus turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters: "The green-eyed wasp Dinocampus coccinellae turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters. Three weeks after a wasp lays its egg inside the hapless beetle, a wasp larva bursts from her belly and weaves itself a cocoon between her legs. The ladybug doesn’t die, but becomes paralyzed, involuntarily twitching her spotted red carapace to ward off predators until the adult wasp emerges a week later. How D. coccinellae enslaves its host at just the right time had been a mystery, but now researchers believe the insect has an accomplice: a newly identified virus that attacks the beetle’s brain. The findings raise questions about whether other parasites also use viruses as neurological weapons."

Aggressive sex spurs female bedbugs to become more flexible

A gene that shaped the evolution of Darwin's finches: "Researchers have identified a gene in Galápagos finches studied by English naturalist Charles Darwin that influences beak shape and that played a role in the birds' evolution from a common ancestor. The study illustrates the genetic foundation of evolution, including how genes can flow from one species to another, and how different versions of a gene within a species can contribute to the formation of new species."

Oldest fur seal identified, ending 5-million-year 'ghost lineage': "The oldest known fur seal has been discovered by a Geology Ph D student at New Zealand's University of Otago, providing a missing link that helps to resolve a more than 5-million-year gap in fur seal and sea lion evolutionary history."

Mystery SOLVED: How popcorn pops

Apes prefer the glass half full: Nearest primate relatives also susceptible to marketing spin: "Humans aren't the only species to be influenced by spin. Our closest primate relatives are susceptible, too. For example, people rate a burger as more tasty when it is described as '75 percent lean' than when it is described as "25 percent fat," even though that's the same thing. A new study finds that positive and negative framing make a big difference for chimpanzees and bonobos too."

Are you happy? Your dog can tell: "Dog owners may think their pets can tell a smile from a frown, but scientific evidence has been lacking. Now, researchers have trained dogs from a variety of breeds to look at a pair of photos arranged side by side—one showing the upper half of a woman’s face looking happy and the other showing the upper half of the same woman’s face looking angry—and pick out the happy expression by touching their snouts to it (pictured). When then shown the lower halves of the faces or pieces of other people’s faces, the perceptive pooches could still easily discern happy from angry."

Earliest-known arboreal and subterranean ancestral mammals discovered: "The fossils of two interrelated ancestral mammals, newly discovered in China, suggest that the wide-ranging ecological diversity of modern mammals had a precedent more than 160 million years ago."

Make like a squid and transform: Squid can recode their genetic make-up on-the-fly to adjust to their surroundings, study finds: "A new study showcases the first example of an animal editing its own genetic makeup on-the-fly to modify most of its proteins, enabling adjustments to its immediate surroundings."

Curious monkeys share our thirst for knowledge: "Monkeys are notoriously curious, and new research has quantified just how eager they are to gain new information, even if there are not immediate benefits. The findings offer insights into how a certain part of the brain shared by monkeys and humans plays a role in decision making, and perhaps even in some disorders and addictions in humans."

Harm and response: Plants recognize and respond to different insects: "In one of the broadest studies of its kind, scientists recently looked at all plant genes and their response to the enemy. Their results showed that the model Arabidopsis plant recognizes and responds differently to four insect species. The insects cause changes on a transcriptional level, triggering proteins that switch on and off plant genes to help defend against more attacks."

Remoras don't suck: "How does the hitchhiking, flat-headed remora fish attach to surfaces so securely yet release so easily? Suction was thought to be the easy answer, but Brooke Flammang, a biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), has proved this long-held conclusion to be only partly true.

Researchers have long studied animals like tree frogs, geckos, and spiders for their adhesive abilities, but what makes remoras unique in this group is they combine three key elements: the ability to securely fasten themselves for long periods of time; attach to different types of surfaces; release quickly without harming the surface.

Understanding the mechanics of this process could help researchers and engineers create or improve designs for any number of devices that need to stick well but then release quickly without harming the host, such as tags for tracking endangered species or bandages that really don't hurt when you pull them off."

Structure-based design used as tool for engineering deimmunized biotherapeutics: "In the first experimental use of algorithms that employ structure-based molecular modeling to optimize deimmunized drug candidates, Karl Griswold, Ph D, and co-investigator Christopher Bailey-Kellogg, Ph D of Dartmouth College complement their prior sequence-based deimmunizing algorithms and expand the tool kit of protein engineering technologies to use in next generation drug development. Their paper, "Protein Deimmunization via Structure-based Design Enables Efficient Epitope Deletion at High Mutational Loads," was published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering."

World crop diversity survives in small farms from peri-urban to remote rural locations: "As much as 75 percent of global seed diversity in staple food crops is held and actively used by a wide range of small farmholders—workers of less than three to seven acres—with the rest in gene banks, according to a Penn State geographer.

Karl Zimmerer, professor of geography and his colleagues in the GeoSyntheSES (Geographic Synthesis for Social-Ecological Sustainability) lab including Steven Vanek, postdoctoral fellow, looked at new census data from 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and combined that data with field observations to develop an understanding of who is farming what and exactly where.

'These new surveys provide information that is much more detailed than what is available from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization,' said Zimmerer. 'The sources include information on Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nepal Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Nicaragua, Colombia and Peru, and cover staple food crops like maize, rice, wheat, potatoes and even teff in Ethiopia.'"

Larger area analysis needed to understand patterns in ancient prehistory: "Archaeologists need to study larger areas of land and link those studies to measurable environmental, societal and demographic changes to understand variations in prehistoric societies, according to Penn State anthropologists. The large areas are necessary to say anything meaningful about human behavioral response to social and environmental events."

Male hungry black widows smell hungry cannibal females: "Female black widow spiders can turn cannibal when they're hungry, but a new study shows males can avoid this by smelling how ravenous she is."

Female pumas kill more, eat less when humans are near: "Female pumas kill more prey but consume less when their territories bump into human development, researchers report in a new study based on monitoring more than two dozen pumas in the Santa Cruz Mountains."

Distant species produce 'love child' fern after 60-million-year breakup: "A delicate woodland fern discovered in the mountains of France is the love child of two distantly-related groups of plants that haven't interbred in 60 million years, genetic analyses show. Reproducing after such a long evolutionary breakup is akin to an elephant hybridizing with a manatee, or a human with a lemur, the researchers say."

Ancient rocks show life could have flourished on Earth 3.2 billion years ago: "A spark from a lightning bolt, interstellar dust, or a subsea volcano could have triggered the very first life on Earth. But what happened next? Life can exist without oxygen, but without plentiful nitrogen to build genes — essential to viruses, bacteria and all other organisms — life on the early Earth would have been scarce. The ability to use atmospheric nitrogen to support more widespread life was thought to have appeared roughly 2 billion years ago. Now research looking at some of the planet's oldest rocks finds evidence that 3.2 billion years ago, life was already pulling nitrogen out of the air and converting it into a form that could support larger communities."

Genetic evidence shows penguins have 'bad taste': "Penguins apparently can't enjoy or even detect the savory taste of the fish they eat or the sweet taste of fruit. A new analysis of the genetic evidence suggests that the flightless, waddling birds have lost three of the five basic tastes over evolutionary time. For them, it appears, food comes in only two flavors: salty and sour."

Cold-blooded animals grow bigger in the warm on land, but smaller in warm water: "Scientists studying arthropods, the group of cold-blooded animals that includes crabs and insects, have found that individuals within species living on land tend to grow to a larger size in the warm and nearer the equator, but that the reverse is true of species found in water.

The findings strongly support the idea that reduced oxygen availability in water causes aquatic animals to reduce their body size much more with warming than those on land."

Study shows long tail on luna moth helps to thwart bat attacks (w/ Video): "A team of researches with members from several institutions in the U.S. has found that the long tails sported by the luna moth exist as a means to foil attacks by bats. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reports on experiments they conducted that confirmed the true purpose of the abnormally long tails in the moths.

Scientists have suggested for years that the extremely long luna moth tails were likely a defense mechanism of some sort, because it did not appear that they served any purpose in attracting a mate. In this new effort, the researchers sought to find the answer once and for all.

Suspecting the tail likely served as a way to confuse bats (their primary predator) the researchers gathered 162 of the moths and pulled the tails off 75 of them. They then tied them individually to a ceiling in a lab and then released a brown bat into the room to see how well the moths were able to ward off attacks. They found that the bats were able to catch 85 percent of the moths with no tails, but just 35 percent of those that still had theirs. This indicated, of course, that the tails helped to confuse the bats."