August 12, 2006, 2:50 PM CT

Tiny animals on fingers

Please note: I didn't take any of these photographs. Where possible, I have included credits, or at least a link to where the photo is from. I encourage you to send in anything you think is good!

Hmmm.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

August 11, 2006, 9:37 PM CT

What Keeps Lizards' Blue Genes from Fading?

Scientists have reported the first direct evidence that cooperative behavior in side-blotched male lizards arises from their genes. The findings, published in the May 9 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by University of California--Santa Cruz's Barry Sinervo and colleagues, represent some 20 years of research into the altruistic or "self-sacrificing" behavior.

Side-blotched lizards, it turns out, come in three different throat colors--blue, orange or yellow. Sinervo had previously demonstrated the three throat colors in the males correlate with strikingly different behaviors.

The blues form partnerships, while the oranges are aggressors and the yellows are sneaky.

Say a pair of blue-throated males, for example, is protecting its territory from roaming orange-throated bullies. In a true act of selflessness, one blue throat steps forward to battle an intruding orange aggressor--thereby sacrificing his own chances to successfully mate.

Meanwhile, as blue throats and orange throats battle it out, yellow throats quietly sneak into unprotected territories to find females.

In nature, altruism seems contradictory to an animal's goals of survival and passing on its genes, so researchers have been trying to understand why one of the blue males in a partnership will put himself in harm's way to allow the other to reproduce. Even though it may forfeit their own reproductive chances, the fighting blue throats secure the persistence of their genes in future generations by enabling their blue buddies to avoid the aggressors and go on to mate.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

August 11, 2006, 7:05 AM CT

Amphibian Declines

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds ecology research in a number of areas, ranging from ecological ethics to tracking diseases responsible for amphibian declines, from human-landscape interactions to the ecological effects of Gulf Coast hurricanes, and biodiversity's importance to human and ecosystem health.

Researchers are presenting results of this research at the annual Ecological Society of America (ESA) meeting in Memphis, Tenn, Aug. 6-11, 2006,.

Ecological research results supported by NSF are highlighted below. All research results are embargoed until the time of their presentation.

Amphibian Declines: Rainfall and bait shops affect disease transmission.

Disease plays an important role in amphibian declines, biologists believe.The interactions between amphibian disease hosts and pathogens are influenced by complex characteristics of the host, the pathogen, and the environment. Ranaviruses are particularly linked to epidemics of amphibian disease.

Researchers James Collins, NSF assistant director for biological sciences (on leave from Arizona State University), and Amy Greer of Arizona State looked at ranavirus infection in a salamander species that lives in ponds on the Kaibab Plateau in Arizona. They observed that variation in infection prevalence, and subsequent salamander deaths, are likely correlation to differences in water availability.During wet periods like those in 2005, ponds flooded for an entire growing season, which decreased disease transmission. In 2004, a dry year, infection rates and deaths were much higher.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

August 10, 2006, 11:47 PM CT

Microbe In The Depths Of Ocean Life

Researchers from MIT and six other institutions are part of a new center for exploring the microbial inhabitants of the sea.

The Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education (C-MORE) will facilitate collaborations among the previously separate disciplines of oceanography, microbiology, ecology and genomics. These new alliances will enable a deeper understanding of the seas, including their potential response to global environmental variability and climate change.

C-MORE, which will receive approximately $19 million from the National Science Foundation over the first five years, is based at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Participating institutions in addition to MIT and UH Manoa are the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oregon State University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the Hawaii Department of Education.

"A central objective of C-MORE will be to increase understanding about how biological diversity detected at the genome level expresses itself at the ecosystem function level, and then to transfer this knowledge to policymakers to assist them in their decision-making process," said MIT Professor Edward DeLong, C-MORE associate director for research.

"Marine microorganisms are invisible to the naked eye, but their presence enables all multicellular life to exist, including human populations," said DeLong, who holds appointments in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and the Biological Engineering Division. "Novel methods in molecular biology combined with satellite- and sea-based remote sensing technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to study microorganisms across broad spatial scales ranging from genes to entire ocean basins".........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

August 9, 2006, 11:55 PM CT

Invasive Species Alter Habitat

When scientists study habitats that alien species have invaded, they usually find predictable patterns. The diversity of native species declines, and changes occur in natural processes such as nutrient cycling, wildfire frequency and the movement of water through the system.

But simply observing such changes doesn't prove that the invaders are responsible.

University of Michigan researchers Emily Farrer and Deborah Goldberg, however, came up with a way to tease out the cause of environmental changes in northern Michigan wetlands where invasive cattails have taken hold. The cattails, they found, alter the environment in ways that hinder native species but benefit the invaders. Farrer and Goldberg will present their results Aug. 9 at a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Memphis, Tenn.

"When you have an invasion, you typically see three things happening at once: the invasion, the change in environment and the decrease in diversity," said Farrer, a graduate student in Goldberg's laboratory group. "But they're all happening concurrently, so you can't really tell which is causing the other." Other factors may enter in. For example, human activity, such as the use of fertilizers and road salt and the suppression of natural wildfires, also may result in environmental changes that affect species diversity.........

Posted by: Jessica      Permalink         Source

August 9, 2006, 11:46 PM CT

New Mammal Discovered

Fossils of a new hoofed mammal that resembles a cross between a dog and a hare which once roamed the Andes Mountains in southern Bolivia around 13 million years ago was discovered by Darin A. Croft, assistant professor of anatomy at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and a research associate at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

With Federico Anaya from Universidad Autónoma Tomás Frías, Croft reported on the new mammal find named Hemihegetotherium trilobus in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology article, "A New Middle Miocene Hegetotherid (Notoungulata: Typotheria) and a Phylogeny of the Hegetotheriidae." It is named for the distinctive three lobes on its back lower molar teeth.

The animal belonged to a group of animals called notoungulates—hoofed mammals native only to South America. The group originated in South America soon after the dinosaurs went extinct and evolved to include hundreds of species over a span of more than 50 million years; all of them are now extinct. Eventhough most notoungulates were gone before humans got to South America, some of the earliest humans to journey to that continent may have seen the last living notoungulates.........

Posted by: William      Permalink         Source

August 9, 2006, 10:23 PM CT

Genetic Snooze Button Governs Timing Of Spring Flowers

In the long, dark days of winter, gardeners are known to count the days until spring. Now, scientists have learned, some plants do exactly the same thing.

Addressing scientists here today (Aug. 9) at a meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Richard Amasino described studies that have begun to peel back some of the mystery of how plants pace the seasons to bloom at the optimal time of year.

"Flowering at the right time is all about competition," says Amasino, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and UW-Madison professor of biochemistry.

Amasino and his colleagues have studied, in particular, the behaviors of biennial plants, which require long periods of exposure to the cold to initiate flowering in the spring. What they have found reveals some of the complex interplay of genes and environment and provides hints that, one day, it may be possible to exert precise control over flowering, a process essential for plant reproduction and fruiting and that has enormous implications for agriculture.

Flowers are the reproductive organs of plants and are responsible for forming seeds and fruit. As their name implies, biennials complete their life cycles in two years, germinating, growing and overwintering the first year. The second year, the plants flower in the spring and die back in the fall.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

August 9, 2006, 10:04 PM CT

West Coast Crustacean Found In Atlantic Waters

MIT scientists have confirmed the first sighting of a Dungeness crab in the Atlantic Ocean. The male, whose species is common on North America's West Coast, was caught off Thatcher Island, Massachusetts, on July 19 by Lou Williams, captain of the fishing vessel Orin C.

The origin of the crab is not known. One possibility is that it may have been purchased from a live seafood market and released. The size of the crab (18 cm) and its gender suggest it most likely arrived as an adult exotic species. Also known as invasive species or bioinvaders, exotic species are of concern because they can establish themselves in a new ecosystem, where they can proliferate and push out native species.

The crab was caught while Williams was gillnetting for groundfish at 45 fathoms. Suspecting the crab to be a Dungeness, he took it to Brandy Wilbur, aquaculture specialist for MIT Sea Grant, and Eric Sabo, educator at the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center, for verification.

After distributing photographs of the crab to several scientists, the scientists received confirmation of the species, Cancer magister, from several experts: Julie Barber, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries; Thomas C. Shirley, Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi; David Tapley, Salem State College; and Richard Strathmann and Eugene Kozloff, the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

August 9, 2006, 7:15 AM CT

Landscapes and human behavior

On Arizona State University's (ASU) Polytechnic campus, graduate student families in the cluster of six houses abutting lush lawns and ornamental bushes spend time together talking while their kids play outside. Meanwhile, the families in a nearby cluster of six homes barely know each other. But that may be in part because their homes sit on native Sonoran desert, not nearly as conducive to recreation as the lush microclimate scientists created in the first neighborhood. Social researchers and biophysical ecologists are finding that environmental surroundings may play a significant role in human social interaction, serving either as a social lubricant as in the first case, or as a barrier.

David Casagrande (Western Illinois University) and Scott Yabiku (ASU) and his colleagues are part of the Central Arizona-Phoenix long term ecological research project. In 2004 and early 2005, the scientists installed residential landscapes at 24 of about 152 virtually identical housing units in the "North Desert Village" of ASU's campus. The researchers selected five "mini neighborhoods" (groups of six houses) and altered four of them, leaving the fifth as a control with no landscaping. The four landscaping styles were:

• mesic: shade trees and turf grass, dependent upon flood irrigation for their high water demands

........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

August 9, 2006, 7:01 AM CT

Management Of Climate Change

Arctic nations have the wealth and scientific understanding to alter the course of global climate change, if they choose to do so, writes F.S. (Terry) Chapin III, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, in a paper would be published August 9, 2006 in the journal Ambio.

Chapin, professor of ecology at the Institute of Arctic Biology, and co-authors offer local-to-global policy recommendations to manage Arctic conditions resulting from thawing permafrost, melting sea ice, and relaxation of thermal thresholds. "Nations that govern Arctic lands account for about 40% of global CO2 emissions and therefore have a substantial capacity to reduce the rates of Arctic change," write the authors.

Among the authors' recommendations are that Arctic nations should designate marine protected areas, designate co-managed reserve networks, foster economic adaptation to global change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "A lot of the recommendations for policy change deal with enhancing the capacity of northern regions to be flexible and adaptable to cope with changes, some of which we can predict, and others of which will be surprises," said Chapin.

An increasingly ice-free Arctic Ocean could be zoned to include marine protected areas, designated shipping lanes, and fishing areas co-managed by local residents and government managers. If reserve networks were implemented, they would likely make important contributions to maintaining biodiversity, providing nursery stocks for adjacent fished areas, and ensuring against mismanagement or unexpected events outside the reserves. Economic adaptation is likely to be most effective if it includes incentives to encourage economic diversity and entrepreneurship rather than subsidies for traditional sectors adversely affected by Arctic change.........

Posted by: Tyler      Permalink         Source

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