You've probably seen this..

...but cephalopod week requires it. So, could your dog do this?



Just how smart is the octopus?

It's Cephalopod Week

So, here we go...

Sleep well

My fish guys will be out in the creeks next week. No peeing in the water.



No need for concern - no candiru in Sumter County streams. But then again, there are those madtoms.

Night music...

Dan Reeder, for a noble cause.

Almost dinosaur

A new discovery that may change our thinking about the predecessors of the dinosaurs - a proto-dinosaur from the African Triassic. Asilosaurus kongwe, described in the new Nature, predates the dinosaurs by about 10 million years. They weighed about 50 pounds and reached 10 feet from head to tail. Counter to our prior picture of the proto-dinosaurs, they walked on four legs and were herbivores. A. kongwe belongs to a group called the sileasaurs, which are the closest known relatives to dinosaurs. They diverged from a common ancestor, and coexisted with dinosaurs for about 50 million years.

Water, water, everywhere...

Spent a nice afternoon in the field with some science-friendly landowners. Looking for good sites for our fish guys to do microhabitat work, but there's just too much water in the world right now. If the nice weather continues, levels in creeks like the Alamuchee may be suitable for field work in a couple of weeks. Problem is, we don't have a couple of weeks.

Greatly appreciate the efforts, though, and the access to some great sites. A lot of the people that we talk to seem to be afraid that we're going to find a panda riding a black rhino.

Forever young?

One of my colleagues focuses much of his research interest on the biochemical control of the aging process. I wish he would work a little faster.

The cover story of this week's Science details the work of a group of scientists at UCSD's School of Medicine in which they have identified a protein that may play a major role in the inhibition of aging in fruit flies. The protein, known as sestrin, is also found in humans and seems to have a similar biochemical function. Sestrins have been known for some time, and are produced in abundance by cells under stress. Their function, however, had remained a mystery. The UCSD group demonstrates that sestrins serve to activate of AMP-dependent protein kinase (AMPK), and inhibit the Target of Rapamycin (TOR). These two protein kinases play a major role in the pathway that regulates the aging process in a wide range of organisms including the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, and, yes, you.

The two kinases have opposite actions - AMPK is activated by a lowering of caloric intake, while increased intake activates TOR. It's been shown that drugs that stimulate AMPK or inhibit TOR can slow down aging in model organisms. Our understanding of sestrin function has been impeded by the fact that there are three different sestrin-encoding genes in mammals. In fruit flies, however, a single gene codes for the protein. When the researchers inactivated this gene, they saw decreased activity of AMPK and increased activity of TOR. The result was the development of a number of age-related pathologies.

The potential significance is huge - the researchers hope that sestrin or analogues may eventually be used to slow down the aging process and treat many of the degenerative diseases associated with aging. Good luck on that. Wish they had found this thirty years ago.

Kind of saw this coming

Darwinius is not in the primate line leading to humans. Can't wait to see how the Discovery Institute spins this.

And one back from the dead...

Yes, amphibians have it tough right now. But there's some good news. Litoria castanea, the yellow-spotted bell frog, had not been seen in Australian wild since the 1970s and was assumed extinct. That changed last year when a fisheries conservation officer, searching for an endangered fish species, caught a glimpse of one and led a government herpetologist to an undisclosed stream where they discovered a population of about 100 adults.

Maybe there's hope for Rheobatrachus silus. That's the gastric brooding frog, another Australian species which is famous as an example of the lengths to which amphibians have gone to brood their eggs. In R. silus, the female swallows 20 or so fertilized eggs, which develop within her stomach for 6-7 weeks, after which the young frogs simply crawl out of her mouth. The female does not feed during that period, and the production of gastric enzymes and acids shuts down. Unfortunately, the gastric brooding frog hasn't been seen since 1983. But who knows - maybe this is the year for the resurrection of extinct Australian amphibians.

Return of the Asteroid

No, not some 1950s B-movie, but the once-accepted, sometimes doubted, and, now, revived idea that the great extinction at the end of the Cretaceous some 65.5 mya was caused by an asteroid impacting the earth in the area Chicxulub, Mexico on the the Yucatan Peninsula. This extinction event, represented in sedimentary layers at was once known as the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) and now more properly called the K-Pg (Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary, claimed almost all species of large land vertebrates, along with a significant percentage of marine invertebrates, land plants, and other taxa. It's most commonly associated, of course, with the disappearance of the dinosaurs - for that reason, it's undoubtedly the mass extinction that resonates most clearly with the general public (with the possible exception of the one that we're currently creating). The asteroid theory has been around since the 1970s, when Walter and Luis Alvarez noted the presence of a iridium-rich deposits at the K-Pg boundary. The later discovery of the Chicxulub crater was seen to be the smoking gun. However, a number of other possible contributing factors have been identifed, notably Indian flood basalt volcanism that occurred at roughly the same time. In the current study, the authors correlate data from global stratigraphy across the boundary with the onset of the extinction event. They feel the evidence conclusively supports the killer asteroid as the instigator. Next?

Not easy...

Amphibians have had it tough lately. They're landslide winners of the Most Endangered Vertebrate Class Sweepstakes, often referred to as the "canary in the coal mine" with regard to impending environmental threats. It's important to remember that, while coal mine canaries might serve a noble cause, they're still ex-canaries. So, why are so many amphibians staring down the barrel of extinction? Oh, a whole host of issues, ranging from sensitivity to pollutants, fungal diseases, habitat loss, and increased UV radiation.

Well, add this one. The pesticide atrazine, about 80,000 tons of which are applied annually in the U.S., chemically castrates 75% of male frogs and turns about 10% into females. This from the lab of UC-Berkeley's Tyrone Hayes, where frogs were raised for three years in water containing 2.5 ppb of atrazine.

The European Union has banned the use of atrazine, and several U.S. states are considering the same. As a result of many recent studies pointing toward the ill effects of the pesticide, the EPA is reviewing existing regulations. Only question - is it too little, too late for The Green One?

Busy season

Haven't had as much time to keep up to date as I wish. Probably tomorrow. Still, haven't been sitting around doing nothing. Tonight, we initiated an outstanding group of students into our biological honor society. Congratulations, guys.

Put together some musical numbers for the banquet. Here you go...

White deer...

Some beautiful footage from Wisconsin public television. Also some interesting questions regarding selection pressure. Thanks, Jason.