And finally...

This has nothing whatsoever to do with biology. I just had no idea that this great scene in a great movie...



...had anything to do with reality. My daughters are the anthropologists, and sometimes I'm jealous.

Loggerheads

All of the world's seven sea turtle species are endangered or threatened. Three, the Kemps ridley, the hawksbill, and the leatherback are considered to be critically endangered. The species that is currently least at risk is the loggerhead (Caretta caretta), which is only considered to be threatened. However, the loggerhead faces a bleak future as well, as anthropogenic influences continue to encroach on its domain.

The Mediterrean Sea has been an area of particular tragedy for loggerheads in recent years. As many as 20,000 are killed annually as bycatch by commerical fishermen. Spanish scientists are looking for ways to reduce that number. Many of the turtles are accidentally taken in the longline fishery for swordfish, and something as simple as changing baits from squid to fish might dramatically reduce the turtle bycatch. Of course, the fishermen are concerned about the potential impact on swordfish catch.

In with fire...

...and out too, although of a different nature. Everybody knows that the dinosaurs (most of them, anyway) died out suddenly about 65.5 million years ago, and the consensus, for now, is that it was an asteroid that did them in. Perhaps just as interesting as their sudden disappearance is their relatively sudden rise to prominence near the boundary of the Triassic and Jurassic Periods around 200 millon years ago.

New research led by Brown University's Jessica Whiteside suggests that it was volcanism that paved the way. During the Triassic, the early dinosaurs found were not the dominant form of carnivores in terrestrial habitats. That honor belonged to group known to paleontologists as the crurotarsans (that's one at right). These crocodilian relatives appeared early in the Triassic, rose to dominance, and were quite diverse by the latter part of the Period. Then, suddenly, all the large crurotarsans disappeared. That decline opened the door for the dinosaur dominance that would follow during the Jurassic Period. Whiteside's group have examined a number of lines of evidence to pinpont the cause of the crurotarsan fall.

The evidence points to massive, widespread volcanic eruptions, probably related to the beginning of the breakup of the supercontinent we call Pangea. Analysis of fossil pollen indicates that the changes associated with the volcanism led to the disappearance of perhaps 50% of the plant species present at the end of the Triassic. We also see that the crurotarsans, common and abundant before the period of volcanism, are gone afterward. This newly emptied niche, the large, terrestrial carnivore, was rapidly filled by the theropods, the group that would ultimately give rise to all of the carnivorous dinosaurs. And the rest is history.

Say goodbye to another great fish

The actions (or, more correctly, lack of action) at the triennial meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in Qatar has likely sent the magnificent Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) down the path to extinction. A secret ballot allowed for nations to place commercial interests over the long-term preservation of the species.

Thunnus stocks have dropped by 97% over the last 50 years, and a CITES ban on marketing the fish may well have been the last, best chance to save them. You see, the Japanese have quite a taste for bluefin, and a large individual can bring as much as $200,000.

The Atlantic bluefin can live to be 30 years old, although none are allowed to reach that age. The largest on record as 14 feet long and weighed nearly 3/4 of a ton. They are, along with the great marlins, the largest of the marine bony fish. They have a pronounced ability to thermoregulate, one of the few fish that do so. This allows them to feed actively in the cold waters of the North Atlantic, and to cruise a half mile below the surface.

Enjoy your sashimi.

Time to update the notes...

...and, I guess, most of the textbooks, too. It appears that the old "birds have lighter bones" is just not true. This is, apparently, something that people working with birds have long be aware of, but it certainly has not made it's way into most of the texts I see. It hasn't been long since I was pointing out to students the remarkable lightness of the skeleton of the magnificent frigatebird. Regardless, bat researcher Elizabeth Dumont of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has demonstrated in a new paper coming out in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B that, even though the bones of birds are often thin and hollow, they are, in fact, denser than those of mammals. Dr. Dumont points out that "this is a new way to think about how bird skeletons are specialized for flying and solves the riddle of why bird skeletons appear so lightweight and are still relatively heavy." She goes on to say that these facts have not made it into textbooks, and she'd like to see that rectified. I would too.

It's too early for...

...more night music, but this guy deserves some attention.

Big fish, again

One of the world's great fish is in even more trouble than we realized. The IUCN has reclassified the beluga sturgeon (Huso huso) as critically endangered. A new study appearing in Conservation Biology, based on data obtained from sturgeon captured in the Ural River population of Caspian Sea beluga sturgeon, suggests that the current conservation strategy is flawed. Rather than depending on the release of hatchery-raised juveniles, the authors feel that the sturgeon can only be saved if current overfishing of the adult stock is ended. They feel that the current take of adult sturgeon is perhaps five times that that the population can support.

Sturgeon, in general, may be the world's most critically endangered vertebrates. Virtually all of the 27 sturgeon species are in need of enhanced protection. Locally, our Alabama sturgeon may be the most endangered vertebrate in the U.S.

Interesting, on several levels...

We were talking just the other day about the South's giant prehistoric crocodile, Deionosuchus, which has lived in the Late Cretaceous some 80 million years ago. Deinosuchus, which reached lengths of 30 feet and weighed perhaps 8 or 9 tons, was first discovered in North Carolina but has been found across the southern states.

An analysis of petrified feces has revealed that the big guy may have had a sweet tooth for dinosaurs. Paleontologist David Schwimmer (more on that later) from THE Ohio State University and his grad student Samantha Harrell recently presented results at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in which they discussed evidence from bite marks on dinosaur fossils and from coprolites (that's fossilized poop, for the uninitiated) that they feel link Deinosuchus to attacks on relatively large dinosaurs. One potential prey was a T. rex relative known as Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis, discovered near Montgomery. In addition, Harrell has analyzed coprolites indentified as belonging to Deinosuchus and discovered that they contain sand and shell fragments, indicating that the big crocs lived in shallow, brackish environments that likely contained an abundance of their preferred prey - sea turtles.

So, now for the more intriguing fact. David Schwimmer, OSU paleontologist really does exist. It's not some sort of weird Friends alternative reality. Really.

On the road again...

...well, the campus loop, anyway. All the activities of the last couple of weeks have made it tough for Bess and me to get out and run. A little less on our plate now. Ran yesterday, but the IPod was dead (among the more frustrating feelings out there to get Bess harnessed up, stretch out, push play, and have nothing happen). This morning we ran in the rain, and had to get reacquainted with Philip Hoare and his whales. Guess what we're talking about now...



Had to assume that we'd get around to narwhals, discussed with other holarctic whales like belugas and bowheads. Along with the sperm whales and the orcas, they've got to be the most charismatic of the cetaceans. Here's another, less entertaining look.



Have to take issue with the comment that the horn "doesn't seem to serve any evolutionary purpose." Not true. In fact, the more we learn about it, the more purposes we uncover.

TGIF

All the extracurriculars are taken care of for a while. A long but fruitful week, with a few very strange punctuations. Topped off with a student production of Twelfth Night. Well done, guys.

Night music...

Do you want to live forever?

One of my students pointed out this story on Turritopsis nutricula, a hydrozoan (Phylum Cnidaria) which can revert to the polyp stage from the adult medusa form. The process can apparently be repeated over and over again, making T. nutricula, for all intents and purposes, immortal. As you might imagine, this abilty had made them the subject of serious interest on those biologists interested in slowing or reversing the process of development and aging.

Actually, the process is poorly understood. Laboratory studies have shown that all stages of the medusa can revert to the polyp form. The process, however, takes place very rapidly and has never been observed in nature. Truth is, the prospects of immortality for an individual are pretty low, given that they experience high rates of predation. Still, the ability to start over at any point is a pretty effective tool to have in one's life history toolbox.

That's the good news. The bad news is that this unique ability, coupled with the anthropogenic contribution of spreading the little guys across the globe through ballast water, has turned T. nutricula into a serious invader around the world ocean.

Thanks, Chris.

Black hats

ScientificAmerican.com has an interesting esssay by paleontologist Scott Sampson, who points out that we should probably laud the incredible success of dinosaurs rather than dwelling on their ultimate extinction. They represented the dominant form of life on the planet for about 160 million years, a couple of orders of magnitude up on us. And, of course, they didn't really go away. Just look out the window and you'll likely spot a couple of little flying dinos.

Sampson also points out that, while extinction is the inevitable fate for any species, unnecessary and untimely extinctions are probably a bad thing. So, the fact that the the driving force behind the sixth of the great extinctions is not an asteroid or Milankovitch cycles or a virus, but a certian bipedal primate should motivate us to reverse the process. When future historians of another species look back at the history of the planet, do we want to be discussed under the section titled "The Hitler Species?"

So, maybe you CAN go home again...

You, and your ancestors, have spent thousands of years adapting to the eternal darkness of caves buried as much as a kilometer below the surface of the earth. You've lost your eyes. You've lost your pigmentation. You're all in for the stgyian blackness. Then, the rules are changed. You find yourselves closer to the surface. It's warmer. The darkness turns to light. But, is it too late? Are you locked in to your subterranean lifestyle?

Research with cave-dwelling scorpions suggests that you can get your evolutionary money back. The scorpion Family Typhlochachtidae includes a number of species found in Mexican caves. Although all show adaptations for life in caves, several live closer to the surface and show a more generic body form than those found at greater depths. In work led by Lorenzo Prendini of the American Museum of Natural History and to be published in Cladistics, researchers developed a phylogeny based on 195 morphological characters and discovered that three shallow-living, morphologically unspecialized species are descended from specialized deep-dwelling species. This runs counter to the predictions of "Dollo's Law", which suggests that selection leading to the develoment of highly specialized traits is not reversible.

Prendini suggests that the evolutionary flexibility of scorpions may play a role - they are, after all, among the oldest extant invertebrate groups. On a more speculative note, he also suggests that the "new" surface dwellers may have been able to come up out of the dark when the Chicxuluxb asteroid wiped out the competition some 65 million years ago.

Detective work

I'm frequently astonished at the amount of detail that paleontologists can glean from fossilized remains. Quite honestly, it's easy to understand why the uninitiated often view their conclusions with a degree of of skepticism.

That said, take a look at this. An Italian team of paleontologists have taken a close look at the fossilized remains of 4 million year old dolphin, and concluded that it was killed by a 12 foot long shark known as Cosmopolitodus hastalis, which attacked it from below, biting deep into its abdomen. The shark then shook its head violently, tearing out large chunks of flesh and causing great loss of blood. Then, when the dolphin rolled onto its back, the shark administered the coup de grace with another bite in the region of the dorsal fin.

Giovanni Bianucci, who led the study (and produced the illustration above), says the 8 foot long dolphin, of a species known as Astadelphis gastaldii, had lain in a museum in Torino, Italy for over a century before he began to work with it and noticed the distinctive bite marks.

CSI afficianados should take heed. You think a cold case is a challenge? Here's the actual work in Paleontolology.

OK, let's talk about this...

Capuchin monkeys, when presented a choice between their favorite food and a variety of foods, choose variety. Question - how general is this, and what's the evolutionary significance of it? Is it simply the result of selection for a diverse diet to include essential nutrients, or does it go deeper than that?

Dancer's Middle Eastern ancestry

Small dogs, it appears, share a variant of the gene IGF1. A group of researchers led by UCLA's Melissa Gray and Robert Wayne surveyed grey wolf populations and concluded that small dogs probably originated there. Remains of small dogs have been discovered in Middle Eastern archaeological sites dating back some 12,000 years.

Hydra genes

Still another example of what will be the story of the 21st Century - the explosion of genetic revelations. A group at UC Irvine has completed the sequencing of of the genome of Hydra, a freshwater cnidarian polyp well known to zoology students everywhere. They reveal a genome about the same size as that of humans, and sharing many of the same genes. Particularly interesting are genes that, in humans, may play a role in Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's. This makes Hydra a prime candidate for research into those disorders.

The paper appears in Nature, or you can read the summary at Science Daily.

Fedexia

My vert zoo guys and I were talking the other day about the significance of certain regions when it comes to looking for certain types of fossils. I saw Neil Shubin last year, and he discussed the importance of knowing where to look - where to find exposed rocks of the right type and the right age. China for early birds, the Sahara for crocodilians, western U.S. for tyrannosaurs - the list goes on. There are several key sites for the early amphibians. Shubin found Tiktaalik in the Canadian Arctic, but he and other specialists on that period have focused heavily on western Pennsylvania.

A new report appearing in the Annals of Carnegie Museum describes a new species, found in 2004 near the Pittsburgh International Airport. It's named Fedexia streigeli, in recognition of the fact that the site where it was found is owned by the FedEx corporation. The rocks in which F. streigeli was found are from the Pennsylvanian Period, about 300 million years old. This is important, in that it pushes even further back the time at which terrestrial amphibians can be documented.

The roughly three-foot long Fedexia belonged to a group of amphibians known as the Trematopidae, unique in that they were adapted for a largely terrestrial existence and perhaps returned to the water only to lay their eggs. As such, this was likely the first North American vertebrate group to tackle the terrestrial lifestyle.

Read more here at Science Daily.

Con Bio

My conservation biology guys and I will be discussing this topic later, but this is an interesting illustration of a key concept. Work examining extinction patterns for a number of large mammals in India has discovered that the current state of protected areas in the nation will not allow many of the species to survive the 21st Century. The study, appearing online in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B and summarized here at Science Daily, attempted to determine the probability of extinction for 25 species, some of them on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. d extinction probabilities for a range of species. It looked at species considered endangered or critically endangered on the 2009 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species and some of them species of least concern.

The group drew on a large database to examine the effect of a range of factors on extinction probabilities. They found that protected areas were among the most significant factors lowering extinction risk, along with greater proportions of forest cover. Human population density was a key factor associated with increased extinction risk. Particularly interesting, though perhaps not surprising, is that our perception of a species has a lot to do with its probability of making it or not. Species that are perceived as non-threatening have a better chance.

Speaks well for our chances of saving the cute guys. But what about tigers?

For the birds

Of course, any Fox-watcher knows that the whole climate change thing is just another hoax enacted on an unsuspecting public by us scientific types. But, if you're interested... a new report documents the impacts that coming climate changes will have on the nation's bird populations. The study, a collaboration between a number of state and federal agencies, along with organizations like the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society stresses that climate change will have "an increasingly disruptive effect on bird species in all habitats." You can see the report here in its entirety, or read ScientificAmerican.com's summary.

Particularly impacted will be seabirds, island-dwellers, and birds dependent on coastal habitats. Warming climates will also reduce available habitat for artic and alpine species such as ptarmigan. No habitats, however, will be unaffected.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, announcing the report, recalls Rachel Carson in pointing out that "our migratory birds are sending us a message about the health of our planet."

Maybe we should let the whales eat him

The majestic animal at right is a sei whale, Balaenoptera borealis. The sei reaches lengths of 50-60', and has been listed as endangered since 1980. There are, perhaps, 50,000 sei whales remaining, maybe 20% of their population size prior to whaling. Apparently, the considerably less majestic animal on the plate at right is a sei whale, as well.

The owners of a Santa Monica, California restaurant known as The Hump were charged last week with serving whale meat. Also charged was Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, sushi chef at the restaurant. He apparently served whale meat to two undercover informants during a sting operation. The Marine Mammal Protection Act, passed in 1972, prohibits the sale of whale meat of any kind.

Here's the web page for The Hump, with the requisite apology for their actions. Far too little, far too late. But that's just my opinion. Well, maybe not.

Night music, old school

Fought the fight on this one, and my better self won out.

If you see her, say hello.

Doing it for the kids

It's proven tough for Tigers, but frogs can do it. A group of biologists have identified the first example of a monogamous amphibian. It's Peru's Ranitomeya imitator, the mimic poison frog, and the investigation seems to tell us something about the evolution of monogamy. A comparison of R. imitator to the closely related variable poison frog, R. variabilis, yields some interesting results. Both utilize small pools for breeding, but the breeding pools differ in size and in the availability of nutrients. Mimic tadpoles mature in tiny, nutrient-poor pools formed in the folds of leaves. They're carried there by the male parent, and fed in the days afterward when the male calls his mate to lay unfertilized eggs in the pool. These eggs provide nutrition for the little ones. Tadpoles of the variable poison frog, on the other hand, grow up in larger pools, tended primarily by the male parent.

The researchers suggest that frogs using the larger breeding pools can go it alone in bring up Junior. The guys in the tiny leaf fold pools, however, are stuck with each other. For the kids sake.

I'm sure there are all sorts of conclusions, both biological and sociological, that can be drawn from this work. Truth is, though, I'm just too tired to think about it right now. Maybe later.

Jurassic Peck?

Yeah, I know. But it's late, OK...

This intrigues me. Scientists have found a way to isolate DNA from fossilized egg shells. Fossil egg shells are pretty common finds in deposits around the world, and have been extensively used for analyses like radiocarbon dating. Now, researchers may also be able to use them to create a DNA profile of extinct species.

One of the birds that's being examined is the the elephant bird, Aepyornis. The name is descriptive - Aepyornis was the largest bird that ever lived, reaching heights of 10 feet and weighing nearly a ton. They're looking at eggshells of another extinct giant, the moa, as well.

I know what you're thinking... I don't know the answer for certain, but I strongly suspect it's "No, we won't be able recreate elephant birds and moas." Fun to think about, though.

Washed out

Sucarnochee crested about 6" south of flood stage earlier this week, but may go back up with additional rainfall tonight. Flash flood watch in effect until 6 in the morning, and tornado watch in effect until 2. All of our sites are washed out for at least the next week - our groups have virtually no usable data.

Sometimes I wish I was a gene jock.

Some quick hits

Long day today, that just concluded an hour ago with a roundtable discussion in my seminar class. Just time for a couple of short notes...

Earlier this week, a colleague and I took advantage of an unexpected holiday to drop a canoe in the river. As we were walking out, we noticed a dramatic difference in our relative appeal to the Sucarnochee mosquitoes. I was ignored, he was the buffet. No surprise there - there's been a lot of work looking at the variety of cues that mosquitoes use to zero in on their next meal. Carbon dioxide, lactic acid, and an organic chemical known as octenol have all been implicated. Well, a new study in PLoS One takes a closer look at the process. Octenol forms enatiomers - sterioisomers that are mirror images of each other. Enatiomers can have different properties, and octenol is no exception. The PLoS study, performed by Jonathan Bohbot and Joseph Dickens from the Department of Agriculture, uses manipulated frog eggs to mimic the manner in which the mosquitoes would respond to the right-handed and left-handed enatiomers of octenol. That's the right-handed version to the right. They found that the right-handed form elicited a greater response than it's left-handed isomer. This is the first demonstration of the ability to detect "handedness" in insects, and should lead to a better understanding of how to ward off the little guys. Given the potpourri of disease organisms they carry, that's nothing but good news.


Interesting work at the boundary of biology and physics. Researchers looking at the manner in which loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings manouver their way through the sand on their way to the sea find that the little guys are able to adapt the manner in which they use their flippers to move easily across different types of surfaces. Next step - robotics.

Fish story

Sticklebacks are cool. They demonstrate some extremely interesting behavior (more on that later) and have been the subject of some very significant research in ecology and evolution for decades. The threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) is essentially a marine fish, but many populations have been able to adapt to freshwater conditions. In Alaska, where populations have been landlocked by receding glaciers, they've evolved rapidly to adapt to their new environment. Changes in body armor, coloration, and behavior distinguish different populations. A new study appearing in PLoS Genetics attempts to get at the genetic basis of this adaptive process. Researchers compared genomes of five populations of sticklebacks, three from landlocked freshwater populations in coastal Alaska and two from nearby marine environments. The fish turned out to be very similar across most of their genomes, but proved to quite different in certain areas. What is particularly interesting is that the landlocked populations, independently derived, showed similar changes. This suggests that different populations are using the same genetic toolbox to solve the problems posed by their new freshwater habitats. The effort now is to identify the specific genes involved.

Ancient crocs...

My vertebrate zoo group and I talked the other day about some of the early crocodilians like Purussasaurus and Sarcosuchus. Thought it might be a fruitful area for some YouTube surfing, and indeed it was.



The National Geographic video is dramatic enough, but it's a little speculative and doesn't provide much in the way of biological background. There's a little more of that available here.

I saw a lecture by Paul Sereno a few years ago prior to one of his African expeditions, not long before his Science paper on Sarcosuchus. The Sahara has proven to be a very fruitful hunting ground for Cretaceous crocodilians. They're great, but I'm a little partial to Deinosuchus - a fellow southerner.

Not us this time?

Another look at the Pleistocene decline of a large North American mammal, although in this case the species survived. And, perhaps more surprisingly, this time we're not the agent of disaster. A study coming out in the new PNAS looks at the dramatic reduction in numbers of musk ox which began about 12,000 years ago and concludes that the major cause was climate change, rather than human impacts.

The researchers analyzed mitochondrial RNA from musk ox remains up to 60,000 years old from areas across their former range. They then applied statistical techniques to investigate changes in the genetic diversity of musk ox over their North American history. They found that genetic diversity, an indicator of population size, declined several times over the last 65,000 years. They also found that changes fluctuations in the size of musk ox populations did not mirror those of other North American megafauna like mammoths and bisons, suggesting that population declines can not be attributed to an invading horde of overzealous human hunters.

The more I read about Pleistocene extinctions, the more convinced I become that there's simply not an easy answer.

New annelids...

Serendipity. My zoology guys have left the mollusks behind and moved on to the annelids. There aren't as many juicy little tidbits about annelids. And yet, we get worm-grunting in the Florida Panhandle and new species of the annelid genus Grania scattered around the world. Grania are a genus of small interstitial marine clitellates, typically a couple of cm in length. They're the subject of the Ph.D. dissertation of Pierre De Wit at the University of Gothenburg. The image at left is Grania maricola (which I stole from Pierre's web page - hope you don't mind, P). Most are white, although Grania colorata, a newly discovered species from the Great Barrier Reef, is green. One called Grania occulta looks so similar to previously described species that it can only be identified by DNA analysis. Congratulations, Pierre. I've had some experience working with interstitial inverts - you've earned a beer.

Gas day

No, not talking about a trip to the Mexican restaurant. An apparent gas leak closed our building for the afternoon, and cancelled classes. The result - a couple of hours on the Sucarnochee.

Worm grunters

Can't wait for this from Scientific American. Worm grunting is sort of tradition in the Florida Panhandle where I grew up. One of the few memories I have of my dad is a grunting expedition in our yard when I must have been 5 or 6. Sopchoppy (that's right, Sopchoppy) is the unofficial worm-grunting capitol, and home to the annual Worm Gruntin' Festival (the "g" must be excluded), with the 10th annual edition coming up next month. Biological significance? Well, no less an authority than Charles Darwin speculated that the worms come to surface because they interpret the vibrations as a foraging mole. This in his 1881 book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould. There were doubters, but Darwin's ideas were supported by this work by Vanderbilt's Kenneth Catania.

The Panda's genes

A study in Nature describes the efforts of a large group researchers to sequence the genome of the giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleura. The full text of the paper is available here - for the Cliff Notes, check it out at Science Daily. Lots of interesting findings. For one, there's no indication of a genetic basis allowing for the digestion of bamboo. Pandas, recall, feed almost exclusively on bamboo. This suggests that they may harbor a gut flora that enables them to process their food, much the same way that the gut flagellates of termites enable them to enjoy your otherwise indigestible house. The researchers did find mutations in the panda's TIR1 gene, which might affect their ability to taste meat - a possible explanation for their their gastronomic differences from their ursid cousins.

One very bright spot - no signs of excessive lack of heterozygosity that are often associated with small populations. That bodes well for the pandas survival. Really nice example of the enhanced understanding that 21st Century techniques are going to bring to a wide range of disciplines.

More whales

Bess and I ran this morning with Phillip Hoare, and today he was talking about the North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis. The cetacean experts in the crowd will know that they were called the right whale because of their suitability for whalers, i.e., they were the right whale to kill. One reason is their very high fat content, which made them profitable, and also made them float when they expired. Depressing to hear, but part of our past nonetheless. The northern right is one of the most endangered of all mammals, maybe at the top of the list. (Quiz Question: how many remain?). They're actually pretty fecund, but they're also prone to disaster. As of now, the rate of loss is keeping pace with new births.

Phil's book is entertaining, even though it's a little lacking in scientific rigor. I also find myself losing track of whether Hoare is speaking himself, or quoting one his many sources ranging from Shakespeare to Thoreau. Lot's of Melville, of course. I guess I'll have to reread Moby Dick, although that'll to have to wait for a semester break.

Hoare is particularly impressed with the right's testicles, which apparently weigh more than a ton. Gonna have to look that one up.

I guess I'm enjoying The Whale. It's motivated a summer trip to Boston, with a junket to Nantucket. There's a limerick in there somewhere.

Regardless, for your pleasure...

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.

Evolving viruses

Work from researchers at the University of Liverpool appears in Nature and is described at Science Daily. They found that evolved responses in the bacteria led to faster evolution in the viruses.

I'm not sure that I agree with the premise that the study provides "the first experimental evidence that shows that evolution is driven most powerfully by interactions between species, rather than adaptation to the environment." There's abudant evidence that this is often the case - David Reznick's guppy studies in Trinidad come to mind. I do think that this contributes to an ongoing paradigm shift that recognizes the importance of interspecific interactions as a driving force in evolution. It's foolish to overgeneralize, however. The relative significance of environmental versus biotic factors depends on the particular system being examined. You'll have a hard time convincing me that biotic factors are more influential than physical ones in acidic hydrothermal pools or on polar icecaps.

A little something for the zoology guys

This week we're looking at the acoelomate and pseudocoelomate worms, and I get the standard number of "Ewww, gross" comments when we're talking about some of the parasitic ones. But, I know they love it. Here's a colonoscopy view of Ascaris lumbricoides, the human intestinal roundworm...



and, a tapeworm revealed by the same technique.

Morning comes early...

...so maybe some night music. Nights like these...

Another new dinosaur...

..a giant herbivore that will be known as Abydosaurus. These come from a sandstone quarry in Utah's Dinosaur National Monument. The best thing about this discovery is that it includes a number of well-preserved skulls. That's unusual in the sauropods because their skulls were quite fragile. Had to be, as they were perched on the top of an extremely long neck.

Best part of this story is the quote from the BYU vertebrate paleontology student who describes the "funnest project" that he's been involved with.

A little nomenclature trivia. The full binomial for the new beast is Abydosaurus mcintoshi. Abydosaurus is a reference to a city on the Nile where the head and neck of the Egyptian god Osiris were buried - a head and neck of the type specimen were unearthed at a site on the Green River. The species epithet honors Jack McIntosh, an American paleontologist whose greatest claim to fame was demonstrating that the Brontosaurus of our youth was not a real animal, but a chimerical blend of fossils of other sauropods.

Kind of a killer week....

...but stuff continues to happen.

Gotta rise at 4:30 in the morning to pick up a van-load of doughnuts that my honor society students sold to help fund their travel to meetings. It's a glamorous life I lead.

Wanna buy some doughnuts?

A couple of interesting stories at ScientificAmerican.com. First, the biogeographic phenomenon of bipolar species. No, not the guy down the street who locks himself in the house with the lights out one day and chases neighborhood kids down the street with a broom the next. These bipolars are the almost 300 species of invertebrates that are found in the polar waters of the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans - and apparently nowhere else. The intrigue surrounding their surprising distribution pattern dates back to their 1840s discovery by James Ross on voyages attempting to reach the North and South Poles. Many biologists in the intervening 160 years, including Charles Darwin, have attempted to explain the phenomenon.

Today, the best guess calls into a play a hypothesized deep-ocean current that moves water slowly from pole to pole. However, there's still a lot of conjecture. Among the questions - just how similar are they? DNA analysis should allow us to determine whether animals in similar habitats, but separated by almost 10,000 miles, are really as much alike as they look.

Check out the slideshow here.

The same online issue includes a discussion about the potential impact on island biotas of oceans swelling as the result of warming climates. As my biogeographers are finding out this week, a fundamental prediction from island biogeography theory is that small islands = fewer species. Will rising sea levels over the next century, projected to be anywhere from a few centimeters to almost a meter, unleash a double whammy on already stressed island communities?

While on the subject of island biogeography.... I was doing some YouTube-surfing today and ran across some great E.O. Wilson stuff. It was Wilson, along with Robert MacArthur, who published The Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography in 1967 and turned biogeography, and the rest of ecology, on its head. The theory remains one of the most powerful explanatory tools we have - and Wilson remains one of biology's most powerful spokesmen. I've seen him speak a few times, and had the pleasure of meeting him at last year's meeting of the Association of Southeastern Biologists.

Here, Wilson discusses the "Eureka moment"...



I know a lot of you are educators, or will be. I think that we should all aspire to help some young scientist have their own Eureka moment.

Nova produced a great documentary on Wilson in 2008. You can watch it online here. I particularly recommend "Chapter 4", where Wilson describes the experiment that he performed with Dan Simberloff in the Florida Keys that still represents the most ambitious effort to experimentally validate the equilibrium hypothesis. Very good stuff.

Saturday Science

We'll be starting a new program next month, in which we'll invite local school kids to campus for some Saturday activities. We've done a lot of this sort of thing in the past, and I'm pleased to bring it back. I'll probably start out with something easy, like a creek trip, and we'll work our way up to a reptile workshop this summer. If any readers have some ideas for activities, I'd love to hear them.

Whales and whale wanna-bes

Mentioned the other day that I'm reading a new book on whales by Phillip Hoare. Also seeing several whale-related news items...

A pair of papers in the latest issue of Science report new findings that relate to giant filter-feeders. In today's world ocean, the largest and most charismatic species are the great whales. The huge filter-feeding mysticetes, along with their fishy homologues like the whale and basking sharks, play a major trophic role in nutrient distribution. Well, there's some history there.

One paper, a collaboration between researchers at George Mason University in Virginia and the University of Otago in New Zealand, takes a prehistorical look at the relationship between the diversity of cetaceans and that of marine diatoms. By looking at records of whale fossils and correlating it with what we know about the history of planktonic diatoms, they found a significant relationship - over the last 30 million years or so, the diversity of whales has corresponded closely to that of diatoms.

Perhaps not surprising, but still good to know that the changes in cetacean diversity, as reflected in the fossil record, are real and related to a factor that we can understand.

A second paper, first-authored by Oxford's Matt Friedman, examines a group of bony fish that occupied the mysticete niche during the Mesozoic. There have been some hints at the significance of large, filter-feeding pachycormid fish, but they had been known only from the Jurassic. An example is Leedsichthys, pictured at right, which was discovered in England in 19th Century. Leedsichthys lived in the Middle Jurassic, some 170 million years ago, and reached lengths of 30 feet or more. lived in the The new paper reports on pachycormids from Asia, Europe, and North America that show the pachycormids persisted throughout the Mesozoic, up until the end of the Cretaceous. At the time of their demise, the cetaceans were almost ready to take the stage.

Shubin and Colbert

Today, my vert zoo students and I talked about the fish/amphibian transition that took place in the early part of the Devonian. Of course, Tiktaalik came up. A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Neil Shubin in an ALLELE talk at the University of Alabama, not long after Your Inner Fish came out. He's a very funny, very engaging speaker. I tried to show my students his appearance with Stephen Colbert, only to find that Comedy Central has pulled it from YouTube. But, it's still there on their site. Embedding won't work, so here's the link.

Guys, meet Neil Shubin....

One of the bad ones

An overly dramatic look at Chironex fleckeri, the Indo-Pacific box jelly.

In fact...

...it's time for some night music. Maybe some Avett Brothers.

Words...

My zoology guys are about to tackle the Phylum Cnidaria. It's tough to get excited about the poriferans, but when you leave the sponges behind and move on to the jellyfish and their kin, things can ratchet up a little. And there's the added benefit of some goodies for the literature/philosophy guys too.

One of the things I love about biology is the degree to which it draws upon other disciplines for its terminology and its descriptions. I'm sure that's true to some extent in all fields - psychiatry has it's Oedipus complex and computer guys have their trojan horses. Still, I think biology makes greater use of literary allusions than the rest of them put together. I mean, we use a dead language just to name our organisms. From the Red Queen Hypothesis to the Ghost of Competition Past, there's plenty of opportunities to prove to the crowd that, yes, I read that book.

We lean on the Greeks a lot, and the cnidarians are a prime example. There's Hydra, the little freshwater polyp that draws its name from the nine-headed sea serpent of Greek mythology. And then there's the medusa, the free-swimming, sexually reproducing stage found in most of the cnidarian classes. They're named, of course, for one of the great villians of all time, the gorgon with serpent hair, so hideous that men turned to stone when they gazed upon her. Medusa was beheaded by Perseus, who later would use her still potent head as a weapon. Here she is, as envisioned by the great Harry Harryhausen in Clash of the Titans...

The references to creatures like Hydra and Medusa in the cnidarians are a tribute to their most characteristic feature. All cnidarians possess cells known as cnidocytes, which contain specialized organelles called cnidae. There are a variety of cnidae, but the ones that the phylum are known for are the stinging and food-gathering organelles known as nematocysts. Within certain cnidocytes are capsules which contain coiled, hollow threads and have a hairlike triggering mechanism, a cnidocil, on their external surface. When the cnidocil is stimulated, on contact with a potential prey item or an unfortunate swimmer, the nematocyst penetrates the object and the thread is thrust into it. This is one of the most rapid movements in the animal kingdom, taking place in a matter of microseconds. The toxins contained in the nematocyst are potent - some of the most potent we'll see in the animal kingdom. But that's a story for another day. It's late.

Whales...

I'm "reading" (actually, listening - it's an IPod/running thing) to a new book by Phillip Hoare called The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea. It's both a natural history and a history - a natural history of the great animals themselves and a history of man's interactions and fascinations with them. I'll periodically have whales on the brain. Right now, we're reading about sperm whales. World's largest predator. Almost 70 feet long. Diving to depths of well over a mile - in search of giant squid. And the hero of, like it or not, the great American novel. Not a bad resume...



And,how spectacular is this?

Tut was a wreck..

DNA analysis of the mummified boy king, and associated mummies, indicate that:

1. His parents were probably siblings.
2. He may have suffered from juvenile aseptic necrosis.
3. He may have fathered children that died from congenital disorders.
4. A fractured femur may have led to an infection that killed him.
5. He probably suffered from the worst form of malaria.

But he had some cool stuff.

One of the sadder things...

...you'll see today. A bahaba, a species of sciaenid fish from the western Pacific, was caught and sold this week.  That might not sound like much of a news item, until you hear the rest of the story. The bahaba (Bahaba taipingensis) is critically endangered, primarily as the result of massive overfishing. You see, the swim bladder of the bahaba is thought to have medicinal powers. This 300 pound fish was the first of its kind to be caught in more than a year, and sold for the equivalent of $500,000. A pretty magnificent fish that will soon go the way of the dodo. Or, more appropriately, the way of the rhino, and for much the same reasons.

I like the comment at the end of this article. What do you think we could get for the dried and powdered remains of a Chinese herbalist?

Your metaphysical question for the day...

If you're being charged by a 4 ton elephant, is it running toward you? Or just walking really fast? As best I can tell, the "answer" seems to be, "Well, what do you mean by running?"

How could you possibly have fun with a jellyfish?

Sponges, of course, can have fun with just about anybody. They are, after all, the life of the oceanic party - a living, flow-through filtration system that can deliver the party treats quicker than Dominos. The delivery system is provided by specialized cells called choanocytes. Choanocytes are flagellated, and the action of the flagella create a current bringing food-laden water into the sponge. Choanocytes are also equipped with a collar of microvilli around the base of the flagellum. Food particles carried with the water are trapped in this collar, ingested, and passed along to other cells for utilization within the body of the sponge. While sponges take on a vareity of body plans, the utilization of choanoctyes to move water and collect food is universal. Modern single-celled choanoflagellates are structured similarly, suggesting that they may share a common ancestor with sponges.

Take a look at the movement of water through sponges as demonstrated here. Be forewarned, the music's not as cool...

Something to live for...

Sharktopus lives.