June 16, 2006, 0:03 AM CT

Fossils Depict Aquatic Origins Of Near-modern Birds

Five fossil specimens of a near-modern bird found in the Gansu Province of northwestern China show that early birds likely evolved in an aquatic environment, according to a study reported today in the journal Science. Their findings suggest that these early modern birds were much like the ducks or loons found today. Gansus yumenesis, which lived some 105 to 115 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period, took modern birds through a watery path out of the dinosaur lineage.

The report was co-authored by Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania and his former students Hai-lu You of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Jerald Harris of Dixie State College of Utah and Matthew Lamanna of Carnegie Natural History Museum in Pittsburgh.

"Gansus is very close to a modern bird and helps fill in the big gap between clearly non-modern birds and the explosion of early birds that marked the Cretaceous period, the final era of the Dinosaur Age," said Peter Dodson, professor of anatomy at Penns School of Veterinary Medicine and professor in Penns Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. "Gansus is the oldest example of the nearly modern birds that branched off of the trunk of the family tree that began with the famous proto-bird Archaeopteryx".........

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June 15, 2006, 11:44 PM CT

Fruit Flies Provide Clues To Learning

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered that a brain region previously known for its role in learning and memory also serves as the location of sleep regulation in fruit flies. Through further examination of this brain structure, scientists hope to shed light on sleep regulation and its role in memory.

Despite its importance in everyday human function, very little is known about the regulation of sleep. In search of the underlying brain region responsible for sleep regulation, senior author Amita Sehgal, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, and his colleagues turned their attention to the fruit fly.

"Fruit flies and humans share similar resting patterns," explains Sehgal. Typically "like humans, the sleeping states of fruit flies are characterized by periods of immobility over a twenty-four hour period, during which the fruit flies demonstrate reduced responsiveness to sensory stimuli."

By tinkering with the gene expression of multiple regions of the fruit fly brain, the research team was able to zero in on the adult mushroom body as the sleep center of the brain. They reported their findings in last week's issue of Nature.

To locate the brain region involved in sleep regulation, Sehgal manipulated the activity of an enzyme known as protein kinase A (PKA). Prior work in Sehgal's lab revealed that the higher the level of PKA activity, the lower the period of immobility, or sleep, in the fruit fly. By building upon this work, Sehgal and others set out to increase PKA activity in various regions of the brain and examine the subsequent sleeping patterns in the fruit flies. "Sleeping fruit flies" were defined as those that remained immobile for at least five minutes.........

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June 15, 2006, 10:27 PM CT

New African Wild Dog Exhibit Opens

Grab your binoculars and a wide-brimmed hat for an African safari unlike any other on this side of the Atlantic! The Bronx Zoo's African Plains has grown a lot livelier since a pack of African wild dogs began settling into a new habitat. Just down the trail from our giraffes and around the bend from our cheetahs, the dog pack rounds out this predator-prey exhibit at the heart of the zoo.

The African Wild Dog exhibit features an open field, a sand pit, and a pond, where our pack enjoys roaming, digging, and swimming-all favorite activities of this species in the wild. A glass-fronted viewing pavilion offers visitors the chance for up-close encounters with the dogs. The exhibit also highlights the work of WCS conservationists to protect this endangered species throughout its remaining range on the real African plains.

What Makes a Wild Dog Wild?

Think you've already seen a wild dog or two roaming around your own neighborhood? African wild dogs are no back-alley canines. These charismatic animals have large, round ears, a musky smell, and a mottled coat of brown, black, and white. Their unique coloration gives them their alternate name: painted dogs. African wild dogs express themselves with lots of different noises, from growling to howling to squeaking (a sign of happiness!) Because they spend their lives in a close-knit pack that ranges from 2 to 30 individuals, cooperation is key to getting along.........

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June 15, 2006, 10:23 PM CT

Meet Cesar Millan At The Bronx Zoo

Cesar Millan, host of National Geographic Channel's weekly series, Dog Whisperer, has worked for years with yippy Chihuahuas and bad-mannered bulls. Now he's ready to greet a pack of truly wild dogs, right here at the Bronx Zoo! On June 17, the Dog Whisperer will make a special zoo-call to meet our pack of 20 highly social-and fairly well mannered-African wild dogs. These charismatic canines roam a new open habitat on the zoo's African Plains, complete with a sand pit for digging and a pond for cooling off in the summer heat. The pack is bound to be as curious about the Dog Whisperer as he is about them!

For the staff of the Bronx Zoo, seeing the world through the eyes of our animals is as important to providing good care as it is for the Dog Whisperer. To help our African wild dogs feel at home in their new habitat, our team of exhibit designers, veterinarians, and zookeepers needed to understand the dogs' pack dynamic, feeding habits, favorite activities, and the way they rear their young. The zoo staff speaks a number of languages to communicate with our animals, and just like for Cesar Millan, "dog talk" is one of them!

After meeting our pack, Cesar will speak to zoo visitors about understanding and correcting common problem with pet dogs. Two presentations will be followed by Q&A sessions and book signings of Cesar's Way. Books are available for purchase at Somba Village and the Bronx Zoo Store.........

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June 15, 2006, 9:25 PM CT

Paving The Way For Jaguars

A thoroughfare that's healthy for wildlife? For a change, a conduit through the forests of Central America won't trigger new development or increase greenhouse gases. Instead, conservationists hope, the only thing it will pave the way for is more pawprints. A group of environment ministers representing the seven nations of Central America and Mexico have agreed to establish a network of protected areas and wildlife corridors to safeguard jaguar populations. The decision was made at the Second Mesoamerica Protected Area Congress recently held in Panama.

A Central American corridor for jaguars is not a new idea. In 1990, the Wildlife Conservation Society launched a project called the Paseo Pantera (Spanish for "path of the panther"), a network of protected areas and wildlife corridors that became known as the Mesoamerica Biological Corridor (CBM) in 1997. The CBM aimed to balance human needs, sustainable development, and the conservation of some of the Earth's greatest biodiversity. Though this project received multi-national support at the highest levels of government and several global institutions committed millions of dollars, its slow implementation and highly ambitious agenda concerned a number of conservationists.

As per Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, executive director of the WCS Science and Exploration Program, the re-evaluation of the project offers new hope for the conservation of Central America's threatened wildlife. "We commend these nations for agreeing to such a far-sighted initiative," he said.........

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June 14, 2006, 11:54 PM CT

First-Ever Photo of Wild Rhino on Borneo

A motion-triggered camera trap set up in a remote jungle has captured the first-ever photo of a rhino in the wild on the island of Borneo, World Wildlife Fund and the Sabah Wildlife Department announced recently.

The rhino is thought to beone of a population of as few as 13 whose existence was confirmed during a field survey last year in the interior forests of Sabah, Malaysia, an area known as the "Heart of Borneo." A handful of rhinos are thought to survive in addition to the 13, scattered across Sabah but isolated from each other.

"This is an encouraging sign for the future of rhinoceros conservation work in Sabah," said Mahedi Andau, Director of the Sabah Wildlife Department. "While the total number of Borneo rhinos remaining is uncertain, we do know there are very, very few. To capture a photo of one just a few months after placing camera traps in the area is extraordinary."

The rhinos in Sabah spend their lives in dense jungle where they are rarely seen, which accounts for the lack of any prior photographs of them in the wild.

Conservationists hope that the population of at least 13 found last year is viable and will be able to reproduce if protected from poaching. A full-time rhino monitoring team, funded by Honda Malaysia was established at the end of 2005 in Sabah to monitor the rhinos and their habitat, and keep poachers away. The team set up the camera traps in February. Camera traps are remotely activated by infrared triggers when animals walk by.........

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June 13, 2006, 11:27 PM CT

Exinct Animal Captured On Video

The first images of a live specimen of a small, furry animal once believed to have gone extinct more than 11 million years ago have been captured during a Southeast Asian expedition led by a retired Florida State University researcher.

The remarkable video and photos shot by David Redfield, a professor emeritus of FSU's science education faculty, and Thai wildlife biologist Uthai Treesucon are being hailed as historic images documenting a true "living fossil," the Laotian rock rat.

The Laotian rock rat is so called for its only known habitat -- limestone outcroppings in Central Laos -- and the appearance of the animal's head and face, which sport long whiskers and beady eyes like those of a rat. (To view photographs and video of the Laotian rock rat, visit www.rinr.fsu.edu/rockrat.)

Redfield's video shows a docile, squirrel-sized animal covered with dark, dense fur and bearing a long tail that's not as bushy as that of a typical squirrel. Perhaps the most striking observation is how the animal walks -- like a duck. Clearly not adapted to climbing trees, the rock rat exhibits a duck-like waddle with its hind feet splayed out at an angle to its body.

An avid but otherwise amateur wildlife observer, Redfield has traveled the world since retiring in 1988 from a career in teaching and research at FSU. A passion for bird watching in the 1990s segued into an interest in seeing some of the world's rare mammals in their native habitats. When he learned about the discovery of the Laotian rock rat last year -- and that no one had seen a live specimen -- Redfield set out on a personal quest to accomplish the feat.........

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June 13, 2006, 0:05 AM CT

Rhesus Monkeys In Nepal And Research

Researchers investigating the genetic makeup of rhesus macaque monkeys, a key species used in biomedical research, have found the rhesus in Nepal may provide a suitable alternative to alleviate a critical shortage of laboratory animals used in work to develop vaccines against diseases such as HIV/AIDS.

Writing in the cover story of the current issue of the American Journal of Primatology, scientists headed by Randall Kyes of the University of Washington report that the Nepali macaques are more closely related genetically to rhesus macaques from India than rhesus macaques of China.

This is important because Indian-origin animals have been used for more than half a century in biomedical and behavioral research. Rhesus macaques have contributed to the discovery of vaccines to prevent diseases such as polio and yellow fever, and represent one of the most widely used primate models for AIDS-related research. India, however, banned the export of all macaques in 1978, thus leading to the current shortage. Eventhough China has been exporting captive-bred animals for sometime, researchers have noted many behavioral and physiological differences in disease progression between animals from the two countries, and the Indian-origin macaques are generally preferred in research on certain diseases.........

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June 13, 2006, 0:01 AM CT

Same Species Responds Differently To Same Warming

Based on current trends for both air and water temperatures, by 2100 the body temperatures of California mussels -- found along thousands of miles of coast in the northeast Pacific Ocean and not just in California -- could increase between about 2 degrees F and 6.5 F depending on where they live.

For areas where mussels already are living close to the edge, chances are that increases of 6.5 F will kill them, scientists say.

Unlike humans, the body temperature of marine animals such as mussels is regulated by the temperature of the air and water around them -- and it's not the simple 1-degree warmer and 1-degree-rise-in-body temperature that has been assumed, says Sarah Gilman, a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher at Friday Harbor Laboratories and lead author of a paper appearing online June 5-9 in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

For the first time, Gilman and her co-authors show that even if the weather warms the air and water the same amounts in one area as another, the actual effect on mussel body temperatures can vary because of local climate. For example, in Washington, air temperature appears to be more important in driving mussel temperature while in southern California, water temperature is the more important factor.........

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June 11, 2006, 12:38 AM CT

Evolving Not So Hot

Since their discovery in the late 1970s, microorganisms known as archaea have fascinated researchers with their ability to thrive where no other life can - in conditions that are extremely hot, acidic or salty.

In the 1990s, however, researchers discovered that archaea occur widely in more mundane, low-temperature environments such as oceans and lakes. Now, scientists from the University of Georgia and Harvard University find evidence that these low-temperature archaea might have evolved from a moderate-temperature environment rather than from their high-temperature counterparts - as most researchers had believed. The results appear in the June 2006 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

"Archaea represent one of the three domains of life on Earth," said Chuanlun Zhang, lead author of the study and associate professor of marine sciences at UGA. "Understanding their evolution may shed light on how all life forms evolve and interact with the environment through geological history."

Zhang and colleagues examined a common group of archaea known as Crenarchaeota. He explains that the Crenarchaeota's low-temperature success may involve a unique molecule known as crenarchaeol that allows the organism's cell membrane to remain flexible in cooler environments.........

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