October 20, 2009, 8:54 AM CT

Family tree for cattle, other ruminants

Pairing a new approach to prepare ancient DNA with a new scientific technique developed specifically to genotype a cow, an MU animal scientist, along with a team of international researchers, created a very accurate and widespread "family tree" for cows and other ruminants, going back as far as 29 million years. This genetic information could allow researchers to understand the evolution of cattle, ruminants and other animals. This same technique also could be used to verify ancient relatives to humans, help farmers develop healthier and more efficient cattle, and assist researchers who are studying human diseases, as per the research, which is being published in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"We studied 678 different animals, representing 61 different species, and using the new Illumina cow 'SNP chip,' or 'snip chip,' we were able to generate some very precise genetic data for which the chip was not designed," said Jerry Taylor, a professor of animal science in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resource and main author of the study. "Our SNP chips allow researchers to examine hundreds of thousands of points on an animal's genome simultaneously. When we applied this technique to 48 recognized breeds of cattle, we were able to construct a family tree and infer the history of cattle domestication and breed formation across the globe"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 15, 2009, 7:44 PM CT

Being a standout has its benefits

Standing out in a crowd is better than blending in, at least if you're a paper wasp in a colony where fights between nest-mates determine social status.

That's the conclusion of a study by University of Michigan scientists published online this week in the journal Evolution.

"It's good to be different, to wear a nametag advertising your identity," said graduate student Michael Sheehan, who collaborated on the research with evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Tibbetts.

In earlier research, Tibbetts showed that paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) recognize individuals by variations in their facial markings and that they behave more aggressively toward wasps with unfamiliar faces. Then last year, Sheehan and Tibbetts published a paper in Current Biology demonstrating that these wasps have surprisingly long memories and base their behavior on what they remember of prior social interactions with other wasps.

That's important in a species like P. fuscatus, in which multiple queens establish communal nests and raise offspring cooperatively, but also compete to form a linear dominance hierarchy. Remembering who they've already bested-and been bested by-keeps individuals from wasting energy on repeated aggressive encounters and presumably promotes colony stability by reducing friction......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:14 AM CT

Whale-sized genetic study for southern hemisphere humpbacks

After 15 years of research in the waters of the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and an international coalition of organizations have unveiled the largest genetic study of humpback whale populations ever conducted in the Southern Hemisphere.

By analyzing DNA samples from more than 1,500 whales, scientists can now peer into the population dynamics and relatedness of Southern Hemisphere humpback whales as never before, and help inform management decisions in the sometimes politically charged realm of whale conservation.

The results of the massive analysis appear in PLoS One, an interactive open-access journal for scientific and medical research. Other contributors to the study include: Columbia University; University of Pretoria; Environment Study of Oman; Instituto Baleia Jubarta and PURCS (Brazil); University of Cape Town; Marine and Coastal Management (South Africa); Faculdade de Biocincias; Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (Gabon); Association Megaptera (France); Universit de La Rochelle (France).

"Humpback whales are perhaps the most studied species of great whale in the Northern Hemisphere, but a number of of the interactions among Southern Hemisphere populations are still poorly understood," said Dr. Howard Rosenbaum, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Ocean Giants Program and main author of the study. "This research illustrates the vast potential of genetic analyses to uncover the mysteries of how humpbacks travel and form populations in the southern ocean basins."........ Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 14, 2009, 7:11 AM CT

Pets With a Microchip

Animals shelter officials housing lost pets that had been implanted with a microchip were able to find the owners in almost three out of four cases in a recently published national study.

As per the research, the return-to-owner rate for cats was 20 times higher and for dogs 2 ½ times higher for microchipped pets than were the rates of return for all stray cats and dogs that had entered the shelters.

"This is the first time there has been good data about the success of shelters finding the owners of pets with microchips," said Linda Lord, main author of the study and an assistant professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State University.

"We observed that shelters did much better than they thought they did at returning animals with microchips to their owners".

Lord said that though the American public so far has not seemed to embrace the practice, this study suggests that pet owners should give strong consideration to microchipping their companion animals.

She also noted, however, that no animal identification is more effective than a tag on a collar that includes the pet's name and the owner's phone number.

Animal microchips are implanted at veterinary offices or shelters and contain a unique number that is revealed when the pet is scanned by a microchip detector. The number coincides with contact information that owners register with a microchip manufacturer......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 13, 2009, 8:26 AM CT

Conservation biologists setting their targets too low

Conservation biologists are setting their minimum population size targets too low to prevent extinction.

That's as per a newly released study by University of Adelaide and Macquarie University researchers which has shown that populations of endangered species are unlikely to persist in the face of global climate change and habitat loss unless they number around 5000 mature individuals or more.

The findings have been published online in a paper 'Pragmatic population viability targets in a rapidly changing world' in the journal Biological Conservation

"Conservation biologists routinely underestimate or ignore the number of animals or plants mandatory to prevent extinction," says main author Dr Lochran Traill, from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute.

"Often, they aim to maintain tens or hundreds of individuals, when thousands are actually needed. Our review observed that populations smaller than about 5000 had unacceptably high extinction rates. This suggests that a number of targets for conservation recovery are simply too small to do much good in the long run".

A long-standing idea in species restoration programs is the so-called '50/500' rule. This states that at least 50 adults are mandatory to avoid the damaging effects of inbreeding, and 500 to avoid extinctions due to the inability to evolve to cope with environmental change......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

October 6, 2009, 7:56 AM CT

Panama butterfly migrations

A high-speed chase across the Panama Canal in a Boston Whaler may sound like the beginning of another James Bond filmbut the protagonist of this story brandishes a butterfly net and studies the effects of climate change on insect migrations at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

"Our long-term study shows that El Nio, a global climate pattern, drives Sulfur butterfly migrations," said Robert Srygley, former Smithsonian post doctoral fellow who is now a research ecologist at the US Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Climate change has been associated with changes in the migration of butterflies in North America and Europe but this is one of the first long-term studies of environmental factors driving long-distance migration of tropical butterflies.

For 16 years, Srygley and his colleagues tracked the progress of lemony yellow Sulfur butterflies, Aphrissa statira, a species found from Mexico to Brazil, as they migrate across central Panama from Atlantic coastal rainforests to the drier forests of the Pacific coast.

"The El Nio Southern Oscillationa global climate cycleturns out to be the primary cause for increases in the plants that the larvae of these butterflies eat. El Nio results in dry, sunny days in Panama, which favor plant growth. When the plants prosper, we see a big jump in the number of Statira Sulfur butterflies"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 30, 2009, 6:39 AM CT

Understanding of how insects smell

New research announced recently, Wednesday 30th September, by a team of leading researchers working with the UK's national Synchrotron, Diamond Light Source, could have a significant impact on the development and refinement of new eco-friendly pest control methods for worldwide agriculture.

Reported in the Journal of Molecular Biology, the study was carried out by Dr Jing-Jiang Zhou and his colleagues at the world's oldest agricultural research centre and the largest UK facility, Rothamsted Research, in collaboration with Professor Nick Keep's group from the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at Birkbeck, University of London.

Dr Jing-Jiang Zhou, Senior Research Scientist in insect molecular biology at Rothamsted Research, studies insect olfaction and chemical ecology at the molecular level, he explains, "Using Diamond Light Source's intense X-rays, we unravelled the detailed mechanisms associated with pheromone detection which dictates mating behaviour in silkworm moths. They are a model organism and any new insights into the working of their olfactory system has repercussions on our global understanding how insects locate mates and their hosts".

Solving this protein structure also represents a significant achievement in the advance of structural biology in the UK and it marks the 100th new structure identified at Diamond since its opening in 2007......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

September 28, 2009, 6:44 AM CT

From underground 850 new species

Australian scientists have discovered a huge number of new species of invertebrate animals living in underground water, caves and "micro-caverns" amid the harsh conditions of the Australian outback.

A national team of 18 scientists has discovered 850 new species of invertebrates, which include various insects, small crustaceans, spiders, worms and a number of others.

The team led by Professor Andy Austin (University of Adelaide), Dr Steve Cooper (South Australian Museum) and Dr Bill Humphreys (Western Australian Museum) has conducted a comprehensive four-year survey of underground water, caves and micro-caverns across arid and semi-arid Australia.

"What we've found is that you don't have to go searching in the depths of the ocean to discover new species of invertebrate animals you just have to look in your own 'back yard'," says Professor Austin from the Australian Center for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity at the University of Adelaide.

"Our research has revealed whole communities of invertebrate animals that were previously unknown just a few years ago. What we have discovered is a completely new component to Australia's biodiversity. It is a huge discovery and it is only about one fifth of the number of new species we believe exist underground in the Australian outback"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:05:03 GMT

Sunday audacity

We had a squirrel incident in the back yard in suburbia this last week. Somehow, three baby squirrels had fallen from their nest high in the cypress tree on a cold and rainy night. The mother was whistling for them, but the little things must have been too dazed to move. Queequeg found them for us, and before he could do what dogs do, Libby put him in the house then retrieved the half-drowned squirrel pups and put them on a soft towel in a box in our garage. She didn’t think they would live, but by morning, they were, quite literally, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. When she let them out under the cypress, two darted right up the tree to mama. Another made for the tall ivy by the fence. But it was then that she found the fourth one, flat on the ground and soaking from being exposed outside all night. She put the barely moving thing in the box and put it in the garage again. She called me at work and told me I would probably find a dead squirrel when I got home. Instead I found yet another bright-eyed and bushy-tailed baby squirrel in the box, and when I let it out, it ran under our new porch. Later I saw it on the porch, surveying the yard. I think the family is reunited now.

If I had to count on one hand the most formative experiences of my life (that I’m conscious of, anyway), one of them would be those idyllic boyhood summers on my grandparents’ farm in Kentucky. I still have an aunt living near there, but I don’t think I’ve been back to Kentucky in fifteen years. That may change soon. My mother is moving there from St. Louis. I understand I’ve already been recruited to move her possessions (though not with Prolechariot but with a big rental truck). So it looks like I’ll be making some visits there in the years to come. Of course I’ll have to visit all of the old spots I saw as a wee lad, and I’m sure half will be changed while the other half will be gone. It will still be good to reconnect.

International Rock-Flipping Day was another hit. If you haven’t gone over to the coordinating blog to see the links to all of the participants, give yourself a treat. There is also a Flickr pool of pix you might enjoy.

The submission deadline for the next edition of the Festival of the Trees at local ecologist has been extended until tomorrow evening, September 28. Send your tree-ish links to Georgia at info (at) local ecology (dot) org, or use the handy contact form.

Every time I see a mourning dove at the backyard feeder, I always think it is a female. I know that can’t be true each time. Among the birds of my acquaintance, these are among the least distinctive between male and female, and also among the birds of my acquaintance, these are among the most “feminine” looking, so my initial reaction makes a kind of sense.

Missouri calendar:

• White pelicans congregate at Squaw Creek and Swan Lake National Wildlife refuges through mid-October.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:55:47 GMT

Eight-legged mama

Normally, I don’t have much luck photographing spiders, but at this time of the year, when cooler temps are moving in, I have gotten a few nice shots, especially of wolf spiders, the terrible hunters of the forest floor.

We saw this beauty in the mown area atop the dam. It’s sudden movement is what allowed me to see it at all, but then it paused at the edge of the taller grass and let me take this portrait.

That is an egg sack the spider has affixed to her spinnerets. This is common among wolf spiders, and I understand it doesn’t slow down their hunting at all. Unlike web spinners, these spiders catch prey by being swift or by ambushing. Carrying a sack of eggs while doing so is apparently not a problem.

When the eggs hatch, the tiny spiders will crawl up to their mother’s abdomen where they will remain for a time.

It be Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Missouri calendar:

• Tree, rough-winged and barn swallows stage in large flocks.

Posted by: Roundrockjournal      Read more     Source