August 25, 2007, 7:11 AM CT

Giant panda can survive

The giant panda is not at an evolutionary dead end and could have a long term viable future, as per new research involving researchers from Cardiff University.

Prior studies have observed that the giant pandas isolation, unusual dietary requirements and slow reproductive rates have led to a lack of genetic diversity that will inevitably lead the species to extinction.

Now a study by Professor Michael Bruford and Dr Benot Goossens from the School of Biosciences, in collaboration with Professor Fuwen Wei and his colleagues from the Institute of Zoology along with the China West Normal University in Sichuan, has observed that the decline of the species can be linked directly to human activities rather than a genetic inability to adapt and evolve.

Our research challenges the hypothesis that giant pandas are at an evolutionary dead end said Professor Bruford. It is however clear that the species has suffered demographically at the hands of human activities such as deforestation and poaching.

The study gives a new genetic perspective on the giant panda, as well as tracing its demographic history. The research also shows that in areas where habit conservation projects are in place, the giant panda is flourishing and population numbers are increasing......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 23, 2007, 10:34 PM CT

Condition of bluefin tuna in gulf of maine is declining

The quality of giant bluefin tuna caught in the Gulf of Maine has declined significantly since the early part of 1990s, scientists at the University of New Hampshire have found by analyzing detailed logbooks from a commercial tuna grader at the Yankee Fishermans Co-op. The findings, published this week in Fishery Bulletin, indicate potential changes in food sources, shifts in reproductive or migratory patterns, or the impact of fishing may be the cause of this decline.

Walter Golet, a Ph.D. candidate in UNHs Large Pelagics Research Lab, along with UNH research assistant professor Andy Cooper and Large Pelagics Lab director Molly Lutcavage, partnered with veteran tuna grader Robert Campbell at the Yankee Fishermans Co-op in Seakbrook, N.H. to analyze the quality of 3,082 Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). In a drawer, he had two or three notebooks with every fish he graded in the last 14 years, from 1991 2004, says Golet. Golets findings corroborated observations by fishermen, brokers and cooperative managers: Not only is the number of giant bluefin in the Gulf of Maine declining, the condition of those fish caught is of much lower quality.

Specifically, Golet and co-authors analyzed the fat and oil content and shape of the tuna. Fat content is in high demand for the market, because thats what makes the meat taste good, he says, noting that fish with well-marbled tail meat, fat in their mid-section muscle and belly, and a rotund shape can command upwards of $50 per pound on the sushi market......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 21, 2007, 5:55 PM CT

Elephantnose fish 'see' with their chin

Originating in Central Africa, Peters' elephantnose fish (Gnathonemus petersii), finds its bearings by means of weak electrical fields. Researchers from the University of Bonn have now been able to show how well this works. In complete darkness the animals can even distinguish the material of objects at a distance or dead organisms from living ones. The results have now been reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

The fish, which is as long as a cigar, hovers with its head inclined, close to the gravel-covered bed. While it swims forward slowly, its trunk-like elongated chin sweeps steadily from right to left, always at a distance of a few millimetres from the bottom. This way the fish behaves like treasure hunters searching for buried gold coins on the beach with their metal detector. Basically, this is precisely what the fish is doing. Hidden in the sediment there are large numbers of dead nematocera larvae waiting for it, its favourite food.

Zoologists from the University of Bonn have hidden the larvae there. 'We wanted to see whether it can find them and if the answer is yes, then down to what depth,' Professor Gerhard von der Emde explains. 'It', that is the African Peters' elephantnose fish. Yet its characteristically shaped chin does not work like a especially sensitive nose. Instead, it contains more than 500 electric sensors with which it senses its surroundings. With this sense the animal has conquered the night. During the day it hides, only under cover of darkness does it goes searching for food......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 21, 2007, 5:11 PM CT

Antibiotic Resistance From Swine Farms To Groundwater

The routine use of antibiotics in swine production can have unintended consequences, with antibiotic resistance genes sometimes leaking from waste lagoons into groundwater.

In a new study, scientists at the University of Illinois report that some genes found in hog waste lagoons are transferred - "like batons" - from one bacterial species to another. The scientists observed that this migration across species and into new environments sometimes dilutes - and sometimes amplifies - genes conferring antibiotic resistance.

The new report, in the recent issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, tracks the passage of tetracycline resistance genes from hog waste lagoons into groundwater wells at two Illinois swine facilities.

This is the first study to take a broad sample of tetracycline resistance genes in a landscape dominated by hog farming, said principal investigator R.I. Mackie. And it is one of the first to survey the genes directly rather than focusing on the organisms that host them. Mackie is a professor in the department of animal sciences and an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology.

"At this stage, we're not really concerned about who's got these genes," Mackie said. "If the genes are there, potentially they can get into the right organism at the right time and confer resistance to an antibiotic that's being used to treat disease"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 20, 2007, 9:41 PM CT

Tracking feline memories on the move

When a cat steps over an obstacle with its front legs, how do its hind legs know what to do" A new study in the August 21st issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press, reveals that it is the foreleg stepping movement itself that leaves a lasting impression. By comparison, feline memories of having just seen an obstacle proved rather fleeting.

Indeed, the scientists observed that cats could remember having stepped over a hurdle for at least ten minutes. The findings suggest that cats working memories can extend much longer than earlier studies had shown, as per the researchers.

"We've observed that the long-lasting memory for guiding the hind legs over an obstacle requires stepping of the forelegs over the obstacle," said Keir Pearson of the University of Alberta, Canada. The main surprise was how short lasting the visual memory on its own wasjust a few seconds when animals were stopped before their forelegs stepped over the obstacle.

The scientists examined the animals memories by stopping cats after their forelegs, but not their hind legs, had cleared an obstacle. They then distracted the animals with food and lowered the obstacle into the walking surface. The nature of the subsequent step revealed whether the animal remembered having stepped over the disappearing obstacle. To find out whether the cats remembered what they saw versus what they did, Pearsons group repeated the experiment, but this time they stopped the cats just before they made their first step......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 15, 2007, 9:28 PM CT

Avoiding incest by causing male relatives to leave home

Scientists at the University of Sheffield in the UK and Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, Gera number of, have observed that female hyenas avoid inbreeding with their male relatives by giving them little choice but to leave their birth group.

Animals generally avoid inbreeding because it is genetically hazardous. They can either do this by moving away from home or, like humans, by learning who their relatives are and not mating with them.

Like most mammals though, male hyenas do not contribute to the rearing of their offspring, making it highly unlikely that females know who their father is. Instead males decide to leave the group in which they were raised, resulting in a low level of inbreeding.

But until now, little was known about why the males and not the females decided to move away from home. The new research on spotted hyenas, published in Nature this week, shows that the reason most males move from their natal group is because of female mate-choice the rules females use when choosing which of the a number of male group members will sire their offspring.

The scientists observed that young females prefer to mate with new arrivals in a group - those males born into, or who joined, the group after the female was born. Older females also apply this rule and in addition prefer males that have built friendly relationships with them for several years. These mate preferences of females mean that males have to choose groups with a high number of young females if they want to reproduce successfully......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 15, 2007, 8:26 PM CT

Male elephants get 'photo IDs' from scientists

Asian elephants dont carry photo identification, so researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Indias Nature Conservation Foundation are providing the service free of charge by creating a photographic archive of individual elephants, which can help save them as well.

The scientists have developed a unique photographic capture-recapture survey method that identifies individual male elephants, specifically by the shape and size of their tusks, ears, and other features. This in turn can be used to monitor their survival rates and movement, as per a new study reported in the current issue of the Journal Animal Conservation (10: 391-399).

Unlike African elephants where both males and females have tusks, only male Asian elephants have valuable tusks, so they are specifically targeted by poachers, said WCS researcher Varun Goswami, the studys lead author. In light of this fact, just counting all elephants with generic techniques isnt enough. Our new method allows specific tracking of male elephant population dynamics, so it is a powerful conservation tool.

Working in collaboration with the Karantaka State Forest Department in Nagarahole and Bandipur reserves, scientists systematically took more than 2400 photographs of individual elephants, sampling game roads and waterholes over an 80-day period. Male elephants in particular were given special therapy, with the researchers recording data such as tusk length, thickness, angle, arrangement, as well as other characteristics ear shape, shoulder height, tail length, and scars. These data revealed some 134 individual male elephants in a population of 991 elephants, with an adult male/female ratio of 1 to 4.33. The data were analyzed using advanced open capture-recapture models......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 15, 2007, 8:25 PM CT

Emerging (disease) markets

Instead of attacking wild birds for our new disease problems, a far more cost effective approach should focus on keeping wild animals separate in the places where they often commingle: in wildlife markets and international trade, as per wildlife health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in a recent issue of the prestigious Journal of Wildlife Diseases.

This is an ounce of prevention that we really need to use in trading hubs where human commerce of wild animals allows for the spread of diseases, said Dr. William Karesh, director of the Wildlife Conservation Societys Field Veterinary Program and lead author of the peer-evaluated paper titled Implications of wildlife trade on the movement of avian influenza and other infectious diseases. The wildlife trade, and markets in particular, serve as very dirty mixing bowls for diseases. We can significantly reduce the threat of avian flu and other emerging diseases by decreasing contact among different animal species in markets and thus giving pathogens fewer opportunities to mutate and spread.

In the paper, Karesh and his co-authors point out birds and other animals moving through wildlife markets give pathogens a chance to jump into new species and geographic regions via the global trade in wildlife. For example, two instances of highly pathogenic avian influenza traveling vast distances in bird hosts include two mountain hawk eagles that were illegally smuggled from Thailand to Belgium and wild songbirds shipped from Taiwan to the United Kingdom. Besides direct health effects, disease outbreaks damage regional and global economies by destabilizing trade. Disease outbreaks such as SARS, Nipah virus and others are thought to have cost some $80 billion in economic damage. Efforts to control avian influenza, such as a culling of 140 million chickens in Asia entailed a significant cost and in developing countries, a terrible loss of food and income for families dependent on those animals......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 8, 2007, 9:36 PM CT

New technology reveals seal behavior

New technology has allowed an international team including UK researchers from University of St Andrews and British Antarctic Survey to witness for the first time the behaviour of the southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) and how it relates to its physical environment. Small sensors were attached to 85 seals to track their movements and collect data about their marine environment. Results are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The seals were tagged at the islands of South Georgia, Kerguelen and Macquarie in the Southern Ocean, and at the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. The data from the seals was transmitted back to land via satellite and shows that elephant seals adopted different strategies to find food.

The Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University led the research. Author Mike Fedak says, These data are really exciting. This new technology has allowed us to see where the seals go and understand their behaviour in the context of different characteristics of water in the Southern Ocean. The majority of animals from South Georgia fed within the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, but seals from other locations had a very different strategy, and visited colder waters nearer the continental shelf......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

August 6, 2007, 5:28 PM CT

Satellite tracking of penguin travels

You could understand if a half-dozen Magellanic penguins developed a "big bird is watching" phobia before this month is over, but the surveillance really will be for their own good.

University of Washington researchers will attach satellite tracking devices to the backs of six penguins that have been treated at two centers in northern Argentina after their feathers were fouled with oil. The birds will be released into the Atlantic Ocean and their movements traced using satellites and the Internet.

The idea is to plug a critical gap in the knowledge of the Magellanics' annual life cycle, their movements on the journey from their winter feeding grounds back to their breeding colonies along the southern Argentina coast and the Islas Malvinas, or Falkland Islands.

"We're missing that information. We know what happens when they leave the breeding grounds but we don't know what happens on the return trip," said Elizabeth Skewgar, a University of Washington doctoral student in biology.

"We want to model the energy requirements for these birds so that we understand what it takes to return to the breeding grounds and still have enough energy to reproduce. Human fisheries competing for the same food could make migration even more difficult for them"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source