#Democratic Republic of congos best run reserve is hemorrhaging elephantsthe Democratic Republic of congo's (DRC) largest remaining forest elephant population located in the Okapi Faunal Reserve (OFR) has declined by 37 percent in the last five years
with only 1700 elephants now remaining according to wildlife surveys by WCS and DRC officials. WCS scientists warn that
if poaching of forest elephants in DRC continues unabated the species could be extinguished nearly from Africa's second largest country within ten years.
According to the latest survey 5100 or 75 percent of the reserve's elephants have been killed in the last 15 years.
According to WCS the primary reason for the recent decline in forest elephant numbers is ivory poaching.
The survey comes in the wake of another grim report earlier this month from Gabon where 11000 elephants were slaughtered in Minkebe National park over a ten-year period.
WCS continue to sound the alarm that rampant poaching is decimating elephant populations throughout Africa
The global poaching crisis for elephants is at epidemic proportions said WCS Executive vice president for Conservation and Science John Robinson.
and demand or we will lose elephants in the wild in our lifetime. In the early 1990s before the civil war of 1996-2003 DRC was relatively calm.
In a 1995-1997 survey of the OFR--a UNESCO World Heritage Site--WCS found that there were approximately 6800 forest elephants living in an area of almost 14000 km2 (8682 square miles.
After the civil war WCS carried out a second survey in 2005-2007 and found that elephants had suffered heavy losses to poaching with numbers having dropped by 60 percent to approximately 2700 elephants.
For example in Salonga National park a huge area that once held the largest elephant population in DRC WCS found that elephants had been decimated to less than 1000 individuals.
Thus by 2007 OFR had DRC's largest remaining forest elephant population. During the war park guards could not protect much of OFR
but were able to document elephant kills and ivory poaching. Since the end of the civil war five years ago park rangers have reduced the decline from approximately 400 to 170 elephants annually.
Despite this success the park rangers cannot keep up with the dramatic increase in demand for ivory that is being fueled by economic growth in Asia particularly China
Despite these hard realities OFR remains the most important site for the conservation of forest elephants and other large mammals in DRC.
Additional results from recent surveys show that other wildlife in the reserve fared much better including the highly important eastern chimpanzee population (approximately 6000 individuals) okapi and duikers (small forest antelopes) with almost no change in their estimated
and will continue to work in their country to protect elephants and the landscapes where they live.
We urge the international community to support the DRC in the fight against the threat of extinction of the forest elephant.
WCS works to stop the killing by collaborating with partners to prevent criminals from slaughtering elephants in Africa's worst killing fields.
and include sniffer dogs to detect ivory and working with judiciaries and other agencies to increase the number of cases taken to court and rates of successful prosecutions.
The authors examined the effect of GSSE processed from a grape cultivar('Carignan')of Vitis vinifera from northern Tunisia on rats.
Rats were fed a high-fat diet that induced a low-grade reno-lipotoxicity that is kidney damage associated with lipids.
When the animals received GSSE at 500 mg/kg bw (which corresponds to 35g/day for a 70 kg human adult)
and prevents copper depletion in rats is available Open Access in the journal Applied Physiology Nutrition and Metabolism.
Previous studies in animals have shown that the transplantation of bone-marrow-derived cells can contribute to the regeneration of the gastrointestinal tract in IBD said Almeida-Porada.
#Wasp transcriptome creates a buzznew research delivers a sting in the tail for queen wasps.
--or transcriptome--of primitively eusocial wasps to identify the part of the genome that makes you a queen or a worker.
Their work published in Biomed Central's open access journal Genome Biology shows that workers have a more active transcriptome than queens.
This suggests that in these simple societies workers may be the'jack-of-all-trades'in the colony--transcriptionally speaking--leaving the queen with a somewhat restricted repertoire.
Studying primitively eusocial species--like these wasps--can tell us about how sociality evolves. Seirian Sumner and colleagues sequenced transcriptomes from the eusocial tropical paper wasps--Polistes canadensis.
All social species ultimately evolved from a solitary ancestor--in this case a solitary wasp who lays the eggs and feeds the brood.
But how does this ancestral solitary phenotype split to produce specialised reproducers (queens) and brood carers (workers) when a species becomes social?
This paper gives a first insight into the secret lives of social insects. It shows that workers retain a highly active transcriptome possibly expressing many of the ancestral genes that are required for our solitary wasp to be successful on her own.
Conversely queens appear to shut down a lot of their genes presumably in order to be really good reproducers. Longstanding analyses based on the fossil record holds ants and wasps in a clade known as Vespoidea with bees as a sister group.
The team reassess the relationships between the subfamilies of bees wasps and ants and suggest that wasps are part of a separate clade from ants
and bees though further genome sequences and comparative data will help to resolve this controversy The dataset offers a first chance to analyse subfamily relationships across large numbers of genes
though further work is required before the term Vespoidia could be dropped or reclassified. Sumner says:''This finding would have important general implications for our understanding of eusociality as it would suggest that bees
and ants shared an aculeate wasp-like ancestor that ants are wingless wasps and that bees are lost wasps that predacious behaviours.'
'Their work suggests that novel genes play a much more important role in social behaviour than we previously thought.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Biomed Central Limited. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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#Maize in diets of people in coastal Peru dates to 5, 000 years agofor decades archaeologists have struggled with understanding the emergence of a distinct South american civilization during the Late Archaic period (3000-1800
Macroscopic remains of maize (kernels leaves stalks and cobs) were rare. However the team looked deeper and found an abundance of microscopic evidence of maize in various forms in the excavations.
Among 62 coprolites analyzed of all types--34 human 16 domesticated dog and others from various animals--43 (or 69 percent) contained maize starch grains phytoliths
#Exurban residences impact bird communities up to 200 meters away, study findsaccording to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) impacts to bird communities from a single rural exurban
The study also determined that sensitive bird species such as the hermit thrush and scarlet tanager prefer unbroken forests with no houses.
Others like the blue jay and black-capped chickadee seem to like having and often thrive with human neighbors.
As part of the study scientists sampled the presence of 20 species of birds both near and far from 30 rural residences in the Adirondack Park.
Calculating their occurrence at increasing distances from the residences they determined that human-adapted species are 36 percent more likely to occur near the homes than in the surrounding mixed hardwood-conifer forests
Exurban homes change the environment by bringing vehicles noise lights pets people and food sources into the forest as well as by physically altering
and composition increased human wildlife conflicts new predator-prey dynamics and decreased biotic integrity (a measure of how pristine a wildlife community is).
and lawn can change bird communities some 200 meters away which means more than 30 acres of the surrounding landscape depending on
It is important that we learn how birds and other wildlife react to particular kinds of human activities
The study found that species sensitive to human impacts include the black-throated blue warbler black-throated green warbler hairy woodpecker hermit thrush ovenbird scarlet tanager and the winter wren.
The presence of some species like the scarlet tanager are a good indicator of undisturbed forest health.
Glennon and Kretser believe that the similar results in two different ecosystem types may indicate that human behaviors associated with exurban homes play a larger role in shaping avian community characteristics nearby than do created habitat alterations
While breeding bird communities were used to measure the impacts of exurban development in the study the authors note that birds can serve as valuable indicators of overall biodiversity.
This research which is being conducted by Agricultural research service (ARS) scientists at the agency's Agroecosystems Management Research Unit in Lincoln Neb. supports the USDA priority of ensuring food safety.
and identified a diverse assortment of bacteria from the six individual animals even though all six consumed the same diet and were breed the same gender and age.
Bumblebees find and distinguish electric signals from flowersflowers'methods of communicating are sophisticated at least as as any devised by an advertising agency according to a new study published Feb 21 in Science Express by researchers from the University of Bristol.
The research shows for the first time that pollinators such as bumblebees are able to find and distinguish electric signals given out by flowers.
and enticing fragrances to attract their pollinators. Researchers at Bristol's School of Biological sciences led by Professor Daniel Robert found that flowers also have their equivalent of a neon sign--patterns of electrical signals that can communicate information to the insect pollinator.
These electrical signals can work in concert with the flower's other attractive signals and enhance floral advertising Power plants are charged usually negatively
To their surprise the researchers discovered that bumblebees can detect and distinguish between different floral electric fields.
although the researchers speculate that hairy bumblebees bristle up under the electrostatic force just like one's hair in front of an old television screen.
The discovery of such electric detection has opened up a whole new understanding of insect perception and flower communication.
This novel communication channel reveals how flowers can potentially inform their pollinators about the honest status of their precious nectar and pollen reserves.
#How human language could have evolved from birdsong: Researchers propose new theory on deep roots of human speechthe sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language Charles darwin wrote in The Descent of Man (1871)
while contemplating how humans learned to speak. Language he speculated might have had its origins in singing
The balance of evidence they believe suggests that human language is a grafting of two communication forms found elsewhere in the animal kingdom:
first the elaborate songs of birds and second the more utilitarian information-bearing types of expression seen in a diversity of other animals.
His conclusion is based on earlier work by linguists including Noam Chomsky Kenneth Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser.
Based on an analysis of animal communication and using Miyagawa's framework the authors say that birdsong closely resembles the expression layer of human sentences
--whereas the communicative waggles of bees or the short audible messages of primates are more like the lexical layer.
Todd saw a condor. We can easily create variations of this such as When did Todd see a condor?
This rearranging of elements takes place in the expression layer and allows us to add complexity
the subject Todd the verb to see and the object condor. Birdsong lacks a lexical structure.
Instead birds sing learned melodies with what Berwick calls a holistic structure; the entire song has one meaning whether about mating territory or other things.
The Bengalese finch as the authors note can loop back to parts of previous melodies allowing for greater variation and communication of more things;
a nightingale may be able to recite from 100 to 200 different melodies. By contrast other types of animals have barebones modes of expression without the same melodic capacity.
Bees communicate visually using precise waggles to indicate sources of foods to their peers; other primates can make a range of sounds comprising warnings about predators and other messages.
Humans according to Miyagawa Berwick and Okanoya fruitfully combined these systems. We can communicate essential information like bees
or primates--but like birds we also have a melodic capacity and an ability to recombine parts of our uttered language.
For this reason our finite vocabularies can generate a seemingly infinite string of words. Indeed the researchers suggest that humans first had the ability to sing as Darwin conjectured
and then managed to integrate specific lexical elements into those songs. It's not a very long step to say that what got joined together was the ability to construct these complex patterns like a song
but with words Berwick says. As they note in the paper some of the striking parallels between language acquisition in birds
and humans include the phase of life when each is best at picking up languages
and the part of the brain used for language. Another similarity Berwick notes relates to an insight of celebrated MIT professor emeritus of linguistics Morris Halle who as Berwick puts it observed that all human languages have a finite number of stress patterns
Well in birdsong there is also this limited number of beat patterns. Birds and beesthe researchers acknowledge that further empirical studies on the subject would be desirable.
It's just a hypothesis Berwick says. But it's a way to make explicit
If this is right then human language has a precursor in nature in evolution that we can actually test today he says adding that bees birds
and other primates could all be sources of further research insight. MIT-based research in linguistics has largely been characterized by the search for universal aspects of all human languages.
Their observation of how patterns of pigmentation on flower petals influence bumblebees'behavior suggests that color veins give clues to the location of the nectar.
The authors looked at the ways in which these color veins influence bumblebee foraging behavior.
#Climate change effect on plant communities is buffered by large herbivores, new research suggestscan existing ecological communities persist intact as temperatures rise?
and integrated the effects of large plant-eating mammals in a 10-year arctic field experiment.
if populations of caribou musk ox and other large herbivores remain intact. The study demonstrates that grazing by these large herbivores maintains plant species diversity
while warming reduces it Post said. Plant communities with lower diversity display a greater tendency toward instability under warming a pre-cursor to the loss of such communities.
and animals directly but also how species'interactions may influence those effects of warming. Post began the study in a remote low-Arctic plant community near Kangerlussuaq Greenland in 2002.
Some areas on which these warming chambers were placed were left open to grazing by caribou and musk ox--two ecologically important large herbivores in the Arctic--while separate 800-square-meter areas that also received warming chambers were fenced off to exclude the animals.
In this way Post created two very different environments: one in which plants and herbivores continued to live together as the temperatures climbed within the warming chambers;
the other in which the animals were not present and the plants were left ungrazed.
The study tested a classic ecological hypothesis but with a new angle Post said. Ecologists have argued for decades over
whether large herbivores contribute to the diversity-stability relationship in a climate-change context. After 10 years of careful observation of the Kangerlussuaq Greenland plant communities Post found that the grazed
This study confirmed that caribou and musk ox act as a buffer against the degradative effects of warming on plant species diversity Post said.
and birch became the dominant plants in response to warming where the herbivorous animals were excluded from the ecosystem.
On the other hand in those areas where caribou and musk ox were able to graze freely shrub responses to warming were muted
Post said the take-home message from his study is that in a warming climate intact populations of large herbivores may be crucial to the maintenance of plant-community diversity and to the persistence of existing plant communities.
What this experiment suggests is that factors that threaten the persistence of large herbivores may threaten the plant communities they exist in as well.
Conservation of these herbivores in the rapidly changing Arctic will require careful mediation of interacting stressors such as human exploitation mineral extraction
while others are pest resistant. At a genetic level there were ten genes which contained differences between these leaves.
While this loss of control probably has a high evolutionary cost it allows the tree to survive the insect-plant war.
which was untouched by insects when the rest of the tree was defoliated completely. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Biomed Central Limited.
These effects promote the growth of good bugs while keeping bad bugs at bay. A University of Colorado Cancer Center review published in this month's issue of the journal Current Opinion in Gastroenterology shows that resistant starch also helps the body resist colorectal cancer through mechanisms including killing pre-cancerous cells
Higgins describes studies showing that rats fed resistant starch show decreased numbers and sizes of lesions due to colorectal cancer and an increased number of cells that express the protein IL-10 which acts to regulate the body's inflammatory response Resistant starch may also have implications for the prevention
For example if you let rats get obese get them to lose the weight and then feed half of the rats a diet high in resistant starch--these rats don't gain back the weight as fast as rats fed a regular digestible starch diet.
This effect on obesity may help to reduce breast cancer risk as well as having implications for the treatment of colorectal cancer.
Much of this information currently comes from rodent models and small clinical trials but the evidence is encouraging.
while maintaining trust said Dr Penny Sparrow from the John Innes Centre. This will be of high importance especially in Europe where the issues surrounding the cultivation of GM agricultural crops remains a contentious concern.
and for investors said Sparrow. Regulations need to be harmonised across the world in order to keep advances and competition on a level playing field.
Dr Sparrow was involved in a collaboration with EU partners to road test the challenges faced by potential investors.
Lead author Kristen Beavers Ph d. and colleagues at Wake Forest Baptist said the findings suggest that prevention of age-related declines in walking speed isn't just about preserving muscle mass it's also about preventing fat gain.
Walking speed declines with age said Beavers and in older adults slower walking speed is a predictor of disability nursing home admission and even death.
Unfortunately said Beavers not much is known about what precedes this decline although change in body composition seemed like a reasonable place to start the research.
Importantly said Beavers older adults who gained the most thigh fat and lost the most thigh muscle were at greatest risk of experiencing a clinically meaningful decline in walking speed.
Beavers said this study is the first of its kind to address the independent association between changes in sophisticated measures of body composition and walking speed.
As the burden of disability becomes increasingly common and expensive identification of modifiable contributors to functional decline in older adults is emerging as a significant priority of public health research Beavers said.
Daniel P. Beavers Ph d. Denise K. Houston Ph d. Barbara J. Nicklas and Stephen Kritchevsky all of Wake Forest Baptist;
#Decoys could blunt spread of ash-killing beetlesas the emerald ash borer ravages North american ash trees threatening the trees'very survival a team of entomologists
and engineers may have found a way to prevent the spread of the pests. Emerald ash borers (EABS) a type of beetle native to Asia first appeared in the U s. about 20 years ago.
They are now moving east from Michigan killing ash trees on the Eastern Seaboard as far south as North carolina.
As their name implies emerald ash borers are iridescent green. The beetles don't carry disease
but their larvae feed on the ash trees'sap effectively killing the trees by depriving trees of their nourishment.
Baker and a postdoctoral fellow in his lab Michael J. Domingue were using dead female EABS for bait to trap the male beetles.
and can sometimes disappear from the trap. Baker then learned that Lakhtakia was able to replicate certain biological materials such as fly eyes and butterfly wings.
Baker posed the question: could Lakhtakia's technique visually replicate the unique female borer to create a better lure?
The two researchers working with a graduate student in Lakhtakia's lab Drew P. Pulsifer created a mold of the top of the female beetle's body.
The decoy beetle is made by a process of layering polymers with different refractive indexes to create the desired iridescence
and then stamping the resulting material into the mold. The researchers were able to create a color similar to the emerald ash borer's green wings by layering different types of polymer.
Eventually they were able to find the right combination of polymers and number of layers
and create a color similar to the beetle's own iridescent green. The researchers'findings are scheduled to be published in the April issue of the Journal of Bionic Engineering.
They also ran a pilot test in Hungary with a related beetle pest that bores into oak trees.
and maintain and more successful at trapping males than dead female borers. The purpose of the decoys is to trap the males
so that populations of emerald ash borers can be detected in new locations quickly paving the way for efficient use of other control methods according to the researchers.
If pest control measures aren't taken these annual plants can serve as amplifiers producing lots of viruses
and insects to move the viruses around. In contrast perennial plants in nature grow slower
#New insect: Spectacular forcepfly species discovered for the first time in South Americaforcepflies are usually known as earwigflies because the males have a large genital forceps that resembles the cerci of earwigs.
A new species of forcepfly Meropeidae (Mecoptera) from Brazil was described representing only the 3rd extant species described in this family
and still thriveresearchers have studied viruses as agents of disease in humans domestic animals and plants but a study of plant viruses in the wild may point to a more cooperative benevolent role of the microbe according to a Penn State virologist.
and animals found only on the continent. Many animals that dwell in trees bushes deadfall
or underground perish from the blazes or succumb later from lack of food and shelter or increased predation.
In Australia for instance the koala is especially vulnerable to wildfires that consume the tree canopy as the animals are slow-moving
To do this the K-State team including graduate students Nan An Brent Christenson and Nathan Keep used a ground-based spectroradiometer to gather spectral data in the visible and infrared spectra at various stages of growth
and animals eat them. The new study focused on two of the most widespread mycotoxin contaminants of grain crops--deoxynivalenol (DON) and zearalenone (ZEN.
#Advance promises to expand biological control of crop pestsa new discovery promises to allow expanded use of a mainstay biological pest control method
and pest-resistance concerns of traditional insecticides scientists are reporting. The advance toward broadening applicability of the so-called sterile insect technique (SIT) appears in the journal ACS Synthetic biology.
Luke Alphey and colleagues explain that the Lepidoptera a large family of insects with a caterpillar stage cause widespread damage worldwide to cotton;
apples pears and other fruits; and vegetable crops like broccoli Brussels sprouts and cabbage. Farmers usually battle these pests with traditional insects with little use of SIT despite its many advantages.
SIT involves mass release of radiation-sterilized insects which mate but produce no offspring thus reducing the population of pests.
Alphey's team focused on eliminating major drawbacks that discourage wider use of SIT: They include difficulty in producing male-only sterile insects without the use of radiation
which reduces their ability to compete with wild males for mates. The scientists describe development of a synthetic genetic system that produces vigorous adult males with lethal information encoded in their sex-determination genes.
The males mate and all the female offspring die thus reducing the pest populations. They developed the lethal genetic sexing system in two pests the pink bollworm which damages cotton crops and the diamondback moth
which attacks broccoli cabbage and other cruciferous vegetable crops. The approach could be used on other pests as well they state.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Chemical Society. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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#Wetland trees a significant overlooked source of methanewetland trees are overlooked a significant source of the potent greenhouse gas methane according to a new study by researchers at The Open University and the Universities of Bristol and Oxford.
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