#Helping farmers adapt to changing growing conditionstwo new online decision-making tools are available to farmers through the U s. Department of agriculture's Useful to Usable
or U2u research project according to state climatologist and South dakota State university associate professor Dennis Todey. The project is funded through the Agriculture and Foods Research Initiative.
Corn Growing Degree days or GDDS will show producers how their crops are developing in lieu of this year's planting delays
and the University of Edinburgh have found that an animal's ability to endure an internal parasite strongly influences its reproductive success. Reported in the journal PLOS Biology the finding could provide the groundwork for boosting the resilience of humans and livestock to infection.
and its level of infection with nematodes tiny parasitic worms that thrive in the gastrointestinal tract of sheep.
The level of infection was determined by the number of nematode eggs per gram of the animal's feces.
While all of the animals lost weight as a result of nematode infection the degree of weight loss varied widely:
and found that sheep with the highest tolerance to nematode infection produced the most offspring while sheep with lower parasite tolerance left fewer descendants.
These sheep provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of parasites weather vegetation changes and other factors on a population of wild animals.
Expending energy to fight infectionnematodes puncture an animal's gut and can impede the absorption of nutrients.
Therefore tolerance to nematode infection could result from an ability to make up for the lost nutrition
Tolerant animals might invest energy in gut repair but would then be expected to incur costs.
They found that animals with strong antibody responses produced fewer offspring each year but also lived longer.
if the most tolerant animals were at a disadvantage under particular conditions. While the PLOS Biology findings provide strong evidence that natural selection favors infection tolerance they do raise questions such as how the tolerance is generated
Understanding the genetic underpinnings of nematode tolerance could someday guide efforts to boost tolerance in livestock by identifying
and selectively breeding those animals that exhibit a heightened parasite tolerance said David Schneider an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford university.
In humans and domesticated animals intestinal parasites are becoming increasingly resistant to the drugs used to treat infections Graham said.
About 2 billion people are infected persistently with intestinal nematode parasites worldwide mostly in developing nations.
Children are especially vulnerable to the worms'effects which include anemia stunted growth and cognitive difficulties.
Ideally we would clear the worms from the bellies of the kids who have those heavy burdens Graham said.
and thus promote tolerance of nematodes that could be a very powerful tool. Story Source:
to save elephants all ivory markets must close and all ivory stockpiles must be destroyed according to a new peer-reviewed paper by the Wildlife Conservation Society.
and a lack of enforcement make any legal trade of ivory a major factor contributing to the demise of Africa's elephants.
if we are to conserve significant wild populations of elephants across all regions of Africa all domestic
If we are to conserve remaining wild populations of elephants we must close all markets
The paper looked at the corruption index of 177 assessed countries noting that half of the 12 countries in Africa that contain elephants are in the bottom 40 percent.
Six of the eight countries identified by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
The paper comes at a time of growing opposition to ivory bans by some groups claiming that carefully regulated ivory sales would help protect elephants
For example forest elephants in Central africa occur in densities seven times higher in sites with ecoguards than without them.
as long as ivory profits continue to escalate giving ever-increasing incentives to kill elephants illegally and traffic in their ivory.
if elephants are to survive we need to close existing legal markets. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Wildlife Conservation Society.
Another was adorned with a bronze finial of the head of a feline with the mane of a lion
and the spots of a leopard and for handle attachments had African heads probably sphinxes.
These and other finds--from the bones of various animals and birds to numerous worked
and unworked deer antlers--suggest that the Cetamura well like other water sources in antiquity was regarded as sacred.
In the Etruscan religion throwing items into a well filled with water was an act of religious sacrifice.
#Fipronil, imidacloprid reduce honeybee mitochondrial activitynew research published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry addresses the effects of two broad-spectrum systemic insecticides fipornil and imidacloprid on honeybees.
These insecticides are used widely in agriculture and the authors conclude that fipronil and imidacloprid are inhibitors of mitochondrial bioenergetics resulting in depleted cell energy.
This action can explain the toxicity of these compounds for honeybees. Scientists are urgently trying to determine the causes of colony collapse disorder and the alarming population declines of honeybees.
The cross-pollination services they provide are required by approximately 80 percent of all flowering plants and 1/3 of all agricultural food production directly depends on bee pollination.
As a result there has been a flurry of research on honeybee parasitic mite infestations viral diseases and the direct and indirect impacts of pesticides.
Daniel Nicodemo professor of ecology and beekeeping at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Dracena Brazil and lead author of the study states These insecticides affect the nervous system of pest
Sublethal effects related to insect behavior have been described in other studies; even a few nanograms of active ingredient disturbed the sense of taste olfactory learning and motor activity of the bees.
A key characteristic of colony collapse disorder is the incapacity of the honey bees to return to their hives
In this study Nicodemo et al. looked at the effects of fipronil and imidacloprid on the bioenergetics functioning of mitochondria isolated from the heads and thoraces of Africanized honeybees.
Honeybee flight muscles are strongly dependent on high levels of oxygen consumption and energy metabolism. Mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation drives ATP synthesis which is required to contract the muscles during flight.
Similar to a plane honeybees require clean fuel in order to fly. Both fipronil and imidacloprid negatively affected the mitochondrial bioenergetics of the head and thorax of the honeybees.
While at sublethal levels insecticide damage may not be evident even such low level exposure clearly contributes to the inability of a honeybee to forage
and return to the hive which could result in declining bee populations. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Vaccinating cows could answer serum shortageby many estimates an Ebola vaccine could be available in humans as early as next year.
which showed good protection in nonhuman primates against the Zaire Ebola virus. Currently the vaccine is being developed with the help of Peter Jahrling at the Integrated Research Facility at the NIH
and help chaperone them out of the blood before they can infect more cells It's like a sponge that mops up a lot of the virus in the body says Schnell.
The experimental therapy that humanitarian aid workers Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol received was purified based on a monoclonal antibodies from mice genetically engineered to produce humanlike antibodies against the Ebola virus.
The cows would have harvested their blood plasma every two weeks to produce 30-60 liters of serum every month from one animal--the equivalent of 2000 doses. The vaccinated cows would produce polyvalent antibodies--antibodies that can recognize many
Insects and rodents seemed to be unimportant. Truck conditions and bad weather were the top factors to blame for loss
There are pest pressures 24/7 soils are poor there's an extreme rainy season distance to markets is great and road conditions are very rough.
#Arctic mammals can metabolize some pesticides, limits human exposurefortunately you are not always what you eat at least in Canada's Arctic.
New research from the University of Guelph reveals that arctic mammals such as caribou can metabolize some current-use pesticides (CUPS) ingested in vegetation.
This limits exposures in animals that consume the caribou--including humans. This is good news for the wildlife
and people of the Arctic who survive by hunting caribou and other animals said Adam Morris a Phd student in the School of Environmental sciences
and lead author of the study published recently in Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry. The lack of any significant biomagnification through the food chain indicates that there is very little risk of harm from exposure to these CUPS in this region.
and mammals and in turn are consumed by other animals and humans. The substances can become biomagnified
They examined the vegetation-caribou-wolf food chain in the area where the presence of other organic contaminants such as legacy pesticides
and fluorinated surfactants suggested that CUPS might be found in the vegetation and animals. Caribou are among the most important subsistence animals for people living in the North
and the Bathurst caribou herd is particularly critical to the area's socioeconomic security. Wolves like people are a top consumer of caribou.
It is an important responsibility both for health and for food security issues that Northerner's face that we monitor traditional food sources Morris said.
By testing vegetation the researchers found large enough concentrations of CUPS to confirm that they were entering the food chain.
In caribou eating that vegetation CUPS were also present but they did not increase (biomagnify) significantly in caribou compared to their diet.
The concentrations were even lower in wolves suggesting sufficient metabolism of CUPS in both animals to prevent significant biomagnification.
The lack of biomagnification also means that we are unlikely to see sudden unexpected increases in concentrations of the CUPS in terrestrial top predators he said.
But this needs to be confirmed in other food chains in the Arctic before general trends can be established that are applicable to larger data sets.
Insect aggression boosted by altering brain metabolismscientists report they can crank up insect aggression simply by interfering with a basic metabolic pathway in the insect brain.
Their study of fruit flies and honey bees shows a direct causal link between brain metabolism (how the brain generates the energy it needs to function) and aggression.
In separate experiments postdoctoral researcher Hongmei Li-Byarlay and undergraduate student Jonathan Massey found that reduced oxidative phosphorylation in fruit flies also increased aggression.
Because fruit flies and honey bees are separated by 300 million years of evolution this is a very robust and well-conserved mechanism he said.
Transfer of disease from animals to humansthe fact that MRSA can spread from animals to humans where they may result in infections has caused great concern in recent years.
i e. it can be transferred directly from animals to humans and cause disease. Thus it is not sufficient to eradicate the bacteria from humans.
We still don't know which specific genetic factors in this MRSA type facilitate the spread from animals to humans.
which can be found in humans animals and our surroundings. Staphylococcus aureus is part of the normal nasal and skin flora of approximately 50%of the population.
A new international study published this week in Nature Climate Change shows that damage from wind bark beetles
while bark beetle damage increased most strongly in The alps. Wind damage would be seen to rise most notably in Central and Western europe.
#Kangaroos win when aborigines hunt with fire: Co-evolution benefits Australias martu people and wildlifeaustralia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch lizards as they have for at least 2000 years.
A University of Utah researcher found such human-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations--showing how co-evolution helped marsupials
and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists. We have uncovered a framework that allows us to predict
which also might be due to increased predation by invasive predators he adds. The study concludes:
The new study found that small grass fires set by Martu to reveal sand monitor lizard holes created a patchy mosaic of five stages of vegetation at different post-fire ages increasing
hill kangaroo populations because the animals can hide from predators like dingoes in older bush grass
and spend most of their time eating shoots and fruits in patches of younger vegetation.
Counts of kangaroo scats showed kangaroo populations were largest at moderate distances from Martu settlements.
At those distances there also were moderate levels of both kangaroo hunting and burning to expose lizard burrows.
As people spend more time hunting in a region kangaroos densities actually increase but only up to a threshold after
which their populations decline Codding says. Martu-set fires average about 10 acres--a small fraction of the size of fires ignited by lightning Codding says noting that patchy vegetation created by intentional fires reduce the likelihood of devastating large blazes.
his former doctoral advisors at Stanford university--senior author Douglas Bird and his spouse Rebecca Bliege Bird--and Peter Kauhanen formerly of Stanford and now at the San francisco Estuary Institute.
An earlier study by the same researchers showed Martu-set fires increase sand monitor lizard populations despite the negative impact of hunting.
And there are indications mammals like brushtail possums and hare-wallabies also benefit. Unintentional Conservationists and the Dreamtimecodding and colleagues conducted the study in a 60-by-35-mile area within Western australia's Little Sandy Desert where the native Martu people hold title to a vast expanse of land.
Martu usually women set small fires in spinifex grass--the dominant vegetation--during wintertime hunts to expose burrows occupied by 2-foot-long sand monitor lizards or sand goannas
It's like sand monitor lizard. Martu men drive along dirt four-wheel-drive tracks to different hunting areas.
There they use. 22-caliber rifles to hunt hill kangaroos a midsized species (3 feet to 5 feet long) named Macropus robustus also known as the euro or common wallaroo.
or indirectly over time in ways that alter each other's evolution--an ecological mechanism that he says explains how moderate levels of burning by the Martu actually bolsters kangaroo populations.
The'conservation'of kangaroos is an outcome that evolved he says. It would be wrong to assume that Martu were intentionally managing a resource.
'But they are well aware their fires benefit kangaroos and other wildlife. In fact they see humans as part of a larger ecosystem that has spiritual components--the dreamtime place of creation where ancestors roamed.
Kangaroo Populations Highest Where Human Disruption is Moderatethe study's key finding is that kangaroo populations are highest where human disruption is moderate not most intense or minimal.
In other words the kangaroos are most abundant at moderate distances from the community--a 40-to 80-minute drive--where hunting is more common than in areas closer to the community and father from it.
Indeed kangaroo population levels close to the village--where they were hunted first--are the same as at great distances from the community where there is little hunting and bush burning.
The study doesn't suggest that hunting kangaroos helps the animals but that any harm to kangaroo populations by hunting is outweighed by
what they gain from a landscape with small patches of different ages of post-fire vegetation.
It's just that the Martu tend to hunt kangaroos in the same areas where they burn the grass to hunt lizards.
Codding says the new study looked at kangaroo populations in all five stages of post-fire spinifex grass vegetation as described by the Martu.
and bush raisin eaten by the Martu and hill kangaroos. The two final stages occur five to 15 years after fire:
and recorded the amount of time they spent hunting for different things (including lizards and kangaroo) and foraging for bush fruits Codding says.
The researchers also monitored how long Martu hunters were away from their camps and what they brought back from the hunts.
They also walked two predetermined 0. 6-mile lines in each hunting area counting the density of kangaroo scat in patches of vegetation in each of the different post-fire growth stages.
and to cells of the nematode C. elegans restored the activity of mitochondria and prevented the degeneration of neurons.
The new findings are sophisticated based on inelastic neutron-scattering experiments performed on several samples of barium iron nickel arsenide at the PUMA triple axis spectrometer at TUM's Heinz Maier
By burning when many animals are active fires in the late spring can devastate wildlife.
Snakes turtles prairie chickens and other nesting birds are less likely to be destroyed during fall and winter burns as wildlife is often hibernating underground
or have not yet built nests Craine said. Additionally moving to a more flexible burning schedule helps manage the large volume of smoke that carry to Manhattan and Wichita Kansas;
#Selective logging takes its toll on mammals, amphibiansthe selective logging of trees in otherwise intact tropical forests can take a serious toll on the number of animal species living there.
Mammals and amphibians are particularly sensitive to the effects of high-intensity logging according to researchers in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 31 who conducted a meta-analysis of almost 50 previously published studies from around the world.
Based on invertebrate surveys primarily representing butterflies dung beetles and ants Burivalova and her colleagues found further diversity losses with logging.
Surprisingly they found that the number of bird species can actually increase in selectively logged areas likely
because birds lost as a result of the disturbance are replaced by other more generalist species. Burivalova calls on logging companies to respect logging intensity thresholds that take biodiversity into account.
She and her colleagues say that even forests that are currently under sustainable management may be logged at intensities that are far too high for amphibian or mammalian diversity.
#Study advances DNA revolution, tells butterflies evolutionary historyby tracing nearly 3000 genes to the earliest common ancestor of butterflies
and moths University of Florida scientists have created an extensive Tree of Lepidoptera in the first study to use large-scale next-generation DNA sequencing.
Butterflies are more closely related to small moths than to large ones which completely changes scientists'understanding of how butterflies evolved.
The study also found that some insects once classified as moths are actually butterflies increasing the number of butterfly species higher than previously thought.
This project advances biodiversity research by providing an evolutionary foundation for a very diverse group of insects with nearly 160000 described species said Akito Kawahara lead author
and assistant curator of Lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural history on the UF campus. With a tree we can now understand how the majority of butterfly
and moth species evolved. Available online and to be published in the August print edition of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Biological sciences the study builds the evolutionary framework for future ecological and genetics research of insects Kawahara said.
There is a DNA revolution taking place Kawahara said. This is an important time in the history of science
Kawahara said the yearlong study is one of the first to utilize a massive amount of genetic data to answer questions about the history of butterflies and moths.
The analysis reveals monumental discoveries about the lineage of Lepidoptera including strongly contradicting the traditional placement of butterflies in evolutionary history Kawahara said.
Using next-generation sequencing a method used to rapidly process large amounts of DNA scientists developed an initial sample of 46 species that represent many of the most bio diverse groups of moths and butterflies.
Daniel Rubinoff entomologist and director of the University of Hawaii Insect Museum said the new study will help scientists conclusively pinpoint where butterflies belong in evolutionary history--a question that has troubled long researchers.
and conclusively demonstrating the evolutionary relationships of the most popular insects on the planet Rubinoff said.
The wispy delicate nature of butterflies and moths is part of their charm but their soft-bodied larval stages have posed a problem for scientists studying them in the fossil record.
The few Lepidoptera fossils we have are from about 15 million years ago Breinholt said.
Previous research based on anatomical features hypothesized that butterflies are close relatives of large moths but the new tree suggests butterflies are more closely related to small (micro) moths Kawahara said.
The study also suggests butterflies are the ancestral group to the tens of thousands of moth species on the planet
and the Hedylidae family commonly known as American butterfly-moths were dismissed as moths and found to be true butterflies.
The tree also provides a baseline to test whether diurnal or daytime activity a common butterfly trait evolved much earlier than scientists previously believed possibly at a time
when bats'spread across the planet as a means of escaping these and other nocturnal predators Kawahara said.
Future research will investigate the causes of evolutionary transitions such as diurnal activity across Lepidoptera. Breinholt said although the new tree clarifies our understanding of butterfly
and moth relationships many lineages still need to be examined. I hope this is a starting point for larger studies that account for the great diversity of Lepidoptera Breinholt said.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Florida. The original article was written by Stephenie Livingston.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Panthers prey on ranchers calves, but amount varies, Florida study findsa two-year panther study at two southwest Florida cattle ranches shows that the endangered cats attack
and kill calves but how often that happens can vary greatly by location and landscape.
Caitlin Jacobs a University of Florida master's student in wildlife ecology and conservation conducted the study in
which radio-transmitter tags were put on the ears of 409 calves at two ranches both near Immokalee.
The Florida panther nearly died out with an estimated population thinning to just 20 to 25 panthers by 1995 with conservation efforts helping the cat's numbers grow to an estimated 100 to 160 by 2012.
But the panthers'comeback has not always been helpful to cattle ranchers. One of the ranches Jacobs studied lost 10 calves
or 5 percent of the herd each year to preying panthers while the other lost only one or half a percent of that herd during the same time span.
Both ranches also lost calves to other causes including eight deaths at one ranch and five at the other not attributed to predators.
Overall panther attacks caused the most deaths although panthers weren't the only predator for calves to contend with.
Each ranch also lost at least one ear-tagged calf to a bear attack during the two-year study
while some untagged calves were killed by coyotes and vultures. The ranches'physical geography including open spaces and the proximity of wooded areas in
which the cats can hide and stalk likely have much to do with the different rates she said.
But for the panthers to continue their comeback they rely greatly on the mixed landscape found on ranches which includes forests wetlands prairies and pastures.
Jacobs said she hopes her research helps lead to fruitful policy discussion between state conservation officials
and ranchers perhaps to programs that might pay ranchers to maintain key panther habitat rather than as compensation for difficult-to-track individual calf losses.
The ranching landscape is important for panthers. Land that's used for housing or row crops
or citrus groves doesn't help them the same way; they need those natural areas she said.
and playing sleuth to determine which predator was to blame: panthers coyotes bears or even vultures.
A bite wound to the front or back of the calf's neck was most often the mark of a panther attack she said
and the cats almost always dragged their prey to a hiding spot nearby to revisit later.
Coyote and bear attacks were much more damaging with the calf's body badly bruised
or found to have many external wounds. Jacobs presented her research two weeks ago at the North america Congress for Conservation Biology in Missoula Mont.
The study used bumblebee foragers housed under controlled conditions to test whether they do learn about flowers during pollen collection.
Their results show that bumblebees can individually assess pollen samples and discriminate between them during collection quickly forming preferences for a particular type of pollen.
Since bumblebees don't eat pollen when foraging it was unclear if or how they might be able to assess differences in quality.
and sheltering domesticated animals over harsh winters in conditions that even nowadays we would find challenging. The results also drew a connection between the'Corded Ware'farming settlers--who were likely to have been genetically different to the hunting and fishing communities--and modern day Finns.
Small sturdy cows as draft animalsscientists from the University of Basel by accident found a very small metacarpal bone from a Neolithic cattle among other animal bones found in the lake settlement Twann in Switzerland
The animal to which the bone belonged was exceptionally small with a withers height of only 112 centimeters.
And how many generations did it take to develop such small animals? explains the archaeogenetics specialist Angela Schlumbaum in regards to the significance of the discovery.
which the bone dates could have been trying to create a new smaller and sturdier type of cattle especially suitable as draft animal by intentional crossbreeding with wild aurochs.
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