By understanding the entire genus at a genome level we have a whole new pool of genetic variation that can be used to combat pests
One example he said would be adding disease resistance genes from all of the wild rice varieties to a species of cultivated rice creating a new super-crop that is resistant to diseases and pests.
A new mango drink enriched with antioxidants from mas cotekresearchers at the Universiti Teknologi MARA have enhanced the antioxidants present in mango fruit drink by adding the extracts of naturally occuring traditional herbs in Malaysia.
The above story is provided based on materials by Universiti Teknologi MARA (Uitm. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
and pests like the filbert weevil and filbert moth harbored by the duff and litter on the ground.
People strategically burned in the fall after the first rain to hit a vulnerable time in the life cycle of the pests
In order to study the effect of changes in agricultural practices on Midwest river discharge the researchers focused on Iowa's Raccoon River at Van Meter Iowa.
and corn harvested acreage in the Raccoon River watershed. In times of flood and in times of drought water flow rates were exacerbated by more or less agriculture respectively.
#Light pollution may affect love lives of birds in the Viennese Forestsartificial light in cities exerts negative effects on humans animals and their environment.
In an ongoing research project behavioral biologists at Vetmeduni Vienna are investigating how blue tits in the Viennese Forests react to light pollution.
The study might help to understand effects of light-at-night on reproductive behavior of birds.
In consequence it could help developing concepts minimizing negative effects on the lives of animals and the ecological system by reducing light sources in specific regions.
Light is an important Zeitgeber especially for birds Based on light birds know when it is time to mate breed forage
If the natural day and night rhythms are affected by artificial light the natural behavioral patterns of the animals may also change.
and Herbert Hoi from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology at the Vetmeduni Vienna are interested in the effects of light-at-night in wild birds.
There are studies investigating the effect of artificial light on the orientation and activity of birds.
but also activity patterns in birds to a great extent study coordinator Mahr explains. The Viennese research team is one of the first to experimentally test the effects of artificial light in the natural environment of animals by actively manipulating ambient light conditions.
The team is interested particularly in the reproductive behavior of blue tits in the Viennese Forests. Blue tits seem to be good model species for this study
because we know a lot about their mating and reproductive behaviour. Besides they frequently breed in cities
and therefore are exposed to artificial light Mahr states. Research using LED lights in the forestover a period of about three weeks LED lights illuminated various areas of the Viennese Forests for two additional hours in the morning before sunrise and in the evening after sunset.
In this period scientists examined activity patterns such as singing and mating behavior growth and development of the nestlings as well as stress hormones.
but does it also affect the development of nestlings? Mahr states. A well-known phenomenon that can be found in chicken farming is the manipulation of the day
and night rhythm in order to make the animals lay more eggs. Does light pollution affect the honesty of sexual signals?
We assume that light at night affects the birds'strategies of choosing partners. Males for instance like to be in the limelight
Besides male blue tits are morning singers. Particularly fit males start to sing pre-dawn songs.
We also know that female blue tits tend to be unfaithful to their partners but do so covertly.
Therefore we want to find out whether artificial light generates a certain conflict between the sexes says Mahr.
and thus impose additional stress on the fledglings. Light possibly has impact on the entire ecological system of the woodsmore light may also affect other living beings in the Viennese Forests.
Insects may for instance be affected. They are an important source of food for many inhabitants of the woods
The research project Does Light Pollution affect the Breeding Performance of wild Blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) in the Viennese Forest?
#Moose drool inhibits growth of toxic fungussome sticky research out of York University shows a surprisingly effective way to fight against a certain species of toxic grass fungus:
moose saliva (yesâ#moose saliva. Published in this month's Biology Letters Ungulate saliva inhibits a grass-endophyte mutualism shows that moose
and reindeer saliva when applied to red fescue grass (which hosts a fungus called epichloã festucae that produces the toxin ergovaline) results in slower fungus growth and less toxicity.
Plants have evolved defense mechanisms to protect themselves such as thorns bitter-tasting berries and in the case of certain types of grass by harbouring toxic fungus deep within them that can be dangerous
or even fatal for grazing animals says York U Biology Professor Dawn Bazely who worked with University of Cambridge researcher Andrew Tanentzap and York U researcher Mark Vicari
We wanted to find out how moose were able to eat such large quantities of this grass without negative effects.
Inspired by an earlier study that showed that moose grazing and saliva distribution can have a positive effect on plant growth the research team set out to test an interesting hypothesis
--whether moose saliva may in fact detoxify the grass before it is eaten. Working in partnership with the Toronto Zoo the team collected saliva samples from moose and reindeer
which they then smeared onto clipped samples of red fescue grass carrying the toxic fungus simulating the effect of grazing.
because moose tend to graze within a defined home range it's possible that certain groups of plants are receiving repeated exposure to the moose saliva
We know that animals can remember if certain plants have made them feel ill and they may avoid these plants in future says Bazely.
This study the first evidence to our knowledge of herbivore saliva being shown to'fight back 'and slow down the growth of the fungus.
and widely used during the 1970s as a safer replacement for DDT It was used on crops ornamental plants livestock and pets.
Supports earlier epigenetic findingswhen Skinner and his colleagues exposed gestating rats to methoxychlor at a range typical of high environmental exposures they saw increases in the incidence of kidney disease ovary disease
and off in the progeny of an exposed animal even though its DNA and gene sequences remain unchanged.
Additionally the study identified mutations in the sperm epigenome of great-grandchild male rats. The epigenome functions like a set of switches for regulating gene expression and can be altered by environmental conditions.
and one of the first conducted within the United states. Effective in killing a broad range of insect pests use of neonicotinoid insecticides has increased dramatically over the last decade across the United states particularly in the Midwest.
and other stress factors in the environment possibly associated with honeybee dieoffs. said USGS scientist Kathryn Kuivila the research team leader.
In practice that means good fertility longer life udders that give good protection against infections improved claws and more efficient feed utilisation.
which displayed variation in other words where the animals have different letters. Currently CRV uses approximately 50000 variants the so-called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) for genomic selection by linking SNP patterns of a very large number of animals to characteristics
which are important for robustness. Together with CRV and the other partners in the Breed4food programme the researchers are investigating
#Vasculature of the hive: How honey bees stay coolhoney bees especially the young are highly sensitive to temperature
and Sciences is the first to show that worker bees dissipate excess heat within a hive in process similar to how humans
and other mammals cool themselves through their blood vessels and skin. This study shows how workers effectively dissipate the heat absorbed via heat-shielding a mechanism used to thwart localized heat stressors says Starks.
This discovery also supports the theoretical construct of the bee hive as a superorganism--an entity in
or 122 degrees Fahrenheitprevious research has shown that workers bees among other duties control the thermostat essential to the hive's survival.
When temperatures dip worker bees create heat by contracting their thoracic muscles similar to shivering in mammals.
or--when the heat stress is localized--absorb heat by pressing themselves against the brood nest wall (a behavior known as heat-shielding).
Bonoan and Goldman collected data on seven active honeybee hives that were framed by clear Plexiglas walls.
An eighth hive empty of bees was used as a control. Using a theater light the researchers raised the internal temperature of all eight hives for 15 minutes.
Temperature probes recorded internal temperature throughout the heating portion of the experiment. As anticipated the worker bees pressed their bodies against the heated surfaces near the brood.
Like insect sponges they absorbed the heat which lowered temperatures. After 15 minutes a time brief enough to prevent serious harm to the bees the theater light was turned off.
Immediately following heat movement within the hive and external hive temperatures were tracked via thermal imaging.
Within 10 minutes of cooling temperatures in the active hives were down to safe levels.
Meanwhile the control hive remained at 40 degrees Celsius. Since the control hive did not have bees the differences in temperature were caused likely by worker behavior Starks says.
Using thermal imaging the scientists observed that temperatures increased peripheral to the heated regions of the hive as the brood nest began to cool.
The thermal images clearly showed that the bees had moved physically the absorbed heat in their bodies to previously cooler areas of the hive.
Moving heat from hot to cool areas is reminiscent of the bioheat transfer via the cardiovascular system of mammals says Starks.
#Urban heat boosts some pest populations 200-fold, killing red maplesnew research from North carolina State university shows that urban heat islands are slowly killing red maples in the southeastern United states. One factor is that researchers have found warmer temperatures increase the number
of young produced by the gloomy scale insect--a significant tree pest--by 300 percent which in turn leads to 200 times more adult gloomy scales on urban trees.
We'd been seeing higher numbers of plant-eating insects like the gloomy scale in cities
These findings also raise concerns about potential pest outbreaks as temperatures increase due to global climate change.
We wanted to look at the most important pest species of the most common tree species in urban areas of the southeastern United states says Dr. Steve Frank an assistant professor of entomology at NC State and senior author of the papers.
This can diminish predator and parasitoid communities and their ability to control pests. However it also makes cities hotter than rural areas.
The researchers collected data on a wide variety of ecological variables that could affect gloomy scale populations including habitat characteristics the temperature at each tree site and the abundance of predators and parasitoids.
Temperature was the most important predictor of gloomy scale abundance--the warmer it was the more scale insects we found Dale says.
That supports the differences we saw in scale insect abundance on the trees. Populations at the warmest sites were over 200 times more abundant than those at the coolest sites.
and other pest species. The research on scale insect abundance is published in Urban warming trumps natural enemy regulation of herbivorous pests which is forthcoming from the journal Ecological Applications.
The research on the overall impact of urban heat on red maples is in The effects of urban warming on herbivore abundance and street tree condition
The Ecological Applications study's findings are also consistent with an earlier study from Frank's lab that found another scale insect species is more abundant at warmer temperatures due to increased survival rates.
and rising temperatures associated with global climate change could lead to increases in scale insect populations which could have correspondingly negative effects on trees like the red maple Dale says.
and Maine's only native rabbit after new research based on genetic monitoring has found that in the last decade cottontail populations in northern New england have become more isolated
The endangered New england cottontail is now is at risk of becoming extinct in the region according to NH Agricultural Experiment Station researchers at the University of New hampshire College of Life sciences
and Agriculture who believe that restoring habitats is the key to saving the species. The New england cottontail is a species of great conservation concern in the Northeast.
New england cottontails have been declining for decades. However NHAES researchers have found that in the last decade the New england cottontail population in New hampshire
and Maine has contracted by 50 percent; a decade ago cottontails were found as far north as Cumberland Maine.
The majority of research on New england cottontails has come out of UNH much of it under the leadership of John Litvaitis professor of wildlife ecology who has studied the New england cottontail for three decades.
Kovach's research expands on this knowledge by using DNA analysis to provide new information on the cottontail's status distribution genetic diversity and dispersal ecology.
The greatest threat and cause of the decline of the New england cottontail is the reduction
and fragmentation of their habitat Kovach said. Fragmentation of habitats occurs when the cottontail's habitat is reduced
or eliminated due to the maturing of forests or land development. Habitats also can become fragmented by roads
Cottontails require thicketed habitats which progress from old fields to young forests. Once you have a more mature forest the cottontail habitat is reduced.
A lot of other species rely on these thicket habitats including bobcats birds and reptiles. Many thicket-dependent species are on decline
and the New england cottontail is a representative species for this kind of habitat and its conservation Kovach said.
Kovach explained that for cottontail and most animal populations to be healthy and grow it is important for adult animals to leave the place where they were born
and relocate to a new habitat which is known as dispersal. There are two main benefits of dispersal:
an animal is not competing with its relatives and dispersal minimizes inbreeding. We have found that it is increasingly difficult for Maine
and New hampshire cottontails to travel the large distances between fragmented habitats necessary to maintain gene flow among populations of cottontails Kovach said.
However certain landscape features such as power line rights-of-way railroad edges and roadsides may support rabbit dispersal as they provided the animal's preferred scrub habitat.
Occasionally underpasses and culverts also may be effective conduits for rabbit travel. The researchers hope that an improved understanding of how the cottontail moves through the landscape will assist wildlife and land managers in species recovery efforts.
Researchers used genetics to study the changes in New england cottontail populations and their dispersal patterns.
To obtain the DNA of the cottontails in this study researchers collected the fecal pellets of 157 New england cottontails in southern Maine and seacoast New hampshire during the winters of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009.
Researchers believe this is the most exhaustive sampling effort in the area to date and likely documented nearly all currently occupied New england cottontail patches in Maine and seacoast New hampshire.
Researchers identified the genetic pattern of individual rabbits and used information about genetic relatedness to make estimates of gene flow.
They identified four major genetic clusters of New england cottontails in the region. A major power line connected some of these populations in the recent past--a finding
This research which was funded in part by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station is presented in the article A multistate analysis of gene flow for the New england cottontail an imperiled habitat specialist in a fragmented landscape in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
but Erika Nowak and her team at Northern Arizona University are determined to aid in its recovery recently rescuing several snakes from ash-filled floods in Oak Creek Canyon following the Slide Fire.
She said Oak Creek is one of the few places where the snake numbers are still somewhat healthy
Additionally the ash covers rocks and small holes making it difficult for the snake to hide while hunting.
Though the snakes can survive for some time without food they will eventually starve to death Nowak explained.
The second was to salvage some of the snakes to ensure we had genetic material from them in captivity
Other contributing factors are habitat degradation causing higher water temperatures and decreased water quality and accidental or intentional killing of snakes by humans.
Scott Nichols institutional veterinarian at NAU and another key player in the preservation efforts drew blood samples from 11 gartersnakes from Oak Creek in order to establish a baseline for the blood levels in the animals.
but also collect blood so we can compare blood values from captive snakes to wild snakes to improve our husbandry efforts.
and females and simulating the natural lifecycle of the snakes including hibernation. One female recently was confirmed pregnant
The team hopes the snakes will thrive and continue to breed so they can eventually be reintroduced into the wild in places like Oak Creek.
The findings are reported in the journal Animal Behaviour. Tagging the bees revealed that about 20 percent of the foraging bees in a hive brought home more than half of the nectar
and pollen gathered to feed the hive. We found that some bees are working very very hard--as we would have expected said University of Illinois Institute for Genomic Biology director Gene E. Robinson who led the research.
But then we found some other bees that were not working as hard as the others. Citizen scientist Paul Tenczar developed the technique for attaching RFID tags to bees and tracking their flight activity with monitors.
He and Neuroscience Program graduate student Claudia Lutz measured the foraging activities of bees in several locations including some in hives in a controlled foraging environment.
Previous studies primarily in ants have found that some social insects work much harder than others in the same colony Robinson said.
This demonstrates that other individuals within the hive also have the capacity to become elites
Are the other animal or animal-derived foods better or worse? New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science conducted in collaboration with scientists in the US compared the environmental costs of various foods
Dr. Ron Milo of the Institute's Plant sciences Department together with his research student Alon Shepon in collaboration with Tamar Makov of Yale university and Dr. Gidon Eshel in New york asked which types of animal
Though many studies have addressed parts of the issue none has done a thorough comparative study that gives a multi-perspective picture of the environmental costs of food derived from animals.
In total eating beef is more costly to the environment by an order of magnitude-about ten times on average-than other animal-derived foods including pork and poultry.
and that beef cattle are responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions than other types of animals. It is published by Climactic Change.
Animals release methane as a result of microorganisms that are involved in their digestive processes and nitrous oxide from decomposing manure.
The developing world is getting better at reducing greenhouse emissions caused by each animal but this improvement is not keeping up with the increasing demand for meat said Caro.
because cattle emit greater quantities of methane and nitrous oxide than other animals. Sheep comprised 9 percent buffalo 7 percent pigs 5 percent and goats 4 percent.
#Mammals metabolize some pesticides to limit their biomagnificationthe concentrations of many historically used and now widely banned pesticides and other toxic chemicals--called legacy contaminants--can become magnified in an animal that eats contaminated food.
However a new study has found that Arctic mammals metabolize some currently used pesticides preventing such'biomagnification.'
'The study appears in the journal Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry. Researchers who studied the vegetation-caribou-wolf food chain in the Bathurst region of Canada say that currently use pesticides enter the food chain
and become concentrated in vegetation but the evidence shows that they are not biomagnified through the diets of their consumers.
and the people of the Arctic who survive by hunting caribou and other animals said first author Adam Morris
. But this is still only a small part of a much larger picture regarding replacement contaminants and how they're behaving compared with their legacy counterparts.
Rain gardens--also known as bioretention cells--are depressions in the landscape that trap stormwater runoff so microbial activity filtration/adsorption
A cross-disciplinary research team studied the impacts of groundcover management systems and nutrient source on soil characteristics tree health and productivity and insect disease and weed management.
#Technology tracks the elusive Nightjarbioacoustic recorders could provide us with vital additional information to help us protect rare and endangered birds such as the European nightjar new research has shown.
The study led by Newcastle University found that newly developed remote survey techniques were twice as effective at detecting rare birds as conventional survey methods.
Using automated equipment to record the nightjars at dawn and dusk when the birds are most active the team found a 217%increased detection rate of the nightjar over those carried out by specialist ornithologists.
Published this month in the academic journal PLOS ONE lead author Mieke Zwart said the findings suggest that automated technology could provide us with an important additional tool to help us survey
and protect rare birds. The results of this research will help conservationists monitor endangered species more effectively explains Mieke who carried out the research as part of her Phd supported by Baker Consultants Ltd
and Wildlife Acoustics Inc. The European nightjar for example is only active at night and is camouflaged very well making it difficult to detect using traditional survey methods.
Using bioacoustics techniques we can more accurately build up a picture of where these birds are population numbers movement and behaviour.
The nightjar--Caprimulgus europaeus--is a migratory species protected under the Birds Directive (Directive 2009/147/EC) and in the UK by the classification of Special Protection Areas (SPAS.
Traditional bird survey methods involve specialist ornithologists conducting field surveys to identify and count the birds they encounter.
But these are time-consuming must be performed by experts and could be inaccurate when surveying species that are difficult to detect.
and analysis software the technology is trained'to automatically recognise the calls of individual species in this case the nightjar.
and could be applied to a wide range of species to give more accurate objective data on bird numbers and distribution.
#Fecal transplants let packrats eat poisonwoodrats lost their ability to eat toxic creosote bushes after antibiotics killed their gut microbes.
Woodrats that never ate the plants were able to do so after receiving fecal transplants with microbes from creosote-eaters University of Utah biologists found.
bacteria in the gut--and not just liver enzymes--are crucial in allowing herbivores to feed on toxic plants says biologist Kevin Kohl a postdoctoral researcher
The study of woodrats also known as packrats raises two concerns according to Kohl and the study's senior author Denise Dearing a professor and chair of biology:
The study of woodrats someday might impact farming practices in arid regions where toxic plants like creosote
Kohl says he'd like to transplant woodrat gut microbes into sheep or goats to find out if that increases their tolerance to toxic foods.
which they use as a defense against herbivores or plant-eating animals. A toxic resin coats the leaves of the creosote bush;
Most mammals are herbivores. Some face serious challenges: their bodies must handle up to hundreds of toxic chemicals from the plants they consume each day.
Plant toxins determine which plants a herbivore can eat says Kohl. Liver enzymes help animals detoxify such poisons.
Researchers previously isolated toxin-degrading microbes from herbivores but Kohl and Dearing say that until now scientists have lacked strong evidence for
what has been conventional wisdom: Gut microbes also help some herbivores eat toxic plants. The study involved desert woodrats (Neotoma lepida)--grayish rodents native to western North american deserts.
Woodrats somehow acquired novel toxin-degrading gut microbes to adapt to climate and vegetation changes that began 17000 years ago.
In a natural climatic event at the end of the last glacial period the Southwest dried out and our major deserts were formed Dearing says.
Creosote which was native to Mexico moved north into the Mojave desert and replaced juniper there
Desert woodrats in the Mojave started eating creosote bushes while desert woodrats in the Great Basin kept eating toxic juniper to
Though slow evolutionary genetic changes in herbivores play an important role in adapting to new diets.
How do woodrats get their tiny but valuable bacterial helpers today? Mammals acquire microbes during birth through contact with their mother's vaginal and fecal microbes Kohl says.
Other possible places to get microbes include leaf surfaces the soil or feces that woodrats collect from other animals.
Speeding Up Dietary Evolution with Fecal Transplantsin an earlier study the Utah researchers showed that the creosote-eating woodrats from the Sonoran
and Mojave deserts had higher proportions of gut microbes that might detoxify creosote while juniper-eating woodrats from the Great Basin had a different set of gut bacteria.
In the new study Dearing and colleagues performed three experiments using two kinds of woodrats â juniper eaters from the Great Basin desert
and creosote eaters from the Mojave desert. They were captured and kept in the lab on a diet of rabbit chow.
In the first experiment the scientists studied the relative abundances of gut-microbe genes in two groups of the creosote-eating Mojave woodrats.
One group was fed rabbit chow containing 1 percent of creosote resin for two days followed by rabbit chow with 2 percent of creosote resin for three days.
The control group was fed only rabbit chow. Gut microbes were removed from the foreguts of both woodrat groups.
DNA was isolated from the microbes to identify genes involved in detoxification. The scientists found that a woodrat's diet determines the composition of its gut microbes.
Mammals are adapted to the plant toxins they eat Kohl says. The guts of creosote-fed woodrats were teeming with microbes that may degrade creosote
while the guts of creosote-free woodrats had only one-fourth the levels of the same gut microbes.
In the second experiment the researchers experimentally removed gut microbes to highlight their dietary role in woodrats.
Antibiotics kill about 90 percent of the gut microbes in animals severely impairing their ability to consume toxic foods.
Two groups of woodrats were pretreated with the antibiotic neomycin in their drinking water. One group was placed on a diet of rabbit chow and creosote resin.
With their gut microbes killed by the antibiotic they were unable to feed on creosote and lost 10 percent of their body weight within 13 days.
The second group ate only rabbit chow and didn't lose weight showing that killing their gut microbes didn't harm them
because they weren't eating toxic creosote. In the third experiment the biologists essentially sped up evolution by using fecal transplants to quickly change populations of microbes living in the woodrats'guts.
They conducted fecal transplants and showed that acquiring new microbes indeed helped woodrats adopt new diets.
Woodrats naturally eat their own and other woodrats'feces. So in the experiment juniper-eating Great Basin woodrats were fed rabbit chow mixed with feces either from other juniper eaters or from creosote-eating Mojave woodrats.
Both woodrat groups then were challenged with a creosote diet. After ingesting feces --and thus gut microbes--from creosote eaters juniper eaters persisted for 11 days on the creosote diet without losing much weight.
Yet 65 percent of the juniper eaters that ate feces of other juniper eaters didn't gain microbes that detoxify creosote
so they lost 10 percent of their weight by day 11 on a creosote diet.
It's not that those woodrats rejected creosote-laced food. They ate as much as the woodrats that were fed feces with creosote-detoxifying microbes.
Instead Kohl and co-authors found that when woodrats didn't get transplants of creosote-detoxifying microbes their urine was more acidic suggesting their livers expended a lot of energy to degrade creosote toxins.
But in juniper eaters that consumed the feces of creosote eaters their newly acquired gut microbes likely detoxified most of the creosote taking the burden off of liver enzymes.
Story Source The above story is provided based on materials by University of Utah. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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