#Involvement of gene in lentivirus infections of sheep, goats has been establishedin her Phd thesis Helena Crespo-Otano has studied the mechanism of the action of the small ruminant lentivirus (SRLV) a type of virus
lentivirus de pequeã os rumiantes Role of the mannose receptor and the polarization of macrophages due to lentivirus infection in small ruminants.
when the virus is allowed to penetrate the cells of the animals. The target cells of these lentiviruses are the macrophages.
As Helena Crespo explained what is observed in the flocks infected by the small ruminant lentivirus is a fall in productivity an increase in mortality caused by secondary infections
and premature culling (the livestock are separated from the flock) of the infected animals which leads to an increase in the restocking rate in the flock and considerable economic losses.
Specifically the so-called MR (mannose receptor) could be a safe door of entry for certain bacteria protozoa parasites and viruses like SRLVS into the target cell
The author of the work studied the role played by this molecule in the development of various pathologies associated with infection So after analysing the MR expression in 124 tissue samples from 31 animals we saw that there was a greater expression of the mannose receptor in the more affected organs.
save endangered animals cheaplychanging cattle fields to forests is a cheap way of tackling climate change
This would cost very little money said senior scientist Dr David Edwards of the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant sciences.
The study also found that letting forests regenerate had a massive impact on the populations of threatened species. In secondary forests in the region researchers found 33 of 40 red-listed bird species that are threatened with extinction.
#Protecting crops from pests, diseasea team of international researchers has uncovered a mechanism by which plants are able to better defend themselves against disease-causing pathogens.
Binding of the chemical to this protein triggers a secondary function that'primes'the plant immune system against future attacks by pests and diseases.
Although their research has been performed in a weed called'Arabidopsis thaliana'the work horse of plant geneticists the team is confident that their discovery can be used for the protection of crops from their enemies.
The flow of nutrients was defined by taking samples from the cow's rumen and omasum.
By means of nutrient flow it is possible to study the processes inside the cow's rumen in the first place
The physiology of the rumen did not limit the intake of forage so the limitation must derive from pasture management factors.
when exposed to perilous situations according to new research from Queen Mary University of London. The study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that past experience of predation causes bumblebees to join other bees already safely feeding on flowers.
Co-author and Phd student Erika Dawson said: Our experiment shows for the first time that when bees find themselves in these predator-infested environments they locate safe places to eat by joining other bees that are already safely feeding on flowers.
The scientists trained bees to differentiate between safe and dangerous environments: when bees landed on a flower associated with danger foam pincers would trap the bee
This simulates an attack by a crab spider a predator that lurks on flowers to catch pollinators
and can hide by changing its colour like a chameleon. In safe environments the bumblebees subsequently chose to feed from flowers at random
but in dangerous environments the bees specifically flew to flowers that were occupied by other bees.
Bumblebees face similar danger when foraging for food. Avoiding being eaten can be tricky as predators are disguised often or undetectable.
The authors suggest that bees use information from other bees to help them to avoid these dangerous situations.
These results show a remarkable flexibility in pollinators'strategic foraging decisions. Bees normally spread themselves out among flowers to minimise competition
but when danger lurks they dine together to seek safety in numbers commented co-author Professor Lars Chittka from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical sciences.
The above story is provided based on materials by Queen Mary University of London. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#Insects represent link for antibiotic resistance traitsthose pesky house flies buzzing around your home or invading your springtime picnic could be doing more harm to human health than you realize.
According to a recent study by Kansas State university published in the Applied and Environmental Microbiology journal insects carry antibiotic-resistant bacteria from one point to another including from food animal farms and wastewater treatment
There are a number of insects that are associated commonly with animals such as house flies and cockroaches said Ludek Zurek K-State professor of microbial ecology
and lead author on the published study. House flies are common where animal manure is produced including in cattle poultry and swine operations.
Cockroaches primarily German cockroaches have become a common pest in confined swine operations. Zurek and his colleagues collected house flies and cockroaches from food animal production locations including swine
and poultry farms as well as wastewater treatment facilities that collect waste from multiple sources including hospitals.
The researchers then genetically analyzed the bacteria in the digestive tract of the insects and compared them to the bacteria present in the animal feces and wastewater.
We found these insects carry the same bacteria found in the animal manure Zurek said.
Then we started sampling insects found in surrounding urban areas including fast food restaurants and again we found house flies with multi-drug resistant bacteria.
The house flies collected from the wastewater treatment plants likewise carried the same bacteria found in the waste itself he said.
House flies collected several miles from the wastewater treatment plants in surrounding urban areas had a lower prevalence of the antibiotic-resistant bacteria than those examined from the facilities themselves
but the bacteria still existed in those urban house flies. The study led the researchers to conclude that insects primarily house flies can pick up antibiotic-resistant bacteria
and disseminate them to surrounding areas. How serious that link is still needs to be investigated
but the potential is clearly there Zurek said. Cockroaches and house flies are highly mobile
and they are attracted to residential areas he said. They are attracted to our food and drinks. They have great potential to move multi-drug resistant bacteria to urban areas.
The resistant strains multiply in the fly and can be left behind on food by fly regurgitation or spitting and defecation.
not only to treat infections in animals but also in helping animals grow. Antibiotics in low doses are added as feed additives primarily in poultry
and swine diets he said. The outcome is that the animals grow faster. At the same time if you use low doses of antibiotics extensively that poses selective pressure on bacteria in the digestive tract of these animals and results in antibiotic resistance.
Humans experiencing more problems with antibiotic resistance could be due to many potential reasons Zurek said including overuse of antibiotics in human medicine and human connection to antibiotic use in food animals.
There are likely many other potential environmental connections as well so it's hard to pinpoint specific infections
and where the antibiotic resistance originated. In addition to the insects Zurek and his research team have showed also that wild birds such as ravens
and crows carry multi-drug antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Wild birds can pick up the antibiotic resistant bacteria from fields where animal manure was used as a fertilizer he said.
We still don't know how significant these birds are as carriers. We just know there are multiple venues where wildlife can acquire resistant strains and move them around in the environment.
Making strides on the issueto help eliminate the potential connection to food animal production the U s. Food
and Drug Administration last December released its first request to antibiotic manufacturers to voluntarily remove antibiotics from the list for animal growth promoters.
All EU countries banned antibiotic use as growth promoters in food animals. Lowering the use of antibiotics in animal industry will be another step to lower prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the environment
Clearly pest management and trying to minimize the pest populations on farms and outside of the farms is one way he said.
House flies aren't just a nuisance. They can carry antibiotic resistant bacteria so they should be taken seriously as a vector.
These practices include better management of pastureland by rotating where animals graze planting better grasses more frequently
The NHLBI group was fortunate to have access to GE pigs through close collaboration with Revivicor Inc. Experiments using these GE pig hearts transplanted in the abdomen of baboons
and B cell immune responses investigators were able to prolong the graft survival in baboons to over one year.
The researchers'next step is to use hearts from the same GE pigs with the same immunosuppression utilized in the current experiments to test their ability to provide full life support by replacing the original baboon heart.
and animals and is found in many foods--on weed control efficacy crop injury and squash yields of yellow squash.
The results were that wherever they protected Sesarma from the pressure of predators the crabs ruthlessly mowed the grasses down.
because overfishing has reduced the predators that would naturally keep the crabs in check. Long-held beliefs that physical forces rather than disrupted food webs are killing the marshes just aren't true Bertness said.
and then protected it from all herbivores including the crabs. To assess whether any site had too much nitrogen they took leaves of the grasses at each site back to the lab ground them up
Later in July they measured Sesarma populations (based on how many they could trap. In August they tethered crabs to make them more vulnerable to predators
and measured how much predation there was. They even measured how hard the marsh soil was at each site.
but they also implemented a direct test of the Sesarma herbivory hypothesis. They erected cages on some plots that could protect the crabs from predators.
As controls for the experiment they put cages on some patches that didn't exclude predators
Sure enough the team reported in Ecology Letters that excluding predators for a single growing season rapidly led to a more than 100-percent increase in Sesarma herbivory a more than 60-percent decrease in aboveground cordgrass biomass a more than 95-percent
#Whitefly confused by cacophony of smellsbombarding pests with smells from many different plants temporarily confuses them
'--whereby animals and humans become inefficient at a task when they are bombarded with lots of distracting information--the team pumped a mixture of plant smells into a greenhouse growing tomato plants.
Exposing the whitefly to a heady aroma of cucumber courgette watercress watermelon cabbage and bean the team found the insects became temporarily disorientated.
Like other insect pests whitefly feed by pushing their long mouthpiece--or stylets--into the leaf until it reaches the plant's main source of nutrients travelling through the phloem.
Weaving their way between the plant cells to reach the sap is technically challenging and the team found the whiteflies failed to feed
while they were being bombarded with the different plant chemicals. Publishing their findings this week in the academic journal Agronomy of Sustainable Development research leads Dr Colin Tosh
and Dr Barry Brogan said this method of control could be an important step towards a more sustainable method of pest control.
--or at least not properly or efficiently--and it's the same for the whitefly. Whiteflies use their sense of smell to locate tomato plants.
By bombarding its senses with a range of different smells we create'sensory confusion 'and the result is that the insect becomes disorientated
and is feed unable to. Because the effect is temporary--we saw it last no more than 15 hours--it's unlikely this method alone could be used to control crop pests.
But this is an easy and safe way of buying the plants time until their own chemical defense mechanisms kick in.
Used in conjunction with other methods sensory confusion opens up a whole new area in sustainable pest control.
Trialeurodes vaporariorum--or whitefly--is a major worldwide pest of greenhouse crops and is controlled traditionally using chemical pesticides or biological methods such as parasites.
Previous studies have shown that whitefly become'restless 'when a number of plant species are mixed together rather than being exposed to a single crop.
Measuring the time it took from the insect settling on a plant to accessing the plant sap the team showed that hardly any of the whiteflies exposed to a range of smells started feeding from the phloem within 15 hours from the time of exposure.
By comparison the majority of whiteflies exposed to just the single smell released by the tomato plants started feeding within this time.
which is unpleasant to the predator. But this response doesn't happen immediately so if we can confuse the insects long enough to give the plants time to defend themselves this may go someway to reducing crop losses.
The team have started now the next phase of the study to investigate ways of helping plants to talk to each other
The warming of Finland's climate is already evident in Finnish fauna; birds for example are migrating earlier in the spring and later in the autumn.
Food shortages expectedthe estimated future crop yields will not be feed enough to the world in 2015. The climate has changed already and affected crop yields.
Warming has resulted already in plankton fish and invertebrate communities shifting northwards. In northern marine areas the diversity and biomass of fish populations have increased.
In laboratory experiments Zhang and her colleagues were able to restore Nrf2 levels in cirrhotic liver tissue by inactivating Hrd1 effectively reversing liver cirrhosis in mice.
The current scarcity of dwarf birch seems to be a combination of the effects of global warming deer grazing and burning plants and trees on moors.
of Ornithology's Team Sapsucker is taking on another big challenge. In early May the team will head to the American Southwest following a new birding route they call El Gigante.
and California says Sapsucker captain Chris Wood. It's a brand-new route for us with new challenges and lots of unknowns.
We'll be looking for some really great birds such as the Elegant Trogon Phainopepla and Mountain quail.
The Sapsuckers'route will take them through areas where habitat for birds and other animals is under heavy pressure from changes in land use and severe ongoing drought.
In Arizona's Santa Rita Mountains forests of oaks and pines rise up from dry desert.
and landowners determine the best ways to target bird and habitat conservation. These same techniques are helping us identify the most important times
and places to provide habitat for migrating shorebirds and waterfowl in the Pacific Flyway. To learn more about the Sapsuckers'Big Day in the Southwest visit www. birds. cornell. edu/Bigdaystory Source:
The above story is provided based on materials by Cornell University. The original article was written by Joe Schwartz.
As global demand for beef and animal feed increased in the early 2000s annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged to more than 20000 km2 per year--prompting global outrage
#Take the bat, leave the candy: The food environment of youth baseballâ#Take me out to the ballgameâ##doesnâ##t exactly conjure up images of apple slices and kale chips.
#Getting at the root of mountain pine beetles rapid habitat expansionthe mountain pine beetle has wreaked havoc in North america across forests from the American Southwest to British columbia
Because of its importance and impact on forestry the mountain pine beetle's genome has been sequenced recently. Using this new resource authors Janes et al. examined how the pine beetle could undergo such rapid habitat range expansion
and if population genetics and the cataloguing of genome wide mutations could shed any light on possible molecular causes of the outbreak.
From beetles collected at 27 sites in Alberta and British columbia they looked for any patterns amongst their catalog of 1536 mutations (single-nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPS).
and conclude that the mountain pine beetle may have been able to spread by adjusting its cellular and metabolic functions to better withstand cooler climates
Such information could give important new clues for the forestry industry to help curb the current devastation of North american forests from this pest.
Bark beetles change Rocky mountain stream flows, affect water qualityon Earth Week--and in fact every week now--trees in mountains across the western United states are dying thanks to an infestation of bark beetles that reproduce in the trees'inner bark.
Some species of the beetles such as the mountain pine beetle attack and kill live trees. Others live in dead weakened or dying hosts.
In Colorado alone the mountain pine beetle has caused the deaths of more than 3. 4 million acres of pine trees.
Dead trees don't drink waterthe unprecedented tree deaths caused by these beetles provided a new approach to estimating the interaction of trees with the water cycle in mountain headwaters like those of the Colorado
Large-scale tree death due to pine beetles has many negative effects says Tom Torgersen of NSF's Directorate for Geosciences and lead WSC program director.
The new results show that the fraction of late-summer groundwater flows from affected watersheds is about 30 percent higher after beetles have infested an area compared with watersheds with less severe beetle attacks.
In bark beetle-infested watersheds. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by National Science Foundation.
when people at several different spots around the globe brought plants under cultivation and domesticated animals for transport food or fiber.
And why only about five of the 148 species of large wild mammalian herbivores or omnivores?
or animals been domesticated in modern times? If nothing else the tiny percentages of domesticates suggests there are limitations to human agency
donkeys and cats. Olsen studies rice and cassava and is interested currently in rice mimics weeds that look enough like rice that they fly under the radar even
when rice fields are handweeded. Both Marshall and Olsen contributed articles to the special PNAS issue
because it brought together people working on plants and animals and archeologists and geneticists. I hadn't really thought much about animal domestication
Anyone familiar with the huge variety of dog breeds all of which belong to the same subspecies of the gray wolf has some appreciation of the power of selective breeding to alter appearance and behavior.
or for that matter domesticated animals accidentally or deliberately bred with wild relatives? Recent evidence that cereal crops such as wheat or barley evolved domestication traits much more slowly than had been thought has led to renewed interest in the idea that selection during domestication may have been partly accidental.
and animals said Marshall. We used to think cats and dogs were real outliers in the animal domestication process
because they were attracted to human settlements for food and in some sense domesticated themselves. But new research is showing that other domesticated animals may be more like cats
and dogs than we thought. Once animals such as donkeys or cattle were caught Marshall said the changes humans sought to make were pretty minimal.
Really it just came down to culling a few of the males and breeding all of the females.
Even today she points out African pastoralists can afford to kill only four out of every 100 cows
or they run the risk that drought and disease will wipe out the entire herd. So I think outside of industrialized societies
In the donkeys and other transport animals it's not affiliative tame behavior the herders want Marshall said.
What they care about more than anything else is that their animals stay alive. So artificial selection is acting in the same direction as natural selection
or maybe pushing even harder because humans often place animals in harsher conditions than natural ones.
because plants and animals were domesticated before humans invented writing and so figuring out what happened has been a matter of making do limited with the evidence that has survived.
or size differences or pathology that might plausibly be related to animals living with people. Sometimes there aren't morphological shifts that are easy to find
If we've got concentrations of dung that means animals were being corralled she said. Olsen on the other hand seeks to identify genes in modern crop species that are associated with domestication traits in the plant such as an erect rather than a sprawling architecture.
One example is the terra preta in the Amazon basin which bears silent witness to the presence of a Pre-columbian agricultural society in
Corn stover--the stalks leaves and cobs in cornfields after harvest--has been considered a ready resource for cellulosic ethanol production.
and animals will go extinct over the next century because of human activities mostly due to our agricultural methods.
The study focused on bat populations within a mosaic of forest fragments and farmland in Costa rica and on islands in a large lake in Panama.
The researchers also did a meta-analysis of 29 studies of more than 700 bat species to bolster
For example the island theory predicted that the Costa rican coffee plantations would have inadequate habitat to sustain a single species of bat.
In reality plantations in the countryside typically supported 18 bat species compared to the 23 to 28 supported by tropical forest fragments and nature reserves.
and wetlands and pest control provided by birds and bats. The study's findings point to the need for new approaches that integrate conservation
and animals into the crops pets and livestock we know today. Generally any mutations that are widespread in domestic plants
and animals but absent from their wild relatives are assumed to have played a key role in the process spreading as people
Chickens are descended from a wild bird called the Red Junglefowl that humans started raising roughly 4000-5000 years ago in South Asia.
To pinpoint the genetic changes that transformed this shy wild bird into the chickens we know today researchers analyzed DNA from the skeletal remains of 81 chickens retrieved from a dozen archeological sites across Europe dating from 200 to 2300 years old.
and other wild birds don't have. When the team compared the ancient sequences to the DNA of modern chickens only one of the ancient chickens had the yellow skin so common in chickens today.
It demonstrates that the pets and livestock we know today--dogs chickens horses cows--are probably radically different from the ones our great-great-grandparents knew he added. â#They are subjected to the whim of human fancy
and control so radical change in the way they look can be achieved in very few generations.
The U s. North has the dubious distinction of having the greatest number of invasive insects
A low propensity or low capacity for forest management reduces options for addressing perceived problems such as low forest diversity invasive species and other insects or disease problems.
The U s. Fish and Wildlife Service reported that last year the range-wide population of the lesser prairie chicken declined to a record low of 17616 birds an almost 50 percent reduction from the 2012 population estimate.
and Coloradoâ#ave a conservation plan in place with a population goal of 67000 birds range-wide for a 10-year average. â#oethat doesnâ##t mean that we have to go from the current estimate of about 17000 birds up to
and then having once exceeded the goal change the status againâ#Lee said. â#oeit means having 67000 birds consistently for a 10-year timeframe. â#Lee said the listing might pose a challenge for some landowners particularly in western Kansas
Significant habitat changes must occur to meet the 67000-bird decade goal and those changes will most likely have to come from livestock ranchers
#East African honeybees safe from invasive pests...for nowseveral parasites and pathogens that devastate honeybees in Europe Asia
and the United states are spreading across East Africa but do not appear to be impacting native honeybee populations at this time according to an international team of researchers.
The invasive pests include including Nosema microsporidia and Varroa mites. Our East African honeybees appear to be resilient to these invasive pests
which suggests to us that the chemicals used to control pests in Europe Asia and the United states currently are not necessary in East Africa said Elliud Muli senior lecturer in the Department of Biological sciences South Eastern Kenya University and researcher at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology
Kenya. The team first discovered Varroa mites in Kenya in 2009. This new study also provides baseline data for future analyses of possible threats to African honeybee populations.
Kenyan beekeepers believe that bee populations have been experiencing declines in recent years but our results suggest that the common causes for colony losses in the United states
and Europe--parasites pathogens and pesticides--do not seem to be affecting Kenyan bees at least not yet said Christina Grozinger professor of entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research Penn State.
Some of our preliminary data suggest that the loss of habitat and drought impacting flowering plants from
which the bees get all their food may be the more important factor driving these declines.
According to Harland Patch research scientist in entomology Penn State not only are flowering plants important for honeybees
but the insects are important for plants as well. Honeybees are pollinators of untold numbers of plants in every ecosystem on the African continent Patch said.
They pollinate many food crops as well as those important for economic development and their products like honey
and wax are vital to the livelihood of many families. People say the greatest animal in Africa is the lion
or the elephant but honeybees are more essential and their decline would have profound impacts across the continent.
In 2010 the researchers conducted a nationwide survey of 24 locations across Kenya to evaluate the numbers
and sizes of honeybee colonies assess the presence or absence of Varroa and Nosema parasites and viruses identify
and measure pesticide contaminants in hives and determine the genetic composition of the colonies. This is the first comprehensive survey of bee health in East Africa where we have examined diseases genetics
The researchers found that Varroa mites were present throughout Kenya except in the remote north.
In addition Varroa numbers increased with elevation suggesting that environmental factors may play a role in honeybee host-parasite interactions.
while Varroa infestation dramatically reduces honeybee colony survival in the United states and Europe in Kenya its presence alone does not appear to impact colony size.
Of the seven common honeybee viruses in the United states and Europe the team only identified three species
The Africanized bees--the so-called'killer bees'--in The americas seem to be having no problem with Varroa or diseases so
I would not be surprised to find they have some innate genetic tolerance to these pests Patch said.
We suspect the seemingly greater tolerance of African bees to these pests over the western bees is a combination of genes and environment.
Given their findings that African honeybees currently appear to be resilient to the effects of parasites
despite the heavy presence of recently introduced Varroa mites and it suggests that the approach to manage these pests should not follow the application of pesticides as has been done in the western world said Muli.
These newly introduced pests to Africa might have long-term implications for the honeybee populations.
As these new parasites and pathogens become more widespread as pesticide use increases and as landscape degradation increases due to increased urbanization farming and climate change we expect to see the combination of all these factors negatively impact the bees in the future Grozinger said.
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