2007 and 2008, the researchers found that agricultural production provides the lion s share of greenhouse-gas emissions from the food system,
'Tree of life'constructed for all living bird speciesscientists have mapped the evolutionary relationships among all 9,
993 of the world's known living bird species. The study, published today in Nature1,
is an ambitious project that uses DNA-sequence data to create a phylogenetic tree a branching map of evolutionary relationships among species that also links global bird speciation rates across space and time."
to divide bird species into 158 clades, well-established groups believed to have evolved from a common ancestor2.
Erica Olsen/FLPATHERE are known nearly 10,000 species of birds. Species diversify over time, but it's difficult to account for a species past movements without complete fossil evidence.
"This is certainly not the last word on phylogeny of birds. We hope it will trigger additional efforts to continue improving our understanding of the avian tree of life
Bid to curb fried-food chemical goes coldthe rich, roasted aroma of coffee or the golden-brown colour of crispy French fries are enough to set most mouths watering.
Swedish scientists discovered in 2002 that a wide range of baked and fried goods contain worryingly high levels of acrylamide1 a simple organic molecule that is a neuro  toxin and carcinogen in rats.
Badger cull stalled The british government on 23 Â October delayed a controversial cull of badgers (Meles meles) that has provoked years of heated debate among researchers, farmers and politicians.
which badgers can transmit to cattle (see Nature 490,317-318; 2012) but it will now take place no sooner than next summer.
Waldrappteamiconic ibis shot A bird that had been reared hand by researchers as part of a project to save a rare species of ibis was killed by poachers in Italy on 13 october.
Goja (pictured), a northern bald ibis (Geronticus eremita), had been trained to migrate from a breeding area in Germany to wintering grounds in Italy
and was the first bird in the project to fly back unaided to Germany in summer 2011.
The bird has been extinct in the wild in Europe for nearly 400 years. See go. nature. com/4buekb for more.
No native microbes were found by an early analysis of the ice on the drill used by a Russian team to penetrate Lake Vostok, a body of water buried deep under Antarctica s ice, in February.
and 15 universities issued a declaration affirming that their research involves animals only where other avenues are not possible,
Chimp haven The US National institutes of health (NIH) said on 17 Â October that it will send 20 Â chimpanzees to permanent retirement in a federally funded sanctuary by August 2013 double the number it announced last month.
The animals are among 110 Â NIH-owned chimpanzees that the agency is removing from the New Iberia Research center in Lafayette, Louisiana Officials at the 80-hectare Chimp Haven sanctuary in Keithville,
Louisiana, say that they would like to accommodate all the animals, but need an extra US$2. 55 Â million to build the necessary structures.
Primates were always tree-dwellersprimates love to climb and most make their homes high up in the branches of trees,
Now, the discovery of some ankle bones is making it look likely that primates were arboreal from the very beginning.
The earliest primate, Purgatorius, lived around 65 million years ago and is well known from the same fossil beds in Montana that yield tyrannosaurs just a few metres deeper down.
as is typical with mammals, they have all been survived teeth that owing to the presence of protective enamel.
The teeth have provided enough information for palaeontologists to say that the animals ate insects and plants but have yielded little information on where the creatures lived.
the ankle bones are the right size for pairing with all of the teeth that have been collected in the same area and look a lot like the ankles of later primates.
"The anatomy of these specimens certainly matches that of known Paleocene primates, but a skull or a full skeleton would tell us so much more,
Primate or not, the ankle bones suggest considerable flexibility.""This animal s foot clearly had a wide range of motion,
Moreover, the trait is found almost exclusively in arboreal animals.""We really think this closes the question of where the first primates were living,
says Chester. Yet why they lived in trees is still being explored.""They weren t being chased up there by dinosaurs.
"We think there is a connection here between primates and plant evolution, with fruits playing a role in luring them up,
show that low-level exposure to a combination of two pesticides is more harmful to bumblebee colonies than either pesticide on its own.
But whereas children recreating these vicious displays simply ram plastic models of the animals together in a straight line,
"The lesions we were seeing were strikingly similar to those that we often see on the skulls of modern mammals that ram heads,
But the film reflects attitudes that have thwarted Van Eenennaam s research into the genetic modification of animals to reduce food costs
says Mark Westhusin, who works on GE animals at Texas A&m University in College Station."
"but good luck getting money for GE animals. Inquiries By nature reveal that fewer than 0. 1%of research grants from the US Department of agriculture (USDA) have gone to work on GE food animals since 1999, in part because of a poor public image.
In one case, James Murray, another geneticist at the University of California, Davis, was told in 2003 that the USDA had rejected his proposal to develop a goat that produces milk rich in human lysozymes enzymes that fight diarrhoeal disease
because the agency felt that"the general public would not accept such animals. Van Eenennaam once hoped to engineer a cow that produced milk rich in omega-3 fats,
but a spokesperson says that it has considered not work on GE animals to be the best use of its funding.
For GE animals that have been developed despite these hurdles market approval has stalled. On 27 september, Van Eenennaam was a panellist at a meeting in WASHINGTON DC,
which has yet to issue a decision on any GE food animal submitted for approval (see Off the table).
A brief history of some of the genetically engineered food animals submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for review.
No such animal has yet been approved.""Aquabounty has done everything they are required legally to do, and, yes or no, now we just want an official word from the FDA,
The FDA evaluates animals as strictly as it does drugs. In the 17 Â years that the salmon has been under review
More than 20 GE food animals are in development in China, he says, including a fast-growing carp and cows that produce milk with reduced allergenic potential.
because he did not have permission to speak to the press predicts that approval for the animals will lag
Even in the United kingdom where public opposition to GE plants and animals has been fierce, researchers seem to be better off than their US counterparts.
The Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council (BBSRC) supports work on GE food animals, including chickens engineered to be resistant to the bird-flu virus. A BBSRC spokesperson told Nature:"
Badger battle erupts in Englandengland s West country is a bucolic landscape of winding country lanes and gently rolling pastures.
At issue is the badger (Meles meles), one of the largest predators left in The british Isles after millennia of human occupation.
As early as this week, government-sanctioned hunters will begin a pilot effort to cull the badgers.
In the United states, environmentalists and ranchers spar over wolves, which have been reintroduced to many states. In Western australia
But the badger question stands out in one distinctive way: it has been studied systematically for more than a decade by scientists at some of England s top universities.
Badgers do carry TB and can infect cows through direct and indirect contact, and years of research and tens of millions of pounds have gone into studying
collecting road kill and performing autopsies on more than a thousand badgers to check for TB. The results are discussed at length in a 287-page UK government study and in numerous scientific papers
The schism reveals an uneasy truth about the badger issue: science doesn t give a clear answer about what to do.
and infected animals are destroyed. And, uncomfortable as it is for animal-lovers, killing large numbers of badgers does help to reduce levels of bovine TB.
Source: DEFRATHE trial backed by Krebs (officially known as the Randomised Badger Culling Trial, or RBCT) showed a 23%reduction in bovine TB in the area of the cull,
although the areas immediately outside the trial area saw an increase of roughly 25%a consequence of badgers extending their normal range.
Reviewing the data, scientists decided in 2011 that culling about 70%of the badgers in larger areas would lead to an overall reduction in bovine TB of up to 16%.
%There is little disagreement among scientists about the 16%figure, says Christl Donnelly, a statistician at Imperial College London,
me, says Jack Reedy, spokesman for the Badger Trust, a nonprofit organization based in East Grinstead, UK,
that opposes the killing of badgers. He adds that controlling cattle movements and increasing TB screening on farms would have a greater impact.
as well as what the government described as a"science-led policy of killing badgers in areas of high bovine TB.
to prevent infected badgers from roaming in or out of the cull zone. For many scientists,
as it is virtually impossible to determine badger populations in advance of actually killing them. On 14 october 31 academics warned in a letter to The Observer newspaper that
because infected badgers will begin to roam more widely.""They say that their policy will be based science
and the easiest something to do is to shoot badgers. Other parts of The british Isles have taken already action.
The irish have used targeted snare-trapping to all but eliminate badgers from selected areas. That system would be more affordable
In Wales, officials have begun an expensive campaign to immunize badgers against TB. Both techniques depend on the peculiarities of local geography and badger populations,
but they reflect the range of approaches that can be supported by the scientific evidence. Policy-makers
and conservationists concede that badgers are a major reservoir for the disease.""They may not be singing from the same hymn sheet,
5 11 october 2012photas/TASS/PAMAMMOTH unearthed from Siberian mud A remarkably well-preserved 30,000-year-old mammoth was revealed on 4 october,
) GM study slammed A study claiming that rats fed Monsanto's genetically modified NK603 maize (corn) or its companion glyphosate-based herbicide,
the Dragon craft was due to dock with the space station on 10 october. The launch saw one engine fail,
its Falcon 9 rocket was designed to handle such a problem. see go. nature. com/rvdn4f for more.
Animals engineered with pinpoint accuracytwo genetically engineered farm animals reported today illustrate how far from Frankenstein s stitched-together monster animal biotechnology has come.
One of those animals, a cow, secretes milk that lacks an allergy-inducing protein because researchers accurately blocked its production using the technique of RNA interference1.
In mice, they discovered a short chunk of RNA, called a microrna, that targeted beta-lactoglobulin MESSENGER RNA directly to prevent its translation.
and cows can now be thought of as big mice, but we are moving in that direction,
Originally, engineered animals were produced with the aim of making food safer, healthier and more abundant.
Yet despite years of investment, almost no animal has been approved by regulatory agencies around the world. Wagner says he has tasted not the milk from his special cow
In rats, they found that upping the levels of that sugar could reduce the severity of NEC on its own3.
Mexico s primary research funding agency, the National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT), stands to get the lion s share of new science funds,
so that they could work on animals all with the same genome. One set of clones was created at the National Swine Resource and Research center (NSRRC) in Columbia, Missouri,
Pigs are more expensive to keep than rodents, and they reproduce more slowly. But the similarities between pig and human anatomy and physiology can trump the drawbacks.
unlike mouse models, developed symptoms resembling those in humans. Geneticist and veterinarian Eckhard Wolf at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, has exploited the similarity between the human
and pig gastrointestinal system and metabolism like us, pigs will eat almost anything and then suffer for it to develop models of diabetes.
Mice with the transgene developed unexpectedly severe diabetes, but the pigs have a more subtle pre-diabetic condition that better models the human disease."
"This shows the importance of using an animal with a relevant physiology, says Wolf. Pig models are now being developed for other common conditions,
including Alzheimer s disease, cancer and muscular dystrophy. This work will be enriched by the discovery, reported in the genome paper,
or even having sex causes the animals to die suddenly4. It then became possible to test for the gene and select pig stocks free of it.
and stalks when insects drilled into the plant, creating a convenient landing pad of dying tissue for the fungus.
and many of them can also occasionally infect animals or people. Leonard has observed one other intriguing characteristic of E. rostratum in his lab:
because the country was relatively free of coconut pests and diseases. In an attempt to contain the disease, movement of coconuts and coconut palms, both from the gene bank and for commercial reasons,
Fungus that controls zombie-ants has own fungal stalkeran article by Scientific American. An unsuspecting worker ant in Brazil's rainforest leaves its nest one morning.
But instead of following the well-worn treetop paths of its nest mates, this ant stumbles along clumsily,
walking in aimless circles, convulsing from time to time. At high noon, as if programmed, the ant plunges its mandibles into the juicy main vein of a leaf and soon dies.
Within days the stem of a fungus sprouts from the dead ant's head. After growing a stalk,
where they can be picked up by other passing ants. This strange cycle of undead life and death has been documented well
and the Camponotini carpenter ants that it infects. Fossil evidence implies that this zombifying infection might have been happening for at least 48 million years.
Recent research also suggests that different species of the fungus might specialize to infect different groups of ants across the globe.
And close examination of the infected ant corpses has revealed an even newer level of spooky savagery other fungi often parasitize the zombie-ant fungus parasite itself.
Deadly infection This clever Ophiocordyceps fungus depends on ants to reproduce and spread, but it has found an abundant host animal.
As Hughes notes, ants have been incredibly successful, currently comprising an estimated half of all insect biomass worldwide.
One of the first clues that a tropical carpenter ant has become infected with Ophiocordyceps is that it will leave the dry tree canopy
and descend to the humid forest floor, staggering over debris and plants. Infected ants behave as zombies,
Hughes and his colleagues wrote in a 2011 BMC Ecology paper describing some of the latest findings.
The ant will walk randomly, displaying convulsions that make them fall down and thus preclude them from returning to the canopy,
however, be blamed on the ant. While the manipulated individual may look like an ant, it represents a fungal genome expressing fungal behavior through the body of an ant,
the researchers noted in the paper. Hence the zombie designation. More from Scientific American. Evans suggests that a nerve toxin spurred on by the fungus is at least partly to blame
judging from the uncoordinated movements and hyperactivity of the ants infected, he says. Ants that have been dissected at this stage of infection reveal heads already full of fungal cells.
Eventually, an affected ant will stop on the underside of one leaf, roughly 25 centimeters from the forest floor,
and clamp down on the leaf's main vein. This position appears to be optimal for the fungus's later stage in
which it ejects spores onto the soil directly below.)Biting leaves is not normal ant behavior.
This atrophy is prompted by metabolites that purge the muscle cells of mitochondria and sarcoplasmic reticulum (which provide energy and signals), according to the BMC Ecology research.
when the infected ant bites onto the leaf vein in it's so-called death grip this atrophy causes it to have lockjaw,
the ant would fall to the ground, destroying the launching point for the fungus's spores.
By that stage, cells from the fungus have grown even more numerous in the ant's body.
They have proliferated around the ant's brain and between surrounding muscle fibers but have not entered the brain,
Ants appear to die within six hours after their final bite. About two to three days later a fungal stalk will start to emerge from the back of the ant's head.
After maturing over the course of weeks the stalk's head will shoot spores onto the soil below.
Foraging worker ants can unwittingly pick up spores as they pass by. The death of an ant outside of its colony and subsequent growth of the fungal stalk might be key adaptations of the fungus,
Ants quickly remove dead nest mates so that dying in the nest would not allow sufficient time for stalk development
and spore release before the dead host ant was ejected, Hughes and his colleagues noted in their BMC Ecology paper.
The doomed ants do not wander too far afield, often ending up within meters of their familiar territory.
And large groups of dead ants are commonly found near colonies. These graveyards can contain anywhere from 50 to hundreds of corpses,
says Sandra Andersen, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, who has studied many of these sites.
Ants'complex and large social groups are thought to be one of the keys to their global abundance.
The fungus has capitalized on ants'social behavior. Sociality can be thought of as evolution's winning lottery ticket
however, cannot live without the winning ants'continued success. It appears to be an obligate parasite,
local species of ant for it to inhabit, grow and propagate its spores. A specialized but global threat The ants best known for getting zombified by the Ophiocordyceps fungus are tree-dwelling carpenter ants found in Brazil and Thailand,
but the fungus is thought to be distributed broadly in tropical areas around the globe. In fact, the full range of strange behavior observed in Sulawesi
Although many ants in different areas are infected similarly and dispatched in this strange way, the species of fungus infecting them is not at all the same.
Each of these species was associated with a different Camponotus ant species, denoting a high degree of specialization.
Ancient scourge The zombifying fungus's vast geographic distribution also hints at the possibility that it has been possessing ants at least
Research published in Biology Letters in 2010 describes a 48-million-year-old fossilized leaf from Germany that bears the distinctive scars of a bite from an ant's mandible on its main vein.
which depends, in turn, on the carpenter ant colony. Once you're very successful, something else will take advantage of it,
The zombie-ant fungus's doom, of course, is little consolation for the infected ant. But the castration of the ant-killing fungus means that it will not go on to turn other local ants into zombies.
This hobble might, in fact, be one of the reasons the zombie-ant fungus has been so successful over the long term.
as long as there are ants nearby to infect. In addition to the fungicidal fungi scientists have seen also small bugs laying their eggs in the infected ant corpse,
where their larvae can then eat the growing fungus. These bugs include specialized gall midges (in the Cecidomyiidae family)
and a species that appears to be new to science, Hughes says. It seems their entire nutrition comes from eating the fungus that manipulates ant behavior.
Evans is collecting more zombie ants in Brazil, as part of what he and Hughes have dubbed unofficially the World Ant Tour.
When Evans returned to a field site in Ghana where he had found different genera of possessed ants in the 1970s
and the ant behavior and signaling dynamics could add to research about pest control for agriculture.
and the challenges farmers in tropical countries face from insects and fungi that infect their crops,
  Maurice Leponce, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciencesarmy ants (Eciton Burchelli) in San Lorenzo forest stretch across a gap and permit other members of the colony to walk
Maurice Leponce, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciencesa"blushing phantom butterfly, Cithaerias pireta, rests briefly on a palm leaf in San Lorenzo forest.
Maurice Leponce, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciencesthe male elephant scarab beetle, Megasoma elephas fights for females and food with a formidable horn.
Thomas Martin, Jean-Philippe Sobczak & Hendrik Dietz, TU Munichentomologist J Â rgen Schmidl collects arboreal insects in San Lorenzo forest by fogging trees with biodegradable insecticides.
Massive Malaysian ivory cache seizedit has been reported widely this week that Malaysian authorities have confiscated 24 tonnes of elephant ivory.
Data from ETIS, compiled by TRAFFIC on behalf of Parties to CITESTHE Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has banned trading in elephant ivory since 1989, apart from in specific circumstances,
According to data from the CITES Elephant Trade Information system the year 2011 broke all previous records, with 39 tonnes intercepted (see graph.
an elephant specialist at the environmental group WWF, seems to be a growing demand for ivory in Asia.
because that country is believed to have a very small population of remaining elephants. To trace tusks back to their origin,
director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle, has built a map of elephant DNA obtained from faeces samples from across Africa.
Most biologists consider African elephants to include at least two species the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis.
The red list of threatened species, drawn up by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, lists African elephants as vulnerable."
That means there are a lot of elephants disappearing
Art of cheese-making is 7, 500 years oldtraces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7, 500 years.
but is also evidence that they had begun to develop a complex relationship with animals that went beyond hunting."
has rejected the findings of a controversial paper published in September (see go. nature. com/3slkys) claiming that rats fed genetically modified maize (corn) showed adverse health effects,
Cities produce plumes of pollution that scientists must characterize as the plumes evolve and disperse downwind.
Emissions profits Airlines that fly to and from Europe may have profited by up to  1. 36  billion (US$1. 83  billion) last year by raising air fares to cover costs
researchers are reaching for the latest tools in an effort to combat the pest, from sequencing its genome to crossbreeding coffee plants with resistant strains.
Kevin Wolf/APENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCYDEPARTING: Lisa Jackson On entering office in 2009, Jackson (pictured) laid the groundwork for climate regulations by formally declaring carbon dioxide a dangerous pollutant.
Until the past few years, most researchers had thought that Greenland contributed at least half of the 6-8 Â metres of Eemian sea-level rise that has been deduced from records of ancient corals and other markers2.
so that the insects are exposed not to the insecticides through pollen and nectar. Dust and plant sap contaminated with the chemicals may also pose a risk to bees,
The chemical company pins most of the blame for bee declines on parasitic Varroa mites
Discovery of goat facility adds to antibody provider's woesa herd of 841 goats has kicked up a stir for one of the world s largest antibody suppliers after US agricultural officials found the animals including 12
But evidence gathered on a 31 october inspection suggested that an additional barn roughly 14 kilometres south of the company's main animal facility had been in use for at least two and a half years,
"That s virtually unheard of in my career, says Cathy Liss, president of the Animal Welfare Institute,
or neglect to tell the inspector, about 800 animals, it begs questions about how well this company is run
but stated by e-mail that"all animals maintained at the ranch are reported annually to the  USDA,
The NIH's public health services policy on animal welfare which since 1985 has governed the use of animals
On 11 january, the Animal Welfare Institute petitioned the NIH director Francis Collins and the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare at NIH to remove this exemption.
According to an 18 december 2012 follow-up inspection by the USDA two of the 12 animals found in poor health in October have
since been euthanised as a result of their conditions, and some but not all of the sick goats are receiving appropriate medical treatment and monitoring
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