and the Guiana Shield harbors around 390 billion individual trees including Brazil nut chocolate and aã§ai berry trees.
and aã§ai berry--have been used and cultivated for millennia by human populations in Amazonia. There's a really interesting debate shaping up says Pitman between people who think that hyperdominant trees are common
and it is ethically easier to use them than for example apes says senior scientist Knud Larsen from Aarhus University.
This was where the zebra fish entered the equation. The zebrafish and the jellyfish The zebrafish is as a model organism the darling of researchers
And in East Africa scientists found that a decline in wildebeest populations in the Serengeti-Mara grassland-savanna system decades ago allowed organic matter to accumulate
For example in the Arctic where about 500 gigatons of carbon is stored in permafrost large grazing mammals like caribou
#Illinois river otters exposed to chemicals banned decades agoresearchers report that river otters in Central Illinois are being exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBS)
The Illinois Department of Natural resources collected 23 river otters between 2009 and 2011 after the animals were killed incidentally (hit by cars
(and byproduct of the pesticide aldrin) that was used across the Midwest before it was banned in 1987--exceeded those measured in eight river otters collected in Illinois from 1984 to 1989.
And male river otters had significantly higher concentrations of PCBS compared to females. PCBS were used once as insulators
In mammals these compounds can cause gene disruption and interfere with hormone function particularly in a developing fetus.
Concentrations of contaminants in river otters ranged widely. One male had a concentration of PCBS in its liver of 3450 parts per billion (ppb)
Since the otters were collected from counties all over Central Illinois the findings could indicate that some watersheds have a worse contamination problem than others Carpenter said.
More research is needed to understand the factors that contribute to the river otters'exposure to these chemicals Mateus-Pinilla said.
The researchers do not know why the male otters in the study carried a heavier burden of PCBS than the females Carpenter said.
because they're eating the same kinds of fish that the otters might be. Studies have shown that PCBS
#Compound derived from vegetables shields rodents from lethal radiation dosesgeorgetown University Medical center researchers say a compound derived from cruciferous vegetable such as cabbage cauliflower and broccoli protected rats and mice from lethal doses of radiation.
For the study the researchers irradiated rats with lethal doses of gamma ray radiation. The animals were treated then with a daily injection of DIM for two weeks starting 10 minutes after the radiation exposure.
All of the untreated rats died but well over half of the DIM-treated animals remained alive 30 days after the radiation exposure.
We also showed that DIM protects the survival of lethally irradiated mice Rosen says. In addition irradiated mice treated with DIM had less reduction in red blood cells white blood cells
and platelets--side effects often seen in patients undergoing radiation treatment for cancer. Rosen says this study points to two potential uses of the compound.
#Badgers ultimately responsible for around half of TB in cattlebadgers are ultimately responsible for roughly half of tuberculosis (TB) in cattle in areas with high TB prevalence according to new estimates based on data from a previous badger culling trial.
However only around six per cent of infected cattle catch TB from badgers with onward transmission between cattle herds accounting for the remainder the study suggests.
The role of badgers in spreading bovine TB has been debated intensely as part of discussions about whether badgers should be culled to control the disease.
The Randomised Badger Culling Trial which ran from 1998 to 2005 found evidence that culling could reduce TB in herds inside culled areas while increasing TB in areas nearby.
Mathematical models based on data from the trial were used previously to calculate an estimate of the proportion of TB in cattle that could ultimately be attributed to transmission from badgers.
The new paper by scientists at Imperial College London provides a more detailed analysis. It estimates that badgers ultimately account for 52 per cent of cattle TB in areas where prevalence in cattle is high.
There is considerable uncertainty around this estimate but the authors say that 38 per cent is a robust minimum value for the estimate.
These findings confirm that badgers do play a large role in the spread of bovine TB.
The mathematical model suggested that 5. 7 per cent*of transmission to cattle herds is from badgers to cattle with the rest of the contribution from badgers resulting from onward transmission between cattle herds.*
Although a connection hasn't been made definitively heavy flows of nutrient-rich freshwater into the estuaries are suspected in die offs of eelgrass manatees and pelicans;
Scientists had calculated already it would take an elephant on a pencil to break through a sheet of graphene.*
#Scientists find soaring variety of malaria parasites in batsresearchers have discovered a surprising diversity of malaria parasites in West african bats as well as new evidence of evolutionary jumps to rodent hosts.
and the Museum fuì r Naturkunde Berlin the new study reveals that two bat-infecting parasites are closely related to parasites in rodents that are used commonly to model human malaria in laboratory studies.
Experimental research on drugs immunology and the development of malaria is done typically on related Plasmodium species that infect rodents including laboratory-reared mice.
The DNA from several genes of the bat parasites was sequenced at the Museum's Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics resulting in the most comprehensive evolutionary tree of life for malaria parasites of bats to date.
and Plasmodium cyclopsi show patterns of evolutionary jumps from the rodent lineage into bats and then likely a reverse jump with a bat parasite reinfecting rodent hosts.
The authors suggest that the bat hosts which roost in trees may have been exposed to the same mosquito vectors that transfer the parasites between the tree-dwelling rodent hosts.
It is unknown what the physiological effects of the parasites are on the bats but the high diversity of parasites as well as the high proportion of individuals that are infected with the parasites suggest that this may be yet another example of the unusually high tolerance of these flying mammals for pathogens said co-author Juliane Schaer a researcher at the Max Planck Institute
for Infection Biology and the Museum fuì r Naturkunde Berlin. Other work has suggested that the evolution of flight may have triggered parallel strengthening of the immune system of bats
which are highly pathogenic to other mammals including humans. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by American Museum of Natural history.
Although varieties of sweet corn (corn on the cob) have existed since the late 1990s relatively few acres have been planted.
When birds and small mammals feed on the fruit they subsequently excrete the indigestible seeds elsewhere
Positive results first with a cat allergy therapy and now with house dust mite and grass allergy treatments suggest that this approach may be used for many common allergies.
and eating behaviour observations on all pigs via genome wide association studies to detect eating behaviour genes--a big task equivalent to finding polar bears in a snowstorm says Kadarmideen.
and nylon DEET has been reported to inhibit an enzyme (acetylcholinesterase) in mammals that is important in the nervous system.
#Caribou may be affected indirectly by sea-ice loss in the Arcticmelting sea ice in the Arctic may be leading indirectly to fewer caribou calf births and higher calf mortality in Greenland according to scientists at Penn State university.
which in turn is associated with lower production of calves by caribou in the area. The results of the study will be published in the journal Nature Communications on 1 october 2013.
Post began his observations on the relationship between the timing of caribou calving and the start of the plant-growing season in Greenland 20 years ago.
Post added that as his observations have continued the data have revealed an increasingly earlier start to the plant growing season a change that has not been matched by correspondingly earlier calving by caribou in the area.
Kerby added that archeological evidence suggests that caribou have used this area as a calving site for over 3000 years.
In late May to early June caribou typically arrive from their west-to-east migratory journey in search of young plants to eat around the time caribou give birth.
by the time the hungry caribou arrive to eat them Kerby said. The animals show up expecting a food bonanza
and other changes in climate simply by adjusting the timing of their growth caribou --whose reproductive cycles are timed by seasonal changes in daylight length rather than by temperature--continue to give birth at nearly the same time during the spring
In addition to analyzing their own data Post and Kerby also used information from a 1970s study of caribou calving and calf survival at the same site by Danish biologists Henning Thing and Bjarne Clausen.
This comparison allowed us to look for signs of trophic mismatch in the same caribou population over 30 years ago Post said.
We found an interesting contrast to the current state of caribou calving in relation to spring green-up Post said.
and/or an antidepressant would help reduce them in men as it does in many women said Mara Vitolins Dr. P. H. professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest Baptist
Whether niacin has similar effects on the life expectancy of mice is the subject of Ristow's current research.
The United states created stronger regulations for tobacco advertising in the 1990s after similar research found that six year olds were as familiar with Camel tobacco's Joe Camel mascot as with the Disney Channel's Mickey mouse.
The theory describes how dust grains in interstellar space like soldiers in lock-drill formation spin
In a study spanning two decades the researchers witnessed the near-complete extinction of native small mammals on forest islands created by a large hydroelectric reservoir in Thailand.
However the researchers saw native small mammals vanish with alarming speed with just a handful remaining--on average less than one individual per island--after 25 years.
Native mammals suffered the harmful effects of population isolation and they also had to deal with a devastating invader--the Malayan field rat.
In just a few years the invading rat grew so abundant on the islands that it virtually displaced all native small mammals.
The field rat normally favors villages and agricultural lands but will also invade disturbed forests.
This tells us that the double whammy of habitat fragmentation and invading species can be fatal for native wildlife said Lynam.
Scientists did not observe an increase in CD8+T cells in mouse and gerbil models of H. pylori infection.
However the rise of the cells in pigs mirrors the recent findings in human clinical studies.#
#oepigs have greater anatomic physiologic and immunologic similarities to humans than mice the main animal model used in biomedical research said Raquel Hontecillas co-director of the Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine
When ruminants such as cows goats and sheep are consuming the plants from a silvopastoral system researchers have seen an increase in growth and milk production.
'Beige fat'cells are found in scattered lentil-sized deposits beneath the inguinal skin in obese diabetic Zucker rats.
For example fragmentation reduces the availability of interior forest habitat that is preferred by many bird species. There are also a number of large predators such as big cats like the tiger
Muscled mothsalthough few gym rats want to admit it whispery moth wings and bulging human biceps aren't that different.
which contains an estimated one percent of the world's biodiversity including 20 lemur species hundreds of species of birds
'Only by viewing forest sites along a gradient of logging disturbance ranging from pristine to heavily degraded were the team able to detect a gradual decline of some key bat species. The research confirmed the most vulnerable bats were those that tend to live in the cavities of old growth trees.
By linking bat captures with vegetation measurements from nearby plots the researchers were able to reveal how these animals declined as successive rounds of logging took their toll on forest structure and crucially the availability of tree cavities.
and mammals with uses that include home insect control insect-repellant clothing dog and cat flea shampoos mosquito control and agriculture.
#Crop-raiding elephants flee tiger growlswild Asian elephants slink quietly away at the sound of a growling tiger
but trumpet and growl before retreating from leopard growls researchers at the University of California Davis have found.
The work published Sept. 11 in the journal Biology Letters could help Indian farmers protect their crops from marauding elephants and save the lives of both people and animals.
We noticed that the elephants were scared more of tigers than of leopards said Vivek Thuppil who carried out the work with Richard Coss professor of psychology at UC Davis as part of his Ph d. in animal behavior.
Thuppil and Coss studied the elephants'behavior in an effort to prevent conflicts between human farmers
and elephant herds that raid their fields by night. It's the first study of nighttime antipredator behavior in elephants.
Crop raiding by elephants is a serious problem in India Thuppil said. Farmers use drums firecrackers
and electrified fences to try to keep them out of their crops. About 400 people a year are killed during these encounters
and some hundred elephants are killed through poisoning electrocution or other means according to an Indian government report.
The researchers set up equipment to play back leopard or tiger growls triggered when the elephants crossed infrared beams across paths leading to crop fields
and captured the events on video. Leopards aren't known to prey on elephants but tigers will sometimes attack a young elephant that becomes separated from the herd.
Although their initial reactions were very different the elephants ultimately retreated from growls of both cats.
The elephants might be confused by the leopard growl Thuppil said. A real leopard would most likely retreat from a group of elephants.
Still there's probably no benefit to the elephants in risking an encounter with a leopard
even if it is known not a predator. You don't want to mess with something with claws and teeth Thuppil said.
They're acting in a very intelligent way Coss said. Wild elephant populations are stable
or even increasing in forest areas Thuppil said. While the forest itself is protected human settlement increasingly has moved into the buffer areas surrounding the forest
which elephants pass through while foraging or visiting different patches of forest. The work was supported by the U s. Fish and Wildlife Service Asian Elephant Conservation Fund and the Rufford Small Grants Foundation.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California-Davis. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
#Climate change may speed up forests life cyclesmany climate studies have predicted that tree species will respond to global warming by migrating via seed dispersal to cooler climates.
But a new study of 65 different species in 31 eastern states finds evidence of a different unexpected response.
Contrary to prior assumptions based on examples in mammals and yeast the new research suggests that in plants GÎ
and mammals GÎ interacts with GPCRS of the type that pass through the membrane seven times--7tm receptors.
They give feeling of pungency in the mouth the feel of a cat's tongue licking your hand.
#Panda poop microbes could make biofuels of the futureunlikely as it may sound giant pandas Ya Ya
and other food crops and toward corn cobs stalks and other non-food plant material.
And if things work out giant pandas Er Shun and Da Mao in the Toronto Zoo will be joining the quest by making their own contributions.
The giant pandas are contributing their feces explained Ashli Brown Ph d. who heads the research. We have discovered microbes in panda feces might actually be a solution to the search for sustainable new sources of energy.
It's amazing that here we have endangered an species that's almost gone from the planet yet there's still so much we have yet to learn from it.
Brown and her students based at Mississippi State university now have identified more than 40 microbes living in the guts of giant pandas at the Memphis Zoo that could make biofuel production from plant waste easier and cheaper.
That research Brown added also may provide important new information for keeping giant pandas healthy. Ethanol made from corn is the most common alternative fuel in the U s
Brown pointed out that corn stalks corn cobs and other plant material not used for food production would be better sources of ethanol.
Bacteria in giant panda digestive tracts are prime candidates. Not only do pandas digest a diet of bamboo
but have a short digestive tract that requires bacteria with unusually potent enzymes for breaking down lignocellulose.
The time from eating to defecation is comparatively short in the panda so their microbes have to be very efficient to get nutritional value out of the bamboo Brown said.
when it comes to biofuel production--that's why we focused on the microbes in the giant panda.
because most of the diseases pandas get affect their guts said Brown. Understanding the relationships between the microbes
and the pandas as well as how they get their energy and nutrition is extremely important from a conservation standpoint as fewer than 2500 giant pandas are left in the wild and only 200 are in captivity.
Additional plans include expanding the work to include samples from red pandas at the Memphis Zoo
which also eat bamboo. Brown and colleagues also are forging a collaboration to get samples of feces from giant pandas that arrived in the Toronto Zoo earlier in 2013.
The scientists acknowledged funding from the Memphis Zoological Society in addition to past funding from the Mississippi Corn Promotion Board the U s. Department of energy and Southeastern Research center at Mississippi State.
however the practicality of testing this in mammals would be very difficult and obviously impossible in humans for ethical reasons.
The role of infected wild badgers in spreading bovine TB remains controversial. This work will help to clarify the role that badgers may have in spreading the disease
and continue to build a sound scientific evidence base on which control measures can be built.
and local persistence of the pathogen in cattle has a distinct spatial signature--we believe that explaining this signature is the key to quantifying the role that badgers play in the persistence of bovine TB in Britain and Ireland.
and badgers we are optimistic that this approach will help accumulating the right scientific evidence over the coming years to tackle this important problem.
#Protect corridors to save tigers, leopardsresearch by Clemson University conservation geneticists makes the case that landscape-level tiger
and leopard conservation that includes protecting the corridors the big cats use for travel between habitat patches is the most effective conservation strategy for their long-term survival.
Sandeep Sharma and Trishna Dutta with colleagues from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute reveal their findings in articles in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
Their articles say that forest corridors play an essential role in maintaining the flow of genes between tiger
and leopard populations in central India and are paramount for sustaining the genetic variation required for their long-term persistence.
In the first ever gene-flow analysis of these big cats Sharma and Dutta analyzed the genes of the estimated 273 tigers
and 217 leopards living in four distinct populations in the 17375-mile Satpura-Maikal region of central India then used computer modeling to compare contemporary and historical gene flow among the region's tiger
and leopard populations. The genetic data showed that the region's tiger population divided rapidly twice in history:
First into two clusters about 700 years ago when great swathes of central India's forestland were cleared for agricultural use during the early Mughal era;
then into four clusters around 200 years ago when The british Empire cut vast tracts of timber to build railroads and ships.
This period also corresponded with a huge increase in tiger hunting. Today these big cats live at high densities in the four protected areas.
Some of the areas are connected by relatively contiguous corridors of forest while others are connected by sparse and fragmented corridors.
while the flow of genes between the four tiger and leopard populations has decreased over time clusters linked by contiguous forest corridors have maintained a high rate of gene flow.
Reserves that have lost connectivity between them have seen the greatest decline in gene flow The research suggests that given the fact of limited financial and human capital the big cats would be served better by extending conservation efforts beyond source habitats to a larger landscape scale.
The viability of the forest corridors connecting tiger habitats has a direct affect on a tigers'chance of finding an unrelated mate
and on the ability of tiger populations to maintain genetic diversity Dutta said. As we know genetic diversity allows species to survive disease
Currently central India's tiger corridors have no legal protection and the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests recently gave permission for coal mining development in a key forest corridor connecting two of the habitats in the study.
and a genetic bottleneck occurs dramatic human intervention is required to save isolated populations of cats from the perils of inbreeding.
and often debilitating osteoarthritis. The researchers found that mice fed a diet rich in the compound had significantly less cartilage damage
We have shown that this works in the three laboratory models we have tried in cartilage cells tissue and mice.
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers definitely had dogs but they did not practise agriculture and did not have pigs sheep goats or cows all of
Each person was shown a picture of a familiar object--such as a chair a pumpkin or a kangaroo--in one eye.
the word for the suppressed object (pumpkin when the object was a pumpkin) the word for a different object (kangaroo
The research in rats published online ahead of print in PLOS ONE found that injections of the compound sodium percarbonate (SPO) can produce enough oxygen to help preserve muscle tissue
Another part of the study involved rats in which the blood flow to a leg was interrupted
or manure on the fields shipped in bat dung from islands in the Pacific or saltpeter from Chilean mines and plowed in glistening granules of synthetic fertilizer made in chemical plants.
New bamboo genera, mountain gorillas, and the origins of Chinas bamboosafrican mountain bamboos are something of a mystery as nearly all bamboos are found in Asia or South america.
Hidden away up mountains in the tropics where they provide food for gorillas just as China's bamboos provide food for the Giant panda there are apparently only 2 species
and they had not been examined in very great detail except by the gorillas see image. It had been thought that they were very closely related to the hundreds of similar bamboos in Asia
but their respective ranges are separated by thousands of miles. As flowering in bamboos is such a rare event spreading by seed takes a very long time
#Red delicious or wolf apple? Brazilian savanna fruits high in antioxidantsnative Brazilian fruits grown in arid climates
The fruits studied here include indigenous species such as lobeira also called'wolf apple'tucum a variety of palm and other fruits
of which come from the feces of a Southeast Asian animal called a palm civet. Their study appears in ACS'Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Eiichiro Fukusaki and colleagues point out that Kopi Luwak (Indonesian for civet coffee) is the world's costliest coffee often fetching $150-$200 per pound.
Palm civets eat coffee berries digest the soft fruit surrounding the bean and excrete the bean. Workers retrieve the coffee beans
and a dozen other crocodile species enjoy an occasional taste of fruit along with their normal meat-heavy diets of mammals birds and fish.
The newly published research has shown that this fight for monopoly of the nest also extends to other honeyguides in a battle conducted deep underground in the nest burrows that bee-eaters dig into the roofs of Aardvark holes.
More recently cycads also coexisted with large herbivorous mammals such as the ice age megafauna that only went extinct a few tens of thousands of years ago.
and dispersed by today's larger-bodied animals such as emus or elephants. If these plants are adapted for dispersal by a set of animals that has been missing from Earth's fauna for tens of thousands of years then how can they still be around today?
and Diprotodon a rhino sized marsupial quadruped explains Hall. The large heavy and poisonous seeds surrounded by a fleshy and nontoxic fruit-like layer seem well adapted to being swallowed occasionally whole en masse by megafauna
Since their potential Australian prehistoric megafaunal dispersers became extinct around 45000 years ago why haven't Australian cycads begun to evolve smaller seeds that would be dispersed more readily by flying birds or possums for example over the interim?
We wanted to understand how these quite well-studied ungulates with contrasting feeding strategies can survive
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