#19 New Swift & Clever Praying mantises Discovered Swift deadly hunters lurk in the trees many camouflaged to look like lichen or bark.
The mantises have flattened mottled bodies that mimic bark moss lichen or dead leaves. They fly poorly so their last line of escape is to leap to the ground
since her all over the world to photograph everything from 3000-year-old lichen to a 9550-year-old spruce to an 80000-year-old colony of aspen trees.
One example I like to give from the Oldest Living things series is the example of the map lichens in Greenland.
Those lichens from Greenland that I had mentioned earlier were sent to outer space not so long ago and were exposed to outer-space conditions.
The stromatolites and the lichens got me thinking about time and space and also philosophically where time and space start to slip
Thanks to Fungus The U s. government leading scientists from around the world and a multibillion-dollar industry are teaming up to fight one of the biggest threats modern civilization has faced ever.
or climate change they're battling it's coffee rust a microscopic fungus that's wreaking havoc on coffee crops in Central america.
The fungus has already wiped out the arabica variety in places like Java in Indonesia which once produced much of the world's best coffee. 10 Things You Need to Know About Coffee We don't see an end in sight anytime soon Leonardo Lombardini of World Coffee Research a scientific endeavor of Texas A&m University
Also known as coffee leaf rust or Hemileia vastatrix the fungus spreads easily through the air on spores.
though some strict quarantine efforts have proven effective at minimizing the spread of the fungus.
In some areas coffee plantations have moved to higher altitudes where the fungus has difficulty reproducing.
when during the rainy season (the fungus spreads best in rainy weather). First discovered in East Africa in the 1800s coffee rust has a nasty legacy.
The fungus has now spread around the world and has been reported in Brazil Costa rica Panama Honduras and El salvador.
Coffee or (other) drugs In Central america the dry season of 2011-2012 was unusually wet allowing coffee rust to spread unfettered according to the BBC.
And the fungus has mutated now to a form that can thrive at higher altitudes placing those coffee plantations at risk.
Fungi in the sloths'environment may be decomposing dead moths fostering the growth of algae. Or the moths may be directly transferring nutrients from the sloth dung to their fur where algae can grow.
In order to make agricultural waste into a suitable fuel for jet engines manufacturers would first need to break it down into sugars mixed with yeast
See Photos of the Top 10 New Species Beautiful beasties The species honored with a place on the top 10 list range from plant to animal to fungus.
Another mini-newcomer is a Penicillium fungus Penicillium vanoranjei so named because its colonies are bright orange
Researchers found the fungus in soil in Tunisia. Finally Australia provides a home for the last new creature on the list the leaf-tailed gecko (Saltuarius eximius.
For example Alpine ibex climb up the side of the Cingino Dam in the Italian Alps to lick salt and lichens from the stones.
Radiation is known to have harmful effects on microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. Recent research has found that radiation therapy can cause severe complications in cancer patients by reducing the populations of helpful bacteria in the intestines.
Bread used to be made of wheat water salt and yeast. When you buy real bread you'll notice there is no nutrition label.
not only carriers for sudden oak death they are also four times more susceptible to fire damage because of the fungus
and fungi species including opium poppy deadly nightshade hallucinogenic mushrooms and ergot fungus. However it's not always possible to determine how people used the substances
Squirrels mainly eat fungi seeds nuts and fruits but they will also munch on eggs small insects caterpillars small animals and even young snakes.
The time-lapse was taken over six days showing 12400 gallons of wort 1215 pounds of whole-cone hops and 1000 pounds of brewer's yeast in four open-top fermenters.
and fermenting these sugars with yeast to turn them into alcohol. Wort is the sticky sweet liquid extracted from mashing grains like barley or wheat.
When yeast is added to the mix it eats up all the sugar in the wort and spits out carbon dioxide and alcohol as waste products.
Instead makers likely fermented this cheese using microbes such as Lactobacillus and Saccharomycetaceae yeasts which are used commonly to make the still-popular fermented dairy beverage known as kefir.
and foraged on lichen and algae for food. The locust's abdomen shows hints of decay and the insect is surrounded by ants inside the amber suggesting the ants might have been carting off the carcass for a meal.
in order to destroy fungi, insects and weeds, pesticides do not have to be so hazardous that they are carcinogenic,
Nature Newsas farmers around the world anxiously monitor the march of a deadly orange fungus across their wheat fields,
the cloning of two fungus-fighting genes. Both genes fend of a wide range of'rust'fungi, including several types of stripe rust (Puccinia striiformis) and leaf rust (P. triticina.
The genes are found in some wild wheat, and can be bred into commercial varieties but that can be an arduous process taking several years to complete.
The results are welcome news as plant pathologists race to arm themselves against an ongoing epidemic of stem rust (P. graminis) caused by a recently emerged fungus called Ug99 (see'Wheat fungus spreads out of Africa'.
but only against a narrow range of rust fungi. These defences target a specific molecule produced by the fungus,
and in time, the fungus often evolves a way to modify the molecule, or to go without it entirely.
Increasingly, breeders are turning to a class of defence gene with a broader spectrum of resistance.
It has been exposed to so many rusts in many different environments for a long period of time, and we haven't seen any sign of selection for virulence against that gene.
leaving the fungus which requires a live host less time to establish an infection, the researchers say.
Dubcovsky discovered the second fungi-fighting gene several years ago as a result of work on a wild wheat that has yields with an unusually high protein content2.
perhaps produced by the fungus itself, or by the plant soon after it becomes infected3.
But in plants with both genes, only 5%of the leaf bore the fungus. Dubcovsky has bred already lines that carry both genes
Although Lr34 alone does not render plants resistant to the fungus, researchers have found that the gene can enhance the resistance found in some varieties4.
or it might be wheat that's resistant to rust, it might be cassava that's able to tolerate change in temperature,
Some rice plants are resistant to the pernicious fungus responsible the disease, but the rice from these plants often has undesirable qualities,
Fungus genome boosts fight to save North american forests: Nature Newscanadian researchers have decoded the DNA of the tree-killing fungus found in the mouths of mountain pine beetles,
the destructive bugs that wipe out entire North american forests. Further genome sequencing of the beetle and pine tree species should help forest managers design better pest-control tactics,
they release spores of the blue-stain fungus (Grosmannia clavigera), which stops the production of a protective toxic resin released by the tree
Bohlmann and his colleagues assembled the fungus's 32.5-million-base-pair genome which is around a hundredth the size of the human genome,
and say which population of trees is interacting with which population of fungus and which population of beetles,
have taken the fungus genome, pinpointed the gene responsible for staining the pine wood blue and created a knockout strain that does not produce any pigment.
But the full utility of the fungus genome might only be realized after other related species are sequenced also,
who studies the interaction between bark beetles and fungi at the University of Montana in Missoula.
Comparing the blue-stain fungus with free-living or pathogenic fungi will shed light on how the beneficial fungus helps the beetles thrive,
Phytophthora infestans, the water mould that causes late blight in potatoes, consumes and rots the leaves and tubers of the plant.
it would take Phytophthora infestans only a couple of years to defeat it. But now that the sequence is complete,
and elusive lifestyle of this fungus, offering clues that could help a truffle industry that is fraught with unpredictable yields and a counterfeit market.
in that the microflora and yeast living on the truffles played a vital role in releasing volatile compounds,
which visits the fungus in search of a mate but carries off fungal spores instead, spreading them between truffles.
which the fungus trades nutrients with oak-tree roots. The T. melanosporum genome also reveals that the fungus reproduces sexually more often than researchers thought.
Many growers rely on asexual truffle propagation, in which two haploid cells from a single fungus each with one copy of the genome fuse to form the diploid fruiting body (the truffle),
which has two copies. Yet Martin and his team found two different sets of mating genes in the black truffle,
In 2008, Martin and his colleagues reported the genome of Laccaria bicolor, another symbiotic fungus that is dependent on woody plants for nutrients2.
and four times larger than that of many fungi but it contains far fewer protein-coding genes.
Mycologist David Hibbett of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, says that he is amazed to learn that the two species of fungi share any genes involved in symbiosis at all.
Although the sequenced genome opens up the possibility of genetically engineering other fungi to pack the same aromatic punch as the PÃ rigord
the firm has engineered strains of yeast to produce hydrocarbon fuels and other chemicals from sugarcane feedstocks.
Virulent wheat fungus invades South africa: Nature Newstwo new forms of a devastating wheat fungus, known as Ug99 stem rust,
have shown up in South africa, a study has found. The two South african forms are able to overcome the effects of two resistance genes in wheat that normally prevent stem rust from taking hold.
The genes cause plant cells around the infection site to die, stopping the fungus from further infecting the plant.
They are two of the most important genes in wheat because they are selected for in crop-breeding programmes across the world.
The discovery of the new forms marks the first time that the stem rust fungus with virulence against key genetic resistance has moved south of its origins in Uganda
and south Asia vulnerable as the fungus can now migrate using different wind trajectories, says Zacharias Pretorius, a wheat pathologist at the University of the Free state in Bloemfontein, South africa,
Pretorius and his colleagues will present their research in early June at a conference on wheat rust in St petersburg, Russia, organized by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative,
resistant varieties to ensure crops are protected against the fungus. The reddish-brown, wind-borne fungus was discovered first in Uganda in 1999
and has since spread to five countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Iran. It attacks the stems of wheat plants by destroying vascular tissue
The fungus can devastate harvests: for example, farmers in the Narok region of Kenya lost up to 80%of their wheat crop due to Ug99 in 2007.
In total, seven mutant strains of the fungus are known now, including the latest forms, originally identified in South africa in 2007 and 2009.
and less dangerous form of the fungus found in South africa in 2000. The team found that the variant detected in 2007 is likely to have arisen through a single mutation of the more common form,
The fungus and its variants are now able to overcome at least 32 of around 50 resistance genes, according to Ravi Singh, a plant geneticist and pathologist at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre.
An international project that is researching resistance to wheat rust led by Cornell University, is developing new tools to help defeat the pathogen.
the only cereal that is not damaged by the rust, is immune.
News briefing: 20 may 2010: Nature Newspolicy Research Business Business watch People The week ahead News maker Number crunch Policy Oil spill:
or whether there is an equal distribution of numbers between species. The team looked at the bugs, nematodes and fungi that attack the hated Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata).
Research Wheat fungus: Two new forms of a devastating wheat fungus known as Ug99 stem rust have arisen in South africa.
Researchers at the University of the Free state in Bloemfontein found that the new variants can overcome the effects of two resistance genes in wheat that normally prevent stem rust from taking hold.
There is concern that winds will help the fungus to migrate further, threatening crops in areas including the Middle east and south Asia.
See go. nature. com/flsdmx for more. Bird blues: As many as 1, 240 bird species are threatened with extinction,
Nature Newsresearchers have traced the key genetic changes that enabled the plant pathogen responsible for the 1845 Irish potato famine (Phytophthora infestans) to jump from wild plant hosts to cultivated potatoes.
which describes the genetic make-up of an unrelated powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis) that affects barley. Pietro Spanu
Slime moulds prosper on the microfarm: Nature Newsa slime mould long thought to hunt bacteria as prey turns out to have unexpected abilities:
according to researchers in Texas, some of the amoebae are actually farmers, husbanding their bacterial'crops'much as some ant species farm fungus.
As social amoebae, slime moulds are bizarre creatures that live as individual singled-celled organisms while feeding,
but congregate in groups of tens of thousands to form multicellular'slugs'that migrate to new areas
such as fungus-farming ants although compared to the ants, which actively feed, nurture and defend their crops,
It was thought previously that slime moulds were strictly predators of bacteria, forming the multicellular slug when scant food supplies prompted a move to new hunting grounds.
or fungus that might pose a threat. And its shop doesn't sell anything that is considered invasive.
Wheat killer A research programme tackling a devastating wheat fungus has been granted US$40 million over five years as part of a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington,
The Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project, involving more than a dozen institutes and coordinated by Cornell University in Ithaca, New york,
including viruses, bacteria and fungi some novel that, alone or in combination, might push a bee colony into precipitous decline.
At the meeting, Cornman presented data showing that hives affected by CCD have higher levels of microscopic gut fungi called Nosema,
Other people had looked at melanins in fungus near Chernobyl. Eumelanin helps defend fungus, says Ismael Galv ¡
n a biologist at the University of Paris-Sud and a contributor to the new study along with Mousseau and M ¸ller.
of which has potential for use in fighting devastating diseases such as the potato cyst nematode and the potato blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans, famous for causing The irish potato famine of the 1840s.
but"relatively easy to ferment using yeast, he says, because of its lower alginate content2. Stephen Mayfield, director of the San diego Center for Algae Biotechnology at the University of California San diego, calls the work"a very sophisticated engineering feat,
but the fungus responsible has never wrought such havoc before. The fungus, Exserohilum rostratum, is a plant-eating generalist equipped with a spore-launching mechanism ideal for going airborne,
is not an especially picky eater and, although it prefers grasses, will dine on many items including humans.
The errant fungus has been identified in lab samples from 52 of those affected and was similarly found growing in unopened vials of the steroid alleged to have caused the outbreak, according to the U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The fungus, which seems to prefer tropical and subtropical environments, has turned up on a wide variety of plant species,
an emeritus professor in the Department of Plant pathology at the University of Minnesota who retired in 2001 from the U s. Department of agriculture's Cereal Disease Lab (then the Cereal Rust Lab). Early in his career,
but only distantly related, fungi with multicellular dark spores that were causing disease in grains such as corn.
when the plant died the fungus was first in line to feed on its decaying remains. I think it's just a general weak pathogen of plants,
creating a convenient landing pad of dying tissue for the fungus. Most often the fungus shows up on grasses and other monocots plants often distinguished by flower parts in threes and parallel leaf venation such as pineapples, bananas and sugarcane,
but it has also been found on non-monocots such as grapes and muskmelon. It's a fungus that is not, apparently, very picky about its food.
It's just a really common fungus in the environment that mostly lives on dead and dying plant tissue,
Leonard says. There are many such others, and many of them can also occasionally infect animals or people.
The fungus can grow from a single spore to a lawn of freshly spore-crowned fungal filaments on a piece of dried leaf in two days flat faster and more abundantly than any other related species he studied.
This is a fungus very well-adapted to colonizing senescent or dead leaf tissue once conditions are right,
. But if the fungus is primarily tropical and subtropical, what was it doing in a place like New england?
In the summer the fungus can probably find ideal growing conditions in places in the northern U s,
And plentiful lawn clippings provide an ideal place for the fungus to grow. Roberts says the group of fungi pigmented with melanin
(which includes E. rostratum) the same molecule that darkens and protects human skin seem to be generating more human infections for reasons he does not understand.
Although the identity of the fungus surprised him, Roberts was not surprised by its ability to capitalize on its situation once inside a patient.
After the fungus was injected along with the drug into the epidural space the space between the dura mater,
and the inside walls of the vertebrae the fungus's filaments were able to penetrate the dura mater,
thereby shortening the fungus s deadly path into the spinal fluid. Then, in some fatal cases, the fungal filaments began to grow in the brain,
The fungus's confinement to just three lots of the drug also remains unexplained. If the facility's water or air supplies in general were contaminated,
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.
Within days the stem of a fungus sprouts from the dead ant's head. After growing a stalk,
the fungus casts spores to the ground below, where they can be picked up by other passing ants.
zombie-ant fungus even in the scientific literature. But scientists are just learning the intricacies of this interplay between the Ophiocordyceps parasitic fungus
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.
We have advanced a great deal in understanding how the fungus controls ant behavior David Hughes, an assistant professor of entomology and biology at The Pennsylvania State university, says.
Deadly infection This clever Ophiocordyceps fungus depends on ants to reproduce and spread, but it has found an abundant host animal.
Evans suggests that a nerve toxin spurred on by the fungus is at least partly to blame
This position appears to be optimal for the fungus's later stage in which it ejects spores onto the soil directly below.)
The zombies'bites are synchronized near noon (possibly cued by clock genes in the fungus) and usually occur in a north-northwestern orientation.
Scientists have found that the fungus also triggers atrophy in its victim's muscles specifically those around its mandibles.
This seemingly small detail is crucial to the fungus's success. Without the death grip,
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,
Researchers have discovered also that this relatively slow-growing fungus can have its main stem broken off and regrow it later.
The death of an ant outside of its colony and subsequent growth of the fungal stalk might be key adaptations of the fungus,
The fungus has capitalized on ants'social behavior. Sociality can be thought of as evolution's winning lottery ticket
But this zombie fungus is natural selection's tax man. The zombie fungus, however, cannot live without the winning ants'continued success. It appears to be an obligate parasite,
requiring a specific, 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
the species of fungus infecting them is not at all the same. Instead of one variable species, there may be tens
Hughes and Simon Elliot (of the Department of Animal Biology at the Federal University of Vicosa in Brazil) described four new species of the Ophiocordyceps fungus that were found in just a small section of rainforest in Brazil
This hint at such vast diversity and specialization also contains broader implications for assumptions about fungus numbers in general.
Ancient scourge The zombifying fungus's vast geographic distribution also hints at the possibility that it has been possessing ants at least
During that time period the region of Germany would have been similar in climate to the areas of Thailand where contemporary zombie-ant fungus has been documented.
A parasite's parasite The zombie-ant fungus is not the end of the parasitizing line
Andersen and her colleagues have found that a different breed of fungi grow over the ant corpse and the emerging fungus stalk.
By covering the original fungus and its stalk, this secondary fungus or hyperparasite effectively prevents the zombie-ant fungus from ejecting its spores.
It looks like they completely sterilize it, Andersen says of the second-level parasite. Even these hyperparasites seem to be specialized for growing on specific parasitizing fungi.
They're not really growing on anything else in the area Andersen says. This makes the hyperparasite another obligate parasite,
which depends on the zombie-ant fungus, which depends, in turn, on the carpenter ant colony. Once you're very successful,
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 a deadly infection it could severely damage an ant colony. But, if another parasite renders more than half of its mature spores infertile
the actual reproduction rate for each mature zombie-ant fungus organism is a little more than one new mature organism,
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)
It seems their entire nutrition comes from eating the fungus that manipulates ant behavior. are specialized such hyper hyperparasites a freak occurrence?
and most ant cadavers have hyperparasites exploiting the zombie-ant fungus at some stage, Hughes notes.
Learning about zombie-ant funguses is not simply an exercise in outrã Â science. As Hughes notes, discovering more about both the fungus
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,
'a disease caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea, but this will not stop the pathogen from killing up to 99%of the ash trees in the country,
where the fungus has ravaged ash trees from Poland to France for more than a decade. On the upside, ash trees reproduce
Was it a new species of fungus, or a variant of an old, endemic species of fungus?
Mycologists first attributed ash dieback to Hymenoscyphus albidus, a species endemic to Europe that they thought had developed into a new, more virulent strain.
The fungus Hemileia vastatrix which causes coffee rust, looks set to wipe out half the nation s 2013-14 harvest in the most affected areas.
On 22 Â January, the government signed an emergency bill to tackle the outbreak. The disease has attacked already coffee crops in South and Central america.
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