Biology – Page 11 – Science Sushi

Mysterious Islands Are A Hotspot For Marine Hybrids

The Socotran landscape dominated by dragon's blood trees. Photo by Tane Sinclair-Taylor. — The Socotran landscape dominated by dragon’s blood trees. Photo by Tane Sinclair-Taylor.

Some 150 miles off the eastern coast of northern Africa — about 240 miles south of the Arabian peninsula — lies a set of islands that some have called “the most alien-looking place on Earth.” Socotra, which is both the name of the archipelago and the largest island, is a truly bizarre place. More than a third of the plants that erupt from the soil are found nowhere else. Their odd shapes and forms give the islands a Dr. Seussian quality, an almost cartoonish, comical landscape that stands in sharp contrast to the strict religious practices of the people who live there.

Socotra is a part of Yemen, a country currently engaged in a brutal civil war. But, it is also an island apart; the hundreds of miles of water that separate Socotra from the mainland have not only allowed biodiversity to take otherworldly forms, they have also allowed the people of Socotra to become distinct. The 50,000 or so people that live on the islands have their own language, myths and legends, and are their own governorate. Socotra has an archeological history that dates back to some of the earliest civilizations, complete with inexplicable cave art and 2,000 year old tools. The rich culture of the indigenous Soqotri has been insulated, like the flora and fauna they live alongside, for thousands of years — until the past decade, or so, when the Yemeni government has begun to open the islands to tourism.

In 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the islands a world heritage site, citing the incredible uniqueness and diversity of the land’s plants and animals — the “Galápagos of the Indian Ocean.” In addition to the hundreds of endemic plants, more than 90 percent of the reptiles and land snails that live on the islands are exclusive to them. Culturally and ecologically, Socotra is a place where uniqueness flourishes.

But the uniqueness of Socotra doesn’t end at the waters’ edge. Scientists have found that its coral reefs are pretty special, too — they’re home to a heap of hybrids. Continue reading “Mysterious Islands Are A Hotspot For Marine Hybrids”

More Bad News About The Lionfish Invasion (Happy Earth Day?)

Lionfish I helped catch off the coast of Beaufort, NC in 2013. Photo by Christie Wilcox. — Lionfish I helped catch off the coast of Beaufort, NC in 2013. Photo by Christie Wilcox

As I’ve described before, the Indo-Pacific lionfish in the Atlantic and Caribbean are quite possibly the worst marine invasion ever. These toxic predators have been eating their way around for the past few decades, driving down populations of native species and threatening already-struggling habitats. Now, a pair of papers released this month have more bad news: the lionfish are continuing to spread, and they may be eating the very last of critically endangered species.

Continue reading “More Bad News About The Lionfish Invasion (Happy Earth Day?)”

#IAmAScientistBecause I get to do this:

Over the past few days, scientists around the globe have taken to Twitter with the hashtag #IAmAScientistBecause, giving their reasons for why they chose to become scientists. As far as scientist origin stories go, mine is not entirely uncommon. I wrote it years ago, back in 2009 when I was about to embark upon my PhD at the University of Hawaii — a degree which I completed last December. For me, science has always been about the natural world, especially the ocean.

I was a biologist when I was five – not that I knew this until much later. I loved animals of all kinds, and couldn’t get enough of museums and zoos. I also fell in love with the sea. I loved tide pools and whatever creatures I could find in them.

So it just seemed so fitting to me that #IAmAScientistBecause happens to be blowing up this week of all weeks. This week happens to be one of the busiest weeks of the year for me, but it’s a week that perfectly encapsulates why I love being a scientist: I just spent the past two days sharing my lifelong passion for tide pools with the students of Mililani-Mauka Elementary.

Every year, helping out with the Tide Walks is the highlight of my spring. I am a scientist because of tide pools, because of field trips when I was a kid just like the ones I now help with annually. I explained the annual Tide Walks a few years ago like this:

The partnership between EECB and Mililani-Mauka Elementary school is one of those rare gems in outreach where both sides get a tremendous amount out of the relationship. The school gets trained scientific experts that fascinate and amaze the kids with tales of slimy defenses and odd partnerships between crabs and anemones. In turn, the graduate students get to take a day off, get out of the lab, and act like kids playing in tide pools. Sometimes, I think the overworked grad students are more excited to catch critters than the kids!

Here is just a few photos from this week that explain why I love this job so much:

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But in case that wasn’t enough of an awesome week to explain why I’m a scientist, there’s more in store for me: I’m spending the rest of this week as an organizer and judge of the 40th annual Albert L. Tester Symposium, which means I get to learn about all of the amazing science that University of Hawaii graduate students are conducting. I couldn’t be more excited to see what my friends and colleagues have been up to! I hope you’ll join us on Twitter with the hashtag #TesterUH.

GMOs of the Future: Two Recent Studies Reveal Potential of Genetic Technologies

For four years, the state of California has experienced a devastating drought. It’s not just a little dry—according to scientists, it’s the worst drought in over a millennium, fueled by global climate change. Cali is in such dire straits that Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. just signed two emergency measures to funnel another $1 billion to drought relief and critical water infrastructure projects. No sector is feeling the hit more than Golden State’s agricultural industry, where the shortage of water has already cost farmers billions. And California’s drought is just the beginning; scientists predict severe and widespread droughts globally in the next 30 to 90 years. Given that the world’s farmers account for 75% of our freshwater use, these droughts will cause massive losses in crop production unless the agricultural industry as a whole can find a way to maintain production with less water input.

It’s a puzzle that genetic engineers are eager to solve. Continue reading “GMOs of the Future: Two Recent Studies Reveal Potential of Genetic Technologies”

Venom As Medicine Won’t Solve The Lionfish Invasion

An invasive lionfish in the Bahamas. Photo by Mark Albins.

The lionfish eating their way through the Atlantic and Caribbean are among the worst marine invasive species to date. Anything we can do to limit their populations is a step in the right direction, thus it’s not surprising that some are getting creative when it comes to control. One of the most common questions I receive goes like this: What if there’s something worthwhile in their venom? Could we convince people to hunt them in droves if we can find a medical use for their spines?

It sure sounds like a perfect plan: study lionfish venom, find medically-relevant compound, and harvest millions of invasive lionfish to extract it. If only it were that simple.

Continue reading “Venom As Medicine Won’t Solve The Lionfish Invasion”

New Technicolor Dream Material Mimics Chameleon Skin

Chameleons are known for their vibrant color changes. While the old wives’ tale that they change color to match their surroundings isn’t true, they are capable of remarkable shifts in hue, a trait which has fascinated scientists for years.

Now, scientists have learned from the little lizards, and have created a material that, like chameleons, can shift its colors seemingly effortlessly.

This silicone material changes color when it is stretched or compressed, just like chameleon skin. — This silicon material changes color when it is stretched or compressed, just like chameleon skin.

The material was created by Connie Chang-Hasnain, a professor of electrical engineering at University of California Berkeley, and her students, Li Zhu and James Ferrara, with the help of visiting student Jonas Kapraun. “One day in our group seminar we started to think about color,” Chang-Hasnain explained. “We looked at what was known at the time about how chameleon skin could change color, and we were fascinated by that, and we thought we could design for it.” And as they reveal in a study published in Optica this week, they were right. Continue reading “New Technicolor Dream Material Mimics Chameleon Skin”

What Brian Williams and bumblebees have in common

They both enjoy a red carpet? No, that's not it... — They both enjoy a red carpet? No, that’s not it…

Journalists are held to the highest standards of accuracy, which is why so many seemed shellshocked to learn that Brian Williams, beloved NBC Nightly News anchor, lied about his experiences in the Iraq war. In his most recent accounts, Williams claimed to have been in a helicopter shot down by enemy fire — a claim that was vocally disputed by veterans who were with Williams at the time. Williams has since admitted that he got the story wrong, but what’s most intriguing about his apology is the seemingly-genuine level of remorse and confusion he displayed.

“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams told Stars and Stripes as a part of his retraction. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”

Scientists do. If we assume that Brian Williams didn’t intend to mislead, then it’s actually not that hard to explain why he’d genuinely recall something that never happened. False memories are a fairly well-known phenomenon in human memory research. Early experiments found that people readily remembered things that never existed, like a word on a given list. In more nuanced experiments since, scientists have been able to convince study participants that they were lost in a mall as a kid, had been on a hot air balloon ride, and even committed a crime. In each case, the participants really remembered the events, even though they were completely fake. So it’s not that far of a stretch to think that, after repeating the stories of riding in a helicopter and of another helicopter being hit over and over, Williams got confused and merged his two long-term memories. According to Lars Chittka, a professor of behavioral and sensory ecology at Queen Mary University of London, “It’s psychologically perfectly possible.”

Chittka’s research recently discovered that Williams is not alone: bumblebees, too, experience a similar failure of memory integrity. Continue reading “What Brian Williams and bumblebees have in common”

Smells Like A Boy: Lemurs May Use Scent of Mother to Determine Baby’s Sex

A long time ago, the great-great-great ancestors of humans and our relatives began to invest heavily in eyes. Sure, we have other senses — hearing, taste, touch — but primates excel at sight. There are lots of hypotheses to explain why eyesight was so evolutionarily valuable, from finding food to reading faces. But whatever the reason, vision became dominant, while other senses were left to languish, including our sense of smell. Primate olfaction is thought to be so miserable that scientists diminutively refer to our noses as “microsmatic” as opposed to the “macrosmatic” noses of dogs or rodents.

But the more we study the noses of our kin, the more we realize how important scent is to primates. Our closest cousins — the monkeys and apes in the Haplorhini (which refers to the to dryness of our noses) — possess similar sniffers to us, but as you move away from our supposedly feeble-nared lineage, our relatives become better and better smellers. Our most distant primate cousins, the lemurs and other ‘wet-nosed’ primates (Strepsirrhini), have a heightened, almost un-primate-like sense of smell, and recently, scientists have come to appreciate just how much they may rely on information obtained by their noses.

Lemurs use scents to tell who’s who, mark territories, and send important signals about their health or social status. Lemur sex lives, especially, are very smelly. Lemurs can tell whether a given secretion comes from a male or a female, and if female, whether she’s ready to make babies. Forget putting a female lemur on birth control — males will smell the difference, and lose interest.

Now, scientists have discovered that not only does smell come into play before pregnancy, lemurs emit particular scents when they’re expecting. These pregnancy odors are so unique that they can even be used to distinguish if the baby-to-be is a boy or a girl. Continue reading “Smells Like A Boy: Lemurs May Use Scent of Mother to Determine Baby’s Sex”

Baby Snake Shows Why The Dead Can Still Be Deadly

Remember that story from last fall about the Chinese chef that died after being envenomated by the severed head of a cobra he was cooking? (Well, if not, here’s a good summary.) Many dismissed the tale outright, thinking a snake couldn’t possibly be lethal if it was no longer living. But a great photo taken this week by Lee Reeve shows just how dangerous venomous animals can be, even after death:

A drop of venom on the fang of a dead baby C. atrox. Photo by Lee Reeve — A drop of venom on the fang of a dead baby *Crotalus atrox.* Photo by Lee Reeve

Lee found this wee western diamondback rattlesnake (Crotalus atrox) dead this morning. It was the runt of a recent litter, and had struggled in spite of months of assisted feeding, so Lee wasn’t surprised the little guy didn’t make it. But just because the small snake was dead didn’t mean Lee could be carefree about handling it, as he explained in a Facebook post:

“Looked like he hadn’t been dead for very long, so I took the opportunity to show why they’re dangerous, even when dead. The liquid coming from the fangs is venom, and will be just as toxic as it was when the snake was alive. Prick your finger on and the fang (or even the bottom teeth), and you got yourself an envenomation.”

Even once dead, venom that is stored in the venom gland can be injected into an unsuspecting victim if pressure is applied. And snakes, like other animals (even us!), can exhibit muscle movements post-mortem, so even if the animal isn’t alive, you can’t be sure it won’t move unpredictably. As someone who has worked for years with venomous animals, I’ve had to be careful with my study organisms even months after their demise (frozen venom can stay potent for a long time!).

So should you come across a dead snake — or anything else with venomous fangs, spines, spurs, etc — be careful! Don’t assume the dead are harmless to the living.

Biological Warfare: Parasitic Wasp Uses A Virus To Control Its Host

Any depth of understanding of biology and ecology is accompanied by this inevitable conclusion: parasites rule the world.

They’re the “man behind the curtain” as fans of Oz would put it. They are the directors and stage managers of the grand production that is life on this Earth, nature’s finest puppeteers, and that we think we have any modicum of control over any species’ physiology in comparison (including our own) is downright laughable.

The latest reminder of our inadequacy when it comes to manipulating biology comes from a fresh paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. In it, scientists describe how the parasitoid wasp, Dinocampus coccinellae, is able to manipulate its host, the ladybug Coleomegilla maculata: it uses another parasite, a never-before seen RNA virus.

A ladybug defending the cocooned parasite that emerged from it. Photo by BeatWalker from Wikimedia Commons — A ladybug defending the cocooned parasite that emerged from it.
Photo by BeatWalker from Wikimedia Commons

Continue reading “Biological Warfare: Parasitic Wasp Uses A Virus To Control Its Host”