July 16, 2008, 8:03 PM CT

Vaccine Offers Hope for Endangered Ferrets

Endangered black-footed ferrets, like children, aren't exactly lining up to be stuck with a vaccine, but in an effort to help control an extensive outbreak of plague in South Dakota, some of the ferrets are getting dosed with a vaccine given by biologists.

This is the first time the vaccine has been used during a major plague epizootic-an animal version of a human epidemic. Sylvatic plague is an infectious bacterial disease commonly transmitted from animal to animal by fleas. This exotic disease is commonly deadly for black-footed ferrets and their primary prey, prairie dogs. Black-footed ferrets are one of the rarest mammals in North America.

In mid-May, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed sylvatic plague in black-tailed prairie dog colonies in the Conata Basin area of Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in southwestern South Dakota. As of late June, about 9,000 acres of prairie dog habitat - including colonies occupied by vulnerable black-footed ferrets - have been infected by the disease, as per U.S. Forest Service mapping. Black-tailed prairie dogs are also being reconsidered for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

Ferret population surveys in the fall of 2007, before the outbreak, indicated at least 290 ferrets lived in the Conata Basin ferret reintroduction area. Some of the plague-impacted prairie-dog colonies were occupied by ferrets, but scientists do not know yet how a number of ferrets have died from the outbreak. Researchers report that in the past, such outbreaks have wiped out entire colonies of prairie dogs and the black-footed ferrets that depended on them for food......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 16, 2008, 7:19 PM CT

Spotted hyenas can increase survival rates by hunting alone

Recent research by Michigan State University doctoral student Jennifer Smith has shed new light on the way spotted hyenas live together and - more importantly - hunt for their food alone.

In a paper recently reported in the journal Animal Behaviour, Smith, a student in MSU's Department of Zoology, shows that while spotted hyenas know the value of living together in large, cooperative societies, they also realize that venturing on their own now and then to hunt for food is often the key to their survival.

"Eventhough spotted hyenas do cooperatively hunt, there is a large cost for doing that," said Smith, who did her research at the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. "This cost is feeding competition within their own group".

The problem is that spotted hyenas live in a social group, they all know each other and there is a well-established hierarchy. So when a kill is made, it is the spotted hyenas that are higher up on the totem pole that get to eat.

Smith and his colleagues report that spotted hyenas do join forces to protect themselves from danger. They aggregate to defend their food from their natural enemy - the lion, and cooperate during turf battles with neighboring hyenas. And, it is easier for spotted hyenas to catch prey when they do so in teams......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 10, 2008, 9:51 PM CT

Genetic basis for the black sheep of the family

Coat color of wild and domestic animals is a critical trait that has significant biological and economic impact. As per a research findings published online in Genome Research (www.genome.org), scientists have identified the genetic basis for black coat color, and white, in a breed of domestic sheep.

In the wild, mammalian coat color is essential for camouflage and plays a role in social behavior. Coat color also strongly influences the animals we choose to breed both as livestock and as pets. Understanding the genetic determinants of coat color in livestock species such as sheep, specifically bred for their coat color, is critical for improving efficient selection of the desired trait.

Classical genetics has associated alternative forms, or alleles, of the agouti signaling protein gene (ASIP) with coat color variation in many mammals including mice, rats, dogs, cats, pigs, and sheep. However, most research has been focused on the mouse, with little understood about the genetic basis for coat color in economically important livestock species such as sheep.

The wild-type coat color of sheep is typically dark-bodied with a pale belly, however sheep raisers have strongly selected for a uniformly white coat domestic sheep. A problem for the sheep industry is a recessive black "non-agouti" allele of the ASIP gene carried by white sheep that cannot be distinguished within the flock, resulting in black coat color at a low, but persistent frequency. Determining the exact genetic differences at the ASIP locus could assist in efficient selection for white coat color......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 10, 2008, 8:13 PM CT

Wasps and Bumble Bees Heat Up

Good pollen makes bees hot, biologists at UC San Diego have found. Wasps warm up too when they find protein-rich meat, a separate experiment has shown.

In both cases warmer flight muscles likely speed the insects' trips home, allowing them to quickly exploit a valuable resource before competitors arrive, the scientists report in separate studies, published this month in two scientific journals.

Because foragers of neither species eat the protein they collect, feeding it instead to their larvae, their warming must be a behavioral rather than a metabolic response to nutritious food, both research teams conclude.

Such similar responses found in two distantly related species - a bumble bee and a yellowjacket wasp whose ancestral lines diverged millions of years ago - suggest that the behavior is an ancestral trait. Bumble bees, but not yellowjackets, recruit fellow foragers to help gather good food; and they are still extra warm when they return to the hive.

"This is information that other bees could potentially use," said associate professor of biology James Nieh who leads the research group that published both papers. Their elevated body heat could be a signal to other bees that has acquired a meaning beyond its original physiological function......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 8, 2008, 8:36 PM CT

Who dares sings and who sings wins

Humans often choose partners based on behavioural keys that are displayed during social interactions. The way we behave in different social contexts can reflect personality traits or temperament that may inspire long-term love. Behavioural norms that we perceive as sexually attractive are not culturally or evolutionarily arbitrary.

However, personality-mediated sexual selection is not just the privilege of mankind. As per a research findings reported in the online, open-access journal PLoS ONE on July 9, Lszl Garamszegiand his colleagues at the University of Antwerp and at Etvs University, Budapest used bird song as a model to investigate whether behavioural traits involved in sexual advertisement can serve as good indicators of personality in wild animals.

Behavioural ecologists have begun to recognise the evolutionary importance of personality traits in a number of animal taxa, from fishes to high vertebrates. Birds are often used as a model in personality research, and past studies have demonstrated that individuals do display consistent behavioural responses on different days, and individuality can even be manifested across different ecological situations (aggression, for example, is expressed in a male-male context, while its correlated response, risk taking is at work in a predator-prey context)......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 8, 2008, 6:40 PM CT

Insect warning colors aid cancer drug discovery

Brightly colored beetles or butterfly larvae nibbling on a plant may signal the presence of chemical compounds active against cancer cell lines and tropical parasitic diseases, according to researchers at Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Such clues could speed drug discovery and provide insight into the ecological relationships between tropical-forest plants and insects that feed on them. The report is published in the Ecological Society of America's journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment

"These findings are incredibly exciting and important," said Todd Capson, STRI research chemist, who directed the project. "The results of this study could have direct and positive impacts on the future of medical treatment for many diseases around the world".

For this research scientists used plants already known to have anti-cancer compounds; those proven to be active against certain disease-carrying parasites; and plants without such activity. The study showed that beetles and butterfly larvae with bright warning coloration were significantly more common on plants that contained compounds active against certain diseases, such as breast cancer and malaria. There was no significant difference in the number of plain-colored insects between plants with and without activity, according to the study by the Smithsonian's Panama International Cooperative Biodiversity Group Program......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 7, 2008, 10:05 PM CT

Birds migrate together at night in dispersed flocks

A new analysis indicates that birds don't fly alone when migrating at night. Some birds, at least, keep together on their migratory journeys, flying in tandem even when they are 200 meters or more apart.

The study, from scientists at the University of Illinois and the Illinois Natural History Survey, appears this month in Integrative and Comparative Biology. It is the first to confirm with statistical data what a number of ornithologists and observers had long suspected: Birds fly together in loose flocks during their nocturnal migration.

Scientists have spent decades trying to determine how birds migrate at night, when most bird migration occurs. But nighttime tracking of tiny flying objects a quarter mile to a half mile up is no easy task. They have used stationary light beams, radar-mounted tracking spot lamps and long-range radar to try to figure out what is going on in the night sky. Some have even watched birds cross the face of the moon.

Decades of such observations suggested that birds travel together at night, but not in compact flocks as they do during the day, said principal investigator Ronald Larkin, a professor of animal biology, who conducted the new study with Robert Szafoni. Larkin is a wildlife ecologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, where Szafoni also worked as a research scientist. Sfazoni currently is an affiliate of the INHS......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 7, 2008, 10:02 PM CT

Climate Effects on Young Fish

From the surface, the two areas of ocean off the coasts of northern New Jersey and Long Island, New York look the same. But to NOAA scientists, the four-square-mile patches could not be more different as they view real-time underwater images and environmental data to try to figure out what lives there and how climate change is affecting marine life, particularly very young fish.

"These areas are much more dynamic than terrestrial landscapes and not what we are used to thinking about the ocean," said John Manderson, a fishery biologist with NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) at the James J. Howard Marine Sciences Laboratory in Sandy Hook, N.J. "People look at the ocean floor as the habitat, but don't think about the connection with the water column above it and how ocean fronts, like atmospheric weather, move through to create a constantly changing environment that affects fish and other marine life. It is a seascape, a moving 3-D environment."

Manderson and his colleagues in the NEFSC's Behavioral Ecology Branch recently completed their first two-week cruise to the study area for the 2008 Ecology of Coastal Ocean Seascapes (ECOS) project. Another two-week cruise will be conducted in July, a third in September. There were some scientific surprises on the first cruise, and an unexpected event. On June 9, near the end of the first cruise, they rescued three teenagers from a swamped boat (see rescue story at end of article)......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 7, 2008, 9:22 PM CT

Biodiversity Maps Will Help Conservation Measures

By Susan Brown.

Conservation biologists from UC San Diego are collaborating with researchers from the African Conservation Centre and other institutions to map patterns of biodiversity and land use in East Africa in unprecedented detail. Their maps, combined with climate models, will project how climate change will alter biodiversity and help to shape policy for setting aside conservation easements.

Wildlife, people and livestock have weathered past variation in climate by shifting their seasonal migration patterns though the varied of ecological zones in the Great Rift Valley, which runs through the center of Kenya and Tanzania.

"When you go from the bottom of the rift, it's almost desert. By the time you get up to the top, no more than 15-20 km away, it's rainforest," said David Western, adjunct professor of biology at UCSD, director of the African Conservation Centre in Nairobi and former director of Kenya Wildlife Service. "Previously this was communal land where people moved with the seasons and they moved with changing climates".

Now, as climate change is expected to shift the balance between habitats in this region, increased farming has fragmented the landscape, Western said. "It's removed the highland grazing for both livestock and wildlife. The crop residues can keep the livestock going, but it's a complete lockout for wildlife"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source

July 7, 2008, 5:28 PM CT

Species Diversity Less Dramatic Than Believed

A study reported in the current issue of Science challenges the long-held belief that diversity of marine species has been increasing continuously since the origin of animals. Dr. Thomas D. Olszewski, a geology and geophysics professor at Texas A&M University, has been a part of the international team that carried out this decade-long study, which concludes that most of the diversification occurred early on - relatively speaking.

"The general understanding for a number of decades has been that since the rise of the modern major groups of animals about 545 million years ago (i.e., since the beginning of the Phanerozoic Era), the diversity of animal life in the seas has undergone a roughly four-fold exponential increase," says Olszewski. A steep increase in the diversity was believed to have occurred only between 145 million and 60 million years ago.

But a number of paleontologists were doubtful about the accuracy of this theory, which was derived using older methods. Olszewski explains that the older methods did not account for a number of important occurrences in the history of the Earth, including changes in the geography of Earth due to continental drift and variations in the state of global climate.

Collaborative efforts of 35 scientists from the U.S., Gera number of, the UK, France and Slovakia resulted in a more accurate interpretation of the prehistoric data. Olszewski says that the scientists used a "fundamentally new analysis, which differs in several important aspects from the prior [methods used for] understanding of the history of marine diversity"......... Posted by: Kelly      Read more         Source