Bootylicious! Horse fly with bling named after Beyonce

From msnbc.com
Australian insect with golden butt reminded researcher of pop-music diva
By Jennifer Welsh

Thanks to Erin W for the link!

Beyonce may be one of the biggest pop divas out there, but she isn't the only diva with that name. A previously unnamed species of horse fly with a glamorous golden rear end has been named Beyonce because it is the "all-time diva of flies," researchers say.
Bryan Lessard, a researcher from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, is responsible for officially describing the fly and naming it Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae, according to the Australian National Insect Collection.

Beyonce isn't the first celebrity to be honored with her own species. Traditionally named after scientists involved in their discovery, organisms have also been linked to the likes of Harrison Ford, Matt Groening (creator of "The Simpsons"), Mick Jagger and other celebrities, including a beetle named after Roy Orbison.

Gold and bold
The rare Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae species of horse fly was collected in 1981 (the year that Beyonce was born) together with two other previously unknown specimens from northeast Queensland's Atherton Tablelands.

The singer Beyonce, on the other hand, was a member of the group Destiny’s Child, which recorded the 2001 hit single "Bootylicious." The fly got its booty-ful name from its extreme diva feature: a big gold butt.

"It was the unique dense golden hairs on the fly's abdomen that led me to name this fly in honor of the performer Beyonce as well as giving me the chance to demonstrate the fun side of taxonomy — the naming of species," Lessard said in a statement.
Horse flies like the newly named one play an important role in ecology by pollinating plants. "Horse flies act like hummingbirds during the day, drinking nectar from their favorite varieties of grevillea, tea trees and eucalypts," Lessard said.

Lying in wait
The Beyonce fly is one of five detailed in Lessard's paper, published in the online version of the Australian Journal of Entomology in August and announced on Friday. This discovery has doubled the number of known species within the Scaptia (Plinthina) subgenus and extended the known distribution of Scaptia into the Northern Territory and northwestern Australia, where they were not previously thought to exist.
"Most Australian Scaptia species have been described, however, these five 'new' species of a subgroup (Plinthina) have been housed in Australian collections since the group was last studied in the 1960s," Lessard said.

Apparently, the singer hasn't had a chance to respond to the news. The CSIRO blog post reads: "News@CSIRO has sought a response from Beyonce about the great honor bestowed upon her but is yet to receive a response. ... Beyonce has recently had her first larva, sorry, child, and may be too busy to respond."

Sony's new termite battery runs on shredded cardboard

From Dvice
By Evan Ackerman

Termites manage to power themselves by eating wood, which is a pretty neat trick. Sony has just come up with a battery that does the same thing: feed it shredded paper or cardboard, and it produces enough electricity to run an MP3 player.

What Sony has come up with (actually, they've been refining it for years now) is a thin sheet of material called a "bio-battery." The basic design uses an enzyme to break down sugar and turn it into hydrogen ions and electrons, creating an electric current and water. Bio-batteries like these can run on all kinds of things, from soda to fruit juice, but the problem is that all of these sugary liquids are just so tasty, and given the choice, most people can't help just drinking their battery power and not powering their batteries with it.

Okay, so yeah, that's not the problem at all.

Still, it would be a lot more useful to power a battery with something that's not as tasty or useful as fruit juice, which is why Sony has added another enzyme into the mix that can break down cellulose into sugar. Cellulose is made of long chains of glucose (sugar), and it forms the cell walls of most green plants. Cardboard and paper are both made of cellulose, but breaking those glucose chains down into usable bits is tough to do. The human digestion can't do it, but termites can, and so can Sony's pet enzymes.

All it takes to power this bio-battery, then, is a bunch of chopped up cardboard immersed in a solution of water and different types of enzymes. The first enzyme breaks the cellulose in the cardboard into glucose, which the second enzyme then eats to produce electricity. It's basically a little digestive tract that eats used paper products and poops out electrons and water, without relying on any heavy metals or chemicals or anything. Sounds too good to be true, and it almost is: as a proof of concept this technology is undeniably impressive, but it's going to be a while before bio-batteries like these output enough power to be useful as much more than novelties.

Dlisted's Hot Slut Of The Day! The world's biggest living insect

From Dlisted
by Michael K:

"The world's biggest living insect (that we know of)! With a body like Xtina's shoved in a bandage dress, arms like Posh Beckham's and seductively dead eyes like Courtney Stodden's, a giant weta hypnotized former American park ranger Mark Moffett when he caught her crawling around Little Barrier Island in New Zealand. Don't even bother taking out the RAID, because this bitch can grab it from you and hit you in the face with it.

Mark tells The Telegraph that he lured the lady weta to his hand by waving a carrot at her. He fed her a few bites and then let her go. Mark seems to think that he's found the biggest weta on the planet.

"Three of us walked the trails of this small island for two nights scanning the vegetation for a giant weta. We spent many hours with no luck finding any at all, before we saw her up in a tree.

The giant weta is the largest insect in the world, and this is the biggest one ever found, she weighs the equivalent to three mice. She enjoyed the carrot so much she seemed to ignore the fact she was resting on our hands and carried on munching away. She would have finished the carrot very quickly, but this is an extremely endangered species and we didn't want to risk indigestion. After she had chewed a little I took this picture and we put her right back where we found her."

There's no reason to beg Khloe Kardashian to save us all by battling that weta in a fight to the death, because she looks harmless. That weta is sort of cute. Don't you just want to dress her up in a tutu, throw her in your purse and take her shopping? Just look her at her nom-ing on that carrot. If she can eat a carrot......that means she can eat a finger..... And while you're screaming at your chomped off finger, she can jump down your open mouth, shove herself down into your stomach and eat you from the inside/out. No, she would never do that."

The silver lining: trees enveloped in spider webs

From Pakistan the Only choice facebook page

"The Silver Lining, The Spider Webs! An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan has been that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters. Because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water has taken so long to recede, many trees have become cocooned in spiders webs. People in this part of Sindh have never seen this phenome...non before but, they also report that there are now far fewer mosquitoes than they would expect, given the amount of stagnant, standing water that is around. It is thought that the mosquitoes are getting caught in the spiders web, thus, reducing the risk of malaria, which would be one blessing for the people of Sindh, facing so many other hardships after the floods...!!!"

Human Sex is Boring

from Roxy Drew


for more go to Roxy Drew

Macro Photographs of Bugs’ Eyes Taken by Thomas Shahan

GO HERE to see a gallery of macro photographs of bugs’ eyes taken by Thomas Shahan - thanks to naim for the link!

How "Zombie" Virus Liquifies Caterpillar Hosts

Single gene allows virus to brainwash caterpillars, turn them to goo, study says.

by Brian Handwerk

From National Geographic

Scientists have identified a single gene that allows a caterpillar-brainwashing virus to do its dirty work, a new study says.

The virus forces the "zombie" caterpillars to climb trees, where the invader eventually liquifies its hosts' bodies into a dripping goo.

"When gypsy moth caterpillars are healthy and happy, they go up into the trees at night to feed on leaves, and then climb back down in the morning to hide [in bark crevices or soil] from predators during the day," said study co-author Kelli Hoover, an entomologist at Penn State University.

But caterpillars infected with a baculovirus—a type of virus that infects invertebrates—are driven to the treetops and reprogrammed to stay there until they meet a doom worthy of a horror film.

"When they are infected, as they get sicker they stay up in the trees and die up there," Hoover explained.

The virus "ends up using just about all of the caterpillar to make more virus, and there are other genes in the virus that then make the caterpillar melt. So it becomes a pool of millions of virus particles that end up dropping onto the foliage below where it can infect other moths that eat those leaves."


Viruses Are Master Manipulators
Though such zombie-making viruses were previously known, their genetics have been a mystery.

So Hoover and colleagues infected gypsy moth caterpillars with half a dozen different types of baculovirus and placed the bugs in tall bottles with food on the bottom. Viruses that the scientists had determined carried a specific gene, called egt, drove caterpillars to climb to the top of the container and stay there to die.

Researchers then removed egt from some viruses, reinfected the caterpillars, and found that the zombie behavior stopped. When the team inserted the gene into a virus that previously lacked it, the zombie behavior returned.

"Somehow or other, using this gene, the virus is able to manipulate the behavior of the caterpillar to go to the right location in the tree to enhance transmission to new hosts. It's really amazing," Hoover said.

The gene may work by deactivating its hosts' molting hormone, according to the study, published tomorrow in the journal Science.

"That would be an advantage to the virus because it keeps the insect in a feeding state, so that they get bigger and bigger and make more and more virus."

Viruses and Moths-Natural Enemies
There are many different types of baculovirus, Hoover said, and almost all caterpillar species are infected by one or more of them.

But the virus, which is naturally occurring, doesn't greatly impact gypsy moths as a species, Hoover said. Gypsy moth populations are prone to cycles of boom and bust, so when caterpillar numbers are in check, the virus remains so as well.

When gypsy moth invasions grow, the virus may go into outbreak mode-serving as a natural control mechanism for caterpillar infestations.

"This virus probably came to North America when the caterpillars did," Hooever explained. "It's just a natural enemy of the gypsy moth."

--

if you liked this you might also like: http://dnapes.blogspot.com/2010/09/zombie-fying-parasites.html

15 Animals You Won’t Believe Aren't Photoshopped

Cracked.com has a very fun article on some neat-looking animals like Ankole-Watusi Cattle which is captioned: "That's the smile of a boy who will never, ever be fucked with again." Go here to see the full list!

Social networking for locusts

From kurzweilai.net




Insect swarming is created by the same kind of adaptive-network mechanisms that humans adopt for social networks, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems have determined.

The researchers used ideas from studies on opinion formation in social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, and applied them to a study of 120 locusts marching in a ring-shaped arena in the lab.

Locusts “like” each other — really like

Locusts rely heavily on swarming because they are cannibalistic. The researchers found that the social interactions involved convincing others to walk in the same direction as they march across barren deserts, keeping track of each other so they can remain within striking distance to consume one another — a cruel but efficient survival strategy.

“We don’t necessarily pay more attention to those doing the same as us, but many times [we pay more attention] to those doing something different,” said Gerd Zschaler of the Max Planck Institute.

Ref.: Gerd Zschaler, et al., Adaptive-network models of swarm dynamics, 2011; [DOI:10.1088/1367-2630/13/7/073022]

Traumatic insemination – male spider pierces female’s underside with needle-sharp penis

From Discover Blogs - Not Exactly Rocket Science

by ED YONG

Thanks to Alex C for the link!

The courtship rituals of the spider Harpactea sadistica start innocently enough, with a dance and a hug. The male spider taps the female gently with his front legs and embraces her. But from that point onwards, things for the female go rapidly downhill. The male bites her and she becomes passive, allowing him to manoeuvre her into position. Like all spiders, his genitals are found next to his head, on a pair of appendages called the pedipalps. But unusually, his penis ends in a needle-sharp tip called an embolus.

The embolus sits at the end of a loop called the conductor. The male hooks one of these loops around the opposite embolus to steady it. Then, by rotating the anchored needle, he drives the point straight through the female’s underside and ejaculates directly into her body cavity. On average, he does this six times, moving slowly downwards and alternating between his two penises. The entire cringeworthy sequence lasts about 15 minutes and throughout it, the male spider never penetrates the female’s actual genital opening.

The species was discovered in Israel last year by Milan Rezac from the Crop Rsearch Institute in the Czech Republic. He named it well. H.sadistica practices a style of sex that’s understandably known as “traumatic insemination“. It’s disturbingly common among insects and other invertebrates, and is most famously practiced by bedbugs. But this is the first time that the behaviour’s been seen among the chelicerates – the group of animals that includes spiders, scorpions and mites.

You can see it happening in the videos below. In the first, the male spider bites and incapacitates the female. In the second, he hooks the conductor of one pedipalp around the embolus of another and, with rotating motions, drives it into the female. These videos aren’t pretty – you’ve been warned.

When most spiders mate, the male ejects sperm into the female’s vulva, and she stores it in a special pouch called the spermatheca. These pouches allow females to control when she fertilises her eggs, by voluntarily shunting sperm onto them before she lays. It also means that the last male to mate with her typically sires most of her offspring, because his sperm flushes out those of earlier liaisons.

This system means that there’s a fever-pitched sperm competition between males. Different species have evolved bizarre adaptations to get an edge in these conflicts. Some guard their mates after sex. Others leave behind “mate plugs” – chastity belts that block the female’s genitals. The males of one species take this to an extreme, by spontaneously dying during intercourse and turning their entire bodies into a mating plug.

But H.sadistica‘s brutal sexual practice allows it to bypass the competition altogether because the male’s sperm can travel directly to the female’s ovaries through her bloodstream. By wresting control of fertilisation from females, males ensure that when they mate, their sperm isn’t shunted aside at the risk of later removal. The female’s genitals support that idea, for her spemathecae have atrophied and are extremely small. Since the male doesn’t ejaculate in the usual place, she has no need to keep around storage space for his sperm.


The wounds don’t seem to harm the female, and Rezac never saw blood leaking from the punctures. If the females are put off by their repeated stabbings, they don’t show it. Within days, they are usually ready for a new mate. It might even be positively beneficial for the female to mate with males who practice traumatic insemination. The sons of such a partnership would themselves be better at circumventing the female’s sexual stores and having more offspring of their own.

It’s entirely possible that in the future, the H.sadistica females will evolve a countermeasure to the male’s stabbing genitals. Female bedbugs, for example, have developed a set of secondary sperm containers called ‘spermalege’ at the place where the males make their entries. They have effectively shunted the entire sexual process – from penetration to sperm storage – to a different part of their bodies. The original genital opening is only used to lay eggs. The same adaptations have cropped up in other insects too but H.sadistica doesn’t have them… yet.

Reference:Rezac, M. (2009). The spider Harpactea sadistica: co-evolution of traumatic insemination and complex female genital morphology in spiders Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0104

Abstract
The males of invertebrates from a few phyla, including arthropods, have been reported to practise traumatic insemination (TI; i.e. injecting sperm by using the copulatory organ to penetrate the female's body wall). As all previously reported arthropod examples have been insects, there is considerable interest in whether TI might have evolved independently in other arthropods. The research reported here demonstrates the first case of TI in the arthropod subphylum Chelicerata, in particular how the genital morphology and mating behaviour of Harpactea sadistica (Řezáč 2008), a spider from Israel, has become adapted specifically for reproduction based on TI. Males have needle-like intromittent organs and females have atrophied spermathecae. In other spiders, eggs are fertilized simultaneously with oviposition, but the eggs of H. sadistica are fertilized in the ovaries (internal fertilization) and develop as embryos before being laid. Sperm-storage organs of phylogenetically basal groups to H. sadistica provide males with last male sperm priority and allow removal of sperm by males that mate later, suggesting that TI might have evolved as an adaptive strategy to circumvent an unfavourable structure of the sperm-storage organs, allowing the first male to mate with paternity advantage. Understanding the functional significance of TI gives us insight into factors underlying the evolution of the genital and sperm-storage morphology in spiders.

(and since it reminded me of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno - here you go):

Spiders Evolved Spare Legs

from National Geographic (image from 27bslash6)
by MATT KAPLAN
Arachnids missing up to two limbs can build webs and hunt with ease.

Scientists may have uncovered why spiders are so creepy-crawly—they have more legs than they need, a new study says.

After collecting thousands of female spiders in the wild, scientists found that more than 10 percent of the arachnids were missing at least one of their eight legs.

"We wondered if this was handicapping them in any way," said study co-author Alain Pasquet at the University of Nancy 1 in France.

The research team placed 123 Zygiella x-notata spiders in individual plastic boxes, where the animals could build webs. Sixty of the spiders were eight-legged, while 63 were each missing one or more legs.

Pasquet and his colleagues found that webs built by spiders missing at least one leg did not differ much from the webs built by spiders that were intact.

Six-Legged Spiders Still Good Hunters
The scientists then placed flies in the enclosures and found that leg-lacking spiders were also perfectly capable of catching and eating the insects.

"We were really surprised—we expected missing a leg to harm the spiders' ability to catch food, and it didn't at all," Pasquet said.

Based on the findings, the authors propose that spiders have legs that they don't really need—an advantage when it comes to escaping a predator that's put the bite on a limb, for example.

Yet there does appear to be a limit to how many legs a spider can lose. In the wild, the team found few spiders missing more than two legs. And in the lab, these five-legged spiders built shoddy webs.

Spider-legs study published in a recent issue of the journal Naturwissenschaften.

Reference
Pasquet A, Anotaux M, Leborgne R (2011) Loss of legs: is it or not a handicap for an orb-weaving spider? Naturwissenschaften DOI: 10.1007/s00114-011-0799-7

Abstract
Leg loss is a common phenomenon in spiders, and according to the species 5% to 40% of the adults can present at least one missing leg. There is no possibility of regeneration after adult moult and the animal must manage with its missing appendages until its death. With the loss of one or more legs, female orb-weaving spiders can be penalized twice: firstly, because the legs are necessary for web construction and secondly, the legs are essential for the control of the prey after its interception by the web. During development, spiders may be also penalized because regeneration has energetic costs that take away resources for survival, growth and reproduction. All these consequences should influence negatively the development of the spider and thus its fitness. We investigated the impact of leg loss in the orb-weaving spider, Zygiella x-notata by studying its frequency in a natural population and web building and prey capture behaviours in laboratory. In field populations, 9.5% to 13%, of the adult females presented the loss of one or more legs; the majority of individuals had lost only one leg (in 48% of cases, a first one). Leg loss seems to affect all the adult spiders, as there is no difference of mass between intact spiders and those with missing leg. Data obtained with laboratory-reared spiders, showed that the loss of legs due to the moult is rare (less than 1%). Considering changes in web design, spiders with missing legs decreased their silk investment, increased the distance between spiral turns but did not change the capture surface of the web. Under our laboratory experimental conditions, spiders with one or two lost legs did not present any difference in prey capture efficiency. In laboratory conditions, spiders with lost leg(s) did not show any difference in egg sac production or in longevity (adult lifespan) compared to intact spiders.

short story by David Sedaris - 'I'm actually more of a barfly'

This story took me back to when I used to study Drosophila, its exactly the type of thing we would have found hysterical. Warning: if you are weak-stomached this one is probably not for you. - MA

from the telegraph via the david sedaris fb page

The fly was at the bus station when he saw a man in a sailor suit clutch his stomach. Then he leant forward in his plastic seat and vomited onto the scuffed linoleum floor. “Son of a bitch,” the man muttered, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I just paid $6 for that!”

There was a bathroom next to the snack bar, and as the man rose unsteadily to his feet and stumbled in its direction, the people flanking him abandoned their seats, leaving a wide berth for what looked to be an excellent meal. The fly liked a hot lunch and was just tucking in when a second fly, this one a female, flew down from the ceiling and landed on a narrow peninsula beside him. “What have we got here?” she asked.

“Chinese,” the male said.

The female picked half-heartedly at a snow pea. “Ten will get you 20 it’s from the Shanghai Garden,” she told him. “I had their pork lo mein once and was in the rest room for two days.”

“Well, I don’t mind it,” the male said, and he moved from a beef chunk to a sliver of ginger. “If you don’t like ethnic, there are some potato chips in here too. And a grilled cheese sandwich.”

“What kind of cheese?” the female asked. “If it’s American, you can have it.”

“Suit yourself,” the male said.

“By law, they shouldn’t even be calling it cheese, that’s how tasteless and full of chemicals it is.” The female glanced into a slick of digestive juices and saw her face multiplied a hundredfold, scowling back at her. “Anyway, when it comes to regurgitated food, you really need to consider the source — the class of person or dog or whatever. Take the lieutenant governor and his family, for example, whom I happen to know quite intimately.”

“Do you?” the male said. He had no idea what a lieutenant governor was, but out of politeness he made himself sound interested, the way he did when someone spoke about computers or yoga.

“Oh yes,” said the female. “Why, I was practically raised at Old Stoney, which is what they call their summer home on the lake. The lieutenant governor’s wife – Khaki, to her friends — is two months pregnant, though that’s strictly on the QT, at least until the formal announcement is made.

“She suffers from the most terrible morning sickness, and her vomit is outstanding, better than normal spoiled food, in my opinion!”

“You don’t say,” said the fly.

“Her faeces were good as well, at least what I could get of them,” the female continued. “Like most people of good breeding, Khaki uses a toilet, but then some horrible journalist wrote that she’d had a cocaine problem in college, so she defecated into a shoebox. The plan was to mail it to him at the newspaper, and while she pieced together a note I swooped in for a quick taste.”

“And?”

“Excellent,” the female said. “The best faeces I’ve ever had. Almost like dessert.”

The fly pointed in the direction of the departure board. “If it’s sweet you’re after, there’s a bit of jam smeared on that handrail over near the front door. I also saw a peach pit on the ground next to the trash can.”

“I meant inherently sweet, spiritually sweet,” the female said. “It’s a quality the lieutenant governor’s wife has in spades. As has Monica Van Landingham.”

The fly looked at her blankly.

“The actress? Monica Van Landingham? Winner of two Spotlight Awards?”

“Sorry,” confessed the fly.

“Well, she’s a very important person,” the female told him. “Extremely important. We met when she was an overnight guest at Old Stoney — not more than five days ago, it was. There was a fund-raising ball for the upcoming election. Miss Van Landingham’s shoes were too tight, so of course she developed a blood blister and of course it popped on the brand-new ottoman the moment she returned to her room to put her poor swollen feet up. I tried to clean it off before she noticed, but she’s quick, Miss Van Landingham. Observant too, so I got no more than five or six mouthfuls before she dabbed at it with soap and water. That did nothing to get the blood out, so in the end she blamed it on the lieutenant governor’s dog, Chocolate Chip, which may seem dishonest but isn’t, really, seeing as he may as well have done it. It’s such a common breed, the Jack Russell.” She picked at a bit of onion. “I can’t believe you don’t know who Monica Van Landingham is.”

“I’m actually more of a barfly,” the male told her. “Certain sports figures I could maybe recognise, but otherwise I don’t have a clue.” He wanted to add that he didn’t care either. Life was short — with luck, you had maybe 30 days — so what did it matter whose crap you were eating? The same was true for vomit and blood blisters: just eat and shut up about it, for God’s sake.

“Perhaps you’ve seen Miss Van Landingham on TV, then,” the female said. “Not on a commercial — she’d never stoop so low — but on the news. You might think that’s odd for an actress, but she has opinions — important ones. Just last week, to give you an example, she came out against breast cancer — told the world, 'Hey, I think it’s a bad idea!’”

“Well, that’s great,” the fly said.

“Call me crazy, but I’m against it too,” the female announced. “I’m against breast cancer and drunk driving and the one where kids in other countries get their feet blown off. And it’s not just my association with Khaki and Miss Van Landingham — I’d be against these things anyway.”

On the other side of the room, a door opened, and from it stepped a janitor with a mop in a rolling bucket. “Just my luck,” muttered the fly, and he quickened his pace while monitoring the man’s progress.

“Tonight there’s a benefit for people who can’t count,” the female told him. “It’s black tie, and everyone will be there. Everyone important anyway. I’m just waiting until it begins.” She paused. “That’s not an invitation, mind you. I just figured you were wondering what someone like me was doing at the bus station.”

“That, I was,” said the fly, and he watched over her head as the janitor lifted his mop. “Especially someone like you, with American cheese stuck to her chin.”

“Oh my God,” said the female. “How long has it been there?” She dipped her front legs into a puddle of grease, and just as she’d begun to wash her face, the mop came down, and the fly took off for the other side of the room, where a woman in a straw hat had placed an uncovered Tupperware dish upon her suitcase. He parked himself on the NO SMOKING sign above her head, and watched while the janitor ruined a perfectly good meal.

As for the female, he wasn’t going to waste any time feeling guilty. Constant vigilance — that was a fly’s motto, and woe be to anyone who let her attention waver, no matter how good-looking she was. He had to give the female that, at least. She had been pretty. If she’d known how to keep her trap shut, he might have upped her to beautiful, but wasn’t that always the way with the ladies? For every good quality they possessed, there were two bad ones just waiting to be discovered.

The male waited another few seconds, and when the woman below shut her eyes for a nap, he moved a bit closer and saw that what she’d set atop her suitcase was pie. Blueberry, and almost an entire slice. A fellow could spend the rest of his life eating a thing like this. He might not finish it — might not even come close — but neither would he grow tired of it, the way he might of vomit or rot or even fresh faeces. Such succulent bounty, and all of it for him! The fly was rubbing his hands together, just preparing to tuck in, when he heard a familiar voice and looked up to see the female. “Talk about a close call!” she said, and she shook a bead of mop water off her wing. “Now, where was I?”

As the fly bit glumly into his favourite filling, she positioned herself in a sunbeam and resumed her monologue from the vantage point of the upper crust.

* This story, 'Vomit-Eating Flies’, will be published in the paperback edition of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk (Abacus) next year. Read an interview with David Sedaris in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/ He will be appearing at the Telegraph Hay Festival on Monday at 4pm

least scary spider ever

via neatorama

Study of spiders shows species may be able to adapt to global warming

From the Ecologist
Study of spiders shows species may be able to adapt to global warming
by WILLIAM McLENNAN
Species may be able to adapt to gradual increases in temperature preventing the collapse of biological communities in the face of global climate change

The predatory behaviour of spiders is unaffected by increased temperatures, according to research by Yale University, suggesting some species can adapt to global warming.

The Yale research examined a well-studied grassland food web, made up of a predatory spider, its grasshopper prey, and the plants grasshoppers fed on. The spider’s predatory behaviour is known to be temperature-sensitive, decreasing with increased temperatures. Researchers had expected higher temperatures to stop the spiders preying on grasshoppers, leading to more plants being eaten.

However, in the study, spider populations from warmer areas tolerated higher temperature ranges better than the populations from cooler areas and continued to control the grasshopper popualtion. This suggests they can adapt to local conditions and maintain their vital role in the community despite increased temperatures.

‘Species are almost certainly adapting to the climate change Earth has experienced during the past century,' study author Dr Brandon Barton told the Ecologist. 'My results show that species have the capacity to adapt to a range of temperatures, similar to those predicted by climate change models, and that a species’ role in the community can be conserved by this adaptation.’

Many similar experiments expose organisms to short-term, sudden increases in temperature, which does not allow for long-term gradual processes like climate change. Barton’s work overcomes these limitations by looking at populations along a natural temperature gradient to see if long-term changes in temperature would affect small-scale food webs. He sampled spiders at sites from a 500km, north-south axis, along the east coast of the United States, where temperature varied by 4.8C.

‘Ecologists must design experiments that explicitly test how gradual climate change will affect future systems, or else risk making unrealistic and misleading conclusions,’ Barton believes.

Dr Karsten Schönrogge, Principal Scientist at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, believes further research is required to improve our understanding of how species may adapt to climate change.

‘Rapid adaptation of species not just to temperatures, but any of the factors indicated to change under climate change [e.g. drought regimes, etc.] or other environmental change could potentially stabilise communities. If they [species] can adapt, understanding how quickly and how far would give us a much better understanding to predict possible impacts of climate change at community level,' he said.

Despite species ability to adapt, Barton remains unconvinced this can eliminate the negative impacts of climate change.‘Whether understated or exaggerated, all evidence suggests that the wide-reaching direct and indirect effects of climate change will have innumerable consequences on biological systems globally.’

---
Reference
Barton BT (2011) Local adaptation to temperature conserves top-down control in a grassland food web. Proc. R. Soc. B doi: 10.1098/rspb.2011.0030

Abstract
A fundamental limitation in many climate change experiments is that tests represent relatively short-term ‘shock’ experiments and so do not incorporate the phenotypic plasticity or evolutionary change that may occur during the gradual process of climate change. However, capturing this aspect of climate change effects in an experimental design is a difficult challenge that few studies have accomplished. I examined the effect of temperature and predator climate history in food webs composed of herbaceous plants, generalist grasshopper herbivores and spider predators across a natural 4.8°C temperature gradient spanning 500 km in northeastern USA. In these grasslands, the effects of rising temperatures on the plant community are indirect and arise via altered predator–herbivore interactions. Experimental warming had no direct effect on grasshoppers, but reduced predation risk effects by causing spiders from all study sites to seek thermal refuge lower in the plant canopy. However, spider thermal tolerance corresponded to spider origin such that spiders from warmer study sites tolerated higher temperatures than spiders from cooler study sites. As a consequence, the magnitude of the indirect effect of spiders on plants did not differ along the temperature gradient, although a reciprocal transplant experiment revealed significantly different effects of spider origin on the magnitude of top-down control. These results suggest that variation in predator response to warming may maintain species interactions and associated food web processes when faced with long term, chronic climate warming.

Blackawton bees paper reminds me why I became a scientist

Deep thanks to Tracy K who posted this on facebook and gave me the perfect introduction to my thesis and reminded me why it is I do science. -MA

P. S. Blackawton PS, Airzee S, Allen A, Baker S, Berrow A, Blair C, Churchill M, Coles J, Cummin RF-J, Fraquelli L, Hackford C, Hinton Mellor A, Hutchcroft M, Ireland B, Jewsbury D, Littlejohns A, Littlejohns GM, Lotto M, McKeown J, O'Toole A, Richards H, Robbins-Davey L, Roblyn S, Rodwell-Lynn H, Schenck D, Springer J, Wishy A, Rodwell-Lynn T, Strudwick D, Lotto RB (2010) Blackawton bees. Biology Letters doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.1056

Abstract
Background
Real science has the potential to not only amaze, but also transform the way one thinks of the world and oneself. This is because the process of science is little different from the deeply resonant, natural processes of play. Play enables humans (and other mammals) to discover (and create) relationships and patterns. When one adds rules to play, a game is created. This is science: the process of playing with rules that enables one to reveal previously unseen patterns of relationships that extend our collective understanding of nature and human nature. When thought of in this way, science education becomes a more enlightened and intuitive process of asking questions and devising games to address those questions. But, because the outcome of all game-playing is unpredictable, supporting this ‘messyness’, which is the engine of science, is critical to good science education (and indeed creative education generally). Indeed, we have learned that doing ‘real’ science in public spaces can stimulate tremendous interest in children and adults in understanding the processes by which we make sense of the world. The present study (on the vision of bumble-bees) goes even further, since it was not only performed outside my laboratory (in a Norman church in the southwest of England), but the ‘games’ were themselves devised in collaboration with 25 8- to 10-year-old children. They asked the questions, hypothesized the answers, designed the games (in other words, the experiments) to test these hypotheses and analysed the data. They also drew the figures (in coloured pencil) and wrote the paper. Their headteacher (Dave Strudwick) and I devised the educational programme (we call ‘i,scientist’), and I trained the bees and transcribed the childrens' words into text (which was done with smaller groups of children at the school's local village pub). So what follows is a novel study (scientifically and conceptually) in ‘kids speak’ without references to past literature, which is a challenge. Although the historical context of any study is of course important, including references in this instance would be disingenuous for two reasons. First, given the way scientific data are naturally reported, the relevant information is simply inaccessible to the literate ability of 8- to 10-year-old children, and second, the true motivation for any scientific study (at least one of integrity) is one's own curiousity, which for the children was not inspired by the scientific literature, but their own observations of the world. This lack of historical, scientific context does not diminish the resulting data, scientific methodology or merit of the discovery for the scientific and ‘non-scientific’ audience. On the contrary, it reveals science in its truest (most naive) form, and in this way makes explicit the commonality between science, art and indeed all creative activities.

Principal finding
‘We discovered that bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from. We also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before. (Children from Blackawton)’.

Some of the nuggets from the actual paper:
From the intro:

"People think that humans are the smartest of animals, and most people do not think about other animals as being smart, or at least think that they are not as smart as humans. Knowing that other animals are as smart as us means we can appreciate them more, which could also help us to help them. "

From the methods:

"The bees had black and yellow stripes with white bottoms."

For so much more check out the Lotto Lab website

The Worst Science Jobs 2010

image from the sprinkle brigade

As a side note - I am a shit-stirrer by trade, and its really not that bad ;P and the last job seems awesome! To see a list from 2009 - check out this old post -MA

From io9.com
by ANNALEE NEWITZ
Fart collecting and testicle mashing: The grossest jobs in science

Fart collecting and testicle mashing: The grossest jobs in science Considering a career in science? You know, all those clean labs and shiny white coats? Well consider this: A lot of science jobs are more disgusting than all the Saw movies put together. We round up seven of the grossest.

Beetle testicle crusher
Do the size of your balls help you find a mate? To answer this burning question, a group of researchers in Japan set out to study whether big-balled beetles scored more with the ladies than small-balled beetles. To do this, I'm afraid, they sacrificed a lot of beetle balls. And to measure their size and volume, they had to grind up their little sacs and measure the volume of each one. The good news is that you don't need big balls to enjoy reproductive success in the beetle world. The bad news is that there are some really sad beetles limping around the lab right now.

Corpse grinder
Sometimes forensic scientists have to analyze corpses after they've been buried. In cases where they are trying to identify the person buried, or do toxicology studies (to see if the person may have been poisoned, for example), they need to get samples of the dead person's DNA. So they exhume the body, take chunks of bone or tissue, grind it up, filter out the DNA, and sequence as much of it as they need to for their research. It's just like that famous cult movie Corpse Grinders, except without the cat food thing.

Whale snot collector
One of this year's IgNobel Prizes for weird science went to three biologists who spent so much time collecting whale snot (to study disease patterns) that they actually invented a special remote-controlled helicopter to scoop up the goo for them. Not only do these brave researchers spend their days sifting through giant whale boogers, but now they have a robot slave to help out. Extra points for evil minionage!
Shit-stirrer
Many studies have been done on the microbes that live in animal guts, from mice to humans. Before scientists get to play around with their fancy DNA sequencers, somebody has to collect what once research team delicately referred to as "freshly voided fecal matter." And then they have to put that steaming poop into a special solution and shake it up. That's right - in labs all over the world, there are genomics and proteomics researchers who are shaking up giant bottles full of poop.

Bacteria chaser
Although bacteria may be the most awesomely adaptable creatures on the planet, they aren't exactly easy on the nose. In fact, scientists who study extremophiles - microbes that live in highly acidic areas, or in regions of intense heat or cold - often have to gather their samples in areas that smell hideous and are intensely hot. It's a stinky job, but somebody has to do it.

Fart statistician
How do you know when you fart too much? Because gastroenterologists have studied human fart production, figured out what the average number of daily farts should be, and determined that levels above that might indicate a medical problem. All hail the fart counters, who are keeping our gastrointestinal tracts healthy. And because I know you want to know: The mean number of farts in humans is "13.6 episodes per day," according to one expert.

Drunken hookup data analyst
Is it true that people look more attractive after you've tossed back a couple of drinks? To find out, a group of long-suffering researchers had to ask drunk people in bars who they would hit. These social scientists endured the real-life version of reading comment threads on YouTube, and discovered - not surprisingly - that people get more attractive the more obnoxiously wasted you get.

Hybridization is a normal part of speciation (and so freakin' cool!)

I ♥ hybridization. Thanks to Vanessa Van D for the link! -MA

from the NYTimes.com
Hybrids May Thrive Where Parents Fear to Tread
By SEAN B. CARROLL

On May 15, 1985, trainers at Hawaii Sea Life Park were stunned when a 400- pound gray female bottlenose dolphin named Punahele gave birth to a dark-skinned calf that partly resembled the 2,000-pound male false killer whale with whom she shared a pool. The calf was a wholphin, a hybrid that was intermediate to its parents in some characteristics, like having 66 teeth compared with the bottlenose’s 44 and the 88 of the false killer whale, a much larger member of the dolphin family.

In 2006, a hunter in the Canadian Arctic shot a bear that had white fur like a polar bear’s but had brown patches, long claws and a hump like a grizzly bear’s. DNA analysis confirmed the animal was a hybrid of the two species.

While one might think that these oddities are examples of some kind of moral breakdown in the animal kingdom, it turns out that hybridization among distinct species is not so rare. Some biologists estimate that as many as 10 percent of animal species and up to 25 percent of plant species may occasionally breed with another species. The more important issue is not whether such liaisons occasionally produce offspring, but the vitality of the hybrid and whether two species might combine to give rise to a third, distinct species.

While several examples of human-bred animal hybrids are well known and can thrive in captivity including zorses (zebra-horse), beefalo (bison-beef cattle) and, of course, mules (donkey-horse), naturally occurring animal hybrids have many factors working against their longer-term success.

One of the main obstacles is that, even if members of different species might mate, when the two species are too distant genetically or carry different numbers of chromosomes, the offspring are usually inviable or infertile (like zorses and mules), and are therefore evolutionary dead ends. A second problem is that any hybrid will usually be vastly outnumbered and outcompeted by one or both parent species.

But because species hybrids create new combinations of genes, it is possible that some combinations might enable hybrids to adapt to conditions in which neither parent may fare as well. Several such examples are now known from nature. Furthermore, DNA analysis is now allowing biologists to better decipher the histories of species and to detect past hybridization events that have contributed new genes and capabilities to various kinds of organisms including, it now appears, ourselves.

The familiar sunflower has provided great examples of adaptation by hybrids. Loren H. Rieseberg of the University of British Columbia and colleagues have found that two widespread species, the common sunflower and prairie sunflower, have combined at least three times to give rise to three hybrid species: the sand sunflower, the desert sunflower, and the puzzle sunflower.

The parental species thrive on moist soils in the central and Western states, but the hybrids are restricted to more extreme habitats. The sand sunflower, for instance, is limited to sand dunes in Utah and northern Arizona and the puzzle sunflower to brackish salt marshes in West Texas and New Mexico.

The species distributions suggest that the hybrids thrive where the parents cannot. Indeed, recent field tests that examined the relative ability of the parental species to thrive in the hybrids’ habitat, and vice versa, found that the sand sunflower was better able than its parents to germinate, grow and survive in its dune habitat but fared relatively poorly in parental habitats. Similarly, the puzzle sunflower was much better at growing in salty conditions than its parents.

One lesson from the sunflowers appears to be that hybrids may succeed if they can exploit a different niche from their parents. The same phenomenon has been discovered in animal hybrids.

In the past 250 years, various forms of honeysuckle have been introduced to the Northeastern states. In the late 1990s, researchers led by Bruce McPheron of Pennsylvania State University discovered that this invasive honeysuckle was infested by a particular fruit fly species they called the Lonicera fly. When they analyzed DNA to determine its relationship to others, they were stunned to find that it was a hybrid of two closely related flies, the blueberry maggot and the snowberry maggot.

In laboratory experiments, the researchers found that the Lonicera hybrid preferred its honeysuckle host plant over its parent species’ host plants and that each parent species preferred its own host plant over the other’s. However, both parents also accepted honeysuckle. The researchers suggest that since the two parental species were thus more likely to encounter each other on honeysuckle in the wild, the newly invasive weed served as a catalyst for matings between the species and the formation of the hybrid species that now prefers honeysuckle.

The sunflower and Lonicera fly examples raise the question of whether hybridization between species has been more frequent than biologists once assumed. The most provocative report of possible hybridization came from the recent analysis of more than 60 percent of the Neanderthal genome sequence, which raised the specter of our ancestors commingling their genes with a long-diverged cousin.

Analyses of the overall genetic distance between Neanderthals and modern humans reveal that our DNA is 99.84 percent identical to that of Neanderthals. This small divergence indicates that the two lines split off from each other about 270,000 to 440,000 years ago. The fossil evidence shows that Neanderthals were restricted to Europe and Asia, whereas Homo sapiens originated in Africa. Various kinds of evidence indicate that modern humans migrated out of Africa and reached the Middle East more than 100,000 years ago and Europe by about 45,000 years ago, and would have or could have encountered Neanderthals for some time in each locale. The crucial question for paleontology, archaeology, and paleogenetics has been what transpired between the two species. To put it a little more crudely, did we date them or kill them, or perhaps both?

If the former, then there could be a bit of Neanderthal in some or all of us. The first comparisons of small sections of Neanderthal DNA did not indicate any hybridization, and the lack of interbreeding became a widely accepted conclusion. That remained the case until this year, when a much greater portion of the Neanderthal genome was obtained by Svante Paabo and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. It now appears that 1 percent to 4 percent of the DNA sequence of Europeans and Asians, but not Africans, was contributed by Neanderthals mixing with Homo sapiens, perhaps in the Middle East 50,000 to 80,000 years ago. It is possible that some Neanderthal versions of genes enabled modern humans to adapt to new climates and habitats.

The discovery of hybrid species and the detection of past hybridizations are forcing biologists to reshape their picture of species as independent units. The barriers between species are not necessarily vast, unbridgeable chasms; sometimes they get crossed with marvelous results.

Sean B. Carroll is a molecular biologist and geneticist at the University of Wisconsin.

David Attenborough: naturalist, broadcaster, comedian.

You have to listen to the audio of David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins chatting, Sir Attenborough does, what i can only hope is, a dead-on imitation of 100-year old Ernst Mayr. The audio is here: David Attenborough and Richard Dawkins . Thanks to Dieter L for the link-MA


From the guardian
Of mind and matter: David Attenborough meets Richard Dawkins
We paired up Britain's most celebrated scientists to chat about the big issues: the unity of life, ethics, energy, Handel – and the joy of riding a snowmobile

Research that NEEDS to be repeated in humans: Flies can forgo sleep when starved!

I hate sleep, I wish I didn't have to do it. I feel bad for these flies, so let's just jump straight to human testing, i totally volunteer! Thanks to Nathalie M for the link!-MA

Image from Deric Bownds Mindblog

From the Scientist.com
Hungry flies ok with less sleep
by JEF AKST

There may be certain conditions under which animals can forgo sleep without serious consequences, even though scientists have considered it an activity that is absolutely indispensible, new research suggests.

When flies are starved, they are able to stay awake for long periods of time without suffering the negative outcomes of sleep deprivation, including cognitive impairment, according to a study published online today (August 31) in PLoS Biology.

The paper demonstrates "that in Drosophila, when there isn't food in the environment, they're able to increase waking time without any of the deleterious effects of sleep loss," said neuroscientist Jerry Siegel of the Center for Sleep Research at the University of California, Los Angeles, who did not participate in the study.

There seems to be "this ability to reduce sleep when it's adaptive for the animals to do that," Siegel added. "If there's food available and it can be found by exerting greater effort, then it's highly adaptive for them to suppress sleep."

By and large, sleep appears to be a necessary part of life, and sleep deprivation can lead to serious impairments in cognitive function and even death. But under certain conditions, the amount of sleep an animal needs appear to vary. Starvation, for example, is known to be arousing, with starved animals being more active and sleeping less, but until now, no one could say why.

Recently neuroscientist Paul Shaw of the Washington University School of Medicine noticed that in addition to staying awake more, starved flies were also less susceptible to the effects of sleep deprivation. They didn't, for example, sleep more after they ate to make up for the sleep they lost while hungry.

Comparing starved flies to flies that were forced to be awake for similar amounts of time by a brief physical jolt every 10 seconds, Shaw and his colleagues found that starved flies didn't seem to get sleepy or suffer the same cognitive impairments as normal sleep-deprived flies.

Furthermore, they used flies that lacked a functional copy of the canonical clock gene cycle, making them extremely sensitive to sleep loss, even dying within just 10 hours of being deprived of sleep. When these flies were starved, however, they survived nearly three times as long.

Indeed, parallels in vertebrates point to another interesting case of sleep deprivation, Siegel said -- that of migrating birds and marine mammals. Some whale species "reduce sleep for long periods of time, for a month or more, well beyond the duration of sleep loss that's lethal [experimentally], and yet these animals are quite active and responsive," he said. "So what we have assumed in the past -- that there's a fixed need for sleep and the more you get the better -- may be the wrong way of looking at sleep."

As for what mechanism may underlie these unexpected effects of starvation, the team suspected that metabolism genes may play a role. Along with the fact that starvation keeps flies awake and alert, sleep deficits in another species -- humans -- can lead to an increased risk of the metabolic disorders obesity and diabetes, as well as coronary disease.

Sure enough, mutations in fat metabolism genes appeared to affect flies' ability to withstand the effects of sleep loss. Brummer (bmm) flies, which are fat and resistant to starvation, were particularly affected by sleep loss, sleeping more afterwards to make up for the loss and showing greater signs of cognitive impairment. Lipid storage droplet 2 (Lsd2) flies, on the other hand, are lean and were able to stay awake without showing signs of sleepiness or cognitive decline.

"Our hypothesis is that fats themselves play a role in regulating sleep," Shaw said. They are, after all, signaling molecules, he said, and it's possible "that lipids themselves are somehow signaling to the brain that you should be sleepy or are initiating cascades that either result in impairment or can protect you from impairment."

While these results are currently limited to flies, the authors are "providing a blueprint for how we can potentially counteract the effects of sleep deprivation in humans," agreed endocrinologist and fat cell biologist Perry Bickel of the University of Texas Health Science Center, who was not involved in the research. Indeed, mice knockouts of the mammalian homologs of both bmm and Lsd2 already exist, he said. "That will get us that much closer to understanding what's going on in humans."

--
Reference
Thimgan MS, Suzuki Y, Seugnet L, Laura Gottschalk L, Shaw PJ (2010)The perilipin homologue, lipid storage droplet 2, regulates sleep homeostasis and prevents learning impairments following sleep loss PLoS Biology, 8: e1000466

Abstract

Extended periods of waking result in physiological impairments in humans, rats, and flies. Sleep homeostasis, the increase in sleep observed following sleep loss, is believed to counter the negative effects of prolonged waking by restoring vital biological processes that are degraded during sleep deprivation. Sleep homeostasis, as with other behaviors, is influenced by both genes and environment. We report here that during periods of starvation, flies remain spontaneously awake but, in contrast to sleep deprivation, do not accrue any of the negative consequences of prolonged waking. Specifically, the homeostatic response and learning impairments that are a characteristic of sleep loss are not observed following prolonged waking induced by starvation. Recently, two genes, brummer (bmm) and Lipid storage droplet 2 (Lsd2), have been shown to modulate the response to starvation. bmm mutants have excess fat and are resistant to starvation, whereas Lsd2 mutants are lean and sensitive to starvation. Thus, we hypothesized that bmm and Lsd2 may play a role in sleep regulation. Indeed, bmm mutant flies display a large homeostatic response following sleep deprivation. In contrast, Lsd2 mutant flies, which phenocopy aspects of starvation as measured by low triglyceride stores, do not exhibit a homeostatic response following sleep loss. Importantly, Lsd2 mutant flies are not learning impaired after sleep deprivation. These results provide the first genetic evidence, to our knowledge, that lipid metabolism plays an important role in regulating the homeostatic response and can protect against neuronal impairments induced by prolonged waking.

Author Summary:

It is well established in humans that sleep deficits lead to adverse outcomes, including cognitive impairments and an increased risk for obesity. Given the relationship between sleep and lipid stores, we hypothesized that metabolic pathways play a role in sleep regulation and contribute to deficits induced by sleep loss. Since starvation has a large impact on metabolic pathways and is an environmental condition that is encountered by animals living in the wild, we examined its effects on sleep in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Interestingly, when flies are starved they display an immediate increase in waking. However, in contrast to sleep deprivation, waking induced by starvation does not result in increased sleepiness or impairments in short-term memory. To identify the mechanisms underlying these processes, we evaluated mutants for genes that have been shown to alter an animal's response to starvation. Interestingly, brummer mutants, which are fat, show an exaggerated response to sleep loss. In contrast, mutants for Lipid storage droplet 2 are lean and are able to stay awake without becoming sleepy or showing signs of cognitive impairment. These results indicate that while sleep loss can alter lipids, lipid enzymes may, in turn, play a role in regulating sleep and influence the response to sleep deprivation.

What is biodiversity?

Biodiversity - Vancouver Film School from Vancouver Film School on Vimeo.

Via Neatorama - Created by students at the Vancouver Film School (Amanda Healey, Jesse Lang, Juan Carlos Arenas and Robert Ramalho through the VFS Digital Design program) this 3 minute video gives a great introduction to biodiversity and its importance!