Daily Science Dose

It seems that some Japanese researchers have figured out that genotoxic stress can cause hair follicles to go white, as it were. But it’s not that the stress actually causes the lack of pigmentation, but rather that the stress causes the cells to use up their pigmentation faster than they should, and once the pigment runs out, it’s silver city, baby.

Some years ago, a dermotologist in Japan, Emi Nishimura, discovered that hair follicles are filled with melanocyte stem cells. If you look at the base of that word, melan-, you may associate it with melanin, which gives animals and plants pigment. The melanocyte stem cells hang out in your hair follicle and whenever a new hair starts to grow, some of those stem cells become the melanocytes, or the cells responsible for your hair’s color. Some of the stem cells stay behind, so to speak, waiting for the next strand to come along. Ideally, your body should store enough of these little dabs of color to last your lifetime, but new research shows that stress to the DNA in the cells cause more of the melanocytes to join whatever hair is growing, leaving fewer and fewer color cells behind for the next hair.

Nishimura suspected that genotoxic stressors, such as radiation or harsh chemicals, might play a role in the stem cells’ fate, because they’ve been implicated in other signs of aging. She and colleagues at Japan’s Kanazawa University tested the idea in mice, which also gray with age. After exposure to cell-stressing x-rays or chemotherapy drugs, young mice went gray in an unexpected way. More of their melanocyte stem cells matured into color-producing melanocytes, depleting the store of stem cells. Instead of dying or being inactivated, the DNA-damaged cells matured before their time.

“The mature cells lose their regeneration capabilities,” Nishimura explains. “The mice then can’t produce enough pigment-making cells” and consequently go gray. Moreover, the stressed mice’s gray hairs and the cell populations in their follicles were indistinguishable from those of elderly mice, suggesting that genotoxic stress might drive natural graying as well. –ScienceNOW Daily News

So basically, genotoxic stress — that is anything from ultraviolet light to the natural division of the cell itself — damages your cells’ DNA, but it also leads to the “maturing” as it were. If the cell is mature, it is no longer dividing like cells do. If a cell is not dividing, it’s not reproducing itself. Is this early maturation process a defensive move on the part of damaged cells that shut down their reproductive processes in order to not pass on the damage (DNA defect) to its “children”?

Although, truth be told, I’m sure that this research will be used to prevent grey hair, rather than to prevent cancer. Hey, I’m a cynic.

cells, stem cells, grey hair, gray hair, going grey, DNA, cancer, cell division, cell maturation, melanocyte stem cells, Kanazawa University, Emi Nishimura, mice

File this one under “why didn’t someone else think of this earlier?”

Scientists have figured out how to use satellite photos to find penguin colonies. Look for the poop. Much like how some future (or alien?) archeologist will search for former human population centers by looking for our massive landfills, researchers that follow the habits of flightless birds are finding new colonies by finding the waste product of said colonies.

Photo montage is from the British Antarctic Survey. The top right satellite shot is of Cape Darnley.

Up until now, most penguin colonies are found by happenstance in a way. The Antarctic winter is quite chilly, and few scientists hang out for it, so when biologists show up in the spring, it’s a matter of luck (or the past use of a spot) that they find the remains of rookeries — most adults have jetted by spring.

I mentioned that penguin researchers may find breeding grounds in the same spot of previous years, but with the changing ice conditions due to atmospheric warming, penguins are on the move. Which means that using the past to find the present isn’t working out so well. Enter satellites.

It’s like Google Earth maps for penguins. But of course, you have to know what you are looking for. Lots and lots of poop.

Penguin biologist Phil Trathan and cartographer Peter Fretwell, both of the British Antarctic Survey, wondered if it was possible to do better by tracking the penguins from space. The birds themselves don’t show up in satellite pictures; their black-and-white bodies are too similar to the white ice with black shadows. Not so with guano. “The poo just sort of stands out at you,” says Trathan. Emperors are the only penguins that breed on the sea ice, so he knows who’s doing the pooping. — Science Mag

From the initial analysis, of the 34 known breeding grounds, six have disappeared. Those six were located in warmer, more northernly areas. If the penguins are moving south to stay cold enough, the problem is that penguins also need to stay near the coast. So this pattern could spell trouble for Emperors and most penguins by extension.

The good news is that the team found 10 new colonies. The population numbers are still hazy at this point, so who knows if the six colonies are now part of the ten new ones or if the ten were always there and never found before now. But the satellite images will be a useful tool in going forward in penguin population studies.

penguins, satellite, satellite images, breeding grounds, Emperor penguin, guano, Antarctica, global warming, climate change, biologists, rookeries, marine mammals

A Woods Hole grad student, now working at the University of Southern Florida’s Mann Lab for Marine Sensory Biology, has released the finding from a study he conducted on marine mammal brains, and the news is not good. It seems that human’s propensity to use the oceans as a dumping ground (as well as our ineptitude in realizing that dangerous chemicals don’t just go away when we no longer see them) has resulted in bio-accumulation of some nasty substances in marine mammals.

Yes, again with the flame retardants…

Eric Montie went to work with Environment Canada to “learn the painstaking techniques required to extract and to quantify more than 170 different pollutants and their metabolites.” He brought back the methods to Woods Hole and started analyzing the brains of 11 whales and dolphins and a grey seal. The animals came from around the Cape Cod area, and darned if you didn’t guess, some not-so-nice chemicals were present in the cerebrospinal fluid as well as the grey matter.

And yes, our dear friends DDT, an overly effective pesticide that has been banned around the world, but doesn’t seem to want to go away; PBDEs, or flame retardants which are only know being scrutinzed despite their ubiquity; and PCBs, again a banned chemical family that just doesn’t go away have all been found in the marine mammalian brain studied by Montie. In fact, the levels of PCBs in the seal were in the parts per million, which may seem small, but according to Montie, “you rarely find parts per million levels of anything in the brain.”

So what’s the big deal? Well, PCBs kind of trick a body into thinking that they are thyroid hormones and instead of healthy and needed thyroid hormones, the body gets PCBs. That can lead to all sorts of neurological issues and problems when it comes to brain development and can disrupt the sensory functions of mammals like dolphins, seals and whales that really depend on their sense of hearing to live.

Just how these chemicals might impact marine mammal health is something Montie plans to pursue. This summer, Montie, [David] Mann [the man behind the aforementioned Mann Lab], and Dr. Mandy Cook (from Portland University) will partner with scientists from NOAA to test the hearing in dolphins living near a Superfund site in Georgia and compare it to dolphins from locations where ambient concentrations of pollutants are significantly lower. Montie is also working with Frances Gulland, director of the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA, to examine how California sea lions’s exposure to PCBs may increase their sensitivity to domoic acid, a naturally produced marine neurotoxin associated with “red tides.” –WHOI news release

Great…

Related: Pelicans Dropping From Sky for Reasons Unknown

marine biology, marine science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Woods Hole, Eric Montie, Environment Canada, University of Southern Florida, David Mann, seals, whales, dolphins, brains, chemicals, DDT, PCB, PBDE, flame retardants, pesticides, cerebrospinal fluid, contaminants, ocean, pollution, banned substances, bio-accumulation, thyroid, hormones, senses, hearing, health, mammals, dumping

Did you know that bats hibernate during the winter and that it is called hibernacula. Like Dr-acula? Come on. I may be having fun with that, but there is nothing fun about what is happening to bats in the eastern United States. They are dying of what biologists are calling white-nose syndrome.

And so far, no one knows what is causing it. Huh, kinda like the honeybees…

Anyway, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is advising to suspend all caving activity in the Eastern US in hopes of stopping the spread of the mysterious syndrome that is killing 90 to 100 percent of all bats affected by it. This is very sad news, and can affect the eastern states in terms of insect control and pollenation provided by bats in agriculture. Bats are a very important part of the ecosystem, so to see such decimation in numbers is worrying. White-Nose Syndrome has killed 75% of the bat populations in the affected areas in the US. See map below.

The FWS provides this information about the symptoms.

While they are in the hibernaculum, affected bats often have white fungus on their muzzles and other parts of their bodies. They may have low body fat. These bats often move to cold parts of the hibernacula, fly during the day and during cold winter weather when the insects they feed upon are not available, and exhibit other uncharacteristic behavior.

I’m going to play armchair scientist and offer a theory. This white-nose syndrome is a fungal attack on the skin of the bats. The areas most affected are the nose. The bat’s shove those noses into all sorts of places, like flowers that may have been treated with some sort of pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, or whatnot. Not only that, but bats also consume things that other pesticides are meant to kill and maybe part of the meal for the unsuspecting bat. Maybe there is a link between the bats and the honeybees. Both are major players in the our agriculture, and maybe our newfangled way of growing stuff is killing them.

United States, bats, white nose syndrome, fungal, disease, die off, caves, deaths, wildlife, insects, pesticide, honeybee, agriculture, farming, colony collapse disorder, US Fish and Wildlife Service, FWS, advisory

Yeah, when you take their cigarettes away…

No, but seriously, it seems that some bad behavior may not be because of crappy parenting — oh, wait. It is because of crappy parenting, namely smoking while pregnant. Some kids have a genetic variant that gets triggered by those prenatal smokes and those kids turn into bad kids.

A new study brought to us by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (a subset of the National Institutes of Health) has shown that exposure to smoke before birth raises the risks for behavioral problems in children and teens. The tobacco affects the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene variant, which is associated with the monoamine oxidase enzyme. This enzyme happens to regulate those nice neurotransmitters like dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin. Something goes wrong in the regulating and well, you got yourself trouble, right here in River City.

And get this, the study shows that the increased risk for bad behavior is different for boys and girls. MAOA has another variant, -L, and if a boy has low MAOA-L activity, he is more likely to have disruptive behavior issues. Quite conversely for a girl — she is more likely to be bad if her MAOA-L is high-activity. The activity levels mean how much or little of the enzyme MAOA is being produced. Also, in girls, it seems that the high-risk girls are prone to reading emotional cues as aggressive, which in turn makes the girls lash back aggressively. And the more mothers smoked, the higher the risks for behavior problems.

The last National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2006-7) showed that 426,000 pregnant women aged 15-44 were current cigarette smokers. I hope those truth ads are helping reduce this number. But then again, if smoking while pregnant produces out-of-control teenage girls, maybe it’s not all bad — Ask Maury.

smoking, drugs, cigarettes, tobacco, prenatal, exposure, smoking while pregnant, monoamine oxidase A, MAOA, gene, enzyme, neurotransmitters, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health

After reading this next study, I am kind of wondering as to why looking at toenail clippings would be the preferred method for measuring the level of arsenic in a human body. Is it because it is easy and non-intrusive, cheap, and a part of the body that is ripe for the study of bioaccumulation? Or is it some foot fetish’s odd way of getting his jollies? I’m hoping it’s the first reason.

Anyway, without further ado, today’s dose is about toenails and arsenic and England. England was the original hotbed for environmental degradation back in the earlier years of the Industrial Revolution — you know, lots of mining and no consideration of producing and disposing of rather nasty waste by-products. Well, some of that nasty stuff was arsenic, and in addition to that, there were arsenic mines that also lead to a issue of arsenic pollution in Great Britain.

Scientists from the University of Leicester, Notthingham Trent University, and the British Geological Survey have developed a relatively easy and painless (although perhaps a little gross) way to measure environmental arsenic in a person’s body — toenails. Toenails grow slowly, building matter and along the way picking up chemicals and in this case, elements that accumulate in our bodies. Add a little acid to those nails, let them dissolve and a little “inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry” and you’ve got yourself a good way of finding out how much arsenic that person has been exposed to over long periods of time.

Mark Button [of the University of Leicester] added: “This preliminary research indicates that people living close to a former arsenic mine have elevated levels of arsenic in their toenails. However, the potential health risks in this case, if any, are not yet clear and no arsenic related health issues have been reported. A large-scale and more detailed biomonitoring study is required to confirm these initial results.”

Dr Jenkin, lecturer in Applied Geology at the University of Leicester said: “This is the first time that the chemical form of the arsenic in the toenails has been measured - that can tell us something about how it got in there and possible risk factors. — SPX via TerraDaily

The only problem with the testing is that as of yet, the researchers are not quite sure how “concentrated” the amount of arsenic in a toenail is and how that affects the measurement of said arsenic. It could be that the human toenail concentrates arsenic and makes it look as though there are high levels, when in fact it’s very low levels over a longer period of time. That makes it harder to determine how it relates to harmful effects that can occur from exposure to arsenic, like cancer of the lungs or kidneys.

But it’s a start…

arsenic, toenails, bioaccumulation, chemicals, mining, waste, England, Industrial Revolution, Leicester, Nottingham Trent, University, British Geological Survey, cancer

In a very creepy Children of Men kind of way, this recent development in the state of our world’s water resources could be the first step to lower fecundity in humans, which yes, in an extreme case like the world of 2027 in Children of Men, could lead to diminished birth rates.

Guess I’ll stop worrying about overpopulation…

A British joint-research project finds that increasing numbers of new chemicals such as those used in pharmaceuticals and fertilizers — the very things that make life worth living, am I right? — are showing up in our water supplies. These chemicals may have a rather harmful and decidedly less fruitful side effect on a man’s reproductive system.

And on a fish’s reproductive system. Studies in the past have shown that male fish are being “feminized” due to female hormones in the water supply. Certain hormones in the water are turning the fish into girl fish, kind of in some cases and literally in others. These estrogens are making it through the water treatment process after passing through women taking birth-control pills. To be fair, chemicals that act like estrogen also have the same effect on fish, and those chemicals are coming from industrial manufacturing.

Now, researchers are finding new chemicals they are calling “anti-androgens.” These are acting much like the estrogen and faux-estrogen. Androgens are male hormones like testosterone, and serve to support sperm production.

In fact, the researchers says they really don’t know where some of these chemicals are coming from.

“We have identified a new group of chemicals in our study on fish, but do not know where they are coming from. A principal aim of our work is now to identify the source of these pollutants and work with regulators and relevant industry to test the effects of a mixture of these chemicals and the already known environmental estrogens and help protect environmental health.” [quote from Lead author on the research paper, Dr Susan Jobling at Brunel University's Institute for the Environment]

Senior author Professor Charles Tyler of the University of Exeter said: “Our research shows that a much wider range of chemicals than we previously thought is leading to hormone disruption in fish. This means that the pollutants causing these problems are likely to be coming from a wide variety of sources.

“Our findings also strengthen the argument for the cocktail of chemicals in our water leading to hormone disruption in fish, and contributing to the rise in male reproductive problems. There are likely to be many reasons behind the rise in male fertility problems in humans, but these findings could reveal one, previously unknown, factor.”–SPX via TerraDaily

These anti-androgens are known to cause a condition called testicular dysgenesis syndrome. Even the name tells us what is going on — dys means “ill” and genesis means “birth“. The anti-androgens can cause developmental damage to the reproductive system in embryos and the syndrome is becoming more and more common unfortunately.

We are what we drink. The ultimate anti-androgens, Women.

Yet more bad news for our water supply.

fertility, reproductive health, men, mens health, water, water pollution, androgens, anti-androgens, fish, feminizing, fecundity, Children of Men, overpopulation, sperm, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, hormones, estrogen, testosterone, manufacturing, chemicals, water treatment, testicular dysgenesis syndrome, embryos, developmental damage

The nation of Liberia (on the western African coast, right above the lower left corner of the bulbous top part of Africa) has declared a state of emergency in its Bong County area, along the Guinean border. African army worms are devastating the crops in such numbers that the Liberian government is asking for international aid to combat the infestation.

The African Army Worm (AAW) is a nasty devil that is a remorseless eating machine if ever there is one. The two-inch long worms get their moniker from the worms tactics of moving en masse from field to field, consuming everything in its path. Kinda like a real army, in the Napoleonic sense.

The Liberian Minister of Agriculture told news organizations that so far 19 villages have been decimated by the marauding worms. Not only is the problem with the voracious appetites of the AAW’s, but also the, um, aftermath of the feasting.

This is not the first time that the African Worm Army has terrorized an African country. Three years ago, Zimbabwe faced starvation situations when army worms showed up. Kenya and Tanzania had their outbreaks in the late 90’s.

So, here’s the thing, army worms are generally controlled by pesticides here in the US and in other nations where even the small farmer can afford chemicals to grow stuff. The good majority of African farmers are organic farmers, not because it is the cool thing to do, but rather because that is all they know and can afford. Why would these farmers start using chemicals just when the world is hopefully moving away from chemical-based agriculture?

Unfortunately, this is a sticky subject. You don’t want the sustenance farmer to die due to a pest infestation that could have been prevented by a safe-enough pesticide, but then again, we really don’t know the long-term effects of said pesticide…what do you do?

African army worms are naturally contained by something that eats them, so how can poor African farmers foster an environment in which the natural enemy of the AAW is welcome to cull the AAW population and attempt to keep the numbers in check. That takes trees.

Birds eat the worms, right? And birds live in trees and bushes, in other words, birds need strong natural habitats full of trees and bushes. Unfortunately, Liberia and most of Africa is experiencing problems with deforestation. A growing human population needs room, and trees are the first to go.

Also, there are better ways to farm organically, and education is needed to attempt to grow adequate amounts of crops for not only the farmer and his or her family, but also the village and the nation.

Liberia, african army worms, Africa, crops, damage, agriculture, state of emergency, Bong County, Guinea, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya, deforestation

Methane was in the news this week, after it was finally confirmed that methane plumes are present on Mars and in another study, decaying plants were found not to contribute methane to the air, but instead transpire methane from other sources, such as microbes in the soil.

Mars’ Methane Madness

NASA announced this past week that scientists have confirmed the presence of infamous greenhouse gas methane on the lonely redrock planetary neighbor. Plumes of methane have been detected at three different locations on Mars, and the plumes only occur during the summer. My question now is what exactly is a Martian summer? Does Mars enjoy a tilt like Earth, or is it when the planet is closest the sun in its elliptical orbit?

The answer is that Mars has an axial tilt of about 25 degrees, similar to Earth’s 23ish degrees.

So methane is there, but what is it that produces this gas? On Earth, methane is produced by certain microbes that live, well, everywhere…even in your stomach. Methane is the major component of our own natural gas.

So does this mean that there is life on Mars? Maybe. Maybe not. Methane is also a product of volcanic activity. Volcanoes release the gas into the atmosphere, and that gas may have been trapped underground for quite some time. On Earth, methane is trapped under heavier ocean water as well as the permafrost in the arctic and antarctic regions of the Earth. So it may mean that there could have been microbial life on Mars some time ago, or it could mean that Mars also has a goodly amount of methane trapped under its volcanically active surface.

Methane Doesn’t Come from Decaying Plants…Kind of.

Ok, methane may come from plant matter, but it’s not the plant’s fault. A few years ago, Frank Keppler ran a test to see if plant matter produces methane. His experiment concluded yes, but it made other scientists question the experiment. So some other scientists ran another experiment.

“This finding was shocking,” recalls Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway, University of London, in Egham, U.K. If true, both plant biochemistry and global methane budget would need a major reexamination. It could also mean that the human contribution to global warming is less than previously thought.

Nisbet’s team set about to investigate Keppler’s findings by growing the same plants, including celery (Apium graveolens) and a type of rice (Oryza sativa), in the absence of external sources of the greenhouse gas. The group found no trace of methane, suggesting that the plants alone cannot make the gas. In a separate experiment, the team placed the plants in water containing dissolved methane. Sure enough, the roots drew up the methane-soaked water and the leaves then pushed out the gas and water vapor–a process known as transpiration. –Science

The same group of scientists also tested some chemical paths that could allow the plant to create methane, but nada, the plant’s did not have the same pathways that methane-producing microbes have. Keppler gives the new science a nod to the transpiration of methane finding, but still holds on to the idea that an unidentified pathway exists.

methane, Mars, plants, NASA, science, greenhouse gas, atmosphere, emissions, decomposition, microbes, chemical, transpiration,

This is rather unsettling. I ran across this article today about brown pelicans literally falling from the sky along the Pacific Coast. And no one knows why…yet.

Some scientists are initially pointing their fingers at demoic acid. Demoic acid is produced by nasty phytoplankton and has made news lately for its effects on sea lions and other marine creatures.

Brown pelicans are being found many miles inland, along freeways, in yards, and parking lots. The birds are disoriented and feeble. Some birds are so weak that people can walk up to them and pick them up, which is not at all usual. Many of the symptoms are those of demoic acid poisoning, but other symptoms are leaving researchers and rescuers stumped.

While some of the symptoms resemble those associated with domoic-acid poisoning — an ocean toxin that sometimes affects sea birds and mammals — other symptoms do not. Domoic acid also apparently has not been found in significant amounts offshore, although more tests are needed.

Rescuers are wondering whether the illness is caused by a virus, or even by contaminants washed into the ocean after recent fires across Southern California. Many of the birds also have swollen feet. — Seattle Times

The Brown Pelican is the only pelican species that lives only along sea shores. Other species may be found inland, but not the Brown pelican, which makes these inland suicide runs all the more troubling. The Pacific population of Brown Pelicans has been on the Endangered Species list since June 1970. Recently, the species has been considered for delisting, but this troubling news may prevent that. The species was initially listed, like many large birds, due to DDT poisoning. The East Coast population has been de-listed, but the Pacific population has been growing more slowly.

Bodies of dead birds and blood samples have been sent off to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in addition to the California Department of Fish and Game for testing. Bird rescue organizations along the coast are alarmed at the numbers of dead or sick adult birds they have seen in the last week and a half.

In the last few years, numerous reports have been published about increasing numbers of Brown Pelicans starving along the Pacific Coast. So this new development may be related, or could have facilitated whatever is plaguing the brown pelicans.

pelicans, brown pelicans, Pacific, marine, endangered species, US Fish and Wildlife Service, DDT, sea lions, demoic acid, poisoning, starvation, California, rescue, disease, illness

In the past month, reports from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Phillipines are detailing the troubling accounts of a resurgence of the Ebola Virus.

First, the Congo…

Nine people have died so far out of 21 people infected with the deadly Ebola virus, according to the Health Ministry in the DR Congo. Doctors without Borders has a higher estimate of 33 people infected That may not seem like such a big deal, except that Ebola tends to kill 90% of those infected. This is hardly the first time that Ebola has struck the West African nation.

Ebola was first documented in 1976 in Zaire, which was what the DR Congo at that time. The disease also afflicted people in the Sudan. Ebola is named after the Ebola River, which is very near the site where the disease was found. Below is a chart 2003 showing the number of people in red infected versus the number of deaths in black, appropriately enough.

If you have been paying attention to the news, you may have heard that some pigs in the Phillipines have also tested positively for Ebola. This needs some clarifying, as the pigs, or hogs, are infected with the Ebola-Reston Virus.

Ebola-Reston may be a subtype of Ebola, but so far, that is still to be definitely determined by researchers. Ebola-Reston gets its name from its similarity to Ebola, obviously, as it is a filovirus as is Ebola. Filoviruses are particularly nasty diseases in which long, slender RNA viruses attack the host’s blood vessels, causing them to rupture and at the same time prevent coagulation, which means that the victim will not stop bleeding.

Ebola-Reston gets the “Reston” from a Reston, Virginia lab where researchers first isolated the filovirus. So far, Ebola-Reston Virus has not caused serious illness in humans, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t. Previous to the recent outbreak, Ebola-Reston was thought only to infect monkeys. The virus’ move into the porcine world could be a normal move of the disease of which little is still known, or it could point to the much-sought “reservoir” of the disease, which has yet to be discovered.

The UN is beginning to investigate the Ebola-Reston virus in pigs…stay tuned.

Ebola, Ebola-Reston, virus, fliovirus, Congo, DR Congo, Zaire, Reston, Virginia

Meet the Lord Howe Island Tree Lobster (Dryococelus australis).

This not so little bug, stretching up to 5 inches or 13 centimeters long, was thought to be extinct until 24 of them were found on a lonely outcrop nearly sixteen miles off of its namesake Lord Howe Island in 2001. The tree lobsters (I think you can see how they got that name just by looking at them) were once common on the small island northeast of the Sydney, Australia that is designated as a World Heritage site. They were common, that is, until black rats swam for it from shipwrecked boat to the Island ninety years ago. Rats like to eat bugs, and thus the Island’s native population of “stick” bugs were wiped out.

But this tenacious bug clung to life.

And this is not the first time that the Lord Howe island tree lobster has clung to life after losing its Island home.

Scientists have discovered that the Lord Howe variety tree lobster is older than the island for which it is named.

The Lord Howe tree lobster appears to be harboring even more surprises. As part of an analysis of the evolutionary origin of stick insects, biologist Thomas Buckley of Landcare Research, New Zealand’s main research institute for environmental science, and colleagues collected DNA from three tree lobster groups, including D. australis, and about 70 other stick insect species. The team found that D. australis was more than 20 million years old, 13 million years older than the rocks on Lord Howe Island.

So where did this species evolve? Buckley thinks that the solution lies under the Pacific Ocean. Lord Howe Island is the youngest of an old chain of islands formed as the Indo-Australian tectonic plate travels north over a fixed volcanic center, or hot spot. Older islands are now submerged inactive volcanoes. The Lord Howe tree lobster may have evolved in one of these drowned islands and traveled south as its habitat eroded away, the team reported online 16 December in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.–ScienceNOW Daily News

How about that? This insect really wants to survive, and has been island-hopping for a good part of its existence. And it seems that DNA analysis has more to tell us about this creepy crawly that just won’t die.

The Lord Howe Island tree lobster is a unique species from two other tree lobsters tested recently by Buckley. The LHI tree lobster and its previously-assumed brethren on New Caledonia and New Guinea evolved apart from one another in a process called convergent evolution.

Convergent evolution is when separate species develop similar evolutionary traits in response to similar environments, despite the fact that they are not closely related. Think wings on birds and bats. Birds and bats are hardly related, but both classes developed wings in response to environmental and evolutionary pressures.

In the case of tree lobsters, you can see how similar (top photo) the New Guinea tree lobster and the Lord Howe Island tree lobsters species are (hi, as in scary), but also how different in the bottom photo where you can see the tree lobsters side by side with another distant relative, a typical stick bug (my infinite thanks to Bug Girl’s Blog for the link to the German site where I got these images).

tree lobster, Lord Howe Island, Australia, extinct, insect, bug, DNA, New Zealand, New Guinea, New Caledonia, World Heritage, stick bugs, convergent evolution, evolution

My thanks to the FEED newsletter from the Union of Concerned Scientists for this one.

It seems that traditional breeding methods are out-performing genetic modifications in developing drought-resistant crops. And as water becomes more and more scarce, drought-resistant crops are a big deal.

The United States Department of Agriculture has recently published some news about drought-resistant soybeans. By going back to the home of the soybean, China, for variety species that are not known in the US, and using some more exotic Chinese varieties of the staple crop, breeders have been able to cross a drought-resistant variety with a more common variety to produce soybeans that are testing well here in the US.

Using conventional breeding methods, Carter and his team develop hundreds of new breeding lines each year, for a total of more than 5,000. Five of them have stood out for further development and are now in validation trials across the South. Based on the results of these tests, the team will soon release advanced breeding lines that carry the slow-wilting trait and also show good yield potential when rainfall is plentiful.

The slow-wilting lines yield 4 to 8 bushels more than conventional varieties under drought conditions—depending on the region and environment, says Carter. For example, under drought conditions, normal soybeans yield 30 bushels per acre, but slow-wilting types yield about 35 bushels per acre. –USDA

That’s zero for genetically-modified drought-resistance, and a gazillion for traditionally-bred drought-resistance.

Ok, I have no data to back up that “gazillion” claim, but traditional breeding has been around for a long time, and there is no telling how many times it has helped develop crops that can go without water for a bit or withstand long, hot summers or even thrive in harsh conditions. If it were not for traditional breeding, well, we may not have many sub-species and varieties that we have today.

Besides, traditional breeding is the way Nature does it, so why shouldn’t we?

On another note, a NGO (non-governmental organization) is working with farmers in Africa and developed a drought-resistant variety of cassava (a staple in that part of the world and others, also known as yuca). And this variety is producing 6 to 10 times the amount of cassava that the usual seed stock is producing.

USDA, drought-resistance, genetically-modified, traditional breeding, genetics, GMO, NGO, soybeans, cassava, yuca, Africa, crops, agriculture

While I was watching NOVA last night, which was called “Ocean Animal Emergency” and truly saddening, I was struck by a small seal pup that had facial tumors growing out of its mouth. The tumors were found to be inoperable, and the poor, little Harbor seal had to be euthanized.

The moment I saw the seal’s tumors I was reminded of another creature that has become afflicted with grotesque facial tumors, the Tasmanian Devil.

Are the facial tumors afflicting the harbor seal on NOVA and Tasmanian Devil related? Could there be something more to this? What is it that is causing these odd, devastating growths? In January 2008, reports came out detailing that Tasmanian Devils have elevated levels of chemicals used as flame retardants in their blood stream. Could these chemicals be causing this kind of growth? Or are the chemicals just enabling this kind of cancer, making some animals more susceptible to disease?

The science is still out on the Tasmanian Devil, but as more than 60% of the wild population has died in the last decade since this facial cancer was first discovered, there may not be much time for scientists to figure it out.

The facial growth I saw on the harbor seal did not look quite as gruesome as that which I have seen in pictures of tasmanian devils. The harbor seal’s tumors looked more like big “toes” sticking out of its mouth. The seal didn’t look bothered by them, so it is unsure if the tumors were causing pain of any kind. I have to wonder if there is some correlation between the toxins we keep dumping in the ocean and this poor seal’s face.

NOVA explained that the seal and sea lions that are euthanized at the Marine Mammal Center are given a post-mortum examination, and blood and tissue samples are collected. I have to wonder what the MMC will find, if anything. Of course, it may simply be a birth defect, and I am worrying over nothing. But as seals are higher up on the food chain and consume other marine creatures, they could be the front line when it comes to realizing the effects of the many, many substances we allow to flow into our waters.

The MMC and other marine researchers are finding that another toxin, domoic acid, is killing sea lions and the numbers are only increasing. The domoic acid is a toxin released by the Pseudo-nitzschia algae, an algae that needs sunlight and nutrient-rich water, which are usually not the same water. However, with increasing amounts of nutrients in the form of fertilizers running into our near-shore waters, like Southern California where many sea lions are dying, algae blooms are becoming common in the spring and early summer.

seals, NOVA, pbs, ocean, animals, marine, mammal, tumors, growths, flame retardants, chemicals, toxins, cancer, tasmanian devil, water, pollution, algae, bloom, California, Marine Mammal Center, sea lions, domoic acid, Pseudo-nitzschia, harbor seal

Did you know that the present time is already considered one of the great mass extinctions? Humans seem to be the major culprit in this, the Holocene extinction event, but scientists have recently began surmising that a similar extinction 251 million years ago was caused by the same thing. But with no humans around 251 million years ago, what is it that I am talking about — yep, carbon dioxide.

The Christian Science Monitor published an article this last week detailing the current hypotheses of a team of researchers and scientists from multiple disciplines.

Now scientists are rethinking another of earth’s great die-offs. The end-Permian extinction 251 million years ago was the worst of earth’s five mass extinctions. Ninety percent of all marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life disappeared. It took five million years, perhaps more, for the biosphere to recover.

But while the die-off was uniquely devastating, evidence of a single cataclysmic event, like an asteroid strike, hasn’t been found in the geological record. Scientists now suspect that “the mother of all mass extinctions” was of Earth’s own making. And the more they learn about it, the more parallels they see to today’s world: A bout of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming, much like today’s, set off a chain of events that culminated in oxygen-depleted oceans exhaling poison gas.

It seems that increased volcanic activity started burning through coal beds, releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide — something we humans are doing, we are like little volcanoes, I guess. The Earth’s population at the time was already stressing the system, and when the extra CO2 entered the atmosphere, it lead to warmer seas (sounds familiar). The warmer seas lead to increased weathering and erosion, which washed nutrients into the oceans, thus leading to algae blooms (again, familiar). When the algae dies, the decomposition process requires oxygen, effectively starving the water of oxygen. When water does not have enough oxygen, many organisms cannot live in that water, except for anaerobic organisms that breathe in sulfates and give off hydrogen sulfide as exhalation. Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous to us oxygen-loving organisms.

And the lessons for today? At the Permian boundary, “you’re in a state of gradual warming, then as you approach that boundary, the warming in­­creases dramatically,” says Jeff Kiehl, a senior scientist at the Na­­­tion­­­al Center for Atmospheric Re­­search in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t a linear warming.” Says Professor Kump: “This shows us what could happen if we push the system too hard…. We don’t know where the intermediate thresholds are.”

We’re still some way from the atmospheric CO2 levels hypothesized at the end-Permian extinction – which were perhaps 10 times preindustrial levels, or 2,800 ppm. Yet, according the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if trends continue we’re still approaching 1,000 ppm of CO2 by 2100. That’s not Permian-extinction levels, but it would be the highest CO2 concentration in 80 million years, and a level at which both ocean anoxia and lesser extinctions have occurred.

This theory on what lead to the “great dying” at the transition between the Permian and Triassic periods (the extinction event is called the Permian-Triassic extinction event, appropriately enough) has been bouncing around for a while now, once scientists started questioning the evidence of the Killer Asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. It seems that despite the asteroid’s impact and subsequent devastation, many big dinosaurs stuck around for quite some time afterward. When the asteroid impact theory gained popularity, some scientists felt that all of our many mass extinctions throughout Earth’s history were caused by otherworldly impacts, but not all the evidence added up.

Until fossil records started showing evidence of little sulfide-emitting organisms, and then scientists started looking at the Permian-Triassic more carefully.

From a Scientific American article from 2006:

But the biomarkers in the oceanic sediments from the latest part of the Permian, and from the latest Triassic rocks as well, yielded chemical evidence of an ocean-wide bloom of the H2S-consuming bacteria. Because these microbes can live only in an oxygen-free environment but need sunlight for their photosynthesis, their presence in strata representing shallow marine settings is itself a marker indicating that even the surface of the oceans at the end of the Permian was without oxygen but was enriched in H2S.

Also, the P-Tr event is marked by volcanic activity in Siberia, of all places, and only a couple of months ago, scientists discovered that large amounts of methane are leaking from the Siberia Seabed. Hmm, methane is a greenhouse gas that has 20 times the power to trap heat that carbon dioxide does, and if that “leak” continues, well, estimates that 50 percent of all species will go extinct in the next century may not be too far off the mark.

extinction, mass, permian, triassic, dinosaurs, humans, mammals, volcanic activity, volcanoes, asteroid, impact, Siberia, methane, carbon dioxide, population stress, warming seas, sulfides, oxygen, algae bloom, anaerobic, greenhouse gas, global warming