Call to keep secrets on rare species draws reluctant support

By Warren CornwallMay. 25, 2017 , 2:00 PM

The extent to which rare animal poachers piggyback on scientific research became clear to Mark Auliya soon after he published a 2012 paper announcing the discovery of the Borneo earless monitor lizard (Lanthanotus borneensis) in a new part of the southeast Asian island.

The conservation biologist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, had left the lizards’ location vague, in an attempt to shield the animal from collectors and their suppliers. Nevertheless, within a year, the lizard was turning up outside Borneo.

So Auliya embraces a new call, published today in Science, for scientists to keep mum about details that could turn rare and sought-after species into the next easy target for the global wild animal trade. “It’s terrible,” he says. “If you describe a new species in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you should probably only list the country.”
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In today’s Perspective, two Australian conservation biologists urge scientists to adopt a policy of strategic “self-censorship” to shield the animals and plants they study. For species that are likely targets for collectors, they urge scientists to share detailed information about where the species is found only with government agencies, while hiding it from the public.

Continued

Mass chimpanzee transfer begins in effort to protect endangered species

Project Chimps sanctuary in Georgia will house 200-plus chimpanzees after they were declared endangered, effectively ending experimentation on the animals

 

Oliver Milman

Friday 9 September 201618.21 BSTLast modified on Friday 9 September 201621.21 BST

More than 200 chimpanzees are being transferred to a new sanctuary in Georgia, as the US winds down the controversial practice of using chimps for scientific research.

On Thursday, nine chimps – Jennifer, Gracie, Genesis, Buttercup, Charisse, Emma, Gertrude, Latricia and Samira – arrived at the Project Chimps sanctuary near Blue Ridge, a small town in northern Georgia.

A total of 220 chimps previously housed at the University of Louisiana’s New Iberia Research Center will move to Project Chimps. The center agreed to transfer the chimps, which were used for biomedical research, in 2014.

The move is the largest such transfer since the apes were declared endangered by the US government last year, effectively ending experimentation upon the animals. In November, the National Institutes of Health said there was “no further justification” for chimpanzee medical research and that it would retire its own test animals.

The move has been celebrated by animal welfare groups. Chimps were used in experiments due to their similarity to humans, sharing 98% of the same genes.

“There has been a watershed moment where the public, the scientific community and the government were aligned that this research wasn’t to be done any more,” said Sarah Baeckler Davis, chief executive of Project Chimps.

“The arrival of the chimps was an overwhelming moment for a lot of us, we have been working on this for a long time. There were tears. There’s a lot of logistics in moving nine chimps 600 miles.”

Project Chimps is a 236-acre facility previously envisioned as a gorilla sanctuary. It has capacity for 80 chimps but is in the process of expanding via individual donations and help from groups including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). It costs about $20,000 a year to keep a single chimp.

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Italian court convicts lab-dog breeders

Three found guilty of cruelty against animals bred for scientific research.

Alison Abbott

23 January 2015

Animal-rights activists cheered outside the tribunal building in Brescia, Italy.

A criminal court in the northern Italian city of Brescia has handed down jail sentences to three employees of a company that breeds beagle dogs for scientific research. The three had been charged with cruelty to the animals in their care, and with unjustifiably putting down some of them. The court found another defendant innocent.

Roberto Bravi, director of the Green Hill facility in Montichiari near Brescia — which belongs to the US-based animal breeding company Marshall Bioresources — was given one year. Renzo Graziosi, the facility’s veterinarian, and Ghislaine Rondot, who manages Marshall’s activities in Europe, both received one and a half years.

The judgement was announced on 23 January, but the reasoning behind the verdict will only be made known in two months.

The Italian Anti-Vivisection League (LAV) proclaimed a victory, but said the sentences were too light. Some pro-research groups, on the other hand have expressed surprise and concern. Dario Padovan, president of the scientific research defence lobby group Pro-Test Italia, which has been following the court case closely, says he had expected the defendants to win. “We were shocked,” he says. “It is another attack on Italian biomedical research, which is becoming increasingly vulnerable.”

Continued ...

Seoul bends to whaling outcry

SOUTH Korea said yesterday it may scrap its fiercely criticised plan to resume "scientific" whaling if experts come up with non-lethal means to study the mammals in its waters.

"We may not conduct whaling for scientific research if there is another way to achieve the goal," said Kang Joon-suk, an official of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

South Korea unveiled its plan at an International Whaling Commission meeting last week, saying it would use the loophole in a global moratorium that permits killing of whales for "scientific" research.

Seoul cited what it called a significant increase in whale stocks in its waters and consequent damage to fisheries. If it goes ahead, it would be the fourth country to kill whales, joining Norway, Iceland and Japan.

Yonhap news agency said Seoul could be backtracking in the face of criticism at home and abroad.

Greenpeace described scientific whaling as ``just thinly disguised commercial whaling''.

Norway and Iceland openly defy the 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling, saying they believe stocks are healthy.

Japan already uses the loophole for scientific research, with the meat then going on dinner plates.

Mr Kang said yesterday South Korea would fully consult international and domestic experts before and after presenting a detailed whaling programme to the IWC's scientific committee, set to meet in South Korea in May next year.

``We will respect the committee's recommendations in making our decision,'' he said.

Continued:  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/seoul-bends-to-whaling-outcry/story-e6frg6so-1226423958177

What are India's citizen scientists looking for? (Via Herp Digest)

What are India's citizen scientists looking for?
By: Lhendup G Bhutia

Date: 2011-11-14, MidDay.com

Place: Mumbai


Computer geeks, school children and professionals from different fields, who have otherwise no inkling of science and research, are turning into its latest foot soldiers. Meet the country's citizen scientists.

Dr Ceaser Sengupta, a pathologist and General Manager with what's considered to be the world's largest thyroid testing laboratory, Thyrocare Technologies Limited, leads a busy life. When he's not at his Turbhe office, his attention is divided between his six year-old daughter, his father and wife, with whom he resides in a swanky highrise in CBD Belapur.

Researchers belonging to Lost Amphibians of India look for amphibians
in the remote area of Latpanchar in North Bengal. The group that
comprises mostly individuals from non-research backgrounds is
undertaking a pioneering project in trying to locate Indian amphibian
species that are feared to have gone extinct.

All this might seem terribly ordinary if you didn't know about Sengupta's parallel life. Occasionally, the 37 year-old takes off to far flung areas of the country, especially forests and swamps, carrying with him a sleeping bag, a supply of dry fruit, and a pair of leather boots that reach his knees, protecting him from snake bites. If unable to locate a cow shed to sleep in, the sleeping bag comes in handy.

On these trips that often last between four days to a month and a half, Sengupta, along with other skilled urban professionals from a variety of career fields, transforms into a 'citizen scientist' or amateur researcher.

Sengupta's task is as ambitious in nature as it is vital. He, along with 500 urban professionals, mostly from non-science and research backgrounds, are part of Lost Amphibians of India (LAI), a group that is searching for 50 Indian amphibian species, mostly frogs and caecilians, that are thought to have gone extinct. While several species have been sighted in the last 10 years, some have eluded researchers for over 169 years.

"It is an extremely important programme. Most Indians are concerned about certain 'prestigious' animals, and hardly ever give a thought to amphibians. Some of the species we are searching for have not been sighted for years. We need to see if they are still around," says Sengupta.

LAI, which was launched in November 2010, has seen an excited response from common citizens. With its 500 members, it has already conducted 30 expeditions, one of which lasted a month-and-a-half in Arunachal Pradesh. The next one, which will be led by Sengupta, is days away and will take him to Maharashtra's Phandsad Wildlife Sanctuary.

LAI is not the only science programme that has seen support from commoners. Snigdha Kar, a 27 year-old Delhi-based employee of UNESCO, who is involved in the coordination and organising of various research programmes for the body, is a researcher in her own right. For the last four years, she has been part of MigrantWatch, a programme with over 1,300 members across the country, that is tracking one of nature's most spectacular events -- the migration of birds.

The programme hopes to ascertain if climate change is affecting the migratory patterns of birds. Kar earlier worked for the Delhi chapter of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and, despite being an amateur, has a keen interest in birds and has been keeping track of 20 different species that regularly fly into Delhi.

To spot these birds, Kar often continues her research when she travels out of Delhi on vacation, and consults books by experts, apart from looking up birds' features on websites. Out of the 20 species of migratory birds that she frequently reports about, Kar finds one particularly tough to spot. "The Greenish Warbler is very tough to identify. It's a small forest bird and we (bird watchers) have hours of discussion just to reach a consensus that it's the Greenish Warbler."

According to Suhel Quader, founder of MigrantWatch that is run by the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, the growing number of Indians from non-research backgrounds getting interested in the natural world provides a great opportunity for both, professional and amateur researchers, to work together.

"For many ecological changes, in particular, documenting what is happening over large spans of space and time is most effectively done through a participatory approach, where interested people volunteer their time and effort in working towards a common goal even though they are distributed throughout the country. When we started, it was obvious that seeking the help of bird watchers was the best way forward," says Quader.

While many have spoken about how eclipses affect the behaviour of animals, few have ever sought to ascertain if this claim is true. Earlier last year, during the January 15 solar eclipse, NCBS tried to do just that.

Over 100 volunteers took part in EclipseWatch, from locations as diverse as Itanagar, Thiruvananthapuram to Mumbai, to find that the only clear change in animal behaviour occurred in areas where the maximum eclipse was almost complete (more than 88 per cent coverage of the sun). In these areas, there was a marked reduction in the activity of birds and animals.

Banking on such models, another programme is being run across Kerala schools, before it can be replicated across the country. And it invites adult participation too. Called SeasonWatch, the programme that launched in November 2010, seeks to learn if climate change is affecting the seasonality of trees.

A total of 100 different trees are on their list, and volunteers monitoring them, regularly update findings on the programme website, including the timing of the flowering, fruiting and leaf-flush of the trees. Arun Elassery, SeasonWatch's programme manager, says, "We often hear of trees blooming before hand, or summers lasting longer. We are trying to learn more about these happenings by taking the help of volunteers."

More often than not, volunteers come with a keen interest in nature. Kar, for instance, was troubled to see how a large number of jackals were being run over by vehicles whenever she drove down the narrow Suraj Kund Road that cut across Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, connecting Tuglaqabad to Kant Enclave, "I spotted at least six jackals being run over.

I would always get out of my vehicle, and photograph them while others would continue running over them. Using the photos, I requested the sanctuary officials to lower speed limits on that road but it hardly helped." Later on June 1, when the Nature Conservation Foundation launched a two month-long survey to find out about the numbers and location of Golden Jackals in India, Kar was able to make an invaluable contribution with her notes and photographs.

LAI's team of amphibian scientists are working and using several scientific parameters to identify the Lost! Amphibians of India. Announcements of rediscovered species are expected very soon. In the case of MigrantWatch, it is too early for results of any kind to emerge. As Quader explains, "We have begun formally documenting existing migration timings -- and this will form a baseline against which future patterns can be compared."

Even in Mumbai, smaller programmes that are as much educational in nature as they are research-oriented, are emerging. For instance, Dr V Subhalaxmi, general manager at BNHS -- Education Department, helped launch in February this year, their Be A Scientist For A Day (BASFAD) programme. Here, a few professional researchers lead a group of volunteers into the 33-acre BNHS Nature Reserve in Goregaon to conduct field trips.

Sachin Chogre, an educational officer who conducts research programmes on moth studies, says, "Here, once every month, we organise research groups to study moths, amphibians, birds and flora of the region. We started it, knowing that we'd get a good response. Besides, it's a great way to document changes unfolding in these regions."

Sameer Patil, a freelance computer programmer from Thane, who attended a session of bird spotting, is planning to join another one soon. "Earlier, I could hardly ever identify birds. That day, we were taught about various species and how to identify them from their calls and features. We spread out and were able to document various species that frequent the area," he says. After a period of time, all findings made during the BASFAD programme, will be compiled into a report.

Dr Sengupta says, "When I return home from exhibitions, my body is marked with mosquito bites. But it is all worth it."

Herbicide Atrazine Spurs Reproductive Problems in Many Creatures (Via Herp Digest)

Herbicide Atrazine Spurs Reproductive Problems in Many Creatures, Report Finds

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2011) - An international team of researchers has reviewed the evidence linking exposure to atrazine -- an herbicide widely used in the U.S. and more than 60 other nations -- to reproductive problems in animals. The team found consistent patterns of reproductive dysfunction in amphibians, fish, reptiles and mammals exposed to the chemical.

Atrazine is the second-most widely used herbicide in the U.S. More than 75 million pounds of it are applied to corn and other crops, and it is the most commonly detected pesticide contaminant of groundwater, surface water and rain in the U.S.

The new review, compiled by 22 scientists studying atrazine in North and South America, Europe and Japan, appears in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

The researchers looked at studies linking atrazine exposure to abnormal androgen (male hormone) levels in fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals and studies that found a common association between exposure to the herbicide and the "feminization" of male gonads in many animals.

The most robust findings are in amphibians, said University of Illinois comparative biosciences professor Val Beasley, a co-author of the review. At least 10 studies found that exposure to atrazine feminizes male frogs, sometimes to the point of sex reversal, he said.

Beasley's lab was one of the first to find that male frogs exposed to atrazine in the wild were more likely to have both male and female gonadal tissue than frogs living in an atrazine-free environment. And in a 2010 study, Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author of the review, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that atrazine exposure in frogs was associated with "genetic males becoming females and functioning as females," Beasley said.

"And this is not at extremely high concentrations," he said. "These are at concentrations that are found in the environment."

The new review describes the disruptions of hormone function and sexual development reported in studies of mammals, frogs, fish, reptiles and human cells exposed to the herbicide. The studies found that atrazine exposure can change the expression of genes involved in hormone signaling, interfere with metamorphosis, inhibit key enzymes that control estrogen and androgen production, skew the sex ratio of wild and laboratory animals (toward female) and otherwise disrupt the normal reproductive development and functioning of males and females.

"One of the things that became clear in writing this paper is that atrazine works through a number of different mechanisms," Hayes said. "It's been shown that it increases production of (the stress hormone) cortisol. It's been shown that it inhibits key enzymes in steroid hormone production while increasing others. It's been shown that it somehow prevents androgen from binding to its receptor."
The review also consolidates the evidence that atrazine undermines immune function in a variety of animals, in part by increasing cortisol.

"Cortisol is a nonspecific response to chronic stress," Beasley said. "But guess what? Wildlife in many of today's habitats are stressed a great deal of the time. They're stressed because they're crowded into little remnant habitats. They're stressed because there's not enough oxygen in the water because there are not enough plants in the water (another consequence of herbicide use). They're stressed because of other contaminants in the water. And the long-term release of cortisol causes them to be immuno-suppressed."

There also are studies that show no effects -- or different effects -- in animals exposed to atrazine, Beasley said. "But the studies are not all the same. There are different species, different times of exposure, different stages of development and different strains within a species." All in all, he said, the evidence that atrazine harms animals, particularly amphibians and other creatures that encounter it in the water, is compelling.

"I hope this will stimulate policymakers to look at the totality of the data and ask very broad questions," Hayes said. "Do we want this stuff in our environment? Do we want -- knowing what we know -- our children to drink this stuff? I would think the answer would be no."

Variation in male, female turtle shells provides advantage when facing predators (Via Herp Digest)

Variation in male, female turtle shells provides advantage when facing predators
Released: 11/15/2011 2:00 PM EST
Source: Allen Press Publishing Services
News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Newswise - Herpetologica - One way to tell a male turtle from a female turtle is a difference in the shape of their shells. While this pattern of sexual dimorphism is common among turtle species, it could have other effects on turtle biology. The differing shell designs may exhibit different strengths in standing up to the attack of a predator, and therefore the survival rate of one sex over the other.

The current issue of the journal Herpetologica reports on the mechanical implications of shell shape differences between two species of male and female turtles. The Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) is an aquatic species, and the Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta) is a terrestrial species.

Females turtles tend to have larger, domed shells, which may indicate the ability to hold large clutches of eggs. Males, on the other hand, typically have flatter shells and larger openings for their limbs, allowing them greater movement. This improves their success in courtship and mating.

To test the strength of these varying shells, researchers created digital models of the shells for finite element analysis. This computer model uses simple geometric shapes to create a complex structure-the turtle shell in this case. It then calculates the response of those elemental shapes to create the response of the shell as a whole. Twelve load conditions, representing the bite of a predator at different locations, were applied.

The females of both species fared better than the males, although male and female Wood Turtles were more evenly matched. Female shells showed less stress than male shells. The concave shape of the plastron, or underside, of the male Wood Turtle's shell in particular exhibited significantly increased stress, indicating it would be more easily punctured by a predator.

These differences between sexes may stem from selection based on other factors besides predation. Currently, there are no data showing that females are more likely to encounter predators, for instance, and that therefore their shells have become better able to withstand such attacks. However, these variations can have an effect on turtles' lives and offer important implications for turtle conservation efforts.

Full text of the article "Dimorphism in Shell Shape and Strength in Two Species of Emydid Turtle," Herpetologica, Volume 67, Issue 4, November 2011, is available at: http://www.hljournals.org/

Whiskers Marked Milestone in Evolution of Mammals from Reptiles (Via Herp Digest)

Whiskers Marked Milestone in Evolution of Mammals from Reptiles

The story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Sheffield. (Nov. 10, 2011) - Research from the University of Sheffield comparing rats and mice with their distance relatives the marsupial, suggests that moveable whiskers were an important milestone in the evolution of mammals from reptiles.

Using high-speed digital video recording and automatic tracking, the research team, which was led by Professor Tony Prescott from the University´s Department of Psychology, have shed light on how rodents such as mice and rats move their whiskers back-and-forth at high speed and in varying ways to actively sense the environment around them in a behaviour known as whisking. Whisking allows mice or rats to accurately determine the position, shape and texture of objects, make rapid and accurate decisions about objects, and then use the information to build environmental maps.

When running in a straight line, rats and mice move their whiskers back-and-forth the same amount on both sides. However when turning, they bias their whisker movements in the direction of the turn, and when the whiskers on one side of the head contact an object, those on the opposite side sweep round to gather more information. These active sensing strategies boost the information gained by the whiskers helping the animals to better understand their world through touch.

In their latest research, the team have shown that whisking like that of rodents, using these active sensing strategies, is also seen in a small South American marsupial -- the grey short-tailed opossum. This animal has many similarities to an early mammal that would have lived more than 125 million years ago; that is, around the same time that the evolutionary lines leading to modern rodents and marsupials diverged.

This evidence suggests that some of the first mammals may also have whisked like a modern mouse or rat, and that the appearance of moveable whiskers was pivotal in the evolution of mammals from reptiles. The research is published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on 12 November 2011 and will also be presented on the same day at the Society for Neuroscience conference.
The earliest mammals were nocturnal, and tree-living. In order to successfully move around and thrive in this challenging environment these animals needed to effectively integrate information from multiple senses -- sight, sound, smell, and touch. Facial whiskers provided mammals with a new tactile sense not available to reptiles that could help them to get around in the dark.

In addition to continuing to investigate the similarities and differences between rodents and marsupials, the team is also using these insights from biological whisker sensing to develop animal-like robots that can use artificial whiskers to navigate without vision. These robots could have applications in search-and-rescue, particularly in environments, such as disaster sites, where vision is compromised by smoke or dust.

Professor Tony Prescott said: "This latest research suggests that alongside becoming warm-blooded, giving birth to live young, and having an enlarged brain, the emergence of a new tactile sense based on moveable facial whiskers was an important step along the evolutionary path to modern mammals. Although humans no longer have moveable whiskers they were a critical feature of our early mammalian ancestors."

Python circulating fatty acids study could benefit diseased human heart (Via Herp Digest)

Python circulating fatty acids study could benefit diseased human heart
Press Relese 10/21/11, Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder

Boulder professor Leslie Leinwand and her team have discovered that huge amounts of fatty acids circulating through the bloodstreams of feeding pythons promote healthy heart growth in the constricting snake, a study with implications for human heart heath. Credit: Photo by Thomas Cooper
A surprising new University of Colorado Boulder study shows that huge amounts of fatty acids circulating in the bloodstreams of feeding pythons promote healthy heart growth, results that may have implications for treating human heart disease.

CU-Boulder Professor Leslie Leinwand and her research team found the amount of triglycerides -- the main constituent of natural fats and oils -- in the blood of Burmese pythons one day after eating increased by more than fifty-fold. Despite the massive amount of fatty acids in the python bloodstream there was no evidence of fat deposition in the heart, and the researchers also saw an increase in the activity of a key enzyme known to protect the heart from damage.

After identifying the chemical make-up of blood plasma in fed pythons, the CU-Boulder researchers injected fasting pythons with either "fed python" blood plasma or a reconstituted fatty acid mixture they developed to mimic such plasma. In both cases, the pythons showed increased heart growth and indicators of cardiac health. The team took the experiments a step further by injecting mice with either fed python plasma or the fatty acid mixture, with the same results.

"We found that a combination of fatty acids can induce beneficial heart growth in living organisms," said CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Cecilia Riquelme, first author on the Science paper. "Now we are trying to understand the molecular mechanisms behind the process in hopes that the results might lead to new therapies to improve heart disease conditions in humans."

The paper is being published in the Oct. 28 issue of the journal Science. In addition to Leinwand and Riquelme, the authors include CU postdoctoral researcher Brooke Harrison, CU graduate student Jason Magida, CU undergraduate Christopher Wall, Hiberna Corp. researcher Thomas Marr and University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Professor Stephen Secor.

Previous studies have shown that the hearts of Burmese pythons can grow in mass by 40 percent within 24 to 72 hours after a large meal, and that metabolism immediately after swallowing prey can shoot up by forty-fold. As big around as telephone poles, adult Burmese pythons can swallow prey as large as deer, have been known to reach a length of 27 feet and are able to fast for up to a year with few ill effects.

There are good and bad types of heart growth, said Leinwand, who is an expert in genetic heart diseases including hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the leading cause of sudden death in young athletes. While cardiac diseases can cause human heart muscle to thicken and decrease the size of heart chambers and heart function because the organ is working harder to pump blood, heart enlargement from exercise is beneficial.

"Well-conditioned athletes like Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and cyclist Lance Armstrong have huge hearts," said Leinwand, a professor in the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department and chief scientific officer of CU's Biofrontiers Institute. "But there are many people who are unable to exercise because of existing heart disease, so it would be nice to develop some kind of a treatment to promote the beneficial growth of heart cells."

Riquelme said once the CU team confirmed that something in the blood plasma of pythons was inducing positive cardiac growth, they began looking for the right "signal" by analyzing proteins, lipids, nucleic acids and peptides present in the fed plasma. The team used a technique known as gas chromatography to analyze both fasted and fed python plasma blood, eventually identifying a highly complex composition of circulating fatty acids with distinct patterns of abundance over the course of the digestive process.

In the mouse experiments led by Harrison, the animals were hooked up to "mini-pumps" that delivered low doses of the fatty acid mixture over a period of a week. Not only did the mouse hearts show significant growth in the major part of the heart that pumps blood, the heart muscle cell size increased, there was no increase in heart fibrosis -- which makes the heart muscle more stiff and can be a sign of disease -- and there were no alterations in the liver or in the skeletal muscles, he said.
"It was remarkable that the fatty acids identified in the plasma-fed pythons could actually stimulate healthy heart growth in mice," said Harrison. The team also tested the fed python plasma and the fatty acid mixture on cultured rat heart cells, with the same positive results, Harrison said.

The CU-led team also identified the activation of signaling pathways in the cells of fed python plasma, which serve as traffic lights of sorts, said Leinwand. "We are trying to understand how to make those signals tell individual heart cells whether they are going down a road that has pathological consequences, like disease, or beneficial consequences, like exercise," she said.

The prey of Burmese pythons can be up to 100 percent of the constricting snake's body mass, said Leinwand, who holds a Marsico Endowed Chair of Excellence at CU-Boulder. "When a python eats, something extraordinary happens. Its metabolism increases by more than forty-fold and the size of its organs increase significantly in mass by building new tissue, which is broken back down during the digestion process."

The three key fatty acids in the fed python plasma turned out to be myristic acid, palmitic acid and palmitoleic acid. The enzyme that showed increased activity in the python hearts during feeding episodes, known as superoxide dismutase, is a well-known "cardio-protective" enzyme in many organisms, including humans, said Leinwand.

The new Science study grew out of a project Leinwand began in 2006 when she was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and awarded a four-year, $1 million undergraduate education grant from the Chevy Chase, Md.-based institute. As part of the award Leinwand initiated the Python Project, an undergraduate laboratory research program designed to focus on the heart biology of constricting snakes like pythons thought to have relevance to human disease.

Undergraduates contributed substantially to the underpinnings of the new python study both by their genetic studies and by caring for the lab pythons, said Leinwand. While scientists know a great deal about the genomes of standard lab animal models like fruit flies, worms and mice, relatively little was known about pythons. "We have had to do a lot of difficult groundwork using molecular genetics tools in order to undertake this research," said Leinwand.

CU-Boulder already had a laboratory snake facility in place, which contributed to the success of the project, she said.

"The fact that the python study involved faculty, postdoctoral researchers, a graduate student and an undergraduate, Christopher Wall, shows the project was a team effort," said Leinwand. "Chris is a good example of how the University of Colorado provides an incredible educational research environment for undergraduates." Wall is now a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego.

Tortoises Yawn-But It's Not Contagious (Via Herp Digest)

Tortoises Yawn-But It's Not Contagious - Ludwig Huber and colleagues earned the 2011 Ig Nobel in physiology for determining that yawning isn't contagious among red-footed tortoises

Copy upon request.

A wasabi alarm, beer bottle-loving beetles, and doomsday math were among the scientific advances honored Thursday with 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes.

National Geographic News, 10/6/11- The unique annual awards go to real research "that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think." The scientific celebration, now in its 21st year, was hosted by the Annals of Improbable Research and several Harvard University student groups.

As usual, more than a half dozen genuine Nobel laureates were onstage at Harvard's Sanders Theater to hand out the coveted prizes.

Tortoises Yawn-But It's Not Contagious
Ludwig Huber and colleagues earned the 2011 Ig Nobel in physiology for determining that yawning isn't contagious among red-footed tortoises-perhaps coming a bit closer to understanding what's behind the common but mysterious behavior.

Tortoises that watched another animal detour around an object to get food were able to learn the behavior by observation and duplicate it rather easily, said Huber, of the University of Vienna in Austria. The tortoises also followed the gazes of others, showing that they attend to what their fellow animals are doing.

But the reptiles did not yawn in response to other tortoises yawning [PDF], as humans and other higher primates have been observed to do. Huber says that combination of results is telling: "We can say that contagious yawning is not purely a simple reflex, because otherwise they would have shown it here," he explained. "We might say that it's based on a more complex kind of social behavior."

How to Scientifically Know where to Allocate Limited Resources to Save Species (Via Herp Digest)

How to Scientifically Know where to Allocate Limited Resources to Save Species - Also known, as Triage - How to Scientifically decide which species are worth saving which aren't. - New Study

Summary of Original Paper published in the Journal Nature Climate Change. by Allen Salzberg--9/30/11 More species could be saved from extinction under climate change thanks to a new model scientists have developed to guide allocation of conservation funding. The international team, led by Dr Brendan Wintle of the University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, is the first to develop a pioneering decision-support model that incorporates both ecological and economic information to guide conservation investment in the face of climate change.

Although scientists knew that high extinction rates were predicted to increase under climate change, there was little advice to guide how money could be best spent to minimise extinctions.
Dr Wintle said "The best part about this model is that it can be applied to a range of environments, including many of Australia's native ecosystems, to suggest how to allocate funding. Our analysis supports the existing evidence that climate change will substantially accelerate extinction rates. So the first step is that we urgently need to limit global warming to avoid a mass extinction. Given that we are probably committed to a two degree warming by 2050, we need to develop effective strategies for minimizing the number of species that go extinct as a result.

"We only have a limited amount of money to spend on managing biodiversity, so the question becomes, how do we most effectively allocate these funds? We needed a systematic approach to guide conservation investment to minimize extinctions and avoid wasting money. An advantage of our approach is that it makes the costs of a plan explicit, reducing the opportunity for politicization of decisions."

The scientists combined ecological predictions with an economic decision framework to prioritize conservation activities, and tested the model on one of world's most biodiverse and highly threatened ecosystems; the South African fynbos.

"An interesting result of our analysis is that the optimal allocation of money depends strongly on the yearly conservation budget. For example if budgets were small then the whole budget would be dedicated to fire-fighting capacity. However, if more money were available, investment would be directed toward avoiding habitat loss due to clearing and weed invasion," Dr Wintle said.
The team included scientists from the University of Melbourne, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, CSIR South Africa, the NERP Environmental Decisions Hub, RMIT University, NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, University of NSW, the University of Queensland and a group of European researchers.

The work is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Row As Firm Moves To Breed Beagles For Tests

Controversial plans to breed more beagles for use in scientific research are being considered by the Government.
The proposals by East Yorkshire company B&K Universal are being looked at by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.

Anti-vivisection groups claim the plans would lead to more dogs being used in laboratory experiments, but the company insists it wants to reduce the number of animals being imported.
Sky News was given exclusive access to the firm's beagles bred for use in animal testing - the first time in its 37-year history that cameras have been allowed on the site.

The dogs are housed in a compound on the edge of the remote village of Grimston, east of Hull, and are shielded from animal rights extremists by razor wire, CCTV cameras and guards.

Behind three separate doors, inside a modern low-rise building, more than a dozen beagles are kept in groups of twos and threes in metal cages against the walls.

To protect them from disease, the dogs are never allowed outdoors and staff and visitors have to wear overclothes.

In the centre of the room is a bright plastic slide which the dogs can play on when they are let out for what the firm calls "socialisation" and when their cages are being cleaned.

The animals are ex-breeding stock imported from America or Europe and are used to supply blood for sale to laboratories.

If planning permission is granted, the cages will be moved to the new buildings and will house breeding dogs and their offspring, which will be sold for drug and product testing as well as medical research.

Known as Marshall beagles, they are a strain bred especially for research purposes by B&K's American parent company, Marshall Bioresources, which bought the firm in 2009 with the aim of establishing a breeding colony and expanding into the UK market.

According to the Home Office, 3,704 beagles were used in animal research procedures in the UK last year, with some 800 procedures carried out on imported dogs.

A well-placed source told Sky News the beagles sell for around £1,600 each, making the market worth up to £6m a year in the UK alone.

"To meet the demand these days we're having to import animals from long distances away and we'd like to avoid that," B&K's general manager, Roy Sutcliffe, said.

"(Our redevelopment) won't increase the numbers of dogs that are needed for research, it will just make it more convenient for the UK researchers to source them in the UK."

Although the use of animals for testing cosmetics is banned in the UK and the Government says it is committed to phasing out the testing of household products and reducing the use of animals in laboratories, the law states new drugs must still be tested on animals for safety.

A planning application to redevelop the Grimston site was refused by East Riding Council in June, and an appeal by the firm has been called in by the Department for Communities and Local Government over the controversy.

The company refuses to say how many dogs it would breed on the site if its appeal is successful, but campaigners claim it could be up to 2,000.

Michelle Thew, chief executive of anti-vivisection group BUAV, said 28,000 people signed their petition objecting to the plans.

"A decision to accept the facility would fly in the face of public opinion and the recent Government pledge to reduce the numbers of animals in experiments," she said.

"People will be shocked to learn of the unnatural conditions in which these beagles are bred. Tragically they are viewed simply as products with a price tag on their heads."

The Department for Communities and Local Government said the appeal is being assessed by a planning inspector and will be approved or rejected in line with planning legislation.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/row-firm-moves-breed-beagles-tests-225353353.html

New study says birds learn how to build nests

A new study has found birds learn the art of nest-building, rather than it being just an instinctive skill. Researchers from Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews Universities studied film of southern masked weavers recorded by scientists in Botswana. This colourful species was chosen because individual birds build many complex nests in a season.

Dr Patrick Walsh of Edinburgh University said the study revealed "a clear role for experience".

Read on...
Picture source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ploceus_velatus_1.jpg

Ticks can thrive on water reptiles (Via Herp Digest)

Ticks can thrive on water reptiles
8/30/11 Written by, Staff report,news@thenewsstar.com

Most Louisianans are familiar with ticks - those pesky, blood-sucking arachnids that thrive in humid environments, particularly wooded or grassy areas. New evidence is emerging, however, indicating that ticks can thrive on a reptile whose entire life is spent in or near the water.
For six weeks this summer, Lisa Brown, 25, a graduate student of biology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, studied the biogeographic phenomenon at two field sites, including a small tropical island off the Pacific coast of Colombia, South America, where an aquatic turtle of the genus Rhinoclemmys, carried the parasite.

"Leeches typically fill that niche on aquatic turtles, but there are no leeches on the island," Brown explained. "I just thought it seemed interesting and really bizarre. I started doing research to see if anything had been documented about it, and I only found a couple of papers that described it in certain mammals. I got more excited because it seemed like a really unique project to take on."
She says the ticks may have gills enabling them to breathe under water and presented her findings at the Ninth Annual Symposium on the Conservation and Biology of Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles, Aug. 14-17, the joint annual meeting of the Turtle Survival Alliance and the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group.

In an unusual twist, on the Colombian mainland the same species of turtle is virtually devoid of the ticks, and instead boasts a large number of leeches, according to Brown. Brown finished her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Tyler and is scheduled to graduate ULM in May 2012.

'Gas-less' kangaroo secret sniffed out

Scientists have gone some way to explaining why kangaroos produce much less methane in their burps, flatus and manure than farm animals such as cows.

They identified a bacterium in the gut of the Tammar wallaby - a member of the kangaroo family - that processes their food without making methane.

Read on...

Snake Genome Suggests Treatments for Human Heart Disease (Via HerpDigest)

Snake Genome Suggests Treatments for Human Heart Disease
By Katherine Harmon Jun 21, 2011 01:10 PM

NORMAN, Okla.-Snakes have been around for some 150 million years, but their ancient physiology might hold some important clues to developing new drugs. 

Aside from their sleek exteriors, snakes' internal physiology is perhaps even more intriguing. "It's a really fun model for studying the extremes of adaptation," Todd Castoe, a researcher at the University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine's biochemistry and molecular genetics department, said June 20 at the Evolution 2011 annual conference in Norman, Okla.

In addition to the wow-factor of deciphering the snakes' interesting innards, the strange systems could help us better understand our own biology. 

As infrequent feeders, snakes have a highly variable metabolism, which can dip down to one of the lowest-known rates of any vertebrate. In particular, "the Burmese python is the quintessential model of the extreme version of this," Castoe said.

They can increase and decrease their metabolism by some 44-fold and their heart size by more than 50 percent depending on their energy demands. 

Behind all of these unusual evolutionary assets are the genes that make these feats possible. However, even as new genetic sequencing technology has allowed researchers to amass an impressive collection of plant and animal genomes, "reptiles have been really over looked by the bulk of sequencing," Castoe noted.



Earlier this year he and his colleagues published the first draft of a snake genome-the Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus)-and it has divulged some interesting details about this species' agile metabolism. The snake's mitochondria, which are in charge of energy use in cells, "have undergone the single most extensive change that we're aware of," Castoe said.



To learn more about how the Burmese python heart undergoes such vast changes, Castoe and his team looked specifically at cardiac gene expression. Over the 72-hour metabolic cycle, they found many rapid changes in gene expression in the heart. In just a 24-hour sample, there were 1,852 unique transcriptomes (expressed RNAs in the tissue)-261 of which were up-regulated more than five fold.



These changes might help shed light on human heart development and disease. "We're pretty excited to not look at this in a vacuum," Castoe said. Some heart growth in humans is a good thing, such as that which occurs in childhood and due to exercise-what Castoe calls "Lance Armstrong-style heart growth." But other heart enlargement, such as that caused by heart disease, cardiac hypertrophy, is a definite negative and the target of much drug development. 

"If we are able to understand the genetic cues involved in rapid python heart muscle increases and decreases, that to be says there is the potential to develop therapeutics for humans,"

Leslie Leinwand, director of CU Boulder's Cardiovascular Institute, said in a prepared statement in 2008, before the genome had been completed. 

More work remains to be done before these new findings can be translated into potential drugs for heart disease in humans.

And as researchers digest more of these big snakes' genome, more medical applications might also emerge. 

A second and more thoroughly annotated draft of the python genome is expected out this fall. And other snakes are set to join the ranks of the sequenced, including the garter snake, the rattlesnake and the king cobra. Castoe notes that the field only keeps getting more interesting, adding: "If you're not studying snakes already, you should start."

Living, biological raygun produced in lab

Glowing mammal-jellyfish chimera-blob emits laser beam

By Lewis Page
Posted in Biology, 13th June 2011 11:52 GMT

Beings or creatures able to emit beams of focused energy from their own living bodies: fiction, right? Comic-book, X Men stuff, right?

Wrong. Boffins in America have announced that they have successfully produced laser light from living cells under laboratory conditions, paving the way - they say - for living lasers to be implanted or grown within human patients, or for the production of living machinery able to interface with optical communications networks.

"Since they were first developed some 50 years ago, lasers have used synthetic materials such as crystals, dyes and purified gases as optical gain media, within which photon pulses are amplified as they bounces back and forth between two mirrors," says Seok Hyun Yun, a top boffin from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

"Ours is the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell."

Yun and his colleague Malte Gather created their lasercyte by meddling with some unspecified mammal cells to make them produce suitable amounts of green fluorescent protein (GFP). GFP, originally discovered in jellyfish, does what it says on the tin - it emits light. In order to make this light coherent, the two boffins placed a lasercyte inside a tiny spherical device rigged with mirrors at the ends, as in a regular laser.

According to a statement issued by Massachusetts General:

Not only did the cell-based device produce pulses of laser light [but] the researchers also found that the spherical shape of the cell itself acted as a lens, refocusing the light and inducing emission of laser light at lower energy levels ... The cells used in the device survived the lasing process and were able to continue producing hundreds of pulses of laser light.

"The ability to generate laser light from a biocompatible source placed inside a patient could be useful," comments Yun, though at the moment he is thinking more of medical imaging and such like as opposed to the ability to emit deadly energy rays from one's eyes or similar.

Gather, on the other hand, is thinking more of making biological machinery that might one day let you plug an optical fibre straight into your brain, or similar.

"One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology," explains the scientist. "That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms."

Yun and Gather's study is published online by Nature Photonics. ®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/13/lasercyte/