Elusive Snow Leopard Collared in Kyrgyzstan

By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer | May 24, 2016 12:45pm ET

Scientists have collared an elusive snow leopard in the remote, rugged mountains of Kyrgyzstan.

The female cat was collared in the Sarychat-Ertash Strict Nature Reserve of Eastern Kyrgyzstan by biologists with the wild cat conservation organization Panthera, the State Agency on Environment Protection and Forestry and the National Academy of Sciences. The mama cat showed signs of having lactated in the past, suggesting she had given birth  to at least one cub. This was the second time in six months that conservationists had succeeded in spotting and collaring a fertile female snow leopard in the country.

The sighting suggests the population of snow leopards (Panthera uncia) in this region could be recovering , after decades of relentless poaching, according to the scientists involved.

"It is so exciting to have two young productive females collared early in this study. It is a clear indication that Sarychat-Ertash, a place where snow leopards were nearly extirpated in the 1990s, is once again a stronghold for the species," Tom McCarthy, executive director of Panthera's Snow Leopard Program, said in a statement. "Kyrgyzstan can be very proud of this turnaround."

Mysterious creatures

The mysterious snow leopard lurks in the frigid, mountainous regions of 12 different countries in Asia. Yet these majestic creatures are often incredibly hard to spot; they glide silently through the snow on big, padded paws, and their thick, mottled white coats provide the perfect camouflage against the rocky, snow-flecked areas they prowl. The big cats are also highly reclusive by nature , meaning many locals who live alongside the cats have never seen them.

For decades, shepherds have hunted the cats to keep them from preying on their flocks.  Poachers have also targeted the majestic snow beasts for their fur and internal organs, which are prized in Chinese medicine.

The snow leopard has been listed as endangered since at least 1986 by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. However, in recent years, scientists and lawmakers have increased conservation efforts dramatically, expanding the size of protected regions and using everything from camera traps to DNA analysis of snow leopard poop to learn more about the elusive creatures. Those efforts have begun to pay off, and researchers estimate that the population is on the rise, with between 4,500 and 10,000 snow leopards now living throughout Asia.

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Ancient crayfish and worms may die out together

Research suggests that bizarre, tentacled worms which live attached to crayfish in the rivers of Australia are at risk of extinction - because the crayfish themselves are endangered.

It would be an example of coextinction, where one organism dies out because it depends on another doomed species.

Just a few millimetres long, the worms eat even tinier critters in the water or inside the crayfish gill chamber.

Their symbiotic relationship stretches back at least 80 million years.

The new findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, map out that shared history based on genetic analysis of 37 different species of spiny mountain crayfish and their "temnocephalan" flatworm passengers.

"We've now got a picture of how these two species have evolved together through time," said Dr Jennifer Hoyal Cuthill from the University of Cambridge.

She and her colleagues conclude that it was some 80-100 million years ago that these two types of animal started to evolve together.

The Australian continent was about halfway through its gradual northward march to its current position on the globe and as it progressed, the creatures' habitat started to fragment and shrink.

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Bee swarm clinging to car boot has Welsh town abuzz

Park ranger and beekeepers help remove thousands of bees after queen was thought trapped in back of a car in Haverfordwest

Press Association

Tuesday 24 May 201617.37 BST

Last modified on Wednesday 25 May 201609.57 BST

Thousands of bees left a town buzzing after swarming on to the boot of a car.

The insects are believed to have swarmed on to the back of a silver Mitsubishi Outlander after their queen got stuck in its boot.

Tom Moses, a ranger at the Pembrokeshire coast national park, noticed a “brown splodge” on the back of the car after the owner parked it in Haverfordwest to do some shopping. When he looked closer, he realised it was a swarm of bees – thought to number more than 10,000.

Moses, 41, said: “I have never seen that many bees in one spot. It was very unusual and then you go and take a closer look, it is quite spectacular.

 “They were packed in quite tight and covered a couple of square feet. There was a lot of buzzing and moving.

“It was interesting to see such a natural phenomenon but there were a lot of people around and I was a bit worried of the bees and the people passing by, their children stopping to look at it. It was the middle of a town and outside a pub. I thought that someone might do something stupid.”

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Scans show Pawpawsaurus depended on sense of smell

MAY 24, 2016

by Brett Smith

A cousin of the tank-like Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus didn’t have the club-like tail of its more famous relative.

However, the lesser-known dinosaur did have a strong sense of smell it likely depended on, according to a new study in the journal PLOS ONE.

The new study is based on the first-ever CT scans of Pawpawsaurus's fossilized skull.

"CT imaging has allowed us to delve into the intricacies of the brains of extinct animals, especially dinosaurs, to unlock secrets of their ways of life," study author Louis Jacobs, a professor of archeology at Southern Methodist University, said in a news release.

Although Pawpawsaurus’s olfaction was inferior to Ankylosaurus, the study team said, it was still better than some predatory dinosaurs like Ceratosaurus.

"Pawpawsaurus in particular, and the group it belonged to—Nodosauridae—had no flocculus, a structure of the brain involved with motor skills, no club tail, and a reduced nasal cavity and portion of the inner ear when compared with the other family of ankylosaurs," said Ariana Paulina-Carabajal, researcher for the Biodiversity and Environment Research Institute, San Carlos de Bariloche in Argentina. "But its sense of smell was very important, as it probably relied on that to look for food, find mates and avoid or flee predators.

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Use of parasitic wasps to fight ash borer grows to 24 states

May 25, 2016 by David Pitt

Millions of tiny wasps that are natural parasites for the emerald ash borer have been released into wooded areas in 24 states as the battle against the tree-killing borer is now biological.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has researched and approved for release four species of parasitic wasps that naturally target the larval and egg stages of the ash borer, which has killed an estimated 38 million ash trees in urban and residential areas. The estimated cost of treating, removing, and replacing the lost trees is $25 billion, according to a report written by USDA and U.S. Forest Service entomologists earlier this month.

On average, federal and state resource managers spend more than $29 million per year to manage ash borer populations.

The tiniest of the wasps looks like a pepper flake on a white surface. It lays eggs inside ash borer eggs, preventing them from hatching. Three other wasps, one the size of a gnat, lays eggs inside ash borer larvae halting development into adult beetles.

They were identified in China in 2002 and studied for several years before scientists concluded they could be safety released in the United States to fight the ash borer.

The wasp release program is in 24 of the 26 states where the ash borer has been found, said entomologist Ben Slager, the manager of the laboratory in Brighton, Michigan, producing the wasps run by the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a USDA agency. Plans are to also distribute wasps to Texas and Georgia, the final two states not yet in the program.

"This isn't going to save anybody's tree in their yard or in the city. What we're working to do is to protect the next generation coming up," Slager said Tuesday. "It's really a long-term management strategy."

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