Tag: biology

Whale culture

a new study finds strong evidence that a group of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the Gulf of Maine (map) is sharing a newly observed feeding behavior via their social networks. (See related blog: “Sharks Have Social Networks, Learn From Friends.”)

That behavior, called lobtail feeding, was first recorded in 1 whale in the Gulf of Maine in 1980. Since then, 278 humpback whales—out of 700 observed individuals that frequent the Stellwagen Bank (map) area—have employed the strategy

Revive

Paging Michael Crichton. Oh wait, he’s dead himself.

Why do it? Why revive extinct species?
For the same reasons we protect endangered species. To preserve biodiversity and genetic diversity. To undo harm that humans have caused in the past. To restore diminished ecosystems. To advance the science of preventing extinctions.

Honor Thy Symbionts

at $2.99, this seems like a great buy:

In Honor Thy Symbionts, the lens of our evolutionary past is focused on obesity, GMO foods, diabetes, the rise in C-section births, ecology of our gut microbes, our African microbial origins, government dietary recommendations, probiotics vs. prebiotics, food poisoning, and more. 90% of the cells in the human body are not even human, but microbial. This makes humans super organisms. This biological truth is reframing the scientific and philosophical conversation around Who are we?

World microbiome

The Earth Microbiome Project analyzes microbial communities across the globe. We propose to characterize Earth by environmental parameter space into different biomes and then explore these using samples. We will analyze 200k samples to produce a global Gene Atlas describing protein space, environmental metabolic models for each biome, 500k reconstructed microbial genomes, a global metabolic model, and a data-analysis portal for visualization of all information.

For example, we may have soil samples from a pH range of 4-6.5 and 7.3-11.2 at a range of different temperatures, nutrient loads, and soil types. To understand the full range of soil microbiota on earth we would need to explore samples whose pH is below 4, above 11.2 and between 6.5 and 7.3, and all at a range of different temperatures, nutrient loads and soil types.

Rewinding evolution

a novel experimental setup that integrates 2 disparate fields – ancestral sequence reconstruction and experimental evolution. This allows us to rewind and replay the evolutionary history of ancient biomolecules in the laboratory. We anticipate that our combination will provide a deeper understanding of the underlying roles that contingency and determinism play in shaping evolutionary processes.

and

scientists in the emerging field of paleogenomics have developed new methods to begin answering some of these questions. By comparing the DNA sequences of many living organisms and working backward, they can infer ancient genomic history, such as when a gene evolved a new function.

Sahara fertilizes the Amazon

The Amazon basin is one of the world’s wondrous ecosystems, supporting massive amounts of life, both in kind and quantity. You might have thought about poison frogs or monkeys, but you’ve probably never stopped to wonder, “Where are all the nutrients that power this biotic explosion coming from?”

The answer is actually astonishing and delightful in that one-planet-one-love kind of way. As laid out in a 2006 paper, nearly 50% of the nutrients that power the Amazon come from a valley in the Sahara called the Bodélé depression. The area is 0.5% the size of the Amazon basin it supplies.

Face Mites

Rosacea – a common skin disease characterized by red blotches on one’s face – may be caused by “tiny bugs closely related to spiders living in the pores of your face.” Tiny bugs that “crawl about your face in the dark”, lay eggs in your pores, and release a burst of faeces when they die.

Also, you are only 0.7% human in terms of dna, the rest is bacterial dna, and bacterial cells on and in your body outnumber human cells 10:1.

Stagnation at the olympics

without breaking records, the olympics are utterly boring. we can now only hope for more oscar pistorius types to lead us into the future.

Many scientists have concluded from recent events that athletic performance is hitting a wall. Geoffroy Berthelot of INSEP, a sports research institute in Paris, looked at competitions from 1896 to 2007 and found that peak scores stopped improving in 64% of track and field events after 1993. Giuseppe Lippi of the University of Verona examined 9 Olympic sports from 1900 to 2007 and found similar results. “Improvement has substantially stopped or reached a plateau in several specialities,” he wrote. Berthelot has predicted that the “human species’ physiological frontiers will be reached” in most sports around 2027.

Dog domestication

Canines have had 36 ka to co-evolve with humans. Plenty of time for canines to domesticate humans as a food source, mainly via the cunning puppy dog eyes.
2012-12-06: How to make dogs from foxes in 8 generations (and “dragons” from foxes)

2018-12-15: This fictionalization of the domestication of wolves was surprisingly good.

2020-06-06: Foxes becoming dog-like

When the foxes moved from the forest to city habitats, they began to evolve doglike traits, potentially setting themselves on the path to domestication.

2022-02-08: Dog / Human co-domestication

Based on claims that dogs are less aggressive and show more sophisticated socio-cognitive skills compared with wolves, dog domestication has been invoked to support the idea that humans underwent a similar ‘self-domestication’ process. Dogs do not show increased socio-cognitive skills and they are not less aggressive than wolves. Rather, compared with wolves, dogs seek to avoid conflicts, specifically with higher ranking conspecifics and humans, and might have an increased inclination to follow rules, making them amenable social partners. These conclusions challenge the suitability of dog domestication as a model for human social evolution and suggest that dogs need to be acknowledged as animals adapted to a specific socio-ecological niche as well as being shaped by human selection for specific traits.