Scientists from the United States and Europe announced plans Tuesday to create the biggest map of underground fungal networks, arguing they are an important but overlooked piece in the puzzle of how to tackle climate change.
Bats are not only using their acoustical abilities to find a meal—they are also using it to predict where their prey would be, increasing their chances of a successful hunt.
An international team of scientists from the United States and Australia, led by Sarah Jacquet at the University of Missouri, has documented the discovery of two new species of fossilized armored worms in Australia—Lepidocoleus caliburnus and Lepidocoleus shurikenus—dating from about 400 million years ago. Then, using the micro-CT imaging capabilities of the MU X-ray Microanalysis Core facility, the researchers were able to develop first-of-its-kind digital 3D-models of the species' individual armor plates by virtually examining the armored skeletons of these ancient worms, called machaeridians.
The sensitive fern—named due to its sensitivity to drought and frost—is a widespread species found throughout eastern North America and eastern Asia. It is a dimorphic plant because it has two distinct types of leaves—one for photosynthesis and one for reproduction. While most fern species in temperate regions produce and disperse their spores in the summer, the sensitive fern has an atypical timing of spore dispersal. In the early summer they produce heavily modified spore-bearing fronds (or leaves) with leaflets tightly enveloping their sporangia and spores. These fronds deteriorate with age, yet continue to persist above ground during the winter as dead mature structures. In the early spring their leaflets open to disperse spores. While the timing of spore dispersal has been observed for over 120 years, the structural mechanisms driving this phenology have remained elusive.
A new decision-making framework designed by an international team of fisheries researchers can help fisheries bolster their ability to adapt to a warming world. The tool, said marine ecologist Jacob Eurich at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS), is meant to take a lot of the guesswork out of finding resilience in a time of climate change.
It is widely understood that antibodies neutralize viruses by latching onto their surfaces and blocking them from infecting host cells. But new research reveals that this barrier method isn't the only way that antibodies disable viruses. An international team of researchers led by Penn State has discovered that antibodies also distort viruses, thereby preventing them from properly attaching to and entering cells.
New technology developed by the University of South Australia may put an end to predatory cat behaviors in native environments and help control Australia's feral felines.
Fish farming by-products have the potential to increase the sustainability of aquaculture, and contribute to other sectors—such as food, diet supplements, animal feed and cosmetics, according to a new study.
A team of researchers led by Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo has used statistical methods to calculate when canine teeth in modern male humans began to shrink down to their current size. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of hundreds of ancient fossil teeth.
A unique "star" was discovered from the Ryukyu Islands, a biodiversity hot spot in subtropical Japan: a star-shaped structure that turned out to be the cocoon mass of a new species of parasitoid wasp. Researchers Shunpei Fujie (Osaka Museum of Natural History), So Shimizu, Kaoru Maeto (Kobe University), Koichi Tone (Okinawa Municipal Museum), and Kazunori Matsuo (Kyushu University) described this parasitoid wasp as a new species in the open-access Journal of Hymenoptera Research.
All land plants originated from a single evolutionary event when freshwater algae got a foothold on land, giving rise to an astonishing biodiversity of plants on earth. However, the group of algae that would later give rise to land plants had already been living and evolving in both freshwater and terrestrial habitats for over one billion years. There is a tiny group of these algae still living that are most distantly related to land plants. A team from the University of G?ttingen honed in on one species of these rare algae, Chlorokybus,that forms "cell packages" and lives in wet soil and rock cracks. The researchers discovered that Chlorokybus contains not one, as previously thought, but at least five different species. The results were published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Male animals are subject to stronger selection pressures than females, which may allow populations to adapt to environmental change more efficiently, according to a report published in the open-access journal eLife.
A new study led by North Carolina State University and the Denver Zoo sheds light on the gut microbiome of gorillas, moving researchers closer to developing tools that can use the microbiome to diagnose potential health challenges for gorillas in human care. Specifically, the study found significant diversity among gorilla microbiomes, suggesting that what constitutes a "healthy" microbiome can vary between individuals.
Think of common courtship displays in the animal kingdom, like the flashy display of a peacock's tail or the treetop melody of a songbird's tune. Each is relatively constant. The brilliant colors in a male peacock's plumage do not change during its attempts to attract a female. And songbirds rely on repetition, like top-40 radio stations, singing the same songs in the same kinds of ways during their mating rituals.
It's no secret that jet lag and night-shift work can wreak havoc on the way our body's internal clock syncs up our daily wake-sleep cycle, known as circadian rhythm, but now researchers say they are a step closer to understanding how the brain creates behavioral rhythms optimized for diurnal, rather than nocturnal, life.
University of Illinois weed scientists have confirmed resistance to the herbicide dicamba in a Champaign County waterhemp population. In the study, dicamba controlled 65% of the waterhemp in the field when applied at the labeled rate. And in the greenhouse, plants showed a five- to 10-fold reduction in dicamba efficacy compared with sensitive plants.
In the first study of its kind in the UK, researchers have demonstrated a worrying decline in small mammals in Britain. The species found to be the worst affected are the harvest mouse and weasel, which were found to be shrinking in occupancy (area of land where they are present) by an average of 2.8% and 4.2% each year, respectively. The scale of decline found for the weasel, which primarily feeds on voles and mice, is enough to justify it being classified as "Vulnerable to extinction" under IUCN Regional Red List Criteria.
New Oregon State University research shows that warm-water habitats can be critically important for the survival of cold-water fish such as trout and salmon.
If sperm can't swim, life can't go on. And a new study suggests that when evolution hit upon an effective strategy for making sperm move, it stuck with it.
The cells of a certain tumor type, neuroblastoma, divide very rapidly. This rapid division can have potentially fatal consequences for the cells. A new study shows how neuroblastoma cells deal with this dilemma.
Finding the fossils of a large duck-billed dinosaur in southern Missouri is exciting enough, but a paleontologist who helped lead the dig believes there are many more in the same area.
Tens of thousands of illegal human settlements pose a real threat to the continued existence of an endangered elephant population, according to satellite analysis of the Babile Elephant Sanctuary in eastern Ethiopia by University of Oxford researchers and the Born Free Foundation.
A trifling paper cut is a site of frenzied activity. Within it, a squad of epidermal stem cells briskly regenerate to patch up the wound. A closer inspection of this war-torn swath of epidermis will reveal that while some of the stem cells are native to the area, others are newcomers—former hair-producing stem cells, that—upon sensing nearby injury—migrated from the hair follicle to the wound bed, where they transformed to resemble indigenous epidermal stem cells.
Extracellular vesicles—or exosomes, as they are more commonly known—continue to be a curious research focus for the scientific community. Once assumed to be waste materials secreted by cells, exosomes have recently been identified as mail carriers, serving an essential role in cell-to-cell communication by acting as delivery vehicles between cells. New research from Carnegie Mellon University and UPMC explores a new use case for exosomes: Delivering growth factors like bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) for bone healing.
The proteins that belong to the HAT family are essential for life as they transport amino acids across the cell membrane. Although the members of this family are practically identical, some transport certain amino acids and not others. This specialization determines their involvement in specific functions, such as cell growth or neuronal functions, and consequently in related diseases like cancer or neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer?s disease. What confers this specificity and diversity of functions? This is one of the questions asked by researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), who led the study, and one whose answer has been published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
A team of international researchers from Canada, Colombia, and Germany has discovered a new marine reptile. The specimen, a stunningly preserved meter-long skull, is one of the last surviving ichthyosaurs—ancient animals that look eerily like living swordfish.
Last summer, some 190 dead porpoises washed ashore on the Dutch Wadden Sea Islands within just ten days. A remarkably high number, considering the annual average of about 600 stranded porpoises on the entire Dutch coast. During the past few months, researchers from Utrecht University and Wageningen University & Research—commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality—investigated the possible cause of death of these porpoises. Their most remarkable finding is the presence of Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae: a bacterium which can cause blood poisoning in cetaceans.
Rain flecked the fiberglass boat and the still green waters as professor Shannon Gowans pushed off from Dock 6. Her students noted in pencil the particulars of time and weather: Not ideal, perhaps, for a Saturday on the bay, but what they sought was below the surface.
