Month: March 2017

About 80 million years ago (Cretaceous period), a group of bees began exhibiting social behavior. Today, their descendants — honey bees, stingless bees, and bumble bees — carry ‘stowaways’ from their ancient ancestors.

The stingless bee Trigonisca ameliae in Colombian copal. Image credit: Dr David Penney / University of Manchester.
At least five host-specific species of bacteria, living symbiotically in the guts of social bees, have been passed from generation to generation for 80 million years, according to a study published in the March 29, 2017 issue of the journal Science Advances .
This is the first study to chart the evolution of the gut community of bacteria in a group of animal hosts so far back in time.
“The fact that these bacteria have been with the bees for so long says that they are a key part o… Read more

Using video microscopy in a living mouse lung, a team of researchers at the Universities of California, San Francisco (UCSF) & Los Angeles (UCLA), has revealed that the lungs play a previously unrecognized role in blood production.

Visualization of resident megakaryocytes in the lungs. Image credit: Emma Lefrançais et al , doi: 10.1038/nature21706.
The team, headed by UCSF Professor Mark R. Looney, found that the lungs produced more than half of the platelets — blood components required for the clotting that stanches bleeding — in the mouse circulation.
In another finding, the team also identified a previously unknown pool of blood stem cells capable of restoring blood production when the stem cells of the bone marrow, previously thought to be the principal site of blood production, are depleted. Read more

A species of frog that is completely new to science has been discovered in the cloud forests of Ecuador.

The Ecuadorian rainfrog ( Pristimantis ecuadorensis ), adult female. Image credit: J.M. Guayasamin et al , doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0172615.
Writing in the journal PLoS ONE , Professor Juan Guayasamin of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and co-authors are calling the new species the Ecuadorian rainfrog, or Pristimantis ecuadorensis .
This frog is known only from three nearby localities on the western slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes, provinces of Cotopaxi and Pichincha.
“The tropics are known to contain many more distinct species per unit area than temperate zones like the United States and Canada, which together have about 110 described frog species,” Prof. Guayasamin and colleagues s… Read more

The kea ( Nestor notabilis ) — a large species of parrot endemic to the Southern Alps of New Zealand — has become the first non-mammal to show signs of ‘emotionally contagious’ vocalization.

Specific calls of playing kea trigger playful emotions in other, non-playing birds, just as laughter does for us. Image credit: Raoul Schwing, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.
When people are feeling playful, they giggle and laugh, making others around them want to laugh and play too.
A team of scientists led by Dr. Raoul Schwing, a researcher at the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria, found that the particularly playful kea parrot has ‘play calls’ with a similarly powerful influence.
“We were able to use a playback of these calls to show that it animates k… Read more

A 20-year demographic study of a relatively undisturbed and exceptionally large community of eastern chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii ) at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, southwestern Uganda, has revealed that our close primate relatives can lead surprisingly long lives in the wild.

A member of the Ngogo community of chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park. Image credit: Brian Wood, Yale University.
The study, led by Yale University researcher Brian Wood, establishes an average life expectancy of about 33 years in its sample of 306 chimpanzees, nearly twice as high as that of other chimpanzee communities and within the 27- to 37-year range of life expectancy at birth of human hunter-gatherers.
“Our findings show how ecological factors, including variation in food supplies and p… Read more

A new species of tapaculo — called the Tatama tapaculo ( Scytalopus alvarezlopezi ) — has been discovered in the cloud forests of Colombia’s Western Andes.

The Tatama tapaculo ( Scytalopus alvarezlopezi ) upon capture at Cerro Montezuma, Risaralda department, Colombia, April 2, 2015. Image credit: Julian Heavyside, doi: 10.1642/AUK — 16-205.1.
The Tatama tapaculo was first spotted in June 1992 in Colombia’s Risaralda department by Dr. F. Gary Stiles, an ornithologist at the Institute of Natural Sciences at the National University of Colombia.
Now studies of the bird’s vocalizations and DNA have confirmed it to be a unique species.
The discovery is outlined in the April 2017 issue of The Auk , the official publication of the American Ornithologists’ Union.
“We take pleasure in naming this species i… Read more