Biosentients - Science Biology… etc

A limpet no bigger than a coin could reveal the possible fate of cold-blooded Antarctic marine animals as per new research published this week in The Journal of Experimental Biology. In comparison to their temperate and tropical cousins, cold-blooded polar marine animals are incapable of fast growth. Until now researchers assumed that a lack of food in winter was the major limiting factor. Studies of the protein-making abilities of limpets in both the sea around the British Antarctic Surveys (BAS) Rothera Research Station and in the laboratory aquarium reveal that these animals cannot make proteins the building blocks of growth - efficiently……..

Using advanced mathematical modeling, scientists from Sweden and The Netherlands show in an article in the recent issue of the American Naturalist that this statement is sometimes true. Sometimes though, killing even a few individuals can have dramatic consequences, causing populations to fluctuate wildly. The important question is: who gets killed” The effects of killing individuals crucially depend on the size of the victims, says Tobias van Kooten, assistant professor at Ume University in Sweden. The regulation of populations is commonly determined by the properties of one specific size class of individuals. In some species, this crucial stage consists of small individuals that can monopolize the available food, denying it to all other individuals.Alternatively, particularly in fish populations, large individuals can limit the abundance of smaller individuals through cannibalism. It is when such a crucial size class is the target of mortality that unexpected things may happen. Van Kooten and co-workers predict for example that in harvested cannibalistic fish populations, individuals may reach giant sizes, more than double the size of those in unharvested population. Indeed, such giant cannibals seem to occur frequently in heavily fished lakes. Our results are directly applicable to conservation and management, since almost all human-induced mortality is size-selective, van Kooten states. Fishermen select gear to catch large fish, while deer hunters prefer the tender meat of calves. Unexpected effects of mortality have been reported before, but this systematic study, would be published in The American Naturalist, unravels the mechanisms behind the effects. Such deep understanding makes it possible to predict effects of size-dependent mortality for a wide range of species……..

A team of anthropologists that studied chimpanzees trained to use treadmills has gathered new evidence suggesting that our earliest apelike ancestors started walking on two legs because it mandatory less energy than getting around on all fours. “When our earliest ancestors started walking on two legs, they took the first steps toward becoming human,” said lead researcher Michael Sockol of UC Davis. “Our findings help answer why”……..

Researchers thought that most new genes were formed from existing genes, but Cornell scientists have discovered a gene in some fruit flies that appears to be uncorrelation to other genes in any known genome. The new gene, called hydra, exists in only a small number of species of Drosophila fruit flies, which suggests it was created about 13 million years ago, when these melanogaster subgroup species diverged from a common ancestor……..

Feared to have gone extinct since it is last seen around 60 years ago, the primitive mammal has brought back enough reasons for the conservationists to rejoice. Im talking of the — the native to the island of New Guinea in the South Pacific — one of the world’s rarest ………

Instead of immutable proprietary software, any species genetic information resembles open source code that is constantly tweaked and optimized to meet the users specific needs. But which parts of the code have withstood the test of time and which parts have undergone rapid evolutionary change has been difficult to assess……..

A typical human mouth teems with as a number of as 700 different species of microbes. A handful of these have been specifically implicated in promoting gum disease, dental cavities, and bad breath, but for the most part, the make-up of this complex ecosystem and its impact on human health remain largely unexplored. A new device created by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers, however, may make some of the most reclusive members of this and other microscopic communities much more accessible for laboratory study……..

A number of researchers think that the ice ages exterminated all life on land and in freshwater in large parts of the Northern Hemisphere, particularly on ocean islands such as Iceland. Researchers at Holar University College and the University of Iceland have challenged that belief, at least when looking at groundwater animals. They have discovered two species of groundwater amphipods in Iceland that are the only animals species found solely in Iceland. These finding can only be explained by these animals surviving glaciations in some kind of refugium under the glaciers, says Bjarni K. Kristjnsson, the scientist who found the species……..

Why do queen honeybees mate with dozens of males? Does their extreme promiscuity, perhaps, serve a purpose? An answer to this age-old mystery is proposed in the July 20 issue of Science magazine by Cornell scientists: Promiscuous queens, they suggest, produce genetically diverse colonies that are far more productive and hardy than genetically uniform colonies produced by monogamous queens……..

The sight of woodlark in England has brought back smiles on the environmentalists and bird lovers as they are returning to the countryside. Once declared most critically endangered birds of the region the bird is now seeing its comeback with its number going up to 3,084 pairs from 1,633 pairs in ten ………