Orangutans Communicate Intelligently Using Gestures, Researchers Have Discovered

 Two British scientists from the University of St Andrews who spent nine months observing the great apes at Twycross Zoo in the UK, Apenheul Primate Park in the Netherlands, and the Durrell trust in Jersey have identified 40 frequently used body language signals of Orang-utans.   These signals were employed repeatedly to send messages such as "I want to play", "give it to me", "go away", "follow me", or "stop doing that". The research also shed light on the origins of human speech millions of years ago. Orangutans can learn human sign language.

The gestures have been compiled into the first ape dictionary.

Details of the study appear in the latest issue of journal Animal Cognition.

Scientists Crack the Biomechanics of Ant's Balancing Act Using video

The balancing act of ants while carrying heavy load must have intrigued many.  As a kid I have watched it with utter fascination. Now the scientists have unraveled the science behind the delicate balancing act. The lead researchers were Dr Karin Moll and Dr Walter Federle from the University of Cambridge. Dr Falvio Roces from the University of Wurzburg in Germany was an associate. The experiments were done on Grass-cutting ants (Atta vollenweideri) that carry plant fragments many times heavier and longer than themselves.

To maintain stability,centre of gravity of ant and load needs to remain above the area of the supporting legs. Using high speed video cameras the scientists have recorded controlled head movements that aid balance. The ant's neck also plays a very critical part in balancing the load. This feature is previously unknown in any insect. The neck joint being involved in the adjustment of the load position was in fact a surprise.

Full details appear in the latest issue of Journal of Comparative Physiology

This Week's Wildlife Photos from Guardian

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Unconventional Natural Gas

I just read a good piece of writing in New Scientist on Unconventional Natural Gas and its enormous potential as a source of clean energy. Unconventional Natural Gas? Yes

Unconventional natural gas tends to be trapped in impermeable hard rock or sandstone or in shale deposits. New technology to extract natural gas from unconventional  deposits has great portent for  previously gas-poor countries in the Americas, Asia and western Europe. They could now have enough cheap gas to last for another 100 years.

The problem with coal is that it is dirty. Nuclear power is very expensive.  Renewables are not predictable. So the best option is to go in for gas. The world consumes around 3 trillion cubic meters of natural gas each year, and consequently reserves from conventional sources will run out by 2068. At current rates of consumption unconventional reserves could give us an extra 60 years. The estimate for unconventional reserves is 900 trillion cubic meters. The scenario is bright.

Research on Wild Potato Germplasm Points to the Urgent Need to Conserve Biodiversity

Research led by Dr Dennis Halterman and Dr Shelley from the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wisconsin, USA,  has demonstrated that the wild potato germplasm offers resistance to some major potato diseases.

The researchers have identified a wild potato species called Solanum verrucosum that contains a gene with resistance to late blight. Late blight is considered to be the most destructive disease afflicting potato. The scientists plan to move the late-blight resistance gene into the cultivated potato. Efforts are also on to tackle early blight, a fungal disease that affects the potato.

Next on the agenda is tackling Verticillium wilt, a fungal disease that can linger in the soil for up to 10 years. The scientists have developed a molecular marker to screen potato germplasm for resistance against this disease which makes the work of researchers easier. More work is on the anvil which will revolutionize potato cultivation.

The research points to the need for conserving the wild relatives of our cultivated food plants. Our future food security depends on it. This should also act as an eye opener for our politicians whose “development” agenda spells doom for biodiversity in many areas.

Crayfish Comes As an Excellent, Practical Model for Insight into Human Decision Making

University of Maryland researchers headed by Dr Jens Herberholz, have come to the conclusion that Crayfish make surprisingly complex, cost-benefit calculations and this may help unravel the cellular brain activity involved in human decisions. Their study is the first to isolate individual crayfish neurons involved in value-based decisions. According to the researchers matching individual neurons to the decision making processes in the human brain is simply impractical for the time being now. The happy news is that basic organization of neurons and the underlying neurochemistry are similar, involving serotonin and dopamine.

In the experiments Crayfish was offered a choice between finding their next meal and becoming a meal for an apparent predator.  Dr Herberholz says the fish carefully weighed the risk of attack against the expected reward.

To make a quick escape, the crayfish would flip their tails and swim backwards. This action was preceded by a strong, measurable electric neural impulse. Specific neurons that come in to play during the decision-making process were identified. The fish take the action in a matter of milliseconds.

When the predator appears to be moving too rapidly for escape the crayfish chose to freeze.

The research has shown that crayfish, similar to organisms of higher complexity, integrate different sensory stimuli that are present in their environment, and they select a behavioural output according to the current values for each choice.

Details of the study appear in online edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Whales Help Offset Carbon Emission

Here is an interesting piece of information about sperm whales. Australian researchers say Sperm whale faeces may help oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the air. The research was led by Dr Trish Lavery from Flinders University in Adelaide.

Sperm whales release about 50 tonnes of iron every year via its faeces. This stimulates the growth of phytoplankton which absorbs CO2 during photosynthesis. This in turn results in the absorption of about 40,000 tonnes of carbon which is more than twice as much as the whales release by breathing. The calculations are based on Southern Ocean sperm whales. The researchers say that the global total could be much more substantial. Lack of iron limits phytoplankton growth in many regions.

The sperm whales eat mainly squid in the deep ocean, and defecate in the upper waters where phytoplankton can grow. Here is the twist. If the sperm whales eat and defecate in the same place they would absorb and release the same amounts of iron. Myriad are the ways of nature.

Details are published in Royal Society journal Proceedings B

Small Carnivores Play Important Role in Helping Fruiting Plants to Reproduce and Disperse their Seeds.

It is a known fact that many small carnivores eat fruits as supplements. It was assumed that it was purely an incidental happening and does not have much ecological significance. This is set to change now.

Scientists from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) have shown that carnivorous animals such as foxes and martens play an important role in helping fruiting plants to reproduce and disperse their seeds.

The researchers studied how foxes and (Vulpes vulpes) and the European pine marten (Martes martes) consumed the fruit of the rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia) in the Cordillera Cantábrica mountain range. They found that that both species were capable of tracking yearly differences in the abundance of rowan fruit in Cantabrian forests and plumbed for the most productive trees. The Carnivores were helping to disperse the seeds. The carnivores consumed considerable proportion of the fallen fruit and this was much more than the amount destroyed by rodents during the same period.

The Rowan is a pioneer species that colonizes secondary scrub and "prepares the way for further succession.

According to the researchers, the rowan-fox-marten system could be important in mountain ecosystems on the Iberian Peninsula.

Full details appear in the latest issue of journal Acta Oecologica

Humpback Whales Discovered to Form Lasting Bonds

Scientists have discovered that individual female humpbacks reunite each summer to feed and swim together. Even though Toothed whales, such as sperm whales, associate with one another this is a first observation of its kind for baleen whales, which are the largest of all whales.

The discovery was made by Dr Christian Ramp and colleagues of the Mingan Island Cetacean Study group based in St Lambert, Canada. They have found that female humpbacks reunite each summer to feed and swim together in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off Canada. The longest recorded friendships lasted six years. How the whales find each other each summer is still an enigma. The scientists suspects the whales use sound to find and recognize other individuals.

Details of the discovery are published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

Fungi Can Speed Up Growth Rate of Rice by Two to Five Times

Plant pathologist Ian Sanders and colleagues from University of Lausanne, Switzerland, have evolved a method by which fungi can speed up growth rate of rice by two to five times.

Nearly 80% of plant species have established a bond with a common fungus. In return for sugar, the fungus helps the plants extract nutrients from the soil. But fungi do not have this special relationship with rice. The aim of Dr Sanders was to devise a method to artificially enable the method in rice.

Dr Sanders collected single fungal spores from fields near Zürich and cultivated them in the lab. The researchers extracted individual spores from each parent and grew them for three generations. The scientists found that the third generation of fungi bonded with rice and increased the plants’ growth rate by two to five times. The scientist attributes the success of bonding to third generation’s greater genetic variability.

The work is still in the labs but scientist hope that in the immediate future it can be taken to the field on an extensive basis.

Full details appear in the latest issue of journal  Current Biology.

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Blindfolded Seals Can Track Passing Fish with Their Whiskers

Here is another piece of incredible news from the nature world. Blindfolded Seals can track passing fish with their whiskers.

The fascinating information is the outcome of research by Wolf Hanke ,  Sven Wieskotten, Hanke, Guido Dehnhardt, Björn Mauck and Lars Miersch from the University of Rostock, Germany.

The researchers found that the seals can also track passing mini-submarines for a distance of 40m. Latching on to hydrodynamic trails in water with their sensitive whiskers; seals easily track passing fish even in the most turbid waters.

Details appear in the latest issue of in The Journal of Experimental Biology.

Evidences of Mathematical Strategies Followed by Marine Animals While Hunting

The latest issue of journal Nature dated June 9 has a paper on the fascinating hunting pattern of marine animals. The authors show that the hunting pattern is not a random one. The animals follow a mathematical pattern called Lévy walks, punctuated by rare, long forays in any direction. Dr David Sims, a researcher at the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom in Plymouth was the lead researcher.

Dr Sims and his colleagues say they have firm evidence for Lévy behavior in 14 species of open-ocean marine predators, including tuna, swordfish, marlin and sharks. The group managed to collect more than 12 million data points for their research.

Lévy behavior was more prominent in waters where plankton, fish and other food was scarce. According to Dr Sims Lévy motion improves the chances of finding prey.

It was Gandhimohan Viswanathan, a theoretical physicist at the Federal University of Alagoas in Maceió, Brazil, who first demonstrated Lévy walks pattern in wandering albatrosses. Wandering albatrosses, fitted with radio-tracking devices, made the occasional long flight that is the hallmark of a Lévy pattern.

Dr Sims and his team are now looking to identify Levy behavior in lower marine animals such as octopuses.

Breakthrough Cisgenics Study Heralds New Exciting Vistas for Forestry

Scientists have demonstrated that growth rate and other characteristics of trees can be changed through "cisgenics". Cisgenics is a type of genetic engineering that is conceptually similar to traditional plant breeding, and uses genes from closely related species that are sexually compatible. The path breaking research was pioneered by forestry scientists at Oregon State University. The study was done with poplar trees.

In conventional transgenic, traits from one plant or animal can be transferred to an unrelated species. But cisgenics uses whole genes from the same plant or a very closely related species. The enormous increases in the speed of genome sequencing have helped the scientists. Sequencing that used to take years can now be accomplished in days.

With the aid if the new technology a gene that gives plants more heat tolerance might be useful in helping plants to deal with a warming climate. Ornamental trees could be developed for shorter height for use in urban areas. Sky is the limit for experimentation.

The new findings have been published in the latest issue of journal Plant Biotechnology Journal.

Anthill: Fiction from EO Wilson

Professor EO Wilson, the world’s most renowned biologist, known as the father of sociobiology has come up with a fiction based on the life of ants. The novel chronicles the rise and fall of a particular ant colony. The novel is based on Wilson’s intimate knowledge about ants.  The renowned biologist imagines exactly what it is like to be an ant and come up with a sure fire winner. Wilson makes ecosystem a central character in the book, to which the ants give body and life.

The ant species, evolved over 100 million years, represents nearly two thirds of the world's insect biomass. Professor Wilson says “ant histories are epics that unfold on picnic grounds", in which "ants are a metaphor for us, and we for them." E.O Wilson adds "An individual ant has a brain one millionth the size of our brain, but still they are capable of quite complicated behaviour”.

Many ant species are capable of learning a maze about half as fast as a rat. They can retain five locations where they can get food, and they can recall how to get there, and retain what time of day the food is offered if it comes regularly." Then there is the mind of the colony. Each ant nest has a distributed intelligence that dovetails through complex interactions to become a communal will. The group in its communal mind has a very good idea of every square inch of the terrain around the nest.

The Anthill chronicle begins, with the death of the queen and the subsequent events that evolve in the life of the colony

 Much of what we know about social insects has been a result of E.O Wilson's research and observation. Professor Wilson officially retired from Harvard in 1996, but continues to hold the posts of Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology.

Book Details

• Hardcover
• April 2010
• ISBN 978-0-393-07119-1

Mongooses Can Pass on Traditions

This is incredible. Latest research shows that Mongooses can pass on traditions from one generation to the next. Till now we thought it is a trait that is the prerogative of animals with big brain.The research was headed by Dr Corsin Müller, now at the University of Vienna.

When banded mongoose pups emerge from the den, most of them form exclusive one-to-one associations with a particular adult, usually an older brother, cousin, or uncle. This new associate becomes their primary caretaker and "escort." says the scientists.

Banded mongooses feed on a wide range of prey species including bird eggs and rhinoceros beetles. They crack open the food item either by holding them in place with their front paws and biting them open or hurling them against a hard surface such as a stone or tree trunk.

For his experiment Müller used a modified "Kinder Egg" plastic container containing a mix of rice and fish that could be opened using either the biting or the smashing method. The mongooses differed markedly in their preference for one or the other technique. The acquired traits persisted over time.

Now the question was, were the traits passed on from adults to pups?The researchers report the answer is yes. In the experiments involving plastic canisters juvenile mongooses, when tested with the novel food item for the first time, tended to copy what they had observed their escort do.

Details appear in the latest issue of Current Biology

Cockroaches Make Collective Decision

A study published in the latest edition of Springer journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology fascinated me no end. It is about collective decisions taken by cockroaches. It clearly demonstrated that groups of cockroaches can forage for food collectively, rather than independently.

According to Dr Mathieu Lihoreau from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, who led the research, Cockroaches cost our economy millions of pounds in wasted food and perishable products. Better understanding of how they seek out our food would allow us to develop better pest control measures,

In the experiments cockroaches (Blattella germanica) were released into an enclosure, where they could choose between one of two piles of food. The majority of the cockroaches fed solely on one piece of food.

The researchers say these observations coupled with simulations of a mathematical model indicate that cockroaches communicate through close contact when they are on the food source.

The scientist presumes that cockroaches use a 'foraging pheromone' to communicate. But they are yet to identify it. Once identified, a man-made 'foraging pheromone' could be used to improve pest control.

Arabian Tahr in Dire Straits Reports Muscat Daily

Muscat Daily reports in its issue dated 1/06/10 that poaching of endangered Arabian Tahr is on the increase. This is happening in spite of the stringent measures taken by Omani Government for the protection of Arabian Tahr.

Last month Omani Environment ministry officials had, with the help of the Omani Police, foiled an attempt by the smugglers to smuggle out of the country two Arabian Tahrs. This is the 5^th incident since May 2009.

Here is a report from the Royal Omani Police website

Arabian Tahr Smugglers Arrested
(18/7/2009)

The ROP arrested three Omanis recently and foiled their attempt to smuggle Arabian Tahr. After a tip-off on their smuggling activities, the Directorate General of Inquiries and Criminal Investigtions formed a working group to lead the operations. The ROP arrested the smugglers on the run, found two animals, and handed them over to the Department of Environment and Climate Affairs in Buraimi.

Conservationists’ are advocating increased community participation, in the conservation efforts of Arabian Tahr, to check the menace of poaching.

Modeling Preferred Habitat of Birds with Laser

There is exciting news for ornithologists. Study of bird habitat has entered hi-tech area. A team of NASA-funded researchers led by Dr Scott Goetz of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has completed an experiment to remotely sense and predict birds’ preferred habitat.

NASA's Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor (LVIS) was the key to the team's success. LVIS data indicated the height of the trees, the state of branches and the canopy layers beneath tree tops. The composition of trees and shrubs determines habitat quality, which in turn influences a bird’s presence and population density.

Painstaking field verification was a natural corollary to the experiment. Dr Scott Goetz and his team combined satellite data, a ground-based bird census, light detection and ranging (lidar), and a new modeling technique to correctly predict the presence of song birds in the forest

The observations were based on the Black-throated Blue Warbler, a small songbird that prefers lower-lying vegetation. Using four years of LVIS data, the researchers ranked various forest habitats as good, fair, or poor based on canopy structure. Their good rankings for the warbler matched actual ground data 90 percent of the time.

Full details appear in the latest edition of journal Ecology.

Squirrels and Adoption

Adoption is noticed in social animals but it is much less common among asocial animals. A study by Guelph University Prof. Andrew McAdam, along with researchers from the University of Alberta and McGill University, has revealed that asocial red squirrels will adopt pups that have lost their mother.

The scientists say social animals like lions and chimpanzees, are often surrounded by relatives, so it's not surprising that a female would adopt an orphaned family member. But red squirrels live in complete isolation and are very territorial. The only time they will allow another squirrel on their territory is the one day a year when the females are ready to mate or when they are nursing their pups.

The researchers found that relatedness plays a critical role in deciding whether a neighbouring squirrel will adopt or not. In the five adoption cases recorded by the researchers, the pups were nieces, nephews, siblings or grandchildren to the adoptive mother.

Adoption jeopardizes the survival of their offspring. So why does an animal adopt in the first place. It is still a mystery. The researchers say in some cases it might be a good bet to adopt as under the right conditions, an animal can propagate more copies of its genes by helping relatives to raise their offspring than by producing offspring of their own.

Squirrels will only adopt an orphaned pup when the costs of adoption are low and when the orphans carry a large percentage of the same genes such as siblings, nieces or nephews rather than more distant relatives. Amazingly squirrels are able to assess which pups are related or not.

Details are published in the latest issue of journal Nature Communications

Britain: The Return of the Blue Butterfly

The Blue butterfly had vanished from the British countryside in the late 70s.  But A successful reintroduction project over the past 25 years has seen the butterflies return to 25 sites.

The large blue begins life as a caterpillar feeding on wild thyme flowers. Then it tricks a species of red ant into thinking it is a lost ant grub. The gullible ants take the grub into the nest, where it feeds on the actual grubs for 10 months before emerging as a butterfly. The species only thrives on dry grassland where wild thyme or marjoram and the red ants are found.

A blue blog is being launched online by the national trust with updates on how the butterfly is doing and pictures from the site.

For more info log on to http://ntlargeblue.wordpress.com/

Preventing Bank and credit cards Fraud – Butterflies Comes to the Rescue

A study of the stunningly bright and beautiful colors found on the wings of Indonesian Peacock or Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio blumei) might come in handy for the banking industry. It has the potential revolutionize the security printing industry.

 Till now mimicking nature's most colourful, eye-catching surfaces of butterfly wings has proved elusive. The colours are produced by light bouncing off microscopic structures on the insects' wings.

Using a combination of nanofabrication procedures Dr Mathias Kolle, working with Professor Ullrich Steiner and Professor Jeremy Baumberg of the University of Cambridge made structurally identical copies of the butterfly scales, and these copies produced the same vivid colours as the butterflies' wings.

The artificial structures could be used to encrypt information in optical signatures on banknotes and credit cards to protect them against forgery.

Full details appear in the latest issue of journal Nature Nanotechnology.