First Evidence Of Planned Animal Action? Chimp's Stone Throwing At Zoo Visitors Was 'Premeditated'

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2009) — Researchers have found what they say is some of the first unambiguous evidence that an animal other than humans can make spontaneous plans for future events. The report in the March 9th issue of Current Biology highlights a decade of observations in a zoo of a male chimpanzee calmly collecting stones and fashioning concrete discs that he would later use to hurl at zoo visitors.

"These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way," said Mathias Osvath of Lund University. "It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including life-like mental simulations of potential events. They most probably have an 'inner world' like we have when reviewing past episodes of our lives or thinking of days to come. When wild chimps collect stones or go out to war, they probably plan this in advance. I would guess that they plan much of their everyday behavior."
While researchers have observed many ape behaviors that could involve planning both in the wild and in captivity, it generally hasn't been possible to judge whether they were really meeting a current or future need, he added. For instance, when a chimp breaks a twig for termite fishing or collects a stone for nut cracking, it can always be argued that they are motivated by immediate rather than future circumstances.
And that's what makes the newly described case so special, Osvath said. It is clear that the chimp's planning behavior is not based on a "current drive state." In contrast to the chimp's extreme agitation when throwing the stones, he was always calm when collecting or manufacturing his ammunition.
Osvath said he thinks wild chimps in general, as well as other animals, probably have the planning ability demonstrated by the individual described in the study. Indeed, experiments conducted recently with other captive chimpanzees have shown they are capable of making such plans. (Some have argued, however, that those findings could be the result of experimental artifacts.)
"I think that wild chimpanzees might be even better at planning as they probably rely on it for their daily survival," Osvath said. "The environment in a zoo is far less complex than in a forest. Zoo chimps never have to encounter the dangers in the forest or live through periods of scarce food. Planning would prove its value in 'real life' much more than in a zoo."
The researcher is Mathias Orvath, of Lund University, in Lund, Sweden.
Journal reference:
Mathias Osvath. Spontaneous planning for future stone throwing by a male chimpanzee. Current Biology, 2009; 19 (5): R190 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.01.010
Adapted from materials provided by Cell Press, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Genetic Study Finds Treasure Trove Of New Lizards

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 10, 2009) — University of Adelaide research has discovered that there are many more species of Australian lizards than previously thought, raising new questions about conservation and management of Australia's native reptiles.

PhD student Paul Oliver, from the University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has done a detailed genetic study of the Australian gecko genus Diplodactylus and found more than twice the recognised number of gecko species, from 13 species to 29. This study was done in collaboration with the South Australian Museum and Western Australian Museum.
"Many of these species are externally very similar, leading to previous severe underestimation of true species diversity," says Mr Oliver.
"One of the major problems for biodiversity conservation and management is that many species remain undocumented.
"This problem is widely acknowledged to be dire among invertebrates and in developing countries.
"But in this group of vertebrates in a developed nation, which we thought we knew reasonably well, we found more than half the species were unrecognised."
Mr Oliver says this has great significance for conservation. For instance, what was thought to be a single very widespread species of gecko has turned out to be eight or nine separate species with much narrower, more restricted habitats and possibly much more vulnerable to environmental change, he says.
"This completely changes how we look at conservation management of these species," he says.
"Even at just the basic inventory level, this shows that there is a lot of work still to be done. Vertebrate taxonomy clearly remains far from complete with many species still to be discovered. This will require detailed genetic and morphological work, using integrated data from multiple sources. It will require considerable effort and expense but with potentially rich returns."
The research was supported by grants from the Australia Pacific Science Foundation and the Australian Biological Resources Study.
Journal reference:
. Cryptic diversity in vertebrates: molecular data doubles estimates of species diversity in a radiation of Australian lizards (Diplodactylus, Gekkota). Proceedings of the Royal Society: B, March 4, 2009
Adapted from materials provided by University of Adelaide.

New Fish Discovered In Antarctic Ocean

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2009) — The new species of Antarctic fish, Gosztonyia antarctica, has been discovered at a depth of 650 metres in the Bellingshausen Sea in the Antarctic Ocean, an area which has not been studied since 1904 and where the fauna is "completely" unknown. Jesús Matallanas, the Spanish researcher responsible for the find, collected four specimens of the new species during Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) campaigns in the southern hemisphere summers of 2003 and 2006.

"The study of the biodiversity of the Bellingshausen Sea has been systematically ignored by international projects because it is quite inaccessible and its beds are not mapped", SINC was told by Jesús Matallanas, the study's main author and researcher from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
The work, which appears in the journal Polar Biology, is based on the IEO's Bentart-03 and Bentart-06 campaigns, in which Matallanas participated as an expert in taxonomy of Antarctic fish.
It is a taxonomic study of these zoarcidae specimens (groups of dominant fish on the continental slope of northern seas which make up around 240 species) captured in the Bellingshausen Sea.
"One of the most significant results is that the ichthyofauna of the Bellingshausen Sea, contrary to what was previously believed, is more closely related to that of the Eastern Antarctic than the Western", highlighted the researcher.
Another important discovery is that in contrast to what occurs in other seas in the Antarctic Ocean, in the Bellingshausen Sea zoarcidae are the dominant group of fish below a depth of 550 metres", added the zoologist.
Family of fish with worldwide distribution
Before confirming the discovery of a new species, in this case Gosztonyia antarctica, which belongs to a group with a very wide distribution, the researcher carried out a worldwide review of all articles published to date.
The new species belongs to an also new genus, which is similar to various Patagonian genera, and its name Gosztonyia, is in recognition of Atila Esteban Gosztonyi, a great expert in the systematics of zoarcidae who has described various new genera endemic to the Magallanes region. The specific name, antarctica, refers to the place of capture of the species: the Antarctic region.
The specimens captured measure between 25.4 cm and 30 cm, are anguilliformes and "the skulls has a lot of its own exclusive anatomical characters", commented the scientist. All the specimens are preserved in 70% alcohol at the UAB.
Journal reference:
Matallanas et al. Description of Gosztonyia antarctica, a new genus and species of Zoarcidae (Teleostei: Perciformes) from the Antarctic Ocean. Polar Biology, 2009; 32 (1): 15 DOI: 10.1007/s00300-008-0496-y
Adapted from materials provided by Plataforma SINC, via AlphaGalileo.

Amazonian Amphibian Diversity Traced To Andes

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 10, 2009) — Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests.

This is the first study to show that the Andes have been a major source of diversity for the Amazon basin, one of the largest reservoirs of biological diversity on Earth. The finding runs counter to the idea that Amazonian diversity is the result of evolution only within the tropical forest itself.
"Basically, the Amazon basin is a 'melting pot' for South American frogs," says graduate student Juan Santos, lead author of the study. "Poison frogs there have come from multiple places of origin, notably the Andes Mountains, over many millions of years. We have shown that you cannot understand Amazonian biodiversity by looking only in the basin. Adjacent regions have played a major role."
Santos and Dr. David Cannatella, professor of integrative biology, published their findings this month in the journal PLoS Biology.
It has been assumed that much of the evolution of biodiversity in the Amazon basin occurred over the last one to two million years, a mere snapshot in time.
Santos and Cannatella peered about 45 million years into the past using novel biogeographical techniques to create a deep evolutionary history of poison frogs in space and time. Because of the lack of an extensive fossil record for the tropical forest, their work used DNA sequences to discover the frogs' evolutionary history.
The poison frogs, or dendrobatids, are diverse and widely distributed across the Neotropics, an area that includes Central and South America. The scientists created an evolutionary tree, or phylogeny, using 223 of the 353 species of poison frogs known from throughout this region.
In analyzing the evolutionary relationships among the poison frogs, they discovered that Amazonian diversity is the result of at least 14 dispersals of ancestral frogs into the region beginning about 23 million years ago.
All living Amazonian poison frogs evolved from these ancestors, most of which (11 dispersals) came from the Andes Mountains.
The Amazon basin has changed dramatically over that long time. A large inland system of water has come and gone, the Andes Mountains started their uplift (about 15 million years ago) and the Amazon River was formed (about nine million years ago).
Most of the frog dispersals from the Andes occurred between one and seven million years ago, when the modern tropical rainforest of the Amazon River basin was forming.
"There was a repeated dispersal of frogs from the foothills of the Andes after the extensive inland wetlands retreated from the Amazon," says Santos.
These frogs then evolved into about 70 species found today in the Amazon basin.
The scientists also discovered that frogs have historically immigrated out of the Amazon basin to adjacent areas, and to and from other regions within the Neotropics.
Evolution and diversification of the poison frogs is ongoing, especially in the Amazon rainforest, the Chocó (a narrow region of tropical forest along the northwest Pacific Coast of South America) and in adjacent Central America.
Cannatella says many other tropical plants and animals in the Amazon may share this more complex geographical and temporal history with the poison frogs.
"The Amazon rainforest is not just gradually accumulating diversity over time," says Cannatella. "Ancestral frog species moved into and out of the area, and we can predict that other organisms restricted to these wet tropical forests may show a similar pattern of dispersal, evolution and diversification."
Funding for this research was provided by the "Assembling the Tree of Life" program of the National Science Foundation and Ecology, Evolution and Behavior graduate research fellowships at The University of Texas at Austin.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Texas at Austin, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Yellowstone Alga Found To Detoxify Arsenic

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 10, 2009) — Arsenic may be tough, but scientists have found a Yellowstone National Park alga that's tougher.
The alga -- a simple one-celled algae called Cyanidioschyzon -- thrives in extremely toxic conditions and chemically modifies arsenic that occurs naturally around hot springs, said Tim McDermott, professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences at Montana State University.
Cyanidioschyzon could someday help reclaim arsenic-laden mine waste and aid in everything from space exploration to creating safer foods and herbicides, the scientists said.
The alga and how it detoxifies arsenic are described in a paper that's posted this week (week of March 9) in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS. Lead authors are McDermott and Barry Rosen, of Florida International University. Among the four co-authors is Corinne Lehr, who formerly worked with McDermott as a postdoctoral scientist at MSU and is now a faculty member at California Polytechnic State University.
Arsenic is the most common toxic substance in the environment, ranking first on the Superfund list of hazardous substances, the researchers wrote in their paper. McDermott said arsenic is very common in the hot, acidic waters of Yellowstone and presents real challenges for microorganisms living in these conditions. Indeed, there are challenges for the researchers. McDermott said the acid in the soil and water are strong enough that it sometimes eats holes through his jeans when he kneels to collect samples.
McDermott has worked in Yellowstone for more than a decade and travels year-round to the Norris Geyser Basin to study the microbial mats that grow in acidic springs. Over the years, he noticed thick algae mats that were so lush and green in December that they looked like Astro-Turf, McDermott said. By June, they were practically gone. While investigating the change, McDermott and his collaborators learned about the Cyanidiales alga and its ability to reduce arsenic to a less dangerous form.
"These algae are such a dominant member of the microbiology community that they can't escape notice, but for some reason they have not attracted much attention," McDermott said.
The Cyanidioschyzon algae grow all over Yellowstone, but the researchers concentrated on the Norris Geyser Basin, McDermott said. The alga thrives in water up to 135 degrees Fahrenheit (too hot to shower) with a very acidic pH factor ranging from 0.5 to 3.5. Creeks are considered acidic if their pH factor is less than 7.
"These algae live in areas of Yellowstone that are extremely toxic with respect to arsenic," McDermott said. "You couldn't drink these waters even if you changed their pH."
The scientists cloned genes from the alga, then studied the enzymes to figure out how they transformed arsenic. They learned that the alga oxidizes, reduces and converts arsenic to several forms that are less toxic than the original.
Rosen said one significant form is a gas that can evaporate, especially at the high temperatures of the Yellowstone springs. That allows life to exist in "really deadly concentrations of arsenic," he said.
"It gives us insight into how life adapts to extreme environments," Rosen added. "If life can grow at high temperatures and high concentrations of heavy metals like arsenic, life might be able to evolve on other planets or moons such as Titan or Enceladus."
McDermott said the scientists conducted basic research that may have implications someday for acid mine drainage and acid rock drainage remediation efforts.
"Any time you learn anything about eukaryotic algae and their potential application for bioremediation, that's always good," he said.
Eukaryotic refers to microorganisms that have cells with membranes enclosing complex structures. Cyanidioschyzon is a simple one-celled organism classified as a red algae.
Rosen added that the alga they studied is a primitive plant, so it might shed light on how plants can tolerate arsenic, which is used in several types of herbicides. The knowledge they gained could also be used someday to help create a new type of rice.
"Some plants, such as rice, accumulate high concentrations of arsenic. This endangers our food supply," Rosen explained. "Rice with high amounts of arsenic won't kill anyone quickly, but does increase the risk of cancers such as bladder cancer."
McDermott said when he first thought about investigating the changing colors in the Yellowstone algae mats, he figured that something more than photosynthesis had to be involved. He thought altitude and latitude played a role. Some of the hot springs have no trees around them, so he wondered if the intense June sun was hammering the algae.
Molecular evidence suggests that the algae in these springs are comprised of two different population groups, McDermott said. One flourishes in the winter and the other in the summer. The algae that dominates in the summer can apparently tolerate high levels of ultraviolet rays.
McDermott's study was funded by the National Science Foundation and partially by a NASA grant through MSU's Thermal Biology Institute. Rosen's work was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Adapted from materials provided by Montana State University.

Penguins Setting Off Sirens Over Health Of World's Oceans

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080701083537.htm

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2008) — Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, penguins are sounding the alarm for potentially catastrophic changes in the world's oceans, and the culprit isn't only climate change, says a University of Washington conservation biologist.

Oil pollution, depletion of fisheries and rampant coastline development that threatens breeding habitat for many penguin species, along with Earth's warming climate, are leading to rapid population declines among penguins, said Dee Boersma, a University of Washington biology professor and an authority on the flightless birds.
"Penguins are among those species that show us that we are making fundamental changes to our world," she said. "The fate of all species is to go extinct, but there are some species that go extinct before their time and we are facing that possibility with some penguins."
In a new paper published in the July-August edition of the journal BioScience, Boersma notes that there are 16 to 19 penguin species, and most penguins are at 43 geographical sites, virtually all in the Southern Hemisphere. But for most of these colonies, so little is known that even their population trends are a mystery. The result is that few people realized that many of them were experiencing sharp population declines.
Boersma contends the birds actually serve as sentinels for radically changing environment. She advocates a broad international effort to check on the largest colonies of each penguin species regularly-- at least every five years -- to see how their populations are faring, what the greatest threats seem to be and what the changes mean for the health of the oceans.
"We have to be able to understand the world that we live in and depend on," she said. "It is the responsibility of governments to gather the information that helps us understand and make it available, but if they can't do it then we need non-governmental organizations to step up."
For 25 years, working with the Wildlife Conservation Society and UW colleagues, Boersma has studied the world's largest breeding colony of Magellanic penguins at Punta Tombo on the Atlantic coast of Argentina. That population probably peaked at about 400,000 pairs between the late 1960s and early 1980s, and today is just half that total.
There are similar stories from other regions. African penguins decreased from 1.5 million pairs a century ago to just 63,000 pairs by 2005. The number of Galapagos Islands penguins, the only species with a range that extends into the Northern Hemisphere, has fallen to around 2,500 birds, about one-quarter what it was when Boersma first studied the population in the 1970s.
The number of Adélie and Chinstrap penguins living on the Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost part of the continent, has declined by 50 percent since the mid-1970s. Other species in Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand, the Falklands Islands and Antarctica also have suffered significant population declines, Boersma said.
She recounts watching in 2006 as climate anomalies wreaked havoc on breeding of the same population of Emperor penguins that was featured in the popular 2005 film "March of the Penguins." The colony bred in the same location as in other years, where the ice is protected from the open sea and wind keeps snow from piling up and freezing the eggs. But in September, with the chicks just more than half-grown, the adults apparently sensed danger and uncharacteristically marched the colony more than 3 miles to different ice. The ice they chose remained intact the longest, but in late September a strong storm broke up the remaining ice and the penguin chicks were forced into the water. While the adults could survive, the chicks needed two more months of feather growth and buildup of insulating fat to be independent. The likely result of the climate anomaly, Boersma said, was a total colonywide breeding failure that year.
Changing climate also appears to be key in the decline of Galapagos penguins, she said. As the atmosphere and ocean get warmer, El Niño Southern Oscillation events, which affect weather patterns worldwide, seem to occur with greater frequency. During those times, ocean currents that carry the small fish that the penguins feed on are pushed farther away from the islands and the birds often starve or are left too weak to breed.
These problems raise the question of whether humans are making it too difficult for other species to coexist, Boersma said. Penguins in places like Argentina, the Falklands and Africa run increasing risks of being fouled by oil, either from ocean drilling or because of petroleum discharge from passing ships. The birds' chances of getting oiled are also increasing because in many cases they have to forage much farther than before to find the prey on which they feed.
"As the fish humans have traditionally eaten get more and more scarce, we are fishing down the food chain and now we are beginning to compete more directly with smaller organisms for the food they depend on," she said.
As the world's population continues to explode and more and more people live in coastal areas, the negative effects are growing for both marine and shore-based habitats used by a variety of species. There is an urgent need to begin monitoring those negative impacts, Boersma said.
"I don't think we can wait. In 1960 we had 3 billion people in the world. Now it's 6.7 billion and it's expected to be 8 billion by 2025," she said. "We've waited a very long time. It's clear that humans have changed the face of the Earth and we have changed the face of the oceans, but we just can't see it. We've already waited too long.
"The Discovery Channel and public television are very popular for their nature programs, and those featuring penguins are especially popular. But we don't want to just have them in our television sets. We want to have them out in the world."
The research was funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society and other foundations and donors.

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Malagasy Chameleon Spends Most Of Its Short Life In An Egg

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080630173924.htm

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2008) — There is a newly discovered life history among the 28,300 species of known tetrapods, or four-legged animals with backbones. A chameleon from arid southwestern Madagascar spends up to three-quarters of its life in an egg. Even more unusual, life after hatching is a mere 4 to 5 months. No other known four-legged animal has such a rapid growth rate and such a short life span.
"It really is a huge surprise," says Christopher Raxworthy, Associate Curator in the Department of Herpetology at the American Museum of Natural History. "Adding to that, until now, the short life span of chameleons in captivity has always been considered as a failure to thrive. We need to rethink this."
Most mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians (all tetrapods) typically live 2 to 10 years, an average bracketed at the upper end by some long-lived animals (for example, turtles and humans that can live for a century) and at the lower end by a handful of animals that only live for about a year.
The males in nine species of marsupials die off after a year, for example, as do most adults in about twelve species of lizards. But the chameleon described here, Furcifer labordi, not only has a brief, yearly life cycle, but the bulk of that time is spent incubating inside an egg. Once outside of the egg, all individuals in the population die within 4 to 5 months.
Kristopher Karsten, a graduate student from the Department of Zoology at Oklahoma State University, discovered the unusual life cycle almost by accident. "I showed up late in the season and found something weird," recalls Karsten. "There were no juveniles. But by February, I found carcasses all over with no signs of mutilation or predation. The population plummeted--we've never seen this with other lizards."
Now, after five seasons of data and sightings of nearly 400 individuals, the life cycle of F. labordi can be described. Hatching begins with the rains in November, and, once emerged, the chameleons develop rapidly, growing up to 2.6 mm (0.1 inches) a day--up to two orders of magnitude greater than other known lizard growth rate. In less than 60 days, for example, there can be a 300%-400% increase in body size for males to reach adulthood. After reaching maturity, the population reproduces, and females burrow through about 138 mm (5.4 inches) of sand to lay their eggs. Once covered, the eggs wait out the dry season for the next 8 to 9 months, and all adults die.
"It is amazing to think that for most of the year, this chameleon species is represented only by developing eggs buried in the ground," says Raxworthy. "This species really illustrates just how much there is still to discover about the natural history of Madagascar." Karsten agrees, adding: "We've identified a species that does something really different from the others, but what is driving this system? One bad year could wipe out these chameleons."
The new research is reported in the June 30 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was carried out by Karsten and Laza Andriamandimbiarisoa of the Département de Biologie Animale, Université d'Antananarivo in Madagascar. Raxworthy and Stanley Fox of the Department of Zoology at Oklahoma State University helped design the study and write the research paper. The project was funded by a National Science Foundation grant to Raxworthy.

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