Feed my curiosity

Blue, green, grey, white, or black; smooth, ruffled, or mountainous; that ocean is not silent.

2010-11-04T11:02:00.002+01:00

I know. The silence. And I'm guessing it will be continous silence with a few exceptions. However, last night I was watching a marine documentary when I became enlightened about the existance of this marvellous animal in the tree of life within the group of frogfishs - Antennarius ("Tångulk" in swedish). It's just plain awsome. If the hindus are right and we will all be reincarnated, I'l like to be one of those. Including a mirror.

Images:
http://www.eol.org/pages/23888
http://palscience.com/science/bizarre-and-weird-orange-creature-caught-on-camera-swimming/

2009 - best picture (according to me)

2009-12-30T12:59:00.002+01:00

It's almost the eve of 2010, and I suppose this future year will bring plenty of sci-related news for us to indulge in. The highlights of 2009 are already being reviewed on several popular science, as well as science webpages, such as the New Scientist, Nature, and so on ans so forth.

A picture that's been stuck in my mind since I first saw it is from a funeral. No, not Michael Jackson's, but another primate. Her name was Dorothy, she was a 40 year old chimpanzee, and a much prominent member of her group. When carried away for her burial, the other chimps gathered in silence, holding arms, acting just as any group of grieving human would. The keepers at the chimp sanctuary were of course deeply moved, even the locals who have grown up in a culture where chimps were regarded as saturday dinner.

It's not new that chimps and humans are highly alike, but this picture is just a perfect example of the innate emotional life we share with them.

Image from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/visions-of-earth/visions-earth-2009

Source:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/monkeys_in_mourning_HZ86SGLBhngUmIUrAkzWWJ

It's a hard duck life

2009-12-29T14:51:00.002+01:00

Image taken from http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/pets/duck.htm

I've written about the rough love-life of ducks before, and the Muscovy ducks are no exception. These birdies have gone through an evolutionary race leading to not just this sadistic mating behaviour but also in their penis ability. First of all, the females do prefer to pick out their sexual partner themselfs. They especially like male ducks with an appropriate courtship and attracting plumage. But the males are not innate gentlemen, no no no. If a female is unwilling to accept his invitation, he has no objections on forcing himself on her. And what's his weapon of choice? His penis. It's long (up to 40 cm) and screw-like and useful for raping a female Muscovy duck.

But the beauty of evolution has led to a response in female genitalia, because they have a reason for being choosy - they want to pick out proper males that might carry good traits for their offspring. Now, the female vagina twists in such a way that copulation becomes more difficult for males. The hypothesis for the reason behind this construction is that the females can somehow choose who's sperm she wants to be fertilized by, and if she herself has choosen to mate with a male, her relaxation of the muscles makes the reproduction process easier.

Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18316-ducks-fight-the-battle-of-the-sexes-in-their-genitals.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11764-female-ducks-fight-back-against-raping-males.html

Smelly letters

2009-11-19T18:58:00.003+01:00

Image taken from http://promega.wordpress.com/

Working with molecular techniques and thus, with the gut bacteria Escherichia coli have led my thoughts towards making images with bacteria on agar plates several times. But since I'm trained for GLP (good laboratory practice) these thoughts have remained thoughts.

Artist don't have these restrains on them, however (controversy rather fuels them). And of course there's a bunch doing what I and probably many other molecular biologists have been thinking of. For instance, there's the creation of a "living font" made from E. coli, cultured on agar media, changing color while growing. The result is rather neat (pic above!) but it's not really suitable for writing long lasting texts, and I bet it's smelly. And it's not really safe, since E. coli can cause some harm when entering your body the wrong way. It's quite cool though.

More science-related art:
http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-05/victimless-leather

Blend in and wait

2009-11-06T15:31:00.003+01:00

Image taken from http://de.academic.ru/pictures/dewiki/109/misumena.vatia.beute.wespe.1771.jpg

We all know that evolution can bring forth the most amazing types of camouflage. Here's a new story: The female crab spider Misumena vatia likes to eat wasps. And these wasps likes to indulge in bright yellow flowers, but naturally they do not really like to be eaten while being there. So what does the crab spider? It becomes as yellow as the wasp's beloved flower, so that the spider just have to sit and wait for the unsuspected wasp to land. Then it's a helluva meal! Take a look at the pictures. I assume that we all would have a difficult time to spot this eight-legged creature....

Well, in order to really comfirm that it was good to be a yellow spider in a yellow plant, the researchers displaced these colored creatures into flowers with other colors. And the result was that wasps avoided these new combinations of predator and flower, suggesting that they could now spot the spider. Thus, these spiders benefit from being the same color as their flower... Changing color takes a while. White to yellow can take from 10-25 days, and the reverse about six days. I have no idea if the transition state is less effective in camouflaging the spiders, but juding from the result from these researchers I guess that is the case.

Image taken from http://www.jorgenlissner.dk/images%5CPictures%5CMisumena_vatia_hun_859.jpg

Source: Science - ScienceShots.

Since this genus is quite widespread, and since spiders are awsome, I thought I'd post some more pictures of other Misumena:

This one is awsome! The photographer has really managed to capture all the details (click on it for full-screen). Just look at the eyes! Image taken from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Misumena_vatia_female_Luc_Viatour_1.jpg

http://www.nature-photographers-portfolio.co.uk/images/Misumena%20vatia%20&%20Eristalis%20pertinax%20prey%20john%20beb.jpg

http://www.aphotofauna.com/Spider-Misumena%20vatia11-06-09.jpg

Bugging in the bed

2009-10-30T15:58:00.003+01:00

A colluege of mine (we're in the same research group) had her latest result on bed bug chemical ecology posted on Science News today. Go read it! It has everything: gender conflicts, homosexual relationships, wild sex and violence. She doesn't know it but during my year here, she has actually becomed something of a role model for me even though we're not working with the same organism, or with the same methods. As I said, go and read it!

Glowing in the forest

2009-10-06T18:27:00.003+02:00

Image taken from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/photogalleries/glowing-fungi/images/primary/RB_24-03-06_36-big.jpg

I was in Amsterdam a few days this summer, enjoying a stay in one of Europe's most non-pretentious old cities where politically correct culture (Rembrandt, art museums, antique shops, Anne Frank's house, all old canals and houses, tulips...) goes hand in hand with tourist traps, naked women behind glass doors and "soft drug" propaganda. I had somewhat prepared myself for the latter, but I would never expect it to be e v e r y w h e r e . On almost every street, there was a coffee shop and/or a souvenir store where you could get "natural" things to mess up your CNS, i.e. cannabis and mushrooms. I've always been fascinated by subcultures, and in Amsterdam it became more obvious than ever how these hallucinogen-loving people all have a few characteristics in their appearance in common. Such as strange little fungi that's glowing. Maybe it comes with the territory. But to my surprise (which may be obvious to others), today I read this in Scientific American - that glowing fungi really do exist and you can see them without first displacing your perceptive equilibrium.

Image taken from http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/10/mushroomsglow1.jpg

In the genus Mycena, the ability to bioluminescence exist in at least 65 species (perhaps more....you just have to find them). Some glow only in the caps, or the gills, others in the stem and others only in the mycelium. No one really knows why they glow; it may be to attract flies and insects for pollination, or it may be to attract predators on the fungi's predators, or it may be something completely different. And when a human gets fascinated, there's always room for business: here you can buy a batch of a glowing fungi culture to add a psychedelic touch to your home. Awsome.

Sources:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-glowing-mushroom-species
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/photogalleries/glowing-fungi/photo2.html http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080808-bts-bioluminescent-fungi.html

Cool pics:
http://www.iq.usp.br/wwwdocentes/stevani/FungusLux_en/gallery.html

Morning glory!

2009-09-17T08:02:00.002+02:00

You're enjoying a good nights sleep when suddenly you hear a weird scratching sound on your wall. When you turn on the light you see this:

Yup, it's a snake with a leg. This awakening would certainly be something to tell your grandkids about...

The story can be found here.

Haast's eagle...again

2009-09-16T15:39:00.002+02:00

I've never understood why so many biology-people fancy ornithology. I actully think it's one of the most gasp-altering parts of biology (not a popular thing to admit in our building). But if the Maori man-eating bird legend would be true, which now seems to be comfirmed (at least somewhat) I could reconsider my statement.

The bigger the better?

2009-09-13T12:30:00.002+02:00

Did you know that there were such a thing as Giant salamanders? I certainley did not. I mean, I haven't really thought about salamanders that much during my 26 years here, apart from a summer when I was 9 and a friend collected small little slimey ones in a wetland close to my hometown. So I've assumed that salamanders are small, perhaps with some variation up to Gecko-lizard sizes but not huuuge.

So therefore I was extremely facinated, and somewhat horrified in a way that H.P. Lovecraft would explain as "unexplainable", when I surfed upon this image:

It's enormous! Not just big but enormous! And there's actually a few variants; one species in China one in Japan, and one in the US. The Chinese salamander can reach 1.8 metres. That's just 8 cm longer than I am. Creepy (yeah, I know - Protagoras "Homo mensura" definitley holds when we tag animals as "huge", "ugly" and so on but I believe that no non-humans will ever read this blog and therefore I take the liberty to call other beings whatever adjective that I want!). They all have poor vision and mainly hunts during the night, when they go for fish, molluscs, worms and other yummy things. I thought that I would find some statement that they are friendly creatures with no known conflicts with humans but they can actually bite and inflict quite a bit of pain. If this is a rare event or if it's something that can happen whenever you swim in their territories it doesn't say. However, I will definitely not dip my toes in their waters...

Of course, all things large enough to threaten the community of Homo sapiens are in a risk of being pushed away. Sadly, this is also the case for the Giant salamanders. I bet that in 100 years or less, we will be the only creature (except for domesticated animals) that are allowed to be more than 1.4 meters long. Just wait and see.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbender
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_salamander
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_giant_salamander
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_giant_salamander

For molecular biologists, this could be our best tip ever...

2009-09-10T17:00:00.002+02:00

I don't know how many of my followers (ha ha) of this blog (ha ha) that is actually practicing molecular biology. But since I know of at least one, I'll post this eye-opener: Bitezize Bio.org!!! It's the best darn discovery of done since I first entered the university area. I'm serious. Just surf in, read the articles, tips, links, everything and you'll get more enlightened in a single day than you've been the latest year.

Off with her head!

2009-09-09T11:28:00.004+02:00

Image: Péter Estók

Birds eat a lot of things, and can be quite mean to other animals that comes in their way. Now, a German research team has recorded for the first time ever that when food is scarce, great tits can actually prey on bats. And it's quite grusome: the bird starts to munch before the bat is dead, which doesn't happen until the bird has pecked open the head of the bat. Not really a Walt Disney movie.

There's a video for you at New Scientist! I can't help it, but this story makes me smile because people tend to view these "cute, little birds" as nice and vunerable creatures, while other birds such as the Rook (Corvus frugilegus) is regarded as a mean scavenger not worthy of your bread crumbs. I will definitely keep this story in mind whenever this topic comes up....

Forest fortunes!

2009-09-08T08:36:00.003+02:00

Image taken (and edited) from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211554/New-frog-rat-species-discovered-Papua-New-Guinea.html

If you like microbes, you can find new species every day or so. If you like mammals, the possibility of increasing your heartbeat frequency due to discovering something new it's a bit more restricted. However, a documentary film team who were rumbling in the jungle of Papua New Guinea all had a lucky day when they ran into a giant rat, a woolly marsupial cuscuse, a new camouflaged gecko and a fanged frog (although these last two are not mammals...I'm not that tired this morning!). And loads of other goodies. You can see pictures at the adress just under the image above and you'll find a video clip from the close encounter with the rat here. Now, let's just hope that no "entrepreneur" aka idiot has gets the "brilliant" idea of logging the hell out of this area. Or any other unique place. But my bitter mind tells me otherwise...

Sources:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/09/giant_rat_found_in_extinct_vol.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211554/New-frog-rat-species-discovered-Papua-New-Guinea.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/07/discovery-species-papua-new-guinea
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8215000/8215144.stm

All in the family!

2009-09-07T15:58:00.002+02:00

In case you ever have had a sleepless night pondering about whether or not the first farmers in Central Europe were homies with the hunter-gatherers that's been roaming these parts of the world before them, then a there's a report in Science to give you some answers. By comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences from skeletal remains, as well as to modern Europeans they compared so called haplotypes - a pice of a DNA sequence that can be present in two or more versions. For instance, one individual might carry a sequence as TTGCCA while the other has a TTCCCA. The nice thing is that thanks to reproduction and time (and a lot of other factors that I won't write about now), individuals within a population may have more of one of the haplotypes than the other, while in another population the situation can be the opposite.

And this is the case for these mitochondrial haplotypes that the researches looked at. One, that's simply called U, was dominating the pre-farming populations, while modern Europeans carry another version called N1a. The latter was found to be present mainly in the early farmers and therefore, the researchers conclude that no, the early farmers seemed not to interbreed with the hunter-gatherers, because then the Europeans today ought to have a blend of both the U and N1a haplotypes. And no genetic exchange of women occurred, they state (why now that should be a suprise). They also say that we who live in Europe today (and humanoid earthlings with european background, I assume) have very little left of these first inhabitants.

If you want to read a longer and better overview of the story, there's another blog that's doing an excellent job about it. You will find it here (at the cool blog dienekes.blogspot.com). Either way, what I find most facinating with this story is that all us million people calling us Europeans today seems to walk around with similar haplotypes, which in turn means that we are decendants from a small group of ancestors that lived came here not that long ago. That's like having a great-great-great-ans-so-on grandmother that was an awsome geographical entrepreneur!

Read all about it!

2009-09-02T19:28:00.002+02:00

There's so much out on our large primate family during the latest days that I just don't know where to begin. For example, a gorilla-study concludes that human semi-monogamy might come of an ape-behaviour where pregnant females get in the way of other females (that's in their ovulating state) by making the male believe that she's also ovulating. Then there's a story about cello-affected tamarins who get's their emotions going when the cello is played according to their style, and there's some hot news about novel genes in humans that ought to have arised from inactive copies present in other primate genomes, and then a theory that differences in our female acestor's promiscuity could help to explain why our human chromosomes are affected by different mutation rates.

As for non-primates, there's a parrot-highlight too; parrots that are either right/left eyed or clawed are smarter than their buddies that have no left/right preference. Read all about it here.

I'm like a Heinz ketchup bottle; first nothing then too much

2009-09-01T16:08:00.004+02:00

...and since I feel reasonably energetic today, I'll just recommend some good reading from the Science blog Origins. It's about plant and nervous systems - read all about it here.

The power of the spore compells you

2009-09-01T10:35:00.002+02:00

Zombie ant!!! Lost in fungi-land...
Image taken from http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/46186/name/Death_grip_

If you are a keen follower of science-blogs this may be old news. If not, then this may be the curiosity of the day! Here we go: Have you ever felt compelled to perform an act without actually wanting to do it? You're like a slave to a drive you don't percive as your own. In that case, you're not alone. At least not if you're an ant living in the Thailand forest. These are living at risk of being turned into a fungus-driven zombie forcing them to find a leaf close to the ground, bite in and die with the jaw locked in place, so that the fungus can get deluxe conditions for reproduction. The horror-movie theme doesn't end there, because now the fungus starts growing a spore out of the ants neck making it look like a true freak of nature. In these forests, the scientist found what they call graveyards of ants attached to the leaves with fungi coming out of them. That is what I call an excursion!

Source
The Life of a Dead Ant: The Expression of an adaptive Extended Phenotype.
Sandra B. Andersen, Sylvia Gerritsma, Kalsum M. Yusah, David Mayntz, Nigel L. Hywel‐Jones, Johan Billen, Jacobus J. Boomsma, and David P. Hughes
The American Naturalist. Volume 174, Issue 3, Page 424–433, Sep 2009

Peer pastor

2009-07-23T10:42:00.003+02:00

I'll write something more substantial sooooon but until then, have a look at this:

Image taken from The Far Left side

Absolutley brilliant!

Neanderthals!

2009-07-21T12:52:00.002+02:00

Image taken from http://www.davincium.com/

If you're like me and have a soft spot for Neanderthals and their dim-lit fate, Scientific American has a nice online-article for you to read. At least I liked it, although there's always a big spoon of assumptions and fantasy-thoughts fed to you regarding what once was.

Ant that a story

2009-07-12T15:59:00.002+02:00

Most animal societies are slaves to reproductive urges, and I bet you all have noticed just how much sex sells in our lovely primate community (and it's seems that it goes way back). Therefore it's quite understandable that from time to time we just sigh and wish to not be remainded of our reproductive organs, even only for a day.

I suppose that feeling became a long-lasting urge in the fungus-arming ant Mycocepurus smithii, because they have reduced the number of males and females to females only, now fully living an asexual lifestyle. The reproductive organ has evolved into something that doesn't really have any function (like our appendix) and the authors believe that even if a male would re-appear, the females would not be able to mate anymore (hard hit, huh!). So now the ants only reproduce when the queens clone themselves.

Otherwise they live their life farming a specific fungus in an unique little garden, weeding off intruding species and feeding the fungus with leafs, dead insects and cleaned-up and cut-to-pieces feces (yum). Of course, they don't do this just for the fun of it; it's not like it's Britains best back gardens we're talking about. The hard-working ants get something in return, i.e. food for their beloved little clone-babies.

It's like a futuristic fairy tale in an Amazon spirit mixed with communism ideology all in one. Not sure if I like the idea of it or not but as long as I'm not a part of it and as long as I can read about it happening elsewhere, I'm happy.

Source:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1667/2611.full?sid=1a06b007-88db-4b96-ac89-530a6ead62e4
No sex in fungus-farming ants or their crops
1. Anna G. Himler1,*,
2. Eric J. Caldera1,
3. Boris C. Baer2,
4. Hermógenes Fernández-Marín3,4 and
5. Ulrich G. Mueller1,4
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090417-female-ants-picture.html

Bye bye birdie

2009-07-11T14:06:00.004+02:00

Continuing with a sort of "endangered species"-theme, I thought I'd write a few lines about a truly magnificent species that another species (*harr harr* Homo sapiens) hunted away from existing to extinction - the Giant Moa (Dinornis). I may be late but I'd never heard about it until today when I red that some researchers had managed to recover DNA from the 2500 year old feathers of this bird. They were able to connect four known Moa species to the DNA samples and thus, were able to draw some conclusions over how these four species looked like. And even better, by comparing the Moa feathers to the still-alive-and-well red crowned parakeet's feathers (but feathers of the same age as the Moa feathers) they could conclude that the colours had not faded or changed.

Reconstructed Giant Moa on some New Zeeland museum.
Image taken from http://www.fotothing.com/photos/9e8/9e818de8b2c96bbd935711688b484789_31c.jpg

Anyway, I wanted to read more about the Giant Moa so with a single google step I learned that this could have been the largest bird that ever lived, reaching up to 2.5 m and weighing 230-240 kg! That's one big chicken McNugget. They seemed to live a grazing lifestyle on New Zeeland until the arrival of the Maori and later, colonists who wanted to eat it, and also due to the ever growing agricultural landscapes destroing the Moa's natural habitat. By 1500, it was gone forever. Shame on us!

Even more shame on us; here's some more long gone gigant birdies that we'll never be able to see again:

Elephant bird, Aepyornis maximus. Up to 3 m tall!

Haast's eagle, chasing some giant Moas (now you do the size math)

The "terror bird" Brontornis, up to 2.8 m!

Source:
Nicolas J. Rawlence, Jamie R. Wood, Kyle N. Armstrongand Alan Cooper. DNA content and distribution in ancient feathers and potential to reconstruct the plumage of extinct avian taxa. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B., June 30, 2009 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0755

Beating around the bush

2009-07-06T21:03:00.003+02:00

It's tempting to believe that you have to be an intelligent being to have a highly sophisticated way of catching your prey. I don't much about the average IQ level in snakes but I'm pretty sure that they don't have any members in MENSA just yet. Still, this is a group of animals having exquisite methods of killing. You all know about venom and such, but have you ever heard about fooling your prey to swim into your mouth? Because that's exactly what this tentacled snake (Erpeton tentaculatum) does. When a nice little fishy passes by, E. tentaculatum positions itself in a motionless J-form behind it and sends of sound waves from the middle of its body. "Hey, what's that noise?" the fish wonders, and turns instinctively towards the other direction and suprise! There's the snakes mouth, wide open and filled with gluttonous desires strong enough to wipe out the fish from this world. Seems like a sirty trick to me, but nature shows no mercy when it comes to food.

Check out the movie found at this link for a glimpse of the snake in work.

Source: Tentacled snakes turn C-starts to their advantage and predict future prey behavior Kenneth C. Catania PNAS published online before print June 19, 2009, doi:10.1073/pnas. 0905183106

Humpin around

2009-07-05T17:15:00.003+02:00

People that have more money than you'll ever had, but subconsiously wants, are often in the hotspot of being identified as greedy and/or egoistic (unless you think you have a chance for a pice of the cake...then you'll probably like him more than life itself). Take this together with that the guy is way past the vital part of his life, yet get's more young and fertile (and bleached) females than you'll ever had. Now, that's not really someone you'd think of as a nice, everyday guy whom you'd see as your equal. Rather, this guy would most likely be the target of journalists who's only goal is to sell you nonsense, and knows that subconciously you don't like people who stick up from the great grey mass, trespassing on your morals, and has things that your inner human primate desires but your enlighted soul knows is out of hand.

So if I say "Hugh Hefner", you probably have loads of negatively or patronizing thoughts in the back of your head. He's not really been associated to saving the world, or working free in soup kitchens for the homeless. Well, just like any other being, he probably has things that are good about him in a social/environmental context and things that are bad. I just read a good thing though, because he's just donated money (and given his name) to a bunny species, Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, that's on the verge of extintion.

I may be naive, but I bet that's better for our worlds flora and fauna than looking in magazines and get upset over "the rich and the famous" and get satisfied by how good moral you have compared to these characters. No species saved there! But then again, I also bet that the (in)famous house of Mr Hefner is quite an environmental fiend in terms of energy waste and such. Either way, we may be able to keep another species thanks to his donation, which is neat in many ways.

Sources:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/06/playboy-bunnies-bouncing-back.html
http://blogs.discovery.com/news_animal/2009/06/playboy-bunnies-close-to-extinction.html

Family values

2009-05-01T15:10:00.003+02:00

Image taken from http://rachelannmason.com/Images/thumbnailimages/bigger%20images/habsburg%20jaw/hemisphere/ambassadors/chiefs/carlos/carlos.jpg

I've been terribly out of office in terms of this blog. I don't know if I should apologize or not (frankly, I don't really know if anyone is reading this but never mind that)...but lately it's just been too much in the schedule and I'm afraid that will be the norm from now on.

But I've got something exciting to write about now (at least exciting if you're me). It's a combination of history and biology, namely royal inbreeding leading to the extinction of the spanish Habsburg dynasty. These guys saw it as the ultimate marriage to get to say "I do" at the altar next to an uncle, a niece or a first-cousin. Of course, this genetic conservatism came with some setbacks. Instead of keeping it in the family (whatever it may be...royal strengh, blue blood, strange eating habits, and so on and so forth) this just brought up all those recessive traits that the founders of the dynasty might have carried around in their royal genome. So the Habsburgers included a few characters that got noteworthy names such as Joanna the mad, as well as yielding physical features such as a enlarged lower jaw.

The inbreeding came to its peak with Charles II of Spain. He was the son of the Habsburgers Mariana of Austria and Philip IV of Spain. These parents were not only related, they were uncle and niece, which meant that his grandmother was also his aunt. This might have been ok if not all other relatives (his parents, grandparents and backwards) were somewhat the result of interbreeding. A study was recently published showing that 24.5% of Charles II genome could have been made up by identical genes, which is basically what you can expect from a brother-sister interbreeding. Because of this genetic uniformity, Charles was mentally disabled as well as disfigured. He had ha hard time chewing (most likely due to the same condition that the earlier mentioned enlarged jaw) and some notes states that his tounge was so large that it was hard to understand what he was saying, and he frequently droowled. He didn't learn to speak until the age of four and he couldn't walk until he was about eight years old. Not what you'd expect of a godgiven royal dynasty. In addition, one of the many duties of being a king is to produce an heir, something that Charles never was able to due even though he tried with two wives, most likely due to impotence.

In short - if you ever had a delirious idea about your family's excellence in terms of heritability, then you should go wash your face with something cold and go for an unrelated spouse. Or else you may bring out genetic traits in your grandkids that will not look so good for the record.

Source:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005174
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/science-shots/

Back in the days...

2009-03-17T18:29:00.002+01:00

Image taken from http://www.nhm.uio.no/pliosaurus/images_highres/45-ton-pliosaur-attacking-a-plesiosaur-AtlanticZoo.jpg

Still enjoying the silence? Here's something for your imagination to digest: a group of paleontologists have unraveled a partial skull of a MONSTROUS (in relation to a human...or an elephant...or an great white shark) marine reptile predating the waters of the Jurassic age (about
147 million years ago!).

The beast is believed to have been something like 50ft long (15-16 meters) and weighed approximately 45 tons (hello, weight watchers!). When munching on those less fortunate beings in the ocean, it could grab a single piece of 33,000lb (14968 kg!?) per bite. That's quite supersized!

Sleep tight...

Carrot creativity

2009-03-02T21:15:00.000+01:00

Not very scientific, but fun!

Exploiding yourself for the good of your kin

2009-02-27T18:19:00.003+01:00

Image taken from http://www.myrmecos.net/insects/ManzAphid3.html

It's been quiet for a while. Not because any lack of cool things to write about; just because a general gloomy period with lots of work and a home computer not willing to cooperate.

But now I'm back. At least for a post. Better one post in the blog than ten in the head, we might say. Well, you perhaps have noticed that I like insects. And you perhaps know that I like a touch of the weird and morbid. So of couse I just had to write something about this: apids exploding themselves for safety of the community in a manner that would make 2nd-WW-kamikaze-soldiers and al quaida green with envy.

These aphids life in so called galls, a ball-like plant tissue that has been induced by the aphids. Then they prefer to live a cosy, non-disturbed life in there, which of course is not always the case. A lot of things could threat their existance, so therefore it's been necessary to evolve an efficient defence system using community members with an explicit role - the soldiers.

So when the gall is damaged, the soldiers aggregate around the area and explode (!), which results in the formation of a sealing goo that protects the gall.

Beats building a ugly wall and shooting at every moving object passing it.

200 year anniversary!

2009-02-12T21:58:00.001+01:00

Happy birthday Mr Darwin!

Snikes!

2009-02-09T20:27:00.002+01:00

I suppose you haven't missed out on the news about a gigantic snake snirling around this globe for a couple of million years ago?

This fella (baptized as Titanoboa cerrejonensis) was around 13 m long (larger than the snake trying to eat Jennifer Lopez in the lame movie Anaconda, according to the researcher), and it's assumed that there's been even larger ones crawling on the surface of the earth we now walk...now that is something I'd gladly live a life without ever coming across.

Source:

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/02/giant_snake_eats_worlds_media.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090204/full/news.2009.80.html

Worm up your life!

2009-02-09T20:26:00.000+01:00

This is more horrific than any scary movie ever.

Ressurection

2009-02-04T10:28:00.005+01:00

What's been seen as a combination of dreams and science fiction has been accomplished: an extinct (sub)species, The Pyrenean ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica), has been brought back into the world of the living. I can't wait for the ressurection of the Dodo...or the mammut!

Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/02/first-animal-to-be-cloned-back.html

Separated by germs

2009-01-30T18:13:00.003+01:00

There's a group of parasitiod Hymenopteras called The Jewel Wasps, Nansonia. They like to lay there eggs in or on other insects, where the larvae will exploit their host's nutrients, which in the end leads to the host's death. I've written about similar systems before.

What I haven't written about (because I didn't know it until now) is the very facinating background of how three species, N, vitripennis, N. giraulti and N. longicornis, are reproductively isolated in nature (they can't produce any offspring, basically). Usually, reproductive isolation is a result of the genetic conflicts of the gametes (egg and spermcells), making embryonic development impossible or severely harder. Or, as in moths, reproductive isolation is the result of the species using different chemicals (pheromones!) to find eachother for mating. There are many more quite easy-to-comprehend examples of the beckground to reproductive isolation. But now I've found this information about the three Nansonia species.

Some more background is needed though, before I get to the basis of what I'd like to say: in some insects, a certain type of bacteria has somewhere along the evolutionary line managed to infect and stay put in the insects cells. The bacterium, known as Wolbachia, has then gradually evolved in sync with the insect so that it becomes kind of symbiont (endosymbiosis - a phenomenon that has led to the mitochondria found in plant, fungi and animal cells, as well as the chloroplasts in plant cells). The different insect species therefore have different variations of Wolbachia. Well, it turns out that in the three Nansonia species, it's their species specific Wolbachia that causes reproductive isolation. Because if the Wolbachia is removed (using antibiotics) the species are suddenly able to breed and produce fertile offspring. I don't know about you but for me this is SO cool. Yes, I'm odd.

Source:
Genome Mapping and Genomics in Animals, Volume 1
Wayne Hunter, Chittaranjan Kole (Editors)
Genome Mapping and Genomics in Arthropods
C H A P T E R 3
The Jewel Wasp – Nasonia
Jürgen Gadau, Oliver Niehuis, Aitana Peire, John H. Werren, Emmanuelle Baudry, and Leo W. Beukeboom

Itsy bitsy spider

2009-01-26T19:18:00.003+01:00

Image taken from http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/spider_kama_sutra.php

Living in a more or less religion-influenced society, it's easy to judge our culture as becoming more and more obsessed in things regarding mating. Girls show off bums and hill-look-a-like body parts, boys try to excell by showing off how good of a catch that they are, commersials try to sell just about everything by giving it a touch of mating-indications. This may be percieved as vulgar and cheap to many of us, but in the spotlight of evolution it's really a good concept because this will pass on genes for ever and ever (although they will be changed over time).

As I've mentioned before, there's plenty of variation among mating systems, and everything seems to be allowed as long as it yields offspring of reproductive value. The spider Homalonychus theologus for example, has a thing for bondage, which might be a word of perverse indications to some of us. This does not become H. theologus, who's life is dictated by other matters than morals and family values. When the male approaches a female, he wraps her legs in silk before proceeding with mating. This behaviour can be found in other spiders as well (Xysticus, Tibellus, Latrodectus, Dictyna, Oxyopes and Nephila maculata).

Basically, it's quite "easy" to come up with theories to why "weird" mating systems arise:
1. We have a group of interbreeding individuals.
2. In one of the individuals, a mutation (or mutations) is induced in it's gametes (sperm and egg cells).
3. The resulting offspring bearing this mutations has a deviation from the original mating system due to this.
4. The mating deviation causes this individual to be able to mate more, mate more succesfully, or mate in any other way that will increase it's ability to produce offspring.
5. The offspring (or atleast some of them, depending on the nature of the mutation) will inherit it's parent mating system deviation and thus have a reproductive advantage to the individuals without the mutation.
6. Over time (without taking other evolutionary factors in regard, such as genetic drift) this mutation will increase in frequency and become normal.

Since humans are cultural beings, it's not very easy or wise to try to explain all our "deviation" with genetics. But the fact that sex sells is very easy, because liking to reproduce (sex) generally means (in a world without contraceptives....as in 50 years ago and backwards in time) a lot of kids, which means a lot of kids growing up to liking to reproduce and so forth. So don't blame our world todaty, if you don't like what you see; blame our ancestors. But then, if they'd listened to your possible arguments, you may not have been born. Ever.

(Of course it's good to question everything, especially the media and fields out to exploit your wallet, but questioning everything ad absurdum will not lead us anywhere than to supression of innate behavioural factors).

Source: http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1636%2FM03-4&ct=1

Hear yourself

2009-01-19T20:16:00.003+01:00

Have you ever thought about why your voice is sounding different when you hear it in a recorded version, than when you hear it "live" on everyday basis? I have, but I haven't really bothered to seek information about this. I get kind of scared when I hear recordings of my voice. I sound so naive, so young (well...I suppose I'm still young, scince I'm only 25) and very dorky. Others (boys in particular) think I sound cute. Not what I'm going for.

Well, well. The reason I believe that my voice is darker than it is is that when I'm talking, the sound waves travels through two media - air (from my mouth and around into the ear) and bone (from the inside of my mouth and inwards to the ear). And since bone enhance deeper, lower- frequency vibrations than air does, I precieve my voice as darker. This part of sound transfer goes away when I am listening to my voice though a recorder (or someone else's voice), therefore I hear it as being lighter. But still, this is a win information for me. Because now I've been enlightened that the voice I hear in my head is really my true voice, and it's all you others who can't hear it this way (unless I talk through your bones, which I don't know how to do). So I'm really not that cute at all.

An additional remark to this is that now it makes sense; why all lousy, tone-deaf people turn up at the American Idol-try outs.

Source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-my-voice-sound-different

The nose was ugly, long, and big, Broad and snouty like a pig

2009-01-16T18:06:00.003+01:00

Image taken from: http://www.tolweb.org/tree/

This could be the cutest insect I've ever stumbled over. It's known to us westernized humans as Curculionidae curculio spp‏, a weevil with hair, from what I can see from the picture. I can't find any information about this particular species, but weevils are the largest group of beetles with over 60,000 species. I am kind of facinated by its antennae that is placed on its snout, rather than on the head (as I'm used to, when seeing an insect).

Life on Mars

2009-01-16T08:13:00.006+01:00

It seems like there's been some indication of life on Mars. This due to recordings of methane plumes from particular areas, which should be a hint that there's microbes living there. Similar areas on earth are places where microbes are bubbeling up gas, so if you put two and two together then you might can call up David Bowie and say "yes, there is life on Mars".

Source:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1165243
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/15/live-blogging-the-mars-methane-mystery-aliens-at-last/

Buy what very big eyes you have...

2009-01-14T18:06:00.003+01:00

Have a look at the eyes of this spook(y)fish, Dolichopteryx longipes. Isn't it awsome? This is the first vertebrate found that uses this type of eyes, which has mirrors instead of lenses to focus the incoming light. Although you can count to four eyes when looking at the fish, it's actually just two eyes that are divided into two parts each, making it possible looking both up and down at the same time. Brilliant!

Source: http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/01/spooky_spookfish_has_freaky_ey.html http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-4V719NP-5&_user=906544&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000047747&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=906544&md5=1fdce4ed93dd9abe54988c16448b1d9b

Bring back the basic

2009-01-14T17:53:00.001+01:00

There's a irritating bug in the world of science administration and politics, growing stronger every day in every country formerly known as being capable producing various types of good science.

As you may or may not know, there's basically two ways of doing science. Most people working for companies and some working for universities and institutions produce applied science. This means that their experiments have a pre-defined goal, which is to yield information that can be used for something concrete (such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, psychological information of how we behave in stores so that we can be tricked into shop even more, and so forth). This is relatively "easy" for the public to understand, and to get an opinion of.

Then there's fundamental science. Science that the public might have difficulties with, when trying to understand the purpose of it. It might produce some examples note-worthy to some popular science magazine or tv-show, but otherwise, if you're not in the academic world you probably won't get the deal about it. It is not necessary to understand why some fundamental research is important, BUT it is extremely important to understand why fundamental research is!

Think about the word "fundamental" for a minute, why it has been given this name. Wouldn't that give you a clue to why this is something that all science, including applied science is dependant of? Apparently, this has not gone through the minds of the politicians deciding how our countries tax money should be supplied to science. The companies manufacturing the drugs used to cure and help have not thought out all the background to their projects by themselves. It's fundamental. Without devoted ecologists (fundamental science) we would not have discovered the effects that various types of pollution have on flora and fauna, which also has led to restrictions protecting people from exposure to the nasty chemicals. Otherwise, this may not have been discovered until we saw a severe effect on the bodies and life of Homo sapiens. Without devoted molecular biologists (fundamental science), we would not have known all things we know today about DNA, proteins and various cellular actions. Then, a pharmacy would most likely not contain as efficiant pharmaceupticals that they do today. Are you starting to get the picture? All science is correlated, indepentant of national borders and other nonsense. And we need every single nieche, even though we may not see the importance of a particular result today. Cause we might see it in 20 years. And then it could be beautiful.

Picture this

2009-01-12T19:31:00.001+01:00

Heliocranchia pfefferi - not that cute on purpose.

Before the dawn of life there was RNA

2009-01-09T20:33:00.007+01:00

I suppose you've all heard about RNA; that it's related to the allmight DNA in one way or the other. What you might not know (if you're not into molecular evolution or just anything regarding evolution), is that once upon a time way back, before DNA started to function into something we define as life, there was another system of replicators highly dependent on RNA. Not much is known about this, but there's been some attempts to know more.

First, let's start with some basic RNA info (lots of chemical things here...skip if you're not interested or if it's just way too confusing). RNA stands for Ribo Nucleic Acid, and the only thing that differs it from a DNA (Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid) molecule is the presence of a hydroxyl group at one of the carbons. This, however, leads to differences in their chemical properties which is very, very important if we want life (as we know it) to exist. First of all, this changes the geometry (A-form instead of the general DNA B-form). Second of all, this -hydroxyl group can (if there's room) chemically attack a phosphodiester bond, so that the backbone of the RNA molecule is cleaved, as well as making RNA more prone to hydrolysis. RNA is usually present as shorter, single stranded chains of molecules, while DNA is usually in double stranded chains and is much longer. When you're not a molecular biology person, the most common thing to know about RNA (I suppose) is that it is the "in between state" when a gene is working. This is a basic rule of biology: DNA is transcribed into RNA that is translated into proteins. In addition, RNA can function as catalyst, acting in various ways. They do so by forming pairs, which are tightly and structurally packed with other pairs. Together, they can do powerful enzymatic activities. These properties have led scientists and general thinkers to hyothesize that RNA alone can function as both provider of information as well as the processor and
replicator of the information.

Image source: http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/VL/GG/images/rna2.gif

Gerald Joyce at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California have just published some amazing results on this stuff. She, along with collegues (you're never alone in this buisness) made catalyst of
paired RNA. When all the necessary ingredients were supplied in a reaction mix, these were able to assembly eachother. These were mixed with building blocks of RNA, and due to the RNA catalyst not being the perfect version for their purpose, they mutated over time into new versions that were better than the originals, thus out-competing them. The outcome was highly dependent on the conditions in the reaction mixture.

In addition, these RNA catalysts were immortal, since they could replicate themselves indefinitely! This is one of the basic properties a life-information-containing molecule must have...

In my biased little brain, this leads me towards the conclusion (not scientific, just highly personal) that once again, evolution can be induced, it's molecular action can be proven, as well as that Darwinian theory is supported again (and again and again and again ad absurdum....eat that, beloved creationists!). Also, all tabula rasa inspired folks should be somewhat joyful, since this also proves that the environment is just as important as the genetic material, when looking at the outcome of it all. It's just great!

Links: http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090108/full/news.2009.5.html

If hell was the sea...

2008-12-29T13:13:00.005+01:00

Vampyroteuthis infernalis. Image taken from http://l.yimg.com

All species get a latin name that in one way or the other are supposed to say something about the characteristics of the species in question. Now, imagine that you belong to a species that has been given the very humble suffix infernalis, which translates as "from hell". That would be a name to brag about! A squid has actually been blessed with this name, and as if this hellish surname wasn't enough, an additional horror-associated word has been put in its name Vampyroteuthis infernalis - "the vampire squid from hell". Extreamly sophisticated.

Image taken from http://www.tolweb.org

This creature was first described in 1903, and it shares similarities with both octopuses and squids making it a tough cookie for phylogeny-people. It is only 15 cm in size, but has been found in sizes up to 30 cm, and is pigmented in variations from jet-black to pale-red, while the eyes are red or blue. The eye-to-body-size is actually the largest found among animals. Being a deep sea creature (living 600-900 m under the surface), it is capable of producing light, so that other animals down there can be temporarely disoriented by sudden flashes of light. In addition, the produces light can create illusional transparency when seen from below, making the vampire squid invisible for predators lurking even further down in the dark. When attacked, the squid places its arms with the tips glowing with light in a posture far away from the body, so that the attacker is drawn towards the body parts that are not as critical for survival as the body would be.

I can't find anything on why it has been given the name "the vampire squid from hell". In my world, such a name would be given to a creature with some diabolical quest in the deep dark sea, but from what I read, this seems to be a friendly creature (exept if you are a small shrimp or whatever it could be preying on), more suitable for a name such as "the pacifistic squid-like octopus from deep below" or "the colored yet transparent eight-armed squid/octopus" (I don't know how that would sound in latin though). Perhaps the name comes from its leathery apperance when it is looked upon in certain positions? Or perhaps it's name-giver had red too much Lovecraft? Either way, it's still swimming and are most likely not interested if we call it this or that. It just is, as we all are.

A bit more like a vampirish appearence. Image taken from http://www.lifesci.icsb.edu

Daddy dino

2008-12-22T08:58:00.003+01:00

I don't really know what the purpose of the following study actually was, but some paleontologists have unraveled that dinosaur males were good fathers, guarding the nest and looking out for the kids. This conclusion is drawn from the analysis of clutch sizes, where the volume of these were two/three times larger than expected from adult body size and the largest clutch sizes ought to have been cared for by males only. Now that's something to tell your chauvinist boss if he derides you for wanting to stay at home for a while with your newborn.

Stinky pretty things

2008-12-21T11:51:00.006+01:00

It's almost christmas. Now we are supposed to spend time with family, binge in on vulgar food and sing crappy music. And everything should be decorated with pretty, nice-smelling things such as pine, apples, cinnamon, oranges and so forth. (If we are those who believe that we are descendents of the apple-eating Adam and snake-loving Eve we may read a chapter or two in a book written by old men from an extinct culture, highly divergent from our own. Well, well. I'm not going to minimize theist in this post (although I might have done it already)). I'm going to write about what you would not like to have in your house in order to create a nice and relaxing atmophere, unless you're related to the residents of the Hardesty house (Texas chainsaw massacre), namely so called "carrion flowers".

Carrion flowers are also known as stinking flowers, since they smell of rotten flesh. At a first sight, they often look pretty but their smell is awful, having evolved to attract beetles and flies for pollination purposes, and not humans for decoration purposes.

Rafflesia arnoldii.

The species with the largest individual flower (in the whole world actually) is Rafflesia arnoldii, being capable of growing into an impressive one metrer in diameter and weighing up to 11 kilograms. It can be found (although it's hard to find it unless it's floweing; then you can follow the scent) in the rainforests of southeast Asia, and since these forest are dissapearing day by day it is assumed that this facinating plant is greatly threatened.

Then we have Titan arum, a carrion flower bragging as being the plant with the worlds largest unbranched inflorescence in the world being able to grow to a enormous 3 meters (!). This plant is also found in southeast Asia.

Titan arum.

Two other carrion flower species are Stapelia gigantea and Smilax herbacea, stinking up nature and being loved by carcass attracted insects around the world.

Stapelia gigantea. Image taken from http://anti-matter-3d-com/Stapeliads

Similax herbacea. Image taken from http://mrhyker.tripod.com/floraandfauna.

Parthogenesis before christmas

2008-12-21T11:32:00.008+01:00

A friend at work recently gave me a couple of Extatosoma tiaratum eggs, which in plain english is a stick insect. The cool thing with stick insects is their reproductive behaviour, which has bended the rules that we might think ought to be universal. When the females have males around, they mate in the good old fashion lutheranian way, i.e. female get's down with male and have babies. Not very exiting. But when there's no suitable male in her territory, she's able to do what no human ever has or ever will be able to do; namely, to make babies herself. This is

known as parthogenesis, in which an egg continues to develop into a embryo and then you know the story... In short, no male gamete is needed! That seems to be a very flexible system.

Parthogenesis is not that uncommon. It's known to occur in insects and arthropods, and also in some reptiles, fish, birds and sharks. Since it's a egg that develops into the offspring, the offpring will be all female if the sex chromosome system is two like chromosomes determine the female sex (like our XY-system), or they will be all males if two like chromosomes determine the male sex (like the ZW-system in moths). The offpring will be able to reproduce in the same way as it's mother, or - if it's female - continue with the self-copying.

What makes parthogenesis even more cool than cloning is that here, all cellular material is of the same descendant, whereas in cloning, only the nucleus will be identical to it's "mother". So, once again; an example of the amazing world of nature. We can try to mimc and to understand but we will never ever be able to comprehend it all. And that's not necessary a bad thing.

(I actually had a dream once where parthogenesis was proven to occur in a deer. I didn't realize that it was a dream until I started talking about the subject with my fellow biology students, who started to laugh at my story. If they didn't laugh, then maybe I'd still believe that parthogenesis could occur in mammals. I mean, just count the number of individuals who believe that a 13 year old girl, who lived about 2000 years ago, gave birth to a kiddie without the help of a penis. At least I saw some empiric proof in my very, very realistic dream, *harr harr*.)

Bye bye to the world as we know it

2008-12-05T14:25:00.002+01:00

Image source: http://www.wettropics.gov.au/

It seems like climate change has claimed it's first mammal extinction. I bet that when our generation is grey and old, our grandchildren will have a hard time believing all our stories of grandiose wild-life. But if they do believe us, they will surely think that we were idiots for letting it go this far.

Still here, still biting...

2008-11-19T19:03:00.003+01:00

Not a pygmy tarsier; just a common one

Remember the "Gremlins", that were hyped during the early 90's? They were a cuddly and nice mogwai until you gave them water, fed them after midnight or exposed them to sunlight; then they started to clone themselves (groovy!) and became evil little bastards. This movie goes under the genre "comedy-horror" but we who weren't even ten when we saw it for the first time may have missed the "comedy" part. Either way, our parents probably told us that the gremlins weren't for real. This time, our parents were a bit wrong. Because deep in the wild of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists have re-discovered the pygmy tarsier, which is a gremlin look-a-like. They have been thought to be extinct for a while (last note of their presence where back in 1921), so most likely they are not able to clone themselves (aren't we all suprised). In addition, they live in a very moist habitat with fog all around at all times and appearently, they are not very cuddly because the scientist that found them got bit. Maybee it's the water that made them evil. Or not. BUT they do have something in common with other horror movies, the Exorcist namely. You know when the pea-soup-vomiting-possesed-girl Regan spins her head around 360 degrees? The pygmy tarsier are able to do halv of that (180 degrees, that is...in case your head isn't working today). Very impressive!

Source:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16078-reallife-gremlin-rediscovered-in-the-wild.html

Some general jibberish from a late-afternoon-tired mind

2008-11-12T19:19:00.003+01:00

This will be a highly monologuic post, at least more than the previous ones. I came across this article today. In short, some researchers have found that women in all ages tend to like male faces that's more "testosteronized" than the opposite and that women in all fertile ages tend to deride female faces that are percieved as "pretty".

The good old female chauvinist pig in me immediately started to find flaws in the protocol of this experiment, such as using "attractive" as a general definition while I would say that this is a feature of high variance depending on whom is the judge. But then, the biology nerd in me started referring to nature: if all other mammals are allowed to have differences between the sexes and differences depending on their developmental status, environment etc. why should that not account for us as well?

It's a strong but stupid urge that almost all of us possess; i.e. the urge to take sides. But do we really have to do it in every single case that we come across? In this case, humans are definitely driven by our biology BUT as with all other living things (perhaps even more) we are highly dependent on environmental factors. You are born with the ability to be scared of dogs, but if you never encounter a dog behaving badly you'll never develop this feature. In addition, depending on whether you meet a angry dog when you're 3 or 30 years old the result may vary quite differently.

So, back to the faces-study. The thing is, I can relate to not liking "pretty" girls, or at least finding exuses not to feel entusiastic about their presence whenever someone else is talking about them. But is it nessecary so that I was born destined to feel this way when I began my fertile age all the way to menopause? Could it not be the environment that I'm born into that has formed the perfect settings for this behaviour to appear? Many factors could affect this, such as seeing how much attention these "pretty" ones get's from the opposite sex, or hearing how older females talks bad about other females. This does not mean that it's an innate behaviour.

What I do think that these types of studies could be good for is to make us take a step away from ourselves and see how we react. Thereby we can become more aware about the personalit(y/ies) that we have derived from the thousands possibilities present for us at birth. And we could try to stop behaviour that is not necessarily helping us in the society we have today. In a naive way, I believe by doing so, we might be closer to a nicer world. At least a world without cat fights.

Born to be what?

2008-11-07T20:32:00.005+01:00

We're all mutants. Now, I de-glorified all Marvel comics heros/villains that posess some kind of extrordinary gift due to being a "mutant". Well, it's not that remarkable in the real world. You won't gain any cool abilities by exposing yourself to nuclear waste, except the ability to grow aggressive tumors in your body (otherwise, imagine what the flora and fauna around Chernobyl would look like at this time). Still, mutations occur all the time; in us and around us. By using the different mechanisms, that causes mutations, in the laboratory we may see glimpses of how nature could work.

In all animals, fungi and plants there are a group of genes called HOX-genes. These dictates the development from a single cell to the multicellular being that we become. Think of them as "on and off" buttons that can be connected in a huge network, giving thousands of possibilities for combining the signals. In simple words, the different combinations of HOX-genes determines the orientation of the future body, i.e. where the head should be, the legs and so on, as well as growing wings instead of an arm. This means that a small change in the combinations directs the developing body to a completely different structure than "normal". Usually, the consequences are so severe that the fetus is spontaniously aborted, but not all developmental disturbances are lethal.

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster have been studied to the core when it comes to the HOX-genes. By disturbing the pattern of expression of these genes, either with mutations or environmental factors (such as chemicals) a fly with antennae instead of eyes develops, or a fly with two thoraxes (see pictures further down for both). In mice you can disturb the development by turning "on" some of the HOX-genes way too much so that the new born mouse has no hair at all. So it's not as simple as just having a genome with all you need to build a being. The genome must be extremely fine-tuned in order to have all limbs in the correct places!

Sources:

http://www.musc.edu/mcbp/concentrations/geneticsdevelop.html

When I come around

2008-11-06T08:14:00.002+01:00

I tend to dwell a lot on everything that concerns being human. I mean, what combinations of minor and major evolutionary processes have led us to this character state defined as a Homo sapiens? Things like this can easily keep my nights sleepless. You know the saying if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to see or hear it, did it ever occur at all? If you say no, then did the world really exist before your first memory? Even better: did the world exist before the one and only "I think therefore I am" species (i.e. us) came along?

If you leave out philosophy and creation myths that place humans in the center, then yeah, there was something here before us. Actually, there were a lot of things here before us. Some, like liverworth are still here today but more species that you could ever imagine have walked and inherited the earth in thousands (or millions!) of years before us, until some cryptic event made them head towards extinction. If you dig around in the earth's crust you may come across some fossils, but we will never ever be able to know all the creatures that have existed (or that will exist in the last million years of this planet, but that's another question).

Predating the waters of the Cambrian period was a strange little being named Opabinia regalis, belonging to a group of animals that have no decendants living today. The fossil record claims that it was up to 7 cm long, had five eyes and a really remarkable feeding part of its body (which makes me think of the offspring of a trilobite, elephant and a vacuum cleaner). The Cambrian period flourished with life forms in many, many versions but this period ended with the greatest mass extintion ever, leaving behind a fraction of species that later evolved into the various life forms we are today.

I may add that the fossil record is based on fewer than twenty fossils. Now, think about a present species that's fairly abundant in our world and have been so for a couple of hundred thousand years. Imagine that only a fraction of these were fossilised and only 15 of these were discovered by some future creature that has a bias for investigating the world's history. Will that say anything about all the other species that exist today? Not really... More fossils of other species might give more but we will never know it all. And that's what's keeping me up at night. Maybe it's a weird extension of being a control freak, but it really bugs me to know that I will never know how things have been before I came around.

Sources:

Evolution. An introduction (Stephen C. Stearns and Rolf F. Hoekstra). Second edition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opabinia

Eight legged freaks

2008-10-24T19:35:00.007+02:00

It's almost halloween, so how 'bout some scary biology curiosities? At least it's scary if you have arachnophobia, in other words if you're afraid of spiders (which I'm not...I'm only afraid of things that has no limbs and no face and dwell this earth a couple of centimetres under our feet...yep, I'm afraid of worms!).

Spiders are kind of cute. They have eight legs, nice eyes (and good vision to, actually), pretty colors and patterns and they may or may not have hair (which isn't hair as in "cuddly", but hair as in "I can sense the worlds movement through sensory systems you humans never could imagine").

Still, I can see why some of you are frightened whenever you come across an arachnid. They could bite you (which worms usually don't do, unless they're disgusting leeches!) with or without poison; they could move rapidly and unpredictable; they can climb up in any possible environment; you can come across them when you least expect it and they could be huuuge. And they can catch animals way bigger than themselves. They can even eat birds and sometimes, if we're lucky, there's a human with a camera to take some pictures so that we can be facinated that others than ourselves likes to eat some chicken now and then.

It's not really that common but it seems like they used to be munch frequently on feather delicacies during what one might refer to as "the golden age of mygalomorph spiders".

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_birdeater

http://www.blueplanetbiomes.org/goliath_bird_eating_spider.htm

Eye see you

2008-10-15T20:48:00.008+02:00

I've never really considered that molluscs could percive the world in a highly sophisticated manner. Well, some actually do. And I should not really be that surprised, but since I'm a human I naturally assume that we are the measure of all things seen as life and that a "simple" little oceanic being would not have senses in the same class as our own...

Here's some close-up shots at a clam (Aequipecten irradians) with it's characteristic blueberry-like eyes. Have no time to dig up any dirt about these sensory organs but I trust that you're all familliar with the wonders of google.com!

Image sources:
http://www.augsburg.edu/biology/photoofmonth/scallop-eyes-close.jpg
http://www.eyedesignbook.com/ch3/fig3-05aBG.jpg
http://www.augsburg.edu/biology/photoofmonth/scallop-eyes-menacing-close.jpg

You fill up my senses

2008-10-08T20:36:00.006+02:00

I'm taking an advanced course at the moment, named "Sensory ecology". It's not really my cup of tea, since I'm usually drawn to genes and molecular biology stuff but there are some highlights. Hot shot professors from all over the world have flewn over to Lund just to give us 50 PhD students (also from all over the world) a 2 h lecture about their topic. And we have ca 3 lectures per day in two weeks, which of course makes the speakers want to stand out from the other lecturers by telling us about behaviours and characteristics in nature that deviates from what we, as humans, would like to precieve as normal.

Image revised from http://www.nadeet.org/pics/newsletter/goldenMole.jpg

Today, one of the topics where the golden mole of Africa. This is a cute little guy, but it has such bad eye sight that evolution have allowed the skin to cover the eyes completely, which only allows it to distinguish light from dark. And it doesn't like it light, so as soon as the sun rises, the golden mole burrows itself deep down in the sand. Instead of relying on vision, these creatures dwell the Namibian desert during the night, searching for insects to eat. To be able to locate it's prey (that's only present on small grass humps in the sand, which in turn is only present here and there in the desert), they have an enormous malleus (that thing we have in our ears, banging at the ear drum when a sound wave causes it to vibrate) specialized for low frequency sounds. To detect the insects faaar away, the golden mole combine "head dipping" and "sand swimming", which allows it to detect things we wouldn't even hear if we had the insect in our ear canals. Marvelous!

Algea-wigs are back in style

2008-09-29T20:16:00.005+02:00

What was she for halloween; the punk-iest turtle you've ever seen.

More pictures of this pretty turtle can be found here!

Enjoy the silence

2008-09-28T15:50:00.004+02:00

I've neglected this blog thingy for a while. Actually, I've not had much time to spend surfing around the allmighty internet, so that's probably the reason behind my lack of inspiration. And my new grown-up era has taken it's time too! I've been out in the field collecting caddisfly larvae and pupae for my first project, followed by rearing in our lab until the adults emerge. Then I've isolated their DNA, and what's next is kind of a secret...

Either way, I thought this might make some of your face muscles twitch. It concerns a phenomenon atleast I thought was mainly human - necrophilia. Well, it's not. For a couple of years ago, the Ig Nobel awards (the Nobel Prize spoof that celebrates bizarre and apparently pointless science) went to a Dr Moeliker who authored the paper The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard, Anas platyrhynchos. Sounds to good to be true. Appearently, this guy was at his office when he heard a bang outside the window. When looking out, he saw a mallard duck raping another dead member of the same species. And it kept on for 75 minutes (!) until Moeliker stopped the whole scenario. The destiny of the unfortunate duck was probably a result of ‘Attempted Rape Flight". Ah, nature - it always keeps me enchanted.

Sources: http://www.nmr.nl/nmr/pages/showPage.do?itemid=1930&instanceid=16 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1165607.ece

It's evolution, baby

2008-09-06T15:52:00.003+02:00

Image revised from http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=500821

Top news from Nature.com here! For me, this is exciting since it is a very good example of how the evolutionary forces can work. It concerns the tiger moths, which are rejected of a number of predatory species even though they'd probably make a good addition in terms of nutients. Some time ago, it was discovered that some tiger moths produces ultrasonic sounds. Now, this sound is also used by bats, which otherwise likes to eat other individuals of the Lepidoptera. But this sound it is not used to locate the moths. Instead, its used to ward them off, since the bats precive the sounds as toxicity signals (and the tiger moths don't really taste good so if the bat would take a chunk, he'd probably leave it directly which in turn leaves no gain for either the moth or the bat). Tiger moths that are around during summer, when bats are a major threat, uses this as a good way of avoiding becoming dinner. However, some other types emerges when it's springtime and the bats aren't as active. Then, there are other greedy eyes in the environment, such as birds. To cope with this other type of predator, these tiger moths rely on bright coloring to send of some statements to the birds that there's no use in eating them since they would taste unpleasant. Visual signals is also used during the summer, but mainly in day active moths since the daylight makes colors more efficiant. SO, what's cool about this is that two different predators and different light-settings have led to the divergence different antipredator defences within the same species. Like X-men, but for real.

Sources:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7209/edsumm/e080904-11.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7209/full/nature07087.html

When three become one

2008-09-04T21:16:00.004+02:00

I'm monogamous to the extreme, and have never understood why some people likes to wrestle around with several mates at the same time. I suppose I'm what many of my colleagues in the world of evolutionary biology would refer to as a "choosy female". I want one mate and when I find him (which I already have, but that's another theme) all my focus and energy will be on him. Of course, this is not a view that I share with many organisms. The animal kingdom is filled with mating behaviour that, if these manners would ever occur in humans, would make all our religious leaders and puritanists have multiple heart attacks.

For example, male toads mount the female from behind and then fertilizes her eggs externally. This is called amplexus. Since there are many males that have aburning desire to produce some offspring, a single female can be mounted by several males at once (called "multiple amplexus") and different eggs can be fertilized by different males (and the female may actually drown due to the heavy load but I suppose the males are to aroused to care). Multiple amplexus is presumably the reason behind the now-and-then reports of frogs with three heads. It's not one frog with three heads; its three frogs strongly indulging in corpulation so that it looks like one being. True love, perhaps...

Sources:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/3534361.stm

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/dn14638-animals-behaving-badly.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=specrt10_head_Wild%20sex

Do not feed the trolls

2008-08-30T16:18:00.003+02:00

Image revised from http://takeaction.oceana.org

To be such a tiny little planet in such an enormous universe, we have more strange beings that one would expect (of couse, I'm biased when it comes to determine what's "strange" and whats not but I'm sure you're all humans as well and therefore agree with me most of the time). In the liquid soup normally known as "the ocean", you can find all kinds of amazing creatures; many that outraces your imagination. The up to 3.3 m long Goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) looks like something a juvenile H.P. Lovecraft could come up with. Being mainly pink, it differs from the other sharks. Another striking character is the long snout (for sensing its way around in the dark) and its intimidating jaws, so it might be settling to know that it lives in deep water far away from your toes. An anatomic remarc is the size of this shark's liver, which can weigh as much as 25% of its body mass. The reason for this is not known. Perhaps it likes to take a pint now and then.

What's in a name? That which we call a fly

2008-08-29T17:51:00.005+02:00

Image taken from http://www.ars.usda.gov/

I've always been facinated by names. When I had a "native american"-period as a juvenile, I used to imagine what name I might have. Coming up with such wonderful names as "raging thunder", I am quite happy that my re-babtism was inoficially performed in my girlroom and that I still go under a "normal" swedish name. Still, I'm intruged by names; by their background and purpose. Therefore I reacted when I just encountered the phorid fly's latin name - Apocephalus paraponerae - that basically states that this organism decapitates ants. When an ant of the species Paraponera clavata gets injured or is involved in a fight, female phorid flies are attracted and starts to lay eggs in the ant's head so that, eventually, the head of the ant falls of. Imagine the horror movies that you could make out of this concept!

Image taken from http://fireant.ifas.ufl.edu

Source: Pheromones and animal behaviour : communication by smell and taste (book)
by Wyatt Tristam

Kill 'em all!

2008-08-28T20:00:00.012+02:00

Image revised from http://www.newscientist.com/

Life ain't easy. There's always a threat lurking around the corner, whether you're a human or a bacteria. Therefore, there are as many defence mechanisms as there are species (if not more!). The poor Japanese honeybees (Apis cerana japonica) are subject of the giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica), who - upon finding and entering a honeybee nest - will destroy it and take the honeybee broods to feed their own larvae. Brutal! In Homo sapien conflicts, destruction of villages and cities are known throughout history but I've never heard of soldiers taking babys to feed their own.

Of course, since evolution is as magnificent as it is, the honeybees have evolved a defence mechanism and it is just as brutaly remarkable as the hornets attack. When the hornet arrives to a nest and marks it (with a pheromone), guard bees starts to send out signals (also pheromones) that makes all bees near the entrance to retreat into the nest. Then, more than 1000 worker bees gather just outside the entrance, and if a hornet tries to enter, the workers form a huge ball that surrounds the intruder. The hornet becomes marked with venom and secretion so that all workers knows that they should focus their attack energy on it. The most brutal thing is how the hornet is finally destroyed: the swarm around it generates a lot of heat (it can reach up to 47 degrees C) so it is basically roasted to death. Now, how's that for a defence!

Image revised from http://sequentialscribbles.blogspot.com/2008/01/and-you-thought-wasps-were-bastards.html

Source:
Pheromones and animal behaviour : communication by smell and taste (book)
by Wyatt Tristam

Nothing of value!

2008-08-27T20:45:00.002+02:00

Yep, I suck at keeping this blog somewhat alive and vivid. This time my excuses are a weekend in Budapest followed by a kick-off 2-day visit (for my research school) in the north of Scania. To further stir up my mental status, my 14 year old dog had to be put to sleep (due to old age) and my cat feels neglected and therefore have started to urinate and scratch at my boyfriends expensive couch.

WELL, nevermind that. I will try to be stoic. At least I was able to shoot some cool animals in Budapest. So here's one I'm quite satisfied with. Since I just came home from a crayfish party at my department I won't write anything of value. Instead I encourage you to surf on to this site or this site and read something about the so called "vampire moth". That's a name you won't forget!

Little oh pretentious me

2008-08-18T20:16:00.004+02:00

Image revised from http://user.it.uu.se/~svens/larverna/normal.html

I've just started a new era in my life; an era that in its simplest form probably will be called "all work no play", or just "my PhD". During the previosly five years of my life I've stumbled forward in my education and now I've landed in a position that I couldn't have imagined even a year before BUT it is a position that fits me perfectly. I will work with "white biology", I will work with bioinformatics, I will work with genetics, I will work with evolution, I will work with creatures on six legs and I will work in the most beautiful surroundings in the natural science part of Lund University.

Basically, I will try to penetrate the evolution of novel pheromone systems in moths. Hopefully, I will be able to get a hold on peculiar curiosities and be able to take some cool photos to post on this blog. But until then I will try to bombard this little dead end of the web with other things that I find interesting.

Image revised from http://gallery.photo.net/photo/4318247-md.jpg

Check out this link for more pictures, in the same theme as the first, that will make your skin itch!

Visions of the hog

2008-08-16T16:35:00.003+02:00

Seriously speaking, t h a t beast makes me uncomfortable...

Uppnosed tigerrr

2008-08-16T16:22:00.002+02:00

(I found this image in an old map in my old computer so I can't give you any background or source)

Eating for life

2008-08-16T14:51:00.008+02:00

Image revised from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/thematerialworld_20060511.shtml

Being a living creature, your main issue - whether you like it or not - is to mature and survive long enough to produce offsprings. Internet-using animals (usually known as humans) are lucky to have evolved to a point where its beneficial to have living and caring parents, monogamous partners that like to see you happy and healthy, and to enjoy being part of a continous social Homo sapiens-pack. Many species aren't that lucky.

For example, the limbless amphibian Boulengerula taitanus starts its life by eating its mother. Actually, the teeth of this little beeing have evolved perfectly for this task. The mother survives this horrifying motherhood state (when one layer is eaten, there's another one underneith), and will live to see her gene pool grow up and perhaps enjoy one more round of being breakfast, lunch and dinner all at once.

Then, we have sexual cannibalism. The females of Latrodectus hasselti (a subspecies of the Black widows) likes to end the copulation by devouring the male. If he manages to leave the scene without being eaten, he's still doomed because of all the injuries that comes with the sexual procedure. Beats snuff-movies both in gore and intelligence.

Image revised from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Red_back_spider_closeup.jpg

The mating behaviour of the Mantis religiosa (the praying mantid) starts off with a very cautious male closing in on a female. The odds are kind of against him; he's at a 31% risk of having to leave this world after having accomplished a mating. Paradoxially he's more attracted to larger females that - if they're hungry - further lower his chance of getting out alive.

Image revised from http://damecarcass.blogspot.com/2008/03/hunger-in-living-room.html

Sources: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0412_060412_flesh_eating.html http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/ZO9920001.htm
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=5377394

The gene that Fearnot did not have

2008-08-13T13:46:00.007+02:00

Image revised from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070725152040.htm

I'm a horror litterature nerd. During my pre-teen summer holidays - when all my friends were out in the sun - I was at the library searching for anything spooky, written down by masters such as E. A. Poe, M. R. James, W. H. Hodgson ect. The only thing that kept me from discovering the macabre world of horror movies were infact my dear mother. She doesn't think highly of "evil flattering" so whenever I pointed my finger towards Tales from the crypt, Salems lot, or Evil dead when we were in a video store she wrinkled her nose and promptly said no.

Of course, later on I was able to get the movies myself. By the age of 12, I had a friend who kindly enough invited me over now and then for late nights with popcorn and Braindead. So early on I was accustomed to bloody flicks and gore galore.

Therefore, the findings of a gene that is linked to “why horror films make some people scream in terror while others may simply laugh” is hard to apply on people with the same horror background as me. The gene is involved in dopamine regulation, and the carriers of this variation generally response more dramatically to unpleasant images, due to the regulation affecting the startle reflex. It is completely new in evolution (which means that no other primate has it) and could be of some advantage. I would guess that being a stone age Homo sapiens, it would be better to be scared and run away than to stay and wrestle a sable toothed kittie.

If you're wondering about my title, it's from one of The storyteller episodes - Fearnot! I was obsessed with that tv-show when I were a kid. I have to buy that DVD-box soon...

Source:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/08/scaredycat_gene_will_make_you.html

Yummy, yummy, yummy I got love in my tummy!

2008-08-12T12:41:00.003+02:00

Image revised from http://morningnoonandnight.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/honey-does-not-spoil/

Appearantly, it's 12 little bugs, that bug around in the stomach of the honey bee, which makes it able for honey to live up to the paradox of being both sweet and seductive yet healthy and antibacterial. Without the bacteria in their tummies, the bees are left without a immune system and are therefore an easy target for outer, wicked forces. Out of the 12 bacteria, four belongs to the gram-positive genus of Bifidobacteria, while the other eight belongs to the Lactobacillus genus. It would be soooooo cooooool to know how they've evolved along with the bees and how their genome looks like!

Source: http://hd.se/skane/2008/08/12/helsingborgsforskare-har-loest/

It's the inside that matters...

2008-08-12T12:01:00.003+02:00

Image revised from http://twi-ny.com/twiny.01.04.06.html

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I took the advantage of living close to Copenhagen (we live in the 3rd largest city in Sweden; Malmö) and went to see Bodies - the exhibition, which is currently on display for all those willing to pay a couple of danish crowns (150 dkr, but since I still have a student licence I only had to pay 120 dkr - jie-ha!). The exhibition shows the body, that we all posess (surprising, huh!), from an inside perspective. By removing all bodily fluids and replacing them with a polymerizing substance all cells are kept in place and thus it's able to reveal how organs, tendons, muscles, nervs ect., are organized. This creates an extraoirdinary view of the human body that I bet you've never seen before (unless you're Jeffery Dahmer or something).

Image revised from http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/photos/popup.asp?gtitle=Bodies%3A%20The%20Exhibition&SubID=1823&page=0&css=gtitle.css&pubdate=09/27/06

The only semi-negative comment to BODIES that strucked me during my walk through the exhibition is that I'm a bit tired of they way that muséums always presents things rooting from live sciences. It's always short "this is how it is"- and "scientist has found"-notes that presents the objects on display. This doesn't really invite the visitors to question facts any further, which really is the machinery that keeps life science going. If the visitors are encouraged to parcipitate in any activity regarding the exhibition, it's always to conclude something that is said rather than something that invokes curiosity to know more. I may be naive but I believe that science could "catch" more attention and draw more minds to the field if we had a more humble and encouraging approach when showing off some gleam of findings to the people. Just a thought! Having said that, here are some more images from the exhibition:

Image revised from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/nyregion/30bodies.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Image revised from http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_13616.shtml

Image revised from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/photogalleries/cadavers_exhibition_museum/

Born kickin'

2008-08-11T23:02:00.002+02:00

How about starting a new clade from this 6-legged Bambi? Would sure be something...

No candy for you, missy!

2008-08-08T14:25:00.006+02:00

Ever thought about why your dog has a sweet-tooth and gladly indulge in your cookies and sweets, while if you offer your cat a piece he/she stares at you as if you were stupid just for thinking that he/she would even smell at it? Well, as much as some people would like to believe that cats are smarter than dogs (which is based on the independance of most cats compared to most dogs, which in turn is a false indication of intelligence since this reasoning would state that the lone ourangutangs are much, much more smarter than us human that likes to get along with all the other kids...but that's a whoooole different entry), this is not the answer to the candy question. Actually, cats can't taste the sweetness at all. Sometime during cat evolution the kittie ancestor lost the ability to have taste receptors for all things being sugary. I would think that this is ok since their diet is more dependant on amino-acids than carbohydrates (if I didn't have my childish liking of chocolate and cookies I would gladly remove this part of my genome too!)

Since this is not exclusive for our cute little homies that cuddles with us hairless primates, but concern all cats (tigers, lions, yeah you get it now) I suppose I'll be safe on a savannah if I dress up as a lolipop? This must be tested empirically...

Sources:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2063449

Yin and yan all in one piece

2008-08-07T19:38:00.007+02:00

We'd like to think that our gender/sex/whatever lies behind the stating that "it takes two to tango" is someting essential ever since we became a sperm&egg hybrid. Well, you could say that it is like that on the paper but nature can't really read. There are therefore several interesting "neither male nor female" cases both in cell way (such as Klinefelter syndrome, Triple X syndrome, XYY syndrome, Turner syndrome and so on) and in body way (hermaphroditism and ovotestism). There's nothing wrong with individuals having these so called "symptoms", other than that they fall out of what we preceive as being normal. As if anyone were...

Anyway! There's more beautiful examples found in nature of how unspecific gender determination could be. One goes under the term "gynandromorphism". It basically means that in a specimen you can find both male and female characteristics. This has been found in moths as well as in some lobsters. Take a look at the claws of the crab in the upper picture and you can see that one side shows female features whereas the other show male features.

There are two possibilities in this "condition": the sex differences can either be separated in two sides of the individual (called "bilateral gynandromorphism") or be mosaic.

Images revised from: http://www.daltonstate.edu/galeps/images/jpegs/Papilionidae/Pa%20glaucus%20gynandromorph2.jpg http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/dual%20sex%20moth%20NHM.JPG

Even if they have male and female characteristics, they are unable to use them for reproductive purposes. This, I suppose, is a way of preventing the possibility for the ultimate incestous mating to happen (self-fertilization, that is) since this isn't really a good thing if you're not a flower.

I also found a site stating that they have a gynandromorphic finch! Read about it here.

Sources:
http://www.lobsters.org/ldoc/ldocpage.php?did=436 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynandromorph

The Guinae sea monster is waiting for your bare naked toes

2008-08-05T20:27:00.003+02:00

It's things like this that makes me feel unconfortable in waters where I can't see the bottom. I mean, it has fur, four paws and a tail and its huuuuge. And it lurks under the surface waiting for YOU.

Well, what could it be? A hoax? A deformed and decomposed whale? A goldfish that's been living in the spill water of a nuclear power plant? One of Cthulhu's spawns? A new species? If its the latter, it would be sooo cool to see how a live specimen looks like.

Maybe its some old, extinct animal that's been frozen for millions of years in some ice mass far away, but due to the warmer climate it has thawed and drifted away with the sea current. Whatever it is, it further confirms that that chill I get down my spine when I'm swimming over black water, has reason for being there.

Want to see more? Then go to:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1833320/posts
http://www.scienceray.com/Biology/Marine-Biology/Six-of-the-Seas-Scariest-Monsters.115045

Mother maggot

2008-08-04T12:22:00.004+02:00

I'm back from Wacken Open Air with a bucket full of good concert memories and stuff like that. This isn't really a curiosity post, but I had to tell the world that on the busride home I became the cradle for some newborn housefly maggots. It wasn't my intention at all, really. When a huuuuge fly landed on my leg I left it alone because I wanted to have a look at it before it flew away again. To my suprise, and somewhat to my disgust it started to shoot of small, twisting little maggots right on top of my leg. It managed to drop of abcout 10 little future flies before I was able to understand what really happened and waved it, and the maggots away. Quite a little adventure...

99 bottles of nectar on the wall

2008-07-29T17:24:00.004+02:00

Fermented beverages are not exlusive for Homo sapiens, although we do consume it in an impressive quantity and together with weird rituals compared to other animals. Now it turns out that a treeshrew species (Ptilocercus lowii) consumes the fermented nectar (3.8 %) from a specific tree, which in turn makes the little creature have a high blood concentration of alcohol at any time. This doesn't mean that we have a jungle full of intoxicated treeshews, since the alcohol apparently leaves the threeshews uneffected from the drunk behaviour humans can boast with.

Now I'm off for five days at Wacken Open Air where I will indulge in my other main interest, which is the heavier/harder side of music. While there I will probably consume some beer and when I do, I will have the treeshrub in mind!

Source:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/07/25/0801628105.abstract?sid=4704ed9e-9f9e-4b54-9cc1-9ae8cb46e4a7

Holy pig!

2008-07-28T12:25:00.005+02:00

An acquaintance sent me this link of a piglet with a wretched face twisted into a monkey-like appearance. It was born in a chinese village and scared the whole community. Appearently, only the son of the family seems to appriciate the little piggy (a promising child, I would say!).

I myself would like to take it home, pet it, feed it and have it as my very own for ever and ever and ever. And of course, I would try to breed of it. Wouldn't that be something...

Cthulhu's spawns has 96 arms

2008-07-25T15:46:00.004+02:00

Image revised from http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/07/monster-octopi-with-scores-of-extra-tentacles/

I once read the book "Maya" by the norwegian writer Jostein Garner. In one chapter, two of the book's charachters discusses how eventual intelligent lifeforms from other worlds would look like. One of the guys states that they ought to have two hands "because that is enough". In my teenage head I thought that was a good quote so I've kept it with me (of course, I've realized over the years that is not true since evolution isn't a goal-oriented force of nature...but never mind that!).

That is, I thought it was a good quote until I came across this picture of a 96-armed (!!!) octopus (found in Shima Marineland Aquarium). Since octopusses are highly intelligent, this defintitely speaks against the Maya-philosophers view on bright extraterrestrial life.

So I guess that this means that we don't know what to expect when trying to socialize with E.T. and his kin. All Lovecraft-freaks must be
thrilled.

Engrish.com

2008-07-24T16:57:00.002+02:00

This is not really a curiosity but if you enjoy the misunderstandings language differences can give rise to, please visit engrish.com. Homo sapiens - same same but different.

Spooky flowers!

2008-07-23T17:08:00.003+02:00

Image revised from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Monotropa_Uniflora_National_Forest_45_Oregon.JPG

The ghost flower Monotropa uniflora is a freaky organism. Its often mistaked for being some kind of fungus but it is truly a plant, although a plant that lacks chlorophyll! Instead of getting energy from sunlight, it takes carbonic compounds (i.e. sugars) from a mycelial fungi that in turn has taken advantage of a photosyntetic plant though symbiosis. This sneaky way of getting nutrients is known as mycoheterotrophy. Since the ghost flower doesn't need sunlight it can actually grow in the dark. If you don't think that is cool, you're not my friend.

Image revised from http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/regions/eastern/DukesTrail/index.shtml

Being all white and pretty, its tempting to pick a bouquet and bring home but this is not a good idea. Due to its dependance on other organism for energy, the plant will wither away in just a few hours.

Image revised from http://www.missouriplants.com/Whitealt/Monotropa_uniflora_page.html

Sources: http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/oct2002.html http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/2005/07/monotropa_unifl.php http://www.mykoweb.com/articles/Mycorrhizas_5.html

World of worms

2008-07-21T16:05:00.007+02:00

Image revised from http://kentsimmons.uwinnipeg.ca/16cm05/16labman05/lb5pg5.htm

I've never liked worms. Actually, you can say that I have a worm-phobia without exaggerating. Since I am a person who wants to be in control of all feelings, this is not really a part of my psyche that I like. Therefore, I try to approach the world of the worms in baby steps. My goal is to be able too look at a living earthworm or leech without feeling the primitive urge to scream and act like a crazy person. But that lies in the future. For now, I'm content with myself when I'm able to read about more pretty worms without any hint of unpleasantness.

Image revised from http://members.aol.com/uwphotohi/Images/flatworm.JPG

Marine flatworms are worms that I can cope with when seen on picture. The mating ritual of some species is fairly entertaining. Being hermaphoditic, the worms produce both eggs and sperms so when getting down to buisness these species have a hard time to decide who's going to be the taker and who's going to be the giver. Therefore they engage in a funny little game called penis fencing (!). The rules is that the first worm to pierce the other one with its penis gets to be the inseminator. The "looser" has to carry the future baby worms. Helluva game I'd say. Imagine the red light district in Amsterdam if humans would mate in this way and you'd get a funny but disturbing picture.

Image revised from http://www.rossum.com/maldiv99/maldive1/images/flatworm.jpg

Image revised from http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/klimt/11/photos.htm

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platyhelminthes

La Specola

2008-07-20T17:51:00.004+02:00

Before I leave this earthly state (which I hope won't be in the next 200 years or so), I plan to visit some of the worlds most exquisite muséums/collections of anatomy and biology oddities. One museum that's on the top ten of my list is "La Specola", which is located in Florence. It has an astonishing collection of anatomical waxes (an art from the 17th century with educational purposes). Have a look on these models and get impressed:

Sources:
http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/museum_of_natural_history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Specola

Images taken from:
http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2008/02/wombs_waxes_and_wonder_cabinet_1.php
http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/museum_of_natural_history.html
http://english.firenze.net/turismo/cm_dettaglio.wbs?id_contenuto=4743&id_categorie=25

Elevating expectations

2008-07-18T19:14:00.001+02:00

Yay, it's friday!

We accept you, one of us! Gooble gobble! Gooble gobble!

2008-07-17T19:55:00.006+02:00

I've always had a soft-spot for deviations of what we generally precive as being normal. Having grown up in a town where anything except "being normal" is regarded as something that needs to "know its place" (and its place is among all the other sheep), I've always felt more or less misplaced. So ever since I was old enough to visit the the library (and when internet entered my pre-teen life) I've indulged in the colourful world of so called "freaks".

The movie "Freaks" came out 1932, and its one of my personal favorites (along side with Life of Brian by Monty python, as well as some horror flicks). The essence of this movie is basically that its not the "freaks" that are the monsters, but the "normal" humans. Of course, this could be seen upon as being positively discriminating of the "freaks", which in turn is almost as bad as negative discriminating BUT I precive the movie as encouraging a rich individual fauna. Here's some beautiful screenshots:

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaks

Plantae universalis

2008-07-16T13:55:00.005+02:00

Scientists at NASA have actually figured out how potential plants on other planets might be colorized. Depending on the planets atmosphere (that works as a radiation filter, so it kind of decides what light that will be served to any plant down on the surface) and the type of star it orbits (for example, our sun emits most of its energy in the green spectrum…although most of this is later absorbed by the ozone in our atmosphere), the plant could be in basically any colour but blue. Although blue is a tempting colour for making up alien rainforest, flesh eating flowers and so on, it is a highly unlikely imagination since the majority of photosynthetic organisms harvest blue light and leaves no left over for the eye.

What makes my head scratch is why the scientist believe that they might find organism that would resemble our world's photosyntetic organisms that much. I would imagine the evolution of photosyntesis far too complex to be reproducible in similar ways of what we know. But hey, that's just my humble 25-year old mind being snotty.

Sources:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-color-of-plants-on-other-worlds

UPDATE

Wouldn’t this be the perfect evolution study project: you take some (tons!) earthly seedlings of various known plant species, hitch a ride with a space shuttle to the closest planet with a life-friendly atmosphere and place out the seedlings all over the planet. Then go home, watch TV and wait a couple of million (or billion) years until you can return to the planet. When you return, you ought to see how time and new premises have affected photosyntesis. Would all of the plants evolve in the same directions (e.g. would they all be green? Or red? Or yellow?) or would they have scattered into a rainbow of photosynthetic possibilities?

Freaky fungi

2008-07-15T21:04:00.006+02:00

I’ve always had a soft spot for various types of fungi, may they be edible, inedible or poisonous. During my early years, I remember watching a TV-documentary about the Australian rainforest when suddenly the camera zoomed in on a pretty, slimy fungus in lovely colours. I asked my mother what I had to do if I wanted to work with this enchanting kingdom. She gave me the answer that I had to study hard and become a biologist of some kind and at least for a moment, I sat my mind on that. (Actually, this summer I finally took my master degree in molecular biology having done a fungi-related project and I had the opportunity to continue doing a fungi-PhD but I had to turn that down because of another offer that I couldn’t refuse).

The almighty Linnaeus didn’t exactly share my liking of the fungi. He referred to them as a disgusting piece of mess and called them the roaming rabble of Flora. It was another Swede, namely Elias Fries that first set the foundations for the modern mycology. Basically, what we see as a fungus is the tip of the ice berg and is only a reproductive construction called the fruiting body. The majority of the organism lives multicellular filaments forming a mycelium (although some live as single cells, such as yeast).

Fruiting bodies are in my point of view the most vivid formations of what we know as life. Here are some examples of fungi (almost all are stinkhorns) that make my heart go a little bit quicker:

Phallus impudicus

The name Phallus shamelessly points out that the fruiting body of this fungus resembles a human penis. This one is a smelly bastard, which has given it the name “stinkhorn”. Of course, some brave mouthed person has once discovered that this stinky thing is edible and therefore it is consumed in parts of Germany and France (although in its younger not-so-phallic-looking form).

(Image revised from http://www.owlspleasure.com/sculpture/mushrooms/Phallus%20impudicus.JPG)

Clathrus ruber

Oh! This one – Clathrus ruber – just makes me happy all the way out to my fingertips. It looks like a metal climbing construction that we had in some play yards in my hometown (maybe that’s the reason behind my happiness) and apparently the inside is covered with smelly slime. A fungi for every childish mind that is not set on princesses and action figures!

(Image revised from http://micologia.net/g3/albums/Chlatrus-ruber/Clathrus_ruberfer.jpg)

Aseroë rubra

Now this is just weird. The anemone stinkhorn (Aseroë rubra) looks like something that managed to escape Roswell and catch a flight from the US to Australia since this is the continent where it resides. As the other mentioned fungi, this is also a stinky, slimey creature.

(Image revised from http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/aseroe_rubra.jpg)

Hydnellum peckii

Out of the stinkhorn gang and into the tooth fungus world – here’s a bleeding tooth fungus. The fruiting body alters droplets of a red fluid on the salmon-pink, spongy body. The pigment that gives the “blood” its colour is called atrometin, which is similar to the anticoagulant heparin used in health care.

(Image revised from http://mushroomobserver.org/name/show_name/232)

Sources:

http://www.naturskolan.lund.se/blad/blad63-svamp/blad63.htm

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Fries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus

http://www.rogersmushrooms.com/gallery/DisplayBlock~bid~6601.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_impudicus

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/clathrus_ruber.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asero%C3%AB_rubra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydnellum_peckii

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~gbarron/MISCE2002/hpeckii.htm

Scotoplanes

2008-07-15T15:59:00.000+02:00

I'll start of with presenting a funny little entity that I first came across earlier this year, in a blog post (perhaps through nature.com? I can't remember.) of novel deep sea findings. Along with giant sea stars, horrifying worms and other breath taking creatures there was a chubby jellyish thing that caught my eye. It was referred to as the not really flattering name "sea pig" and naturally, I had to know more...

(Image revised from: http://galathea3.emu.dk/es/blog/cerdos-de-mar.html)

For marine biologist, the sea pig goes under the name Scrotoplanes. They feed on things found in the mud of the deep sea floor by using the tentacles to scope it in. Sea pigs live on or underneith the surface of the bottom. I don't know if the position is decided by the species or if all species can live both ways (maybe someone else knows?). Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, but I can't seem to make up my mind on whether or not I'd like the appearance of the Scrotoplanes or if I'm just overwhelmed by unpleasant feelings. As one of my friends stated when I presented her a picture, "I am happy yet disgusted at the same time". They're cute, but ugly. They make you wanna cuddle them followed by shrieking in horror when you feel their cold (at least I imagine them as being cold) movement on your palm. They invoke very opposing feelings indeed...

Scrotplanes belong to the phylum Echinoderms, which includes other sea floor creatures such as sea stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers. In the phylum, they are further classified as Holothuroidea, which states that they are more related to the sea-cucumbers than the other members of this phylum. Together they form large groups on the sea floor, making their way in a sludge-like fashion. Movement is generated by using long tube feet. I don't know if these feet is what can be seen on the picture on the left, or if those feet-like thingies are just some tentacles or confusing ornaments of unknown purpose.

(Image revised from http://www.mbari.org/benthic/holothurians.html)

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotoplanes
http://animals.jrank.org/pages/1631/Sea-Cucumbers-Holothuroidea-SEA-PIG-Scotoplanes-globosa-SPECIES-ACCOUNTS.html

Abeunt studia in mores

2008-07-15T15:36:00.000+02:00

So, I figured I ought to start a blog. Again. I spend to much time just googling words, definitions, phrases etc. to satisfy my curiosity, which is - I allow myself to say - almost limitless, without archiving my finds. I am not that type of creature that accept things as they are presented to me; I always find something peculiar that generates more and more questions. Mind you, these questions may be of no interest at all for others but I happily indulge in my greedy quest to know some more.

Of course, not everything is uninteresting. I'd like to think that I learn many extraordinary facts. Therefore I tend to spam my acquaintances with links, photos and whatever I feel can enchant them. This is basically the reason why I decided to blog; to pretend that there are beings interested in what I find interesting. Now I feel kind of egocentric...but again, aren't we all?

Oh, and by the way. The title of this first post (abeunt studia in mores) is my favorite latin phrase at the moment. It meens (well, at least it is supposed to meen) through study carachter grows. I thought it was a suitable title for a blog of this kind...