Whales Have Talent


Humpback whales have built a solid reputation as wandering troubadours, plying their trade across the South Pacific. The hotspot for song writing is off the eastern Australian coast where the singer/songwriters audition for the big time. The big time is really huge, as all the guys in a population learn the same song and sing it all the time.

These whale versions of Pop songs are split into verses, which are then repeated. Their tonal range is startling and the very low notes can carry enormous distances ensuring a wide audience. Recordings of humpbacks singing are widely available so we can groan and shriek along even if we don’t understand the words.

Whales being whales, and males to boot, are never quite satisfied with the product and must tune tweak and change verses, so their songs develop over time. Garland et al from U of Queensland have been avidly studying recordings and have just published their results (1,2). During the whale’s 4,000 mile singing tours, pirated copies of the songs turn up in local populations along the route, with the result that songs with the same roots are heard all across the Pacific, with local tweaks creeping in here and there of course.


  1. http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(11)00291-0
  2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9457000/9457855.stm

At First Sight


Last year a cooperative octopus living in an aquarium in Germany predicted the Football World Cup winners. This skill was a revelation to most of us who only meet octopus on our dinner plates. Sadly that wily octopus is now dead, so all bets are off for the 2014 Cup games.

It turns out that octopuses are quite bright lovable creatures. People who study them are aware of their individual personalities, their propensity to learn and solve problems, their ability to communicate visually and that they can recognize their lab caretaker, even if they don’t offer them multiple simultaneous hugs.

Tricarico and her Italian colleagues reported this week on a study of how well octopuses know their neighbors (1). In the wild, they don’t fight with their established neighbors but they do establish a pecking order. The question naturally arises then as to how easy is it for a new immigrant to move into the ‘hood?

When strange octopuses were allowed to stare at each other for a while, they recognized each other when they met again.  They had already sized each other up at first sight and in some cases dominance hierarchies changed. There had been no need to put things to the test and therefore, no ink had been spilt.

If the first encounter was short, the assessment was recalled for a day or so, but if they were staying for a while, they remembered for a much longer period.  Hence in the wild, the ‘hood is quiet with no undue gang violence.

  1.   http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018710

Aging Gracefully


Fruit flies in your kitchen are annoying little critters as they are telling all your visitors that you have over ripe (that is, rotting or fermenting) fruit available. They have a short life cycle; egg to adult takes a week, so your fruit fly restaurant gets crowded very quickly. The other side of the coin is that they make a good model system for scientists to study population behavior and change

In a paper published on Tuesday, Zou et al (1) described a detailed video study of their behavior, minute by minute throughout their lifetime. There was no privacy here. They were monitored as they rested, walked, flew, fed, drank or just scratched themselves.  The study showed that fly activity increased as the flies grew to their prime and then slowed down as they went past middle age and became elderly. Elderly flies spent much more time hanging around in cluster at the top of their cage complaining about the state of their world, the pushy exuberance of the younger guys etc.

A good healthy diet for fruit flies is a sugar and yeast smoothy. This keeps them up and flying well. As we all know (I think), a poor diet can lead to premature aging. A bad diet for fruit flies is to leave their vitamin B on the side of their plates and just drink the sugar water.

Using their tendency to laze around gossiping in clusters instead of getting around to their daily flying tasks as the indicator for reaching middle age, the team showed that middle and old age arrived much earlier when the flies were eating just junk food. A poor diet made the flies relatively hyperactive and increased their tendency after lights-out to stay hanging around bemoaning the state of their world. Rushing about, hustling on a poor diet had them middle aged in half the time of those living on a better diet and having a more relaxed well balanced lifestyle.

        1.  http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018151

Extreme Dates


We are all familiar with the nasty habits of female spiders and praying mantises eating their male friends after, or in some cases during, satisfying their lustful desires. However, it is always interesting to see someone bucking the trend, and when it comes to a whole species, it is even more compelling reading.

The Brazilian Wolf spider, Allocosa brasiliensis, who lurks in burrows in the sand prior to rushing out at night to grab an early breakfast, has settled on role reversal as a strategy for breeding success. Aisenberg et al from Clemente Estable Istitute, Montevideo.  In Uruguay have published a study (1) of 20 male Wolf spiders who were introduced to sprightly virgins and more experienced heavy bodied mated females.

The big boys ate 10% of the virgins on offer, but attacked 40% of the old gals and munched their way through 25% of the total on offer. The explanation is in the "extreme mate choice hypothesis" which the guys are going to go for the gals who will be most productive. The rest are lunch.

I guess guys will be guys and will be attracked to extreme sports. But these Wolf spiders seem to be determined to have their cake and eat it.


  1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01631.x/abstract

More Gosling Pictures




First Batch Hatch


The gosling hatch has commenced and the sitting around doing nothing is beginning to pay off, if you are a goose that is. These are the early birds. Some pairs still seem to be wandering about and can’t quite seem to concentrate on the job at hand. But there is a lot less squabbling going on and the ponds are peaceful.

Recent rains have brought the river level back up and the ponds are now at the highest that I’ve seen them. Some of the recent plantings are barely showing a tip above the water level. The cormorants are on vacation. The turtles are all over their abandoned logs, like huge barnacles whenever there is a hint of sun. Even a rumor seems to bring them out.

Some of the heron’s are working hard around the edges of the ponds. Their treetop nests are now well hidden by leaf growth. It is too soon to see if there are any chicks.



A Mug's Game


Whether we are old style hunter-gatherers in the forest or on the savannah, or are doing the equivalent in today’s modern, high tech world, cooperation between individuals in a group is a major factor in achieving success. How best to engender that cooperation is the subject matter of many books on the art of management and has turned many management consultants into fat cats. The usual recommended incentives are a blend of bonuses and punishments.

The laboratories most of the work is based on are in the field, with no controls and highly variable inputs. A new study by Pan and Houser of George Mason U (1) was carried out under regular laboratory conditions.  A large group of students were rounded up and handed a wad of experimental ‘green stuff’ to play an investment game. There were multiple rounds and sufficient controls to prevent corporate raids and other such capitalistic activities. The idea was for the groups to ‘invest’ in a project and the winners were the group that invested most generously. The kicker was that the bids were sealed so investment hysteria was out.

Of course games have winners and winners have prizes. In some rounds the prize was ice-cream. High quality of course, as would be suitable for future fat cats. In other rounds, the prizes were decorative mugs, suitable for prominent display on their desks, and of sufficient grandeur to brings ‘oohs and aahs’ from visiting friends and family.

The young women couldn’t get worked up enough to cooperate strongly for mugs. They went for the ice-cream. The young men in stark contrast were ambivalent when ice-cream was the reward, but would all invest heavily to win a trophy mug.

Those mugs would be permanently on display; announcing to the world the high status of those young men as Winners.

The long-term gains of the winning women might start off being on display, but perhaps not permanently after a spell of dieting.


1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018050#s3

Coffee Shopper


Sitting in the coffee shop corner of my local bookstore, my web ramblings turned up a couple of new and encouraging publications. The first one is the report of a metagenomic study from Caparoso et al from NIH, Bethesda (1) on a large number of  habitual caffeine consumers. The latter term is maybe more polite than addicts but I do need my early morning shot. It turns out that there are two spots on our genome that seem to be the culprits. It's always nice to be able to blame someone else for your habits and even better when it's a previous generation. 

Now, the discovery that one part of our genome sequence is helping us metabolize caffeine, whilst another part regulates the first part, is very encouraging. Since caffeine does good things for our health, apart from waking me up in the morning, understanding how we're programmed is important. It also can do bad things and maybe tracking the source of that response would be even more valuable. Some of us seem to be very intolerant to venti lattes, and maybe there is an opportunity there for some medical entrepreneur to offer some high priced genetic engineering service to those so afflicted.

Perhaps even more exciting for someone how is sitting in a store full of books to lust after, is the paper from Chang et al of NHRI in Taiwan (2). Retail therapy is now recognized as being a way towards longer and fuller life. Like all therapy, it has to be undertaken on a regular basis for it to be effective. Just once a week won’t do. Little and often is definitely the way to go.

We are left with the question of why does regular retail therapy improve your wellbeing and help you live longer? Note that it is an especially valuable therapy for the over 65s. My first thought, unworthy maybe, but first nevertheless, was that if we buy a lot, we owe a lot and we have to stay around to pay off the credit cards. But no, that’s not it. It’s the old physical activity and social interaction that does it. Scampering across the streets with loaded shopping bags will keep us nimble, and our vocabulary up to date.




  1. http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1002033
  2. http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2011/03/17/jech.2010.126698.short?q=w_jech_ahead_tab

Toothless


When I read that there has been a decline in the numbers of plants that indulge in meat-eating, I wondered if they had turned to a vegan diet out of necessity, green awareness or just because they were tired of a rich diet. If they had gone vegan, they would be unpopular with their neighbors, as they would have become parasites. Better that I suppose than choosing to eat each other.

Reading, rather than glancing at the paper by Jennings and Rohr the U of South Florida (J Bio Con), I see that it is not a change of habit but of habitat that is the lever for the decline. They are getting fewer because we are bad neighbors. We keep exercising our right of eminent domain to take away the land from under their roots.

As plants become rare, a parallel with our animal neighbors becomes evident. Just as we (well most of us) no longer hang parts of endangered dead animals on our walls to show how testosterone charged we are, most of us don't pick rare plants and press them in scrapbooks. But just as we go for exotic pets, we go out and buy or collect exotic plants from the wild. This has now become a significant threat to our plant friends of the carnivorous persuasion. 

Empathetically Yours


We all have a group of friends or relatives who make up our social circus and keep us entertained and happy. Our ingroup in psychological terminology, the members of which we feel empathy for and we laugh or cry with them. Other groups that we don’t know are out groups and here our empathy can be pretty thin.Empathy makes actions like laughing or crying a great deal more infectious. Hence, if we are a stand-up comedian or a politician – sorry for repeating myself just then– it is wise to stack the audience with some friends. 

Yawning too is infectious, as I have found to my cost when lecturing. The student classmates are an ingroup, and yawns can spread through my audience like wildfire. However, the yawning contagion isn’t confined to familiars with humans, strangers can catch it too.

So it is with dogs. The infectiousness of yawning goes wider than the ingroup. Dog empathy goes wider that just their friends. But then many dogs seem to be optimists and expect me to make a fuss of them without us having been formally introduced.

So what about Chimpanzees? Well Campbell and de Waal of Emory U have just published a study (1). Here a group of chimpanzees were shown videos of familiars and unfamiliars yawning. Although they were very interested in the unfamiliar chimps and trying to see if they checked with someone in a rogues gallery, they didn’t catch as many yawns as when they saw videos of their friends and relations yawning.

Note though that yawns from any of the chimp body were infectious. In an earlier paper (2) Campbell et al reported that chimps also caught yawns from 3-D chimp avatars. Must have been a pretty bad movie if even the avatars were yawning.



1.    http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018283
2.   Campbell et al.,Proc. of the Roy. Soc., Biological Sciences 276: 4255–4259

Rodentia Down Under


Deep in the Australian outback things are stirring. Being in the middle of an arid region, Alice Springs is a popular place to head for if you’re looking for a cool beer. Days are hot and nights are cool and flies are plentiful (except in September and October). But this year the rainfall has been a bit higher than usual. Not this past week though, it has been the normal hot ’n’ dry.

There is an influx of tourists predicted (1) due to the wetter than usual weather. These longhaired tourists are not welcome however. They are rodentia, and 12 inch long ones at that. The name on their documents is Rattus villosissimus. They are Australian natives and not recent immigrants, but they do have an unfortunate habit. That is, they can produce 12 babies every 3 weeks if left to entertain themselves.

Their home turf is in the Barkly Tableland in the Northern Territory, where rolling grasslands feed lots of beef cattle, and are watched over by Spencer’s Goanna, Ingram’s Brown Snake and Collet’s Snake. This year these guys have been asleep on the job, so the rodentia irrupted and have now gone walkabout.

The tourist mob doesn’t appear to have much interest in the Simpson Desert as they are heading west. Maybe for Alice’s Blatherskite Park to get settled in and ready for the 42nd Imparja Camel Cup race that will be held in early July. It is unlikely though, that the good citizens of Alice will be happy with that situation. If they were palatable, the barbies would be getting fired up now.

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12994713

Stealth Strategy


When we look around, the decrease in biodiversity becomes a concern as we realize that we are in the midst of another great extinction. This has an increased poignancy when we think how long these species have been around. Even more so when we think about the long low evolutionary process that we learned about some years ago. Things are not quite as settled as they seem though. Le Page (1) has put together a wide range of examples of very rapid speciation into one general article.

Evolutionary adaption can go in spurts in one direction and sometimes back again. A drought on one of the Galapagos Islands in 1977 wiped out plants that produced small seeds putting great pressure on large beak size that could tackle larger seeds. In a few years the average beak size was 4% larger, until 1983 when the weather went back to a wet cycle. Beak sizes went smaller again as small seeds became available and the food abundance pressure was reversed.

Small islands are good places to observe changes. A nice example comes from Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands when in the ‘90s a parasitic fly that targets crickets was introduced. Crickets get ultra noisy when looking for girlfriends and the loud chirps gave their location away to the fly, which would then pounce and lay an egg on the romantic cricket. The hatched larva would get stuck into it meal-ready-to-eat and munch its way through the live cricket.

The Kauai crickets went into evolutionary overdrive. Now nearly all the males have different shaped wings that don’t make chirping sounds. The parasitic fly population has dropped. The corollary is that the large number of stealth male crickets could have a particularly arid love life. But they developed a strategy. Now the stealth males cluster around the few chirpers that are still around. The females crowd in to attend the raves and nature has found a way to maintain romance on the island.

A chirping cricket is still a target for the fly, but the numbers are small and the few genetic stick-in-the-muds can hold the line. Would that the building environmental pressures could give us an evolutionary spurt in the brain department.


1. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028061.300

The First Social Network


Walking through the woods, we look up and admire the silent stalwarts competing for the sun, standing around apparently ignoring each other, trying to be a loner amongst the crowd. But under our feet, the underground network is active (1). No fiber optic-cables stuck in defined trenches here. Fungal threads stretch out in all directions to form a dense web, which can transfer water and nutrients. Young saplings that are well connected are healthier than those denied access to the web, as was demonstrated by Teste et al (2). But the most important thing that is sent along the underground is chemical information. Chemicals are the Lingua Franca, of our plant friends.

Bad news travels fast along the underground network. Zeng et al (3) poisoned a tomato plant by injection of a pathogen and stuffed its top in a plastic bag to keep it quiet. The underground was buzzing though, and the neighbors quickly rallied and activated 6 defensive genes. They weren’t going down without a fight!

Nepotism has a tendency to occur everywhere and plants are not immune to it. Dudley and File (4) watched while American sea rocket helped its younger brothers and sisters to a place in the sun. But it was a ruthless empire builder if planted among different species. Then its roots rushed out to grab the lion’s share of food and water. Some plants can also work harder in their defense against insect attack if backed up by their family. Being surrounded by their kinfolk stiffens their backbone.

Not all plants have a “family first” make up and companion plants are out there to be cherished. Peas and beans, for example, in a fit of global generosity, employ micro-factories manned by bacterial workers busily fixing nitrogen for the enjoyment and delectation of others.



1.    http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928051.500
2.    http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/08-1884.1
3.   http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013324
4.   http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/3/4/435.abstract

Spaced Out


“The Final Frontier” is becoming closer to us all. For your entrepreneur with everything, you can now fill in an online booking form (1) for a Virgin Galactic flight for his or her birthday. Currently, this is only for a short trip, as is appropriate when we realize that such successful entrepreneurs will need to get back to their gadgets and minions fairly quickly if they are to stay ahead.

Man is not very well designed for space and we suffer worrying side effects if we are out there too long, such as calcium loss from our bones and our muscle atrophying. Certainly in space, 70 is not the new 50 but more like the new 90. The problem is lack of gravity and not knowing which way is up. To shed further light on the 'which way is up' problem, a joint US and Russian program (2) has been going on in a rather slow fashion by sending snails up to wait in a space station for the next vehicle to come along.

Snails are good at telling which way is up. The have a chunk of calcium carbonate inside them that dangles and pushes on tiny hairs. This organ is called a statocyst and doesn’t seem to cause motion sickness as our ears can.

In fact when we return from an extensive trip to the frontier, we fall about rather as though the celebration was excessive. Our snail friends do not have this problem. They have a heightened awareness of the proprieties of being upright and respond to slopes and tilts faster than their earthbound brethren.

There is a strong suggestion that snails might make a good model system for the further investigation of gravitational modification to organisms. In addition they can be away from their desks for longer than any of the passengers of Virgin Galactic, who are living life at a slight faster pace than the snails.


1.    http://www.virgingalactic.com/booking/
2.    http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017710

To Fly, Or Not To Fly?


With the coming of Spring, it is traditional to turn our attention to the more romantic side of nature. I see that Cremer et al from the U of Regensburg reported on an interesting study (1) of the tactics of males of the ant species Cardiocondyla obscurior, which Seifert describes as a “cosmopolitan tramp species”. There are two types males in the colony. Those wingless guys who duke it out and laid back docile guys with large wings.

Of course all the guys are competitive, but if you have wings, you have more options. The wingless guys have no choice but to stay and find mates on their home turf. They are not good at tolerating those namby-pamby flyboys around their girls. For their part the flyboys use female perfumery to disguise their presence in the dark recesses of the nest.

This works less well as they grow older and eventually, they kick the dust off their feet and fly away to pastures new with virgin queens who are easier to win. If there are few or no wingless guys about at home, the emigration is not necessary and they can make hay with the young lady ants at home. We learn that those flyboys are very flexible in their behavior, one might even say opportunistic in their mating tactics.

Thinking about the mass migration of youngsters during Spring Break in the US or for summer vacation in the EU we should be pleased that, unlike the ants, this has not been a dispersal process.

1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017323 

Dissonant Notes


If someone said that you looked pale or pasty, it was usually meant to indicate that they were worried about your state of health. If it was your mom, then perhaps it was good news and meant a day off school. But it seems that the same observation applies to Gallic pigeons in Paris parks. Jacquin et al (1,2) have published a study showing that paler pigeons have a weaker immune system and are more prone to pigeon parasites.

Melanin seems to be the key to pigeon prosperity. There is apparently a genetic link between melanin production and the strength of their immune systems. More melanin means darker feathers and healthier birds.

Being French and in Paris parks, the inevitable questions arise about the romantic consequences. Well pigeon moms have taught their daughters not to participate in parades in Paris parks with pale pasty pigeon potential paramours.

On an entirely different matter, there is news of the protest at the Bronx Zoo. This was a one-snake protest by an Egyptian Cobra. She went on the slither for several days. Whilst she was on the Downlow, there was a Tweet or two from her, but they proved to be fictitious. Nevertheless there were hundreds of thousands of followers eager for news.

A week later, she is no longer on the Downlow but is back inside doing time. The “Found” Tweet went chirping round the Tweetisphere on Friday.



1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600048X.2010.05120.x/abstract
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9442000/9442210.stm