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Categories: Biology: General, Ecology: Animals
Published Neurobiology: How bats distinguish different sounds
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Bats live in a world of sounds. They use vocalizations both to communicate with their conspecifics and for navigation. For the latter, they emit sounds in the ultrasonic range, which echo and enable them to create an 'image' of their surroundings. Neuroscientists have now discovered how Seba's short-tailed bat, a species native to South America, manages to filter out important signals from ambient sound and especially to distinguish between echolocation and communication calls.
Published Killer instinct drove evolution of mammals' predatory ancestors
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source The evolutionary success of the first large predators on land was driven by their need to improve as killers, researchers suggest.
Published 'Dynamic duo' defenses in bacteria ward off viral threats
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scientists have discovered that bacteria can pair up their defense systems to create a formidable force, greater than the sum of its parts, to fight off attack from phage viruses. Understanding how bacteria react to this type of virus is a big step in combating antimicrobial resistance.
Published Compound vital for all life likely played a role in life's origin
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source A chemical compound essential to all living things has been synthesized in a lab in conditions that could have occurred on early Earth, suggesting it played a role at the outset of life.
Published Snakes do it faster, better: How a group of scaly, legless lizards hit the evolutionary jackpot
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source More than 100 million years ago, the ancestors of the first snakes were small lizards that lived alongside other small, nondescript lizards in the shadow of the dinosaurs.
Published Copies of antibiotic resistance genes greatly elevated in humans and livestock
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have uncovered a key link between the spread of antibiotic resistance genes and the evolution of resistance to new drugs in certain pathogens. Bacteria exposed to higher levels of antibiotics often harbor multiple identical copies of protective antibiotic resistance genes which are linked to 'jumping genes' that can move from strain to strain. Duplicate genes provide a mechanism for resistance to spread and enable evolving resistance to new drugs.
Published Metabolic diseases may be driven by gut microbiome, loss of ovarian hormones
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Mice that received fecal implants from donors that had their ovaries removed gained more fat mass and had greater expression of liver genes associated with inflammation, Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and atherosclerosis. The findings may shed light on the greater incidence of metabolic dysfunction in postmenopausal women.
Published Damage to cell membranes causes cell aging
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have discovered that damage to the cell membrane promotes cellular senescence, or cell aging.
Published Mice surprise: Researchers discover new native species
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Australia can lay claim to two new species of native rodent thanks to a new study. The aptly named delicate mouse was previously thought to be a single species spanning a massive stretch of the country from the Pilbara in Western Australia, across parts of the Northern Territory and through Queensland down to the New South Wales border. We now know there are three distinct species.
Published Scientists can tell where a mouse is looking and located based on its neural activity
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have paired a deep learning model with experimental data to 'decode' mouse neural activity. Using the method, they can accurately determine where a mouse is located within an open environment and which direction it is facing, just by looking at its neural firing patterns. Being able to decode neural activity could provide insight into the function and behavior of individual neurons or even entire brain regions.
Published Modeling tree masting
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source The effects of a phenomenon called tree masting on ecosystems and food webs can be better understood thanks to new theoretical models validated by real world observations.
Published Scientists discover link between leaky gut and accelerated biological aging
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source A professor has demonstrated a connection between viral damage to the gut and premature biological aging.
Published Researchers develop molecules for a new class of antibiotics that can overcome drug resistant bacteria
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source About a decade ago, researchers began to observe a recurring challenge in their research: Some of the compounds they were developing to harness energy from bacteria were instead killing the microbes. Not good if the objective of the project was to harness the metabolism of living bacteria to produce electricity.
Published TB vaccine shrinks liver cancer tumors in mice
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Could the TB vaccine be a new immunotherapy for liver cancer? A study found that the century-old vaccine reduced tumors and extended survival for mice with liver cancer.
Published Snaking toward a universal antivenom
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scientists discovered antibodies that protect against a host of lethal snake venoms.
Published Increasingly similar or different? Centuries-long analysis suggests biodiversity is differentiating and homogenizing to a comparable extent
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source The tendency of communities and the species within them to become more similar or more distinct across landscapes -- biotic homogenization and differentiation -- are approximately balanced, according to a new study. This analysis is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive assessment of how local and regional biodiversity changes combine across landscapes over centuries.
Published Revealing what makes bacteria life-threatening
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have discovered that a mutation in the cellulose making machinery of E. coli bacteria allows them to cause severe disease in people -- 'good' bacteria make cellulose and 'bad' bacteria can't. The mutations stopped the E. coli making the cell-surface carbohydrate cellulose and this led to increased inflammation in the intestinal tract of the host, resulting in a breakdown of the intestinal barrier, so the bacteria could spread through the body. Understanding how bacteria spread from intestinal reservoirs to the rest of the body is important in preventing infections and tackling antibiotic resistance.
Published Weedy rice gets competitive boost from its wild neighbors
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Weedy rice is an agricultural pest with a global economic impact. It is an aggressive weed that outcompetes cultivated rice and causes billions of dollars in yield losses worldwide. A study offers new insights into genetic changes that give weedy rice its edge over cultivated rice in tropical regions of the world.
Published Butterfly and moth genomes mostly unchanged despite 250 million years of evolution
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Comparison of over 200 high-quality butterfly and moth genomes reveals key insights into their biology, evolution and diversification over the last 250 million years, as well as clues for conservation.
Published Citizen science to mitigate the environmental crisis in the marine environment
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Citizen science can help to improve conservation and management strategies for Mediterranean marine ecosystems, and to mitigate the impact of the environmental crisis.