Scientists have found 450-million-year-old fossilized crustaceans entombed with their eggs and newly hatched offspring. At least one of the animals is a newly identified species.
The tiny ostracods — arthropods related to shrimps, lobsters, and crabs — were buried by a mudslide in an area of upstate New York, near Rome, at a time when the entire region was deep underwater. In one specimen, both eggs and early embryos are present with the adult female. (more…)
Humans aren’t the only species with a sweet tooth. Research from North Carolina State University shows that the invasive spotted-wing vinegar fly (Drosophila suzukii) also prefers sweet, soft fruit – giving us new insight into a species that has spread across the United States over the past four years and threatens to cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to U.S. fruit crops.
“Because we know that D. suzukii prefers softer, sweeter fruit, we can focus our research efforts into which wild fruits may serve as reservoirs for this species and help identify new crops that might be at risk,” says Dr. Hannah Burrack, an assistant professor of entomology at NC State and lead author of a paper on the research. “These findings may also be a starting point for plant breeders interested in developing new fruit varieties that are more resistant to D. suzukii.” (more…)
Are you allergic to peanuts and worried there might be some in that cookie? Now you can find out using a rather unlikely source: your cell phone.
A team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a lightweight device called the iTube, which attaches to a common cell phone to detect allergens in food samples. The iTube attachment uses the cell phone’s built-in camera, along with an accompanying smart-phone application that runs a test with the same high level of sensitivity a laboratory would.(more…)
*Females influence the gender of their offspring so they inherit either their mother’s or grandfather’s qualities. ‘High-quality’ females – those which produce more offspring – are more likely to have daughters.*
*Weaker females, whose own fathers were stronger and more successful, produce more sons.*
The study, by scientists at the University of Exeter (UK), Okayama University and Kyushu University (Japan), is published today (9 January) in the journal Ecology Letters. It shows for the first time that females are able to manipulate the sex of their offspring to compensate for the fact that some of the genes which make a good male make a bad female and vice versa.
The research focuses on the broad-horned flour beetle, Gnatocerus cornutus, but the team believes the findings could apply to other species across the animal kingdom, even mammals. (more…)
*For ancient plants, two genes were definitely better than one*
In the wake of the disaster that killed the dinosaurs, the ancestors of today’s crop plants reinvented themselves.
They doubled their genomes, and in that single act set the stage for feeding the world 60 million years later.
In a study published in the Nov. 16 issue of the journal Nature, researchers from the University of Minnesota and other institutions recount how sequencing the genome of a model, alfalfa-like legume revealed the monumental benefits that flowed when the ancestor of legumes acquired an extra copy of every gene. (more…)
*Sea turtles face an uncertain future as a warming climate threatens to reduce their reproductive viability.*
*However, new research led by the University of Exeter and published this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that some turtles are naturally heat-tolerant.*
The study focused on green turtles nesting on Ascension Island, a UK overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. Scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Groningen found that eggs laid by turtles nesting on a naturally hot beach withstand high temperatures better than eggs from turtles nesting on a cooler beach just a few kilometres away. (more…)
*New UA research has discovered that seed beetles from the desert Southwest shelter their broods from attacking parasitic wasps under a stack of dummy eggs.*
They lead modest lives among the palo verde, mesquite and acacia trees throughout the Southwestern U.S., laying their eggs on seed pods and defending the survival of their offspring against the parasitic wasp species that attacks their eggs before their young can develop.
They are the seed beetles Mimosestes amicus, living all around us in the trees of Tucson, and yet remaining all but invisible to our eyes – or nearly so. (more…)
*A fossil from north-eastern China has revealed that terrestrial reptiles were giving birth to live young at least as early as 120 million years ago.*
The newly discovered fossil of a pregnant lizard proves that some squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) were giving birth to live young, rather than laying eggs, in the Early Cretaceous period – much earlier than previously thought. The fossil shows a pregnant female filled with the tiny skeletons of more than 15 baby lizards at a stage of development similar to that of late embryos of modern lizards. The mother lizard, which is 30 centimetres long (excluding her tail), probably died only a few days before giving birth.
The discovery is described in the journal Naturwissenschaften by scientists from UCL (University College London) and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. (more…)
