A new species of monkey with a red, bushy beard (pictured) has been discovered in theColombiansection of the Amazon rain forest, conservationists announced today.
A scientist first glimpsedCallicebus caquetensis—a type of titi monkey—in the 1960s. But political strife in the southern Caquetá Province (seemap) kept scientists away until 2008, when an expedition finally confirmed the bearded monkey as a new species. (See"New Monkey Species Found in Remote Amazon.")
The cat-size primate is"fascinating"because it mates for life, an unusual trait among monkeys, said expedition leaderThomas Defler, a primatologist at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. Pairs are often spotted sitting on branches with their tails intertwined.
A typical Caquetá titi couple has a baby every year, and the father handles most of the infant's care, other than nursing, Defler noted. It's unknown why the dad does most of the work, but there's likely an evolutionary advantage, he said. (See morepictures of devoted animal dads.)
Last seen in 1989,Costa Rica's golden toad (pictured) is perhaps the most famous of the"lostamphibians"—virtually extinct animals that may be eking out an existence in a few scattered hideouts, conservationists say.
The toad—which likely disappeared due to a combination of drought and thedeadly chytrid fungus—is one of ten species that scientists most hope to rediscover during an unprecedented global search for"extinct"amphibians launched today. The ten were chosen for their"particular scientific or aesthetic value,” according to project leader Robin Moore, ofConservation International.
Led by Conservation International and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'sAmphibian Specialist Group, the effort will seek out a hundred such species but invest mostly in ten species of high scientific and aesthetic value.
The new project comes amid a steady decline in worldwide amphibian species, 30 percent of which are threatened with extinction, according to Conservation International. (Read aboutvanishing amphibiansinNational Geographicmagazine.)
Jason Rohr, a University of South Florida ecologist not involved in the project, applauds its goals.
"But I also discourageanyone from interpreting any new discovery of these species as previous scientific error or evidence that the particular species, or amphibians in general, have not 'croaked,'"he said by email.
"While a few remaining individuals or isolated populations is certainly better than a complete extinctions, this would unfortunately be a small victory considering the catastrophic, global loss of amphibians."
One ofNorth America's most common bats will go extinct in the northeastern U.S. within two decades if a deadly disease continues to spread unchecked, scientists warn in a new study. And other bat species—including the rare Indiana bat—may soon follow suit.
The condition makes bats restless and disturbs their winter hibernation. Instead of sleeping peacefully, infected bats burn up their fat reserves, causing them to die at a staggering rate—almost 75 percent a year in affected colonies, research shows.
So far the syndrome is known to infect nine hibernating bat species, including the widespread and well-studied little brown bat. (Listen to bat calls.)
BiologistWinifred Frickand colleagues collected bat population data gathered over the past three decades from nearly two dozen hibernation sites in five states, and ran the data through population models.
Their analysis showed that little brown bat populations crashed when white-nose syndrome appeared in North America—perhaps introduced from Europe or another distant locale.
"We also found that if mortality continues the way we've seen it, the regional population of this bat ... will basically be gone from the landscape in 16 to 20 years,"said Frick, of Boston University and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
During 2010 infected bats were found as far south and west asTennesseeandOklahoma(see a U.S. map). The fungus has also spread north to the Canadian provinces ofQuebecandOntario.
"This is quickly becoming a continental scale problem,"Frick said."We're not surprised by this, but we are distressed by it."
And, as the ailment gets a foothold in more places, it's impacting more bat species.
"We chose little brown {bats} because we had really good data, and because they were a very common and abundant species,"Frick explained.
"But it's reasonable to assume that other hibernating species will face similar dangers, because the fungus grows in the hibernation sites. And some of those species, like the Indiana bat, are already endangered species."
There is no cure for the syndrome, though scientists are searching for ways to combat the disease.
Bat Extinctions Could Affect People, Too
Though the situation looks bleak for bats, humans also have cause for concern, Frick said. That's because the flyingmammalseat a lot of insects—such as mosquitoes—that damage crops, spread disease, and generally pester people.
Don't worry—oysterherpes isn't a new side effect of eating"the food of love."
The incurable, deadly virus is, however, alarming fishing communities inEurope, where oyster herpes seems to be spreading—and could go on spreading as seas continue to warm, experts say.
In July lab testing of farmed oysters detected the first knownUnited Kingdomcases of herpes in the shellfish. The virus has already killed between 20 to 100 percent of breeding Pacific oysters in some French beds in 2008, 2009, and 2010, according to theFrench Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea(Ifremer).
The reason for oyster herpes's emergence in Pacific oysters off England remains a mystery, thoughglobal warmingmay have played a part, experts speculate.
A new strain namedOstreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1)μvar (mew-var),the virus remains dormant until water temperatures exceed 16 C {61 degrees F}, which U.K. waters reach in the height of summer, according to Kevin Denham of the British government'sFish Health Inspectorate.
With that in mind, Tristan Renault, director of Ifremer's genetic and pathology lab, said that global warming"could be an explanation of the appearance of this particular type of the virus."
Though all herpes strains are DNA-based viruses, herpes, which infects everything from cows to clams to monkeys, comes in a wide variety of species, each with their own unique set of symptoms. Among humans, perhaps the best known forms are theHerpes simplexviruses, which are spread through close contact and can manifest themselves as oral and genital blisters.
Ostreidherpes viruses are known to affect not only oysters but also clams, scallops, and other mollusks, according to Renault.
The New Oyster Herpes
Herpes-infected shellfish aren't new to science, but in 2008—the first year a huge increase in mortality rates was detected inFrance—Ifremer detected a new variation of the virus.
Like the other strains of herpes that affect mollusks,OsHV-1μvarattacks young oysters during breeding season, when the mollusks' bodies are so focused on producing sperm and eggs that the oysters have no energy to maintain an immune system, Renault said.
ButOsHV-1μvaris"more virulent than strains we identified before,"Renault said, adding that the virus is so efficient at killing its hosts that it can wipe out 80 percent of the oysters in a bed within a week.
That death rate is the only outward sign something's wrong, he added, because a oyster herpes have no visible symptoms, and diagnosis is possible only through lab testing.
Though oyster herpes can't be transmitted to humans, it does threaten the fishing industry, since dead oysters are unsafe for eating—and that's exactly what worries oyster harvesters such asSeasalter Shellfish.
Based in the southeastern English city of Whitstable, where oysters have been harvested for centuries, Seasalter this summer became the first company to discover the herpes-ravaged oysters in the U.K.
The finding prompted an investigation by the Fish Health Inspectorate, which detected the virus and learned that Seasalter had employed equipment previously used in France to refurbish oyster beds.
"We were told it had been out of the water for a number of years,"Denham said."Nevertheless there's still a possibility"that the virus could have traveled from infected French beds via the gear. Possible culprits also include other reused equipment or water transferred from an infected area.
To keep the U.K. oyster-herpes outbreak from spreading, the British government has banned the shipping of oysters out of affected areas, most of which, like Whitstable, are around the mouth of the River Thames in southeastern England.
No matter what measures are taken, Denham said, oyster herpes is going to be tough to kick. Even if all the infected Pacific oysters are removed from oyster farms, wild Pacific oysters will still be present in surrounding waters, perhaps acting as"a reservoir for infection."
It's unlikely, though, thatOsHV-1μvarwould end up inU.S.oyster beds, Renault said, because the United States doesn't typically import oysters from Europe.
But a less virulent, herpes-like virus has been detected in farmed oysters offCalifornia. If sea temperatures continue to rise, he said, perhapsμvaror something like it could emerge in U.S. waters too.
Some dinosaurs, a new study suggests, knew very different crocs from today's reptiles—including a newfound fossil crocodile that might seem to have been designed by committee. (Seepictures of the prehistoric"cat crocodile.")
According to the study, the cat-sizePakasuchus kapilimaihad relatively long legs and a nose similar to adog's. Perhaps weirdest of all,Pakasuchus—literally,"cat crocodile"—hadmammal-like teeth that gave the crocodile a power previously unknown amongreptiles: the ability to chew.
As a result, the 105-million-year-old crocodile, researchers say, was something of a stand-in for mammals in the mammal-poor, long-gone southern supercontinent of Gondwana, which included thePakasuchusfossil site in what's nowTanzania.
According to lead study authorPatrick O'Connor,Pakasuchus's"legs were longer and more slender than what you think of for modern crocodiles ... and it had a little more of an upright stance,"the Ohio University paleontologist said.
Living among dinosaurs, the fossil crocodile—technically a crocodyliform—was also lankier and had fewer of the bony plates that armor modern crocodiles.
And unlike inmodern crocodiles—which have nostrils positioned on the tops of their heads, for breathing while swimming—the nose ofPakasuchuswas located at the tip of its snout, canine style.
"It was not like the crocodiles we know today, which are submerged much of the time. It was up, moving around on the land,"said O'Connor, who received aNational Geographic Society/Waitt Grantfor this project. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)
Modern crocodiles have fairly undifferentiated, conical teeth specialized for a bite-and-gulp feeding style. ButPakasuchushad teeth resembling mammals' canines, premolars, and interlocking molars, says the study, to be published in tomorrow's issue of the journalNature.
In addition, the lower jaw ofPakasuchuscould slide back and forth."Crocodiles alive today don't have a major sliding component to their jaw,"O'Connor explained."It's just a hinged joint that allows the jaw to move up and down."
Taken together, the crocodile's unique dentition and sliding jaw suggestPakasuchuswas able to chew and grind its food, a trait previously thought to be unique to mammals.
"Chewing is a mammalian characteristic, almost by definition,"O'Connor said.
"Most people who do functional anatomy or paleontology reserve the term for mammals only,"he said. Other animal groups are generally thought to lack the necessary anatomical features and coordinated muscle activity required for complex chewing, he added.
Pakasuchuswas almost certainly capable of chewing, agreedZhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist and early-mammal expert at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"We used to think that it was not possible for crocodiles to really chew their food,"said Luo, who was not involved in the research."But {this study} shows that, yes, they could."
Crocodile Was Mammal Proxy in Land of Reptiles?
Pakasuchuslikely fed on small lizards, insects, and the few primitive mammals that existed in Gondwana at the time. The animal's unique dentition may have allowed the fossil crocodile to occupy ecological niches filled by mammals in other parts of the world, the study says.
"This small-bodied animal occupied a dramatically different feeding niche than do modern crocodilians"study co-author Nancy Stevens, also of Ohio University, said in a statement. The crocodilian order includes crocodiles, alligators, caimans, gavials, and related extinct forms.
Pakasuchusbelonged to a reptile family calledthe notosuchians, or"southern crocodiles."For this group, differentiated teeth may have been the key to success, said Steve Salisbury, a paleontologist at theUniversity of Queenslandin Australia.
Increasingly, fossil discoveries in former areas of Gondwana are revealing that the notosuchians boasted a very diverse range of species, said Salisbury, who also did not participate in thePakasuchus-fossil research.
If it turns out that mammal-like teeth were typical among other notosuchians,"it may have opened up new opportunities that weren't possible with more simplified dentition,"he added.
Salisbury adds that the discovery ofPakasuchuswill likely prompt many scientists to go back and reexamine their fossil collections.
"Isolated teeth that people previously assumed belonged to mammals,"he said,"may in fact belong to crocodiles."
The newfound, cat-size crocodilePakasuchus kapilimai(illustrated) hadmammal-like teeth that helped give the fossil crocodile a power previously unknown amongreptiles: the ability to chew.
One key to that ability is that the 105-million-year-old crocodile's lower jaw could slide back and forth (inset).
"Crocodiles alive today don't have a major sliding component to their jaw,"said lead study authorPatrick O'Connor, an Ohio University paleontologist."It's just a hinged joint that allows the jaw to move up and down."
For thousands of years humans have changed the sizes, shapes, colors, and coats ofdogsthrough selective breeding. Now it seems we've actually reordered many breeds' brains in the process
A new brain-imaging study examined 11 carcasses from 11 different dog breeds, both long-snouted, such as the greyhound and Jack Russel terrier, and short-snouted, such as the mastiff and pug.
The team found that the brains of many short-snouted breeds have rotated forward by as much as 15 degrees.
Furthermore, in these breeds the brain region for smell, called the olfactory bulb, has drifted downward toward the base of the skull, perhaps significantly altering the dogs' all-important source of smell, researchers say.
Since the first wolf was domesticated an estimated 12,000 years ago,"selective breeding has produced a lot of {anatomical} variation, but probably the most dramatic is in terms of skull shape,"said study co-authorMichael Valenzuela, a neuroscientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
"Dogs are very unique in having such a massive diversity of skull shapes,"Valenzuela added,"more than any other species really."
Dog Brain Changes Equal Changed Behavior?
It's unclear whether the brain rotation and olfactory bulb movement of short-snouted, or brachycephalic, dogs has affected their ability to smell, but Valenzuela and his colleagues note that short-snouted dogs are usually not used for scent work.
"We think of dogs living in a world of smell—but this finding strongly suggests that one dog's world of smell may be very different to another's,"study co-author Paul McGreevy of the University of Sydney said in a statement.
One way the brain changes could have changed the dogs' olfactory sense is by affecting a pathway in the brain called the rostral migratory stream, or RMS, the team speculates. Other studies have suggested the RMS is important for a normal sense of smell.
"The RMS starts very deep in the middle of the brain and traces a very predictable path to the olfactory bulb,"study co-author Valenzuela told National Geographic News.
"Since the olfactory bulb has moved in brachycephalic dogs, you'd expect to see a change in the course of the RMS, or it may be disregulated"and dysfunctional, he added.
Investigating these potential RMS deviations, the authors write, would"be of intense interest for future research."
Valenzuela's team plans to undertake at least some of that future research and hope to uncover whether—or how—breeding-based brain changes have changed the sense of smell in dogs."It is a fascinating question that our group will be looking into more."
Australia's"terrifying"dragonfish (pictured) uses its many fangs—which even stud its tongue—to hook hard-to-find prey in the cold, dark depths, scientists say.
The banana-size fish is one of tens of thousands of both known and new species included in a new inventory released today by theCensus of Marine Life, a decade-longocean-exploration project.
The first-of-its-kind"roll call"of marine species from 25 diverse ocean regions is a prelude to the census's final summary of up to 230,000 species to be released October 4, census scientists say.
To create the inventory—published Monday in the journalPloS One—scientists combined years of census data with previous research on the richness of ocean species. Species counts in each of the 25 areas ranged from 2,600 to 33,000, with an average of about 10,750 per region. Altogether census scientists found more than a hundred thousand species in the 25 regions.
"This inventory was urgently needed for two reasons,"report lead authorMark Costello, of the Leigh Marine Laboratory at New Zealand's University of Auckland, said in a statement.
First, not knowing what species ply the oceans"impairs society's ability to discover and describe new species,"Costello said.
The research may also serve as a base line, helping scientists to track future extinctions:"Marine species have suffered major declines—in some cases 90 percent losses—due to human activities and may be heading for extinction—as happened to many species on land."
An unidentified purple octopus (pictured) is one of 11 potentially new species found this month during a deep-sea expedition off Canada's Atlantic coast, scientists say.
Still at sea, a team of Canadian and Spanish researchers is using a remotely operated vehicle calledROPOSfor dives offNewfoundlandwith a maximum depth of about 9,800 feet (3,000 meters).
The 20-day expedition aims to uncover relationships between cold-watercoraland other bottom-dwelling creatures in a pristine yet"alien"environment, according to theresearchers' blog.
"It's been really spectacular,"Ellen Kenchington, research scientist with the Fisheries Department of Canada—one of the organizations involved in the project—told Canada'sCTV Newswebsite.
"It's really changing our perception of the diversity that's out there. ... We're seeing new species in deeper waters."
On a July 10 fishing trip inGeorgianreaches of the Okefenokee Swamp, Ray Cason found his way blocked by what looked to him like analligatorfeeding frenzy.
Hundreds of alligators packed a roughly 30-foot-wide (9-meter-wide) stretch of canal, jumping over and snapping at each other—all of it caught on a video (watch below) that went viral Wednesday viaYouTube,Facebook,CNN, and other media.
Alligator"Feeding Frenzy"Video
"I ain't never seen so many gators in my life!"someone can be heard exclaiming in the video, which Cason, 39, posted on YouTube after his foray into 420,000-acre (170,000-hectare)Stephen C. Foster State Parkoutside the town of Fargo.
Georgia state wildlife biologist Greg Nelms agreed, telling CNN,"I've never seen footage like that before."Such"cooperative feeding"by alligators—a true feeding frenzy is more chaotic—is seen every three or four years in the area, Nelms added.
In general, though, it's not uncommon forAmerican alligators, which can grow to about 15 feet (4.6 meters) long, to engage in cooperative feeding, herpetologistKenneth Kryskotold National Geographic News.
"There could be multiple reasons"for the swarm seen in the viral video, said Krysko, of the University of Florida."But they're usually known to congregate when they're breeding as well as when they're feeding."
Since American alligators breed in spring and the"feeding frenzy"video was shot in July, predation is the most likely reason for the Okefenokee gator swarm.
An alligator feeding frenzy tends to occur when the reptiles, fishing in evaporating pools or captive enclosures, engage in a violent free-for-all. The gators clash violently over food and block smaller rivals from feeding,according to the University of Floridawebsite.
Cooperative feeding, by contrast, is pretty much what it sounds like.
Alligators"face into the current and arrange themselves side-by-side in a row across the flow of water"—the better to catch a flood of fish squeezed into a bottleneck in a free-flowing channel, the university site says.
That's apparently just what happened in the Stephen C. Foster State Park canal in the video, where mudfish, or bowfins—common prey for Okefenokee alligators—are said to have been particularly plentiful on July 10.
Other hallmarks of cooperative feeding by alligators: Fighting over prey is relatively rare, and the feeding is so intense that humans and other interlopers are often ignored.
Low water can make alligator congregations more likely too, by forcing fish to stream, en masse, toward deeper water, Krysko said.
In the alligator"feeding frenzy"video, alligators can be seen jumping over one another and attacking each other, presumably while competing for food. Cason estimated there were about 300 alligators gathered.
There was"a lot of noise and a lot of splashing,"Cason told local television news station News4Jax.
"I just eased through them and went fishing"—perhaps not the wisest decision, according to the University of Florida's Krysko.
Though Krysko said the alligators were probably not abnormally dangerous during the congregation, he said Cason put himself in danger of falling into the congregation—and risked harming the alligators with his boat.
American alligators"are a protected species,"said Kysko, referring to protections afforded by the U.S. Endangered Species Act, even though the species is no longer listed as endangered by the U.S. government."No one would be allowed to do that if they were manatees, and manatees are protected as well."
Blair Hayman, a biologist withFlorida'sAlligator Management Program, though, didn't see anything wrong with the fisher motoring through the alligator swarm.
"It doesn't appear that he is doing anything,"she said."He's just boating at normal speed. Typically {alligator} harassment would be if he were poking {an alligator} with a stick or intentionally touching or otherwise disturbing him."
The first ever video ofjumbo squidacting naturally—footage captured by squid themselves—shows the cannibalistic predators lighting up"like Christmas trees,"according to a new documentary of a 2009 expedition.
The same expedition established the jumbo squid—one of which shattered two Kevlar bite plates with its beak—as having among the world's strongest bites.
In partially sunlit depths of the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortez (seemap), the camera recorded footage of the squid"strobing"red and white and flailing its arms—signals that could advertise anything from aggression to sexual prowess, according to scientists. (Seesquid pictures.)
Such behaviors have been seen before in the difficult-to-study species but never without the distractions of divers, lights, and submersibles—and never so close up, said herpetologist Brady Barr, part of the team that captured the footage in September 2009 for the National Geographic Channel showDangerous Encounters With Brady Barr: Cannibal Squid, airing Friday at 9 p.m. ET/PT. (The National Geographic Society part-owns the National Geographic Channel and wholly owns National Geographic News.)
Barr said the film's objective—"to get an untethered camera on the squid and hope that the animal would return to the abyss and carry on with its way of life,"was met, and more.
Known to prey on their own kind, jumbo squid—also called Humboldt squid—can travel to depths of about 4,900 feet (1,500 meters), though most of the filming occurred at depths of less than 330 feet (100 meters).
"I've worked with animals for 20 years,"Barr added,"and this was as good as it gets."
Flashy Jumbo Squid Resembles"Christmas Tree"
To get the video, scientists first had to lure several seven-foot-long (two-meter-long) squid—to the surface with bait. (Learn about the relatedgiant squid.)
On three occasions Barr and colleagues got into the water and wrestled different rubbery squid into a synthetic sleeve outfitted with aCrittercam, a National Geographic Society-patented research tool for collecting video, audio, and environmental data.
The first released jumbo squid had red LED lights attached to its camera. When the squid dove deeper, other squid attacked it, perhaps because"squid appear to be able see red LED lights, and it may really piss them off,"according to jumbo squid expertWilliam Gilly, who participated in theCannibal Squidexpedition. Torn off by the attackers, the Crittercam surfaced prematurely.
For the second deployment, the team attached a camera without lights to another jumbo squid. When this Crittercam squid entered a jumbo squid swarm at around 140 feet (42 meters), the Crittercam squid began alternately flashing red and white and flaring its tentacles.
"Their entire body flashes—this thing lights up like a Christmas tree,"Barr said.
It's known that squid and related species ofoctopuscan change their body colors quickly—often to camouflage themselves.
But"it was nice to see that for the first time without humans,"Gilly said.
That's because no one knows how artificial lighting can skew a squid's natural behavior, said Gilly, of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California.
Gilly noted that other squid didn't seem to treat the Crittercam squid unusually—other than the first, light-equipped squid—and that all the camera-equipped squid seemed to swim naturally.
Squid Signals: Aggression or Attraction?
The footage strengthens the idea that squid are communicating via flashing and flaring—though it's hard to say what those mean, Gilly said.
For instance, a squid that opens its arms and flashes red-to-white may be trying to look big and impressive.
Then again, such a show could be attractive to a potential mate, Gilly said."If you're a big, strong squid, you're a good fighter and a good mater."
Flashing in jumbo squid is already well known to scientists, saidRoger Hanlon,senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
It's certain that rapid changes in light patterns are part of antagonistic displays among squids—"all of which have some sort of unambiguous visual signal with which to carry out their displays,"said Hanlon, who was not part of the research. Hanlon specializes in the study of chromatophore displays in other species of cephalopods, the class of animals that includes squid, octopus, and cuttlefish.
There aren't many observations published about squid behavior in the wild, addedLou Zeidberg,a squid researcher who works in Gilly's lab but wasn't involved in the project.
But Zeidberg noted that in some studies of other squid species, white seems to be a"seductive"color used by male squid—and in the case of the reef squid, by females, according to the Marine Biological Laboratory's Hanlon—and red has been attributed to combative male-male displays.
For instance, Zeidberg has seen—via remotely operated vehicle—an interaction between a small and a big squid off Monterey,California.
While the small squid hovered in front of the ROV displaying white coloration, a larger squid came into view. The small squid immediately turned red and circled the larger squid while maintaining eye contact, he said.
Jumbo Squid Might Be Planet's Strongest Biter
Though seen as one of the oceans' top predators, the jumbo squid remains little understood, expedition leader Barr said.
But scientists do know"they're powerful, they're smart, they're fast, they've got an arsenal of weapons,"he said.
For instance, at the center of their array of eight sucker-lined arms, there's a parrotlike beak powered by a mass of muscles.
To measure the strength of a jumbo squid's bite, the team caught a squid at the surface and inserted a Kevlar pressure plate into its mouth—which the squid promptly bit in half. Kevlar is 20 times stronger than steel, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The preliminary reading indicated the jumbo squid had a bite force of more than a thousand pounds (more than 455 kilograms)—stronger than the killer jaws of thehyena, though not quite as strong as acrocodile, according to Barr, who specializes in animal bite forces.
More readings are needed, but"for all we know,"the jumbo squid may be"the strongest biter on the planet,"he said.
MBL's Hanlon isn't surprised by this brute power:"I am pretty sure {a} large squid could bite well into a human arm—and perhaps even through the bone."
Gilly would know. A captive squid bit the Stanford scientist's arm in June while he was fitting it with a Crittercam—requiring 15 stitches.
"When I saw blood flowing into the cooler in large amounts, I realized it wasn't going as planned,"Gilly said.
That squid later disappeared with the Crittercam, providing no useful data on how squid hunt and live in oxygen-free depths—Gilly's next areas of study.
Come September, Gilly plans to outfit more jumbo squid with Crittercams—and maybe even find the one that got away.
"I'm feeling like Ahab to some extent,"he quipped."I gotta go get that sucker."
Discovered in 1937 but"missing"for 60 years,Sri Lanka's Horton Plains slender loris was presumed to have died out. In 2002 a fleeting nighttime sighting of something looking like the elusive tree-dweller, however, gave conservationists hope.
Follow-up surveys led by theZoological Society of Londonfinally confirmed the lorises are alive—if not exactly well—in 2009, when two individuals were photographed and examined.
Initial estimates after the rediscovery put the total world population at fewer than a hundred, said the society's conservation biologist Craig Turner. And in this case, the world is limited to high cloud forests in theHorton Plains area (map)of central Sri Lanka—the animal's only known habitat.
"Potentially this is the rarest primate we're aware of today,"Turner said.
About 8 inches (20 centimeters) long and weighing just 11 ounces (310 grams), the slow-moving loris has been doomed as forests have been felled for firewood and to make way for tea plantations and other farms, Turner said.
"There's no means for these lorises to move between the {remaining} forest patches,"Turner said."In terms of breeding and finding mates, it is very difficult for them."(See asatellite picture of Horton Plains' forests.)
"The real focus now has to be on the remaining forest areas and looking at how we can enhance and protect them, and also reconnect them to one another,"he added.
The Horton Plains slender loris is generally classified as a subspecies of Sri Lanka's red slender loris. But, thanks in part to the first ever pictures, researchers now believe the"extinct"loris could be a whole new species.
"It's clearly very different physically,"Turner said. Compared to lowland lorises, the Horton Plains loris is"stockier, shorter limbed—and it's got a much longer fur coat."
Ongoing tests on DNA samples taken from the few individuals recorded to date, he added, should help to settle the issue.
A"catastrophic"epidemic has made 30amphibianspecies locally extinct in a region ofPanama—including 5 species that were lost before they were even formally identified, a new study says.
The species are the latest victims of the deadly chytrid fungus, which has caused major amphibian declines in Central and South America as well as in Australia since the late 1980s. The fungus infects an amphibian's skin, sloughing off the skin's layers and causing lethargy, weight loss, and eventual death.
Suspecting the imminent arrival of chytrid, researchers had visited the forests of El Copé (seemap) between 1998 and 2004 to record genetic information from the region's frog and salamander species.
Chytrid swept through El Copé in 2004, wiping out amphibians so quickly that dead frogs littered the forest floor, according to study leaderAndrew Crawford, an evolutionary biologist at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.
But armed with the genetic database, the El Copé team was able to make the first before-and-after comparisons to pinpoint the exact species lost to the fast-moving fungus—including a handful of species that proved to be new to science.
"We're discovering species and losing species at the same time—these two conflicting trends have to clash at some point,"Crawford said.
Species Not Gone Globally, But Hope Dim
Before chytrid hit El Copé, Crawford and colleagues had collected DNA samples from 63 frog and salamander species in a 1.5-square-mile (4-square-kilometer) tract of forest. The information was added to a larger genetic database of known amphibians.
By matching unknown specimens with existing genetic lineages, the team discovered 11 unnamed species among those collected in the forest before the outbreak.
A post-epidemic survey conducted between 2006 and 2008 showed that 25 of the 63 species had been lost. Five of the missing species were among the 11 that were new to science.
Another nine species had seen population declines between 85 and 99 percent since the earlier survey, according to the study.
Though the species aren't globally extinct, there's"not much optimism"that amphibians from unaffected areas will recolonize El Copé, Crawford said.
Past experiments—such as inCosta Rica—show that frogs don't bounce back after a chytrid wave comes through. (Read aboutvanishing amphibiansinNational Geographicmagazine.)
A frogless forest could have reverberations throughout the ecosystem, Crawford added. For one thing, tadpoles are crucial to stream environments, because they munch on moss and algae along stream beds, taking in protein and other nutrients needed by animals higher up the food chain.
Frog Fungus a Hint of What's to Come?
No one knows what sparked the spread of chytrid, but it's possible that globalization—with people and goods becoming more interconnected—is a key factor, Crawford said. (See"Bait Shops Found to Be Spreading Chytrid.")
In general, the outbreak is an"alarming"reminder of how such emerging pathogens can devastate whole ecosystems.
For instance, chytrid is so potent that it's killing off distantly related species of frogs that are as genetically different from each other as rats are from whales, he said.
"Hopefully we don't get pathogens like that that hit mammals,"he said."This could be just one example of what's coming."
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently began arranging the relocation of some 70,000 rare sea turtle eggs from 700 Gulf Coast nests in the path of theBP oil spill. All seven of the world's sea turtle species—four of which nest in the Gulf—are considered threatened or endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
If left alone, Gulf sea turtle hatchlings—which crawl through sand layers to leave their underground nests—could get injured or killed through contact with buried oil on their way out to sea, said Riley Hoggard, a resource-management specialist forGulf Islands National Seashore.
In part to address such threats, the babies were hatched in a special facility in a warehouse at eastern Florida's Kennedy Space Center and are being released on several Atlantic Ocean beaches throughout summer 2010—on the other side of the state from the Gulf.
CalledThalassiosira trifulta, the diatom was discovered as part of an ongoing project to catalog animal diversity on theKorean Peninsula (map). Split into three three-year phases the Korean biodiversity initiative started in 2006 and is slated to run until 2014.
So far, 694 species have been found during the second phase of the project, running from 2009 to 2011. Of these, 420 species were known to science but are new to South Korea, while 274 species are entirely new to science.
The diatom, which forms chainlike colonies, was discovered in Pohang, a coastal city in South Korea's Gyeongbuk Province, according to Kim Min-Ha, manager of the Korean indigenous species project at the National Institute of Biological Resources (NIBR).
Most of the newly unveiled species are microscopic—no new mammals or large animals have been found so far.
Dubbed Leviathan melvillei—an homage toMoby-Dickauthor Herman Melville—the recently unearthed fossil sea monster lived about 13 million years ago in waters atop what's now aPeruviandesert, according to a study published by the journalNatureon Wednesday.
Living alongside the largest sharks ever known, the raptorial—meaning actively hunting—whale measured about 60 feet (18 meters) in length, about as big as a modern male sperm whale.
But whereas modern sperm whales feed primarily on squid, Leviathan's large teeth—some of which measured more than a foot (36 centimeters) long—suggest the whale hunted more challenging prey, including perhaps its close whale relatives.
"It was probably a very powerful and frightening animal, so it fits well with the description Melville made of Moby-Dick,"said lead study author Olivier Lambert, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural Historyin Paris.
Two new species of bottom-dwelling"walking"fishhave been found in the Gulf of Mexico—right in the path of theGulf oil spill,experts say.
Small enough to fit in a person's palm, members of the two species of pancake batfish might already be threatened by the ongoingDeepwater Horizonspill and the oil-dispersing chemicals being used in its cleanup, experts say.
Once thought to be part of a known, widespread species, the batfish are actually three separate species, according to a recent physical reexamination of museum specimens. The species discoveries—to be described in an upcoming issue of theJournal of Fish Biology—were made before the Gulf oil spill began on April 20.
One of the new species,H. intermedius, is found only in the Gulf of Mexico (seemap), including parts—such as coastal Louisiana—that are already heavily affected by the oil spill.
The other new batfish,H. bispinosus, lives along the northeastern Gulf coast, as well as along the eastern coasts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Oil has begun to dirty the western coast of Florida in recent weeks. (Seepictures of oiled Florida beaches.)
"If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity ... is out there that we do not know about,"study co-authorJohn Sparks, a fish biologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, said in a statement.
Toxic Oil Poses Many Threats to Batfish
There are several ways the oil could harm the newfound fish.
For one, floating slicks of oil may be killing the pancake batfishes' plankton food supply.
Adult pancake batfish on the seafloor could be immediately harmed by oil gushing from the broken wellhead.
And the toxic crude may also kill off the fishes' eggs and larvae, which travel on the ocean's surface, said study co-authorProsanta Chakrabarty, a fish biologist at Louisiana State University.
What's more, chemical dispersants used to break up the oil into smaller droplets for easier digestion by microbes may be toxic to the fish, he said.
It's also unclear whether the right kinds of microbes exist in deep ocean to digest the oil once it's broken up by dispersants, Chakrabarty pointed out.
"How the oil breaks down and how it's affecting the fish is totally unknown. This shouldn't have been done without a study beforehand,"he added.
Brainregions that grow the most outside the womb are the same areas that expanded the most during evolution from monkeys to humans, a new study says.
As the human brain matures, it expands in a"strikingly nonuniform"fashion, according to researchers who compared MRI scans of 12 infant brains with scans of 12 young adult brains. (Seebrain pictures.)
The research revealed that brain regions involved in higher cognitive and executive processes—such as language and reasoning—grow about twice as much as regions associated with basic senses such vision and hearing, said study leader Jason Hill, a neurobiologist atWashington Universityin St. Louis, Missouri.
"The parts of the {brain} that have grown the most to make us uniquely humans are the same regions that tend to grow the most postnatally,"Hill said.
Hill and colleagues also compared the new human-brain scans with brain scans of macaque monkeys.
The results suggest that the expansion patterns in infant brains are"remarkably similar"to how human brains have changed since humans and macaques diverged from a common ancestor about 25 million years ago.
Hill and colleagues suspect that development of the human brains' higher cognitive and executive regions may be delayed to allow them to be shaped by early life experiences. (Read"Beyond the Brain"inNational Geographicmagazine.)
The delay could help keep a fetus's brain from growing too big to fit through his or her mother's pelvis.
"It is evolutionarily advantageous to put those resources more into the maturation of regions that are better suited to early survival, such as being able to see and recognize your mother,"Hill said.
Brain Research May Help Preemies
The researchers hope that the new brain discovery can help uncover where and how the development of some premature babies goes awry.
"We know that 30 to 50 percent of preterm infants have some kind of lasting neurodevelopmental problem,"Hill said,"and in a lot of cases we don't necessarily know why."
Scientists in the Amazon rain forest's Reserva Florestal Adolpho Ducke, near Manaus,Brazil, heard a margay imitating the call of a baby pied tamarin monkey in 2005.
It was the first—and so far, only—scientifically documented case of a cat imitating a prey species in the Americas, team member Fabio Rohe, a researcher for the New York-based nonprofit WCS, said in an email. Rohe added that he's unaware of any other predators in the world using vocal mimicry as a hunting tool.
Listed as near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—meaning it's likely to face a high risk of extinction in the near future—the margay is a spotted cat that grows to about 7 pounds (3.3 kilograms) and typically feeds on small mammals, birds, and reptiles.
The cat's chief threats are habitat destruction, the market for exotic pets and pelts, and angry farmers, known to shoot margays who raid poultry stocks, according to IUCN.
Monkey Mimicry Passed From Cat to Cat?
Despite the margay's lack of success that day, the observation suggests the cats use surprising"psychological cunning"to nab their dinner, Rohe said.
And the margay probably isn't the only sneaky cat in the jungle. Rohe and colleagues interviewed people living in the central Amazon who reported hearing other cat species—such ascougarsandjaguars—tricking their prey through mimicry. (Seebig-cat pictures.)
Many of the South America's prey species, such as macuco birds and agouti rodents make very sharp sounds that may be in the"potential repertoires"of cats, the researchers say.
What's more, those repertoires may run in the family. Margay moms, Rohe said, likely pass the imitation strategy on to their young. In"wild cats, this learning with {the} mother seems to be essential for its survival."
A huge swarm of parasitic wasps has been unleashed inThailandas a last-ditch effort to control a devastating pest outbreak, scientists say.
More than a quarter million wasps filled the skies of the northeastern province of Khon Kaen (seemap) on Saturday. The hope is that the wasps will attack mealybugs, which have been infesting the country's valuable cassava crop.
The pill-shaped mealybugs suck sap from the crops—a main ingredient of tapioca—causing them to shrivel and die.
But that's nothing compared with the killing technique of femaleAnagyrus lopeziwasps, which inject their eggs directly into the mealybugs' bodies. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat their way out of their hosts, killing them.
Like the wasp and cassava, thePhenacoccus manihotimealybug is native to theSouth Americancountry ofParaguay. But the mealybugs"got into Thailand without their natural enemies, and the population has increased very rapidly over the past couple of years,"said Tony Bellotti, an entomologist at theInternational Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), a Colombia-based nonprofit research institute that is helping organize the effort. The Thai Department of Agriculture and theThai Tapioca Development Instituteare also involved in the project.
Mealybugs were probably accidentally imported to Thailand from stem cuttings from Africa sometime during the past few years, Bellotti said.
In 2009 mealybugs had spread to more than 700 square miles (200,000 hectares) of eastern and northeastern Thailand, where the pests are known to kill up to half of the plants in a given field, experts say.
Past experience shows the Thai wasp army should work, Bellotti said: The parasites were used to great effect throughoutAfricain the 1980s to help control mealybug infestations of cassava.
Scientists consider the parasitic wasps a classic example of"biological control,"in which the natural enemies of a pest are imported from its native country to curb the pest's spread.
In Africa"yield losses were estimated at the time to be as high as 80 percent ... I doubt it's even 10 percent now,"Bellotti said.
Parasitic Wasp Attack Highly Targeted
Anthony Shelton, an entomologist at Cornell University in New York State, said the Thai wasp attack is"very logical."
Not all biological-control experiments work out as scientists intend, but those that do—such as the 1980s African intervention—tend to be"spectacular successes,"said Shelton, who was not involved in the project.
If the wasps work well in Thailand, they should not negatively impact other species, he said.
Unlike most predators—which often feed on many types of prey—some parasites, such as theAnagyrus lopeziwasp, attack only one or a few species, Shelton added.
"As the pests spread around, it's also important to spread around their natural enemies"—the wasps, Shelton said.
In time, the wasp and the mealybug should reach an equilibrium in Thailand, CIAT's Bellotti said.
"The parasite can't eliminate the pest {completely} because it would eliminate itself,"he said."But you hope that the equilibrium will be at a low enough level that it's no longer damaging to the crops."
Wasp Swarm to Spread?
CIAT's Bellotti said it shouldn't take long for scientists to know whether unleashing the wasp swarm was a good idea.
"The big test will come during December, January, and February, which is Thailand's dry season,"Bellotti said."The mealybug is a dry-season pest."
If the Thai experiment works, CIAT may deploy the wasps inCambodia,Laos, and other Southeast Asian countries where the cassava mealybug has been reported.
"We don't see this as just a Thai problem,"Bellotti said."We see it as a regional problem in Southeast Asia."
