Wildlife Faces Cancer Threat

Green turtles around the globe are dying from fibropapillomatosis,

a disease that causes tumors on the skin (pictured here) and internal organs.

(Credit: Cynthia Lagueux)

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2009) —

While cancer touches the lives of many humans, it is also a major threat to wild animal populations as well, according to a recent study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

A newly published paper in the July edition of Nature Reviews Cancercompiles information on cancer in wildlife and suggests that cancer poses a conservation threat to certain species. The WCS authors highlight the critical need to protect both animals and people through increased health monitoring.

"Cancer is one of the leading health concerns for humans, accounting for more than 10 percent of human deaths," said Dr. Denise McAloose, lead author and Chief Pathologist for WCS's Global Health program. "But we now understand that cancer can kill wild animals at similar rates."

In certain situations, cancer threatens the survival of entire species. The Tasmanian devil, the world's largest carnivorous marsupial, is at risk of extinction due to a cancer known as devil facial tumor disease. This form of contagious cancer spreads between individual Tasmanian devils through direct contact (primarily fighting and biting). To save the species from this fatal disease, conservationists are relocating cancer-free Tasmanian devils to geographically isolated areas or zoos.

Many species living within polluted aquatic environments suffer high rates of cancerous tumors, and studies strongly suggest links between wildlife cancers and human pollutants. For example, the study cites the case of beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River system. These whales have an extraordinarily high rate of intestinal cancer, which is their second leading cause of death. One type of pollutant in these waters—polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (or PAHs)—is a well-known carcinogen in humans, and PAHs are suspected carcinogens for beluga whales as well. Fish in other industrialized waterways, including brown bullhead catfish and English sole, also exhibit high levels of cancer.

Virus-induced cancers can affect the ability of some wildlife populations to reproduce. Genital tumors in California sea lions on North America's western coast occur at much higher rates than previously documented. Oceanic dolphin species, such as the dusky dolphin and Burmeister's porpoise (both found in the coastal waters of South America), are also showing higher rates of genital carcinomas.

Other virus-induced cancers can affect the feeding ability or eyesight of wildlife. Green sea turtles—a migratory species in oceans across the globe—suffer from fibropapillomatosis, a disease that causes skin and internal organ tumors. A virus is suspected as the cause these tumors, and environmental factors such as human-manufactured carcinogens might exacerbate their severity or prevalence.

Monitoring the health of wildlife can illuminate the causes of cancer in animal populations; thereby, better safeguarding animals and humans against possible disease. Evaluating cancer threats in wildlife populations requires the collaborative efforts of biologists, veterinarians, and pathologists as well as the earnest engagement of governments and international agencies. The paper concludes that more resources are necessary to support wildlife health monitoring.

"Examining the impact of cancer in wildlife, in particular those instances when human activities are identified as the cause, can contribute to more effective conservation and fits within the One World–One Health approach of reducing threats to both human and animal health," said Dr. William Karesh, Vice President and Director of WCS's Global Health Program

New Chemical Element In The Periodic Table

 

ScienceDaily (June 12, 2009) — The element 112, discovered at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung (Centre for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, has been officially recognized as a new element by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). IUPAC confirmed the recognition of element 112 in an official letter to the head of the discovering team, Professor Sigurd Hofmann. The letter furthermore asks the discoverers to propose a name for the new element.

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Their suggestion will be submitted within the next weeks. In about 6 months, after the proposed name has been thoroughly assessed by IUPAC, the element will receive its official name. The new element is approximately 277 times heavier than hydrogen, making it the heaviest element in the periodic table.

“We are delighted that now the sixth element – and thus all of the elements discovered at GSI during the past 30 years – has been officially recognized. During the next few weeks, the scientists of the discovering team will deliberate on a name for the new element”, says Sigurd Hofmann. 21 scientists from Germany, Finland, Russia and Slovakia were involved in the experiments around the discovery of the new element 112.

Already in 1996, Professor Sigurd Hofmann’s international team created the first atom of element 112 with the accelerator at GSI. In 2002, they were able to produce another atom. Subsequent accelerator experiments at the Japanese RIKEN accelerator facility produced more atoms of element 112, unequivocally confirming GSI’s discovery.

To produce element 112 atoms, scientists accelerate charged zinc atoms – zinc ions for short – with the help of the 120 m long particle accelerator at GSI and “fire” them onto a lead target. The zinc and lead nuclei merge in a nuclear fusion to form the nucleus of the new element. Its so-called atomic number 112, hence the provisional name “element 112”, is the sum of the atomic numbers of the two initial elements: zinc has the atomic number 30 and lead the atomic number 82. An element’s atomic number indicates the number of protons in its nucleus. The neutrons that are also located in the nucleus have no effect on the classification of the element. It is the 112 electrons, which orbit the nucleus, that determine the new element’s chemical properties.

Since 1981, GSI accelerator experiments have yielded the discovery of six chemical elements, which carry the atomic numbers 107 to 112. GSI has already named their officially recognized elements 107 to 111: element 107 is called Bohrium, element 108 Hassium, element 109 Meitnerium, element 110 Darmstadtium, and element 111 is named Roentgenium

TB Vaccine Gets Its Groove Back

 

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2009) — A team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators has cracked one of clinical medicine's enduring mysteries – what happened to the tuberculosis vaccine. The once-effective vaccine no longer prevents the bacterial lung infection that kills more than 1.7 million people worldwide each year.

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Their solution, reported in the journalPLoS One, could lead to an improved TB vaccine and also may offer a novel platform for vaccines against other pathogens.

"Our findings represent nearly a 180-degree reversal from the dogma of the last 60 years – that the TB vaccine stopped working because it became over-attenuated and was too 'wimpy' to be effective," said Douglas Kernodle, M.D., associate professor of Medicine.

Instead, Kernodle and colleagues found that the TB vaccine has acquired some traits that make it less effective in evoking a sustained immune response. When they take away these traits, the TB vaccine induces stronger immune responses in mice.

The current TB vaccine, known as BCG (bacille Calmette-Guérin), has been around since the 1920s. It was made by weakening (attenuating) a strain of bacteria that causes tuberculosis in cows and that genetically is 98 percent identical to the human TB germ.

During the early years of its use, BCG was 80 percent effective against pulmonary TB. But because there were no long-term storage options for bacterial strains until the 1960s, BCG was grown continuously in culture, with "sub-cultures" of the original BCG maintained in laboratories around the world. Over time, BCG changed – the original vaccine ceased to exist and the daughter sub-cultures lost effectiveness against pulmonary TB.

Today, although BCG no longer protects against lung disease, it is still 80 percent effective against "disseminated TB" (TB infection in many parts of the body) in early childhood. Because of this protection, BCG is given annually to 100 million newborns worldwide – not in the United States and a few other countries – and is estimated to prevent about 40,000 cases each year of TB meningitis and other disseminated TB, Kernodle said.

But the question of why BCG lost its effectiveness against pulmonary TB has not been fully investigated. Researchers accepted the notion that as BCG was grown in culture, it changed genetically and became too weak to evoke the kind of immune response needed for protection.

Kernodle and colleagues came to the problem of BCG's poor activity against pulmonary TB from a different angle. They had reported in 2001 that one way TB itself evades the immune system is by producing antioxidants. Since BCG also produces antioxidants, they suggested that removing BCG's antioxidant-producing capacity might improve the vaccine.

"Our idea to take something away from BCG – and therefore theoretically attenuate it even further – was met with a lot of skepticism," Kernodle said. "But we believed our data that we could make BCG more immunogenic and safer."

Two years ago, after the Kernodle group had modified BCG and was beginning to test it for immune responses, researchers at the Institut Pasteur in Paris published a paper describing the genomic evolution of BCG. They found that in addition to containing gene deletions consistent with attenuation of the vaccine, the BCG genome also had regions of gene duplication and increased gene expression. Some of the duplicated and over-expressed genes were for antioxidants already being targeted by the Kernodle group.

It was suddenly obvious what had happened to BCG, Kernodle said.

"It had not become too weak – instead, by making more antioxidants it had become better at suppressing immune responses."

In the current studies, first author Lakshmi Sadagopal, Ph.D., research instructor of Medicine, vaccinated mice with a modified BCG (genetically changed in three ways to reduce or eliminate the production of several antioxidants) and examined the immune response in the days following vaccination and later with a "challenge" dose of BCG.

She found that, compared to BCG, the modified BCG induced greater cytokine (immune regulatory factor) production during the early phase of the immune response, more CD8 cell-killing T cells at the peak of the primary response, and more CD4 helper T cells during the memory phase. Modified BCG also produced greater recall immune responses and was eliminated better by the vaccinated host animal than the parent BCG vaccine, which might correlate with improved safety in humans.

"At each time point of the immune response, the modified BCG vaccine worked better than the parent BCG vaccine," Kernodle said. "By targeting antioxidants that had increased in expression during decades of cultivation, we ended up making BCG more like it was back in the 1920s when it was 80 percent effective against pulmonary TB. We fixed it."

Using modern molecular techniques to reduce the activity of antioxidants below levels in naturally occurring strains, "it should be possible to make it even better than the original BCG," he added.

The Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has already licensed the modification technology developed by Kernodle and colleagues. Aeras is working to make the best possible modified BCG vaccine, and it has built the infrastructure to conduct clinical trials in South Africa, Kenya and India – countries with a high incidence of TB.

Kernodle and colleagues say the results are also encouraging for other vaccine development. Because the modified BCG produces a better immune response profile than existing vaccine technologies, it could be a useful vector for vaccines directed against other pathogens, including HIV and the parasites that cause malaria.

The National Institutes of Health, a VUMC Discovery Award and the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation supported the research. Kernodle is the David E. Rogers Associate Professor of Medicine.

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Adapted from materials provided by Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

High Blood Pressure COuld Be Caused BY A Common Virus, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2009) — A new study suggests for the first time that cytomegalovirus (CMV), a common viral infection affecting between 60 and 99 percent of adults worldwide, is a cause of high blood pressure, a leading risk factor for heart disease, stroke and kidney disease.

Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and published in the May 15, 2009 issue of PLoS Pathogens, the findings further demonstrate that, when coupled with other risk factors for heart disease, the virus can lead to the development of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.
"CMV infects humans all over the world," explains co-senior author Clyde Crumpacker, MD, an investigator in the Division of Infectious Diseases at BIDMC and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "This new discovery may eventually provide doctors with a whole new approach to treating hypertension, with anti-viral therapies or vaccines becoming part of the prescription."
A member of the herpes virus family, CMV affects all age groups and is the source of congenital infection, mononucleosis, and severe infection in transplant patients. By the age of 40, most adults will have contracted the virus, though many will never exhibit symptoms. Once it has entered the body, CMV is usually there to stay, remaining latent until the immune system is compromised, when it then reemerges.
Previous epidemiological studies had determined that the CMV virus was linked to restenosis in cardiac transplant patients, a situation in which the heart's arteries "reblock." The virus had also been linked to the development of atherosclerosis, the hardening of the heart's arteries. But, in both cases, the mechanism behind these developments remained a mystery. This new study brought together a team of researchers from a variety of disciplines – infectious diseases, cardiology, allergy and pathology – to look more closely at the issue.
"By combining the insights of investigators from different medical disciplines, we were able to measure effects of a viral infection that may have been previously overlooked," explains Crumpacker.
In the first portion of the study, the scientists examined four groups of laboratory mice. Two groups of animals were fed a standard diet and two groups were fed a high cholesterol diet. After a period of four weeks, one standard diet mouse group and one high-cholesterol diet mouse group were infected with the CMV virus.
Six weeks later, the animals' blood pressures were measured by the cardiology team using a small catheter inserted in the mouse carotid artery. Among the mice fed a standard diet, the CMV-infected mice had increased blood pressure compared with the uninfected group. But even more dramatically, 30 percent of the CMV-infected mice that were fed a high-cholesterol diet not only exhibited increased blood pressure, but also showed signs of having developed atherosclerosis.
"This strongly suggests that the CMV infection and the high-cholesterol diet might be working together to cause atherosclerosis," says Crumpacker. In order to find out how and why this was occurring, the investigators went on to conduct a series of cell culture experiments.
Their first analysis demonstrated that CMV stimulated production of three different inflammatory cytokines – IL6, TNF, and MCP1 – in the infected mice, an indication that the virus was causing inflammation to vascular cells and other tissues.
A second analysis found that infection of a mouse kidney cell line with murine CMV led to an increase in expression of the renin enzyme, which has been known to activate the renin-angiotensin system and lead to high blood pressure. Clinical isolates of human CMV in cultured blood vessel cells also produced increased renin expression.
"Viruses have the ability to turn on human genes and, in this case, the CMV virus is enhancing expression of renin, an enzyme directly involved in causing high blood pressure," says Crumpacker. When the scientists inactivated the virus through the use of ultraviolet light, renin expression did not increase, suggesting that actively replicating virus was causing the increase in renin.
In their final experiments, the researchers demonstrated that the protein angiotensin 11 was also increased in response to infection with CMV. "Increased expression of both renin and angiotensin 11 are important factors in hypertension in humans," says Crumpacker. "What our study seems to indicate is that a persistent viral infection in the vessels' endothelial cells is leading to increased expression of inflammatory cytokines, renin and angiotensin 11, which are leading to increased blood pressure."
According to recent figures from the American Heart Association, one in three U.S. adults has high blood pressure, and because there are no known symptoms, nearly one-third of these individuals are unaware of their condition. Often dubbed "the silent killer," uncontrolled high blood pressure can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure or kidney failure, notes Crumpacker.
"We found that CMV infection alone led to an increase in high blood pressure, and when combined with a high-cholesterol diet, the infection actually induced atherosclerosis in a mouse aorta," says Crumpacker. "This suggests that further research needs to be directed at viral causes of vascular injury. Some cases of hypertension might be treated or prevented by antiviral therapy or a vaccine against CMV."
This study was funded by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
Study co-authors include Jielin Zhang of BIDMC's Division of Infectious Diseases (co-senior author); Jilin Cheng formerly of BIDMC's Division of Infectious Diseases and now at Fudan University, Shanghai, China (first author); Qingen Ke of BIDMC's Division of Cardiology; Zhuang Jin and Haiban Wang of BIDMC's Division of Allergy; Olivier Kocher of BIDMC's Division of Pathology; and James Morgan of Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, Boston.
Adapted from materials provided by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Climate Adds Fuel To Asian Wildfire Emissions

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2009) — In the last decade, Asian farmers have cleared tens of thousands of square miles of forests to accommodate the world's growing demand for palm oil, an increasingly popular food ingredient. Ancient peatlands have been drained and lush tropical forests have been cut down.

As a result, the landscape of equatorial Asia now lies vulnerable to fires, which are growing more frequent and having a serious impact on the air as well as the land.

A team of NASA-sponsored researchers have used satellites to make the first series of estimates of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted from these fires -- both wildfires and fires started by people -- in Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo, and Papua New Guinea. They are now working to understand how climate influences the spread and intensity of the fires.

Using data from a carbon-detecting NASA satellite and computer models, the researchers found that seasonal fires from 2000 to 2006 doubled the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) released from the Earth to the atmosphere above the region. The scientists also observed through satellite remote sensing that fires in regional peatlands and forests burned longer and emitted ten times more carbon when rainfall declined by one third the normal amount. The results were presented in December 2008 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tropical Asian fires first grabbed the attention of government officials, media, and conservationists in 1997, when fires set to clear land for palm oil and rice plantations burned out of control. The fires turned wild and spread to dry, flammable peatlands during one of the region's driest seasons on record. By the time the flames subsided in early 1998, emissions from the fires had reached 40 percent of the global carbon emissions for the period.

"In this region, decision makers are facing a dichotomy of demands, as expanding commercial crop production is competing with efforts to ease the environmental impact of fires," said Jim Collatz, an Earth scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and a co-author of the study. "The science is telling us that we need strategies to reduce the occurrence of deforestation fires and peatlands wildfires. Without some new strategies, emissions from the region could rise substantially in a drier, warmer future."

Since the 1997 event, the region has been hit by two major dry spells and a steady upswing in fires, threatening biodiversity and air quality and contributing to the buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere. As more CO2 is emitted, the global atmosphere traps more heat near Earth's surface, leading to more drying and more fires.

Until recently, scientists knew little about what drives changes in how fires spread and how long they burn. Collatz, along with lead author Guido van der Werf of Vrije University, Amsterdam, and other colleagues sought to estimate the emissions since the devastating 1997-98 fires and to analyze the interplay between the fires and drought.

They used the carbon monoxide detecting Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite -- as well as 1997-2006 fire data and research computer models -- to screen for and differentiate between carbon emissions from deforestation versus general emissions. Carbon monoxide is a good indicator of the occurrence of fire, and the amounts of carbon monoxide in fire emissions are related to the amount of carbon dioxide. They also compared the emissions from different types of plant life (peat land vs. typical forest) by examining changes in land cover and land use as viewed by Terra's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectradiometer (MODIS) and by Landsat 7.

Collatz explained that two climate phenomena drive regional drought. El Niño's warm waters in the Eastern Pacific change weather patterns around the world every few years and cause cooler water temperatures in the western Pacific near equatorial Asia that suppress the convection necessary for rainfall. Previously, scientists have used measurements from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission satellite to correlate rainfall with carbon losses and burned land data, finding that wildfire emissions rose during dry El Niño seasons. The Indian Ocean dipole phenomenon affects climate in the Indian Ocean region with oscillating ocean temperatures characterized by warmer waters merging with colder waters to inhibit rainfall over Indonesia, Borneo, and their neighbors.

"This link between drought and emissions should be of concern to all of us," said co-author Ruth DeFries, an ecologist at Columbia University in New York. "If drought becomes more frequent with climate change, we can expect more fires."

Collatz, DeFries, and their colleagues found that between 2000 and 2006, the average carbon dioxide emissions from equatorial Asia accounted for about 2 percent of global fossil fuel emissions and 3 percent of the global increase in atmospheric CO₂. But during moderate El Niño years in 2002 and 2006, when dry season rainfall was half of normal, fire emissions rose by a factor of 10. During the severe El Niño of 1997-1998, fire emissions from this region comprised 15 percent of global fossil fuel emissions and 31 percent of the global atmospheric increase over that period.

"This study not only updates our measurements of carbon losses from these fires, but also highlights an increasingly important factor driving change in equatorial Asia," explained DeFries. "In this part of Asia, human-ignited forest and peat fires are emitting excessive carbon into the atmosphere. In climate-sensitive areas like Borneo, human response to drought is a new dynamic affecting feedbacks between climate and the carbon cycle."

In addition to climate influences, human activities contribute to the growing fire emissions. Palm oil is increasingly grown for use as a cooking oil and biofuel, while also replacing trans fats in processed foods. It has become the most widely produced edible oil in the world, and production has swelled in recent years to surpass that of soybean oil. More than 30 million metric tons of palm oil are produced in Malaysia and Indonesia alone, and the two countries now supply more than 85 percent of global demand.

The environmental effects of such growth have been significant. Land has to be cleared to grow the crop, and the preferred method is fire. The clearing often occurs in drained peatlands that are otherwise swampy forests where the remains of past plant life have been submerged for centuries in as much as 60 feet of water. Peat material in Borneo, for example, stores the equivalent of about nine years worth of global fossil fuel emissions.

"Indonesia has become the third largest greenhouse gas emitter after the United States and China, due primarily to these fire emissions," Collatz said. "With an extended dry season, the peat surface dries out, catches fire, and the lack of rainfall can keep the fires going for months."

Besides emitting carbon, the agricultural fires and related wildfires also ravage delicate ecosystems in conservation hotspots like the western Pacific island of Borneo, home to more than 15,000 species of plants, 240 species of trees, and an abundance of endangered animals.

Smoke and other fire emissions also regularly taint regional air quality to such a degree that officials have to close schools and airports out of concern for public health and safety. Peat fires also aggravate air pollution problems in this region because they release four times more carbon monoxide than forest fires. In 1997, air pollution from the fires cost the region an estimated $4.5 billion in tourism and business.

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Adapted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Pesticide Exposure Found To Increase Risk Of Parkinson's Disease

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2009) — The fertile soil of California's Central Valley has long made it famous as one of the nation's prime crop-growing regions. But it's not just the soil that allows for such productivity. Crops like potatoes, dry beans and tomatoes have long been protected from bugs and weeds by the fungicide maneb and the herbicide paraquat.
Scientists know that in animal models and cell cultures, such pesticides trigger a neurodegenerative process that leads to Parkinson's disease. Now, researchers at UCLA provide the first evidence for a similar process in humans.
In a new epidemiological study of Central Valley residents who have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, researchers found that years of exposure to the combination of these two pesticides increased the risk of Parkinson's by 75 percent. Further, for people 60 years old or younger diagnosed with Parkinson's, earlier exposure had increased their risk for the disease by as much as four- to six-fold.
Reporting in the April 15 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, Beate Ritz, professor of epidemiology at the UCLA School of Public Health, and Sadie Costello, a former doctoral student at UCLA who is now at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Central Valley residents who lived within 500 meters of fields sprayed between 1974 and 1999 had a 75-percent increased risk for Parkinson's.
In addition, people who were diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 60 or younger were found to have been at much higher risk because they had been exposed to maneb, paraquat or both in combination between 1974 and 1989, years when they would have been children, teens or young adults.
The researchers enrolled 368 longtime residents diagnosed with Parkinson's and 341 others as a control group.
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that often impairs motor skills, speech and other functions. It has been reported to occur at high rates among farmers and in rural populations, contributing to the hypothesis that agricultural pesticides may be partially responsible.
Until now, however, data on human exposure has been unavailable, largely because it has been too hard to measure an individual's environmental exposure to any specific pesticide.
"Because pesticides applied from the air or ground may drift from their intended treatment sites — with measurable concentrations subsequently detected in the air, in plants and in animals up to several hundred meters from application sites — accurate methods of estimating environmental exposures in rural communities have long been sorely needed," said Ritz, the study's senior author and vice chair of the School of Public Health's epidemiology department.
So Ritz, Costello and colleague Myles Cockburn from the University of Southern California, developed a geographic information system–based tool that estimated human exposure to pesticides applied to agricultural crops. This GIS tool combined land-use maps and pesticide-use reporting data from the state of California. Each pesticide-use record includes the name of the pesticide's active ingredient, the amount applied, the crop, the acreage of the field, the application method and the date of application.
Research subjects were recruited between 1998 to 2007; telephone interviews were conducted to obtain their demographic and exposure information. Detailed residential history forms were mailed to subjects in advance of their interviews and were reviewed in person or over the phone. The researchers recorded and added lifetime residential histories and estimated ambient exposures into the system for all historical addresses at which participants had resided between 1974 and 1999, the period covered by the pesticide-use data.
"The results confirmed two previous observations from animal studies," Ritz said. "One, that exposure to multiple chemicals may increase the effect of each chemical. That's important, since humans are often exposed to more than one pesticide in the environment. And second, that the timing of exposure is also important."
Ritz noted that this is the first epidemiological study to provide strong evidence that maneb and paraquat act synergistically to become neurotoxic and strongly increase the risk of Parkinson's disease in humans.
Of particular concern, Ritz said, and consistent with other theories regarding the progression of Parkinson's pathology, is that the data "suggests that the critical window of exposure to toxicants may have occurred years before the onset of motor symptoms when a diagnosis of Parkinson's is made."
In addition to Ritz and first author Costello, study authors included Jeff Bronstein, UCLA professor of neurology, and Xinbo Zhang of USC. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The research was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program. In addition, initial pilot funding was provided by the American Parkinson Disease Association.
Journal reference:
Sadie Costello, Myles Cockburn, Jeff Bronstein, Xinbo Zhang, and Beate Ritz. Parkinson's Disease and Residential Exposure to Maneb and Paraquat From Agricultural Applications in the Central Valley of California. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2009; 169 (8): 919 DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwp006
Adapted from materials provided by University of California - Los Angeles. Original article written by Mark Wheeler.

Tiniest Frog In South America's Andes Mountains

Tiniest Frog In South America’s Andes Mountains
ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2009) — It fits on a fingertip: Noblella pygmaea is a midget frog, the smallest ever found in the Andes and among the smallest amphibians in the world. Only its croaking was to be heard from the leaves on the mossier ground of the “elfin forests” in the highlands of Manu National Park, before German and Peruvian herpetologists discovered the tiny little thing in south-eastern Peru.

The popular name of the new species is fitting: Noble’s Pygmy Frog has an average length of 11.4 millimeters. It was introduced in a paper recently published in the journal Copeia by Edgar Lehr, a German herpetologist at the Senckenberg Natural History Collection Dresden, and the Swiss-Peruvian ecologist Alessandro Catenazzi from the University of California at Berkeley, USA. The pygmy that fits on a fingertip was discovered during field work in the Wayqecha Research Station. Not only its small size left it undiscovered for so long. Its predominantly brown colour camougflages Noblella perfectly. But Noble’s Pygmy Frog could be spotted with the assistance of the members of the native communities adjacent to the Manu National Park.
Manu National Park is well known as “hotspot” in the lowland rainforests, a place of exuberant diversity; however the biosphere reserve also preserves vast areas of montane cloud forests, where the sempiternal mists envelop and often conceal plants and animals. In the countless ecological niches many of them were able to evolve undisturbed and are highly adapted to the cold and permanently humidity at a daily average temperature of 11° Celsius. Genetic studies show that the diversity of amphibians in general and especially in this region is highly underestimated. That is why Edgar Lehr and Alessandro Catenazzi think that Noblella pygmaea is only one of many undiscovered amphibians in the Andes mountain area. The scientists expect to find other new species during the next few years.
Currently the midget frog is one of the smallest vertebrates ever found above 3000 metres, where most species tend to be larger than congeneric or similar species in lowland areas. Noblella pygmaea inhabits the cloud forest, the montane scrub and the high-elevation grasslands at a height from 3025 to 3190 metres above sea level. Beside its size the remarkably long forefinger is a notable distinguishing feature that was not found at other pygmy frogs in the mountains of Peru. The females lay only two eggs of approximately four millimeter in diameter. In contrast to most amphibian species these eggs are laid in moist, terrestrial microhabitats, such as in moss or leave litter, and are protected from insect predators by the mother frog. It is noteworthy also that embryos do not change into aquatic tadpoles, but immediately after the hatching lead a fully terrestrial life.
Whilst the scientists cannot give a reason for Noblella’s minute size, it is apparently advantageous. Maybe it is perfectly adopted to its special niche. The fact, that the species is not forced to leave its habitat – not even for egg deposition – might protect it from natural enemies. Despite living in the Manu Biosphere Reserve the survival of the midget frog and of other amphibians is uncertain. Several adverse influences such as anthropogenic habitat changes and the effects of global warming, which among other things facilitates the dispersal of the highly virulent pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis threaten amphibians of the Andean region. Fotunately the fungus, which has become epidemic, has not been noticed on Noblella so far. Possibly because of its terrestrial life Noblella is less exposed to the fungus than stream-dwelling frogs.
Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis is suspected to be the cause of the extinction of many frog species in Ecuador and northern Peru and is currently decimating populations of high-elevation frogs in southern Peru. Up to now no effective means are known for stopping the expansion of fungal infections in the region. Researchers hope that the large topographic heterogeneity of the Andes cordilleras will provide refugia where the fungus is unable to cause massive population declines in amphibian species, thus ensuring the survival of the dwarf in the Andean "elfin forests."

Pesticide & Birth Defects

Month Of Conception Linked To Birth Defects In United States

ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2009) — A study published in the April 2009 issue of the medical journal Acta Pædiatrica is the first to report that birth defect rates in the United States were highest for women conceiving in the spring and summer.

The researchers also found that this period of increase risk correlated with increased levels of pesticides in surface water across the United States.Studying all 30.1 million births which occurred in the U.S. between 1996 and 2002, the researchers found a strong association between the increased number of birth defects in children of women whose last menstrual period occurred in April, May, June or July and elevated levels of nitrates, atrazine and other pesticides in surface water during the same months.

While many of these chemicals, including the herbicide atrazine which is banned in European countries but permitted in the U.S., are suspected to be harmful to the developing embryo, this is the first study to link their increased seasonal concentration in surface water with the peak in birth defects in infants conceived in the same months.

The correlation between the month of last menstrual period and higher rates of birth defects was statistically significant for half of the 22 categories of birth defects reported in a Centers for Disease Control database from 1996 to 2002 including spina bifida, cleft lip, clubfoot and Down's syndrome."Elevated concentrations of pesticides and other agrochemicals in surface water during April through July coincided with significantly higher risk of birth defects in live births conceived by women whose last menstrual period began in the same months.

While our study didn't prove a cause and effect link, the fact that birth defects and pesticides in surface water peak during the same four months makes us suspect that the two are related," said Paul Winchester, M.D., Indiana University School of Medicine professor of clinical pediatrics, the first author of the study.

"Birth defects, which affect about 3 out of 100 newborns in the U.S., are one of the leading causes of infant death. What we are most excited about is that if our suspicions are right and pesticides are contributing to birth defect risk, we can reverse or modify the factors that are causing these lifelong and often very serious medical problems," said Dr. Winchester, a Riley Hospital for Children neonatalogist.

Birth defects are known to be associated with risk factors such as alcohol, smoking, diabetes or advanced age. However, the researchers found that even mothers who didn't report these risk factors had higher overall birth defect rates for babies conceived from April to July.

The study relies on findings by U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies on the seasonal variations in nitrates, atrazine and other pesticides in the surface water."These observations by Dr. Winchester are extremely important, as they raise the question for the first time regarding the potential adverse effect of these commonly used chemicals on pregnancy outcome – the health and well-being of our children," said James Lemons, M.D., Hugh McK. Landon Professor of Pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine.

Dr. Lemons is director of the section of neonatal-perinatal medicine at Riley Hospital.Co-authors of this study, which was funded by the Division of Neonatalogy of the Department of Pediatrics of the IU School of Medicine, were Jordan Huskins, B.A., a fourth year I.U. School of Medicine student, and Jun Ying, Ph.D. of the University of Cincinnati

No Joy In Discoveries Of New Mammal Species, Only A Warning For Humanity

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2009)

In the era of global warming, when many scientists say we are experiencing a human-caused mass extinction to rival the one that killed off the dinosaurs, one might think that the discovery of a host of new species would be cause for joy. Not entirely so, says Paul Ehrlich, co-author of an analysis of the 408 new mammalian species discovered since 1993.


"What this paper really talks about is how little we actually know about our natural capital and how little we know about the services that flow from it," said Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford."I think what most people miss is that the human economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the economy of nature, which supplies us from our natural capital a steady flow of income that we can't do without," Ehrlich said. "And that income is in the form of what are called 'ecosystem services'-keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, supplying fresh water, preventing floods, protecting our crops from pests and pollinating many of them, recycling the nutrients that are essential to agriculture and forestry, and on and on."

Ehrlich conducted the analysis with Gerardo Ceballos, a professor of biology at the National University of Mexico. They are co-authors of a paper describing the work, scheduled to be published Monday, Feb. 9, in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The 408 newly discovered species amount to approximately 10 percent of the known species of mammals. As a group, mammals have been very well studied, Ehrlich said, and their size makes them relatively easy to spot compared to insects or microbes. It is not that surprising that multitudes of new insect species are still being discovered, or that new extremophile species are found in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, he said. But the new mammals include a small antelope weighing approximately 200 pounds and surprisingly high numbers of primates, more than would be expected if the discoveries were randomly distributed across higher taxonomic groups

"Our analysis indicates how much more varied biodiversity is than we thought and how much bigger our conservation problems are if we're going to maintain the life-support services that we need from biodiversity," Ehrlich said.

Among those ecosystem services is disease control."There's an important set of diseases called hantaviruses that infects human beings and quite frequently kills them. And it turns out that if you reduce the diversity of the different species of rodents, say, in a forest, the rodents that carry hantaviruses can become more common. And the results for human beings are more death and disease," Ehrlich said. "So by reducing the diversity of mouse-like creatures in a forest, you can make that forest more dangerous for people.

"Many of the newly discovered species have small populations or limited geographic ranges, making them particularly vulnerable to extinction."The rarer of the species and the smaller of the populations often disappear without us even knowing that they are going," Ehrlich said.Although not every species that goes extinct plays a crucial role in controlling diseases like hantaviruses, that doesn't necessarily mean we can do without them.

Ehrlich said the answer to the question, "What difference does it make if we put a strip mall in here and this little fly goes extinct, or this little mouse goes extinct?" lies in the rivet-popper hypothesis, which he and his wife and colleague, Anne Ehrlich, a senior research scientist in the Department of Biology at Stanford, developed in the 1980s.

An airplane wing has a certain amount of redundancy in its design, as does much of nature. So you can pop off some of the rivets and the wing will still hold together and the plane will still fly. But at some point, you'll have removed one too many rivets and the plane will crash."Even though you don't know the value of each rivet, you know it's nuttier than hell to keep removing them," Ehrlich said. "There is some redundancy, but we don't know how much. And facing serious climate disruption, humanity is going to need more redundancy in the little rivets, the species and populations that run the world.

"We are facing for the first time the collapse of a global civilization," he said. "You have to reduce the scale of the human enterprise to having a chance at preventing that."

Ehrlich said that continually creating more mouths to feed will only chew up more of Earth's natural capital."The economy of nature is what allows us to have a human economy. If we let the infrastructure of nature go down the drain, then we just can't make up for it with human infrastructure," he added. "It just can't be done."

200 Years of Adventure and Discovery

Sean B. Carroll, 02.10.09, 12:00 AM EST

Charles Darwin wasn't the only scientist with spirit. Less than a year into his voyage on the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin realized that what was supposed to be a two-year surveying expedition was going to be a much longer journey. Plagued by constant seasickness and increasingly homesick, Darwin confessed in a letter to his mentor, botanist Rev. John Henslow, "I know not, how I shall be able to endure it."It would be three more years before the Beagle would reach the Galapagos Islands. Had Darwin abandoned the voyage anytime before then, he would not have seen the creatures that inspired his revolutionary theory.

But Darwin did not quit. He braved the notoriously fierce storms rounding the Cape Horn, sailed the Strait of Magellan in the dead of winter, climbed the Andes, witnessed a devastating earthquake, ventured inland among hostile natives and put up with the increasingly unpredictable whims of the ship's captain. How did he bear it all? What sustained Darwin through the perils, physical hardships and loneliness of his epic five-year adventure on the Beagle?Author C.W. Ceram described adventure as "a mixture of spirit and deed." Great adventures and great deeds require great spirit--a spirit that manifested itself in Darwin as the passion to explore (to walk where no one else had walked) and in the thrill of discovery (in seeing what no one else had seen). It was also nourished by letters from Henslow, who gently encouraged his former pupil: "If you propose returning before the whole period of the voyage expires, don't make up your mind in a hurry. … I suspect that you will always find something to keep up your courage."

Indeed, Darwin did find some things--and that is why this year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species and, on Feb. 12, Darwin's 200th birthday. Comment On This Story But we should take this opportunity to celebrate more than just one man and an idea. We should celebrate the spirit that drove Darwin and many other exceptional people to explore previously unseen parts of the world and to unearth the history of life. Their adventures and discoveries have transformed our view of nature and our place in it.

I will mention just a few of these less heralded explorers.

The development of the theory of evolution and its early acceptance in scientific circles owes a considerable debt to two other men, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates, who undertook even longer voyages under more difficult conditions than Darwin.Wallace and Bates became friends through their shared hobby, insect collecting. Though both left school at age 13, they nurtured an interest in natural history. They hatched a scheme to travel to the Amazon and ship specimens back to England to pay their expenses. Unlike Darwin, who had no scientific idea in mind at the outset of his voyage, Wallace was keen "to gather facts toward solving the problem of the origin of species."

Wallace and Bates arrived in Brazil in 1848 and soon split up to cover more territory.Over the course of four years, Wallace ventured 2,000 miles up the Rio dos Uaupes. But by 1852, he had had enough. Sick, and worn out from caring for a menagerie of live animals he hoped to bring back to the London Zoo, he made his way downriver, gathered up many crates of specimens he had stored and boarded a ship for home. Four weeks out of Brazil, however, the ship caught fire. Wallace only had time to grab a few shirts and drawings before getting into a lifeboat and watching the ship burn and sink along with all of his specimens. He spent 10 days--adrift, sunburned, parched and drenched with sea spray--before being rescued. Though he swore to himself on the voyage home never to venture out on the ocean again, he soon broke that resolution. He voyaged to the Malay Archipelago for what turned out to be an eight-year journey, island-hopping from Singapore to New Guinea. The different species on different islands played the same role for Wallace that the birds of the Galapagos did for Darwin and led him to the conclusion that species evolved by natural selection.

In the meantime, Bates, Wallace's former collecting buddy, stayed in the Amazon for an incredible 11 years. After experiencing every imaginable hardship--tropical diseases, robbery, malnutrition--he returned the very same year (1859) that Darwin's great book was published. He realized that he had great evidence for natural selection in the wild in the form of harmless species that mimicked the appearance of dangerous or poisonous species. He struck up a correspondence with Darwin, and mimicry quickly became one of the strongest arguments for natural selection.

The Origin of Species set an agenda for paleontology: to find the fossils that would document the origins of major groups. 2009 also happens to be the anniversary of two landmark discoveries in that arena, made by some of the most tenacious and dedicated naturalists who have ever roamed the planet.Although Charles Walcott never finished high school nor earned any kind of degree, he turned a boyhood fascination with trilobite fossils into a career that carried him to expeditions throughout North America, from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the tops of the Rocky Mountains and eventually to Washington. But despite his duties as director of the U.S. Geological Survey, secretary of the Smithson­ian Institution and an adviser to seven presidents, Walcott always spent summers prospecting in the field. In 1909, at age 59, after riding his horse high up on Burgess Pass in the Canadian Rockies, Walcott found a mother lode of exquisitely pre­served animal fossils. The Burgess Shale, as it was called, contained the first appearance of many major animal groups in the fossil record and vivid evidence of the "Cambrian Explosion" of animal evolution.

It may seem strange now, but for the first half of the 20th century, most anthropologists thought Asia was the cradle of mankind. But not Louis Leakey. For more than 30 years, he and Mary Leakey combed East Africa. They unearthed tens of thousands of tools, but no evidence of their makers until 50 years ago this summer. In July 1959, Mary discovered the first hominid skull at Olduvai Gorge. Her find, dubbed "Dear Boy" (now known as Paranthropus boisei) and dated at 1.75 million years old, electrified the world and swung attention on human origins back to Africa for good. In short order, the Leakeys also discovered Homo habilis and Homo erectus fossils at Olduvai, providing key links in the evolutionary sequence from apes to humans.What the Leakeys and their peers set in motion continues to unfold today; the best days of evolutionary science are far from past. Spectacular transitional fossils have been unearthed in the Arctic, China and elsewhere by a new generation of intrepid explorers and molecular biologists who are currently mining the massive new DNA record to decipher how we evolved. And the question of all questions--the origin of life here and elsewhere in the universe, remains as open and unexplored as the world was to Darwin and Wallace. Great adventures lie ahead.

Sean B. Carroll, a professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin, is the author of the new book Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

60 second Extinction Countdown

By John Platt

Few species have come as close to extinction as the milu (Elaphurus davidianus) and survived. For centuries, the rare Chinese animal, also known as Père David's deer, has existed only in captivity. Now, more than 100 years after the species disappeared from its homeland, it is taking its first steps back into the wild.
Overhunting drove the milu to near-extinction for the first time around A.D. 200. For centuries after that, the deer lived only within the walls of Imperial Hunting Park, near modern Beijing, where only China's emperor was allowed to hunt. A flood in 1894 wiped out all but 20 to 30 of the animals. The rest were shot and eaten during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
But the milu's story didn't end there. A few decades earlier, a French missionary named Armand David brought several milu to Europe, where they earned their Western name, Père David's deer. The last 18 deer eventually made their way to the estate of England's Duke of Bedford, where they once again became a private hunting stock.
The deer bred in England for decades, until 1985, when the first milu were returned to China. More soon followed, and the deer continued to breed. The worldwide population, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources's Red List of Threatened Species, today stands at over 2,000.
Now some of these deer are, for the first time, leading "semiwild" lives, according to the China Daily: "About 300 milu at Dafeng [Milu Nature Reserve] are now 'semiwild', meaning they are still fed by staff during the harsh winters. The deer are picky eaters, preferring only the tenderest shoots of water plants and grasses, meaning the colder months issue a challenge to their survival."
Of course, the milu's problems aren't over yet. Because the entire population is descended from just 18 animals, the species faces a potentially dangerous lack of genetic diversity. The China Daily reports that "inbreeding had led to a number of reproductive problems, including low birth rates affected by frequent abnormal and difficult births" as well asan imbalanced sex ratio.
Meanwhile, potential habitat for the milu continues to shrink. According to Wu Haohan, technical advisor with the State Forestry Administration's China GEF Wildlife Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Office, "we have to protect their habitat, because only then can we introduce them into nature. If that's destroyed, they can only live in captivity."
Still, after so many centuries of beating the odds, it's nice to see the species thriving, and taking steps toward returning to nature

Global Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity

ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2009) — When three undergraduates set off on an expedition in 1965 to trap moths on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, little did they realise that they were establishing the groundwork for a study of the impacts of climate change.

New research led by the University of York has repeated the survey 42 years later, and found that, on average, species had moved uphill by about 67 metres over the intervening years to cope with changes in climate.
This is the first demonstration that climate change is affecting the distributions of tropical insects, the most numerous group of animals on Earth, thus representing a major threat to global biodiversity.
University of York PhD student I-Ching Chen – first author of the new study – said: “Tropical insects form the most diverse group of animals on Earth but to-date we have not known whether they were responding to climate change. The last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change AR4 Report showed a gaping hole in the evidence. Our new study is good in that it increases the evidence available, but it is potentially bad for biodiversity.”
Professor Thomas added: “Large numbers of species are completely confined to tropical mountains, such as Mount Kinabalu: many of the species found by the expeditions have never been found anywhere else on Earth. As these species get pushed uphill towards cooler conditions, the amount of land that is available to them gets smaller and smaller. And because most of the top of the mountain is bare rock, they may not be able to find suitable habitats, even if the temperature is right. Some of the species are likely to die out.”
The New Expedition in 2007 was joined by Henry Barlow, one of the members of the original survey, whose life-long enthusiasm for moths helped I-Ching Chen, who is from Taiwan, to come to terms with the sheer diversity of moths she had to identify.
Jeremy Holloway, a Research Associate at the Natural History Museum in London, and another member of the 1965 expedition, devoted his career to the identification (taxonomy) of moths from South East Asia, enabling the research team to identify the new samples. Armed with the data from 1965, moth-trapping equipment, tents, sleeping bags and rations, I-Ching and colleagues set out to repeat the original survey.
“Photographs from the 1965 expedition led us back to exactly the same sites sampled 42 years ago”, said Dr Suzan Benedick, expedition member, and Universiti Malaysia Sabah entomologist.
The new survey involved climbing the mountain and catching moths up to an elevation of 3,675 metres above sea level. Once all of the specimens had been caught and identified, then the team compared the heights at which each species had been found in 1965 and again in 2007. The results revealed a highly statistically significant shift, indicating that the moths are now found higher on the mountain than previously.
There is a more positive note, however. As the highest and coolest location between the Himalaya and New Guinea, Mount Kinabalu represents an extremely important “climate change refuge”. Species that begin to find conditions too hot (or dry) in the surrounding lowlands may be able to find suitable conditions by moving upwards on the slopes of this mountain. “The critical thing is to protect the forests surrounding the mountain, so that the lowland species are able to reach the cooler conditions that they may need,” said Dr Jane Hill, expedition member, and one of I-Ching Chen’s advisors.

New Population of Extremely Rare Snub-Nosed Monkey Discovered

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2008) — A new population of the extremely rare Tonkin snub-nosed monkey, so-called because of its unusual and distinctive up-turned nose, has recently been discovered in a remote forested area of northern Vietnam. The exciting finding made by Fauna & Flora International (FFI) provides new hope for the monkey's future.

Believed to be extinct until the late 1980s, only around 200 Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys (scientific name: Rhinopithecus avunculus) are left in the world. As a result, the primate is listed as Critically Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Endangered Species. Unique to Vietnam, the species is now known to be present in just two of Vietnam's northern-most provinces - Tuyen Quang and Ha Giang.Villagers reported sightingsThe new finding came about after FFI set out to discover whether any more populations of the rare monkeys existed. While interviewing communities near the Chinese border last year, it emerged that villagers in the Tung Vai Commune had sighted the strange looking monkeys after seeing rare film footage of them that FFI had supplied to a national television network.On the strength of these reports, in April 2008 an FFI-led team of biologists managed to observe 15-20 individuals in the nearby forest, including three infants - an encouraging sign, indicating that this is a breeding population. The monkeys were located in a small forest patch in Quan Ba District, Ha Giang Province, near the Chinese border. While observing this group, the biologists noted that the monkeys were very sensitive to the presence of people, giving warning signs to one another and fleeing the area whenever the team approached. It was apparent that the monkeys associated humans with danger - perhaps due to ongoing threats from hunters.Excitingly, local reports indicate that another - possibly larger - group also exists. During the work, FFI's team managed to take a photo of one member of the new population - capturing a fleeting glimpse of an adult male scampering through the trees. This is the only photographic evidence of Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys in Quan Ba District.Future hope for the speciesThis new population provides hope for the future of this species, as the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey is now known to survive in no more than five locations in Vietnam, and at some locations the populations are probably in decline. Habitat loss and hunting for the bush meat and traditional medicine trades have been pushing the species to the brink of extinction. At this new location, cardamom plantations and logging for the Chinese timber market are clearing the few forest refuges left for this unique primate and it looks as though FFI has arrived in the nick of time to drum up the local and international support necessary to protect it.With urgent funds provided by Twycross Zoo in the UK, the first significant steps have been taken to protect this population and FFI has brought together a range of stakeholders, from provincial officials to village heads, to plan the way forward. Added to the mix is support from the Swiss development charity Caritas, which is working alongside FFI in the same district. They are now planning to provide support to the poor rural communities living next to the monkey's forest, to improve local livelihoods and reduce human pressures on the forest ecosystem, thereby increasing the monkey's chance of survival. Already, cardamom production has stopped expanding in the forest and there has been a government programme to confiscate hunting guns.'All recent indications suggest that we have a fantastic opportunity to secure this population and significantly increase the chances for the survival of this species', said Paul Insua-Cao, FFI's Vietnam Primate Programme Manager. 'Most significant is all the excitement this has generated locally and the support that is coming from the local Vietnamese government agencies and Caritas Switzerland . With almost half the world's primate species under threat from extinction, we must do everything we can.'In 2002, FFI and its partners discovered the largest known population of Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys in Khau Ca forest, Ha Giang Province. With an estimated 70 individuals, and the only population not in decline, this group is now considered the most important for the survival of the species. FFI began working to conserve this group immediately upon finding it and continues to support forest patrols and conduct ecological research, while this year supporting the establishment of a protected area at Khau Ca forest.Conservation biologist Le Khac Quyet, has made a name for himself as one of the few people in the world who can claim to be an expert on this mysterious species and, while working for FFI, is credited with discovering both the new population and the one in Khau Ca in 2002. It is fitting that he should have the last word:'When I saw the Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys in Tung Vai Commune I was overjoyed. This new discovery further underlines the importance of learning more about the Tonkin snub-nosed monkeys' range and distribution. There is still time to save this unique species, but with just 200 or so left and threats still strong, we need to act now.

Rolling "Sea Grape" Rocks the Fossil Record

(Dec. 4, 2008) — A submarine expedition that went looking for visually flashy sea creatures instead found a drab, mud-covered blob that may turn out to be truly spectacular indeed.
See also: Plants & AnimalsMarine Biology Fish Soil Types Science & SocietyOcean Policy Transportation Issues Resource Shortage ReferenceMicroorganism Paleozoic Animal Symmetry (biology) The grape-like animal, tentatively named the Bahamian Gromia, is actually a single-celled organism, fully one inch long. But what makes it really fantastic is that it moves -- very slowly -- by rolling itself along the ocean floor."At first, we assumed they were snails, because they had trails," said Sönke Johnsen, an associate professor of biology at Duke University. But after sucking up a few with the tools aboard the NOAA research submarine Johnson-Sea-Link and having a look, they figured the soft, nondescript blobs were simply some kind of elaborate poop. "We called them doo-doo balls," Johnsen said."We watched the video over and over," Johnsen said. The trails couldn't be the result of currents because they went in several directions at the same spot, and sometimes they even changed course. And they weren't the result of rolling downhill. In fact, one trail was found that went down into a small depression and came back up the other side."We argued about it forever," Johnsen said. "These things can't possibly be moving!" But they are, at a rate too slow to be captured on the sub's video. Johnsen guesses they move maybe an inch a day or less.The distinctive trail that the Gromias leave is identical to mud tracks found in the fossil record, which throws a big wrench into one long-standing argument in biology. The fossil tracks pre-date the so-called "Cambrian explosion" 530 million years ago, which was a blossoming of multicellular life and complex body plans from what had previously just been simple, blobby life forms. Many paleontologists and evolutionary biologists have argued that such a trail couldn't possibly have been made by a simple organism, meaning complex body plans were around before the Cambrian explosion. But the Gromia show that simple blobs can indeed move and make tracks in the light, silty bottom.We're confident that drawing attention to these bizarre mega-protists will provide a powerful new spin to the debate," said biologist Mikhail Matz of the University of Texas at Austin, who is first author on the paper in Current Biology. Matz worked out the genetics of the new creature and found it's a giant amoeba closely related to similar blobs found in the Gulf of Oman, near Antarctica, off Guam, and in the Mediterranean. None of them are known to move.The surface of the cell is covered with tiny ports. Its interior is just a fluid; the important working parts of the cell are all near the surface. Think of the working cell as a very thick balloon, Johnsen said.These sea grapes are almost neutrally buoyant, so they barely rest on the ocean floor 800 meters down. It's possible, Johnsen said, that they're sort of eating and rolling at the same time, pulling new sediment in on one side, and pushing "pseudo feces" out on the other, leaving the distinctive trail.What "eating" they do is pretty rudimentary, he added. If they're like other large amoebas, they're really just relying on resident bacteria to ferment their food for them and living off the byproducts. Unfortunately, the Gromia are too fragile to study in captivity.Johnsen also couldn't guess how the critters reproduce. "They obviously do, because there sure were a lot of them," he said. They all appeared to be about the same size however, so it wasn't obvious if there were any young Gromia.The Gromia were found on a relatively sterile area of sea bottom on the eastern side of the Bahamas, near Little San Salvador Island, where the current is extremely slow. "It's actually kind of a spooky habitat," Johnsen said. The expedition made a series of dives on the area in August 2007, with support from NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. Johnsen was chief scientist on the expedition.

Alien-like Squid with "Elbows" Filmed at Drilling Site

Kelly Hearnfor National Geographic News
November 24, 2008
A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—"elbowed" Magnapinna squid. (See photos of Magnapinna.)

See Video at:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081124-giant-squid-magnapinna.html?source=email_wn_20081205&email=wn

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In a brief video from the dive recently obtained by National Geographic News, one of the rarely seen squid loiters above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico on November 11, 2007.
The clip—from a Shell oil company ROV (remotely operated vehicle)—arrived after a long, circuitous trip through oil-industry in-boxes and other email accounts.
"Perdido ROV Visitor, What Is It?" the email's subject line read—Perdido being the name of a Shell-owned drilling site. Located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) off Houston, Texas (Gulf of Mexico map), Perdido is one of the world's deepest oil and gas developments.
The video clip shows the screen of the ROV's guidance monitor framed with pulsing inputs of time and positioning data.
In a few seconds of jerky camerawork, the squid appears with its huge fins waving like elephant ears and its remarkable arms and tentacles trailing from elbow-like appendages.
Despite the squid's apparent unflappability on camera, Magnapinna, or "big fin," squid remain largely a mystery to science.
ROVs have filmed Magnapinna squid a dozen or so times in the Gulf and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.
The recent video marks the first sighting of a Magnapinna at an oil development, though experts don't think the squid's presence there has any special scientific significance.
But the video is evidence of how, as oil- and gas-industry ROVs dive deeper and stay down longer, they are yielding valuable footage of deep-sea animals.
Some marine biologists have even formed formal partnerships with oil companies, allowing scientists to share camera time on the corporate ROVs—though critics worry about possible conflicts of interest.

The Perdido squid may look like a science fiction movie monster, but it's no special effect, according to squid biologist Michael Vecchione of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who is based at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
In 1998 Vecchoine and University of Hawaii biologist Richard Young became the first to document a Magnapinna, based on juveniles of the Magnapinna pacifica species. M. pacifica was so unusual that the scientists had to create a new classification category to accommodate it: the family Magnapinnidae, which currently boasts four species.
In 2001 the pair released the first scientific report based on adult Magnapinna specimens, as seen via video. The study demonstrated that Magnapinna are common worldwide in the permanently dark zone of the ocean below about 4,000 feet (1,219 meters).
(See "'Weird' New Squid Species Discovered in Deep Sea" [December 20, 2001].)
In 2006 a single damaged specimen from the North Atlantic led to the naming of a second Magnapinna species, M. talismani. And in 2007 the scientists documented two more: M. atlantica and a species based on a specimen from the mid-Atlantic.
That fourth Magnapinna species remains nameless, because its arms were too badly damaged for a full study. "However, it was clearly different from the three known species," Vecchione said.
The Magnapinna species apparently have only slight physical differences, mainly related to tentacle and arm structure in juveniles.
The subtlety of those variations makes it impossible to identify which species is in the oil-rig video, given that at least two Magnapinna species—M. atlantica and M. pacifica—are known to inhabit the Gulf of Mexico, Vecchione said.
Enduring Mystery
Based on analysis of videos not unlike the one captured at the Perdido site, scientists know that the adult Magnapinna observed to date range from 5 to 23 feet (1.5 to 7 meters) long, Vecchione said. By contrast, the largest known giant squid measured about 16 meters (52 feet) long.
And whereas giant squid and other cephalopods have eight short arms and two long tentacles, Magnapinna has ten indistinguishable appendages that all appear to be the same length.
"The most peculiar structure is that of the arms," said deep-sea biologist Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.
Referring to the way the tentacles hang down from elbow-like kinks, Robison said: "Judging from that structure, we think the animal feeds by dragging its arms and the ends of its tentacles along the seafloor as it drifts slowly above it."
The elbow-like angles allow the tentacles to spread out, perhaps preventing them from getting tangled.
"Imagine spreading the fingers of a hand and dragging the fingertips along the top of a table to grab bits of food," he added.
But NOAA's Vecchione suggests a feeding behavior that is more like trapping than hunting. He speculates that Magnapinna passively waits for prey to bump into the sticky appendages.
Strange Bedfellows?
As oil companies and their ROVs spend more time in the bathypelagic zone, more discoveries are sure to follow, experts say.
Eager for hard-to-come-by deep-sea video and data, some biologists are formally aligning themselves with the companies.
The U.K.-based SERPENT (Scientific and Environmental ROV Partnership using Existing iNdustrial Technology) project, for example, matches oil companies with researchers "to make cutting-edge ROV technology and data more accessible to the world's science community," according to the project's Web site.
Despite such partnerships, Monterey Bay's Robison said, most sightings of the Magnapinna squid have come from research vessels, not oil companies. The November 2007 video, for the record, was captured without scientific involvement.
Some scientists, including Robison, are not entirely comfortable relying on corporations for new data.
Andrew Shepard, director of NOAA's Undersea Research Center, is excited about the potential for new ocean resources, but he does have concerns.
"Oil companies are there to develop hydrocarbons, not find new species," Shepard said.
"These discoveries may, in fact, have a negative impact on very expensive and valuable lease tracts if someone decides a rare species needs to be protected."
But given how expensive and time consuming ROV-based deep-sea research is, scientific cooperation with industry is crucial, SERPENT project oceanographer Mark Benfield said.
"There are relatively few research vessels and far fewer ROVs and manned submersibles capable of working down through [extremely deep regions of the ocean]," said Benfield, who teaches at Louisiana State University.
Research funds are getting scarcer, he added, and "with SERPENT we gain access to sophisticated ROVs for free.
"These systems are based on vessels or rigs that spend months to years at a single location. This allows us to build up a much more complete picture of life in the deep-sea than would be possible with [only] academic ships and deep-submergence vehicles."
NOAA's Vecchione said he has "gotten a lot of interesting observations from the SERPENT project and other petro sources."
But the oil-industry collaborations "should not get in the way of purely scientific exploration," Vecchione said. "We need to be careful about deep-sea conservation."
National Geographic Digital Media researcher Liz Cosby contributed to this report.

Solar Powered Sea-slugs Live Like Plants

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — The lowly sea slug, “Elysia chlorotica,” may not seem like the most exciting of creatures, but don’t be fooled: it behaves like a plant and is solar-powered, says a Texas A&M University biologist who has been studying these tiny creatures for the past decade and, along with collaborators from several universities, has identified a possible cause of their ability to behave like plants.

Biology professor James Manhart is a member of a research group that believes they have identified some of the secrets of the sea slug and its curious plant-like behavior.

Manhart says plants can be compared to solar-powered machines—their cells contain tiny organelles called plastids that trap sunlight and convert it into energy by a process known as photosynthesis. Animals, on the other hand, depend on plants or other animals for their energy needs.

The sea slug, however, works a little differently. Its main food source is a specific type of alga. “It makes a cut in the alga, sucks out the cytoplasm [the material inside the alga] and digests most of it,” explains Manhart.

But there’s a twist—it retains the plastids that trap the solar energy.

These plastids remain in the slug, continue to photosynthesize and provide food for the slug. In effect, the creature becomes a solar-powered slug and is able to make its own food like plants do.

“Photosynthesis needs around 2,000 to 3,000 genes, and animals do not have many of the critical genes,” says Manhart. So Manhart and his co-workers looked into how the plastids consumed by the slug can continue photosynthesizing.

“We found that the slug has at least one gene required for photosynthesis in its nuclear genome, which has never been found in any animal,” says Manhart. “The critical thing is the plastids come from the alga, but the slug nucleus contains at least one, and probably more of the genes required for plastid functioning,” he adds.

“The slug needs the alga to mature and complete its life cycle,” Manhart says. “It is totally dependent on the alga to survive. Once the slug has acquired a sufficient amount of plastids it can survive, like plants, for at least nine months by trapping solar energy and converting it into food.”

That means the “baby” slugs are born with genes that support photosynthesis, but they have to gather their own plastids. Manhart says that if the slug and the alga both brave the ever-changing climatic conditions, the slug might evolve into a truly photosynthetic animal—that is, one born with the plastids. But that might be looking too far into the future. For now, he says, the next step would be sequencing the slug’s genome.

These research findings have been published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.