A group blog highlighting ecology, evolution and biodiversity, and other aspects of biology.
"The Crusade Against Evolution
In the beginning there was Darwin. And then there was intelligent design.
How the next generation of "creation science" is invading America's
classrooms."
By Evan Ratliff, Wired, Issue 12.10 - October 2004
"Konar and Katrin Iken, assistant professors of marine biology with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Marine Science, accidentally dropped a small strainer, or sieve, overboard. The scientists had been conducting nearshore surveys of marine life as part of an international study sponsored by the Census of Marine Life NaGISA program and funded by the Gulf Ecosystem Monitoring program.
"A sieve is worth about $75, so we wanted to get it back," said Konar. "We descended into about 60 feet of water and found the sieve right away. But then I noticed these little pink tumbleweeds everywhere. I thought I was looking at a rhodolith bed, but rhodolith beds had never been described in Alaska. We were shocked to see how many there were down there.""
Rhodoliths are a kind of coralline red algae that deposit calcium carbonate within their cell walls, forming hard structures that closely resemble beds of coral. Unlike coral, rhodoliths do not attach themselves to the rocky seabed, but drift like tumbleweeds along the seafloor until they grow heavy enough to settle and form brightly coloured beds. Rhodoliths photosynthesise.
Rhodoliths have never been documented in Alaska.
From a Science Daily report.
Intending to share published and unpublished material from the Raffles Bulletin of Zooology and in Habitatnews, while conscious of the need to encourage proper citation and acknowledgement of original work, I reflected on the manner in which IT circles have addressed issues of sharing and selling in open source, shareware, freeware and the use of Creative Commons Licenses.
I eventually adopted the latter and acknowledged as much at database workshop in Kuala Lumpur this year, and suggested to biologists that they consider these issues for their databases and publications.
Ever since the CBD propagated a over-simplified view of material profits from forests and oceans, there has been a climate of self-preservation by means of over-regulation that has crippled scientific research in many countries, ultimately affecting local biodiversity scientists as well.
Added to this burden has been the physically inaccessible or unknown nature of regional journals and the financially inaccessible nature of commercially published scientific journals.
Advances in computers, internet, and publishing methods are thankfully forcing a rethink of these issues.
Gass, Doyle and Kennnison investigate this issue in three articles in the open source Public Library of Science Biology articles.
On 13 July 2004, Andy Gass, Helen Doyle & Rebecca Kennison asked "Whose Copy? Whose Rights?" in PLoS 2(7): e228.
They argue that since governments invest millions in university infrastructure and research, there is a moral obligation to share derived knowledge with the community at large, and not just an elite group restricted by the high costs inevitable in prestigious journals and the restriction of copyright that often prevent the author from circulating his work freely.
This is the third in a series of articles, the other two being: Doyle, H., A. Gass & R. Kennison, 13 Apr 2004. Who Pays for Open Access? PLoS Biol., 2(4): e105, and Doyle, H., A. Gass, R. Kennison, 2004. Open Access and Scientific Societies. PLoS Biol., 2(5): e156.
In
The idea sounds good and this could also be a possibility we can explore in our own backyard, using smaller plots of forests as pilot projects and maybe eventually moving to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. The education center could serve as a education hub for tropical rainforest ecology for the region. Already, several science enrichment companies are using the reserve for paid guided walks and simple ecological projects. Perhaps existing institutions such as NEA or RMBR could explore this possibility.
'The European common frog, Rana temporaria, has long been thought to have a straightforward breeding strategy - male grabs female and fertilizes eggs once released into water. After centuries of study and thousands of published papers, a novel mating strategy been just discovered in the special population conditions (4-10 males : 1 female) of the ponds in the Pyrenees - post-mating clutch piracy, which has been observed for the first time in an externally fertilised vertebrate.
In these ponds, when a breeding female has allowed a male to clasp her, surrounding males often jostle the pair in an attempt to dislodge the male. After the female has laid the eggs and the parents have left, these pirate males grasp the eggs as they would a female, and release sperm in the floating clutches. In one pond, 84% of all clutches had been fertilized by more than one male.
At other times, gangs of males search the pond for newly laid clutches and fertilize them again within an hour or two of being laid. Often, parent males join a gang to engage in clutch piracy as well. Some clutches had as many as four fathers.'
"This is the first example of such a complex mating behavior in amphibians undergoing external fertilization," said David R. Vieites, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. "Because of a population excess of males, the males found a system to reproduce without the female."
See Science Daily and UC Berkeley news commenting on Vieities, DR, S Nieto-Roman, M Barluenga, A Palanca, M Vences & A. Meyer, 2004. Post-mating clutch piracy in an amphibian. Nature 431, 305 - 308 (16 September 2004); doi:10.1038/nature02879. Abstract. Video available in supplementray material (NUS access).
Fear not if you are balding...
Adult mouse skin found to contain stem cells that can generate skin and hair!
"The researchers took individual cells and grew them up into hundreds of thousands of identical copies, then grafted them into a wound on the back of a hairless mouse. The cells grew to form patches of fur, including skin, follicles, hair, and oil-producing glands."
This work "...is the first to prove that the cells are true stem cells, with the capacity to form new tissues. It's hoped the discovery will lead to treatments for baldness and burns."
See: "Hair-raising stem cells confirmed in mouse skin." By Helen Pilcher. News@Nature, 02 Sep 2004, writing about Blanpain C., Lowry W. E., Geoghegan A., Polak L. and Fuchs E. (2004). Cell, 118: 635 - 648.
While most attention is focused on the impact of large scale commercial fishing, a new study led by Florida State University biologist Felicia Colema on US recreational fishing revealed that they account for for some 23% of the total catch of over-fished populations in 2002.
"The conventional wisdom is that recreational fishing is a small proportion of the total take, so it is largely overlooked," said Coleman. "But if you remove pollock and menhaden -- two strictly commercially caught species that account for over half of all landings -- the recreational take rises to 10 percent nationally. If you focus on fish identified by the federal government as species of concern, it rises to 23 percent." FSU press release.
The numbers of recreational fishermen has increased by 20% in the past ten years and there are now "over 10 million saltwater recreational anglers" in the US.
It will be interesting to do a study on recreational fishing in this region and check on their impact on fish population as well. I suspect we might get similar figures due to growing affluence and an increase in tourism in the region.
"Ocean Fish Feeling Effects of Recreational Anglers." Scientific American: Science News, 27 Aug 2004 reporting on Coleman, F. C., W. F. Figueira , J. S. Ueland & L. B. Crowder, 2004. The Impact of U. S. Recreational Fisheries on Marine Fish Populations. Science, 26 Aug 2004.
