peer-reviewed paper

tags: virology, mimivirus, sputnik, virophage, microbiology, molecular biology Now here's an astonishing discovery that's hot off the presses: a virus that infects other viruses! This amazing finding is being published tomorrow in the top-tier peer-reviewed journal, Nature. I don't know about you, but when I was in school, I was taught that viruses could only infect other living cells, and further, I was taught that viruses are not living cells. So, logically, one could conclude that viruses cannot infect other viruses. But a new discovery by a group of scientists in France reveals otherwise…
tags: researchblogging.org, premature hair graying, autosomal dominant trait, genetics, horses, hair color, syntaxin-17, melanocortin-1 receptor, cis-acting regulatory mutation, melanoma, evolution This horse is in the process of losing its pigment. It will end up being all white by the time it is eight years old. Image: Horse Wallpaper [larger view]. Even though I have always been a fan of black horses, my heart did leap at the sight of the noble Shadowfax racing towards Gandalf in response to his call in the Lord of the Rings. White horses have symbolized purity throughout most ages and…
tags: researchblogging.org, begging calls, brood parasitism, coevolution, learning, social shaping, ornithology, Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo, Chalcites basalis, Chrysococcyx basalis Horsfield's Bronze-Cuckoo, Chalcites (Chrysococcyx) basalis, Capertee Valley, NSW, Australia, September 2003. Image: Aviceda [larger view]. Brood parasites are birds, fish or insects that deceive unrelated animals of the same species or different species to care for their offspring. By doing so, the parasitic parent is relieved of the energetic demands of constructing a nest and raising its young to independence…
tags: researchblogging.org, Macaw Wasting Disease, myenteric ganglioneuritis, proventricular dilatation disease, Bornaviridae, avian bornavirus, negative strand RNA viruses, pan-viral microarray, ViroChip One pair of the Little Blue (Spix's) Macaw, Cyanopsitta spixii. This species is extinct in the wild and its captive population consists of roughly 70 to 100 individuals. Image: Fundação Parque Zoológico de São Paulo (São Paulo Zoo), Brasil. For more than 30 years, a mysterious disease, known as proventricular dilatation disease (PDD), has sent chills of terror down the spines of…
tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, speciation, ring species, phylogeography, landscape genetics, crimson rosella, Platycercus elegans, parrots, birds, Australia Crimson Rosella, Platycercus elegans. Image: Australian Broadcasting Corporation. One of the challenges facing those who believe that evolution cannot create new species is explaining the problem of "ring species." Ring species are a group of geographically connected populations that can interbreed with nearby populations, but cannot breed with those populations that exist at each end of the cline (figure A). These populations…
tags: researchblogging.org, animal migration, ecology, conservation, habitat destruction, global warming, overexploitation Image: Makoa Farm Horseback Riding Safaris in Tanzania [larger view]. What do salmon, passenger pigeons, American bison and wildebeest have in common? They all are (or were) migratory, and their populations either are declining or have become extinct. In fact, the populations of nearly all migratory animals, from insects to fishes, birds to mammals, are suffering disproportionate population declines that sedentary species are not experiencing. This is hardly…
tags: researchblogging.org, dinosaurian soft tissue, fossils, bacterial biofilms, paleontology, endocasts, formerly pyritic framboids, collagen Figure 1. EDS spectrum of framboid. EDS spectrum of framboid showing an iron-oxygen signature. Pt is from coating for SEM. Area in red box was scanned for elements. [larger view]. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002808. Some of you might remember a paper published in Science that rocked the paleontological world by revealing that a broken thigh bone from Tyrannosaurus rex contained soft tissue. When this soft tissue was analyzed, it was identified as…
tags: researchblogging.org, Bombus impatiens, Bumblebees, pathogen spillover, epidemiology, pollinating insects, greenhouses Common Eastern Bumblebee, Bombus impatiens. This species is often relied upon to pollinate commercial food crops, such as tomatoes, that are often grown in agricultural greenhouses. Image: Wikipedia Commons [larger view]. A mysterious decline in North American bumblebee populations is apparently the result of "spillover" of pathogen-infected commercial bumblebees, Bombus species, from agricultural greenhouses where tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers are commonly grown…
tags: researchblogging.org, dichromatism, mating system, plumage color, sex allocation, eclectus parrots, Eclectus roratus, ornithology, birds, avian, parrots Elektra, my female Solomon Islands eclectus parrot, Eclectus roratus solomonensis. This is the smallest and most distinctively marked of all the subspecies of eclectus parrots. Image: GrrlScientist 4 July 2008 [larger view]. Some of you might recall the recent story about scientists learning to identify plumage coloration from fossilized feathers. This might seem a sort of esoteric pursuit meant to entertain scientists with access to…
tags: researchblogging.org, speciation, adaptive radiation, , diversification, ecological opportunity, community assembly, species interactions, North American wood-warblers, Dendroica species, Daniel L. Rabosky Yellow-rumped warbler, Dendroica coronata, After Hatch Year male. Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU [larger view]. Several questions that motivate my own research and thinking are; How do species arise? Where does all this biodiversity that we see on Earth come from? Does speciation occur as a series of slow and gradual accumulated changes or is it an explosive process that occurs within a…
tags: researchblogging.org, birdsong, personality traits, mate choice, sexual selection, risk taking, European collared flycatcher, Ficedula albicollis, László Zsolt Garamszegi Male European collared flycatcher, Ficedula albicollis, singing. Image: Beijershamn Ãland, 23 May 2004 [link]. Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel 1/1000s f/8.0 at 400.0mm iso400. Most people don't believe that animals possess distinct personalities, although they readily recognize and can describe individual personalities among their family, friends and neighbors and are aware of the importance of individual personalities…
tags: researchblogging.org, reciprocal altruism, cooperation, anti-predator behavior, mobbing, birds, pied flycatcher, Ficedula hypoleuca, Indrikis Krams Male European pied flycatcher, Ficedula hypoleuca, singing. SkÃ¥ne, Sweden. Image: Omar Brännström, 8 May 2005 [link]. Canon EOS 1D Mark II ,Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM 1/640s f/5.6 at 700.0mm iso320. Meticulous experimental design is crucial to understanding the evolution of specific behaviors, expecially complex and subtle behaviors exhibited by highly intelligent and very social animals, such as birds. One such behavior is mobbing…
tags: researchblogging.org, melanosomes, plumage color, feather color, fossil preservation, birds, dinosaur, Jakob Vinther Male Red-bellied woodpecker, Melanerpes carolinus. Image: Ken Thomas (Wikipedia) [larger view]. When looking at paintings and reconstructions of fossil birds and dinosaurs, people often ask "how do you know what color they were?" Well, we didn't. However, a new paper was just published in Biology Letters that explores the possibility of deciphering the actual color of fossilized plumage and makes a startling discovery: scientists can identify at least some of the…
tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, flatfish, Amphistium, Heteronectes, transitional fossils, missing link, Matt Friedman During the development of extant flatfishes, such as this plaice, Pleuronectes platessa, one eye has migrated round the head to lie on the same side as the other. So these fishes have an 'eyed' (up) side and a 'blind' (down) side suitable for their bottom-dwelling lifestyle. Image: KÃ¥re Telnes. Flounder, turbot, sole, halibut and plaice (pictured above) are more than just a tasty slab of flesh on your plate. They are flatfishes that spend their adult life lying…
tags: researchblogging.org, female scientists, science publishing, double-blind review, single-blind review, cultural observation, gender bias, sexism, feminism A microbiologist at work. Image: East Bay AWIS. A few months ago, a controversy occurred in the blogosphere regarding whether scientific papers whose first author is female are discriminated against during the peer-review process, and the suggestion was to institute double-blind peer review as a way to mitigate this possibility. "Double-blinding" as this is sometimes referred to, is a process where a manuscript that has been…
tags: researchblogging.org, endangered species, estimating extinction risk, demographic heterogeneity, demographic stochasticity, environmental stochasticity, Mechanistic stochastic models, Brett Melbourne The endangered pelagic thresher shark, Alopias pelagicus. More than half of the world's shark species are under the threat of extinction due to overfishing by humans, especially for sharkfin soup. Image: Kevin Markey, 2004 (Pacific Shark Research Center). The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released a report in 2007 indicating that more than 16,000 animal species…
tags: researchblogging.org, global warming, climate variation, climate change, penguins, El Nino, marine zoning, P. Dee Boersma Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, and chicks. (a) Adélie penguin chicks may get covered in snow during storms, but beneath the snow their down is warm and dry. (b) When rain falls, downy Adélie chicks can get wet and, when soaked, can become hypothermic and die. Images: P. Dee Boersma. According to an article that was just published in the journal BioScience, penguin populations are declining sharply due to the combined effects of overfishing and pollution…
tags: researchblogging.org, Early Bird Project, Tree of Life, avian evolution, deep avian evolutionary relationships, avian phylogenomics, location cues, Shannon J. Hackett, Rebecca T. Kimball, Sushma Reddy Basic topology of the evolutionary relationships between birds. Maximum Likelihood (ML) phylogram reveals the short internodes at the base of Neoaves and highlights certain extreme examples of rate variation across avian lineages. The phylogenetic tree was rooted to crocodilian outgroups (not shown). Branch colors represent major clades supported in this study: land birds (green),…
tags: researchblogging.org, Black-throated Blue Warbler, Dendroica caerulescens, social information, habitat selection, vegetation structure, location cues, dispersal, Matthew G Betts Male Black-throated Blue Warbler, Dendroica caerulescens, with nestlings. Image: S. Maslowski, USFWS [larger view]. Wild songbirds must be able to quickly discriminate between different habitats so they can choose and establish a suitable breeding territory. Since even older, experienced breeding songbirds lose roughly 50% of their chicks to predators, even a small mistake in choosing a breeding territory…
tags: researchblogging.org, scientific ethics, Hippocratic oath, life scientists, corporate culture I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member. Scientific misconduct is very expensive, leading to years of wasted research dollars and effort in pursuit of a scientific mirage, and it damages the…