Green Group discussion
Animals
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If you don't like spiders, look away now
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Still pretty cool to watch (as long as it's a recording)!
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At the bottom of this useful page are six more examples of resin fossils, like a spider attacking a wasp.
https://gizmodo.com/this-stupid-tick-...
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https://gizmodo.com/new-evidence-from...
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"The mantis devoured nine of the 40 fish in the pond over a five-day period, “showing the potential for a single invertebrate to have a strong impact on the fish community and, since guppies, like many other small fish, are active predators of aquatic insects, indirectly on the whole pond ecosystem,” the authors write. "
In the comments, there is an extraordinary clip of a mantis trying to catch a hummingbird. Only in the slowed down version can we be sure of what happens.
https://gizmodo.com/dear-lord-praying...
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https://gizmodo.com/real-life-zombie-...
Plight of the Living Dead: What Real-Life Zombies Reveal about Our World--And Ourselves
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https://gizmodo.com/gemologist-finds-...
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https://gizmodo.com/you-ve-heard-of-w...
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https://gizmodo.com/gollum-like-daddy...
Clare wrote: "Gizmodo kindly interviewed the author of a book on parasites that zombify insects and other animals, so I don't have to. Read if you dare. This book is amazing! Take the chance.
Candice
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https://gizmodo.com/newly-discovered-...
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https://www.ecowatch.com/smallest-din...
The Chilean bee hummingbird is the smallest warmblooded creature along with the Etruscan shrew and Kitti's hognosed bat.
But cold blooded creatures can be even smaller. This discovery may shed light on the coldblood/ warmblood debate.
More info on the debate can be found in
Why Elephants Have Big Ears: And Other Riddles from the Natural World
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The fun story, however, is that it was first spotted in a photo posted on Twitter.
https://phys.org/news/2020-05-bizarre...
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This is a cicada year in USA for the 17-year appearing variety.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/whats-up-...
You do need to turn the sound on for the short film!
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https://gizmodo.com/incredible-amber-...
Here is the slightly more scientific version from the Royal Society.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/do...
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https://phys.org/news/2020-07-group-t...
""We compared their physical appearance and the burrows they construct, and then looked for molecular differences in their DNA," Dr. Wilson said. "We found differences in their physical appearance which allow them to be distinguished from other trapdoor spiders in eastern Australia."
Molecular differences confirmed that the researchers were dealing with an entirely new genus of trapdoor spider.
"The incredibly well hidden burrows they create were also different to other trapdoor spiders in eastern Australia, which is probably why this new group of spiders remained undiscovered in the past," Dr. Wilson said."
They live in Brisbane.
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You've probably heard of fleas, which transmit diseases. But there are other parasites which live for stages in different hosts, as different as waterbirds and fishes.
Deep sea fish find food hard to come by, so some fish or arthropods latch onto any part of a larger fish and live on its leavings or blood.
Science is now studying which parasites thrive and which diminish as circumstances change.
"Traditionally, the field of disease ecology assumes one of two paths: That we are either heading toward a future of more disease and massive outbreaks or toward a future of parasite extinction. This paper shows that both trajectories are happening simultaneously, Wood explained.
"This particular experiment suggests that we need to anticipate both trajectories going forward. It starts to resolve the conflict in the literature by showing that everyone is right—it's all happening," Wood said. "The trick now is to figure out what traits will predict which parasites will decline and which will increase in response to biodiversity loss."
Wood's lab is working on that question now by reconstructing the history of parasites over time, documenting which parasites increased in abundance and which declined. However, there's almost no historical record of parasites and without this information, it's difficult to know how to conserve them. "
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-parasit...
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And some scientists are interested.
https://phys.org/news/2020-07-team-co...
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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-b...
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https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-be..."
Impressive! Where can I get my "diabolical ironclad armor"? ;-)
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"The great fox-spider is listed as "critically endangered" and was feared to be extinct in the UK before it was rediscovered at a Ministry of Defence (MoD) training area in Surrey.
Previously it had not been seen since the early 1990s and had only ever been found at three sites in Dorset and Surrey.
Mike Waite, from the Surrey Wildlife Trust, said he was "over the moon" with the discovery.
He said: "This formidable-looking creature is an impressive beast, perfectly camouflaged and also largely nocturnal, and for all its size it has been remarkably elusive.""
https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2020/10...
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https://phys.org/news/2020-11-million...
More information: An early Cambrian euarthropod with radiodont-like raptorial appendages, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2883-7 , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-28...
Journal information: Nature
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"Hongjie Li, the lead author of the report published in Nature Communications, "became fascinated with the crystals" and discovered it was a biomineral layer that develops as the ants mature, increasing the hardness of their exoskeleton and covering nearly the entire body.
While researchers do not know for certain why the ants have this unusual armour, Currie told AFP they suspect it has a lot to do with the soldier ants of another species of fungus-growing ants, Atta cephalotes.
The two species will often engage in territorial "ant wars", which the researchers simulated in lab-based battles.
"When the Acro majors are without their armour the Atta soldiers quickly cut them into pieces, literally," Currie said.
"When they have their armour, they actually go from almost always losing the battles to almost always winning.""
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-leaf-cu...
More information: Biomineral armor in leaf-cutter ants, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19566-3 , www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19...
Journal information: Nature Communications
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""They're as big as a stag beetle," said the NHM's senior curator of insects, Max Barclay.
"As far as I know, the story is this: A farmer in eastern England was cutting up wood he'd found while doing some deep ploughing and discovered these insects inside; dead, of course. This was a huge piece of waterlogged oak, and he sent us a sample. I think, primarily, he was concerned the beetles were pests. My colleagues at the time said, 'well, they're not British', and so they were left.
"Today, you find this species halfway down France. You get it in Poland, Hungary and into Slovakia. And there are also old records from southern Germany.
"We recently had the opportunity with some American collaborators to actually date the wood and the beetles. This was really interesting. Because the beetles are inside the wood, you know they're the same age; and it's therefore a test of the dating techniques to show they get the same results whether it's plant material or animal material. It's a kind of Rosetta Stone moment."
The radiocarbon dating found the beetles and the oak to be 3,785 years old.
Back then, in what was the Bronze Age, we think these islands experienced relatively dry and warm conditions. We don't have thermometer records but many other similar "proxies" suggest this. The presence of the wood-chomping beetles probably speaks also to more forested times. East Anglia has since been cleared of nearly all its ancient woodlands."
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-envi...
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https://gizmodo.com/dino-parasites-tr...
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They say most bites happen around the home, with the vast majority occurring when victims are in bed or have spiders trapped in their clothing.
The species originated in the Canary Islands and Madeira but has been spreading worldwide in the last two decades. In parts of Ireland and the UK, it is now one of the most common spiders found in urban settings.
Venomous bites are reportedly becoming more prevalent, with victims usually experiencing intense pain and swelling for a few days. In some cases, malaise and persistent stiffness in limbs is reported.
Last year, researchers discovered that 111 toxins, out of 140 found in the Noble False Widow spiders' venom, were common to those found in Black widows."
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/0526/122...
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"“I was surprised that snake-eating by spiders can be found on all continents (except Antarctica),” says study leader Martin Nyffeler, a spider expert at the University of Basel in Switzerland. “I was surprised that so many different spider groups are capable of killing and eating snakes. I was surprised that so many different snake species are occasionally killed by spiders.”
“All of this was unknown before,” says Nyffeler in an email.
In all, Nyffeler and his co-author, University of Georgia snake expert J. Whitfield Gibbons, scoured every piece of scientific literature they could find, as well as social media sites, news coverage, and even old issues of National Geographic, to unearth more than 300 observations of spiders killing snakes. The data encompassed more than 40 spider species and more than 90 snake species."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/an...
There's photos, folks. And a wriggly bit. Beware.
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"Soon after we began our research on the ecology of Phillip Island's burrowing seabirds, we discovered chicks of black-winged petrels (Pterodroma nigripennis) were falling prey to the Phillip Island centipede.
We knew this needed further investigation, so we set out to unravel the mystery of this large arthropod's dietary habits.
To find out what these centipedes were eating, we studied their feeding activities at night and recorded the prey species they were targeting. We also monitored petrel chicks in their burrow nests every few days, for months at a time.
We eventually began to see consistent injury patterns among chicks that were killed. We even witnessed one centipede attacking and eating a chick.
From the rates of predation we observed, we calculated that the Phillip Island centipede population can kill and eat between 2,109 and 3,724 petrel chicks each year. The black-winged petrels—of which there are up to 19,000 breeding pairs on the island—appear to be resilient to this level of predation.
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"Up until just a few decades ago the Phillip Island Centipede was very rare. In fact, it was only formally described as a species in 1984.
After an intensive search in 1980, only a few small individuals were found. The species's rarity back then was most likely due to severely degraded habitats caused by pigs, goats and rabbits introduced by humans to the island.
The removal of these invasive pests enabled black-winged petrels to colonize. Their population has since exploded and they're now the most abundant of the 13 seabird species that breed on Phillip Island.
They provide a high-quality food source for the Phillip Island centipede and have therefore likely helped centipede population to recover."
https://phys.org/news/2021-08-giant-b...
Journal information: American Naturalist
Provided by The Conversation
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" Historically there is a bias towards larger inclusions in amber as inclusions as small as tardigrades are hard to see and require extremely good observational skills, as well as some specialist knowledge.
"Scientists know where tardigrades broadly fit in the tree of life, that they are related to arthropods, and that they have a deep origin during the Cambrian Explosion. The problem is that we have this extremely lonely phylum with only three named fossils. Most of the fossils from this phylum are found in amber but, because they're small, even if they are preserved it may be really difficult to see them," Ortega-Hernández said.
Mapalo agreed, "If you look at the external morphology of tardigrades, you might assume that there are no changes that occurred within the body of tardigrades. However, using confocal laser microscopy to visualize the internal morphology, we saw characters that are not observed in extent species but are observed in the fossils. This helps us understand what changes in the body occurred across millions of years. Furthermore, this suggests that even if tardigrades may be the same externally, some changes are occurring internally."
Mapalo and Ortega-Hernández continue to employ confocal laser microscopy technology to study other tardigrades in amber in their hopes to expand the tardigrade fossil record."
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-tardigr...
More information: A tardigrade in Dominican amber, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2021). rspb.royalsocietypublishing.or … .1098/rspb.2021.1760
Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Provided by Harvard University
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https://phys.org/news/2021-12-true-mi...
"The record-setting species was discovered 60 metres underground in a drill hole in a mining area in Western Australia and has been dubbed Eumillipes persephone."
More information: Paul Marek, The first true millipede—1306 legs long, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-02447-0. www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02...
Journal information: Scientific Reports
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https://gizmodo.com/newly-discovered-...
Oh, and I was starting to think bamboo was part of the answer - clothing, paper products, fabric. Thanks for some more information.
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https://phys.org/news/2022-10-hairy-s...
""This is already the sixth species of hairy-shelled Cyclophoridae, a group of tropical land snails found so far, embedded in Mesozoic amber, about 99 million years old," explains Dr. Adrienne Jochum from the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt and the Natural History Museum in Bern. Dr. Jochum explains that "It is not uncommon for the shells of fossil and present-day land snails to be embellished with ridges, hairs, nodules, or folds; however, the development of such 'decoration' is still a complex process that usually does not occur without a purpose.""
More information: Jean-Michel Bichain et al, Archaeocyclotus brevivillosus sp. nov., a new cyclophorid land snail (Gastropoda: Cyclophoroidea) from mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber, Cretaceous Research (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2022.105359
Journal information: Cretaceous Research
Provided by Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum
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https://phys.org/news/2023-07-legged-...
"A previously unknown species has been discovered lurking in the parks of Los Angeles and Orange counties.
The animal boasts 486 legs and a toothy, Predator-style head. It has the greenish translucence of a glow-in-the-dark toy in daylight, and weaves through the soil as elegantly as an embroiderer's needle.
But step away from the microscope and the Los Angeles thread millipede (Illacme socal) becomes a lot less intimidating. With the width of a thin mechanical pencil lead and the length of a sewing pin, it's easy to see how this tiny, thread-like snippet of an invertebrate has gone unnoticed—until now.
With the publication late last month of a paper formally introducing the critter, the Los Angeles thread millipede joins roughly 12,000 other named millipede species worldwide.
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"Millipedes do the unsexy yet essential work of keeping the forests from drowning in their dead. They are detritovores, breaking down dead plant matter for food and excreting nutrients that seed the soil for future growth."
More information: Paul E. Marek et al, A new species of Illacme from southern California (Siphonophorida, Siphonorhinidae), ZooKeys (2023). DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.1167.102537
Journal information: ZooKeys
Here in Aotearoa, we have no native land mammals except a species of bat. In the ecological void normally filled by mice these huge amazing insects evolved. They're called weta and look pretty darned scary but are slow moving, non-aggressive and harmless to humans. They are said to be, not the largest, but the heaviest insect in the world.Here's a story about them with pics and videos.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/6...
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Am I right in thinking that your islands are "true islands" - they were never part of a continent? Which would account for lack of mammals.
From your article, I love...
"The name weta comes from the Maori word wetapunga, or “god of ugly things” [PDF]. The genus name, deinacrida, means “terrible grasshopper.”"
Clare wrote: "Weta Workshop!Am I right in thinking that your islands are "true islands" - they were never part of a continent? Which would account for lack of mammals..."
These islands were a part of the continent called Zeelandia but it was a sunken one which is slowly rising. And you are correct. That is the reason we have no mammals. Only 20 million years ago, most of Aotearoa was underwater and there were only a few small islands emerging.
Chat GPT can explain it better than I can:
The sunken continent of Zeelandia, also known as the Zealandia, is a geological term used to refer to a mostly submerged continent in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It is an underwater landmass that encompasses New Zealand, New Caledonia, and other nearby islands and territories.
Zealandia is approximately 4.9 million square kilometers (1.89 million square miles) in size, making it the world's largest current microcontinent. It is believed to have broken away from the supercontinent Gondwana around 80 million years ago. Over time, tectonic plate movements caused most of the landmass to submerge beneath the ocean.
The concept of Zealandia has been studied by geologists and scientists for many years, and the evidence supporting its classification as a submerged continent continues to grow. The Geological Society of America officially recognized Zealandia as Earth's seventh continent in 2017.
Zealandia plays a significant role in understanding the geological and tectonic history of the Pacific region, and ongoing research helps to shed light on various aspects of plate tectonics and continental evolution.
There's black humour in thinking that as sea levels rise, and the other continents lose land area, this country continues to rise out of the sea and gain new land area. Will our little Aotearoa (NZ) one day be the biggest country in the world?
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https://phys.org/news/2023-10-birds-d...
"Lead author Suetsugu says, "Astonishingly, amidst a sea of limited active dispersal, we discovered identical genotypes jumping across vast distances, strongly indicating the past occurrence of passive long-distance genetic dispersal." In other words, a few of the flightless insects must have flown from place to place, and the only plausible way in which this could happen is that the eggs of the insects survive the passage through the digestive tract of birds that eat them."
More information: Suetsugu Kenji et al, Phylogeographical evidence for historical long-distance dispersal in the flightless stick insect Ramulus mikado, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.1708. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi … .1098/rspb.2023.1708
Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Provided by Kobe University
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https://phys.org/news/2023-11-insect-...
"Hundreds of millions of years ago, katydids were among the first animals to take advantage of using sound to communicate. They started to make noise by scraping their wings together, with the earliest evidence for this dating back more than 240 million years.
These sounds are generally made by males, which use them to attract females. However, these calls can also attract the wrong kind of attention, in the form of predators looking for a meal.
This might explain why, over millions of years, katydids developed the ability to call at increasingly higher frequencies. But by 125 million years ago, the hearing of the katydid's mammalian predators had caught up with its calling.
This led some katydids to produce ultrasonic sounds with even higher pitches, which wouldn't have been heard until the first bats evolved around 52 million years ago.
From this point on, bats and katydids have been stuck in an evolutionary arms race. Bats have been evolving to be better at hearing the calls of katydids, while the insects have changed their calls and behavior."
More information: Charlie Woodrow et al, An Eocene insect could hear conspecific ultrasounds and bat echolocation, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.10.040
Journal information: Current Biology
Provided by Natural History Museum
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https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0207/143...
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https://phys.org/news/2024-08-scorpio...
"Although they represent a diverse group of arachnids with about 3,000 species worldwide, pseudoscorpions—unlike scorpions—are little known and have hardly been investigated as venomous animals. They look similar to their larger relatives with their long claws compared to their bodies, even though their abdomen is not divided or has a venomous sting.
However, their small size, just 1 to 7 millimeters, makes it difficult to analyze their venom, which they inject into their prey through venom glands on their claws.
A team of Hessian researchers from the LOEWE Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE-TBG) and other institutions has now succeeded for the first time in artificially producing all known members of a family of toxins from the book scorpion (Chelifer cancroides) and investigating their activity.
The scientists discovered a surprisingly strong activity against a well-known hospital germ called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Staphylococci are common bacteria that colonize the skin and mucous membranes."
More information: Pelin Erkoc et al, Determining the pharmacological potential and biological role of linear pseudoscorpion toxins via functional profiling, iScience (2024).
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltex...
Journal information: iScience
Provided by Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum
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https://rte.social.ebu.io/NMY0K0T3V021
"The mesmerizing glow of fireflies on a summer evening is a sight many are familiar with, but the history of these insects’ luminescence stretches back millions of years.
A recent discovery by paleontologist Chenyang Cai and his team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences may provide new insights into the origins of this fascinating trait.
In a piece of amber found in Myanmar, a 99 million-year-old firefly species, Flammarionella hehaikuni, was uncovered.
Its well-preserved glowing abdomen suggests that firefly ancestors had developed bioluminescence as early as the Mesozoic Era.
“The discovery shows that by 99 million years ago, insect bioluminescence was already well established and diverse,” Cai's team stated."
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https://rte.social.ebu.io/NMY0K0T3V021
"The mesmerizing glow of fireflies on a summer evening is a sight many are familiar with, but the history of th..."
I apologize for the digression...but, Clare, your post reminded me of one of my favorite contemporary songs. In these very stressful times (especially here in the US), this really raises my spirits. Hope it does the same for my fellow Green Group members!
Owl City - Fireflies Music Video — https://youtu.be/psuRGfAaju4?si=nj_Uz...
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"“Our team has discovered a new fossil ant species representing the earliest undisputable geological record of ants,” Anderson Lepeco, a researcher from the Museum of Zoology at the University of São Paulo, said in a Cell Press statement. “What makes this discovery particularly interesting is that it belongs to the extinct ‘hell ant,’ known for their bizarre predatory adaptations.”
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/...
Green Group
Books mentioned in this topic
The Complete Field Guide to Stick and Leaf Insects of Australia [OP] (other topics)Facts About The Walking Stick Insect (other topics)
Stick Insects (other topics)
Stick Insects: Masters of Defense (other topics)
Why Elephants Have Big Ears: And Other Riddles from the Natural World (other topics)
More...
https://gizmodo.com/mad-scientists-ta...