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Category: Biology

Unlocking secrets of the honeybee dance language – bees learn and culturally transmit their communication skills

Unlocking secrets of the honeybee dance language – bees learn and culturally transmit their communication skills

A honeybee is performing the waggle dance in the center of this photo to communicate the location of a rich nectar source to its nestmates. Heather Broccard-Bell, CC BY-ND By James C. Nieh, University of California, San Diego The Greek historian Herodotus reported over 2,000 years ago on a misguided forbidden experiment in which two children were prevented from hearing human speech so that a king could discover the true, unlearned language of human beings. Scientists now know that human…

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The evolutionary importance of slime

The evolutionary importance of slime

Susanne Wedlich writes: The weather in Morro Bay, California is too good, the coastline too picturesque, and the wildlife seem to have waltzed straight out of a Disney film. Sea otters play in the waves with their young, herons bask on the beach, and seals stretch their plump bellies in the sun. And yet amid the tranquility of Morro Bay lurks a monster straight from H.P. Lovecraft’s playbook, as slimy as a creature from Sartre’s nightmares. It doesn’t get much…

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Ancient proteins offer new clues about origin of life on Earth

Ancient proteins offer new clues about origin of life on Earth

Science Daily: By simulating early Earth conditions in the lab, researchers have found that without specific amino acids, ancient proteins would not have known how to evolve into everything alive on the planet today — including plants, animals, and humans. The findings, which detail how amino acids shaped the genetic code of ancient microorganisms, shed light on the mystery of how life began on Earth. “You see the same amino acids in every organism, from humans to bacteria to archaea,…

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Why life is not a thing but a restless manner of being

Why life is not a thing but a restless manner of being

Tim Requarth writes: Mike Russell found his moment of inspiration on a warm spring evening in Glasgow in 1983, when his 11-year-old son broke a new toy. The toy in question was a chemical garden, a small plastic tank in which stalagmite-like tendrils grew out of seed crystals placed in a mineral solution. Although the tendrils appeared solid from the outside, when shattered they revealed their true nature: each one was actually a network of hollow tubes, like bundles of…

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All living cells could have the molecular machinery for a magnetic ‘sixth sense’

All living cells could have the molecular machinery for a magnetic ‘sixth sense’

Science Alert reports: Every animal on Earth may house the molecular machinery to sense magnetic fields, even those organisms that don’t navigate or migrate using this mysterious ‘sixth sense’. Scientists working on fruit flies have now identified a ubiquitous molecule in all living cells that can respond to magnetic sensitivity if it is present in high enough amounts or if other molecules assist it. The new findings suggest that magnetoreception could be much more common in the animal kingdom than…

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Ants aren’t adapting to warmer temperatures

Ants aren’t adapting to warmer temperatures

Eos reports: Ants are a bedrock of forest ecosystems, and they might not be adjusting well to warming temperatures. In newly published research, scientists found that foraging ants preferred to gather food placed at specific temperatures but did not avoid food that was too hot or too cold. Long-term exposure to these hot, but sublethal, temperatures could be changing the ants’ food and energy usage, harming colonies and broader forest ecosystems. Hotter temperatures force ants to use more energy to…

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Cockatoos know how to pick the right tools for the job

Cockatoos know how to pick the right tools for the job

The New York Times reports: Cockatoos contain contradictions. “They behave like gremlins,” said Antonio Osuna-Mascaró, a biologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. His colleague Alice Auersperg agreed. “Imagine a toddler with pliers in their head,” she said, that is also able to fly. But just like toddlers, cockatoos can be sweet and curious, always exploring the world around them. Dr. Auersperg and other researchers showed the innateness of this curiosity in 2021, when they reported that wild Goffin’s…

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Some ‘friendly’ bacteria backstab their algal pals. Now we know why

Some ‘friendly’ bacteria backstab their algal pals. Now we know why

Science News reports: The photosynthesizing plankton Emiliania huxleyi has a dramatic relationship with its bacterial frenemies. These duplicitous bugs help E. huxleyi in exchange for nutrients until it becomes more convenient to murder and eat their hosts. Now, scientists have figured out how these treacherous bacteria decide to turn from friend to foe. One species of these bacteria appears to keep tabs on health-related chemicals produced by E. huxleyi, researchers report January 24 in eLife. The bacteria maintain their friendly…

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How antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics

How antidepressants help bacteria resist antibiotics

Nature reports: The emergence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics is often attributed to the overuse of antibiotics in people and livestock. But researchers have homed in on another potential driver of resistance: antidepressants. By studying bacteria grown in the laboratory, a team has now tracked how antidepressants can trigger drug resistance1. “Even after a few days exposure, bacteria develop drug resistance, not only against one but multiple antibiotics,” says senior author Jianhua Guo, who works at the…

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How our microbiome is shaped by family, friends and even neighbours

How our microbiome is shaped by family, friends and even neighbours

Nature reports: Most studies on how humans acquire their microbiomes have focused on people’s first contact with microbes: through their mums. “It’s key to providing a microbial starter kit,” says Hilary Browne, a microbiologist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK. To examine how and why this starter kit changes over a person’s life, a team led by microbiome researchers Mireia Valles-Colomer and Nicola Segata at the University of Trento, Italy, analysed DNA from nearly 10,000 stool and saliva…

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How gut bacteria are controlling your brain

How gut bacteria are controlling your brain

Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren write: Your gut is a bustling and thriving alien colony. They number in their trillions and include thousands of different species. Many of these microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea and eukarya, were here long before humans, have evolved alongside us and now outnumber our own cells many times over. Indeed, as John Cryan, a professor of anatomy and neuroscience at University College Cork, rather strikingly put it in a TEDx talk: “When you go to the…

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Mobile genes from the mother shape the baby’s microbiome

Mobile genes from the mother shape the baby’s microbiome

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: A mother gives her baby her all: love, hugs, kisses … and a sturdy army of bacteria. These simple cells, which journey from mother to baby at birth and in the months of intimate contact that follow, form the first seeds of the child’s microbiome—the evolving community of symbiotic microorganisms tied to the body’s healthy functioning. Researchers at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University recently conducted the first large-scale survey of…

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Using physics to describe how tiny biological components give rise to living organisms

Using physics to describe how tiny biological components give rise to living organisms

Charlie Wood writes: In a sunny lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two starfish fought over their prey. Overlapping arms pinned a hunk of thawing cocktail shrimp against the side of the tank. Thousands of suction cups rippled furiously against the glass as each echinoderm struggled to inch the prize toward its own maw. The physicist Nikta Fakhri looked on with a grin. Not many physicists keep ocean life in their labs, but Fakhri has learned to care for…

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What ants’ longevity secrets could mean for aging in other species

What ants’ longevity secrets could mean for aging in other species

Viviane Callier writes: Animals that produce many offspring tend to have short lives, while less prolific species tend to live longer. Cockroaches lay hundreds of eggs while living less than a year. Mice have dozens of babies during their year or two of life. Humpback whales produce only one calf every two or three years and live for decades. The rule of thumb seems to reflect evolutionary strategies that channel nutritional resources either into reproducing quickly or into growing more…

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Humans are still evolving thanks to microgenes

Humans are still evolving thanks to microgenes

The Scientist reports: Humans are still evolving new genes, according to a study published in Cell Reports on December 20. As our lineage evolved, at least 155 human genes sprung up from DNA regions previously thought of as “junk,” including two human-specific genes that emerged since humans branched off from chimpanzees around 4 to 6 million years ago, the researchers report. “I thought it was a great study,” says Alan Saghatelian, a biologist at the Salk Institute who was not…

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Inside ancient asteroids, gamma rays made building blocks of life

Inside ancient asteroids, gamma rays made building blocks of life

John Rennie and Allison Parshall write: In 2021, the Hayabusa2 space mission successfully delivered a morsel of the asteroid 162173 Ryugu to Earth — five grams of the oldest, most pristine matter left over from the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago. Last spring, scientists revealed that the chemical composition of the asteroid includes 10 amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The discovery added to the evidence that the primordial soup from which life on Earth arose may…

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