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Archive for the ‘Earth News’ Category

Giant ‘meat-eating’ plant found

07 Apr
The newly discovered giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii)

The newly discovered giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii)

A new species of giant carnivorous plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines.

The pitcher plant is among the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.

During the same expedition, botanists also came across strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms they could not identify.

The botanists have named the pitcher plant after British natural history broadcaster David Attenborough.

They published details of the discovery in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society earlier this year.

Word that this new species of pitcher plant existed initially came from two Christian missionaries who in 2000 attempted to scale Mount Victoria, a rarely visited peak in central Palawan in the Philippines.

With little preparation, the missionaries attempted to climb the mountain but became lost for 13 days before being rescued from the slopes.

On their return, they described seeing a large carnivorous pitcher plant.

That pricked the interest of natural history explorer Stewart McPherson of Red Fern Natural History Productions based in Poole, Dorset, UK and independent botanist Alastair Robinson, formerly of the University of Cambridge, UK and Volker Heinrich, of Bukidnon Province, the Philippines.

Nepenthes attenboroughii

Big enough to drown a rat

All three are pitcher plant experts, having travelled to remote locations in the search for new species.

So in 2007, they set off on a two-month expedition to the Philippines, which included an attempt at scaling Mount Victoria to find this exotic new plant.

Accompanied by three guides, the team hiked through lowland forest, finding large stands of a pitcher plant known to science called Nepenthes philippinensis, as well as strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms which they could not identify.

As they closed in on the summit, the forest thinned until eventually they were walking among scrub and large boulders

“At around 1,600 metres above sea level, we suddenly saw one great pitcher plant, then a second, then many more,” McPherson recounts.

“It was immediately apparent that the plant we had found was not a known species.”

Mount Victoria, Philippines

The summit of Mount Victoria appears through the clouds

Pitcher plants are carnivorous. Carnivorous plants come in many forms, and are known to have independently evolved at least six separate times. While some have sticky surfaces that act like flypaper, others like the Venus fly trap are snap traps, closing their leaves around their prey.

Pitchers create tube-like leaf structures into which insects and other small animals tumble and become trapped.

The team has placed type specimens of the new species in the herbarium of the Palawan State University, and have named the plant Nepenthes attenboroughii after broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough.

“The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species which catch not only insects, but also rodents as large as rats,” says McPherson.

Blue fungi found on the slopes of Mount Victoria, Philippines

Unidentified blue fungi

The pitcher plant does not appear to grow in large numbers, but McPherson hopes the remote, inaccessible mountain-top location, which has only been climbed a handful of times, will help prevent poachers from reaching it.

During the expedition, the team also encountered another pitcher, Nepenthes deaniana, which had not been seen in the wild for 100 years. The only known existing specimens of the species were lost in a herbarium fire in 1945.

On the way down the mountain, the team also came across a striking new species of sundew, a type of sticky trap plant, which they are in the process of formally describing.

Thought to be a member of the genus Drosera, the sundew produces striking large, semi-erect leaves which form a globe of blood red foliage.

 
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‘Extinct’ tiny shrew rediscovered

07 Apr

A tiny species of shrew has been rediscovered in the wild, more than a century after first being described.

An adult male Nelson's small-eared shrew, alive and well

An adult male Nelson's small-eared shrew, alive and well

In 1894, a handful of specimens of the Nelson’s small-eared shrew were collected in southern Mexico.

But the shrew was never seen again, and was considered by many experts to already be extinct.

That was until two researchers found three shrews in a small patch of forest, a find that is reported in the journal Mammalian Biology.

The Nelson’s small-eared shrew (Cryptotis nelsoni) is named after the man who first discovered it.

In 1894, Edward Nelson and Edward Goldman collected 12 specimens some 4,800 feet up the slopes of the San Martín Tuxtla volcano in Veracruz, Mexico.

A year later, the creature was formally described for science, and the specimens were stored away in the drawers of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, US.

In Mexico, the shrews are very poorly known, even by the people who co-exist with these beautiful animals
Mammaologist Lazaro Guevara, who rediscovered the species

That was the last time the shrew was seen alive for 109 years.

The biology of the shrew has remained a mystery. It was even believed to have become extinct because it had gone unrecorded so so long.

That changed when two mammalogists based in Mexico decided to look for it.

Fernando Cervantes of the National Autonomous University of Mexico teamed up with Lazaro Guevara of the University of Veracruz in Mexico.

In 2004, they set off for the forest slopes of the San Martín Tuxtla volcano to search for the long-lost shrew.

The skull of an adult female Nelson’s small-eared shrew

Setting 100 pitfall traps a night for four nights, they eventually caught three shrews – one adult male, one juvenile male and an adult female.

Since then, the researchers have been validating their find.

“We have reviewed [all the] papers about Cryptotis. We visited several biological collections and museums,” says Guevara.

“A recent study on the mammalian diversity of Sierra de Santa Martha, Veracruz, did not record the presence of C. nelsoni. Therefore, we believe that no more specimens exist.”

The shrews are tiny, measuring less than 10cm from nose to tail. They have sooty brown fur, which is darker than a related shrew species C. mexicana. It also has a larger and heavier, but flatter skull than its relative.

The researchers found the animals scurrying around a patch of cloud forest, that local people know as “dwarf forest” due to its small trees.

“We know very little about its behaviour,” says Guevara.

He says that after 100 years or more, it was acceptable to think that the Nelson’s small-eared shrew had gone extinct, especially as shrews tend to be overlooked by many scientists.

The surviving shrews are still so scarce that they must be considered critically endangered, say the researchers.

The volcano upon which they live erupted in 1793, destroying all the vegetation around the crater. Despite this eruption, the shrew managed to survive.

But so few now exist that any small change to their habitat could prove disastrous, says Guevara.

“A small habitat alteration may cause changes in the population that may lead to their extinction,” he says.

Subsistence crops and livestock are reared in the region, “and any conservation plan needs to involve communities, government and schools to promote the dissemination of the importance of this species,” says Guevara.

“In Mexico, the shrews are very poorly known, even by the people who coexist with these beautiful animals.”

Guevara explains that, when they started their search they knew that the last record of the species was from 1894. “We thought it was very important research,” he says. “We thought that was risky but high value for wildlife conservation. So, we travelled to find it. When we found it, we (were) very pleased.”

 
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Giant lizard species discovered in the Philippines

07 Apr
A close look at the giant Varanus bitatawa

A close look at the giant Varanus bitatawa

A new species of giant lizard has been discovered in the Philippines.

The 2m-long reptile is a monitor lizard, the group to which the world’s longest and largest lizards belong.

The monitor, described as spectacular by the scientists who found it, lives in forests covering the Sierra Madre mountains in the north of the country.

The striking reptile has bright yellow, blue and green skin, and survives on a diet of just fruit, yet until now it has escaped the eyes of biologists.

“It is an incredible animal,” says Dr Rafe Brown, one of the scientists who describe the new lizard in the journal Biology Letters.

In the journal, the researchers describe how rare it is to find such a large terrestrial animal new to science.

The discovery of the lizard, they say, is of a similar importance to two other large species of so-called “mega-fauna” discovered in recent years: the kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji), a new genus of monkey found in Africa, and the saola, a Vietnamese forest bovid (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis).

The giant lizard is actually well known to resident Agta and Ilongot tribespeople living in the forests of northern Luzon Island.

The tribespeople regularly hunt the lizard for its meat, a vital source of protein.

Yet scientists were unaware of its existence.

That was until Dr Brown and an international team of colleagues from the US, Philippines and The Netherlands surveyed a series of lizard specimens preserved in museums both within the US and Philippines.

Within these specimens they identified the new species on the basis of its body size, scales, colouration and DNA.

With a main body length approaching 1m, with an additional 1m-long tail, the lizard has dark skin covered by golden yellow spots and flecks.

Its legs are mainly yellow, and its tail striped black and yellow.

In some pictures, the animal also looks to have green or blue scales.

The new species, which is called Varanus bitatawa, is thought to survive on a diet of fruit, making it one of just three species of fruit-eating monitor lizards in the world.

Monitor lizards include the world’s most massive lizard, the Komodo dragon (V. komodoensis), which can reach up to 3m-long and weigh up to 90kg.

While not as massive, other species of monitor, such as the Crocodile monitor or Salvadori’s monitor (Varanus salvadorii) of New Guinea, can also reach similar lengths.

Secretive creature

Why the new massive lizard has remained undiscovered by scientists until now is a mystery, especially as many biologists work in the northern Philippines.

The researchers say it may be because the lizard is naturally reclusive, being a highly secretive animal that never leaves the forest or crosses open country.

It could also be because few scientific expeditions have characterised the reptiles living in the Sierra Madre forests.

The new species of monitor lives at least 150km away from its nearest relative, another lizard called V. olivaceus, which also lives in trees and eats fruit.

 
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Mysterious Bale monkey of Africa loves to eat bamboo

03 Apr

Ethiopia’s mysterious Bale monkey eats almost nothing but bamboo, according to the first study of the primate.

bale monkey

bale monkey

Discovered in 1902, little is known about the monkey, named after the region in Africa in which it lives.

But scientists have now discovered it spends most of its life in the trees of a bamboo forest, eating young leaves to avoid getting poisoned.

Very few primates depend on bamboo, and the Bale monkey’s reliance on it makes the primate vulnerable to extinction.

Researchers from Ethiopia, US and Norway describe the behaviour of the Bale monkey for the first time in the International Journal of Primatology.

They were always considered by scientists to be ‘too difficult to study’
Dr Peter Fashing
California State University, US

The Bale monkey (Chlorocebus djamdjamensis) is an arboreal and enigmatic primate restricted to the forests of the Bale Massif and Hagere Selam regions of southeastern Ethiopia.

Little information has been available on how this mysterious primate lives.

“They were always considered by scientists to be ‘too difficult to study’ due to the rough mountainous terrain and foggy conditions in the forests where they occur,” says Dr Peter Fashing from California State University, California, US, one of the co-authors of the study.

Between 2007 and 2008 the team studied two neighbouring groups of Bale monkeys in the Obobullu forest in southeastern Ethiopia, which lies to the east of the Bale mountains.

The researchers spent many months deep in the forest, following the primates and recording their behaviour and ecology.

“At the beginning, I had to habituate the very shy monkeys to my presence, but over time they came to trust me enough to let me watch them from a distance,” explains Mr Addisu Mekonnen from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, who led the study.

No taste for cyanide

The research team discovered several previously unknown Bale monkey populations.

The scientists also found that Bale monkeys are quite different to their closest relatives, other green or vervet monkeys belonging to the same genus.

“We found Bale monkeys to be highly specialised primates, relying entirely on the bamboo forest to meet their needs,” Mr Mekonnen says.

The monkeys feed on just 11 plant species.

However, of those bamboo leaves account for a remarkable 77% of their diet.

Most other forest monkeys eat far richer diets, typically consuming between 50 and 100 different plant species or more, says Dr Fashing.

Bale monkeys also consume mainly young bamboo leaves, perhaps to avoid being poisoned by cyanide that accumulates in mature leaves.

Food for thought

Only one type of primate is known to rely more heavily on bamboo than Bale monkeys – the bamboo lemurs of Madagascar, of which there are three species, each consuming a diet that is 90% bamboo.

“Bamboo is a key resource for the existence of Bale monkeys,” says Mr Mekonnen.

Yet bamboo in the Bale Massif is being commercially harvested.

“The loss of this resource would have [an equally profound] adverse effect on the long-term survival of this species.”

The revelations about the Bale monkey also highlight how little we still know about some primate species, says Dr Fashing.

“If we are to ensure the survival of these mysterious primates, we must first study their basic ecology and behaviour to determine what their conservation needs are,” he says.

“Prior to this study, we did not know just how dependent Bale monkeys are on bamboo for their survival.”

 
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Shar-pei wrinkles explained by dog geneticists

13 Jan

Just how did the Shar-pei get its famous wrinkled appearance?

Wrinkled Dog

Wrinkled Dog

Scientists who have analysed the genetics of 10 pedigree dog breeds believe they now have the answer.

Their research identifies 155 distinct locations in the animals’ genetic code that could play a role in giving breeds their distinctive appearances.

In the Shar-pei, the team found differences in a gene known as HAS2 which makes an enzyme known to be important in the production of skin.

“There was probably a mutation that arose in that gene that led to a really wrinkly puppy and a breeder said, ‘hey, that looks interesting, I’m going to try to selectively breed this trait and make more of these dogs’,” explained Joshua Akey from the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, US.

Small differences

The pedigree dog has become a fascination – and a remarkably useful research tool – for geneticists.

The domestication of the grey wolf more than 10,000 years ago, and the selective breeding that followed, has resulted in more than 400 breeds – each with a distinctive physique, coat colour and temperament.
Labrador (BBC)
The study compared the genetics of 10 pure-bred dog groups.

These discrete populations give scientists the opportunity to compare and contrast the genetics of the different groups, making it easier to find the causes of specific traits.

“Man’s best friend” is helping scientists locate the faulty genes that cause disease in both dogs and humans, as well giving a useful insight into how evolution works at a molecular level.

Dr Akey and colleagues studied 32 wrinkled and 18 smooth-coated Shar-peis and compared a specific stretch of their DNA with that of other breeds.

The team found four small, but significant, differences in the genetics of the two skin types of the Shar-pei versus the other breeds. These single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), as they are called, were located in the HAS2 gene.

New targets

“HAS2 makes hyaluronic acid synthase 2, and it’s an enzyme that makes hyaluronic acid, and that’s one of the principal constituents of the skin,” explained Dr Akey.

“There are rare human cases where there are mutations that lead to really severe wrinkling in humans, too.

“So, that suggested it was a good candidate to look at; and sure enough, when we sequenced it we saw that that gene explained wrinkling in Shar-peis,” he told BBC News.
As well as giving insights into the Shar-pei, the research has also identified a raft of other locations in the dog genome that can now be investigated further to understand better why pedigree animals look the way they do.

“The thing that excites me most about our study is that in the last five years, five genes have been identified that contribute to this vast diversity in dog breeds,” said Dr Akey.

“So our study found all five of those genes and then we found 150 new targets to explore. It’s a powerful approach to look at the genetic legacy of selective breeding.”

Dr Akey and colleagues report their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

 
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