48-million-year-old horse-like fetus discovered in Germany Well-preserved uteroplacenta found surrounding fetus similar to modern day mares

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A 48 million year-old horse-like equoid fetus has been discovered at the Messel pit near Frankfurt, Germany according to a study published October 7, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jens Lorenz Franzen from Senckenberg Research Institute Frankfurt, Germany, and Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues.

The authors of this study completed their investigation of the fetus from a 48 million year-old horse-like equoid uncovered near Frankfurt, Germany in 2000. They evaluated the bones and anatomy and used scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and high-resolution micro-x-ray to describe the ~12.5 cm fetus.
The fetus appears to be well-preserved, with almost all bones present and connected, except for the skull, which appears to have been crushed. The well-preserved condition of the fossil allowed the researchers to reconstruct the original appearance and position of the fetus. They estimate that the mare may have died shortly before birth, but don't believe the death was related to birth.
The authors also found preserved soft tissue, like the uteroplacenta and one broad uterine ligament, which may represent the earliest fossil record of the uterine system of a placental mammal. Applying SEM, the authors discovered a bacterial lawn replacing the soft tissues, as is common with other specimens found in that area. The observable details correspond largely with living mares, which lead the authors to posit that the reproductive system was already highly developed during the Paleocene, and possibly even earlier.

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Buzzing bees can't resist caffeinated nectar For many people, the best start to the day is a nice, fresh cup of joe. Now, researchers find that honey bees find caffeinated beverages -- er, nectar -- irresistible too.

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For many people, the best start to the day is a nice, fresh cup of joe. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 15 find that honey bees find caffeinated beverages--er, nectar--irresistible too.

In fact, it appears that bees may select caffeinated nectar over an uncaffeinated but otherwise equal-quality alternative. As a result, the researchers say, plants may be lacing their nectar with caffeine as a way to pass off cheaper goods.
"We describe a novel way in which some plants, through the action of a secondary compound like caffeine that is present in nectar, may be tricking the honey bee by securing loyal and faithful foraging and recruitment behaviors, perhaps without providing the best quality forage," says Margaret Couvillon of the University of Sussex.
"The effect of caffeine is akin to drugging, where the honey bees are tricked into valuing the forage as a higher quality than it really is," adds Roger Schürch, of the University of Sussex and the University of Bern. "The duped pollinators forage and recruit accordingly."
Couvillon, Schürch, and their colleagues were aware of earlier studies, which found that honey bees are better at learning and remembering particular scents when they are under the influence of caffeine. The findings suggested a role for reward pathways in the bees' brains.
"I could not help but wonder how caffeine would affect the natural behaviors as seen in the field," Couvillon says, noting that the nectar of many flowering plants contains caffeine in low concentrations.
To investigate, the researchers tested bees' responses to a sucrose solution with field-realistic doses of caffeine or without. They found that the caffeine caused honey bees to forage more and to direct their friends to the caffeinated forage more frequently with waggle dances. The caffeine quadrupled the recruitment dances of bees to those feeders in comparison to uncaffeinated controls.
Bees were more persistent about returning to sites where they'd previously found caffeinated nectar, even after the feeder had run dry. After sipping caffeine, bees were also less inclined to search for other resources, a behavior that could be useful when the well runs dry.
"We were surprised at how, across the board, we saw an effect of caffeine just about everywhere we looked in foraging and recruitment, and all in the direction to make the colony more faithful to the caffeinated source compared to an equal-quality, uncaffeinated source," Schürch says.
Based on their observations of the individual bees' behaviors, the researchers' model suggests that caffeinated nectar could reduce honey production in colonies if indeed plants reduce the sweetness of their nectar. The findings come as a reminder that the interests of plants and their pollinators don't always align.
The researchers say it would now be interesting to find out whether plants that lace their nectar with a secondary compound like caffeine also make nectar that's less sweet. And, they note, caffeine isn't the only secondary compound found in nectar.
"It would be interesting to determine the effects of other compounds," Couvillon says. "It may be that chemistry is a popular way in which plants can get the upper hand on their pollinators."
The authors are funded by the Nineveh Charitable Trust, the Natural Environment Research Council, the University of Sussex, Damascus University, and Rowse Honey Ltd. Additional research funding was provided by Waitrose Ltd. and Burt's Bees.

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Evidence for functional redundancy in nature Many species may play essentially the same role....

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One of biology's long-standing puzzles is how so many similar species can co-exist in nature. Do they really all fulfill a different role? Massive data on beetles now provide strong evidence for the idea that evolution can drive species into groups of look-a-likes that are functionally similar, according to a study by an international consortium of scientists led by Wageningen University.

While it is clear that species fulfill many different roles in ecosystems, it has also been suggested that numerous species might actually share the same function in a near neutral way. So-far, however, it was unclear whether such functional redundancy really exists. The new study addresses this question using extensive data on the world's 4168 species of diving beetles. It shows that across the globe these animals have evolved towards a small number of regularly-spaced body sizes, and that locally co-existing species are either very similar in size or differ by at least 35%. Surprisingly, intermediate size differences (10-20%) are rare. As body-size reflects functional aspects such as the food that these generalist predators can eat, these beetles thus form relatively distinct groups of functional look-a-likes. The striking global regularity of these patterns support the idea that a self-organizing process drives such species-rich groups to self-organize evolutionary into clusters.
"This finding has important implications for how we look at the risks of losing species," says Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University and lead author on the paper. "Our work suggests that evolution is a generator not only of functional complementarity but also of functional redundancy. However, such redundancy does not mean that these species are not needed for the functioning of nature." Scheffer stresses that while functional complementarity promotes the magnitude of ecosystem processes, redundancy promotes resilience of such ecosystem processes through the insurance effect of biodiversity. This insurance effect is due to the fact that species that are near-neutral when it comes to their functional role (e.g. their niche in terms of the food they eat), will typically still differ in their response to various stressors. Such response diversity may include sensitivity to specific parasites and diseases. As a result the resilience of a functional role should be expected to increase with the number of species in a near-neutral group.
"It is also important to note that such resilience from functional redundancy will be much rarer in larger animals, simply because species richness decreases with body size in the animal kingdom," Scheffer says. "It is therefore no surprise that especially the loss of large species can give rise to substantial functional change in ecosystems. While redundancy may be the rule in smaller creatures, the functional uniqueness of larger ones could imply that they are often the Achilles heel for ecological functioning."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Wageningen University and Research Centre. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Must Read IT #Nature.... :)

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#‎MustReadIt‬ .....There's a place I go to
Where no one knows me
It's not lonely
It's a necessary thing
It's a place I made up
Find out what I'm made of
The nights are stayed up
Counting stars and fighting sleep

Let it wash over me
Ready to lose my feet
Take me on to the place where one reviews life's mistery
Steady on down the line
Lose every sense of time
Take it all in and wake up that small part of me
Day to day I'm blind to see
And find how far
To go
Everybody got their reason
Everybody got their way
We're just catching and releasing
What builds up throughout the day
It gets into your body
And it flows right through your blood
We can tell eachother secrets
And remember how to love
There's a place I'm going
No one knows me
If I breathe real slowly
Let it out and let it in
They can be terrifying
To be slowly dying
Also clarifying
The end where we begin.....
‪#‎Nature‬

Spring to come three weeks earlier to the United States

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Scientists have projected that the onset of spring plant growth will shift by a median of three weeks earlier over the next century, as a result of rising global temperatures.

The results, published Oct. 14 in the journal Environmental Research Letters, have long term implications for the growing season of plants and the relationship between plants and the animals that depend upon them.
The researchers, based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, applied the extended Spring Indices to predict the dates of leaf and flower emergence based on day length. These general models capture the phenology of many plant species.
Their results show particularly rapid shifts in plant phenology in the Pacific Northwest and Mountainous regions of the western US, with smaller shifts in southern areas, where spring already arrives early.
"Our projections show that winter will be shorter -- which sound greats great for those of us in Wisconsin" explains Andrew Allstadt, an author on the paper. "But long distance migratory birds, for example, time their migration based on day length in their winter range. They may arrive in their breeding ground to find that the plant resources that they require are already gone."
The researchers also investigated so-called 'false springs' -- when freezing temperatures return after spring plant growth has begun. They showed that these events will decrease in most locations. However a large area of the western Great Plains is projected to see an increase in false springs. "This is important as false springs can damage plant production cycles in natural and agricultural systems," continues Allstadt. "In some cases, an entire crop can be lost."
These researchers are working on a NASA Biodiversity Grant, with the goal of assisting people working in conservation of public land in the US. As such, the researchers have provided much of their data freely on their website: http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/
"We are expanding our research to cover all kinds of extreme weather, including droughts and heat waves" concluded Allstadt. "We are particularly interested in how these affect bird populations in wildlife refuges."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by IOP Publishing. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.