From: “Non-native and hybrid in a changing environment: conservation perspectives for the last Italian red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) population with long natural history”, G. Forcina, M. Geurrine, F. Barbanera (2020), Zoology 138 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2019.125740 Over the past few centuries, it has become ever quicker and easier for people to travel across the world. Advances in sailing, …
Continue reading “Elba Room: Surprising Finds in the Partridge Genome”
From: “Ambient temperature correlates with geographic variation in body size of least horseshoe bats”, M. Wang, K. Chen, D. Guo, B. Luo, W. Wang, H. Gao, Y. Liu, J. Feng (2020), Current Zoology zoaa004 https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoaa004 One of the most interesting and frequently recurring problems in biology is how diversity within species. Under natural selection you’d …
From: “Transcriptome of pleuropodia from locust embryos supports that these organs produce enzymes enabling the larva to hatch” B. Koponová, E. Nichberger and A. Crisp (2020), Frontiers in Zoology 17:4 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12983-019-0349-2 When developing inside the egg, many insects develop small organs just below their final pair of legs called pleuropodia. These have been found in …
Continue reading “Hatching a plan: how modern genetics shed light on an 80-year old theory”
From: “What wild dogs want: habitat selection differs across life stages and orders of selection in a wide-ranging carnivore”, H.M.K. O’Neill, S.M. Durant and R. Woodroffe (2020) BMC Zoology 5:1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40850-019-0050-0 African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), also known as painted dogs for their bright brown, black and white patterning, are a highly social species of …
Continue reading “Where the Wild Dogs Are: how Kenyan Carnivores decide where to live”
Note: I’ve been spending the last week and a half neck-deep in research about eugenics in 19th and 20th Century Britain, so I thought I may as well put my reflections up here. Normal posts resume next week, or this weekend if I have time In a post-nazi world, eugenics is the dirty secret of …
Continue reading “Eugenics: good intentions and how to avoid them”
From: “Impact of age-specific immunity on the timing and burden of the next Zika virus outbreak”, M.J. Counotte, C.L. Althaus, N. Low, J. Riou (2019), PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 13(12) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0007978 Zika Virus (ZIKV) is one of several mosquito-borne viruses of the flavivirus family. It was first identified as a distinct from other viruses in …
Continue reading “Predicting and preventing the next Zika outbreak”
From: “Characteristics of tiger moth (Erebidae: Arctiinae) anti-bat sounds can be predicted from tymbal morphology”, N.J. Dowdy and W.E. Conner (2019) Frontiers in Zoology 16(45) https://doi.org/10.1186/s12983-019-0345-6 In the 19th and early 20th Centuries insect-collecting was a fairly popular hobby amongst well-off ladies and gentlemen with spare time on their hands. When a particularly prolific or …
Continue reading “Predicting what a moth sounds like – just by looking”
From: “Plasmodium vivax Malaria Viewed through the Lens of an Eradicated European Strain”, L. van Dorp, P. Gelabert, A. Riuex, M. de Manuel, T. de-Dios, S. Gopalakrishnan, C. Carøe, M. Sandoval-Velasco, R. Fregel, I. Olalde et al (2019), Molecular Biology and Evolution msz264 https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msz264 Malaria is, worldwide, a huge danger to human life. It is …
From: “The genetic basis of adaptive evolution in parasitic environment from the Angiostrongylus cantonensis genome”, Xu L., Xu M. Xi S., Junyang X., Xin Z., Dai S., Dongjuan Y., Ping H., Weiming H., Yulan Y., Shiqi L., Xiaoying W., Zhongao W. et al (2019), PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 13:11 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0007846 Parasites are, when you think …
Continue reading “The genes that allow a parasitic worm to infect both rats and snails”
From: “Consistent habitat preference underpins the geographically divergent autumn migration of individual Mongolian common shelducks”, F. Meng, X. Wang, N. Batbayer, T. Natsagdorj, B. Davaasuren, I. Damba, L. Cao, and A.D. Fox (2019), Current Zoology 56 https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoz056 Common Shelducks (Tadorna tadorna) are a largish species of black, white and brown ducks found across Europe, Asia …
Continue reading “How shelducks decide on their travel plans”
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