Amber, besides being a popular name for girls, is a special type of fossilized tree resin which has many uses.

Since the Neolithic era, it has been used to make beautiful jewelry, ornamental items and even perfumes. However, one of its most important uses is to help us learn about the evolution of insects and other small animals.

Since amber comes from the extinct sticky substance of trees, many leaves and insects become entrapped and, most importantly, fossilized in pieces of amber.

Recently, scientists have made an outstanding discovery thanks to amber. In the Dolomite Alps of northern Italy, scientists examined, give or take 70,000 droplets of amber.

This extensive search returned few, but great, results. They found two mites from the Triassic Era, which means that these ‘grandpa bugs’ age in at an outstanding 230 million years old!

Their age poses great significance because about 252 million years ago, mass extinction occurred that lead to the extinction of about 57 percent of insect families.

These small creatures can help scientists come up with new theories of one of the most debated topics in history: evolution.

Even though the mites are extremely old, they are not much different from bugs today.

According to researcher, David Grimaldi, “You would think that by going back to the Triassic you’d find a transitional form of gall mite, but no, even 230 million years ago, all of the distinguishing features of this family were there — a long, segmented body; only two pairs of legs instead of the usual four found in mites; unique feather claws.”

However, scientists are extremely hopeful that they will be able to find even more amber fossilized insects across northern Europe that will eventually lead to even bigger breakthroughs in insect and plant evolution.

BETHEL, Vt. (AP) — Last year’s hurricanes and flooding not only engulfed homes and carried away roads and bridges in hard-hit areas of the country, it dispersed aggressive invasive species as well.

In Vermont, the floodwaters from Tropical Storm Irene and work afterward to dredge rivers and remove debris spread fragments of Japanese knotweed, a plant that threatens to take over flood plains wiped clean by the August storm.

The overflowing Missouri and Mississippi rivers last year launched Asian carp into lakes and oxbows where the fish had not been seen before, from Louisiana to the Iowa Great Lakes. Flooding also increased the population along the Missouri River of purple loosestrife, a plant that suppresses native plants and alters wetlands.

“It’s quite an extensive problem around the country and it’s spreading,” said Dr. Linda Nelson, aquatic invasive species expert with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The agency’s budget for controlling invasive aquatic plants has grown from $124 million in 2008 to $135 million for fiscal year 2012.

Dr. Al Cofrancesco, director of the Corps’ Invasive Species Center in Vicksburg, Miss., said invasive species are not a problem when they’re in their native range.

“There are things that keep them in natural balance. The problem occurs is when we move into areas where they don’t have those natural controls or regulators and they expand very rapidly,” he said.

In Vermont, floodwaters and repair work broke off portions of stems and woody rhizomes of the aggressive Japanese knotweed. The perennial, imported from Asia as an ornamental, was already a problem in Vermont and a dozen other states in the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. It spreads quickly on riverbanks, floodplains and roadsides, choking out native plants, degrading habitats of fish, birds and insects and weakening stream banks

“The whole Irene event was ideal” for knotweed, said Brian Colleran, a coordinator for Vermont’s knotweed program.

The plant, which resembles bamboo when mature, spreads quickly in disturbed soils. Just this week, new young plants were inching out of the silt on the banks of the Camp Brook, a tributary of the White River, where the land looks like a moonscape since floodwaters washed away trees, rocks and other native plants. Once these invasive plants take over, their root structure and a lack of groundcover and native plants and trees with deeper roots, weakens the stream banks, causing erosion, and flood damage.

“We’d like to get out the message that if there’s ever a time to hand pull or mechanically control so we can avoid the use of herbicides, this is the one year where that’s possible,” said Sharon Plumb, invasive species coordinator, for the Vermont Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

Once the knotweed becomes established, it’s laborious to remove. The plant, which can grow 12 feet high, needs to be cut down four to five times a year for a number of years or chemicals or machinery will need to be used.

Efforts are under way to restore those bare banks with native trees and shrubs that will shade out knotweed.

This spring, the state of Vermont hired Colleran to scout out new infestations, educate river groups about the invader and to coordinate community efforts to remove the plants.

Another invasive species problem, Asian carp, was aggravated by the past year’s flooding, which moved the fish from the Missouri and Mississippi rivers into isolated lakes and oxbows, said Duane Chapman, research fish biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey based in Columbia, Mo. Some carp were able to pass over dams during the floods, he said.

“Give these guys an opportunity and they’ll take it,” he said.

Invasives are also spread by repair and cleanup work after storms.

After Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana imposed a quarantine in a dozen parishes to restrict movement of wood and cellulose material that could be infested with Formosan subterranean termites. Millions of tons of wood debris left behind by Katrina and Rita was shredded into mulch and there were fears the material could spread the pests.

“Any time you move a potentially infested material, there’s the potential to move an invasive species,” said Alan Lax, the former research leader for the Formosan subterranean research unit for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

When one pictures a T-Rex, images instantly appear in your mind of a scaly, monstrous predator. However, recent research suggests that this familiar primordial creature may actually be more reminiscent of a warm and fuzzy pet: a ferocious, seven-ton warm and fuzzy pet.

A recent discovery in Northeastern China shows evidence of a tyrannosaurus species which lived 60 million years before the tyrannosaurus Rex. The fossil preserved remains of a fluffy down coat, resembling feathers, make it the largest feathered dinosaur ever unearthed.

In recent years, there have been many discoveries of primitive dinosaurs with feathery coats; however this is the first time we have seen an animal of this magnitude with such features. It has been a long, heated debate between scientists whether larger dinosaur species lost their feathers as they grew in size, or whether the fossils of dinosaurs with feathers have yet to be uncovered.

“People need to start changing their image of T. rex,” said Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

A large team of Chinese and Canadian scientists studied and analyzed three well-preserved fossil skeletons which were uncovered in northeastern China. The fossils showed remnants of a “long, thick coat” on the dinosaur’s arms and neck. Although it was patchy elsewhere, scientists at the site believe the coat would have extended across its entire body.

Further study shows that this species lived approximately 125 million years ago. They were about 30 feet long and weighed around one ton. While smaller than the more common T. rex, this predecessor was just as ferocious. “Having feathers doesn’t make it less threatening or less fearsome,” said Thomas Holtz, professor at the University of Maryland.

The new dinosaur species has been named “Yutyrannus huali” which translates to “beautiful feathered tyrant.”

The world’s population is growing at a rapid rate, and in order to keep up with the demand for resources, modern scientists are constantly trying to think of innovations that will advance our ever-evolving society. A new development in a Dutch lab definitely fits this bill, as they have been able to develop “test-tube” hamburger from the stem cells of cows.

Mark Post, the scientist behind the research, says that his aim is to invent an efficient way to produce skeletal tissues, that mimics meat, and that will eventually replace the entire meat-animal industry. The ingredients for the first burger are still in what Post calls the “laboratory phase,” but he says that by the fall they will have developed a couple of thousands of small tissues that they will be able to use to make a hamburger.

Post spoke at a symposium titled “The Next Agricultural Revolution,” which is aimed at reducing the environmental and health costs of food production. They believe that conventional meat and dairy production requires more land, water, plants, and disposal of waste products than almost all other human food. After all, we have to feed the animals, give them a place to graze, and in the end, we end up wasting most of the product.

Speakers at the convention applauded Post’s research, since the demand for meat worldwide is expected to rise 60 percent by the year 2050, yet we do not have enough space for this. Nicolas Genovese, who organized the symposium, explained that, “The majority of earth’s pasture lands are already in use,” and that they only way society would be able to meet this demand is if we destroy even more of the planet. This would result in a loss of biodiversity, and a host of other problems including increases in disease.

Patrick Brown, of Stanford University of Medicine told reporters that, “Animal farming is by far the biggest ongoing global catastrophe, and it’s incredibly ready to topple. It’s an inefficient technology that hasn’t changed fundamentally for millennia.”

Like Mark Post, Brown is trying to develop meat products in the laboratory. He says that he will spend the rest of his life trying to make products that mimics meat, but that are made entirely from vegetable sources. He believes that Post’s venture will still have a high environmental cost, and that’s why he wants to rely solely on plant sources.

While they are both taking different approaches, both scientists say that no companies in the existing meat industry have expressed interest. However, other groups have shown interest, especially PETA. They are happy that scientists are taking the initiative to try to change the animal-meat industry, which they have always publically protested.

If Mark Post and Patrick Brown are able to make products that mimic meat, with a lower environmental cost, they may just change the way that the world eats forever. While it is unlikely that they will be able to oust the meat industry completely, it is possible that more people across the globe would be able to enjoy meat – or at least a meat like product.

The deepest part of the ocean is the Pacific’s Mariana’s Trench. Researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at U.C. San Diego have been investigating the trench using dropcams. Dropcams are “high resolution camera encased in a thick pressure-proof and waterproof glass sphere,” according to Yahoo News.

Most recently they have discovered one of the world’s largest single cell organisms. The organism was detected by one of the dropcams to be deeper than any other organism. The organism was a type of protozoa related to amoebas, called xenophyophores. According to Tecca News, these single celled organisms have been found before, except much smaller and closer to the surface. The organism is visible to the human eye, as it spans to about four inches, one of the world’s largest single celled organisms.

National Geographic says that the xenophyophores are sponge-like animals that make up just one cell. They act as host for other organisms and soak up heavy metals such as lead, uranium, and mercury. The amoebas were found just less than seven miles into the trench, the deepest any organism has been found. A majority of organisms can’t even live that far down due to the extremities of the environment. Doug Bartlett, a Scripps Marine Microbiologist, said, “The identification of these gigantic cells in one of the deepest marine environments on the planet opens up a whole new habitat for further study of biodiversity, biotechnological potential, and extreme environment adaptation.

Lisa Levin, another marine biologist, told Wired Science News that, “As one of very few taxa found exclusively in the deep sea, the xenophyophores are emblematic of what the deep sea offers. They are fascinating giants that are highly adapted to extreme conditions, but at the same time are very fragile and poorly studied. These and many other structurally important organisms in the deep sea need our stewardship as human activities move to deeper waters.” This find has definitely proven itself to be one of the most important discoveries in the Mariana’s Trench, and it will only lead to more research and discovery.

Darwin’s finches may have some competition. A team led by Biologist Ben Evans at McMaster University report that they have found a group of frogs that evolved to fill a plethora of niches on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. The researchers discovered 13 species of frogs on the island, all belonging to the genus Limnonectes. Nine of the species had never before been described by scientists.

The frogs showed an unusual array of adaptations, living in both the wettest and driest parts of the island. Some species fertilized their eggs internally, while others did it externally. Some had webbed feet for life in swift-moving water, while others that lived on land had minimal webbing. Some were small, others large.

This discovery echoes one by Charles Darwin nearly two centuries ago. He realized that finch species across the Galapagos archipelago had adapted to the differences in their environments. It became one of the most famous illustrations of his theory of evolution.

“Darwin found that the finches had evolved changes to the shapes of their beaks, allowing them to access different food sources,” said Evans in a press release from McMaster. “With the frogs, we found that they have made a number of adaptations including in body size, amount of webbing in their feet and how they raise their young – all of which matched the demands of their particular ecological niches.”

The group of frogs is named for their “fangs,” pairs of bony protrusions that stick up from their lower jaws. They are not teeth, and scientists are not yet sure what they are used for. Evans and his team speculate in their paper that the diversity of fanged frogs on Sulawesi is due in part to a lack of competition for ecological slots. He notes for comparison that there are fewer species of Limnonectes in the Philippines, which should have the twin advantages of being much larger and being composed of numerous islands. However, another genus of frogs called Platymantis competes for space in the Philippines. That group is absent from Sulawesi.

In all, the researchers caught 683 frogs by hand. The team’s paper is titled “Adaptive Radiation and Ecological Opportunity in Sulawesi and Philippine Fanged Frog (Limnonectes) Communities.” It was published in the August issue of The American Naturalist.

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WEST HAVEN, CONN — The invasive sea squirt, Styela clava, has now been discovered along the Eastern Seaboard as far south as Bridgeport Harbor and poses a significant

a Noel Sardalla Photo

danger to Connecticut’s $30 million shellfish business, according to field research conducted by Carmela Cuomo, head of the marine biology program at the University of New Haven, and several of her students.

The migration of the non-native pest, sometimes called an Asian clubbed tunicate, southward from Canada and northern New England threatens farming of bivalves such as clams, mussels, scallops and oysters in Long Island Sound. Styela clava’s efficient feeding, rapid reproduction and tendency to form large colonies enable them to crowd out other species.

Connecticut’s shellfish industry provides 300 jobs statewide, generates $30 million in sales and has 70,000 acres of shellfish farms in the state, according to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture.

The state, world famous for its oyster industry in the 1800s, has been working since the 1960s to rebuild its shellfish beds and clean up the pollution that led to the industry’s demise.  Connecticut shellfish beds produce oysters, mussels and scallops as well as Quahog, steamer, razor and other clams.

“The spread of this particular species of sea squirt westward in Long Island Sound, along with laboratory studies of its temperature tolerance, indicates it can survive at higher water temperatures than scientists had previously believed,” Cuomo said. “If further testing confirms that Styela can reproduce in warmer waters, Styela may pose a greater threat than had previously been imagined and may even be able to spread as far south as Florida.”

Styela clava is an invertebrate that can travel great distances by attaching themselves to the hulls of ocean-going vessels. In fact, the styela here are believed to have originated in waters off the coast of Korea and were first documented in British waters in 1953, after that nation’s warships returned from service in the Korean conflict.

Styela has been reported in waters off Canada, and beginning several years ago were spotted in Fisher’s Island Sound near Groton, Conn. and in Noank, Conn.  It was later discovered in Atlantic waters near the eastern mouth of Long Island Sound. Only recently has the species been observed within the Sound itself where the water is warmer than in Fisher’s Island Sound.

However, Styela’s preference for cooler water—between 35 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit—made it seem unlikely it would travel much further south.

A UNH graduate student, Melody Wood, working in Cuomo’s lab, has documented survival of adult Styela in waters as warm as 86 degrees F.  In addition, Nicholas Brunetti of Saddle Brook, N.J.,  an undergraduate also working in Cuomo’s lab, has been investigating whether or not adult Styela clava can reproduce at higher temperatures, along with whether or not their larvae can survive at such temperatures.

Another undergraduate, Samantha Davidson of Groton, Conn., has been studying the communities of organisms found growing on Styela. Additionally, Wil Dixon, a graduate of Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge, Conn., spent several years working in Cuomo’s lab on the effects of temperature on Styela’s filtering rate. He won several awards at science fairs for his work and is now a freshman at the University of Michigan.

Similar to other sea squirts, Styela consumes plankton by filtering seawater through a bronchial sac inside its body cavity. These animals are called “squirts” because they pump and expel the water they have screened for food.

Styela is a particularly efficient feeder, and reproduces rapidly through a long reproductive season. Each organism resembles a knobby, leathery club attached to a tough stalk and may grow to three inches or longer in length. Styela grows in dense clusters of as many as 1,500 per square yard.

Cuomo and two undergraduate researchers in the marine biology program at UNH, Kathleen Sandin of West Haven, Conn.  and Brunetti, have spent the past two months traveling along the northern coast of Long Island Sound looking for Styela clava. The results of this work reveal that Styela has spread as far west as Bridgeport, Conn., moving closer to the oyster farms that thrive in the Sound near Norwalk, Conn. Cuomo and her students are continuing to track the path of the species southward, as well as to study its environmental tolerances.

“At present, there are few good ways to stem the progress of Styela’s invasion,” according to Cuomo. “The invertebrate does not appear to have any natural predators in the region, and any agent that might be introduced to kill the organisms en masse—such as concentrated salt or lime—could also damage the species Connecticut has worked so hard to protect,” she said.

The most reliable method to eliminate Styela is to scrape any specimens free of surfaces to which they have adhered such as the hull of a ship, a technique that could provide fishermen, pleasure boaters and others with an excellent opportunity to help protect the local ecology although one has to be careful not to trigger the release of gametes (reproductive cells) when they are in the water.

Some Koreans go a step further: They eat Styela steamed, in a mixture with beef, clams, vegetables and ground rice, known as mideodok-chim.  Harvesting the Styela, however, would be ill advised in areas such as New Haven where there is a ban on harvesting shellfish. Styela sequesters heavy metals in their tissues and eating them from most Connecticut waters would be unhealthy.

And if the threat by Styela were not enough, John Kelly, assistant professor of marine biology at UNH, and graduate student Beth Shedden of Stamford, Conn. also have identified an invasive species of shrimp in Connecticut waters.  Oriental shrimp, also known as Palaemon macrodactylus, like Styela, are native to the waters off of Korea, Japan, and China.  They were first detected on the east coast of the U.S. in 2001, near New York City and were recently found in the Mystic River.

Kelly and Shedden have collected samples of oriental shrimp from numerous locations in Connecticut, including within the New Haven Harbor.  They are trying now to determine how well established the shrimp is in the area, what habitats it prefers and whether or not it is a threat to native species.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Wading through a muddy river bed to reach shallow pools of water, wildlife biologists scooped up hundreds of minnows Friday in one of the first rescues of fish threatened by the state’s worst drought in decades.

The scientists collected smalleye shiners and sharpnose shiners from the Brazos River — about 2,300 on Thursday and 800 Friday. The fish, which are found only in the Brazos and nowhere else in the world, are both candidates to be listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. They will be taken to the state’s fish hatchery near Possum Kingdom Lake but returned to the river when the drought abates.

Scientists used a large net to scoop up dozens of fish at a time Friday morning near Sagerton, about 150 miles west of Fort Worth. Both types of 2-inch-long minnows are shiny and have other distinctive features, making them easy for scientists to spot and put in buckets, while throwing other fish caught in the nets back in the water, said Kevin Mayes, an aquatic biologist with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

With the water drying up in the drought, the minnows don’t have the 100 miles of river they need to reproduce. And, their life span is just two years, Mayes said. Game fish like catfish and largemouth bass eat the minnows, making them an important part of the ecosystem, he said.

A team rescued 110 federally threatened Arkansas River shiners and 60 peppered chubs from the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle near the New Mexico border last week and took them to a federal fish hatchery in Oklahoma. Gene Wilde, a Texas Tech University fish ecology professor who led the team, said he believes that effort was the first fish rescue in Texas during this severe drought.

“We value these species and they are an important part of the Texas natural heritage, so we’re trying to prevent losing them in this drought,” Wilde said, referring to both rescue efforts.

Large fish rescues are rare, but they could become more common for fish, reptiles and amphibians as the drought persists. Texas is home to 86 species considered endangered or threatened.

The San Saba, Colorado and Llano rivers are home to several species of mussels, some of which are listed as threatened in Texas and for which petitions are pending for federal status.

Several federally endangered species — including the fountain darter and the Texas blind salamander — could need rescuing from the Comal and San Marcos Springs, south of Austin. If stream flows drop to pre-determined levels, biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will evacuate as many samples of the species as possible.

About 88 percent of the state is in the worst stage of drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor map released Thursday. Texas just finished its driest 11 months on record and is in its worst single-year drought ever. It also had the hottest June through August on record in the U.S.

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For decades, Puerto Rico’s ecosystem has suffered tremendously, with species dying out constantly. But recently, divers stumbled across these reefs during a federally funded mission to conduct research on deep-water corals, according to the U.S. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). The reefs were found off the southwestern side of Puerto Rico, where the ocean floor plunges to reveal the reefs at a depth of up to 500 feet, over a span of 12 miles long.

Lettuce coral, star coral, and several different species of sponges, along with grouper, snapper, and reef sharks, inhabit the beautiful underwater landscape. Fish species that thrive at a deeper depth can help replenish stock in more shallow reefs, which means that this reef’s existence helps us believe that other struggling, shallow ecosystems in the U.S. Caribbean Territory may possibly have a better-than-believed chance at survival. “Any large fish is always neat to see, not having seen them on top of the platform for decades, or not at all,” says Richard Appledoom, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico.

This discovery has been a great opportunity for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, since the two islands are seeking to create the Caribbean Regional Ocean Partnership to NOAA, who financed the mission that led to the discovery of the reefs in the first place. The CROP is an endeavor that aims to better coordinate the use of the coastal waters and implements conservation programs for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The proposed goal is to create a zoning map of the waters around the two islands, which would designate certain areas for recreation, conservation, or commercial purposes.

Ernesto Diaz, director of Puerto Rico’s Coastal Zone Management program, said the partnership would eventually include the Dominican Republic and the British Virgin Islands in the nearby future. Until then, scientists are beginning to explore reefs off Mona, a nearby island just west of Puerto Rico that is sometimes the unintended final destination of migrants from Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

From the Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – A federal court judge is giving the Interior Department until Dec. 23 to explain why polar bears are listed as a “threatened” species instead of the more-protective “endangered.”
The written order issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, D.C., follows an October hearing on multiple lawsuits filed over the listing.
Sullivan writes that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erroneously concludes that a species must be in imminent danger of extinction to be declared endangered. The judge says that runs counter to the plain meaning of the Endangered Species Act.
Former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in 2008 declared polar bears were threatened because of the rapid disappearance of the Arctic sea ice.
The state of Alaska argues that polar bears should not even be listed as threatened.