EXTINCTION AGENDA!!!

Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth

James A. Estes et al.

Until recently, large apex consumers were ubiquitous across the globe and had been for millions of years. The loss of these animals may be humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature. Although such losses are widely viewed as an ethical and aesthetic problem, recent research reveals extensive cascading effects of their disappearance in marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems worldwide. This empirical work supports long-standing theory about the role of top-down forcing in ecosystems but also highlights the unanticipated impacts of trophic cascades on processes as diverse as the dynamics of disease, wildfire, carbon sequestration, invasive species, and biogeochemical cycles. These findings emphasize the urgent need for interdisciplinary research to forecast the effects of trophic downgrading on process, function, and resilience in global ecosystems.

Science 15 July 2011: Vol. 333 no. 6040 pp. 301-306 

What is this cool?

 This is amazing because it shows that the loss of large organisms in an environment have massive effects! Of course it does because the environment/ecosystem as we know it evolved with all those organisms. What kinds of creatures are out there keeping the world machine running?

Lions

Tigers, all kinds

Tuna

Wolves

Wildebeasts!

Seastars (really)

 This seems like when a co-worker dies  and, at the funeral, you see the numerous people related to the deceased in one way or another. Then you go back to work and see people affected by the death who didn't attend the funeral. Then you go to a lunch place and find out that the deceased was acquaintances with the waitress and she becomes really distraught. Later during a fire, you find out that the co-worker was a volunteer firefighter. Lastly, you find out that the co-worker was really good at their job and now the work environment is getting hostile because the boss wants results. Once embedded, a person or organism become vital to the normal operation of a business or ecosystem, respectively.


I'm just saying that you should go and hug your friend, because he or she is probably important to someone.

ORIGIN OF THE SEXES!!!

Running with the Red Queen: Host-Parasite Coevolution Selects for Biparental Sex

Levi T. Morran*, Olivia G. Schmidt, Ian A. Gelarden, Raymond C. Parrish II, Curtis M. Lively

Most organisms reproduce through outcrossing, even though it comes with substantial costs. The Red Queen hypothesis proposes that selection from coevolving pathogens facilitates the persistence of outcrossing despite these costs. We used experimental coevolution to test the Red Queen hypothesis and found that coevolution with a bacterial pathogen (Serratia marcescens) resulted in significantly more outcrossing in mixed mating experimental populations of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Furthermore, we found that coevolution with the pathogen rapidly drove obligately selfing populations to extinction, whereas outcrossing populations persisted through reciprocal coevolution. Thus, consistent with the Red Queen hypothesis, coevolving pathogens can select for biparental sex. 

Science 8 July 2011: Vol. 333 no. 6039 pp. 216-218

Why is this cool?

 If you are like me, sometimes you will stare at someone while they talk and think about something...anything. You may look at their body and wonder if anyone finds them attractive and then you wonder what it means to be attracted. Why is there attraction? Why can't we reproduce without a partner? Why do we need women? Why is love so cruel?

 Today's researcher's may have ideas about the last question, but their work focuses on why two sexes ever evolved.  The abstract states the following "The Red Queen hypothesis proposes that selection from coevolving pathogens facilitates the persistence of outcrossing despite these costs." They tested this with nematodes (Caenorhabditis elegans) which can reproduce asexually or with a mate.  The nematodes were separated into two groups and one was grown in the presence of a pathogenic bacteria (Serratia marcescens) and the other was not.  They found that the bacterially infected nematodes ceased to asexually reproduce and shifted to mating with a partner.

 As a teenager, I often wondered why I yearned for love and that "other." You know, the someone who completes me and boils my thin blood.  I am drawn towards the perfect Her not because I philosophically believe that someone else is necessary, but because my biology is pre-programmed that way. 

 It is startlingly to me that this compulsion for someone else is an evolutionary accident. Great poetry and prose are all the indirect result of some pathogen changing our evolutionary trajectory.  Clint Eastwood may appear to be pretty bad ass in his movies, but he always comes off as some unnatural creature. He fights, revenges, and smokes, but he never has a partner dangling off his arm. His lack of partner feels off. In a world where humans reproduced asexually, Clint Eastwood would always have a mate. 

Extreme longevity!!!

Extreme longevity in proteinaceous deep-sea corals. 
Roark EB, Guilderson TP, Dunbar RB, Fallon SJ, Mucciarone DA.
Deep-sea corals are found on hard substrates on seamounts and continental margins worldwide at depths of 300 to approximately 3,000 m. Deep-sea coral communities are hotspots of deep ocean biomass and biodiversity, providing critical habitat for fish and invertebrates. Newly applied radiocarbon age dates from the deep water proteinaceous corals Gerardia sp. and Leiopathes sp. show that radial growth rates are as low as 4 to 35 mum year(-1) and that individual colony longevities are on the order of thousands of years. The longest-lived Gerardia sp. and Leiopathes sp. specimens were 2,742 years and 4,265 years, respectively. The management and conservation of deep-sea coral communities is challenged by their commercial harvest for the jewelry trade and damage caused by deep-water fishing practices. In light of their unusual longevity, a better understanding of deep-sea coral ecology and their interrelationships with associated benthic communities is needed to inform coherent international conservation strategies for these important deep-sea habitat-forming species.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Mar 31;106(13):5204-8. Epub 2009 Mar 23.

Why is this cool?

 Do you know how old I am? I am 29 years old and, on the infinite countertop of evolutionary time, I am a fleck of dust. My existence no more registers to it than the bacteria on your eyebrows registers to you. Were an organism to live a really long time, then it could be privy to the time tested secrets of evolution!! Imagine that a sentient redwood would be able to see change. Serious change. Not a nickels and dimes, dollars. Bank vaults of dollars!
 What did the researchers do? They did some radiocarbon dating and determined the age of living coral reefs! They found that the "longest-lived Gerardia sp. and Leiopathes sp. specimens were 2,742 years and 4,265 years, respectively." 

 Do you know what radiocarbon dating is? Let me explain. We are carbon-based lifeforms, but all carbon is not equal. The carbon that composes most of our body, clothes, general stuff is carbon-12. There also exists carbon-13 which is stable, but does not occur in large amounts. The interesting one is carbon-14 which decays at a specific rate and occurs in a fixed ratio in everything carbon. I am getting outside of my knowledge base here, so you should check the exact details yourself. What makes does it mean to say that carbon-14 decays? And what is the difference between carbons-12,13, and 14? The difference is a neutron. Carbon-12 has six neutrons, while 13 and 14 have 7 and 8, respectively. Carbon-14 decay means that the nucleus cannot support that number of neutrons for whatever reason and it becomes carbon-13 by ejecting a neutron. Since the ratio between the various carbons is known, researchers can figure out how old a carbon thing is by seeing how much carbon-14 has decayed.
 So, these coral have been shown to live for thousands of years! I don't think there is any medical use that can come from this discovery, just because the organisms are so completely different. I do think that it tells us just how amazing the world is!
These insignificant bacteria were on the bottom of the ocean when Kang the Conqueror was defeated by the Fantastic Four in ancient Egypt!

Those coral were filter feeding without knowing that Iron Man and Dr. Doom were battling in Camelot!

As those same exact corals flapped with each current, Dracula became the Lord of the Vampires!!

More importantly, could those corals recognize the importance of Storm taking control of the Morlocks?!?!

Obesity in Asia!!!

Body Mass Index and Diabetes in Asia: A Cross-Sectional Pooled Analysis of 900,000 Individuals in the Asia Cohort Consortium

Background
The occurrence of diabetes has greatly increased in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Asia, as has the prevalence of overweight and obesity; in European-derived populations, overweight and obesity are established causes of diabetes. The shape of the association of overweight and obesity with diabetes risk and its overall impact have not been adequately studied in Asia. 

Methods and Findings
A pooled cross-sectional analysis was conducted to evaluate the association between baseline body mass index (BMI, measured as weight in kg divided by the square of height in m) and self-reported diabetes status in over 900,000 individuals recruited in 18 cohorts from Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Logistic regression models were fitted to calculate cohort-specific odds ratios (OR) of diabetes for categories of increasing BMI, after adjustment for potential confounding factors. OR were pooled across cohorts using a random-effects meta-analysis. The sex- and age-adjusted prevalence of diabetes was 4.3% in the overall population, ranging from 0.5% to 8.2% across participating cohorts. Using the category 22.5–24.9 Kg/m2 as reference, the OR for diabetes spanned from 0.58 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.31, 0.76) for BMI lower than 15.0 kg/m2 to 2.23 (95% CI 1.86, 2.67) for BMI higher than 34.9 kg/m2. The positive association between BMI and diabetes prevalence was present in all cohorts and in all subgroups of the study population, although the association was stronger in individuals below age 50 at baseline (p-value of interaction<0.001), in cohorts from India and Bangladesh (p<0.001), in individuals with low education (p-value 0.02), and in smokers (p-value 0.03); no differences were observed by gender, urban residence, or alcohol drinking. 

Conclusions
This study estimated the shape and the strength of the association between BMI and prevalence of diabetes in Asian populations and identified patterns of the association by age, country, and other risk factors for diabetes.

PLoS ONE 6(6): e19930. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0019930

Why is this cool?

 The researchers recorded the body mass index of 900,000 people across Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. They found that there was a positive correlation between high body mass index and presence of diabetes. This correlation extends across gender, location, and alcohol consumption.
 You may ask "We already knew that, so what is the big deal?"

 Well, it is an interesting thing, but most studies on diabetes on on people of European descent and it is entirely possible that the Asian peoples are sufficiently different, due to their particular evolutionary history, such that diabetes does not result from being fat. Well, that was not the case. Another idea, and I don't know if they checked it, is that the Asian diet may make a huge difference and as such it could disconnect diabetes from weight. Again, their data suggests that no matter how you get fat, you are racing towards diabetes.

 Why is this interesting to me? Well, I live in the States and here we worry about China dominating everything because of their invincible economy. An economy which is not as burdened as the American one is with old people and overweight people. Can China's economy grow as quickly as it has been when it becomes saddled with the long lived and obese? I suspect not. I wonder what cultural initiatives will be cooked up to deal with their obesity. What has been done for the obesity problem of the U.S. of A.?
 I also see this issue as another aspect of global warfare! Imagine that the USA projected unparalleled spending power on the part of China and was running out of options on how to contain or otherwise mitigate that growth, what choices would it have?

The US would institute a system of actively prompting massive food consumption! The people would be obese. The economy burdened with health costs. This is the future!