… said Alexander Bentley, a herpetologist, “and so that is, in its own right, respectable.”
Tonight’s science news begins with a selection of weird fungi and bacteria stories that, although publicized using a science version of click bait, are not over-hyped. They are totally respectable and amazing.
Alexander Bentley, a herpetologist, often leads regular tour groups through a stretch of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador … and he especially enjoys pointing out cordyceps — a parasitic fungi that kills its insect hosts and is the inspiration for the post-apocalyptic franchise “The Last of Us.”
But on a rainy night last August, he found something he had never seen before. After flipping a leaf to show his group some cordyceps, he poked the fungal growth — the hairy, yellowish tendril-like stalks that are usually a sign that the cordyceps has killed its host.
The fungal mass suddenly moved. Mr. Bentley was shocked … [He] collected the specimen and posted his discovery to iNaturalist, a citizen-science platform. The site’s users said that it was not a fungus, but a spider pretending to be infected by one. The fungus the spider was mimicking was gibellula — a genus of parasitic fungi that belongs to the same family as cordyceps. […]
After scouring photos taken by citizen scientists, researchers found spiders with fungal mimicry all over the world. All the spiders belonged to the same family, Araneidae. The family is also known as orb-weavers because of the creatures’ ability to build conspicuous, wheel-shaped webs.
Because the bacteria have been isolated for millions of years, they offer a unique window into the past. What’s more, each has evolved a different strategy to survive. Some extract energy from rocks and the atmosphere. Others are predators, feeding off other bacteria.
“Like in the rainforest, we see predators that just run in and grab, stab and kill other microbes,” says Barton. “But we also see other microbes that work together to get nutrients and energy out of a system that otherwise wouldn’t be able to yield enough energy to survive.”
The bacteria also have an even more surprising trick up their sleeve – they are resistant to most antibiotics, despite the fact that they have been trapped in a cave that formed six million years ago, most of which was completely sealed off from humans until 1986. Not only is this resistance a remarkable natural phenomenon, it is now helping guide researchers to drugs that can withstand the onslaught of antimicrobial resistance in modern medicine.
From koalas to cheetahs, scientists are exploring how the microbiome can aid conservation. Human activity is altering wildlife gut health, but fecal transplants and microbe studies may boost reintroduction success and animal rehabilitation.
Story by Sean Mowbray for #Mongabay.
The Chernobyl exclusion zone may be off-limits to humans, but not to every form of life … for one organism, at least, the ionizing radiation lingering inside the reactor’s surrounding structures may be an advantage.
There, clinging to the interior walls of one of the most radioactive buildings on Earth, scientists have found a strange black fungus curiously living its best life.
That fungus is called Cladosporium sphaerospermum, and some scientists think its dark pigment – melanin – may allow it to harness ionizing radiation through a process similar to the way plants harness light for photosynthesis. This proposed mechanism is even referred to as radiosynthesis.
But here’s the really funky thing about C. sphaerospermum: Although scientists have shown that the fungus flourishes in the presence of ionizing radiation, no one has been able to pin down how or why. Radiosynthesis is a theory, one that’s difficult to prove.
Researchers have found that multidrug-resistant bacteria from hospitals are also highly resistant to the common herbicide glyphosate. The study sparks concerns that exposure to the common chemical could be allowing drug-resistant bacteria to thrive.
#chemsky 🧪
A groundbreaking new study may have once again upended our understanding of human prehistory in the Americas.
For years, the predominant theory of how humans arrived in the western hemisphere centred around the Clovis culture, which crossed the Beringia land bridge from Asia between 13,400 and 12,800 years ago, and spread south.
That version was challenged in 1977 when a site in southern Chile was first excavated. Monte Verde, near the city of Puerto Montt, was found to be about 14,500 years old – a true outlier that appeared to prove that there had been human populations in the far south of the hemisphere long before the arrival of the Clovis people.
Now, the theory has changed again.
Red-light devices are increasingly appearing in dermatology offices, wellness centres, locker rooms and homes. Amid the hype, there is a growing body of legitimate science that has been exploring the benefits of red-light therapy for several conditions, according to a feature in Nature. 🧪
Experts warn that there is considerable hype about red-light therapy. But a growing body of legitimate science has been exploring the benefits for several conditions. Clinical studies have reported improvements in peripheral neuropathy1, retinal degeneration2 and certain neurological disorders3. For some indications, expert groups now recommend red-light regimens1.
Researchers are also uncovering how red and near-infrared light might exert these effects. Mitochondria — the power plants of the cell — are emerging as a central piece of the puzzle.
The science behind these benefits is growing at a time in which humans are exposed to less red light than ever before. People spend more time indoors away from the Sun, and efforts to conserve energy have narrowed the spectrum of indoor lighting, eliminating many red and near-infrared wavelengths (see ‘Light by the source’). Some scientists are now asking whether these factors might have biological consequences.
When he was a doctoral student at the University of Copenhagen, Eske Willerslev was a nobody. At least, that’s how it seemed to the budding evolutionary geneticist, who was unable to lay his hands on one of the few coveted fossils that might still contain traces of ancient DNA.
But frustration turned to inspiration one autumn day in 2000, when he saw a dog depositing its morning poo onto the ground. The droppings contain DNA, he thought, and perhaps, even after rain washes them away, some DNA might remain. And if it does stick around, the genetic material of long-dead animals might also persist in the environment. That would mean he could learn something about those creatures, even without getting access to priceless museum specimens.
Willerslev’s idea was ridiculed by his professors at the time. “I’ve never heard anything as stupid as this,” he recalls one of them remarking. But his hunch bore incredible fruit. In a 2003 paper in Science, he showed that plant and animal DNA could be recovered from a Siberian permafrost core that stretched back 400,000 years1.
Two decades on, the study of ancient DNA from sediments has matured into one of the most exciting tools for studying the past, say researchers … Archaeologists, too, are re-examining soil collected decades ago, keen to discover more about the past using this modern technology.
In the graph below, blue dots show Biden’s term % change in single year death rates and orange (two rows) show Trump’s terms. Vertical axis=% change and horizontal=age.
This is my fifth try to effectively show the difference between Trump’s and Biden’s effect on our death rates. I just hope you understand it. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Politics
The Yurok Tribe has already helped bring good fire back to California landscapes, freed the Klamath River of four major dams and tended restoration of the riparian habitat, and documented returning salmon migrating up the full length of the river, over 400 miles.
Now they are bringing back the California condors and their habitat.
A pair of California condors reintroduced to the Pacific Northwest by the Yurok Tribe appears to have established the species’ first nest in the region in more than 100 years, program officials announced in early March.
Based on shifts in behavior and satellite flight data, biologists with the Northern California Condor Restoration Program (NCCRP) determined that the female condor, known by her Yurok name Ney-gem’ Ne-chween-kah (“She carries our prayers”), likely laid an egg inside a hollow in an old-growth redwood tree along Redwood Creek drainage in early February. Her mate, called Hlow Hoo-let (“At last I fly”), has been sharing incubation duties. […]
In 2003, a panel of Yurok elders designated the condor as the top priority for land-based species restoration on their ancestral territory. The tribe spent nearly two decades conducting studies, evaluating contaminant risks, and building partnerships before releasing the first cohort of four condors in May 2022.
Did you know whale songs have changed over the years? 🐋🎶🧪
A newly rediscovered 1949 recording from @whoi.edu captures the oldest known humpback whale song on record and offers a rare snapshot of how these animals once sounded.
Plant specimens and teaching materials that inspired Charles Darwin and qualified him to work as a naturalist on HMS Beagle have been unearthed from an archive in Cambridge and will be used for the first time to teach contemporary students about botany.
The fragile specimens, ink drawings and watercolour illustrations of plants belonged to Darwin’s teacher and mentor, Prof John Stevens Henslow, and have been stored in Cambridge University’s herbarium for nearly 200 years. […]
“When Darwin came to Cambridge, he studied botany formally for the first time. He enjoyed Henslow’s course so much that he took it three years in a row,” said Dr Raphaella Hull, acting head of learning for Cambridge University Botanic Garden (CUBG). “Henslow introduced him to the concept of variation, laying the foundation for Darwin’s later theory of evolution.”
European regulators have approved acoziborole, a new treatment for sleeping sickness that cures the disease with a single oral dose. The drug replaces complex regimens requiring hospitalisation, spinal taps and weeks of monitoring. buff.ly/KX3Ld2B
#ShareGoodNewsToo
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A widely used sugar substitute found in everything from keto snacks to diet drinks may not be as harmless as it seems. New research shows that erythritol can disrupt brain blood vessel cells, reducing their ability to relax, increasing harmful oxidative stress, and impairing the body’s ability to break down clots. These changes create conditions that could raise stroke risk, even at typical consumption levels.
Receiving excessive approval from artificial intelligence chatbots could encourage people to be ruder to others. Researchers found that people who received highly flattering feedback from AI systems tended to be more certain of their own correctness during social conflicts and were less likely to apologize than were participants who interacted with less-affirming bots. People also rated fawning bots as more trustworthy than those that took a tougher stance, which encourages sycophancy in chatbots even when the effects could be harmful, the authors say.
New research confirms it: the creativity of artificial intelligence (AI) is a myth. Although current generative AI models may appear to be autonomous creative agents, analyzing their imaginative process step by step reveals that their creative abilities are not genuine. This is the conclusion of a new study published in Advanced Science and led by an international team of experts … The study, focused on visual creativity and imagination, began in 2024 during a workshop organized by the Fundació Èpica—La Fura dels Baus, whose work aims to promote interdisciplinary collaborations between science, technology and art.
Following this workshop, the experts devised an innovative methodology to study creativity. They prepared a visual-creative imagination task based on abstract stimuli, and compared the creative performance of an image-generation AI model, with and without human guidance, with that of two groups of people: visual artists and the general population (non-artists).
This is from MIT Tech Review newsletter: The hardest question to answer about AI-fueled delusions
What actually happens when people spiral into delusion with AI? To find out, Stanford researchers analyzed transcripts from chatbot users who experienced these spirals.
Their findings suggest that chatbots have a unique ability to turn a benign, delusion-like thought into a dangerous obsession. But the research struggles to answer a vital question: does AI cause delusions or merely amplify them? Read the full story to understand the answer’s enormous implications. —James O’Donnell
This spellbinding site simulates what Earth looked like hundreds of millions of years ago.
From Nature newsletter:
Found this 1969 #Earth Day poster.
The message remains very relevant. Our #environmental problems are serious and our societies remain unsustainable.
But it also inadvertently shows that we’ve made A LOT of progress too.
Consider the smoke trails. They are not an exaggeration.
