Do not try this at home.
This is not the right way to eat lionfish!

According to many biologists, you don’t really know your research inside and out until you’ve tasted what you study (there is, quite literally, a badge of honor for it). I’ve known biologists who have chugged shots of plankton, taken bites from agar plates, and some have even drank water that’s a billion years old to attain the dubious honor. You’d be surprised^* just how many times I’ve gotten into conversations about my research and my study organisms only to be interrupted by “that’s great and all, but have you eaten them?” And every time, I had to hang my head in shame and confess that, alas, I had not. Now, I’m thrilled to report that while I was in Beaufort, NC to collect samples, I finally joined the cool biologists club. I ate my study species.

And they are delicious.

It certainly helps that I study lionfish. Unlike many of my colleagues, my fish are perfectly palatable, even downright mouthwatering. Still, until a couple weeks ago, I had never tasted the freshest delicacy to hit the southeastern US, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean.

I say ‘fresh’ because lionfish are truly newcomers in the Atlantic, the unfortunate consequence of aquarium releases over time. These pretty, frilly fish are native to the Indo-Pacific, but have spent the past two decades making the warm waters from North Carolina to Venezuela home. They’re one of the worst invasive species the US has ever had to face. Lionfish been called everything from cockroaches to a living, reproducing oil spill, and scientists fear that unless we can control their populations, they will cause irreversible ecological cascades, forever altering our marine ecosystems and threatening the species we care about most.

My first lionfish fillet — one of the over two hundred fish caught by North Carolina’s inaugural lionfish derby. Photo taken by NOAA’s James Morris.

Controlling species populations is difficult and expensive, though, and it’s hard to justify spending thousands or even millions of dollars just to hunt down a species that you most likely will never be completely rid of. But there is one way to ensure that thousands of lionfish are removed from the Atlantic every year: create demand for their flesh.

Lionfish are venomous, not poisonous — that is, while a sting hurts like hell, the venom is harmless once cooked. Thus government officials, managers, and conservation organizations avidly promote an “eat ‘em to beat ‘em” strategy, and there are even efforts being made to create a commercial fishery.

Their invasiveness and the current push to eat them in general, of course, made it all the more damning that, as a scientist studying this nuisance, I hadn’t eaten a single bite of lionfish. It was a deficiency that needed to be rectified STAT. Thankfully, Libby Eaton was ready to come to my rescue.

The Bistro-by-the-Sea team filleting a large lionfish for the hungry crowd

Beaufort, NC just had its inaugural lionfish derby, a tournament with the aim of killing as many invasive lionfish as possible. The idea started with Libby Eaton, owner of the local restaurant Bistro-by-the-Sea, when she visited Belize in January. She heard that other areas had been successful in fishing down local populations of lionfish through tournaments, and thought it was a brilliant way to both do some good and spread the word about the invasion. The event, a joint effort between Discovery Diving, the Hampton Inn in Morehead City, the Eastern Carolina Artificial Reef Association and Carteret Catch, was a tremendous success. More than 240 lionfish were speared in the week long derby even though storm winds prevented diving most of the days. On the last day of the tournament, a six person team speared over 150 lionfish!

Charlie, accepting his big winner’s check from Libby

The big winner was my dive buddy Charlie Coffman, who singlehandedly speared 50 fish in just two dives. Since the dives were down deep to over 120 feet, that meant he was spearing at a rate of more than a lionfish a minute! One the counts were made, all of the fish taken in the tournament were processed by NOAA, donating their organs to ongoing scientific research on the invasive populations. Each and every fish was then hand filleted (by scientists like me!) and given back to Libby to be served as appetizers at Bistro-by-the-Sea. Libby hopes that having lionfish on the menu will create awareness and maybe even convince locals to keep fishing for them.

Delicious lionfish tastes for the Big Rock crowd

The derby’s end coincided with one of the most well-known annual Beaufort events: the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament. Though it was a hot, sunny day in North Carolina, tons of people waiting in the heat to see the boats come in with their tournament catch. To spark interest in the new menu item and share the success, Libby arranged to give out free lionfish samples to the crowd that awaited the return of the fishing boats. Libby’s ace team flavored and grilled the fish, while Libby herself walked around with the tray of tasty morsels for the crowd.

Me, chatting lionfish with the Big Rock live webcast. Photo by Ronnie Boon.

I went along for moral support, but I was snagged by the Big Rock presenter to talk to the audience, online and in person, about the invasion, what scientists are doing about it, and how they, as consumers, can help. Most didn’t realize there were lionfish off North Carolina, and were clearly surprised to see me fearlessly holding a large male lionfish. I got to explain where the danger is and where it isn’t, and that they have nothing to fear when it comes eating these venomous fish freshly caught off their coast.

The crowd went wild!

As Libby handed out samples, I heard a murmur of approval spread through the crowd. I asked one family what they thought of the fish, and the two kids gleefully gushed about the taste. The dad said he’d definitely buy it, if he could find it for sale somewhere. Similar responses came from every person I talked to: Tender. Flaky. Gentle flavor, not too fishy. Delicious.

With the fillets cooked and the crowd fed, it was finally time for the moment four years in the making. I had set aside a piece of lionfish, and now that the rest had been handed out, it was my turn to eat. I was by myself, standing off to the side of the grill. No one there knew just how big this was for me, but I felt the anticipation and excitement building as I held the small piece of fish. I was finally going to earn my badge. I was going to eat my study organism. Greedily, I shoved the entire piece into my mouth at once.

My first taste of my study species

The crowd was right. They really are incredible. Honestly one of the softest, flakiest, and sweet tasting fish I’ve ever eaten.

With a quick swallow, it was gone. Kind of anticlimactic, really. Everyone else waited eagerly in the hot sun for the first marlin to come in. Libby had left already. The grill was beginning to cool. I sat by myself, a little disappointed that there was no one there to share my triumph with. But, as I let the tender flavor sit on my tongue, I make a silent thank you to my advisor for letting me choose my own dissertation project. Just imagine if I had ended up studying coral or plankton — yuck. 

I’ve earned my badge! Image via Science Scouts

*Or, if you know a lot of scientists, you probably wouldn’t be surprised at all.

Scientist in vivo lets you peek behind the scenes at what my life is like as a researcher so you can learn more about what I actually do for a living and what makes my job so rewarding. 

More info on the lionfish invasion:

• NOAA’s lionfish invasion research site
• National Ocean Service’s Podcasts with James Morris on the invasion, Part 1 and Part 2

First, of course, he’s correct in saying not all blogs are bad. The case of arsenic life and Rosie Redfield may go down in history as the first great example of blogging truly blending with and supporting research, changing the way we view peer review and the overall system of science publication and communication. It validated the beliefs of many that social media was not the enemy of science but instead its under-utilized ally. Shortly after, even major journals began to see the merits of these new media platforms for research and outreach.

But Dr. Redfield is an expert in her field, and had legitimate concerns to blog about. As Geoffrey notes, this is not the case for most blogs. Any criticisms made by non-expert blogs “can of course be harmful — at the least there tends to be a “no smoke without fire” effect.” Worse, though, once critiques are heard and publicized, there is no going backward to rebuild. “Once a scientific reputation has been tainted,” Geoffrey states, “it can be hard to restore confidence.”

We all know scientists whose careers have been cut short due to unsubstantiated online critiques. So, I was disappointed that Geoffrey failed to provide a single example of a non-expert’s blog ruining a scientific career, since there surely must be many he could have drawn from. He unnecessarily weakened his overall argument by providing a clear, concise example of a blog benefitting research, peer review, and the scientific process without providing the plethora of specific counter examples that support his claims.

And he is right, after all — we should be worried about the viewpoints of non-experts, particularly those that are distributed widely. Unlike journal editorials, which of course are thoroughly researched, edited, and written by known experts in the field, “anyone can write a blog and criticize anything”. Geoffrey’s article is a clear example of the distinction between journal publications and blogs. His rich background in science blogging, the science of science communication, and social media in general makes him an ideal expert to weigh in on this issue, and his command of the literature, clear from his extensive use of citations, sets him apart from ‘self-indulgent’ bloggers that simply feel the need to weigh in on topics they have not researched and do not truly understand.

Should we not be wary of critiques that are published and circulated on large platforms without any oversight or review? Peer-review is the heart of science publication, a system that always separates the good from the bad and the ugly. The review system is in place because it is the only way to ensure quality. There is no doubt that Geoffrey passed his own article to a proper peer review panel — people who are experts in the science of science communication and social media — to receive their valuable inputs on his opinion, because to neglect to do so would be, at its core, unscientific. It would be simply hypocritical for him to publish an editorial that attacks the work of others without first passing it in front of the critical eye of an outside editor, if only to fix even inane details like Geoffrey’s constant desire to put phrases “in quotes”. These review and editing steps are essential to ensure that a critique isn’t biased, that criticisms are fair and well supported, and that they are not based on misunderstandings.

But, as Geoffrey points out, real danger arises because bloggers are truly unaccountable. Nothing they write is attached to their names, and thus their own reputations are never on the line. While scientists are held accountable for their errors in thought or judgment, science writers are never tainted by shoddy work (e.g. Jonah Lehrer, whose reputation as a writer and scientific thinker has not been tarnished in any way since his rampant plagiarism was revealed). This lack of balance when it comes to accountability leaves scientists open to unjust attacks by bloggers — attacks which can go viral and truly impact careers. And, unless they wish to take to the internet themselves, these scientists have no way to reply to scathing critiques.

We simply cannot trust non-experts to grasp the nuances necessary to discuss scientific research and engage in science communication. Their lack of accountability for their opinions as compared to “traditional” outlets is downright dangerous, and thus we must do our best ensure that journals and magazines with wide readership do not give credence to unsupported remarks without proper review. While we cannot stifle “free speech”, we have to do what we can to prevent unscientific attacks from damaging the careers of hardworking scientists and writers. This means that major journals should be wary of criticisms, even internal ones, if they have not been properly vetted.

After all, perhaps the biggest crime in this age of rapid assessment and dissemination would be for a journal to publish a critique that lacks the very tenets of scientific quality that the peer review system was created to maintain.

Interested in social media and science communication You may also be interested in my Social Media for Scientists series, including the Social Networking for Scientists Wiki.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, this post is very much meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek.

Thanks to the detailed research of Patricia Brennan and the fluent coverage of it by Ed Yong and Carl Zimmer, a lot of people have not only heard of the impressive duck penis, they’ve seen it in all its explosive glory (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a moment to click on the links above — trust me, it’s worth it).

Why do chickens and other birds lack the fancy phalluses of their relatives? Good question. At least, now, we know how…
Image from Herrera et al., Fig 1.

But while ducks and their fellow water fowl boast these impressive, large penises, the penes of most birds are nothing to squawk about. Ninety-seven percent — over 10,000 species of birds — have either reduced or non-existant penises that are incapable of penetration. “One of the most puzzling events in evolution is the reduction and loss of the phallus in birds,” explains biologist Marty Cohn in a Cell Press Video Abstract. “It’s remarkable that a group of animals would eliminate a structure that is so important for reproduction.” Given that, like us, birds conceive through internal fertilization, you would think a penis would be essential. How else is the male’s sperm supposed to get all up in the female’s vagina?

While scientists still debate about why the chicken lost most of its penis, a new study published this week in Current Biology finally explains how it was lost, a crucial first step in unraveling this evolutionary enigma.

Chick porn: a developing chicken’s penis (red) before it regresses, visualized by a scanning electron microscope.
Image c/o A.M. Herrera and M.J. Cohn, University of Florida

Marty Cohn and his lab at the University of Florida study the development and evolution of appendages, and are particularly interested in the bird penis conundrum. “It really catches your attention when you see a species that reproduces by internal fertilization and realize that it lacks a penis, which we tend to think of as a critical organ for this mode of reproduction,” explains lead author of the study and Cohn’s graduate student Ana Herrera.

To get to the bottom of mystery of avian penises, Herrera and fellow grad student Claire Perriton, with the aid of undergrad Simone Shuster, watched developing bird embryos closely to see exactly when and how the development of genitalia in the micropenis-wielding chickens diverges from that of their well-endowed duck cousins. They found that through the first stages of development, the two embryos grow the same way. Male chickens begin life with a normally-forming penis. But then, as development progresses, everything changes. In chickens, the penis stops growing and even shrinks, while the duck penis continues to extend and extend, eventually coiling.

When the team began examining these developmental penises at the cellular level, they expected that the cessation of growth by the chicken’s penis would be due to a decrease in cell division — but it wasn’t. “We expected to find that some critical outgrowth factor was missing,” said Cohn. Instead, the proliferation pathways in developing duck and chicken penises were the same, even after the stage when the chicken penis starts to regress. Since the signal for penis enlargement is steady throughout, the team realized that developmental penis growth has to be controlled instead by cell death.

LysoTracker Red staining shows widespread apoptosis (cell death) in the tip chicken and quail developing penises, whereas duck, goose, emu, and alligator genitalia at comparable stages show limited death. The brighter the orange, the more death is occurring. Image from Herrera et al., Fig. 3.

What we consider growth is really the delicate balance between two opposing cellular processes: proliferation and death. When cells divide more than they die, parts grow; when the die more than they divide, those parts shrink. Since the developmental chicken penises were proliferating at the same rate as duck penises, the team instead looked at the rate of programmed cell death, called apoptosis. Sure enough, the developing penises of chickens and penis-less birds showed increased death at the tip, while the forming penises of the phallus-retaining duck, emu and alligator showed much less apoptosis. They then went a step further, tying the death to the expression of a gene called BMP4, a part of the bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) pathway well known for its role in apoptosis. When they blocked BMP4 expression in developing chicks, their penises continued to grow; when they induced it in ducks, penis growth halted. “It was surprising to learn that genital outgrowth fails in these birds not due to absence of a critical growth factor, but due to presence of a cell death factor,” said Herrera.

Cohn and Herrera were quick to point out that understanding bird genitalia has much broader implications. Reproductive organs evolve extremely quickly and are affected by more birth defects than almost any other organ. “Despite the high incidence of birth defects affecting the genitalia, genital development is not well understood at the molecular genetic level,” explains Cohn. By understanding the developmental variation in animals like birds, Cohn hopes to shed light on developmental discrepancies in a wide variety of animals, including us. “This [research] allows us to understand not only how evolution works, but also to gain new insights into possible causes of malformations.”

Perhaps what’s most interesting about this discovery is that it means chickens and other galliform birds likely haven’t lost the ability to create a full penis. Instead, a novel anti-penis pathway counteracts extension early on. If, though, that pathway were to be disrupted by a new evolutionary event, the penes would grow.

This might explain why chachalacas, guans and curassow — birds in the family Cracidae — possess penetrative penises. They alone in the entire lineage of Galliformes boast these appendages, and the team thinks that this unique group didn’t keep their penises throughout evolutionary history, they got them back. “In light of current phylogeny, cracids may have re-evolved an intromittent phallus,” write the authors. “which would suggest that galliforms have retained the competence to redevelop a phallus from a rudimentary genital organ.”

Which, of course, still leaves scientists wondering why Galliformes lost their penises in the first place.

Some have suggested that the reduction of the galliform penis occurred as an evolutionary accident or side-effect of sorts — a phenomenon biologists call pleiotropy. Pleiotropy occurs because individual genes are involved a suite of traits in different parts of the body, thus a mutation in a single gene can cause changes in two otherwise unrelated observable traits. If one of these trait changes is strongly beneficial, both changes might stick around, even if the other is less than ideal. When it comes to birds and penises, we know (thanks especially to the work of Cohn and Herrera) that the molecular mechanisms that control development aren’t unique to genetalia. The same gene networks also control the formation of the limbs, gut, nervous system, muscle, and even feathers. It’s possible, then, that the shift in development of any of these traits could have altered penile development.

Many scientists find the idea that the penis could be so ‘accidentally’ lost unlikely, though. The reduction of such an important appendage could not have easily been outweighed by benefits to other areas, they argue, thus selection on the penis itself would have had to come into play at some point, at least in a stabilizing manner. In other words, the reduced phallus had to have been a little advantageous. Many alternative hypotheses have been suggested as to what selective pressures pushed for penis loss in Galliformes, from the flying cost of a heavy member to the lack of need for deep penetration outside of aquatic environments, but the strongest center around the idea of female choice. For fertilization to occur in the absence of a penis, females have to cooperate with their would-be mates. In most birds, the female must present her cloaca and evert her vagina before the male can inseminate her. Such behavior gives the females total control over the literal act of sex as well as paternity. Unlike male ducks, male chickens can’t rape their partners or force copulation; they have to convince the female they’re worth the effort, or they don’t get any. Period. This fact alone suggests that sexual selection may be to blame for the tiny penes, and suggests that early female Galliformes preferred to mate with poorly-hung males — whether the ultimate reason for that was to affirm mate choice, prevent rape, avoid STDs, or even get things over with quickly to avoid predation.

Now that we know the molecular details of how the Galliformes lost their members, scientists can begin to whittle away at the different options and attempt to figure out which hypothesis fits best. For now, Cohn and Herrera are leaving that debate to evolutionary biologists and ecologists. “We study embryonic development in a wide range of species,” said Herrera. “While asking why this happened is a fascinating question, as developmental biologists, we were interested in discovering how this change occurred” — and, discover they did. From the developmental perspective, the case of the missing avian penes is closed.

“Whatever the evolutionary forces that drove this change, our finding shows that, at the genetic level, it resulted in a change in the regulation of BMP4 expression, which causes the embryonic phallus to regress due to programmed cell death.”

Citation: Herrera A., Shuster S., Perriton C. & Cohn M. (2013). Developmental Basis of Phallus Reduction During Bird Evolution, Current Biology, 23 1-10. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.04.062

O_o.

The couple planning to do this are entirely serious—and they won’t be the first to travel to Hawaii for a dolphin-assisted birth. My professional opinion: this has to be, hands down, one of the worst natural birthing ideas anyone has ever had (and that is saying a lot).

I know they’re pretty, but really, you don’t want these guys to play midwife. Photo by Flickr user docklander

Let’s talk about dolphins for a moment. I get it — they’re stunning creatures. These sleek, smart, playful animals are almost universally loved by people. Dolphin interactive experiences are hot sellers at tourist locations worldwide, and we naturally want to trust their cheeky, smiling faces. So many people I know got into marine science because of their affinity for dolphins and other marine mammals. I understand why a to-be mother might want to calm her nerves by having a dolphin in the tub during an underwater birth. I can even stretch my imagination and see why a woman would enjoy swimming with a pod of dolphins and giving birth while watching the beautiful displays of these majestic animals.

But, DEAR GOD. NO. JUST. NO.

Because of their friendly disposition and common occurance in aquariums, we tend to think of dolphins as trustworthy, loving creatures. But let’s get real for a minute here. Dolphins don’t eat sunshine and fart roses. They’re wild animals, and they are known to do some pretty terrible things.

Look at how their treat their women. Male dolphins are aggressive, horny devils. Males will kidnap and gang-rape females with their prehensile penises, using alliances of several males to keep females isolated from the rest of the group. As Miriam Goldstein once explained to Slate, “To keep her in line, they make aggressive noises, threatening movements, and even smack her around with their tails. And if she tries to swim away, they chase her down.” Male dolphins don’t just rape their females — they’ve also been known to assert authority by forcibly mounting other males.

They also get a kick out of beating on and killing other animals. Dolphins will toss, beat, and kill small porpoises or baby sharks for no apparent reason other than they enjoy it, though some have suggested the poor porpoises serve as practice for killing the infants of rival males. That’s right, not only do dolphins kill other animals, they kill baby dolphins using the same brutal tactics. No matter how cute they might appear, dolphins are not cuddly companions; they are real, large, ocean predators with a track record for violence — even when it comes to humans.

Just ask Michael Maes, an underwater videographer who has seen first hand just how dangerous dolphins can be. While diving in Grand Cayman, Maes describes a local dolphin nicknamed “Stinky” attempting to ride him and push him to the ground. The animal then turned toward Maes’ friend Alex, circling him, prodding him, and rubbing against him, finally trying to roll on top of him and push him to the surface. “Stinky is in an awkward situation which can turn him into a playful killer-machine,” Michael wrote on his YouTube page. “Please be prudent people and get out of the water when you see him. Believe me, if he decides, you don’t stand the slightest chance!”

Imagine if, instead of trained scuba divers, Michael or Alex were snorkelers, one of them in labor or carrying a newborn infant.

Maes certainly isn’t the first to be roughhoused by a dolphin. Videos of inapropriate behavior can be found all over YouTube, from both captive and wild dolphins. Attacks range from playful to downright perilous, especially when the dolphin decides to push its human toy deep underwater. But a dolphin doesn’t need depth to be dangerous — or even deadly. Off a beach in Brazil, two men saw a dolphin near to shore, and excited by the animal’s presence, decided to approach it. When they touched the apparently friendly dolphin, it flipped out and rammed both the men with serious force. One of the men later died of internal injuries.

Is this an animal you want to have at your side when you’re completely vulnerable?

What would you do if the dolphin does get aggressive, decides to attack the mother or even the newly-emerged baby? How would you protect either from a three-to-four hundred pound animal with lightning speed and agility that is more at home in the environment than you are? And that’s just the dolphin side of things. What if something goes wrong with the birth in general? What if the baby gets stuck, or the mother starts hemorrhaging? Do you really want to be deep in the ocean if something happens?

The Sirius Institute, where the couple is headed, claims that a natural dolphin-assisted birth is completely safe. “Some of the reported occurrences include a mother and a baby playing with the dolphins within 45 minutes of the birth,” claims the site, “another instance of a free dolphin escorting a newborn human baby to the surface for its first breath.” They claim that wild dolphins will come into shallower pools, massaging the mother to help deliver the child, but they don’t have any evidence to back up these claims. When Penn and Teller talked to the institute, they found that none of the mothers which came to Sirius actually went through with the ocean birth. Somehow, I’m not surprised.

The basis for the institutes’ claims seems to be that dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT) is relaxing and soothing. But, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, “there is no scientific evidence to prove that the therapy is effective,” furthermore, “both people and animals can be exposed to infection and injury when participating in these programs.” Dr. Lori Marino takes the criticism even further. “Nearly a decade following our initial review, there remains no compelling evidence that DAT is a legitimate therapy or that it affords any more than fleeting improvements in mood.”

Swimming with dolphins programs may actually be harming wild populations. Photo by Flicr user Dominic

Even if dolphin-assisted births were safe or good for people, no one seems to be asking how the dolphins feel about it. More than 40,000 people swim with dolphins every year, and there is growing concern that such programs are negatively impacting dolphin populations. “Research indicates that, in some areas heavily targetted by commercial swim tours and other human activities, dolphins are actually leaving their traditional habitat in favour of quieter areas,” explains the Whale and Dolphin Conservation. “There is concern that disruption to feeding, resting, nursing and other behaviour may have a long-term impact on the health and wellbeing of individuals and populations.” Scientists have found that dolphins have started avoiding people in swim-with-dolphin areas, and operators of such programs show no interest in complying with regulations put in place to protect the animals.

I sincerely hope Adam and Heather reconsider their options. If they want to have a natural birth, that is one thing, but having one in the ocean with wild dolphins is a seriously bad idea for them and the animals they want to have this special bond with.

The “blue jeans” color morph of the strawberry poison dart frog, Oophaga pumilio, from Costa Rica.
Image from Wikimedia Commons user Pstevendactylus

Mate choice is one of the most well-studied aspects of evolution. To prove that they’re worth the effort, animals will do just about anything. They dance, prance, sing, bellow, and fight for attention. When you look around the animal kingdom, the wild results of mate choice boldly stand out, from the impractically beautiful tails of peacocks to the ostentatious antlers of elk and deer. With so much focus placed on quality, you might assume that every species has their own complex way of conveying their worth, and that all of the females of the world are finicky creatures.

But not so for the female strawberry poison dart frog — when she’s ready to mate, she doesn’t pick the strongest or the brightest guy around. She just goes for the closest.

This came as a shock to Ivonne Meuche and her colleagues from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover, Germany. Strawberry poison dart frogs are some of the most colorful animals on the planet. There are more than a dozen color morphs, from the bright red they’re named for to vibrant blues and greens. When the mating season arrives, male frogs gather in these large groups called leks to vie for female attention. In other lekking species, these large displays sort the men from the boys in the minds of the females, with the most impressive singers/dancers/etc winning the most matings. It is believed that these large groups give the males a chance to prove their top-notch genes or parenting skills. So the scientists wanted to know what drives mate choice in these colorful frogs. Does their bold coloration play a role? Or, like in other species of frogs and toads, does size matter most?

Listen to a male call:

To test female choice, the team played male calls that varied in pitch and rate made by frogs of different sizes and shapes, and watched to see which the females picked. The female frogs didn’t choose based on any of those factors, though. “We did not find female preferences for certain call properties or physical properties,” the authors explain. “Our data suggest that in our study population, female strawberry poison frogs use a mate sampling tactic that could be defined as “accept the closest calling male”.” When it comes to convincing a female strawberry poison dart frog, a male doesn’t have to be the strongest or the handsomest. He just has to be the first she gets to.

The scientists believe this very non-choosy behavior is a result of the reproductive biology of these colorful little frogs. They found that when a female is ready to lay eggs, she has a short time frame in which to do so. Females that don’t mate in that window end up laying unfertilized eggs, thus squandering their body’s efforts to reproduce. Since time is of the essence, the best choice available for these girls is to take what they can get, for even a lesser quality mate is better than no mate at all.

“Strawberry” is a misnomer: an example of the stunning diversity of color in these little frogs.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Dendrotoine85

The authors do note that their study has limitations. Populations of strawberry poison dart frogs vary a lot in the natural world in many ways that the team was unable to test. For example, the proportion of males to females or potential egg-laying sites might shift how females behave. Other studies have found that when there are more females than males, as was true in this study, that the pressure to be picky relaxes. So, further research, in the lab and in the wild, are needed to determine if this species has multiple tactics for choosing mates, or if the closest male always wins out.

But, at least in their study population, the team is confident in their results. And it makes sense — the cost of searching for a better mate is high for these bright little females, so it’s not worth their time to be picky. “High egg mortality as well as the risk of losing the whole clutch by laying unfertilised eggs and the probably low benefits of intensive mate sampling support our assumption that acceptance of the closest calling male represents an optimal mate sampling tactic in female strawberry poison frogs,” they write. The longer these frogs wait to mate, the more likely they are to fail altogether. So why not just pick any guy and hope for the best?
Citation: Meuche I., Brusa O., Linsenmair K.E., Keller A. & Pröhl H. (2013). Only distance matters — non-choosy females in a poison frog population, Frontiers in Zoology, 10 (1) 29. DOI: 10.1186/1742-9994-10-29

Plus, bonus footage of grizzlies catching fish!

An Anopheles gambiae mosquito gorging herself on blood. Photo by Jim Gathany, from the CDC’s Public Health Image Library

By the time you realize what has happened, it’s too late. An Anopheles gambiae mosquito can land on your skin completely unnoticed. While you continue unaware, she stealthily walks over your exposed flesh, searching, probing the surface of your skin with her proboscis until she finds a blood vessel. She then situates her body perfectly at just the right angle, hunches down, and plunges her needle-like mouthparts into your skin. Tiny pumps pull the warm, protein-rich blood into her mouth.

With every millisecond increasing her chances of exposure, she drinks as quickly as she can. Your hand isn’t the only obstacle she faces: even as she sucks, your body senses the wound and attempts to plug the hole by forming a clot. She needs your warm, nutritious blood for her eggs, so she’s not about to let your protective mechanisms interfere. To ensure her meal keeps flowing, she pumps saliva laden with anti-coagulants and vasodilators  into the wound — and that’s when it happens. That’s when the Plasmodium falciprum sporozoites that have been waiting patiently in her salivary glands enter your bloodstream. Dozens can hitch a ride in her saliva, but it only takes one to cause malaria. One single, microscopic protozoan is enough to kill you.

Responsible for the most dangerous kind of malaria and at least half of malaria cases worldwide, Plasmodium falciprum is estimated to kill somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people every year. In recent years, the parasite has developed resistance to many of our best treatments, leaving doctors without options in the over one hundred countries where malaria is endemic. While scientists continue to research new means of treatment from vaccines to drugs, nations struggling with malaria have shifted focus to prevention. Recently, this means scientists have become particularly interested in mosquito behavior to develop better, cost-effective control mechanisms. But a new study in PLoS ONE today suggests we know less than we might have thought, and that the parasite may be influencing its host mosquitos in ways we never even imagined.

“So far, most studies of Anopheles gambiae mosquito behavior have been conducted with uninfected mosquitoes,” write the authors, “but our data demonstrate that such results may not be representative of infected mosquitoes.” Previous studies found that Plasmodium-infected mosquitos probe skin more, bite more often and ingest larger meals than uninfected ones, but the scientific team comprised of scientists from the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States wondered whether infected mosquitos behave differently before they land.

Many parasites with multiple hosts are known to alter one hosts’ behavior to increase transmission to the next. Toxoplasma gondii, for example, suppresses rats’ fear of cats by altering how they respond to feline smells. The research team wondered if Plasmodium could control mosquitos along the same lines, so they tested how uninfected and infected mosquitos reacted to the scent of human skin. Their results were staggeringly significant.

Figure 1 A from Smallegange et al. The total number of landings by uninfected (green bars) and P. falciparum infected (red bars) mosquitos in response to no odor (left) or human skin odor (right).

Infected Anopheles mosquitos landed on the human-scented surface more than three times as often as non-infected mosquitos. “These results suggest that malaria-infectious females are more attracted to human odors than uninfected mosquitoes,” write the authors. “This is the first indication of a change in [mosquito] behavior in response to human odor, caused by infection with P. falciparum.”

The authors hope this research spurs further study into the ways in which Plasmodium alters mosquito senses. New types of attractant smells, for example, could lead to breakthroughs in trapping technology and provide powerful allies in the struggle against malaria.

But the discovery that mosquitos act differently when infected has its downsides, too. If the parasites can change how the mosquitos smell, how much does this alter how they behave? Are the usual battery of deterrent or attractant smells less effective? Is the alluring scent enough to draw mosquitos to feed when they normally wouldn’t, making our nightly netting less meaningful? Are there any other ways that the parasite alters its host, and what do these changes in behavior mean when it comes to bite prevention?

There is a long road ahead before scientists will fully understand the complex interactions between Plasmodium and their hosts. Studies like this one reveal just how little we understand these deadly parasites of ours, and how much more we have to learn if we want to win the battle against them.

Citation: Smallegange R., van Gemert G.J., van de Vegte-Bolmer M., Gezan S., Takken W. et al. (2013). Malaria Infected Mosquitoes Express Enhanced Attraction to Human Odor. , PLoS ONE, 8 (5) e63602. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0063602

  X2!

The winners of the inaugural Science Seeker Awards have been announced! My posts got nods as finalists in two categories: Best Biology Post and Best Life-in-Science Post. Thank you so much to the judges for these honors, and a huge congrats to all of the winners and other finalists. I strongly suggest reading through the list of winners and finalists, and checking out all of the fabulous posts!

Welcome to Musical Monday, where I feature an original song just for the heck of it. Want to hear more? Check out my previous musical posts, Time – And Brain Chemistry – Heal All Wounds, Biochemically, All Is Fair, and Taking Einstein’s Advice, and previous Musical Mondays Stay Near Me and As Hard As It Is.

I’ve had a song banging around in my head for awhile, and finally this weekend I took the time to get a very rough draft out. When it comes to love, everything is a gamble. So, enjoy!

You believe you are an island
You are forever alone
Waves of regret and isolation
come ashore, ashore, ashore

Walls of your creation surround you
By showing no weakness, you feel strong
You think you cannot be happy
but you’re wrong, you’re wrong, you’re wrong

You play the game with an ace up your sleeve,
so scared of losing you don’t care who you beat,
but you’ll never win no matter how much you cheat,
cuz you keep your cards to your chest, and fold when she bets

Over time the fog has lifted
There are clear skies overhead
but you hide in your darkness
my friend, my friend, my friend

You choose the path of most resistance
It’s the only path you know
But all you need is to give in
to let go, let go, let go

Still you play the game with an ace up your sleeve,
so scared of losing you don’t care who you beat,
but you’ll never win no matter how much you cheat,
cuz you keep your cards to your chest, and fold when she bets

Just close your eyes
Imagine a world where you don’t have to lie
Where you put your heart on the line
Broken and bleeding, it’s still whole
I know, I know, I know

You were not ready when I met you
Our dead love rests in peace
But I won’t be the last to believe in you
you’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll see

Just lay the cards on the table
Don’t count the chips in the end
You don’t have to be an island
You don’t have pretend
Love is worth the gamble
Oh my friend, my friend, my friend

Turn that frown upside-down — the newest Nature issue defends GMOs. Cover image provided by Nature.

Now, the top-tier scientific journal Nature has weighed in. In their “GM Crops: Promise & Reality” issue this week, several articles explore “the messy middle ground.” With titles like “Tarnished Promise” and “A Hard Look At GM Crops,” you might think they attack genetic engineering, but in fact, the entire issue does the opposite, standing in support of crop genetic engineering technologies and pleading to rethink the knee-jerk reaction against them. Even the “Hard Look” concludes, “Tidy stories, in favour of or against GM crops, will always miss the bigger picture, which is nuanced, equivocal and undeniably messy. Transgenic crops will not solve all the agricultural challenges facing the developing or developed world… But vilification is not appropriate either. The truth is somewhere in the middle.”

Which is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. 

“Over the past 50 years, improved crop varieties have contributed almost 1% each year to the gains made in worldwide agricultural productivity,” explains Christopher Whitty, chief scientific adviser at the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and colleagues in their comment piece “Africa and Asia need a rational debate on GM crops”. “To begin with an emotional debate about GM techniques is to look down the wrong end of the telescope.”

Whitty and his colleagues aren’t Monsanto shills; they’re scientists that have carefully weighed the evidence. And they’re among the majority of scientists that support GM technologies, even though they say GMOs aren’t an agricultural panacea. “Genetic engineering is not essential, or even useful, for all crop improvements,” they write. But, they come down hard on blanket bans against genetically engineered crops. “Excluding any technology that can help people to get the food and nutrition that they need should be done only for strong, rational and locally relevant reasons.” To support their case, they specifically cite three examples of GMOs — vitamin A-boosted golden rice, poo-borer-resistant cowpea, and water-efficient maize — that they consider “potential life savers.”

They also make special note of the western world’s privileged status when it comes to debating GMOs, and argue that developing countries shouldn’t simply follow the leader when it comes to genetic technology policies. “It makes little sense for decisions on GM crops to be overly influenced by European perspectives… where the benefits of better crop yields are slight, the risks (although largely theoretical, and in some cases, arguably irrational) may dominate in a risk–benefit analysis.”

Meanwhile, in a different comment piece, Fusuo Zhang and colleagues describe how “driven by an urgent need to both produce more food and lessen the environmental impact of agriculture — and with more money to address the problem than most — Chinese scientists are working out how to push crop yields close to their biophysical limits.” And, of course, GMOs are playing an important role in these efforts to improve efficiency and sustainability.

“The development of new crop varieties and hybrids is one of several areas of fundamental research,” the authors write, “with transgenic technology becoming an increasingly important element in recent years.” The use Bt cotton as an example (the first GM crop approved for commercial use in China), citing that, with it, farmers have increased yields by nearly 6% and reduced the use of insecticides by around 80% in the past 8 years. In spite of the Chinese public’s wariness about genetic engineering, the government poured almost $4 billion US into a 12-year GM research and development initiative. “In the face of climate change, pushing yields to the limit while sparing resources and reducing environmental consequences is a crucial goal for all,” they conclude.

And the next generation of GM crops are on their way, explains Daniel Cressey in his news feature “A New Breed.” “New tools offer unparalleled precision in editing genes,” he explains. “Some of these crops will tackle new problems, from apples that stave off discolouration to ‘Golden Rice’ and bright-orange bananas fortified with nutrients to improve the diets of people in the poorest countries.”

The main goal of GM researchers now: use what you’ve already got. “The real power of these techniques lies in the ability to confer new traits by modifying native plant genes,” Cressey explains. He writes about researchers that are using modifications to a plant’s actual genes, not the insertion of genes from other species, to combat common problems. Cressey notes that using the plants own genetic material “could conceivably reduce the public disquiet over GM foods.” “US regulators have already suggested that organisms modified with the newer techniques such that they contain no DNA from other species will be treated differently from conventional GM organisms,” he explains.

One of the many applications of transporters cited in Schroeder et al.’s perspective: barley engineered for enhanced zinc content. Around two billion people suffer from iron and zinc deficiencies worldwide. Image courtesy of The John Innes Centre

Nature further has an entire perspective article dedicated to one way in which scientists may be able to achieve the lofty goal of improving without adding: alterations in membrane transporters. “Transport proteins embedded within membranes are key targets for improving the efficiency with which plants take up and use water and nutrients,” explain the international team of 11 scientists led by Julian Schroeder, UC San Diego biology professor. The new wave of genome sequencing, they say, has led to incredible leaps in understanding of the natural genetic diversity of plant membrane transporters, which can be exploited through conventional breeding or genetic engineering.”Just as our cell phones will need more advanced technology to carry more information, plants need better or new transporters to make them work harder on existing agricultural land,” said Dale Sanders, director of the John Innes Centre in the U.K. and a corresponding co-author of the paper, in a press release. “We can make plants better at finding and carrying their own chemical elements.” By tinkering with these genes, scientists can improve nutrient content and increase drought, flood, or salinity tolerance. “We expect that research into fundamental mechanisms of plant membrane transport processes will continue to produce surprises and breakthroughs that will provide new avenues towards a more sustainable and productive agriculture in the face of impending challenges,” write the authors.

That’s not to say that using native plant genes should be the only way to engineer better crops. There is plenty of good being done with cross-species gene transfer, too. Cressey discusses how non-agribusiness researchers are focusing on locally used plants instead of big money makers, hoping to improve crops for developing countries. Nutritional enhancement is a common goal, including crops like golden rice and fortified bananas. These researchers are trying to solve real global issues, whether or not Monsanto and other large agricultural companies are backing them.

Even the harshest article in this new Nature issue defends GM crops. In “A Hard Look At GM Crops,” Natasha Gilbert examines the myths and truths of the GM debate. Is Bt cotton leading to suicides in India? Nope. “The claim, based on an increase in total suicide rates across the country in the late 1990s, has become an oft-repeated story of corporate exploitation since Monsanto began selling GM seed in India in 2002,” Gilbert explains, but the fact is “there has been essentially no change in the suicide rate for farmers since the introduction of Bt cotton.” Are GM crops causing superweeds? Well, yes, but that’s not the whole story. “Twenty-four glyphosate-resistant weed species have been identified since Roundup-tolerant crops were introduced in 1996,” Gilbert explains, “But herbicide resistance is a problem for farmers regardless of whether they plant GM crops. Some 64 weed species are resistant to the herbicide atrazine, for example, and no crops have been genetically modified to withstand it.”

The end result of Gilbert’s “Hard Look” is a hard look at the arguments against GMOs, not the GMOs themselves. As she explains, “These controversial case studies show how blame shifts, myths are spread and cultural insensitivities can inflame debate.”

The point being made over and over by these pieces is that GM crops are a part of the future of agriculture, and they should be. As fellow Discover blogger Keith Kloor has pointed out many times before, “Unfortunately, the public GMO discourse is dominated by phony, pseudoscientific claims advanced by ideologically motivated activists and their enablers in the media.” Kloor comes down hard on the media’s willingness to portray GMOs as dangerous in spite of a complete lack of any scientific evidence whatsoever. “In truth,” he writes, “the uncontrollable spread of disinformation about GMOs is what’s really contaminating the environment.”

I completely agree. As I’ve said before , the future of agriculture needs to use all tools available to tackle the growing problems of malnutrition, population growth, and ecological impact. If we universally apply the same methods globally, we are destined to fail both in terms of efficiency and sustainability. It is only through the breakdown of arbitrary and variable distinction between methodologies like “organic” and “conventional,” scientific rigor in our approach to studying technologies and methods, and integration of a variety of practices that we will achieve our ultimate goal of a bright future both agriculturally and ecologically.

I’m glad to see such a prominent journal focus on this hot-button issue, especially with such staunch defense of technology. Genetic engineering isn’t the enemy of sustainable agriculture, even if Monsanto or other agri-businesses are. The technology itself is unbiased, and can be used to revolutionize food production globally. To blanket attack technologies with the potential to help billions while lessening our impact on the rest of the Earth is counter-productive to everything the environmental movement stands for. It’s time we stop villainizing GMOs, and start using science and technology to secure a healthy, sustainable future.

Citations:
The Nature special issue: http://nature.com/gmcrops

Schroeder J., Delhaize E., Frommer W.B., Guerinot M.L., Harrison M.J., Herrera-Estrella L., Horie T., Kochian L.V., Munns R., Nishizawa N.K., Tsay Y.-I. & Sanders, D. (2013). Using membrane transporters to improve crops for sustainable food production, Nature, 497 60-66. DOI: 10.1038/nature11909