Zombie ant jack o' lantern

In the spirit of Halloween, we’ve asked Dr. David Hughes of Penn State University and  Dr. Harry Evans of  Federal University of Viçosa Brazil to share with us a bit about their manuscript, Hidden Diversity Behind the Zombie-Ant FungusOphiocordyceps unilateralis: Four New Species Described from Carpenter Ants in Minas Gerais, Brazil.   Both were kind enough to oblige and share with us their perspective via email.

The description of ants as zombies is not a pitch to popularity-even at Halloween-  but an orchestrated attempt to identify fungal-infected ants as very different from other ants in the society. Just because something looks, walks and quacks like a duck doesn’t mean it is actually a duck. The sinister thing about parasites which manipulate host behavior is that they can easily go unnoticed. The zombie ant moniker forces us to recall that we are looking at two organisms and the ant is not in the driving seat.

Our study in PLoS ONE, which used micromorphology together with spore function to delimit and describe new species, came about as it was obvious that the diversity of zombie ant fungi must be  higher than previously supposed because ant species diversity is high. We know that ants differ in many important behaviors which of course is due to brain differences. So, if your evolutionary gambit is brain control, then diverse brains will act as diverse selection environments leading to different species. Perhaps the most exciting thing is that we now recognize that these initial descriptions are just the tip of a very large iceberg and that many more zombie-inducing fungi await discovery, especially in tropical forests such as the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest in which we set our study.

In March, our editor wrote an overview of this paper.  To see last year’s Halloween post, click here.

Image by Roel Fleuren and pumpkin carving by Charissa de Bekker.

In this author spotlight, Sara Maxwell, a Postdoctoral Fellow with Marine Conservation Institute and the University of California, Santa Cruz, answers questions about her background, her research and her PLoS ONE manuscript, Using Satellite Tracking to Optimize Protection of Long-Lived Marine Species: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle Conservation in Central Africa.

First, a bit of background – how did you become interested in studying migratory patterns of large pelagic animals?

My interests have always centered around conservation primarily.  In my mid-20s as I was considering going back to graduate school, I knew I wanted to study a system that would interest me over the course of an entire career – and a system where my science could make a difference.  The migratory patterns of marine mammals fit the bill well, and turtles in particular have always been particularly special to me. During my undergraduate career, I spent a summer working with sea turtles at Duke University’s Marine Laboratory and it was ultimately the turtles that drew me into marine biology and conservation.  When the opportunity to work with turtles in Gabon arose, I didn’t think twice!

In the manuscript, it mentions that sea turtles are “excellent candidates and models for protecting vulnerable, discrete breeding areas.” Why is this so?

Sea turtles are a highly migratory and dispersed species throughout most of their lives, but during the breeding and nesting season, they come together in large concentrations – and for fairly long stretches of time.  Breeding and nesting areas are relatively close together. Olive ridley sea turtles, for example, nest every year to three years.  Female turtles stay in the breeding-nesting grounds for several months while they mate and lay up to three clutches of eggs, and breeding males are found in the same areas.  Breeding and mating areas, however, are close to shore – so closer to humans, fishing and other threats – but because they are in a small area for a specific period of the year and during an important life history stage, it makes protecting them easier and more politically and socio-economically feasible.

Mayumba National Park is a marine protected area just north of the border of the Republic of Congo. The area is home to leatherback and olive ridley sea turtles but of the two turtles, olive ridleys make up 59 to 95 percent of the dead turtles that wash up on shore.  Is there a reason for this and how does tracking via satellite help to minimize the number of stranded olive ridley sea turtles?

We understand the situation in Mayumba a lot better than we did before this study but it is still a bit of a thousands of leatherbacks sea turtles nesting in Mayumba every year but only a few hundred olive ridleys – yet the olive ridleys are dying in much greater numbers.  We used satellite tracking to determine where the turtles were going in relation to the park that was created to protect them. We found that they are spending a lot of time outside the park boundaries where they are exposed to fishing nets and drowning.  Leatherback movement patterns are somewhat similar; however we don’t see the same number of dead animals washing ashore.  This could be because leatherbacks are heavier and their bodies sink instead of washing ashore or they don’t encounter fishing nets as frequently because they are in deeper waters or have different diving behavior.  There are lots of things we still don’t know, but what we do know is that creating a larger park – one that is in both Gabon and the Republic of Congo – will protect both species better more from fishing nets.  Satellite tracking has been the key tool that brought us to that conclusion, through this study and another great study by Matthew Witt and colleagues published in Oryx in 2008.

One of the three elements you mention, as being necessary to provide protection to breeding females, is the level of confidence in tracks given the limitations of satellite telemetry. How accurate is satellite telemetry and what was done to eliminate location error of internesting movements?

Satellite tracking is an incredibly powerful technology – but it can be tricky too!  We were focused on a fairly small area of the world in this study (approximately 1500 km2), and like all measurements, satellite telemetry locations have error associated with them.  In the case of telemetry, however, this error can be tens of kilometers which could have a significant impact on the conclusions we were making about where turtles are found in relation to park boundaries.  To help counter this, we used a technique called state-space modeling that has been fairly recently applied to animal movement.  State-space models allowed us to assign the Bayesian equivalent of confidence intervals to every track location.  By doing this, we could calculate error estimates for how animals are using park boundaries – and recommend changes in the park boundaries that take this uncertainty into account.

You have included a few figures in the manuscript. Of them, which one is the most important and why?

This is a difficult question!  I think Figure 3, (above figure) which shows the key areas that the olive ridleys are using along with the outer bounds for our error estimation, is critical in showing what we learned from the study – and what we are still uncertain about due to satellite telemetry error. Figure 4 is important as well because it shows the olive ridley and leatherback sea turtle distributions together.  Though the analytical techniques were different, this figure shows that the proposed park boundaries (which extend into both Gabon and Congo as well as further offshore) are really on target to protect BOTH of these species – this was a really exciting finding, and one in which is already helping to guide management in the area.

Did you find anything surprising or unexpected while conducting your research for this paper?

One of the most critical things that we learned from conducting this research is not in this paper – and is critical to protecting the olive ridley population.  There is a substantial nest monitoring effort that goes on in Gabon and in Mayumba National Park but most of the monitoring has focused on leatherback sea turtles.  Olive ridleys, however, nest earlier in the year, and in the most remote part of the park.  We were on this remote part of the beach earlier in the year, both to deploy our satellite transmitters and to monitor the nests.  As a result we discovered that almost 100% of the nests being laid by olive ridleys were being predated upon by natural predators such as crabs and mongooses. Olive ridley nests are not as deep in the sand as leatherbacks, so predators could reach the eggs and none of the eggs being laid were hatching.  This obviously will have a huge impact on the population. As a result of what we learned, however, over the last three years, with support from the US Marine Turtle Conservation Fund, Mayumba National Park has started a hatchery where they incubate the eggs in a protected area of the beach to ensure that the eggs are safe and hatchlings are born.

What’s next?  Where do you hope to go from here?

The directions are endless!  But there are several directions we are actively working towards.  We are working to combine not just the satellite tracks from olive ridley and leatherback sea turtle data but also humpback whales.  The goal is to have a comprehensive understanding of how key species in the region are moving in relation to both park boundaries and also other human activities such as fishing and oil and gas development.  We have begun modeling the at-sea habitat olive ridleys use during the nesting season in relation to the physical and oceanographic environment.  The goal is predicting where ridleys are likely to be found in relation to other nesting beaches where we weren’t able to deploy satellite tags.  Finally, we are also collaborating with scientists from Pendoley Environmental who have tracked olive ridleys from another nesting beach in Angola.  We are finding that the turtles have similar migratory patterns and are focusing on the same foraging grounds and oceanographic features. All of these efforts are focused on how can we better understand and protect the turtles.

To read more about Sara’s experience in the field, please see her posts on Turtling in Africa in the On TOPP of the World Blog and to view the satellite tracks online, visit the SEATURTLE.ORG tracking page. The paper Using Satellite Tracking to Optimize Protection of Long-Lived Marine Species: Olive Ridley Sea Turtle Conservation in Central Africa is freely available to rate, comment on, and share.

Today is World Malaria Day —a time to reflect upon and commemorate the global efforts to fight this deadly mosquito-born disease found throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Given the day, we thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight some of the recent malaria research published in PLoS ONE and PLoS Pathogens, as well as have the authors discuss their work.   Many thanks to the authors and academic editors who agreed to participate in this post.

PLoS ONE

Earlier this month, the Head of Malaria at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland,  David Bell, and colleagues from the Ministry of Health of Senegal, FIND and WHO published a paper on the Major Reduction in Anti-Malarial Drug Consumption in Senegal after Nation-Wide Introduction of Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Tests.

According to Bell:

This paper demonstrates the tangible impact that can be achieved through the well-managed rollout of malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) nationwide. In particular, the article shows that:

• rolling out a high quality nation-wide RDT programme is feasible even in low-income countries
• a carefully planned and implemented rollout results in good adherence to diagnostic results by clinical staff
• the widespread use of quality diagnostics can lead to a significant reduction in the number of anti-malarial drugs prescribed, which is both a public health gain and results in significant savings in ACT procurement (the Global Fund was able to retain €1.2 million from its Malaria grant to Senegal, available for use in other projects)
• Senegal now has solid evidence of its “true” national malaria rates, allowing for more accurate targeting of malaria interventions and resources, essential if elimination is eventually to be achieved.
  

  Figure 2. Evolution of parasite based diagnosis of malaria in Senegal public health services 2007–2009.

While WHO recently recommended universal parasitological confirmation of suspected malaria prior to treatment, debate has continued as to whether wide-scale use of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) can achieve this goal. Adherence of health service personnel to RDT results has been poor in smaller-scale interventions some settings, with little impact on anti-malarial drug consumption. The experience in Senegal shows that this need not be the case, and that the well-managed use of quality diagnostics can have a dramatic positive impact on the management of malaria and febrile disease.

In the paper, Malaria Prevalence, Risk Factors and Spatial Distribution in a Hilly Forest Area of Bangladesh,  Ubydul Haque, a PhD student currently at  the Department of International Health, Institute of Tropical Medicine (NEKKEN) and the Global Center of Excellence Program in Nagasaki, Japan, along with colleagues from the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research  in Bangladesh, and the  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health evaluate early stage malaria interventions in Bangladesh.

From the authors:

Figure 2. Land cover classification in Rajasthali

Malaria is a major public health concern in Bangladesh and it is endemic in the Chittagong Hill Tracts where prevalence was 11.7% in 2007. One sub-district, Rajasthali, had a prevalence of 36%. Several interventions were introduced in early 2007 to control malaria with the support of Global Fund. This study was undertaken to evaluate the impacts of these intensive early stage interventions on malaria in Bangladesh. The study result confirmed the malaria prevalence dropped to 11.5% in 2009. Sex, age, number of bed nets, forest cover, altitude and household density were potential risk factors. Statistically significant malaria clusters were identified. Significant differences among risk factors were observed between cluster and non-cluster areas. Malaria has significantly decreased within 2 years after onset of intervention program. Both aspects of the physical and social environment, as well as demographic characteristics are associated with spatial heterogeneity of risk. The ability to identify and locate these areas provides a strategy for targeting interventions during initial stages of intervention programs.

The findings are important since the prevalence rate sharply declined although malaria cluster effect still remains.

In another paper published this month called, Determinants of the Cost-Effectiveness of Intermittent Preventive Treatment for Malaria in Infants and Children, Amanda Ross a statistician at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and first author of the manuscript writes:

With finite resources, a rational basis is needed for choosing between malaria control strategies. The potential strategies, intermittent preventive treatment in children (IPTc) and infants (IPTi), are under consideration. IPT aims to deliver anti-malarial treatment to the target age group at specified time points whether or not they are known to be infected with the aim of reducing morbidity and mortality.

Field trials have provided information on the effectiveness of IPT on clinical episodes in a number of settings. It is not practical, however, for the trials to include the very large numbers of children required to estimate the effectiveness on the less frequent but important outcomes of severe malaria (requiring hospitalisation) and death, neither is it feasible to carry out large numbers of trials for many different setting nor implementation characteristics.

Figure 5. Predicted effects and cost-effectiveness of IPT depending on timing of first dose in seasonal settings.

This paper uses a comprehensive model of malaria epidemiology together with economic data to provide predictions of the impact and cost-effectiveness of IPTc for different settings, drugs and implementation characteristics, and to investigate the limits where IPT is no longer cost-effective. These predictions contribute to a growing database of the likely effectiveness, including cost, of different malaria control strategies generated using this common simulation platform. These predictions, taken together with other considerations, can aid decision-makers.

Our final PLoS ONE malaria highlight comes from Francesco Dieli, a Professor of Immunology and Director of the Division of Immunology and Immunogenetics at the University of Palermo, Italy.  As the Academic Editor for the recently published paper, Interethnic Differences in Antigen-Presenting Cell Activation and TLR Responses in Malian Children during Plasmodium falciparum Malaria, by Charles Arama et al., he writes:

Half of the world’s population remains at risk of contracting malaria. During 2008, malaria was estimated to be responsible for 767,000 deaths in Africa alone, mostly in children below the age of 5 years. There is substantial evidence that host genetic factors play a major role in determining the outcome of infection with Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum), the ethiologic agent of malaria, but in humans, this genetic trait is complex. Several epidemiological approaches can be applied in the study of the genetic susceptibility to malaria, amongst which is inter-ethnic comparative analyses among populations with different genetic backgrounds, exposed to the same epidemiological context and showing different susceptibility to the disease.  The combination of such epidemiological studies, together with linkage analyses in a rural area in Mali have clearly shown different genetic innate susceptibility to P. falciparum between two ethnic groups, the Fulani and the Dogon. These populations live under similar social, cultural and geographic conditions and are exposed to identical malaria pressure. However, the Fulani are better protected against Plasmodium falciparum malaria as compared to the Dogon and this has been associated to the development of robust anti-malarial immunity.

Nevertheless, little is known about the functionality of innate immunity in Fulani and sympatric ethnic groups and how this branch of immunity influences susceptibility to malaria infection. This aspect is of crucial importance to fully understand the immunological mechanisms of susceptibility/resistance to malaria, as innate immunity both rapidly inhibits parasite growth, thereby limiting the onset of disease, and instructs specific adaptive immunity

The paper by Arama and colleagues clearly demonstrates that important differences exist between the Fulani and Dogon groups at the level of innate immune response, which involve the function of dendritic cells (DCs): P. falciparum infection impairs the phenotype of DCs and alters their responses  to TLR agonists in Dogon, but not in Fulani children, and this has an important consequence on the outcome of subsequent adaptive immunity to P. falciparum, as documented by differential IFN-γ release in the two ethnic groups.

While evaluation of a larger cohort of patients is required to confirm these results and to analyze the potential occurrence of distinct TLR polymorphisms in these two ethnic groups, this paper clearly indicate that understanding of innate immune responses to P. falciparum in naturally exposed children may yield important insights in the development of immunity to malaria, with particular regard to the definition of robust correlates of susceptibility/resistance to infection, and to the development of novel vaccination strategies.

PLoS Pathogens

Dr. Anthony James, a Distinguished Professor of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, writes about his recently published article, Engineered Resistance to Plasmodium falciparum Development in Transgenic Anopheles stephensi.

Figure 1. A model of the modified scFv transgenes.

Malaria eradication will require vector-control strategies that are both self-sustaining and not affected by migration of infected humans and mosquitoes. Replacement of wild malaria- susceptible mosquito populations with transgenic strains refractory to parasite development could interrupt the cycle of disease transmission and support eradication efforts.

Production of P. falciparum-resistant mosquitoes is a necessary first step towards investigating the population replacement strategy. Alison T. Isaacs and colleagues engineered Anopheles stephensi to produce P.falciparum-targeting effector molecules; these mosquitoes exhibit resistance to this important human malaria parasite. Two of the three effector molecules represent a novel combination of components derived from the immune systems of mosquitoes and mice. Transgenes with this design coupled with a gene-drive system could be used alongside vaccines and drugs to provide sustainable local elimination of malaria as part of a long-term strategy for eradication.

Author Franck Prugnolle writes about his team’s review article, A Fresh Look at the Origin of Plasmodium falciparum, the Most Malignant Malaria

Figure 2. Distribution of the different subspecies of chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas in Africa and representation of the spread of the different Plasmodium species in these subspecies.

Agent.

Until very recently, Plasmodium falciparum, the main malignant agent of human malaria, appeared phylogenetically isolated from the other Plasmodium species infectinghuman and non-human primates. Only one sister species, P. reichenowi from chimpanzees was recognised and molecularly characterised. In 2009 and 2010, thanks in particular to the use of new non-invasive methods to diagnose the presence of Plasmodium species in wild great apes, several studies have revealed the existence of a number of distinct new phylogenetic species infecting chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. P. falciparum parasites were also found to naturally infect wild gorillas. In our paper, we discuss how these discoveries irrevocably changed our perception of the evolution and origin of P. falciparum but also how this opens vast new areas of research to explore the origin of these different species, their ecology and their evolution.

Dr. Christian Engwerda, an Associate Editor for PLoS Pathogens, edited the paper Dendritic Cells and Hepatocytes Use Distinct Pathways to Process Protective Antigen from Plasmodium in vivo by Cockburn et al., and offers his comments:

CD8+ T cells recognize intracellular peptide antigens presented on the cell surface by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) I molecules. In this way, CD8+ T cells can recognize and kill tumours and cells infected with intracellular pathogens. Malaria is

Figure 6. Pexel/VTS motifs are not required for the presentation of CD8+ epitopes in the CS protein.

caused when a female mosquito injects Plasmodium Spp. parasites while taking a blood meal. The parasites first infect hepatocytes in the liver, prior to establishing the blood stage of infection responsible for all clinical symptoms of malaria. Evidence to date indicates that the malaria liver stage is a good target for vaccine-induced CD8+ T cell-mediated protective immunity. However, CD8+ T cells first need to be activated by specialized antigen presenting cells called dendritic cells (DCs) in lymph nodes before they can migrate to the liver and kill infected hepatocytes, and hence much work has been devoted to studying parasite antigens presented via MHC I on DCs. However, malaria-specific CD8+ T cells must recognize parasite peptide antigens presented by MHC I on both DCs and hepatocytes.

Recently, Cockburn, Zavala and colleagues reported in PLoS Pathogens that DCs and hepatocytes use different mechanisms to process Plasmodium Spp. antigens prior to presentation by MHC I on the cell surface. Furthermore, they discovered that in hepatocytes, well-recognised parasite protein export motifs were not required for parasite antigens to leave the parasitophorous vacuole, where parasites reside in the cell, to enter the cell cytoplasm prior to antigen processing. These data are important because they show that the potential number of parasite proteins presented on MHC I molecules by hepatocytes may be much greater than previously thought, and importantly, suggest that identifying protective CD8+ T cell parasite antigen epitopes might best be achieved by looking for them in infected hepatocytes, the targets for CD8+ T cell-mediated killing, rather than restricting our search to those that can be presented by DCs. This information will help in developing a safe and effective malaria vaccine.

All together, PLoS ONE, PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Medicine have over 400 research articles focused on Malaria.  To browse more of the research, click here.  In addition, PLoS Medicine launched the malERA – a research agenda for malaria eradication collection earlier this year.  The collection contains 12 Reviews,  three reflective pieces, and nine research and development agendas. They have also posted on their Speaking of Medicine blog an interesting post by Nathan Ford, a medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), on improving treatment for severe malaria.

Many thanks to Mary Kohut, the PLoS Pathogens Publications Manager, for her assistance in this post.

First image shown in this post is courtesy of SomosMedicina.

In this media digest: your flaws are my pain, increased gold mining threatens the Peruvian Amazon and more.

The manuscript, Your Flaws Are My Pain: Linking Empathy To Vicarious Embarrassment, by Soren Krach et al., received media attention from: The Body Odd, Toronto Sun, Indian Express and US News & World Report. The featured image is from Figure 1 of this manuscript.

Jennifer Swenson and colleagues published a paper on, Gold Mining in the Peruvian Amazon: Global Prices, Deforestation, and Mercury Imports.  Their research was covered by Discovery News, Mongabay, and Treehugger.

In addition to the media coverage for the article, Antidepressants and Breast and Ovarian Cancer Risk: A Review of the Literature and Researchers’ Financial Associations with Industry from last week.  This paper was also covered by the Boston Globe.

Colored Motifs Reveal Computational Building Blocks in the C. elegans Brain by Jifeng Qian, Arend Hintze, and Christoph Adami1 was covered by Live Science.

Colin P. Groves, Prithiviraj Fernando, and Jan Robovský published a paper earlier this month called, The Sixth Rhino: A Taxonomic Re-Assessment of the Critically Endangered Northern White Rhinoceros. It has received coverage from Mongabay.

Partners with Bad Temper: Reject or Cure? A Study of Chronic Pain and Aggression in Horses by French researchers Carole Fureix, Hervé Menguy, and Martine Hausberger received coverage from Horsetalk and Horse Yard.

The manuscript, Getting the Grip on Nonspecific Treatment Effects: Emesis in Patients Randomized to Acupuncture or Sham Compared to Patients Receiving Standard Care was covered on About.com.

US News & World Report and Estonian Public Broadcasting covered the manuscript, Carotid Plaque Age Is a Feature of Plaque Stability Inversely Related to Levels of Plasma Insulin.

Diet-Independent Remodeling of Cellular Membranes Precedes Seasonally Changing Body Temperature in a Hibernator was covered by Xinhua and Cordis News.

The view from Helicon covered Ingroup-Outgroup Bias in Contagious Yawning by Chimpanzees Supports Link to Empathy.

Andrew Farke interviewed Josh Miller about his paper, Ghosts of Yellowstone: Multi-Decadal Histories of Wildlife Populations Captured by Bones on a Modern Landscape.  The interview can be read on his blog, The Open Source Paleontologist.

In this media round-up:  a chimp’s yawn is contagious, cows produce milk with a human protein and much much more.

The manuscript, Herpes Simplex Virus Dances with Amyloid Precursor Protein while Exiting the Cell by Shi-Bin Cheng, Paulette Ferland, Paul Webster, and Elaine Bearer, received media coverage from CBS News, Science Blog, and USA Today. The featured image is a part of Figure 4 and shows an example of infected cells.

Ingroup-Outgroup Bias in Contagious Yawning by Chimpanzees Supports Link to Empathy by Matthew Campbell and Frans de Waal received coverage from the BBC, 80 Beats, Mother Nature Network, and Scientific American.

The paper, Stalking the Fourth Domain in Metagenomic Data: Searching for, Discovering, and Interpreting Novel, Deep Branches in Marker Gene Phylogenetic Trees, by Dongying Wu, Martin Wu, Aaron Halpern, Douglas B. Rusch, Shibu Yooseph, Marvin Frazier, Craig Venter, and Jonathan Eisen received coverage from The Loom, The Economist, The Telegraph, and New Scientist.   To read the story behind this paper, check out Eisen’s blog, Phylogenomics.

A Natural Plasmid Uniquely Encodes Two Biosynthetic Pathways Creating a Potent Anti-MRSA Antibiotic by Christopher Thomas et al. was covered by PhysOrg and TopNews Arab Emirates.

The UCSF led study on Leukocyte Telomere Length in Major Depression: Correlations with Chronicity, Inflammation and Oxidative Stress – Preliminary Findings received coverage from MedIndia and PsychCentral.

Brandon Keim wrote a piece about the manuscript, Social Influence in Televised Election Debates: A Potential Distortion of Democracy. It appeared in Wired Science.

Lisa Cosgrove et al. recently published an article entitled, Antidepressants and Breast and Ovarian Cancer Risk: A Review of the Literature and Researchers’ Financial Associations with Industry. The paper received media attention from CTV, Bloomberg Businessweek, and South Asia Mail.

The paper Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies was covered by News @ Northeastern.

A Swedish study entitled, Alarm Pheromones and Chemical Communication in Nymphs of the Tropical Bed Bug Cimex hemipterus received media attention from Times of India and California Watch.

Characterization of Bioactive Recombinant Human Lysozyme Expressed in Milk of Cloned Transgenic Cattle was covered by Discovery News, The Telegraph, and Sydney Morning Herald.

The Vacouver Sun, French Tribune, and the CBC covered the manuscript, Detection of Prion Protein in Urine-Derived Injectable Fertility Products by a Targeted Proteomic Approach.

The paper, Usefulness of Dismissing and Changing the Coach in Professional Soccer was covered by Brian Mossop in Wired’s Playbook.

They examined 4313 passerine specimens collected between 1898 and 1906 from the museum collections of CAS and 266 finch and mockingbird specimens from the ZSM which were dated from 1891 to 1897.  Of the specimens studied from the collection at CAS, they found that 6.3% of the birds showed lesions consistent with Avipoxvirus.

This finding, along with others discussed in the paper, indicates “that 64 years after Charles Darwin collected specimens on the Galapagos Islands the Avipoxvirus was present in its endemic birds.”

The image below is Figure 4 from the paper and is of a Vegetarian Finch (Geospiza crassirostris) collected in July 1906 from San Cristobal Island.

The California Academy of Science also made a video further describing the study.  110 Years of Avipoxvirus in the Galapagos Islands is freely available for you to comment on, read and rate.

In this PLoS ONE media digest: bedbugs bite, edible insects are environmentally friendly and more!

In an article on the Transcriptomics of the Bed Bug (Cimex lectularius), researchers from Ohio State University identified possible genes in bedbugs that help protect against pesticides. Their paper received coverage from NPR, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Reuters, Irish Times and AFP.

Dutch researchers suggest insects are an environmentally friendly meat alternative in their paper on An Exploration on Greenhouse Gas and Ammonia Production by Insect Species Suitable for Animal or Human Consumption. The research was covered in Mongabay, Toronto Sun and PhysOrg.

In a recently published paper, Multiplexed Echo Planar Imaging for Sub-Second Whole Brain FMRI and Fast Diffusion Imaging, researchers developed new technology that significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to scan the brain.  The research was covered by Sify, PhysOrg and Medgadget. The image above is part of Figure 4. and shows neuronal fiber tracks generated using the M-EPI sequence.

In this study, the authors measured the looking preference of dogs in order to assess whether the animal could match the correct image of the dog with the corresponding growl. The image below is Figure 4 of the manuscript and demonstrates the looking behavior of the dog during the experiment.

The authors presented a test group of 24 dogs with the choice of two projected images. One image was a life size picture of a dog and the other was an image of the same dog scaled up or down  by 30 percent. When the recording of the growl was played, 20 of the 24 dogs looked at the image of the proper-sized dog first and for the greatest period of time. The image below is from Figure S1 of the paper and shows the arrangement of the experimental room.

In the paper, the authors write:

We have shown for the first time that dogs can match cross-modal information between pictures and sounds and we provided evidence that dogs can assess accurately the size of a growling dog based on the acoustic information. Moreover, our results suggest that dogs are able to perceive species specific information based on pictures.

To read more about this study by Tamás Faragó, Péter Pongrácz, Ádám Miklósi, Ludwig Huber, Zsófia Virányi  and Friederike Range you can click here. If you are interested in canine research published in PLoS ONE you can start your search here.

In a recently published study, The Structure of Borders in a Small World the authors, Christian Thiemann, Fabian Theis, Daniel Grady, Rafael Brune and Dirk Brockmann, have redrawn the borders within the U.S. by tracking the distribution of money using data from Where’s George? – a website that tracks dollar bills spent throughout the country. The movement of these bank notes from person to person represents a link between two geographic places.

The above figure represents the movement of bank notes between 3,109 counties in the lower 48 United States and is Figure 1a of the manuscript. As Dr. Dirk Brockmann, the author who led the study explains:

Each line connecting two counties symbolizes the flux of money between them. The bright yellow lines indicate strong flux whereas dark red indicates small flux. The network reflects the connectivity of strength between two locations. This emergent multi-scale mobility network is characterized by strong local bonds but also significant long range connections.

The image below comes from Figure 2 of the paper and shows the mobility borders in the United States.

Dr. Brockmann adds:

The map shows borders (blue) that appear in at least 10% of the 1,000 different divisions we have computed.  The darker a border the more divisions it appears in, i.e. the more significant it is.  Black lines indicate state borders.  Sometimes these effective borders coincide with political borders border, topographical features. But they can also split States for instance Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Illinois.

Authors Christian Thiemann and Daniel Grady, also created a five minute video called Follow the Money which helps illustrate the team’s research.

As with all PLoS content, the images and text from this article can be downloaded, modified, distributed or otherwise reused, as long as the authors and journal are credited.  This  article  is also freely available for you to comment on and rate.

For example, until 1967 local fisherman were able to catch approximately 60 tons of lobster per year, however if you fast forward to 2004, the “lobster catch for all the island groups was declared to be 1 ton.”

This dramatic decrease illustrates the need to find sustainable management strategies which can be employed to help rebuild the lobster stock of the archipelago.  This also brings me to the topic of this weeks’ Worth A Thousand Words.

Our featured images for this week come from a recently published manuscript by Tyler Eddy, Jonathan Gardner and Alejandro Pérez-Matus. In the paper, they use fishers’ ecological knowledge to construct the past and future lobster stocks in the Juan Fernández Archipelago.

The first image comes from Figure 1 and shows the location of the islands Robinson Crusoe, Santa Clara and Alexander Selkirk. These volcanic islands make up the Juan Fernández Archipelago and are located 700 km west of the port city Valparaíso.

Lobster fishing practices still use traditional equipment.  The next image comes from Figure 2 and shows the gas powered wooden boat and wooden lobster traps used by the fishers on the archipelago.

The manuscript, Applying Fishers’ Ecological Knowledge to Construct Past and Future Lobster Stocks in the Juan Fernández Archipelago, Chile is part of the PLoS ONE: The HMAP Collection.