The winner of the PLoS ONE Blog Pick of the Month for September 2011 is Paul Norris from AnimalWise for his post on a recent study about how macaque monkeys use both sights and sounds to identify, and remember, their peers.

As Paul said:

The researchers found that the macaques, who had never been trained to use vocalizations to guide their test responses, continued to be good at choosing the “correct” photo, but that when they made errors, they were statistically more likely than chance to pick the image of the vocalizing monkey, rather than the one in the video.

Congratulations, Paul!

Photo via Flickr / Michael Ransburg

(Yes, we are a little bit late announcing this, but…) The winner of the PLoS ONE Blog Pick of the Month for August is Connor Bamford from the Rule of 6ix for his post on recent advancements made in sequencing pox genomes.

By comparing the entire genetic sequence of pathogens like cowpox, smallpox, and monkeypox, researchers were not only to see how similar these able to virus were to each other, but they also started to uncover how these strains evolved in space and time:

Cowpox viruses were found to cluster in two major groups – cowpox like and vaccinia virus like suggesting that our smallpox ‘vaccinia’ vaccine potentially originated as a cowpox virus (as we thought) yet it was endemic to mainland Europe, something that goes against the tale of Jenner’s isolation of cowpox from the UK.

Connor, along with all of the authors of the paper, will receive a complimentary t-shirt from us.

Photo via Flickr / Agriculturasp

Last month’s winner is Elizabeth Preston from Inkfish, for her post on dogs’ ability to discriminate identical twins based on smell:

According to a new study from the Czech Republic, though, a dog can do one better than a DNA technician. A group of trained German shepherds were able to reliably tell apart the scents of identical twins.

Preston goes on to discuss the implications of this line of research:

In this country, perhaps we should consider giving dogs a larger role in forensic investigations. As long as identical-twin criminals don’t strike, DNA is still a reliable and (usually) convincing form of evidence. But it’s easy for us to forget that other animals have access to a whole layer of information we can’t begin to decode.

Elizabeth, along with all of the study’s authors, will receive a complimentary PLoS ONE t-shirt and our heartfelt thanks.

Photo via Flickr / Magnus Brath

The PLoS ONE Blog Pick of the Month winner for May is Iddo Friedberg from Byte Size Biology, for continued excellence in promoting novice scientists.

Last January, PLoS ONE published a paper cataloging the results of the HHMI-sponsored National Genome Research Initiative (NGRI), where college freshman isolated and analyzed 12 new phages as part of their curriculum.

The program is now expanding, and Miami University will join other institutions across the country in bringing the process of discovery into the classroom. As Iddo said:

And I get to teach the bioinformatics bit: annotation and comparative genomics. Woo-hoo! The great thing about this course, is that unlike most lab courses, the students (and faculty) will be setting up experiments intended not only to teach, but also to discover something new. Also, the results of the research are meaningful. Genomics data generated by student participants will be used by other researchers to answer medical, ecological, and evolutionary scientific questions.

To show our support of citizen science, we will send each institution mentioned in the paper (as well as Miami University) a custom PLOS poster as token of thanks.

The winner of PLoS ONE’s Blog Pick of the Month for April is Alistair Dove, for his post on Deep Sea News that chronicles his group’s recent publication about the largest whale shark gathering ever recorded.

In a post that was over two years in the making, Dove tells the back-story of his findings on his own terms, instead of using the traditional press release. What develops is a fascinating look behind the scenes:

To help set the scene I need to take you on a trip to the flat, karst beauty of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in the summertime, in the state of Quintana Roo. Real tropical summer too; not the namby pamby Zone 6 or 7 stuff so many of us experience back in our temperate homes, but the oppressive blanket of sweltering tropical stillness that smothers you in equal parts humidity and blinding UV. You know the sort, where going outside is like being slugged in the face with a pillowcase full of batteries, the breeze has gone somewhere else to escape the heat, and every day comes with a side of thunderstorm at 5PM. It’s during these sorts of dog days that the whale sharks appear.

Distilling journal articles for researchers in other disciplines as well as the general public is an important undertaking for the future of science communication, and part of the reason we have a ‘Blog Pick of the Month’ in the first place. But scientists using social media and blogs to not only promote their work, but to tell their story and engage the community in scientific discussion, well, that deserves a separate nod of respect. And for the second month in a row, we’re proud to recognize the efforts of authors going the extra mile.

Dove’s research team will receive complimentary PLoS ONE t-shirts and our gratitude (but only the former shipped via UPS).

Is our proclivity for music due to societal and cultural influences, or is there a resonance for beats in our brains?

The winner of this month’s Blog Pick of the Month is Ben Good from the B Good Science Blog who covered two papers, one from PLoS ONE, the other from Nature Neuroscience – describing how the enjoyment of a song correlates to changes in brain activation, as well as fluctuations in other body metrics, like respiration rate, body temperature, and skin moisture.

So what songs are likely to cause these kind of effects? Well another study by the same research group came out with a list of instrumental songs most likely to cause the ‘chill factor’ according to their observations. They asked their participants to select 3-5 songs which caused the chill factor for them. They were not allowed to pick songs that they had an emotional connection to (e.g. “Aww this our song!”) or songs from films (unless they hadnt seen the film), this was to try to reduce any prior associations with the song. The songs ranged from from classical to jazz.

For their work, Ben and the authors of the study will receive a complimentary PLoS ONE t-shirt.

Aside from providing insight into music and the brain with a really intriguing post, Ben also drove my MP3 choices for the remainder of the day. Nicely done.

Photo via Flickr / Rick_Smit

….Hannah Waters of the Culturing Science blog (with the subtitle “biology as relevant to us earthly beings”), for her post Forest canopy height: why do we care?, describing the research in the PLoS ONE aticle Recent Widespread Tree Growth Decline Despite Increasing Atmospheric CO2 by Lucas C. R. Silva, Madhur Anand and Mark D. Leithead of the Global Ecological Change Laboratory in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. From the Abstract of the paper:

Background

The synergetic effects of recent rising atmospheric CO2 and temperature are expected to favor tree growth in boreal and temperate forests. However, recent dendrochronological studies have shown site-specific unprecedented growth enhancements or declines. The question of whether either of these trends is caused by changes in the atmosphere remains unanswered because dendrochronology alone has not been able to clarify the physiological basis of such trends.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Here we combined standard dendrochronological methods with carbon isotopic analysis to investigate whether atmospheric changes enhanced water use efficiency (WUE) and growth of two deciduous and two coniferous tree species along a 9° latitudinal gradient across temperate and boreal forests in Ontario, Canada. Our results show that although trees have had around 53% increases in WUE over the past century, growth decline (measured as a decrease in basal area increment – BAI) has been the prevalent response in recent decades irrespective of species identity and latitude. Since the 1950s, tree BAI was predominantly negatively correlated with warmer climates and/or positively correlated with precipitation, suggesting warming induced water stress. However, where growth declines were not explained by climate, WUE and BAI were linearly and positively correlated, showing that declines are not always attributable to warming induced stress and additional stressors may exist.

Conclusions

Our results show an unexpected widespread tree growth decline in temperate and boreal forests due to warming induced stress but are also suggestive of additional stressors. Rising atmospheric CO2 levels during the past century resulted in consistent increases in water use efficiency, but this did not prevent growth decline. These findings challenge current predictions of increasing terrestrial carbon stocks under climate change scenarios.

In her blog post, Hannah says:

Lasers are cool! The LIDAR technology, originally created for studying atmospheric chemistry, reapplied to study canopy heights has allowed us to visualize our forests in a new way. (And make some beautiful pictures.) There was a lot of work put into it – and to accurately measure how our forests are changing, increasing work will have to be done to keep the maps updated to create an index of canopy height on our planet.

However, we’ve also learned that we cannot necessarily rely on traditional hypotheses in times of climate change. While trees have the capacity to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it, other factors can confound these effects, as we read in the PLoS ONE paper. While more work certainly needs to be done on this front (using large-scale climate measures for growth instead of dendrochronology, for example), their results are certainly sobering.

I am about to notify both Hannah and the authors of the article and send them the famous PLoS ONE t-shirts as prizes. This month’s runners-up are: EcoPhysioMichelle, for blogging not one but three PLoS ONE articles last month (one, two, three), Neurosceptic (two posts – one, two), and the trio of bloggers – Kevin Zelnio, Razib Khan and Dave Munger – for discussing one of the PLoS ONE articles in their weekly podcast.

Previous winners:

March 2009: Ed Yong
April 2009: Eric Michael Johnson
May 2009: Christie Wilcox
June 2009: Iddo Friedberg
July 2009: Toaster Sunshine and Hermitage
August 2009: Bjoern Brembs
September 2009: Alun Salt
October 2009: Andrew Farke
November 2009: John Beetham
December 2009: SciCurious
January 2010: Anne-Marie Hodge
February 2010: Princess Ojiaku
March 2010: Grrrlscientist
April 2010: Jason Goldman
May 2010: Brian Switek
June 2010: Greg Laden

There were 28 blog posts covering PLoS ONE articles aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org in June. And as always, they were great fun to read. This month’s winner is….

Greg Laden of the eponymous blog, for his post How did the victims of the Plinean Eruption of Vesuvius die? describing and explaining the research in the PLoS ONE article Lethal Thermal Impact at Periphery of Pyroclastic Surges: Evidences at Pompeii by Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo, Pierpaolo Petrone, Lucia Pappalardo and Fabio M. Guarino of Napoli, Italy. The paper’s Abstract states:

Background

The evaluation of mortality of pyroclastic surges and flows (PDCs) produced by explosive eruptions is a major goal in risk assessment and mitigation, particularly in distal reaches of flows that are often heavily urbanized. Pompeii and the nearby archaeological sites preserve the most complete set of evidence of the 79 AD catastrophic eruption recording its effects on structures and people.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Here we investigate the causes of mortality in PDCs at Pompeii and surroundings on the bases of a multidisciplinary volcanological and bio-anthropological study. Field and laboratory study of the eruption products and victims merged with numerical simulations and experiments indicate that heat was the main cause of death of people, heretofore supposed to have died by ash suffocation. Our results show that exposure to at least 250°C hot surges at a distance of 10 kilometres from the vent was sufficient to cause instant death, even if people were sheltered within buildings. Despite the fact that impact force and exposure time to dusty gas declined toward PDCs periphery up to the survival conditions, lethal temperatures were maintained up to the PDCs extreme depositional limits.

Conclusions/Significance

This evidence indicates that the risk in flow marginal zones could be underestimated by simply assuming that very thin distal deposits, resulting from PDCs with poor total particle load, correspond to negligible effects. Therefore our findings are essential for hazard plans development and for actions aimed to risk mitigation at Vesuvius and other explosive volcanoes.

In his blog post, Greg Laden writes:

Consider this: Imagine an area about 10 kilometers (just over 6 miles) around the volcano. Now imagine that area being covered with a blanket of very hot ashy air over the course of about 3 minutes. To help imagine this, pretend you are looking at the volcano when the explosion starts, and there is an airliner over the volcano heading for you at the same time. It is moving at top speed for such an aircraft, and when it reached you it has slowed to just over 100 mph. That represents the leading edge of the blanket of hot air and ash. Just at that moment, the blanket of air and ash deflates/dissipates, the air cooling and the ash settling. But first, all humans, probably all tetrapods (birds, mammals, etc) within that few miles of space have simply dropped dead. Since there is only a little ash, they are dirtied by it, but later, a larger deposit of ash is spewed out, and now all the dead are deeply buried.

Oh, and there is a video!

I am about to notify both Greg and the authors of the article and send them the famous PLoS ONE t-shirts as prizes. This month’s runners-up are: Hannah Waters, Charles Daney and Darcy Cowan.

Previous winners:

March 2009: Ed Yong
April 2009: Eric Michael Johnson
May 2009: Christie Wilcox
June 2009: Iddo Friedberg
July 2009: Toaster Sunshine and Hermitage
August 2009: Bjoern Brembs
September 2009: Alun Salt
October 2009: Andrew Farke
November 2009: John Beetham
December 2009: SciCurious
January 2010: Anne-Marie Hodge
February 2010: Princess Ojiaku
March 2010: Grrrlscientist
April 2010: Jason Goldman
May 2010: Brian Switek

There were 30 blog posts covering PLoS ONE articles aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org in May. As usual, a number of posts were excellent so it took me a lot of time and effort to narrow down the field and finally choose just one. So, drumroll, please….

…the winner for this month is Brian Switek of Laelaps. His post, Off the prehistoric coast of Panama, a mega-toothed shark nursery describes the work in the PLoS ONE article Ancient Nursery Area for the Extinct Giant Shark Megalodon from the Miocene of Panama by Catalina Pimiento, Dana J. Ehret, Bruce J. MacFadden and Gordon Hubbell. From the Abstract:

Background

As we know from modern species, nursery areas are essential shark habitats for vulnerable young. Nurseries are typically highly productive, shallow-water habitats that are characterized by the presence of juveniles and neonates. It has been suggested that in these areas, sharks can find ample food resources and protection from predators. Based on the fossil record, we know that the extinct Carcharocles megalodon was the biggest shark that ever lived. Previous proposed paleo-nursery areas for this species were based on the anecdotal presence of juvenile fossil teeth accompanied by fossil marine mammals. We now present the first definitive evidence of ancient nurseries for C. megalodon from the late Miocene of Panama, about 10 million years ago.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We collected and measured fossil shark teeth of C. megalodon, within the highly productive, shallow marine Gatun Formation from the Miocene of Panama. Surprisingly, and in contrast to other fossil accumulations, the majority of the teeth from Gatun are very small. Here we compare the tooth sizes from the Gatun with specimens from different, but analogous localities. In addition we calculate the total length of the individuals found in Gatun. These comparisons and estimates suggest that the small size of Gatun’s C. megalodon is neither related to a small population of this species nor the tooth position within the jaw. Thus, the individuals from Gatun were mostly juveniles and neonates, with estimated body lengths between 2 and 10.5 meters.

Conclusions/Significance

We propose that the Miocene Gatun Formation represents the first documented paleo-nursery area for C. megalodon from the Neotropics, and one of the few recorded in the fossil record for an extinct selachian. We therefore show that sharks have used nursery areas at least for 10 millions of years as an adaptive strategy during their life histories.

Brian writes:

My early elementary reading school choices often got me into trouble. Every week I would pass over the recommended, grade-appropriate sections for the few shelves containing the books about dinosaurs, sharks, and alligators – if it was big and hard sharp teeth, I wanted to learn about it. The school librarian was not too pleased with this, even calling my parents in on one occasion to insist that I read something fit for younger children, but I just could not get enough of theropods, crocodylians, and enormous sharks.

Given my love for “cold-blooded killers” (as so many titles described them) it was not very long before I learned about “Megalodon” (formally known as Carcharocles megalodon), an immense shark which disappeared just a million-and-a-half years before human bathers began to wade into the shallows. Perhaps, some books hinted, the giant sharks still lurked in some unknown ocean recess, and a photograph of an array of American Museum of Natural History scientists inside the restored jaws of the shark drove home the point that it could have made of meal of just about anything it wanted. It was one of the most fascinating and terrifying images I had ever seen…

And there Brian jumps into the fascinating science of this paper!

I am about to notify both Brian and the authors of the article and send them the famous PLoS ONE t-shirts as prizes. This month’s runners-up are Darren Naish of Tetrapod Zoology, Daemios from Rudimenthos and Neuroskeptic of the Neuroskeptic blog.

Previous winners:

March 2009: Ed Yong
April 2009: Eric Michael Johnson
May 2009: Christie Wilcox
June 2009: Iddo Friedberg
July 2009: Toaster Sunshine and Hermitage
August 2009: Bjoern Brembs
September 2009: Alun Salt
October 2009: Andrew Farke
November 2009: John Beetham
December 2009: SciCurious
January 2010: Anne-Marie Hodge
February 2010: Princess Ojiaku
March 2010: Grrrlscientist
April 2010: Jason Goldman

There were 34 blog posts covering PLoS ONE articles aggregated on ResearchBlogging.org in April. And as is now usual, it took me a lot of time and effort to narrow down the field and finally choose just one to pick. But pick I did….

…the winner for this month is Jason G. Goldman of The Thoughtful Animal blog. His post, Elephants Say ‘Bee-ware!’ describes the work in the PLoS ONE article Bee Threat Elicits Alarm Call in African Elephants by Lucy E. King, Joseph Soltis, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Anne Savage and Fritz Vollrath. From the Abstract:

Unlike the smaller and more vulnerable mammals, African elephants have relatively few predators that threaten their survival. The sound of disturbed African honeybees Apis meliffera scutellata causes African elephants Loxodonta africana to retreat and produce warning vocalizations that lead other elephants to join the flight. In our first experiment, audio playbacks of bee sounds induced elephants to retreat and elicited more head-shaking and dusting, reactive behaviors that may prevent bee stings, compared to white noise control playbacks. Most importantly, elephants produced distinctive “rumble” vocalizations in response to bee sounds. These rumbles exhibited an upward shift in the second formant location, which implies active vocal tract modulation, compared to rumbles made in response to white noise playbacks. In a second experiment, audio playbacks of these rumbles produced in response to bees elicited increased headshaking, and further and faster retreat behavior in other elephants, compared to control rumble playbacks with lower second formant frequencies. These responses to the bee rumble stimuli occurred in the absence of any bees or bee sounds. This suggests that these elephant rumbles may function as referential signals, in which a formant frequency shift alerts nearby elephants about an external threat, in this case, the threat of bees.

Jason writes:

Why is this research important? Aside from the general importance of better understanding animal communication, as it can inform our understanding of human communication, this research has very practical implications as well. Elephants regularly raid the crops of humans; strategically placed beehives (or even just speakers broadcasting bee sounds or bee rumbles), could minimize human-elephant conflict and potential elephant deaths.

I am about to notify both Jason and the authors of the article and send them the famous PLoS ONE t-shirts as prizes. This month’s runners-up are Jeremy of Voltage Gate, Razib from Gene Expression and Jacqueline of the Laika’s MedLibLog.

Previous winners:

March 2009: Ed Yong
April 2009: Eric Michael Johnson
May 2009: Christie Wilcox
June 2009: Iddo Friedberg
July 2009: Toaster Sunshine and Hermitage
August 2009: Bjoern Brembs
September 2009: Alun Salt
October 2009: Andrew Farke
November 2009: John Beetham
December 2009: SciCurious
January 2010: Anne-Marie Hodge
February 2010: Princess Ojiaku
March 2010: Grrrlscientist