Open Reading Frame brings together a selection of recent publication highlights from elsewhere in the open access ecosystem. This week we take a look at the past few weeks in biology.
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Female chimps rule the tools
Meat-eating in primates is of interest given the importance of hunting in human evolutionary history and nonhuman primate models are a useful resource in studies of extinct hominid behaviour. Among chimpanzees, hunting of vertebrates is usually by hand and mainly by adult males. A single population of savannah chimpanzees in Fongoli, Sénégal however, are known to systematically fashion and use tools to hunt. New research comparing tool hunting to the overall hunting pattern in this population reveals that females lead this behaviour. Galago (bushbabies) constitute a large proportion of meat in this population and account for most female tool-caught prey. Sticks fashioned as spears are the tool of choice and are used to poke at the bushbabies in their tree hollows and cause injuries that make them relatively easy to catch when they emerge. Adult males were found to be less likely to use tools to hunt but they were still more successful in their hunting efforts, accounting for 70 percent of all captures. Interestingly, in the Fongoli population, the male chimpanzees don’t exercise their dominance to take food from other lower members, such that Galago hunting is a high-energy, low-risk resource that members of various age–sex classes can benefit from. This culture of social tolerance may explain the development of tool use in female chimpanzees and offers an insight into the nature of sex differences in feeding and foraging in extinct hominin behavioural ecology.
Pruetz et al. Royal Society, Open Science.
Given the current climate…
The effects of anthropogenic climate change are many and far reaching and the future deoyxgenation of marine ecosystems is inevitable if the current carbon emission trends continue. Geologically recent episodes of abrupt climatic warming are used to assess the effects of changing oxygenation on marine communities, and to date most palaeoecological reconstructions of ocean sediments have relied on geochemical and microfaunal analyses. Such studies however, fail to capture the full scale of ecological responses to global climate changes which is vital if we are to understand the wider picture of changes in biodiversity in response to stress. New research investigates a large range of metazoan fossil materials against a background of known historical climate shifts. Analysing different patterns of succession in upwards of 5,000 micro- and macrofossils and some 50 trace fossils in a sediment core, revealed an extensive history of biotic turnovers and recoveries in response to oxygen minimisation events. The results indicate that even relatively minor disturbances in oxygenation caused by warming events can lead to massive changes in the distributions of benthic (bottom dwelling) communities. The known rates of biological recovery are shown to be much slower than previously reported and are expanded by an order of magnitude, from <100 years to >1,000 years emphasizing the critical role of climate disruptions in driving ocean ecosystems.
Moffitt et al. PNAS
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Dino attacks
The dinosaurs of our childhood imaginations are always locked in titanic battles with one another. The scientific evidence for this is scanty and researchers’ conclusions circumspect. New research into a fossil specimen of an immature Daspletosaurus—a smaller relative of Tyrannosaurus—gives some clear evidence of a lifetime of violence and how it was consumed after its death. The specimen showed signs in its skull and jaw of numerous healed bite wounds that must have been inflicted upon the animal while it was alive, and most probably by another Daspletosaurus. Additionally there are bite wounds on the jaw consistent with another large dinosaur taking a bite after death. Evidence that this was after decomposition suggests this was scavenging rather than predation.
Hone and Tanke, PeerJ
How the brain changes tack
The “default mode network” (DMN) is a neuronal network in the human brain normally associated with mind-wandering, and turned down when the mind is focused on a task. However the DMN is also associated with some high-level cognitive tasks such as imaginary scene construction or taking another’s perspective. A new study tests the idea that what links these is a large change in cognitive context between one activity and the next. They found that the DMN is involved only when this change is suitably large and demanding, possibly by relaxing the current focus and allowing another to arise.
Crittenden et al. eLife
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Radioactive frogs that haven’t croaked
In the years following the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, attention moved to the effects of nuclear fallout on the wildlife in the surrounding areas. Studies in a range of creatures have shown differing effects of radiation exposure. However studies have concentrated on edible species. A new study examines frogs (that aren’t consumed): living in water exposed to radioactive fallout, and with thin skins they may be particularly vulnerable. The study found that frogs had massively varied concentrations of radiocesium from place to place, ansd this correlated with the local soil concentrations. However there was no evidence of abnormalities in their reproductive organs that might have affected reproduction. There was however another notable side effect on wildlife. After local residents were evacuated, the paddy fields in which many frogs bred dried up, with a result that fewer species were found than expected, but frogs were flourishing where there were natural water sources.
Matsushima et al. Scientific Reports
Written by Tim Sands, Executive Editor for the BMC Series and Ciara Ní Dhubhghaill, Assistant Editor for the BMC Series
The post Open reading frame: chimps, climate and radioactive frogs appeared first on Biome.