Evolutionary biologists have now discovered that the Pygmy Marmoset – the world’s smallest monkey – is not one species but two.

Pygmy Marmoset [Credit: University of Salford]

Weighing just 100 grams - roughly the size of a large tomato - the insect-eating primate was first described scientifically in 1823 by German naturalist Johann Spix as Cebuella pygmaea, with a sub-species subsequently found.

Now a team led by the University of Salford, using the latest techniques in genomics and phylogenetics, have established proof of two clades or branches of pygmy marmosets, that have diverged from one another around 2 – 3 million years ago.

The study was restricted to monkeys in the Brazilian Amazon, but there are indications that researchers may discover more species with further research in the forests of the other countries where they live.

Implications for conservation efforts

Findings like this have serious implications for conservation, since population numbers essentially are halved when a species is suddenly split in two in the light of new scientific evidence.  Luckily for the pygmy marmosets, the forests where they are found are amongst the best preserved patches of Amazon, the scientists say.

The study, led by Jean Boubli, professor of tropical ecology and conservation, at Salford University, UK, and the first ever to use genomics to investigate the evolutionary history of a group of New World primates, is published in Molecular Phylogenics and Evolution.

The team, which included scientists from four Brazilian research institutes and US-based Conservation international, found one of the distinct Pygmy Marmoset species is found in Brazil’s Japurá basin, extending west into Colombia, northern Peru and Ecuador, while the other, is found south of the Amazon River, east to the Madeira River in Brazil, and possibly extending into Peru and Bolivia.

They employed genome sequencing (ddRADseq) to study the evolutionary history of Cebuella and found two lineages.

Keep original name?

Professor Boubli said: “There has long been confusion over the taxonomy of these wonderful creatures mostly because Spix did not record in his travel diaries the exact location where he collected the type of Cebuella pygmaea in the early 1800s.  That creates confusion as to which of  the two recently uncovered species should keep the original name; that of the north or of the south of the Amazon.

“The beauty of genomics means that we can now see the pygmy marmoset is a term for two species which have been evolving independently for nearly 3 million years.”

According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, Pygmy Marmosets are species of “Least Concern.” But recent disease epidemics resulting have prompted the IUCN Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group to recommend updating that status to Vulnerable.

The team is now collecting more data including faeces from different localities to clarify the taxonomy of Pygmy Marmosets and the geographic ranges of the two species already identified—and possibly even that of new ones.

Source: University of Salford [March 02, 2018]

Rainforest loss is fuelling a tsunami of tropical species extinctions. However, not all is doom and gloom. A new study, conducted in the Brazilian Amazon, suggests that ecological cataclysms prompted by the fragmentation of the forest can be reverted by the regeneration of secondary forests, offering a beacon of hope for tropical forest biodiversity across the world.

Credit: Mark Moffett/ Minden Pictures/National Geographic Stock

The international team of researchers found that species strongly associated with primary forest were heavily depleted after 15 years of man-made disruption including the burning and clearing of forest stands,

However, 30 years down the line, and with the regeneration of secondary regrowth, many of the species that had abandoned the area had made a comeback.

"If you compare the time periods, it is apparent that taking a long-term view is paramount to uncovering the complexity of biodiversity in human-modified landscapes," said senior researcher Dr. Christoph Meyer, lecturer in global ecology and conservation at the University of Salford.

The study, published in Nature: Scientific Reports, measured the impacts of forest break-up of 50 species of bat (approx. 6,000 animals).

Bats comprise roughly one fifth of all mammal species and display wide variation in foraging behaviour and habitat use, making them an excellent model group for the research.

"The responses exhibited by bats offer important insights into the responses of other taxonomic groups." says Ricardo Rocha, lead author of the study from the University of Lisbon.

"The recovery that we have documented mirrors the patterns observed for beetle and bird communities within the Amazon.

"These parallel trends reinforce the idea that the benefits of forest regeneration are widespread, and suggest that habitat restoration can ameliorate some of the harm inflicted by humans on tropical wildlife", he adds.

The results of the current study contrast with the catastrophic faunal declines observed during a similar time window in rodent communities in the 'forest islands' of the Chiew Larn reservoir in Thailand.

"The recovery observed at the Amazon was mostly due to the recolonization of previously deforested areas and forest fragments by old-growth specialist bats. This recolonization is likely attributable to an increased diversity and abundance of food resources in areas now occupied by secondary forest, fulfilling the energetic requirements of a larger set of species", explains Rocha.

However, the short-term nature of most studies has substantially impaired the capacity of researchers to properly capture the intricate time-related complexities associated with the effects of forest fragmentation on wildlife.

Source: University of Salford [February 28, 2018]

Caecilians are serpent-like creatures, but they're not snakes or giant worms. The limbless amphibians, related to frogs and salamanders, favor tropical climates of Africa, Asia and the Americas. Most live in burrows of their own making; some are aquatic.

A limbless amphibian, known as Caecilian, Siphonops annulatus, widely distributed in Brazil. Scientists from Utah State University in the United States and Brazil’s Butantan Institute report skin gland concentrations adapted to different evolutionary pressures in the head and posterior regions of the amphibian [Credit: Carlos Jared, Butantan Institute]

With colleagues from Brazil, Utah State University ecologist Edmund "Butch" Brodie, Jr. reports caecilians feature greatly enlarged poison glands at each end of their bodies, which appear to have evolved from different selective pressures - the ability to tunnel into the ground and to defend oneself from predators.

Brodie, along with Carlos Jared, Pedro Luiz Mailho-Fontana, Rafael Marques-Porto, Juliana Mozer Sciani, Daniel Carvalho Pimenta, and Marta Maria Antoniazzi of São Paulo's Butantan Institute, published the findings in Scientific Reports.

The team's research, supported by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, focuses on Siphonops annulatus, a caecilian species found throughout Brazil.

"My Brazilian colleagues noticed the burrows made by this species were lined with a shiny, slick substance," says Brodie, professor in USU's Department of Biology and the USU Ecology Center. "We didn't think it was a secretion from the poison glands, so we decided to investigate."

The Brazilian caecilian, grayish in color and measuring about 18 inches in length, is a surprisingly rapid burrower, he says.

Magnified image of connective tissue matrix forming honeycomb structure surrounding glands on the head of Caecilian, Siphonops annulatus. Scientists from Utah State University in the United States and Brazil’s Butantan Institute report skin gland concentrations adapted to different evolutionary pressures in the head and posterior regions of the amphibian [Credit: Carlos Jared, Butantan Institute]

"When caecilians burrow, they force their snouts into the ground and essentially dive into the soil," Brodie says.

As suspected, the team discovered all the skin glands in the serpentine creatures' head region were greatly enlarged, tightly packed mucous glands - not poison ones. The slippery lubrication enables the caecilians' rapid, subterranean escape from predators, especially coral snakes.

"We know of no other amphibian with this high concentration of mucous glands," Brodie says. "In other terrestrial amphibians, mucous is mainly related to the uptake of oxygen. Here, in caecilians, it's obviously used in locomotion."

Examination of the caecilians revealed further information. The mucous glands extend throughout the amphibians' body, in gradually reduced concentration, and give way to poison glands concentrated in the tail.

"The poison glands, resulting from a different selective pressure, provide another defense from predators," Brodie says. "In addition to chemical defense, the tail acts as a 'plug,' blocking the tunnel and further deterring predators."

The eccentric amphibian, Brodie and colleagues write, is "really a box of surprises."

Author: Mary-Ann Muffoletto | Source: Utah State University [February 23, 2018]

When it comes to spreading their seeds, many trees in the rainforest rely on animals, clinging to their fur or hitching a ride within their digestive tract. As the seeds are spread around, the plants' prospects for survival and germination are increased.

Researchers from UConn and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation and Research examined how the overhunting of seed dispersing animals is changing tree communities in Western Amazonia, such as those in Manu National Park [Credit: Varun Swamy]

But in many tropical forests, over-hunting is diminishing the populations of those animals, and, as a result, changing the make-up of the forests themselves.

A new study of the Amazon rainforest by researchers at UConn and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation and Research, published in the Journal of Ecology, examines what happens to plants if their seed dispersers are no longer present. They found that theoretical models predicting a dire impact on plant communities and huge decreases in the amount of carbon stored in tropical forests are not supported by the facts. Instead, the effects on the ecosystem are less straightforward and less immediately devastating.

"Yes, there is a negative effect, but there isn't 100 percent mortality," says Robert Bagchi, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UConn. "The story is more complex and much more subtle."

Whereas the models used in the previous studies did not use actual data on items such as mortality, survival, growth, and spatial distribution, Bagchi and his fellow researchers explored the question in greater detail, using a statistical technique they recently developed with extensive data collected on tree communities in the 80,000 km2 Madre de Dios river basin, located in the southeastern corner of Peru's Amazon rainforest.

In Western Amazonia, as many as two-thirds of all tree species rely on native, fruit-eating mammals such as spider monkeys and tapirs, or birds like guans, trumpeters and toucans, who are able to travel fairly large distances and carry any ingested seeds far from their parent trees.

Dispersal is advantageous for seeds because spreading out will give seedlings an edge over specialized natural predators who might otherwise wipe out aggregations of undispersed plants.

"The idea is that the seeds escape," says Bagchi. "A lot of pathogens and insects are quite specific about which plants they will eat, and if there is no dispersal and their desired plants are densely aggregated, those plants will be clobbered."

In tropical rain forests, as many as two-thirds of all tree species rely on native, fruit-eating mammals such as capuchin monkeys who are able to travel fairly large distances and carry any ingested seeds far from their parent trees. What happens to the forests when these seed dispersing animals are over hunted? [Credit: Varun Swamy]

In addition, the tree species dispersed by these animals also store the most carbon.

Unfortunately, the large-bodied animals and birds are the favorite quarry of hunters for bush meat.

The researchers examined tree communities in the tropical rain forests of Western Amazonia, in terms of forest spatial organization and carbon storage capacity. They did find that tree communities in hunted forests appear to be undergoing a reorganization, where saplings of species that rely on large hunted animals for dispersal are now growing closer to each other and forming denser clumps in hunted forests.

But the long-term implications for biodiversity and the biomass of forests are not yet clear. And the expectation that without their dispersers, seeds of these plant species will land in the "kill zone" of insects and diseases under their parents and be replaced by other species that store less carbon, culminating in huge decreases in the amount of carbon stored in tropical forests, has not materialized.

A number of factors could be contributing to the reason that previous theories are not proving true, Bagchi says.

Smaller seed dispersers that often increase when their larger competitors are hunted out may be compensating. Additionally, the trees analyzed in the study were already at least 10-15 years old, so follow-up studies will instead focus on the early lives of these trees, starting at the germination stage.

Questions the researchers hope to pursue include, What are the survival rates of undispersed seeds in hunted forests? Is limited dispersal by smaller animals enough to ensure a seed's survival? How do these stages fit together -- does high survival at a later stage compensate for low survival of undispersed seeds?

"We can't simplify the process to just a linear one," says Bagchi. "We need data following the whole process, from seed dispersal to trees growing into adults."

Bagchi also cautions that although these findings are somewhat hopeful in light of previous modeling studies, tropical forests in South America, Asia, and Africa are becoming ever more stripped of their diversity of flora and fauna, fundamentally changing the structure of these complex systems.

Source: University of Connecticut [February 15, 2018]

Tropical forests around the world play a key role in the global carbon cycle and harbour more than half of the species worldwide. However, increases in land use during the past decades caused unprecedented losses of tropical forest. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have adapted a method from physics to mathematically describe the fragmentation of tropical forests. In the scientific journal Nature, they explain how this allows to model and understand the fragmentation of forests on a global scale. They found that forest fragmentation in all three continents is close to a critical point beyond which fragment number will strongly increase. This will have severe consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage.

The aerial photo shows forest fragments of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest in Northeastern Brazil (Mata Atlantica), surrounded by sugar cane plantations [Credit: Mateus Dantas de Paula]

In order to analyse global patterns of forest fragmentation, a UFZ research group led by Prof. Andreas Huth used remote sensing data that quantify forest cover in the tropics in an extremely high resolution of 30 meters, resulting in more than 130 million forest fragments. To their surprise they found that the fragment sizes followed on all three continents similar frequency distributions. For example, the number of forest fragments smaller than 10,000 hectares is rather similar in all three regions: 11.2 percent in Central and South America, 9.9 percent in Africa and 9.2 percent in Southeast Asia. "This is surprising because land use noticeably differs from continent to continent," says Dr. Franziska Taubert, mathematician in Huth's team and first author of the study. For instance, very large forest areas are transformed into agricultural land in the Amazon region. By contrast, in the forests of Southeast Asia, often economically attractive tree species are taken from the forest.

When searching for explanations for the identical fragmentation patterns, the UFZ modellers found their answer in physics. "The fragment size distribution follows a power law with almost identical exponents on all three continents," says biophysicist Andreas Huth. Such power laws are known from other natural phenomena such as forest fires, landslides and earthquakes. The breakthrough of their study is the ability to derive the observed power laws from percolation theory. "This theory states that in a certain phase of deforestation the forest landscape exhibits fractal, self-similar structures, i.e. structures that can be found again and again on different levels," explains Huth. "In physics, this is also referred to as the critical point or phase transition, which for example also occurs during the transition of water from a liquid to gaseous state," added co-author Dr. Thorsten Wiegand from UFZ. A particularly fascinating aspect of the percolation theory is that this universal size distribution is, at the critical point, independent of the small-scale mechanisms that led to fragmentation. This explains why all three continents show similar large-scale fragmentation patterns.

The UFZ team compared the remote sensing data of the three topical regions with several predictions of percolation theory. In support of their hypothesis they found agreement not only for the fragment size distribution, but also for two other important indicators - the fractal dimension and the length distribution of fragment edges. "This physical theory allows us to describe deforestation processes in the tropics," concludes Dr. Rico Fischer, co-author of the study. And that's not all: this approach can also be used to predict how fragmentation of tropical forests will advance over the next decades. "Particularly near the critical point, dramatic effects are to be expected even in the case of relatively minor deforestation," adds Taubert.

Using scenarios that assume different clearing and reforestation rates, the scientists modelled how many forest fragments can be expected by 2050. For example, if deforestation continues in the Central and South American tropics at the current rate, the number of fragments will increase 33-fold and their mean size will decrease from 17 ha to 0.25 ha. The fragmentation trend can only be stopped by slowing down deforestation and reforesting more areas than deforesting, which currently is a rather unlikely option. Future satellite missions, such as Tandem-L, are of great importance for the timely and reliable detection of these trends.

Advanced fragmentation of tropical forests will have severe consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage. On the one hand, biodiversity suffers because numerous rare animal species depend on large forest patches. For example, the jaguar needs around 10,000 hectares of contiguous forest to survive. On the other hand, the increasing fragmentation of forests also has a negative impact on climate. A UFZ team of scientists led by Andreas Huth described in Nature Communications in spring of last year that fragmentation of once connected tropical forest areas could increase carbon emissions worldwide by another third, as many trees die and less carbon dioxide is stored in the edge of forest fragments.

Source: Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research - UfZ [February 14, 2018]

Imagine your hometown or city's entire population had to live on just one tenth of the land it used to—essentials like food and shelter would quickly go scarce, and it'd be just about impossible for the populace to sustain itself. This, in broad strokes, is what's happening to the flora and fauna of the Atlantic Forest, the second most biodiverse forest system in South America (after the Amazon).

Gracilinanus agilis, a marsupial species whose data is represented in this study [Credit: (c) Noe de la Sancha, The Field Museum]

Spanning the Atlantic coast of Brazil into eastern Paraguay and Argentina, the Atlantic Forest once covered roughly 463,000 square miles of habitat. Today, only 8-12 percent of this original habitat space remains. Deforestation poses a substantial threat to the region's native plant and animal species, and for mammals in particular, habitat loss is the main driver of extinction.

This, of course, is a troubling reality for scientists studying the Atlantic Forest's mammals. Worried that species are disappearing at faster rates than they can be studied, 96 of these scientists took collective action and wrote a paper published in Ecology cataloguing traits such as body mass, reproductive attributes, and tail length in mammals native to the Atlantic Forest.

To give a sense of the project's scale: the 96 co-authors of this paper compiled trait information on 39,850 individuals from 279 different mammal species and 388 separate populations.

"This is the first comprehensive dataset of this forest system's mammalian trait data," said Noe de la Sancha, co-author and research associate at the Field Museum in Chicago. "We wanted to create a resource so that scientists wouldn't have to dig through every natural history museum in the country to find these data. It's a stepping stone for future research, putting that out for everybody to use—it's a really big change in science."

Rodent specimens at The Field Museum representative of the kinds of specimens de la Sancha contributed to this study [Credit: (c) The Field Museum]

De la Sancha explained that when zoologists rely solely on their own data, they're limited in what questions they're able to ask and answer. An example: de la Sancha's research focuses specifically on rodents and marsupials in eastern Paraguay. He's done years of fieldwork, collecting thousands of specimens and authoring dozens of papers along the way. Still, if he wanted to figure out how the small mammals he studies developed their traits over thousands of years, or how they ended up in eastern Paraguay in the first place, he'd need to look for more evidence elsewhere—likely from natural history museums in the U.S. or abroad. This process can be time-consuming and costly.

"For this paper, everyone threw their data into this large, extensive collective," de la Sancha said. "We're putting puzzle pieces together. Having more data available, we can start to ask more interesting questions—questions of ecology and modeling that have more serious impact than cursory descriptors."

Fernando Goncalves, lead author and graduate student at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) - Sao Paulo State University in Sao Paulo, Brazil, agreed with de la Sancha that this paper expands possibilities for zoological and ecological research.

"Ninety-six authors accepted the challenge to go back to their field notes and send as much information on mammal morphological traits as they could," Goncalves said. "And thanks to them, we'll be able to provide raw data for ecological and evolutionary studies for researchers all over the world."

Gracilinanus agilis, a South American oppossum whose species was represented in this study [Credit: (c) Noe de la Sancha, The Field Museum]

This paper is a critical—and urgent—step in the right direction, providing scientists with an expansive research toolkit as Atlantic Forest habitats continue to shrink. In turn, these scientists hope to draw attention to the Atlantic Forest as a region to protect, so that they can continue their studies and learn more about the impact of factors like climate change and human activity on these mammal species.

"There's still a great deal we don't know about our biodiversity—and as a consequence, we don't know what we're losing," de la Sancha emphasized. He hopes this paper, on top of serving as a resource for fellow scientists, highlights the importance of mammal species to the Atlantic Forest's ecosystem. He's particularly passionate about small mammals' role in this ecosystem.

"These are the dudes that drive the world," de la Sancha said, pointing to a shelf of rat specimen in his lab. "It's rodents. It's not primates, lions, bears. Rodents are the most important group of mammals, the base of most food chains. They disperse seeds for trees and spores for fungi. They also act as vectors for various kinds of diseases that might affect us. And the best way to target those diseases is studying the rats affected and why."

De la Sancha sees his contributions to this paper as "putting my grain of sand on the beach, so to speak." And his research, along with the other 95 grains of sand that comprise this paper, could make a real, tangible impact on how we study—and care for—the Atlantic Forest.

"Hopefully if these types of papers start getting attention, people will start to value what they have in their backyards," de la Sancha said. "This paper highlights the importance of this forest system, and that could potentially get locals pumped about conserving it."

Source: Field Museum [February 01, 2018]

The Brazilian Air Force has released formerly classified information related to UFO research dating back to the 1980s. The newly released information tracks an incident that occurred in Brazil in 1986 when around 20 UFOs were sighted by numerous airplanes and by ground radar.

By Gabrielle Pickard www.topsecretwriters.com 7-4-16

According to the reports, the UFOs were sighted by at least six airplanes and by ground radar on the night of May 19, 1986, flying over several states in the south east of Brazil (1).

Unidentified radar returns were tracked by the Integrated Air Defense and Air Traffic Control Center in Brasilia, as well as by Sao Paulo Airport.

Three Mirage jet fighters and two F-5E planes were said to have been scrambled from in the states of Sao Paulo and Goias. ...
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