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World’s heaviest flying bird uses plants to self-medicate, scientists say
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Taking drugs if you’re feeling under the weather is old news for humans, but new research shows that the world’s heaviest bird capable of flight could be the latest animal to use plants as a form of medication.
Researchers from Madrid in Spain studied data on 619 droppings belonging to great bustards and discovered that the two species of plants that were eaten more than other foods in their diet had “antiparasitic effects.”
“Here we show that great bustards prefer to eat plants with chemical compounds with antiparasitic effects,” Luis M. Bautista-Sopelana, a scientist at Madrid’s National Museum of Natural Sciences and lead author, said in a news release Wednesday.
Found in parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, great bustards are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, with around 70% of the world’s population living in the Iberian peninsula, according to the release.
Published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution scientific journal on Wednesday, the study reveals that the great bustards ate an abundance of corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas) and purple viper’s bugloss (Echium plantagineum). In humans, corn poppies have been used for their medicinal properties as a sedative and pain relief while purple viper’s bugloss can be toxic if consumed.
Through analysis of the plants extracts, researchers discovered that both have antiparasitic properties, which they tested against three common parasites in birds: the protozoon Trichomonas gallinae, the nematode Meloidogyne javanica and the fungus Aspergillus niger.
Both plants were highly effective in killing or inhibiting the effects of the protozoa and nematodes, according to the study. The purple viper’s bugloss showed moderate defensive action against the fungi.
The researchers noted that these plants were consumed especially during mating season, which they believe was to negate the effects of increased exposure to parasites during that time.
Great bustards are known as lek breeders, which means males gather at chosen sites to put on displays for the visiting females, who then choose a mate based on the show, the news release said.
“In theory, both sexes of great bustards might benefit from seeking out medicinal plants in the mating season when sexually transmitted diseases are common – while males that use plants with compounds active against diseases might appear more healthy, vigorous, and attractive to females,” Azucena Gonzalez-Coloma, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Madrid and study co-author, said in the release.
Paul Rose, a zoologist and lecturer in animal behavior at the University of Exeter in England, said the findings show that great bustards are capable of determining what is good for them at a certain time and change their foraging behavior accordingly. He was not involved with the study.
“We normally associate self-medication in species like primates, so to see researchers studying endangered birds is brilliant,” Rose told CNN.
Chimpanzees have been spotted capturing insects and applying them to their own wounds, as well as the wounds of others, possibly as a form of medication, while dolphins rub against certain kinds of corals to protect their skin from infection.
Plants use their epigenetic memories to adapt to climate change — ScienceDaily
Animals can adapt quickly to survive adverse environmental conditions. Evidence is mounting to show that plants can, too. A paper publishing in the journal Trends in Plant Science on November 17 details how plants are rapidly adapting to the adverse effects of climate change, and how they are passing down these adaptations to their offspring.
“One day I thought how the living style and experience of a person can affect his or her gametes transmitting molecular marks of their life into their children,” says Federico Martinelli, a plant geneticist at the University of Florence. “Immediately I thought that even more epigenetic marks must be transmitted in plants, being that plants are sessile organisms that are subjected to many more environmental stresses than animals during their life.”
Plants are facing more environmental stressors than ever. For example, climate change is making winters shorter and less severe in many locations, and plants are responding. “Many plants require a minimum period of cold in order to set up their environmental clock to define their flowering time,” says Martinelli. “As cold seasons shorten, plants have adapted to require less period of cold to delay flowering. These mechanisms allow plants to avoid flowering in periods where they have less chances to reproduce.”
Because plants don’t have neural networks, their memory is based entirely on cellular, molecular, and biochemical networks. These networks make up what the researchers term somatic memory. “These mechanisms allow plants to recognize the occurrence of a previous environmental condition and to react more promptly in presence of the same consequential condition,” says Martinelli.
These somatic memories can then be passed to the plants’ progeny via epigenetics. “We have highlighted key genes, proteins, and small oligonucleotides, which previous studies have shown play a key role in the memory of abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, cold, heat, and heavy metals and pathogen attacks,” says Martinelli. “In this peer-reviewed opinion piece, we provide several examples that demonstrate the existence of molecular mechanisms modulating plant memory to environmental stresses and affecting the adaptation of offspring to these stresses.”
Going forward, Martinelli and his colleagues hope to understand even more about the genes that are being passed down. “We are particularly interested in decoding the epigenetic alphabet underlying all the modifications of the genetic material caused by the environment, without changes in DNA sequence,” he says. “This is especially important when we consider the rapid climate change we observe today that every living organism, including plants, needs to quickly adapt to in order to survive.”
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Electric Discharge From Plants May Be Changing Air Quality in Ways We Didn’t Expect : ScienceAlert
When lightning flashes above, plants on the ground may respond in kind.
Scientists have long been aware that plants and trees can emit small, visible electric discharges from the tips of their leaves when the plants are trapped beneath the electrical fields generated by thunderstorms high overhead. These discharges, known as coronas, are sometimes visible as faint, blue sparks that glow around charged objects.
Now, new research suggests those plant-based sparks may be altering the surrounding air quality in ways never recognized before. But whether the impacts of these minishocks in the atmosphere are positive or negative remains unclear.
In the study, published 9 August in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, researchers recreated the electrical fields from thunderstorms in a laboratory and analyzed the coronas given off by eight plant species under a range of conditions.
The results showed that all of the coronas created a high abundance of radicals – chemicals containing unpaired electrons that are highly reactive with other compounds – which can significantly alter the surrounding air quality.
“While little is known about how widespread these discharges are, we estimate that coronas generated on trees under thunderstorms could have substantial impacts on the surrounding air,” lead study author Jena Jenkins, an atmospheric scientist at Penn State University, said in a statement.
Related: ‘Gigantic jet’ that shot into space may be the most powerful lightning bolt ever detected
The two radicals given off by the plant coronas are hydroxyl (OH) and hydroperoxyl (HO2), both of which are negatively charged and are known to oxidize, or steal electrons from, a number of different chemical compounds, thereby transforming them into other molecules.
The researchers were particularly interested in the concentrations of hydroxyl radicals because they have a greater impact on air quality.
“The hydroxyl radical contributes to the total atmospheric oxidation of many atmospheric pollutants,” study co-author William Brune, a meteorologist at Penn State University, said in the statement.
For example, if a hydroxyl radical reacts with greenhouse gases, such as methane, then it can remove the damaging molecules from the atmosphere and help combat climate change, Brune said.
But if the same radical reacts with oxygen, it can create ozone, which, despite playing an important role in the upper atmosphere, is toxic to humans. The radicals can also create aerosol particles that harm air quality, he added.
This is not the first time that researchers have shown the link between thunderstorms and hydroxyl radicals.
In 2021, a research team led by Brune found that lightning was a major progenitor of hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere. In their paper, published in the journal Science, the team theorized that thunderstorms could be directly responsible for up to one-sixth of the hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere.
In September, another team led by Brune released a follow-up study, published in the journal Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, that showed coronas produced by metallic objects such as telephone poles and transmission towers produce a slightly higher level of hydroxyl radicals than plant coronas.
However, the levels of radicals produced by plant and artificial coronas are both significantly less than those produced directly from lightning.
“Even though the charge generated by the [plant] corona was weaker than the sparks and lightning we looked at before, we still saw extreme amounts of this hydroxy radical being made,” Jenkins said.
Considering the vast numbers of trees that are present in lightning-prone areas, plant-produced coronas may represent a majorly understudied source of radicals with a highly unpredictable effect on air quality, she added.
“There are about two trillion trees in areas where thunderstorms are most likely to occur globally and there are 1,800 thunderstorms going on at any given time,” Jenkins said.
As a result, researchers want to continue studying these coronas in greater detail to fully understand the effect they have on localized air quality and on a wider global scale.
“The hydroxyl radical is the atmosphere’s most important cleanser,” Jenkins said. “So having a better accounting of where this stuff is being made can give us a more complete understanding of what’s happening in the atmosphere.”
Other studies suggest that thunderstorms may become more frequent and powerful due to the effects of human-caused climate change, so understanding the effects of thunderstorms on air quality is vital, she added.
During the experiments, the team made another discovery that could help accelerate this field of research: The leafy discharges gave off sharp spikes of ultraviolet radiation.
This could allow the team to indirectly study where coronas are occurring in the field and measure their effects on nearby air quality.
Related content:
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
Electric Discharge From Plants May Be Changing Air Quality in Ways We Didn’t Expect : ScienceAlert
When lightning flashes above, plants on the ground may respond in kind.
Scientists have long been aware that plants and trees can emit small, visible electric discharges from the tips of their leaves when the plants are trapped beneath the electrical fields generated by thunderstorms high overhead. These discharges, known as coronas, are sometimes visible as faint, blue sparks that glow around charged objects.
Now, new research suggests those plant-based sparks may be altering the surrounding air quality in ways never recognized before. But whether the impacts of these minishocks in the atmosphere are positive or negative remains unclear.
In the study, published 9 August in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, researchers recreated the electrical fields from thunderstorms in a laboratory and analyzed the coronas given off by eight plant species under a range of conditions.
The results showed that all of the coronas created a high abundance of radicals – chemicals containing unpaired electrons that are highly reactive with other compounds – which can significantly alter the surrounding air quality.
“While little is known about how widespread these discharges are, we estimate that coronas generated on trees under thunderstorms could have substantial impacts on the surrounding air,” lead study author Jena Jenkins, an atmospheric scientist at Penn State University, said in a statement.
Related: ‘Gigantic jet’ that shot into space may be the most powerful lightning bolt ever detected
The two radicals given off by the plant coronas are hydroxyl (OH) and hydroperoxyl (HO2), both of which are neutral and are known to oxidize, or steal electrons from, a number of different chemical compounds, thereby transforming them into other molecules.
The researchers were particularly interested in the concentrations of hydroxyl radicals because they have a greater impact on air quality.
“The hydroxyl radical contributes to the total atmospheric oxidation of many atmospheric pollutants,” study co-author William Brune, a meteorologist at Penn State University, said in the statement.
For example, if a hydroxyl radical reacts with greenhouse gases, such as methane, then it can remove the damaging molecules from the atmosphere and help combat climate change, Brune said.
But if the same radical reacts with oxygen, it can create ozone, which, despite playing an important role in the upper atmosphere, is toxic to humans. The radicals can also create aerosol particles that harm air quality, he added.
This is not the first time that researchers have shown the link between thunderstorms and hydroxyl radicals.
In 2021, a research team led by Brune found that lightning was a major progenitor of hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere. In their paper, published in the journal Science, the team theorized that thunderstorms could be directly responsible for up to one-sixth of the hydroxyl radicals in the atmosphere.
In September, another team led by Brune released a follow-up study, published in the journal Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, that showed coronas produced by metallic objects such as telephone poles and transmission towers produce a slightly higher level of hydroxyl radicals than plant coronas.
However, the levels of radicals produced by plant and artificial coronas are both significantly less than those produced directly from lightning.
“Even though the charge generated by the [plant] corona was weaker than the sparks and lightning we looked at before, we still saw extreme amounts of this hydroxy radical being made,” Jenkins said.
Considering the vast numbers of trees that are present in lightning-prone areas, plant-produced coronas may represent a majorly understudied source of radicals with a highly unpredictable effect on air quality, she added.
“There are about two trillion trees in areas where thunderstorms are most likely to occur globally and there are 1,800 thunderstorms going on at any given time,” Jenkins said.
As a result, researchers want to continue studying these coronas in greater detail to fully understand the effect they have on localized air quality and on a wider global scale.
“The hydroxyl radical is the atmosphere’s most important cleanser,” Jenkins said. “So having a better accounting of where this stuff is being made can give us a more complete understanding of what’s happening in the atmosphere.”
Other studies suggest that thunderstorms may become more frequent and powerful due to the effects of human-caused climate change, so understanding the effects of thunderstorms on air quality is vital, she added.
During the experiments, the team made another discovery that could help accelerate this field of research: The leafy discharges gave off sharp spikes of ultraviolet radiation.
This could allow the team to indirectly study where coronas are occurring in the field and measure their effects on nearby air quality.
Related content:
This article was originally published by Live Science. Read the original article here.
‘Double Whammy’ Could Wipe Out Carnivorous Plants
On a recent reporting trip out West, I found myself surrounded by hundreds of vicious carnivores, all soaking their prey in a corrosive mix of flesh-eating enzymes. In a California bog, I stood in a field of carnivorous plants. The sticky sundews held their sparkling, modified leaves just an inch or so off the ground, digesting insects ensnared in their numerous traps.
I was tagging along on a botany rescue mission to collect and preserve as many of the state’s rare and threatened plants as possible. One goal of that expedition: collecting seeds from the sundew. There are only a few known occurrences of the plant across all of California’s 160,000+ square miles. And in this case, the population is condensed to just two patches of floating muck, eking out an isolated existence.
Carnivorous plants showcase the splended oddities evolution is capable of. And although much about them remains mysterious, recent research has increased our understanding of why and how some plants flipped the script and started eating animals. Simultaneously, these meat-munching-marvels are increasingly threatened by habitat destruction, poaching, and climate change.
“Carnivorous plants face a double whammy,” Barry Rice, a botanist at UC Davis and an astrobiologist at Sierra College, told me in a phone call. “Not only are they facing all the stresses that all the other plants on the planet are facing, but they’re also, by their very nature, extra sensitive to it.”
So read all about them, before they’re all gone.
German economy minister rules out keeping nuclear plants running to save gas
German Economy and Climate Action Minister Robert Habeck speaks during a news conference on the future use of liquefied natural gas (LNG), in Berlin, Germany August 16, 2022. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner/File Photo
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BERLIN, Aug 21 (Reuters) – German Economy Minister Robert Habeck ruled out on Sunday extending the lifespan of the country’s three remaining nuclear power plants in order to save gas, saying it would save at most 2 percent of gas use.
These savings were not sufficient to be worth reopening the debate about the exit from nuclear energy given the consensus on the topic, he said during a discussion with citizens at the government’s open-door day.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel initiated legislation to halt the use of nuclear power by the end of this year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011 with a majority of voters in favour. But attitudes are shifting amid fears of an energy crisis this winter following a decline in Russian gas deliveries – with the three-way coalition itself divided on the matter. read more
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“It is the wrong decision given the little we would save,” said Habeck, a member of the Greens party, which has it roots in the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 80s.
On the other side of the debate, Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the pro-business Free Democrats reiterated his stance that it would be better to extend the lifespans of nuclear plants for a limited time than to bring coal plants back online.
“We shouldn’t be too picky, but reserve all possibilities,” he said, adding that he would be open to an extension of “several years” in the current circumstances.
Separately to the debate over gas savings measures, Habeck said he was open to extending the lifespan of one nuclear power plant in Bavaria if a stress test showed this was necessary to ensure the stability and supply of the electricity network in winter, he said.
Habeck accused the southern state and manufacturing hub, which depends on gas-fired power plants and has few coal-fired plants, of possibly contributing to problems by failing build up wind power production and improve the network.
The fact that Germany is having to supply France with electricity due to a drop in nuclear output is another factor at play.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the result of the stress test should come towards the end of the month, or the beginning of next month – and only then would a decision be made.
The situation in France, where nearly half its reactors are offline because of corrosion problems and maintenance, showed how problematic the technology was though, he said.
New plants were so expensive that they pushed up electricity prices unlike renewable energies, he said.
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Reporting by Markus Wacket and Andreas Rinke; Writing by Sarah Marsh; editing by David Evans
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.