Azteca workers catch a large moth on the underside of a leaf of their host plant. Photo taken by the authors of the PLoS ONE article.

The study recently published in PLoS One by French and Spanish biologists investigated the predatory behaviour of the ant Azteca andreae in French Guiana. The and lives in a close mutualistic relationship with its host, Cecropia obtuse, which in return for the ant’s protection from herbivores offer it accommodation in its hollow stems and nectar from extrafloral nectar bodies. However, the nectar is relatively poor in proteins and amino acids, so the ants supplement it by active hunting.

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More than a primitive savage - the Neandertaler was one of us

The news was striking: scientists analyzed Neandertal genome and compared it to that of modern human populations. Together with an international research team, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig present an initial draft of the genome sequence of the Neandertal, a human form which died out some 30.000 years ago. Initial analyses of four billion base pairs of Neandertal DNA indicate that Neandertals left their mark in the genomes of some modern humans. Our ancestors and Neandertals had sex together. Amazingly only humans from non-Africans show some Neandertal genome.

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A drawing of a lantern shark which emits light from its belly which can be used to camouflage it from creatures below it. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Most light in the aquatic environment comes directly from the sun, i.e. from above and as anybody who has dived can testify to then this mean that everything moves above you in the water column has a very distinct silhouette against the downwelling sunlight.  This makes it very difficult to remain hidden. Some luminescent shrimps and squids have therefore developed a method of directing their light emissions  downward to act as counter-illumination to hide their silhouettes from predators. However some sharks hunts from above and therefore would also benefit from counter-illumination.  

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Women want men with many skills

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A fruit fly in flight showing the special sensory organ, the haltere. Courtesy of the BioFuture Research Group, University of Ulm.

Flies have remarkable aerodynamic abilities and as anybody who has ever tried to smash a fly will know, they can change flight direction very fast in response to an approaching stimulus. A new study now finds that the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has an equally impressive ability to recover from quick flight disturbances.

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Sick ants leave their nestmates to die alone in order to reduce the risk of spreading their disease to them. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Taken by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

Ants are highly social insects that live in colonies ranging from thousands to millions of individual ants, all daughters of the single reproductive queen. Although a social life-style gives many advantages including defence, resource utilization and in ant colonies also in the high degree of specialisation, it also results in increased risks from the easy spread of pathogens. One way to reduce this risk is to isolate sick individuals and indeed anecdotes from many different social animals tell of dying animals isolating themselves from their companions shortly before death. However, there is a lack of hard scientific evidence for this.

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Are we alone in space?

Extrasolar planets are candidates for life in Outer Space. Astronomers and astro-biologists use high resolution telescopes to detect traces of life on planets outside our solar system. More than 400 planets have been identified meanwhile most of them consisting of gas. Some of them have the size of Jupiter, the biggest planet which orbits our sun. Surprisingly some of these planets consist of hard and stony material maybe allowing earth-like atmospheres, a kind of "Super-Earth".

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