The Eastern Green Mamba (Dendroaspis angusticeps) has one of the most venomous bites. From Wikimedia Commons (Photo by user Danleo)

Snakes are limbless reptiles which can be found almost everywhere on the globe although the diversity is far greater in the tropics than everywhere else. Most snakes are poisonous and use the poison to paralyze prey, which typically include rodent, lizards and amphibians. However, the poison is also used for self-defence against larger predators and although only few species are dangerous to humans these often possess a significant threat to humans working in rural tropical settings.

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Birds cannot adequately track the climate change. Here the wren (Troglodytes troglodytes). Photo by Robert Lorch - Wikimedia Commons.

In the past year it has become evident that the current degree of climate change is having a significant impact on species composition and distribution for many taxonomic groups and in many different habitats world wide. One of the best studied groups in this respect is the birds, where several studies show that climate change results in changes of behaviour and distribution as well as changes in time of egg-laying and migration.

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A new study by French scientists shows that when the ants are removed from their host in an ant-plant mutualism, the host plant suffer more damage from herbivores. They, furthermore, find that ants patrol more often on a young and vulnerable leaves, but are rapidly recruited to leaf wounds.

The so-called myrmecoophyte plants live in a close mutualism with ants. They offer the ants shelter in thorns, hollow stems or curled leaves and food in the form of extra-floral nectar or food bodies. In return the ants protects the plant by removing encroaching competitors and fungal pathogens, killing or scaring off herbivores – the ants usually have painful stings and are so aggressive that they can deter even large herbivores.

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AIDS-Virus leaving an infected cell (Courtesy by NSF)

Facing the virus and destroying it. This is mainly the way AIDS-drugs work. Still no cure is available and still the diagnosis "HIV-positiv" is a longterm death penalty. But amazingly a small number of patients infected with this malignant virus never became ill. This finding was of interest for scientists who wondered what was different between those individuals and "normal" patients who died sooner or later by the AIDS-Virus. The researchers found out, that people obviously immune against HIV are lacking a certain structure on the surface of their cells, the so called CCR5-co-receptor. This was promising reason enough to investigate new drugs based on this principle of the persons with immunity against AIDS. An American-German research group from New York (USA) and Cologne (Germany) now published their results about a new drug which seemingly successfully prevents HIV from getting into the cell of infected people. It is called "Maraviroc".

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Engineers from the North Carolina State University in the US have investigated the anatomy and behaviour of biting mosquitoes and modelled how the thin hollow tube, with which the mosquitoes bite, avoids buckling. Their results have implications for the development of micro-needles for medical purposes

Although all animal life forms deserve respect and the right to exist in their natural niche, there are some animals harmful to man, you sometimes would wish did not exist. Mosquitoes are one of these animals. The species Aedes egypti, for instance, is a carrier of several diseases harmful to man such as Dengue fever and malaria, the latter diseases kills more than a million humans annually. However, a new study shows that perhaps we can also make use of Aedes egypti for something positive. The anatomy and the method by which the mosquito injects it proboscis (a long hollow tube which it uses to such up the blood with) could provide useful inspiration for the development of biomimetic micro-needles.

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