Smithsonian Science

Ugandan park rangers with cell phones may help mitigate next world influenza epidemic

John Barrat — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:16:13 +0000

When West Nile virus swept across the New York City region in 1999 and then, in subsequent years, across almost all of the continental United States, “people were finding dead crows and other birds all over the place,” says Peter Marra of the Migratory Bird Center at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. “We didn’t see the actual virus moving across the landscape, but we did see the devastation it caused through the remains of birds.” The disease was passed from birds to humans primarily by the tiger mosquito.

Today, Marra is helping launch an Animal Mortality Monitoring Program (AMMP) in Africa sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development that will alert authorities to animal deaths—“mortality events”—that occur on a larger-than-normal scale. Known as AMMP, the network is intended to serve as an early warning system for emerging infectious diseases that can pass from animal populations into the human population. Recently, Marra and his collaborator Isabelle-Anne Bisson, a research associate at the Migratory Bird Center, took a few minutes to answer some questions about this new initiative.

Image right: A flag representing “56 dead rats” set out during an animal mortality monitoring training workshop for park staff at the Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area in Uganda.

Q: What is the aim of the animal mortality monitoring program in Africa?

A: Marra: In cases of zoonotic diseases—such as West Nile virus and Avian Influenza which each began in animals and then jumped to humans—an epidemic of human sickness usually occurs after there’s already been a noticeable sickness in animals. By having local people keeping an eye out for sick and dead animals we think we have the potential to get an early warning on emerging zoonotic pathogens before they move to the human population. We want to have some sort of surveillance mechanism out there that is looking for sick and dead animals that have fallen victim to an emerging disease. This way we may catch a disease before it becomes a human epidemic.

Image above: Isabelle-Anne Bisson conducts a workshop with park staff from Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area in Uganda. (All images courtesy Isabelle-Anne Bisson)

Q: Why Africa?

A: Marra: We are starting in Uganda because it, as well as other “hotspots” in Africa, tend to be places where you get a lot of zoonotic diseases occurring. In such areas there is a lot of mixing of things—people, domestic animals, wild animals—that don’t normally come together. People are hunting animals and eating wild game and there’s just a lot of human-animal interface.

Once a pathogen emerges and disease begins to appear in hosts, given how much globalization is taking place today and how much trade there is all over the planet, an epidemic can move today in ways that we never would have predicted. The tiger mosquito that may have brought West Nile Virus to North America could have easily been transported on planes. There’s a lot of illegal trade in animals and food that goes on too. Every time you move an animal, legally or illegally, you not only move the animal but also move what is inside the animal—including pathogens and parasites. There are a lot of different factors that determine whether or not and how a pathogen can move.

Image right: A park staff member finds the first flag set out by AMMP staff.

Q: How is the AMMP network being launched?

A: Bisson: In April 2011 we launched the first pilot project in the Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area with the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Some 50 Nokia mobile phones were deployed. We started with an intensive month-long training program, which included several workshops where park staff learned how to use the phones and the mobile data collection application EpiSurveyor. The phone acts as a small mobile computer where staff can enter animal mortality events using EpiSurveyor while on field patrols.

We next used “mock” dead animals by printing yellow flagging tapes that contained project logos and information the staff needed to enter once they found a flag. For example, a flag might say “56 dead rats.” We distributed more than 100 of these flags across the park tied to trees and recorded the GPS data for each flag.

Image left: During a training session, park staff in Uganda learn to capture data from a flag representing “mock” dead animals on a Nokia cell phone.

When park staff found a flag, they entered its data into the cell phone and the phone also captured the flag’s GPS position. The data is sent to a central server via cellular networks and anyone with a computer, Internet connection and access to the account can view the data in real time.

Q. How did the park staff do finding the flags?

A: Bisson: From May to August park staff looked for the flags while on patrol and entered the data for the flags they found. From August to September we returned to Uganda to evaluate the training and practice and speak to park staff for feedback.

We heard a lot of stories about taking hours to find a single flag and their frustrations with the network, but all-in-all the feedback was positive—they love the phones and they love EpiSurveyor. One quarter of the flags were recovered of which 65 percent were entered correctly without missing data. Some flags were eaten by ants, others were destroyed by elephants, some disappeared mysteriously while a few had faded to a pale, imperceptible yellow.

All-in-all the workshops exceeded our expectations. Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area staff are now ready to monitor real animal deaths and we plan to fully integrate the program into existing Uganda Wildlife Authority systems at the end of June 2012. We are also working on the development of a custom mobile phone data form application with a local company MindAfrica.

Image above: Uganda Wildlife Authority staff celebrate following the successful completion of the AMMP workshop.

Q: What follows when a real mortality event is reported?

A: Marra: Another main AAMP partner is RESPOND, a project that links schools of public health and veterinary medicine in Africa with institutions in the United States to help strengthen their ability to identify and respond to outbreaks. Once a mortality event occurs an animal pathologist will come to the scene, someone say from the School of Veterinary Medicine at Makerere University in Uganda, and take samples of animal tissues and transport them to a lab for analysis.

These projects are part of a larger Emerging Pandemic Threats program overseen by USAID, which includes PREDICT, a program focused on responding to, identifying, preventing and preparing for emerging pandemic diseases.

Q. Other than national park staff what other groups will you be working with to establish an AMMP network?

A. Marra: Our goal now is to expand the program to people in the agricultural sector in Uganda—people with large and small farms, say down to only one cattle herd.

But on a larger scale, it is basically a sound idea to keep track of all animal mortality, period. AMMP is focused on emerging infectious diseases, but I have had a long-time interest in developing a central database for keeping track of and quantifying animal mortality. We don’t have anyone compiling these sort of data today…say how many birds and what species were killed by airplanes, how many birds and what species are killed by wind turbines…. There are all sorts of ways animal mortality data can be analyzed and actions we can take to minimize the impacts on birds and other animals and, thus, minimize the impacts on humans. Many places in the world are prime areas for a dead animal surveillance networks.

Caribbean box jellyfish now thriving in southern Florida

John Barrat — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:28:41 +0000

A box jellyfish from the Caribbean has recently become established in the red mangroves of Florida near Boca Raton, adding to a rising number of marine invasions observed along the world’s coasts in recent years. Since 2009, when a single male specimen of Tripedalia cystophora was discovered in Florida’s Lake Wyman and identified by Allen Collins, curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Evan Orellana of the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, this box jellyfish has appeared in Florida in much greater numbers.

“Based on the numbers that have been reported, the population seems to be pretty healthy,” Collins says. “I do not think this is something that people should be overly alarmed about,” he adds. “They are not large. Their bell is only about a centimeter. There aren’t any reports of them causing bad stings to swimmers, but the venom has not been specifically studied.”

Image right: The box jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora. (Photo by Jan Bielecki)

With the gradual warming of the oceans a number of marine species from the Caribbean have been observed moving into areas of the southern and mid-Atlantic coasts of the United States. “We’re seeing this happening everywhere all over the planet. Species ranges are changing because of human activities,” Collins says. “In general, it’s another symptom of a changing world.”

Image right: Diagram of a box jellyfish from the paper “First report of the box jellyfish Tripekalia cystophora (Cubozoa: Tripedaliidae) in the continental USA, from Lake Wyman, Boca Radon, Florida” by Evan Orellana and Allen Collins.

Tripedalia cystophora has taken up residence in southern Florida’s red mangroves, which is “a really good habitat for larval fishes,” Collins explains. “So, they could be competing with larval fishes for food, or if the fish larvae are small enough, perhaps even eating them, but they specialize on copepods. This box jellyfish is probably here for good.”

Video: Meet our Scientist–Mark Torchin tracks invasive marine species and their parasites in Panama

John Barrat — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:03:02 +0000

New exhibition looks at fishes from the “Inside Out”

John Barrat — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:01:33 +0000

“X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out,” is a new exhibition of striking x-rays that reveal the complex bone structure of fishes in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. These x-rays allow scientists to study “the skeleton of a fish without dissecting or in any other way altering the specimen,” says curator Lynne Parenti. Ichthyologists at the museum study fish skeletons, fin spines, teeth and other morphological features to differentiate one species from another and exmaine evolutionary development. “X-Ray Vision: Fish Inside Out,” from the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service, opens at the Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, Feb. 4. More information about each of the fish species featured is available at: eol.org/info/xrayvision.”(All images by Sandra J. Raredon, Division of Fishes, National Museum of Natural History.)

Moray eel. Moray eels are legendary predators on coral reefs. Note the second set of jaws in the “throat”; these are the gill arches, which are present in all fish. Gill arches support the gills, the major respiratory organ of fish.

Lookdown. Because of its sloped head and the enlarged crest on its skull, the Lookdown appears to “look down” as it swims. These fish often swim in small schools.

Alligator Pipefish. Pipefish may be thought of as seahorses unfurled. The numerous bony body rings are used to differentiate one species of pipefish from another.

Ox-eyed Oreo. The name Oreosoma (“mountain body”) refers to the cone-shaped bony structures on the underside of this larval specimen. Adults are more elongate, less oval, and covered with scales.

Dhiho’s Seahorse. Just over one inch long, this elegant fish is readily identified as a seahorse by its characteristic head. The body ends in a tail that can curl around and hold on to algae or coral. This species is found only in the waters around Japan.

New Book: “Across Atlantic Ice : The Origin of America’s Clovis Culture”

John Barrat — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:06:35 +0000

Who were the first humans to inhabit North America? According to the now familiar story, hunters entered the continent some 12,000 years ago from Siberia crossing a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea. These early New World people, known as by their distinctive stone tools, came to be known as the Clovis culture.

Across the Atlantic Ice boldly challenges this old narrative and presents overwhelming evidence for a pre-Clovis occupation of the American continents, and finds virtually no direct evidence that the progenitors of Clovis came from Siberia. Evidence put forth in this new book overwhelmingly indicates southwestern Europe, specifically the Ice Age Solutrean Culture of France and Spain, as the source of the people that developed into the Clovis.

Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford, of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Bruce A. Bradley, associate professor at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, apply rigorous scholarship to a hypothesis that places the technological antecedents of Clovis in Europe. Their research indicates that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought.

Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support these assertions, the book dismantles the old paradigms while persuasively linking Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago.

Jeholopsyche liaoningensis

John Barrat — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:46:33 +0000

This fossil represents a new genus and species of extinct aneuretopsychid, Jeholopsyche liaoningensis, recently described in a paper in the journal ZooKeys by Conrad Labandeira of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and Dong Ren and ChungKun Shih of the College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University, Beijing. The aneuretopsychidae are a family of long-proboscid insects that lived in Asia from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. The paper documents the first formal record of fossil Aneuretopsychidae in China. The new fossils reveal previously unknown and detailed structure of the mouthparts, antennae, head, thorax, legs and abdomen of this distinctive insect lineage.

Five funky and 5 fun facts about fishes

John Barrat — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:12:51 +0000

1

Hagfishes, known as slime eels or slime hags, are so named because of the huge amounts of mucus they produce. One disturbed hagfish can fill a 2-gallon bucket with slime in a matter of minutes. The slime makes them virtually inedible.

2

The eyes of the Four-eyed Fish are split in half horizontally, each having two pupils and a retina that is divided into top and bottom sections. It swims with half of its eye out of the water, searching for insects, and the other half looking down into the water.

3

African lungfish enclose themselves in a mud tunnel and, after their lake has dried up, can live for years buried in the mud, breathing air and waiting for the rains to return. The structure of their heart and lungs first tricked scientists into thinking the South American lungfish was a reptile, the African lungfish an amphibian.

4

Anemone fishes live in groups where the two largest fish only are sexually mature, the largest being female and the next largest male. If the female dies, the male changes sex to female and the next largest fish in the group matures to male. If the animated film “Finding Nemo,” had been true to life, Nemo’s dad, Marlin, should have become Nemo’s mother shortly after his original mother was eaten by a barracuda.

5

A few fishes specialize on, or at least supplement their diets with, the eyes of other fishes. A narrow-bodied cichlid in Africa’s Lake Malawi, the Malawi Eyebiter, does not make a good aquarium pet because of its eye-popping activities.

6

Peters Elephantfish is the only fish ever observed playing with objects. In captivity, these fish will repeatedly take a small ball of aluminum foil and carry it to the outflow tube of an aquarium filter so the ball is pushed across the tank by the water current.

7

Most fish are countershaded: darker on top, gradually lighter or silver on their sides and brightest on their bellies. Seen from above, beside or below, this pattern makes them less visible in the water column against the background color of the water.

8

The cusk eels are the world’s deepest living family of fishes. One was netted with a bottom trawl in the Puerto Rico Trench at a depth of 27,500 feet. At such a depth a fish would experience a pressure of approximately 12,000 pounds per square inch.

9

As they sleep (and fish do sleep), parrotfishes and wrasses secrete a mucous cocoon around themselves at night, perhaps to thwart the highly-developed senses of moray eels and blood-sucking parasitic invertebrates.

10

Menhaden, the fishes the Indians taught the Pilgrims to plant with their corn, today rank as America’s most important fishes. Menhaden oil is used in cosmetics, linoleum, health food supplements, margarine, soap, insecticides and paints. Their pulverized bodies end up as feed for cats, dogs, poultry and pigs.

All fish facts are from the new book Fishes: The Animal Answer Guide, by Bruce Collette, National Systematics Laboratory, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; and Gene Helfman, University of Georgia.

190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site discovered in South Africa

John Barrat — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:39:08 +0000

An excavation at a site in South Africa has unearthed the 190-million-year-old dinosaur nesting site of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus–revealing significant clues about the evolution of complex reproductive behavior in early dinosaurs.

Image right: The hand print of a baby dinosaur from the nesting site in South Africa. (Images courtesy University of the Witwatersrand)

A new study, entitled Oldest known dinosaur nesting site and reproductive biology of the Early Jurassic sauropodomorph Massospondylus and published in the international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Canadian palaeontologist Robert Reisz, a professor of biology at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, and co-authored by Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History; Eric Roberts of James Cook University, Australia; and Adam Yates of the Bernard Price Institute for Paleontological Research.

The study reveals clutches of eggs, many with embryos, as well as tiny dinosaur footprints, providing the oldest known evidence that the hatchlings remained at the nesting site long enough to at least double in size.

The authors say the newly unearthed dinosaur nesting ground is more than 100 million years older than previously known nesting sites.

Image left: A fossil from the nesting site showing seven eggs, some with the embryos exposed.

At least 10 nests have been discovered at several levels at this site, each with up to 34 round eggs in tightly clustered clutches. The distribution of the nests in the sediments indicate that these early dinosaurs returned repeatedly (nesting site fidelity) to this site, and likely assembled in groups (colonial nesting) to lay their eggs, the oldest known evidence of such behavior in the fossil record.

The large size of the mother, at six meters in length, the small size of the eggs, about six to seven centimetrs in diameter, and the highly organized nature of the nest, suggest that the mother may have arranged them carefully after she laid them.

“The eggs, embryos, and nests come from the rocks of a nearly vertical road cut only 25 meters long,” Reisz says. “Even so, we found ten nests, suggesting that there are a lot more nests in the cliff, still covered by tons of rock. We predict that many more nests will be eroded out in time, as natural weathering processes continue.”

Image right: A nest of dinosaur eggs from the South African nesting site.

The fossils were found in sedimentary rocks from the Early Jurassic Period in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa. This site has previously yielded the oldest known embryos belonging to Massospondylus, a relative of the giant, long-necked sauropods of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

“This amazing series of 190 million year old nests gives us the first detailed look at dinosaur reproduction early in their evolutionary history, and documents the antiquity of nesting strategies that are only known much later in the dinosaur record,” says Evans.

Fungi-filled forests are critical if endangered orchids are to thrive

John Barrat — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:53:31 +0000

When it comes to conserving the world’s orchids, not all forests are equal. In a paper to be published Jan. 25 in the journal Molecular Ecology, Smithsonian ecologists reveal that an orchid’s fate hinges on two factors: a forest’s age and its fungi.

Roughly 10 percent of all plant species are orchids, making them the largest plant family on Earth. But habitat loss has rendered many threatened or endangered. This is partly due to their intimate relationship with the soil. Orchids depend entirely on microscopic fungi in the early stages of their lives. Without the nutrients orchids obtain by digesting these host fungi, their seeds often will not germinate and baby orchids will not grow. While researchers have known about the orchid-fungus relationship for years, very little is known about what the fungi need to survive.

Image right and below: Flowers (right) and leaves (below) of the orchid Goodyera pubescens, commonly known as the downy rattlesnake orchid, endangered in Florida. (Photos by Melissa McCormick/SERC)

Biologists based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., launched the first study to find out what helps the fungi flourish and what that means for orchids. Led by Melissa McCormick, the researchers looked at three orchid species, all endangered in one or more U.S. states. After planting orchid seeds in dozens of experimental plots, they also added particular host fungi needed by each orchid to half of the plots. Then they followed the fate of the orchids and fungi in six study sites: three in younger forests (50 to 70 years old) and three in older forests (120 to 150 years old).

Image right and below: Leaf (right) and flowers (below) of Tipularia discolor, the cranefly orchid, endangered in New York and Massachusetts, and threatened in Michigan and Florida.

After four years they discovered orchid seeds germinated only where the fungi they needed were abundant—not merely present. In the case of one species, Liparis liliifolia (lily-leaved twayblade), seeds germinated only in plots where the team had added fungi. This suggests that this particular orchid could survive in many places, but the fungi they need do not exist in most areas of the forest.

Meanwhile, the fungi displayed a strong preference for older forests. Soil samples taken from older forest plots had host fungi that were five to 12 times more abundant compared to younger forests, even where the research team had not added them. They were more diverse as well. More mature plots averaged 3.6 different Tulasnella fungi species per soil sample (a group of fungi beneficial to these orchids), while the younger ones averaged only 1.3. Host fungi were also more abundant in plots where rotting wood was added. These host fungi, which are primarily decomposers, may grow better in places where decomposing wood or leaves are plentiful.

All this implies that to save endangered orchids, planting new forests may not be enough. If the forests are not old enough or do not have enough of the right fungi, lost orchids may take decades to return, if they return at all.

“This study, for the first time, ties orchid performance firmly to the abundance of their fungi,” McCormick says. “It reveals the way to determine what conditions host fungi need, so we can support recovery of the fungi needed by threatened and endangered orchids.” –Kristen Minogue

The University of Alaska Fairbanks and Purdue University also contributed to this study. The abstract will be available here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2012.05468.x/abstract. To receive a copy of the paper, to speak with McCormick or for more information, contact Kristen Minogue at (443) 482-2325 or (314) 605-4315.

Cinnabar specimen donated to Natural History

John Barrat — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:45:32 +0000

A mineral dealer from Dallas recently donated this fine specimen of Chinese cinnabar–the common ore of mercury–to the Department of Mineral Sciences of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. This twinned crystal is approximately 3 centimeters across. The specimen was donated to replace one that was damaged during the Aug. 23, 2011 earthquake. (Photo by Jeff Scovil)