Mosquitoes kill more people each year than any other animal. In 2023, the blood-sucking insects infected a reported 263 million people with malaria, leading to nearly 600,000 deaths, 80% of which were children.

Recent efforts to block the transmission of malaria have been stalled because mosquitoes have adapted resistance to insecticides and the parasites within mosquitoes that cause malaria have become resistant to drugs. These setbacks have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which impeded ongoing anti-malarial efforts.

Now, researchers at the University of California San Diego, Johns Hopkins University, UC Berkeley and the University of São Paulo have developed a new method that genetically blocks mosquitoes from transmitting malaria.

Biologists Zhiqian Li and Ethan Bier from UC San Diego, and Yuemei Dong and George Dimopoulos from Johns Hopkins University, created a CRISPR-based gene-editing system that changes a single molecule within mosquitoes, a minuscule but effective change that stops the malaria-parasite transmission process. Genetically altered mosquitoes are still able to bite those with malaria and acquire parasites from their blood, but the parasites can no longer be spread to other people. The new system is designed to genetically spread the malaria resistance trait until entire populations of the insects no longer transfer the disease-causing parasites.

[…]

The system targets a gene that produces a protein known as “FREP1” that helps mosquitoes develop and feed on blood when they bite. The new system switches an amino acid in FREP1 known as L224 with a genetic alternate, or allele, called Q224. Disease-causing parasites use L224 to swim to the insect’s salivary glands, where they are positioned to infect a person or animal.

Dimopoulos, a professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute (Bloomberg School of Public Health), and his lab tested strains of Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes, the main vector of malaria transmission in Asia. They found that the L224-to-Q224 switch could effectively block two different types of malarial parasites from reaching the salivary glands, thereby preventing infection.

[…]

In a range of follow-on tests, the researchers found that although the genetic switch disrupted the parasite’s infection capabilities, the mosquitoes’ normal growth and reproduction remained unchanged. Mosquitoes carrying the newly inserted variant Q224 exhibited similar fitness to those with the original L224 amino acid, a key achievement since the FREP1 protein plays an important role in the biology of the mosquito, which is separate from its role in being exploited by malarial parasites.

Similar to a gene-drive, the researchers created a technique for mosquito offspring to genetically inherit the Q224 allele and spread it throughout their populations, halting the transmission of malaria parasites.

[…]

Source: CRISPR Gene Editing in Mosquitoes Halts Malaria Spread | Technology Networks

As far as I am concerned, just kill them all please: We finally may be able to rid the world of mosquitoes. But should we? (hell yes! And ticks please!)

Elasmobranchs are an evolutionarily ancient group of cartilaginous fishes that can hear underwater sounds but are not historically viewed as active sound producers. Three recent reports of several species of rays producing clicks in response to approaching divers have cast doubt on this long prevailing view and resulted in calls for more research into sound production in elasmobranchs. This study shows that the rig, Mustelus lenticulatus, produces clicks (mean SPL_rms = 156.3 dB re. 1 μPa ± 0.9 s.e.m. at approx. 30 cm) when handled underwater, representing the first documented case of deliberate sound production by a shark

[…]

Source: Evidence of active sound production by a shark | Royal Society Open Science

As our planet warms up and rain patterns shift, the feathers and skin of many species are changing colors, often getting lighter. Snails in the Netherlands are going from brown to yellow. In a species of tropical bee in Costa Rica, the proportion of orange to blue individuals is increasing. Lizards in France are turning lighter, and so are many insects and birds across the globe. “Under global warming one would expect that the darker species, and darker individuals, might decline,” says Stefan Pinkert, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at Yale University.

[…]

Melanins, the most common pigments in birds and mammals, may be affected by rising temperatures and changing rain patterns. “If you have more melanin in your skin or your fur or feathers, then it tends to absorb more heat,” says Matthew Shawkey, an evolutionary biologist at Ghent University in Belgium. This may be a disadvantage as the temperature soars, he says, because it can cause animals to overheat. On the flip side, if it rains more, pathogens tend to thrive. In such conditions, dark melanins can be protective because they “toughen up tissues,” Shawkey says.

A rule proposed by Charles Bogert, an American herpetologist, in a 1949 paper, predicts that hotter climates should have a higher presence of ectotherms, or so-called cold-blooded animals, that are lighter in color and therefore less likely to overheat. (These animals, such as reptiles and insects, can’t regulate their own body temperature, and they rely on external heat sources.)

In recent years, science has not only confirmed Bogert’s rule but also extended it to endothermic, or warm-blooded, species. It’s not just frogs, toads, snakes and midges that are lighter in warmer regions; birds get lighter as well. A 2024 analysis of more than 10,000 species of birds showed that in hot places, white and yellow feathers win over blue and black ones.

[…]

With global warming, some animal populations are becoming even lighter. Between 1967 and 2010, as temperatures in the Netherlands rose by 1.5 to two degrees Celsius, brown land snails gave way to yellow ones. Between 1990 and 2020 in the U.K., dragonflies and damselflies got progressively lighter, too—as Pinkert and his colleagues found in a 2023 paper. And if you’ve looked closely at some dragonflies, you may have noticed that they now have fewer dark ornaments on their wings.

In one recent study conducted in North America, male dragonflies from 10 different species had the smallest melanin-based color patches on their wings in the warmest years between 2005 and 2019. In this same time period, pretty spots also seemed to pale on Mediterranean Blue Tits—tiny birds with yellow chests and azure, hatlike markings on their head. Between 2015 and 2019, the blue head patches of tit populations around Montpellier, France, have gotten lighter by approximately 23 percent—a change related to the rise in local temperatures.

[…]

Besides individual ability to adjust color based on temperature, animal populations living in warming regions may become lighter simply because paler animals move into new areas. There may be genetic changes at play, too, Pinkert says, but we still have “a critical knowledge gap” about how such evolution may be playing out.

While Bogert’s rule appears straightforward in regions that heat up yet remain dry, such as the Mediterranean, if rainfall increases alongside temperatures, species may turn dark instead of light.

[…]

When Delhey tested what happens when both temperatures and precipitation increase with climate change, he found that, at least in birds, “the effects of humidity are generally much, much stronger,” he says. Delhey and his colleagues mapped the plumage colors of all species of passerine birds, of which there are more than 5,000, to climates in which they live. They found that the animals were lighter where warm and dry but darker where warm and humid. Roulin and his colleagues found something similar in a 2024 study of thousands of museum specimens of barn owls collected across the globe between 1901 and 2018. The researchers showed that over time, plumage colors became lighter where the climate got warmer and drier but darker where both temperature and precipitation increased. “Where the climate change was stronger, the change in color was stronger,” Roulin says.

[…]

Source: Climate Change Is Altering Animals’ Colors | Scientific American

[…] The behavior of the 248 Siberian tigers observed through a personality test showed that the endangered cats had unique traits influencing both their success in reproduction and survival, researchers reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

“We found that tigers are very individual, and that people who’ve worked with them and know them well see their individual personalities,” co-author Rosalind Arden of the London School of Economics told AFP.

The study adapted a commonly used human personality test to explore tiger traits such as confidence, sincerity, bullying and savagery in two separate populations of tigers held in semi-captivity in China.

Questionnaires with a list of 70 personality indicators were filled out by veterinarians and feeders who work with the tigers on a daily basis.

The combined results found that both tiger populations displayed characteristics that fell into two overarching personality categories: majesty and steadiness.

Tigers scoring higher for “majesty” were healthier, preyed more on live animals, and ate and mated more.

They were also “regarded by their human raters as having higher group status among tigers,” the study said.

But being collaborative and gentler had its evolutionary benefits too: “steady” tigers were shown to be gentler, more sincere and more loving.

Such traits may play a role in the unusual length of time—two to three years—that tiger cubs remain with their mothers.

The study found very few sex-related differences in tigers’ personalities, however, and father tigers have also been observed taking part in raising their young.

“It’s pleasant to see that you don’t have to be dominant, fierce, competitive and aggressive in order to succeed as a tiger,” said Arden.

Similar studies illuminating the personality and mental abilities of primates have helped humanize them, Arden said.

“There is evidence that it does, in fact, improve animal welfare and conservation,” she added.

Siberian tigers are endangered due to poaching and habitat loss. Only around 500 remain living in the wild.

More information: Rosalind Arden et al, Majestic tigers: personality structure in the great Amur cat, Royal Society Open Science (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.220957

Source: Easy, tiger: study maps big cats’ personalities

Addition and subtraction must be hard for fish, especially because they don’t have fingers to count on. But they can do it—albeit with small numbers—a new study reveals. By training the animals to use blue and yellow colors as codes for the commands “add one” and “subtract one,” respectively, researchers showed fish have the capacity for simple arithmetic.

To make the find, researchers at the University of Bonn adopted the design of a similar experiment conducted in bees. They focused on bony cichlids (Pseudotropheus zebra) and cartilaginous stingrays (Potamotrygon motoro), which the lab uses to study fish cognition.

In the training phase, the scientists showed a fish in a tank an image of up to five squares, circles, and triangles that were all either blue or yellow. The animals had 5 seconds to memorize the number and color of the shapes; then a gate opened, and the fish had to choose between two doors: one with an additional shape and the other with one fewer shape.

The rules were simple: If the shapes in the original image were blue, head for the door with one extra shape; if they were yellow, go for the door with one fewer. Choosing the correct door earned the fish a food reward: pellets for cichlids, and earthworms, shrimp, or mussels for stingrays.

Only six of the eight cichlids and four of the eight stingrays successfully completed their training. But those that made it through testing performed well above chance, the researchers report today in Scientific Reports.

[…]

To make sure the animals weren’t just memorizing patterns, the researchers mixed in new tests varying the size and number of the shapes. In one trial, fish presented with three blue shapes were asked to choose between doors with four or five shapes—a choice of “plus one” or “plus two” instead of the usual “plus one” or “minus one.” Rather than simply selecting the larger number, the animals consistently followed the “plus one” directive—indicating they truly understood the desired association.

[…]

Source: Fish can learn basic arithmetic | Science | AAAS

The Elephant Ethogram is a uniquely detailed catalogue, or library, of the behavior and communication of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana). It is based on decades of ElephantVoices behavioral studies, photographs, and audio and video recordings, the referenced research of other elephant biologists, as well as professional and amateur footage made available to ElephantVoices. You can read more about how elephants communicate within this section of elephantvoices.org.

The Elephant Ethogram consists of written and referenced descriptions, video examples, photographic illustrations and, where relevant, audio recordings, of 404 Behaviors, 109 Behavioral Constellations and 23 Behavioral Contexts. There are close to 3,000 media files in the fully searchable Elephant Ethogram including approximately 2,400 video clips (May 2021).

[…]

African savanna elephants are among the most socially complex non-human species on our planet, but their lives and behavior are increasingly impacted by humans. The Elephant Ethogram aims to document the rich behavior and communication of this species, including rare, novel and idiosyncratic behavior, and those acquired, through social learning, in response to rapidly increasing anthropogenic threats. We intend The Elephant Ethogram to be a repository for scientific study and comparison, and to inspire broader interest in elephant behavior, conservation and welfare.

[…]

Source: The Elephant Ethogram

Belgium has detected an outbreak of bird flu, leading authorities to order all poultry farmers and individual bird owners to keep the animals confined, the country’s food safety agency AFSCA said Saturday.

Avian influenza has recently spread to western Europe after outbreaks in Russia and Kazakhstan this summer.

“Three wild birds that stayed in a bird sanctuary in Ostend tested positive for the H5N8 virus,” AFSCA said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the outbreak was confirmed the day before by the Sciensano public health institute.

AFSCA said the new measures would be effective from Sunday and would apply to private poultry houses as well as individuals who keep birds in their homes, in a country where there is a strong tradition of pigeon racing.

“All gatherings of poultry and birds are strictly prohibited,” the statement said, adding that preventive measures were imposed on professional pigeon farms on November 1.

France this month ordered measures for poultry farms such as protective netting to prevent contact with wild birds that spread the disease, after the country’s ministry of agriculture warned that bird flu infections were on the rise in western Europe.

In addition to cases declared in the Netherlands, the ministry pointed to “13 cases in wild birds in Germany” and an outbreak on November 3 in the northwest of England.

Source: Belgium announces measures for bird flu outbreak

In a draft law seen by AFP, the country’s environment ministry has drawn up a number of new measures to protect insects, ranging from partially outlawing spotlights to increased protection of natural habitats.

“Insects play an important role in the ecosystem…but in Germany, their numbers and their diversity has severely declined in recent years,” reads the draft law, for which the ministry hopes to get cabinet approval by October.

© David GANNON Sundown could mean bright lights must go out in future for German cities like capital Berlin.

The changes put forward in the law include stricter controls on both lighting and the use of insecticides.

Light traps for insects are to be banned outdoors, while searchlights and sky spotlights would be outlawed from dusk to dawn for ten months of the year.

The draft also demands that any new streetlights and other outdoor lights be installed in such a way as to minimise the effect on plants, insects and other animals.

The use of weed-killers and insecticides would also be banned in national parks and within five to ten metres of major bodies of water, while orchards and dry-stone walls are to be protected as natural habitats for insects.

The proposed reforms are part of the German government’s more general “insect protection action plan”, which was announced last September under growing pressure from environmental and conservation activists.

Source: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

The Pando aspen grove, located in central Utah, is the largest organism on the planet by weight. From the surface, it may look like a forest that spans more than 100 U.S. football fields, but each tree shares the exact same DNA and is connected to its clonal brethren through an elaborate underground root system. Although not quite as large in terms of area as the massive Armillaria gallica fungus in Michigan, Pando is much heavier, weighing in at more than 6 million kilograms. Now, researchers say, the grove is in danger, being slowly eaten away by mule deer and other herbivores—and putting the fate of its ecosystem in jeopardy.

“This is a really unusual habitat type,” says Luke Painter, an ecologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis who was not involved with the research. “A lot of animals depend on it.”

Aspen forests such as the Pando grove and many others reproduce in two ways. The first is the familiar system in which mature trees drop seeds that grow into new trees. But more commonly, aspen and some other tree species reproduce by sending out sprouts from their roots, which grow up through the soil into entire new trees. The exact amount of time it took the Pando grove to reach its modern extent is unknown, says Paul Rogers, an ecologist at Utah State University in Logan. “However, it’s very likely that it’s centuries old, and it’s just as likely that it’s millennia old.”

Scientists first noticed the Pando shrinking in the late ’90s. They suspected elk, cattle, and most prominently deer were eating the new shoots, so in the new study Rogers and colleagues divided the forest into three experimental groups. One section was completely unfenced, allowing animals to forage freely on the baby aspen. A second section was fenced and left alone. And a third section was fenced and then treated in some places with strategies to spur aspen growth, such as shrub removal and controlled burning; in other places it was left untreated.

The results were surprising: Simply keeping the deer out was enough to allow the grove to successfully recover, the team reports today in PLOS ONE. Even in the fenced-off plots where there was no burning or shrub removal, young trees were thriving.

The good news, at least for Pando, is that it appears that keeping out the deer is enough to solve the problem. But fencing the entirety of the grove is neither practical nor palatable, says Rogers, who partners with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, Colorado, as part of the Western Aspen Alliance, a group committed to improving aspen management and restoring their ecosystems. “Everybody, including myself, doesn’t want fences around this iconic grove. We don’t want to go to nature to see a bunch of fences.”

The alternative, he says, is to do something about the mule deer population. The thinning of the forest has only started to occur in the past century or so. This time frame roughly coincides with when humans entered the area, building cabins, banning hunting, and removing carnivores like wolves that would ordinarily prey on the deer. These human activities, Rogers says, has turned Pando into a safe haven for the deer, artificially inflating their numbers in the area.

With the new data in hand, he’s planning to advocate for a culling of the deer population in the area. Although that may seem extreme, it may be the only chance to give Pando a chance a long-term survival. “The real problem,” Rogers says, “is that there are too many mouths to feed in this area.”

Source: One of the world’s largest organisms is shrinking | Science | AAAS

Raptors are one of the most important causes of fatalities due to their collisions with aircrafts as well as being the main victims of collisions with constructions. They are difficult to deter because they are not influenced by other airspace users or ground predators. Because vision is the primary sensory mode of many diurnal raptors, we evaluated the reactions of captive raptors to a “superstimulus” (a “paradoxical effect whereby animals show greater responsiveness to an exaggerated stimulus than to the natural stimulus”) that combined an “eye shape” stimulus (as many species have an aversion for this type of stimulus) and a looming movement (LE). This looming stimulus mimics an impending collision and induces avoidance in a wide range of species. In captivity, raptors showed a clear aversion for this LE stimulus. We then tested it in a real life setting: at an airport where raptors are abundant. This study is the first to show the efficiency of a visual non-invasive repellent system developed on the basis of both captive and field studies. This system deterred birds of prey and corvids through aversion, and did not induce habituation. These findings suggest applications for human security as well as bird conservation, and further research on avian visual perception and sensitivity to signals.

Source: Wide-eyed glare scares raptors: From laboratory evidence to applied management

Plants may lack brains, but they have a nervous system, of sorts. And now, plant biologists have discovered that when a leaf gets eaten, it warns other leaves by using some of the same signals as animals. The new work is starting to unravel a long-standing mystery about how different parts of a plant communicate with one another.

Animal nerve cells talk to each other with the aid of an amino acid called glutamate, which—after being released by an excited nerve cell—helps set off a wave of calcium ions in adjacent cells. The wave travels down the next nerve cell, which relays a signal to the next one in line, enabling long-distance communication.

Source: Plants communicate distress using their own kind of nervous system

The New Zealand government has announced a “world-first” project to make the nation predator free by 2050.

The prime minister, John Key, said on Monday it would undertake a radical pest extermination programme – which if successful would be a global first – aiming to wipe out the introduced species of rats, stoats and possums nation-wide in a mere 34 years.

According to the government, introduced species kill 25m native New Zealand birds a year including the iconic ground-dwelling, flightless Kiwi, which die at a rate of 20 a week, and now number fewer than 70,000.

The government estimates the cost of introduced species to the New Zealand economy and primary sector to be NZ$3.3bn (£1.76bn) a year.

Source: No more rats: New Zealand to exterminate all introduced predators | World news | The Guardian

“In Athens-Clarke County, we found that about 30 per cent of the sampled cats were successful in capturing and killing prey, and that those cats averaged about one kill for every 17 hours outdoors or 2.1 kills per week.

“It was also surprising to learn that cats only brought 23 per cent of their kills back to a residence. We found that house cats will kill a wide variety of animals, including: lizards, voles, chipmunks, birds, frogs, and small snakes.”

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think • The Register.

Last month, marine biologist Luke Tipple, armed with a career in the study of sharks, accepted the request from handheld laser manufacturers, Wicked Lasers, to attach a Wicked Lasers laser beam to a shark’s fin, which he did with success. On a diving trip in the Bahamas, he fit a laser device onto a lemon shark’s dorsal fin and tested the shark’s movements.

Beamed-up lemon shark shows research promise w/ Video.

Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.

Blamed for Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm – BlackListedNews.com.

If you’re a birdwatcher, eBird is the site for you to go – huge maps of species and countries, you can follow the birds as they’re reported in by other eBirders.

Birding News and Features — eBird.

This is bizarre – teach your cat to use your toilet bowl to take it’s shits and pisses, and never have to clean the litter again!

YouTube – Litter Kwitter Cat / Kitten toilet training system amazing.

What a fantastic concept: basketball on donkeyback – 4 vs 4. Of course PETA has a problem, but then again, what do they know about animals?