New research at the University of Sydney may give conservation of crocodiles a boost by examining how their tough lives have given their immune systems an evolutionary advantage.

From Phys.org:

The MHC is a group of genes that help the immune system identify microbes and parasites. They play an important role in disease resistance, as diverse genes allow animals to resist a wider range of diseases. The research published this week in the journals PLOS ONE and Immunogenetics shows that some of the genes involved in the fight against viruses, bacteria and parasites have remained the same across all crocodilian species while other immune genes seem to have diversified in crocodiles.

"The diverse environments occupied by many crocodilians, whether saltwater crocs in the Northern Territory or alligators in Florida, appear to have exposed crocodilians immune genes to a wide range of germs," Dr Gongora said.

Researchers found multiple instances of crocodilians losing and/or duplicating genes showing that their immune system is still responsive to evolutionary changes.

"We now have a genetic resource to understand the immune system in crocodilians, thanks to this research. It will enable genetic investigations of how these animals respond to local conditions including susceptibility to disease," said lead author of the article Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri, who recently completed his PhD at the University of Sydney.

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Looks like ancient reptiles got deliveries from the stork. That's an amazingly inaccurate paraphrase of a recent study published on the journal PLOS ONE, which analyzed an ichthyosaur fossil.

From National Geographic:

The 248-million-year-old fossil from the Mesozoic era (252 to 66 million years ago) reveals an ichthyosaur baby inside its mother (orange) and another stuck in her pelvis (yellow). A third embryo discovered nearby suggests it was stillborn; scientists believe the mother died during a difficult labor.



The narrow, eel-like ichthyosaur belongs to the genus Chaohusaurus and is the oldest known species of the group.

[...]

It's not just the age of the Mesozoic-era discovery that is surprising; it's the shattering of the belief that ichthyosaurs—also dubbed sea monsters—gave birth in water, not on land.

The scientists reached their conclusion because the fossil showed the offspring emerging head-first—a behavior found only in animals that give birth on land.

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Developers or snakes? You decide.

From the Kansas City Star:

Barely a half-foot long without a drop of venom, the redbelly snake hardly seems a threat.

Unless you’re a developer or public official in Johnson County.

Listed by Kansas as a threatened species, the reddish brown reptile with the orange belly is complicating growth in Johnson County.

County leaders are reluctant to dip into taxpayers’ wallets to preserve a snake habitat disrupted by new development. So they are waging a battle with the seldom-seen snake that’s not much longer than a typical worm.

They’re asking the Kansas Legislature to remove the redbelly and the comparable smooth earth snake from the state’s threatened species list.

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Photo: Suzanne L. Collins/Kansas City Star

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When the male túngara frog whispers sweet nothings into his loved one's ear, it's not a private conversation.

From Wired:

Male túngara frogs, native to Central and South America, gather at night in shallow ponds and call to attract females. They space themselves out carefully, each male defending a small calling site. Competition for females is serious business, and males will fight if one horns in on another’s chosen calling site.

A new study shows how the male túngara frog’s call inadvertently creates a multisensory message that can be exploited by both rivals and predators.

[...]

But these courtship signals meant for females aren’t just overheard by rival male frogs. They also provide frog-eating bats (Trachops cirrhosus) with a way to pinpoint the location of their next meal. The frog-eating bat specializes in túngara frogs, using a combination of echolocation and eavesdropping to detect them. A frog will stop calling if it sees a bat flying overhead, but ripples continue to move through the water for several seconds after the call ceases, leaving a “footprint” of the frog’s presence.

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Photo: Ryan Taylor/Salisbury University

No, alligators and crocodiles can't fly, but they can climb trees, suggests research at the University of Tennessee.

From Science Daily:

Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, is the first to thoroughly study the tree-climbing and -basking behavior. The research is published in the journal Herpetology.

Dinets and his colleagues observed crocodilian species on three continents -- Australia, Africa and North America -- and examined previous studies and anecdotal observations. They found that four species climbed trees -- usually above water -- but how far they ventured upward and outward varied by their sizes. The smaller crocodilians were able to climb higher and further than the larger ones. Some species were observed climbing as far as four meters high in a tree and five meters down a branch.

"Climbing a steep hill or steep branch is mechanically similar, assuming the branch is wide enough to walk on," the authors wrote. "Still, the ability to climb vertically is a measure of crocodiles' spectacular agility on land."

The crocodilians seen climbing trees, whether at night or during the day, were skittish of being approached, jumping or falling into the water when an approaching observer was as far as 10 meters away. This response led the researchers to believe that the tree climbing and basking are driven by two conditions: thermoregulation and surveillance of habitat.

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Photo: Kristine Gingras, University of Tennessee

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Of course, at kingsnake.com, we like alligators. Tom and Consandra Christmas in Mississippi don't feel the same, at least when the reptiles are roaming around their front yard, which they say are. And they know who they blame: ExxonMobil, who they claim managed their nearby property in such a way to drive more than 80 gators onto their land.

From Newsmax.com:

The Christmases charged that the alligator infestation is a non-abatable nuisance that has caused a permanent injury to their property and are seeking damages for permanent depreciation of their land, reported the AP.

ExxonMobil, though, claimed that the Christmases' real estate agent told them about the alligators as far back as 2003 and the Christmases waited too long to file a lawsuit, stating their claim has passed the statute of limitations.

A Mississippi circuit court judge threw out the Christmases original case in 2011, but a state court of appeals returned the case to Wilkinson County for trial. ExxonMobil appealed that ruling to Mississippi's Supreme Court.

"Alligators were allegedly introduced to the Exxon property prior to 1984, and the retention ponds have apparently existed at least that long," stated the Christmases filing to the Mississippi Court of Appeals. "It was also attested that by the year 2000 (at the latest), there were 'many, many alligators' on the Exxon property, and a real estate agent involved in the sale of the property to the Christmases stated that an alligator may have attacked a horse he kept on the Christmas property."

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Thirteen iguanas, one of them dead, were found crammed into a suitcase at Heathrow Airport in London. The surviving lizards are being cared for by veterinary specialists in the UK.



From Sky.com:

Officers found the reptiles in a case while carrying out customs checks at Terminal 5 on Monday.

Each one was wrapped in an individual sock - 12 survived their journey, one had died.

The iguanas arrived on a flight from the Bahamas taken by two Romanian women aged 24 and 26, who were arrested on suspicion of importation offences.

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Photo: Sky News

The fascinating body structures of sea snakes which adapt them for life in water are being studied by University of Adelaide researchers as inspiration for a marine robot - the first of its kind.

Postgraduate mechanical engineering research student Amy Watson and a team of engineering, environmental science and computer science researchers will use the sea snake body shape and swimming motion to generate a design for a 'bio-mimetic' sea snake robot.

"Biomimetics or biology-inspired design is a rapidly growing field which uses the results of millions of years of trial-and-error experiments through natural evolution to produce a machine that's best-adapted for a particular environment," says Ms Watson. "The success of the sea snake's aquatic invasion is of interest to both evolutionary biologists and mechanical engineers."

Sea snakes are the only fully aquatic reptiles in existence. They evolved about eight million years ago from an Australian terrestrial snake ancestor that bore live young (rather than egg-laying), and most sea snakes are still found in Australia and South-East Asia.

"From the more or less cylindrical body with a tapered tail of land snakes, the true sea snakes have become efficient swimmers with ribbon-like bodies and paddle-shaped tails," says Ms Watson.

"In the transition from land-based to marine vertebrates, sea snakes have acquired remarkable swimming capacity. We want to capture and analyse the body shape and movement to generate information that will enable a more efficient design for underwater vehicles."

The undulating locomotion of a snake-like robot will be much less invasive in the marine environment than a propeller-based machine and will be able to move through complex habitats more easily because of their streamlined shape, says Ms Watson.

"The first step in the process is to learn more about the anatomy of sea snakes and this project starts bone deep - with the spine," she says.

She is investigating the biomechanics of the sea snake spine using high-resolution CT scanning at Adelaide Microscopy and 3D simulation models of vertebrae to test the movement.

The range of motion between pairs of vertebrae located at different positions along the spine will be compared along the spine of a single snake and between snakes of different species.

Ms Watson is presenting preliminary results and discussion around the implications for sea snake robot design at the University of Adelaide-hosted combined conference ACMM23-ICONN2014 on microscopy and nanoscience at the Adelaide Convention Centre this week. For further information see www.aomevents.com/ACMMICONN

Hundreds of dead reptiles and amphibians originating in Madagascar, some of them endangered species, were discovered at a South African airport. More than 1000 animals were in bad condition but alive, and are being treated by veterinarians at a local zoo.

From the BBC:

Some of the animals were so tightly packed together that they were unable to move or turn around, local media report.

Many of the recovered animals were classified as endangered, vulnerable, or threatened, according to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

Those on Cites appendix II protocol, meaning that they can be traded, but only with a special permit.

The Star newspaper reports that they did have the authorisation but local animal rights groups have called for an investigating into how the consignment came to arrive in South Africa.

The NSPCA and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries are further investigating the matter.

"The authorities suspect that there are South African agents involved [who work as middle men] and once investigations are finalised they would be charged with animal cruelty," said Ainsley Hay, head of the NSPCA's Wildlife Unit.

The department will be contacting authorities from Madagascar to discuss what should be done with the animals, until then they will be treated in some zoos locally.

Read more here...

Photo: Miona Jeneke/BBC News

University of Florida researchers have developed a simple immune-based screening test to identify the presence of a debilitating and usually fatal disease that strikes boas and pythons in captivity as well as those sold to the pet trade worldwide.

Known as inclusion body disease, or IBD, the highly infectious disease most commonly affects boa constrictors but pythons and other snake species in the boid family are also occasionally infected with the virus that causes the disease. IBD was first seen in snakes in the late 1970s, said Elliott Jacobson, D.V.M., Ph.D., a professor emeritus of zoological medicine at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine and co-author of a study that appeared in December in PLOS ONE.

"We don't know the prevalence, but we see more of IBD in the United States because there are some 2 million boas being kept as pets in this country," Jacobson said. "This simple blood test will help determine whether or not an animal has this disease and potentially will help clean up colonies of snakes that will ultimately be disease-free."

Although snakes infected with IBD may display neurological signs, such as head-tilting, chronic regurgitation or disequilibrium, there is also a population of snakes that are subclinical, meaning they are infected but otherwise appear healthy.

"That's a big problem, because healthy-seeming animals that are affected with IBD are being sold and sent around the world," he said. "However, they may develop the disease sometime later and may be the source of infection for other snakes."

On Jacobson’s research team at the UF veterinary college were his former graduate student, Li-Wen Chang, B.V.M., Ph.D., the principal investigator in the study, and Jorge Hernandez, D.V.M., Ph.D., a veterinary epidemiologist.

To develop the test, the researchers studied a monoclonal antibody produced in response to a unique protein that accumulates in cells of snakes having IBD. They then sequenced the protein in an effort to further understand the nature and cause of the disease. Although the cause of IBD is unclear, the UF team found genetic links of this unique protein are associated with a family of viruses that primarily infect rodents but may infect humans. However, there is no evidence to indicate that the virus that causes IBD can infect people.

When Chang joined the study in 2008, she realized the limited availability of snake databases and potential causative agents of the disease presented additional challenges.

“It took us almost a year to finally produce this antibody, and three more years to validate its performance for immuno-based diagnostic tests,” Chang said.

University of California-San Francisco researchers identified the Golden Gate virus in 2012 and scientists now consider it to be a potential cause of IBD.

UF’s findings supplement that theory, although more studies of disease transmission need to be conducted to confirm the role of Golden Gate virus in the development of IBD, Jacobson said.

The research was performed at the UF’s Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research through the university’s veterinary diagnostic laboratories, where the new test is now offered. It will supplement existing molecular and histological tests, which are more widely available but also more expensive, Jacobson added. In addition, the test’s ease of use and simplicity will offer veterinary practitioners a good first-line diagnostic tool to screen for IBD in snake species that show signs of the disease, or even before these signs occur.

"We know now that this disease exists in multiple collections and populations," Jacobson said. "It is important to determine why some snakes are not showing clinical signs of the disease. Could there be another agent operating synergistically? Perhaps one virus needs to be present but another virus needs to be present also, or perhaps the subclinical cases only have one of those agents, not both."

Only strict quarantine of new arrivals to snake populations and the culling of infected snakes, as well as mite control, can mitigate the spread of the disease, according to a 2013 fact sheet prepared by the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians' infectious disease committee.

"It’s a situation of management," Jacobson said. "You'll never completely eradicate this disease."

Jacobson and Chang collaborated with an interdisciplinary team throughout the university that included Ann Fu, M.D., Ph.D., Marjorie Chow, Diane Duke, Linda Green and Karen Kelley, Currently, Chang is a resident in clinical pathology at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, National Chung Hsin University in Taiwan. Edward Wozniak, D.V.M., Ph.D., a public health veterinarian working in Texas, also collaborated in the study.

Photo: Dr. Elliott Jacobson with a Dumeril’s ground boa, a species affected by inclusion body disease/University of Florida

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He's considered one of the world's ugliest animals, and the salamander-like axolotl is also one of the most threatened.
From the Austin Statesman:

It's disturbing news for an admittedly ugly creature, which has a slimy tail, plumage-like gills and mouth that curls into an odd smile.

The axolotl is known as the "water monster" and the "Mexican walking fish." Its only natural habitat is the Xochimilco network of lakes and canals — the "floating gardens" of earth piled on reed mats that the Aztecs built to grow crops but are now suffering from pollution and urban sprawl.

Biologist Armando Tovar Garza of Mexico's National Autonomous University said Tuesday that the creature "is in serious risk of disappearing" from the wild.

Describing an effort last year by researchers in skiffs to try to net axolotls in the shallow, muddy waters of Xochimilco, Tovar Garza summed up the results as "four months of sampling — zero axolotls."

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Photo: Austin Statesman