- Email: [email protected]
How plants get by when pollinators vanish
stephen dalton/nhpa
IN BRIEF Happy in sport, happy in politics
Instant evolution helps make up for vanishing pollinators PITY the birds and the bees, in decline the world over as we humans pillage their environment. But what about the plants that rely on them to spread their pollen? Sarah Bodbyl-Roels at the University of Kansas found, in one species at least, that depriving flowering plants of their natural pollinators can drive rapid evolutionary changes that help them survive by self-pollinating. She planted 1600 common monkey flowers, Mimulus guttatus (pictured above), in a field, and the same number in a greenhouse, away from their natural pollinator, the Bombus bumblebee. By the fifth
generation, the greenhouse plants had developed smaller flowers; this encourages self-pollination as the female and male organs are much closer together. Seed production in these plants – a measure of their ability to survive – crashed in early generations, before returning almost to normal. Bodbyl-Roels, who reported her study at the Evolution 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon, last week, says she found genetic variations linked to the physical changes. The study’s findings are likely to apply to a large number of other flowering plant species, says Jeffrey Karron of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He adds that the result gives some hope that the mating systems of flowering plants can evolve to cope with gradual environmental change.
Home field advantage in mouse brain THE first rule of mouse fight-club is… always play on your home turf. Winning a fight causes brain changes that enhance fighting ability and the desire to seek out additional contests, particularly if the fight is on familiar ground. So say Matthew Fuxjager and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who investigated the effect on the male mouse brain of winning 14 | NewScientist | 10 July 2010
a fight home or away. The researchers made sure of a win by pairing mice with smaller and sexually inexperienced individuals. After three consecutive victories, they analysed the brain of each animal. Mice that won showed increased expression of receptors for male hormones – androgens – in a region of the brain that influences social aggression.
In addition, “home-win” mice showed increased androgen sensitivity in regions that mediate motivation and reward. These mice also won more subsequent fights compared with mice who had only won in away fights (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1001394107). The experience of winning drives neural changes that increase aggression and desire, say the authors.
FRENCH president Nicolas Sarkozy should be thankful he isn’t up for re-election now. France’s abysmal showing in the soccer World Cup might have been his downfall. So suggests Neil Malhotra at Stanford University in California, who found that sports results can influence voting preferences. Malhotra and his team looked at how political candidates fared in 62 US county elections between 1964 and 2008, and compared that with the local college American football team’s results. They found that in years when the team won in the two weeks prior to election day, the incumbent or their party received 1.6 per cent more of the votes than in years when the team lost (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1007420107). A bad mood draws us to change, and a good mood to the status quo, regardless of what causes that mood, says Malhotra.
How the moon got its whiskers FAMOUS for its crater-pocked face, it now turns out that the moon has whiskers too. Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC and his colleagues shone a laser at a sample of moon rock collected by the Apollo 17 mission 40 years ago. This revealed that the rock was made of sheets of carbon graphite just a single atom thick, rolled up into whiskers (Science, DOI: 10.1126/ science.1190541). The rock is about 3.9 billion years old, from a time when the moon underwent heavy meteor bombardment. The carbon whiskers may have arrived fully formed on these meteoroids, or alternatively condensed from the hot, carbon-rich gas of the impact.
IN BRIEF Happy in sport, happy in politics
Instant evolution helps make up for vanishing pollinators PITY the birds and the bees, in decline the world over as we humans pillage their environment. But what about the plants that rely on them to spread their pollen? Sarah Bodbyl-Roels at the University of Kansas found, in one species at least, that depriving flowering plants of their natural pollinators can drive rapid evolutionary changes that help them survive by self-pollinating. She planted 1600 common monkey flowers, Mimulus guttatus (pictured above), in a field, and the same number in a greenhouse, away from their natural pollinator, the Bombus bumblebee. By the fifth
generation, the greenhouse plants had developed smaller flowers; this encourages self-pollination as the female and male organs are much closer together. Seed production in these plants – a measure of their ability to survive – crashed in early generations, before returning almost to normal. Bodbyl-Roels, who reported her study at the Evolution 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon, last week, says she found genetic variations linked to the physical changes. The study’s findings are likely to apply to a large number of other flowering plant species, says Jeffrey Karron of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He adds that the result gives some hope that the mating systems of flowering plants can evolve to cope with gradual environmental change.
Home field advantage in mouse brain THE first rule of mouse fight-club is… always play on your home turf. Winning a fight causes brain changes that enhance fighting ability and the desire to seek out additional contests, particularly if the fight is on familiar ground. So say Matthew Fuxjager and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who investigated the effect on the male mouse brain of winning 14 | NewScientist | 10 July 2010
a fight home or away. The researchers made sure of a win by pairing mice with smaller and sexually inexperienced individuals. After three consecutive victories, they analysed the brain of each animal. Mice that won showed increased expression of receptors for male hormones – androgens – in a region of the brain that influences social aggression.
In addition, “home-win” mice showed increased androgen sensitivity in regions that mediate motivation and reward. These mice also won more subsequent fights compared with mice who had only won in away fights (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1001394107). The experience of winning drives neural changes that increase aggression and desire, say the authors.
FRENCH president Nicolas Sarkozy should be thankful he isn’t up for re-election now. France’s abysmal showing in the soccer World Cup might have been his downfall. So suggests Neil Malhotra at Stanford University in California, who found that sports results can influence voting preferences. Malhotra and his team looked at how political candidates fared in 62 US county elections between 1964 and 2008, and compared that with the local college American football team’s results. They found that in years when the team won in the two weeks prior to election day, the incumbent or their party received 1.6 per cent more of the votes than in years when the team lost (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1007420107). A bad mood draws us to change, and a good mood to the status quo, regardless of what causes that mood, says Malhotra.
How the moon got its whiskers FAMOUS for its crater-pocked face, it now turns out that the moon has whiskers too. Andrew Steele of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC and his colleagues shone a laser at a sample of moon rock collected by the Apollo 17 mission 40 years ago. This revealed that the rock was made of sheets of carbon graphite just a single atom thick, rolled up into whiskers (Science, DOI: 10.1126/ science.1190541). The rock is about 3.9 billion years old, from a time when the moon underwent heavy meteor bombardment. The carbon whiskers may have arrived fully formed on these meteoroids, or alternatively condensed from the hot, carbon-rich gas of the impact.