In the next hall, there was a copy of The Primate Diaries.  The open page said something about how unicolonial ants pose challenge to “selfish gene” theory. Beside it was a Denim and Tweed wall plaque, illustrating how ants trim trees for more living space. The end of the hall had a big sign by Hoxful Monsters, showing a new tree of life, which suggests that the nervous system evolved only once in animal history.

We walked down to The History Cellar and saw Charles Darwin’s letters, in which Darwin reacts to a bad review of The Origin of Species.  The man standing next to us, who we later learned was Adam Goldstein, said, “Give the old man a break and let’s stop it with ‘Darwinism’.”

We then went to see the new movie at the museum, Three New Species Discovered–in the Stratosphere! GrrlScientist had suggested we go see it before she met up with us, saying “”Wow, THREE new bacterial species in the stratosphere! Where will we find new life next? Perhaps the Moon? Mars?”

Towards the end of our museum visit, GrrlScientist joined us and shared some insight and photos from her own research into the evolution and biogeography of the lories, which are parrots native to the islands of the South Pacific Ocean. Apparently dead birds do tell tales!

After we left the museum, GrrlScientist, Christie and I walked through Central Park, and we looked at all the birds that have returned for spring.  GrrlScientist told me, “human eyes speak volumes to birds, and that the birds will try to hide from our gaze.”  ”Ha!” I told her.  ”That may be cool, but I know something even more interesting.  Did you know birds can dance?”

We continued our walk through the park, and saw The White Sepulchre holding a sign that was only three words long, but by his account, was the best argument against Creationism ever devised.  It said “Serpents can’t talk.”

Afterwards, I met a few friends for drinks.  Andrew Bernadin suggested that I order endorphins on the rocks.  While we were sipping away, he told me about the plasticity of human nature, and that mating strategies are variable and influenced by culture.  While discussing male dominance, he quoted Franz de Waal and said “for males, this is an all-or-nothing game; rank determines who will sow his seed far and wide and who will not sow his seed at all.”  I told him that I recently read in The Primate Diaries that the importance of female choice is overlooked in chimpanzees. When we began talking about monogamy, Anna shared something really interesting–in birds, the more monogamous the species, the bigger the brain! Zen Faulkes said that this may not be the same case with humans, and told us about a recent study he read, the author theorizes that if you’re monogamous, you have a large brain to cheat. Jennifurret, decided to end the debate and reminded us of the diversity of mating strategies in the world.

As we left the bar, I was glad to be out in the warm air that came with May.  After all, I only just read in The Spittoon that researchers tie variation in cancer gene to winter temperatures.

We walked over to the Metamagician and the Hellfire Club, where we listened to Jerry Coyne on science organisations and accommodationism.  Afterwards, Jennifurret talked about the problems with some universities and teaching evolution in colleges.  Maybe we should tell the universities to hire The Southern Fried Scientist, who gets really excited by clear cases of convergent evolution. I bet he could do a better job of teaching evolution!

Oh crap! Is that the time??? Now it’s too late to go catch the Carnival of Evolution!  I guess I’ll have to catch it next month, over at Deep Sea News.

“For a long time, people have thought that the ability to move to a beat was unique to humans,” said Adena Schachner of Harvard University, who led one of two studies published today in Current Biology.

It turns out, dancing is for the birds.  The two studies show that vocal-mimicking animals, particularly parrots, are able to dance–they can bob their heads, tap their feet, and sway to the beat of the music.

Don’t believe me?  The video below shows a cockatoo named Snowball dancing to his favorite song, “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys.  When the researches changed the tempo of the music, Snowball would adjust the tempo of his dancing so stay synchronized with the music.

The theory was that natural selection for vocal mimicry resulted in a brain mechanism that was also needed for moving to a beat, and that only animals that can mimic sound should be able to keep a beat.

One of the two research teams watched over 1,000 videos of dancing animals on YouTube, and analyzed the videos frame-by-frame.  Potentially fake videos were omitted, in which the animal was following a visual cue or the music was added in during post-production.

“Our analyses showed that these birds’ movements were more lined up with the musical beat than we’d expect by chance,” says Adena Schachner, a researcher in the study, in a press release. “We found strong evidence that they were synchronizing with the beat, something that has not been seen before in other species.”

Only the vocal mimics (14 species of parrot and 1 species of elephant) showed evidence of being able to keep a beat.

The researchers now suspect that the parrots’ dancing skills are related to another ability they share with humans, vocal learning, implying an evolutionary link between the two abilities.  This suggests that keeping a beat to music relies on the neural circuitry for complex vocal learning, which requires a tight link between auditory and motor circuits in the brain.

“Our data suggests that some of the brain mechanisms needed for human dance originally evolved to allow us to imitate sound,” says Schachner.

The human ability to keep time with music may have also evolved as a byproduct of vocal mimicry–the cognitive processes needed for both actions are related.  Both abilities require you to take in auditory input, and monitor your output and sound input at the same time, which allow you to fix your output and line up better with what you hear.

So what I want to know is….where do I sign up for a job like this???

Aniruddh D. Patel, John R. Iversen, Micah R. Bregman, Irena Schulz (2009). Experimental Evidence for Synchronization to a Musical Beat in a Nonhuman Animal Current Biology, 19 (10), 1-4
Adena Schachner, Timothy F. Brady, Irene M. Pepperberg, Marc D. Hauser (2009). Spontaneous Motor Entrainment to Music in Multiple Vocal Mimicking Species Current Biology, 19 (10), 1-6

African wild dogs and cheetahs, the smallest and most endangered of Africa’s large predators, have the greatest dietary overlap of all African carnivores, as well as the smallest number of prey species to choose from. Both species predominantly dine on Thomson’s gazelle and impala, two small species of ungulate. The risk of extinction increases when a species has fewer food options. Larger carnivores such as lions, spotted hyenas and leopards have more options in their prey, minimizing competition and giving them a more secure status.

Researchers from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in South Africa recently conducted a study on prey preferences and dietary overlap amongst Africa’s large predators. The species in the study were leopards, lions, spotted hyenas, cheetahs and African wild dogs. The conservation status of each species into was taken into account during data analysis, which served as a method to estimate the number of surviving individuals within each of the five carnivore species studied.

The researchers found that almost three-quarters of the actual diet for African wild dogs and cheetahs overlapped, the greatest amount of overlap between any of the other large carnivores. The overlap for the preferred diet of these two species was also over 70 percent.

When the scientists looked at the data in comparison to the conservation status of each species, they found that the smaller the dietary options available to a species, the more endangered that species was. Leopards, who have the broadest range of prey to choose from, are of the least conservation concern.

The evolution of Africa’s large predators is now negatively affecting those who evolved to become more specialized. African wild dogs and cheetahs, which have the fewest number of prey options, are also the most threatened, and also suffer from the greatest amount of dietary overlap.

The current theory is that competition with and predation by lions and spotted hyenas forces African wild dogs to exist at low densities. Long-term data shows that the wild dogs were most abundant in the Serengeti during the 1960s and 1970s, when lions and spotted hyenas were more scarce. Over the next two decades, as lion and hyena populations doubled, the African wild dog population declined up until local extinction. The recent findings in the study at NMMU suggest that food limitation may have been a factor in the extinction of the wild dogs in the Serengeti. The decline of the preferred prey species of the wild dogs placed them under greater pressure, and they ultimately went in extinct in that location.

African wild dogs also suffer from human persecution, habitat loss, disease and competition with lions and spotted hyenas. The larger predators interfere with the wild dog’s kills, in addition to lions actually killing the dogs themselves.

Cheetahs suffer from habitat loss, exploitation human interference, disease, predation as well as other predators stealing their food. Habitat loss is their greatest threat, because it reduces the availability of suitable prey species and thus reduces their success in hunting. Competition with other predators also threatens Cheetahs in the Serengeti, where lions kill cheetah cubs.

Cheetah cub mortality depends on the mother’s vigilance and anti-predator behavior. When the mother has to spend more time hunting because of fewer suitable prey options, she has less time to protect her cubs. The same holds true for African wild dogs. The more effort they have to put in to taking down prey, the fewer guard dogs they can leave behind to guard the pups.

Food limitation, and competition for resources between species can now be added to the list of threats for African wild dogs and chetahs, particularly in conservation areas that are free from habitat alteration and human persecution, but where management strategies have led to unnaturally high population densities of all predators found there, which reduces the availability of food.

Conflict with humans restricts large carnivores predominantly to conservation areas. But in clumping the carnivores together in one area, it increases the likelihood that they will have to compete for resources, such as prey, by creating artificially high population densities, and may eventually lead to further extinctions.

The successful management of conservation areas is crucial to ensuring that further extinctions do not take place.  One way to do this is to vary the prey species in the conservation area, and to make sure that the preferred prey species of the more threatened carnivores are available at all times.

By keeping an eye on things and actively engaging in the management of conservation areas, we can ensure that they only serve to booster endangered populations, rather than cause further damage.

Hayward, M., & Kerley, G. (2008). Prey preferences and dietary overlap amongst Africa’s large predators South African Journal of Wildlife Research, 38 (2), 93-108 DOI: 10.3957/0379-4369-38.2.93

Photos courtesy of Carl Zimmer’s blog, The Loom.  Check out the entire Science Tattoo Emporium.

Today marks Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, and EVERYONE seems to be celebrating.

National Geographic is running a few specials in honor of Darwin.  In case you missed it the first time around (as I did), be prepared to plop yourself in front of the TV from 8-11pm, to watch the series Morphed.

Darwin’s Secret Notebooks will air again on Friday, Feb. 13 at 10pm, and Monster Fish of the Congo will be on again on Saturday, Feb. 14 at 7pm.  I did manage to watch Monster Fish of the Congo the first time it aired, and I have to say…it was FREAKIN’ AWESOME!  Let’s just say that the goliath tigerfish (Hydrocynus goliath) could inspire some nightmares…

The show also inspired me to look into reviving my aquarium.  What type of tank, you may ask?  A CONGO RIVER TANK!  It’s been a few years since I have had an aquarium set up, and watching the various fish on the show made me realize just how cool all the congo fish are….bichirs, spiny eels, elephantnose fish, catfish, knifefish, lungfish…the list goes on and on.  I’ve seen them all in the stores and have always admired them, and even had the (brief) pleasure of owning an elephantnose.  I never thought of having a “theme” though.

Now, getting back to Darwin….If you are lucky enough to live in England (and I am OH SO jealous of those of you that do!), then there are Darwin celebrations APLENTY to attend this year!  Darwin200 is a national program of events honoring Darwin’s scientific ideas and their impact.  There are over 300 events over the course of 2009, all celebrating one of the world’s most creative and influential figures.  One featured event is the Darwin: Big Idea Big Exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. This exhibit will have Darwin’s mockingbirds on display for the FIRST TIME EVER.  You can read all about Darwin’s mockingbirds in my original post.

Today and tomorrow, UPenn  is hosting a free two-day colloquium to celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday.  They are also hosting the third annual Darwin Day and Evolution Teach -In on Sunday, Feb. 15 from 1-4pm, one of many Darwin Day celebrations worldwide.  UPenn’s Darwin Day is just one highlight of Philadelphia’s city-wide Year of Evolution events.

Next month, even my own Hofstra University will be hosting a conference called Darwin’s Reach.

My last note for the day is to tell you to check out the cool stamps commemorating Charles Darwin, courtesy of The Conservation Report.