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Males in transition

8 March 2018 / wvanstrien

Squid male changes its mating tactic when growing larger

When becoming sexually active, male squids are little successful at first. Only later they perform better, increasing their chances to sire offspring. This development includes major changes, Lígia Apostólico and José Marian discovered.

In squid like Doryteuthis pleii, a species living off the coast of Brazil, small males are able to mate, but they have to do it at an inappropriate time and in a little successful way, as sneakers. Large males act much more effectively as real partners or consorts, as Lígia Apostólico and José Marian report.

Shooting mechanism

When squid mate, s male delivers sperm packages to a female. With a special arm, a male takes the packages, spermatophores, from the spermatophoric sac, where they are produced, and places them on the body of a female with a rapid movement. Then he is done, the sperm packages themselves will do the rest of the work. With a shooting mechanism (ejaculatory apparatus), a package turns inside out, and when evaginated, it attaches onto the female’s body and the sperm cells swim out.

A large male delivers its sperm packages neatly. He approaches a female that is about to release her eggs, places himself next to her with his head pointing in the same direction as hers, moves his special arm behind her head under the mantle that surrounds her body and places his spermatophores near the opening of the oviduct from which the eggs will be released in capsules. The sperm cells have immediate access to the eggs. The male guards the female and tries to keep rivals at bay with flickering colour patterns, because if another male also mates with her, his sperm will have to compete with that other male’s sperm.

Aggregate

A small man does not stand a chance against a large one, so he can only mate at a less exciting time, when no eggs are to be released soon. He doesn’t put his arm under the female’s mantle, but he assumes a head-to-head position and places his sperm packages under her beak, that is between the arms. When she releases the eggs, she holds the capsules for a while near the beak before depositing them on the substrate, and then a sneaker’s sperm cells have a chance – as far as the eggs are not fertilized already by a consort’s sperm.

The sperm cells of sneakers are adapted to the unfortunate site where they are placed and the wide time interval between mating and fertilization chances, and their spermatophores differ from those of consorts. Sneakers have smaller and thinner spermatophores; after evagination, they are short and club-like shaped. The sperm cells come out slowly and aggregate at the exit, having nothing to do there for the time being. The spermatophores of consorts, in contrast, are larger and after evagination, they are long and hook-like shaped. The sperm is quickly discharged in a powerful flow and sperm cells immediately diffuse, so the eggs that are released will pass through a cloud of them.

Now in Doryteuthis pleii, Apostólico and Marian found some males, intermediate in size between sneaker and consort (about 17 centimetres mantle length), that produce sneaker-like spermatophores as well as consort-like spermatophores, and often also an intermediate form. The sneaker-like packages are oldest and stay in the anterior part of the spermatophoric sac, the consort packages are youngest and reside in the posterior part, and the intermediate packages are to be found in between.

Fast switch

This indicates that a male starts as a sneaker and, if he exceeds a certain size limit, he will go on as a consort, implementing all changes that are required by the transition. Age estimates show that sneakers are indeed younger than consorts; the estimates are based on the size of small particles in the organs that enable the animals to control their position and balance; every day these particles, statoliths, increase a little in size. The switch from sneaker to consort must take place very fast, as only few males are found that are in transition.

So, during their lives, which lasts less than a year, the males go through a major development. They are small when at summer the mating season starts, but still they mature sexually, so that they can begin to reproduce – although for the time being only as little successful sneakers.

But perhaps not all males follow that path, Apostólico and Marian think. Males that were born early, in late summer or autumn, have much time before the mating season starts. They can grow to a large size before they become sexually active, and then they can be consorts from the start.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Alvaro E. Migotto (Cifonauta. Creative Commons CC BY-NC SA 3.0)

Sources:
Apostólico, L.H. & J.E.A.R. Marian, 2018. From sneaky to bully: reappraisal of male squid dimorphism indicates ontogenetic mating tactics and striking ejaculate transition. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 123: 603-614. Doi: 10.1093/biolinnean/bly006
Apostólico, L.H. & J.E.A.R. Marian, 2018. Dimorphic male squid show differential gonadal and ejaculate expenditure. Hydrobiologia 808: 5-22. Doi: 10.1007/s1075
Apostólico, L.H. & J.E.A.R. Marian, 2017. Dimorphic ejaculates and sperm release strategies associated with alternative mating behaviors in the squid. Journal of Morphology. 278: 1490-1505. Doi: 10.1002/jmor.20726

First aid

27 February 2018 / wvanstrien

Hunting ant workers rescue lightly injured nest-mates

Groups of the African ant Megaponera analis undertake hunting parties that are risky because of the fierce resistance of the termites that are attacked. Some ant workers get injured, but they are carried back to the nest and treated if possible, Erik Frank and colleagues report.

Workers of the large African ant Megaponera analis, also known as Matabele ant, face a heavy task. The ants prey on termites that they detect and overpower at their foraging sites. The ants approach the termites in a column formation consisting of hundreds of individuals. When the first ants reach a site, they wait until all participants have arrived and then they attack. The large individuals, the majors, break open the protective layer of earth that covers the termites’ foraging site; the small ants, the minors, then go inside to seize, kill, and pull out the termites.

Emergency signal

And that is a risky job, as Erik Frank and colleagues write. Termite soldiers with strong head and mandibles will fight fiercely. Some ants, almost all of them being minors, get injured; some ants are bitten off one or more legs or antennas, others are hindered by a termite that clings to them.

The ants limit losses by rescuing many injured nest-mates. After the fight, the ants gather before they jointly return to the nest, because an ant travelling alone easily falls prey to predators, for example spiders. Majors run over the place to pick up and carry dead termites and nest-mates that lag behind. If all ants have joined the column, they start walking. But ants that lost one or two legs and ants with a termite clinging to them are unable to keep up with the group, according to observations and experiments in the field and in the lab. By excreting certain substances they signal to others that they need help.

Majors that are not yet carrying anything will pick up these lightly-injured nest-mates, which tuck in their legs to facilitate transportation.

Ants who are severely injured and can no longer stand on their legs, don’t emit an emergency signal and they don’t let themselves to be picked up: they keep on twisting and turning. These unhappy ants are left behind, so that only victims that have a chance to recover are taken home. Almost all of them safely reach the nest, whereas without help many injured ants would not be able to complete the journey.

Care

As soon as the victims are brought into the nest, they are taken care of. A termites that clings to an ant mostly is pulled off successfully and the ant doesn’t suffer any long-term consequences of the adventure. An ant that lost a leg or antenna receives a thorough treatment: nest mates groom the open wound for a long time, cleaning it and probably also applying antimicrobial substances that they produce in special glands. Experiments show that an ant with an untreated open wound almost always dies, probably due to an infection. But when treated, it usually survives and it will learn to walk on four or five legs as fast as the others – and soon enough, it will join termite raiding parties again.

When heavily injured ants are brought in, which happens only infrequently, they will get no treatment, but are carried out of the nest instead. The ants only help injured nest mates that will survive.

The rescue behaviour in Megaponera analis is unique. It could develop in these ants because they conduct short and space-limited raids on a dangerous prey. There are many casualties, but the injuries are rarely fatal when the victims get help – and help is worth the effort. Without rescuing behaviour, the colony would be much smaller and fewer workers would be available to join a raiding party. To give an idea of the importance: the number of ants that are rescued on a day roughly equals the number that is born.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Megaponera analis: major carrying injured nest mate back to the nest. ETF89 (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0)

Videos of Megaponera ants that carry and treat injured nest mates

Sources:
Frank, E.T., M. Wehrhahn & K.E. Linsenmair, 2018. Wound treatment and selective help in a termite-hunting ant. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285: 20172457. Doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2457
Frank, E.T., T. Schmitt, T. Hovestadt, O. Mitesser, J. Stiegler, K.E. Linsenmair, 2017. Saving the injured: Rescue behavior in the termite-hunting ant Megaponera analis. Science Advances 3: e1602187. Doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1602187

Multi-coloured livestock

19 February 2018 / wvanstrien

Thanks to tending ants, mixed aphid colonies persist

The aphid milking ant Lasius japonicus ensures long-lasting coexistence of two colour morphs of the mugwort aphid, from which it harvests honeydew, Saori Watanabe and colleagues write. Without intervention, its favourite colour would be displaced.

Like many other ants, the Asian ant Lasius japonicus has a mutualistic relationship with aphids. The aphids suck sap from their host plant and excrete excess sugars, dissolved in a liquid: honeydew. The ant fights off their natural enemies and harvests (‘milks’) the sugary honeydew. One of its mutualistic partners is the Japanese mugwort aphid, Macrosiphoniella yomogicola, which lives on mugwort, a common plant of Europe and Asia. The protection by the ant is of crucial importance to the aphids; each colony will fall victim to its enemies if not protected.

Quality

The mugwort aphid occurs in different colours, with red and green as the most common types; large green specimens will turn black. The ant has a preference for the green morph, Saori Watanabe and colleagues show, because it excretes a higher quality honeydew. But as a consequence, the red morph, which retains a larger proportion of the sugars that it obtains from the host plant, can reproduce at a higher rate. All aphids are females that reproduce parthenogenetically, their young being clones of their mother. Red aphids produce red daughters, green aphids green daughters. The green morph runs a risk to be displaced by the red one, which multiplies faster.

But, as it turns out, the ants prevent this from happening. The researchers show that the red aphids indeed are able to multiply faster than the green ones. As a consequence, in laboratory experiments, the proportion of green aphids in a mixed colony decreased, but only if the researchers withheld attending ants. If, however, ants were allowed to join the aphids, the reproduction rate of the green morph increased, and the green aphids now reproduced as fast as the red aphids. Thus, in the presence of ants, the proportion between green and red morphs was stable.

It is not clear how the ants improve the reproduction rate of the green aphids, but it saves the green morph from local extinction.

Winter

In the field, almost all colonies are mixed. It is understandable that no pure red colonies are to be found. No ant would be interested in such colony, which produces only low quality honeydew, so it would be lost. But why don’t green colonies exist? Why wouldn’t the ants remove the red aphids from a mixed colony by eating them, so that only high quality honeydew would be produced?

Apparently, the presence of red aphids is advantageous for some reason. That has to do with the winter period, the researchers suggest. At the end of the season, the aphids give birth to daughters and sons, which mate and produce fertilized eggs that can overwinter if the host plant survives. However, after flowering in autumn, mugwort dies off. The researchers hypothesize that red aphids may suppress flowering, so that the plant persists. They are now going to test that idea.

Need each other

It would mean that the ant needs both aphid morphs, the green one for high quality honeydew, the red one to maintain the colony to the next season. It would also mean that the two types of aphids need each other. The red morph cannot do without the green one, which attracts attending ants, and the green morph cannot do without the red one, which prevents the host plant from dying off in winter.

But as dependent the aphid morphs may be on each other, they cannot live together for a long time without the ant interfering.

Willy van Strien

Photo: aphid tending ant Lasius japonicus and two colour morphs of Macrosiphoniella yomogicola. ©Ryota Kawauchiya

Bronnen:
Watanabe, S., J. Yoshimura & E. Hasegawa, 2018. Ants improve the reproduction of inferior morphs to maintain a polymorphism in symbiont aphids. Scientific Reports 8: 2313. Doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-20159-w
Watanabe, S., T. Murakami, J. Yoshimura & E. Hasegawa, 2016. Color polymorphism in an aphid is maintained by attending ants. Science Advances 2: e1600606. Doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1600606

Hidden beauty

12 February 2018 / wvanstrien

Chameleons are characterized by glowing bony tubercles

Many chameleon species are discovered to possess bony bumps that emit blue light through the skin. The glowing bumps enable the animals to recognize conspecifics and males probably show them off to females. We don’t perceive them in natural light, but the animals do, David Prötzel and colleagues think.

There are many ways in which an animal can make itself stand out, for instance with scent, colour, song, dance, decorative feathers or eyes on stalks. But here is a new one: chameleons appear to have small bumps on their skull that emit blue light, David Prötzel and colleagues report.

That may sound like horror, but there is nothing ghostly about it. Bone tissue is fluorescent: if it is hit by ultraviolet light, it is excited and will emit blue light. Chameleons use this natural phenomenon. The bumps, or tubercles, on their skull protrude through most of the skin and are covered only by a thin, transparent layer of cells, which is like a window. If ultraviolet passes that window and falls on the tubercles, they will glow blue.

Blue light

Normally we don’t see it, as the amount of ultraviolet (UV) in natural light is too small. Therefore, the phenomenon was only discovered when the researchers illuminated heads of chameleons with a UV lamp. But natural light does contain enough ultraviolet to make the glowing bumps visible to the chameleons themselves, the researchers suspect, as their eyes are more sensitive to blue light than ours. Many chameleon species in Madagascar and in Africa have such glowing bumps, especially species that inhabit humid forests, where the component of ambient UV light is relatively high; the emitted blue light contrasts well with the dark background.

Seduce

The pattern of bony bumps is species specific; most bumps are seen around and behind the eyes, but some species have such blue glowing tubercles not only on the skull, but on the entire body. Chameleons will recognize their conspecifics by the distinctive pattern of tubercles, which is a stable signal for these animals with their colour changing behaviour.

As in the nearly all species males posses on average more tubercles than females, the researchers assume that males display them to seduce a female.

So, chameleons possess glowing bone bumps as ornamentations used for recognition and display; it is possible that other lizards and snakes will be discovered to show fluorescencent bony bumps.

Willy van Strien

Photos:
Large: Calumma crypticum, male. Axel Strauβ (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
Small: head of Calumma crypticum, preserved specimen from the Zoologische Staatssammlung München (Germany), under ultraviolet light. Copied from David Prötzel et al. (Creative Commons, CC BY 4.0) and mirrored, so that head is oriented in the same direction as in the large picture

On this YouTube video, the researchers illuminate Furcifer pardalis and two Brookesia species to elicit the blue glow. And on this video you see the knobby skull of Calumma globifer.

Source:
Prötzel, D., M. Heß, M.D. Scherz, M. Schwager, A. vant Padje & F. Glaw, 2018. Widespread bone-based fluorescence in chameleons. Scientific Reports 8: 698. Doi: 10.1038 / s41598-017-19070-7

Family ties

6 February 2018 / wvanstrien

Caring treehopper mother recognizes her offspring

Females of the treehopper Alchisme grossa exhibit complex maternal care. If a mother has been separated from her offspring, she can localize and recognize them, as Daniel Torrico-Bazoberry and colleagues show.

The treehopper Alchisme grossa occurs in Central and South America, where it lives on a number of host plants, feeding on plant sap. The females lay their eggs on the host plants; they cut a slit in the midrib at the underside of a leaf, deposit the eggs in it and cover the egg mass with a frothy secretion.

They then will exhibit extensive brood care for a few months, Daniel Torrico-Bazoberry and colleagues write. The caring behaviour is unique for such a small creature. A female positions herself over the eggs and shields them with an enlarged pronotum (dorsal plate of the thorax) which bears two horns at the front side. If parasites or predators, such as spiders or predatory bugs, try to reach the eggs of a guarding mother, she will behave like a hero. She moves her body, fans her wings and kicks with strong legs to scare off the enemies. A batch of eggs is certainly lost without its mother; if it does not fall prey to enemies, it will desiccate.

Sap feeders

The offspring rely on maternal care until they have completed development. The treehoppers undergo an incomplete metamorphosis. The nymphs that hatch from the eggs resemble adults, but are smaller. They undergo five instar stages before they are fully grown. Just like adult treehoppers, nymphs are sap feeders. Shortly before they hatch, the mother cuts a number of small holes in the midrib near the batch of eggs, so that the tiny nymphs can easily puncture the vein to tap the sap flow. And she stays with them. If the nymphs feel threatened, they drum on the leaf with their legs and the mother will come.

Now Torrico-Bazoberry shows that a female can localize and recognize her offspring after having been separated from them. This is useful, because often several females start a family on a single host plant, each on her own leaf. Torrico-Bazoberry put ten to fifteen nymphs from a single family on a host plant in the lab and a female on 20 centimetre distance on the same plant; in some cases she was the mother, in others she was not.

Trample

Separated from their mother, the nymphs often started to trample; one or a few began, the rest joined in producing a wave-like synchronized behaviour. Upon this rocking behaviour, the nymphs gathered. If the female that was put on the plant was their mother, they aggregated more closely; apparently they detected her presence. The female responded to the rocking behaviour if she was the mother: each mother approached the nymphs. Some non-mothers also did, but not all of them.

Apparently, mother and nymphs discriminate kin from non-kin, probably on the basis of the composition of the chemical compounds of the outer skin layer, the researchers suggest. Chemical analyses revealed that this composition differs between individuals, differences between nymphs of a single family being much smaller than differences between nymphs of different families. Because the nymphs aggregate more closely in presence of their mother, it is easier for her to defend them and prevent them from desiccation.

Sometimes, the nymphs stay on their natal leaf until reaching maturity, but sometimes they disperse over the plant stem before that time. The mothers follow their young and together they form mixed aggregations with nymphs of other families and their mothers.

Willy van Strien

Photos: Treehopper Alchisme grossa. Andreas Kay (via Flickr. Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Large: female with eggs on midrib of leaf
Small, first: female
Small, second: older nymphs on plant stem

Sources:
Torrico-Bazoberry, D., L. Caceres-Sanchez, L. Flores-Prado, D. Aguilera-Olivares, F.E. Fontúrbel, H.M. Niemeyer & C.F. Pinto, 2018. Kin recognition in a subsocial treehopper (Hemiptera: Membracidae). Ecological Entomology, online Jan. 23. Doi: 10.1111/een.12506
Torrico-Bazoberry, D., C.F. Pinto, L. Flores-Prado, F.E. Fontúrbel & H.M. Niemeyer, 2016. Natural selection in the tropical treehopper Alchisme grossa (Hemiptera: Membracidae) on two sympatric host-plants. Arthropod-Plant Interactions 10: 229-235. Doi: 10.1007/s11829-016-9427-y
Torrico-Bazoberry, D., L. Caceres-Sanchez, D. Saavedra-Ulloa, L. Flores-Prado, H.M. Niemeyer & C.F. Pinto, 2014. Biology and ecology of Alchisme grossa in a cloud forest of the Bolivian Yungas. Journal of Insect Science 14: 196. Doi: 10.1093/jisesa/ieu031
Camacho, L., C. Keil & O. Dangles, 2014. Factors influencing egg parasitism in sub-social insects: insights from the treehopper Alchisme grossa (Hemiptera, Auchenorrhyncha, Membracidae). Ecological Entomology 39: 58–65. Doi: 10.1111/een.12060

Idea of lenses abandoned

30 January 2018 / wvanstrien

Brittle star senses light with network of photosensitive cells

A network of thousands of photosensitive cells allows brittle stars to detect dark places where they can hide from predators, Lauren Sumner-Rooney and colleagues write. No lenses are involved, as has been hypothesized.

The brittle star Ophiocoma wendtii, which lives on coral reefs in the Caribbean, has a strong aversion to light and during the day it retreats into dark crevices, where it is safe from predators. So, it perceives a difference between dark and light places, and this is possible thanks to an impressive network of thousands of light-sensitive cells across the entire body surface, Lauren Sumner-Rooney and colleagues discovered.

Microlenses

At the same time, they reject the existing idea that the dorsal side of the arms is covered with microlenses, as described by for instance Joanna Aizenberg and colleagues. These lenses were thought to focus incident light onto light-sensitive cells beneath; these cells would then transmit a signal to nerve fibres and from these signals neural centres would construct an image of the environment. In fact, the whole animal would act as one compound eye.

Those lenses don’t appear to exist.

Where did the idea come from? Brittle stars have an internal skeleton consisting of a spongy, porous form of calcite (calcium carbonate). The calcite plates of the arms extend into many bumps at the surface, which are hemispherical and transparent. They look just like tiny lenses – and so they were assumed to be tiny lenses.

But now, Sumner-Rooney succeeded in locating cells with light-sensitive pigments. She found many such cells, but not beneath the proposed microlenses, where the focal points should be. Instead, the light-sensitive cells occur at the surface in between the putative lenses, embedded in the skin; they are regularly arranged across the entire body. She also found bundles of nerve fibres that project towards these cells, and no nerve fibres that terminate beneath the ‘lenses’.

Safe place

In conclusion: the brittle star Ophiocoma wendtii possesses thousands of light-sensitive cells at the surface, but the transparent crystal bumps (the putative lenses) are not associated with them. The bumps are completely covered with skin, which is also in contradiction with an optical role. Also, no neural centres are found that could process the signals. With the extensive network of photosensitive cells the animals can distinguish light from dark very coarsely and find a safe place.

Willy van Strien

Photo: Ophiocoma wendtii. © Lauren Sumner-Rooney

Sources:
Sumner-Rooney, L., I.A. Rahman, J.D. Sigwart & E. Ullrich-Lüter, 2018. Whole-body photoreceptor networks are independent of ‘lenses’ in brittle stars. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285: 20172590. Doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2590
Aizenberg, J., A. Tkachenko, S. Weiner, L. Addadi & G. Hendler, 2001. Calcitic microlenses as part of the photoreceptor system in brittlestars. Nature 412: 819-822. Doi: 10.1038/35090573

Blacker than black

18 January 2018 / wvanstrien

Almost no light escapes from of bird of paradise feathers

Many birds of paradise have beautiful colours, the brightness of which partly is an illusion, created by dark feathers that surround coloured patches. These feathers are not normal black, but velvety super black, as Dakota McCoy and colleagues show.

Birds of paradise, which mainly occur in New Guinea, deserve their name. The bird family includes many species in which the males have brilliant colours, wear exuberant plumage ornaments and perform exciting dances. With their spectacular appearance, they try to seduce females.

Black feathers play an important role in their courtship, Dakota McCoy and colleagues write. The black feathers that these birds display are not normal black, but super black: they absorb almost all light – more than 99.5 percent – that falls on it. Against this velvety super black background, blue and yellow colours seem brighter than they really are; it looks as if the colours were luminescent. Such super black material is extremely rare in nature.

Ragged, curled edges

The researchers show that the deep black appearance is brought about by the special surface structure of the smallest components of the feathers. A feather consists of a shaft on which barbs are implanted, and the barbs are densely packed with barbules. Normally, these barbules are smooth and just bear hooks that interlock to make the feather stiff. The black feathers of crows and ravens have such normal barbules, as do the black feathers of birds of paradise that play no role in their show, such as back feathers.

But the barbules of super black feathers are highly modified. They have very ragged, curled edges with which deep, curved cavities in between, and this structure retains almost all light that falls on it. A normal black surface absorbs 95 to 97 percent of the incident light and reflects the remaining 3 to 5 percent. But in the micro jungle of spikes and cavities of super-black feathers, the light hits obstacles that scatter it again and again, and each time part of the light is transmitted into the material, where it is absorbed. Ultimately, less than half a percent of the incident light is reflected, so the feathers look super black for someone who faces the male – for instance a choosy female.

Photo: Victoria’s riflebid, Ptiloris victoriae, courting male. Francesco Veronesi (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0)

Watch paradise birds in a video of BBC Earth, and another one of BBC Earth, and one of Cornell University featuring the magnificent riflebird.

Source:
McCoy, D.E., T. Feo, T.A. Harvey & R.O. Prum, 2018. Structural absorption by barbule microstructures of super black bird of paradise feathers. Nature Communications 9:1. Doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-02088-w

Fireproof

10 January 2018 / wvanstrien

‘Heart of Flame’ bromelia protects spider against flames

In case of a fire event on the Brazilian cerrado, many animals are killed. But the spider Psecas chapoda, which lives on a bromeliad plant, has a chance to survive, Paula de Omena and colleagues write.

The terrestrial bromeliad plant Bromelia balansae and the spider Psecas chapoda are strongly associated with each other. The spider lives almost exclusively on this prickly plant, in the centre of which it is protected against its predators. On the leaves, adult spiders hunt, court and mate, females lay their eggs, and spiderlings grow up. Up to twenty spiders may inhabit one plant. Conversely, although the plant can do without Psecas chapoda, it benefits when it is inhabited by spiders, because it extracts nutrients from their faeces; the predatory spiders also protect the plant against herbivorous critters.

Fires

Now, Paula de Omena and colleagues discovered that this nice mutualism offers an additional benefit to the spider: it can survive a fire on the plant, because the leaves provide shelter and protection from the heat of the flames. Strikingly, the plant is known as ‘Heart of Flame’, as the centre turns bright red when it is about to bloom.

The bromeliads and spiders live in South America, including the Brazilian cerrado: a savanna-like area with trees and shrubs. In the dry period, which lasts about half a year, natural fires frequently rage. The researchers assumed that in the centre of the plants the spiders are sheltered from the heat of flames, and to find out whether they were right, they counted plants and spiders in a small and isolated cerrado fragment before and after a natural fire event.

Recovery

The day after the fire, the number of spiders had strongly decreased, and also the percentage of bromeliads occupied by spiders was low. But in the centre of a number of plants with intact leaf structures, the researchers found spiders that had survived the fire, and thanks to their survival, the spider population recovered within five months.

Without this possibility to hide, far fewer spiders would survive a fire event and it would take much longer for the population to return to pre-fire levels. A new fire would probably break out before the population fully recovered – so that Psecas chapoda would run a risk to disappear completely. Thanks to the plants, this does not happen.

Willy van Strien

Photos
Large: ‘Heart of Flame’, Bromelia balansae. João Medeiros (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY 2.0)
Small: jumping spider Psecas chapoda, female, on Bromelia balansae. ©Gustavo Q. Romero

Sources:
De Omena, P.M., M.F. Kersch-Beckr, P.A.P. Antiquera, T.N. Bernabé, S. Benavides-Gordillo, F. C. Recalde, C. Vieira, G.H. Migliorini & G.Q. Romero, 2017. Bromeliads provide shelter against fire to mutualistic spiders in a fire-prone landscape. Ecological Entomology, online December 20. Doi: 10.1111/een.12497
Romero, G.Q., P. Mazzafera, J. Vasconcellos-Neto & P.C.O. Trivelin, 2006. Bromeliad-living spiders improve host plant nutrition and growth. Ecology 87: 803-808. Doi: 10.1890/0012-9658(2006)87[803:BSIHPN]2.0.CO;2

Alternative imaging

13 December 2017 / wvanstrien

Scallops see thanks to hundreds of tiny mirrors

If a potential predator is in sight, a scallop moves away. It sees the danger with special eyes, which don’t use a lens for image formation, but a concave mirror instead. Benjamin Palmer and colleagues visualized the scallops’ eyes.

With many bright blue eyes along the edge of their mantles, scallops scan their environment continuously. The eyes are peculiar. They do not use a lens to form an image of the outside world, like almost all other eyes do (including ours), but a concave mirror; the eyes are similar to reflecting telescopes. As a second oddness, each eye contains not one retina, but two.

Using various microscopic imaging techniques, Benjamin Palmer and colleagues took a detailed look at the eyes of the great scallop, Pecten maximus, an inhabitant of the Atlantic Ocean which is appreciated in the kitchen. It has about two hundred eyes, each about one millimetre in size.

Tiles

At the back, the eyes appear to be ’tiled’ with a mosaic of thin, square guanine plates, that are neatly placed next to each other. There are twenty to thirty layers of tiles, and the system reflects almost all incoming light: it is a highly reflective mirror. The fact that the crystals are thin square plates is prove that the scallops have strong control over the crystallisation process, because guanine crystals would take a different form when growing in the lab.

Guanine is also known as the nucleobase G, one of the four letters of the genetic material, the DNA; but it has quite a different application here.

Danger

The mirror is curved, it is concave, so that reflected light is focused in front of it. It has no regular shape, but is flattened in the middle. As a result, light that falls in obliquely, that is, from the periphery of the field of view, is focused slightly closer to the mirror than the light falling in perpendicular, from the centre of the field of view. Each eye has two retinas in front of the mirror which absorb the reflected and focused light: closest to the mirror a retina on which an image is formed of the peripheral field of view, in front of it a retina for the central field of view (incoming light has to pass through the retinas before it hits the mirror).

On the outside of the retinas, the eyes also have a lens, but this lens is weakly refracting and it hardly contributes to the imaging.

Thanks to the many eyes, a scallop can see if a predator is approaching. In case of danger, it makes sure to get away: scallops can move by opening and closing their valves quickly. Though it is not quite like swimming, they can escape if they have to.

Willy van Strien

Photos:
Large: eyes of a scallop. Matthew Krummins (Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC BY 2.0)
Small: great scallop. ©Ceri Jones (Haven Diving Services)

Watch a scallop moving in its habitat

Source:
Palmer, B.A., G.J. Taylor, V. Brumfeld, D. Gur, M. Shemesh, N. Elad, A. Osherov, D. Oron, S. Weiner & L. Addadi, 2017. The image-forming mirror in the eye of the scallop. Science 358: 1172-1175. Doi: 10.1126/science.aam9506

Disarmed, but not impotent

6 December 2017 / wvanstrien

Disabled cactus bug produces more sperm

With their enlarged hind legs, male cactus bugs fight with each other to defend a territory or to achieve access to a female. What will become of a male that lost one of those weapons, Paul Joseph and colleagues wondered.

The leaf-footed cactus bug Narnia femorata can drop (autotomize) a leg when this leg is grasped by a predator, entrapped or damaged. Thanks to such self-amputation the bug survives the incident, but from now on it has only five legs left to stand on and to walk on; a leg that is lost is not regenerated. For a male, it is extra annoying if it has to sacrifice one of its two hind legs, because it uses them to fight with other males for the possession of a territory or the access to a female. However, if it loses a hind leg before it is fully grown, it can compensate for it, write Paul Joseph and colleagues.

In the southwest of the United States, Mexico and parts of Central America, the bugs live on cacti, for instance on the prickly pear cactus Opuntia mesacantha. They feed on the plants, preferably on the ripe fruits, and females lay their eggs on them, selecting parts with ripe fruits.

Fierce fight

Males try to defend a territory on a cactus. If an intruder shows up, both males position themselves rear to rear to display, kick and wrestle with their hind legs until one of them gives up. In the presence of a female – when there is a lot at stake – the fight is fiercer, and the male with the largest hind legs will be the winner. The hind legs of males are real weapons, they are enlarged and serrated.

A male that loses one of its hind legs is in problems. It cannot defeat an intact rival and the chance that it will mate a female has decreased considerably. But it may compensate for its disability, Joseph hypothesized, by growing larger testes. This would be possible if the leg is lost before the male is full-grown; bugs don’t go through a complete metamorphosis with a pupal stage, but they grow gradually.

In order to find out whether juvenile males grow larger testes after losing a hind leg, Joseph experimentally induced juvenile bugs to drop a leg by grasping the leg with a pair of forceps and tickling with a small paintbrush, mimicking what can happen in the wild. As expected, after such treatment the testes grew extra large, while everything else developed as it normally does.

More sperm

And is it useful to have enlarged testes? The researchers paired disabled and untreated males each with a female for 24 hours. Afterwards, they counted how many eggs the females laid and how many of them hatched, meaning that they had been fertilized. They noticed that most females produced about twenty eggs, independent of whether or not they had mated. Clutches of females that had been paired with an untreated male were more likely to contain eggs that hatched than clutches of females with a disabled partner. Apparently, males that dropped a hind leg less often succeeded in mating.

But if disarmed males managed to mate, they fertilized a larger proportion of the eggs. Their enlarged testes produced more sperm, and so they sired more offspring than intact males.

In conclusion, males can compensate for the loss of a weapon by investing more in testes growth – but only if they lose it when still young. Otherwise, it is just bad luck.

Willy van Strien

Photos
Large: leaf-footed cactus bug Narnia femorata; male that dropped a hind leg. ©Christine Miller
Small: leaf-footed cactus bug male on cactus fruit. Cotinis (via Flickr; Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Sources:
Joseph, P.N., Z. Emberts, D.A. Sasson & C.W. Miller, 2017. Males that drop a sexually selected weapon grow larger testes. Evolution, 20 november online. Doi: 10.1111/evo.13387
Procter, D.S., A.J. Moore & C.W. Miller, 2012. The form of sexual selection arising from male-male competition depends on the presence of females in the social environment. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 25: 803–812. Doi: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02485.x

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