The Earth Story

Lyme disease at least 15 million years old

In large swathes of the world it pays to be attentive to the depredations of blood sucking ticks, that communicate a variety of nasty diseases. Lyme disease is one of them, first discovered (though not suffered) some forty years back. Recent discoveries of the relevant bacterial genus (Borrelia) in ticks fossilised in amber from the Dominican Republic (see http://tinyurl.com/lompw53) show that it were around long before ever bothering us.

Other research by the same team (who specialise in tracing disease through the fossil record) also found the bacteria that cause spotted fever in ticks preserved in 100 million year old Burma amber. Bacteria do not fossilise easily, having no convenient hard parts, and amber is often their best preservative.

Ticks are a greater disease vector than mozzies in the temperate belts of the world, and their diseases are often hard to diagnose. Lyme affects joints, heart and central nervous system, and can be treated if recognised early, but its symptoms are fairly non specific, and it is often misdiagnosed. It is slowly increasing its range with global warming as the ticks spread into new areas.

It has been with mammals since before the hominid line split off, and was found in Otzi the iceman, the 5,000 year old mummy that emerged in the 90's from a glacier in the Alps.

Loz

Image credit: George Poinar, Jr.

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-amber-discovery-lyme-disease-older.html http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2014/may/amber-discovery-indicates-lyme-disease-older-human-race http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/science-lyme-disease-bacteria-amber-01956.html

Ticks in amber that fed on dino blood

The 99 million year old fossilised tree sap from Burma has brought us several significant finds of late including a baby bird (see http://bit.ly/2C8DsW1) and some early avian wings (see http://bit.ly/2hpvCQK). Now some preserved remnants from a feathered dinosaur nest has revealed several parasitic ticks (a type of arachnid, related so spiders and scorpions) alongside a dinosaur feather (one clinging to it for dear life) and nest dwelling beetles, and several other fossilised ticks have appeared in material from the same location. The feather clinger was seemingly filled with dinosaur blood and swollen to 8 times its normal size after its final and fatal feast (named by the team Deinocroton draculi aka Dracula’s terrible tick). For those fans of Jurassic Park amongst our readers, I'll just remind you of the unfortunate scientific fact that DNA simply does not survive that long except in the tiniest and hard to read dribs and drabs (at the very best, and even these prove highly contentious).

The finds prove that this way of making one' living by sucking the blood of larger creatures is at least 100 million years old, and that dinosaurs were plagued by some of the same problematic creatures as we humans are. It also demonstrates the versatility of life, since the ticks survived the mass extinction 65 million years ago but carry on sucking the blood of the lineages which made it through that bad day when the asteroid hit. Whether they carried diseases back then as they do now (Lyme disease being the most obvious) is improvable, but Occam's razor suggests that they did. The ticks were extinct members of known families and must have evolved their lifestyle well before their entombment. Finds like this physically linking parasite and host are incredibly rare in the fossil record. Ticks spend most of their time riding on the host, and so are even rarer since they don't get the opportunity to be fossilised very often.

The 4 pieces of amber were all loaned by private collectors who purchased them in Burma and after noticing their unusual inclusions chose to share them with researchers (something that has always been seen as best practice in the collecting world, after all these people are usually as fanatical about the objects of study as the scientists, and many of them are similarly knowledgeable), going to show that private collection and the wealth that it mobilises do have a useful part to play in scientific research in these days of tight museum and research funding, and that this type of practice should be encouraged by the scientific community rather than met with a 'this belongs in a museum' (which probably can't afford it) type of reaction.

Loz

Image credit: Nature Communications; Penalver et al

http://bit.ly/2C8WawE http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42327784 http://bit.ly/2AA83P2 Original paper, open access: http://go.nature.com/2AyIb6o

Sorry Timon, mongeese are a warthog’s best friend.

Well this looks like a grisly scene, doesn't it? Mongeese are known for their bloodthirsty nature, regularly feasting on insects, lizards, birds, rodents, even snakes in certain Indian species. Have they grown a bit overconfident and tried to take on a warthog? And won?!

No, that isn't what’s happening here. In actual fact, Ugandan warthogs have enlisted these accommodating mongeese as their own personal groomers. When parasitic ticks are proving particularly bothersome, the warthogs will actively seek out a band of mongeese, plop down in front of them with legs held high, and allow them to climb aboard and help themselves to a meal. You can see it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXW_1i1pA0w

The mongoose-warthog relationship is a type of symbiotic mutualism - where two cohabiting animal species both benefit from each other’s presence. Similar cleaning partnerships are commonly seen between birds and large herbivores, and cleaner wrasse and large fish. This, however, seems to be the first instance of a partnership between two separate mammalian species. It does make you wonder how many other animal relationships exist beneath our notice…

(In case you were wondering, the official plural form of ‘mongoose’ is ‘mongooses’, though ‘mongeese’ is acceptable too).

VP

Reference: Suiform Surroundings - page 31 (http://bit.ly/22j31yb) Image credit: Andrew Plumptre (http://bit.ly/22j31yb)

The Ingenious Mr Hooke - Micrographia Many of the greatest discoveries in science have been brought about by the creation of an ability to see what was previously unseen. The most exciting of these inventions was the microscope because it could be used by almost anyone.  It brought into focus a world of such amazing complexity and beauty in the most commonplace things and changed forever our admiration for the intricacies of Nature. It first made people gaze in wonder at the very small as well as the very large. One person deserves the credit for launching this voyage of discovery into this microworld and for illustrating it with skill and precision. Robert Hooke began his scientific career while still a student at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1653, where he met and worked for pioneering chemist Robert Boyle. Over the next several years, amongst his many interests, he was active in developing powerful new compound microscopes, and used his beautifully crafted instrument to create a remarkable atlas of the microscopic natural world.  It was published in 1665 for the Royal Society under the title 'Micrographia' and contained a series of sixty studies, fifty-eight microscopic and two telescopic pictures of the moon and stars. The majority of Hooke's microscopic studies were of living things: a louse, a fly's compound eye, sponges, herbs, a bee's sting, fish scales, snail's teeth, insects, stinging nettles, and spiders. These pictures inspired scientists to embark upon serious, systematic study of the detailed structure and function of insects and other small-scale intricacies of nature because they revealed such extraordinary detailed anatomy. This would also lead to the proposal of Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century, that natural fine-tuned complexity was the result of a sequence of successive approximations steered by natural selection.  Observations and discoveries that were made with microscopes like these also pointed the way to germ theory, which states that many diseases are caused by the presence and actions of specific microorganisms. The theory radically changed the practice of medicine and helped save literally millions of lives, if not more. We can view this extraordinary interactive 'fold out' book of this remarkable mans illustrations online. It is well worth a look.  Ingenious indeed. ~JM Image Credit: www.history-of-the-microscope.org Online Interactive: http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/hooke/hooke.html  Further reading: http://www.history-of-the-microscope.org/robert-hooke-microscope-history-micrographia.php

Lyme disease at least 15 million years old In large swathes of the world it pays to be attentive to the depredations of blood sucking ticks, that communicate a variety of nasty diseases. Lyme disease is one of them, first discovered (though not suffered) some forty years back. Recent discoveries of the relevant bacterial genus (Borrelia) in ticks fossilised in amber from the Dominican Republic (seehttp://tinyurl.com/lompw53) show that it were around long before ever bothering us. Other research by the same team (who specialise in tracing disease through the fossil record) also found the bacteria that cause spotted fever in ticks preserved in 100 million year old Burma amber. Bacteria do not fossilise easily, having no convenient hard parts, and amber is often their best preservative. Ticks are a greater disease vector than mozzies in the temperate belts of the world, and their diseases are often hard to diagnose. Lyme affects joints, heart and central nervous system, and can be treated if recognised early, but its symptoms are fairly non specific, and it is often misdiagnosed. It is slowly increasing its range with global warming as the ticks spread into new areas. It has been with mammals since before the hominid line split off, and was found in Otzi the iceman, the 5,000 year old mummy that emerged in the 90's from a glacier in the Alps. Loz Image credit: George Poinar, Jr. http://phys.org/news/2014-05-amber-discovery-lyme-disease-older.html http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2014/may/amber-discovery-indicates-lyme-disease-older-human-race http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/science-lyme-disease-bacteria-amber-01956.html