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When a male Australian peacock spider wags its bottom at you, it's impossible to look away. In the throes of courtship, ...
28/02/2023

When a male Australian peacock spider wags its bottom at you, it's impossible to look away. In the throes of courtship, the spider's glittering badonkadonk shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow, diffracting intense iridescent light like a living Lisa Frank sticker.

Scientists calls the spectacle "nature's smallest rainbow" — in fact, peacock spider bodies measure at most 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) long, according to a new paper(opens in new tab) published online in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers also noted that the flashy display is the only known example in nature of males deploying all the colors of the rainbow to entice females during courtship. [In Photos: Meet 7 New Species of Peacock Spider]

The team of researchers from the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia think they know how two species of miniature peacock spiders (Maratus robinsoni and Maratus chrysomelas) get the dazzling job done. The trick, the researchers say, is in their scales.

"M. robinsoni and M. chrysomelas have two types of visually distinct abdominal scales: rainbow-iridescent scales and velvet black scales," the researchers wrote in their new paper. "These scales show strikingly different morphologies: The black scales are brush-like and randomly oriented, while the rainbow-iridescent scales are more orderly aligned, cling to the cuticle surface and have bulky 3D shapes."

A zoom-in view of the scaly abdomen of the Peacock spider Maratus robinsoni.

A zoom-in view of the scaly abdomen of the Peacock spider Maratus robinsoni. (Image credit: Dr. Jürgen Otto)
The researchers took a closer look at these bulky, iridescent scales using a variety of imaging techniques,to better understand the surfaces' unique rainbow-scattering properties. The team discovered that each iridescent scale contains a series of three-dimensional, parallel grates used to split different wavelengths of light at different angles.

"The unique grating configuration of each M. robinsoni scale disperses the visible spectrum over a small angle, such that at short distances, the entire visible spectrum is resolved, and that a static microscopic rainbow pattern distinctly emerges," the authors wrote.

These insights allowed the team to successfully fabricate their own miniature rainbow-scattering surfaces based on the same pattern seen on the spiders' scales. According to a statement from the University of Akron (which participated in the study), this spider-inspired knowledge could help push the boundaries of optics and color technology, particularly where fine-scale color resolution is required in small packages, as in instruments on space missions or wearable chemical-detection systems. Still, more work is required to match the spiders' exact capabilities.

"As an engineer, what I found fascinating about these spider structural colors is how these long-evolved, complex structures can still outperform human engineering," Radwanul Hasan Siddique, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech and a co-author of the new research, said in the statement. "I wonder how the spiders assemble these fancy structural patterns in the first place."

On Sept. 26, hobbyist nature photographer Oban van Shie was strolling through Bradgate park — an 800-year-old deer park ...
28/02/2023

On Sept. 26, hobbyist nature photographer Oban van Shie was strolling through Bradgate park — an 800-year-old deer park in Leicestershire, England — when he was captivated by a strange sight. Sitting among the park's resident herds of red and fallow deer, a snow-white buck rested its body in the tall, green grass.

"I had never seen a white deer before," van Shie told Live Science in an email. "I was intrigued given their rarity, although many others that have visited the park will have no doubt seen it."

Van Shie readied his camera and started snapping the buck from afar. It wasn't until he got home that he realized the true treasure he'd recovered. The glorious deer — eyes clenched, mouth cracked, tongue lolling — had been photographed mid-sneeze.

The next day, van Shie posted the buck pic on Reddit's "mildly interesting" forum, where it received nearly 90,000 upvotes. While most commenters were impressed or eager to draw comparisons to the TV show "BoJack Horseman," some questioned van Shie's interpretation of the photo.

"I have received some comments doubting whether the deer was sneezing but I was far away enough from the deer that it wouldn’t feel threatened, especially considering that the park is open to the public and there wasn’t enough noise for it to have been calling out," van Shie said. "Having done some research I am confident that it was in fact a sneeze."

1-in-a-million… or 8 million
So, how rare is this photo, really? It's hard to say for sure, but Live Science is going to bet its doe on "pretty bucking rare." (Sorry… they say puns are a workout for your brain.)

For starters, all-white deer — or "leucistic" deer — are the rarest of the four color-varieties of fallow deer. Unlike albinism, a condition that results from the absence of the pigment melanin, leucism is a recessive-gene condition that results from the loss of multiple types of pigment. While we can't say exactly how common the condition is in fallow deer, nature.org previously reported that leucism effects about 1 percent of white-tail deer worldwide.

And as for the sneezing? Not much research has been done on deer-sneeze frequency… or even human-sneeze frequency, for that matter. However, one small, snotty 2006 study found that a control group of nonallergic people sneezed an average of 1.1 times per person per day.

If we hypothesize that the average sneeze takes about 1 second from start to finish, and that fallow deer sneeze exactly as often as the human-control group in that 2006 study, then the odds van Shie photographed a single deer at the precise moment of its daily sneeze are about 1 in 80,000. If there is a 1 percent chance that that sneezing deer is a leucistic deer, the odds of taking this photograph drop to about 1 in 8,000,000. (Live Science does not endorse doing math or science in this way.)

In conclusion, van Shie's photo is probably a lot rarer than seeing a humpback whale sneeze a rainbow, but less rare than meeting an astronaut who just sneezed all over his or her space helmet. Regardless — congratulations to Oban for taking a remarkable photograph that, for one glorious moment, made the internet sigh a collective "aww… choo!"

Originally published on Live Science.

Brandon Specktor
Brandon Specktor
Editor
Brandon is the space/physics editor at Live Science. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, CBS.com, the Richard Dawkins Foundation website and other outlets. He holds a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the University of Arizona, with minors in journalism and media arts. He enjoys writing most about space, geoscience and the mysteries of the universe.

And their other special abilities …Genetics may also explain another one of the white shark's superpowers: the ability t...
25/02/2023

And their other special abilities …
Genetics may also explain another one of the white shark's superpowers: the ability to heal quickly. The team discovered several white shark genes that are known to play important roles in vertebrate wound-healing processes. And, similar to the stability genes, the wound-healing genes in the white shark were under the same kind of positive evolutionary selection pressures, meaning there's a tendency for the number of these beneficial traits to increase.

"We also found an enrichment of genes for both wound healing and genome stability genes in the white shark compared to other vertebrates," Stanhope said. In other words, the white shark genome has a higher proportion of these types of genes compared with what's seen in other vertebrate genomes.

While the team discovered a number of genes that may be responsible for many of the great white's super-shark abilities, there was one characteristic that wasn't clearly accounted for by the genome: the shark's sensitive sniffer.

Sharks are known for having a keen sense of smell, so the researchers expected to find numerous olfactory receptor (OR) genes, which are the genes responsible for the effective schnozes of other vertebrates. But the white shark genome contained exceptionally few of these genes. What the researchers found instead was another category of genes, called vomeronasal genes. These genes can also be involved in the perception of smell, but they aren't normally as abundant as OR genes, Stanhope said. In the white shark genome, however, there are more than dozen vomeronasal genes, so the researchers suggested that maybe those genes drive smell perception in the white shark.

"We're still at a point here where we're scratching the surface, but having this genome sequence gives us a starting point for addressing these questions in more detail," Kacev said. This research will undoubtedly help answer questions about other species, too, he added. "Understanding the genome of the white shark is not only important for the white shark, but it's a scaffold, or jumping-off point to understand related species."

Great white sharks are one of the world's most well-recognized marine creatures, but their populations are struggling as people continue to hunt them out of fear and greed. "People have these images of [white sharks] that are depicted in movies and TV shows as being these killing machines," Kacev said. Yet, the reality is that humans kill far more sharks than sharks kill humans.

"Humans kill many, many millions of sharks every year across the world for silly, fake medicine reasons; for shark fin soup and all sorts of reasons that are just tragic, really," Stanhope said. The researchers hope their study helps more people realize how special these ancient vertebrates are.

"I hope that people recognize the remarkable, biological adaptations of these animals and as a consequence, have a greater appreciation for them," Stanhope said.

For a multitude of reasons, great white sharks should be considered nature's ocean-dwelling superheroes — they're big an...
25/02/2023

For a multitude of reasons, great white sharks should be considered nature's ocean-dwelling superheroes — they're big and strong, live long lives, can heal their wounds remarkably fast, and it's even likely that they rarely get cancer. But how is it possible that these ancient giants have so many superhero-like traits? Scientists have now taken a major step toward answering that question by decoding the entire genome of the great white shark.

An international team of researchers led by scientists at the Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center and the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida sequenced the genome of the great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) and compared it with the genomes of several other vertebrate species. The team discovered a wealth of unusual genetic characteristics that might explain why white sharks are the superheroes (or supervillains, if you're a plump sea lion) of the sea. Their study was published online on Monday (Feb. 18) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Genetic stability is key
Sequencing the great white shark genome was no small task — the genome consisted of 4.63 billion base pairs (the nitrogen-containing molecules that make up the "rungs" of the DNA ladder), which is about 1.5 times the size of the human genome. "It's quite an impressive effort," said Dovi Kacev, a marine molecular ecologist and researcher at the National Marine Fisheries Services Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California, who was not involved with the study. [Image Gallery: Great White Sharks]

Nearly 60 percent of the white shark genome consisted of repeated genetic sequences, which is similar to what's seen in the human genome. What's special about the white shark genome was that many of those repeated regions are codes for a special group of genes known as LINEs.

"These [LINEs] make copies of themselves and then reinsert randomly in various locations in the genome, and in the process they make double-stranded breaks in the DNA that need to be repaired," said Michael Stanhope, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University in New York. Stanhope co-led the study with Nicholas Marra and Mahmood Shivji, conservation biologists at Nova Southeastern University.

Those frequent breaks in the DNA make the genome unstable, which typically leads to a higher risk of problem-causing genetic mutations that can eventually lead to cancer. But white sharks seem to have evolved a way to avoid such genomic instability.

The researchers found that the white shark genome contained a lot of genes responsible for maintaining genetic stability — things like DNA-repair genes and tumor-suppressing genes. And when the researchers compared the white shark's stability genes with analogous genes in other vertebrates, they found small changes in the gene sequence that suggest a specific pattern of evolutionary adaptation for these genes in white sharks.

"Think of it as fine-tuning the role of these genes in maintaining genome stability in the white shark," Stanhope said.

People have speculated that sharks have a much lower rate of cancer than other animals, but "there's not a lot of real data to say that with certainty," Kacev said. Nonetheless, the abundant presence of specially adapted stability genes could explain the potential cancer resistance.

"If you want to prevent cancer, you need to maintain the stability of your genome," Stanhope said, which means avoiding genetic mutations. An accumulation of excess mutations leads to cancer, but the shark genome seems specifically designed to prevent that. "These are things we would have to test in the lab, though, to really know," he said.

Stanhope also cautioned that while white sharks might have a genetic adaptation to prevent them from getting cancer, that does not mean that consuming shark products could prevent a human from getting cancer, despite what proponents of "alternative medicine" may claim.

If you’re the type of yoga enthusiast who loves to experiment, finding your perfect partner in a yoga mat could be a cum...
24/02/2023

If you’re the type of yoga enthusiast who loves to experiment, finding your perfect partner in a yoga mat could be a cumbersome chore.

For example, lightweight travel yoga mats might slip neatly into your vacation plans, but can they hold firm during humid hot yoga classes? And would you choose to plant down on a plushly padded yoga mat if you plan to seamlessly transition into crow pose during your practice? Probably not.

SPECIFICATIONS
Size: 180cm x 66cm

Thickness: 4mm

Weight: 2.5kg

Materials: Natural rubber and PU

Colors: Grey, green, black, blue, red

Yogi Bare Wild Paws Extreme Grip Yoga Mat at Amazon for $104.95
While there might not be a one-size-fits-all answer, Yogi Bare certainly comes close with the Natural Rubber Extreme Grip yoga mat. As the name Yogi Bare suggests, the brand strips it all back with its accessible ‘everybody, every body’ ethos, and range of eco-sensitive mats designed to be planet and person conscious.

We put this yoga mat to the test as a fitness teacher and a yoga student to see if it could hold its own in various settings. This super grippy, subtly (and beautifully) designed yoga mat ticked nearly every box for extreme grip, durability, and looks and it comes in various stripped-back color palettes. It easily secures itself as one of the best yoga mats you can buy, allowing you to focus on getting all the benefits of yoga.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY
The MSRP of the Yogi Bare Wild Paws Natural Rubber Extreme Grip yoga mat is £74.95 and is available for shipping directly from the Yogi Bare website. For orders outside of the UK, you can purchase the Yogi Bare range on Amazon for $104.95.

DESIGN
The beautifully designed mat offers an eco-friendly approach to extreme grip. You won’t find yourself sliding out of downdog or turning warrior one into the splits when you’re planted on this spacious mat and we found very little to critique in terms of design.

The natural rubber and PU (polyurethane synthetic leather) materials used to make this mat non-slip are fully recyclable and biodegradable. You can even send your old mats in to be repurposed as part of Yogi Bare’s recycling scheme – which will also bag you 15% off your next purchase. The closed-cell rubber is also resistant to bacteria.

Yogi Bare Wild Paws Natural Rubber Extreme Grip yoga mat laid out on floor for testing

(Image credit: Sam Hopes)
Ample cushioning coupled with superb grip is the dream for any yogi yet hard to achieve. Although the 4mm thickness suggests an overly plush design, this mat doesn’t feel too cushioned for inversion practices and advanced yogis should find it easy enough to find balance. That said, our joints still got enough support for poses (like dolphin pose) where most of the weight-bearing is on your shoulders or elbows; it’s a tough balance to strike, yet Yogi Bare has nailed it.

The 2.5kg weight results in a heavy-duty yoga mat that slaps onto the ground with a satisfyingly smack, ensuring it stays put. But it might not be suitable for those traveling to class on foot – we found it heavy to carry.

The Paws mat rolls out ready to go without any irritating corner curling found on cheaper or lightweight yoga mats, which is likely down to its weight. We tested the black model and marveled over the softly engraved Aztec print across the top and bottom of the mat, connected by an alignment line sliced through the center. This feature is perfect for those who need a gentle assist for positioning during poses; it’s understated, fuss-free, and stripped-back – just like the brand itself.

PERFORMANCE
We got to work testing the Paws mat in a hot yoga vinyasa class (taking full advantage of some hot yoga benefits) before winding down with a restorative Yin session. This mat is definitely designed by a yogi for fellow yogis, with performance carefully considered every step of the way.

If you’re paying a premium price for a yoga mat, premium performance should be a given. Although we appreciate disposable income feels like a distant memory right now, this yoga mat is seriously durable and versatile, and we believe it’s worth the relatively steep price tag. What’s more, each model is recyclable, and Yogi Bare offers discounts for all PU mat returns.

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