Wing of the Week

OK, so this is more like a biweekly wing. In honor of the visit by Auburn University ornithologist Dr. Geoff Hill to the Cincinnati Museum Center this week on Feb. 28 to participate in the museum's Charles and Ralph Dury Lecture Series let's take a look at the wing of a Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). Putative Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) sightings are often in actuality this common species of the woodpecker family. The difference is that on both the topside (top photo) and the bottom (bottom photo) of the Pileated Woodpecker wing there is no white on the trailing edge. Knowing what field marks to look for is absolutely critical for those looking to tick off an Ivory-billed Woodpecker from their life lists!

For those in the Cincinnati area I encourage you to attend the lecture by Dr. Geoff Hill on Feb. 28 at 7:30 at Cincinnati Museum Center to learn more about the hunt for the elusive Ivory-billed Woodpecker. Also, check out Dr. Hill's new book, 'Ivorybill Hunters: Search for Proof in a Flooded Wilderness', on the Ivory-bill Woodpecker search.
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Big Mouth!

Some very special spots on the globe reveal important clues to the history of life on Earth. Madagascar is one of these very special places. The continents are on plates that float on the more viscous lower layers of the Earth. Land masses split apart and collide. Often our geographic boundaries of land masses that are not in accord with their geologic boundaries. For example, what we define as the combined continent of Eurasia is actually comprised of land masses on different geologic plates. India is on a different plate than the rest of Asia and has been colliding with Asia for approximately the past 50 million years. This collision between the India Plate and the Eurasian Plate is pushing up the Himalayas. Prior to it's collision with Eurasia India was part of a single landmass that included Madagascar and the Seychelles.

The geological history of these places is not just reflected in the rocks but also in their plants and animals. For example, a recently discovered species of a palm, Tahina spectabilis, found in Madagascar has it's closest relatives in India. After the combined landmass of India, the Seychelles and Madagascar split from Africa it drifted into what is today Antarctica, which at the time was also connected to South America. This connection via Antarctica explains some odd biogeographic patterns. The large constricting snakes encompass two groups distinguished by their mode of reproduction. Boas are primarily confined to the Americas and give live birth while the pythons, found in Africa and Asia, lay eggs. Most boas are found in the Americas, but, two species of boa, very similar to the boas of Central and South America, are found in Madagascar. The distribution of the boas provides another clue to Madagascar's geological history.

Now, a new find by Susan Evans of University College London and her colleagues provides yet more clues to Madagascar's complex history. The anuran (frogs and toads) sub-family Ceratophrynae contains large predatory frogs found in tropical and subtropical forests in South America. These frogs are large, fat blobs with huge mouths. Often seen in the pet trade they are popularly known as "pac-man frogs" due to their characteristic "all-mouth" morphology (see photo of juvenile Ceratophrys ornata right). Ceratophryine frogs are sit-and-wait predators who sit on the forest floor camouflaged int he leaf litter waiting for large insects, or even small mammals to walk by. It seems that like the Boas the Ceratophryine frogs have, or once had, cousins from Madagascar.

Evan's team discovered a new species of Ceratophryine frog from Madagascar. The new species is described from fossil material from the Mahajanga Basin in northwestern Madagascar. Extant Ceratophryine frogs are very large frogs, but, this new species dwarfs the existing Neotropical species and indeed at 40 cm long and 20 cm wide is larger than the largest known extant frog, the Goliath Frog (Conrauna goliath). Due to it's broad bony head and it's imposing size and likely predatory habits, like those of other Ceratophryines, the researchers named this new species Beelzebufo ampinga, or "shielded devil frog". This imposing fossil dates to the late Cretaceous about 65-70 million years ago.

Beelzebufo ampinga's relationship to the South American Ceratophyines and it's place in Madagascar's history at the late Cretaceous presents a bit of a puzzle. The present day islands of Madagascar, the Seychelles and the sub-continent of India split from Africa as one land mass approximately 160 million years ago and began to divide into their present day land areas about 88 million years ago. Shortly, geologically speaking, after the split from Africa the Madagascar-Seychelles-India land mass was in contact with the Antarctic land mass, which was also connected with both South America and Australia, but, the timing and duration of this contact is debated. The common ancestor of the modern South American Ceratophryines and this new Malagasy Ceratophryine must have inhabited this ancient interconnected Anatarctic-South American-Australian-Indian-Malagasy continent.

However, evidence from genetics provides another puzzle. The genetic data suggest that the modern Ceratophryine group diverged from a common ancestor well after the late Cretaceous. This would mean that Beelzebufo ampinga arose well before the appearance of the Ceratophyrines and isn't a Ceratophryine at all but rather evolved it's "pac-man-like" characteristics independently of the modern Ceratophryine frogs. However, Evans provides some compelling evidence that Beelzebufo ampinga is indeed a member of the Ceratophryine clan which means that the genetic data is misleading or that the history of these southern land masses is not as expected with much later and perhaps longer connections between Madagascar, Antarctica and South America. Beelzebufo ampinga is yet another dramatic example of the complex history of the Earth and surely will help us better understand the drifting continents and the distribution and evolution of plants and animals.

Read more about this finding at the Nature News website and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Happy Darwin Day!

Today is the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. Born on this date in 1809 (coincidentally the same day as Abraham Lincoln) Darwin eventually would revolutionize biology. The idea that life shares a common ancestry and changes over time preceded Darwin, but, until Darwin's theory of natural selection, no one had yet posed a viable mechanism by which evolutionary change occurs. Darwin's deceptively simple idea was based on a few very basic premises; populations vary, their variations can be passed from parent to offspring, and some variants leave more progeny than others. Some individuals leave more progeny than others owing specifically to how their characteristics perform in a given environment relative to other traits in the population. This is natural selection, and it remains a central idea in modern biology explaining everything from the beaks of finches to the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Darwin's monumental contribution to the life sciences was recognized by the scientific community almost immediately. So important were Darwin's ideas to the advancement of science that he was buried in Westminster Abby near that other of Britain's fathers of modern science, Issac Newton. Placing Darwin's remains in Westminster alongside Newton was a recognition that Darwin's theory of evolutionary change was as important as an accomplishment as Newton's ideas on gravity and optics. Today evolution remains the central organizing principle in the life sciences, a testament to Charles Darwin's scientific genius.

Next year will be the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. Next year look forward to exhibits and other activities at Cincinnati Museum Center, and scientific institutions and museums around the globe, celebrating Darwin's scientific accomplishments and the central role of evolution in helping us explain the natural world.

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Wing of the week

OK, it's been a little more than a week but here's the latest wing of the week. This time it's another Philippine species but a less brightly colored bird, the Luzon Scops Owl (Otus longicornis). There are many species of Scops Owls in East and Southeast Asia and this is one of the endemic Otus species from the Philippines. It's not as flashy as the kingfisher wing from last week but I still think the patterned brown wings of owls are absolutely beautiful.

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New species of sengi

What is a sengi? Sengis are also known as elephant shrews. Found exclusively in Africa, elephant shrews are small, terrestrial mammals found in grasslands and forests. The sengi's diet consists of insects and other terrestrial invertebrates. Sengis have long thin legs, long tails and a long flexible snout that they use to sniff out their prey. Just as the Flying Lemur's name has proven unexpectedly appropriate as new DNA evidence has shown they are the closest cousins to the primates, so too is the sengi's other common name. Recent comparative genetic studies suggest that sengis are members of a very old mammalian superorder, the Afrotheria. As the name suggests the Afrotheria originated in Africa and the group consists of a strange assemblage of mammalian orders including aardvarks, golden moles, sea cows and manatees, hyraxes, tenrecs, elephants and elephant shrews. Just as the Flying Lemur neither truly flies nor is truly a lemur, elephant shrews are neither elephants or shrews. However, their unexpected place in the Afrotheria along with the elephants does give some truth to the sengi's other common name, the elephant shrew.

Sengis belong to the order Macroscelidea and there are 15 recognized species, OK, make that 16. The Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania are a major center of biodiversity. Compared to other animal groups like insects or marine invertebrates there are few recent cases of terrestrial vertebrates new to science. However, the Udzungwa Mountains have seen an explosion of new species. Several amphibians, reptiles, a partridge, a shrew and even a new species of monkey have been described from the Udzungwa Mountains in recent years. Add to that list a new species of sengi. Francesco Rovero of the Trento Museum of Natural Science in Trento, Italy and colleagues describe a large forest sengi from the Udzungwa Mountains. This new snegi is called the Grey-faced Sengi (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis) and at about 1.5 lbs (710 g) it is the largest sengi species. The Grey-faced Sengi was found in moist montane forests and bamboo thickets where they forage for insects and build nests of loose leaves at the base of trees. This new member of the sengi clan shows that the Udzungwa Mountains are an evolutionary hotspot deserving of the highest conservation priority.

To see a photo of this new species taken with a laser triggered camera-trap see Discovery News and read the original paper in the Journal of Zoology.

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