genetics

Corals Saving Corals | Earth Wise

December 29, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis, has found that under the right circumstances, disease-resistant corals can rescue corals that are more vulnerable to disease.

The researchers monitored a disease outbreak at a coral nursery in the Cayman Islands. They tracked the presence of disease in 650 coral fragments in various arrangements over a period of five months. They found that some corals are more resistant to disease just by being around other corals that are particularly resistant. In general, when there are only corals of the same genetic makeup, they are more vulnerable to disease than corals that grow among a mixture of genotypes. But beyond that, some vulnerable corals become more resistant to disease just by being around other corals that are particularly resistant. Proximity to the resistant genotypes helped to protect the susceptible corals from the effects of disease.

These findings provide new evidence that genetic diversity can help reduce disease transmission among corals and furthermore, it is important to consider how corals are arranged in coral nurseries or in reef restoration projects.

The ability of resistant coral to help protect vulnerable individuals appears to be similar to how vaccinations work among humans. Vaccinated individuals resist a disease, which effectively erects a barrier that weakens a disease’s ability to move through a population.

The researchers hope that the findings of this study will be integrated into coral nursery and reef restoration projects. By intentionally arranging corals with mixtures of genotypes, it will help rebuild coral resilience and help those corals that are vulnerable to disease to thrive.

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Corals Saving Corals

Photo, posted December 30, 2014, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Examining The Decline Of Honey Bees | Earth Wise

December 28, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

For many years, scientists have been sounding the alarm on the global struggle of pollinators. Many of the invertebrate pollinator species, such as bees and butterflies, are facing extinction. And since 75% of the world’s food crops depend on pollination to some extent, the decline of pollinators poses a major threat to global food security.

Honey bees are among the struggling pollinators. Over the past 14 years, bee colonies have been disappearing at an alarming rate in what is known as the “colony collapse disorder.”

In an effort to understand why, scientists have often focused their research on environmental stressors, such as parasites, pesticides, and disease. But according to new research by entomologists from the University of Maryland, honey bee life spans are simply 50% shorter today than they were 50 years ago. In the study, which was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers found that honey bees kept in a controlled, laboratory environment lived half as long as honey bees did in the 1970s. This is the first study to show that genetics – as opposed to environmental stressors – may be influencing the broader trends seen in the beekeeping industry.

When the researchers modeled the effect of their findings on a beekeeping operation, they found that the resulting loss rates were about 33%. This is similar to the average overwinter and annual loss rates reported by beekeepers during the past 14 years.

The next step is for researchers to compare trends in honey bee life spans across the U.S. and in other countries to see if there are differences in bee longevity.

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Honey Bee Lifespans are 50% Shorter Today Than They Were 50 Years Ago

Helping Agriculture’s Helpful Honey Bees

Photo, posted June 23, 2007, courtesy of Susan E. Ellis via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Animals And Social Distancing | Earth Wise

June 16, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the spread of COVID-19 continues throughout the U.S. and around the world, health officials continue to ask people to keep physical space between themselves and others outside their homes. It’s an important and effective way to slow down and prevent the spread of disease.

But it’s not just humans who can benefit from social distancing. It turns out that animals can, too.

Microorganisms living on or inside our bodies are important for both our health and for the development of disease. Researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio have found evidence for the importance of social distancing to minimize the spread of microbes among individuals. The researchers studied wild monkeys to find out what role diet, genetics, social groupings, and distance in a social network play when it comes to the microbes found inside the gut. The gut microbiome refers to all the microorganisms living in the digestive tract.

The research team studied the fecal matter of 45 female colobus monkeys that congregated in eight different social groups in a small forest in Ghana. The researchers observed major differences in gut microbiomes between the eight social groups. But individual monkeys from different groups that were more closely connected to the population’s social network had more similar gut microbiomes. The findings, recently published in the journal Animal Behaviour, indicate that microbes may be transmitted between monkeys during occasional encounters with other monkeys from different social groups.

Learning how microorganisms pass among monkeys can help researchers understand how diseases spread. Understanding how diseases spread can help guide decision making during this pandemic and any future disease outbreaks.

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Even animals benefit from social distance to prevent disease, research shows

Photo, posted January 10, 2007, courtesy of Silke Baron via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Speed Breeding Of Crops

January 4, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A technique pioneered by NASA for the purpose of growing plants extra-terrestrially is now being applied here on earth to fast-track improvements in a range of crops. The technique, known as speed breeding, has been adapted for use by British and Australian researchers on a scale ranging from vast greenhouses to desktop growth chambers.

Speed breeding uses enhanced LED lighting and day-long regimes of up to 22 hours to optimize photosynthesis and promote rapid growth of crops. By speeding up the breeding cycle of plants,it is possible, for example, to grow six generations of wheat in a year compared with two generations using traditional breeding methods.

With shortened breeding cycles, genetic improvements such as yield gain, disease resistance and climate resistance can be fast-tracked in crops such as wheat, barley, chickpeas, various Brassica species, oil seed rape and peas.

The ability to do this in compact desktop chambers permits cutting-edge research to be performed inexpensively before being scaled up to large greenhouses.

Crop development is an increasingly important activity and speed breeding is increasingly attractive in light of the opposition in some quarters to modern gene-editing techniques to create GMO crops. Speed breeding allows crop improvements via anon-GMO route.

The new technique is already being applied in Australia, which is experiencing one of the worst droughts on record. It is being used to rapidly cycle genetic improvements to make crops more drought resilient.

Generation time in most plant species is a major bottleneck in applied research programs and breeding. Speed breeding can greatly reduce this bottleneck, allowing scientists to respond more quickly to emerging diseases, the changing climate and increased demand for specific plant traits.

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JIC joins European scientists to safeguard precision breeding

Photo, posted May 8, 2016, courtesy of Yair Aronshtam via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.