Researchers solve a 150-year-old mystery: Aetosaur find involves juveniles

Aetosaurs had a small head and a crocodile-like body. The land dwellers were up to six meters long and widely distributed geographically. They died out about 204 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic. In Kaltental near Stuttgart, Germany, an assemblage of 24 Aetosaurus ferratus individuals, only between 20 and 82 centimeters long, was discovered in 1877. Since then, scientists have been puzzling over whether they were juveniles or small adults. A team led by Elżbieta M. Teschner from the University of Bonn has now solved the mystery: Bone examination of two specimens shows that they are juveniles. The results have now been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Reptiles of the genus Aetosaurus ferratus were discovered in a quarry near Kaltental, now a district of Stuttgart, and were first described nearly 150 years ago. The assemblage of about 24 individuals was dated to be about 215 million years old. "What was striking was that the total body length was only between 20 and 82 centimeters," says Elżbieta M. Teschner, who is pursuing a doctorate in paleontology at the University of Bonn while also conducting research at the University of Opole (Poland). "Interestingly, they were also the only fossils found in the area," she adds.

Oscar Fraas provided the first description of the skeletons in 1877 and suggested that they had washed up together. Sixteen years ago, Rainer R. Schoch of the State Natural History Museum in Stuttgart published a more detailed morphological study. Based on features visible to the naked eye, he determined that they must be juveniles. Together with Julia B. Desojo, an Argentine paleontologist from CONICET at the Museo de La Plata, they later described the skull of a larger skeleton of another aetosaur species (Paratypothorax andressorum). The find, more than 50 kilometers from Kaltental, could potentially be the adult form of the small aetosaur species known from the assemblage, they surmised.

Paleohistology enables age determination

The assumption only recently became certainty: With the help of the science of tissue growth (paleohistology) it has now become possible to examine the bones of the Kaltental find. "Long bones are a good model for calculating the age of animals because they deposit growth rings during their life that can be counted -- similar to the growth rings in tree trunks," says Dorota Konietzko-Meier, paleontologist from the University of Bonn. Based on this method, the relative individual age of the studied specimens could be determined.

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Leonardo da Vinci's forgotten experiments explored gravity as a form of acceleration

Engineers from Caltech have discovered that Leonardo da Vinci's understanding of gravity -- though not wholly accurate -- was centuries ahead of his time.

In an article published in the journal Leonardo, the researchers draw upon a fresh look at one of da Vinci's notebooks to show that the famed polymath had devised experiments to demonstrate that gravity is a form of acceleration -- and that he further modeled the gravitational constant to around 97 percent accuracy.

Da Vinci, who lived from 1452 to 1519, was well ahead of the curve in exploring these concepts. It wasn't until 1604 that Galileo Galilei would theorize that the distance covered by a falling object was proportional to the square of time elapsed and not until the late 17th century that Sir Isaac Newton would expand on that to develop a law of universal gravitation, describing how objects are attracted to one another. Da Vinci's primary hurdle was being limited by the tools at his disposal. For example, he lacked a means of precisely measuring time as objects fell.

Da Vinci's experiments were first spotted by Mory Gharib, the Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics and Medical Engineering, in the Codex Arundel, a collection of papers written by da Vinci that cover science, art, and personal topics. In early 2017, Gharib was exploring da Vinci's techniques of flow visualization to discuss with students he was teaching in a graduate course when he noticed a series of sketches showing triangles generated by sand-like particles pouring out from a jar in the newly released Codex Arundel, which can be viewed online courtesy of the British Library.

"What caught my eye was when he wrote 'Equatione di Moti' on the hypotenuse of one of his sketched triangles -- the one that was an isosceles right triangle," says Gharib, lead author of the Leonardo paper. "I became interested to see what Leonardo meant by that phrase."

To analyze the notes, Gharib worked with colleagues Chris Roh, at the time a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech and now an assistant professor at Cornell University, as well as Flavio Noca of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland in Geneva. Noca provided translations of da Vinci's Italian notes (written in his famous left-handed mirror writing that reads from right to left) as the trio pored over the manuscript's diagrams.

In the papers, da Vinci describes an experiment in which a water pitcher would be moved along a straight path parallel to the ground, dumping out either water or a granular material (most likely sand) along the way. His notes make it clear that he was aware that the water or sand would not fall at a constant velocity but rather would accelerate -- also that the material stops accelerating horizontally, as it is no longer influenced by the pitcher, and that its acceleration is purely downward due to gravity.

If the pitcher moves at a constant speed, the line created by falling material is vertical, so no triangle forms. If the pitcher accelerates at a constant rate, the line created by the collection of falling material makes a straight but slanted line, which then forms a triangle. And, as da Vinci pointed out in a key diagram, if the pitcher's motion is accelerated at the same rate that gravity accelerates the falling material, it creates an equilateral triangle -- which is what Gharib originally noticed that da Vinci had highlighted with the note "Equatione di Moti," or "equalization (equivalence) of motions."

Da Vinci sought to mathematically describe that acceleration. It is here, according to the study's authors, that he didn't quite hit the mark. To explore da Vinci's process, the team used computer modeling to run his water vase experiment. Doing so yielded da Vinci's error.

"What we saw is that Leonardo wrestled with this, but he modeled it as the falling object's distance was proportional to 2 to the t power [with t representing time] instead proportional to t squared," Roh says. "It's wrong, but we later found out that he used this sort of wrong equation in the correct way." In his notes, da Vinci illustrated an object falling for up to four intervals of time -- a period through which graphs of both types of equations line up closely.

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Can hearing loss be reversed? Research reveals clues that could regrow the cells that help us hear

Taking a bite of an apple is considered a healthy choice. But have you ever thought about putting in earplugs before your favorite band takes the stage?

Just like your future body will thank you for the apple, your future ears (specifically your cochlear hair cells) will thank you for protecting them. The most common cause of hearing loss is progressive because these hair cells -- the primary cells to detect sound waves -- cannot regenerate if damaged or lost. People who have repeated exposure to loud noises, like military personnel, construction workers, and musicians, are most at risk for this type of hearing loss. But, it can happen to anyone over time (even concert goers).

On the other hand, birds and fish can regenerate these hair cells, and now researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience are getting closer to identifying the mechanisms that may promote this type of regeneration in mammals, as explained in research recently published in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience.

"We know from our previous work that expression of an active growth gene, called ERBB2, was able to activate the growth of new hair cells (in mammals), but we didn't fully understand why," said Patricia White, PhD, professor of Neuroscience and Otolaryngology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. The 2018 study led by Jingyuan Zhang, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the White lab at the time, found that activating the growth gene ERBB2 pathway triggered a cascading series of cellular events by which cochlear support cells began to multiply and activate other neighboring stem cells to become new sensory hair cells.

"This new study tells us how that activation is happening -- a significant advance toward the ultimate goal of generating new cochlear hair cells in mammals," said White.

Using single-cell RNA sequencing in mice, researchers compared cells with an overactive growth gene (ERBB2 signaling) with similar cells that lacked such signaling. They found the growth gene -- ERBB2 -- promoted stem cell-like development by initiating the expression of multiple proteins -- including SPP1, a protein that signals through the CD44 receptor. The CD44 receptor is known to be present in cochlear-supporting cells. This increase in cellular response promoted mitosis in the supporting cells, a key event for regeneration.

"When we checked this process in adult mice, we were able to show that ERBB2 expression drove the protein expression of SPP1 that is necessary to activate CD44 and grow new hair cells," said Dorota Piekna-Przybylska, PhD, a staff scientist in the White Lab and first author of the study. "This discovery has made it clear that regeneration is not only restricted to the early stages of development. We believe we can use these findings to drive regeneration in adults."

"We plan to further investigation of this phenomenon from a mechanistic perspective to determine whether it can improve auditory function after damage in mammals. That is the ultimate goal," said White.

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New models explain canyons on Pluto moon

In 2015, when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft encountered the Pluto-Charon system, the Southwest Research Institute-led science team discovered interesting, geologically active objects instead of the inert icy orbs previously envisioned. An SwRI scientist has revisited the data to explore the source of cryovolcanic flows and an obvious belt of fractures on Pluto's large moon Charon. These new models suggest that when the moon's internal ocean froze, it may have formed the deep, elongated depressions along its girth but was less likely to lead to cryovolcanoes erupting with ice, water and other materials in its northern hemisphere.

"A combination of geological interpretations and thermal-orbital evolution models implies that Charon had a subsurface liquid ocean that eventually froze," said SwRI's Dr. Alyssa Rhoden, a specialist in the geophysics of icy satellites, particularly those containing oceans, and the evolution of giant planet satellite systems. She authored a new paper on the source of Charon's surface features in Icarus. "When an internal ocean freezes, it expands, creating large stresses in its icy shell and pressurizing the water below. We suspected this was the source of Charon's large canyons and cryovolcanic flows."

New ice forming on the inner layer of the existing ice shell can also stress the surface structure. To better understand the evolution of the moon's interior and surface, Rhoden modeled how fractures formed in Charon's ice shell as the ocean beneath it froze. The team modeled oceans of water, ammonia or a mixture of the two based on questions about the makeup. Ammonia can act as antifreeze and prolong the life of the ocean; however, results did not differ substantially.

When fractures penetrate the entire ice shell and tap the subsurface ocean, the liquid, pressurized by the increase in volume of the newly frozen ice, can be pushed through the fractures to erupt onto the surface. Models sought to identify the conditions that could create fractures that fully penetrate Charon's icy shell, linking its surface and subsurface water to allow ocean-sourced cryovolcanism. However, based on current models of Charon's interior evolution, ice shells were far too thick to be fully cracked by the stresses associated with ocean freezing.

The timing of the ocean freeze is also important. The synchronous and circular orbits of Pluto and Charon stabilized relatively early, so tidal heating only occurred during the first million years.

"Either Charon's ice shell was less than 6 miles (10 km) thick when the flows occurred, as opposed to the more than 60 miles or 100 km indicated, or the surface was not in direct communication with the ocean as part of the eruptive process," Rhoden said. "If Charon's ice shell had been thin enough to be fully cracked, it would imply substantially more ocean freezing than is indicated by the canyons identified on Charon's encounter hemisphere."

Fractures in the ice shell may be the initiation points of these canyons along the global tectonic belt of ridges that traverse the face of Charon, separating the northern and southern geological regions of the moon. If additional large extensional features were identified on the hemisphere not imaged by New Horizons, or compositional analysis could prove that Charon's cryovolcanism originated from the ocean, it would support the idea that its ocean was substantially thicker than expected.

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Deep-sea black carbon comes from hydrothermal vents

Hydrothermal vents have been identified as a previously undiscovered source of dissolved black carbon in the oceans, furthering the understanding of the role of oceans as a carbon sink.

The ocean is one of the largest dynamic carbon sinks in the world, and is susceptible to increased carbon emissions from human activities. There are even proposals to use the ocean to sequester carbon in an effort to reduce the carbon emissions. However, much of the processes by which the ocean functions as a carbon sink are not fully understood.

Associate Professor Youhei Yamashita and grad student Yutaro Mori at Hokkaido University, along with Professor Hiroshi Ogawa at AORI, The University of Tokyo, have revealed conclusive evidence that hydrothermal vents are a previously unknown source of dissolved black carbon in the deep ocean. Their discoveries were published in the journal Science Advances.

"One of the largest carbon pools on the Earth's surface is the dissolved organic carbon in the ocean," explains Ogawa. "We were interested in a portion of this pool, known as dissolved black carbon (DBC), which cannot be utilized by organisms. The source of DBC in the deep sea was unknown, although hydrothermal vents were suspected to be involved."

The researchers analyzed the distribution of DBC in the ocean basins of the North Pacific Ocean and Eastern South Pacific Ocean, and compared the data with previously reported concentrations of a helium isotope that is associated with hydrothermal vent emissions, as well as oxygen utilization in these areas.

Their findings showed that hydrothermal vents were an important source of DBC in the Pacific Ocean. This hydrothermal DBC is most likely formed due to the mixing of the hot fluids from hydrothermal vents with cold seawater, and is transported over long distances -- up to thousands of kilometers away.

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A more healthful, gluten-free flour made from sweet potatoes

Orange, starchy sweet potatoes are great mashed, cut into fries or just roasted whole. But you likely haven't considered grinding them into a flour and baking them into your next batch of cookies -- or at least, not yet! Recent research published in ACS Food Science & Technology has reported the best method to turn sweet potatoes into gluten-free flours that are packed with antioxidants and perfect for thickening or baking.

Wheat flour has been used for tens of thousands of years, and likely isn't going away anytime soon. But for those who face gluten intolerance or have celiac disease, the gluten proteins in wheat flour can lead to stomach pain, nausea and even intestinal damage. Several gluten-free options are either already available or in development, including those made from banana peels, almonds and various grains. But an up-and-coming contender is derived from sweet potatoes, as the hearty tuber is packed with antioxidants and nutrients, along with a slightly sweet flavor and hint of color.

Before it can become a common ingredient in store-bought baked goods, the best practices for processing the flour need to be established. Though previous studies have investigated a variety of parameters, including the way the potatoes are dried and milled, none have yet determined how these different steps could interact with one another to produce flours best suited for certain products. So, Ofelia Rouzaud-Sández and colleagues wanted to investigate how two drying temperatures and grinding processes affected the properties of orange sweet potato flour.

To create their flours, the team prepared samples of orange sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) dried at either 122 or 176 F then ground them once or twice. They investigated many parameters for each sample, comparing them to store-bought sweet potato flour and a traditional wheat one. Regardless of drying temperature, grinding once damaged just enough of the starch to make it ideal for fermented products, such as gluten-free breads. Grinding twice further disrupted the starch's crystallinity, producing thickening agents ideal for porridges or sauces. When baked into a loaf of bread, the high-temperature-dried, single-ground sample featured higher antioxidant capacity than both the store-bought version and the wheat flour. The researchers say that these findings could help expand the applications for orange sweet potato flour, both for home cooks and the packaged food industry.

From Science Daily

The relationship between ghosting and closure

Odds are, you know someone who has been ghosted. And according to a new study from the University of Georgia, it can be a haunting experience.

A recent study conducted by researcher and corresponding author Christina Leckfor and University of Mississippi researcher Natasha Wood found nearly two-thirds of participants have ghosted -- ended a relationship by ignoring the other person, without offering a clear explanation -- and have been ghosted.

And as online dating, dating apps and other social technologies grow in popularity, so does the likelihood that someone is left on read after a few dates. Yet despite its frequent occurrence, little is known about why people ghost or the psychological effects of this social phenomenon.

"Ghosting is becoming a common strategy, and it creates an ambiguous situation where one party doesn't really know what's going on," said Leckfor, a doctoral student in the UGA Department of Psychology. "We were interested in what individual differences or personal characteristics might influence a person's intentions to use ghosting. We also wanted to know if people with a high need for closure were less likely to use ghosting, or if they would hurt more after being ghosted."

On the receiving end of a breakup, ghosting was a negative experience for almost all participants. But for individuals who yearn for closure, the negative effects of ghosting are even more profound.

To gauge the effect of a breakup, study participants reflected on a past relationship, either a time they were ghosted or directly rejected, and then answered questions about their psychological needs satisfaction -- feelings of belonging, self-esteem, control and meaningful existence. Ghosted participants had some of the lowest needs satisfaction, meaning they were hit hardest by the rejection, and those who wanted closure reported even lower needs satisfaction.

"For recipients, desire for closure has this magnifying effect. When someone with a high need for closure recalled a time where they were ghosted or directly rejected, it hurt more than if they had a low need for closure," Leckfor said. "But they also felt more positive after recalling times when they were acknowledged by their partner."

In contrast, when someone considered initiating a breakup, the connection between closure and ghosting varied.

"We actually found that people who had a higher need for closure were slightly more likely to intend to use ghosting to end a relationship," Leckfor said. "Even though things may be ambiguous on the recipient side, the person who is ghosting sees it as a distinct end to the relationship. Those results weren't definitive in our study, but they pose an interesting avenue for future research."

And ghosting's not just for dating apps anymore. More than half of the study participants wrote about a time when they were ghosted by a friend, rather than a romantic partner.

"The individuals who were ghosted by a friend reported feeling just as bad about the relationship as those who wrote about a time when they were ghosted by a romantic partner," Leckfor said. "In psychology in general, a lot of literature regarding adult relationships focuses on romantic relationships. This [research] shows that friendships are really important to study as well."

It also relates back to the role of technology in our relationships. There have been several studies on how people initiate, maintain and end relationships without technology, but as more human connectivity moves to social media, dating apps, texting or Zoom, those relationships can change. And individual traits, such as a need for closure, will factor into how we use those technologies.

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Footprints of galactic immigration uncovered in Andromeda galaxy

Over the course of billions of years, galaxies grow and evolve by forging new stars and merging with other galaxies through aptly named "galactic immigration" events. Astronomers try to uncover the histories of these immigration events by studying the motions of individual stars throughout a galaxy and its extended halo of stars and dark matter. Such cosmic archaeology, however, has only been possible in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, until now.

An international team of researchers has uncovered striking new evidence of a large galactic immigration event in the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way's nearest large galactic neighbor. The new results were made with the DOE's Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab.

By measuring the motions of nearly 7500 stars in the inner halo of the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), the team discovered telltale patterns in the positions and motions of stars that revealed how these stars began their lives as part of another galaxy that merged with M31 about 2 billion years ago. While such patterns have long been predicted by theory, they have never been seen with such clarity in any galaxy.

"Our new observations of the Milky Way's nearest large galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, reveal evidence of a galactic immigration event in exquisite detail," explained Arjun Dey, astronomer at NSF's NOIRLab and the lead author of the paper presenting this research. "Although the night sky may seem unchanging, the Universe is a dynamic place. Galaxies like M31 and our Milky Way are constructed from the building blocks of many smaller galaxies over cosmic history. "

"We have never before seen this so clearly in the motions of stars, nor had we seen some of the structures that result from this merger," said Sergey Koposov, an astrophysicist at the University of Edinburgh and coauthor of the paper. "Our emerging picture is that the history of the Andromeda Galaxy is similar to that of our own Galaxy, the Milky Way. The inner halos of both galaxies are dominated by a single immigration event."

This research sheds light on not only the history of our galactic neighbors but also the history of our own galaxy. Most of the stars in the Milky Way's halo were formed in another galaxy and later migrated into our own in a galactic merger 8-10 billion years ago. Studying the relics of a similar, but more recent, galaxy merger in M31 gives astronomers a window onto one of the major events in the Milky Way's past.

To trace the history of migration in M31, the team turned to DESI. DESI was constructed to map tens of millions of galaxies and quasars in the nearby Universe in order to measure the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the Universe. It is the most powerful multi-object survey spectrograph in the world, and is capable of measuring the spectra of more than 100,000 galaxies a night. DESI's world-class capabilities can also be put to use closer to home, however, and the instrument was crucial to the team's survey of M31.

"This science could not have been done at any other facility in the world. DESI's amazing efficiency, throughput, and field of view make it the best system in the world to carry out a survey of the stars in the Andromeda Galaxy," said Dey. "In only a few hours of observing time, DESI was able to surpass more than a decade of spectroscopy with much larger telescopes."

Even though the Mayall Telescope was completed 50 years ago (it achieved first light in 1973), it remains a world-class astronomical facility thanks to continued upgrades and state-of-the-art instrumentation. "Fifty years sounds like a long time, and naïvely one might think that's the natural lifetime of a facility," said co-author Joan R. Najita, also at NOIRLab. "But with renewal and reuse, a venerable telescope like the Mayall can continue to make amazing discoveries despite being relatively small by today's standards."

The research was carried out in collaboration with two Harvard University undergraduates, Gabriel Maxemin and Joshua Josephy-Zack, who connected with the project through the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Najita was a Radcliffe Fellow from 2021 to 2022.

The team now plans to use the unparalleled capabilities of DESI and the Mayall Telescope to explore more of M31's outlying stars, with the aim of revealing its structure and immigration history in unprecedented detail.

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Computer model IDs roles of individual genes in early embryonic development

Computer software developed at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis can predict what happens to complex gene networks when individual genes are missing or dialed up more than usual. Such genetic networks play key roles in early embryonic development, guiding stem cells to form specific cell types that then build tissues and organs. Mapping the roles of single genes in these networks is key to understanding healthy development and finding ways to regrow damaged cells and tissues. Likewise, understanding genetic errors could provide insight into birth defects, miscarriage or even cancer.

Such genetic experiments -- typically conducted in the laboratory in animal models such as mice and zebrafish -- have been a mainstay of developmental biology research for decades. Much can be learned about a gene's function in animal studies in which a gene is missing or overexpressed, but these experiments are also expensive and time-consuming.

In contrast, the newly developed software called CellOracle -- described Feb. 8 in the journal Nature -- can model hundreds of genetic experiments in a matter of minutes, helping scientists identify key genes that play important roles in development but that may have been missed by older, slower techniques. CellOracle is open source, with the code and information about the software available at this link.

"The scientific community has collected enough data from animal experiments that we now can do more than observe biology happening -- we can build computer models of how genes interact with each other and predict what will happen when one gene is missing," said senior author Samantha A. Morris, PhD, an associate professor of developmental biology and of genetics. "And we can do this without any experimental intervention. Once we identify an important gene, we still need to do the lab experiments to verify the finding. But this computational method helps scientists narrow down which genes are most important."

CellOracle, which was included in a recent technology feature in the journal Nature, is one of a number of relatively new software systems designed to model insights into cellular gene regulation. Rather than simply identify the networks, CellOracle is unique in its ability to let researchers test out what happens when a network is disrupted in a specific way.

Morris and her team harnessed the well-known developmental processes of blood cell formation in mice and humans and embryonic development in zebrafish to validate that CellOracle works properly. Their studies, in collaboration with the lab of co-author and zebrafish development expert Lilianna Solnica-Krezel, PhD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Developmental Biology, also uncovered new roles for certain genes in zebrafish development that had not previously been identified.

And in a related paper online in the journal Stem Cell Reports, Morris and her colleagues used CellOracle to predict what happens when certain genes are dialed up beyond their usual expression levels.

"We found that if we dialed up two specific genes, we can transform skin cells into a type of cell that can repair damaged intestine and liver," Morris said. "In terms of regenerative medicine, these predictive tools are valuable in modeling how we can reprogram cells into becoming the types of cells that can promote healing after injury or disease."

According to Morris, most laboratory methods for converting stem cells into different cell types, such as blood cells or liver cells, are inefficient. Maybe 2% of the cells arrive at the desired destination. Tools like CellOracle can help scientist identify what factors should be added to the cocktail to guide more cells into the desired cell type, such as those capable repairing the gut and liver.

At present, CellOracle can model cell identity in more than 10 different species, including humans, mice, zebrafish, yeast, chickens, Guinea pigs, rats, fruit flies, roundworms, the Arabidopsis plant and two species of frog.

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Whiskers help nectar-eating 'acro bats' hover like hummingbirds

From dragonflies to hummingbirds, hovering flight is among the most complex and captivating forms of animal movement -- a physiological feat of size, musculature and wing development.

For nectar-feeding bats that hover as they feed from flowers, this aerial maneuver also depends on extra-long whiskers unlike those of most other bat species, according to a Dartmouth College-led study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers used high-speed cameras to capture how the stiff hairs jutting forward from the face of nectar-eating bats provide enhanced spatial information that guides the animals as they swoop in to quickly feed -- within a second or less -- on succulent flowers without landing.

"The whiskers of nectar-feeding bats are critical sensory organs that provide high-quality input the brain works with to optimize hovering. It's a cool junction between sensory biology and bio-kinematics, between form and function," said lead author Eran Amichai, a postdoctoral researcher in biological sciences at Dartmouth who studies echolocation in bats. Co-authors are postdoctoral fellow David Boerma from the American Museum of Natural history, animal behavioralist Rachel Page at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, Sharon Swartz, a professor of biology and engineering at Brown University, and Hannah ter Hofstede, a past assistant professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth now at the University of Windsor in Canada.

The researchers worked at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute recording Pallas's long-tongued bats -- a South and Central American bat that has the fastest metabolism of any mammal -- as they drank from hand-blown glass flowers designed for the study to replicate the plants the animals feed from. High-speed infrared cameras captured photos and video of the bats as they descended upon the glass flowers and navigated their muzzles and tongues into the "bloom" to eat the nectar. Feedings typically lasted between a half- to one second.

The researchers found that bats with clipped whiskers were less agile and accurate during feeding and flight than animals with untouched whiskers. The animals with clipped whiskers were held for a few days until the hairs regrew, then released back into the jungle. "Clipping the whiskers doesn't reduce the bats' ability to feed, they just do it a little less gracefully," Amichai said. "If it were gymnastics, they'd get an 8.5 instead of a 9.8."

The role of long whiskers in nectar-feeding bats' flight control provides new insight into the coevolution of the bats with the flowers they feed on, Amichai said. The majority of bats possess short whiskers not arranged in any particular pattern or direction. But the researchers found that whisker length in nectar-eating bats evolved at least twice to -- along with long tongues and faces -- potentially help them better navigate the deep chambers of the flowers they prefer. In turn, the long reach these flowers require results in more pollen sticking to their pollinators and thus the broader proliferation of their kind.

The researchers plan to continue their work using higher-resolution images, flowers that move, interactions with predators and other expansions on the experimental model, Amichai said.

In the meantime, the latest study offers a fascinating glimpse into how nectar-feeding bats combine various forms of sensory information to navigate the world around them, Amichai said. Their world is a combination of scent, echolocation, spatial memory, knowledge of the seasons and the physical sensation and equilibrium provided by their whiskers.

"I find thinking in these terms of switching back and forth between completely different ways to perceive the world -- and seamlessly integrating their input -- to be a mind-blowing concept," Amichai said. Understanding how animals perceive and interact with their surroundings helps scientists develop better conservation strategies, he said.

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