0000-0001-9565-7985[Above image: Flying bumblebee. Mikkel Houmøller, wikimedia] As we ring in the New Year, we thought it would be fun to look back on the PLOS ONE articles that were the biggest hits in the news
Category Archives: Media
Read All About it: PLOS ONE in the News
[Above image: Polar Bear jumping, in Spitsbergen Island, Svalbard, Norway. Arturo de Frias Marques, Wikimedia] This December, the Press team is reflecting on some of the PLOS ONE articles covered in the news in 2015.
PLOS ONE’s Top 5 Videos of 2015 (So Far)
At the end of 2014, we highlighted some of our favorite research videos from that year. We’re only mid-way through 2015, but we already have a number of popular research videos that we’d like to share. Here are some of … Continue reading
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Zoom-Enhance: Identifying Trends in Article-Level Metrics
In late December 2013, PLOS ONE published an article from UK-based Psychologists Rob Jenkins and Christie Kerr titled “Identifiable Images of Bystanders Extracted from Corneal Reflections”. Using high-resolution photography, Jenkins, from the University of York, and Kerr, from the University … Continue reading
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At Year’s End: Staff Editors’ Favorite PLOS ONE Articles of 2014
2014 has been an exciting year for PLOS ONE. We saw the journal reach a milestone, publishing its 100,000th article. PLOS ONE also published thousands of new research articles this year, including some ground-breaking discoveries, as well as some unexpected … Continue reading
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PLOS ONE’s Spookiest Images of 2014
As we take a look back at research articles published so far in PLOS ONE in 2014, we realize we have no shortage of images to terrify our readers, or at least sufficiently creep them out long enough to last through … Continue reading
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Article-Level Metrics Highlight: Top 10 of the Summer
“Low T” and Prescription Testosterone: Public Viewing of the Science Does Matter
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Supporting Hepatitis Awareness with Open Access Hepatitis Research
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Not Just a Pretty Face: Island Poppies Defend With Prickles
Although the vibrant, waifish petals of the poppy may appear inviting to the casual observer, a closer look reveals a pricklier message: Stay away! To discourage plant eaters like insects and birds from biting into their leafy appendages, many plant species protect themselves with defense mechanisms, like tougher leaves, distasteful latex, and armor made of prickles. Developing these defense features is part of a plant’s natural growth throughout its lifetime. Some plants, however, are able to activate additional protection when faced with attacking herbivores. The authors of a recent PLOS ONE paper investigated these defense mechanisms in two species of poppy currently found in Hawaii, where natural herbivores have long been extinct. The authors’ results reveal that island poppies may have more “nettle” in the face of simulated adversity than previously predicted.
The authors chose two species of poppy for testing, Argemone glauca, a species native to Hawaii, and Argemone mexicana, a species originally hailing from the North American continent and a recent inhabitant of the Hawaiian islands. Both species come pre-equipped with permanent features that may function as defense strategies. However, permanent defenses are costly to maintain for a plant: They divert energy away from other functions, like reproduction and growth, and are therefore an energy investment for the plant. To combat the cost of maintaining a full suite of permanent defenses, some plants respond to attacks from plant eaters only when they occur by activating additional defenses, known as inducible defenses. Unlike defense features that develop throughout the course of a plant’s lifetime, also known as constitutive defenses, inducible defenses are not permanent, only prompted by specific need.
In this study, the researchers simulated the need for additional defenses by subjecting the two species to various “attacks” to see how the poppies would respond. Plants were assigned to one of four random treatment groups:
- The control group, which received no treatment
- The damage group, where the authors clipped off portions of the leaves
- The Jasmonic acid group, where researchers sprayed the leaves with a harmful solution that inhibits growth
- And the combination group, where authors defoliated plants first and then sprayed them with Jasmonic acid
The researchers then allowed for two new leaves to grow to ensure that the plants had an adequate amount of time to respond.
Although neither species developed additional leaf toughness or produced more natural latex in response to treatments, both species exhibited increased prickle density on new leaves that grew after treatment. To evaluate prickle density, the authors harvested new leaves and counted all the new prickles on the surfaces of the leaves, excluding prickles found along the leaf edge. They also quantified the leaf area and performed statistical analyses to identify patterns in the various groups.
The authors found that Hawaiian native A. glauca responded more intensely to treatment by developing significantly more prickles than its continental North American counterpart, A. mexicana. The authors report that prickles for A. glauca were 20x more dense and 2.7x higher than A. mexicana.
Plant defenses are selected for over time due to snacking pressures from herbivores. On the Hawaii islands, however, natural herbivores of A. glauca, such as flightless ducks and beetles, are now extinct. The lack of natural predators for island plants has given rise to the idea that island plants have ‘gone soft’ over time. The authors consider A. glauca’s robust response to external attacks evidence that island plants may be better defended than previously thought.
Although it may be impossible to determine whether these island defenses have been selected for by herbivores of the past, no longer present, the inducibility of prickles in A. glauca and A. mexicana demonstrates that these poppies have the mettle to fight back against attackers and snackers.
For more on how herbivores and plants interact, check out this EveryONE blog post on snail mucus.
Citation: Hoan RP, Ormond RA, Barton KE (2014) Prickly Poppies Can Get Pricklier: Ontogenetic Patterns in the Induction of Physical Defense Traits. PLoS ONE 9(5): e96796. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0096796
Image 1: Agemone glauca by Forest and Kim Starr
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PLOS ONE Publishes its 100,000th Article
PLOS ONE publishes its 100,000th article – a pretty major milestone for a journal that has seen its fair share of momentous events, and a perfect opportunity to reflect on this journey.
PLOS ONE began seven and a half years ago. On the day of its launch – as has become the legend in the PLOS offices – there was an earthquake in the Bay Area, heralding the tremors that would be felt through the science world as a result of the disruptive innovation underway. PLOS ONE was an aspirational idea for PLOS from the very beginning: our founders always intended to launch a multi-disciplinary, broad-acceptance journal that would shake off the vestiges of the print tradition – no limits to the scope of research, number of pages, or potential growth.
And grow it did. After two years PLOS ONE had published over 4,000 articles, by four years it was the largest journal in the world, and now seven years after launch has published 100,000 articles. The revolutionary model of PLOS ONE has been emulated the world over: virtually every publisher now has its own equivalent “megajournal.”
PLOS ONE is now a major force in the scientific literature. The top 2% PLOS ONE papers (by number of views) have been collectively viewed nearly 39 million times, cited on Scopus over 80,000 times, bookmarked by Mendeley readers over 150,000 times, tweeted over 59,000 times, cited 2,800 times on Wikipedia, and recommended over 300 times on F1000 Prime.
The enduring value of PLOS ONE to the scientific process lies in the solid union between the three following factors: speed to publication, high standards of science, and unrestricted scope of research.
Speed to publication:
Faster time to publication was the founding principle of PLOS ONE. It doesn’t just entail going from submission to publication more quickly (although that is also important). It means dramatically reducing the time from an author’s decision to publish their findings to the time those results appear in public. That time is often years in the old system of review, where subjective opinions of significance and scope lead to unnecessary rejections and resubmission to different journals. With PLOS ONE, where scientific rigor alone is assessed, this time window shortens to a few months.
High standards:
PLOS ONE instituted rigorous standards from the start. As the volume exponentially increased and the quality of the submissions became more variable, these checks became more important and more rigorous. For every paper the journal staff (over 100 strong, including 14 editors) now check each of the following before a manuscript is sent for review:
- Competing interests
- Financial disclosures
- Quality of English language
- Ethical approval for animal experiments
- IRB approval for human experiments
- Protocols and CONSORT for clinical trials
- PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- Cell line provenance
- Field sample provenance
- Humane endpoints in animal studies
- Data availability
- Plagiarism
The care that we take in reporting and oversight is rooted in PLOS’ commitment to this editorial responsibility.
Because of these checks, every PLOS ONE citation on a researcher’s CV shows that their work has reached high standards of reporting and oversight – something that matters a great deal to funders and institutions as the need for reproducibility becomes increasingly a part of their overall mission. This is an area where we feel journals can take a lead: high standards of reporting are the best way for the scientific community to regain the trust of the public and politicians in the wake of the recent spate of failures in replicating high-profile discoveries.
Unrestricted scope:
So many of the delays in sharing results are a result of journals putting unnecessary restrictions on the scope of the research they are willing to publish. Journals often withhold the release of negative findings because they are likely to be cited less, and will therefore lower their impact factor. Or they exclude papers purely due to the application of disciplinary boundaries. In this digital age, with no space restrictions on what can be published, such artificial limits only impede the flow of information. At PLOS ONE, we have thrown out these notions and will consider vital research across all subject areas (even seemingly strange and multi-disciplinary).
A heartfelt 100k thank you
The impact of PLOS ONE on scientific publishing has been tremendous and revolutionary. The world of scientific communication is a different place because of it, and that is something PLOS and its entire community of collaborators should be proud of.
The extraordinary PLOS ONE Editorial Board, reviewers and authors – who believed in the PLOS mission to accelerate research communication and gave their own time to review, edit and revise manuscripts – were critical to this transformation and share in this milestone. To each and every one of them PLOS ONE is eternally grateful.
So here’s to the 100,000th PLOS ONE article. Though thrilled to have reached this milestone, we are even more excited to see where the next 100,000 will lead.
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Poll the Audience: Crowd-sourcing the Name of a New Species of Wasp
A scientifically literate society is one that can make educated, informed decisions based on the best available evidence. While much of the public harbors a basic interest in science and education, there is still a need to increase and improve efforts to educate and engage with the public about science. In one such effort to strengthen the public’s connection to science, researchers with the Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum) in Berlin encouraged museum visitors to participate in the naming of a new species of wasp found in Thailand. This call was met with keen interest, and the researchers shared their experience with us in a recently published PLOS ONE paper.
This previously undescribed red and black wasp belongs to a group of ant-mimicking cockroach hunters with extraordinary predation techniques. When one of these wasps finds a cockroach that looks tasty, the wasp stings it, stopping the cockroach’s normal escape response without paralyzing its legs, and leaving it in a surprisingly cooperative, docile state. The wasp then leads the complacent cockroach by one antenna back to a location of its choosing, often where it has lain eggs. The cockroach willingly marches to its doom, saving the wasp a lot of heavy lifting. At their final destination, the cockroach becomes a hearty meal that the wasp enjoys from the comfort of home.
With all of this information about the wasp in hand, as well as access to information about taxonomy rules and principles, visitors were given ballots with four potential wasp names from which to choose (no write-ins, as species names need to follow certain conventions):
- Ampulex bicolor, for its red and black coloring.
- Ampulex mon, a reference to the ethnic Mon people of Thailand that live in the region where the wasp was discovered.
- Ampulex dementor, inspired by the Dementors in Harry Potter that consume their victim’s souls, leaving them will-less.
- Ampulex plagiator, a reference to plagiarism, which reflects the wasp’s ant-mimicry (and was a shout-out to current events at the time).
Over 90% of the 300 ballots given out were returned, and the winning name was Ampulex dementor. Apart from formally describing a new species, the authors of the paper note that the naming activity was well-received and seemed to be an appropriate way to educate the public about taxonomic work and the process of classification of species. At least initially, crowd-sourcing may seem more appealing and democratic to the public than some of the other ways to go about naming species:
- Naming species after the research funders, although that is good politics.
- Auctioning naming rights to the highest bidder. The authors note that internet casino Goldenpalace.com named a monkey the GoldenPalace.com Monkey.
- Naming new species after members of a royal family.
- Referencing your favorite movies, which leads to beetles named after Arnold Schwarzenegger (Agra schwarzeneggeri) and Darth Vader (Agathidium vaderi), although in fairness the namer claims to have exhausted all other useful descriptive names.
- Contacting myself, Alex Theg, for ideas, which is guaranteed to result in bad puns.
Related links:
Sexy Faces in a Male Paper Wasp
Ant-Mimicking Spider Relies on a “Double-Deception” Strategy to Fool Different Audiences
Scientists Popularizing Science: Characteristics and Impact of TED Talk Presenters
How Academic Biologists and Physicists View Science Outreach
Citation: Ohl M, Lohrmann V, Breitkreuz L, Kirschey L, Krause S (2014) The Soul-Sucking Wasp by Popular Acclaim – Museum Visitor Participation in Biodiversity Discovery and Taxonomy. PLoS ONE 9(4): e95068. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0095068
Images: Images are from Figures 1 and 2 of the published paper
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The Science of Snakeskin: Black Velvety Viper Scales May be Self-Cleaning
West African Gaboon viper
Whether you love them or hate them, snakes have long captivated our interest and imagination. They’ve spurred countless stories and fears, some of which may have even affected the course of human evolutionary history. We must admit, there is something a little other-worldly about their legless bodies, willingness to swallow and digest animals much bigger than them, and fangs and potentially fatal (or therapeutic?) venomous bites.
Not least of all, their scaly skin is quite mesmerizing and often laden with intricate and beautifully geometric patterns just perfect for camouflaging, regardless of whether they live high up in a tree, deep in murky waters, or on the forest floor. Snakeskin was the focus of recent research by the authors of this PLOS ONE study who sought to determine whether it has any special properties less obvious to the naked eye.
Please meet the West African Gaboon viper, Bitis gabonica rhinoceros (pictured above). Native to the rainforests and woodlands of West Africa, these large, white-brown-and-black snakes can be identified by large nasal horns and a single black triangle beneath each eye—nevermind that, because they also lay claim to titles for the longest fangs and most venom volume produced per bite. The pattern of their skin is intricate and excellent for camouflage, and the black sections have a particularly velvety appearance. These eye-catching characteristics intrigued zoology and biomechanics researchers from Germany, who decided to take a closer look.
In a previously published paper, the authors analyzed the Gaboon viper’s skin surface texture by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), as well as its optical abilities by shining light on the snakeskin in different ways to see how it’s reflected, scattered, or transmitted. They found that only the black sections contained leaf-like microstructures streaked with what they call “nanoridges” on the snake scales, a pattern that has not been observed before on snakeskin. What’s more, the black skin reflects less than 11% of light shone on it—a lot less than other snakes—regardless of the angle of light applied. The authors concluded from the previous study that both of these factors may contribute to the viper’s velvet-like, ultra-black skin appearance.
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of viper scales
In their most recent PLOS ONE paper titled “Non-Contaminating Camouflage: Multifunctional Skin Microornamentation in the West African Gaboon Viper (Bitis rhinoceros),” the authors conducted wettability and contamination tests in hopes of further characterizing the viper skin’s properties, particularly when comparing the pale and black regions.
To test the wettability of the viper scales, the authors sprayed droplets of water, an iodide-containing compound (diiodomethane), and ethylene glycol on the different scale types shown above, on both a live and dead snake, and then measured the contact angle—the angle at which a liquid droplet meets a solid surface. This angle lets us know how water-friendly a surface is; in other words, the higher the contact angle, the less water-friendly the surface.
Contact angle (A) and snake skin with water droplet on light and dark areas (B)
As you can see in the graph above, the contact angle was different depending on the liquid applied and the type of scale; in particular, the contact angle on the black scales was significantly higher than the others, in a category that the authors refer to as “outstanding superhydrophobicity,” or really, really, really water-repelling. This type of water-repelling has been seen in geckos, but not snakes.
Water droplet appearance on live snake skin
The authors then took some of the snake carcass and dusted it with a sticky powder in a contamination chamber, after which they generated a fog for 30 minutes and took pictures.
Skin before dusting (A), skin under black light after dusting (B), skin under black light after fogging (C), section of SEM, showing light and dark skin (D)
After 30 minutes of fogging, the black areas were mostly free of the dusting powder, while the pale areas were still completely covered with dust. The powder itself was also water-repelling, and so the authors showed that despite this, the powder rolled off with the water rather than sticking to the black areas of snake skin. Therefore, as suggested by the authors, this could be a rather remarkable self-cleaning ability. The authors suspect that the “nanoridges,” or ridges arranged in parallel in the black regions, may allow liquid runoff better than on the paler areas of the snake.
How does this texture variation help the snake, you ask? The authors posit that all these properties basically contribute to a better form of camouflage. If the snake were completely covered in one color, it may stand out against a background of mixed colors (or “disruptive coloration”), like that of a forest floor. If the black regions have fairly different properties from the paler regions, mud, water, or other substances would rub off in these areas and continue to provide the light-dark color contrast and variation in light reflectivity that helps the snake do what it does best: slither around and blend in unnoticed.
Citations
Spinner M, Kovalev A, Gorb SN, Westhoff G (2013) Snake velvet black: Hierarchical micro- and nanostructure enhances dark colouration in Bitis rhinoceros. Scientific Reports 3: 1846. doi:10.1038/srep01846
Spinner M, Gorb SN, Balmert A, Bleckmann H, Westhoff G (2014) Non-Contaminating Camouflage: Multifunctional Skin Microornamentation in the West African Gaboon Viper (Bitis rhinoceros). PLoS ONE 9(3): e91087. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0091087
Images
First image, public domain with credit to TimVickers
Remaining images from the PLOS ONE paper
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A Year in Review: 2013 PLOS ONE Papers in the Media
Image Credit: Yutaka Tsutano
Tired of year-end lists? We know you’ve got room for at least one more. 2013 was a great year for PLOS ONE media coverage: We had over 5,000 news stories on over 1450 published articles.
The PLOS ONE press team poured tirelessly over the list to whittle down the papers that stood out the most. In celebration of the New Year, we’d like to share some of these titles with you.
Zipping back to January 2013 and moving forward from there, here they are:
1. Flowers Flowering Faster
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
In “Record-Breaking Early Flowering in the Eastern United States,” US researchers used 161 years of historical reports—initiated by Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold in 1935—to track spring flowering times. They discovered that exceptionally warm spring temperatures in Massachusetts and Wisconsin in 2010 and 2012 may have resulted in the earliest recorded spring in the eastern United States. Furthermore, scientists indicate that these advanced flowering times could be predicted based on the historical data. This research received media attention from the The New York Times, National Geographic, and NPR.
2. Lend an Ear?
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
US scientists 3D-printed a human ear using collagen hydrogels (a network of polymers that form a gel with water) derived from cow cartilage in the lab. They shared their results in “High-Fidelity Tissue Engineering of Patient-Specific Auricles for Reconstruction of Pediatric Microtia and Other Auricular Deformities.” The authors suggest that this advancement may be a significant first step toward creating patient-specific tissue implants for those who require ear prosthesis. Popular Science, Discovery News, and NPR covered this research.
3. Central African Elephants in Big Trouble
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
African forest elephant populations may have declined by an alarming 62% in the last decade, according to the study “Devastating Decline of Forest Elephants in Central Africa.” The authors suggest that this dramatic drop is largely due to continuing illegal ivory trade and inadequate efforts to put a stop to it. ScienceNow, TIME, Slate, Smithsonian, and many others covered this story.
4. Wrapped up in a Book
Image credit: moriza
For everyone who enjoys a good page-turner, researchers in the study “The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books” indicate that recent British and American books have fewer emotional “mood” words than they did in the earlier half of the 20th century. What’s more, the study’s authors provide evidence that American authors express more emotion than British authors, and that newer American books use more words conveying fear than older ones. This research was covered by the The New York Times Arts Beat, Jezebel, our EveryONE blog, and Nature.
5. Gaming for All Ages
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
In the article “A Randomized Controlled Trial of Cognitive Training Using a Visual Speed of Processing Intervention in Middle Aged and Older Adults,” researchers from multiple institutions in Iowa discovered that when middle-aged and older adults played video games, they scored better on cognitive function tests. The authors hope that these results might help us slow cognitive decline in older individuals. This paper was covered by the The Wall Street Journal, Nature, and The Telegraph.
6. Seafood Watch for Arctic Foxes?
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
In another saddening story of declining wild animal populations, researchers studying the “Correlates between Feeding Ecology and Mercury Levels in Historical and Modern Arctic Foxes (Vulpes lagopus)” found that mercury levels in seafood may be the culprit. They emphasize that overall direct exposure to toxic materials may not be as important as the feeding ecology and opportunities of predators, like the arctic fox, that have a very marine-based diet, which may contain these toxic substances. This research received media attention from Wired UK, Scientific American, and The Guardian.
7. Cancer in Neandertals
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
At least one Neandertal 120,000 years ago had a benign bone tumor in a rib, according to researchers in the study “Fibrous Dysplasia in a 120,000+ Year Old Neandertal from Krapina, Croatia.” The authors note, however, that they cannot comment on any health effects or the overall health condition of the individual without further evidence. This article received media attention from sources including the BBC, The New York Times, ScienceNOW, and Gizmodo.
8. Who Needs Rows of Teeth When You’ve Got a Tail to Slap Sardines?
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
“Thresher Sharks Use Tail-Slaps as a Hunting Strategy” contains the first video evidence of long-tailed sharks tail-slapping to stun their sardine prey. The authors suggest that this method may be effective when hunting prey that swim in schools. A Scientific American podcast, National Geographic’s Phenomena blogs, and NBC News were some of the media outlets that covered this research.
9. Contagious Yawning in Dogs and Chimps
Video credit: PLOS ONE article
Yawning animals were the focus of more than one PLOS ONE article in 2013. In one study, “Familiarity Bias and Physiological Responses in Contagious Yawning by Dogs Support Link to Empathy,” Japanese researchers found that dogs yawn more often in response to their owners’ yawns rather than a stranger’s, and received media coverage from The Guardian, CBS News, and The Telegraph. The authors of another research article “Chimpanzees Show a Developmental Increase in Susceptibility to Contagious Yawning: A Test of the Effect of Ontogeny and Emotional Closeness on Yawn Contagion” showed that chimpanzees appear to develop a contagion for yawning as they get older, just as humans do, and this article received media attention from The New York Times Science Takes, Los Angeles Times, and Scientific American Blogs.
10. What, the Cat? Oh, He’s Harml…
Image credit: Denis Defreyne
Our favorite parasite Toxoplasma gondii strikes again. Mice are normally terrified of cats, and rightly so, but Berkeley researchers (including a PLOS founder Mike Eisen) in “Mice Infected with Low-Virulence Strains of Toxoplasma gondii Lose Their Innate Aversion to Cat Urine, Even after Extensive Parasite Clearance” show that mouse exposure to the parasite, carried in cat feces, may alter the mouse’s brain, causing the mouse to permanently lose their fear of cats. The story received coverage from several news outlets, including a CNN segment by Charlie Rose, BBC, National Geographic Phenomena, and Nature.
11. Just in Time for the Movie: Jurassic Park is Fake
Image credit: Wikipedia
Sorry in advance for the disheartening news: Jurassic Park will likely remain a work of fiction. In “Absence of Ancient DNA in Sub-Fossil Insect Inclusions Preserved in ‘Anthropocene’ Colombian Copal,” UK researchers were unable to find any evidence of ancient DNA in specimens of prehistoric insects fossilized in hardened tree sap. Conveniently, the article published right when the newest Jurassic Park film series was announced, and was covered by San Francisco Chronicle, The Telegraph, The Conversation, and others.
12. Not Now, Honey – The Pressure Just Dropped
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
Insects avoid sex when a drop in atmospheric pressure occurs, which usually precedes rain, according to researchers in the study “Weather Forecasting by Insects: Modified Sexual Behaviour in Response to Atmospheric Pressure Changes.” Injury from rain can be deadly for some insect species, so the authors suggest that the insects modified their behavior to enhance survival (good choice!). The article has received attention from nearly 20 news outlets, including Nature, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and ScienceNOW.
13. Dinos with Squishy Joints and Tiny Arms
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
Dinosaurs were a popular item in PLOS ONE in 2013, especially with the launch of PLOS ONE’s New Sauropod Gigantism Collection. The most popular article was a simulation of how the largest dinosaur, the Argentinosaurus, might have walked in “March of the Titans: The Locomotor Capabilities of Sauropod Dinosaurs,” which was covered in Washington Post and The Guardian. Another group of researchers showed that squishy joints were a major factor in the massiveness of saurischian dinosaurs in “What Lies Beneath: Sub-Articular Long Bone Shape Scaling in Eutherian Mammals and Saurischian Dinosaurs Suggests Different Locomotor Adaptations for Gigantism.” The article was covered by Gizmodo, Inside Science, and Discovery. Finally, a new super-predator larger than T. rex lived 80 million years ago and was described in “Tyrant Dinosaur Evolution Tracks the Rise and Fall of Late Cretaceous Oceans” and covered by BBC, Nature, and Discovery.
14. Huh?
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
The title of this next study says it all: “Is “Huh?” a Universal Word? Conversational Infrastructure and the Convergent Evolution of Linguistic Items.” The authors of this article suggest that it is, and that at least ten countries use a variation of this word to verbally express confusion. The article was featured in NPR, The New York Times, and LA Times.
15. Little Red Riding Hood: The Evolution of a Folk Tale
Image credit: PLOS ONE article
Little Red Riding Hood has very deep roots, as the authors of “The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood” show in their article. It has made its way across China to Europe and back again, but where did it begin? The authors indicate that phylogenetic methods (like the branched chart above) may be a new way to analyze cultural relationships among folk tales and oral narratives. This article received coverage in ScienceNOW, National Geographic, and Nature.
Thank you to all of our Academic Editors, reviewers, and authors for making these articles a reality. Needless to say, PLOS ONE staff cannot wait to see what lies ahead in 2014!
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New Year, New Species
Rock lizards, pigment producing fungus, eagle rays, ant garden parasites, and Antarctic sea anemones: new species are discovered all the time and there are likely still millions that we simply haven’t yet discovered or assessed. Species are identified by researchers using a range of criteria including DNA, appearance, and habitat. PLOS ONE typically publishes several new species articles every month, and below we are pleased to help introduce five that were discovered in 2013.
Thought previously to consist of only three species, this group of lizards are now seven distinct species. They appear very similar to one another, making it difficult to tell which characteristics define different species, and which are just variations present in the same species. They also have a variety of habitats, from trees to rocky outcrops, and the genus is widespread. Iranian, German, and Portuguese scientists used genetic variation and habitat to help describe four new species of Iranian rock lizards, Darevskia caspica, D. Kamii, D. kopetdaghica, and D. schaekeli. These techniques, in addition to analysis of the the lizards’ physical features, as in the photo of the four new species’ heads at the top of this page, helped to identify them definitively.
Found in soil, indoor environments, and fruit, Talaromyces atroroseus produces a red pigment that might be good for manufacturing purposes, especially in food. Some other species of this type of fungus produce red pigments, but they are not always as useful because they can also produce toxins. T. atroroseus produces a stable red pigment with no known toxins, making it safer for human use, according to the Dutch and Danish researchers who identified it.
Fish, like rays and sharks, are at high risk for extinction as a group, but as rare as they are, they can be plentiful enough in some locations to make them undesirable to locals. The discovery of the Naru eagle ray, Aetobatus narutobiei, splits a previously defined species, A. flagellum, that, due to its shellfish-eating habits, is considered a pest and culled in southern Japan. The discovery by Australian and Japanese scientists that this species is actually two species prompted the authors to encourage a reassessment of the conservation status of the rays.
Fungal parasites in ant gardens
In the Brazilian rainforest of Minas Gerais, leafcutter ants cultivate fungus, their primary source of food, on harvested leaf clippings. But scientists from Brazil, United Kingdom, and The Netherlands have discovered that their food source is threatened by four newly identified mycoparasites, Escovopsis lentecrescens, E. microspora, E. moellieri, and Escovopsioides nivea. The parasites grow like weeds in the ants’ gardens, crowding out more desirable fungus used for food. Unfortunately for the ants, researchers expect there are many similar unidentified species yet to be discovered.
Living on the previously undocumented ecosystem of the underside of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, American researchers discovered the first species of sea anemone known to live in ice, Edwardsiella andrillae. Fields of anemone were discovered using a scientist-driven remote-controlled submersible. The anemone burrows and lives within the ice and dangles a tentacle into the water beneath, almost as if it is dipping a toe in the water to test the chilly temperature.
Look here to read more about new species.
Citations
Ahmadzadeh F, Flecks M, Carretero MA, Mozaffari O, Böhme W, et al. (2013) Cryptic Speciation Patterns in Iranian Rock Lizards Uncovered by Integrative Taxonomy. PLoS ONE 8(12): e80563. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0080563
Frisvad JC, Yilmaz N, Thrane U, Rasmussen KB, Houbraken J, et al. (2013)Talaromyces atroroseus, a New Species Efficiently Producing Industrially Relevant Red Pigments. PLoS ONE 8(12): e84102. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0084102
White WT, Furumitsu K, Yamaguchi A (2013) A New Species of Eagle RayAetobatus narutobiei from the Northwest Pacific: An Example of the Critical Role Taxonomy Plays in Fisheries and Ecological Sciences. PLoS ONE 8(12): e83785. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083785
Augustin JO, Groenewald JZ, Nascimento RJ, Mizubuti ESG, Barreto RW, et al. (2013) Yet More “Weeds” in the Garden: Fungal Novelties from Nests of Leaf-Cutting Ants. PLoS ONE 8(12): e82265. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082265
Daly M, Rack F, Zook R (2013) Edwardsiella andrillae, a New Species of Sea Anemone from Antarctic Ice. PLoS ONE 8(12): e83476. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083476
Figures are all from their respective articles.
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