With recent technological advances in DNA sequencing investigating microbiomes from all areas of life has become possible as PLOS ONE Publication Assistant Maija Mallula finds out. With the advancement of DNA sequencing technology, our ability
Category Archives: frogs
Earth Day 2015: Celebrating Our Awe Inspiring World
We share Earth with millions of amazing plants and animals. Whether we’re relaxing in a hot spring like a Japanese macaque, or catching a glimpse of a rare bird, our exposure to Nature’s diversity enriches our lives and makes us … Continue reading
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Valentine’s Day Couples in the Animal Kingdom
While humans may be the only ones with a day dedicated to celebrating romantic love, rest assured that the semblance of ‘love’ is alive and well in the animal kingdom too. While ‘love’ in this context may not hold the … Continue reading
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Sticky Times: How to Hang On Under a Waterfall
Adhesion, or stickiness, is a powerful and valuable property that results from both physical and chemical interactions. Think of all the sticky things we use day to day: tape, post-its, glue, stickers, and so on. Life might be annoyingly inconvenient without the ability to tape a sign to a wall, or a cover a wound with a Band-Aid; but for a little frog living in the constant stream of a waterfall, stickiness is vital to survival.
The torrent frog, picture above on the right and native to Trinidad, has evolved an ability to cling to rough, wet surfaces so well that it seems to defy gravity. In an attempt to better understand how they maintain adhesion despite external forces and angles that would dislodge most any other creature, a group of scientists from a recent PLOS ONE article “challenged” both tree and torrent frogs to cling to a variety of smooth and coarse surfaces on a rotating platform under both dry and wet conditions. They found that although both species could cling to dry, smooth surfaces, the torrent frogs outperformed the tree frogs on adhering to rough, wet surfaces, both at low- and high-flow water volumes.
Tree frogs, they observed, spread their limbs out sideways and hang on by their pads alone—check out the video below of these frogs’ toes lighting up an inverted glass surface:
Torrent frogs, on the other hand, used their entire bellies and thighs to stick to the surface while water rushed over them, even having better adhesion when the water flow increased. The video below shows how the experiment was set up:
Using a scanning electron microscope on the pads of the frogs revealed that the structure of the cells on the toe pads of torrent frogs are elongated and have straighter channels between them (B and C in the image below) than the pads of the tree frogs (A in the image below). This design potentially allows better drainage of excess fluid beneath the pad, and may help explain the torrent frogs excellent sticking ability.
The incredible adhesive abilities these frogs have allows them to thrive in an environment that would otherwise be very difficult to inhabit. Understanding how they stick so well could contribute to better development of sticky things that are useful in our own lives.
Citation: Endlein T, Barnes WJP, Samuel DS, Crawford NA, Biaw AB, et al. (2013) Sticking under Wet Conditions: The Remarkable Attachment Abilities of the Torrent Frog, Staurois guttatus. PLoS ONE 8(9): e73810. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0073810
Image: Frogs – Figure 1 from the manuscript, Toe pads – Figure 6 from the manuscript
Making the News in May
Laughter, fungi, pipettes and ants – last month, PLOS ONE papers made headlines with an array of research. Here are some of our May media highlights:
Not all laughter is the same and your brain knows it. In recently published research, scientists studied the effects of three types of laughter (joyous, taunting, and “tickling”) on the human brain. Participants listened to recordings of these laugh and were asked to discern the type and count how many bouts had occurred. The researchers found that the participants could discern joyous and taunting laughter at comparable rates and that it was slightly more difficult to discern laughter in response to tickling. Participants were able to count the number of taunting laughs more accurately than joyous and tickling laughs. Read more about this study in the Huffington Post UK, TIME, and Los Angeles Times.
There are fungi afoot! New research confirms that the chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatis), which has decimated amphibian populations around the world, can be found in frogs in California. Scientists swabbed 201 South African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) in the California Academy of Sciences’ collection, 23 of which were caught in California. Eight specimens tested positive for chytrid, including one frog caught in San Francisco County in 2003. This frog species was once imported to aid in pregnancy testing. To read more, visit the National Geographic, Science News, ABC and the Smithsonian blog, Smart News.
Pipettes are a staple lab equipment, but not without their drawbacks. According to a new PLOS ONE paper, certain methods of dispensing and diluting liquids can introduce errors in experimental data. The researchers of this study compared pipetting, or tip-based transfer, with an acoustic dispensing technique and found that laboratory results depended greatly on the dispensing technique. Learn more about this study by reading the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Chemistry World, Nature’s Methagora blog, and In the Pipeline.
There are plenty of odd couples in nature. For one example, just look at the unlikely partnership of the ant and the pitcher plant. A recent study finds that a particular ant species, Camponotus schmitzi, has formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the carnivorous Nepenthes bicalcarata, a pitcher plant. Scientists observed that the ants provide pitcher plants with nitrogen and preys on other insects, such as mosquitoes, that may otherwise steal nutrients from the plant. In return, the pitcher plant provides a home and a steady source of sustenance. You may find more about this study at Discovery News, The Scientist, and the New York Times.
To find out what other PLOS ONE papers were in the news in May, check out our Media Tracking Project.
Image: Figure 1 from “A Novel Type of Nutritional Ant–Plant Interaction: Ant Partners of Carnivorous Pitcher Plants Prevent Nutrient Export by Dipteran Pitcher Infauna”
Citations:
Wildgruber D, Szameitat DP, Ethofer T, Brück C, Alter K, et al. (2013) Different Types of Laughter Modulate Connectivity within Distinct Parts of the Laughter Perception Network. PLoS ONE 8(5): e63441. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063441
Vredenburg VT, Felt SA, Morgan EC, McNally SVG, Wilson S, et al. (2013) Prevalence of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in Xenopus Collected in Africa (1871–2000) and in California (2001–2010). PLoS ONE 8(5): e63791. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063791
Ekins S, Olechno J, Williams AJ (2013) Dispensing Processes Impact Apparent Biological Activity as Determined by Computational and Statistical Analyses. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62325. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062325
Scharmann M, Thornham DG, Grafe TU, Federle W (2013) A Novel Type of Nutritional Ant–Plant Interaction: Ant Partners of Carnivorous Pitcher Plants Prevent Nutrient Export by Dipteran Pitcher Infauna. PLoS ONE 8(5): e63556. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063556