It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Neither wind, nor rain—nor massive sheets of ice—have kept Earth's birds from their appointed rounds of migrating to better climes, according to a new study.
That's the conclusion of a new study from the Max Planck-Yale Center for Biodiversity Movement and Global Change (MPYC), which simulated global bird migrations during scenarios of past climate conditions. The researchers said that, in the Americas in particular, migratingbirdssuccessfully maneuvered vastly changing landscapes in the past 50,000 years.
"Our simulations predict that bird migration worldwide has remained relatively constant over this period, suggesting an origin for this phenomenon that is older than the glacial cycles of recent Earth history," said first author Marius Somveille, a former MPYC researcher who is starting a postdoctoral position at Colorado State University.
Yet there has been regional variation in migrating birds' response to climate change, the researchers said. In the Americas, for example, there has been a larger increase in the distances that birds have migrated over the past 50,000 years, compared with other parts of the world.
"In the last ice age, up to about 18,000 years ago, North America had an ice sheet that covered a large part of the continent and prevented bird species from living there," said Yale's Walter Jetz, senior author of the study, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and co-director of MPYC.
"This ice sheet retreated and birds colonized the land—and those birds were likely highly migratory, as seasonality in this area was pronounced. Our simulations suggest that toward the present this part of the world has seen both migratory distances and migration activity significantly increase," he said.
The study appears in the journal Nature Communications.
Using existing data about the global distribution of migratory birds, the researchers created a model that predicted migrations based on energy efficiency: They positioned each species' breeding and non-breeding ranges in a way that accounted for the availability of food and how much energy birds would reasonably expend during migration.
To estimate migration activity far in the past, the researchers applied their model to reconstructions of past climate conditions.
Co-author and MPYC co-director Martin Wikelski of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior said the findings may be of use to conservationists and policymakers because the simulations "have the potential to inform predictions of how future climate change will impact bird migrations."How will the winds of climate change affect migratory birds?
More information: Marius Somveille et al. Simulation-based reconstruction of global bird migration over the past 50,000 years, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14589-2
Eating junk food found to impair the role of the hippocampus in regulating gorging
by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress
The hippocampus is a region of the brain largely responsible for memory formation. Credit: Salk Institute
A team of researchers from Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. has found that eating junk food can alter the ability of the hippocampus to constrain junk food intake. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes experiments they conducted with volunteers and their eating habits, and what they learned from them.
Most of the western world has learned of the dangers of eating junkfood—it leads to overeating, obesity and a host of health problems. But scientists are still trying to figure out why people have such a difficult time stopping themselves from eating junk food. In this new effort, the researchers enlisted 110 volunteers in their early 20s who had a history of healthy eating to learn what happens to the body after one week of junk food consumption.
Half of the volunteers ate as they normally did for a week; the other half ate junk food—specifically, meals high in fat, carbs and sugar. After the week was over, all of the volunteers were invited to eat breakfast together in a lab setting. Each of the volunteers was given a memory test before and after eating, along with a survey that queried them on how much they enjoyed eating the food they had been consuming over the course of the study week.
The memory tests revealed lower scores for the volunteers after eating junk food for a week. But more importantly, they also showed hippocampus impairment directly after eating a single junk food meal. Prior research has shown the hippocampus plays a role in regulating eating—but it was not able to do its job properly after a volunteer ate a plate of Belgian waffles. And because of that, the volunteers were not signaled to stop eating once they were full. Instead, they gorged. And after a week of gorging, the volunteers retained memories of the pleasures of gorging while forgetting those of less pleasurable foods. The result was difficulty in refraining from eating junk food.
More information: Richard J. Stevenson et al. Hippocampal-dependent appetitive control is impaired by experimental exposure to a Western-style diet, Royal Society Open Science (2020). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.191338
Researchers discover new mechanism for the coexistence of species
Cartoon of experiment showing coexistence between bacteria (red and blue) that cyclically colonize nutrient patches (green). Credit: AMOLF
Researchers from the AMOLF institute in Amsterdam and Harvard have shown that the ability of organisms to move around plays a role in stabilizing ecosystems. In their paper published 19 February 2020 in Nature, they describe how the competition between 'movers' and 'growers' leads to a balance in which both types of bacteria can continue to exist alongside each other.
We are all too familiar with the threats to our planet's ecosystems: global warming, forest fires, nitrogen deposition, biodiversity decline, and even mass extinctions. But what actually makes ecosystems stable or fragile? What prevents one species from outcompeting all others, and hence driving them to extinction?
These questions have captivated biologists since Darwin. We have learned that food webs and cooperation between species are key pieces to this puzzle, because they help explain how species depend on one another to survive. Now, a group of biophysicists from the Netherlands and the U.S. have advanced a startling finding: The active movement of organisms can also drive ecosystem diversity and stability through a remarkably simple mechanism that does not require food webs or cooperation.
"Movement is fundamental to essentially all organisms—even plants move by seed dispersal," says Sander Tans at the AMOLF institute in Amsterdam. "Bacteria are well known to move actively. Our experiments show how this movement can keep different bacterial species, typically called strains, together in a larger population. There is a rich literature on the possible roles of movement in such coexistence of species, but direct experiments that can exclude other explanations were lacking.
Bacterial strains A and B were show to both outcompete the other when rare, and hence coexist. Credit: AMOLF
The coexistence paradox—what prevents extinctions in a competitive world?
To find bacterial species that might form a minimal stable ecosystem in the lab, the Ph.D. student Sebastian Gude took two species (also called strains) from the gut of the same animal. If both survived there, perhaps they would also do so in his experiments. To follow their competition, he colored one blue and the other red. However, all his first attempts failed in the beginning. One of the two strains always lost the competition when grown together, with these bacteria always producing fewer offspring than the other. This blue 'loser' strain would thus become outnumbered by the red 'winner' strain, and was ultimately driven to extinction.
Gude's luck took a dramatic upturn, however, when he changed the design of the experiment. He took the sugary liquid in which the bacteria normally grew, and turned it into a gel reminiscent of a jelly desert. When the blue 'loser' bacteria growing on the gel became outnumbered by the reds, they started to produce more offspring than the reds, and were thus winning. But in turn, the reds also became more competitive when rare. In this way, both strains escaped extinction, and hence coexisted together. These results underscore the fundamental paradox of the coexistence debate: What causes losers that are close to extinction to suddenly start winning?
Fluorescence microscopy of bacterial populations across the gel after the competition. Credit: AMOLF
Getting territorial
To resolve this conundrum, Gude followed the competition by making movies. "The results were quite striking," says Tom Shimizu. "We saw the populations migrating into the gel like a wave, where they multiplied using the sugars they encountered. Initially, red dominated the expansion and blue was barely seen. But then the red advance suddenly stopped just when the blues emerged, and were seen to overtake the reds' front, where they formed a thin layer. After that, the wave was blue only. The blue bacteria could thus proliferate alone in the deeper regions of the gel, freed from competition from the reds that could not reach that far. This also explained the coexistence: Whenever blue were rare, they could build up their population in the deeper regions of the gel."
Accelerated movie of competing bacterial strains. Credit: AMOLF
Should I spread or should I grow?
But how did the blue bacteria organize themselves and efficiently confine the red? Did they signal to each other or secrete toxins, as is known for some bacteria? In trying to address these questions the team discovered a rather different mechanism. The blue bacteria were indeed worse at proliferating, as they lost in a direct competition. But they compensated by migrating faster. By reaching the farther regions first, they could finish the local sugars. Hence, they gave the red no chance there, and could thus block their advance, a bit like in a scorched earth strategy.
Tans: "Some bacteria apparently are good at proliferating, and others at migrating. But they cannot excel at both. This makes sense because both activities cost a lot of energy. Such specialization is often observed, though effects on coexistence are often difficult to prove. Here we could manipulate the capacity to migrate and proliferate by genetic engineering, and show it alone is enough for coexistence. Other mechanisms like exchanging toxins or dependencies like in food webs are thus not required per se."
Slowed-down movie of motile E. coli cells. Credit: AMOLF
Disturbance ecology
Of course, in the real world, bacteria cannot count on encountering bowls of Jello left out of the fridge. Luckily for them, they don't need to, as pristine pastures of fresh nutrients do arise more often than expected. Much like the vegetation that colonize cleared soil after forest fires, many bacteria grow on patches of resources, from fallen fruits to decomposing animals, or—for those microbes that inhabit your gut—the lunch you just had.
Shimizu says, "We demonstrated this migration-proliferation mechanism in motile bacteria. But what we found is for instance evocative of models of plant ecology where fast-growing plants compete with plants that invest more in spreading their seeds." He added that there is a lot to be learned about more complex scenarios. "There is a lot of interest in explaining the diversity of bacteria in the human gut, which we now know, thanks to modern DNA analysis, is intimately related to our health. Our findings suggest that looking at motility genes and their spatial distribution within the gut might help explain some of that diversity."
More information: Bacterial coexistence driven by motility and spatial competition, Sebastian Gude, Erçağ Pinçe, Katja M. Taute, Anne-Bart Seinen, Thomas S. Shimizu, and Sander J. Tans, Nature 2020, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2033-2
Improving innovation: Assessing the environmental impacts of emerging technology
Credit: Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
Although many new technologies offer the promise to improve human welfare, they can also produce unintended environmental consequences. And while applying the principles of life cycle assessment (LCA) early in technology development can provide important insights about how to avoid damage to the environment, existing methods focus on products or processes that are already commercially established.
Meanwhile, the procedures and tools used to assess emerging technologies tend to be applied on an ad hoc basis, with no clear guidelines as to what methods are available, applicable or appropriate.
A new special issue of Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology addresses this gap with cutting edge research that advances methods, tests new approaches against emerging technologies, and assesses novel technologies for transportation, infrastructure, energy, and materials. The special issue, "Life Cycle Assessment for Emerging Technologies," includes findings with far-reaching implications for technology developers and policy makers.
For example, two papers reveal the potential environmental consequences of the rapid increase in production of the lithium-ion battery packs that power everything from electric cars to portable computing devices. In contrast to earlier analyses, these studies show that, on a global scale, expansion of lithium production is likely to continue without being slowed by resource constraints for up to three more decades. Meanwhile, localized environmental impacts associated with extraction and processing of high-grade lithium ion brines are likely to create geographic imbalances in the environmental impacts and benefits of that expansion.
The issue also includes papers on fresh approaches to comparative assessment of emerging energy technologies. These new analyses make clear that the age of single-technology solutions at massive, industrial scales is coming to a close. The papers here examine environmental impact of alternative energy futures for algae-derived fuels, hydrogen, solar, and off-shore wind energy technologies.
"The research in this issue advances not only the understanding and methods for the environmental assessment of novel technologies, italso shows the potential for refashioning the tools of systematic environmental assessment to apply at the earliest stages of the innovation cycle," said Reid Lifset, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Industrial Ecology.
Another innovation is the creation of LCA inventories (databases) that can be aligned with the scenarios used in the integrated assessment models (IAMs) widely used in climate change modeling. Methods to incorporate technology readiness levels (TRLs) that are used in R&D management allow connection of LCA with other complementary tools such as multicriteria decision analysis, risk analysis, techno-economic analysis, and the development of data repositories for emerging materials, processes, and technologies
More information: Hanjiro Ambrose et al. Understanding the future of lithium: Part 1, resource model, Journal of Industrial Ecology (2019). DOI: 10.1111/jiec.12949
Communicating science can benefit from scientists 'being human'
Luis Martinez-Lemus (right) discusses research findings with Lauren Park (left) and Jaume Padilla at the University of Missouri's Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. Credit: University of Missouri
First be a human, then be a scientist.
As social beliefs and values change over time, scientists have struggled with effectively communicating the facts of their research with the public. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Missouri and the University of Colorado believe scientists can gain trust with theiraudienceby showing their human side. The researchers say it can be as simple as using "I" and first-person narratives to help establish apersonal connectionwith the audience.
The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE, one of the world's leading peer-reviewed journals focused on science and medicine.
Traditionally, scientists might not always consider the audience evaluating them when sharing the facts of their research, said SiSi Hu, a graduate instructor and research assistant in the Missouri School of Journalism and corresponding author on the study.
"Most of the time the public understands what the scientist is presenting to them, but each person understands in their own way," Hu said. "Therefore, there needs to be a sense of mutual understanding—the scientist must trust the audience as much as the audience trusts the scientist with his or her message."
After completing a literature review of perceived authenticity, the team did not find any appropriate measures relating to science communication. Therefore, based on existing literature, they created a theory of perceived authenticity in science communication—a scientist is someone with their own belief system beyond institutional affiliations, and their messaging reflects those values.
Study participants tested the theory by completing a 19-question survey on authenticity. Survey questions were based on a description of published plant science research and a group of randomly assigned narrative messages attempting to explain that research. The group of messages included a story drawn from the real-life experiences of J. Chris Pires of how he became interested in plant science. Pires is a Curators Distinguished Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science, and an investigator in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center.
Researchers found that if a scientist shares the story of the development of the origin of his or her interest in the subject through a first-person narrative—without use of institutional affiliations—people are more inclined to perceive him or her as authentic. Additionally, if a scientist only uses a first-person narrative, people are more inclined to perceive a scientist as authentic based on a feeling of connection.
The team also found the narrative qualities of perceived authenticity align closely with existing literature on benevolence and integrity, two personality traits that can help an audience build trust with the person delivering the message.
"We hope our findings will provide some wisdom, guidance and tools that scientists can use to enhance their communication of their research—that is also accessible and will be trusted by the public," said Lise Saffran, director of the Master of Public Health program at the MU School of Health Professions, and lead author on the study. "People want to know the person talking to them is a human being with their own values and point of view, and that the message they share reflects those values."
The study, "Constructing and influencing perceived authenticity in science communication: Experimenting with narrative," was published in PLOS ONE.
More information: Lise Saffran et al, Constructing and influencing perceived authenticity in science communication: Experimenting with narrative, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0226711
New mathematical model reveals how major groups arise in evolution
Researchers at Uppsala University and the University of Leeds presents a new mathematical model of patterns of diversity in the fossil record, which offers a solution to Darwin's "abominable mystery" and strengthens our understanding of how modern groups originate. The research is published in the journal Science Advances.
The origins of many major groups of organisms in the fossilrecordseem to lie shrouded in obscurity. Indeed, one of the most famous examples, theflowering plants, was called "an abominable mystery" by Darwin. Many modern groups appear abruptly, and their predecessors—if there are any—tend to be few in number and vanish quickly from the fossil record shortly afterwards. Conversely, once groups are established, they tend to be dominant for long periods of time until interrupted by the so-called "mass extinctions" such as the one at the end of the Cretaceous period some 66 million years ago.
Such patterns appear surprising, and often seem to be contradicted by the results from "molecular clocks"—using calibrated rates of change of molecules found in living organisms to estimate when they started to diverge from each other. How can this conflict be resolved, and what can we learn from it?
In a paper, Graham Budd, Uppsala University, and Richard Mann, University of Leeds, present a novel mathematical model for how the origin of modern groups based on a so-called "birth-death" process of speciation and extinction. Birth-death models show how random extinction and speciation events give rise to large-scale patterns of diversity through time. Budd and Mann show that the ancestral forms of modern groups are typically rather few in number, and once they give rise to the modern group, they can be expected to quickly go extinct. The modern group, conversely, tends to diversify very quickly and thus swamp out the ancestral forms. Thus, rather surprisingly, living organisms capture a great percentage of all the diversity there has ever been.
The only exceptions to these patterns are caused by the "mass extinctions," of which there have been at least five throughout history, which can massively delay the origin of the modern group, and thus extend the longevity and the diversity of the ancestral forms, called "stem groups." A good example of this is the enormous diversity of the dinosaurs, which properly considered are stem-group birds. The meteorite impact at the end of the Cretaceous some 66 million years ago killed off nearly all of them, apart from a tiny group that survived and flourished to give rise to the more than 10,000 species of living birds.
The new model explains many puzzling features about the fossil record and suggests that it often records a relatively accurate picture of the origin of major groups. This in turn suggests that increased scrutiny should be paid to molecular clock models when they significantly disagree with what the fossil record might be telling us.
More information: Graham Budd and Richard Mann. The dynamics of stem and crown groups. Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz1626 , https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/8/eaaz1626
Bacteria on the International Space Station no more dangerous than earthbound strains
Astronaut Michael Foale sampling the potable water delivery system from the International Space Station. Credit: CC0 (public domain), NASA
Two particularly tenacious species of bacteria have colonized the potable water dispenser aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but a new study suggests that they are no more dangerous than closely related strains on Earth. Aubrie O'Rourke of the J. Craig Venter Institute and colleagues report these findings in a new paper published February 19, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Shortly after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) installed thewaterdispenser aboard the ISS in 2009, periodic sampling showed that twobacteria, Burkholderia cepacia and later on, Burkholderia contaminans were contaminating thedrinking water. These microbes belong to a group of related Burkholderiaspeciesthat cause opportunistic lung infections in people with underlying health conditions and are very difficult to kill using common sterilization techniques. The bacteria have persisted in the water dispenser despite periodic flushing with an extra-strength iodine cleaning solution.
To learn more about these bacteria, researchers sequenced the genomes of 24 strains collected from 2010 to 2014. All of the B. cepacia and B. contaminans strains were highly similar, and likely descended from original populations of these two bacteria that were present in the water dispenser when it left Earth.
The researchers conclude that the two bacterial species living within the dispenser are no more dangerous than similar strains that might be encountered on Earth. In the event of an infection, the bacteria can still be treated with common antibiotics.
The authors add: "Within each species, the 19 B. cepacia and 5 B. contaminans recovered from the ISS were highly similar on a whole genome scale, suggesting each population may have stemmed from two distinct founding strains. The differences that can be observed among the isolates of the same species are primarily located within putative plasmids. We find that the populations of Burkholderia present in the ISS PWS are likely are not more virulent than those that might be encountered on planet, as they maintain a baseline ability to lyse macrophage, but remain susceptible to clinically used antibiotics."
More information: Aubrie O'Rourke et al, Genomic and phenotypic characterization of Burkholderia isolates from the potable water system of the International Space Station, PLOS ONE (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227152
A relationship between severe winter weather and Arctic warmth?
To what extent is severe winter weather in the U.S. related to Arctic warmth? Credit: Wikimedia Commons
A new review article published in Nature Climate Change evaluates whether severe winter weather in the United States, Europe and Asia is sensitive to Arctic temperatures. The lead author is NSF-funded scientist Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research.
Despite a warming planet,winterweather has remained surprisingly resilient across the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and the winter weather headlines have often been about severe cold, heavy snowfalls, and the polar vortex. The unexpected frequency of severe winter weather was not projected by global climate models used to study climate change. It has been challenging, says Cohen, for climate scientists to attribute the recent streak of cold, snowy winters to a particular cause.
One relatively new idea has been to link severe winter weather across the United States, Europe, and Asia with Arctic amplification, the accelerated warming of the Arctic region at a rate two to three times faster than the rest of the globe. The accelerated Arctic warming was thought to be due mostly to rapidly melting Arctic sea ice.
One camp of consensus represents studies arguing that Arctic amplification is contributing to more severe winter weather. Conditions favorable for disrupting the polar vortex increase the probability of severe winter weather in the United States, Europe, and Asia, these scientists believe.
The other camp of consensus cites studies based on simulations of low Arctic sea ice using global climate models. The majority of these studies conclude that any observed increase in recent severe winter weather is likely due to chance and not Arctic amplification. In the simulations, sea ice loss does not result in more polar vortex disruptions and contributes to milder winter weather (not severe winter weather) across the United States, Europe and Asia.
The review article discusses why Arctic warming is complicated, and not due solely to melting sea ice or snow cover. Increasing water vapor and clouds, as well as the transport of heat and moisture from lower latitudes, are all contributing to accelerated Arctic warming, Cohen and colleagues report
More information: J. Cohen et al. Divergent consensuses on Arctic amplification influence on midlatitude severe winter weather, Nature Climate Change (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-019-0662-y
Jet stream not getting 'wavier' despite Arctic warming
Rapid Arctic warming has not led to a "wavier" jet stream around the mid-latitudes in recent decades, pioneering new research has shown.
Scientists from the University of Exeter have studied the extent to which Arctic amplification—the faster rate of warming in the Arctic compared to places farther south—has affected the fluctuation of the jet stream's winding course over the North Hemisphere.
Recent studies have suggested the warming Arctic region has led to a "wavier" jet stream—which can lead to extreme weather conditions striking the US and Europe.
However, the new study by Dr. Russell Blackport and Professor James Screen, shows that Arctic warming does not drive a more meandering jet stream.
Instead, they believe any link is more likely to be a result of random fluctuations in the jet stream influencing Arctic temperatures, rather than the other way around.
The study is published in leading journal Science Advances on Wednesday 19 February 2020.
Dr. Blackport, a Research Fellow in Mathematics and lead author of the study, said: "While there does appear to be a link between a wavier jet stream and Arctic warming in year-to-year and decade-to-decade variability, there has not been a long-term increase in waviness in response to the rapidly warming Arctic."
Scientists have studied whether the jet stream's meandering course across the Northern Hemisphere is amplified by climate change in recent years.
For about two decades, the jet stream—a powerful band of westerly winds across the mid-latitudes—was observed to have a "wavier" flow, which coincided with greater Arctic warming through climate change.
These waves have caused extreme weather conditions to strike mainland Europe and the US, bringing intense cold air that leads to extreme cold weather.
In this new study, Dr. Blackport and Professor Screen studied not only climate model simulations but also the observed conditions going back 40 years.
They found that the previously reported trend toward a wavier circulation during autumn and winter has reversed in recent years, despite continued Arctic amplification.
This reversal has resulted in no long-term trends in waviness, in agreement with climate model simulations, which also suggest little change in "waviness" in response to strong Arctic warming.
The results, the scientists say, strongly suggest that the observed and simulated link between jet stream "waviness" and Arctic temperatures do not represent a causal effect of Arctic amplification on the jet stream.
Professor Screen, an Associate Professor in Climate Science at Exeter added: "The well-publicised idea that Arctic warming is leading to a wavier jet stream just does not hold up to scrutiny.
"With the benefit of ten more years of data and model experiments, we find no evidence of long-term changes in waviness despite on-going Arctic warming."
The Cebidichthys violaceus, known as the monkeyface prickleback,
grows to as much as three feet long and six pounds in weight.
Credit: NOAA/MBARI / Public domain
A secret to survival amid rising global temperatures could be dwelling in the tidepools of the U.S. West Coast. Findings by University of California, Irvine biologists studying the genome of an unusual fish residing in those waters offer new possibilities for humans to obtain dietary protein as climate change imperils traditional sources. Their paper appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The fish, Cebidichthys violaceus, is colloquially known as the monkeyface prickleback. With an acidic stomach and small and large intestines, it has a digestive system similar to that of humans. The monkeyface prickleback is among just five percent of the 30-thousand fish species that are vegetarian, nourishing themselves only with the specialized algae in the tidepools where they live.
This characteristic captured the attention of Donovan German, associate professor of ecology & evolutionary biology, researcher Joseph Heras and colleagues. They wanted to figure out how the monkeyface prickleback survives on a food source containing a low level of lipids, which are essential for all living beings. By sequencing and assembling a high-quality genome for the fish, the team discovered the secret.
"We found that the monkeyface prickleback's digestive system is excellent at breaking down starch, which we anticipated," said German. "But we also learned it has adapted to be very efficient at breaking down lipids, even though lipids comprise just five percent of the algae's composition. It is a compelling example of what we call 'digestive specialization' in the genome."
With climate change making the raising of livestock less sustainable, the discovery holds promise for developing new sources of protein for human consumption. In particular, it could be important for aquaculture, which is a possible alternative but is contending with the issue of what to feed the fish being raised.
"Using plant-based food ingredients reduces pollution and costs less," said Heras, the paper's first author. "However, most aquaculture fish are carnivores and can't handle plant lipids. Sequencing this genome has provided us a better understanding of what types of genes are necessary for breaking down plant material. If we scan additional fish genomes, we may find omnivorous fish with the right genes that could provide new candidates for sustainable aquaculture."
The monkeyface prickleback grows to as much as three feet long and six pounds in weight. It can live on land for up to 37 straight hours, thanks to the ability to breathe above water as well as under. In the past decade, it has become a culinary delicacy, appearing on plates in a number of high-end restaurants. Its flavor belies its imposing appearance.
"The taste is actually delicate and mild," said German.
