Up in Arms

The Rough Skinned Newt- one of the most poisonous animals on the planet. Courtesy of the USGS

Last week, I mentioned that evolution is an ongoing process. In the case of germs and humans, bacteria may develop a more lethal strain, and humans develop genes more adept at avoiding this type of infection. This type of co-evolution is called the evolutionary arms race, and has been seen in many, many examples in nature.

For my first example, I would like to visit the rough-skinned newt. This amphibian is a smallish lizard like animal that lives around fresh water bodies in the Northwest coast. An interesting side note to them is that they are one of the most poisonous animals on earth.

A somewhat dubious story says that three men whom had gone camping were found dead, huddled around a coffee pot with one newt inside of it. What is known is that the poison produced by the newt’s skin is called a tetrodotoxin. This nasty toxin has no known antidote, and kills by stopping the heart’s muscles from contracting. It is 100 percent fatal.

Only one animal can eat this newt with few side effects; the garter snakes that live in the area. It is thought that both the newt’s extreme toxicity and the garter snake’s immunity are due to the evolutionary arms race.

The concept is quite similar to the cold war arms race of the 20th century. The snakes gain a gene that allows it an immunity to the poison of the newt . The newt’s offspring that have the most toxins are the least likely to be eaten by snakes- and pass those high toxicity genes to their offspring. The garter snake’s most successful offspring are subsequently the ones that are more likely to resist the tetrodotoxin.

The arms race keeps going until the newt is the most poisonous animal on earth, and the snake can consume enough tetrodotoxin to kill 20 full grown people. And then, it keeps going.

The concept of the evolutionary arms race has also been dubbed, “The Red Queen Hypothesis.” It is called this because of a line the Red Queen character has in the famous tale Alice in Wonderland, “You need to keep running just to keep up.”

This theory states that evolution is a constantly moving battle between those who need lunch and those that would be lunch. As long as both species survive, you will keep seeing camouflage getting better, teeth getting sharper, and running speeds going up. But that is a subject for next time.

Looking at Evolution through Germs part: I

Or, screwed, screwed, we are all screwed.

When it comes to talking about evolution, I like to go big and old. I mostly base my research on whales with legs, giant snakes, and dinosaurs because , well, I geek out over big animals that lived a while ago. If I could figure out why, I probably wouldn’t have this blog.

Today I’d like to switch things up and talk about evolution that’s happening in modern times, sometimes under our own noses.

Bacteria. The word itself sounds kind of icky. Bacteria themselves are one celled organisms so tiny that more than 100,000 of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. Something really interesting about them is exactly how they reproduce and how fast they reproduce.

Bacteria make more of themselves through a neat trick called binary fission. That is, they split (fission) into two (binary). Both copies have they exact same DNA, which I am required by science writer code to call, “the building blocks of life.” Some species of bacteria can double their population in 20 minutes by way of binary fission.


Bacteria reproduction.

What brings us to the subject of evolution is mutation in bacterial reproduction. Evolution itself is tiny genetic mutations spread out through many, many generations. Since generations in bacteria last hours instead of years, these creatures make excellent subjects for evolution.

Mutations are generally a bad thing. Downs syndrome is a mutation. Sickle cell anemia is another one. Sometimes mutations can be neutral, like blue eyes or pointer toes that are longer than big toes. Every once in a great while, something beneficial comes out of a mutation. For many organisms, beneficial mutations typically come in the form of eating or reproducing more efficiently. For bacteria, it’s most often antibiotic resistance.

We live in a world covered in germs, and a world covered in antibiotics. We put antibiotics in ourselves when we get sick, we put antibiotics in the animals we eat, we put antibiotics in our soap. It’s little wonder that when one of these fast-mutating “bugs” gets a gene promoting antibiotic resistance, the new type spreads like wildfire. As you will see in the next post, this can lead to some very hairy situations.

Looking at Evolution through Germs part: II

Or, screwed, screwed, we are all screwed… Part II



Pretty scary, huh? A bacterial infection spread through dirty gyms that is totally resistant to antibiotic treatment. Oddly enough, most people think that this strain of Staph infection came into being at a hospital.

This is sort of counter-intuitive. Hospitals are supposed to be clean, right? The problem is that hospitals may be too clean for their own good. Anti-bacterial cleaning solutions are put down on the hospital floors, everything in use is constantly sterilized, et cetera.

Normally, this is all well and good. After all, who wants to go to a 19th century hospital? But as I stated earlier, all these sterile techniques run into the problem of rapid bacterial evolution. If one bacterium gains a mutation allowing it to survive a dose of antibiotics, in 20 minutes, there will be two of them, in 40 minutes there will be four of them, and in a day, there could be 2 to the 72nd power of them, which is more than all the people in the world, times a billion. Insert explicative of choice here.

The sad part is, there’s little middle ground on this subject. If we were to stop using antibiotics altogether, a particularly bad ear infection (which I am quite familiar with) could equal a death sentence. The best chance we have against these hospital borne “super bugs” becoming antibiotic resistant is to have doctors make educated decisions on when to administer drugs. This may be easier said than done, as many people clamor for antibiotics at the first sign of the sniffles.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only place we can find antibiotics, due to pharmaceutical companies’ large presence in American business, we can find antibacterial in our hand soaps, in the feed we give to farm animals, and even in our G&$d@*n drinking water.

What can you personally do to cut down on antibiotic use? (And perhaps stop some kind of 28 Days Later s___ from going down?)

• Buy Organic meat- being certified organic means that your chicken patty wasn’t pumped full of antibiotics at a factory farm. (plus, some say organic meat is rich in self-righteous flavors, with delicate undertones of smugness)

• Use regular hand soap, not the antibacterial kind. Bacteria will cover your hands within the next hour anyways, so you might as well skip the whole I-created-a-super bug-that-destroyed-mankind deal. If you’re a real Mysophobe, use alcohol based sanitizers instead

• When you get sick, ask the doctor if you actually need antibiotics to cure your ills. If you wind up with an antibiotic, do not stop taking them until you are done with the course.

Well, that’s all for this entry. I was only planning on doing these two, but I’m having fun with this, so I’ll do another on bacteria.

Next stop: 1347 AD- The Black Plague.

Looking at Evolution through Germs part: III

Or, screwed, screwed, we are all screwed…Part III

For a second, imagine you’re living in 14th century Southern France, around 1349 AD. This is not only a world without lolcats and gangsta rap, but also one without cotton clothing, chocolate, and a knowledge of how germs are spread.

The last one is particularly important, as a plague called the Black Death is currently sweeping through your town, killing, using the best evidence, about every one in three people. Named because of the blackish color the lymph nodes take when infected with the disease, it spread when rats infected with the disease were bitten by fleas, which then carried it to humans. This was a nasty, nasty way to go.

"Doctor Beak of Rome" an 1656 engraving by Paul Furst. This was the typical uniform of a plague doctor at the time, a sort of medieval hazmat suit. The bird mask holds sweet smelling herbs in the bill in order to keep the smell of death at bay. Seeing as these men were unsuccessful at stopping the plague, it is thought the mask is what gives us the word "quack" to describe unprofessional doctors.

The real question is, why didn’t all of Europe succumb to the plague? The answer again lies in evolutionary biology. Some Europeans had a genetic mutation that made them less likely to get the plague. It is thought that the Yersinia pestis bacterium latched on to a protein found on some people’s cells. Those who had a mutation deleting this protein were much more likely to survive. Six and a half centuries later, a good ten percent of European ancestored people still lack this protein. A cool side effect of this is that HIV uses the same protein, making those with the mutation more adept at resisting AIDS.*

Interestingly enough, evolution and epidemics go hand in hand.

Diseases like smallpox nearly wiped out the Indian tribes when Europeans first set foot on the New World. The reason for this (as well as the reason why the Europeans weren’t wiped out as well) has to do with natural selection. Smallpox had been common to the old world for millennia. Europeans who had genes adept at avoiding smallpox infections were more likely to survive and have children with the same genes. Those who didn’t, died.

Across the pond, the genes responsible for smallpox immunity would have been useless, and therefore not as common. When Smallpox first hit America, as many as 50 million lives were lost. The few Indians that survived were likely carriers of a resistance gene.A scene describing the Smallpox virus racing through the Aztec population. This comes from the Florentine Codex, a story written by unknown native students of Bernardino de Sahagún.

It is thought that germs, not guns or better technology are why we aren’t speaking Aztec.

So the bad news is that germs have been around forever, and some are waiting for a good time to kill millions of us. The good news is that germs aren’t the only things evolving. Humans’ immune systems are constantly evolving new ways to protect us from all sorts of nasty things. This is called the evolutionary arms race, and is a topic for next time.

*The author is saying this is a cool legacy of a long gone epidemic event, not condoning sharing needles or unsafe sex. Don’t be stupid, people.

Weather Story

story by Ted Rogers

There is an old Yankee saying that New England weather is, “Nine months of Winter followed by three months of damned poor sledding.” And while how warm this spring is going to be is still up for debate, the two snowstorms that walloped central Massachusetts in January and March are still being remembered. These blizzards shut down the University of Massachusetts Amherst for a day each; a situation that pleased nearly all students, but only some of the faculty.

The first storm hit the county area in the early hours of Wednesday, January 28th. About five to eight inches of wet, heavy snow fell from 4 am to the early afternoon. In the Amherst area, the worst effects of the weather were limited to slick roads and closed schools- with some public schools and colleges receiving an extra half-day for clean up.

Elsewhere in Massachusetts, problems included a few power outages in Suffolk and Worcester counties and several car accidents in the Westfield area of the Massachusetts turnpike. State Police report that they lowered the speed limit on the turnpike to 40 miles per hours as a response.
Nationally, the storm took a far heavier toll. Before heading north, the snowstorm went through the southern and eastern states, laying down a sheet of ice across roads and causing power failures for up to 1 million customers. The blizzard is said to have caused more than 23 deaths nationwide.

The second snowstorm to hit Massachusetts went down on Monday, March 2nd, dumping six to 12 inches of snow throughout the region. This was a classic example of a nor’easter system- a storm named after the trade winds bringing the tempest in. The snow delayed flights and buses in the New England area for most of the day. Other then a few icy roads and closed schools, however, the day was fairly uneventful.

After the snowstorm ended, the mercury plunged into the low 10s, creating icy roads. By Wednesday, the air temperature at Westover Air Reserve Base had reached an all-time low of three degrees Fahrenheit, beating a previous 1943 record by a degree.

This storm also had far reaching effects, with snow being seen as far down south as South Carolina. Pictures were captured of snow blanketing the US Capitol Building. As snowy conditions are rarely seen south of Pennsylvania, car accidents and a 15 mile long traffic jam were reported in North Carolina. More than 900 flights on the eastern seaboard were canceled.

These storms have also taken a toll on the already weak US economy. New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine reported that the storm could cost his state 2.5 to 7 million dollars. Closer to home, Chicopee Mayor Michael D. Bissonnette said, "At $12,000 an inch, we are expecting to reach $1 million in costs," for this season alone.

On the brighter side of things, the old saying that March, “comes in like a lion, out like a lamb,” is expected to hold true. Daytime temperatures are predicted to be in the mid to upper 50s for the next week, with a likely high of 62 degrees and sunny weather on Friday.

For more on how the snow affected Students at UMass, please check this audio slide show out, with photography by Emily Grund and narration by Alyssa Montalbano

Given that this is an evolution/paleontology blog, I get disproportionately excited any time some group of people finds a few bones in a hole that they've been digging for years.

It's one of those days.

After three years of digging in the freezing cold, polar bear-infested island of Spitsbergen, scientists have unearthed an absolutely gigantic Pliosaur. This monster was as big as a humpback whale, and a whole lot meaner.

Large Pliosaur skeleton with person for scale. Courtesy of Sarah Katzenell

Today, I think it would be interesting to use this discovery to show a core principle of evolution- Body structures are related to the animal‘s environment and behavior.

Take a look at this creature’s flippers- there are four of them. All other fully aquatic animals have eventually lost their hind limbs, in what is thought to be a response to better hydrodynamics. Flippers tend to create drag when traveling through open water, which means more energy is spent swimming and less spent on eating and reproducing.

So, why would four massive flippers exist on an animal? To know this, we need to look at the Pliosaur’s environment.A world map of the Jurassic Period. Notice the continents are partially fused together. Courtesy of Dr. Ron Blakey

As you can see on the map, there is one giant ocean, a few shallow seas, and thousands of miles of coastland. The coasts and shallow waters make excellent habitats for reefs- and creatures that like to hide in reefs. Now, animals hide for two reasons; to avoid becoming prey, or to wait until your next dinner comes close enough to be convenient. As the Spitsbergen monster was quite possibly the largest animal in the ocean at that point, it can be assumed that its behavior was the latter.

Tests done with robots show some interesting benefits that come with swimming with four flippers. This style allows the animal more maneuverability, and short bursts of speed, something associated with an ambush method of hunting.

Fossils are nothing short of amazing. When looking at the case of the four-flippered pliosaur, one can not only learn about how this creature may have behaved, but also get a better glimpse of what kind of environment this animal lived in.

Fun with Fossils

I have to admit something- talking about evolution can get old in a sense. 3.8 billion years old, to be somewhat precise. But every so often, I get to talk about some recent discovery that shocks scientists the world over. Without further ado, I would like to show you the newly uncovered Maiacetus (mother whale in Latin), the whale that lived like a sea lion.

Mother Whale
It’s not just the discovery of a new species of whale that has science in a uproar- it’s also the fact that this fossil whale was extremely pregnant. As it turns out, a fossilized pregnant whale can give a wealth of information about how the creature lived.
The mother Maiacetus’ fetus was so developed that it already had a set of tiny teeth, something that suggests the baby was equipped to hunt and defend itself soon after birth. What is really amazing is that the baby whale was positioned for a head first birth. Since modern whales give birth tail first, (to prevent the newborn from drowning) this suggests that Maiacetus hauled its bulky body onto shore to give birth, just like modern day sea lions.



What else can fossils tell us?
It depends on what is being fossilized. An egg or a pregnant mother can tell paleontologists about what early life was like for that specific species. Teeth can tell us what the species ate, and sometimes, where they lived. Fossilized foot prints show how an extinct animal walked.

It may come as a surprise to my readers at UMass, but the nearby Holyoke Range is covered with dinosaur footprints from the late Triassic. 190 million years ago, the Pioneer Valley was a vast swampy region with a decent amount of volcanic activity going on nearby. Something interesting about these tracks- they show that theropod dinosaurs walked on two legs without dragging their tails. Believe it or not, this was a lively field of debate a few decades ago.

Notice how this early exhibit of T. Rex had the animals standing with a tripod tail? We now think they had an upright walking position, like a bird.
Public Domain

Fun German word of the day-
Lagerstätten- Means, “place of storage.” This are entire environments that have been flash frozen in stone. These are generally due to a catastrophic event that buries all life in the area and preserves it. The formation of Lagerstätten are associated with events like eruptions, landslides, and flash floods.