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SPECIAL ISSUE Psychedelic Toads and Many Other Amazing Animals

MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE MAY 6, 2023 & MAY 20, 2023

Rulers
Sky
of the

New clues shed light on


the lives of pterosaurs
VOL. 203 | NO. 9

Features
20 These Animals Can Bend
the Mind
The Sonoran Desert toad has become known for its
psychedelic secretions. What other animals can alter
the mind? By Deborah Balthazar

26 The Original Highfliers


COVER STORY New evidence shows how pterosaurs
took to the skies, what they ate and more. By Sid Perkins

34 Kraken the Code


Octopuses and squid modify their RNA like crazy,
20
while leaving DNA untouched. By Tina Hesman Saey

News
6 Thawing permafrost 14 Scientists have finally 16 Hibernating bears don’t
may unleash industrial found where in Africa get blood clots because
pollution across painted lady butterflies levels of a key clotting
the Arctic go to breed in winter protein plummet
7 Yellow crazy ants’ bizarre Underwater ultrasounds Machine learning
reproduction creates could help reveal 4
FROM TOP: © BEASTMASTER/INATURALIST (CC BY-NC 4.0); © BAVARIAN STATE PAINTING COLLECTIONS, MUNICH; PAT DOAK

sharpens the first


males with two separate secrets of whale shark portrait of a black hole
sets of DNA reproduction

8 Waves of cerebrospinal 15 Baseball home runs have


18 How sea cucumbers eject Departments
an organ from their butts
fluid that usually wash become more common 2 EDITOR’S NOTE
over the brain during thanks in part to climate Icy rings may heat up 4 NOTEBOOK
sleep can be induced in change Saturn’s atmosphere Venus’ volcanic bonanza;
people who are awake Renaissance paint recipes
An implantable battery 40 REVIEWS & PREVIEWS
gives tumor-shrinking Once Upon a Prime invites
drugs a boost in mice readers to find the hidden
9 A leech’s healthy appetite math in literature
hints that the bloodsucker 46 FEEDBACK
could help eradicate
disease-spreading snails 48 SCIENCE VISUALIZED
The secret to the ghost
10 Indigenous people catfish’s rainbow flair is in
supercharged the spread the fish’s muscles
of horses across the
Great Plains COVER Pterosaurs, the
first flying vertebrates,
12 A new analysis of ate from a diverse menu
the W boson’s mass that included fish.
intensifies debate over Warpaintcobra/iStock/
10 Getty Images Plus
a weightier claim

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 1


EDITOR’S NOTE

The animal kingdom


EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER Maya Ajmera
PUBLISHER Michael Gordon Voss
EDITOR IN CHIEF Nancy Shute

never ceases to amaze EDITORIAL


EXECUTIVE EDITOR Elizabeth Quill
NEWS DIRECTOR Macon Morehouse
DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR Emily DeMarco
It’s a rare day at Science News when we’re not discuss- ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITORS Christopher Crockett,
Ashley Yeager
ing animal attributes, conversations that more often than MANAGING EDITOR , PRINT AND LONGFORM Erin Wayman
DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR Cassie Martin
not include the phrase “That’s amazing.” Whether it’s a DIGITAL DIRECTOR Demian Perry
MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Helen Thompson
croakless frog that communicates by touch or the unique AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT EDITOR Mike Denison
DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT PRODUCER Kaitlin Kanable
genetics of dogs living near the remains of the Chernobyl CIVIC SCIENCE FELLOW Martina G. Efeyini
ASTRONOMY Lisa Grossman
nuclear power plant, there’s always something new to learn about the creatures BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Bruce Bower
BIOMEDICAL Aimee Cunningham
that share our world. EARTH AND CLIMATE Carolyn Gramling
LIFE SCIENCES Susan Milius
In this issue of the magazine, we go all in for animals. We regale you with ants MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, SENIOR WRITER Tina Hesman Saey
NEUROSCIENCE , SENIOR WRITER Laura Sanders
that break the rules of reproduction (Page 7), snail-eating leeches (Page 9) and PHYSICS , SENIOR WRITER Emily Conover
SOCIAL SCIENCES Sujata Gupta
the world’s longest known butterfly migration (Page 14). We also explain why it’s STAFF WRITERS Erin Garcia de Jesús, Nikk Ogasa, Meghan Rosen
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Aina Abell
hard to tell if a whale shark is pregnant (Page 14), how hibernating bears avoid SCIENCE WRITER INTERN McKenzie Prillaman
CONTRIBUTING CORRESPONDENTS
blood clots (Page 16) and how sea cucumbers shoot a sticky organ out of their Laura Beil, Tom Siegfried, Alexandra Witze
rear ends to ward off predators (Page 18). And those are just the stories in the DESIGN
CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER Stephen Egts
news section. SENIOR ART DIRECTOR Tracee Tibbitts
ART DIRECTOR Chang Won Chang
We also explore animals that can induce hallucinations. It’s a talent we got
SCIENCE NEWS EXPLORES
hip to after the U.S. National Park Service sent out a plaintive message asking EDITOR , DIGITAL Janet Raloff
EDITOR , PRINT Sarah Zielinski
people to please not lick the Sonoran Desert toad, which secretes a psychedelic ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR Jill Sakai
ASSOCIATE DIGITAL EDITOR Lillian Steenblik Hwang
compound. That inspired freelance writer and former Science News intern ASSISTANT EDITOR Maria Temming
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Aaron Tremper
Deborah Balthazar to learn about other animals — including a fish, a frog, an ant SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE
and a sponge — that may have mind-altering powers (Page 20). PRESIDENT AND CEO Maya Ajmera
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Rachel Goldman Alper
Octopuses don’t need to be hallucinogenic to be cool, but finding out that CHIEF OF STAFF Dawnita C. Altieri
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Matt Fuller
these intelligent, adaptive cephalopods extensively edit their own RNA mol- CHIEF PROGRAM OFFICER Michele Glidden
CHIEF, EVENTS AND OPERATIONS Cait Goldberg
ecules adds even more evidence of their awesomeness, molecular biology and CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING OFFICER
Gayle Kansagor
senior writer Tina Hesman Saey tells us (Page 34). And who wouldn’t want to CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER James C. Moore

spend some time with a pterosaur? Alas, the last opportunity for going aloft BOARD OF TRUSTEES
CHAIR Mary Sue Coleman
with Quetzalcoatlus northropi, a giraffe-sized reptile that was the largest VICE CHAIR Martin Chalfie TREASURER Hayley Bay Barna
SECRETARY Christine Burton AT LARGE Thomas F. Rosenbaum
creature ever to take flight, was about 66 million years ago. But humans con- MEMBERS Adam Bly, Lance R. Collins, Mariette DiChristina,
Tessa M. Hill, Charles McCabe, W.E. Moerner,
tinue to be enchanted by pterosaurs, and freelance writer Sid Perkins explains Dianne K. Newman, Roderic Ivan Pettigrew, Afton Vechery,
Gideon Yu, Feng Zhang, Maya Ajmera, ex officio
how scientists are discovering new clues to pterosaurs’ origins, preferred cui- ADVERTISING AND SUBSCRIBER SERVICES
ADVERTISING Daryl Anderson
sine and global dominance (Page 26). MAGAZINE MARKETING John Pierce
SCIENCE NEWS LEARNING Anna Pawlow
Truth be told, even the humblest of creatures are amazing. At Science News, PERMISSIONS Jackie Ludden Nardelli
our online group chat for discussing all things animal hums with reports of Science News
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2 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


ADV E RTI SE M E NT
NOTEBOOK

Venus (part
of the northern
Excerpt from the hemisphere shown
May 12, 1973 in false color) has about
issue of Science News 85,000 volcanoes.

PICTURE THIS
50 YEARS AGO
Venus is a volcanic bonanza, a new map shows
Light flashes The hellscape of Venus is riddled with even across, and about 100 are wider than
no danger more volcanoes than scientists thought. 100 kilometers. The team also found
The light flashes and streaks Using radar images taken by NASA’s many tight clusters of small volcanoes
seen by [Apollo] astronauts Magellan spacecraft in the 1990s, research- called volcanic fields.
have long been attributed ers cataloged about 85,000 volcanoes “We have a better handle of how many
to high-energy, heavy cos- strewn across the Venusian surface. volcanoes are on Venus than are on
mic particles (HZE) passing That’s nearly 50 times as many volcanoes Earth,” where most volcanoes are prob-
through the eyes.... A new as past surveys counted. Planetary sci- ably hidden beneath the oceans, Byrne
report … concludes that the entists Rebecca Hahn and Paul Byrne of says. But he doesn’t think the Magellan
particles are not a serious Washington University in St. Louis debuted data tell the whole story of Venus’ volca-
hazard for short trips to the the map in the April JGR Planets. nism. That spacecraft could see features
moon or Earth-orbital mis- Such a thorough inventory of volca- as small as about 1 kilometer in diameter.
sions such as Skylab. nism on Venus could offer clues about Earth has “lots and lots of volcanoes that
the planet’s interior, such as hot spots of are far smaller than a kilometer across,”
UPDATE: The mechanism magma production, Byrne says. And with Byrne says. “That’s probably the case
behind the flashes described the recent discovery that Venus is vol- with Venus, too.”
by Apollo astronauts remains a canically active, the map could also help We may soon find out. The European
mystery. Perhaps the particles, pinpoint places to look for new eruptions Space Agency’s EnVision mission is
which are components of (SN: 4/8/23, p. 10). slated to turn its much sharper eyes on
cosmic rays, emit radiation Almost all the volcanoes that Hahn and Venus’ surface within the next decade or
as they pass through part Byrne found are less than 5 kilometers so (SN Online: 6/2/21).
of the eye. Or perhaps they wide. About 700 are 5 to 100 kilometers — Maria Temming
trick nerve cells to create the
illusion of light. However the Literal hot spots This map of Venus shows the locations and diameters of volcanoes visible in
flashes happen, they are still an radar data from the Magellan spacecraft. Continents and other geographic regions are shown in gray.
issue for astronauts. In 2006,
about 80 percent of NASA and Ishtar Terra
European Space Agency astro-
nauts reported experiencing JPL-CALTECH/NASA; R. HAHN AND P. BYRNE/JGR PLANETS 2023

the flashes. How the phenom- Beta Regio


enon impacts astronaut health
Atla Regio
after months or years in deep Aphrodite Terra
space is unclear. As NASA
plans crewed missions to Mars Alpha Regio
and the moon, scientists are
devising new ways to protect
astronauts from radiation (SN:
7/4/20 & 7/18/20, p. 18), such Volcanoes <5 km Volcanoes >100 km
as portable magnetic shields Volcanoes <5 km Volcanoes 5–100 km
that can deflect cosmic rays. (Less visible in Magellan data)
Volcanic fields
Deformed volcanoes (All volcanoes ≤20 km)

4 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


MYSTERY SOLVED egg to oil paints may have affected the artwork.
So chemical engineer Ophélie Ranquet of the Karlsruhe
Why scramble eggs with oil paints Institute of Technology in Germany and colleagues whipped
Art historians often wish that Renaissance painters could shell up two recipes to compare with plain oil paint. One mixture
out secrets of the craft. Now, scientists may have cracked one contained fresh egg yolk mixed into oil paint and had a similar
using chemistry and physics. consistency to mayonnaise. For the other blend, the scien-
Around the turn of the 15th century in Italy, oil-based tists ground pigment into the yolk, dried it and mixed it with
paints replaced egg-based tempera paints as the dominant oil — a process the old masters might have used, according to
medium. During this transition, artists including Leonardo the scant historical records that exist today. Each medium was
da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli also experimented with paints subjected to a battery of tests that analyzed its mass, moisture,
made from oil and egg. But it has been unclear how adding oxidation, heat capacity, drying time and more.
In both mixtures, yolk proteins, phospholipids and antioxi-
dants slowed paint oxidation, which can cause paintings to turn
yellow, the team reports March 28 in Nature Communications.
In the mayolike blend, the yolk created sturdy links between
pigment particles, resulting in stiffer paint. Such consistency
would have been ideal for techniques like impasto, a raised,
thick style that adds texture to art. The firmer consistency also
could have reduced wrinkling, which sometimes happens with
oil paints when the top layer dries faster than the paint under-
neath, and the dried film buckles over looser, still-wet paint.
The hybrid mediums have some less than eggs-ellent quali-
ties, though. The paints dry very slowly, and if they were too
Italian artist Sandro Botticelli used oil mixed with egg yolk to paint por-
tions of “Lamentation Over the Dead Christ” in 1480. The medium may yolky, Renaissance artists would have had to wait a long time
have added texture and helped prevent wrinkling, scientists say. to add the next layer, Ranquet says. — Jude Coleman

HOW BIZARRE

Special cells let beetles recycle water in their poop


Some beetles “drink” using their rear Beetles are particularly pernicious.
ends, and scientists are starting to These insects can thrive in arid environ-
FROM TOP: © BAVARIAN STATE PAINTING COLLECTIONS, MUNICH; HHELENE/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS

understand how. ments, including in supplies of wheat


Red flour beetles, a major agricul- and other bone-dry crops. One way dry-
tural pest, open their anus to get water adapted beetles survive is by recycling
vapor in the air flowing into the lower water out of their poop using the rectal
gut and condensing on any poop there. complex, an organ near the end of their
The insects then draw water out of the digestive system. But researchers didn’t
fecal material using special cells lining know how the insects achieved the feat.
Red flour beetles use certain cells in an organ
the lower digestive system, researchers In red flour beetles (Tribolium in the digestive system to suck water out of
report in the March 28 Proceedings of castaneum), the gene Nha1 is more fecal matter and back into the body.
the National Academy of Sciences. active in cells pockmarking the lining
This “amazing mechanism” could one of the rectal complex than elsewhere in rest of the body through osmosis, the
day be exploited to make beetle-specific the body, Halberg and colleagues found. scientists suspect.
pesticides that could protect crops while Previous studies suggested that these Experiments confirmed that the
safeguarding bees and other insects, blisterlike cells were involved in sucking insects opened their anuses in high
says Kenneth Halberg, a comparative water out of material in the organ. humidity, allowing water vapor to flow
endocrinologist and physiologist at the Nha1 produces a protein that pumps into the rectal complex. And beetles
University of Copenhagen. potassium ions across the cells’ mem- with Nha1 deactivated didn’t survive as
Insect pests get into as much as branes, Halberg’s team found. That may well in dry conditions as normal beetles.
20 percent of the global food supply result in a buildup of the ions on the The finding, Halberg says, shows how
every year, destroying food and costing outside of the rectal complex, which “nature has its way of developing some
farmers money, the United Nations’ Food could allow water to move through the quite interesting solutions to some very
and Agriculture Organization estimates. wall of the rectal complex and into the interesting problems.” — Freda Kreier

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 5


News
In May 2020, thousands of tons of diesel fuel
spilled from a destabilized tank facility in
Siberia. The spill was blamed partly on the loss
of soil stability in thawed permafrost.

too. But in many cases, the type of pol-


lutant was not documented. “That’s a big
problem,” Langer says, in part because it
makes understanding the risks of a par-
ticular leak or spill much harder.
By analyzing the association of indus-
trial sites and contamination places in
North America, Langer and colleagues
extrapolated where industrial contamina-
tion and permafrost might coexist across
ENVIRONMENT all of the Arctic, finding that 13,000 to
20,000 such sites may exist today.
Thawing threatens to pollute the Arctic Then the team used computer simula-
As permafrost warms, industrial substances could be released tions to investigate the impact of current
and future levels of climate change. Today,
BY NIKK OGASA times as fast as the rest of the planet as a there may already be a risk of permafrost
As the Arctic’s icebound ground warms, it result of climate change, and as much as degrading at about 1,000 of the known
may unleash toxic substances. 65 percent of the region’s shallow perma- industrial sites and 2,200 to 4,800 of the
The thawing threatens to destabilize frost may disappear by 2100. known and estimated contaminated areas.
facilities, such as mines and pipelines, at That could release some worrisome In a low-emissions scenario in which
more than 2,000 industrial sites and fur- things, says climate scientist Kimberley warming rises by up to 2 degrees Celsius
ther compromise more than 5,000 already Miner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory above preindustrial levels by the end of the
contaminated areas by the end of the in Pasadena, Calif., who wasn’t involved century, those numbers increase to more
century, researchers report March 28 in in the study. In 2021, Miner and col- than 2,100 industrial sites and 5,600 to
Nature Communications. leagues warned that thawing permafrost 10,000 contaminated areas. An increase of
Those numbers come from the first could release antibiotic-resistant bacte- about 4.3 degrees C would probably affect
comprehensive study to pinpoint where ria, viruses and radioactive waste from almost all known and projected locations.
thawing Arctic permafrost could release nuclear-testing programs. The findings are probably conservative,
industrial pollutants. But there are prob- To identify where the warming could Langer says, partly because the analy-
ably additional contaminated areas that spread industrial pollutants, Langer and sis didn’t consider that infrastructure
we don’t know about, says permafrost colleagues first analyzed the range of Arctic itself can warm the ground. And even if it
researcher Moritz Langer of the Alfred permafrost and whereabouts of indus- doesn’t fully thaw, “warming of the per-
Wegener Institute in Potsdam, Germany. trial infrastructure. They identified about mafrost causes quite a bit of a problem,”
“We only see the tip of the iceberg.” 4,500 sites — including oil fields, mines says civil engineer Guy Doré of Université
Toxic substances released in these and abandoned military installations — in Laval in Quebec City. Permafrost that
locations could jeopardize fish and other places where permafrost probably exists. warms from –5° C to –2° C can lose half of
animals in Arctic waterways, as well as the Next, the team mapped contamina- its load-bearing capacity, he says, destabi-
health of people who depend on them. tion in permafrost areas of Alaska and lizing infrastructure.
Permafrost is any soil, sediment or rock Canada — regions with accessible records. No international regulations mandate
that remains frozen for at least two years. The team found that as of January 2021, industries in the Arctic to document the
IRINA YARINSKAYA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES PLUS

Step on the ground in the Arctic, and another 3,600 contaminated locations substances they use and store, or what
chances are that permafrost lies under- occupied the two regions. These include happens to them. So it’ll be difficult to
foot. For decades, people have treated the waste areas and places where pollutants assess and manage the growing risk of
frozen earth as staunch and largely immo- were accidentally released. contamination, Langer says.
bile. Industries constructed infrastructure Focusing on Alaska, the researchers He plans to visit decades-old oil drilling
atop its firmness, and within it they bur- found that diesel, gasoline and related facilities in Canada to see how the chang-
ied their refuse and sludge. In some places, petrochemicals make up about half of ing permafrost has affected the contain-
scientists and others have used permafrost the pollutants reported. Lead, arsenic and ment of drilling fluids. The next step, he
to store radioactive waste. mercury — substances toxic to fish, peo- says, is “to understand better how [con-
But the Arctic is warming nearly four ple and other organisms — were reported taminants] spread into the landscape.”

6 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


ANIMALS Whether a yellow crazy ant is a
sterile female (left) or a fertile male
Invasive ants are (two shown, right) depends on
whether DNA from two lineages
genetic oddballs merges when sex cells combine.

Yellow crazy ants need male


‘chimeras’ to reproduce

BY MCKENZIE PRILLAMAN
Yellow crazy ants break the rules of
reproduction.
Every male ant contains separate
populations of cells from two distinct
genetic lineages, making them “chimeras,”
researchers report in the April 7 Science. So he and colleagues collected therefore can’t pass on the W genome.
Yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) h undreds of yellow crazy ants from “We think it’s maybe an interaction
are the first known species that requires across East and Southeast Asia. Analyzing between two genomes that are in con-
chimerism to create fertile males. females — queens and workers — revealed flict but sometimes cooperate,” Darras
It’s “an elegant response to the kinds of that royalty in this species has a genetic says. The distinct lineages may have
unusual mating systems we’ve observed source. Reproductive queens came from evolved independently in two separate
in other ants,” says Waring “Buck” Trible, combining sperm and egg cells from the ant populations that eventually inter-
an evolutionary geneticist at Harvard same lineage, which the team dubbed R. mingled. Or perhaps the lineages started
University who was not involved in the Queens had R/R genomes. Workers were with similar genes that diverged over
work. “We might consider this as the next hybrids of the R lineage and another lin- time, he suggests. Regardless, “it looks
evolutionary step” in ants, Trible says. eage that the team called W. These ants like the whole genomes are separated
Most animals develop from a sperm cell had R/W genomes. and don’t exchange any genetic material,”
and an egg cell uniting into one, combin- Consistent with the previous study, Darras says.
ing their DNA. As a creature grows, all of the researchers also identified R/W That odd reproductive strategy may
the subsequent cells, save for sex cells, males. But rather than having two sets provide benefits for yellow crazy ants,
carry two sets of DNA-bearing chromo- of chromosomes within somatic cells, helping them earn the title of one of
somes, one from each parent. In other these males had just one set, as is typical the world’s worst invasive species
words, these somatic cells all carry the of other ant species. Each cell contained (SN: 10/10/09, p. 13). Because fusion of R
same genetic information. Sperm and egg chromosomes from either the R lineage and W nuclei results only in sterile work-
cells contain just one set of chromosomes. or the W lineage, the team found. ers, the genomes can never mix and be
But in many ants, along with other Further experiments revealed that the passed to the next generation. Thus, the
insects such as wasps and bees, only R and W cells were unevenly distributed ants avoid any possibility of inbreeding,
females have somatic cells with chromo- throughout the males’ bodies. Most of the which helps small populations invading
some pairs. Males typically develop from body contained majority R cells, almost new areas maintain genetic diversity.
unfertilized eggs, so their somatic cells 75 percent based on the sampled tissue. Chimeras have been observed in other
hold only one set of chromosomes. The ratio nearly flipped in the ants’ sperm — animals, including humans, but it’s rare
A 2007 study, however, found that 65 percent were W cells. and usually a developmental accident.
about half of the sampled male yellow Since both female workers and males Yellow crazy ants are the first known
crazy ants possessed two copies of the come from combining W sperm with species in which chimerism determines
same genes, just like the species’s female R eggs, the sex depends on whether the sex. But some scientists estimate there
worker ants. cells’ packets of DNA, or nuclei, merge. are around 20,000 ant species, and the
But “it didn’t make any sense that all Fusion creates a female. Failure to fuse reproductive systems of most have not
males in this species would be diploid,” causes egg and sperm nuclei to divide sep- been studied.
or have two sets of chromosomes in each arately within the egg, producing a male. “This is a very special system,” says
somatic cell, says evolutionary biologist It’s unclear why this never-before-seen Guojie Zhang, an evolutionary biologist at
Hugo Darras of Johannes Gutenberg mode of reproduction evolved in yellow Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China,
University Mainz in Germany. When this crazy ants. By not fusing its nucleus with who was not involved in the research.
© H. DARRAS

happens in other ants, the males are usu- that of the egg, the sperm “might be able “The question would be how frequently
ally sterile. “Nobody had any explanation,” to increase its reproductive output,” Trible this system can be observed in other ant
Darras says. says. Female worker ants are sterile and lineages.”

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 7


NEWS

NEUROSCIENCE the rhythmic influences that breathing and

Scientists make waves in awake brains heartbeat have on spinal fluid.


As brain activity during sleep causes
Controlling spinal fluid might help treat neurological diseases blood to flow through the brain, spinal
fluid flows in behind the blood. Such fluid
BY SIMON MAKIN implications for treating certain brain infusions clear out toxic proteins and
Waves of cerebrospinal fluid that normally disorders. maintain constant pressure in the skull,
wash over brains during sleep can be made “I think this [finding] will help with experiments in mice have shown.
to pulse in the brains of people who are many neurological disorders,” says In the new study, “the first question
wide awake, a new study finds. J onathan Kipnis, a neuroscientist at we wanted to answer is, can you manip-
Previous research has suggested that Washington University in St. Louis who ulate [blood flow] enough to also drive
the clear fluid may flush out harmful was not involved in the work. “Think of [fluid] flow when someone’s awake?” says
waste, such as the sticky proteins that Formula One. You can have the best car Stephanie Williams, a neuroscientist also
accumulate in Alzheimer’s disease (SN: and driver, but without a great mainte- at Boston University.
7/21/18, p. 22). So being able to control nance crew, that driver will not win the To stimulate blood flow in the brain,
the fluid’s flow in the brain might have race.” Spinal fluid flow in the brain is a Williams, Lewis and colleagues showed six
major part of that maintenance crew, healthy adults a flickering checkerboard
Studies suggest that spinal fluid (blue in this Kipnis says. But he and other research- pattern. A mix of techniques, including
MRI image) clears harmful waste from the brain. ers, including the study’s authors, caution functional MRI and electrodes, confirmed
that any potential therapeutic applications that the intense stimulation affected blood
are still far off. flow in the brain and allowed the team to
In 2019, neuroscientist Laura Lewis of see the order of events.
Boston University and colleagues reported Neural activity increased when the
that strong waves of cerebrospinal fluid flashing pattern was turned on, followed
wash through our brains while we slum- by increased blood flow. Cerebrospinal
ber, suggesting that sleep may give the fluid flow was suppressed while blood
brain a deep clean (SN: 11/23/19, p. 11). The flow increased, and then surged into
slow neural oscillations that characterize the brain as blood flow ebbed when the
deep, non-REM sleep occur in lockstep stimulation stopped, the team reports
with the waves of spinal fluid, the team March 30 in PLOS Biology. Longer stimu-
showed. These flows are far larger than lation produced larger spinal fluid flows,

HEALTH & MEDICINE volume in two weeks, scientists report a target for precision treatment, Xia, Zhang

Battery starves March 31 in Science Advances.


Solid tumors like those that can develop
and colleagues say.
Hypoxia could act as a beacon for

cancer of oxygen in breast cancer often grow so rapidly that


the tumor’s growth is faster than its blood
treatments that use hypoxia-activated
prodrugs, which become active only in a
The device gives tumor supply can support (SN: 6/10/17, p. 15). This low-oxygen environment, says Qing Zhang,
treatments a boost in mice means that the centers of many tumors a molecular biologist at the University of
can become hypoxic, with much lower Texas Southwestern Medical Center in
BY BETHANY BROOKSHIRE oxygen levels than surrounding tissue. Dallas who was not involved in the work.
It’s not great when a person sucks all the “Hypoxia is a double-edged sword,” says But these prodrugs haven’t shown much
oxygen out of a room. When a battery materials scientist Yongyao Xia of Fudan benefit in clinical trials, possibly because
does it to a tumor, though, it could be a University in Shanghai. Low oxygen levels the solid tumors they target are not evenly
good thing. in tumors mean the body’s immune cells hypoxic or not hypoxic enough.
A small self-charging battery wrapped often cannot survive long enough to kill the To make tumors more hypoxic so that
around a tumor removes oxygen from the cancerous cells (SN: 3/4/17, p. 24). Hypoxic the prodrugs have a better chance of
cancer cells’ environment, boosting the cells are also resistant to treatments like working, Xia, Fan Zhang and colleagues
S.D. WILLIAMS (CC BY 4.0)

power of some cancer therapies, a study radiotherapy and traditional chemo- deployed a flexible battery that can par-
in mice shows. Mice that had the batter- therapy, as there isn’t enough blood flow to tially wrap around a tumor. One of the bat-
ies wrapped around their breast cancer deliver an effective dose, says coauthor Fan tery’s electrodes self-charges by sucking
tumors, combined with cancer therapy, Zhang, a materials scientist also at Fudan up oxygen from the environment. It also
showed a 90 percent decrease in tumor University. On the other hand, it provides creates highly reactive oxygen molecules

8 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


suggesting it was possible to maximize ANIMALS
the response.
The effect of brain activity on spinal This leech has
fluid flow is separate from the influences
of heartbeat and breathing, the team
a taste for snails
found. “The brain has a way to control its Its hearty appetite could keep
own fluid flow,” Lewis says. infectious gastropods in check
The team did not measure whether
the waking flows cleared waste from the BY BETHANY BROOKSHIRE
brain. However, previous studies in mice Leeches might seem like relics of a
have found that certain audiovisual stim- bygone age of medicine, but they haven’t
uli reduce levels of toxic proteins linked outlived their usefulness. The freshwater
to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Testing of leech Helobdella austinensis can eat up to
the technique in humans is under way. its weight in snails every day, suggest-
“It’s a beautiful study, but I wouldn’t ing that leeches could be used to control
draw therapeutic conclusions from this,” freshwater snail populations — and the Helobdella austinensis leeches eat a snail in a
lab test. The leeches, which aren’t too picky
says neurologist Steven Goldman of the host of diseases they carry, researchers when it comes to snail snacks, could be used to
University of Rochester Medical Center in report in the April Biology Letters. control snail-borne diseases.
New York. The brain’s fluid flow system is Snails spread diseases such as schisto-
optimally set up for cleaning during sleep. somiasis and fascioliasis to humans and to snail-ridden areas could tank mollusk
“It would be more effective to just ensure livestock. Both of those conditions are populations within about six months.
a good night’s sleep,” Goldman says. “Any caused by flatworms called flukes that It’s an interesting idea, says ecologist
manipulations over and above that would spend part of their life cycle in snails. David Civitello of Emory University in
be best employed during sleep.” In 2021, more than 250 million people Atlanta. But he thinks much more research
Lewis’ team acknowledges that the needed preventive treatment against the is needed.
induced flows were smaller than those fluke that causes schistosomiasis. A more In the lab, leeches had a hard time find-
seen during sleep. But the change in flow effective prevention would be controlling ing snails once the mollusk populations
was still “pretty substantial,” Lewis says. snail populations that host the parasite. decreased. That indicates “a poor abil-
The technique could help scientists figure Leeches may be staple frights for hor- ity to drive [prey] extinct,” Civitello says.
out how the process might be disrupted ror movie characters, but the animals that Indiscriminately killing but not eradicat-
in diseases like Alzheimer’s, she says. should really live in terror of H. austinensis ing snails may weaken competition among
are snails. “Everybody who works in the the mollusks for food. Big, well-fed snails
very small leech world globally, we all know are much more infectious than smaller,
that cells can’t use and damage DNA. that these particular types of leeches love hungrier ones, he says. So if the leeches
By using up most of the available oxygen snails,” says evolutionary biologist Daniel leave small populations of large snails, the
and producing lots of reactive oxygen mol- Shain of Rutgers University in Camden, mollusks’ infectiousness could mean snail-
ecules, the battery shrunk tumors in mice N.J. The leeches aren’t picky in terms of borne disease ends up getting worse.
by up to 26 percent of their original size the types of snails they eat. “And snails are More importantly, H. austinensis will
two weeks after implantation. Pairing the a big problem globally, in terms of health, eat other things besides snails, Civitello
battery with a hypoxia-activated prodrug and so we just connected a few dots.” says. This is a problem that has plagued
shrunk average tumor size by 90 percent. In lab tests, Shain and colleagues paired snail biocontrol efforts. “These predators
The findings are encouraging but H. austinensis and H. serendipitous leeches are often not specialists on the snails we
extremely preliminary, Qing Zhang says. raised in the lab, plus H. modesta leeches want them to eat,” he says. In the lab,
The battery “has to be tested in several found in local New Jersey lakes, with seven the leeches also eat dead insect larvae.
breast cancer models, and also has to be different freshwater snail species. Only Civitello worries that if introduced to new
tested in other cancer models,” he says. H. austinensis proved an indiscriminate wild areas, the leeches will prove to have
And, of course, in humans. What’s more, devotee of escargot. If enough snails were dangerously diverse diets.
if the tumor cells that remain survive, present, one of these leeches could eat Shain and colleagues want to test
it could mean they are resistant to the 0.97 milligrams of snail per day — roughly whether the leeches stick to snail
hypoxia and the tumor could grow back. the leech’s own weight. snacks in field trials. In the meantime,
As with many treatments, Qing Zhang Using a ratio of one leech per every he hopes that people won’t be put off by
NAIM SAGLAM

says, it will probably have to be combined 10 snails, Shain and colleagues put the concept of leeches. H. austinensis is
with other therapies to make sure the together predator-prey computer simu- tiny — and uninterested in humans. Only
whole tumor is zapped for good. lations that suggested leeches introduced the snails need to shiver.

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 9


NEWS

ANTHROPOLOGY of the Paleocultural Research Group in


Broomfield, Colo., who did not partici-
Native Americans drove horses north pate in the study.
Research reveals how equines may have come to the Great Plains The earliest of the 23 North American
horse remains include bony growths at the
BY BRUCE BOWER Running Horse Collin of the Center back of the skull consistent with the use of
Indigenous knowledge and Western for Anthropobiology and Genomics of a halter or bridle, Taylor said at the news
science have written a new tale about Toulouse in France. Running Horse Collin conference. One horse from the 1500s
when domesticated horses most recently is a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. displayed the kind of dental damage seen
arrived in what is now the United States. Great Plains populations such as the from use of a bridle’s metal bit. Another
Spaniards brought horses to Mexico Lakota and Comanche speak of having early horse had been found among various
in 1519. Indigenous peoples then took cared for, herded and otherwise inter- ritual artifacts, indicating that it had held
the reins, rapidly transporting offspring acted with horses long before Europeans ceremonial meaning of some kind.
of those equine newcomers north along showed up. Analyses of diet-related chemical
trade routes. As a result, a new study finds, Running Horse Collin contacted elements in teeth typical of particular
many Native American populations across Toulouse colleague Ludovic Orlando, a geographic regions indicated that one
the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains molecular archaeologist who has traced early North American horse had grown
had incorporated horses into their ways the origins of domesticated horses to up locally. Another was raised even far-
of life by the early 1600s, decades before southwestern Asia more than 4,200 years ther north, probably part of a managed
encountering any Europeans. ago (SN: 11/20/21, p. 15). The duo orga- herd that was fed maize during part of the
This unconventional scenario of nized a large collaboration of Western year, the researchers say.
how domesticated horses originally scientists and Indigenous scholars and DNA comparisons with a range of
spread throughout central and west- officials, including members of the modern horses showed that early North
ern North America bucks a previous Lakota, Comanche, Pawnee and Pueblo American horses were primarily of
narrative: European written accounts nations. Spanish ancestry.
dating mainly to the 1700s and 1800s “Our findings indicate that horses Some Indigenous oral histories sug-
had contended that horses first spread spread [north] from Mexico … by the turn gest that Indigenous peoples’ interactions
into western North A merica in large of the 17th century and were raised locally, with horses go back thousands of years to
numbers after Pueblo people tem- which strikingly lines up with Native equines that might have survived the Ice
porarily drove Spanish settlers out of American perspectives,” William Taylor, Age. But analysis of DNA retrieved from
New Mexico in 1680. But little evidence an archaeozoologist at the University of remains of two Ice Age horses previously
existed to confirm or deny that claim. Colorado Boulder, said at a March 28 news found in Alaska — one dating to about
Europeans’ historical texts didn’t ring conference. Results of the team’s inves- 26,100 years ago and another to around
true for molecular archaeologist Yvette tigation appear in the March 31 Science. 28,400 years ago — showed no direct ties
Taylor directed an effort that located to later North American horses. Scientists
and radiocarbon-dated previously exca- generally suspect that wild horses first
vated remains of 23 horses from North evolved in North America over tens of
America and six horses from Argentina. millions of years before dying out around
Three of the North A merican horses 10,000 years ago.
dated to the second half of the 1500s, For now, the scientific evidence sup-
well before the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. Those ports just the pre-European integration
specimens came from sites in Kansas, of horses into Great Plains societies, says
New Mexico and Wyoming. Reanaly- Peter Mitchell, an archaeologist at the
sis of a previously radiocarbon-dated University of Oxford who was not part of
horse’s remains from an Idaho site, using the investigation. Further research needs
a technique that measures the amount to establish precisely how long ancient
of near-infrared radiation absorbed by wild horses survived in Alaska, he says.
bone, produced a comparably early age Taylor and colleagues have nonetheless
estimate. married Western science to Indigenous
What’s particularly important is that knowledge in a way that “sets a new stan-
those finds yielded evidence of Native dard for archaeological research into the
Rock art of an undetermined age at a American groups caring for, riding and early spread of the horse and the take-
PAT DOAK

Wyoming site depicts a horse and rider that


researchers suspect was carved by ancestral culturally embracing horses by the early up of horse usage by Indigenous groups”
Comanche or Shoshone people. 1600s, says archaeologist Mark Mitchell throughout the world, Mitchell says.

10 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


CONGRATULATIONS
TO THE
2023 ISEF FINALISTS!
www.perotmuseum.org
2201 N. Field Street | Dallas, TX 75201
ADV E RTI SE M E NT
NEWS

PARTICLE PHYSICS would show something is wrong with the

W boson might not be a heavyweight current theory.


The ATLAS reanalysis offers a stron-
A recalculation of the particle’s mass closely aligns with theory ger counterpoint to the CDF claim than
the earlier ATLAS analysis of the same
BY JAMES R. RIORDON reported in 2018. That increases confi- data. “The new analysis is an important
The battle over the heft of a hard-to- dence that the team got the mass right. confirmation of our previous result,” says
detect particle is heating up. What’s at The updated mass is now even more Andreas Hoecker, a physicist at CERN.
stake? Only the leading theory describing at odds with a different group’s mass The latest ATLAS value widens the
all known matter in the universe. measurement. In April 2022, scientists chasm that separates CDF’s mass mea-
A recalculation of the mass of an from the CDF experiment at Fermilab surement from what other experiments
elementary particle, the W boson, has in Batavia, Ill., shocked the physics have found. But it shouldn’t be seen as
increased the conflict between measure- community with a measurement of erasing CDF’s standard model challenge,
ments from competing particle collider 80,434 MeV — about 80 MeV heavier than says physicist Ashutosh Kotwal of Duke
experiments. The ultimate outcome could expected (SN: 5/7/22 & 5/21/22, p. 12). If University, who is a member of the CDF
bolster the standard model of particle the CDF finding is correct, it implies that collaboration.
physics, which describes the fundamen- something is off with the standard model, The ATLAS reanalysis doesn’t change
tal forces that make up everything we see which has persevered in the face of every the perspective on CDF’s announcement
in the cosmos. Or it could reveal signs experimental challenge thrown at it over in 2022 of a heftier W boson, Kotwal says.
of a breakdown in the standard model, the last 50 years. Because the reanalysis is based on data
depending on which lab’s answer prevails. The W boson is responsible for the that ATLAS released in 2017, he says, “the
A reanalysis of old data from the weak force, one of three fundamental fact that ATLAS obtains a similar value as
Large Hadron Collider’s ATLAS experi- forces in the standard model (SN: 2/5/83, before is to be expected.”
ment yields a W boson mass of about p. 84). And “it’s the only mass of a particle Heinemeyer, who is not affiliated with
80,360 million electron volts. Research- in the standard model that can be cal- ATLAS or CDF, sees a shift in the W boson
ers with the experiment, at CERN near culated,” says theoretical physicist Sven mass landscape, but no sign of a resolu-
Geneva, reported the measurement Heinemeyer of the Karlsruhe Institute of tion of the discrepancy.
March 23 at the Rencontres de Moriond Technology in Germany. “Having one new measurement is not
conference in La Thuile, Italy. The revised The standard model theory specifies a enough,” Heinemeyer says. “If more and
value closely aligns with predictions from value for the mass of the W boson, but more measurements were to come out
the standard model. not for any of the other types of standard now from ATLAS and [other experiments],
It also boasts reduced uncertainty model particles, such as electrons and and they would all be in the same ball-
compared with the researchers’ previ- quarks. Finding a W boson mass that’s dif- park, at some point the community would
ous analysis of the same data, which they ferent from standard model predictions decide CDF did something wrong.”
The next word on the W boson mass
will probably come with pending stud-
ies from ATLAS and other experiments at
CERN. The CDF experiment shut down in
2011, so it will not contribute further to
the debate.
In the meantime, researchers hope to
scrutinize each other’s analyses to search
for clues that might help explain discrep-
ancies in W boson mass measurements.
“The CDF April 2022 paper provides a
number of cross-checks of the CDF meth-
odology and is transparent,” Kotwal says.
“I look forward to detailed discussions of
the ATLAS methodology.”
MAXIMILIEN BRICE/CERN

In the end, the conflict might reveal a


new crack in the standard model. Or it
could turn out to be another example of
A new analysis of W boson data from the ATLAS experiment (shown) at CERN’s Large Hadron
Collider is in close agreement with theory. However, it does not negate a larger W boson mass one of the most successful theories in
measurement announced last year by scientists with Fermilab’s CDF experiment. history standing strong.

12 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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WE ARE

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ANIMALS ANIMALS

Longest butterfly migration mapped Wild whale sharks


Europe’s painted ladies cross the Sahara to breed in savannas get ultrasounds
BY ERIN GARCIA DE JESÚS Scientists knew that painted ladies went New underwater techniques
Every year, painted lady butterflies born in to Africa to wait out European winters. The could help detect pregnancies
Europe embark south on an epic journey butterflies cross the Sahara and arrive in
to Africa. Now, researchers know exactly countries such as Chad in the fall. Around BY BRIANNA RANDALL
where on the continent these long-haul November the insects fly elsewhere, but it How do you know if the world’s largest
travelers spend their winter vacation. was unknown where they landed. fish is expecting babies? Not by her bulg-
From December through February, Talavera and colleagues had pre- ing belly, it turns out.
after flying across the Sahara in the fall, dicted that subtropical regions close Scientists thought that an enlarged area
the orange-and-brown-winged insects to the equator might provide suitable on the underside of a female whale shark
set up camp and breed in savannas and habitat. From late 2017 through early was a sign of pregnancy. But ultrasound,
highlands across central Africa, scientists 2020, the team searched a wide variety used for the first time on free-swimming
report in the April 18 Proceedings of the of sites across nine countries in sub- animals, showed only skin and muscle.
National Academy of Sciences. As the rainy Saharan Africa either during the months The humps might instead be a secondary
season brings greenery to the region, the of December and January or year-round. sex characteristic on mature females, like
butterflies and their caterpillar offspring Another 15 sites were monitored year- breasts on humans, researchers report
feast on a variety of plants until the win- round for about two years. March 23 in Endangered Species Research.
tering spots dry up. Then the butterflies Their search paid off. The scientists The ultrasound is part of a suite of new
fly north to Europe. found more than 2,700 caterpillars and methods including underwater “jet packs”
Exactly where painted lady butterflies nearly 2,000 butterflies, from as far west and blood tests that scientists hope
(Vanessa cardui) overwinter and breed was as Cote d’Ivoire and all the way east to could unlock secrets about whale shark
the last unknown piece of their roughly Kenya and Ethiopia. From September to (Rhincodon typus) reproduction. Whale
15,000-kilometer migration, says Gerard November, the butterflies occupy semi- shark numbers have declined by more
Talavera, an entomologist and evolution- arid savannas. As those areas dry up, the than 50 percent in the last 75 years. Now,
ary biologist at the Botanical Institute of painted ladies move south to savannas and there are only 100,000 to 238,000 individ-
Barcelona. The species — one of the most highlands in slightly humid regions from uals left worldwide, scientists estimate.
common butterflies in the world — boasts December to February. Central Africa’s In part because whale sharks are rela-
the longest round-trip journey of any but- tropical rainforests stop the insects from tively rare, their reproductive biology
terfly (SN: 7/21/18, p. 4). going any farther south, Talavera says. is mostly a mystery (SN: 9/24/22, p. 4).
Painted ladies aren’t the only insects to “These butterflies don’t like wet areas.” Nearly everything biologists think they
make long migratory trips, says Constantí Warm weather across the region could know is based on the examination of one
Stefanescu, a butterfly ecologist at Museu help the butterf lies reproduce more pregnant female caught by a commercial
de Ciències Naturals de Granollers in quickly than they do in some parts of fishing boat in 1995.
Spain who was not involved in the work. Europe, Talavera says. Three to five gener- “Protecting organisms without know-
Understanding how these butterflies ations might be born in Africa before any ing about their biology is like trying to
do it provides a framework to explore surviving adults head north in February. catch a fly with our eyes closed,” says Rui
how other migratory insects, including The findings could help scientists fig- Matsumoto, a fisheries biologist with the
destructive pests, make such treks. ure out why there are population booms Okinawa Churashima Foundation in Japan.
with 100 times as many butterflies in some The organization researches subtropical
This brand new painted lady butterfly in central years as others, Stefanescu says. In 2021, animals and plants to maintain or improve
Africa may migrate to Europe if it survives. his team linked the phenomenon to rains natural resources in national parks.
in sub-Saharan Africa. But the part of To learn more about these gentle giants,
West Africa identified in that study is dif- Matsumoto and shark biologist Kiyomi
ferent than where the newfound breeding Murakumo of Japan’s Okinawa Churaumi
grounds are. Now, scientists can verify the Aquarium had to figure out how to keep
link by looking at rainfall and other con- up with them. Like superheroes in a comic
ditions where baby butterflies are found. book, the biologists used underwater jet
G. TALAVERA

But the next mystery Talavera’s group packs — propellers attached to their scuba
hopes to solve is why painted ladies make tanks — to swim alongside the fish, which
such a long journey at all. average 12 meters in length and move

14 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


about 5 kilometers per hour.
Then the team held a 17-kilogram brief-
case containing an ultrasound machine
and maneuvered the wand on the bellies
of 22 females near the Galápagos Islands. Fisheries biologist Rui
Until this study, ultrasound wands had Matsumoto uses a propel-
ler mounted on his scuba
never been used outside of an aquarium tank to keep pace with a
on free-swimming wildlife. The team also female whale shark to take
drew blood from the fins with syringes. an ultrasound of her belly.
To prevent seawater from contaminating
the samples, the researchers used one those of a captive immature female, indi- Developing these sampling techniques is
syringe to create a vacuum, which allowed cating the wild females were not pregnant. an “astounding feat,” says Rachel Graham, a
another syringe to draw only blood. Ultrasound imagery showed egg follicles marine conservation scientist and founder
Performing these tests on whale sharks in two wild females, indicating the whale of MarAlliance, a marine wildlife conserva-
is especially challenging, says coauthor sharks were mature enough to reproduce tion nonprofit headquartered in Houston.
Simon Pierce, a whale shark ecologist but were also not pregnant. The biologists But she doubts whether sharks or marine
with the Marine Megafauna Foundation, did not locate a pregnant whale shark. mammals that swim faster than whale
a marine conservation nonprofit in West Pioneering these noninvasive tech- sharks would tolerate similar tests.
Palm Beach, Fla. The fish “have some of the niques on whale sharks has opened the Coupled with satellite tracking, the new
thickest skin of any animal — up to about door to learning about other endangered methods could help pinpoint where whale
30 centimeters thick,” Pierce says. marine animals. Waterproof ultrasound sharks give birth, Pierce says. That would
Back in the lab, blood plasma from six of wands mounted on poles are already being go “quite a long way towards conserving
the females had hormone levels similar to used to study tiger sharks, Pierce says. the population,” he says.

CLIMATE human-caused warming led to an extra


58 home runs on average per season from
Climate change spikes baseball homers 2010 to 2019. The relationship between
High temps caused over 500 major league home runs since 2010 warmer days and more home runs goes
back to the 1960s.
BY DARREN INCORVAIA Dartmouth College. “But nobody had The team followed that analysis by
Baseball is the best sport in the world for quantitatively investigated it.” comparing the speeds and trajectories of
numberphiles. There are so many stats The theorized relationship between more than 220,000 batted balls tracked
collected that the analysis of them even global warming and home runs stems by high-speed cameras, controlling for
has its own name: sabermetrics. Like in from fundamental physics — the ideal gas factors like wind speed and humidity.
Moneyball, team managers, coaches and law says as temperature goes up, air den- That analysis showed a similar increase
players use these statistics in game strat- sity and thus air resistance goes down. To in home runs per degree Celsius as the
egy, but the mountain of available data see if home runs were happening due to game-level analysis, with only lower air
can also be put to other uses. warming, Callahan and colleagues ana- density due to higher temperatures left
An analysis of baseball’s number hoard lyzed data from more than 100,000 Major to explain higher numbers of home runs.
shows that climate change caused more League Baseball games from 1962 to 2019. Shifting day games to night games and
than 500 home runs on average since 2010, A 1-degree-Celsius increase in the daily adding domes to stadiums could help
with higher air temperatures contributing high temperature boosted the number of teams adjust to rising temperatures. But
to the sport’s ongoing home run heyday, home runs in a game by nearly 2 percent, climate change may soon cause even
researchers report April 7 in the Bulletin of the team found. For example, a game more dramatic changes to America’s
the American Meteorological Society. like the one on June 10, 2019, where the pastime, even with those adaptations,
Many factors have led to players hitting Arizona Diamondbacks and Philadelphia says Madeleine Orr, who studies the
it out of the park more often in recent Phillies set the record for most home runs impacts of climate change on sports at
decades, from steroid use to the height in a game, would be expected to have Loughborough University London.
of the stitches on the ball. Blog posts and 14 home runs instead of 13 if the tempera- Baseball seasons are also susceptible
news stories have also speculated about ture was 4 degrees C warmer. to snow, storms, wildfires and flooding.
whether climate change could be con- Running game-day temperatures “I don’t think, without substantial change,
S. PIERCE

tributing to the increase, says Christopher through a climate model that controls baseball exists in the current model”
Callahan, a climate change researcher at for greenhouse gas emissions found that within 30 years, Orr says.

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 15


NEWS

ANIMALS health care experts — to show how animals were less likely to clump than those in

Hibernating bears have adapted to stop immobility-related


blood clots. Now, there’s a road map to
summer samples and clotted more slowly.
In hibernating bears, HSP47 levels were

avoid blood clots mimic nature’s solutions with drugs.


In platelets, heat shock protein 47, or
about one-fiftieth of those in active bears.
Tests with mice confirmed HSP47’s role.
Scientists identify a target for HSP47, attaches to collagen, a protein Mice lacking the protein had fewer clots
developing anticlotting drugs that helps platelets stick together. This is and lower levels of inflammation than mice
helpful when the body responds to a cut or with HSP47. The team also found that peo-
BY ERIN GARCIA DE JESÚS other injury; it’s dangerous when a clump ple with long-term immobility because of
People stuck sitting in tight airplane seats of platelets blocks blood flow to the lungs. spinal cord injury had low levels of HSP47
for a long-haul flight are at risk of deadly Staying still for long periods of time can and no signs of inflammation-related
blood clots. But immobile, hibernating put people at risk of developing rare but clotting. The same was true for 10 healthy
bears are not. Now scientists know why. dangerous blood clots that usually take participants in a monthlong bed rest study.
Bears settled in for winterlong slumbers shape in the legs, a condition called deep By day 27, their HSP47 levels decreased.
are deficient in a protein that helps blood vein thrombosis. Inflammation and slow Potential anticlotting drugs could aim
clots form, researchers report in the April 14 blood flow can cause the clots to form. to stop HSP47 from interacting with pro-
Science. Platelets lacking this protein don’t To see why hibernating bears don’t teins or immune cells that spark clots,
easily stick together. develop blood clots, cardiologist Tobias Petzold says. The trick will be finding the
The study is a “huge step forward,” says Petzold of University Hospital at Ludwig- right balance between preventing clots
Tinen Iles, a computational biologist at the Maximilians-Universität München and and causing too much bleeding.
University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. It colleagues analyzed blood samples from 13 But the next question to address,
brought together researchers from many wild brown bears taken in winter and sum- Petzold says, is how being motionless
backgrounds — from wildlife biologists to mer. Platelets taken during hibernation prompts the body to make less HSP47.

ASTRONOMY

Machine learning touches up the first black hole portrait


If the first image of a black hole looked like a fuzzy doughnut, holes in the data. “Since we can’t just cover the entire Earth
this one is a thin onion ring. Using machine learning, scien- in telescopes, what that means is that there is some miss-
tists sharpened the portrait of the supermassive black hole ing information,” says astrophysicist Lia Medeiros of the
at the center of galaxy M87. Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. “We need to
In 2019, scientists with the Event Horizon Telescope have an algorithm that can fill in those gaps.”
unveiled an image of M87’s black hole. The picture showed Previous analyses had used certain assumptions to fill
a blurry orange ring of glowing gas surrounding the dark in the details, such as preferring an image that is smooth.
behemoth (below left). The new ring’s thickness (right) is half But the new technique uses machine learning to address
that of the original, despite being based on the same data, re- the gaps based on over 30,000 simulated images of matter
searchers report April 13 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. swirling around a black hole, creating a sharper image.
The Event Horizon Telescope takes data using a network In the future, this technique could help scientists get a
of radio telescopes across the globe. But that still leaves better handle on the black hole’s mass. — Emily Conover

L. MEDEIROS ET AL 2023

16 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


Contribute Positively
to Their Prosperity
Lessons from the Mawhiba Foundation

• Parents understand their children the most, thus, they should always be in contact with the
school and provide them with important feedback about their child to contribute positively to
their prosperity.

• To better understand your gifted child's needs, read and learn more about gifted students.

• Make sure to provide a variety of learning opportunities and resources to support your gifted
child's development.

• It is important to participate in your child's school activities that are specially designed for
gifted students and celebrate their achievements.

• Gifted students are known for being curious and inquisitive. For that reason, try not to give
them straight answers, but encourage them to find out answers and pose questions, and
always spend enough time listening to them.

• Always have high expectations for your gifted child's performance.

• Your child might be gifted in some aspects and average in others.

• Be in contact with parents of other gifted children to support your child's educational journey.

• Ensure that your gifted child interacts within a normal social life.

"Mawhiba" is a non-profit organization in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was founded 1999 to
identify and nurture gifted students through a well-established education system that includes a
variety ofnational and international opportunities in STEM fields.

106 813 27,381


ISEF awards International awards Students in Mawhiba
classes program

122 518,816 186,915


Number of schools Tested Students Identified Gifted Students
involved in Mawhiba
classes program

m a w h i b a . o r g

Mawhiba

ADV E RTI SE M E NT
NEWS

ANIMALS

Genes help unravel sea cucumber ‘silk’


The animal ejects a sticky organ from its butt to deter predators

BY DARREN INCORVAIA evolutionary advantage this sea cucum-


Some lizards shed their still-wriggling tails ber has gained … so that its population can
to distract predators, but sea cucumbers expand so widely and predominantly.”
take this sort of strategy to the next level. Chen and colleagues identified genes
When startled, the marine invertebrates from the tubules, known collectively
shoot a silky, sticky substance out of their as the Cuvierian organ, then predicted
rear ends that is actually an entire organ. what their proteins would look like using
The tangle of tubules looks like a program called AlphaFold (SN: 9/24/22,
intestines, but it evolved from the sea p. 16). The program predicted new types
cucumber respiratory system and, like of receptors on cell surfaces that might
lizard tails, regenerates after use. Now, play a role in expelling the organ. A startled black sea cucumber will expel a
sticky, stringlike organ (thin white lines in
a closer look at the genetic instruction An analysis of the tubules’ “silk” proteins this artist’s illustration) as a defense against
book, or genome, of one sea cucumber found that even though their amino acid predators such as crabs.
species is helping unravel how the tubules sequences differ from those in spider silk,
work on the molecular level, scientists both silks are made up of long repeating amyloids, Chen says. In humans, amyloid
report in the April 18 Proceedings of the chains of amino acids. Those chains might proteins are associated with neurodegen-
National Academy of Sciences. be a shared structure across silklike pro- erative conditions like Alzheimer’s.
The black sea cucumber (Holothuria teins, even when the proteins evolved The team’s data can be used to answer
leucospilota) is “the most dominant sea independently, the team says. other questions about how the enigmatic
cucumber species in the South China Proteins responsible for the organ’s organ evolved, says biologist Patrick
Sea,” says biologist Ting Chen of the South stickiness — which stops sea cucumber Flammang of the University of Mons in
China Sea Institute of Oceanology in predators like fish, crabs and starfish in Belgium. A good genome is “a cornerstone
Guangzhou. “We would like to know what their tracks — have features similar to to be able to do this work,” he says.

PLANETARY SCIENCE The key to the discovery came when predominantly water ice. It may be the

Saturn’s icy rings the Hubble Space Telescope and the


Cassini spacecraft observed Saturn simul-
source of the atomic hydrogen” emitting
the Lyman-alpha radiation, he says.

may bring the heat taneously in 2017, right before Cassini


plunged into the planet’s atmosphere,
Icy ring particles falling into Saturn’s
atmosphere carry the energy of their
Ultraviolet glow could help says astrophysicist Lotfi Ben-Jaffel of the motion with them. “They have to release
scientists ID ringed exoplanets Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris. that energy to the surrounding gas,”
This allowed Ben-Jaffel and colleagues Ben-Jaffel says, and that energy heats
BY KEN CROSWELL to calibrate the ultraviolet detectors on up the atmosphere. When the particles
The rings that make Saturn a spectacle those spacecraft and on the International vaporize, they release additional energy,
are probably heating its atmosphere, Ultraviolet Explorer, an Earth-orbiting further heating the atmosphere and mak-
making it glow at ultraviolet wavelengths. satellite that also observed Saturn. The ing it glow at ultraviolet wavelengths. The
In the planet’s northern hemisphere, team also calibrated data from Voyager 1 emission may also appear in the planet’s
researchers detected an excess of ultra- and 2, which flew past the planet in 1980 southern hemisphere, the team suspects.
violet emission that comes from hydrogen and 1981. Comparing these observations Astronomers don’t yet know whether
atoms. Known as Lyman-alpha radia- revealed a band of excess Lyman-alpha any of the thousands of worlds found
tion, the emission is probably the result radiation spanning 5° to 35° N latitude. orbiting other stars have rings that are
of water ice falling into the atmosphere The team’s explanation for the extra as magnificent as Saturn’s. But the new
from the planet’s rings, the team proposes glow is plausible, says planetary scientist discovery may help scientists identify
in the March Planetary Science Journal. Paul Estrada of NASA’s Ames Research such worlds, if they exist. Future planet
The detection of a similar emission Center in Mountain View, Calif. “We hunters could look for the telltale glow
from a distant world could someday lead know material is falling in from the rings,” of Lyman-alpha radiation, Ben-Jaffel says,
LIANG LI

to the discovery of a Saturn-like planet Estrada says, because Cassini detected and then further observations could con-
orbiting another star. it (SN: 1/20/18, p. 7). “The rings are firm the rings’ existence.

18 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEATURE

These animals can


BEND THE MIND At least one of their compounds is
psychedelic, while others remain mysterious
By Deborah Balthazar

20 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


T
he adage “all attention is good attention” ting the secretions, then drying and smoking them.
may be true for marketers — not so for the When inhaled, a compound within, 5-MeO-DMT, can
Sonoran Desert toad. Last fall, the U.S. cause auditory and visual hallucinations. “It’s a very
National Park Service sent out a message powerful psychedelic sometimes called the ‘God
on Facebook asking visitors to “refrain from licking” molecule,’ ” says pharmacologist and chemist David
the toad (technically Incilius alvarius but commonly Nichols of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
called Bufo alvarius). That message came months The drug’s growing popularity could be bad
after a New York Times article covered the booming news for toad populations. “If you relocate it out-
interest in the psychedelic compound that the toad side of its home territory,” Villa says, which often
excretes from its skin — along with the “poaching, happens when people collect a toad for its secre-
over-harvesting and illegal trafficking” that have tions, “it gets lost and its chances for survival go
accompanied that interest. way down.” What’s more, collecting large numbers
People don’t typically lick the toads to get high, of toads increases the risk of disease transmission,
says Robert Villa, a community outreach specialist like chytrid fungus, between toads.
at the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on We at Science News heard the PSA loud and clear:
Tumamoc Hill. The secretions the toads produce Just leave this toad alone. But we couldn’t help but
are toxic when ingested. They “work orally, through wonder: What other amazing animals may have psy-
the mucous membranes, and cause really danger- chedelic potential? On the following pages, freelance
SONORAN
ous side effects, like cardiac arrest,” Villa says. writer Deborah Balthazar takes us on a tour, by land
DESERT TOAD
Instead, for decades, people have been collec- and sea, of some of the world’s mind-altering fauna.
Habitat: The
Sonoran Desert, in
the southwestern
Sonoran desert toad United States and
northern Mexico
(Incilius alvarius)
All toads secrete toxins from their skin. These
OPPOSITE PAGE: BACKGROUND: PREMYUDA YOSPIM/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS; ANIMALS, FROM TOP: © MATT REALA/INATURALIST
(CC BY-NC 4.0); HOLGER KRISP/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC BY 3.0); SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE; © BEASTMASTER/

secretions, whose specific compounds vary


INATURALIST (CC BY-NC 4.0); BRIAN GRATWICKE/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0); THIS PAGE: HOLGER KRISP/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC BY 3.0)

from species to species, probably evolved as


a way to keep a toad’s body moist. Over time,
the compounds, which can also act on the
brain and affect heart muscle when ingested,
came to aid in self-defense.
But the Sonoran Desert toad, also known
as the Colorado River toad, appears to have
taken evolution one step further.
The toad, one of the largest in North
America, secretes an enzyme that converts
bufotenine, a compound also made by other
toads, into 5-MeO-DMT, a powerful hallucino-
gen related to the psychedelic drug DMT.
A frightened Sonoran Desert toad gushes
its toxic mix, which includes 5-MeO-DMT,
from its parotoid glands — located behind
each eye — and from glands on its legs. It’s a
way to say, “Please don’t eat me! I don’t taste
good!” When swallowed in large quantities
by a potential predator, the toxins can cause
coma, cardiac arrest and even death.
Scientists aren’t yet sure why the Sonoran
Desert toad produces 5-MeO-DMT, and why
it is the only toad known to make it. “There’s
a lot of mystery,” Villa says.

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 21


FEATURE | THESE ANIMALS CAN BEND THE MIND

California harvester ant


(Pogonomyrmex californicus)
The venom of the California harvester ant is made up of
enzymes that aren’t known to cause hallucinations on
their own, but the Indigenous peoples of central
California once ate them during rituals including vision
quests. Ethnographic reports suggest people would swal-
low hundreds of live ants in balls of eagle down feathers.
No doubt the people were stung, likely on the insides.
Justin Schmidt, an entomologist at the Southwestern
Biological Institute and University of Arizona in Tucson
GIANT MONKEY FROG who died in February, said the pain of being stung by so
Habitat: The Amazon Basin in South America many ants, along with extreme cold, fasting and in some
cases sleep deprivation, triggered hallucinations that
connected the people with spiritual guides.
Giant monkey frog A harvester ant’s sting is “nothing like a bee sting,”
Schmidt wrote in The Sting of the Wild (SN: 8/6/16, p. 26).
(Phyllomedusa bicolor) “The pain is intense, comes in waves, and is deeply
There’s no scientific consensus on whether kambô, the visceral.” Lasting from four to eight hours, the pain is
name for the toxic secretion produced by the giant mon- accompanied by a numb sensation at the site of the sting.
key frog, should be considered a psychedelic. The term The ants deliver stings to defend their colonies from large
psychedelic comes from Greek meaning “mind manifest- predators, including lizards, birds and people. (Smaller

FROM TOP: © BEASTMASTER/INATURALIST (CC BY-NC 4.0); © MATT REALA/INATURALIST (CC BY-NC 4.0)
ing,” Nichols says. “You can imagine, it’s enhancing the enemies such as other insects and spiders are bitten.)
properties of your mind, rather than just intoxicating you.” A person who eats 1,000 ants would probably die;
Other compounds such as stimulants and depressants according to Schmidt’s book, one ant is enough to kill
modify the activity of the brain, but they don’t leave users a mouse. But some predators have defenses: The regal
with the kind of new insights and memorable experiences horned lizard (Phrynosoma solare) has a mucus lining its
that come with psychedelics. mouth and digestive system that allows it to eat hundreds
Wuelton Monteiro, a tropical medicine researcher at of ants and a substance in its blood that neutralizes the
the Universidade do Estado do Amazonas in Manaus, venom. Some birds somehow avoid getting stung too.
Brazil, points to a 2020 study in Scientific Reports as an It’s hard to get more information on how the ants
example of why the classification has been unclear. In the were used in rituals and the nature of the experience.
small study, nearly half of participants who reported using Disease and violence that came with Westerners during
kambô said they had a spiritual experience, and some ex- California’s gold rush destroyed the Indigenous commu-
periences came with what resembled the afterglow often nities in the Central Valley and their way of life.
associated with hallucinogens. But kambô doesn’t activate
the 5-HT2A receptor, a protein that senses the chemical
messenger serotonin, while classic psychedelics do.
Among Indigenous populations in the southwestern
Amazon, the frog’s skin secretions have been used for
centuries as a stimulant in shamanistic rituals. According
to Villa, the secretions are usually applied on small, super-
ficial burns on the body to increase the stamina of hunters.
In predators attempting to gobble the frog, kambô
might cause regurgitation, seizures and a change in heart CALIFORNIA
function. Researchers are still trying to decipher the HARVESTER ANT
specific compounds that explain these effects, but they do Habitat: Southwestern
know that species of Phyllomedusa collectively produce United States and
over 200 short protein fragments that can influence body northern Mexico
function. Some might be promising for future medicines.

22 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEATURE | THESE ANIMALS CAN BEND THE MIND

Salema (Sarpa salpa) SALEMA


Fishes including this species of sea bream, as well as some Habitat: Temperate and
sea chubs and clownfish, can cause auditory and visual hal- tropical ocean waters, from
lucinations when eaten, though reports are rare. Sarpa salpa But ichthyoallyeinotoxism is the Atlantic coast of Africa
was known as the “dream fish” in ancient Rome, according to distinct from two other forms of to the Mediterranean Sea
a 2018 review of psychedelic fauna published in Frontiers fish poisoning. Symbiotic bacteria
in Psychiatry. Two cases of hallucinatory fish poisoning were within puffer fish produce a neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin,
documented in 2006 in the journal Clinical Toxicology. In or TTX, that can cause paralysis and death. And ciguatera
one case, a 40-year-old man ate baked S. sarpa and later fish poisoning comes from eating fish contaminated with a
experienced hallucinations of screaming animals and giant neurotoxin produced by some dinoflagellates. It can cause
arthropods surrounding his car. The symptoms went away, diarrhea, vomiting and weakness, as well as a reverse sensory
with medical attention, 36 hours after he ate the fish. disruption, where hot things seem cold and vice versa. But it
Researchers don’t know what compounds cause does not cause hallucinations, says Sandric Leong, a biological
this ichthyoallyeinotoxism, or fish poisoning, which can oceanographer at the National University of Singapore.
include nightmares. Evolutionary biologist Leo Smith of the How and why many of these neurotoxins are produced
University of Kansas in Lawrence, who studies fish history is still being worked out. “There are so many relationships
and diversification, says he and other scientists suspect that with the marine environment which we are not very sure of,”
the compounds are a by-product of the fishes’ diets. Leong says.

PITTED SPONGE
Pitted sponge (Verongula rigida)
Habitat: The Caribbean
The pitted sponge and some other sponges including Smenospongia aura
and S. echina contain 5-bromo-DMT and 5,6-dibromo-DMT. Because
of their relationship with the psychedelic drug DMT, these compounds
are plausible psychedelics. American chemist Alexander Shulgin,
famous for his research into psychedelic compounds and for introduc-
ing the world to the synthetic hallucinogen MDMA, or ecstasy, and
his wife Ann Shulgin wrote in TIHKAL: The Continuation that they don’t
know whether the sponge compounds are activated by smoking or not.
They are, however, “quantitatively reduced to DMT by stirring under

FROM TOP: BRIAN GRATWICKE/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0); SMITHSONIAN TROPICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
hydrogen in methanol, in the presence of palladium on charcoal.”
The pitted sponge is known to concentrate in its tissue chemicals
called monoamines that can modify the behavior of nerve cells. Not
only can these compounds make the sponge taste bitter, but they can
also alter the behavior of predatory fish that dine on the sponge.
“They wouldn’t prevent the fish from ever trying to take a bite, but it
would prevent it from persisting or consuming the sponge any beyond
an initial several bites,” says Mark Hamann, a pharmacologist from the
Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
V. rigida’s ability to alter animal behavior intrigued Hamann, who
reported in a 2008 study in the Journal of Natural Products that
5,6-dibromo-DMT acted like an antidepressant in rats, while
5-bromo-DMT acted like a sedative. Hamann says that related
compounds may one day be isolated and might make for promising
antidepressants, anxiety-reducing drugs or pain relievers in people.

Explore more
„ Laura Orsolini et al. “Psychedelic fauna for psychonaut hunters:
A mini-review.” Frontiers in Psychiatry. May 22, 2018.

24 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEATURE

The
Original
Highfliers
New discoveries are updating
scientists’ picture of pterosaurs,
the first flying vertebrates
By Sid Perkins

I
n an eat-or-be-eaten world, flight conveys a bevy powered flight. Pterosaurs, Greek for “wing lizards,”
of benefits. A creature that takes to the third arrived on the scene in the Triassic Period, per-
dimension can more easily escape earthbound haps as early as around 237 million years ago. These
predators, dine off a much broader menu or drop original vertebrate fliers preceded birds by at least
With a wingspan of down on unsuspecting victims from above. Flying 70 million years and bats by more than twice that.
at least 2.5 meters, also allows an animal to cover distance more quickly, What caused pterosaurs’ demise is clear: The
Dearc sgiathanach was
N. JAGIELSKA

forage more efficiently and find mates more easily. same asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dino-
the largest pterosaur of
its era, the middle of the So it’s perhaps surprising that only three groups saurs about 66 million years ago also took them
Jurassic Period. of vertebrates have ever evolved sustained, muscle- out — along with more than 75 percent of all life on

26 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


Earth. But how pterosaurs took to the air in the first The first discovered species was named
place remains a big mystery. “We don’t have any Pterodactylus antiquus, the genus name stemming
properly transitional fossils for pterosaurs, or at from the Greek words for “wing finger.” (Although
least ones that we recognize,” says Matthew Baron, this species and many discovered soon after were
a freelance vertebrate paleontologist. commonly referred to as pterodactyls, that term
Despite the gap in the early fossil record, recent officially applies only to this species and a small
research offers clues to who pterosaurs’ earliest group of related species within the broader ptero-
cousins were and what they looked like, and how saur lineage.) Unlike in bats, whose wing membranes
pterosaurs evolved from small, flitting creatures are stretched between four elongated fingers of the
into an incredibly varied group. They eventually hand, a pterosaur’s wing is supported by only one
occupied ecosystems worldwide and consumed a hyperelongated finger, a hallmark that helps distin-
wide variety of prey — getting bigger and spread- guish pterosaurs from other creatures.
ing farther earlier than previously thought, recent But something pterosaurs and bats do share is
studies reveal. Some grew bizarre crests atop their that when they first appear in the fossil record,
heads, while others sported mouths full of teeth they’re already able to fly. Direct evidence of how
that projected threateningly at various angles. the reptiles took to the skies is lacking. “As yet, we
“Some pterosaurs looked like creatures from your do not know of any ‘missing link’ pterosaurs,” Baron
nightmares,” says Brian Andres, a vertebrate pale- reported in 2021 in Earth-Science Reviews.
ontologist at the University of Sheffield in England. The oldest known pterosaur fossils date to about
During their lengthy reign of the skies, ptero- 219 million years ago, though paleontologists sus-
saurs ranged in size from creatures that could sit in pect pterosaurs originated as early as 237 million
the palm of your hand to soaring behemoths with years ago, Baron notes. That’s when the oldest and
wingspans that rivaled those of an F-16 fighter jet. closest relatives of pterosaurs lived, and thus prob-
In fact, the largest animal that ever took flight — an ably around the time that pterosaurs would have
iconic species discovered more than half a century split off and formed their own lineage. The gap in
ago but only recently described in great detail — was the fossil record is in part due to the fact that rocks
a pterosaur. from this period are scarce worldwide. And many
pterosaur bones were hollow, so they were vulner-
In the beginning able to being crushed soon after death or during
Pterosaur fossils were first unearthed in the late fossilization. “Often, pterosaur remains are just a
1700s — coincidentally, from the same limestone jumble of bones,” Baron says.
formation in Germany that later yielded the earliest But there are indirect clues to what a proto-
known bird, Archaeopteryx. Scientists didn’t quite pterosaur might have looked like and whether
know what to make of the fossils. One scientist pro- pterosaur flight evolved from the ground up — in
posed they belonged to a weird sea creature, and terrestrial creatures that flapped and leaped into
another thought they represented a transitional the air — or from the trees down — in tree-living
form between birds and bats. But soon, experts animals that glided.
settled on the fact that pterosaurs were flying Those clues come from studies of pterosaurs and
reptiles, distinct from dinosaurs. their relatives. In 2020, researchers published a

Pterosaur timeline Pterosaurs originated during the Triassic Period — well before the other two groups of flying
vertebrates, birds and bats — and then died out in the same mass extinction that killed off non-avian dinosaurs.

Milestones in the history of vertebrate flight

Triassic Jurassic Cretaceous Paleogene

237 million 230 million 219 million 150 million 66 million 52 million
years ago: years ago: years ago: years ago: years ago: Asteroid years ago:
Suspected Oldest known Oldest known Oldest known hits and pterosaurs, Oldest known
origin of dinosaur pterosaur bird skeleton along with non-avian bat skeleton
pterosaurs fossil fossil dinosaurs, go extinct

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 27


FEATURE | THE ORIGINAL HIGHFLIERS

paper in Nature comparing the anatomy of 157 spe- ably didn’t spend a lot of time in trees, that argues
cies of early pterosaurs, primitive dinosaurs and a against the idea that pterosaur flight evolved out
variety of reptiles that lived at the same time or of gliding. But a small pelvic girdle suggests that
earlier. A group known as lagerpetids — from the S. taylori wasn’t a leaper, Foffa says. That would
Greek for “rabbit reptiles,” so named because of the seem to argue against the standard idea for how a
general proportions of the bones in the limbs — was ground dweller would take to the skies. However,
most closely related to pterosaurs. he says, “it’s not necessary to be a leaper to evolve
A separate analysis, reported last year in Nature, flight.”
showed that a fast-running, roughly 20-centimeter-
Pterosaurs may have long reptile that lived about 230 million years ago What’s for lunch?
evolved from small was a close relative of both lagerpetids and ptero- What pterosaurs ate is often a matter of conjec-
ground-dwelling reptiles saurs. Given that close relationship, this creature, ture. Although some fossils preserve stomach
similar to Scleromochlus
taylori (top), which was called Scleromochlus taylori, may serve as a good contents — direct evidence of what was consumed —
about as long as a dinner stand-in for the kind of animal that pterosaurs most of the time researchers must look at where
fork, during the late evolved from (SN: 11/5/22, p. 15). a pterosaur lived and how its anatomy compares
Triassic Period. The re-
cent discovery of Dearc S. taylori had slender limbs, small hands and with modern creatures to reconstruct diet. Based
sgiathanach (bottom) straight claws, all of which point to a ground- on such comparisons, researchers have speculated
suggests that pterosaurs dwelling creature, says Davide Foffa, a vertebrate that various species of pterosaurs ate everything
evolved large body sizes
by at least the middle of paleontologist at National Museums Scotland in from insects and worms to fish, crustaceans and
the Jurassic Period. Edinburgh. Because a critter like S. taylori presum- meatier prey such as small land vertebrates.
But sometimes, researchers are left to comb
through other types of evidence.
Take Kunpengopterus sinensis, a pterosaur that
lived in what is now China between 165 million
and 153 million years ago. Last year, researchers
reported unearthing fossils of this species along-
side gastric pellets chock-full of fish scales, a strong
hint that the creatures had eaten fish and then
regurgitated the indigestible bits, as modern owls
and gulls do (SN: 3/12/22, p. 5).
Other evidence comes à la fossilized poop — or,
more delicately, coprolites. If a coprolite can
be linked to the creature that made it, any con-
tents can be reasonably identified as a part of the
diet, says Martin Qvarnström, a vertebrate pale-
ontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. A
few years ago, he and colleagues analyzed three
coprolites from more than 150-million-year-old
rocks unearthed in south-central Poland. The fos-
silized dung was deposited on an ancient tidal
flat that also preserved a multitude of pterosaur
footprints, Qvarnström says. The well-trampled
surface appears to have been rapidly buried, per-
haps as soon as the next tide came in, so it’s very
likely that both the footprints and the copro-
FROM TOP: GABRIEL UGUETO; N. JAGIELSKA

lites were made by pterosaurs, he and colleagues


reported in 2019 in PeerJ.
Using high-energy radiation to perform CT–like
scans of the fossilized poop, the team found that the
largest coprolite, which was about 1.5 centimeters
long and 6 millimeters in diameter, contained
more than 100 calcium-rich shells of single-celled
organisms called foraminifera. One of the smaller
coprolites contained many bristles from what may

28 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


have been bottom-dwelling marine worms. The
large numbers alone suggest that ingestion of these
forams and worms wasn’t accidental, Qvarnström
says. Instead, the researchers propose, the ptero-
saur had been targeting this prey.
For these pterosaurs to consume such minus-
cule prey, they must have been filter feeders,
much like flamingos or baleen whales. To cap-
ture the forams — which were mostly about
300 micrometers across, about the size of a large
dust mite — these pterosaurs must have had jaws
full of closely spaced teeth, the team suggests.
Although filter-feeding pterosaurs are known from
later ages, this is the first strong evidence for them 5 mm
living as early as about 150 million years ago, says
Qvarnström.
Because skeletal fossils of these pterosaurs aren’t
yet known, Qvarnström’s group doesn’t know what
the mystery filter feeders looked like or how big
they were. But maybe they resembled the newly
discovered species Balaenognathus maeuseri.
(Balaenognathus, roughly translated from Latin,
means “whale jaw,” a reference to baleen whales.)
Its fossils were unearthed from limestone rocks laid
down as sediment sometime between 157 million
and 152 million years ago in what is now Germany,
says David Martill, a vertebrate paleontologist at
the University of Portsmouth in England.
B. maeuseri had a wingspan of about 1.5 meters,
similar to a large flamingo. The pterosaur had
0.5 mm
a 10-centimeter-long, spatula-shaped bill that
sported at least 480 teeth. Many of those long, thin Fossilized dung, or coprolites, can help reveal what
teeth — not strong enough to provide a clamping pterosaurs ate. CT-like scans of three coprolites (virtual
bite on struggling prey — had tiny hooks on their reconstructions, top left) revealed the shells of micro-
scopic organisms (shown within the coprolites, top right,
ends, Martill says. That’s unlike anything seen in any and isolated, bottom). They include foraminifera, mol-
other pterosaur. The crochet hook–like features lusks and crustaceans (one highlighted blue).
probably helped the pterosaur filter and trap itty-
bitty prey more effectively than straight teeth would preserved fossil lacks only parts of the skull, wings,
have, Martill and colleagues reported January 21 hind limbs and tail, says Natalia Jagielska, a verte-
in PalZ. When foraging, this long-legged creature brate paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh.
probably waded through shallow water, facing She and colleagues dubbed the creature Dearc
into the flow and opening its jaws just enough for sgiathanach, which in Scottish Gaelic means
plankton-rich water to enter, Martill says. Then, “winged reptile from Skye.”
water drained away through the teeth, leaving Microscopic analyses of cross sections of some
behind a food-rich slurry. bones revealed features akin to the growth rings
in trees, hinting that the pterosaur was at least
Bigger, wider, faster 2 years old and still growing when it died, Jagielska
M. QVARNSTRÖM ET AL/PEERJ 2019

Thanks to a fossil discovered in 2017 on Scotland’s and colleagues reported in February 2022 in Current
Isle of Skye, researchers now realize that pterosaurs Biology. Based on the size of the pterosaur’s upper-
grew to larger sizes much earlier than once thought. arm bone, the team estimates the youngster had a
That, in turn, has helped debunk some theories wingspan of around 2 meters.
about why pterosaurs evolved large body sizes. Comparisons with the growth patterns of closely
Embedded in limestone laid down as sediments related pterosaurs suggest that an adult would have
in a lagoon about 167 million years ago, the well- had a wingspan of at least 2.5 meters and possibly

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 29


FEATURE | THE ORIGINAL HIGHFLIERS

Another recent study speaks to how widely and


how quickly pterosaurs spread around the world,
Andres says. Some extremely fragmentary speci-
mens unearthed from sandstone in northwestern
Argentina, including scattered portions of a snout, a
jawbone and a wing bone, are distinct enough to be
classified as belonging to pterosaurs. The features
are so distinct that Andres and colleagues named
two brand-new species: Yelaphomte praderioi and
Pachagnathus benitoi. The team described the fos-
sils in March 2022 in Papers in Palaeontology.
The sandstone probably dates to sometime
between 206 million and 200 million years ago,
the researchers estimate. Unequivocal pterosaur
remains known from that time come from North
America, Europe and Greenland — all then part of
the northwestern portions of the supercontinent
Pangaea. The new fossils were found in an area that
was once southwestern Pangaea, Andres notes.
That reveals a wider distribution tens of millions
of years earlier in pterosaur history than was previ-
ously presumed, Andres’ team argues. And because
the sandstone formed in upland areas far from the
nearest coast, the find reveals that pterosaurs lived
in a greater diversity of habitats in this era than
previously recognized.

An icon revealed
Of all the pterosaurs ever found, none has cap-
tured imaginations as much as Quetzalcoatlus
northropi, the largest creature to ever take flight.
Besides cameos in Jurassic Park: Dominion and
the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, the species has
appeared on the postage stamps of more than two
dozen nations and on two coins struck by the Royal
Canadian Mint.
A pterosaur named Balaenognathus maeuseri was probably Scientists are enamored of the species too. The
a filter feeder similar to modern flamingos. Little hooks

FROM TOP: MEGAN JACOBS/UNIV. OF PORTSMOUTH; D. MARTILL ET AL/PALZ 2023


(visible in the fossil close-up) at the ends of B. maeuseri’s 1975 paper that initially described it has been cited
skinny teeth probably helped trap tiny prey. more than 500 times, despite its brevity, Andres
says. In late 2021, Andres and colleagues built on
3 meters or more. That makes D. sgiathanach the that paper’s description with a number of papers
largest pterosaur to have lived up until that time, that, for the first time, delved deeply into the iconic
with a wingspan that rivaled a trumpeter swan’s. species’ size, appearance, movements and the habi-
Before the discovery of D. sgiathanach, stud- tat where it lived.
ies had suggested that pterosaurs didn’t start Only a handful of Q. northropi fossils have been
to become larger until the late Jurassic Period, found, most in the Big Bend area of southwest-
between about 160 million and 145 million years ern Texas, Andres says. Most of the identifiable
ago. At that point, the story goes, competition with remains come from a handful of creatures and
newly evolved birds forced pterosaurs to expand together comprise a partial wing and a few leg
beyond being just insect eaters and into new bones. They, and several hundred other poorly
ecological roles. But D. sgiathanach evolved tens of preserved pterosaur bone fragments, were
millions of years before the first birds took wing, so unearthed from rocks formed from sediments
other, not-yet-identified factors must have been at that accumulated in stream channels between
play, the researchers say. 69 million and about 66 million years ago, says

30 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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FEATURE | THE ORIGINAL HIGHFLIERS

Giraffe-sized Quetzalcoatlus northropi, the


largest flying creature that ever lived, may
have foraged in meadows and shallow waters
like modern herons and storks do.

Tom Lehman, a vertebrate paleontologist at Texas to reconstruct the range of motion of their joints.
Tech University in Lubbock. That means some of “First of all, their back is so short and their legs are
these pterosaurs could have been alive when or just so long that they couldn’t walk like other quadru-
before an asteroid struck Earth and brought on a peds,” says Kevin Padian, a vertebrate paleontologist
long-lasting and worldwide climate catastrophe. at the University of California, Berkeley. “And their
Much of what scientists suspect about forelimbs are so long, they couldn’t avoid touch-
Q. northropi stems from the more common fos- ing the ground.” Yet pterosaur footprints suggest
sils of a related species, Q. lawsoni. Andres and his that those forelimbs weren’t helping propel the
colleagues have unearthed fossils of more than creature forward when it walked, he says. Instead,
200 of these individuals, offering enough bones to they appear to have been used for support only, like
reconstruct the majority of the pterosaur. The team walking sticks.
estimates that this smaller relative had a wingspan It appears that Quetzalcoatlus could reach down
“The worst of about 4.5 meters and lived in the same area to the ground with its long, toothless beak — and
thing about around the same time as Q. northropi, Lehman says. even lower, into bodies of water. Once it grabbed
He and colleagues estimate that Q. northropi had a its prey, it could tilt its beak to the sky and swallow
pterosaurs is wingspan of about 10 meters. its victims whole. So Padian and colleagues suggest
that they’re no If these two species did live simultaneously, that this pterosaur patrolled through meadows or
longer around.” Lehman says, they evidently divvied up the ecosys- waded in shallow waters as modern-day storks or
BRIAN ANDRES tem and foraged separately. When they died, their herons do, plucking up fish, mammals or even small
carcasses ended up in different types of sedimentary dinosaurs using a beak that acted like chopsticks.
rocks, suggesting different parts of the environ- The sight of a giraffe-sized predator stalking
ment. Q. lawsoni apparently spent a lot of time through swamps would have undoubtedly been
in oxbow lakes. Q. northropi, on the other hand, impressive. “The worst thing about pterosaurs,”
seems to have foraged along the edges of the river Andres says, “is that they’re no longer around.”
itself. Plenty of water snails and other creatures
lived in these bodies of water and would have pro- Explore more
vided ample food for hungry pterosaurs and other „ Matthew G. Baron. “The origin of pterosaurs.”
predators, Lehman says. Earth-Science Reviews. October 2021.
JAMES KUETHER

Based on their measurements, the research-


ers made life-size models of Q. northropi’s bones Sid Perkins is a freelance science writer based in
to see how the creatures would have moved and Crossville, Tenn.

32 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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FEATURE

Kraken
the
code
34 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023
Cephalopods may edit RNA
to adapt to their surroundings
By Tina Hesman Saey

M
any writers grouse when an editor makes a change
in a story, but the consequences of changing a sin-
gle word usually aren’t that dire.
Not so with genetic instructions for making pro-
teins. Even a small change can prevent a protein from doing its job
properly, with possibly deadly consequences. Only occasionally is
a change beneficial. It seems wisest to preserve genetic instruc-
tions as they are written. Unless you’re an octopus.
Octopuses are like aliens living among us — they do a lot of
things differently from land animals, or even other sea creatures.
Their flexible tentacles taste what they touch and have minds
of their own. Octopuses’ eyes are color-blind, but their skin can
detect light on its own (SN: 6/27/15, p. 10). They are masters of
disguise, changing color and skin textures to blend into their
surroundings or scare off rivals. And to a greater extent than
most creatures, octopuses squirt the molecular equivalent of
red ink over their genetic instructions with astounding abandon,
like a copy editor run amok.
These edits modify RNA, the molecule used to translate infor-
mation from the genetic blueprint stored in DNA, while leaving
the DNA unaltered.
Scientists don’t yet know for sure why octopuses, and other
shell-less cephalopods including squid and cuttlefish, are such
prolific editors. Researchers are debating whether this form of
genetic editing gave cephalopods an evolutionary leg (or tentacle)
up or whether the editing is just a sometimes useful accident. Sci-
entists are also probing what consequences the RNA alterations
may have under various conditions. Some evidence suggests edit-
ing may give cephalopods some of their smarts but could come at
the cost of holding back evolution in their DNA (SN: 4/29/17, p. 6).
“These animals are just magical,” says Caroline Albertin, a
comparative developmental biologist at the Marine Biological
Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. “They have all sorts of different
solutions to living in the world they come from.” RNA editing may
help give the creatures vast numbers of solutions for problems
they may face.

Wielding a red pen


Molecular biology’s central dogma holds that instructions for
building an organism are contained in DNA. Cells copy those
WRANGEL/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES PLUS

instructions into messenger RNAs, or mRNAs. Then, cellular


machinery called ribosomes read the mRNAs to build proteins
by stringing amino acids together. Most of the time, the protein’s
composition conforms to the DNA template for the protein’s
sequence of amino acids.
Octopuses and other shell-less But RNA editing can cause divergences from the DNA instruc-
cephalopods commonly edit their RNA
without changing their DNA. Scientists tions, creating some proteins that have different amino acids
don’t yet know why. than specified by the DNA.

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 35


FEATURE | KRAKEN THE CODE

Editing chemically modifies one of RNA’s four building blocks, those, only 1,517 recode proteins, the researchers reported last
or bases. Those bases are often referred to by the first letters of year in Nature Communications. Of those recoding sites, up to
their names: A, C, G and U, for adenine, cytosine, guanine and 835 are shared with other mammals, suggesting that evolution-
uracil (RNA’s version of the DNA base thymine). In an RNA mol- ary forces preserved editing at those locations.
ecule, the bases are linked to sugars; the adenine-sugar unit, for Cephalopods take RNA recoding to a whole new level, Albertin
instance, is referred to as adenosine. says. Longfin squid (Doryteuthis pealeii) have 57,108 recoding
There are many ways to edit RNA letters. Cephalopods excel sites, Rosenthal, Eisenberg and colleagues reported in 2015 in
at a type of editing known as adenosine to inosine, or A-to-I, eLife. Since then, the researchers have examined multiple spe-
editing. This happens when an enzyme called ADAR2 strips a cies of octopus, squid and cuttlefish, each time finding tens of
nitrogen and two hydrogen atoms off adenosine (the A). That thousands of recoding sites.
chemical peel turns adenosine into inosine (I). Soft-bodied, or coleoid, cephalopods may have more oppor-
Ribosomes read inosine as guanine instead of adenine. Some- tunities for editing than other animals because of where at
times that switch has no effect on the resulting protein’s chain least one of the ADAR enzymes, ADAR2, is located in the cell.
of amino acids. But in some cases, having a G where an A should Most animals edit RNAs in the nucleus — the compartment
be results in a different amino acid being inserted into the pro- where DNA is stored and copied into RNA — before sending
tein. Such protein-altering RNA editing is called RNA recoding. the messages out to meet up with ribosomes. But cephalopods
Soft-bodied cephalopods have embraced RNA recoding with also have the enzymes in the cytoplasm, the cells’ jellylike guts,
all of their arms while even closely related species are more ten- Rosenthal and colleagues discovered (SN: 4/25/20, p. 10).
tative about accepting rewrites, Albertin says. “Other mollusks Having editing enzymes in two locales doesn’t fully explain
don’t seem to do it” to the same extent. why cephalopods’ RNA recoding so far outstrips that of humans
RNA editing isn’t limited to creatures of the deep. Almost every and other animals. Nor does it explain the patterns of editing
multicellular organism has one or more RNA editing enzymes scientists have uncovered.
called ADAR enzymes, short for “adenosine deaminase that acts
on RNA,” says Joshua Rosenthal, a molecular neurobiologist also All about flexibility
at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Editing isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Rarely are all copies
Cephalopods have two ADAR enzymes. Humans have versions of an RNA in a cell edited. It’s much more common for some per-
of them, too. “In our brains, we edit a ton of RNA. We do it a lot,” centage of RNAs to be edited while the rest retain their original
Rosenthal says. Over the last decade, scientists have discovered information. The percentage, or frequency, of editing can vary
millions of places in human RNAs where editing occurs. widely from RNA to RNA or between cells or tissues, and may
But those edits rarely change the amino acids in a protein. depend on water temperature or other conditions. In longfin
For instance, Eli Eisenberg of Tel Aviv University and colleagues squid, most RNA editing sites were edited 2 percent or less of
identified more than 4.6 million editing sites in human RNAs. Of the time, Albertin and colleagues reported last year in Nature
Communications. But the researchers also found more than
U
Recode away In a common form of
U

205,000 sites that were edited 25 percent of the time or more.
 Deaminase
RNA editing, an adenosine becomes an domain In most of a cephalopod’s body, RNA editing doesn’t often
inosine (below) through a reaction that  U
  affect the makeup of proteins. But in the nervous system, it’s a
removes an amino group and replaces it  
with an oxygen (arrows). The illustration  
different story. In longfin squids’ nervous systems, 70 percent of

J.J.C. ROSENTHAL AND E. EISENBERG/ANNUAL REVIEW OF ANIMAL BIOSCIENCES 2023


U
at right shows an ADAR enzyme attaching U edits in protein-producing RNAs recode proteins. And RNAs in
 U
to a double-stranded RNA at the “dsRNA   the nervous system of the California two-spot octopus
binding domain.” The region of the enzyme dsRNA  U U
that will interact to cause the reaction, the binding  U   U (Octopus bimaculoides) are recoded three to six times
 
“deaminase domain,” is positioned near the domain   U as often as in other organs or tissues.

adenosine that will become an inosine. 
 Some mRNAs have multiple edit sites that alter

U  amino acids in the proteins the mRNAs encode. In the long-
U
  fin squid’s nervous system, for instance, 27 percent of mRNAs
U 

NH2 O  U have three or more recoding sites. Some contain 10 or more such
  sites. Combinations of those editing sites could result in multiple
 
N N N NH   versions of a protein being made in a cell.
  Having a wide selection of proteins may give cephalopods
N N N N U 
 U
“more flexibility in responding to the environment,” Albertin
O O
  says, “or give you a variety of solutions to the problem in front
 
 U
of you.” In the nervous system, RNA editing might contribute to
  flexibility in thinking, which could help explain why octopuses
H H 3'
 can unlock cages or use tools, some researchers think. Edit-
Adenosine Inosine 5' ing could be an easy way to create one or more versions of a

36 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


protein in the nervous system and different ones in the rest of
the body, Albertin says.
When humans and other vertebrates have different versions
of a protein, it often comes from having multiple copies of a
gene. Doubling, tripling or quadrupling copies of a gene “results
in a whole genetic playground to allow genes to go off and do
different functions,” Albertin says. But cephalopods tend not to
duplicate genes. Instead, their innovations come from editing.
And there is a lot of room for innovation. In squid, mRNAs
for building the alpha-spectrin protein have 242 recoding sites.
All the combinations of edited and unedited sites theoretically
could create up to 7 x 1072 forms of the protein, Rosenthal and
Eisenberg report in this year’s issue of Annual Review of Animal
Biosciences. “To put this number in perspective,” the researchers
wrote, “suffice it to say that it dwarfs the number of all alpha-
spectrin molecules (or, for that matter, all protein molecules)
synthesized in all cells of all the squids that have ever lived on
our planet since the dawn of time.”
That incredible level of complexity would be possible only
if every site were independent, says Kavita Rangan, a molecu-
lar biologist at the University of California, San Diego. Rangan
has been studying RNA recoding in California market squid
(Doryteuthis opalescens) and in longfin squid. Water temperature
triggers the squid to recode motor proteins called kinesins that
move cargo inside cells.
The longfin squid recodes RNA at more than 50,000 locations. RNA
In longfin squid, the mRNA that produces kinesin-1 has recoding might help the squid respond more flexibly to its environment,
14 recoding sites, Rangan has found. She examined mRNAs but whether recoding has evolutionary value is not yet clear.
from the optic lobe — the part of the brain that processes visual
information — and from the stellate ganglion, a collection of amino acids, with “nonsynonymous” sites where recoding hap-
nerves involved in generating the muscle contractions that pens. Since synonymous edits don’t change amino acids, the
produce jets of water to propel the squid. researchers considered those edits to be neutral as far as evo-
Each tissue made several versions of the protein. But cer- lution is concerned. In humans, recoding, or nonsynonymous
tain sites tended to be edited together, Rangan and Samara editing, happens at fewer sites than synonymous editing, and
Reck-Peterson, also of UC San Diego, reported last September in the percentage of RNA molecules that are edited is lower than
a preprint posted online at bioRxiv.org. Their data suggest that at synonymous sites.
editing of some sites is coordinated and “very strongly rejects “If we assume synonymous editing is just like noise that
the idea that editing is independent,” Rangan says. “The fre- happens in the cell, and nonsynonymous editing is less fre-
quency of the combos that we see don’t match if every site was quent and [at a] lower level, that suggests nonsynonymous
edited independently.” editing is actually harmful,” Zhang says. Even though recod-
Yoking editing sites may prevent squid and other cephalopods ing in cephalopods happens much more frequently than for
from reaching the pinnacles of complexity that they’re theoreti- humans, in most cases, recoding is not advantageous, or adap-
cally capable of. Still, RNA editing provides cephalopods a way to tive, for cephalopods, the researchers argued in 2019 in Nature
try out many versions of a protein without getting locked into a Communications.
permanent change in DNA, Rangan says. There are a few shared sites where octopuses, squid and
That lack of commitment puzzles Jianzhi Zhang, an evolu- cuttlefish all recode their RNAs, the researchers found, sug-
tionary geneticist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. gesting the recoding is useful in those instances. But this is a
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he says. “If you want a particular small fraction of editing sites. A few other sites that are edited
amino acid in a protein, you should change the DNA. Why do in one species of cephalopod but not others were also adaptive,
you change the RNA?” Zhang and Jiang found.
If it’s not all that helpful, why have cephalopods persisted with
Is RNA recoding adaptive? RNA recoding for hundreds of millions of years? RNA editing
ELAINE BEARER

Perhaps RNA editing provides some evolutionary advantage. may stick around not because it is adaptive, but because it is
To test that idea, Zhang and then–graduate student Daohan addictive, Zhang says.
Jiang compared “synonymous” sites, where edits do not change He and Jiang proposed a harm-permitting model (that is, a

www.sciencenews.org | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023 37


FEATURE | KRAKEN THE CODE

situation that permits harmful changes to DNA). Imagine, he guanine in the DNA of one or more related species, researchers
says, a situation in which a G (guanine) in an organism’s DNA gets reported in 2020 in PeerJ. And for heavily edited sites, evolution
mutated to an A (adenine). If that mutation leads to a harmful across cephalopods seems to favor a transition from A to G in
amino acid change in a protein, natural selection should weed DNA (rather than to cytosine or thymine, the other two DNA
out individuals that carry that mutation. But if, by chance, the building blocks). That favors the idea that editing can be adaptive.
organism has RNA editing, the mistake in the DNA might be Other recent work by Rosenthal and colleagues, which exam-
corrected by editing RNA, essentially changing the A back to G. ined A-to-G replacements in different species, suggests that
If the protein is essential for life, then the RNA would have to having an editable A is an evolutionary boon over an uneditable
be edited at high levels so that nearly every copy is corrected. A or a hardwired G.
When that happens, “You’re locked into the system,” Zhang
says. Now the organism is dependent on RNA editing machinery. Open questions
“It cannot be lost, because you will require the A to be edited Evidence for and against RNA recoding’s evolutionary value
back to G for survival, so the editing will be kept at high levels.… has come mainly from examining the total genetic makeup, or
In the beginning you really didn’t need it, but after you got it, genomes, of various cephalopod species. But scientists would
you became addicted.” like to directly test whether recoded RNAs have an effect on
Zhang argues that that sort of editing is neutral, not adap- cephalopod biology. Doing that will require some new tools and
tive. But other research suggests RNA editing can be adaptive. creative thinking.
RNA editing may work as a transition phase, letting organ- Rangan tested synthetic versions of squid motor proteins
isms try out a switch from adenine to guanine without making and found that two edited versions that squid make in the cold
a permanent change in their DNA. Over the course of evolution, moved slower but traveled farther along protein tracks called
sites where adenines are recoded in RNA in one cephalopod spe- microtubules than unedited proteins did. But that’s in artificial
cies are more likely than unedited adenines to be replaced with laboratory conditions on microscope slides. To understand what
is happening in cells, Rangan says, she would like to be able to
Making changes Soft-bodied cephalopod species including grow squid cells in lab dishes. Right now, she has to take tis-
octopuses, squid and cuttlefish recode RNA in their nervous systems sue directly from the squid and can only get snapshots of what
at tens of thousands of sites, compared with about a thousand or fewer
sites in humans, mice, fruit flies and other animal species. Though scien- is happening. Lab-grown cells might allow her to follow what
tists have been documenting the number of editing sites, they will need happens over time.
new tools to directly test how recoding influences cephalopod biology. Zhang says he is testing his harm-permitting hypothesis by get-
Number of RNA recoding sites across animals ting yeast hooked on RNA editing. Baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces
100,000 cerevisiae) doesn’t have ADAR enzymes. But Zhang engineered a
Cephalopods strain of the yeast to carry a human version of the enzyme. The
Other ADAR enzymes make the yeast sick and grow slowly, he says. To
speed up the experiment, the strain he is using has a higher-than-
10,000
normal mutation rate, and may build up G-to-A mutations. But
if RNA editing can correct those mutations, the ADAR-carrying
yeast may grow better than ones that don’t have the enzyme.
Editing sites

1,000 And after many generations, the yeast may become addicted to

J.J.C. ROSENTHAL AND E. EISENBERG/ANNUAL REVIEW OF ANIMAL BIOSCIENCES 2023


editing, Zhang predicts.
Albertin, Rosenthal and colleagues have developed ways
to change the genes of squid with the gene editor CRISPR/
100 Cas9. The team created an albino squid by using CRISPR/Cas9
to knock out, or disable, a gene that produces pigment. The
researchers may be able to change editing sites in DNA or in
RNA and test their function, Albertin says.
10
This science is still in its early stages, and the story may lead
somewhere unexpected. Still, with cephalopods’ skillful editing,
it’s bound to be a good read.
1
Explore more
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of the neural proteome in cephalopods by RNA editing.”


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„ Joshua J.C. Rosenthal. “The emerging role of RNA editing in


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Species plasticity.” Journal of Experimental Biology. June 2015.

38 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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the science of force testing and measurement.

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REVIEWS & PREVIEWS

BOOKSHELF by patterns of some sort. Perhaps more revelatory is her

Math plus literature look at how math also molds the structure or pace of nov-
els. For example, I had noticed Amor Towles was not moving
equals a good pair through time in a strictly linear fashion when I read his 2016
“Mathematical symbolism and metaphor book A Gentleman in Moscow, but I completely missed how
are present in every kind of literature, the number two orchestrates the story’s structure. The novel
from the humblest of fairy tales right takes us through 32 years in the protagonist’s life, starting in
through to War and Peace,” claims math- 1922 when he begins living under house arrest. Each chapter
ematician Sarah Hart. In Once Upon a advances in a roughly doubling interval of time since his sen-
Prime, she lays bare some of this hidden tence begins: the first day after, then the second, fifth, 10th,
Once Upon a Prime
Sarah Hart math and meaning in a host of poetry, three weeks after, six weeks after and so on. Then from the
FLATIRON BOOKS, novels and folklore. middle of the book, the intervals climb down again, reversing
$29.99 She starts with nursery rhymes, the sequence. Some readers may wonder if Hart’s love of math
often rife with counting — such as “One, Two, Buckle My simply leads her to find patterns like this everywhere. But the
Shoe” — showing how numbers bleed into our very first odds must be astronomically high for the examples she pres-
encounters with the world of words. This is not just through ents to be mere chance.
counting but also more subtly through the rhythms and rhyme Among the numerous math-loving authors Hart cites is
patterns. It’s also through trebling — where a word or phrase is Herman Melville, who steals the limelight for a good 10 pages
repeated three times, such as “Row, row, row your boat.” that are sheer joy to read. Melville tended to lace his novels
The number three has a special hold on Western lit- with so much philosophy and mathematics that his publisher
erature and languages in general. It pervades common worried about profitability. At one point, Melville promised his
phrases — “Three cheers for…,” “Ready, Set, Go,” “Learning next novels would have “no metaphysics, no conic-sections,
your ABCs.” It’s also central to story structure; nothing but cakes & ale.” He did not keep that
for example, trilogies are more prevalent than Sarah Hart lays promise. One of his next books was Moby-Dick.
tetralogies. Characters tend to come in threes bare some of the The novel is thick with math, from the concept
too, like “The Three Little Pigs,” and even in hidden math and of a quoin — a kind of lopsided wedge, which the
jokes like “A priest, a minister and a rabbi…”
Hart suggests this emphasis on three has
meaning in a host main character Ishmael defines through geo-
metric descriptions of a sperm whale’s head — to
some basis in geometry. Three is the mini- of poetry, novels the analogy for how such a creature must see
mum number of points that can define a two- and folklore. two distinct views of the world from eyes on
dimensional shape, and the minimum number either side of its head, “as if a man were
of sticks that can be bound to make a stable able simultaneously to go through
rigid structure, that is, a triangle. And the demonstrations of two dis-
the equilateral triangle is the only tinct problems in Euclid.”
shape with both equal-length Cover to cover, Hart’s love
sides and equidistant corners. of math fizzes off the page,
These geometric properties such as when she implores
give the number three “a sense readers to put down the book
of strength and completeness, and twist a line of paper into
and also often of equitability,” a Möbius strip. She admits
Hart writes. it’s a bit of a detour, but in her
It’s a poetic argument, if not defense, it is leading up to a dis-
completely convincing. To bolster cussion of a 1974 short story called
her case, she also points to trichoto- “Mobius the Stripper,” which has a particular
mies. Take a number, any number, and kind of circular narrative.
every other number is either more, less or equal to that num- Hart’s simple breakdowns of both math and literature
ber — a trichotomy that has direct parallels with Aristotle’s make the book easy for anyone to follow, no matter their
doctrine of the mean: “Every ethical virtue is a golden mean proficiency in either subject, though a familiarity with some
(just right) between two vices — one an excess, the other a of the math and literature references might make for a
deficiency,” as Hart describes it. This doctrine is playfully slightly more satisfying read. Not everyone will finish the
illustrated in Goldilocks’ experiences with porridge, chairs book primed (ha!) to discover the mathematical gems hid-
and beds. den in a book or poem. But that takes little away from the
C. CHANG

For a book about math and literature, it’s not surprising charm of reading Once Upon a Prime, a joyous tour de force
that Hart focuses quite a bit on poetry, which is often defined of mathematical and literary delights. — Anna Demming

40 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


ADV E RTI SE M E NT
SOCIETY UPDATE

CONVERSATIONS
WITH

MAYA RAJ CHETTY


Founder of Opportunity Insights, a nonpartisan
research and policy institute that uses big data to
improve economic opportunity and mobility in the
United States

Maya Ajmera, President & CEO of the Society for Science and Executive Publisher of
Science News, chatted with Raj Chetty, an alumnus of the 1997 Science Talent Search
(STS) and the 1997 International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). In 2018, Chetty
founded Opportunity Insights, an institute based at Harvard University dedicated to
harnessing big data to improve upward mobility out of poverty. Chetty is the William A.
Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard, a MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the
John Bates Clark Medal. Chetty, who recently joined the Society’s Honorary Board, sat
down with Ajmera this fall for a fireside chat hosted by the Society. We are thrilled to share
an edited version of that conversation.

Tell us about yourself and a little bit about your upbringing. in ISEF shaped my own interest in research and the types of
I grew up in New Delhi, India, until I was 9 years old. Then I questions I'm focused on today.
came to the United States with my parents. I had what I think is
a common experience for many immigrant kids: I saw the U.S. What inspired you to apply big data to the study of
as a land of opportunity. Seeing the big contrast between India economic mobility?
and the United States has shaped some of my perspective and In high school, I started to realize that I was very interested in
interest in issues of inequality, social mobility and opportunity. research, science and discovering things. But at the same time,
That experience, in part, inspired my research into what I realized I was more interested in statistical analysis of the
factors lead people to pursue careers in science and data I was generating. My interest in math and statistics and
innovation. We found that America has many “lost Einsteins” — my experience seeing vast differences in outcomes between
women and people from minoritized or low-income groups kids in India and kids in the U.S. led me towards economics
who could have made significant discoveries if they had been and social science. Big data came later. When I was in college
exposed to innovation as children. and in graduate school, big data wasn't a thing. But I later
discovered that it could be a great vehicle to study some of
You participated in ISEF and STS. What are your memories the questions I and many others had been thinking about for
of those competitions? decades.
I have vivid memories of participating in ISEF and STS. I had
an opportunity to work during the summers and after school You have studied a range of variables that both coincide
at the Medical College of Wisconsin in a microbiology lab, with and challenge our perceptions of economic mobility
which is where I did my research project. At ISEF, I remember and the American dream. What findings have surprised you
being struck by the experience of seeing all these students the most?
from different parts of the U.S. doing lots of different exciting What surprised me the most is how the U.S. is not actually all
things. Conducting research in high school and participating that much of a land of opportunity, despite that perception.
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If you grow up in the U.S. in a low-income family, your odds
of reaching up into the middle class or beyond don't look that
great. In some sense, if you want to achieve the American
dream, you are better off growing up in Canada or in many
parts of Scandinavia.
But when I started digging further into the data on millions
of children’s experiences from anonymized tax return data,
it became clear how disparate opportunities are, depending
upon where you live and the color of your skin.

For whom is the American dream possible?


In simple terms, white Americans growing up in middle class
families in certain communities — often higher-income areas
with better schools and better social networks — have great A young Raj Chetty plays in front of a chalkboard at Stony Brook
outcomes. We also see very good outcomes for many kids University, where his father, V. K. Chetty, was a visiting professor.

who come here as immigrants. But there are vast swaths of


America, including much of the Southeast and many cities in of launching a large-scale collaboration between Meta and
the industrial Midwest, where even white kids don't have great our research team to study these questions. We were able to
chances of rising up. For Black kids, unfortunately, and Black use anonymized Facebook social network data on 80 million
boys in particular, the American dream is not a reality almost people and looked at their friendships in the U.S. — 21 billion
everywhere in the U.S. friendships between them — and constructed very fine-grained
measures, zip code by zip code, about the extent to which
Your most recent research highlights the importance of low- and high-income people were interacting with each
forging relationships that transcend socioeconomic status. other. Connections like these have turned out to be the single
Can you tell us about those findings? strongest predictor of differences in economic mobility that
The vast differences in children's chances of rising up across we or anybody else has identified to date.
different communities became a motivating puzzle for our We found that low-income kids growing up in communities
research: What factors explain why we're seeing kids from where there is a lot of interaction across class lines have a
low-income families do really well in certain parts of Iowa, for much better chance of going to college and achieving a higher
example? Is it about the schools? Is it about the types of jobs? level of income. It remains to be understood exactly why that
Something else? is the case, but we think it's things like being aware of career
Over the years, many sociologists have discussed the idea paths they may not have otherwise considered.
that it might be about who you're connected to, who shapes
your aspirations, and what your social network looks like. But What's your favorite book?
the problem was we didn't have a good way to measure social I will go back to my childhood and say Charlie and the
capital empirically. With the advent of online social networks, Chocolate Factory, which in retrospect, I realize is a book
I started talking with the team at Meta about the possibility about upward mobility. I don't think I had quite figured that
out as a kid.

What's keeping you up at night?


Knowing that the pandemic has made all the issues that we're
studying only worse. Finding solutions to these problems is all
the more imperative with that in mind. Not just because the
American dream in and of itself is important, but also because
it has very important political implications. Democracy
itself is at risk at the moment because many people feel
disenfranchised. I would like to have more answers to the
question of what we can do to make a difference. If somebody
were to ask me how we can narrow racial disparities or improve
outcomes for many low-income kids, I have a couple guesses
but don't really have the answer. I think that lack of scientific
As a high school student at the University School of Milwaukee, understanding prevents us from finding a solution. That's the
Raj Chetty interned in the lab of Vladimir M. Kushnaryov at
Medical College of Wisconsin. kind of thing that I often lie in bed thinking about and what I
think makes social science so important and exciting.
Photo: USAID/Marilyn Finney
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USAID is the world’s premier international development agency and a catalytic actor driving development results. USAID’s
work advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and helps people
progress beyond assistance.

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ADV E RTI SE M E NT
FEEDBACK

Superconductor Controversy | Early Galaxies Too Big to Explain


A song for the (stone) ages for pollutants would be challenging.
People have long eaten putrid foods, forcing The chemicals that make up pigments
MAGAZINE OF THE SOCIETY FOR SCIENCE MARCH 25, 2023
scientists to rethink the diets of Neandertals and varnishes would need to be care-
and other hominids, Bruce Bower reported fully controlled for, say climate physicist
IN OUR in “Stone Age cuisine” (SN: 3/25/23, p. 16). Anna Lea Albright of the Laboratory

AIR Microplastics are all


around us, but the
risk to human health
Reader Maria Reidelbach asked Google’s
AI chatbot to write a song inspired by the
story, in the style of musician Tom Waits:
of Dynamic Meteorology, Sorbonne
University and École Normale Supérieure
in Paris and climatologist Peter Huybers
is largely unknown of Harvard University. “Looking at other
Deep in the cave, the Neandertals eat materials from that time [like outdoor
Putrid meat, their only treat sculptures] might be easier,” they say.
They gnaw on the bones, they chew on
the skin
And they don’t give a damn if it’s been in

MARCH 25, 2023 Chorus:


Putrid meat, putrid meat
It’s all they’ve got, it’s all they eat
Putrid meat, putrid meat
It’s the only thing that keeps them going

The Neandertals are a tough bunch


They’ve been through a lot, they’ve seen a lot
But they’re still here, they’re still alive
And they’re still eating putrid meat

(Repeat chorus)

Some people say the Neandertals are extinct


But I know they’re not, I’ve seen them
They’re out there, somewhere, eating
putrid meat

(Repeat chorus)

So if you’re ever feeling down


And you think your life is tough
Just remember the Neandertals
And their putrid meat diet
They’re still here, they’re still alive
And they’re still eating putrid meat

Making an impression
Air pollution from the Industrial Revolution
may have helped give rise to 19th century
impressionist art, Bas den Hond reported in
“Smog influenced impressionism’s dreamy
style” (SN: 3/25/23, p. 4).
Join the conversation
Reader Bill Clendenen asked if pollutants
E-MAIL feedback@sciencenews.org
trapped in impressionist paintings could
MAIL Attn: Feedback
1719 N St., NW reveal increasing levels of air pollution
Washington, DC 20036 during this time.
Paints can trap environmental
Connect with us elements. Vincent van Gogh’s 1882 paint-
ing “Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy
Weather” contains sand from the beach
where it was made. But analyzing paints

46 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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SCIENCE VISUALIZED

1 µm

How a transparent fish turns rainbow


The ghost catfish transforms from glassy to glam when white iridescence arose from light passing through a fish rather
light passes through its mostly transparent body. Now sci- than reflecting off it. By using a white light laser to illuminate
entists know why: The fish’s iridescence comes from light the animal’s muscles and skin separately, the team found that
bending as it travels through microscopic banded structures the muscles generated the multicolored sheen.
in the animal’s muscles, researchers report in the March 21 The researchers then analyzed how X-rays scatter
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. when traveling through the muscle and looked at the tis-
Many fishes with iridescent flair have tiny crystals in either sue with an electron microscope. The team identified
their skin or scales that reflect light (SN Online: 4/6/21). But sarcomeres — regularly spaced, banded structures, each
the ghost catfish (Kryptopterus vitreolus) and most other roughly 2 micrometers long, that run along the length of
transparent fishes, like eel larvae and icefishes, lack such muscle fibers — as the source of the iridescence.
structures to explain their luster. Each sarcomere (one highlighted in yellow in the electron

FROM TOP: X. FAN ET AL/PNAS 2023; NAN SHI, XIUJUN FAN AND GENBAO WU
The iridescence of the roughly 5-centimeter-long ghost microscope image above) consists of two adjacent “tiles” of
catfish caught the eye of Qibin Zhao, a physicist at Shanghai interlocking myosin filaments and actin filaments, threadlike
Jiao Tong University, when he was in an aquarium store. To protein structures responsible for muscle contraction. The
investigate the freshwater fish’s colorful properties, Zhao repeating bands bend white light in a way that separates and
and colleagues examined several ghost catfish under differ- enhances its different wavelengths. The collective diffraction
ent lighting conditions. The researchers determined that the of light produces an array of colors (left). When a fish con-
tracts and relaxes its muscles to swim, the sarcomeres slightly
change in length, causing a shifting rainbow effect.
The purpose of the iridescence is a little unclear, says
Heok Hee Ng, an independent ichthyologist in Singapore.
Ghost catfish live in murky water and seldom rely on sight.
But the iridescence might help them visually coordinate
movements when traveling in schools, he says, or it could
help them blend in with shimmering water to hide from land
predators such as birds. — McKenzie Prillaman

48 SCIENCE NEWS | May 6, 2023 & May 20, 2023


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