Daily Archives: August 4, 2021

Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center.

It has been a strange, exhausting year for many evolutionary virologists.

"Scientists are not used to having attention and are not used to being in the press and are not used to being attacked on Twitter," Martha Nelson, PhD, staff scientist who studies viral evolution at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told Medscape Medical News.

Over the past year and a half, the theory of evolution has been thrust into the spotlight more now than ever, perhaps, as the world is stalked by the Delta variant and fears arise of a mutation that's even worse.

We've also debated the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the rise of the Delta variant, and have speculated about vaccine efficacy and the possible need for booster shots. In all these instances, consciously or not, we're engaging with the field of evolutionary virology.

It has been central to deepening our understanding of the ongoing pandemic, even as SARS-CoV-2 has exposed gaps in what we understand about how viruses behave and evolve.

Evolutionary virology experts believe that after the pandemic, their expertise and tools could be applied to and integrated with clinical medicine to improve outcomes and our understanding of disease.

"From our perspective, evolutionary biology has been a side dish and something that hasn't been integrated into the core practice of medicine," said Nelson. "I'm really curious to see how that changes over time."

Novel pathogens, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and cancer cells are all products of ongoing evolution. "Just like cellular organisms, viruses have genomes, and all genomes evolve," Eugene Koonin, PhD, evolutionary genomics group leader at the NIH, told Medscape Medical News.

Compared to cellular organisms, viruses evolve quite fast, he said.

A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) exemplifies evolutionary virology in action. In the study, Koonin and fellow researchers analyzed more than 300,000 genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 variants that were publicly available as of January 2021 and mapped all the mutations in each sequence.

The researchers identified a small subset of mutations that arose independently more than once and that likely aided viral adaptation, said Nash Rochman, PhD, a research fellow at the NIH and co-author of the PNAS study.

Many of these mutations were concentrated in two areas of the genome the receptor binding domain of the spike protein, and a region of the nucleocapsid protein and were often grouped together, possibly creating greater advantages for the virus than would have occurred individually, he said.

The researchers also found that from the beginning of the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 genome has been evolving and diversifying in different regions around the world, allowing for the rise of new lineages and, possibly, even new species, Koonin said.

During the pandemic, researchers have used evolutionary virology tools to tackle many other questions. For example, Nelson tracked the spread of SARS-CoV-2 across Europe and North America. In a study by Rochman and Koonin that is currently undergoing peer review, the investigators found recently vaccinated individuals, who are only partially immune, are at the highest risk for incubating antibody-resistant variants.

C. Brandon Ogbunu, PhD, an evolutionary geneticist at Yale University whose work is focused on disease evolution, studied whether SARS-CoV-2 would evolve to become more transmissible, and if so, would it also become more or less virulent. His lab also investigated the transmission and spread of the virus.

"I think the last year, on one end, has been this opportunity to apply concepts and perspectives that we've been developing for the last several decades," Ogbunu told Medscape Medical News. "At the same time, this pandemic has also been this wake-up call for many of us with regards to revealing the things we do not understand about the ways viruses infect, spread, and how evolution works within viruses."

He emphasizes the need for evolutionary biology to partner with other fields including information theory and biophysics to help unlock viral mysteries: "We need to think very, very carefully about the way those fields intersect."

Nelson also points to the need for better, more centralized data gathering in the United States. The sheer volume of information scientists have collected about SARS-CoV-2 will aid in the study of virus evolution for years to come, said Koonin.

Evolutionary virology and related research can be applied to medicine outside of the context of a global pandemic. "The principles and technical portions of evolutionary virology are very applicable to other diseases, including cancer," Koonin said.

Viruses, bacteria, and cancer cells are all evolving systems. Viruses and bacteria are constantly evolving to thwart drugs and vaccines. How physicians and healthcare professionals practice medicine shapes the selection pressures driving how these pathogens evolve, Nelson said.

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a particularly relevant example of how evolution affects the way physicians treat patients. Having an evolutionary perspective can help inform how to treat patients most effectively, both for individual patients as well as for broader public health, she said.

"For a long time, there's been a lot of interest in pathogen evolution that hasn't translated so much into clinical practice," said Nelson. "There's been kind of a gulf between the research side of evolutionary virology and pathogen emergence and actual practice of medicine."

As genomic sequencing has become faster and cheaper, that gulf has started to narrow, she said. As this technology continues to prove itself by, for example, tracking the evolution of one virus in real time, Nelson hopes there will be a positive snowball effect, leading to more attention, investment, and improvements in genomic data and that its use in epidemiology and medicine will expand going forward.

Bringing viral evolution studies more into medicine will require a mindset shift, Ogbunu said. Clinical practice is, by design, very focused on the individual patient. Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, deals with populations and probabilities.

Being able to engage with evolutionary biology would help physicians better understand disease and explain it to their patients, he said.

To start, Nelson recommends requiring at least one course in evolutionary biology or evolutionary medicine in medical school and crafting continuing education in this area for physicians (presentations at conferences could be one way to do this, she notes).

Nelson also recommends deeper engagement and collaboration between physicians who collect samples from patients and evolutionary biologists who analyze genetic data. This would improve the quality of the data, the analysis, and the eventual findings that could be relevant to patients and clinical practice.

Still, "my first and inevitable reaction is I would so much rather prefer to exist in relative obscurity," said Koonin, noting that the tragedy of the pandemic outweighs the advancements in the field.

Although there's no going back to prepandemic times, there is an enormous opportunity in the aftermath of COVID to increase dialogue between physicians and evolutionary virologists to improve medical practice as well as public health.

Nelson summed it up: "Everything we uncover about these pathogens may help us prevent something like this again."

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COVID Brings Evolutionary Virologists Out of Shadows, Into the Fight - Medscape

Aug 3, 2021

Paul Gutierrez

Rob Demovsky

The football story of Charles Woodson is, at its heart, a three-part yarn. In Oakland, he had Hall of Fame talent. In Green Bay, he became a Hall of Fame player. In his return to the Raiders, Woodson became a legend. To best encapsulate these distinct chapters, ESPN Raiders reporter Paul Gutierrez and ESPN Packers reporter Rob Demovsky combined to chronicle Woodson's road to Canton.

HENDERSON, Nev. -- Charles Woodson was a young player doing young player things when he first entered the NFL, a Heisman Trophy-winning No. 4 overall pick of the 1998 draft by the Raiders.

Some days after practice, he'd hop in a car with wide receiver Andre Rison. On others, Woodson would take off with running back Charlie Garner. Jon Gruden, then a young first-time head coach himself, would look on longingly as the cars pulled out of Raiders headquarters for parts unknown and mutter to himself, "Oh, no, there he goes."

Two decades later, Gruden laughs at the memory.

"He was broken in by some wild guys, I'll say that," Gruden, whose first-ever draft pick as a head coach was Woodson, chuckled recently. "We were a team full of characters. Characters with football character. And Charles was in the middle of it all.

"We were elated when he was there for us [in the draft]. It went Peyton Manning, then Ryan Leaf, then Andre Wadsworth, then us. Charles could play dime linebacker. Nickel. Corner. Safety. And all in the same series. He was one of the most decorated defensive players in the history of the draft. Yeah, we were excited. And he was a magnet, just attracting everybody to him. He enjoyed it. There were times we had to reel him in."

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Woodson rewarded Gruden and the Raiders by being named the NFL's Defensive Rookie of the year. But if it seemed like he was distracted, or allergic to practicing, it never showed up on game day.

"Out of college, high draft pick, you're just kind of ready for life," Woodson reminisced. "Yeah, you're there to play football, but you also want to live as well, you know what I mean? I was that guy. I went hard in both areas -- football and then off the field, as well."

Enter the likes of Rison and Garner. Woodson is howling now.

"Those were my boys, man," Woodson said. "We went hard. That was the old school in me. We went hard some nights, but when it was time to get up and do that thing on Sunday, man, we were ready to roll."

Old school?

On the football side of things, Hall of Fame cornerback Willie Brown, the godfather of the Bump and Run, gave his blessing for Woodson to wear his old No. 24.

"Willie Brown was a guy who made sure you understood what it meant to be a Raider," Woodson said. "The first thing he would tell us, 'There are 31 teams in the NFL, and there's the Raiders.' That's the kind of mentality you picked up when you got there. George Atkinson, Cliff Branch. Those guys made me know early on what I had to bring to the table -- be a tough, physical, fast football player."

Woodson went to four Pro Bowls and was twice named first-team All-Pro in his first four seasons with the Raiders.

Woodson's final game with Gruden as his coach? The "Tuck Rule Game." With Woodson coming on a corner blitz, he dislodged the ball from Michigan college teammate Tom Brady in the New England snow to send the Raiders to the AFC title game in January 2002.

Except ...

History books show no sack by Woodson, the fumble overturned into an incomplete pass by Brady, who would lead the Patriots to an overtime victory and hasten Gruden's departure and the Raiders' descent.

Sure, the Raiders went to the Super Bowl the next year (where they faced Gruden and his new team in Tampa Bay) and Woodson, playing with a broken bone in his right leg, had an interception on the third play of the game. But Gruden's Buccaneers thumped Oakland 48-21, and the Raiders have had only one winning season and one playoff appearance since.

Injuries and issues with Gruden's replacement, Bill Callahan, portended a frosty end to Woodson's tenure with the Raiders. In Game 6 of the 2005 season, Woodson broke his right leg. His season was done, as was his time with the Raiders, with his contract expiring after playing the previous two years on franchise tags. And as at peace as he was with moving on, he was more excited for the coming bidding war.

"My thought was, 'I'm going to have people crawling over each other trying to get to me,'" he said. "I thought I was that type of player."

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Except ... the offers did not roll in. Not even from Gruden, who had taken Woodson to Fleming's Prime Steakhouse in Tampa to get a feel for him.

"Probably the worst mistake of my career [not signing him]," Gruden said. "He was at a low point in his career. There were questions about fit."

People crawling over each other to get to him? Teams were running the other way, with his recent injury history keeping him from playing in a full 16-game schedule since 2001.

"That stung a little bit," Woodson said. "You hear players that have been through Green Bay, especially Black players, say, 'Hey, man, that ain't where you want to be.'

"That's not the team I want calling me. ... I couldn't believe it. I thought there'd be multiple teams and a bidding war. It made me combative."

Woodson needed the Green Bay Packers more than he cared to admit at the time.

By 2006, he had two options: the Buccaneers or Packers.

Tampa Bay wanted Woodson, but only as a safety. Woodson, then 29 years old, still believed he was a cornerback. The Packers were the only team to give him that chance.

It didn't begin well.

It was 2006, Mike McCarthy's first season as a head coach, and he wanted players who wanted to be there.

"Initially when I got there, things were kind of rocky at the start," Woodson recalled recently. "I think that Coach McCarthy and everyone else around there was just trying to make my transition as easy as they could, but I was just very reluctant to allow myself to just be a Packer. We had kind of gone through some things there my first few weeks in the training camp. We had some issues that we had to iron out, but Coach Mike McCarthy assured me, 'Hey man, we want you here. You're going to be a big part of this team.' He was just trying to basically comfort me as a coach and let me know I'm a big part of the plans there in Green Bay.

"Those conversations like that, we were able to have throughout my career, my seven years there in Green Bay, to the point there that Coach McCarthy and my relationship became very solid over the years I was there. I certainly appreciate him for making me feel welcome when I didn't want to be welcome, actually."

By Woodson's second season, the Packers were back in the NFC Championship Game.

By his fourth season, he was the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year.

But it was Year 5 when Woodson got what he really wanted: A Super Bowl ring.

In fact, he became a driving force behind their run to Super Bowl XLV as the NFC's sixth seed.

In the moments after winning the NFC Championship Game over the rival Chicago Bears at Soldier Field, Woodson held court with the team huddled in the center of the locker room. He told them: "For two weeks, think about one. Let's be one mind. Let's be one heartbeat. One purpose. One goal. One more game. One. Let's get it."

The Super Bowl itself was bittersweet for Woodson; he left the game in the second quarter because of a broken collarbone. But his impact on the team was immortalized on its Super Bowl rings, which were inscribed with the No. "1" along with Woodson's words of "mind," "goal," "purpose" and "heart."

"You see that '1' and the words, and it was like, 'Wow,' you're floored," Woodson told ESPN years later. "When you talk to the team in any capacity, you never know what's going to stick. You try to say something that guys can kind of grab on to. For that to be inscribed on the ring told me that it meant something, not only to the players but to the coaches. Now, there's something that we can actually hold on to forever."

To say Woodson needed his time in Green Bay to solidify his Hall of Fame stats might be a stretch because, as Woodson said recently, "I would've been somewhere else, I would've made my mark somewhere else. It just so happened that during that transition from Oakland I was able to make my stop in Green Bay and go there and do some great things."

Upon further reflection, however, Woodson conceded: "In that respect, it doesn't happen without Green Bay, but my career was going to continue somewhere, I don't know where it would've been, but I would've made that mark somewhere else."

In all, Woodson spent seven years with the Packers. Aaron Rodgers has repeatedly called Woodson the best teammate he's ever had. And when Woodson's Hall of Fame election became official, Rodgers responded with a three-word Tweet: "The best ever."

McCarthy, who coached Woodson during his entire tenure with the Packers, called him "a generational player," upon his retirement.

Woodson had 38 of his 65 career interceptions in the green and gold -- including a league-leading nine picks during his defensive MVP season of 2009 -- and was selected to four straight Pro Bowls (2008 to 2011) while in Green Bay.

All in a place he struggled to warm up to at first.

"It was kind of rough at the beginning, because I really didn't quite want to be there, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that I didn't have anybody who wanted me on their team," Woodson said. "I was really sour about that, so it kind of dictated the way I interacted with a lot of people around there, really standoffish, got into some verbal arguments and things like that. When I look back on it I kind of feel like it was my way of trying to get out of the situation. But I'm really glad I didn't get out of it because it turned out the way it turned out."

Looking for a new team after his contract with Green Bay expired, Woodson visited the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos. Then he took a flier on the Raiders.

On May 21, 2013, Woodson visited his old stomping grounds at Raiders' headquarters. With more than 200 fans having mobilized on social media, they, too, showed up in force to sway Woodson, some in their game-day attire of makeup, costumes and, yes, Woodson jerseys.

"I tell you, man, it was overwhelming," Woodson said at the time. "I think that if, at any time, I had ever forgotten what the love was like in Oakland, I was definitely reminded...I think [the fan turnout] played a big part [in my return].

"I was actually afraid of leaving the facility and not having a deal done. I don't know if I would have made it out of there. But that was a big deal and seeing that kind of welcome, it definitely put me in the mindset [where] it would be a good decision to make it happen."

Woodson, at 37, returned to the Raiders a changed, more mature man. Beat writers who had covered C-Wood 1.0 could not believe the scene -- old man Woodson, who had gone just as hard off the field as he had on, showing up for training camp toting baby car seats and strollers.

Gruden thinks the slower-paced lifestyle of Green Bay helped Woodson slow down and get centered.

"And he met and married the right woman and had kids," Gruden said.

"It was," Woodson said, "a beautiful transition, if you will."

He also transitioned into a full-time free safety and did not miss a game in his three seasons back with the Raiders (he suffered a dislocated shoulder in the season opener of his 18th and final season and played through the pain), going to the Pro Bowl following his final season of 2015. It was his eighth career selection.

And yes, those were flecks of gray in his beard, epitomizing the reversed roll. Now he was playing the part of Brown, Atkinson and Branch for the younglings, which included quarterback Derek Carr, who was in the first grade when Woodson won the Heisman.

"He gets mad when I say this [but] when I was 6 years old, I was pretending to be him," Carr said.

"C-Wood, I can't limit his leadership to just when I played with him. He still is a leader to me. He still texts me. He still calls me. He'll call me out and say, 'Hey, do this.' ... He knew on his way out that Khalil [Mack] and I were coming up as the leaders of the organization ... I'll always be thankful to him."

The Raiders struggled on the field in Woodson's final three seasons, going 4-12 in 2013 (he recently admitted he thought he would be returning to Green Bay after that season), 3-13 in 2014 and 7-9 in 2015.

"No matter the circumstance -- whether we started 0-9, which we did one year, it didn't matter -- you've got to go out there and work and show your teammates and coaches and fans that you care," Woodson said. "Coming back, the second time around, everything is totally different. I've got two kids now. I'm married. It's like going from driving in a 75-mph zone to driving in a 35, you know what I mean?"

Woodson, who has become an entrepreneur with his wine and bourbon labels, was such an integral part of Raiders culture team owner Mark Davis chose him to light the Al Davis Torch for the final game in Oakland.

And Sunday night, he will close out the latest chapter of his football story with the final speech of the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, becoming just the 10th player in history (and third Raider) to have won a Heisman and to receive a Gold Jacket.

"It's not one night," Woodson said. "It's not like I go in on the 8th and then it's over, I'm no longer saying I'm a Hall of Famer. I'm going to say I'm a Hall of Famer on that Monday, that Tuesday, that next week, the following year.

"I'm a Hall of Famer man, so I get to celebrate that for eternity."

Link:

From Hall of Fame talent to Hall of Fame production to NFL legend -- the evolution of Charles Woodson - ESPN

The cloud forests of the Western Ghats are a matrix of natural habitats forests and grasslands (background and in the distance), along with human-modified plantations such as the tea plantations (foreground). These habitats occur on isolated mountain-tops forming habitat islands called sky islands. Photo: Prasenjeet Yadav, Munnar

Islands, both in the literary sense of land surrounded by water and the metaphorical sense of anything being isolated and surrounded by something else, have played an important role in the process of evolution and for our study of it. By the very fact of their isolation, islands permit rapid evolutionary changes and the formation of new species, allowing evolution to perform pilot experiments not easily possible on the mainland. And it is their relatively small size that makes it easier for us to uncover the processes and document the products of evolution. Hence the pride of place for the sub-discipline of island biogeography in the study of evolution.

Not surprisingly, both the co-discoverers of the principle of evolution by natural selection, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, were island biogeographers before they became evolutionary biologists, deriving key insights from their expeditions to the Galapagos Islands and the Malay Archipelago, respectively.

The theory of island biogeography

The study of island biogeography came of age when Robert H. MacArthur, a pioneering theoretical ecologist, and Edward O. Wilson, a naturalist par excellence, joined forces in the 1960s and produced the famed theory of island biogeography. Enduring as their theory is, the inspirational legacy of both MacArthur and Wilson go well beyond.

MacArthur wrote his magnum opus, Geographical Ecology (1972), while convalescing in Vermont with no access to libraries, entirely from memory, just before he died at the age of 42. Some words from his introduction have remained etched in my memory.

Doing science is not such a barrier to feeling or such a dehumanising influence as is often made out. It does not take the beauty from nature. The only rules of scientific method are honest observations and accurate logic. To be great science it must also be guided by a judgment, almost an instinct, for what is worth studying. No one should feel that honesty and accuracy guided by imagination have any power to take away natures beauty.

When asked to identify the most important problems facing the world, E.O Wilson said:

The worst thing that can happen, will happen, is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

The coming together of MacArthur and Wilson was propitious. They produced a simple and elegant theory, first in a landmark paper in 1963 and then in an influential monograph in 1967.

Combining knowledge of observed patterns, some simplifying assumptions and the results of a mathematical model, MacArthur and Wilson argued that the number of species on an island would be a compromise between two opposing forces. The more species already present on the island, the fewer new species would arrive by immigration from the nearest mainland. Conversely, the more species there are on the island, the more species that would go extinct. The balance between immigration and extinction would predict the equilibrium number of species seen on the island (graph 1, below). This has therefore come to be known as the equilibrium model of island biogeography.

Simple extensions of the basic idea predict that the farther the island is from the mainland, the slower the rate of immigration will be. But the rates of extinction would be unaffected by distance from the mainland. Thus, islands closer to the mainland would have more species than islands farther away (graph 2, below).

By similar logic, the smaller the island, the greater the rates of extinction would be. But the rates of immigration would not be affected by the size of the island. Consequently, larger islands would have more species than smaller islands (graph 3, below).

The accompanying simple graphs illustrate these principles; more realistic graphs are available in their paper and book mentioned above.

An experimental test of the theory

In 1969, E.O. Wilson and his PhD student Daniel Simberloff published a paper describing the first field-experimental test of the equilibrium theory of island biogeography. Wilson says, I hesitate to use the usual expression studied under me, because in the years to follow, I learned as much from [Simberloff] as he did from me. We soon became partners.

Wilson and Simberloff conducted their experiment on six small mangrove islands measuring 11 to 19 meters in diameter, in the Florida keys, a set of islands located off the southern tip of Florida, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. First, they painstakingly made a complete inventory of all arthropod species (there was nothing else on these islands), including insects, spiders, isopods, scorpions and a few others. Then they fumigated these islands to exterminate all arthropod species. Finally, they monitored the natural process of recolonisation of the islands by immigration from the neighbouring islands for a year.

The new fauna approximately resembled the pre-fumigation numbers and composition on five out of the six islands, broadly supporting the equilibrium theory.

Trees as islands

One reason for the broad applicability of the MacArthur-Wilson theory of island biogeography is that it applies just as well to metaphorical islands, as long as they harbour life forms and are surrounded by space that is inhospitable for the same forms of life. Within a year of the publication of the MacArthur-Wilson monograph, Daniel H. Janzen suggested that plants in general and trees, in particular, can serve as islands for insects and that the theory of island biogeography can therefore be used to study the colonisation of trees by insects.

Janzen (1939- ) is one of the best-known ecologists and conservation biologists alive today. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he helped establish one of the most successful ecological restoration projects in Costa Rica.

Later, researchers pointed out that insects on trees often violate the predictions of the theory of island biogeography. It is the mark of a good theory that we learn as much from its failure or inability to explain observed patterns. Insects colonising trees often violate the assumption of a passive trade-off between immigration and extinction and the dependence of these processes on simple factors such as distance and size.

Many insects are host-specific, meaning that they can only live on a particular tree species. Rates of colonisation will therefore depend much more on the suitability of the tree for the survival of the insect species. Moreover, insects and their host trees co-evolve and thus modify future rates of immigration and extinction, and free them from the simple influence of size and distance.

Considering the theory of island biogeography is based on rates of immigration and extinction and the sizes of islands and distance from sources of colonisation, it is not surprising that it has been a significant driver in the rational design of nature reserves. With relentless habitat fragmentation and competing claims for land use, the design of nature reserves is no more than doing the best of a bad job and one that needs all the help it can get from theoretical principles.

Remarkably, the theory of island biogeography endured and continued to inspire research for almost half a century. Its simplicity has been crucial for it isnt just easy to understand and apply but also to understand why it fails when it does. That ecologists to this day are writing papers, like A roadmap for island biology: 50 fundamental questions after 50 years of The Theory of Island Biogeography and A call for a new paradigm of island biogeography, is testimony to the power of the MacArthur-Wilson theory to inspire ecological research.

If it fails in the end, it will simply have burned itself out in the service of new theories and empirical research.

Sky islands

In the metaphorical sense of an isolated habitat surrounded by inhospitable nothingness, certain mountain tops represent islands in the sky. A steep temperature or other environmental gradient or deep insurmountable valleys between mountain peaks can make mountain tops uniquely suitable habitats for some species that cannot thrive in the intervening areas. These sky islands can thus provide opportunities for evolution to experiment with rapid change and speciation in much the same way as literal islands of land separated by water.

The best-studied examples of sky islands are the so-called Madrean sky islands found in Arizona and New Mexico and Chihuahua and Sonora in Mexico.

The Western Ghats in India, famed for being a biodiversity hotspot, contain some of the worlds most magnificent sky islands, breathtaking in their beauty and unique in their biogeography. The sky islands of the Western Ghats of India spread over a range of 700 km with a variety of different habitats and microhabitats perhaps the most spectacular of which are the montane cloud forests, also known as Shola.

These sky islands have hitherto remained poorly studied, but now that is changing thanks to some remarkable work by V.V. Robin and his students and collaborators.

Robin is now an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in the temple town of Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. He heads a bird lab with a lively group of bright, young students and postdocs. Robin is a second-generation ecologist, and thats still unusual in India both his parents are distinguished ecologists and long-standing friends of mine. Having watched Robin since he was a little boy, it gives me great pleasure to study his fascinating work and write about it.

In a study published in 2015, Robin, C.K. Vishnudas, Pooja Gupta and Uma Ramakrishnan presented a comprehensive analysis of the bird community of the sky islands in the Western Ghats. Vishnudas, a collaborator on Robins National Geographic project, is an avid naturalist and ornithologist who has conducted detailed surveys of birds in the Western Ghats. One of Vishnudass imaginative projects was to revisit the trails previously visited by Indias most famous ornithologist, Salim Ali, at the same times of the year and re-survey the bird fauna recorded by the master.

Pooja Gupta was a project student at the time of the study, doing the molecular work. She has since gone on to do a PhD at the University of Georgia, working on avian malaria on the sky island system. Uma Ramakrishnan is a highly accomplished, trail-blazing young researcher in the field of molecular ecology at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, which hosted all the scientists of this study.

Prasenjeet Yadav, whose beautiful photographs adorn this article, combines science and photography. Inspired by Robin, he applied for and won a Young Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society to document the Shola sky islands and Robins work. His work has been recognized internationally, and he has won many awards, including the Banff Film Festival. Yadav is now an official photographer for National Geographic, with several stories around the world.

Robin is also collaborating with Prasenjeet Yadav and a beatbox musician from New York to create Sky Island Beatbox, making music with bird songs. He and his team visit schools and enthuse children with the joy of studying ecology and natural history.

Robin and his team extensively surveyed the Shola habitats in the sky islands of the Western Ghats and studied almost the entire community of songbirds, the so-called Oscines. Songbirds belong to the order Passeriformes, commonly called the passerine, or perching, birds. Using mist-nets, they captured representatives of 23 out of the 25 species that constitute this community. They also collected blood samples from 356 birds, sequenced parts of two nuclear and two mitochondrial genes, and constructed phylogenetic trees of the bird community.

Their study aimed to understand how the sky islands being potential physical barriers to gene flow have affected the distribution of birds through colonisation, extinction and interbreeding (or its absence). Deep valleys can be barriers to movement for some species at all times. But the valleys effectiveness as barriers may vary with climate change. For other species, the valleys may not be barriers at all.

There are three major valleys in their study area: the Chaliyar valley separating Wayanad and the Nilgiri hills; the Palghat gap separating the Nilgiri hills and the Anaimalai hills; and the Shencottah Gap separating the Anaimalai hills and Agasthyamalai.

Thirteen of the 23 species studied were unaffected by the valleys and appeared capable of crossing them. More likely, they had crossed the barriers in the past when the climate permitted. However, 10 species showed genetic divergence at locations, which would be expected if the valleys acted as barriers to gene flow. All the 10 were affected only by the deepest valley, namely the Palghat gap.

Some species, such as the laughing thrush, were affected by all three valleys. Some other species were affected by the Palghat Gap and the next deepest valley, the Shencottah Gap, but not by the Cheliyar valley, the shallowest of the three.

The power of this rich study comes from many sources.

First, the researchers combined extensive fieldwork with state-of-the-art molecular analysis.

Second, it was a very ambitious study, for it included nearly all members of the songbird community of these sky islands.

Third, it was the culmination of some two decades of Robins obsession with birds of the montane forests. While visiting my colleague Raman Sukumar at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, in 2002, Robin undertook a major survey to assess the habitat preferences of one of these birds, the white-bellied shortwing, along the mountains of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Fourth, the 2015 study was preceded by a pilot study in 2010. During his PhD under the mentorship of Anindya Sinha at the National Institute for Advanced Study, Bengaluru, Robin worked with Uma Ramakrishnan of NCBS to examine the effect of valleys and climate on the distribution of one bird species. Together, they established that the Palghat Gap had managed to split the white-bellied shortwing into two different species; they even sang different songs. This study established the proof of principle that allowed Robin to embark on the more ambitious 2015 study.

Fifth and finally, the 2015 study has begun to spawn even bolder new research. In 2017, Robin and his colleagues, including additional collaborators from Singapore and the US, published a revolutionary new study. Incorporating genetic, morphometric, song and plumage data, they reorganised the songbird taxonomy of the region. The researchers questioned the traditional view that two of the species of birds on the sky islands, the laughingthrushes and the shortwings, are a single species each, related to other similar birds in the Himalaya.

Instead, their data showed that these two species are two different genera that evolved and differentiated in the sky islands of the Western Ghats after splitting off from their Himalayan relatives over five million years ago. That both groups did so at about the same time highlighted the potential role of climatic factors superimposed on geographic factors.

The Western Ghats laughingthrushes now proudly occupy their own new genus Montecincla, with four species. Similarly, the Western Ghats shortwings now occupy their own new genus Sholicola, with three species.

Robin told me in an email:

This finding was a significant step for two reasons. Firstly, Western Ghats were the best described and explored habitats in India, and that the first new genera descriptions for the century were coming from here implied there was much unknown. Secondly (and perhaps more importantly for me), this study revealed that these isolated habitat islands indeed resembled oceanic islands for some species, causing radiations in even vagile taxa like birds.

There is much unknown indeed. But with passionate and committed young researchers like Robin and his colleagues on the scene, I see great hope.

However, we must take note that this kind of research requires significant long-term institutional and financial support. Here is a rare opportunity for scientists in India to cease to be mere followers and become world leaders and rewrite the textbooks of the history of life. I know that young researchers are up to the challenge. But will the slow-moving, conservative state machinery rise to the challenge?

Raghavendra Gadagkar is a Department of Science and Technology (DST) Year of Science Chair Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

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More Fun Than Fun: Evolution on Islands in Water, in the Sky and Elsewhere - The Wire Science

After earning her bachelors and masters in biology at the Northern Michigan University and her Ph.D. in biological sciences focused on ecology and evolution at the University of Alberta (Canada) in 2019, Emily Durkin, Ph.D., took on a postdoctoral research position at the University of Florida before moving to her current postdoc role at the University of Kentucky. Starting in fall 2021, she will continue her research in evolutionary biology of arthropods as an assistant professor at the University of Tampa.

By Lorena Lopez, Ph.D.

Editors Note: This is the next post in the Standout ECPs series contributed by the Entomological Society of Americas Early Career Professionals (ECP) Committee, highlighting outstanding ECPs that are doing great work in the profession. (An ECP is defined as anyone within the first five years of obtaining their terminal degree in their field.)Learn more about the work ECPs are doing within ESA, andread past posts in the Standout ECPs series.

Emily Durkin, Ph.D., with her dog Pfeffer.

Emily Durkin, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kentucky, where she studies the experimental evolution of endosymbiotic bacteria in dwarf spiders (Araneae: Linyphiidae). Since Emily began her bachelors degree in 2009, she embarked on a unique professional path investigating evolutionary biology phenomena, particularly in the field of entomology and acarology. She earned her bachelors and masters in biology at the Northern Michigan University and her Ph.D. in biological sciences focused on ecology and evolution at the University of Alberta (Canada) in 2019.

During her Ph.D., Emily experimentally evolved a population of facultatively parasitic mites, Macrocheles muscaedomesticae, to exhibit an increased propensity in host-attachment behavior using artificial selection. Her research was the first to provide an estimate of heritability for infectious behavior in a facultative parasite, suggesting natural selection can act upon facultative strategies. Her Ph.D. research provided important implications for the evolution of parasitism from free-living ancestors. Emily continued her work on the parasitic behavior of mites as a postdoc at the University of Florida and moved to Kentucky in 2020. She recently accepted a professorship position at the University of Tampa and will move back to Florida in fall 2021 to start her program as an assistant professor in the Biology Department.

Lopez: Tell us about your current research. How did you get interested in the ecology and evolution of parasitic relationships?

Durkin: In the beginning, my masters research was focused on birds; I was going to compare immune system function between two bird species that exhibit different parental strategies by measuring their levels of blood parasites. I had the choice of taking an ornithology class or a parasitology class. My advisor at the time wanted me to take ornithology, but I chose to take parasitology because the field was much more foreign to me. It was in that class that I was exposed to the intimate relationships between parasite and host. I was in awe of parasitic adaptations. They can manipulate their hosts behavior and evade or alter their hosts immune system to complete their lifecycle; they are true masters of their craft. But, of course, hosts evolve defenses in response. These intimately evolving host-parasite relationships provide some of the greatest examples of the red queen hypothesis (which proposes that species must constantly evolve to survive when faced with other evolving species) in action. As someone that loves evolutionary biology, it is difficult not to fall head-over-heels for host-parasite interactions.

During her doctoral research, Emily Durkin, Ph.D., experimentally evolved a population of facultatively parasitic mites, Macrocheles muscaedomesticae (shown here attached to Drosophila hydei flies) to exhibit an increased propensity in host-attachment behavior using artificial selection. Her research was the first to provide an estimate of heritability for infectious behavior in a facultative parasite, suggesting natural selection can act upon facultative strategies.

Whats your favorite aspect of your research?

I love how hands-on and tangible my research is. It involves a lot of observation of mite behavior and biology. Although it can be a double-edged sword, I enjoy that my work is unique. My less-common expertise in working with live mites has fostered some awesome collaborations, but it can be a bit isolating as well.

During her postdoctoral research position at the University of Florida, Emily Durkin, Ph.D., often conducted education and outreach visits with teachers, using mites as a subject for lessons.

Whats a recent research challenge you had to overcome, and how did you do it?

Keeping track of multiple individual mites over an experiment is a challenge. It is so easy to lose them or accidentally kill them. I try my best to overcome this by going into an experiment with the expectation that I will lose a proportion of mites and start with a larger-than-needed sample size.

How has your life changed in the transition from graduate student to postdoc?

I think the biggest change I have experienced during my transitions is an increase in confidence. I would often compare my research to the research of others around me and think what I was doing wasnt as interesting or important. Superficially, it may appear that I play around with tiny critters in the lab and watch them, but I have been able to test some interesting hypotheses and generate data that helps shed light on some larger questions on the evolution of parasitism.

If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to your graduate-student self?

First, find some supportive grad-student friends! I was so wrapped up in my work the first two years of my Ph.D. that I had very few friends. Once I made more friends, I realized how important they were. They helped me have fun, finish my work, and keep my sanity while I finished up my degree. Second, take breaks to enjoy yourself! I used to think taking time away from my work was just that, taking time away from my work, which I felt guilty about. I realized much later how refreshed and better my work and productivity were after taking a break to do what I wanted when I felt I needed one. And, third, dont compare yourself to others. This is hard not to do, but really, everyone has different research and will likely have a completely different journey. As long as you are getting some enjoyment and satisfaction out of what you are doing and are being friendly and collegial with others, you are doing it right.

Lorena Lopez, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Techs Department of Entomology (Eastern Shore AREC) and vice chair of the ESA Early Career Professionals Committee. Twitter: @lorelopez257. Email: lorelopezq257@vt.edu.

All photos courtesy of Emily Durkin, Ph.D.

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How an Evolutionary Biologist Found Her Place in Entomology - Entomology Today

Emirati national Aisha Al Yazeedi, a research scientist at the NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD)Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics, has published her first research paper, featuring some key findings on the evolution of galaxies.

Galaxies eventually undergo a phase in which they lose most of their gas, which results in a change into their properties over the course of their evolution. Current models for galaxy evolution suggest this should eventually happen to all galaxies, including our own Milky Way; Al Yazeedi and her team are delving into this process.

Composite RGB image of the Blob Source extracted from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys (Dey et al.(2019), legacysurvey.org). MaNGA _eld of view is shown in orange. Gray box corresponds to the GMOS _eld of view. Credit: Dey et al.(2019), legacysurvey.org

Commenting on the findings, Al Yazeedi said: The evolution of galaxies is directly linked to the activity of their central supermassive black hole (SMBH). However, the connection between the activity of SMBHs and the ejection of gas from the entire galaxy is poorly understood. Observational studies, including our research, are essential to clarify how the central SMBH can influence the evolution of its entire host galaxy and prove key theoretical concepts in the field of astrophysics.

Titled The impact of low luminosity AGN on their host galaxies: A radio and optical investigation of the kpc-scale outflow in MaNGA 1-166919, the paper has been published inAstronomical Journal. Its findings outline gas ejection mechanisms, outflow properties, and how they are related to the activity of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of the host galaxy.

To that end, the paper presents a detailed optical and radio study of the MaNGA 1-166919 galaxy, which appears to have an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN). Radio morphology shows two lobes (jets) emanating from the center of the galaxy, a clear sign of AGN activity that could be driving the optical outflow. By measuring the outflow properties, the NYUAD researchers documented how the extent of the optical outflow matches the extent of radio emission.

Superposition of optical z-band MzLS image isophotes (gray color) and our highest spatial resolution radio image in S band (in blue). Optical image has a spatial resolution of 0:0084, while S-band radio data { 0:009. Credit: NYU Abu Dhabi

Al Yazeedi is a member of NYUADs Kawader program, a national capacity-building research fellowship that allows outstanding graduates to gain experience in cutting-edge academic research. The three-year, individually tailored, intensive program is designed for graduates considering a graduate degree or a career in research.

Her paper adds to the growing body of UAE space research and activities. The UAE has sent an Emirati into space, a spacecraft around Mars, and recently announced plans to send a robotic rover to the Moon in 2022, ahead of the ultimate goal to build a city on Mars by 2117.

The above figure is a GMOS outflow map with radio contours overlaid in black. The outflow velocities show a clear spatial separation of red and blue components. It strongly suggests a biconical outflow and nicely shows the correspondence between the optical outflow and radio emission. Credit: NYU Abu Dhabi

Emirati women are playing a key role in the research and development behind these projects. The Mars Hope probe science team, which is 80 percent female, was led by Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and chairperson of the countrys space agency.

Reference: The impact of low luminosity AGN on their host galaxies: A radio and optical investigation of the kpc-scale outflow in MaNGA 1-166919 3 August 2021, Astronomical Journal.DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/abf5e1

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New Insights Into How Central Supermassive Black Holes Influence the Evolution of Their Host Galaxy - SciTechDaily

The coming Olympics will showcase some of the most extraordinary human feats of strength, speed, and agility. As an archaeologist who focuses on the development of the human species over evolutionary history, its interesting to consider how and why we came to be so good at certain things, from javelin throwing to the 500-meter sprint. Much of what makes our bodies capable of athletic prowess comes from well before we were Homo sapiens.

Human athletic paleobiology is a branch of research that uses trained athletes to explore adaptations of the human body. These studies focus on metabolism and peak physical performance, limb biomechanics, and other aspects of human anatomy and physiology to get a sense of the types of activities that humans in the past might have been capable of performing.

Here is a short roundup of some things we humans can do that make for great sport, along with a quick look at where these skills come from and how long theyve been around.

The ancestors of modern humans have walked upright since around 4 million years ago, when members of the genus Australopithecus first started spending more time on the ground than in treetop habitats. Evolving to be bipedal changed a number of things about the human skeletal structure. Our pelvis is shorter and wider than that of other living primates. This is because we move by exerting force mostly through muscles in our butts and legs rather than along our backs and shoulders, as a knuckle-walking chimp would. Our lower femurs (the big bone in your thigh) develop a specific shape, called the bicondylar angle, as we learn to walk.

This allows us to stride in a rolling motion, transferring our weight smoothly from side to side as we go. If youve ever seen a gorilla or chimpanzee walk on two legs instead of four, youll notice that they have a much more waddling gait. Our smoother gait helps us walkand runmore efficiently.

Homo sapiens in particular, with longer legs and shorter Achilles tendons than some of our ancestors, seem particularly well-suited to running long distances. Researchers have suggested that early humans were able to hunt prey animals like antelope or zebra by repeatedly startling them into running long stretches in the midday heat, eventually running the animals to exhaustion.

When we compare ourselves to other living primates, one of the most noticeable differences is a lack of body hairand the fact that we sweat. Thermoregulation, the bodys ability to maintain an ideal temperature, is critical for all mammals, but humans are unique in our capacity to sweat all over our bodies, creating evaporative cooling.

When did we lose all our hair and become sweaty, naked creatures? Counterintuitively, studies have shown that humans and chimps, our closest primate relatives, actually have roughly the same number of follicles over our bodies. Our hair is simply much shorter and finer.

So, what prompted the change from full fur to fine hair? Charles Darwin proposed that it was a sexually selected traitthat our distant female ancestors preferred, and mated with, less hairy males. However, the more likely scenario has more to do with environmental rather than sexual pressures. During our evolution in Africa, the move from forests to more open, hotter environments meant that the ability to keep cool contributed to survival in a big way.

Our sweaty selves can now compete in sporting events even in the heatalthough climate change might soon make most cities too hot to reasonably play host to Summer Olympics.

While the bottom half of our body has evolved away from an arboreal lifestyle, our upper body still retains traits that we inherited from tree-dwellers. Our glenohumeral joint, the ball-and-socket connection between our upper arm and scapula, allows us to swing our arms around in a full rotation. This is a very different type of mobility from that of quadruped animals that dont swing in treesa dog or cats front legs, for example, primarily swing back and forth and couldnt perform a butterfly swim stroke. We, on the other hand, can.

Our rotatable shoulder joint also allows us to throw overhand. The ability to throw accurately and forcefully appears to have originated at least 2 million years ago, with our ancestors Homo erectus. Recent research has also shown that Neanderthals might have thrown spears to hunt at a distance. The few known examples of Neanderthal spears were long thought to be used only for thrusting and close-in killing of prey, in part because when researchers tried to throw replicas, they didnt go far.

Recently, however, researchers put replicas into the hands of trained javelin throwers and were stunned to see the spears fly much farther and fastermore than 65 feet.

Human hands are unique in their dexterity, which has evolutionary roots as early as 2 million years ago. Evidence for this early development of hands like ours, with opposable thumbs and the ability to apply force in either a strong or delicate grasp, comes from a single metacarpal boneone of the bones that forms the palmfor a hominin found at a site in Kenya. This grip lets us do everything from grasping a pen to a golf club.

The evolution of our hands has included both biological and cultural selection for right- versus left-handed individuals. Both Neanderthal and early Homo sapiens populations seem to have had roughly the same ratio of right-handed to left-handed individuals as modern humans. (Today we are about 85 percent right-handed).

Researchers have suggested one explanation for this lies in the emphasis of cooperation in human communities (which favors everyone having the same handedness so they can share tools, for example) over competition (which favors difference, so a lefty can beat a right-hander in a fight). Some evidence for this theory comes from sport: A study of how many elite athletes are left-handed across different sports showed that the more competitive the sport, the greater the proportion of lefties.

Many species of animals play, but humans are the only species to play games involving organized rules and equipment. We not only play by throwing, kicking, or otherwise propelling balls of various materials, we sometimes do so with bats, sticks, or racquets.

The generally accepted theory for the evolutionary origins of play is that it allows children to learn actions and tasks that they will need to master as adults. In hunter-gatherer populations, games that help children develop accuracy, power, and hand-eye coordination are useful practice for hunting. There is plenty of archaeological evidence to suggest that children played with miniature versions of hunting tools or other tools of adult trades going back to at least 400,000 years ago.

Some of the earliest evidence for ballgames comes from ancient Egypt: The tomb of a child dating to around 2500 B.C. included a ball made from linen rags and string. In China, the sport of cuju, which was similar to modern soccer and played with a leather ball stuffed with feathers, is depicted in paintings and reportedly dates back to 2300 B.C.

The most famous ancient ballgame, though, has its origins in Mesoamerica. Ceramic figurines and murals dating to as early as 1700 B.C., and ball courts dating to approximately 1600 B.C., attest to a game that was a huge and complex part of Olmec, Aztec, and Maya society.

This story was originally published on Sapiens, an anthropology magazine.

Anna Goldfield, an archaeologist who received her PhD from Boston University, specializes in analyzing faunal remains from archaeological sites, with particular emphasis on the diets of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. She is currently an adjunct instructor in anthropology at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento and at the University of California, Davis. Goldfield is the illustrator of The Neanderthal Child of Roc de Marsal: A Prehistoric Mystery and co-host of "The Dirt", an archaeology podcast. Follow her on Twitter @AnnaGoldfield.

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Five Ways Humans Evolved to Be Athletes | Science - Smithsonian Magazine