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- August 19, 2010
- 11:22 PM
- 508 views
Food goes through a rabbit twice. Think what that means!
by Bora Zivkovic (coturnix) in A Blog Around The Clock
Coprophagy in rabbits and its circadian control.... Read more »
Bellier R, Gidenne T, Vernay M, & Colin M. (1995) In vivo study of circadian variations of the cecal fermentation pattern in postweaned and adult rabbits. Journal of animal science, 73(1), 128-35. PMID: 7601725
Kenagy, G., & Hoyt, D. (1979) Reingestion of feces in rodents and its daily rhythmicity. Oecologia, 44(3), 403-409. DOI: 10.1007/BF00545245
Kenagy GJ, Veloso C, & Bozinovic F. (1999) Daily rhythms of food intake and feces reingestion in the degu, an herbivorous Chilean rodent: optimizing digestion through coprophagy. Physiological and biochemical zoology : PBZ, 72(1), 78-86. PMID: 9882606
Hörnicke H, Ruoff G, Vogt B, Clauss W, & Ehrlein HJ. (1984) Phase relationship of the circadian rhythms of feed intake, caecal motility and production of soft and hard faeces in domestic rabbits. Laboratory animals, 18(2), 169-72. PMID: 6748594
Pairet M, Bouyssou T, & Ruckebusch Y. (1986) Colonic formation of soft feces in rabbits: a role for endogenous prostaglandins. The American journal of physiology, 250(3 Pt 1). PMID: 3456721
Hörnicke, H., Batsch, F., & Hornicke, H. (1977) Coecotrophy in Rabbits: A Circadian Function. Journal of Mammalogy, 58(2), 240. DOI: 10.2307/1379586
- August 15, 2010
- 10:15 PM
- 539 views
Postscript to Pittendrigh’s Pet Project – Phototaxis, Photoperiodism and Precise Projectile Parabolas of Pilobolus on Pasture Poop
by Bora Zivkovic (coturnix) in A Blog Around The Clock
Review of literature on how Pilobolus fungus orients itself and shoots its spores into a considerable distance.... Read more »
Bruce, V., Weight, F., & Pittendrigh, C. (1960) Resetting the Sporulation Rhythm in Pilobolus with Short Light Flashes of High Intensity. Science, 131(3402), 728-730. DOI: 10.1126/science.131.3402.728
TRAIL, F., GAFFOOR, I., & VOGEL, S. (2005) Ejection mechanics and trajectory of the ascospores of Gibberella zeae (anamorph Fuarium graminearum). Fungal Genetics and Biology, 42(6), 528-533. DOI: 10.1016/j.fgb.2005.03.008
Fischer, M., Stolze-Rybczynski, J., Cui, Y., & Money, N. (2010) How far and how fast can mushroom spores fly? Physical limits on ballistospore size and discharge distance in the Basidiomycota. Fungal Biology, 114(8), 669-675. DOI: 10.1016/j.funbio.2010.06.002
Roenneberg, T., & Merrow, M. (2001) Seasonality and Photoperiodism in Fungi. Journal of Biological Rhythms, 16(4), 403-414. DOI: 10.1177/074873001129001999
Yafetto, L., Carroll, L., Cui, Y., Davis, D., Fischer, M., Henterly, A., Kessler, J., Kilroy, H., Shidler, J., Stolze-Rybczynski, J.... (2008) The Fastest Flights in Nature: High-Speed Spore Discharge Mechanisms among Fungi. PLoS ONE, 3(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003237
- April 13, 2010
- 02:52 AM
- 1,007 views
Evolutionary Medicine: Does reindeer have a circadian stop-watch instead of a clock?
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
Whenever I read a paper from Karl-Arne Stokkan's lab, and I have read every one of them, no matter how dense the scientese language I always start imagining them running around the cold, dark Arctic, wielding enormous butterfly nets, looking for and catching reindeer (or ptarmigans, whichever animal the paper is about) to do their research.
If I was not so averse to cold, I'd think this would be the best career in science ever!
It is no surprise that their latest paper - A Circadian Cl........ Read more »
Lu, W., Meng, Q., Tyler, N., Stokkan, K., & Loudon, A. (2010) A Circadian Clock Is Not Required in an Arctic Mammal. Current Biology, 20(6), 533-537. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.01.042
- February 3, 2010
- 02:02 PM
- 957 views
My latest scientific paper: Extended Laying Interval of Ultimate Eggs of the Eastern Bluebird
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
Yes, years after I left the lab, I published a scientific paper. How did that happen?
Back in 2000, I published a paper on the way circadian clock controls the time of day when the eggs are laid in Japanese quail. Several years later, I wrote a blog post about that paper, trying to explain in lay terms what I did, why I did it, what I found, and how it fits into the broader context of this line of research. The paper was a physiology paper, and my blog post also focused on the physiological asp........ Read more »
Cooper, C., Voss, M., & Zivkovic, B. (2009) Extended Laying Interval of Ultimate Eggs of the Eastern Bluebird. The Condor, 111(4), 752-755. DOI: 10.1525/cond.2009.090061
- May 28, 2009
- 12:41 PM
- 1,533 views
Yes, Archaea also have circadian clocks!
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
If you ever glanced at the circadian literature, you have probably encountered the statement that "circadian rhythms are ubiquitous in living systems". In all of my formal and informal writing I qualified that statement somewhat, stating something along the lines of "most organisms living on or near the Earth's surface have circadian rhythms". Why?
In the earliest days of chronobiology, it made sense to do most of the work on readily available organisms: plants, insects, mammals and birds. Dur........ Read more »
Whitehead, K., Pan, M., Masumura, K., Bonneau, R., & Baliga, N. (2009) Diurnally Entrained Anticipatory Behavior in Archaea. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005485
- May 10, 2009
- 04:18 PM
- 1,595 views
Why social insects do not suffer from ill effects of rotating and night shift work?
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
Most people are aware that social insects, like honeybees, have three "sexes": queens, drones and workers.
Drones are males. Their only job is to fly out and mate with the queen after which they drop dead.
Female larvae fed 'royal jelly' emerge as queens. After mating, the young queen takes a bunch of workers with her and sets up a new colony. She lives much longer than other bees and spends her life laying gazillions of eggs continuously around the clock, while being fed by workers.
Female l........ Read more »
Yang, L., Qin, Y., Li, X., Song, D., & Qi, M. (2007) Brain melatonin content and polyethism in adult workers of Apis mellifera and Apis cerana (Hym., Apidae). Journal of Applied Entomology, 131(9-10), 734-739. DOI: 10.1111/j.1439-0418.2007.01229.x
Sharma, V., Lone, S., Goel, A., & Chandrashekaran, M. (2004) Circadian consequences of social organization in the ant species Camponotus compressus. Naturwissenschaften, 91(8). DOI: 10.1007/s00114-004-0544-6
Ingram, K., Krummey, S., & LeRoux, M. (2009) Expression patterns of a circadian clock gene are associated with age-related polyethism in harvester ants, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis. BMC Ecology, 9(1), 7. DOI: 10.1186/1472-6785-9-7
- April 12, 2009
- 07:38 PM
- 1,614 views
Why eliminate the peer-review of baseline grants?
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
About a week ago, my brother sent me a couple of interesting papers about funding in science, one in Canada, the other in the UK. I barely had time to skim the abstracts at the time, but thought I would put it up for discussion online and come back to it later. So I posted the link, abstract and brief commentary a few days ago to the article: Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant:
Abstract: Using Natural Science........ Read more »
Gordon, R., & Poulin, B. (2009) Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant. Accountability in Research, 16(1), 13-40. DOI: 10.1080/08989620802689821
- February 4, 2009
- 12:17 AM
- 1,627 views
An Awesome Whale Tale
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
When I was a little kid, almost nothing was known about evolution of whales. They were huge, they were marine and they were mammals, but their evolutionary ancestry was open to speculation. Some (like Darwin himself) hypothesized that the terrestrial ancestor of whales looked like a bear. Others favored the idea of a hippo-like or even a pig-like ancestor.
Over the decades, two things happened. First, the revolution in molecular biology and computing power allowed scientists to compare many ge........ Read more »
Philip D. Gingerich, Munir ul-Haq, Wighart von Koenigswald, William J. Sanders, B. Holly Smith, & Iyad S. Zalmout. (2009) New Protocetid Whale from the Middle Eocene of Pakistan: Birth on Land, Precocial Development, and Sexual Dimorphism. PLoS ONE, 4(2). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004366
- February 1, 2009
- 04:20 PM
- 1,471 views
Circadian Rhythm of Aggression in Crayfish
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
Long-time readers of this blog remember that, some years ago, I did a nifty little study on the Influence of Light Cycle on Dominance Status and Aggression in Crayfish. The department has moved to a new building, the crayfish lab is gone, I am out of science, so chances of following up on that study are very low. And what we did was too small even for a Least Publishable Unit, so, in order to have the scientific community aware of our results, I posted them (with agreement from my co-authors) on........ Read more »
A. J. Farca Luna, J. I. Hurtado-Zavala, T. Reischig, & R. Heinrich. (2009) Circadian Regulation of Agonistic Behavior in Groups of Parthenogenetic Marbled Crayfish, Procambarus sp. Journal of Biological Rhythms, 24(1), 64-72. DOI: 10.1177/0748730408328933
- December 20, 2008
- 12:00 PM
- 1,581 views
Einstein was smart, but Could He Play the Violin? - the winner of the synchroblogging contest
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
Happy Anniversary, PLoS ONE!
Today is PLoS ONE's second anniversary and we're celebrating by announcing that the winner of the second PLoS synchroblogging competition is SciCurious of the Neurotopia 2.0 blog.
"This fluent post captures the essence of the research and accurately communicates it in a style that resonates with both the scientific and lay community" - Liz Allen, PLoS.
Here is the winning entry, cross posted in its entirety:
====================
Einstein was smart, but Could H........ Read more »
Marie Forgeard, Ellen Winner, Andrea Norton, & Gottfried Schlaug. (2008) Practicing a Musical Instrument in Childhood is Associated with Enhanced Verbal Ability and Nonverbal Reasoning. PLoS ONE, 3(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0003566
- October 5, 2008
- 07:47 PM
- 1,178 views
Wikipedia, just like an Organism: clock genes wiki pages
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
The October issue of the Journal of Biological Rhythms came in late last week - the only scientific journal I get in hard-copy these days. Along with several other interesting articles, one that immediately drew my attention was Clock Gene Wikis Available: Join the 'Long Tail' by John B. Hogenesch and Andrew I. Su (J Biol Rhythms 2008 23: 456-457.), especially since John Hogenesh and I talked about it in May at the SRBR meeting.
Now some of you may be quick to make a connection between this art........ Read more »
Jon W. Huss, Camilo Orozco, James Goodale, Chunlei Wu, Serge Batalov, Tim J. Vickers, Faramarz Valafar, & Andrew I. Su. (2008) A Gene Wiki for Community Annotation of Gene Function. PLoS Biology, 6(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060175
- June 25, 2008
- 10:01 PM
- 1,640 views
Why do earthworms come up to the surface after the rain?
by Coturnix in A Blog Around The Clock
Believe it or not, this appears to have something to do with their circadian rhythms!
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was quite a lot of research published on the circadian rhythms in earthworms, mostly by Miriam Bennett. As far as I can tell, nobody's followed up on that work since. I know, from a trusted source, that earthworms will not run in running-wheels, believe it or not! The wheels were modified to contain a groove down the middle (so that the worm can go only in one d........ Read more »
Shu-Chun Chuang, & Jiun Chen. (2008) Role of diurnal rhythm of oxygen consumption in emergence from soil at night after heavy rain by earthworms. Invertebrate Biology, 127(1), 80-86. DOI: 10.1111/j.1744-7410.2007.00117.x
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