ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

A new study suggests that an elephant's muscles aren't the only way it stretches its trunk -- its folded skin also plays an important role. The combination of muscle and skin gives the animal the versatility to grab fragile vegetation and rip apart tree trunks. The research finds that an elephant's skin doesn't uniformly stretch. The top of the trunk is more flexible than the bottom, and the two sections begin to diverge when an elephant reaches more than 10%. When stretching for food or objects, the dorsal section of the trunk slides further forward.

A new survey attempts to fill some of the gaps in understanding by synthesizing the perspectives of thousands of biodiversity experts worldwide. The survey received 3,331 responses from scientists studying biodiversity in 187 countries, covering all major groups of species, habitats and ecosystems.

Scientists have revealed a novel ADAR1-SIRT1-p16INK4a axis in regulating cellular senescence and its potential implications in tissue aging.

A new study of rattlesnakes in the western U.S. sheds light on how the reptiles evolve over time to keep up with prey resistance to their venom.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, microbes and plants might have given insects an evolutionary advantage by passing genes to them through horizontal gene transfer. Researchers now report that more than 1,400 genes across 218 insect species, including butterflies and moths, originated from bacteria, viruses, fungi, and plants. The study argues that these genes might have been essential for insect evolution by allowing them to develop beneficial traits in mating behavior, nutrition, growth, and adaptation to environmental changes.

More than 200 experiments comparing yields of crop plants with an without insect pollination analyzed, revealing 32% less variability in yields of plants visited by pollinators. The study suggests that supporting and conserving pollinators like bees could stabilize food supply, with the potential to prevent future spikes in food food prices.

The world's governments are presently negotiating a Global Biodiversity Framework, containing goals and targets for saving nature, which is due to be adopted at the end of 2022. Conservation experts explored how the suggested targets in the Framework, could contribute to reducing extinction risk of threatened vertebrates, invertebrates and plants. Their findings show that while targets to expand protected areas or reduce pollution will benefit many species, 57% would still need targeted recovery actions.

Research has shown how clown anemonefish control their growth to match the size of their anemone host.

Bioengineers used deactivated Cas9 fusion proteins to synthetically control gene expression and reveal new details about natural processes in human cells.

When different cell types compete in a confined space, those which remove debris faster have a better chance to dominate their environment. Researchers showed in a new model that not only a higher net proliferation rate, but also the swift removal of dead cells provides a competitive advantage. They mixed two cell populations only differing in debris removal rate and showed that already after a few generations the population with the higher removal rate starts to dominate the confined space.

There are certain skills that once we acquire them, we rarely have to relearn them, like riding a bike or looking both ways before crossing a street. Most studies on learning and long-term memory in the wild focus on a handful of animal species. Now, researchers share the first report of long-term memory in frog-eating bats.