thescienceblog reblogged
thescienceblog reblogged
MORELET’S TREE FROG Agalychnis moreletii ©Laura Quick
Morelet’s tree frog is a species of tree frog of family Hylidae. It belongs to the leaf frog subfamily, and is found in Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. They have also been called black-eyed leaf frog and popeye hyla.
The population of Morelet’s tree frogs are also being affected due to a disease called Chytridiomycosis, which is an infectious disease that kills amphibians. Chytridiomycosis and habitat destruction are projected to cause the population to decline over 80% in the next 10 years. In some regions, the frogs have gone extinct completely. source
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thescienceblog reblogged
ミコアイサ（Smew）
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A rare new treefrog of the genus Sarcohyla (Anura: Hylidae) from Guerrero, Mexico
GRÜNWALD, FRANZ-CHÁVEZ, et al.
Based on morphological data collected from treefrogs related to Sarcohyla hazelae, we describe a new species of the genus Sarcohyla from the cloud forest of the Sierra Madre del Sur of Guerrero, Mexico.
We compare physical charactersitics of this new species to its closest relatives within the genus Sarcohyla, including dorsal and ventral coloration, head shape, tympanum distinctiveness, morphometrics and the condition of the tubercles on hands and feet.
We analyze accoustic data from the advertisement call of males of the new species. We discuss the relationship of the species described herein with several of its cogeners, plus we resurrect the Sarcohyla hazelae group for these frogs. We describe habitat and distribution species related to Sarcohyla hazelae and also comment on the conservation priorities of these frogs.
Read the paper here:
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Fall Colors
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Miniature ecosystem found in a drop of water taken from the birdbath.
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science
Source: science
thescienceblog reblogged
end0skeletal
The feather-horned beetle (Rhipicera femorata) is native to Australia. Males have significantly bushier antennae than females; they use them to locate females emitting pheromones indicating that they are ready to mate.
thescienceblog reblogged
CATERPILLARS from Yunnan, China Click on and scroll through images for individual IDs….. by Sinobug (itchydogimages) on Flickr. Pu’er, Yunnan, China See more Chinese caterpillars on my Flickr site HERE…
Source: Flickr / itchydogimages
thescienceblog reblogged
Britain's answer to 'King Tut's tomb' found on roadside
Excited archaeologists on Thursday hailed an ancient burial site found on the side of a road near a pub and a budget supermarket as Britain’s answer to the tomb of Egypt’s King Tutankhamun.
The small bump on a patch of grass in the county of Essex just northeast of London did not look like much when UK researchers first spotted it in 2003.
“The thing that’s so strange about it is that it was such an unpromising-looking site,” Museum of London Archaeology’s (MOLA) director of research Sophie Jackson said.
But a team of 40 MOLA archaeologists still decided to give it a shot.
Years of meticulous digging and carbon dating have now led them to conclude that they have stumbled onto an Anglo-Saxon burial chamber of a prince whose likes have never before been found in Britain.
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Archaeologists find richest cache of ancient mind-altering drugs in South America
When José Capriles arrived in 2008 at the Cueva del Chileno rock shelter, nestled on the western slopes of Bolivia’s Andes, he didn’t know what he would find within. Sweeping aside layers of fresh and ancient llama dung, he found the remains of an ancient burial site: stone markers suggesting a body had once been interred there and a small leather bag cinched with a string. Inside was a collection of ancient drug paraphernalia—bone spatulas to crush the seeds of plants with psychoactive compounds, wooden tablets inlaid with gemstones to serve as a crushing surface, a wooden snuffing tube with a carved humanoid figure, and a small pouch stitched together from the snouts of three foxes.
Now, more than a decade later, Capriles—an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University in State College—and colleagues have discovered that the 1000-year-old bag contains the most varied combination of psychoactive compounds found at a South American site, including cocaine and the primary ingredients in a hallucinogenic tea called ayahuasca. Read more.
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Jellyfish (by David Carbó)
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The Aplysiopsis toyamana is a sacoglossan sea slug (not a nudibranch!) that usually is about 2cm long. It lives just off the coast of Japan, and feeds off of the insides of algae cells!
thescienceblog reblogged
Black holes have been mysterious and elusive — until now. Astronomers using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) have, for the first time, photographed one.
“We’ve now seen the unseeable,” said Avery Broderick, a physicist at the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute who was part of the international EHT research team. “Black holes are made real — they’re not just the scribblings on theorists’ chalkboards anymore, but they really are out there in the night.”
The image, which shows an orange ring around a round, black silhouette, is of the black hole at the centre of Messier 87 (M87), a galaxy 50 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is one of the most massive known: it’s six billion times more massive than our sun.
Black holes are so dense and have such strong gravity that anything that crosses their threshold — known as the event horizon — gets pulled into them, never to return. That includes both matter and light, making them black and invisible — and therefore very difficult to see and photograph.
An international team of more than 200 people spent more than a decade working to capture the image released today.
Source: cbc.ca
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Astronomers capture first image of a black hole
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) – a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration – was designed to capture images of a black hole. Today, in coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers reveal that they have succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. This breakthrough was announced in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5-billion times that of the Sun.
Source: nsf.gov