Sunday, April 24, 2011

Frugivory in four sympatric lemurs: implications for the future of Madagascar's forests

"Although some conservationists accept that not all species can be saved, we illustrate the difficulty in deciding which species are dispensable. In this article, we examine the possibility that the integrity of a forest relies on its entire faunal assemblage...Analyses reveal that while lemurs overlap in a number of fruit taxa exploited, 46% (16/35) of families and 56% (29/52) of genera are eaten exclusively by one lemur species. We, therefore, predict local changes in forest composition and structure if certain of these lemur species are eliminated from a forest owing to hunting, disease, or habitat disturbance."

(...plus, my focal animal, Yellow-Blue, made it on the cover!)

Friday, April 22, 2011

Epigenetics and ACE

"Epigenetic regulation of somatic angiotensin-converting enzyme by DNA methylation and histone acetylation." Methylated CpG islands are all up in ACE's grill, messing with somatic ACE expression.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Colors of Domestication

Great review article -- lots of useful images and figures