Animal communication: ground squirrel uses ultrasonic alarms

Apart from echolocation and the pursuit of prey by bats, the function of ultrasound in animal communication is poorly understood. This is mainly because of the broad range of responses that it can evoke and the widely varied contexts in which it is used (for example, in rodents of the Muridae family it may indicate distress in infants or a sexual or predatory encounter in adults). Here we find that a purely ultrasonic signal is produced in the wild by a rodent of the Sciuridae family, Richardson's ground squirrel, and show that its function is to warn conspecifics of impending danger. To our knowledge, ultrasonic alarm calls have not previously been detected in any animal group, despite their twin advantages of being highly directional and inaudible to key predators.     

Fine-scale phylogenetic architecture of a complex bacterial community

Although molecular data have revealed the vast scope of microbial diversity, two fundamental questions remain unanswered even for well-defined natural microbial communities: how many bacterial types co-exist, and are such types naturally organized into phylogenetically discrete units of potential ecological significance? It has been argued that without such information, the environmental function, population biology and biogeography of microorganisms cannot be rigorously explored. Here we address these questions by comprehensive sampling of two large 16S ribosomal RNA clone libraries from a coastal bacterioplankton community. We show that compensation for artefacts generated by common library construction techniques reveals fine-scale patterns of community composition. At least 516 ribotypes (unique rRNA sequences) were detected in the sample and, by statistical extrapolation, at least 1,633 co-existing ribotypes in the sampled population. More than 50% of the ribotypes fall into discrete clusters containing less than 1% sequence divergence. This pattern cannot be accounted for by interoperon variation, indicating a large predominance of closely related taxa in this community. We propose that such microdiverse clusters arise by selective sweeps and persist because competitive mechanisms are too weak to purge diversity from within them.     

Animal behaviour: geomagnetic map used in sea-turtle navigation

Migratory animals capable of navigating to a specific destination, and of compensating for an artificial displacement into unfamiliar territory, are thought to have a compass for maintaining their direction of travel and a map sense that enables them to know their location relative to their destination. Compasses are based on environmental cues such as the stars, the Sun, skylight polarization and magnetism, but little is known about the sensory mechanism responsible for the map sense. Here we show that the green sea-turtle (Chelonia mydas) has a map that is at least partly based on geomagnetic cues.     

The DNA sequence and analysis of human chromosome 13

Chromosome 13 is the largest acrocentric human chromosome. It carries genes involved in cancer including the breast cancer type 2 (BRCA2) and retinoblastoma (RB1) genes, is frequently rearranged in B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, and contains the DAOA locus associated with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. We describe completion and analysis of 95.5 megabases (Mb) of sequence from chromosome 13, which contains 633 genes and 296 pseudogenes. We estimate that more than 95.4% of the protein-coding genes of this chromosome have been identified, on the basis of comparison with other vertebrate genome sequences. Additionally, 105 putative non-coding RNA genes were found. Chromosome 13 has one of the lowest gene densities (6.5 genes per Mb) among human chromosomes, and contains a central region of 38 Mb where the gene density drops to only 3.1 genes per Mb.     

The role of barren stalk1 in the architecture of maize

The architecture of higher plants is established through the activity of lateral meristems--small groups of stem cells formed during vegetative and reproductive development. Lateral meristems generate branches and inflorescence structures, which define the overall form of a plant, and are largely responsible for the evolution of different plant architectures. Here, we report the isolation of the barren stalk1 gene, which encodes a non-canonical basic helix-loop-helix protein required for the initiation of all aerial lateral meristems in maize. barren stalk1 represents one of the earliest genes involved in the patterning of maize inflorescences, and, together with the teosinte branched1 gene, it regulates vegetative lateral meristem development. The architecture of maize has been a major target of selection for early agriculturalists and modern farmers, because it influences harvesting, breeding strategies and mechanization. By sampling nucleotide diversity in the barren stalk1 region, we show that two haplotypes entered the maize gene pool from its wild progenitor, teosinte, and that only one was incorporated throughout modern inbreds, suggesting that barren stalk1 was selected for agronomic purposes.