Interesting tid bits from the science front

> The Very Hungry Caterpillar in Eric Carle’s children’s book, may have been hunting for drugs as well as food. Woolly bear caterpillars (Grammia incorrupta) normally ingest small amounts of pyrrolizidine alkaloids to ward off parasites. Michael Singer of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and his team showed that the caterpillars ingested around twice as much of the drug when infected by maggots. This finding suggests that self-medication is more widespread than previously thought -- it has never been clearly demonstrated in insects before. Previous studies by the team have shown that the taste receptors of infected woolly bears are altered to crave more alkaloids when they are infected.

> The majority of prescribed medicines in the United States and as much as 80% of all medicines used in developing nations are derived from organismal species. These include: painkillers from poppies (Papaver), cone snails (Conus), and frogs (Dendrobates and Epipedobates); anticancer medicines from sea squirts (Didemnidae), bryozoans (Bugula), sponges (Discodermia and Luffariella), and diverse plants (e.g., Artemisia and Tabebuia); and antiviral drugs from red algae (Gigartina and Kappaphycus) and sea cucumbers (Holothuroidea).

> Probably less than 10% of the species on the planet have been described, and our knowledge of the ecosystem functions for the fraction of species that we do recognize is inadequate.  At the same time, the number of known species considered to be threatened with extinction is increasing across nearly all taxonomic groups that have been evaluated, including roughly 12% of all bird species, 20% of all mammals, and a third of our fellow primates

-- 
Peter L Borst

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