(Press-News.org) Chestnut Hill, Mass (07/24/2024) – A small but ferocious predator, the male dragonfish will apparently do anything for love. Or at least to find a mate.
A new study by researchers at Boston College found the eyes of the male dragonfish grow larger for mate-seeking purposes, making the dragonfish an anomaly in vertebrate evolution, the team reported today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Like many creatures that inhabit the dark depths of the sea, dragonfishes survive thanks to numerous adaptations, including glowing bioluminescence. But females are not quite as bright as males, according to Boston College biologist Christopher P. Kenaley, lead author of the report “Sexually Dimorphic Eye-size in Dragonfishes, a Response to a Bioluminescent Signaling Gap”.
“We’ve found that these male dragonfishes have evolved larger eyes to find females who produce less light,” said Kenaley. “It’s rather stunning and a really important insight into how these poorly known species exist and thrive in the deep sea.”
Sexual dimorphism in the visual systems of vertebrates is extremely rare, Kenaley added. “This is perhaps the second known case in fishes, the largest group of vertebrates.”
The largest biome on Earth, the deep-sea is a dark, barren place and the distance between individuals that live there can be vast, Kenaley said. Most animals in this realm produce their own light, bioluminescence, using it to lure prey and often to find mates. Many deep-sea fishes are sexually dimorphic in this regard – males have larger photophores, the organs that produce light, than females.
That can present a problem when it comes to finding a mate, Kenaley said.
“This creates a paradox: if bioluminescence is important in sexual signaling and finding each other, this dimorphism results in a scenario in which females can detect males at shorter distances than the reverse,” he said. “In short, there's a bioluminescent detection gap. We hypothesized that, to close this gap, males might have evolved larger eyes to capture more light.”
Kenaley and his team of Boston College undergraduates, working with Stockholm University biologist Valentina Di Santo, studied two species – Malacosteus niger and Photostomias guernei – of deep-sea dragonfishes that are sexually dimorphic in the size of their photophores. The team modeled the distance at which males and females of each species could see members of the opposite sex. This was based on the eye size and how much light a member of the opposite sex could produce.
The researchers found there is a substantial detection gap in both species ranging from just a few meters to more than 100 meters, they report in the journal. They also found that males of both species have larger eyes and that this dimorphism closes the gap by about 5 meters or so. It's a modest improvement, they noted, but significant to the difficult task of finding a rare mate in such an open system.
In previous work, a few deep-sea biologists have asserted that a bioluminescent detection gap exists. The Boston College-led team is the first to assess the extent of this gap and, more importantly, whether these species might have evolved large male eye size.
Kenaley said future work may focus on why the bioluminescence of males is brighter than female dragonfish.
“We don't yet know exactly why luminescent dimorphism exists in these and other deep-sea species,” said Kenaley. “Perhaps it's a way of signalling to one another that a member of the opposite sex is nearby. Answering this question will require more studies like ours that establish a pattern of how detection distances vary with levels of dimorphism.”
END
Eyes for Love: Searching for light and a mate in the deep, dark sea, male dragonfishes grow larger eyes than the females they seek
The ocean predator’s sexual dimorphism in the visual system is extremely rare in vertebrates, Boston College team reports
2024-07-24
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
PNNL scientists tap nation’s fastest computers to explore critical science questions
2024-07-24
RICHLAND, Wash.—Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have been awarded more than 3 million node hours on the nation’s most powerful computers to explore questions around pathogens, climate and energy-efficient microelectronics.
Access to the nation’s supercomputers, granted to Margaret Cheung, Daniel Mejia Rodriguez and Po-Lun Ma, is a coveted prize among scientists. The node hours represent an investment of several million dollars in computing time awarded to PNNL scientists to explore important science questions.
The awards are among 44 projects awarded through ...
Peri-operative care of transgender and gender-diverse individuals: new guidance for clinicians and departments published
2024-07-24
New guidance on peri-operative care of transgender and gender-diverse individuals is today published in Anaesthesia (the journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) to guide best practice to ensure the safety and dignity of transgender and gender-diverse people in the peri-operative period. The guidance has been produced by a working group of experts including Dr Stuart Edwardson, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, and Dr Luke Flower, Victor Philip Dahdaleh Heart and Lung Research Institute, Cambridge, UK, and colleagues.
The number of people openly identifying ...
Clinical psychologist’s book addresses largely ignored problem: social anxiety
2024-07-23
RIVERISDE, Calif. -- We all have some social anxiety. The nervousness we might feel before giving a speech is one example. Some people, however, have more social anxiety than others, and limit their social engagement due to excessive chronic fears of being embarrassed or humiliated. Although such social anxiety is common in both adolescents and adults, it is rarely diagnosed and treated.
In a new book titled “Social Anxiety: Hidden Fears and Shame in Teens and Adults,” Thomas E. Brown, a clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience in the University of California, Riverside's School of Medicine , explains ...
Researchers leveraging AI to train (robotic) dogs to respond to their masters
2024-07-23
An international collaboration seeks to innovate the future of how a mechanical man’s best friend interacts with its owner, using a combination of AI and edge computing called edge intelligence.
The project is sponsored through a one-year seed grant from the Institute for Future Technologies (IFT), a partnership between New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).
Assistant Professor Kasthuri Jayarajah in NJIT’s Ying Wu College of Computing is researching how to design a socially assistive model ...
Drawing water from dry air
2024-07-23
Earth’s atmosphere holds an ocean of water, enough liquid to fill Utah’s Great Salt Lake 800 times.
Extracting some of that moisture is seen as a potential way to provide clean drinking water to billions of people globally who face chronic shortages.
Existing technologies for atmospheric water harvesting (AWH) are saddled with numerous downsides associated with size, cost and efficiency. But new research from University of Utah engineering researchers has yielded insights that could improve efficiencies and bring the world one step closer to tapping the air as a culinary water source in arid places.
The study unveils the first-of-its-kind ...
Combining trapped atoms and photonics for new quantum devices
2024-07-23
Quantum information systems offer faster, more powerful computing methods than standard computers to help solve many of the world’s toughest problems. Yet fulfilling this ultimate promise will require bigger and more interconnected quantum computers than scientists have yet built. Scaling quantum systems up to larger sizes, and connecting multiple systems, has proved challenging.
Now, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have discovered how to combine two powerful technologies—trapped atom arrays and photonic devices—to ...
A new way to make element 116 opens the door to heavier atoms
2024-07-23
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are credited in the discovery of 16 of the 118 known elements. Now they’ve completed the crucial first step to potentially create yet another: element 120.
Today, an international team of researchers led by Berkeley Lab’s Heavy Element Group announced that they have made known superheavy element 116 using a titanium beam, a breakthrough that is a key stepping stone towards making element 120. The result was presented today at the Nuclear Structure 2024 conference; the science paper will be posted on the online repository ...
New genetic tool could identify drug targets for diseases associated with metabolic dysfunction
2024-07-23
There’s a glaring gap in our knowledge of cell metabolism: in many cases, we still don’t know exactly how nutrients are transported into the cell. Without that understanding, it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop treatments for the many diseases linked to the protein transporters that drive metabolism. Now, a new study in Nature Genetics presents a tool to map these metabolic gene functions more precisely. The platform, dubbed GeneMAP, has already identified one key gene-metabolite association at the heart of mitochondrial metabolism.
GeneMAP was developed in the laboratory of Kivanç Birsoy, ...
Plant Biologist Siobhan Brady named HHMI Investigator
2024-07-23
iobhan Brady, a professor in the Department of Plant Biology and Genome Center at the University of California, Davis, has been selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. The prestigious Investigator program, which Brady describes as “life changing,” will provide her with roughly $9 million in research support over a seven-year term, with the option to renew.
Brady’s research aims to understand how plants use their roots to respond to environmental stressors, and to use this information to develop plants that are better able to respond to climate ...
Long-acting injectable cabotegravir for HIV prevention is safe in pregnancy
2024-07-23
Long-acting injectable cabotegravir (CAB-LA) was safe and well tolerated as HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) before and during pregnancy in the follow-up phase of a global study among cisgender women. The analysis of outcomes from more than 300 pregnancies and infants will be presented at the 2024 International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2024) in Munich, Germany.
“Cisgender women experience biological changes and social dynamics that can increase their likelihood of acquiring HIV during pregnancy and the postnatal period, and we need to offer them evidence-based options when they may need them most,” said Jeanne Marrazzo, M.D., M.P.H., ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Insulin resistance is linked to over 30 diseases – and to early death in women, study of people in the UK finds
Innovative semaglutide hydrogel could reduce diabetes shots to once a month
Weight loss could reduce the risk of severe infections in people with diabetes, UK research suggests
Long-term exposure to air pollution and a lack of green space increases the risk of hospitalization for respiratory conditions
Better cardiovascular health in early pregnancy may offset high genetic risk
Artificial intelligence method transforms gene mutation prediction in lung cancer: DeepGEM data releases at IASLC 2024 World Conference on Lung Cancer
Antibody–drug conjugate I-DXd shows clinically meaningful response in patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer
IASLC Global Survey on biomarker testing reveals progress and persistent barriers in lung cancer biomarker testing
Research shows pathway to developing predictive biomarkers for immune checkpoint inhibitors
Just how dangerous is Great Salt Lake dust? New research looks for clues
Maroulas appointed Associate Vice Chancellor, Director of AI Tennessee
New chickadee research finds cognitive skills impact lifespan
Cognitive behavioral therapy enhances brain circuits to relieve depression
Terasaki Institute awarded $2.3 Million grant from NIH for organ transplantation research using organs-on-a-chip technology
Atoms on the edge
Postdoc takes multipronged approach to muon detection
Mathematical proof: Five satellites needed for precise navigation
Scalable, multi-functional device lays groundwork for advanced quantum applications
Falling for financial scams? It may signal early Alzheimer’s disease
Integrating MRI and OCT for new insights into brain microstructure
Designing a normative neuroimaging library to support diagnosis of traumatic brain injury
Department of Energy announces $68 million in funding for artificial intelligence for scientific research
DOE, ORNL announce opportunity to define future of high-performance computing
Molecular simulations, supercomputing lead to energy-saving biomaterials breakthrough
Low-impact yoga and exercise found to help older women manage urinary incontinence
Genetic studies reveal new insights into cognitive impairment in schizophrenia
Researcher develops technology to provide cleaner energy and cleaner water
Expect the unexpected: nanoscale silver unveils intrinsic self-healing abilities
nTIDE September 2024 Jobs Report: Gains in employment for people with disabilities appear to level off after reducing gaps with non-disabled workers
Wiley enhances NMR Spectral Library Collection with extensive new databases
[Press-News.org] Eyes for Love: Searching for light and a mate in the deep, dark sea, male dragonfishes grow larger eyes than the females they seekThe ocean predator’s sexual dimorphism in the visual system is extremely rare in vertebrates, Boston College team reports