New ant species discovered in the Amazon likely represents oldest living lineage of ants

This new species of blind, subterranean, predatory ant, Martialis heureka, was discovered in the Amazon by Christian Rabeling at the University of Texas at Austin. It belongs to the first new subfamily of living ants discovered since 1923, and is a descendant of one of the first ant lineages to evolve over 120 million years ago. Credit: Christian Rabeling, the University of Texas at Austin.

The new ant is named Martialis heureka, which translates roughly to "ant from Mars," because the ant has a combination of characteristics never before recorded. It is adapted for dwelling in the soil, is two to three millimeters long, pale, and has no eyes and large mandibles, which Rabeling and colleagues suspect it uses to capture prey.

The ant also belongs to its own new subfamily, one of 21 subfamilies in ants. This is the first time that a new subfamily of ants with living species has been discovered since 1923 (other new subfamilies have been discovered from fossil ants).

Rabeling says his discovery will help biologists better understand the biodiversity and evolution of ants, which are abundant and ecologically important insects.

"This discovery hints at a wealth of species, possibly of great evolutionary importance, still hidden in the soils of the remaining rainforests," writes Rabeling and his co-authors in a paper reporting their discovery this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Rabeling collected the only known specimen of the new ant species in 2003 from leaf-litter at the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária in Manaus, Brazil.

He and his colleagues found that the ant was a new species, genus and subfamily after morphological and genetic analysis. Analysis of DNA from the ant's legs confirmed its phylogenetic position at the very base of the ant evolutionary tree.

Ants evolved over 120 million years ago from wasp ancestors. They probably evolved quickly into many different lineages, with ants specializing to lives in the soil, leaf-litter or trees, or becoming generalists.

"This discovery lends support to the idea that blind subterranean predator ants arose at the dawn of ant evolution," says Rabeling, a graduate student in the ecology, evolution and behavior program.

Rabeling does not suggest that the ancestor to all ants was blind and subterranean, but that these adaptations arose early and have persisted over the years.

"Based on our data and the fossil record, we assume that the ancestor of this ant was somewhat wasp-like, perhaps similar to the Cretaceous amber fossil Sphecomyrma, which is widely known as the evolutionary missing link between wasps and ants," says Rabeling.

He speculates that the new ant species evolved adaptations over time to its subterranean habitat (for example, loss of eyes and pale body color), while retaining some of its ancestor's physical characteristics.

"The new ant species is hidden in environmentally stable tropical soils with potentially less competition from other ants and in a relatively stable microclimate," he says. "It could represent a 'relict' species that retained some ancestral morphological characteristics."

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Ness 'hum' saga is a global issue

THE Loch Ness humming noise mystery has gone global.

After our story last week on the unexplained phenomenon, the Highland News website was inundated with hits.

And an American scientist has revealed he has been carrying out international research into the strange noise after similar reports from around the world.

Our story triggered an immediate response from Kevin Barber in Mount Vernon, Washington, who endures the same problem highlighted by Loch Ness webcam master Mikko Takala. He now claims there is another Loch Ness mystery to solve.

Mr Barber told the Highland News: "I see these types of articles getting more attention these days, as they should. I am also a hum sufferer here in the USA.

"This topic deserves international attention as it really is a disturbing worldwide physical phenomenon."

Mr Barber alerted us to research by Professor David Deming of the College of Geosciences at Oklahoma University, who has had a 24-page dossier on the subject published by the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

He described the hum as a mysterious un-traceable sound that is heard in certain locations around the world by two to 10 per cent of the population.

"Historically the area that has been most affected by the hum is the United Kingdom, where reports have been frequent since the early 1970s," states Professor Deming.

In the United States, reports date from the early 1900s with the two most publicised locations being Taos, New Mexico and Kokomo, Indiana.

He adds: "The source of the hum has never been located. The hum does not appear to be a form of tinnitus and may not be an acoustic sound. More than just a noise, the hum is also capable of manifesting itself as vibrations felt through the body and is often accompanied by physical symptoms that include headaches, nausea and pain in the ears."

Among the hypotheses considered as possible sources of the hum in the US include cellular telephone transmissions and aircraft operated by the US Navy for submarine communications.

Mr Takala, who lives in a cottage at Bunloit, overlooking Loch Ness, reported the phenomenon was being experienced by himself and a neighbour after reading an article on the web about residents in the Suffolk town of Sudbury.

Mr Takala added: "It is reassuring to know that, far from being just another 'Loch Ness monster hunter losing his marbles', I am in fact suffering from a phenomena that has been around since at least the early 1970s and which actually affects thousands of people around the world."

Mr Takala believes the source of the noise could be the Foyers hydro electric plant by Loch Ness. But his concerns have been rejected by its operators, Scottish and Southern Energy, which has insisted there are no problems with the plant.

And Professor Deming's studies support the energy company's response.

"Thirty years of research into the cause of the hum have proven fruitless because of the repetitive and thoughtless use of standard acoustic techniques," Professor Deming told the Highland News. "Although sound measurements are an indispensable starting point, it should be clear by now that routine approaches are inadequate. Future investigations should start with some recognition that local manifestations of the hum are only one aspect of a global problem.

"Ten years ago, the British Medical Journal noted: 'Hums are associated with noise problems that cannot be routinely solved by acoustic consultants or environmental health officers (Rice, 1994)'.

"I warned people in Kokokmo, Indiana, of this in 2001. But they ignored my advice. The Kokomo city council spent $100,000 on an acoustic noise consultant who did all the usual things. He found industrial sources of low-frequency noise, and they were abated. But the hum remained.

"Every scientist who has investigated this phenomenon in the past has concluded that it is real, and not a delusion on the part of those who hear it. Anyone who ridicules hearers just because they cannot hear it themselves are simply ignorant."

To ascertain the scale of the problem, Mr Takala is creating a webpage where residents in the Highlands, and elsewhere, can log on and record their experiences.

He added: "This story is obviously of international interest and importance. I hope people will contact us so that we can start to build a picture of the hum and how it is affecting the Highlands.

"One thing is for sure – Loch Ness has a genuine mystery to solve."

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Loch Ness mystery noise 'unsolved'!

RESIDENTS on the shores of Loch Ness are having their sleep disturbed by a mystery humming noise similar to that which sparked a spate of calls to a council in Suffolk.

Mikko Takala, who lives in a cottage overlooking the loch near Drumnadrochit where he runs a webcam site tracking the elusive Loch Ness Monster, has been having sleepless nights for weeks.

His mother, who lives with him, and a near neighbour have also been woken in the wee sma' hours by the same strange humming noise, which one blue blooded Suffolk resident, Lord Philips of Sudbury, said could be mistaken for a spacecraft landing.

Inquiries by Babergh District Council have so far failed to pin down a source of the noise, while Highland Council environmental health staff are about to begin their own inquiries into the lochside disturbance.

"I thought at first the noise could be coming from some old bearings in the Foyers Hydro Station across the loch," said Mikko.

"But when I went out of the house I couldn't hear anything at all."

A Scottish and Southern Energy spokeswoman confirmed they have been having no problems with the machinery at the hydro station and the noise would not be from their plant.

Mikko said he would be contacting other utility companies as a process of elimination to try to get to the bottom of the mystery.

"I have to confess it's bizarre. It get's into your head and is like a buzzing sound, vibrating like an empty football. I think its a resonance frequency. Putting your fingers in ears doesn't help. I've heard it start at 2am and it would carry on until 8am. My mother has heard it too."

Mikko said he had gone outside to listen and focus on where it was coming from but couldn't hear anything.

"It's a complete mystery because you only seem to hear it from indoors and its exactly the same as what is being experienced in Suffolk."

Babergh District Council received 50 complaints from residents and council staff there are still trying to identify the source.

Locals have failed to pin it down and Lord Philips of Sudbury commented: "If someone had said to me a spacecraft had landed on the meadows I would have said, 'well I heard it'."

Other locals in Sudbury have described the noise as a high hum and a high pitched drone.

Highland Council's environmental health staff confirmed they had received a report about the noise and they would be investigating.

"We have had reports of a low humming noise which is loud enough to wake local residents.

"We will investigate this but it will be very much a process of elimination to try and identify a noise source.

"That can involve switching off all power sources to the property to ensure there is not a problem with a motor in the house."

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Enigmatic object baffles supernova team

An astronomical enigma has been spotted by a team hunting for very distant supernovas for their studies of the early universe.

At first glance, the object discovered on 22 February in the constellation Bootes resembled an ordinary supernova. But it kept growing brighter for much too long, and its spectrum was abnormal.

The mysterious object was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and took at least 100 days to reach peak brightness, says Kyle Dawson of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project. Normal supernovas reach peak brightness about 20 days after the blast.

Hubble saw nothing on 29 January at the point in the sky where the object appeared, so it must have brightened by more than a factor of 200. It has just begun to fade.

The object's spectrum is also unusual. The researchers could find no matches when they compared it with objects in the wide-ranging Sloan Digital Sky Survey. And its colour has not changed since it was first observed. Normally, temperature changes after an explosion cause colour changes.

Uncertain distance

How far away the object is, as determined by its redshift, is uncertain. If the strongest feature in the spectrum is a pair of calcium absorption lines, its red shift would be 0.54, corresponding to a distance of 5.5 billion light years.

But the object is at least one magnitude brighter than a Type 1A supernova would be at that distance, Dawson told New Scientist. And there is no sign of a host galaxy, which should be visible.

Astronomers can only speculate on what the object is. "It could be some galactic variable [star], a supernova or a quasar. But none of those makes any sense," Dawson says.

The object's behaviour doesn't match any known quasar. The team is not convinced the object is outside our galaxy, but nothing like it is known inside the galaxy. Furthermore, the region of Bootes is a largely empty area of the sky far from the plane of the Milky Way.

Intriguing object

"It's a very intriguing object," says supernova researcher Stefan Immler of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, US, but he will not rule out the possibility that it might be a supernova.

If it was extremely distant, the expansion of the Universe would relativistically stretch a supernova explosion. We would see a 20-day event stretched to 100 days at a red shift of 4, corresponding to an object about 12 billion light years away seen just 1.5 billion years after the big bang.

That would require an extremely bright supernova, but Immler says that such young stars would explode differently because they contain fewer heavy elements than modern stars.

The best hope to resolve the question is to make more observations, and so Dawson has booked time for 25 June. "It's still going to be visible for another 2.5 months on the ground. We hope the spectrum will evolve and we see some features we can recognise," he says. Observations outside the visible spectrum may also provide more insights.

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'Water bears' are first animal to survive space vacuum

Tiny invertebrates called 'water bears' can survive in the vacuum of space, a European Space Agency experiment has shown. They are the first animals known to be able to survive the harsh combination of low pressure and intense radiation found in space.

Water bears, also known as tardigrades, are known for their virtual indestructibility on Earth. The creatures can survive intense pressures, huge doses of radiation, and years of being dried out.

To further test their hardiness, Ingemar Jönsson of Sweden's Kristianstad University and colleagues launched two species of dried-up tardigrades from Kazakhstan in September 2007 aboard ESA's FOTON-M3 mission, which carried a variety of experimental payloads.

After 10 days of exposure to space, the satellite returned to Earth. The tardigrades were retrieved and rehydrated to test how they reacted to the airless conditions in space, as well as ultraviolet radiation from the Sun and charged particles from space called cosmic rays.

The vacuum itself seemed to have little effect on the creatures. But ultraviolet radiation, which can damage cellular material and DNA, did take its toll.

Dried out

In one of the two species tested, 68% of specimens that were shielded from higher-energy radiation from the Sun were revived within 30 minutes of being rehydrated. Many of these tardigrades went on to lay eggs that successfully hatched.

But only a handful of animals survived full exposure to the Sun's UV light, which is more than 1000 times stronger in space than on the Earth's surface.

Before this experiment, only lichen and bacteria were known to be able to survive exposure to the combination of vacuum and space radiation.

"No animal has survived open space before," says developmental biologist Bob Goldstein of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not affiliated with the study. "The finding that animals survived rehydration after 10 days in open space – and then produced viable embryos as well – is really remarkable."

This ability to survive in extreme conditions "might be important when we consider the habitability of other bodies in our solar system or beyond," says astrobiologist Gerda Horneck of the German Aerospace Center. But the results say little about how the animals might develop and reproduce in harsh environments, Horneck says.

The authors aren't sure what causes the animals to be as resistant as they are to the effects of ultraviolet radiation. They speculate their hardiness might stem from the same adaptations that enable tardigrades to bounce back from being dried out.

Journal reference: Current Biology, vol 18, p R729

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