Health Advice from Spiny Lobsters, Snakes that Borrow their Poison, and More Unusual Findings about Wild Creatures

Spiny Lobsters
Mark Butler, ODU professor of biological sciences, and Donald Behringer, a researcher in biological sciences, authored an article for the prestigious international journal, Nature, about the quarantine habits of spiny lobsters. Their study shows for the first time that animals in the wild shun their neighbors who have contracted an infectious disease.

The researchers found that healthy lobsters begin avoiding infected lobsters even before disease symptoms are present. According to the authors, the lobsters probably are prompted by their sense of smell to avoid infected creatures, and the tactic may limit disease transmission in the wild.

The National Science Foundation has funded research by the two researchers, who have been studying viral disease in Caribbean spiny lobsters (Panulirus argus) for about six years. A lethal pathogenic virus called PaV1 that strikes juvenile lobsters and is transmitted mainly by physical contact was the focus of the most recent study.

Because spiny lobsters are social and share communal dens, such a virus could have devastating consequences if there were no mechanism to check its spread, the authors write. As it is, surveys in Florida waters of the juvenile Caribbean spiny lobster population reveal a steady PaV1 infection rate of less than 7 percent. This rate is far less than would be predicted by the social nature of the lobsters and the highly infectious nature of the virus.

During underwater surveys, the researchers found that infected lobsters only rarely shared dens with healthy mates. To test whether healthy lobsters were avoiding the infected ones, or vice versa, laboratory tests were conducted. These showed that healthy lobsters avoided dens containing infected fellow crustaceans, but that infected lobsters did not discriminate between healthy and diseased lobsters.

Butler said the research shows that spiny lobsters, though more primitive than many other animals, have evolved the biological machinery necessary to distinguish their diseased neighbors, and that their ability to do so is finely tuned to click in before the disease becomes infectious. “It’s unlikely that lobsters are unique in this way, and I suspect that other species have a similarly rich behavioral repertoire that permits them to detect and minimize the risk of exposure to pathogens,” he said in an interview.

Elephant and Crabeater Seals
ODU oceanographers Eileen Hofmann and John Klinck are participating in a project that puts seals to work as climate researchers.

The two professors at ODU’s Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography are part of an international team of scientists who are using deep-diving seals to collect data from the oceans. A story about this work appeared in the Sept. 8, 2006, issue of Science magazine.

The faculty members are involved in an Antarctic project called “Southern Elephant Seals as Oceanographic Sensors,” which is funded by the National Science Foundation and includes researchers from the United Kingdom, France and Australia. The project is one segment of the seal-sensor climate research pioneered by Dan Costa, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

About 70 elephant seals and crabeater seals, whose feeding routines require dives of several hundred meters or more, carry sensors that scientists have attached to the animals’ heads or backs.

Sensors such as these have been used mostly to collect information about animals’ migratory and feeding habits, as well as other life sciences data. But a little ingenuity and technical advances in sensors have now made it possible for seals to send back information—global coordinates, dive depth and duration, water temperature and salinity—that is also useful to climate researchers.

Asian Snakes
After the spiny lobster appeared in Nature last year, the story was reported in numerous newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Similar broad media coverage came for research conducted about Asian snakes by Deborah Hutchinson, an ODU postdoctoral research associate, and her mentor, Alan Savitzky, professor of biological sciences.

An international team of researchers including the two from ODU has identified a snake that has a poisonous bite only because it borrows and stores toxins it gets from eating toxic frogs. The findings could be good news for endangered species of amphibians, and for humans with ailments that might be treated with compounds in the toxins.

The researchers’ paper debuted on the Web site of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) and was published in February 2007 in the PNAS journal. The New York Times, Science magazine, National Geographic and many other publications reported on the findings.

For more than seven years, Hutchinson has been studying the Asian snake Rhabdophis tigrinus and its relationship with a type of toxic toad. In the PNAS article, she and her co-authors describe dietary sequestration of toxins by the snakes. The process allows the snakes to store in neck glands some of the toxins from the toads they have eaten. A predator’s strike can free the toxins.

The researchers made their case by testing Rhabdophis tigrinus on several Japanese islands, one with a large population of the toads, another with none of the toads and a third with toads scattered here and there. The presence or amount of toxins in the snakes’ neck glands depended upon their access to the toads. Laboratory tests with snake hatchlings confirmed the fieldwork.

The State of the Region: Hampton Roads 2006
The Regional Studies Institute at Old Dominion University produced the seventh annual “The State of the Region” report on living conditions in southeastern Virginia, focusing on topics such as beach replenishment, the youth of Hampton Roads, traffic congestion and theaters and performing arts companies. James V. Koch, Board of Visitors Professor of Economics and ODU president emeritus, wrote in the preface that he and the other authors “maintain the goal of stimulating thought and discussion that ultimately will make Hampton Roads an even better place to live.” Other key authors include professors of economics Vinod Agarwal and Gilbert Yochum of the Old Dominion University Economic Forecasting Project. Yochum directs the project.

The 2007 report will be released in October. To read the current report, visit
http://www.odu.edu/bpa/forecasting/sors2006.shtml

New Home for College of Health Sciences
The remodeled Technology Building on the east side of campus was dedicated in October 2006 as the new Health Sciences Building, allowing the college to pull together all of its schools under one roof. The facility, with 82,000 square feet of floor space, has up-to-date labs and teaching clinics, and even a model hospital—Monarch General—with hospital rooms, operating room and intensive care unit. Andrew Balas, dean of the college, predicts the move to the building will energize faculty and students and lead to more external funding for health sciences research at ODU, as well as to more interdisciplinary collaboration among the college’s researchers.

Boxfish
Ian Bartol, an assistant professor of biological sciences, was a main source for an article in The Scientist magazine in summer 2006 about a prehistoric looking, boxy fish—called the boxfish—that gives its shape to a concept car built by Mercedes-Benz.

Bartol’s research, which he shared a few years back with German engineers, has long promoted the maneuverability and stability of the tropical boxfish.

The Mercedes-Benz concept car reportedly can carry four passengers and travel for 80 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel.