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MAKING DO WITH TREE SHREW POO

CHAMELEONS, THE CHAMPIONS OF BREAKFAST: Because reptiles are cold-blooded, their muscles usually contract slowly during periods of low temperature, such as early morning. Not so for the tongue of the veiled chameleon, as biologists at the University of South Florida recently learned. The tongue shoots out to catch insects equally fast at cool and warm temper- atures. Why? As muscles pull the tongue into the mouth, they stretch the tongue’s springy collagen, a protein-based connective tissue, much like pulling back on a bowstring. When released, the tongue snaps outward at maximum speed because the collagen isn’t slowed by cooling.

RIDING ON THE GLOBAL WARMING EXPRESS For the first time, scientists have linked human-caused global warming definitively to the timing of a natural event. Researchers at Australia’s University of Melbourne used records dating to 1940 to determine that common brown butterflies (Heteronympha merope) have emerged from their chrysalises 1.6 days earlier per decade

across the past 70 years. During the same period,Melbourne, Aus- tralia, warmed by about 0.25 degrees F per decade. “This rate of warming is extremely unlikely to be natural and is highly consistent with the expected effects of human greenhouse gas emissions,” says Michael Ray Kearney, one of the researchers. The butterflies now take wing 10.4 days earlier than they did in the 1940s. By raising the insects in temperature-controlled chambers, the researchers showed that the warming aroundMelbourne can explain the shift in emergence date. Such studies, the biologists reported in Biology Letters, “improve our ability to forecast future climate change impacts on biodiversity.”

WHAT IS THIS?

Hint: To see it in real life, you’d probably want to put on a snorkel and flippers. See next issue’s “News of the Wild” for the answer, or visit National Wildlife online at www.nwf.org/ animals. Last issue’s “What Is This?” showed the area between the wings on the back of a common green darner dragonfly.

Scientists believe that Borneo’s giant montane pitcher plant (Nepenthes rajah), an endangered highland species, stands out as the largest meat-eating plant in the world:Measuring up to 13 inches high and 7 wide, the “pitcher” in which it captures and digests food can hold more than a half-gallon of water.What scientists did not know until recently is just what it is eating. Carnivo- rous-plant expert

Charles

Clarke and his col-

leagues at M ysia’s Monash

ala

University and British

Columbia’s Royal Roads University have discovered that glands on the pitcher “lids” of these massive plants produce large quantities of nectar highly palatable to local tree shrews, rodentlike animals related to primates. To get the nectar, the tree shrews— which match closely in size the dimen- sions of the pitcher—have to perch on the plants in a way that places their rear ends over the pitcher mouths.While dining they also take a mom nt, appar- ently, to mark their territory by defecat- ing. The droppings, tShuecresearchers believe, are absorbedabby the plant and fulfill most of its nitrogen needs. “One- hundred-and-fifty years after the dis- covery of N. rajah, we finally have an explanation for why the largest carnivo- rous plant in the world produces such pitchers,” Clarke told the BBC. The researchers suspect that many other highland pitcher species also feed on mammal droppings, including one plant that often serves as a bat roost.

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CHAMELEONS, THE CHAM are cold-blooded, their muscle temperature, such as early mo chameleon, as biologists at the The tongue shoots out to catch atures. Why? As muscles pull t tongue’s springy collagen, a pr back on a bowstring. When rele speed because the collagen isn

across the past 70 years. Dur tralia, warmed by about 0.2 warming is extremely unlik with the expected effects of Mich el Ray Kearney, one o wing 10 4 days earlier than in temperature-controlled c warming aroundMelbourn h tudies, the biologists r ility to forecast future clim

WHAT IS THIS?

Hint: To see it in real life, you to put on a snorkel and flippe issue’s “News of the Wild” for visit National Wildlife online a animals. Last issue’s “What Is the area between the wings o a common green darner drag

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CLOCKWISE FROMTOP: STEPHEN DALTON (MINDEN PICTURES), CH’IEN C. LEE, CHRISTOPHER J. CROWLEY, ROBWALLS (ALAMY)