Ecology and bioprospecting

Bioprospecting is the exploration of biodiversity for new resources of social and commercial value. It is carried out by a wide range of established industries such as pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and agriculture as well as a wide range of comparatively new ones such as aquaculture, bioremediation, biomining, biomimetic engineering and nanotechnology. The benefits of bioprospecting have emerged from such a wide range of organisms and environments worldwide that it is not possible to predict what species or habitats will be critical to society, or industry, in the future. The benefits include an unexpected variety of products that include chemicals, genes, metabolic pathways, structures, materials and behaviours. These may provide physical blueprints or inspiration for new designs. Criticism aimed at bioprospecting has been addressed, in part, by international treaties and legal agreements aimed at stopping biopiracy and many activities are now funded by agencies that require capacity-building and economic benefits in host countries. Thus, much contemporary bioprospecting has multiple goals, including the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable management of natural resources and economic development. Ecologists are involved in three vital ways: first, applying ecological principles to the discovery of new resources. In this context, natural history becomes a vast economic database. Second, carrying out field studies, most of them demographic, to help regulate the harvest of wild species. Third, emphasizing the profound importance of millions of mostly microscopic species to the global economy.     

Sustainability,Health, and the Human Population

A sustainable human population (e.g., range, density, and total numbers) is essential to health and in management. The notion of sustainability applies to all species and ecosystems and to the biosphere. Sustainability involves the health not only of individual humans, but also of ecosystems and other species. Thus, sustainability of the human population is important because of the wealth of factors involved: both the elements of systems it affects and those that contribute to its size. In this article, I address the sustainability of the human population on the basis of the argument that other species serve as examples of sustainability at the species level—an example of an application of systemic management that simultaneously accounts for complexity and achieves measurable health for individuals, species, and ecosystems. I conclude that the human population is two to four orders of magnitude larger than is optimally sustainable when compared with the populations of other mammalian species of similar body size and that this is a significant contributor to health problems for our species, other species, and ecosystems—a systemic pathology.     

Biomimetic characterisation of key surface parameters for the development of fouling resistant materials

Material science provides a direct route to developing a new generation of non-toxic, surface effect-based antifouling technologies with applications ranging from biomedical science to marine transport. The surface topography of materials directly affects fouling resistance and fouling removal, the two key mechanisms for antifouling technologies. However, the field is hindered by the lack of quantified surface characteristics to guide the development of new antifouling materials. Using a biomimetic approach, key surface parameters are defined and quantified and correlated with fouling resistance and fouling removal from the shells of marine molluscs. Laser scanning confocal microscopy was used to acquire images for quantitative surface characterisation using three-dimensional surface parameters, and field assays correlated these with fouling resistance and fouling release. Principle component analysis produced a major component (explaining 54% of total variation between shell surfaces) that correlated with fouling resistance. The five surface parameters positively correlated to increased fouling resistance were, in order of importance, low fractal dimension, high skewness of both the roughness and waviness profiles, higher values of isotropy and lower values of mean surface roughness. The second component (accounting for 20% of variation between shells) positively correlated to fouling release, for which higher values of mean waviness almost exclusively dictated this relationship. This study provides quantified surface parameters to guide the development of new materials with surface properties that confer fouling resistance and release.     

The challenge of biomimetic design for carbon-neutral buildings using termite engineering

Abstract The main aim of this paper is to present humanity and termites as design partners in the creation of a new dimension of ecosystem understanding. The paper by Turner and Soar, “Beyond biomimicry: What termites can tell us about realizing the living building” (2008) opens up a new era in how we think of human habitations, not only on earth, but perhaps on other planets, and using the termite model as the corner stone of innovative engineering. We know that termites are masters of constructing ‘buildings’ that meet all nutrition, energy, waste disposal needs, shelter, and food sources for many other animals and insects. We need to emulate the symbiotic abilities of termites to survive over time, for we all live on this symbiotic planet, and symbiosis is natural and common.     

Social insects inspire human design

The international conference ‘Social Biomimicry: Insect Societies and Human Design’, hosted by Arizona State University, USA, 18–20 February 2010, explored how the collective behaviour and nest architecture of social insects can inspire innovative and effective solutions to human design challenges. It brought together biologists, designers, engineers, computer scientists, architects and businesspeople, with the dual aims of enriching biology and advancing biomimetic design.     

Further Efforts to Clarify Industrial Ecology's Hidden Philosophy of Nature

As an emerging discipline, industrial ecology represents a promising interdisciplinary field that studies industrial systems and their fundamental linkage with nature. At the root of its scientific profile lies a refreshingly different perspective on nature as a model in comparison with other disciplines' orthodox understanding nature in terms of a "sack of resources" the "biophysical limit""something outside""surrounding" or just "environment". In contrast to these phrases, industrial ecology's perspective indicates an important change in the interpretation of nature, from the interest in intervening in or preserving nature toward an orientation by nature, from the comprehension of nature as an object toward understanding nature as a model, and from exploiting natural resources toward learning from nature as, in part, an ideal. This characteristic perspective of industrial ecology is typically stated with an appealing natural ecosystem metaphor and based on an analogy between industrial systems and natural ecosystems. On the basis of initial efforts to conceptualize industrial ecology's underlying assumptions concerning nature, a philosophically focused analysis of nature as a model is presented. Industrial ecology's implicit philosophy of nature is thus uncovered and clarified. Finally, a set of arguments drawing on the philosophy of science and on Kantian epistemology and philosophical anthropology is provided to gain greater conceptual clarity and to contribute to laying a solid foundation for industrial ecology's stimulating role in achieving sustainability at large.     

The Long and Short of Hearing in the Mosquito Aedes aegypti

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Spicing up restoration: can chili peppers improve restoration seeding by reducing seed predation?

Seed predation by rodents presents a significant barrier to native plant recruitment and can impede restoration seeding efforts. In nature, some plants contain secondary defense compounds that deter seed predators. If these natural defense compounds can be applied to unprotected seeds to inhibit rodent granivores, this approach could improve restoration seeding. Capsaicin is the active ingredient in chili pepper (Capsicum spp.) seeds that creates the burning sensation associated with human consumption of hot peppers. This compound has a similar effect on other mammals and is believed to have evolved as a deterrent to rodent seed predators. We used seed‐coating techniques to attach powder ground from Bhut Jolokia (Capsicum chinense) peppers to native plant seeds and evaluated the efficacy of these seed coatings for deterring rodent seed predation and enhancing native plant recruitment using laboratory and field experiments. Laboratory feeding trials demonstrated that native deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) consumed far fewer pepper‐coated seeds compared to untreated control seeds. Field seed‐addition experiments consistently demonstrated that rodent seed predation reduced native plant recruitment over the 4‐year study. Coating techniques used in the first 3 years were not persistent enough to reduce rodent seed predation effects on plant recruitment. However, a more persistent coating applied in conjunction with late‐winter sowing negated rodent seed predation effects on recruitment in year 4. Our results demonstrate that coating seeds with natural plant defense compounds may provide an effective, economical way to improve the efficacy of plant restoration by deterring seed predation by ubiquitous rodent granivores.     

Biomimetic Materials to Characterize Bacteria-host Interactions

Bacterial attachment to host cells is one of the earliest events during bacterial colonization of host tissues and thus a key step during infection. The biochemical and functional characterization of adhesins mediating these initial bacteria-host interactions is often compromised by the presence of other bacterial factors, such as cell wall components or secreted molecules, which interfere with the analysis. This protocol describes the production and use of biomimetic materials, consisting of pure recombinant adhesins chemically coupled to commercially available, functionalized polystyrene beads, which have been used successfully to dissect the biochemical and functional interactions between individual bacterial adhesins and host cell receptors. Protocols for different coupling chemistries, allowing directional immobilization of recombinant adhesins on polymer scaffolds, and for assessment of the coupling efficiency of the resulting “bacteriomimetic” materials are also discussed. We further describe how these materials can be used as a tool to inhibit pathogen mediated cytotoxicity and discuss scope, limitations and further applications of this approach in studying bacterial - host interactions.     

Biological and bionic hands: natural neural coding and artificial perception

The first decade and a half of the twenty-first century brought about two major innovations in neuroprosthetics: the development of anthropomorphic robotic limbs that replicate much of the function of a native human arm and the refinement of algorithms that decode intended movements from brain activity. However, skilled manipulation of objects requires somatosensory feedback, for which vision is a poor substitute. For upper-limb neuroprostheses to be clinically viable, they must therefore provide for the restoration of touch and proprioception. In this review, I discuss efforts to elicit meaningful tactile sensations through stimulation of neurons in somatosensory cortex. I focus on biomimetic approaches to sensory restoration, which leverage our current understanding about how information about grasped objects is encoded in the brain of intact individuals. I argue that not only can sensory neuroscience inform the development of sensory neuroprostheses, but also that the converse is true: stimulating the brain offers an exceptional opportunity to causally interrogate neural circuits and test hypotheses about natural neural coding.