Academy scientist Brian Fisher looks at life on a different scale than most people. And his unique perspective has had a profound influence on his approach to species conservation in some of the world’s most critically endangered biodiversity hotspots.

Fisher, an entomologist who specializes in the study of ants, was recently appointed the Academy’s first Patterson Scholar in Science and Sustainability. The honor comes in recognition of his tireless work in Madagascar and other remote regions of the world, as well as the innovative methods he uses to find and study the creatures he calls “the glue that holds ecosystems together.”

“Ants are one of the most important members of ecosystems,” says Fisher. “They turn over more soil than earthworms.” But they’re also some of the most overlooked, he says. “If they were bigger, they would be the most studied type of organism, but people don’t see them.”

Fisher does see ants of course, lots of them. He and his team have identified more than 900 new species of ants in Madagascar alone. So obviously, he spends a lot of time looking closely at patches of ground where ants might live. Some of his other methods, however, are decidedly higher-tech and provide a much more detailed view of these organisms, their habitats, and what their presence or absence might indicate about ecosystem health.

Surprisingly, one of these detailed views comes from space. Fisher has teamed up with satellite companies and engineers from Google to deliver high-resolution satellite images of some of the least explored areas of Madagascar. Fisher can reference these images in the field, even when no network access is available.

The amount of information this places at his fingertips is not unlike what we’ve come to expect from our smartphones while we’re navigating city streets. But Fisher uses these technologies as he explores some of the world’s most remote regions. It’s an unprecedented view and it’s invaluable to his research. Equipped with a GPS-enabled tablet with customized software and high-res satellite images taken only weeks prior, he can not only see where to camp and find water, but he can also tell which patches of forest are most likely to contain new species of ants.

Fisher has learned from years of field experience in Madagascar to focus his search for ants on forests that are wet, situated at 800 meters (2,600 feet) of elevation or below, and isolated from other such patches. Those are the forests that tend to have the greatest species richness—of ants and many other arthropods. They’re also the types of forest that Fisher thinks should be our highest priority in terms of habitat conservation for these species.

Some habitat conservation analyses suggest that deforestation has stabilized in Madagascar, but the percentage of deforestation is not the important measure, Fisher says. “The important question is: Where are we losing the most species due to deforestation?” he says. “What patch of forest is under threat that should be our highest conservation priority right now?”

Of course, ants shouldn’t be our only focus, according to Fisher, but the perspective that research on these types of animals provides is helping to correct a bias in habitat conservation. “If you base conservation on vertebrates alone,” he says, “it leads you to conclude that only the largest forests are important. Ants and other insects provide a better map of true biodiversity.” It’s a more holistic approach.

Based on this approach, Fisher is developing new models that are helping him provide effective conservation recommendations as well as plan future research efforts. He’s currently working with conservation organizations like the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) to identify patches of forest that should be highest priority for protection. So far, he’s identified five areas that CEPF has under review, and he’s always in search of more. “Most of the forests in the lowlands are already gone, so we’re really focused on trying to find the remaining lowland patches of great conservation value,” Fisher says.

Of course, protecting biodiversity requires a solid understanding of the species that are actually out there. This is a huge job in places as species-rich as Madagascar—even if you’re focused only on ants. Fisher and his team of 20 Malagasy scientists and students, as well as five postdocs here in San Francisco, are busy trying to identify and describe the hundreds of new species of ants they’ve discovered in Madagascar. The thinking is that the more species they document, the stronger the efforts will be to save the habitats where these organisms live.

Gathering and sharing information about ants—not to mention generating an appreciation for these creatures—was the primary motivation behind AntWeb, the online database that Fisher created. The site contains records of more than 10,000 ant species collected from around the world, and the perspective it provides on these tiny creatures is unlike most scientific databases. In addition to the tremendous amount of data that AntWeb contains about each species, Fisher says the site’s high-resolution composite images are helping to put a face on these tiny creatures and getting people to appreciate ants and their significance to the health of our planet.

And yet there are so many more ants to find and document—and Fisher and his team feel like they’re in a race against time. Their methods, he says, are “too, too slow. We’re struggling to speed it up.”

Staring at a satellite image of rugged, roadless Malagasy terrain, Fisher says there’s one piece of technology he and his team need more than any other. “We could really use a helicopter,” he says, only half joking.

He’ll continue his exploration of the unexplored when he returns to Madagascar in January 2014—by helicopter or on foot… probably on foot.

Steven Bedard is editor of the Academy website. A recent Bay Area transplant, he now understands what all the fuss is about.

At Science Today, we love stories that highlight bioinspiration—tales that reveal how close inspection of the natural world lead to problem-solving in the human realm. Engineering-wise, nature has had millions of years of trial and error to get things right, so why not learn from evolution and adaptation?

This week, the Academy will open Built for Speed, a new exhibit that explains the adaptations by fast fish and marine mammals that make them swift and speedy underwater and how boat designers use a similar process of adaptations to create ultrafast sailboats to compete in the America’s Cup race.

To get ready for Built for Speed, we’re featuring a few recent news stories about robots inspired and refined by the study of nature. Enjoy!

UC Berkeley

One of the leaders in bio-inspired robots is right across the Bay from the Academy. Biologists and engineers at UC Berkeley have been collaborating for several years on biological inspiration. And the researchers find inspiration from the most unlikely of sources. We’ve covered their gecko-inspired bot, but earlier this year news outlets featured Cal cockroach robots. Did you know that cockroaches are able to balance without using their brains? According to Discovery News, this is fabulous news for robot builders:

… One of the recurring challenges of designing a mobile robot is writing an algorithm that keeps it from falling over.

VELOCIRoACH, is a Berkeley roach bot and happens to be one of the fastest robots in the world. TAYLRoach uses its tail to make fast turns. New Scientist says that smaller is better for these robots:

Small-legged robots are being developed for search and rescue, for situations where a location is inaccessible or too dangerous for humans.

More Insect-bots

Berkeley isn’t the only academic biorobotic institution. Last week, Harvard scientists published their engineering breakthrough—the first flying insect-like robot. Ten to fifteen years in the making, this bug-bot was inspired by the biology of a fly. It has submillimeter-scale anatomy and two wafer-thin wings that flap almost invisibly, 120 times per second! Check out the video.

Do you feel like you’re being watched? Another publication last week describes a new camera, inspired by insect eyes. Made of 180 tiny lenses, the camera can take panoramic pictures that offer similar compound views to those of ants, bees and praying mantises. According to Ed Yong in National Geographic, this tiny biomimetic camera is “ideal for surveillance. Perhaps in the future, we’ll be watched by man-made flies on the walls.” Creepy!

Speaking of creepy, how about small robots that work together like a colony of ants? French and American scientists wanted to understand how individual ants, when part of a moving colony, orient themselves in the labyrinthine pathways that stretch from their nest to various food sources. They hope their robotic findings reveal “possible improvements for the design of man-made transportation networks,” according to an abstract in PLoS Computational Biology.

Snakes and Seahorses and Birds, Oh My

Want more? How about a soft snake robot that slithers? A robotic arm as flexible and protected as a seahorse’s tail? Airplane wings fashioned after the wings of a herring gull? What about a swimming and crawling robot as efficient as a salamander? All of the above? Help yourself—many of the links above have videos detailing the creations.

Speedy Virtual Robots

Finally, just because it’s super cool, check out this video on Discover’s site. Researchers at the University of Wyoming and Cornell created a computer program to design fast virtual robots. Each robot could be made out of four different materials, and only the fastest would “reproduce.”

Essentially, the researchers incentivized forward motion, so the faster the robot, the more successful it would be in the evolutionary race.

You have to see the simulations created in this “Evolution in Action.”

Image of insect-eye camera: John A. Rogers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Ants Defending Trees

Did you know that some ants defend their tree homes from invading plants? But how can they tell the difference between the host tree and other plants? Colorado State University scientists decided to find out.

Ants known as Pseudomyrmex triplarinus are found in the Peruvian rainforest and have evolved a symbiotic relationship with Triplaris americana trees, receiving shelter and sustenance in return for defense.

“The ants inhabit hollow channels inside the tree and aggressively fight off any invaders including other plants, yet how these ants recognize their host tree compared to other plants has not been studied,” said lead author Tiffany Weir. “We found that the ants distinguish between their host trees and encroaching species through recognition of the plant’s surface waxes.”

Once a competing plant is recognized the ants prune them to defend their host. The research is published in the journal Biotropica.

Would Ants Facebook?

Scientists have assumed for years that interaction networks without central control (think Facebook, Twitter and even the spread of disease) have universal properties that make them efficient at spreading information. Just think of the local grapevine—let something slip, and it seems like no time at all before nearly everyone knows.

But University of Arizona researchers, studying ants, have found that not all of these networks function alike. Their study was published last month in PLoS ONE.

The researchers chose to use ant colonies as models for self-directed networks because they are composed of many individual components—the ants—with no apparent central organization and yet are able to function as a colony.

This research is incredibly detail-oriented. After relocating ant colonies to their lab, the scientists painted each one to identify the individuals. They then filmed the ants, recording roughly 9,000 interactions between 300 to 400 individual ants.

The results were surprising. Contrary to predictions that ant networks would spread information efficiently in the same way as other self-directed networks, the researchers found that the ants actually are inefficient at spreading information.

According to lead author Benjamin Blonder:

They could be just walking around completely randomly bumping into each other. We were able to show that the real ants consistently had rates of information flow that were lower than even that expectation. Not only are they not efficient, they’re also slower than random. They’re actually avoiding each other.

So this raises a big question: If you have this ant colony that is presumably very good at surviving and persisting, and there are a lot of good reasons to think it’s optimal to get messages from one part to the other, how come they don’t do it?

One possible explanation is a concept most of us already are familiar with: “If you spend too much time interacting, then you’re not actually getting anything done,” said Blonder.

Another possibility is that individual ants are responsible for only their region and only need to communicate with other ants in that region.

So why does all of this matter? Understanding how interaction networks function could have applications from building self-directed networks to perform specific functions (such as unmanned drones to explore other planets) to preventing the spread of disease.

Ant Supermodels

Can we hear some catcalls, please?  Go over to the Daily Mail to see what we mean. These gorgeous, hi-res ant images come from Antweb, a project that calls the Academy home and “provides tools for exploring the diversity and identification of ants,” according to the website. The goal is to image all ant species, around 12,000 of ‘em. Check out a few from the nearly 5,000 already on the web.

Image: Benjamin Blonder

The fungi control the ants with mind-altering chemicals, according to Wired Science:

Once infected by spores, the worker ants, normally dedicated to serving the colony, leave the nest, find a small shrub and start climbing. The fungi directs all ants to the same kind of leaf: about 25 centimeters above the ground and at a precise angle to the sun (though the favored angle varies between fungi).

Once the ant arrives at the right leaf, it dies and the fungus takes over. It can produce spores from a single dead ant for up to a year! Wired has some pretty gnarly pictures, if you feel the urge.

The researchers studied these fungi in the wild, not the lab (which has been the trend), and reported their findings last week in the open access, online journal, PLoS One.

In their paper, the authors draw attention to undiscovered, complex, biological interactions in threatened habitats. The four new species all come from the Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil, the most heavily degraded biodiversity hotspot on the planet with ninety-two percent of its original coverage gone. The fungi keep the ant population in check—a tip in the balance could wreak havoc on the ecosystem.

And fungi from this group contribute to both traditional and modern medicine. Again, from Wired:

Organ transplant patients, for example, receive ciclosporin—a drug that suppresses the immune system, reducing the chance the body will reject the new tissue. Chemicals from this same fungal group are also used for antibiotic, anti-malarial and anticancer drugs.

The researchers hope to understand more about this group of fungi before it’s too late. Ants may feel differently…

Image courtesy of PLoS One

“I don’t imagine you’ll ever hear the phrase ‘seal the deal’ again, unless perhaps the worst worst-case scenarios unfold and the climate system comes utterly unglued.” That’s Andrew Revkin’s reaction to the closing of the Cancun climate talks in today’s New York Times. Heads of States seemed to be missing, debates continue to rage over the Kyoto Protocol and developing nations’ and climate-affected island states’ shouts were not heard. From New Scientist:

…on the platform, the chairman of the African Union Commission, Jean Ping, noted that “Africa’s billion people are polluting roughly as much as Texas, which has 25 million people.” But Barack Obama was not there to answer.

The talks end today… don’t expect too much, says Nature’s The Great Beyond blog:

Contrary to Copenhagen, the goal going into Cancun was to make incremental progress. That seemed doable at the time, but nobody is taking anything for granted today.

Now for some fun! Through Twitter, we found this great defense of the existence of Santa… in the Multiverse. Yes, Virginia…

Follow that frog! Did you know that frogs’ bladders can hunt and remove foreign objects in their bodies? In their attempts to track frogs in Australia, scientists were implanting the amphibians with bead-sized transmitters. Within a few weeks, the transmitters had moved to their bladders and/or had simply been expelled (peed) out and left behind. Lab tests followed and results published. Read more here or here.

Bio-Inspiration: Ants travels could lead to better computer networks. According to Nature News, Argentine ants are so adept at finding the shortest routes to food and changing those routes when necessary (high traffic, obstacles), that systems engineers are hoping to learn from their behavior and build more efficient networks.

Continue to follow Science Today’s efficient science news network and lead us down some new paths by adding your comments below!

Found several years ago in Ethiopia, a large team of interdisciplinary scientists (including paleontologists, geologists and microbiologists) studied the amber for the past five years. It dates back 95 million years to the Cretaceous period.

It is known that dinosaurs roamed Africa during that period, but the fossils found inside the amber displayed many more diverse forms of life. The amber held fossilized ants and other insects, spiders, ferns, fungi and even bacteria. The ant finding is significant because it is one of the oldest ant fossils found and could reveal more about ant evolution. Until now, paleontologists thought ants originated in North America or South Asia (the oldest fossils had been found there), but it now seems that Africa could have been their starting point.

In addition, the amber deposit may provide fresh insights into the rise of flowering plants during the Cretaceous. “The first flowering plants appeared and diversified in the Cretaceous,” says lead author Alexander Schmidt of the University of Göttingen in Germany. “Their rise to dominance drastically changed terrestrial ecosystems, and the Ethiopian amber deposit sheds light on this time of change.”

Amber is fossilized tree resin that sometimes contains animals and plant material. The researchers do not know from which tree this amber originated. According to author Paul Nascimbene, of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, “This amber could be from an early flowering plant or a previously-unknown conifer that is quite distinct…”

Amber from the Cretaceous period is primarily found in North America and Eurasia.  This Ethiopian amber is the first major discovery of its kind from the African continent.  And the diversity of life discovered in this deposit promises to reveal new information about Africa’s evolutionary past.

Image courtesy of PNAS/ Matthias Svojtka