DNA From A Strawberry!!! This Was Super Cool (the Little White Strands In The Clear Is Actual Dna From

Physarum pulcherrimum + beetle

by Kim Fleming

microscopy lab dump :]

Petri dish after being exposed to common household air. Includes Aspergillum, penicillium, green & black rhysopus, & stachybotrum moldm

A new species of African legless skink, genus Acontias Cuvier, 1816 “1817” (Squamata: Scincidae) from Serra da Neve inselberg, south-western Angola

Mariana P. Marquesa, Diogo Parrinha, Arthur Tiutenko, et al.

ABSTRACT

During a recent survey of the Serra da Neve inselberg in south-western Angola, a population of legless skinks of the genus Acontias was found. Only three species of this genus have been recorded for the country so far – A. occidentalis, A. kgalagadi and A. jappi. Using an integrative approach and combining molecular and morphological data we found that the Serra da Neve population represents a new species, closely related to species such as A. percivali and some members of the A. occidentalis species complex. In this paper, we describe this population as a new species, Acontias mukwando sp. nov. and provide brief comments on its conservation and biogeography.

Read the paper here:

Full article: A new species of African legless skink, genus Acontias Cuvier, 1816 “1817” (Squamata: Scincidae) from Serra da Neve inselberg, south-western Angola (tandfonline.com)

Mycena mushrooms in the moss

source

Ode to the Microbe

Prints

How a novel class of sulfonamides potently blocks malaria transmission

Drugs to treat malaria symptoms and insecticides to kill malaria-spreading mosquitoes have improved in recent decades, but the parasite and the mosquitoes are evolving to become resistant to these strategies.

The Baum laboratory along with colleagues at Imperial College London, UK, previously identified a new class of potent antimalarial compounds, belonging to a family of sulfonamides. These compounds kill the parasite only when it is in a specific sexual phase of its life cycle, rapidly stopping it from being able to infect a mosquito and, therefore, preventing any subsequent human infection.

In their new Disease Models & Mechanisms article, Baum and colleagues explored exactly how these compounds work, which is an essential step before the compounds can be developed for testing in patients.

Continue Reading

Abortiporus biennis, 2019-08-26

FOTD #126 : entoloma haastii!

entoloma haastii (no common name) is a mushroom in the family entolomataceae :-) it is only known to grow in aotearoa, where it often sprouts in leaf litter from southern beech plants.

the big question : can i bite it?? the edibility is unknown, but it is said to be sharp-tasting & sour / bitter.

e. haastii description :

"the cap is initially conical later developing an umbo & becoming rounded or bell-shaped, reaching diameter of 1.5–5.5 cm (0.6–2.2 in) in diameter. older fruit bodies have margins that are turned upward. the cap colour is dark brown or soot-brown but always has a bluish tinge. the surface is dry, covered by radially arranged wrinkles or veins, neither striate nor hygrophanous. the gills are adnexed to almost free from attachment to the stem. they are somewhat distantly spaced, with between 16 & 22 gills extending fully from the stem to the edge of the cap, in addition to one to three tiers of interspersed lamelluae (short gills that do not extend fully from the stem to the cap edge). the gill colour is grey-bluish later becoming pink, & the gill edges are straight or somewhat saw-toothed, & the same colour as the gill face. the stem is 4–10 cm (1.6–3.9 in) by 0.3–1 cm (0.12–0.39 in), bulbous-rooting or club-shaped. the top portion of the stem is deep blue, the colour fading towards the whitish or ochraceous base, strongly fibrillose, dry, hollow, fragile, often twisted. the flesh is blue in the cap & the upper parts of the stem, but whitish or yellowish at the base."

[images : source & source] [fungus description : source]