Category: Uncategorized

WIPEOUT TRAIN. “More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species, that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct.” Would you voluntarily board this train with its reckless driver? https://lnkd.in/efCSXC8 View in LinkedIn

DEAD CLADE WALKING. “Clade survival is no guarantee that preextinction trends will persist or be reasserted in the postextinction setting. Each extinction has examples of clades that survived the extinction event only to fall into a marginal role or eventually disappear (dead clade walking).” http://www.pnas.org/content/98/10/5393.full/Donnie) View in LinkedIn

INEXORABLE MARCH. “The cumulative fossil record can give the impression that the diversity of life has increased inexorably through time, although punctuated with occasional mass extinction events.” (PS: See Figure 1). https://lnkd.in/e5XfdvZ View in LinkedIn

ENDOCRINE DEATH TRIGGERS. "In Octopus hummelincki, brooding females alter and reduce feeding behavior and die shortly after their eggs hatch. These traits are influenced by endocrine secretions from the optic gland." https://lnkd.in/ecP3KMX View in LinkedIn

PROGRAMMED DEATH. "Among invertebrates, cases of death following semelparous reproduction that clearly seem to be coded into the genome (and thus “programmed”) include the many insects in which adults entirely lack mouthparts or are otherwise incapable of feeding. In some cephalopod molluscs, rapid senescence and death follow spawning (squids) or brooding (octopuses)." https://lnkd.in/ecP3KMX View in LinkedIn

STRESS HORMONES AND DEATH. "Males of several small marsupials die shortly after mating. Remarkably, the proximate molecular mechanisms of decline and death in all these distantly related vertebrates seem to be similar, with corticosteroid stress hormones playing the central role." https://lnkd.in/ecP3KMX View in LinkedIn

POST BREEDING DEATH. "Semelparous animals show a similar pattern. Among vertebrates, the best studied examples of rapid senescence and death following semelparous reproduction are in fishes and marsupial mammals. Anadromous Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), and catadromous eels (Anguilla spp.) and lampreys (Petromyzontidae) die shortly after spawning." https://lnkd.in/ecP3KMX View in LinkedIn

SEMELPARITY AND DEATH. "Semelparity is common in long-lived plants, occurring in representatives of at least 20 different families. In most cases, the proximate mechanisms of death are unknown, but there is evidence in some species for an internally generated “senescence signal”, which may be a hormone." https://lnkd.in/ecP3KMX View in LinkedIn

SEMELPAROUS SPECIES. "In some species, there is considerable empirical evidence for a tightly regulated “death program”, or organismal initiation and control of the process leading to death." https://lnkd.in/ecP3KMX View in LinkedIn

SENESCENCE. "The strongest appearance of programmed organismal death in organismal senescence is found in semelparous species, which reproduce only once during the life cycle. A common pattern in these species is that individuals appear healthy up to the time of reproduction, then decline rapidly and dramatically afterward. Mortality in these cases is often 100%, with no obvious environmental cause." https://lnkd.in/ecP3KMX View in LinkedIn