Rats exposed to an antidepressant just before and after birth showed substantial brain abnormalities and behaviors, in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. After receiving citalopram, a serotonin-selective reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) , during this critical period, long-distance connections between the two hemispheres of the brain showed stunted growth and degeneration. The animals also became excessively fearful when faced with new situations and failed to play normally with peers – behaviors reminiscent of novelty avoidance and social impairments seen in autism. The abnormalities were more pronounced in male than female rats, just as autism affects 3-4 times more boys than girls. “Our findings underscore the importance of balanced serotonin levels – not too high or low -- for proper brain maturation,” explained Rick Lin, Ph.D. , of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson, a Eureka Award grantee of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health. Lin and colleagues report on their discovery online during the week of Oct. 24, 2011, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Last July, a study reported an association between mothers taking antidepressants and increased autism risk in their children. It found that children of mothers who took SSRI's during the year prior to giving birth ran twice the normal risk of developing autism — with treatment during the first trimester of pregnancy showing the strongest effect. A study published last month linked the duration of a pregnant mother's exposure to SSRIs to modest lags in coordination of movement " but within the normal range " in their newborns.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Depression
Link ID: 15941 - Posted: 10.25.2011

By Carolyn Butler, Whenever I took a tumble or scraped my knee as a child, my mother typically assessed the situation and then promptly tickled me, counseling, “Laughter is the best medicine.” This trick remains remarkably effective with my own boys and, to this day, YouTube videos of laughing babies or cats playing with printers still have the power to make me feel a bit better when I’m under the weather. But while giggling is certainly a great distraction when you’re hurt or feeling low, I can’t help but wonder whether the old adage is true: Can laughter really have a positive impact on health? There is a growing body of research indicating that a good guffaw may improve immune function, help lower blood pressure, boost mood and reduce stress and depression. And despite a dearth of more rigorous, long-term studies, the sum of these findings is compelling, says cardiologist Michael Miller, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has researched the topic. “We don’t have any clinical outcome evidence to show that laughter will reduce heart attacks or improve overall survival. However, we do have a number of studies that have shown that there is a potential upside, in terms of vascular benefits and also overall health,” he explains. “These findings certainly support laughter as a reasonable prescription for heart health and health in general, especially since there’s really no downside.” A new study from Oxford University supports a long-held theory that laughter triggers an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals that can help you feel good, distract you from pain and maybe deliver other health benefits. © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Emotions; Pain & Touch
Link ID: 15940 - Posted: 10.25.2011

By Jesse Bering There are signs, some would say omens, glimmering in certain children’s demeanors that, probably ever since there were children, have caused parents’ brows to crinkle with worry, precipitated forced conversations with nosy mothers-in-law, strained marriages and ushered untold numbers into the deep covenant of sexual denial. We all know the stereotypes: an unusually light, delicate, effeminate air in a little boy’s step, often coupled with solitary bookishness, or a limp wrist, an interest in dolls, makeup, princesses, dresses and a staunch distaste for rough play with other boys; in little girls, there is the outwardly boyish stance, perhaps a penchant for tools, a lumbering gait, a square-jawed readiness for physical tussles with boys, an aversion to all the perfumed, delicate, laced trappings of femininity. So let’s get down to brass tacks. It’s what these behaviors signal to parents about their child’s incipient sexuality that makes them so undesirable—these behavioral patterns are feared, loathed and often spoken of directly as harbingers of adult homosexuality. However, it is only relatively recently that developmental scientists have conducted controlled studies with one clear aim in mind, which is to go beyond mere stereotypes and accurately identity the most reliable signs of later homosexuality. In looking carefully at the childhoods of now-gay adults, researchers are finding an intriguing set of early behavioral indicators that homosexuals seem to have in common. And, curiously enough, the age-old homophobic fears of parents seem to have some genuine predictive currency. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15939 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY Researchers have long wondered how some people with schizophrenia can manage their symptoms well enough to build full, successful lives. But such people do not exactly line up to enroll in studies. For one thing, they are almost always secretive about their diagnosis. For another, volunteering for a study would add yet another burden to their stressful lives. But that is beginning to change, partly because of the unlikely celebrity of a fellow sufferer. In 2007, after years of weighing the possible risks, Elyn R. Saks, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, published a memoir of her struggle with schizophrenia, “The Center Cannot Hold.” It became an overnight sensation in mental health circles and a best seller, and it won Dr. Saks a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. For psychiatric science, the real payoff was her speaking tour. At mental health conferences here and abroad, Dr. Saks, 56, attracted not only doctors and therapists, but also high-functioning people with the same diagnosis as herself — a fellowship of fans, some of whom have volunteered to participate in studies. “People in the audience would stand up and self-disclose, or sometimes I would be on a panel with someone” who had a similar experience, Dr. Saks said. She also received scores of e-mails from people who had read the book and wanted to meet for lunch. She told many of them about the possibility of participating in a research project. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15938 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By BENEDICT CAREY PASADENA, Calif. — The feeling of danger was so close and overwhelming that there was no time to find its source, no choice but to get out of the apartment, fast. Keris Myrick headed for her car, checked the time — just past midnight, last March — and texted her therapist. “You’re going to the Langham? The hotel?” the doctor responded. “No — you need to be in the hospital. I need you consulting with a doctor.” “What do you think I’m doing right now?” “Oh. Right,” he said. “Well, O.K., then we need to check in regularly.” “And that’s what we did,” said Ms. Myrick, 50, the chief executive of a nonprofit organization, who has a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, a close cousin of schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. “I needed to hide out, to be away for a while. I wanted to pamper myself — room service, great food, fluffy pillows, all that — and I was lucky to have a therapist who understood what was going on and went with it.” Researchers have conducted more than 100,000 studies on schizophrenia since its symptoms were first characterized. They have tested patients’ blood. They have analyzed their genes. They have measured perceptual skills, I.Q. and memory, and have tried perhaps thousands of drug treatments. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 15937 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By JOHN TIERNEY After he lost much of his hearing last year at age 57, the composer Richard Einhorn despaired of ever really enjoying a concert or musical again. Even using special headsets supplied by the Metropolitan Opera and Broadway theaters, he found himself frustrated by the sound quality, static and interference. Then, in June, he went to the Kennedy Center in Washington, where his “Voice of Light” oratorio had once been performed with the National Symphony Orchestra, for a performance of the musical “Wicked.” There were no special headphones. This time, the words and music were transmitted to a wireless receiver in Mr. Einhorn’s hearing aid using a technology that is just starting to make its way into public places in America: a hearing loop. “There I was at ‘Wicked’ weeping uncontrollably — and I don’t even like musicals,” he said. “For the first time since I lost most of my hearing, live music was perfectly clear, perfectly clean and incredibly rich.” His reaction is a common one. The technology, which has been widely adopted in Northern Europe, has the potential to transform the lives of tens of millions of Americans, according to national advocacy groups. As loops are installed in stores, banks, museums, subway stations and other public spaces, people who have felt excluded are suddenly back in the conversation. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15936 - Posted: 10.24.2011

By ALINA TUGEND MY older son asked for an iPhone for his bar mitzvah. My younger son, Gabriel, will be celebrating his in about a month and wants a Tempur-Pedic mattress. This may not be as odd as it sounds. Gabriel has been interested in mattresses for a long time, and we bought him a new one a few years ago when he complained his old one was lumpy and he couldn’t sleep. But somehow, it wasn’t enough. Although to me he seems to sleep just fine, he is convinced that the perfect mattress will make his nights blissful. In this, he is not alone. Judging just by the many commercials and advertisements, there are a lot of Americans out there looking to buy a great night’s sleep. Companies offer a heady array of mattresses, sleeping pills and even soothing noise machines to usher us into the land of nod. But is this a case, like losing weight, where the quick and easy (if not necessarily cheap) option is not a solution? According to James Wyatt, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center, people who have sleep problems actually need to be divided into two broad categories — those who have sleep disorders and those who don’t sleep enough. “There are over 70 different types of sleep disorders,” Mr. Wyatt said, including problems with breathing, like sleep apnea, insomnia, sleep terrors and nightmares and sleepwalking. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 15935 - Posted: 10.24.2011

(HealthDay News) -- Seeing someone else being caressed causes your brain to react as strongly as if you were being caressed, researchers have found. In the study, MRI scans were used to measure the brain activity of volunteers while they were stroked either slowly or quickly with a soft brush. Not surprisingly, the strongest brain reaction occurred when the participants were being stroked slowly, said the research team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. However, the investigators were surprised at the results when the participants watched videos of another person being caressed. "The aim was to understand how the brain processes information from sensual contact, and it turned out that the brain was activated just as quickly when the volunteers got to watch someone else being caressed as when they were being caressed themselves," researcher India Morrison said in a university news release. "Even when we are only watching sensual skin contact, we can experience its emotional meaning without actually feeling the touch directly." When the participants watched a video that featured a hand caressing an inanimate object, the brain activation was not nearly as strong as when they saw another person being caressed, the researchers pointed out. The findings "indicate that our brain is wired in such a way that we can feel and process other people's sensations, which could open up new ways of studying how we create empathy," Morrison said. © 2011 U.S.News & World Report LP

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15934 - Posted: 10.22.2011

Paul Vallely A sad-eyed, mournful-mouthed beagle stares out from a poster on a bus shelter by the front door of the Ear Institute of University College London. Below the melancholy dog blares the legend 'Boycott Vivisection'. It is clearly intended to be a reprimand to the scientists passing through the door into one of the world's leading research centres on hearing and deafness. Not that there are any experiments on dogs going on in the Institute, but then facts are not always the first currency when it comes to the emotive subject of experiments on animals. The number of research procedures on animals carried out in the UK rose by 3 per cent last year. The figure has risen steadily over the past decade to just over 3.7 million in 2010. 'Procedures' is the term used by the Home Office, which is looking at ways to meet a commitment in the Government's coalition agreement to reduce the use of animals in scientific research. And it is a significant word, for behind it lies a major shift in animal experimentation. The headline figure disguises considerable changes. Experiments on many of the kind of animals which most inspire protest among animal rights activists were down: dogs by 2 per cent, rabbits by 10 per cent and cats by 32 per cent. Even the eponymous guinea pigs were down 29 per cent. There was also a fall of 11 per cent in the number of animals used in toxicity trials, as thanks to rule changes one test can now be used to satisfy several requirements. Where there was an increase was in mice and fish – the latter up a whopping 23 per cent. What that reveals is a switch to animals whose genes can be easily modified. An extraordinary 44 per cent of those 'procedures' turn out not to be what most members of the public imagine as an 'animal experiment' but merely the act of breeding transgenic creatures, mostly done by allowing mice to do what male and female mice do naturally anyway. But the nature of the experiments has undergone a notable change. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 15933 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by David Robson TAKE a minute out of the hustle and bustle of your busy life and sit very still. Now, place your hands on the arms of the chair or the desk in front of you, and try to focus your attention on counting your heartbeats. Can you feel a throbbing drum roll, a slight murmur or nothing at all? How does your bladder feel – is it empty or will you need to dash for the bathroom within the next half hour? You may be surprised to learn that these bodily sensations are helping you think. We tend to view the mind as an aloof, disembodied entity but it is becoming increasingly clear that the whole body is involved in the thinking process. Without input from your body, your mind would be unable to generate a sense of self or process emotions properly. Your body even plays a role in thinking about language and mathematics. And physiological sensations, such as those from your heart and bladder, influence such diverse personal attributes as the strength of your tendency to conform, your willpower and whether you are swayed by your intuitions or governed by rational thought. In the past few years, discoveries about mind-body connections have overturned the long-held view of the body as a passive vehicle driven by the brain. Instead there is more of a partnership, with bodily experiences playing an active role in your mental life. "The brain cannot act independently of the body," says Arthur Glenberg at Arizona State University in Tempe. Tune in to the body's signals, and you can exploit this to improve your creativity, memory and self-control. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 15932 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by Ferris Jabr What got you interested in the history of violence? I was struck by a graph I saw of homicide rates in British towns and cities going back to the 14th century. The rates had plummeted by between 30 and 100-fold. That stuck with me, because you tend to have an image of medieval times with happy peasants coexisting in close-knit communities, whereas we think of the present as filled with school shootings and mugging and terrorist attacks. Then in Lawrence Keeley's 1996 book War Before Civilization I read that modern states at their worst, such as Germany in the 20th century or France in the 19th century, had rates of death in warfare that were dwarfed by those of hunter-gatherer and hunter-horticultural societies. That too, is of profound significance in terms of our understanding of the costs and benefits of civilisation. Isn't this topic a departure for you? Your earlier books focus on how the mind and brain work... Two of my earlier books, How The Mind Works and The Blank Slate, were not about language or even cognition, narrowly, but about human nature. In them I talked about violence, for example, the abolition of barbaric customs such as torturing people to death for religious heresy, to reinforce the point that human nature comprises many components, some of which incline us toward violence, some of which pull us away from it. The fact that violence has declined and what this implied for human nature were spelled out in both books, but I decided that those paragraphs deserved to be expanded into a book of their own. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 15931 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by Chelsea Whyte Ever wondered how you can make your way down a dark hallway in the night without stubbing your toe? New research in mice has shown for the first time that the cerebellum – an area of the brain that is known to control motor learning – plays a crucial role in this type of navigation. Another area of the brain, the hippocampus, is known to house a kind of mental map, created by three types of cell: "place" neurons that fire when an animal is in a specific location and only that location; "head direction" cells that fire when the animal is facing a certain direction; and "grid" cells that fire at regular intervals as the animal moves, leaving a virtual "breadcrumb trail" that helps to create a sense of location relative to other places visited. But until now there has been no evidence that the cerebellum is a partner in creating the representation of the body in space. "We never knew that the cerebellum and hippocampus communicated," says Christelle Rochefort at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France, who worked on the study. This new finding reveals that there are networks in the brainMovie Camera that haven't yet been explored, she says. "It seems that there is some crosstalk between the two structures," says research team leader Laure Rondi-Reig, also at Pierre and Marie Curie University. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15930 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by Michael Marshall Supposedly, if women live together their hormonal cycles start to synchronise, thanks to a pheromone. If that were true it would mean that they all have their period simultaneously. Just think about it. This "menstrual synchrony" argument was first reported in 1971 by psychologist Martha McClintock, who noticed signs of it in her own college dorm. But it may not really exist. Studies have had mixed results, often reporting no synchrony at all. Assamese macaques, however, have evolved an unmistakable kind of synchrony: they all have sex at the same time. Assamese macaques live in troupes of a few dozen, including about a dozen adults of each sex, plus offspring. Although there are strong social bonds within the troupes, they are dominated by the males, who compete vigorously to mate with the females. The mating season runs from October to January, and the males become increasingly aggressive as it goes on. The males do show some solidarity. If a female attacks a male, other males will rally to his defence. But it is the females who form close friendships with each other, while males are only loosely allied with their fellows. The females also have ways of resisting the males' control of the troupes, says Ines Fürtbauer of the University of Göttingen in Germany. For one thing, like human females, they do not show external signs of fertility, so males have no way of knowing whether the female they are mating with is actually able to conceive. The females mate throughout their cycles, further confusing the issue. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 15929 - Posted: 10.22.2011

By Kimberly Hayes Taylor We may be a step closer in understanding what causes autism, say University of Missouri researchers after finding differences between the facial characteristics of children who have autism and those who don’t. Kristina Aldridge, lead author and assistant professor of anatomy at the University of Missouri, began looking at facial characteristics of autistic children after another researcher, Judith Miles, professor emerita in the School of Medicine and the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, mentioned, “There is just something about their faces. They are beautiful, but there is just something about them.” “Children with other disorders such as Down syndrome and fetal alcohol syndrome have very distinct facial features. Autism is much less striking,” she says. “You can’t pick them out in a crowd of kids, but you can pick them out mathematically.” When researchers took three-dimensional images of the children, they discovered autistic children have a broader upper face with wider eyes, a shorter middle region of the face including the cheeks and nose and a broader or wider mouth and philtrum -- the area below the nose and above the top lip. Aldridge analyzed 64 boys with autism and 41 typically developing boys ages 8 to 12 using the 3-D images of each boys’ head. She also mapped out 17 points on the face, such as the corner of the eye and the divot in the upper lip. When the overall geometry of the face was calculated and the two groups were compared, she noticed statistical differences in autistic children’s faces.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15928 - Posted: 10.22.2011

By Bruce Bower Stroke survivors and other patients trying to relearn how to walk due to weakness on one side of the body may reap benefits from being forced to stumble and stagger. Healthy adults made to switch between a regular and an unusual walking pattern on a special treadmill relearned the strange stride much faster the next day than volunteers who had practiced only the unusual gait, neuroscientist Amy Bastian of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore and her colleagues report in a study in the Oct. 19 Journal of Neuroscience. Not surprisingly, participants who learned and then unlearned an unusual walking pattern while adjusting to a new walking style took lots of clumsy steps when trying to relearn the original pattern, some reminiscent of Monty Python’s old skit about the Ministry of Silly Walks. Yet these individuals had the last laugh, because they learned how to correct awkward leg limps and body lurches that occur in the early stages of adapting to a new gait, the researchers propose. Practice at switching gaits helps people learn how to adjust for initial missteps when attempting an alternative walking style, Bastian says. She calls this process “learning to learn” from one’s mistakes, so that movements can be realigned quickly as needed. Gait-switching volunteers weren’t aware that they learned anything, but the next day they realized that it was easier to adopt the odd walking style. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Stroke; Regeneration
Link ID: 15927 - Posted: 10.22.2011

By Laura Sanders The roller-coaster teenage years can take IQs along for the ride. A person’s IQ can nosedive and climb sky-high during adolescence, while corresponding brain regions wax and wane in bulk, researchers report online October 19 in Nature. The results suggest that the IQ number given to a child is not immutable, as many researchers believe, says neuroscientist Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine. “This is an extremely interesting paper.” Back in 2004, Cathy Price of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London and colleagues tested the IQs of 33 healthy participants who were, on average, 14 years old. While the teens were in the lab, structural MRI brain scans measured particular brain regions. About four years later, Price and her team invited the teenagers back for a redo. Overall, IQ scores held steady: Average IQs were 112 in 2004 and 113 four years later. But when the researchers zoomed in on individual teens, they found that about a third of the teenagers had meaningful changes in IQ, and a handful showed dizzying climbs or plunges. One such plunge was 18 IQ points — which would be enough to demote a person from genius status to merely above average. The retest also turned up an IQ gain of 21 points — which would elevate a below-average person to above average. Some people who scored high the first time around scored even higher later, and some low scorers scored even lower. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Intelligence
Link ID: 15926 - Posted: 10.22.2011

by John Bohannon If you've begun to pack on the pounds, your doctor may recommend that you get up and move around. But a new study suggests that it's not just your body you should be moving. Researchers have found that relocating people out of poor neighborhoods can be as effective as drugs in reducing their chances of becoming overweight and developing diabetes. The idea that neighborhoods have subtle but powerful effects on our health goes back at least to the 1920s, says Jens Ludwig, a sociologist at the University of Chicago Law School. "This question is one that I have been personally very interested in for a long time, partly because I live here on the South Side of Chicago [where] there are massive disparities in people's life outcomes and well-being." But how to tease apart the causes? "Consider two low-income African-American 50-year-old women in Chicago," Ludwig says. "One lives in Hyde Park," an integrated middle-class neighborhood, "and the other lives in Washington Park," a nearby but extremely poor and racially segregated neighborhood. "We see that the woman living in Hyde Park has better health," Ludwig says, but is that due to the neighborhoods themselves or some difference between the women that led them to choose where to live? The only way to sort out cause and effect is to do a randomized trial, moving people around between neighborhoods and tracking their health over several years. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15925 - Posted: 10.22.2011

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer A small portion of shy teenagers may actually have social phobia, according to a new national study of adolescents. Social phobia, a persistent, debilitating fear of situations that could involve scrutiny and judgment, is a somewhat controversial diagnosis in children and teens, with critics arguing that the diagnosis turns normal shyness into a medical condition. But the new research finds that teens who meet the criteria for social phobia are also more likely to struggle with depression, anxiety, substance disorders and other problems. That finding suggests that social phobia is a serious condition beyond regular shyness, the researchers report Monday (Oct. 17) in the journal Pediatrics. To uncover the overlap between shyness and social phobia, the researchers drew from a nationally representative survey of 10,123 American teenagers and 6,483 of their parents. In face-to-face sessions, the teenagers answered questions about their level of shyness, anxiety and prescription medication use. The teens were also evaluated for social phobia. Parents were more likely to rate their teens as shy than the teens themselves, with 62.4 percent of parents saying their teens were shy while only 46.7 percent of teens described themselves that way. Of the students who called themselves shy, 12.4 percent actually met the criteria to be diagnosed with social phobia. Of the teens described as shy by their parents, 10.6 percent met the criteria for social phobia. © 2011 LiveScience.com.

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 15924 - Posted: 10.18.2011

By JANE E. BRODY Patrick Fox, now 14, considers himself lucky. It took only a year to find out why he was always tired, his heart raced and he ached all over, why he became overheated easily and had terrible headaches almost every day. Once a happy, active child and good student who enjoyed school, by age 12 he could hardly get out of bed. Various medical specialists — pediatrician, cardiologist, rheumatologist and geneticist — failed to find a physical cause for his symptoms. Some said he should see a psychiatrist because he was a malingerer, lazy, depressed, manipulative or overly anxious. Instead, after his racing heart caused chest pains that felt like an impending heart attack, his mother whisked him off to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where in just two hours he learned he had a form of autonomic dysfunction known as POTS, short for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. It has taken some youngsters with the syndrome as long as a decade to get a proper diagnosis, by which time their teen years are a washout. Patrick, who lives in Columbia, S.C., said he was telling his story in hopes that it would help others with the syndrome, which affects up to 1 percent of teenagers, get to the bottom of their problem more quickly. Patrick’s mother, Jacqueline Fox, said physicians needed to be better educated about the disorder so that it is promptly and accurately diagnosed and patients are treated before years of their youth go down the drain. In young people, POTS is almost always eventually outgrown, but proper treatment can give them their lives back in the meantime. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15923 - Posted: 10.18.2011

By ANDY NEWMAN NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Any old pond will do. Michael L. May set out one recent Wednesday morning from his cramped office at the Rutgers University entomology building to collect a few dragonflies. The road to a more pristine lagoon in a county park was closed, so Dr. May pulled off a highway two miles from campus and parked alongside a triangular pond lined with tall weeds and poison ivy and wild hibiscus serving up white shuttlecock flowers. With the traffic on U.S. Route 1 whizzing off in the distance, Dr. May, a bushy-bearded Florida native who just turned 65, grabbed his net and shuffled down the bank until his sneakers sank in the mud. The pond was abuzz with activity. A green darner patrolled the surface like a fighter pilot. Bluets posed primly on slender reeds, and three stocky little Eastern amberwings chased one another around choice perches. “There’s a pair copulating on the bamboo.” Dr. May pointed to two Eastern pondhawk dragonflies — green-and-black female and blue-dusted male — shimmering in the sunlight in a familiar heart shape. Dr. May turned his attention and his net elsewhere, poised, and struck. Swish-swish, and a thick, blue-black helmet-headed creature — named, in the fanciful way of the dragonfly world, a slaty skimmer — danced in the fabric. “This is the one I was hoping for,” he said. “It’s a common enough thing, but it has a fairly rococo penis.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 15922 - Posted: 10.18.2011