Scientists Have 3D-Scanned Thousands of Creatures Creating Incredibly Intricate Images Anyone Can Access for Free

3D scanned creatures by oVert – Released by Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

An incredible new project has scanned thousands of creatures to advance scientific research and provide colorful images to the world. Natural history museums have entered a new stage of scientific discovery and accessibility with the completion of openVertebrate (oVert), a five-year collaborative project among 18 institutions to create 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and make them freely available online. Now, researchers have published a summary of the project in the journal BioScience reviewing the specimens they’ve scanned to date, offering a glimpse of how the data might be  used to ask newquestions and spur the development of innovative technology. “When people first collected these specimens, they had no idea what the future would hold for them,” said Edward Stanley, co-principal investigator of the oVert project and associate scientist at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Such museums got their start in the 16th century as cabinets of curiosity, in which a few wealthy individuals amassed rare and exotic specimens, which they kept mostly to themselves. Since then, museums have become a resource for the public to learn about biodiversity. But, the majority of museum collections remain behind closed doors—accessible only to scientists who must either travel to see them or ask that a small number of specimens be mailed on loan—and oVert wants to change that. “Now we have scientists, teachers, students and artists around the world using these data remotely,” said David Blackburn, lead principal investigator of the oVert project and curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum. Beginning in 2017, the oVert team members took CT scans of more than 13,000 specimens, with vertebrate species across the tree of life, including over half the genera of all amphibians, reptiles, fishes, and mammals.

A collage of scanned fish from oVert – Released by Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

CT scanners use high-energy X-rays to peer past an organism’s exterior and view the dense bone structure beneath. Some specimens were also stained with a contrast-enhancing solution for visualizing soft tissues, like skin, muscle, and other organs. The models give an intimate look at internal portions of a specimen that could previously only be observed through destructive dissection and tissue sampling. “You want to protect specimens, but you also want to have people use them,” Blackburn said. “oVert is a way of reducing the wear and tear on samples while also increasing access, and it’s the next logical step in the

Hedgehog CT scan from oVert – Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

mission of museum collections.” Skeletons too large to fit into a CT scanner, like a humpback whale, were painstakingly taken apart so that 3D models of each individual bone could be scanned and reassembled. “These are not things you put in boxes and loan,” Blackburn pointed out. A set of iconic Galapagos tortoises at the California Academy of Sciences were each photographed in a 360-degree rotation. Photographing their undersides was problematic, as their curved shells made it impossible to keep them upright. After a few trial-and-error runs, they settled on placing the specimens on top of inflatable swimming tubes. Scientists have already used data from the project to gain astonishing insights into the natural world. Watch the incredible video below, and learn more at the bottom…In 2023, Edward Stanley was conducting routine CT scans of spiny mice and was surprised to find their tails were covered with an internal coat of bony plates, called osteoderms. Before this discovery, armadillos were considered to be the only living mammals with these structures. “All kinds of things jump out at you when you’re when you’re scanning,” Stanley said. “I study osteoderms, and through kismet or fate, I happened to be the one scanning those particular specimens on that particular day and noticed something strange about their tails on the X-ray. “That happens all the time. We’ve found all sorts of strange, unexpected things.”oVert scans were used to determine what killed a rim rock crown snake, considered to be the rarest snake species in North America. Another study showed that a group of frogs called pumpkin toadlets had become so small that the fluid-filled canals in their ears that confer balance no longer functioned properly, causing them to crash-land when jumping. One study of 500 oVert specimens revealed that frogs have lost and regained teeth more than 20 times throughout their evolutionary history. Other researchers concluded that Spinosaurus, a massive dinosaur that was larger than Tyrannosaurus rex and thought to be aquatic, would have actually been a poor swimmer, and thus likely stayed on land. And the list goes on, full of insights and ideas that would have been impossible or impractical before the project’s outset. “Now that we’ve been working on this for so long, we have a broad scaffold that allows us to take a broader view of

Fish CT scan from oVert – Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

evolutionary questions,” Stanley said. Artists and teachers are benefitting too Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the value of the oVert project extends beyond science. Artists have used the 3D models to create realistic animal replicas, photographs of oVert specimens have been displayed as museum exhibits, and specimens have been incorporated into virtual reality headsets that give users the chance to interact with and manipulate them. A high school teacher in Cincinnati says it’s been a game-changer for her studies on evolution. “I teach juniors and seniors, and I absolutely love them, but they can be a tough audience,” said Jennifer Broo. “They know when things are fake, which makes them less engaged. Using the oVert models, my class has gotten so much better because I have had the opportunities to work with and expose my students to real data.”Visit Sketchfab to view a sample of 3D interactive models. At MorphoSource you can access the full openVertebrate repository.Scientists Have 3D-Scanned Thousands of Creatures Creating Incredibly Intricate Images Anyone Can Access for Free

Read More........→March 18, 2024

'Love hormone' guides young songbirds in choice of 'voice coach'

Zebra finches are highly social birds and will press a lever in order to hear a recording of another Zebra finch singing. (Photo by Carlos Rodríguez-Saltos)

By Carol Clark: Oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” plays a key role in the process of how a young zebra finch learns to sing by imitating its elders, suggests a new study by neuroscientists at Emory University. Scientific Reports published the findings, which add to the understanding of the neurochemistry of social learning. “We found that the oxytocin system is involved from an early age in male zebra finches learning song,” says Natalie Pilgeram, first author of the study and an Emory PhD candidate in psychology. “It’s basic science that may lead to insights into the process of vocal learning across the animal kingdom, including humans.” “Our results suggest that the neurochemistry of early social bonds, particularly during language learning, may be relevant in studies of autism,” adds Donna Maney, a professor of neuroscience in Emory’s Department of Psychology and senior author of the study. Young male zebra finches learn to sing by listening to an adult male tutor that they choose to pay close attention to, normally their biological father or a “foster” father who nurtures them. This social process holds some similarities for how children learn to speak, making the birds a laboratory model for the neural underpinnings of social vocal learning. In the current paper, the researchers show how oxytocin, a hormone essential to social bonding, influences young finches exposed only to the songs of unfamiliar males. In experiments, blocking the young birds’ oxytocin receptors while they listened to a male biased the birds against that male’s song. Instead they preferred to listen to and eventually learn the song of a male they heard when their oxytocin receptors were allowed to function normally. The paper builds on previous work by the Maney lab regarding the hormonal and genetic influences on social behavior. Her lab is working with researchers at the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta to maximize any potential translational impact of its research findings. Finding their voice: Zebra finches are highly social birds. In the wild they nest together in large colonies. Only adult males sing, primarily to court females. From the time they hatch, the males begin listening for song, and memorizing particular songs, even before they can actually sing one. “Up until around day 50, they are making little cheeps and warbles, what we call ‘subsong,’” Pilgeram explains. “It’s similar to human infants who begin to babble at around six months without actually talking.” During this sensitive listening phase, a male zebra finch pays closest attention to the song of its father, even though it can hear other adult males nearby. In a laboratory environment, research shows that if a biological father is removed from a cage before a male hatches and then substituted with a “foster father” that they can interact with, the young male will prefer the song of the foster father over other males it can hear. The young males demonstrate this preference by pressing levers that allow them to hear playback of different songs. Learning from their environment: “The young birds have got to learn all that they can from their environment,” Pilgeram says. “Just as during human development, the birds pay the closest attention to their immediate caregivers, on whom they rely for everything.” Around day 50, the young male finches enter puberty and what is called the “plastic song phase.” During this time, they practice their song motor skills and actively try to produce song. Although they begin to shift their attention away from their fathers and show a preference for hearing songs of other males, each young male still practices dad’s tune. By day 100, most male zebra finches are fully singing their father’s song. They have reached adulthood and their tune has “crystalized” into the song that they will sing for the rest of their lives. In previous research, the Maney lab found that the stronger the preference a male zebra finch shows for its father’s song during the early listening phase, the more closely its crystalized adult song will mimic that of the father. The role of oxytocin: For the current paper, the researchers wanted to test whether the oxytocin system played a role in that preference. The research centered on male juvenile zebra finches hatched in the lab. At day four, the fathers were removed from each of the youngsters’ cages so they were raised only by their mothers. The cages were enclosed in chambers that prevented the young birds from hearing song from other birds housed nearby. Beginning at day 27 in a young bird’s life, it was exposed to a series of tutoring sessions by two different adult male tutors that it had never heard. The tutor’s cage was placed next to the cage of the young bird, or pupil. When it was exposed to one of the tutors, the pupil was given a substance that blocked its oxytocin receptors from activating. When the young bird was exposed to the other tutor it received a control substance that allowed its oxytocin receptors to function normally. After completing a series of tutoring sessions, the pupils were presented with two different levers they could press in their cages. Pressing one lever was more likely to play the song they heard when their oxytocin receptors were blocked. The other lever was more likely to play the song they heard with normally functioning oxytocin. The results showed that early in their development, the juveniles favored the song that they heard when their oxytocin was not blocked. Building on past findings: “We also found that when their oxytocin was not blocked, the birds’ developmental milestones fit the same data curve as in our previous research,” Maney says. “They showed an early preference for the song of one tutor, then switched to preferring the other song during puberty.” The preference flattened out as they began singing the song of their chosen tutor, she adds. And the stronger the preference that they showed for the chosen tutor’s song during the early listening phase, the more closely their own adult song resembled that of the chosen tutor. The researchers also noted behavioral differences in the way the pupils and tutors interacted. With normally functioning oxytocin, a pupil pecked more often at the wall of its cage facing the tutor and more often preened in a fashion known to be associated with focused listening in the birds, compared to when its oxytocin was blocked. “Our results suggest that the oxytocin system is involved in how an animal decides where to focus its attention very early in its life,” Pilgeram says. Co-authors of the study include Carlos Rodríguez-Saltos, who received his doctorate from Emory and is now at Illinois State University; postdoctoral fellow Nicole Baran; research technicians Matthew Davis and Erik Iverson; and Emory undergraduates Sumin Lee, Emily Kim and Aditya Bhise. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Silvio O. Conte Center for Oxytocin and Social Cognition. eScienceCommons: 'Love hormone' guides young songbirds in choice of.

Read More........→March 07, 2024