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captainswaglord500 · 3 months

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Desert Banshee

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class/Clade: Reptilia (Sauropsida)

Clade: Diapsida

Clade: Archosauria

Clade: Dinosauria

Clade: Saurischia

Clade: Eusaurischia

Clade: Theropoda

Clade: Neotheropoda

Superfamily: Coelophysoidea

Family: Coelophysidae

Subfamily: Allophysinae

Genus: Aravadromeus

Species: A. kakophonia (”dissonant runner of the Arava Desert”)

Ancestral species: Coelophysis bauri

Temporal range: late Pliocene to recent (3 mya - present)

Information:

While this creature superficially resembles an odd cross between a proceratosaurid and an ornithomimid, its origins actually lie far closer to the base of the theropod family tree: this odd creature is, in fact, a highly-derived coelophysid. Outside of its appearance, however, it has one notable difference: at some point within the last 30 million or so years, its lineage has made the switch from carnivory to herbivory. While the desert banshee feeds primarily on desert shrubs, fruits, leaves, and grasses, facultative carnivory has been observed: they are known to occasionally hunt and eat small birds, reptiles, and mammals, and females may do this leading up to when they lay their eggs. (But that’s a story for a little latter). As with many animals inhabiting the Arava Desert (though it also inhabits the grasslands and dry forests much further north in smaller densities and parts of the jungle to the east, though the latter may actually be a distinct but closely-related species), it is quite hardy, able to go long periods without food or water by storing fat in its tail.

In addition to their dietary switch, they have also developed unique behaviors to accommodate such changes: as the desert banshee is rather small, only around 8-9 feet in length, 3-4 feet at the hip, and around 70-80 lbs, it is a prime target for many desert predators, including the many species of carnivorous theropods and synapsids (including humans) who inhabit the region. As such, this animal is built for speed, being able to run up to 40 miles per hour in short bursts and preferring to flee from predators. However, if cornered or injured, it will not hesitate to put up a fight, making use of its two large ankle spurs to slash at its attackers. Additionally, it is nocturnal, preferring to travel at night to both avoid the scorching desert sun and to find new feeding grounds. While the obvious assumption would be that these animals would additionally flock together for protection, desert banshees deeply detest sharing space with congeners, and territorial confrontations can get bloody very quickly. However, it frequently travels with large flocks of ornithomimids for protection. The relationship this creature has with its larger distant cousins may be described as a form of commensalism: in exchange for protection, the desert banshee acts as a watchman of sorts to the ornithomimids, alerting the flock when predators are near with the deafeningly shrill, shrieking call that gave it its name. (Among its repertoire of other sounds are clucks and “drums” to communicate with its ornithomimid protectors long-distance and hissing when threatened or otherwise angered). In a rare example of non-primate social grooming, this creature will readily allow the ornithomimids it lives around to groom its feathers and remove parasites.

Just about the only time when these creatures will tolerate one another is when they are ready to mate: while these animals mate year-round, most mating occurs in late spring to early summer. With only slight sexual dimorphism, the males and females are not always easy to tell apart. Both have the same coloring: a white crest with black stripes, a white beak with black spots, creamy blue skin, dark blue spots on the wattle, grey feathers with black bands, and brown-to-black eyes. However, the female being able to distinguish herself by her warbling call which signals she is sexually receptive. Flashing his bright wattle, the male will flick his head up and down as part of a mating dance to get the female’s attention. If she accepts his display, the pair will walk side-by-side in synchronized movement, warbling and cooing while bobbing their heads up and down. After this display is over, the pair will mate and go separate ways. In the few weeks leading up to laying her clutch, the female may become facultatively carnivorous in order to obtain the calcium needed to produce her eggs. She will lay a clutch of 3-5 eggs in due time, and after a few weeks, they will hatch. However, she can retain the eggs inside her for an extended period of time until conditions are favorable or to synchronize the birth of her chicks with those of the ornithomimid flocks she follows. For the first 1.5 years of their life, the young are dependent on their mother as they reach near-adult age, at which point they are chased away and must find their own herd to follow. By 2.5 years, they will have reached sexual maturity and will be ready to mate, and if they can successfully avoid predators, they can expect to live 12-14 years in the wild and, if born in captivity, 20-30 years.

This species’ relationship with humans is one which is both riddled with mutualism and marred by tragedy: the desert banshee’s naturally social nature makes it exceptionally tame when raised in captivity, and some nomadic Lowland Xenogaean tribes keep them as their equivalent to sheepdogs. They are also known to be quite affectionate with their caretakers. Their ability to run fast in short bursts has also made them quite common as race animals which betters will gamble on. This species is also a frequent pest in the desert city of Tairokôna, where its habit of eating local crops and decorative plants have put it at odds with the city’s denizens. In addition to being used as a shepherd animal by Lowland Xenogaeans, they have also long been a source of food, with cut marks on fossil bones dated to around 50,000 years ago indicating that ancient humans in the area butchered and ate these animals. At one point, wild desert banshee numbers were driven so low due to pressures put on them by human hunters, that these animals experienced a bottleneck where smaller animals went on to breed and pass on their genes, meaning the modern population may be as much as 15% smaller than the Plio-Pleistocene variant of this species. Thankfully, its numbers have rebounded significantly in modern times, albeit they are still proportionally small and at risk of extinction in the wild, with only around 30,000 wild specimens across their entire range. At one point, this animal was also one of most trafficked and poached animals in the entire region, being hunted specifically for its bony crest in addition to its meat. Though its numbers rebounded significantly, there are a number of zoos and private collections across the world which still have illegally-bought desert banshees and their goods, particularly in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Even amongst Xenogaean aristocracy (Xenogaea being the larger of 1 of 2 nations inhabiting the archipelago), this animal is frequently seen as an exotic pet, and the King of Xenogaea, Tlahula I, has an entire stable of captive-bred desert banshees which have been selectively bred for several generations. Nowadays, most desert banshees killed for human consumption are captive-bred, with some debate over whether or not they may be undergoing domestication and if the captive-bred populations should be counted as a distinct species or subspecies from the wild one. However, the lack of morphological differences would seem to suggest that the captive-bred population are merely just that: captive-bred specimens of a wild species. Fossils of this species go back to at least the late Pliocene around 3 million years ago, though similar species are known from fossils in what is now the western grasslands as far back as the Eocene some 34 million years ago. Genetic divergence suggests it diverged from its closest living relatives over 150 million years ago, predating the split of most modern mammal lineages.

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twf2020 · 1 year

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India is losing her primates to the illegal wildlife trade

Macaques, the old robust primate are the most geographically distributed non-human primate, with about 22 species throughout the world and 12 species throughout Asia mainland. Out of 10 macaque species found in India, the rhesus macaques (Macaca Malatta) were commonly exported for the research and testing because of their anatomical and physiological closeness to human. Besides rhesus, other macaque species like long tailed macaque, crab eating macaque, pig tailed macaque and bonnet macaques also played an important role in the development of various vaccines. For this reason, they have faced the brunt of the illegal wildlife trade.

India has been exporting macaques to North America and Europe in the 20th century, export began to fall from 50,000 to 30,000 a year in 1975 and then from 30,000 to 12,000 a year until the ban in 1978.

Scientific, Cultural and Political Motive behind Macaque’s Export

Macaques were essential for the biomedical research, especially for the poliomyelitis research and endocrinological studies, Species like Rhesus Macaque helped in the development of rabies, small pox and polio vaccines, Rh factor discovery in blood and treatment of reproductive disorder which was one of the many widespread diseases prevailing in India and as India was not in a strong state to develop such crucial vaccine at that period therefore exports were made for the experimental research and mass production of such vaccines. With the macaque’s export, India was trying to tackle not only the prevailing diseases but also the rising macaque-human conflict.

Cultural motive behind exporting macaques is backed by the religious belief, the monkeys (macaques) hold a sacred place in India (among Hindu and Buddhist) due to the Monkey god ‘Hanuman’ therefore even after a rise in the case of human-macaque conflict, the killing of macaques was never considered as an option to control the population therefore the export at that time came out as the best possible solution to reduce cases of conflict. Cultural motives have resulted in the illegal wildlife trade of countless species. This includes snake charming and dancing bears.

Political motive was somewhat based on the mixed factors. Firstly, the macaque’s export began under the period of British rule, when there was no influence or existence of the Indian government and besides that, Britisher and Indian Government (after independence) were earning the foreign exchange. Secondly, after the independence, the newly formed government was not in the situation to keep a check on macaques-human conflict through the immunocontraception and other scientific ways, therefore during the 1950’s there was a periodical ban on the export until the government got into a good position to permanently banned the macaque’s export.

Development of ban on Export

Despite the several benefits obtained from the experiments conducted on macaques, it was the most miserable life for the macaque, and for such smart species there could have been nothing worst then cages. In the 1950’s there was periodical embargoes on export placed by the Indian government after the Hindu’s and Buddhist’s response on the harsh method of trapping, caging and transporting the macaques to western world, besides the reverence for monkeys, the news about the weapon related research by the US Defence Nuclear Agency on macaques also played an important role in the complete ban on the export from India.

Conflict with human and other species

Destruction of natural habitats by the clearance of forest or deforestation for the non-forest purpose resulted in the shortage of food and fragmentation of groups, forcing them to move to rural and urban areas in search of food, creating a conflict situation, which became a matter of concern as these commensal primate causes financial damages (crop destruction, damage to tangible assets) and injuries to both human and macaques, there has been increasing case of conflict where macaques has been kidnapping and killing new born, death of 65 years old by stone pelting by a troop of macaque and many more such incidents.

The translocation of rhesus macaques due to the conflict with humans has led to their widespread establishment in various geographical regions outside their native realm, which caused an extension and creation of new exotic population of the species, creating a pressure on the already existing animal and plant species, due to the absence of any previous exposure to invasive species like macaques, the plants and animals had no evolutionary feature to protect themselves, causing an extinction of native biodiversity, for examples, macaques raids on birds nest for eggs and chicks, they destroys the fruits before maturing and kills the seed, chew the orchids, branches, seedlings, making their environment inhospitable for the small vertebrates. Before 1940 the only macaque species found in Mumbai was Bonnet macaque until the introduction of Rhesus.

Conclusion

Scientific, Political and Cultural motive of exporting the macaques were somehow connected with each other through a thin thread of mitigating the macaque – human conflict situation, but with the time the country became competent enough to find their own ways of tackling the situation without making the life of macaque miserable, in which the religious factor played an important role, putting a ban on the practice of exporting macaques.

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This was first published on Think Wildlife Foundation.

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thejunglenook · 6 years

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Inspiration for Dr. Seuss's 'The Lorax' may be from real plant and animal life in Kenya

(via Science Daily, 7/23/18)

Ever since "The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss (the pen name for Theodor Geisel), was first published in August of 1971, it has captured the minds of young readers. It's been translated into 15 languages and more than 1.6 million copies were sold by 2010. The short and spunky, furry orange creature called the Lorax, who "speaks for the trees," is famous for his environmental pleas, as he demands that the Once-ler stop cutting down the Truffula trees to make yarn for the Thneeds. (...) Historical records indicate that Geisel wrote 90 percent of "The Lorax" while visiting Mount Kenya Safari Club in September 1970. That was the year that the U.S. environmental movement was born with the creation of the National Environmental Protection Act, Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The illustrations of "The Lorax" provide important clues. For example, the spiky, barren trees outside the Once-ler's home look like the whistling thorn acacia (Acacia drepanolobium), a common tree found on the Laikipia plateau in Kenya. If Geisel noticed these trees while he was there, then he probably also saw patas monkeys (Erythrocebus patas), which rely on the acacia tree for more than three-fourths of their diet. The acacia tree and the patas monkey have a commensal relationship in which neither species is harmed. It is this very notion of commensalism that grounds the story of "The Lorax," according to the research team."

The proposal that the patas monkey might be the real-life referent for Dr. Seuss's Lorax introduces an interpretation of the children's tale that undermines the core assumption of human exceptionalism. If we really want this biodiverse planet to thrive, we cannot consider ourselves as separate from the environment. This is the deep message of the Lorax: He is a part of the ecological system not apart from it," explains co-author Donald E. Pease, a professor of English and the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth. Pease is an expert on Theodor Geisel and author of "Theodor Seuss Geisel" (Oxford University Press, 2010).

"If the Lorax is genuinely part of the environment, he is modeling the attitude we need to assume," adds Pease.

(continue reading)

#Ethology #Primatology #Dr. Seuss #Biology #Zoology #my favourite book #my favourite monkey #because patas monkeys #my first primate study was on patas and acacia gum #so this little essay just brings joy to my heart #commensalism

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tribbetherium · 3 years

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The Late Therocene: 75 million years post-establishment

Welcome to the Jungle: Tropical Forests of Lacero

While North Ecatoria has broken off from the Ecatorian mainland in the Late Therocene, another landmass has split off this time from the southeastern side of Ecatoria: the continent of Lacero. This small continent is primarily tropical rainforest: its trees are mostly those of citrus and stonefruit, as usual, while grasses and cloverferns grow all across the forest floor. Some cloverferns have converged with vines, climbing up trees in a race for sunlight, while certain grasses evolved to become similar to bromeliads: sprouting on the trunks and branches of trees with gaudy colors that complete the look of a wild and wonderful jungle landscape. Like the animals, the plants here compete fiercely in the struggle to survive: the trees develop partnerships with the plants that grow on them, be it parasitic, commensal, or even mutualistic.

This lush tropical jungle is home to thousands of different species, living in different levels and regions of the forest. Down below on the forest floor, different herbivores thrive, feeding on low-growing plants, roots and fungi, as well as fallen seeds and fruit. Bumbaruskas (Bumbaceros tetrodon), small grazers of relation to the carnivorous beelzeboars, forage here on the damp ground, while small basal hamtelopes like the llamlings (Longicollimys spp.) and ledonkes (Asinomimomys spp.) rummage about in the low-lying vegetation, grazing and browsing on whatever plants are in their reach.

Smaller carnivores also make a living in the forest floor, where they take advantage of the variety of herbivores present here. Some are part-time predators, such as the grizzlets (Nanoursulus minimus), a very small basal hamyena, and the only other one still extant aside from its bigger cousins in North Ecatoria, that has adapted to a diet of insects, fruits and fungi but will take on young bumbaruskas or hamtelopes if it can. Others are strict carnivores that go after larger game: the tattooed warhound (Guerrocyon khani) is the largest of the ground predators, and typically hunts in pairs, their favored targets being hamtelopes but as a team fully capable of taking an adult male bumbaruska head-on.

Higher up in the canopy, ratbats of a wide assortment of species take residence, with some, such as brown ratbats (Musculonyctus spp.) being small swift-like insectivores, while others, such as firebats (Pyronyctus spp.) and battacans (Erythrocephalonyctus spp.) being fruit-eaters and thus important seed dispersers. Like the walkabies, their diet of colorful fruit came hand-in-hand with improved color vision, and in turn gaudier display colors used to communicate and attract mates.

But the treetops of the Laceroan forests are dominated by the lemunkies: a group of primate-like hamsters descended from the arboreal squizzels. They too have developed color vision and impressive coloration, such as the rainbow squimian (Spectrosimius bahagri) and the painted rafreeki (Notodril papioides), two species with brightly-colored, larger males that display to harems of females with their noisy territorial displays and colorful bodies, with pigments obtained from their food and thus bright colors signify a strong and well-fed potential mate for any prospective female. Other lemunkies, such as the gronke (Primatocricetus spp.) use their coloration more on camouflage, blending in with the branches and trees with its distinctive patterns of browns, yellows and pale greens.

While most lemunkies are social, active, colorful and intelligent, there is one unusual outlier in this family of the bright and brilliant: the slow-moving, leaf-eating koanda (Melanonasus ailuropoides). Slow-moving, nocturnal and very lethargic in its movements, this species is notable for its diet of tough, toxic leaves that offer very little nutrition. To cope, it greatly reduced its caloric needs and metabolism by sacrificing its most energy-hungry organ of all: its brain. It may seem counterintuitive for a creature to evolve to be incredibly dim-witted, especially in sharp contrast to its clever cousins, but evolution doesn't always succeed with the strongest, fastest or smartest, making animals "better": the koanda's foul diet is one it has no competition for, as nothing else eats the stuff, and also is the source of toxins that give the koanda a terrible smell and thus unappealing and malodorous to predators.

Intelligence, sociability or being just plain smelly benefits the lemunkies well in the treetops of Lacero, as a predator like no other hunts in the canopy above: the tigerillas (Pantheropithecus spp.). Descended from the treegers, this 200-pound predator is a tree-dwelling specialist adapted for hunting lemunkies, with a bizarre mixture of features seemingly combining those from big cats, apes and the Madagascan fossa alike. Grasping paws on both front and hind limbs allow it to scale up trees with little effort, chasing its prey onto precarious branches, while poweful jaws can seize its prey even midair as they try to leap to safety. Its long prehensile fingers leave the tigerilla unable to retract its claws, and as such on the ground it walks on its heels and knuckles to avoid blunting its weaponry, and furthering its convergent, uncanny resemblance to an ape-- at least at first glance.

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#speculative evolution #speculative biology #spec evo #speculative zoology #hamster's paradise

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thedearidiot · 3 years

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“Commensality, as anyone who has participated in an uncomfortable holiday dinner can attest, does not always produce social pleasure. In fact, some of the most interesting meals in life and in literature are difficult, dangerous, even downright violent. The banquet scene in Act 3 of Macbeth, in which Macbeth continually witnesses the ghost of Banquo sitting in his seat while his wife frantically tries to reassure her guests that their king is not losing his mind, provides a case in point. The scene offers a study in the collapse of conviviality through the performance of commensality. It is the climax of the play’s emotional arc, not a failure but a great tragic success. The scene reminds us that meals, speaking in evolutionary terms, are charged with risk – here is a group of people, often armed with knives, tearing into other organisms with their teeth. What holds them back from eating each other is only, in the final analysis, a delicate web of fellow feeling, social graces, taboos, and rules of etiquette that stretch back into our cannibal primate past. Literature finds power in disjunction; the disjunction between eating a meal together and enjoying it, or between eating with the other and eating the other, is one of its great sources of lyric and narrative engagement.”

- David B. Goldstein, Food and Literature.

#prose #william shakespeare #the hole in my belly has started growing #la tour d'amour #david goldstein

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ntrending · 6 years

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Dr. Seuss might have written the Lorax after seeing these creatures in Kenya

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/dr-seuss-might-have-written-the-lorax-after-seeing-these-creatures-in-kenya/

Dr. Seuss might have written the Lorax after seeing these creatures in Kenya

He is the Lorax. He speaks for the truffula trees. His origins are never explicitly addressed in the illustrated children’s book that bears his name, but new research reports that his tubby poise was inspired by a real animal—the patas monkey—and the monkey’s bond with a real tree, the whistling thorn acacia. In fact, the research argues, it may have even been their close relationship that got Theodor Seuss Geisel, known to generations of children as Dr. Seuss, to write it.

The story of this research begins at a Dartmouth College faculty dinner, where evolutionary biologist Nathaniel Dominiy ended up sitting with renowned Seuss expert Don Pease. The biologist says he was at a bit of a loss for what to talk about, but thankfully, “I have two kids… and so I’m pretty familiar with Dr. Seuss’s work.” One thing he’d noticed in the course of his fieldwork in Kenya: a monkey found near Mount Kenya, the patas monkey, bore a strong resemblance to the fictional Lorax. What Dominiy didn’t know was that Dr. Seuss had once visited a resort in that part of Kenya—in fact, he actually wrote most of the Lorax there after suffering from a prolonged bout of writer’s’ block.

Initially, says Pease, he was skeptical of the idea that the monkey may have inspired Seuss. By late 1970, when Seuss started writing The Lorax, he’d been creating illustrated books full of fantastical characters and absurd made-up words for more than three decades. He had plenty of wondrous characters to draw from, and there was no reason to think he’d look elsewhere.

“But then, I thought about what it might add to the established understanding of the Lorax,” Pease said. A common perception of the Lorax is as a grouchy environmental crusader or “eco-policeman” who comes in from outside to “speak for” an environment in which he has no stake.

But if the Lorax’s relationship with the truffula trees mirrored that of the patas monkeys and the tree from which they derive more than 80 percent of their food, he was both an advocate for the environment and as much part of it as the Bar-ba-loots, Swanee-Swans and Humming-Fish who rely on the truffula ecosystem. Then the message becomes, “Human beings should understand themselves as a part of the environment,” Pease says. After all, as climate change fundamentally alters our planet, we’re all in the same straits as the Lorax and his fellow creatures.

Pease and Dominiy embarked on a quest to assess whether the patas monkey may have inspired Seuss, using facial analysis. They compared the Lorax’s whiskery mug to five Kenyan monkeys and another Seuss creature commonly cited as an antecedent. The method they used, Eigenface analysis, compares images by looking for facial features and calculating their relationship to one another. Faces with more similar relationships look more similar to one another. In this case, they found that the Lorax’s face is more like those of three of the monkeys, including the patas monkey, than that of the other Seuss creature. Furthermore, the researchers write, “even the voice of the Lorax (a ‘sawdusty sneeze’) resembles the ‘whoo-wherr’ vocalization of patas monkeys.”

“We also know that he was very impressed by the local trees,” says Dominiy. The patas monkeys and the whistling thorns have what’s known as a commensal relationship, where the monkeys prune and maintain the trees, which provide their main sources of food. Because of these attentions, they have an odd, scrubby, tall appearance.

In 1971, when The Lorax was first published, the modern American environmental movement was still in its infancy. What Seuss wrote down, teaching generations of children, was the basis of what’s known as a “trophic cascade,” says Dominiy. In other words: “When you remove a piece of the community, the rest of that community starts to fall apart.” These might seem like obvious concepts today, but at the time, they weren’t understood outside academia, he says. Seuss helped to change that.

Although these things may have inspired Seuss, patas monkeys and whistling acacias have not yet suffered the dismal fate of the truffulas and the creatures who relied on them, says primate ecologist Lynne Isbell. Isbell, who was not involved with this paper, has worked extensively with patas monkeys in the past. The monkeys aren’t yet endangered, she says, but their ecosystem is not as stable as it once was. The monkeys are losing food and habitat as the human population expands into a landscape that can’t even support the current level of human incursion. In this case, a major factor are local people, who rely on charcoal made from the acacia, cutting the trees down to make fuel.

“Unless people can find some better fuel source… I don’t see much hope for [the patas monkeys],” she says. And, just like the character they inspired, the monkeys don’t control the fate of the trees. The conservation of this habitat can only come at the behest of the people who live there. In other words; Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Written By Kat Eschner

#Science

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healthtimetaylor · 5 years

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Antiretroviral therapy administration in healthy rhesus macaques is associated with transient shifts in intestinal bacterial diversity.

PMID: J Virol. 2019 Jul 3. Epub 2019 Jul 3. PMID: 31270225 Abstract Title: Antiretroviral therapy administration in healthy rhesus macaques is associated with transient shifts in intestinal bacterial diversity and modest immunological perturbations. Abstract: Gastrointestinal immune system competency is dependent upon interactions with commensal microbiota, which can be influenced by wide-ranging pharmacologic interventions. In SIV-infected Asian macaque models of HIV infection, we previously noted that initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) is associated with a specific imbalance (dysbiosis) of the composition of the intestinal bacteriome. To determine if ART itself might contribute to dysbiosis or immune dysfunction, we treated healthy rhesus macaques with protease-, integrase- or reverse transcriptase inhibitors for 1-2 or 5-6 weeks and evaluated intestinal immune function and the composition of the fecal bacterial microbiome. We observed that individual antiretrovirals (ARVs) modestly altered intestinal T-cell pro-inflammatory responses without disturbing total or activated T-cell frequencies. Moreover, we observed transient disruptions in bacterial diversity coupled with perturbations in the relative frequencies of bacterial communities. Shifts in specific bacterial frequencies were not persistent post-treatment, however, with individual taxa showing only isolated associations with T-cell pro-inflammatory responses. Our findings suggest that intestinal bacterial instability and modest immunological alterations can result from ART itself. These data could lead to therapeutic interventions which stabilize the microbiome in individuals prescribed ART.Dysbiosis of the fecal microbiome is a common feature observed in ARV-treated people living with HIV. The degree to which HIV infection itself causes this dysbiosis remains unclear. Here we demonstrate that medications used to treat HIV infection can influence the composition of the GI tract immune responses and its microbiome in the non-human primate SIV model.

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health-jobs · 7 years

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Aging Immune Dysregulation

Position Description: The Immunoregulation Section, LMBI, National Institute on Aging (NIA), is looking for a highly motivated, post-doctoral researcher to study the role of commensal microbiome in dysregulation of immune responses in aging and its relevance in aging-associated neuro-inflammatory diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. The work will involve cultivation and use of select commensal bacteria and their metabolites in rodents and possibly primates as well in vivo and ex vivo functional analysis of immune cells in the gut, omentum and brain. Qualifications: Applicants must have received a Ph.D. or equivalent degree, and have extensive experience in Immunology Microbiology and Molecular Biology (preferably with a hands-on knowledge of Neuro-inflammation and Mucosal immunity).

To Apply: To apply, please click on the button below, or submit letter of interest, curriculum vitae, and references to: Arya Biragyn, Ph.D., Chief, Immunoregulation section, NIH/NIA/IRP, Biomedical Research Center, 251 Bayview Blvd, Baltimore, MD 21224 USA. Phone: 410-558-8680, or e-mail: [email protected]

The NIH is dedicated to building a diverse community in its training and employment programs.

Recent Publications from the Section: 1. Lee-Chang C, Bodogai M, Moritoh K, et al. Accumulation of 4-1BBL+ B cells in the elderly induces the generation of granzyme-B+ CD8+ T cells with potential antitumor activity. Blood. 2014;191:4141-4151. 2. Lee-Chang C, Bodogai M, Moritoh K, et al. Aging Converts Innate B1a Cells into Potent CD8+ T Cell Inducers. J Immunol. 2016;196:3385-3397. 3. Bodogai M, Moritoh K, Lee-Chang C, et al. Immunosuppressive and Prometastatic Functions of Myeloid-Derived Suppressive Cells Rely upon Education from Tumor-Associated B Cells. Cancer Res. 2015;75:3456-3465.

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#HealthJobs #HealthcareJobs via hj on Inoreader

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