[ad_1]
Pompeii was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, burying its inhabitants under layers of volcanic ash. But the story of the Roman city’s destruction doesn’t end there.
Research published in the journal Frontiers in Earth Science provides evidence that the ancient city of Pompeii was devastated by a major earthquake, a finding that establishes a new timeline for the city’s demise.
Researchers have long believed that seismic activity played a role in the city’s destruction. From his vantage point in a nearby town, the ancient writer Pliny the Younger reported that the eruption of Vesuvius was accompanied by violent shaking. But until now, no evidence has been found to support this historical claim. A team of researchers led by Domenico Sparice of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology decided to investigate this gap in the record.
Sparris said that until now, the excavations at Pompeii had not involved experts in the field of archaeological seismology, which studies the effects of earthquakes on ancient buildings. He said the contribution of experts in the field was key to the discovery. “Past scholars had speculated about the effects of earthquakes, but no factual evidence had been reported until our study,” Sparris said, adding that the discovery was “very exciting.”
The team focused on the island of Chaste Lovers. This area contains several buildings, including a bakery and a house, where the painters were apparently forced to stop work due to the volcanic eruption, leaving the murals unpainted. After excavation and careful analysis, the researchers concluded that the walls of the island collapsed due to an earthquake.
First, they ruled out hazards such as falling debris as the main cause of the damage. Then they compared the damage to known effects of earthquake damage, such as on historic buildings.
The excavation also uncovered a pair of skeletons covered in debris from the island’s inner wall. One of the skeletons even showed signs of trying to hide. Fracture patterns and crush injuries observed in modern earthquake victims suggest these Romans died from building collapse. — Jordan Pearson
Bees flap their wings and the ant invaders fly away
Asian honey bees have an impressive hive-defense arsenal: hypnotic glints to warn off predatory hornets; defensive balls that roast intruders to death with their body heat; and, of course, their venomous stingers, which they use only once in their lives.
Honey bees have added a new weapon to their arsenal: wings. Asian honey bee guardians use their wings to swat pesky ants away from harm, Japanese scientists have found. Slow-motion video accompanying a study in the journal Ecology shows what happens when an ant tries to sneak into a hive entrance: The guard bee leans toward the ant like a tennis player preparing for a backhand shot, then slams the ant with its wings, sending it tumbling in the air before plummeting to the ground.
For Asian honey bees, flapping wings appears to be a low-energy way to shoo away thieves – while Japanese ants don’t usually kill honey bees, they can deplete a hive’s food stores and devour the bees’ protein-rich eggs, the researchers said.
To understand how the strategy works, a team of researchers used slow-motion cameras to film guard bees as they faced various ant species invading their hives.
Replays showed that when the bees flapped their wings, they sent smaller ants flying about half the time. When the flaps missed, the ants occasionally tried to bite the guard bees, but usually “just froze,” said Kiyohito Morii, a behavioral ecologist and author of the study. — Elizabeth Anne Brown
She didn’t like his song, so she tried to eat him
It was already dark when a shrill scream was heard from Coolagang Island, north of Sydney.
John Gould, an ecologist at Newcastle University who is doing postdoctoral research on population declines in green and golden bell frogs, rushed toward the eerie sound. There, in a pond he was surveying, he spotted a scene that could be fit for an amphibian remake of a Hannibal Lecter movie: a large female frog was biting a male by the hind leg and slowly dragging him into a hole.
This is the first time that overt cannibalism has been documented between adults of this species, and it piqued Gould’s interest in further studying the topic. Ultimately, he thinks that when a female frog becomes dissatisfied with a male’s song, she may choose to turn him into a meal.
Females are “almost the ultimate predator of males,” Gould said, because their ears are perfectly tuned to pick up the calls of their future mates.
Cannibalism is well known among amphibians. But usually, the youngest frog, toad, or salamander ends up as dinner. For example, various tadpoles will eat smaller tadpoles to get ahead in life. In some cases, it happens frequently between siblings. In other cases, adult tadpoles sometimes eat eggs or larvae—and researchers recently discovered that giant salamander dads may eat their own children when water conditions are poor.
But cannibalism among adult frogs is rare. In a study published last month in the journal Ecology and Evolution, Gould reviewed the literature and found only a few cases of adult frogs cannibalizing each other—most of which were found in the lab. Almost all of those cases occurred when the females were larger than the males. Females of green and golden bell frogs, for example, can grow to about 2.75 inches long, while males typically top out at less than 2 inches.
Gould thinks female frogs may be able to tell whether a male is more suitable for mating or feeding based on the intensity of his calls, which means male frogs take big risks when trying to attract a mate. “You really have to give male frogs credit for risking their lives to reproduce,” Gould says. “Maybe that’s why you rarely see males and females living side by side in a pond.” — Joshua Rapp-Lane
[ad_2]
Source link
