In age of covid-19, integrating sample preservation and collection into scientific study will add a tool to humanity’s arsenal against animal-borne plagues, report says.
MINDY WEISBERGER, LIVE SCIENCE
15 JANUARY 2021
A desert gecko from Namibia has brilliant glow-in-the-dark markings that shine neon green by the light of the moon. The mechanism that produces its glow has never been seen before in land animals with backbones.
Web-footed geckos (
Pachydactylus rangei) have translucent skin with large, yellowish markings: stripes on their sides and rings surrounding their eyes. But those markings light up brightly when they absorb the moon s bluer light.
Fluorescence when light is absorbed and then emitted at a longer wavelength has been found in other reptiles and amphibians, produced by their bones or by chemical secretions in their skin. However, web-footed geckos generate their light using skin pigment cells that are filled with guanine crystals.
E-Mail
It s been more than a year since the first cases were identified in China, yet the exact origins of the COVID-19 pandemic remain a mystery. Though strong evidence suggests that the responsible coronavirus originated in bats, how and when it crossed from wildlife into humans is unknown.
In a study published online Jan.12 in the journal
mBio, an international team of 15 biologists say this lack of clarity has exposed a glaring weakness in the current approach to pandemic surveillance and response worldwide.
In most recent studies of animal-borne pathogens with the potential to spread to humans, known as zoonotic pathogens, physical specimens of suspected wildlife hosts were not preserved. The practice of collecting and archiving specimens believed to harbor a virus, bacteria or parasite that s under investigation is called host vouchering.