New ant species discovered in the Amazon likely represents oldest living lineage of ants

This new species of blind, subterranean, predatory ant, Martialis heureka, was discovered in the Amazon by Christian Rabeling at the University of Texas at Austin. It belongs to the first new subfamily of living ants discovered since 1923, and is a descendant of one of the first ant lineages to evolve over 120 million years ago. Credit: Christian Rabeling, the University of Texas at Austin

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A new species of blind, subterranean, predatory ant discovered in the Amazon rainforest by University of Texas at Austin evolutionary biologist Christian Rabeling is likely a descendant of the very first ants to evolve.

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The new ant is named Martialis heureka, which translates roughly to "ant from Mars," because the ant has a combination of characteristics never before recorded. It is adapted for dwelling in the soil, is two to three millimeters long, pale, and has no eyes and large mandibles, which Rabeling and colleagues suspect it uses to capture prey.

The ant also belongs to its own new subfamily, one of 21 subfamilies in ants. This is the first time that a new subfamily of ants with living species has been discovered since 1923 (other new subfamilies have been discovered from fossil ants).

Rabeling says his discovery will help biologists better understand the biodiversity and evolution of ants, which are abundant and ecologically important insects.

"This discovery hints at a wealth of species, possibly of great evolutionary importance, still hidden in the soils of the remaining rainforests," writes Rabeling and his co-authors in a paper reporting their discovery this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Rabeling collected the only known specimen of the new ant species in 2003 from leaf-litter at the Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária in Manaus, Brazil.

He and his colleagues found that the ant was a new species, genus and subfamily after morphological and genetic analysis. Analysis of DNA from the ant's legs confirmed its phylogenetic position at the very base of the ant evolutionary tree.

Ants evolved over 120 million years ago from wasp ancestors. They probably evolved quickly into many different lineages, with ants specializing to lives in the soil, leaf-litter or trees, or becoming generalists.

"This discovery lends support to the idea that blind subterranean predator ants arose at the dawn of ant evolution," says Rabeling, a graduate student in the ecology, evolution and behavior program.

Rabeling does not suggest that the ancestor to all ants was blind and subterranean, but that these adaptations arose early and have persisted over the years.

"Based on our data and the fossil record, we assume that the ancestor of this ant was somewhat wasp-like, perhaps similar to the Cretaceous amber fossil Sphecomyrma, which is widely known as the evolutionary missing link between wasps and ants," says Rabeling.

He speculates that the new ant species evolved adaptations over time to its subterranean habitat (for example, loss of eyes and pale body color), while retaining some of its ancestor's physical characteristics.

"The new ant species is hidden in environmentally stable tropical soils with potentially less competition from other ants and in a relatively stable microclimate," he says. "It could represent a 'relict' species that retained some ancestral morphological characteristics."

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When in Doubt, Spit It Out

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

A DATE WITH DNA K. C. Dustin and his wife, Debra Netschert, give saliva samples.

IT was a funny thing to be doing in a cocktail dress.

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Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Anne Wojcicki and Diane von Furstenberg at the DNA sample party last week.

Debra Netschert, a financial analyst, was sitting next to her husband, K. C. Dustin, an equities salesman, and spitting into a test tube at a party last week in Chelsea to promote a DNA testing company.

As a soundtrack that included “Whole Lotta Love” blasted, the couple were submitting samples for tests that could reveal disturbing news, like his propensity to develop throat cancer or the chances of her having pregnancy complications.

But Ms. Netschert adopted the party mood, focusing, at first, on the less consequential details about her heredity. “I want to figure out why I have freckles,” she said.

It was taking a few minutes to fill the tube with the required amount of saliva, so Ms. Netschert had a dry-mouthed moment to consider what the couple might do if her husband turned out to be carrying a gene that could doom his offspring.

“Then maybe we’ll adopt instead,” she said. “Really.”

Some people might fear a world where widespread DNA testing would remove the mysteries of their futures or even strip them of privacy. But the testing company 23andMe, which was the host of what it billed as a “spit party” in the middle of New York Fashion Week, filled with celebrities, wants people to think of their genomes as a basis for social networking. As in: You are invited to join the group Slow Caffeine Metabolizers.

Co-founded by Anne Wojcicki, the wife of a founder of Google, the company, which has token financial backing from Harvey Weinstein and Wendi Murdoch, hopes to make spitting into a test tube as stylish as ordering a ginger martini.

“It’s fun to learn about your own genome,” the 23andMe Web site says.

Typically, customers register and pay online — the price of a test was cut by nearly two-thirds to $399 last week — and are sent a testing kit. A customer spits into a tube, mails it in, and about a month later receives results via a Web account. The information on 89 genetic markers include details of customers’ ancestry as well as what current research suggests are proclivites to certain diseases and other genetic traits like one’s appetite for sugar and responsiveness to antidepressants.

Customers have been able to share their results with whomever they choose online, or keep the information private, since shortly after the company began offering the tests in November. A new feature allows customers to post DNA-related questions in a community forum.

A select group, which included family and friends of the owners, began using the forum in recent weeks, and some customers have begun networking with others who share their traits, such as lacking a sense of smell. Others are posting notices, seeking those who share a mutation in the gene called ACTN3, which is associated with muscle response, wondering if their fellows share a lack of musical talent.

“If you want to have a community around psoriasis,” Ms Wojcicki said, “we’d like to be able to allow you to form a psoriasis-specific community.”

Ms. Wojcicki’s own offline networking has built support for her company. She met Ivanka Trump in St. Barts, where Ms. Wojcicki and her husband, Sergey Brin, were spending the New Year holiday aboard a boat.

She had met Rupert and Wendi Murdoch, Mr. Weinstein and others at the Allen & Company annual conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2004. This past July, she was back at the conference and told her friends about the idea for the spit party. They offered their support.

“I was sitting at a table at Allen & Company with Wendi Murdoch, Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg, Anderson Cooper and Sergey, and we were talking about tongue curling,” Ms. Wojcicki recalled. “Barry cannot roll his tongue, but Anderson Cooper can do a really complicated four-leaf clover.”

COMPREHENSIVE DNA tests may one day be a normal part of medical care, but right now 23andMe’s efforts to make genetic testing an impulse buy disturbs many researchers.

“People think if you have money to spend on this, why not buy a test instead of a model train for Christmas,” said Dr. Alan Guttmacher, acting director of the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health. “It can be neat and fun, but it can also have deep psychological implications, both for how you view yourself and how others view you, depending on who else has access to the information.”

Ms. Wojcicki and Linda Avey, the company’s other founder, say their chief goal is to advance science by compiling a database of genetic information that medical researchers can tap (while protecting customers’ anonymity). Customers cannot opt out of having their information anonymously shared, but they can refuse to participate in surveys focusing on specific traits.

When customers see their results on the screen, they are instructed about which findings are based on widely accepted science and which are less certain because the research is considered preliminary.

Quintin Lai, a research analyst at the investment firm Robert W. Baird & Company, said 23andMe is following a different business model than its two chief rivals, DeCODEme and Navigenics. When Navigenics releases test results to customers, it assigns a “genetic counselor” who can explain what the results mean.

“If the gatekeeper is going to be a physician,” Mr. Lai said, “then the industry is going to go through the channels of educating physicians that this is a normal test, and physicians will begin recommending it to patients, and the industry’s growth will be much slower.”

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Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Dylan Lauren, Harvey Weinstein and Wendi Murdoch at the DNA sample party last week.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

A photo of Wendi Murdoch loomed over the “spit party.”

As the party throbbed in the ground floor space of Barry Diller’s IAC Building on West 18th Street, Mr. Weinstein, the film producer, who has acquired the Halston clothing brand, joked that DNA testing was as buzzworthy as the fashion shows taking place all week. “Now that I’m in the fashion business,” he said, “I think genetics is a natural extension.”

Ms. Murdoch said she, her two children with Mr. Murdoch, her husband and his 99-year-old mother had all been tested.

“I think she’s the oldest one in the database,” Ms. Murdoch said. She added that she was pleased by results that showed Mr. Murdoch had inherited a gene from his mother associated with the heart, and that she is still hale. (His father died of a heart attack at 67.)

In a telephone interview before the party, Ms. Trump said she and five friends had been tested by 23andMe and used the company’s Web site to share results with one another. “I have a very low chance of becoming obese,” Ms. Trump said. “That makes me exceedingly happy.”

Not everyone is as genetically blessed as Ms. Trump. “There’s been a bit of heckling back and forth across my friend group,” said Ms. Trump, 26. “My oldest and best friend since childhood signed up at the same time as I did, so we have pointed out some of those things. I gave her a little ribbing that she better watch her caloric intake in the next 5 to 10 years.”

Jared Kushner, the owner of The New York Observer, who has dated Ms. Trump, said at the party that he had also been tested. But Ms. Trump said he had not shared his results with her. Asked if she would ditch a suitor if he had unfavorable genetics, she said: “That’s a tough question. I’m going to say no.” She paused. “It depends on what came up though.”

Navigenics and DeCODEme do not offer social networking capabilities. Kari Stefansson, the chief executive of DeCODEme, which is based in Iceland, said 23andMe is in the entertainment business, unlike his company, which has made many genome research discoveries.

“We are looking at DeCODEme as a serious product for analysis of medical issues,” he said.

His company stopped offering its tests for sale to New York State residents, as did Navigenics, after the State Department of Health sent letters informing the companies that it is illegal to offer medical tests in New York without proper licensing. Claudia Hutton, a spokeswoman for the Health Department, said that 23andMe also received such a letter, along with three dozen other DNA-testing companies.

A spokeswoman for 23andMe, Rachel Cohen, said the matter was being negotiated with the state. “We are still talking to them and hammering out the best method to do it to take into account their interest in regulating the industry,” Ms. Cohen said.

Ms. Hutton said that if 23andMe has continued offering tests since receiving their warning letter in December, the company could be fined $2,000 for each test done on a New York resident. There was no sign of a Department of Health inspector at the party.

But Roberto De Mitri, director of product management for a software company, was there. He stood at a computer playing with a 23andMe demonstration.

He said he and his fiancée had talked about how it was scary that someone might insist on seeing a potential mate’s DNA test before moving ahead in a relationship. But his curiosity had been piqued enough that he was spitting into a vial. After all, he said, the sharing of test results would not be that different than vetting a potential partner’s finances before forging ahead.

“You check that now,” he said, clicking on an icon. “Unless you fall completely in love.”

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Large Hadron Collider's Hacker Infiltration Highlights Vulnerabilities

By Brandon Keim

Though the Large Hadron Collider's infiltration by hackers did not disrupt the historic project, experts warn that its computer systems are vulnerable -- though at least their exploitation won't destroy Earth.

Shortly after physicists activated the Collider on Wednesday, hackers identifying themselves as Group 2600 of the Greek Security Team accessed computers connected to the Compact Muon Solenoid detector, one of four key subsystems responsible for monitoring the collisions of protons speeding around the 18-mile track near Geneva, Switzerland.

A few scientists had worried that the experiment could inadvertently create a planet-swallowing black hole. Physicists called this impossible, or at least extraordinarily unlikely. But the hack raises a different sort of worst-case scenario: the largest and most complicated science experiment in history, intended to reveal basic information about the composition of matter, derailed by malevolent intruders.

"The LHC experiments have very complex computer systems for data recording and analysis and even more sensitive systems for experiment control, trigger and data acquisition," said MIT physicist and Collider collaborator Frank Taylor. "You could imagine that penetrating the 'real time domain' could have catastrophic consequences."

The hackers were stopped before they could access the Collider's central computer system, but were described by the Telegraph as being "one step away" from full control of the CMS. They deleted one as-yet publicly unidentified file -- the hacker equivalent, perhaps, of counting coup.

"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," wrote the intruders in a note left on the Collider's website.

"There seems to be no harm done. From what [the computer security team] can tell, it was someone making the point that CMS was hackable," said James Gillies, spokesman for Cern, to the Telegraph.

Computer security at the Collider has received less attention than other aspects of the historic experiment, but insiders have previously expressed concern.

In November, an article in the computer affairs newsletter of CERN -- the European Organization for Nuclear Research, home to the Collider -- warned of potential security breaches.

"Vulnerability scans at CERN using standard IT tools have shown that commercial automation systems often lack even fundamental security precautions: some systems crashed during the scan, while others could easily be stopped or have their process data altered," wrote CERN computer security officer Stefan Luders.

The consequences of a breach, wrote Luders, "are inherent to the design of CERN's accelerators and the affiliated experiments. All run a variety of control systems: some of them are complex, some of them deal with personnel safety, and some of them control or protect expensive or irreplaceable equipment. Thus, CERN's assets and their proper operation are at stake."

But those worried by hacker-unleashed black holes and Big Bang energies can rest easy. "The LHC is just a bunch of magnets that steer the proton beams plus radio frequency cavities to accelerate them," said Northeastern University physicist Stephen Reucroft. "The amount of energy involved is miniscule. Similarly, the CMS is a magnet with a lot of sensors operating under a variety of voltages. Not much damage could be done there by diddling with the computer."

Of course, damage is relative when discussing the controls of a six billion dollar experiment.

"Hacking is a bad thing," said Lee Smolin, a professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics who is not involved with the Collider. "It can damage the work of thousands of people who have been working for decades to advance science."

Images: The endcap of the Compact Muon Solenoid Detector, from WikiMedia Commons; a screenshot of the CMS website (now unavailable) after the hack; and researchers standing inside the CMS, courtesy of the Insitute for Research on the Fundamentals of the Universe.

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