descobertas que brilham

New Glowing Mushrooms Found in Brazil



Like a black light poster come to life, a group of bioluminescent fungi collected from Ribeira Valley Tourist State Park near São Paulo, Brazil, emanates a soft green glow when the lights go out.
The mushrooms are part of the genus Mycena, a group that includes about 500 species worldwide. Of these only 33 are known to be bioluminescent—capable of producing light through a chemical reaction.
Since 2002 Cassius Stevani, professor of chemistry at the University of São Paulo; Dennis Desjardin, professor of mycology at San Francisco State University in California; and Marina Capelari of Brazil's Institute of Botany have discovered ten more bioluminescent fungi species—four of which are new to science—in Brazil's tropical forests.The work, Stevani says, has increased the number of glowers known since the 1970s by 30 percent.
in National Geo

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Oldest-Ever Bee Found in Amber


October 25, 2006—This tiny, ancient insect has created an enormous buzz.
Melittosphex burmensis, which has been trapped in amber for the past hundred million years, is the oldest bee fossil ever discovered. It lived in northern Myanmar (Burma) in Southeast Asia about 35 million to 45 million years earlier than the next oldest specimens known to science.
The ancient bee shares some traits with its modern relatives but is also quite unlike any other known bee (honeybee photos, facts, more).
"The [previous] oldest bee fossils that we have are essentially fauna that are pretty much like modern groups that you could go out and collect today," said Bryan Danforth, associate professor of entomology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Danforth and colleague George Poinar of Oregon State University in Corvallis will report the find in the October 27 issue of the journal Science.
in National Geo