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No wrong way to make a tadpole + Bizarre new Zika infection in Utah

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There’s No Wrong Way to Make a Tadpole (or Froglet)
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-na...180959824/

EXCERPT: You’re probably familiar with the story of how frogs make more frogs. It goes like this: When a lady frog and a dude frog love each other very much, they play a little game of piggyback that results in fertilized eggs. They deposit those eggs into a pond or stream where they will eventually hatch into tadpoles. After a few weeks, those little squigglies turn into adult frogs through the magic of metamorphosis.

The problem is, that neat template isn’t strictly true. Some frog species lay eggs in trees. Others lay their eggs on land. Heck, some helicopter-parenting frogs superglue their eggs to mom’s back and carry them everywhere until they’re fully formed froglets. There are even frog species who skip the whole tadpole thing altogether and others that give live-birth—out of their mouths. Yeah.

When it comes to frog reproduction, scientists are finding that exceptions are the rule. “I don’t think people have a clue as to how unique some of these frogs are in their developmental and reproductive patterns,” says Kenneth Dodd, a herpetologist at the University of Florida and author of Frogs of the United States and Canada. Partially, that's because we’re sheltered: Many of our researchers come from places like the U.S., where amphibians tend to follow the “traditional” trajectory of egg-tadpole-frog.

For the really freaky stuff, it turns out, you have to look to the tropics. So hop along for the ride, and get ready: It's going to get weird....



New Utah Zika Case Baffles Health Officials
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/19/health...-case.html

EXCERPT: The Zika virus continues to surprise. On Monday, the Utah Department of Health reported that a new case had been diagnosed that did not appear to have be contracted through the two known sources of transmission: a mosquito bite or sexual contact. The patient, who has since fully recovered, was a “family contact” who helped care for an older man who had become infected with the virus after traveling abroad.

The Zika virus is spread mostly by mosquitoes and has caused more than 1,500 cases of birth defects in newborns in Latin America, where it has spread rapidly, and even in the United States, mostly in pregnant women who traveled to countries where it is circulating. In the United States and its territorieas, there are several hundred pregnant women that have been infected with the Zika virus, with the largest concentration in Puerto Rico.

The new case is something of a medical mystery: Zika is known to be transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito and through sex, but neither seemed to be a plausible explanation for what happened in Utah. “We have found no evidence that mosquitoes here in Utah are transmitting the Zika virus...”

A Bizarre New Zika Infection In Utah
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archiv...ah/491750/
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