Bowhead whales (弓头鲸) can live 200 years or longer. How they do it is no longer among the secrets of the deep. Scientists have mapped the genetic code of this long-lived whale species. The international effort found unusual features in the Arctic whale’s genes. Those features likely protect the species against cancer and other problems related to old age.

“We hope to learn what is the secret for living longer, healthier lives,” says João Pedro de Magalhães. He is a gerontologist (a scientist who studies old age) at the University of Liverpool in England. He also is co-author of the study that appeared January 6 in Cell Reports. His team hopes, he says, that its new findings might one day be used “to improve human health and preserve human life.”

No other mammal is known to live as long as the bowhead. Scientists have shown that some of these whales have lived well beyond 100—including one that survived to 211. For perspective, if he were still alive, Abraham Lincoln would be turning just 206 this year. De Magalhães’ team wanted to understand how the bowhead can live so long. To study this, the experts analyzed the animal’s complete set of genetic instructions, called its genome (基因组). Those instructions are coded in the animal’s DNA. The team also compared the whale’s genome to those of people, mice and cows.

The scientists discovered differences, including mutations (突变), in the whale’s genes. Those changes are linked to cancer, aging and cell growth. The results suggest that the whales are better than humans at repairing their DNA. That’s important because damaged or flawed DNA can lead to diseases, including some cancers.

Bowheads also are better at keeping abnormally dividing cells in check. Together, the changes appear to allow bowhead whales to live longer without developing age-related diseases such as cancer, says de Magalhães.

While environmental assessments of new roads focus on the danger of habitat destruction, or bats colliding (碰撞) with traffic, the first ever controlled field experiment to investigate the impact of vehicle noise suggests the thunder of road traffic is likely to drive away bats and cause bat activity to decrease by two-thirds.

Researchers played noise recorded from the A38 dual carriage way in demon, with a “dusk average” of 26 vehicle passing per minute, in locations where different bat species flew and fed. The wild bats, including pipistrelle species, were monitored with bat detectors (探测器) placed beside, and 20 metres away, from the recorded noise.

Ultrasonic (超音速) sounds from vehicle were found to block some bat species' high-frequency echo - location calls, which they use to find insect prey (捕获物) such as moths. But more significant was that most bat species sought to avoid audible (听得见的) traffic noise.

“Just like us, bats are likely to find audible road noise an irritation, something they would prefer to avoid rather than it jamming their echo-location,” said Fiona Matt hews, lead author of the paper in Environmental Pollution.

Matthews said the effect of ordinary traffic noise on bats meant that the negative impact of new roads on bat populations was likely to be more far-reaching than realized.

She said: “This is important, as it means we could expect to see negative effects continue at a considerable distance from the road. We know that lower frequency road noise travels well beyond 50 metres — the scale at which ecological impact assessments are conducted.”

Dr. Henry Schofield, from Vincent Wildlife Trust, which jointly funded the research, said: “We have raised people’s awareness that bat species face barriers in the landscape that impede (妨碍) their ability to access suitable feeding areas and reduce their chances of survival. Along with habitat destruction and artificial lighting at night, this research has added road noise to the list of anthropogenic (人为的) factors reducing habitat quality for these protected species.”

We all feel better after a night's sleep and insects are no different. But new studies have found a commonly used pesticide (农药) is disturbing the sleep of bees and flies. In one study,   researchers gave bees nectar sugar (花蜜糖) mixed with neonicotinoids (烟碱类农药)—one of the most commonly used pesticides—and then tracked their movements.

The impact of the pesticide — similar to the amount a bee would encounter in the wild —was terrible. “It seems to disturb the body clock in bees — they are sleeping a lot more in the daytime. It's causing the disorder of timing of their normal behaviors,” Kiah Tasman, lead author of the studies, said.

This, she explained, could have serious results. “It's quite worrying because our studies show that their motivation of searching for food has decreased. Besides, many plants including the fruit and vegetables and so on rely on pollinators (传粉者), like bees, to reproduce (繁殖). Bees take on a big share of this workload. Pollinators, most often honey bees, are responsible for one in every three bites of food we take, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, and they increase crop values in the US by more than $15 billion each year,” Tasman added.

But bees are under threat because of widespread pesticide use, habitat loss and the climate crisis. “If the time they are managing to go out and search for food is at night-time when many flowers aren't available, that's going to hugely reduce how successful they are at collecting the food that the colony needs to grow and reproduce,” Tasman said. “It could also affect how well bees are able to care for their young. Meanwhile, the same pesticide has already been found to damage the brains of baby bees.”

In a second study, the researchers focused their attention on flies, again exposing them to neonicotinoids. The results showed that the pesticide was working directly on the cells in the brain that run the body clock, which decides when sleep and activity happen in a day, and confusing them.