#Sterile flies save food crops, millions of dollars in eradication effortsirradiated sterile flies dropped over seaports
But blasting these secret-suitor insects with radiation via electron beams X-rays or gamma-rays tends to make them weaker than typical males
What sterile-insect operations need says University of Florida insect physiologist Daniel Hahn is the insect world's version of George Clooney:
and last that sterilizing insects in a low-oxygen environment helps create suitors who more closely resemble the suave Clooney than do sterilized those in a normal-oxygen environment.
Our males (insects) are not only more sexually competitive they are maintaining their sexual competitiveness and their virility into old age Hahn said
The sterile insect technique or SIT has been used for decades and is considered a much preferable alternative to spraying pesticides over urban or suburban areas near major ports.
In this biological control method large numbers of sterile male insects are released to compete with wild males for the attention of invasive wild females.
The technique has been used effectively against the Mediterranean fruit fly called the Medfly and the cattle-infesting screw-worm fly among others.
Florida spends roughly $6 million a year using SIT to prevent Mediterranean fruit fly infestations while California spends about $17 million a year.
Because of the inherent dangers in importing even one Mediterranean fruit fly into the state in their recent studies LÃ pez-Martã nez and Hahn investigated the physiological effects of applying low-oxygen treatments prior
to and during irradiation sterilization on two other plant pests: the Caribbean fruit fly and the invasive cactus moth.
The low-oxygen effect has been known for decades but the physiological basis for it had never been tested rigorously
They suspected and found that under the low-oxygen conditions the insects'cells would produce antioxidants that can help better protect them from the off-target radiation damage.
Some operations that rear and sterilize insects such as one in Guatemala that produces many of the sterile medflies dropped over Florida's major ports roughly every seven days do employ low-oxygen conditions called hypoxia or anoxia.
and sterilize the cactus moth. The reseachers found using a low-oxygen environment during sterilization boosted the sterile males'longevity as well as their ability to attract and successfully mate.
They found that the positive effects of low-oxygen treatments even extended into their'old age'--in the insects'case about 30 days under cushy laboratory conditions.
#Moths trapped with plant-produced sex pheromonea collaborative experiment involving a Kansas State university biochemist may mark the beginning of an effective environmentally friendly plant-based method of insect control.
and moth enzymes to engineer plants that emitted sex pheromones that mimic those naturally produced by two species of moths.
The research recently appeared in the journal Nature Communications A plant factory for moth pheromone production.
Pheromones are released chemicals from the body of animals and insects that are used to attract mates or relay danger.
Currently insect pests are managed with pesticides and synthetic pheromones--the latter of which confuse the insect and prevent it from breeding
or enable it to be trapped. While these pheromones can be made chemically it can be a toxic process to produce them Durrett said.
What we demonstrated in this study is a more environmentally friendly approach that avoids the need to use toxic chemicals
The study focused on the bird-cherry ermine moth and the orchard ermine moth--two insects that feed on the leaves of orchard trees
and as caterpillars can strip trees of their bark. Durrett helped the Swedish researchers use enzymes from plants
and moths to create a biological pathway that made it possible for plants to produce the moths'sex pheromones.
He contributed an enzyme from the burning bush plant that performed the final step in the synthesis process essentially turning plants into pheromone production factories.
The result was plants that produced pheromones that mimicked the sex pheromones of both moth species. The Swedish researchers baited moth traps with the plant-produced pheromone.
They found that each trap attracted an average of 130 male moths--half the number of catches possible with synthetic pheromones
While a proof-of-concept experiment engineering plants to be insect pheromone-producing factories creates an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides as well as an easier
and less expensive method of synthesizing insect pheromones Durrett said. None of the enzymes that were put together would interact with each other naturally so it was really exciting to see this pathway work
%The introduction of this oilseed preparation into the diet of ruminants also improves efficiency in the use of digestible organic matter by between 4. 4%and 10.1
#Genetic secret of mosquito resistance to DDT, bed net insecticides discoveredresearchers from LSTM have found that a single genetic mutation causes resistance to DDT
The researchers led by Dr Charles Wondji used a wide range of methods to narrow down how the resistance works finding a single mutation in the GSTE2 gene which makes insects break down DDT
They have shown also that this gene makes insects resistant to pyrethroids raising the concern that GSTE2 gene could protect mosquitoes against the major insecticides used in public health.
Mosquitoes (Anopheles funestus) are vectors of malaria and most strategies for combating the spread of the disease focus on control of mosquito populations using insecticides.
The spread of resistance genes could hold back efforts to prevent the disease. The authors say that knowing how resistance works will help to develop tests
and stop these genes from spreading amongst mosquito populations. Charles Wondji said:''We found a population of mosquitoes fully resistant to DDT (no mortality
when they were treated with DDT) but also to pyrethroids. So we wanted to elucidate the molecular basis of that resistance in the population
'They took mosquitoes from Pahou in Benin which were resistant to DDT and pyrethroids and mosquitoes from a laboratory fully susceptible strain and did a genome wide comparison study.
They identified the GSTE2 gene as being upregulated--producing a lot of protein--in Benin mosquitoes. They found that a single mutation (L119f) changed a non-resistant version of the GSTE2 gene to a DDT resistant version.
They designed a DNA-based diagnostic test for this type of resistance (metabolic resistance) and confirmed that this mutation was found in mosquitoes from other areas of the world with DDT resistance
but was completely absent in regions without. X-ray crystallography of the protein coded by the gene illustrated exactly how the mutation conferred resistance by opening up the'active site'where DDT molecules bind to the protein so more can be broken down.
This means that the mosquito can survive by breaking down the poison into nontoxic substances..
They also introduced the gene into fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and found they became resistant to DDT
and pyrethroids compared to controls confirming that just this single mutation is enough to make mosquitoes resistant to both DDT and permethrin.
'For the first time we have been able to identify a molecular marker for metabolic resistance (the type of resistance most likely to lead to control failure) in a mosquito population
and deforestation caused by expansion of agriculture as well as methane released by the animals themselves with a lesser amount coming from manure management and feed production.
and continued yield increases in the crop sector will lead to shifts to richer animal diets in the future.
#As hubs for bees, pollinators, flowers may be crucial in disease transmissionlike a kindergarten or a busy airport where cold viruses and other germs circulate freely flowers are common gathering places where pollinators such as bees
and butterflies can pick up fungal bacterial or viral infections that might be as benign as the sniffles
or as debilitating as influenza. But almost nothing is known regarding how pathogens of pollinators are transmitted at flowers postdoctoral researcher Scott Mcart
and Professor Lynn Adler at the University of Massachusetts Amherst write. As major hubs of plant-animal interactions throughout the world flowers are ideal venues for the transmission of microbes among plants and animals.
In a recent review in Ecology Letters with colleagues at Yale and the University of Texas at Austin Mcart and Adler survey the literature
As the authors point out Given recent concerns about pollinator declines caused in part by pathogens the role of floral traits in mediating pathogen transmission is a key area for further research.
They say their synthesis could help efforts to control economically devastating pollinator-vectored plant pathogens such as fire blight
Traditionally research on flower evolution has focused largely on selection by pollinators but as Mcart and colleagues point out pollinators that also transmit pathogens may reduce the benefits to the plant of attracting them depending on the costs and benefits of pollination.
The researchers say more work is needed before scientists can know whether a flower's chemical or physical traits determine the likelihood that pathogens are transmitted for example
and whether infection by pathogens is an inevitable consequence of pollinator visitation. Plant pathologists have made great strides in identifying floral traits that mediate host plant resistance to floral pathogens in individual systems;
From the pollinator's perspective there has been surprisingly little work elucidating the role of flowers and floral traits for pathogen transmission.
Given recent concerns about pollinator declines caused in part by pathogens understanding the role of floral traits in disease transmission is a key missing element say Mcart and colleagues.
The researchers studied the light-sensitive cells known as cones that are in the eyes of chickens and most other birds active in daytime.
These birds have four types of cones for color--violet blue green and red--and one type for detecting light levels and each cone type is a different size.
In many creatures'eyes visual cells are distributed evenly in an obvious pattern such as the familiar hexagonal compact eyes of insects.
Multi-hyperuniformity is crucial for the avian system to evenly sample incoming light Torquato said.
If I gave you the avian system with these cones and removed the red it's still hyperuniform.
Evolutionarily speaking the researchers'results show that nature found a unique workaround to the problem of cramming all those cones into the compact avian eye Corbo said.
The ordered pattern of cells in most other animals'eyes are thought to be the optimal arrangement
Yet birds with the arrangement studied here--including chickens--have impeccable vision Corbo said. These findings are significant
because they suggest that the arrangement of photoreceptors in the bird although not perfectly regular are in fact as regular as they can be given the packing constraints in the epithelium Corbo said.
We still know nothing about the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie this beautiful and highly organized arrangement in birds.
The paper Avian photoreceptor patterns represent a disordered hyperuniform solution to a multiscale packing problem was published Feb 24 in Physical Review E. The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (grant no.
The epicenter of China's devastating Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 was in the Wolong Nature Reserve a globally important valuable biodiversity hotspot and home to the beloved and endangered giant pandas.
and roads but the earth split open and swallowed sections of the forests and bamboo groves that shelter and feed pandas and other endangered wildlife.
but also take into account the animals inhabiting the ecosystem and human livelihoods. They also noted that such efforts could benefit from more targeting of areas most favored by pandas.
The replanting efforts were done by local residents. We witnessed pretty intense periods when it seemed like everyone in the target areas were said out planting co-author Vanessa Hull a CSIS doctoral candidate who studies panda habitat in Wolong.
My field assistants also joined in on the village-wide efforts. It was pretty neat to see.
and pandas shy from human contact. That meant that some of the best assisted-forest recovery was in areas not favored by pandas.
Hull noted however that there could be an upside to that. Healthier forests could mean local residents have need less to venture into more far-flung panda-friendly forests.
We wanted to know if the benefit of this effort was matching up to the investment
#Seed-filled buoys may help restore diverse sea meadows in San francisco Baya pearl net filled with seedpods tethered by a rope anchored in the coastal mud
The emphasis on genetic diversity is a relatively new concern in ecosystem restoration projects where there has been an understandable urgency to move plants and animals back into an area as quickly as possible.
and provide a huge nursery for a variety of algae fish shellfish and birds. But a variety of human influences from bridge building to runoff pollution to smothering loads of sediment have threatened these grass beds globally.
#Fruit-loving lemurs score higher on spatial memory testsfood-finding tests in five lemur species show that fruit-eaters may have better spatial memory than lemurs with a more varied diet.
In a study appearing in the journal Animal Cognition researchers Alexandra Rosati at Yale university and Kerri Rodriguez and Brian Hare of Duke compared spatial memory skills across five species of lemurs living in captivity at the Duke Lemur Center--fruit-eating red-ruffed
and black-and-white ruffed lemurs leaf-eating Coquerel's sifakas and ring-tailed and mongoose lemurs that eat a mix of fruit leaves seeds flowers nectar and insects.
A total of 64 animals took part in the studies which measured their ability to remember the locations of food treats in mazes and boxes.
The results are consistent with these species'foraging behavior in the wild the researchers say with fruit-eaters doing well
and omnivores lagging behind. In the first experiment the lemurs learned the location of food hidden in one of two arms of A t-shaped maze.
A week later the fruit-eating ruffed lemurs were the only species able to retain and recall the right spot.
A second experiment tested whether the lemurs were recalling the exact spot or just remembering the turns they took along the way First the lemurs learned how to find a piece of food hidden in one wing of a symmetrical cross-shaped maze.
Ten minutes later the lemurs were moved to a new starting position in the maze and released to find their way again.
The ruffed lemurs were most likely to set off again to the right spot in the cross-maze
even though they had to take new turns to get there. Before they might have turned right
but now they had to turn left to get to the same spot Rosati said. The results suggest that ruffed lemurs primarily rely on a memory of the place rather than a memory of what turns they took.
The other species showed a mix of both strategies Finally to better reflect the situations lemurs face
when foraging in the wild a third experiment tested the lemurs'ability to remember multiple locations.
In the initial session a lemur was allowed to explore a room containing eight open boxes each marked with a distinct visual cue.
Half the boxes were baited with food and half were empty. After the lemur learned which boxes contained food and
which didn't all eight boxes were baited with food and covered with lids to keep it from view.
Ten minutes later when each lemur searched the room again only the ruffed lemurs preferentially searched spots where they found food before.
In their native Madagascar ruffed lemurs'diets can exceed 90%fruit--especially figs. Remembering when and where to find food from one season to the next requires keen spatial skills and good powers of recall.
And ring-tailed lemurs and mongoose lemurs--who finished in second and third place in many of the memory tests--can grab a snack pretty much anywhere anytime Rosati explained.
Animals living in captivity don't have to forage for food in the same way they do in the wild so the differences the experiments found are probably innate not learned the researchers said.
The study is part of a long history of research aimed at understanding the origins of primate intelligence.
and other primates owe their smarts to the demands of getting along in a group.
But far fewer studies have examined the idea that some aspects of primate intelligence arose because they helped the animals deal with other challenges such as foraging for food.
The researchers point out that the most social species in this study--the ring-tailed lemurs--fell in the middle of the pack in terms of spatial memory skills.
Our results suggests that different cognitive skills might evolve for different reasons Rosati said. Story Source:
#New york takes lead in state efforts to end ivory tradethe following statement was released today by John Calvelli Wildlife Conservation Society Executive vice president for Public Affairs and Director of the 96 Elephants Campaign:
and stopping the demand of elephant ivory. WCS applauds the leadership of New york Assemblyman Robert K. Sweeney for introducing this much-needed legislation as New york is the number one importer of ivory into the U s. This legislation will enhance federal efforts announced last week
While these federal efforts are a major step in ending the ivory trade state collaboration is critical to ensuring that the sale of ivory is banned truly in the United states. WCS will work to support this legislation through its 96 Elephants Campaign named for the number of elephants gunned down each day in Africa.
We urge for its swift passage as time is running out for Africa's elephants
Just last week Wildlife Conservation Society scientists reported grim news that nearly ten percent of the world's forest elephants were killed in 2012 and again in 2013.
Since then there has been a growing rallying cry to save elephants with the U s. China France Chad
and we are hopeful that New york will be helping lead the charge to protect Africa's elephants.
What their model revealed for this particular forest of hardy native Metrosideros polymorpha trees on the windward slope of Manua Kea is that an incumbent tree limb greening up a given square meter would still dominate its position two years
Observatory over 43 hectares on the windward flank of Manua Kea. In the vast majority of pixels (each representing about a square meter) the forest growth looked normal
#Managed honeybees linked to new diseases in wild bees, UK study showsdiseases that are managed common in honeybee colonies are now widespread in the UK's wild bumblebees according to research published in Nature.
The study suggests that some diseases are being driven into wild bumblebee populations from managed honeybees.
Dr Matthias FÃ rst and Professor Mark Brown from Royal Holloway University of London (who worked in collaboration with Dr Dino Mcmahon
and Professor Robert Paxton at Queen's university Belfast and Professor Juliet Osborne working at Rothamsted Research and the University of Exeter) say the research provides vital information for beekeepers across the world to ensure honeybee management
This research assessed common honeybee diseases to determine if they could pass from honeybees to bumblebees.
It showed that deformed wing virus (DWV) and the fungal parasite Nosema ceranae--both of which have major negative impacts on honeybee health--can infect worker bumblebees
and in the case of DWV reduce their lifespan. Honeybees and bumblebees were collected then from 26 sites across the UK
and screened for the presence of the parasites. Both parasites were widespread in bumblebees and honeybees across the UK.
Dr FÃ rst explained: One of the novel aspects of our study is that we show that deformed wing virus
which is one of the main causes of honeybee deaths worldwide is not only broadly present in bumblebees
and studied genetic similarities between DWV in different pollinator populations. Three factors suggest that honeybees are spreading the parasites into wild bumblebees:
honeybees have higher background levels of the virus and the fungus than bumblebees; bumblebee infection is predicted by patterns of honeybee infection;
and honeybees and bumblebees at the same sites share genetic strains of DWV. We have known for a long time that parasites are behind declines in honeybees said Professor Brown.
What our data show is that these same pathogens are circulating widely across our wild
and managed pollinators. Infected honeybees can leave traces of disease like a fungal spore or virus particle on the flowers that they visit and these may then infect wild bees.
While recent studies have provided anecdotal reports of the presence of honeybee parasites in other pollinators this is the first study to determine the epidemiology of these parasites across the landscape.
The results suggest an urgent need for management recommendations to reduce the threat of emerging diseases to our wild
and managed bees. Professor Brown added: National societies and agencies both in the UK and globally currently manage so-called honeybee diseases on the basis that they are a threat only to honeybees.
While they are doing great work our research shows that this premise is not true
and that the picture is much more complex. Policies to manage these diseases need to take into account threats to wild pollinators
and be designed to reduce the impact of these diseases not just on managed honeybees but on our wild bumblebees too.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council. Note:
New work from Carnegie's Cheng-Hsun Ho and Wolf Frommer developed tools that could help scientists observe the nitrogen-uptake process in real time
Their method is applicable to any transporter from any organism thereby enabling the otherwise exceptionally difficult analysis of transport processes in the tissues of plants and animals.
and certain types of cancer and for treating disorders of the immune system in animals and humans.
First studying the immune systems of cows and other animals helps us to understand how our own immune systems function.
#Habitat of early apes: Evidence of the environment inhabited by Proconsula University of Rhode island anthropologist
along with colleagues from an international team of scientists has discovered definitive evidence of the environment inhabited by the early ape Proconsul on Rusinga Island Kenya.
and interpreting the connection between habitat preferences and the early diversification of the ape-human lineage.
Their research which was published today in the journal Nature Communications demonstrates that Proconsul and its primate relative Dendropithecus inhabited a widespread dense multistoried closed canopy forest.
Holly Dunsworth URI assistant professor of anthropology said that the research team found fossils of a single individual of Proconsul which lived 18 to 20 million years ago among geological deposits that also contained
tree stump casts calcified roots and fossil leaves. The discovery underscores the importance of forested environments in the evolution of early apes.
To have the vegetation of a habitat preserved right along with the fossil primates themselves isn't a regular occurrence in primate paleontology she said.
It's especially rare to have so many exquisite plant fossils preserved at ancient ape sites.
Rusinga has been known since the 1980s for preserving a fossil ape and other creatures in a hollowed out fossilized tree trunk.
But it wasn't until the research team's discovery of additional tree trunks and fossil primates preserved in the same ancient soil that there was a strong link between the ape and its habitat at the site.
It's probably the best evidence linking ape to habitat that we could ask for Dunsworth said.
Combined with analyses of the roots trunks and even beautifully preserved fossil leaves it's possible to say that the forest was closed a canopy one meaning the arboreal animals like Proconsul could easily move from tree-to-tree without coming to the ground.
This environmental evidence jibes with our behavioral interpretations of Proconsul anatomy--as being adapted for a life of climbing in the trees--and with present-day monkey and ape ecology.
Additional evidence from the excavation site has shown that the landscape was stable for many years
and has resulted in the collection of thousands of mammal fossils including many well-preserved specimens of Proconsul and other primates.
Evidence from these fossils indicate that Proconsul probably had a body position somewhat similar to modern monkeys
Since 2011 the research team's work at the fossil forest site has resulted in the collection of several additional new primate fossils.
but without a doubt if we keep searching we're going to find knowledge about early ape evolution which was of course a significant chapter in our own history she said.
Developing biocontrol methods and their integration in sustainable pest and disease management in blackcurrant production.
#How evolution shapes the geometries of lifewhy does a mouse's heart beat about the same number of times in its lifetime as an elephant's
although the mouse lives about a year while an elephant sees 70 winters come and go?
Why do small plants and animals mature faster than large ones? Why has chosen nature such radically different forms as the loose-limbed beauty of a flowering tree and the fearful symmetry of a tiger?
These questions have puzzled life scientists since ancient times. Now an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Padua in Italy propose a thought-provoking answer based on a famous mathematical formula that has been accepted as true for generations but never fully understood.
In a paper published the week of Feb 17 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the team offers a rethinking of the formula known as Kleiber's Law.
'and animals'widely different forms evolved in parallel as ideal ways to solve the problem of how to use energy efficiently.
Named after The swiss biologist Max Kleiber who formulated it in the 1930s the law fits observations on everything from animals'energy intake to the number of young they bear.
It's used to calculate the correct human dosage of a medicine tested on mice among many other things.
and animals evolved in response to the same mathematical and physical principles. By working through the logic underlying Kleiber's mathematical formula and applying it separately to the geometry of plants
and animals the team was able to explain decades worth of real-world observations. Plant and animal geometries have evolved more or less in parallel said UMD botanist Todd Cooke.
The earliest plants and animals had simple and quite different bodies but natural selection has acted on the two groups so the geometries of modern trees
and animals are remarkably displaying equivalent energy efficiencies. They are both equally fit. And that is what Kleiber's Law is showing us.
a tree and a tiger. In evolutionary terms the tree has the easier task: convert sunlight to energy and move it within a body that more or less stays put.
The animal has to find a way to get rid of excess body heat. The obvious way is surface cooling.
But because the tiger's surface area is proportionally smaller than its mass the surface is not up to the task.
So as animals get larger in size their metabolism must increase at a slower rate than their volume
If the surface area were the only thing that mattered an animal's metabolism would increase as its size increased at the rate of its mass to the two-thirds power.
or branching form that is common to tree limbs and animals'blood vessels but added in new assumptions about the volume of fluids contained in those fractal networks.
the speed at which nutrients are carried throughout the animals'bodies and heat is carried away. So the team members calculated the rate at
which animals'hearts pump blood and found that the velocity of blood flow was equal to the animals'mass to the one-twelfth power.
Animals need to adjust the flow of nutrients and heat as their mass changes to maintain the greatest possible energy efficiency.
That is why animals need a pump--a heart --and trees do not. Plugging that information into their equation the researchers found they had attained a complete explanation for Kleiber's Law.
and animals that are very different and they arrive at the same conclusion. That is what's called convergent evolution
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