which is modified to produce a protein called Bt that is harmful to insect pests, is one of only two GM CROPS approved for cultivation in the EU. The other is a high-starch GM potato called Amflora that is intended for industrial applications such as paper production.
Losing a single pollinator species harms plantsremoving even a single bee species from an ecosystem has serious effects on plant reproduction,
yet simulations have predicted that the insects decreasing numbers will not have a major effect on plant reproduction until most pollinating species are gone3.
Wielding his butterfly net, ecologist Berry Brosi of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, set out to test these models in the field with his colleague Heather Briggs from the University of California,
They first monitored the plots in their natural state, identifying the most abundant species of bumblebee (of the Genus bombus) in each.
The researchers counted how many different species of plant the bumblebees visited, studying 736 individual insects in total.
They also carefully caught bees as they were pollinating the flowering plant Delphinium barbeyi (a type of larkspur) and anaesthetised them
Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1, Brosi and Briggs find that after they removed the dominating bumblebee species from a given plot,
Brosi's study measured seed production only in larkspur a plant that is pollinated by several species of bumblebee.
as well as to pollinators other than bees. Brosi says that his work adds weight to the argument that society should be more active in protecting pollinators.
In the United states""it seems to me like a pesticide is safe until proven otherwise,
But given the sensitivity of plants to the removal of pollinators"it might be time to rethink those sorts of policies
But in the seventeenth century, the Danish mathematician Erasmus Bartholin suggested that the insects need no such forethought.
The team interrupted honeybees making a comb by smoking them out of the hive and found that the most recently built cells have a circular shape,
The authors say that the worker bees that make the comb knead and heat the wax with their bodies until it reaches about 45 oc warm enough to flow like a viscous liquid.
the comb cells of the Italian honeybee (Apis mellifera Ligustica) are circular (top), but after two days they already look more hexagonal (bottom).
the temperature of the hive will always be close to the melting point, so the wax will be close to being fluid.
the insects strengthen the walls over time by adding other materials to it, creating a kind of composite
Italian animal work Proposed legislation in Italy to tighten restrictions on animal research has moved forward,
or transplants of living cells from other species. It would also stop the breeding of dogs, cats and primates in Italy for research,
and require anaesthetic for any procedure causing mild pain in animals (such as giving injections). Concerned scientists say that the restrictions could halt important biomedical research,
or Fox, constellation. At Hubble s optical resolution, light from the planet and its star typically blend together.
says Michael Firko, the head of biotechnology regulation at the USDA s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
whether vaccines developed against a closely related virus peste des petits ruminants (PPR), which causes disease in sheep
The animals responded by making antibodies that blocked that virus but aided infection with the swine flu H1n1,
the authors of a study published today in Nature1 say that their finding reinforces the idea that H7 avian viruses are constantly mixing
Ducks, in particular, act as living mixing bowls for avian viruses. Domestic species encounter a large catalogue of wild-bird viruses,
which swap genes to form versions that can spread to chickens and to humans. Better surveillance of Chinese bird populations is needed to monitor the emergence of dangerous viruses such as H7n9,
says lead author Yi Guan, an influenza specialist at the University of Hong kong. In China, the virus has infected 135 people
Guan's team sampled wild birds and poultry markets around Shanghai in April, weeks after the H7n9 outbreak began there.
The researchers collected throat and intestinal swabs from 1, 341 birds, including chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, partridges and quails, plus 1, 006 water and faecal samples from bird markets.
they found H7n9 and H7n7 to be hybrids of wild Eurasian waterfowl strains, such as H7n3 and H11n9.
The scientists think that those viruses swapped genes in domestic ducks before spreading to chickens, where they traded genes with a common chicken virus, H9n2.
But Guan and his team found that ferrets could become infected with the virus suggesting that a spread to humans is possible.
The animals, a primitive breed called Soay (Ovis aries), are known for their diminutive size and their agility on cliffs.
in humans and mice, it is involved in sexual development and bone density. She adds that heterozygotes such as Alpha Red 78 end up with more offspring largely
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the branch of the agriculture department responsible for overseeing GM CROPS,
has stuck so far to a strict interpretation of a 1957 law designed to protect agriculture against plant pests that was coopted in 1986 to regulate GM CROPS.
a bacterial pest that can insert DNA into plant genomes. In 2011, APHIS regulators announced that a herbicide-tolerant Kentucky bluegrass would not fall under their purview,
because the lawn-and-garden company developing it did not use Agrobacterium or any other plant-pest DNA to engineer the grass.
The company, Scotts  Miracle-Gro of Marysville, Ohio, instead used a gene gun to fire DNA-coated gold particles into plant cells.
and was just a test case to see how APHIS would respond. That is not the case for other groups that have been told that their GM products would not be regulated.
Sally  Mackenzie, a plant biologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, contacted APHIS about the high-yield offspring of a transgenic sorghum grass plant
In 2012, APHIS regulators invited Mackenzie to the organization s headquarters in Riverdale, Maryland, and questioned her about this hypothesis. APHIS eventually notified her that it would not regulate her plants a decision that Mackenzie says has accelerated her research
and may allow her to launch a company to develop her grass variety. Agricultural giants Monsanto, based in St  Louis, Missouri,
Have you been through APHIS? says Mackenzie. Other companies are gauging their prospects with different DNA-modification tools,
In 2010, APHIS told Dow Agrosciences of Indianapolis, Indiana, that it would not regulate a herbicide-tolerant maize (corn) made using zinc-finger nucleases.
Massachusetts, says that he would rather be regulated by APHIS to earn the public s trust.
In April 2012, APHIS told him that the agency would regulate his variety in spite of the fact that the genes he introduced came from other apples.
in part to exploit a loophole in US law that facilitates regulatory approval of organisms carrying transgenes not derived from bacterial pests.
whose plots are invaded by the pest, Lu says.""If the EPSP-synthase gene gets into the wild rice species, their genetic diversity,
Researchers reported on 9  August that of 50  Omani camels sampled, all showed evidence of previous infection with MERS-Cov or a closely related virus (C.  B.  E.  M.  Reusken et  al.
whether camels could be a source of human infections. Stormy Atlantic The current Atlantic hurricane season,
by adding an antibody to fight rotavirus originally found in llamas in the rice genome.
The team fed Mucorice-ARP1 to mice they subsequently infected with rotavirus, and found these mice had significantly less virus than mice fed normal rice.
The rice could be used to complement vaccinations to protect children when they are at their most vulnerable to rotavirus,
Originally found in llamas, arp1 is ideal for oral immunotherapy as it is not readily digested by the acids in the human stomach, according to Iturriza-Gomara.
Llamas produce single-chain antibodies which have two important properties: one, they are very small
despite concerns about droughts, wildfires and bark beetles surging as the world warms. Ecosystem productivity is rising at high latitudes, with a roughly 50%increase in the amount of carbon cycling through northern landscapes since the 1950s,
despite growing concerns about the vulnerability of northern forests to pests and fires.""Everybody hears about negative feedbacks on the carbon cycle,
"A lot of ecological studies in animals have shown that a bad start in life, such as low food or high population density around the time that you re developing, is essentially bad for your fitness,
and it would be impossible to target them to where they are needed most where grazing animals have left urine
The results suggest that mass epidemics may spark from a complicated intermingling of bacteria between animals and humans and from exchanges between different countries
"There is a pervading wisdom that local animals are a predominant source of pathogens and resistance, says study co-author Stuart Reid, a veterinary epidemiologist at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK.
because animals naturally harbour the bacteria. To find out whether this was really the case, the team used whole-genome sequencing to trace the tiny evolutionary steps of the collected bacterial strains.
They analysed 142 samples isolated from Scottish patients and 120 from local animals mostly cows, then compared them with 111 strains collected from people and animals in other countries.
The team found that strains infecting Scottish patients were different from those in local livestock.
But they also found that strains could spread from humans to animals.""It s occurring at a low frequency,
and in imported food probably entered the country and infected animals and humans separately, then continued to evolve
Though local animals were not a main source of these pathogens he explains that it does not eliminate the possibility that resistance genes from local farms
"It s not just multi-bug, multi-drug, he says, "but multi-country. Scotland imports most of its red meat,
Birds protect Costa rica's coffee cropthe yellow warbler may not pull a perfect latte, but it turns out it's a friend to coffee drinkers all the same.
Research in Costa rica shows that hungry warblers and other birds significantly reduce damage by a devastating coffee pest, the coffee berry borer beetle.
A study found that insectivorous birds cut infestations by the beetle Hypothenemus hampei by about half,
saving a medium-sized coffee farm up to US$9, 400 over a year s harvest roughly equal to Costa rica s average per capita-income income.
not only offer hope to farmers battling the beetle, but also provide an incentive to protect wildlife habitat:
the more birds the farm had, and the lower its infestation rates were.""Based on this study, we know that native wildlife can provide you with a pretty significant benefit,
"Incorporating their conservation into your management of pests is absolutely something you should do. The borer beetle is originally from Africa,
but has spread to nearly every coffee-producing region. The insect is invulnerable to most pesticides,
and can cost farmers up to 75%of their crop. To learn whether birds can mitigate the problem,
Karp and his colleagues covered coffee bushes on two Costa rican plantations with mesh fine enough to keep out birds.
They found that avian predators did indeed pick off a lot of beetles: in the rainy season peak time for beetle activity borer infestation almost doubled
when birds were excluded from foraging on coffee shrubs, rising from 4. 6%to 8. 5%.By analysing bird faeces for beetle DNA,
the team identified the yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia) and four other species as beetle eaters. Next, the researchers combined data about bird abundance, forest cover and beetle populations from six coffee plantations.
They found that beetle-eating birds were most common at sites with lots of stretches of forest nearby,
and that beetle infestations were slightly more severe at sites that were surrounded not by abundant forest.
Furthermore many of the avian exterminators were living in small scraps of unprotected woodland, rather than in big nature reserves.
The finding"is definitely good news for Costa rican farmers, says Matthew Johnson, a conservation ecologist at Humboldt State university in Arcata, California.
He and his colleagues have previously found that birds help to protect the famous Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee crop from the borer beetle2,
and he is happy to see that Jamaican birds are not alone in their taste for the pest.
But Johnson is sceptical about the impact of forest cover. The link between infestation and forest coverage"is obviously not rock-solid
he says. Karp and colleagues'results show only a very modest drop in borers as forest coverage grows,
he points out, and Johnson would like to see stronger evidence that the effect is real.
birds reduce the beetles dirty Work on one farm, hungry birds warded off beetles from coffee beans worth around 4%of the total value of the annual crop.
That may not sound like much, says Karp, but"in farming, every little bit helps, especially because often you re barely scraping by
Selective tree-clearing on Mount Sutro would help the larger remaining trees to fight the beetle and fungal pests currently afflicting the forest,
The area s great horned owls could also have more foraging opportunities. Reducing competition for sunlight should encourage the growth of large trees,
Nonnative pine trees provide habitat for threatened cockatoos in Western australia, for example. And in Scotland, old industrial waste heaps known as shale bings are now home to rare and protected plants and animals.
In the early 1990s Patricia Kennedy of Oregon State university in Corvallis helped to develop management guidelines for northern goshawks.
She found that the raptors do need not strictly old-growth forests; land used for timber harvesting can work, too.
She says that, at the time, accepting the idea felt like a move to the"dark side."
Crop pests advancing with global warmingcrop pests and diseases are moving towards the poles at about the same speed as warmer temperatures.
including some birds and insects1, 2, 3. The changing climate is raising major concerns about food security in many countries,
and pests may contribute to making matters worse.""Our defences, pesticides and fungicides, are being asked to deal with larger and larger numbers of pests and diseases,
each of which can evolve fungicide or pesticide resistance, says ecologist Dan Bebber of the University of Exeter, UK, who led the new study.
Expansion of pest populations into new territories increases the risk that these organisms will escape our control.
Global movement of crop pests had never been analysed comprehensively. To fill this gap Bebber and his colleagues made use of historical records held by CABI (formerly known as the Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International),
which document crop pests and diseases around the world from 1822 to the present.""No one has looked at any of these datasets.
For 612 different pest species, the researchers identified the first year in which each was observed in a new country
which the pest reached that country or region s average latitude. The main vulnerability of their study was biases in the data.
The group hypothesised that, in the absence of any real trend, pests would appear to be moving towards the equator rather than the poles.
This is because wealthier countries have the scientific resources to detect pests earlier than others, and wealthier countries tend to be at higher latitudes.
and study their pests better, the pests range could appear to move into the tropics. Instead, the team found that, on average,
crop pests have been moving towards the poles at 2. 7 kilometres per year, which is very close to the rate of climate change5.
However the rate of shift varied significantly for different groups and among individual species. Fungi, beetles, true bugs, mites,
butterflies and moths showed clear movements to higher latitudes, whereas viruses and nematode worms shifted to lower latitudes.
Other groups showed no detectable change.""Many studies have shown that climate change is affecting the distribution of wild species populations.
This is the first one to show that a similar process is happening in pest species,
says Gurr. She highlights the worrying finding that fungi and oomycetes are moving particularly quickly, at 7 and 6 km per year respectively.
that those pest groups seen moving towards the equator largely nematode worms and viruses are the most poorly understood,
Pesticide makes invading ants suicidally aggressiveneonicotinoid insecticides have developed a bad reputation for their unintended and potentially harmful effects on pollinating insects such as bees.
A study in New zealand now shows that the chemical can also change how native and invasive ants interact.
New zealand is facing an invasion of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile), which compete with native southern ants (Monomorium antarcticum).
The insects often meet in urban or agricultural areas, where neonicotinoids are in use. So ecologist Rafael Barbieri, a graduate student in the lab of Philip Lester at Victoria University of Wellington, wondered
whether the behavioural changes that have been associated with sublethal neonicotinoid exposure in other insects affect how the two species interact."
"Any changes in behaviour could potentially affect the structure of the entire community, he says.
As the team describes in Proceedings of the Royal Society B1, Barbieri exposed the ants to extremely low doses of a common neonicotinoid
and examined how the insecticide affected each species behaviour. He did not observe an effect on the foraging behaviour or survivability of either species in isolation,
although they did cut the brood size of the invasive Argentine ant in half. But it was
When the southern ant was exposed to the potent neurotoxins it became much less aggressive towards the invader.
This increased the survival odds of The argentine ant, and could help it to spread. However, when invasive ants were exposed to the insecticides,
they became much more aggressive towards unexposed Southern ants so aggressive, in fact, that they risked their own lives to attack.
As a result, unexposed natives were able to completely eradicate their exposed rivals. The mixed results make it difficult to predict whether,
and how, neonicotinoids will exacerbate the invasion of Argentine ants, says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland,
But it is another example of how low levels of these insecticides can change behaviour in many different kinds of insects."
"There s no doubt that neonicotinoids are fantastic to control insect pests, says Barbieri.""But we should be more careful in the way we use them in nature
Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013essence of elephants'by Greg du Toit depicts the animals at night.
No one could say that Greg du Toit did not earn his images of the birds
and big-game animals that visited the water to drink and socialize in Botswana s Northern Tuli Game Reserve.
so that the animals would not pick up his scent. He told the Wildphotos conference, held at the Royal Geographical Society in London on 12-13 october
that he prefers not to use camera traps, and would rather get as close as possible to all of the waterhole s inhabitants himself.
one rather disgusting skin disease that his doctors linked to baboon faecal matter, and a fresh perspective on Africa's wild animals.
This photo, entitled'Essence of Elephants',was the winner of the exhibition's Animal Portraits award.
Michael Nichols, National geographic/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013'The President's crown'by Michael Nichols displays a giant sequoia tree (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in all its glory.
His shots of polar bears (Ursus maritimus and other animals on Russia's Wrangel Island wowed the crowd at Wildphotos.
Toshiji Fukuda/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013'Tiger untrapped'by Toshiji Fukuda shows an endangered Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica.
but also for his dedication to photographing the Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) in the wild. Fukuda spent 74 days in a small, specially constructed hut in the Far Eastern Federal district, Russia, waiting for this animal one of only around 300 Amur,
or Siberian, tigers left in the wild. Luis Javier Sandoval/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013'Dive buddy'by Luis Javier Sandoval depicts an endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas.
Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013in'Ivory trash'by Brent Stirton, a Kenyan ranger inspects elephants killed by poachers.
Mike Veitch/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013'The fish trap'by Mike Veitch shows a whale shark (Rhincodon typus) actively sucking on a fishing net in Indonesian waters.
These pictures and more are on display at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013 exhibition at the Natural history Museum in London, from 18 october
Drillers will spend several weeks boring through layers of rock that house the fossils of tiny early dinosaurs and giant crocodile-like phytosaurs,
Since 2004, for instance, several skeletons have been unearthed of an extinct crocodile-like animal called Revueltosaurus, previously known only from its teeth.
Early dinosaurs such as the dog-sized Coelophysis also roamed there, and radiometric dating has shown how these dinosaurs were related to those in other parts of the Americas3.
The team already has its eye on other cores that it could drill
Study linking GM maize to rat tumours is retractedbowing to scientists'near-universal scorn, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology today fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper claiming that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats,
after the authors refused to withdraw it. The paper, from a research group led by Gilles-Eric SÃ ralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France,
But the small number and type of animals used in the study mean that"no definitive conclusions can be reached.
The known high incidence of tumours in the Sprague-Dawley strain of rat cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality
The study found that rats fed for two years with Monsanto s glyphosate-resistant NK603 maize (corn) developed many more tumours
It also found that the rats developed tumours when glyphosate (Roundup), the herbicide used with GM maize,
See'Rat study sparks GM furore'.'At the 28 november press conference, Corinne Lepage, a Member of the European parliament and former French environment minister, said that SÃ ralini s paper asked"good questions about the long-term toxicity of GMOS GM
from viruses to fish and mammals, have become invasive in the country (see Space invaders).
A case in point is the whitefly Bemisia tabaci, an insect that feeds on plant vascular tissue called phloem.
Researchers have managed now to halt the whitefly s march. Strategies such as planting crop varieties that are resistant to the pest,
separating individual seedlings to minimize pest spread, applying low levels of pesticides and implementing biological control with natural enemies means that"there haven t been major outbreaks since 2009,
says Wan. Another invader that has been brought under control is the red turpentine beetle (Dendroctonus valens. In North america, the beetle mainly attacks dead or ailing trees.
But the beetles, which were introduced to China in the 1980s, have wiped out more than 10 Â million pine trees in northern provinces since 1999.
A study led by Sun Jianghua, an entomologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology in Beijing, found that the interaction between the beetles
and their symbiotic fungus Leptographium procerum is key to their personality change in China (J.  Sun et  al.
Annu. Rev. Entomol. 58,293-311; 2013). ) Since its arrival,"the fungus has mutated into novel genotypes,
says Sun. One of these induces trees to release large amounts of the compound 3-carene a strong attractant to the beetles that is not released in response to the north American fungal variant.
The finding has led to a series of successful projects to trap beetles using 3-carene.
is integrated part of an pest-management programme, launched in 2007, that also includes the use of other chemical attractants and pesticides,
Sun s findings raise the possibility of a potential reinvasion of the United states by the red turpentine beetle
Most of the forest pest species in North america originally came from China and some of its exports have wreaked havoc in Europe.
She has been studying the invasion of the harlequin ladybird (Harmonia axyridis) in Europe and, by working with Chinese researchers
is now trying to understand the insect s behaviour and natural enemies in the hope of developing effective control measures.
Listening to Africa s elephantslast week, audio from the Elephant Listening Project was released, featuring the actual moment an elephant was killed by poachers (see video).
The low-frequency recording, which sounds almost abstract, was captured by some of the special microphones set up by the project in the forests of Gabon and the Republic of congo.
The aim is to monitor the sounds that forest elephants use to communicate, which humans can sometimes feel
Behavioural ecologist Peter Wrege directs the Elephant Listening Project. Nature interviewed behavioural ecologist Peter Wrege of the The Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york,
remote locations where they can record for long periods of time without human presence influencing the animal's behaviour.
For example, other than counting dung piles along a transect to try to estimate population density, the only typical method of collecting data on forest elephants is by direct observation at clearings in the forest, measuring
Although some of these measurements can't be made just from acoustic records at least not yet relative numbers of elephants
Nations fight back on ivorymy impression is that the situation is very bad for forest elephants.
we think that forest elephants are taking the brunt of ivory poaching more and more. Rainforests are difficult places to patrol
I would say that all populations of forest elephants are in deep trouble, and the ones most at risk are those at the edges of their current range in Cameroon and the Central african republic.
where once more than 60%of all forest elephants lived. I believe there are some fronts where science can be a big help.
As populations of elephants decline, we need to be able to predict where they are going to be
whether they are aware that more money has been flowing in to protect elephants. They will look at you like you are crazy.
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