#Giant Beetle Threatens Palm trees Of Hawaiino one knows exactly how the coconut rhinoceros beetle made its way to Hawaii
In 2007 the beetles destroyed an estimated 50 percent of the palm trees on the island of Guam.
The beetles could have come from a variety of places including areas where they are deemed invasive
They were detected first just before Christmas in traps specifically designed to catch invasive insects around Joint Base Pearl harbor-Hickam on the island of Oahu Hawaii.
and a pheromone lure that's attractive to nocturnal beetles. Since the beginning of the year coconut rhinoceros beetles have been caught in over a dozen traps.
Officials initially identified a particularly productive breeding site in a mulch pile on the base's golf course
Officials are now in a race against time to quell the spread of the beetle which can destroy palm tree date palm sugarcane and banana tree populations.
A potential method for detecting the beetles involves the use of acoustic monitoring devices to determine which trees are infested.
Richard Mankin an entomologist with USDA previously employed sound and vibration detection devices to locate the beetle in Guam.
There's a number of insects like the coconut rhinoceros beetle that you can't see when they get into tree trunks.
For a long time we've been using sounds to detect these hidden insects particularly to detect large species said Mankin.
but not enough was done to eradicate the insects after detection. As a result the beetles spread to most areas of the island and now the invasive population is controlled through community efforts.
For example Guam residents are educated to chip up and burn dead trees an ideal breeding ground for the beetle's larvae.
In Hawaii trapped coconut rhinoceros beetles are destroyed in compost bins heated to temperatures between 140-180 degrees Fahrenheit.
The heated decomposition process produces ammonia which kills the beetles. HDOA and APHIS are also working to develop a long-term federally funded eradication effort
which may include the controlled introduction of biological predators like a fungus that's known to attack the beetle.
Whatever the final plan the lesson from Guam is clear. Officials must implement a comprehensive detection
and eradication effort quickly to avoid devastation of a sensitive island ecosystem and a culture so tied to the palm tree e
T heir claims that the science-driven action that s protected families for generations would somehow harm us flies in the face of history and shows a lack of faith in American ingenuity and entrepreneurship.
And because exoskeletons would become untenable as they scale up in size collapsing under their weight in all but the lowest gravities insects can be ruled reasonably out.
The sweltering mosquito-assaulted set of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is a minor marvel of engineering a three-story habitat with interlacing tree trunks recessed rooms
of fruit flies. Researchers have used also radiation to increase random mutations. But the difference between these lab-grown mutants and their Hollywood counterparts comes down to luck.
If the common cold can repel Martian occupiers in The War of the Worlds why not hurl even more virulent weapon ized bugs at the enemy?
I have for stepping on a butterfly I know is going to lay the eggs that make the worms that eat up my cabbages.
Then you may discover that ants have to work hard for a living too and before long that chlorophyl is a definite soporific.
or even whole insects Tramper wrote to Popular Science in an email. Beyond price there's one comparison many have missed says a Texas-based science communicator who goes by the name Dr. Ricky.
They could try to cultivate insects guinea pigs or other small animals but caring for these would add to their already enormous workload.
I caught the plastics bug. Biddle later got a Ph d. in polymer science and engineering at Case Western Reserve University.
#Rise Of The Insect Dronesas they sat nursing their beers Guiler and Vaneck watched as a fly appeared to slam into a window.
Instead of breaking apart on contact as their drones did bounced the insect off the glass and recovered.
Then it did it again. It was an epiphany says Vaneck who works for the Massachusetts research and development company Physical sciences Inc. PSI.
But until recently inventors lacked the aerodynamics expertise to turn diagrams into mechanical versions of something as quotidian as a fly or a bee.
And engineers have developed the first flying insect-inspired vehicles opening the door to an entirely new class of machine:
Although insects and their relatives represent roughly 80 percent of the world s animal species ome 900000 known types he mechanics of their flight had long been an enigma.
But as the wings of insects flap back and forth the air around them is constantly changing.
And the stubby wings of bees and other insects lift far more weight than can be explained using conventional steady-state aerodynamics principles.
Engineers have developed the first insect-inspired vehicles opening the door to an entirely new class of machine:
In the 1970s Torkel Weis-Fogh a Danish zoologist at the University of Cambridge used high-speed photography to analyze the exact wing motions of hovering insects and compare them to the insects morphological features.
From this he formulated a general theory of insect flight which included what he called the clap-and-fling effect.
When insect wings clap together and then peel apart between the up and down strokes the motion flings air away
This vortex creates the force necessary to lift the insect between wing flaps. Similar vortices might be generated by the angle
Charles Ellington a Cambridge zoologist and former Weis-Fogh student built a robotic wing that could precisely mimic the movements of a hawk moth.
At the University of California at Berkeley neurobiologist Michael Dickinson built a robotic fruit-fly wing that likewise mimicked a fly s natural motion
Dickinson and electrical engineer Ron Fearing won a $2. 5-million DARPA grant in 1998 to apply these principles to a fly-size robot.
Flies have really complex wing trajectories. There are a whole bunch of subtle things that happen Wood says.
he had built a gyroscope that could mimic the sensors insects use to detect body rotation;
What remained was to put it all together into a working insect-size flying machine. On a freezing day in 2006 Wood arrived at his Oxford street laboratory at Harvard.
On the workbench sat a 60-milligram robot with a three-centimeter wingspan and a thorax roughly the size of a housefly.
and demonstrating for the first time stable hovering and controlled flight maneuvers in an insect-scale vehicle. I didn t end up sleeping the rest of that night Wood says.
Techject a company that spun off from work done at the Georgia Institute of technology recently unveiled a robotic dragonfly with a six-inch wingspan.
The Techject Dragonfly takes advantage of an aerodynamics principle called resonance. When wings flap at their most efficient frequency hich happens
After observing the fly at the bar the two engineers searched for someone with experience replicating insect flight.
By closely observing the positions of the flies body parts they could measure the exact flip and twist of wings and legs.
I thought the fly would tumble a bit and lose a lot of altitude Vaneck says. But the fly recovery was elegant.
Just before the moment of impact the fly flew at an angle that ensured its legs touched the glass first.
Every time the fly slammed into the window it reflexively surrendered to the crash momentum and fell.
Then its wings flapped again propelling the insect into a controlled hover. It can hit
in order to mimic the alternating wing speed that provides four-winged insects with exceptional control. When the vehicle is blown out of position
Unlike the much larger Instanteye Nano Hummingbird and Dragonfly drones Robobees must be connected to an external power source.
and insects are suited perfectly for environments where you have dynamic obstructions he trees are moving the branches are moving.
Today he runs a lab at the University of Washington and works with advanced imaging systems to study insect flight.
Fifteen years ago the flies looked like little fuzzy UFOS he says. Now the biologists use cameras that can run at 7500 frames per second significantly higher than what was once available to researchers and that work in infrared light.
he s using electrodes to record the activity of neurons in insects brains. He links them to a flight-simulation system and presents them with visual stimuli picture of a predator for instance hat cause them to react.
The british Forces have begun recently using a microdrone a hand-launched helicopter called the Black Hornet to scout for insurgents in Afghanistan.
and insects that make secretions that stick to wet surfaces he says. Think: slug goo. Those secretions he found are viscous and hydrophobic or water-repelling.
which has also been studied in ants. With this study scientists at the University of Queensland have found that the so-called waggle dance bees perform translates that polarized light map of the sky into the movement that guides others.
Building on previous studies that have examined how waggle dances can be altered by illuminating the hive with artificially polarized light these experiments demonstrate that foraging bees can sense
The researchers are studying effects on coastal insects and birds; whether the change will affect coastal ecosystems'ability to store carbon;
and adaptively evolved in the honeybee. The first genetic mechanism for sex determination was proposed in the mid-1800s by a Silesian monk named Johann Dzierson according to the study's co-author and Arizona State university Provost Robert E. Page Jr.
He knew that the difference between queen and worker bees--both females--emerged from the different quality and quantity of food.
But what about the males he asked. Dzierson posited that males were haploid--possessing one set of chromosomes
evolved in their article Gradual molecular evolution of a sex determination switch in honeybees through incomplete penetrance of femaleness.
#Slippery bark protects trees from pine beetle attacktrees with smoother bark are better at repelling attacks by mountain pine beetles
The tiny beetles which are about the size of a grain of rice bore into the pine bark.
which pushes the beetles back out of the tree. Large-scale and continuous beetle attacks can kill the tree.
We thought the beetles were either choosing to avoid the smooth surface or they just couldn't hang onto it.
To determine which was the case the researchers tested how well the beetles could hold onto different bark textures.
They placed each of 22 beetles on a rough patch of bark and on a smooth patch.
They timed how long the beetle could stay on each surface before falling. Twenty-one of the 22 beetles were able to cling to the rough bark until the test ended after five minutes.
But all of the beetles fell from the smooth bark in less than a minute. The results--especially combined with the findings of a second study also recently published by the research team--provide information that may be useful to land managers who are trying to keep public parks and other relatively small forested areas healthy.
In the second study published online in the journal Oecologia Ferrenberg Mitton and Jeffrey Kane of Humboldt State university in California found that a second physical characteristic of a tree also helps predict how resistant the pine is to beetle infestation.
The number of resin ducts--which is related to the trees'ability to pitch out the beetles--is counted easily by taking a small core of the tree.
when mitigating properties to resist beetles. This contradicts the approach that has been historically common for fire management Ferrenberg said.
But if you want to defend a small amount of land against bark beetles that may not be the best strategy.
The new species previously unknown to science include 38 different ants 12 fishes 14 plants eight beetles two spiders one reptile and one amphibian.
In addition Academy scientists discovered a new genus of beetle and a previously unidentified genus of sea fan.
This year Academy scientists were able to identify 38 previously unknown ant species seven new plants and two new spider species from Madagascar.
Academy scientist Brian Fisher an entomologist who specializes in the study of ants calls them the glue that holds ecosystems together.
Ants are one of the most important members of ecosystems says Fisher. They turn over more soil than earthworms.
and recent high-res images Fisher and his colleagues can identify which patches of forest are most likely to contain new species of ants based on their elevation vegetation and adjacent habitats.
Ants and other insects provide a better map of true biodiversity. New species unearthed close to homewhile researchers from the California Academy of Sciences are spanning the far reaches of the globe to find new plants animals
and other life forms there are still many things to discover closer to Home in 2013 Academy scientists discovered two new plant species and eight new beetles from Mexico.
According to Sokolov these miniscule ground beetles remain largely uninvestigated. Prior to his recent discoveries there were only two other species from two different genera described from Mexico.
These beetles rarely emerge and are so tiny that they have gone largely unnoticed. These types of beetles live all over the world including here in California
but are very difficult to collect says Dr. Dave Kavanaugh Senior Curator of Entomology at the Academy.
Then once you have found the beetles and get them back to the lab it takes a steady hand to dissect them and tediously compare each specimen under a microscope.
The study of these beetles illustrates how isolation and slight changes in habitat can influence the evolutionary process.
These beetles are blind flightless and don't move around very much yet they are found in nearly every corner of the world says Kavanaugh.
#Corn pest decline may save farmers moneypopulations of European corn borer (ECB) a major corn crop pest have declined significantly in the eastern United states according to Penn State researchers.
During September of each season they assessed corn borer damage on 400 random plants at each site.
and other moth species and provides data about their prevalence. While traps within the Pestwatch network provide insight on ECB population size where moths are active
and periods of ECB activity their utility as a predictive tool particularly for field corn has been limited Bohnenblust said.
We found that ECB moths captured in the Pestwatch network correlate well with in-field populations of ECB in field corn which means that Pestwatch data hold potential to inform decisions about
and Pestwatch reflects low moth captures in their area we would recommend that in the next season they give competitive non-Bt hybrids a try on some of their acres
The researchers enlisted the help of schoolchildren to do a precise accounting of bug and woodpecker activity in the area said Christopher Whelan an avian ecologist with the Illinois Natural history Survey UIC adjunct assistant professor of biology
The insects create characteristic serpentine galleries that cut this vascular system starving the tree. Eventually mature adults exit the tree to start the process again.
and for holes made by other insects. Paint seeped through to dye the stem beneath
or into holes made by other bugs. The students tracked the fate of each bug that had been in the tree.
Instead of relying on a statistical estimate of the insect population and thus the food source available every bug and its fate were accounted for.
This was looking at woodpecker foraging at a fine tree-by-tree scale said Flower.
#Significant advance reported with genetically modified poplar treesforest geneticists at Oregon State university have created genetically modified poplar trees that grow faster have resistance to insect pests
With this genetic modification the trees were able to produce an insecticidal protein that helped protect against insect attack.
Insect attack not only can kill a tree it can make the trees more vulnerable to other health problems said Amy Klocko an OSU faculty research associate.
In a really bad year of insect attack you can lose an entire plantation. Hybrid poplar trees which are grown usually in dense rows on flat land almost like a food crop are especially vulnerable to insect epidemics the researchers said.
Manual application of pesticides is expensive and targets a wide range of insects rather than only the insects that are attacking the trees.
A number of the GMO trees in this study also had improved significantly growth characteristics the researchers found.
Annual crops such as cotton and corn already are grown routinely as GMO products with insect resistance genes.
and are subjected to multiple generations of insect pest attacks. That's why engineered insect protection may offer even greater commercial value
and why extended tests were necessary to demonstrate that the resistance genes would still be expressed more than a decade after planting.
Zavattieri plans to extend his research to study the properties of alpha-chitin a material from the shells of organisms including lobsters crabs mollusks and insects.
After drinking a cup of soy milk as he had done regularly for months Liam immediately started coughing vomiting developed hives all over his body
It is spread by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid that feeds on the trees leaving bacteria that starve the tree of nutrients.
In the battle against greening UF/IFAS researchers have tried everything from working on ways to eradicate the psyllid to grafting trees that show better resistance to greening.
and vitamins B and C. Apart from fungi and insects the parasitic nematode Radopholus similis is considered a major banana pest.
#Teens publish studies on pest-killing wasps, berry funguswe know more about wildlife this week thanks to research by two Canadian teens.
Their research on wasps and leaf disease reveal that a Canadian wasp is an efficient killer of an agricultural pest
Young's research focused on an agricultural pest and the wasps that kill it. The Diamondback Moth invaded Canada a long time ago
and brought with it an appetite for crops such as cabbage and canola. Researchers have known for years that two Canadian wasp species can kill the pest moth.
The wasps lay their eggs in moth caterpillars then the baby wasps grow up eating the caterpillar from the inside out until the wasps emerge from the caterpillar killing the caterpillar in the process.
It's kind of like the movie Alien Young explained. While researchers knew these wasps kill the moth pest they didn't know which wasp was more effective under different conditions.
Young designed and performed experiments to see which wasp is better at controlling Diamondback Moth populations under various conditions.
He found that one wasp species was a tireless killing machine whereas the other wasp was only effective at killing moths under limited conditions.
The results will help farmers and greenhouse operators combat the moth pest without the need for pesticides.
My research won first prize at the Ottawa regional science fair and two of the judges were editors of The Canadian Field-Naturalist.
They said my research was good enough to be published. So Young wrote his research as a scientific paper
and other insect species--and the future of many of those species is uncertain. Now researchers from North carolina State university are proposing a set of guidelines for assessing the performance of pollinator species
in order to determine which species are most important and should be prioritized for protection. Widespread concerns over the fate of honey bees and other pollinators have led to increased efforts to understand which species are the most effective pollinators
since this has huge ramifications for the agriculture industry says Dr. Hannah Burrack an associate professor of entomology at NC State
when they actually appear to be important pollinators for blueberry growers. The paper Multiple Criteria for Evaluating Pollinator Performance in Highbush Blueberry (Ericales:
Ericaceae) Agroecosystems was published online Nov 25 in the journal Environmental Entomology. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by North carolina State university.
#Peaceful bumblebee becomes invasivebumblebees look cute. They have a thick fur fly somewhat clumsily and are less aggressive than honeybees or wasps.
They are appreciated very much by farmers as keen pollen collectors. Particularly in the context of the crisis-stricken honeybee populations the buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris is being bred on an industrial scale for the pollination of fruit and vegetable crops both inside and outside greenhouses.
It was hoped that these insects would take over these important services when they were introduced first into central Chile in southern South america in 1998 as pollinators in a few greenhouses with the backing and approval of the state authorities.
But in the greenhouse they did not stay. Some individuals escaped and very soon they established colonies in the wild.
But that was not All the buff-tailed bumblebee turned out to be an extremely invasive insect that embarked on an unparalleled victory tour that took it as far as Patagonia.
As an aside the first European bumblebee species Bombus ruderatus was introduced back in 1982 but it turned out to be relatively harmless in comparison.
Extremely invasivethis is one of the most spectacular examples of the invasion of an entire continent by a foreign species introduced by man says Paul Schmid-Hempel retired Professor of Experimental Ecology at ETH Zurich.
He has been monitoring the spread of buff-tailed bumblebees over the last ten years. Together with this wife Regula and his colleagues from South america he has published just his work in Journal of Animal Ecology.
The couple collected these insects during several trips to southern South america in order to document their rapid spread do genetic analyses
and examine the parasites which accompany them as stowaways in the bumblebee intestines. The findings show that the European buff-tailed bumblebee spread southwards from central Chile along the Andes at a rate of around 200 kilometres a year--faster than the ecologists would ever have expected.
After just a few years the buff-tailed bumblebee had crossed the mountain chain and it reached the Atlantic coast of Argentina in late 2011.
By 2012 the insect had penetrated already deep into south Patagonia reaching the gateways to some of the major national parks. Given that colonies
and not individual insects have to become established this migration speed is astonishingly fast says Paul Schmid-Hempel.
He is convinced that in just a few years'time the bumblebees will reach the Strait of magellan. From there it would be just a little leap to Tierra del fuego.
Unfortunately we don't have any information at all about the occurrence of bumblebees on this large island comments the researcher.
In the other poorly accessible areas in Southwestern Chile no one has looked for buff-tailed bumblebees either.
That's why we don't have any evidence up to now. As however there are often strong winds in Patagonia in the summer Schmid-Hempel believes that it is possible that the insects could be transported easily to many locations.
Native species are disappearingthe triumphant advance of the European bumblebee is a disaster for the native bumblebees--five out of a total of 250 bumblebee species to be found in the world live in southern South america
--and a disaster particularly for the attractive and vivid orange giant bumblebee Bombus dahlbomii. Wherever the buff-tailed bumblebee settles the native species are done for:
in most areas in which its competitor has appeared B. dahlbomii has disappeared surprisingly quickly. One possible reason for its extinction is the protozoan parasite Crithidia bombi
which lives in the intestines of the buff-tailed bumblebee. This parasite causes intestinal infections in the European and native bumblebee species in South america.
It modifies the behaviour of the workers increases their mortality rate and prevents the establishment of new colonies.
Paul Schmid-Hempel is worried about the rapid spread of the buff-tailed bumblebee in remote areas of southern South america not least
because nothing seems capable of stopping it. The species is established now and it would be almost impossible to remove it from the ecosystem.
The European bumblebee could disrupt the ecological balance of southern South america to a major degree. Nor is it stopping either at the boundaries of famous nature reserves like Torres del Paine
#New rearing method may help control western bean cutwormthe western bean cutworm is a destructive insect pest of dry beans and corn.
Inadequate protocols for laboratory rearing of this insect have hindered controlled efficacy experimentation in the laboratory and field.
However in an article in the Journal of Economic Entomology called Evaluation of Tolerance to Bacillus thuringiensis Toxins Among Laboratory-Reared Western Bean Cutworm (Lepidoptera:
Noctuidae) the authors report a new rearing methodology used to maintain a laboratory colony for 12 continuous generations.
The ability to mass produce this pest insect will enhance fundamental research including evaluation of control tactics and toxin susceptibility.
The new rearing procedure described in the article allowed the researchers to gather the first reported data for western bean cutworm susceptibility to Cry toxins using laboratory dose-response bioassays.
With the ability to rear western bean cutworm in the laboratory it may be possible in the future to select strains with varying levels of Cry1f toxin susceptibilities which could in turn be used to investigate the genetic basis of resistance.
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