#Food Dyeâ##s May be linked to Hyperactivity in Children Artificial dyes in food are limited not just to candy.
#Zombie Ants Controlled by Four New Species of Fungi A stalk of the newfound fungus species Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani,
grows out of a zombie#ants head in a Brazilian rain forest. Originally thought to be a single species, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis,
of which can mind control#ants#cientists announced last week. pics) The fungus species can infect an ant,
take over its brain, and then kill the insect once it moves to a location ideal for the fungi to grow
and spread their spores. All four known fungi species live in Brazils Atlantic rain forest, which is rapidly changing due to climate change
It is tempting to speculate that each species of fungus has its own ant species that it is adapted best to attack#
Healthy Camponotus rufipes ants scamper across a Brazilian forest floor. The four newly identified zombie#fungi species use different techniques to spread after infecting an ant, the researchers found.
Some of the fungi species create thin infection pegs#that stick out from a victims body
and infect passing ants, Hughes said. Other fungus species develop explosive spores on infected ants bodies.
When other ants come near the cadavers, the shooting spores can hit the unwitting passersby, turning them too into zombie ants.
Lodged in a zombie ants brain, the fungi species direct#the dying ants to anchor themselves to leaves or other stable places,
as pictured above#roviding a stable nursery#for the fungus. For instance, as the Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani fungus is about to kill the ant, the insect bites down hard into whatever substance its standing on.
This attachment is so strong that a dead zombie ant can remain stationary even when hanging upside down,
the scientists say. A white fungus stalk (left) of the Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis species begins to poke through the head of a zombie ant two days after death.
Also noticeable are faint, white, slightly fuzzy fungal growths on the ants joints. Once the insect dies
the fungus rapidly spreads through the body. During the first couple days, though, very little evidence of the fungus is visible from the outside.
During later stages of Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis infection, the fungus rapidly consumes the nutrients inside a zombie ant
and begins to colonize the outside of the ants body. The fungus stalk growing from the back of the head also becomes longer and more noticeable.
The mature fungus stalk, shown growing from a zombie ants head during the final stage of infection,
differs among fungi species. For instance, Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis creates just a single stalk (pictured), while Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani forms a forked stalk.
Ants arent the only zombie-fungi hosts#ther insects also fall prey to fungus. Above, a wasp is infected by a Cordyceps fungus species that hasnt yet been named or formally documented.
Fungi of the Cordyceps genus are the products of a tightly evolved arms race between hosts
and parasites, study author Hughes noted. That means the fungi are locked often into one type of host#specialization that might spell doom for fungi species as host species die out.
Unlike ants, many insect species that fall victim to zombie fungi are very difficult to identify after the fungus has spread around their bodies the scientists noted.
#Crickets too can fall prey to zombie fungi (as pictured), though little is known about the fungus species that brought this insect to its horrific end.
Hughes plans to remedy that#nd expects to find many more zombie fungus species in the forests of Brazil.
If you start seeing pretty white butterflies fluttering around your broccoli, youre guaranteed to start seeing little green worms all over your broccoli plants.
Tomato horn worm can be a problem in many areas#these large caterpillars should be removed by hand
Aphids and flea beetles are the two most common insect pests when growing peppers. While both can be controlled with insecticidal soap,
A tomato leaf spray will get rid of aphids, and garlic/hot pepper spray works very well on a flea beetle infestation. 7. Beets Beets are a great two-fer#crop#you can harvest the beet roots, of course,
but you can also harvest and eat the greens. Young beet greens are added delicious when raw to a salad,
Rarely, leaf miners can become a problem. 9. Carrots Carrots are at their sweetest, crunchiest best when freshly harvested from the garden.
#Collapse of the Honeybee Population Could Be linked to Pesticides Even tiny doses of neonicotinoids made the insects more susceptible to disease.
The US research, revealed in a new film about the disappearance of bees, found even tiny doses of neonicotinoids made the insects more susceptible to disease.
The chemicals, that mimic the insect-killing properties of nicotine, are used widely in the UK on both ornamental garden plants
prompting fears for food security as the insect is vital for pollinating many major crops. However UK scientists insisted that the decline of bees is due to a number of factors, such as disease or a lack of suitable food sources in the countryside,
It makes the plant toxic to certain insects if they eat the sap. However scientists fear that the systemic chemical also makes it into the plants pollen
revealed in new film The Strange Disappearance of the Bees, exposed two groups of bees to the common insect disease nosema.
Matt Shardlow, of insect charity Buglife, said most bee deaths in the UK are caused by disease.
which have shown that these chemicals could be the cause of the decline of bees and other wild pollinators,
approved by the Government, have proved that neonicotinoids do not harm bees and other insects if applied properly.
#when plant immune systems are under stress#as might be caused by plant pathogens, drought, insects, etc.
#Is Eating Insects the Answer to Reducing our Food Footprint? Flickr user avlxyz tries an insect at Chiang Mai bazaar Hungry for a grasshopper taco?
Well, probably not. But the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO) thinks it is time for an end to the Eewww!#
#response to the thought of eating insects. The FAO reports that there are more than1000 edible insect species. Insects can provide protein in the diet at a much lower environmental cost than traditional livestock, such as cows, pigs, or sheep.
The FAO started the push to improve the image of edible insects at a workshop in Chiang Mai, Thailand,
where bugs are already a common feature on the menu. The proceedings of the Chiang Mai workshop on edible insects are now available online (pdf.
Since then, the FAO has been campaigning to increase appetites for insects, focusing especially on developing areas where protein supplies are scarce and sustainable harvesting of insects can contribute to both nutritional and economic improvements.
For example, in May 2010, the FAO launched a program in Laos featuring celebrity chefs competing to whip up the tastiest insect dishes.
Insects offer many advantages as a sustainable source of protein. The cold-blooded creatures require less feed to produce proteins.
For example, a cricket can produce the protein equivalent of cows with six times less feed. Furthermore, insects can often feed on organic waste matter.
Moreover insects are considered already delicacies in many cultures, and the practice of eating insects goes back millenia.
The Eewww-factor is learned a behavior reflecting our recent sensibilities about hygiene and health (quite ignoring the fact that we are all eating bugs already in foods meeting prescribed contamination limits).
But insects which are raised properly, harvested and prepared present no risks to health. Quite the contrary:
insects offer healthy nutritional value including largely unsaturated fats, high iron content, minerals, and vitamins.
Of course, no campaign to market a new food trend can get around the fundamental question: how do they taste?
Flickr user avlxyz, pictured above, reports on the experience: The creamy belly tasted like scrambled eggs,
while the thorax/lung area was a bit spongey. The shell is pretty tasteless and not edible anyway.#
#Not convinced? Well, at least for those of us in parts of the world where simply meeting our minimal nutritional demands is not the major issue,
there is always theweekday vegetarian diet as an alternative. grasshopper taco 1000 edible insect via Treehugger Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati T
#Chicago Combats Food Deserts and Childhood Obesity One Seed at a time Chicagoans that vote for their favorite seeds, get free seeds to plant in their gardens.
Alarming Decline in Bumblebees Found in U s a bumblebee gathers pollen from a sunflower. Four previously abundant species of bumblebee are close to disappearing in the United states,
researchers reported Monday in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide.
As with honeybees, a pathogen is involved partly, but the researchers also found evidence of inbreeding caused by habitat loss.
We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level#
These are one of the most important pollinators of native plants,#Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois, Urbana,
But most studies have focused on honeybees. Bumblebees are also important pollinators, Cameron said, but are studied far less.
Bumblebees pollinate tomatoes, blueberries and cranberries, she noted. The 50 species (of bumblebees) in the United states are associated traditionally with prairies and with high alpine vegetations#
she added. Just as important#they land on a flower and they have called this behavior buzz pollination that enables them to cause pollen to fly off the flower.#
#POLLINATING TOMATOES This is the way to pollinate tomatoes, Cameron said#although smaller bees can accomplish the same effect if enough cluster on a single flower.
Several reports have documented the disappearance of bumblebees in Europe and Asia, but no one had done a large national study in The americas.
Pollinators such as bees and bats often have specific tongue lengths and pollination behaviors that have evolved
Bumblebees can fly in colder weather than other species, and are key to pollinating native species in the tundra and at high elevations,
Genetic tests show that the four affected bumblebee species are inbred and other tests implicate a parasite called Nosema bombi,
This is a wake-up call that bumblebee species are declining not only in Europe not only in Asia,
There is growing concern among health care experts and policy makers about antibiotic resistance and the rise of superbugs,
or beneficial insects with Dragon Juice Dragon Juice naturally helps eliminate many common plant problems.
It is nontoxic to bees, ladybugs and other beneficial insects and therefore unique to agriculture and conventional pesticides.
and eliminate plant problems and some insects.#¢#¢We pushed a lot of plants to their limits testing each ingredient to record the amounts of each compound a plant can handle.#¢
that mutant fruit flies that were missing some of these genes lost the ability to respond to light.
and human biology even as my own research evolved from studying plant responses to light to leukemia in fruit flies. 2. How do think people should change how they think about plants?
For example, if a maple tree is attacked by bugs, it releases a pheromone into the air that is picked up by the neighboring trees.
This induces the receiving trees to start making chemicals that will help it fight off the impending bug attack.
For example a Venus Fly Trap needs to have two of the hairs on its leaves touched by a bug in order to shut,
While the short term memory in the venus fly trap is based electricity, much like neural activity,
The likely culprit in sharp worldwide declines in honeybee colonies since 2006 is imidacloprid, one of the most widely used pesticides,
which adult bees abandon their hives. The study will appear in the June issue of the Bulletin of Insectology.
because bees#beyond producing honey#are prime pollinators of roughly one-third of the crop species in the U s,
Massive loss of honeybees could result in billions of dollars in agricultural losses, experts estimate.
each yard had treated four hives with different levels of imidacloprid and one control hive. After 12 weeks of imidacloprid dosing,
all the bees were alive. But after 23 weeks, 15 out of 16 of the imidacloprid-treated hives#94%#had died.
Those exposed to the highest levels of the pesticide died first. The characteristics of the dead hives were consistent with CCD,
said Lu; the hives were empty except for food stores, some pollen, and young bees, with few dead bees nearby.
When other conditions cause hive collapse#such as disease or pests#many dead bees are typically found inside and outside the affected hives.
Strikingly, said Lu, it took only low levels of imidacloprid to cause hive collapse#less than
and beekeepers, alarmed at the sudden losses of between 30%and 90%of honeybee colonies since 2006, have posed numerous theories as to the cause of the collapse,
bees line their hives with more propolis the waxy, yellow substance seen here. Research from North carolina State university shows that honey bees self-medicate
and effort of its worker bees to collect these resins, #says Dr. Michael Simone-Finstrom, a postdoctoral research scholar in NC State s Department of Entomology and lead author of a paper describing the research.
#Wild honey bees normally line their hives with propolis, a mixture of plant resins and wax that has antifungal and antibacterial properties.
to fill in cracks in their hives. However, researchers found that, when faced with a fungal threat,
because they lined some hives with a propolis extract and found that the extract significantly reduced the rate of infection.
it s also meant the onset of superbugs. According to the National Academy of Sciences roughly 70 percent of the antibiotics and other antimicrobial drugs used in the U s. are fed to farm animals
It s not quite the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings creating a hurricane across the world,
#Insects have Personalities too, research on novelty-seeking honey bees indicates Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure.
researchers report The findings offer a new window on the inner life of the honey bee hive,
for example) to serve their queen. Now it appears that individual honey bees actually differ in their desire
Could insects also have personalities?##Robinson and his colleagues studied two behaviors that looked like novelty-seeking in honey bees:
the hive divides and the swarm must find a suitable new home. At this moment of crisis, a few intrepid bees#less than 5 percent of the swarm#take off to hunt for a hive.
These bees, called nest scouts, are on average 3. 4 times more likely than their peers to also become food scouts, the researchers found.
but their willingness or eagerness to go the extra mile#can be vital to the life of the hive.
and other vertebrates has parallels in an insect, #Robinson said. One can see the same sort of consistent behavioral differences
#The findings also suggest that insects, humans and other animals made use of the same genetic toolkit#in the evolution of behavior,
and insects that might harm crops, and churning the soil as it moves underground. Much remains to be discovered in further study
Although the commentary might seem straight out of the Journal of Ideas That Will Never Fly,
nano-netting will provide a fibrous support structure that is visually non-intrusive but capable of keeping out insects, birds,
or swarms, inspired by the behavior observed in social insects, called swarm intelligence. So far no swarmbots have made their way to CES. 25.
#Parasitic flies attack honeybees turning them into zombies Zombie#fly parasite causing decline of honeybee population.
A pile of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile of bees ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U s. honeybee populations,
which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential culprit is a bizarre and potentially devastating parasitic fly that has been taking over the bodies of honeybees (Apis mellifera) in Northern California.
John Hafernik a biology professor at San francisco State university, had collected some belly-up bees from the ground underneath lights around the University s biology building.
And the invaders had led somehow the bees from their hives to their deaths. A detailed description of the newly documented relationship was published online Tuesday in PLOS ONE.
The team performed a genetic analysis of the fly and found that it is the same species that has previously been documented to parasitizie bumblebee as well as paper wasp populations.
That this parasite hasn t previously been reported as a honeybee killer came as a surprise
given that honeybees are among the best-studied insects of the world, #Hafernik said. We would expect that
if this has been a long-term parasite of honeybees, we would have noticed.##The team found evidence of the fly in 77 percent of the hives they sampled in the Bay Area of California,
as well as in some hives in the state s agricultural Central Valley and in South dakota. Previous research has found evidence that mites, a virus, a fungus,
or a combination of these factors might be responsible for the widespread colony collapse. Read more about colony collapse disorder in our feature Solving the Mystery of the Vanishing Bees.#
#And with the discovery that this parasitic fly has been quietly killing bees in at least three areas,
it might join the list of possible forces behind colony collapse disorder. Parasitic fly larva emerging from a dead bee s neck.
Courtesy of John Hafernik The parasitic fly lays eggs in a bee s abdomen. Several days later, the parasitized bee bumbles out of the hives often at night on a solo mission to nowhere.
These bees often fly toward light and wind up unable to control their own bodies. After a bee dies, as many as 13 fly larvae crawl out from the bee s neck.
The bees behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized and then decapitated from within by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus
. When we observed the bees for some time the ones that were alive we found that they walked in circles, often with no sense of direction,#Andrew Core,
a graduate student who works with Hafernik and a co-author on the new paper, said in a prepared statement,
#Bees from affected hives and the parasitizing flies and their larvae curiously also contained genetic traces of Nosema ceranae, another parasite,
This double infection suggests that the flies might even be spreading these additional hive-weakening factors.
whether infected bees are leaving the hive willingly or getting kicked out in the middle of the night
and where the flies are finding the bees in which they lay their eggs. We assume it s
because we don t see the flies hanging around the bee hives#Hafernik said. But it s still a bit of a black hole in terms of where it s actually happening.#
#Most of the parasitized bees found so far have been foraging worker bees, but even if other groups of bees within a hive are not becoming infected,
a decline in the number of foragers in a hive could have a large impact on a hive as a whole.
Models of colony dynamics suggest that significant loss of foragers could cause rapid population decline and colony collapse,
Hafernik and his colleagues hope that the simple way they made their discovery will enable professional and amateur beekeepers to collect vital samples of bees that leave the hive at night#with a light trap
If the parasitic fly is just starting to infect honeybee populations, this could be an important move,
especially given the newly prevalent mobile commercial hives, which mean that honeybees and their ailments are on the move in much greater numbers than ever before.
Photo credit: Inhabitat Via Yahoo Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati
#Guerrilla Grafters: Turning public trees into fruit-bearing trees Money doesn t grow on trees,
or to track mosquitoes, or that he belonged to an lite team of ghost hunters.
drive for twenty minutes, realize there was some software bug, then sit there for four hours reprogramming
Phase 2#Protection Drones Some companies are already working on Phase 2 drones capable of proactively protecting the crops from bugs, birds, disease,
Prevent birds from destroying high value crops Identify insects, worms, and other unwanted plant devastation Precision pesticide, herbicide,
and even shooting mosquitoes. Much of today s work in this area is experimental and sounds more like science fiction than real science,
including bacteria, fungi, insects, and plants. Galas s team detected the same specific rice mirna that Zhang had dubbed mir-168
and insects, looking for any trace of plant mirnas. They found them in some of the datasets,
and large amounts of beetle-killed trees have created#oeperfect storm#conditions for multiple wildfires to rage across the State.
#Insect-eating is the future of food Insects may be the food of the future. In Western societies, eating insects is considered disgusting or even primitive.
But 2 billion people elsewhere consume insects on a regular basis. According to a report released last month by the UN, the benefits of using insects as food is so great that it is high time we convert the other 5 billion people into insect-eaters.
Who eats insects? As it turns out, at least two billion people actively consume insects as part of their diets.
In the Democratic republic of the congo, caterpillars are abundantly available all year round in markets. A quick Google search tells us that caterpillars have a nutty (to be more specific enoki-pine nutty)
or fruity taste and clearly Congolese are fond of them. One household, in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, eats about 300 g of caterpillars a week on average.
This equates to an astonishing 96 tonnes of caterpillars consumed in the city annually. While in African countries
insects are eaten mostly by the natives, in Southeast asia, a plethora of insects, prepared and concocted in different ways,
is marketed increasingly to tourists. It s no surprise really, considering the surge of tourists to this part of the world.
And the fact that between 150-200 species of insects are consumed in Southeast asia. The most delicious insects?
Globally, beetles and caterpillars are consumed as much as all other edible insects taken together. But bees (as my brother can attest to),
wasps and ants are popular too, accounting for a whopping 14%global insect consumption. Cicadas, locusts, crickets, dragonflies, flies are spared not either.
While two billion people are perfectly fine with eating insects, the remaining five billion are mostly on the opposite end of the#oelike spectrum.#
#It seems weird that such a common practice is frowned upon so much by others, isn t it?
The disconnect, perhaps unsurprisingly, stems from the westernisation of diets and cultures. Why do most of us find eating insects disgusting?
Native american tribes, for instance, had a long history of eating insects. But as Western cultures began to interact with
(and sometimes decimate) them, the West imposed their own values onto the tribes, discouraging and suppressing the practice.
In their eyes, eating insects was considered primitive. Some indigenous groups in Sub-saharan africa were afflicted similarly#nd much more recently too.
In the village of Sanambele in Mali, children routinely hunt and eat grasshoppers as snack food.
In a village where many children were already at risk of suffering from kwashiorkor, a form of malnutrition caused by protein deficiency in the diet,
grasshoppers offered a welcome source of protein. Sadly, since 2010, the fields where the children would hunt for grasshoppers are sprayed with pesticides to ensure maximum yield of cotton harvested from neighboring cotton fields.
The Malian farmers were advised by their Western counterparts, who took no notice of Sanambele s population and culture.
Now the children are forbidden mostly to hunt and eat grasshoppers for fear that they may be intoxicated by pesticides.
The insect population has plummeted anyway. Funnily enough, the five billion people who are not fond of insects,
are insect-eaters too, albeit unknowing ones, at the tune of#oetwo pounds of flies, maggots and other bugs each year.#
#Even more fascinating is that we are actually eating them as part of lunch and dinner. And the FDA knows all about it!
Here s an excerpt from Kyle Hill s blog post about this at Scientific American:#
#oethe FDA s Defect Levels Handbook lays it all out. Staples like broccoli, canned tomatoes,
and hops readily contain#oeinsect fragments##eads, thoraxes, and legs#nd even whole insects. I won t tell you about the rat hair limits#)Fig paste can harbor up to 13 insect heads in 100 grams;
canned fruit juices can contain a maggot for every 250 millimetres; 10 grams of hops can be the home for 2, 500 aphids...
#oe The disgust you may be experiencing right now is unfortunate. Because insects may be the key to our future.
Looking at population growth alone, the global population will reach 9 billion people in 2050
and will require that we produce twice as much food than we do today. Now factor in the rise of the middle class, with its subsequent demand for protein,
and harsher environmental conditions we will have to battle with, and it becomes vividly clear that our current food production systems will be taken by storm very soon.
Last month, the UN released a comprehensive 185-page document advocating the rearing of edible insects to be used as food by humans
and also as cattle Feed in the accompanying press release Eva Muller, Director of FAO s Forest Economic policy and Products Division,
#Why are insects so good? They have a high nutritional value, their cultivation is environmentally friendlier,
You may be surprised to learn that insects are#oea highly nutritious and healthy food source with high fat, protein, vitamin, fiber and mineral content.#
And when used as animal feed, insect-based feeds are comparable to the popular soy-based or fishmeal formula,
The Economist has a great graphic that showcases how#oegreen#insect cultivation exactly is as well.
The#oegreen#benefits stem from the ratio of amount of food insects will eventually produce to the amount of food they consume.
insects are much much more efficient a food source:##oethe bigger the beast, the more food, land and water is needed to produce the final edible product,
Crickets require just 1. 7 kg of food to produce 1 kg of meat, and 80%is considered edible.#
#Insects also emit less greenhouse gases and ammonia than cattle or pigs and require less land for rearing.
And whatnot, insects can also feed on organic by-products such as human and animal waste, which may help reduce environmental contamination.
And to cap it all the risk that insects may transmit zoonotic infections may well be less significant than the very real risk posed by cattle, pig and poultry, from
Importantly, consumption of insects can bring along direct and relatively rapid societal benefits. Rearing and processing of insects can be performed at a relatively artisanal stage without sophisticated machinery.
This means that the poorest members of society can be encouraged to participate giving them an avenue to employment and income, potentially lifting them out of poverty.
and safety aspect of the entire chain from insect rearing to processing and storage is a must as is a comprehensive legal framework that can lead to the#oefull development...
of production and international trade in insect products.##We must also move past the disgust factor that is embroiled in the cultures of many.
Also, I m a pescatarian so#)So, would you eat insects now that you know how it can help the environment,
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