and are highly attractive to beneficial native insects including the natural enemies of agricultural pests.
because most models don't account for random events such as fire drought and insects that kill already-stressed trees.
But scientists now warn that other nerve agents targeting insect pests may also be harming bees and other pollinators.
But harm is only evident over a period of two weeks in bumblebees and is seen when you look at entire colonies.
He recently published a studyshowing neonicotinoids hit bumblebee colony growth and queen production. He also said:
beneficial insects such as ladybirds and bees are exposed to lots of different chemicals and we have a really poor understanding of
Julian Little spokesperson for Bayer Cropscience based in Norwich UK says the evidence against these pesticides has all been based lab essentially taking a social insect
But he also agrees more monitoring of pollinators is needed. Where you do get large-scale bee deaths not enough has been done to know exactly what has happened Little commented.
This is a great opportunity for farmers to adopt these practices to protect bees and other pollinators.
Indeed he believes farmers will benefit from healthy pollinator populations as they provide substantial economic benefits to crop pollination.
which is used against insects and Roundup Original MAX which is a common herbicide used against weeds.
Some components of the nectar and pollen grains bees collect to manufacture food to support the hive increase the expression of detoxification genes that help keep honey bees healthy.
However honey bees have relatively few genes dedicated to this detoxification process compared to other insect species she said.
which lines all of the cells and seals cracks within a hive. Propolis turns on immunity genes--it's not just an antimicrobial caulk or glue.
They also found more insects and the particular focus of the study higher densities of a native species of gecko Lygodactylus keniensis.
and small invertebrates such as insect larvae worms and snails when fruits are said scarce Dr. Keuroghlian.
and from Hessian fly in the eastern U s. The physical map developed by the research team provides a roadmap for the mapping of genes that make wheat resistant to diseases heat
In both cases plants are surrounded by numerous organisms such as weeds pollinating insects fungi blights and diseases and their natural enemies all engaged in the struggle for existence.
The seasonal timing of trees and insects advance too but songbirds like Parus major or the great tit lag behind.
caterpillars. The seasonal timing of the food peak has advanced over twice as fast as that of the birds
and caterpillar peak in the woods will keep growing and so will the impact following the temporary rescue
Current fertilization practices may not match the uptake capabilities of hybrids that contain transgenic insect protection
The study examined six hybrids each with transgenic insect protection at two Illinois locations Dekalb and Urbana.
Pesticides kill protein-rich insects that bustard chicks rely on for rapid growth to be able to migrate come fall.
The Schmallenberg virus appears to be spread by midges. It causes a relatively mild illness in adult animals
The Department for Environment Food and Rural affairs (DEFRA) believes the disease was brought probably into the UK from infected midges blown across the Channel.
#Invasive kudzu bugs may pose greater threat than previously thoughtthe invasive kudzu bug has the potential to be a major agricultural pest causing significant damage to economically important soybean crops.
Conventional wisdom has held that the insect pests will be limited to areas in the southern United states but new research from North carolina State university shows that they may be able to expand into other parts of the country.
Kudzu bugs (Megacopta cribraria) are native to Asia and were detected first in the U s. in Georgia in 2009.
The bugs have an interesting life cycle which has been thought to be a limiting factor on far they can spread.
which we'll call Generation A. The immature bugs of Generation A normally feed on kudzu plants until they reach adulthood
Generation B kudzu bugs can feed on soybean crops during both their immature and adult life stages causing significant crop damage.
Because the immature Generation A kudzu bugs have only been seen to feed on kudzu researchers thought that the pest would not be able to migrate to northern and western parts of the United states where kudzu doesn't grow.
Under controlled conditions in a greenhouse laboratory researchers at NC State found that immature Generation A kudzu bugs were limited not to feeding on kudzu--they were feed able to exclusively on soybeans reach maturity
and the field observations indicate that kudzu bugs are potentially capable of spreading into any part of the U s. where soybeans are grown.
It also means that both annual generations of kudzu bugs could attack soybean crops in areas where the bug is established already
The fact that moths ants and fruit flies are known now to self-medicate has profound implications for the ecology and evolution of animal hosts and their parasites according to Mark Hunter a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and at the School
which animals such as baboons and woolly bear caterpillars medicate themselves. One recent study has suggested that house sparrows and finches add high-nicotine cigarette butts to their nests to reduce mite infestations.
Wood ants incorporate an antimicrobial resin from conifer trees into their nests preventing microbial growth in the colony.
Parasite-infected monarch butterflies protect their offspring against high levels of parasite growth by laying their eggs on anti-parasitic milkweed.
Perhaps the biggest surprise for us was that animals like fruit flies and butterflies can choose food for their offspring that minimizes the impacts of disease in the next generation Hunter said.
There are strong parallels with the emerging field of epigenetics in humans where we now understand that dietary choices made by parents influence the long-term health of their children.
For example when gypsy moth caterpillars consume foliage high in certain toxic compounds transmission of viruses between the caterpillars is reduced facilitating moth outbreaks.
Honeybees are known to incorporate antimicrobial resins into their nests. Analysis of the honeybee genome suggests that they lack many of the immune-system genes of other insects raising the possibility that honeybees'use of medicine has been partly responsible
--or has compensated--for a loss of other immune mechanisms. The authors also note that the study of animal medication will have direct relevance for human food production.
For example increases in parasitism and disease in honeybees can be linked to selection by beekeepers for reduced resin deposition by their bees.
#Fighting disease from within the mosquito: New techniques to help halt the spread of diseasescientists have revealed a new technique to introduce disease-blocking bacteria into mosquitoes with promising results that may halt the spread of diseases such as dengue yellow fever and potentially malaria.
When infected with the bacteria Wolbachia mosquitoes are unable to spread viruses such as dengue a disease
which kills round 40000 people each year with no vaccines or specific treatments currently available. There have been around 2400 cases of dengue infection in Northern Australia in recent years.
However the bacteria has been difficult to spread within the mosquito population because it reduces the mosquitoes'ability to lay viable eggs.
Now Professor Hoffmann from the University of Melbourne and Professor Michale Turelli from the University of California have shown that by introducing an insecticide resistance gene alongside the Wolbachia bacteria into the mosquito that the insects pass on the disease-blocking bacteria to other mosquitoes faster.
The results are published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. This could mean that the spread of disease can be stopped faster
and less infected mosquitoes would need to be released in a disease control program said Professor Ary Hoffmann from the University of Melbourne's Bio21 Institute and Department of Genetics.
Wolbachia bacteria strains live naturally inside up to 70%of all insects and are known to protect them against viral infection.
The disease-blocking strain of Wolbachia was discovered first in Australian fruit flies in 1988 by Prof Hoffmann
and trials with collaborators at Monash and James Cook Universities in 2011 showed that Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes were unable to spread the dengue virus.
and malaria-prone regions and so this strategy should select for the survival of only the Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes
but then these insects would be unable to pass on a virus to humans. Prof Hoffmann added that insecticide resistance genes would not spread to the uninfected mosquito populations
because a Wolbachia-infected female with a resistance gene will always pass on both the gene and the bacteria to her offspring.
and the strategy can utilize insecticides that are no longer part of active mosquito control programs. Story Source:
#Bean leaves can trap bedbugs, researchers findinspired by a traditional Balkan bedbug remedy researchers have documented how microscopic hairs on kidney bean leaves effectively stab
and trap the biting insects according to findings published online today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Scientists at UC Irvine and the University of Kentucky are now developing materials that mimic the geometry of the leaves.
Bedbugs have made a dramatic comeback in the U s. in recent years infesting everything from homes and hotels to schools movie theaters and hospitals.
Their work was motivated by a centuries-old remedy for bedbugs used in Bulgaria Serbia and other southeast European countries.
The bug-encrusted greenery was burned the next morning to exterminate the insects. Through painstaking detective work the scientists discovered that the creatures are trapped within seconds of stepping on a leaf their legs impaled by microscopic hooked hairs known botanically as trichomes.
The synthetic surfaces snag the bedbugs temporarily but do not yet stop them as effectively as real leaves Loudon said suggesting that crucial mechanics of the trichomes still need to be determined.
Plants exhibit extraordinary abilities to entrap insects said Loudon lead author of the paper. Modern scientific techniques let us fabricate materials at a microscopic level with the potential to'not let the bedbugs bite'without pesticides.
Nature is a hard act to follow but the benefits could be said enormous Potter. Imagine if every bedbug inadvertently brought into a dwelling was captured before it had a chance to bite
and multiply. Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California-Irvine.
Cows horses and termites can digest the cellulose in grass hay and wood. Most cellulose consists of wood fibers and cell wall remains.
#Researchers help unlock pine beetles Pandoras boxtwenty researchers--more than half of them Simon Fraser University graduates
A paper detailing their newly created sequencing of the mountain pine beetle's (MPB) genome will be gold in the hands of scientists trying to stem the beetle's invasion into eastern forests.
just as the mountain pine beetle has been doing to B c.'s lodgepole pines says Christopher Keeling the paper's lead author.
It's the beetle's genome that will help us figure out exactly how it does its damage
As the beetles'range expands and as they head into jack pine forests where the defensive compounds may be different this variation could allow them to be more successful in new environments explains Keeling.
The rice grain-sized insect has already wiped out an area of B c. lodgepole pine forest five times larger than the size of Vancouver Island.
The MPB genome allows us to examine the population differences for beetles at various parts of an outbreak.
The genome sequencing of the first North american pest bark beetle species in the Genus dendroctonus also uncovers a bacterial gene that has jumped into the MPB genome.
and/or microorganisms that grow in the beetle's tunnels beneath the bark of a tree explains Keeling.
#Let me introduce myself--leafcutter bee Megachile chomskyi from Texasthe Genus megachile is a cosmopolitan group of solitary bees often called leafcutter bees.
A new species Megachile chomskyi has been found only in Texas US. What is specific and interesting about this bee is the fact that it is among those insects
which exhibit a narrow specialized preference for pollen sources. Presumably the irreplaceable host of M. chomskyi are the beautiful flowers of the widespread Onagraceae or the so-called Evening-primrose family.
Unlike the other representatives of the family that chew leaves or flower petals many species of Megachile neatly cut circular pieces of leaves or petals for nest construction.
Nests of Megachile are constructed often within hollow twigs or other similarly constricted natural cavities but some species including members of the subgenus Megachiloides excavate burrows in the ground.
The subgenus Megachiloides still remains one of the most problematic Megachile groups in North america partially due to males
#Bumblebees use logic to find the best flowersscientists at Queen Mary University of London and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have discovered why bees copy each other
and joins Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical sciences later this year. Most worker bees visit thousands of flowers every day in their search for nectar to feed their queen's brood.
Copying flower colour choices may be a shortcut to success bypassing the exhausting process of exploring each flower to see
Erika Dawson a Phd student at Queen Mary University of London adds: Our study shows how bees use past associations to make decisions about
The above story is provided based on materials by Queen Mary University of London. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
#NASA flies radar south on wide-ranging expeditiona versatile NASA airborne imaging radar system is showcasing its broad scientific prowess for studying our home planet during a month-long
#New dual resistant tomatoes fight lethal pests with one-two punchin the battle against thrips Cornell breeder Martha Mutschler-Chu has developed a new weapon:
The dual resistant insect and virus varieties may reduce or even eliminate the need for pesticides in several regions.
Thrips are tiny insects that pierce and suck fluids from hundreds of species of plants including tomatoes grapes strawberries and soybeans.
Adapting a novel form of insect resistance discovered in a wild plant native to Peru Mutschler-Chu professor of plant breeding and genetics first isolated the resistance.
The acylsugars don't kill the insects but deter them from feeding or laying eggs on the plants.
If some thrips get through with the virus the virus resistance genes are there to mop it up Mutschler-Chu said.
The Cornell thrips-resistant tomato lines with and without the virus resistance genes will be used by Mutschler-Chu
and an interdisciplinary team of eight other scientists from seven other institutions nationwide as part of a new five-year $3. 75 million project to control thrips and TOSPO viruses in tomatoes.
or tweaking virus resistance Mutschler-Chu wants to discover the best package for insect and virus control.
Metals in flowers may play role in bumblebee declinebeekeepers and researchers nationally are reporting growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides may be killing off bumblebees.
Now research at the University of Pittsburgh points toward another potential cause: metal pollution from aluminum and nickel.
Published in the journal Environmental Pollution the Pitt study finds that bumblebees are at risk of ingesting toxic amounts of metals like aluminum
The Pitt study finds that bumblebees have the ability to taste --and later ignore--certain metals such as nickel
Therefore the insects are exposed to toxins before they even sense the presence of metals. Although many metals are required by living organisms in small amounts they can be toxic to both plants
Beyond leading to mortality these metals can interfere with insect taste perception agility and working memory--all necessary attributes for busy bumblebee workers.
Ashman and George Meindl coauthor of the study and a Phd candidate in Ashman's lab studied bumblebee behavior using the Impatiens capensis a North american flower that blooms in summer.
Its flowers are large producing a high volume of sugar-rich nectar each day--an ideal place for bumblebees to forage.
and aluminum in the flowers'nectar influenced bumblebee behavior Ashman and Meindl used two groups of uncontaminated flowers one group of flowers contaminated by nickel and another contaminated by aluminum.
When a bumblebee visited a flower in an array the entire visitation was recorded as well as the time spent (in seconds) foraging on each individual flower.
However once bumblebees arrive at flowers and sample the nectar they are able to discriminate against certain metals.
The paper The effects of aluminum and nickel in nectar on the foraging behavior of bumblebees first appeared online March 6 in Environmental Pollution.
while at VIMS and is now at the University of California Davis. Think of how vital honeybees are for pollinating tree crops or
or more toxins to fend off insect pests rests on assumptions that don't always apply UA researchers have discovered.
Our goal is to understand how insects evolve resistance so we can develop and implement more sustainable environmentally friendly pest management he said.
We obviously can't release resistant insects into the field so we breed them in the lab
For their experiments the group collected cotton bollworm--also known as corn earworm or Helicoverpa zea-a species of moth that is a major agricultural pest and selected it for resistance against one of the Bt toxins Cry1ac.
As expected the resistant caterpillars survived after munching on cotton plants producing only that toxin. The surprise came
If the assumption of redundant killing is correct caterpillars resistant to the first toxin should survive on one-toxin plants
But on the two-toxin plants the caterpillars selected for resistance to one toxin survived significantly better than caterpillars from a susceptible strain.
and may also explain the reports indicating some field populations of cotton bollworm rapidly evolved resistance to both toxins.
Carriã re explained that this is especially problematic with cotton bollworm and some other pests that are not highly susceptible to Bt toxins to begin with.
But if inheritance of resistance is seen dominant as with cotton bollworm matings between a resistant moth
and a susceptible moth can produce resistant offspring which hastens resistance. According to Tabashnik overly optimistic assumptions have led the EPA to greatly reduce requirements for planting refuges to slow evolution of pest resistance to two-toxin Bt crops.
Our main message is to be more cautious especially with a pest like the cotton bollworm Carriã re said.
#Insect pests more plentiful in hotter parts of city than in cooler areashigher temperatures in cities can be a key driver of insect pest outbreaks on trees in urban areas according to research published March 27
The researchers found that a scale insect that exclusively feeds on oak trees was 13 times more abundant on willow oaks in the hottest parts of the city of Raleigh North carolina than in cooler areas of the same city even
when other factors like natural enemies that would kill the insects were similar in both areas.
In a second experiment they found scale insects collected from trees in hot areas had higher survival rates in hot greenhouses than in cool ones.
However insects originally from cooler urban areas remained low in number in both hot and cool greenhouses.
The researchers found no differences in the rates of reproduction of insects in any of these groups.
Meineke explains that Urban warming can lead to higher insect pest abundance a result of pest acclimation or adaptation to higher temperatures.
and another type of pesticide coumaphos that is used in honeybee hives to kill the Varroa mite a parasitic mite that attacks the honey bee.
The study is the first to show that these pesticides have a direct impact on pollinator brain physiology.
when bees had been exposed to combinations of these pesticides for 4 days as many as 30%of honeybees failed to learn
Pollinators perform sophisticated behaviours while foraging that require them to learn and remember floral traits associated with food.
Disruption in this important function has profound implications for honeybee colony survival because bees that cannot learn will not be able to find food.
Together the researchers expressed concerns about the use of pesticides that target the same area of the brain of insects and the potential risk of toxicity to non-target insects.
However little consideration has been given to the miticidal pesticides introduced directly into honeybee hives to protect the bees from the Varroa mite.
We find that both have negative impact on honeybee brain function. Together these studies highlight potential dangers to pollinators of continued exposure to pesticides that target the insect nervous system and the importance of identifying combinations of pesticides that could profoundly impact pollinator survival.
This research is part of the Insect Pollinators Initiative joint-funded by the Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council Defra the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) the Scottish government and the Wellcome Trust under the auspices
of the Living with Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council.
#Fruit flies fed organic diets are healthier than flies fed nonorganic diets, study findsa new study looking at the potential health benefits of organic
versus nonorganic food found that fruit flies fed an organic diet recorded better health outcomes than flies fed a nonorganic diet.
The study from the lab of SMU biologist Johannes H. Bauer Southern Methodist University Dallas found that fruit flies raised on diets of organic foods performed better on several tests for general health.
what we now need to determine is why the flies on the organic diets did better especially
Fruit flies on organic diets showed improvements on the most significant measures of health namely fertility
We don't know why the flies on the organic diet did better. That will require further research.
The research focus of Bauer's fruit fly lab is nutrition and its relationship to longevity health and diabetes.
The findings Organically grown food provides health benefits to Drosophila melanogaster have been published in the open access journal PLOS One.
Flies on organic food performed better on some health teststhe data demonstrated that flies raised on organic food extracts by and large-large performed better on the majority of health tests reported the researchers.
Fruit flies were fed extracts from produce purchased at a grocery storein order to investigate whether organic foods are healthier for consumers the lab utilized one of the most widely used model systems the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
Because of the low costs associated with fly research and the fly's short life cycle researchers use fruit flies to study human diseases from diabetes to heart function to Alzheimer's disease.
The Bauer lab fruit flies were fed organic and nonorganic produce purchased from a leading national grocery retailer of organic and conventional foods.
The flies were fed extracts made from organic and conventional potatoes soybeans raisins and bananas. They were fed not any additional nutritional supplements.
The researchers tested the effects of each food type independently and avoided any confounding effects of a mixed diet.
To our surprise in the majority of our tests of flies on organic foods the flies fed organic diets did much better on our health tests than the flies fed conventional food Bauer said.
On both of these tests flies fed organic diets performed much better than flies fed conventional diets.
Since Kennewick lies within a region near the heart of Washington state's $1. 5 billion apple-growing region an annual survey of fruit trees is performed by the Washington state Department of agriculture (WSDA) to look for any invading insects.
This time the surveyors discovered a crabapple tree that had been infested by a fruit fly that they couldn't identify.
It was possible that the fly's larvae eating away inside the crabapples as they grew toward adulthood belonged to a relatively harmless species that had expanded simply its traditional diet.
But the real fear was represented that they an expansion in the range of the invasive apple maggot fly known to biologists as Rhagoletis pomonella.
and accurately figuring out which one of the flies was in that tree says Jeffrey Feder professor of biological sciences
and a member of the Advanced Diagnostics & Therapeutics initiative (AD&T) at the University of Notre dame. And for these flies it can sometime turn out to be a difficult thing to do.
One larva was sent to Notre dame for genetic analysis. The study sought to compare Notre dame's genetic analysis to Yee's visual identification after the larvae had developed into adults.
Fortunately the fly identified Rhagoletis indifferens is known not to infest apples. The Notre dame group further demonstrated that it is possible to genetically identify the correct fly species within two days compared to the four months required to raise
and visually identify the fly. A separate study led by the Feder lab details how the apple maggot fly was introduced recently into the Pacific Northwest region of the U s. likely via larval-infested apples from the East.
The flies have reached subsequently as far north as British columbia Canada and as far south as northern California.
So far though the apple maggot has not been reported infesting any commercial apple orchards in central Washington.
The correct identification of the larvae infesting crabapple trees saved the local state and federal agencies thousands of dollars in monitoring inspection and control costs Yee said.
The cost to growers if the apple maggot had been found to be established in the region would have been very substantial (easily over half a million dollars)
but the rapid diagnostic test developed at Notre dame suspended the need to proceed with the rulemaking process saving staff and administrative costs.
The Feder team is continuing to refine the genetic assays to develop a portable test that would be valuable in apple-growing regions as well as ports of entry where fruit infested by nonlocal insect species can be detected rapidly to prevent the spread of the insect.
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