Termites are the primary food of sloth bears. Sloth bears have especially long noses that allow them to suck termites from their holes.
For the most part bears have their young in dens. Dens are made homes from hollowed-out trees caves and piles of brush.
The researchers have identified already a new species of pygmy locust a tiny grasshopper relative and two flies in flagrante.
Other finds include ants beetles wasps midges and mammal hair all crowded together in the amber fragments offering a rich view of the 20-million-year-old forest ecosystem.
Amazing Amber Trove Rediscovered in Illinois This is a massively important resource said Sam Heads an insect paleontologist at the Illinois Natural history Survey who searched the museum's nooks and crannies for the amber collection.
Amber collectors even those working for museums prize intact insects and other intriguing specimens over bits and blobs of bugs.
The insect fossil record has great potential to inform people about ancient climate and climate change Heads said.
and flowed over bugs and debris on branches and tree bark trapping and preserving them for millions of years.
The wee bug is less than an inch long (20 millimeters) and foraged on lichen and algae for food.
The locust's abdomen shows hints of decay and the insect is surrounded by ants inside the amber suggesting the ants might have been carting off the carcass for a meal.
but they have been known to eat small animals and insects. A male can eat up to 40 lbs.
and 3 percent comes from termites and caterpillars. The mountain gorilla eats a diet that is about 86 percent leaves shoots and stems;
and 2 percent snails ants and grubs. Gorillas live in groups. Groups of gorillas are called troops or bands.
Halting the African armyworm: Nature Newsa plague of crop-eating caterpillars has struck Liberia and a second wave could spread across West Africa in the next few weeks,
the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO) has warned. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia's president, has declared a state of emergency
The African armyworm is the caterpillar of the night-flying moth Spodoptera exempta, and is a major crop pest,
From October to December one of the rainy seasons the moths lay their eggs on grasses and crops in Kenya and Tanzania.
They subsequently pupate to form moths, each of which can fly up to 1, 000 kilometres and lay 1, 000 eggs in its 10-day lifetime.
Armyworms have attacked, with varying intensity, 48 times in the past 55 years, says David Grzywacz, an expert on the caterpillars at the Natural resources Institute of the University of Greenwich, UK.
The second wave of moths generally fly north or south of eastern Africa, to countries such as Ethiopia or Zambia.
Liberia in western Africa, was prepared simply not to deal with the threat, he says. The caterpillars have munched through cocoa, bananas and maize (corn),
and are defecating in water supplies. So far more than 100 villages and around 500,000 people have been affected,
says the FAO's Christopher Matthews. Many of the armyworms have bored now into the ground,
When they re-emerge as moths in a week to 12 days he says, a second wave may spread into neighbouring countries such as Guinea and Sierra leone.
and moths have been spotted in some regions of Liberia, Tucker says. The caterpillars can be sprayed with pesticides
as soon as they are detected. Tanzania has a network of pheromone traps set up as monitoring devices to attract the moths
as soon as they appear. The country also stockpiles pesticides to deal with the caterpillars. But because it was taken by surprise,
Liberia was unable to deal with the threat fast enough. Initially farmers who could not get hold of pesticides set fire to worms
so Liberia must prepare for a second wave of moths. The idea of using pheromones to corral the moths together for destruction won't work,
says Grzywacz there will be too many to control cost-effectively. Neighbouring countries are already spraying pesticides in preparation.
If the weather conditions continue to be good for armyworms (generally scattered showers and warm), he says,
then the next wave of moths will be initiating a second generation of outbreaks in a few weeks,
the weather conditions may turn against the armyworms and things may gradually subside.
Cutting out the chemicals: Nature Newsozone experts are exploring ways to curb powerful greenhouse gases of their own making under the Montreal Protocol,
like bark beetles, says Mantgem. Bark beetles have caused many massive tree die offs in the region in recent years.
And the mortality increases that Mantgem and his team captured may be symptoms of climatic stress that make the forests more liable to such catastrophes.
they can become more susceptible to things like the pine beetle, says Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British columbia.
in order to destroy fungi, insects and weeds, pesticides do not have to be so hazardous that they are carcinogenic,
We want to switch the current perception of Bangladesh from the iconic vulnerable country where all these journalists fly to to see vulnerability to make it the iconic adaptive country,
which has been modified to be resistant to insects. But on 16february, a committee of experts appointed by each of the 27 EU countries was unable to muster the'qualified majority'--one that represents 62
It has approved already two more insect-resistant maizes--BT1507, which is owned jointly by Pioneer and Dow Agrosciences, and BT11,
Droughts, insect invasions, fires and storms would cause widespread forest destruction. The impacts of these fires and pest infestations will lead to an additional release of carbon into the atmosphere,
the short-term positive impacts would be cancelled out by damage from increased insect invasions, fires and storms.
The mountain pine beetle has devastated the forests of western Canada. The outbreak currently covers 14 million hectares roughly 3. 5 times the size of Switzerland,
says Allan Carroll, an insect ecologist with the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British columbia. By 2020, the projected end of the outbreak, about 270 megatonnes of carbon will have been emitted to the atmosphere3.
To date, fire-prevention policies in regions such as western North america have sought to suppress forest fires altogether leaving forests more susceptible to large-scale fires and insect attack.
resistant to a variety of insects and diseases and able to withstand the vagaries of climate change,
Nature Newsthe ability to adapt to a new environment may not always be beneficial for long-term success in flour beetles at least.
Beetles that were offered and ate a novel food, even with their ancestral food all around them, suffered over multiple generations, according to a study presented last month at the Evolution 2009 meetings in Moscow, Idaho.
We saw that these beetles have a massive degree of behavioural plasticity but that their evolutionary success was hindered due to their adaptability,
Agashe tested Tribolium castaneum, the ubiquitous flour beetle, by offering the beetles wheat flour their ancestral diet and maize (corn) flour,
The researchers tracked how much of each flour the beetles had consumed by looking at the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in ground-up beetle carcasses.
After only two weeks, Agashe found, the beetles'diet shifted to almost 30%maize flour. This was a never-before-seen food source,
The researchers let the beetles multiply through six generations, and tracked adult and larval numbers to assess immediate as well as long-term success. There was only a 4%increase in corn use over six generations, reports Agashe.
In other words, the beetles ate a lot of maize initially but then the rate tapered off. Furthermore the beetle populations that shifted to eating maize most quickly tended to have the lowest population sizes and stability.
Nature Newslaboratory studies suggest that it may be possible for insects to overcome two disparate toxins produced by genetically modified cotton.
Insects can become resistant to individual insecticides in much the same way as bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics.
Missouri, intends to launch a line of maize (corn) that contains eight different genes that make the crop resistant to herbicides and to attack by insects.
The main way that insects become resistant is by altering the binding site of the toxin,
if the insects altered the Cry1ac binding site, it's not going to give cross resistance to Cry2ab.
But when Tabashnik and his colleagues tried to selectively breed insects that were resistant to Cry2ab
The researchers were studying pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) a particular nuisance in the cotton fields of the southern United states. Crops expressing Cry1ac have held thus far largely the pest at bay,
and there has been no sign of Cry1ac resistance emerging in the insects. Tabashnik wanted to learn more about how insects may become resistant to the less-studied Cry2ab protein,
so the team raised a number of different laboratory strains of pink bollworms on a diet that contained the toxin.
To their surprise they generated a strain of pink bollworm that was not only resistant to 240-times higher levels of Cry2ab than normal,
but also to 420-times higher concentrations of Cry1ac. Although the binding sites of the two toxins differ,
both toxins are activated via the same pathway in the insect. A change in the protease responsible for activating the toxins could provide an avenue to cross-resistance,
Other changes in the insect's ability to cope with damaged cells could also play a part,
But this does not pose a threat for control by the current pyramided Bt cotton of this insect Tabashnik says.
The resistant pink bollworms were able to withstand high concentrations of both toxins in their diets,
Evolution by insects is not something that scientists are going to stop.
Renewable technologies increase energy sprawl: Nature Newsmillions of hectares of land will be needed to meet growing energy demands in the United states over the next two decades, according to new'energy sprawl'estimates.
Nature Newsresearchers have created transgenic maize plants that fight off pests by emitting a chemical to attract insect-killing nematode worms. 1the method,
which attracts nematodes that kill western corn rootworm an insect whose larvae are major maize pests in North america.
and 60%fewer adult rootworm beetles emerged from such plants. Although the team has created not a commercially viable crop,
future studies should address the effects that enhancing natural chemical signals might have on a whole ecosystem including the resident populations of insect-killing nematodes.
Nature Newscanadian researchers have decoded the DNA of the tree-killing fungus found in the mouths of mountain pine beetles,
the destructive bugs that wipe out entire North american forests. Further genome sequencing of the beetle and pine tree species should help forest managers design better pest-control tactics,
the authors say. It's really getting to a systems-level understanding of the mountain pine beetle epidemic,
Mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have eaten their way through vast swathes of western North american pine forests,
As the burrowing beetles tunnel under the bark to feed and lay eggs, they release spores of the blue-stain fungus (Grosmannia clavigera),
and allows the beetles to continue to infest. Bohlmann and his colleagues assembled the fungus's 32.5-million-base-pair genome
For the other two species the beetle and the tree the researchers are concentrating mainly on expressed gene sequences, fragments of the complete DNA sequence, rather than the genomes in their entirety.
They've already amassed one of the largest insect libraries of gene transcripts for the bark beetle from more than a dozen beetle life stages and body parts.
and say which population of trees is interacting with which population of fungus and which population of beetles,
and a few symbiotic ecological relationships such as leaf-cutter ants and their microbial partners, but the approach has never before been applied on this scale for an outbreaking forest nuisance.
who studies the interaction between bark beetles and fungi at the University of Montana in Missoula.
Comparing the blue-stain fungus with free-living or pathogenic fungi will shed light on how the beneficial fungus helps the beetles thrive,
Using genomics to stop the bark beetles is a bit of a long shot for sure, admits Chris Keeling,
or brinjal, that is insect-resistant. But barely 24 hours later, Jairam Ramesh, India's minister of environment and forests, said that permission for its cultivation will be given only after consulting all stakeholders.
Nature News Liberia's caterpillar plague Panic struck Liberia in early 2009, after a plague of caterpillars struck villages around the country, munching trees
while the UN's Food and agriculture organization (FAO) warned of further attacks to come (see'Halting the African armyworm').
'While some 400,000 villagers had to temporarily abandon their caterpillar-saturated homes, the impact of the pests turned out to be less calamitous than at first suggested.
The situation was exacerbated by an early misidentification of the caterpillar as an armyworm (a devastating crop pest that regularly attacks eastern Africa,
In fact it turned out to be Achaea catocaloides, a less threatening caterpillar that feeds mostly on the Dahoma tree.
As for the armyworm, it continues to cause devastation in eastern Africa each year. Outbreaks and high moth catches have already been reported in northern Tanzania,
says Ken Wilson, an ecologist at Lancaster University, UK. Together with the UK-based development organization CABI, he and fellow researchers have received just around £500, 000 (US$800,
000) over the next 18 months from the UK government to develop an armyworm early warning and control system in Tanzania.
Butterfly paper bust-up In August the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a paper online by Donald Williamson, a retired zoologist at the University of Liverpool, UK,
reporting that ancient butterflies accidentally mated with wormlike animals to give rise to caterpillars. The study which was communicated'by Lynn Margulis, of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
or brinjal, that is insect-resistant. The crop carries a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt),
such as rice that is insect-resistant (Bt rice) or enriched with Vitamin a and micronutrients. Our national labs have all the genes for rice improvement,
and its moons since 2004, will get to fly until 2017, NASA announced on 3 february. The mission was slated originally to come to end in 2008,
The new schedule calls for 155 orbits around the planet, 54 fly-bys of the methane-shrouded Titan and 11 fly-bys of the icy moon Enceladus.
Other scents beckon the truffle fly, which visits the fungus in search of a mate
which is engineered to be resistant to the European corn-borer caterpillar, was licensed in 1998. The sluggish pace of approval for GM CROPS means that
and on the approval of three other maize strains two insect-resistant varieties made by Syngenta and Pioneer,
is harboured in mammals, birds and even insects. It can trigger abortions in goats and sheep and causes flu-like symptoms and sometimes pneumonia in humans.
if this bug is the one responsible for human infections. With the Dutch Institute for Public health and the Environment, Roest's team is carrying out genome sequencing and comparisons of different strains.
Organic farmers have used Bt to kill insects for decades, and plants have been modified genetically with Bt genes
protecting themselves from insects without any pesticides. This bacterium is a natural soil predator of nematodes,
and to control mosquitoes and blackflies. The cost to treat one child with Bt would be 28 cents, Aroian estimates.
although one crop, a Chinese GMO cotton that is resistant to bollworm, has proved extremely useful to the population,
which incorporates eight genes conferring herbicide tolerance and insect protection. If farmers don't switch to Roundup Ready 2,
is flexing its muscles with the imminent release of its herbicide-tolerant, insect-resistant Viptera maize.
Nature Newsgrowing cotton that has been modified genetically to poison its main pest can lead to a boom in the numbers of other insects,
In 1997, the Chinese government approved the commercial cultivation of cotton plants genetically modified to produce a toxin from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is deadly to the bollworm Helicoverpa armigera.
Outbreaks of larvae of the cotton bollworm moth in the early 1990s had hit crop yields and profits,
and the pesticides used to control the bollworm damaged the environment and caused thousands of deaths from poisoning each year.
Numbers of mirid bugs (insects of the Miridae family), previously only minor pests in northern China, have increased 12-fold since 1997,
Mirids are now a main pest in the region, says Wu. Their rise in abundance is associated with the scale of Bt cotton cultivation.
Wu and his colleagues suspect that mirid populations increased because less broad-spectrum pesticide was used following the introduction of Bt cotton.
Mirids are not susceptible to the Bt toxin so they started to thrive when farmers used less pesticide,
Mirids can reduce cotton yields just as much as bollworms, up to 50%when not controlled, Wu adds.
The insects are also emerging as a threat to crops such as green beans, cereals, vegetables and various fruits.
The rise of mirids has driven Chinese farmers back to pesticides they are currently using about two-thirds as much as they did before Bt cotton was introduced.
As mirids develop resistance to the pesticides, Wu expects that farmers will soon spray as much as they ever did.
For example, the boll weevil was once the main worldwide threat to cotton. As farmers sprayed pesticides against the weevils,
bollworms developed resistance and rose to become the primary pest. Similarly, stink bugs have replaced bollworms as the primary pest in southeastern United states
since Bt cotton was introduced. Along with genetically modified crops, says Andow, farmers need effective systems for responding to changes in pest abundance.
This needs to be based on research into the timing dosage and frequency of pesticide use needed to tackle new pests.
and trying to reduce mirid damage to cotton by growing crops the pests prefer nearby.
Meanwhile, Chinese researchers are trying to develop cotton plants that kill both bollworms and mirids. Wu stresses,
which release chemicals that deter insects but these can be expensive or difficult to implement.
'But the research by Crowder, an insect ecologist at Washington state University in Pullman, and his colleagues, shows the importance of'evenness'the relative abundance of different species. Evenness quantifies not just the presence of different species,
or whether there is an equal distribution of numbers between species. The team looked at the bugs, nematodes and fungi that attack the hated Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata).
resulting in fewer potato-munching beetles and larger potato plants. Although the work of Crowder and his group does not address the issue of yields from organic versus conventional farms
Mosquito spray affects bird reproduction: Nature Newsa widely used microbicide may not be as environmentally friendly as previously thought.
The bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) is now the most commonly used microbicide to control mosquitoes worldwide
When ingested by water-inhabiting mosquito larvae, toxic proteins produced by Bti cause pores to form in the guts of the larvae,
and is favoured the method of mosquito control in West Africa, the United states and Europe. The handful of previous field studies on its toxicity to vertebrate populations have not found significant adverse impacts.
and her colleagues in the Journal of Applied Ecology provides evidence that mosquito control has effects further up the food chain.
The fall in reproductive success was due to the loss of mosquitoes the birds'preferred food source.
They found that birds inhabiting the control sites predominately ate mosquitoes and midges. But flying ants accounted for a larger proportion of the birds'diet in the treated areas.
They found that 58%of the differences in food source and 63%of the variation in the size of prey taken by birds in the control
where the aim is to reduce mosquito numbers for human comfort rather than for disease control.
Mosquito saliva may signal infection outbreaks: Nature Newsbaiting mosquito traps with cards soaked in honey,
and then analysing VIRAL RNA in saliva left by mosquitoes that feed on them, may be a way of tracking the spread of some diseases.
To assess whether mosquito populations are harbouring dangerous viruses, researchers often use traps baited with carbon dioxide
or light to attract the insects, which are then ground up and subjected to genetic analyses to identify any viruses.
But this procedure does not distinguish between viruses that are confined safely to the mosquitoes'gut
and those that have migrated to their salivary glands to be released in saliva when the insects bite a host.
An alternative approach is to analyse blood samples from animals such as chickens and pigs, for antibodies that signal the presence of pathogens.
and his colleagues have developed a method for collecting mosquito saliva by allowing the insects to feed on honey-drenched cards placed in a trap filled with carbon dioxide.
The researchers infected mosquitoes in the lab with West Nile Ross River or chikungunya viruses. About 10 days later, they captured more than 90 mosquitoes,
placed each one in a separate vial and allowed them to feed on the honey-soaked cards for 2 days.
whether the insects had ingested it. The team then used a genetic test to analyse VIRAL RNA on the cards.
They found that many mosquitoes had consumed the honey, and that more than 70%of cards tested positive for the three viruses.
Almost all cards that mosquitoes had fed on tested positive for the viruses they carried. The team next tested their approach in the field.
Their results showed that traps containing honey-soaked cards attracted more mosquitoes than those without cards,
with more than 75%of mosquitoes consuming honey while in the traps. Each week, the team collected cards and trapped mosquitoes and shipped them to a lab,
where they were tested for Ross River and Barmah Forest viruses. VIRAL RNA was found on the cards and in the mosquitoes that fed on the cards.
The approach is promising because it detects viruses only when mosquitoes are capable of transmitting them.
Viruses in mosquito saliva can be transmitted, but those in the gut cannot infect a new host when a mosquito bites.
But the usefulness of the cards may vary according to the mosquito species and the geographical region
van den Hurk says. For instance, Aedes aegypti, which spreads dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses, prefers blood meals over honey.
The kinds of mosquitoes they trapped with this method are not necessarily the most important vectors for some viruses,
says Scott Weaver, who studies virus-mosquito interactions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
The method does not indicate which species, or how many mosquitoes, deposited viruses on the cards.
As a result, it would be nearly impossible to quantify the risk of infection on the basis of the amount of VIRAL RNA on the cards
scientists could then use more comprehensive analyses to determine whether the mosquito preys on humans,
and to calculate the infection rate in mosquitoes and assess the potential threat. Next, van den Hurk will compare the sensitivity of the approach with those of other standard methods,
so-named because the embryos of flies with a mutation in the polished rice gene lack the hairs that characteristically decorate the surface of the fruitfly embryo
and a pair of graphite walking sticks for when her balance goes awry. Yes, I e-mail, she says.
a variety of aubergine modified to produce a protein from the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) bacterium that is toxic to insect pests.
Stress speeds up the metabolism of grasshoppers, making them seek out easily digested sugars and carbohydrates for a quick energy boost.
In cages placed on naturally growing vegetation, Hawlena added grasshoppers and, in some cases, spiders with their mouthparts glued shut,
so that they could induce fear without killing the grasshoppers. Grasshoppers that were exposed to spiders switched from eating protein-rich grasses to munching on several species of sugary goldenrod plants.
Initially, this diet shift was thought to be related to how easy it is for grasshoppers to hide from spiders in the branched and flowering goldenrod.
To separate out the possible effects refuge-seeking Hawlena also studied grasshoppers and muzzled spiders in indoor terrariums.
Instead of plants, the grasshoppers were fed with an artificial diet of high-sugar or protein-rich'biscuits'and he saw the same trend.
Fearful grasshoppers went for the high-sugar cookies rather than the protein-rich bars1. All that sugary food means that the stressed-out insects are ingesting foods richer in carbon and poorer in nitrogen than their calmer,
protein-pumping cousins. Meanwhile, their bodies are breaking down proteins to make even more glucose. The result is a body that is made of significantly more carbon
and less nitrogen and thus makes poorer fertilizer when it dies and rots. Hawlena thinks that the ecosystem is likely to be changed in two ways by frightened grasshoppers.
First, they eat more goldenrod and less grass, changing the ratio of these species in the landscape.
In ongoing experiments, Hawlena is getting intriguing results by looking at the different kinds of soil bacteria that thrive on stressed or unstressed grasshopper corpses.
Like Hawlena's grasshoppers, the elk of Yellowstone national park in Wyoming were thought to eat differently because of the threat of predation.
whether the physiological effects of stress on grasshoppers scale up to plants, soil, bacteria and onwards,
which kills the European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis). They found that since the crop was introduced in 1996, US farmers in the key maize-growing states of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois,
Not only does Bt maize suppress the corn-borer population in fields planted with the GM crop
Overall, Hutchison's team found that corn-borer populations have declined by between 27%and 73%across the five states in the 14 years
Conventional growers also help to stop corn borers becoming resistant to the Bt toxin by hosting pest populations that are susceptible to it, according to the team's research.
the corn earworm (Helicoverpa zea), has evolved resistance to Bt toxin in situations where GM-crop coverage is 100%.
so they could grow corn borers, says Hutchison, but over 14 years it's been very successful.
Hutchison says that the authors who work for industry provided data about corn borers and were involved not in the financial calculations.
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