But blasting these secret-suitor insects with radiation via electron beams X-rays or gamma-rays tends to make them weaker than typical males
What sterile-insect operations need says University of Florida insect physiologist Daniel Hahn is the insect world's version of George Clooney:
and last that sterilizing insects in a low-oxygen environment helps create suitors who more closely resemble the suave Clooney than do sterilized those in a normal-oxygen environment.
Our males (insects) are not only more sexually competitive they are maintaining their sexual competitiveness and their virility into old age Hahn said
The sterile insect technique or SIT has been used for decades and is considered a much preferable alternative to spraying pesticides over urban or suburban areas near major ports.
In this biological control method large numbers of sterile male insects are released to compete with wild males for the attention of invasive wild females.
They suspected and found that under the low-oxygen conditions the insects'cells would produce antioxidants that can help better protect them from the off-target radiation damage.
Some operations that rear and sterilize insects such as one in Guatemala that produces many of the sterile medflies dropped over Florida's major ports roughly every seven days do employ low-oxygen conditions called hypoxia or anoxia.
They found that the positive effects of low-oxygen treatments even extended into their'old age'--in the insects'case about 30 days under cushy laboratory conditions.
#Moths trapped with plant-produced sex pheromonea collaborative experiment involving a Kansas State university biochemist may mark the beginning of an effective environmentally friendly plant-based method of insect control.
and insects that are used to attract mates or relay danger. Currently insect pests are managed with pesticides and synthetic pheromones--the latter
of which confuse the insect and prevent it from breeding or enable it to be trapped. While these pheromones can be made chemically it can be a toxic process to produce them Durrett said.
What we demonstrated in this study is a more environmentally friendly approach that avoids the need to use toxic chemicals
and the orchard ermine moth--two insects that feed on the leaves of orchard trees and as caterpillars can strip trees of their bark.
While a proof-of-concept experiment engineering plants to be insect pheromone-producing factories creates an environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides as well as an easier
and less expensive method of synthesizing insect pheromones Durrett said. None of the enzymes that were put together would interact with each other naturally so it was really exciting to see this pathway work
The researchers led by Dr Charles Wondji used a wide range of methods to narrow down how the resistance works finding a single mutation in the GSTE2 gene which makes insects break down DDT
They have shown also that this gene makes insects resistant to pyrethroids raising the concern that GSTE2 gene could protect mosquitoes against the major insecticides used in public health.
#As hubs for bees, pollinators, flowers may be crucial in disease transmissionlike a kindergarten or a busy airport where cold viruses and other germs circulate freely flowers are common gathering places where pollinators such as bees
and butterflies can pick up fungal bacterial or viral infections that might be as benign as the sniffles
But almost nothing is known regarding how pathogens of pollinators are transmitted at flowers postdoctoral researcher Scott Mcart
As the authors point out Given recent concerns about pollinator declines caused in part by pathogens the role of floral traits in mediating pathogen transmission is a key area for further research.
They say their synthesis could help efforts to control economically devastating pollinator-vectored plant pathogens such as fire blight
Traditionally research on flower evolution has focused largely on selection by pollinators but as Mcart and colleagues point out pollinators that also transmit pathogens may reduce the benefits to the plant of attracting them depending on the costs and benefits of pollination.
The researchers say more work is needed before scientists can know whether a flower's chemical or physical traits determine the likelihood that pathogens are transmitted for example
and whether infection by pathogens is an inevitable consequence of pollinator visitation. Plant pathologists have made great strides in identifying floral traits that mediate host plant resistance to floral pathogens in individual systems;
From the pollinator's perspective there has been surprisingly little work elucidating the role of flowers and floral traits for pathogen transmission.
Given recent concerns about pollinator declines caused in part by pathogens understanding the role of floral traits in disease transmission is a key missing element say Mcart and colleagues.
In many creatures'eyes visual cells are distributed evenly in an obvious pattern such as the familiar hexagonal compact eyes of insects.
and mongoose lemurs that eat a mix of fruit leaves seeds flowers nectar and insects.
and studied genetic similarities between DWV in different pollinator populations. Three factors suggest that honeybees are spreading the parasites into wild bumblebees:
and managed pollinators. Infected honeybees can leave traces of disease like a fungal spore or virus particle on the flowers that they visit and these may then infect wild bees.
While recent studies have provided anecdotal reports of the presence of honeybee parasites in other pollinators this is the first study to determine the epidemiology of these parasites across the landscape.
Policies to manage these diseases need to take into account threats to wild pollinators and be designed to reduce the impact of these diseases not just on managed honeybees but on our wild bumblebees too.
After testing scores of samples taken from rice fields across the state MSU scientists found that seed treatments are effective in managing the crop's most troublesome insect pests.
Insect managementgore works at the Delta Research and Extension Center in Stoneville. He said researchers take core samples about 4 inches in diameter
and soil insects such as wire worms and white grubs and get the plants off to a good healthy start.
which is about two months that the seed treatment was sitting in the soil without having insect pressure Adams said.
if the lower seeding rate and hence the lower seed treatment rate on a per acre basis impacted insect control.
and behavior activities have been evaluated in the laboratory bioassays according to Aijun Zhang research chemist U s. Department of agriculture Agricultural research service Beltsville Agricultural Research center Invasive Insect Biocontrol and Behavior Laboratory.
It is possible that the synthetic version of pheromone could be used in combination with an insect pathogenic fungus that is being studied at Cornell University by Ann Hajek Hoover said.
and the ecosystem few scientists have observed insects adapting to a plastic-rich environment he said.
Markings showed that the bees chewed the plastic differently than they did leaves suggesting that the insects had collected not incidentally plastic.
and Environment did not see a drop in the number of pollinators such as bees in the fields.
However the relatively small size of the research fields limited the researchers'ability to measure the effect on pollinators according to Egan.
That may be because pollinators are very mobile and the spatial scale of our experiment may not be big enough to show any effects Egan said.
Specifically they looked at wasps belonging to different castes including dominant colony-founding queens subordinate colony-founding queens established queens dominant workers and subordinate workers.
We found that in wasps which are primitively social insects aggression genes control the establishment of an individual's dominance over a group said Christina Grozinger professor of entomology and director of the Center for Pollinator Research Penn State.
In contrast in honey bees which are advanced social insects aggression genes control altruistic defensive behavior--for example
Bees and other insects should actually be redundant here as the examined coffee variety Coffea arabica is self-pollinating.
if pollinators have access to the coffee blossoms the cherries were about seven percent heavier
bees and other pollinators ensure better quality. â#Same effect with all cultivation systemsto the surprise of the researchers intensified farming seems to have no negative effect:
Given that much of the landscape is divided into small parcels pollinators birds and bats still could find a suitable habitat with nesting places and from there spread into the plantations.
New method to extract PLANT DNA from grasshopper guts sheds light on plant-insect interactionsgrasshoppers may be small
and insect species says University of Cincinnati researcher Alina Avanesyan who developed the new protocol while studying grasshopper leaf tissue consumption.
According to Avanesyan With this protocol a researcher can focus on a variety of research questions such as detecting plant-insect interactions determining how long the food has been digested estimating the prevalence of different plants in insect guts exploring the sequence of multiple plant species consumed
and ultimately better understand the insect food digestion process Avanesyan explains. It opens doors to a completely different research area--insect physiology.
To demonstrate the utility of the protocol Avanesyan successfully amplified the DNA of a noncoding region of a plant chloroplast gene
Benefits extend far beyond grasshoppers as it can be adapted to any insect herbivores of interest.
and sustainable methods of managing insect populations making the new gut DNA extraction method a valuable tool for the scientific community.
and physiologically similar says Avanesyan who plans to continue to use the protocol to investigate plant defenses against insect herbivores.
This in conjunction with the 300 percent rise in pollinator-dependent crops requires the industry to manage honey bees like never before;
Results from Federally mandated tests performed at the University of California Riverside now show that Tamarixia radiata is indeed safe for the environment and poses no undue risk to other insects humans or pets.
such as pest controlservices provided by Mother Nature such as pest control from insect-eating bats are affected by market forces like most anything else in the economy a University of Tennessee Knoxville study finds.
In fact by preying on the individual insects that survive the Bt toxin bats may provide the additional service of slowing the evolution of resistance to Bt and other insecticides.
#Organic farms support more species, researchers findon average organic farms support 34%more plant insect and animal species than conventional farms say Oxford university scientists.
'For pollinators such as bees the number of different species was 50%higher on organic farms although it is important to note that the study only looked at'species richness'.'
This effect was weakest in pollinators which may be because pollinators are likely to visit neighbouring farms
and could be affected by pesticides there.''The impact of organic farming on total species richness varied significantly across the data with the average gain in species richness varying between 26%and 43%.
#Beneficial insects, nematodes not harmed by genetically modified, insect-resistant crops, studies showa large body of literature has shown that genetically-modified plants that produce proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to protect themselves from insect pests have little to no effect on a wide range of nontarget insects.
However concerns about Bt crops still exist. Now two new studies using more exacting methods show that Bt crops have no negative effects on two beneficial insect predators or on a beneficial entomopathogenic nematode.
In an article in the February 2014 issue of Environmental Entomology called Using Resistant Prey Demonstrates that Bt Plants Producing Cry1ac Cry2ab
They then fed the caterpillars to two common beneficial predatory insects--insidious flower bugs (Orius insidiosus)
and fertility of the insect predators in both groups were similar regardless of whether they consumed caterpillars that fed on Bt plants or non-Bt plants.
or Orius insidious two important insect predators that help suppress pest populations on corn cotton
and then exposed to Heterorhabditis bacteriophora a beneficial nematode that preys on insects. The researchers found that the virulence reproductive potential
Together these two studies add to the scientific literature demonstrating that Bt plants can control targeted insect pests
#First African study on biodiversity in genetically modified maize finds insects abundantprevious studies from China Spain
and the United states on genetically modified (GM) rice cotton and maize have concluded that the biodiversity of insects
#Trees diminished resistance to tropical cyclone winds attributed to insect invasionsguam experiences more tropical cyclones than any other state
Invasions of two invasive insects (Aulacaspis yasumatsui in 2003 and Chilades pandava in 2005) were found to be responsible for the 100%mortality of the intact portions of the trees'snapped stems during the 5 years after Typhoon Chaba.
These bats of which there are almost 200 species eat a variety of foods including insects frogs lizards fruit nectar and even blood.
#Single gene separates queen from workersscientists have identified how a single gene in honey bees separates the queens from the workers.
While workers have these distinct features queens do not. The research team was able to confirm this by isolating
which are in the same family as honey bees queens have pollen baskets similar to workers.
We conclude that the evolution of pollen baskets is a major innovation among social insects and is tied directly to more-complex social behaviors.
Future research by Huang may pursue investigating how bees could be improved to become better pollinators.
DDT--used in the United states for insect control in crops and livestock and to combat insect-borne diseases like malaria--was introduced as a pesticide during WWII.
Rutgers scientists--the first to link a specific chemical compound to Alzheimer's disease--believe that research into how DDT
#Common crop pesticides kill honeybee larvae in the hivefour pesticides commonly used on crops to kill insects
While we have found that NMP contributes to honeybee larvae mortality the overall role of these inactive ingredients in pollinator decline remains to be determined.
while watching a David Attenborough video describing the mold insects and other crud that resides in the plodding animal's thick fur.
Insects frogs lizards fruit nectar and even blood. The bats'skulls of today reflect this dietary diversity.
#Increase in hemlock forest offsetting effect of invasive hemlock woolly adelgid for nowdespite the accumulating destruction of a nonnative invasive insect called the hemlock woolly adelgid hemlock forests in the eastern United states appear to have held their own
Nonnative forest insects like the hemlock woolly adelgid are devastating on many levels because trees are so important to a region's culture
and the Forest Products Lab. Forest Service research is working hard to more aggressively control nonnative insects
and waiting for the insects to emerge. The results reveal that the tiny pest controllers('parasitiod'wasps) that prey upon the caterpillars are not present in high enough numbers to control the moths.
and then see insects--the adult moths or their pest controllers--emerge but making these discoveries was a valuable contribution to understanding why some animals become so invasive.
and insects would have an effect on the tree species'said Professor Rob Freckleton of Sheffield University who co-led the study.'
but eliminating insects didn't. Ours is the first study to unpick the effects of the different natural enemies.'
Instead management practices focused on maintaining the complex web of ecological interactions among coffee plantation organisms--including insects fungi plants birds
and abundance of beneficial insects and opens the plantations to winds that help disperse coffee rust spores according to U-M ecologist John Vandermeer
Bee Virus (DWV) Black Queen Cell Virus (BQCV) and Sacbrood Virus (SBV) are known other causes of honeybee viral disease.
The fact that infected queens lay infected eggs convinced these scientists that TRSV could also be transmitted vertically from the queen mother to her offspring.
Thus they call for increased surveillance of potential host-jumping events as an integrated part of insect pollinator management programs.
which is used on flowering crops to prevent insect damage reduces the size of individual bees produced by a colony.
and weighing bees on micro-scales as well as monitoring the number of queens and male bees produced by the colony.
We know we have to protect plants from insect damage but we need to find a balance
The two female castes workers and queens are diploid like humans. They contain two copies of each chromosome.
and feeding like the workers they are responsible for mating with queens so that the next generation of honey bees can be produced within a colony.
Without strong fit drones the chance of successful matings with queens could be compromised severely.''Recent studies mainly coming out of the United states suggest that queen failure is a major cause of colony death.
Early death of queens could be the result of queens not obtaining sufficient quantity and quality of sperm from drones during mating.
Honey and pollinationhoney bees as all insect pollinators provide crucial ecosystem and economic service which is relevant for our food security.
Annually in Europe more than 24 million honey bee colonies contribute to the production of 130000 tons of honey
Bigheaded flies are a group of bizarre insects whose round heads are covered almost entirely by their bulging compound eyes
and planthoppers renowned common garden insect pests says Archibald. The newly discovered species were preserved in Eocene epoch fossil beds that are 49 million to 52 million years old
Along with these new rich forests came an expanding diversity of pollinators and herbivorous insects and with them diversification of their insect predators including these bigheaded flies.
With these new discoveries we see that the early history of these oddly shaped insect predators provides a part of the puzzle revealing the broad ecological-evolutionary revolution of expanding predator-prey relationships
and increasing biodiversity during the formation of new ecosystems says Archibald. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Simon Fraser University.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology have looked now more deeply into the insect-plant interaction asking
The researchers found that the electrostatic properties of the glue that coats spider webs causes them to reach out to grab all charged particles from pollen and pollutants to flying insects.
which may enable insects to spot the webs with their antennae'e-sensors'.'The study published in Naturwissenschaften shows how a quirk of physics causes webs to move towards all airborne objects regardless of
This explains how webs are able to collect small airborne particles so efficiently and why they spring towards insects.
Many insects are able to detect small electrical disturbances including bees that can sense the electric fields of different flowers and other bees.'
'Pretty much all flying insects should be capable of sensing electrical disturbances'said Professor Vollrath.''Their antennae act as'e-sensors
'when the tips are connected to the body by insulating materials meaning the charge at the tip will be different from the rest of the insect.
As insects approach charged objects the tips of their antennae will move by a small amount
whether insects would be able to sense them before the web snaps out to grab them.
Either way it is clear that electrostatic charges play an important role in the insect world.'
The research provides new insights on how the environment can affect gene expression and on insects'extraordinaire adaptability.
and memory abilities to suit different life stages in a remarkable show of insects'survival skills.
and beneficial insects birds and microbes that consume methane a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
and the Insect Pollinators Initiative Crops project indicates that demand for pollination services has risen five times as fast as the number of colonies across Europe.
although the total number of honeybee colonies increased in some European countries the demands for the pollination services supplied by these pollinators has increased much faster due to the increasing demand for biofuel feedstocks.
Dr Tom Breeze who conducted the research said This study has shown that EU biofuel policy has had an unforeseen consequence in making us more reliant upon wild pollinators like bumblebees and hoverflies to meet demands forthis
Adding The results don't show that wild pollinators actually do all the work but they do show we have less security
Many of the most important crops in Europe such as rapeseed sunflower soybeans apples and strawberries benefit from pollination by insects.
and other organisations to better understand the role of different pollinators in European agriculture. Story Source The above story is provided based on materials by Pensoft Publishers.
and the research project leader whose lab focuses on urban entomology insect behavior and chemical ecology.
However certain stink bugs are beneficial such as Podisus nigrispinus (Dallas) a predatory stink bug that is considered an important biological control agent for various insect pests of cotton soybean tomato
Pentatomidae) may aid companies that rear these beneficial insects and the growers who use them in the field.
This is the first study to examine the storage technique for the predator P. nigrispinus to improve its mass rearing in laboratory conditions without compromising the quality of insects produced.
It also increases the availability of insects for release in the field at the earliest opportunity.
and insects preserved for all time in amber. The flowing tree sap covered the specimens
The pollen of these flowers appeared to be said sticky Poinar suggesting it was carried by a pollinating insect
New associations between these small flowering plants and various types of insects and other animal life resulted in the successful distribution
he would chase after the shadowy insects swarming around the glowing street lamps. The child of a middle-class family--his father was an engineer,
The company is capturing the sun's energy to kill nocturnal insects that feast on crops.
By night, the battery (set on a timer) powers a pair of patented light bulbs that lure insects in with one attractive wavelength
but conducts most of its testing in China, says some farmers have reported insect reductions of up to 90 percent.
Our state-of-the-art insect control systems have seen great success in the Chinese agricultural market, which has allowed us to grow our revenues very quickly.
But man is that miniscule mound of gray matter finely tuned as the winged pollinator's mission control center.
Simpler organisms such as social insects have advanced surprisingly cognitive abilities Dr. James Marshall of the University of Sheffield says.
making them factories for producing insect pheromones. Pheromones, those chemicals produced by animals and released into the environment, are used by moths for finding mates.
Synthetic pheromones--which can disrupt pheromone communication in insect pests--have been used widely by farmers for decades,
to trap insects or confuse them enough so they can t breed. As pesticides, pheromones are nontoxic and biodegradable,
Right now, the team still has to prepare baits for trapping insects using their plant-derived pheromone components.
and Queen of the Sun Become involved, donate, purchase local honey or sponsor a hive.
D c. How samara fly In a manner similar to insects, hummingbirds and bats, maple seeds fly by creating a vortex over the leading edge of the wing.
 Bees are social insects that return to the same point and operate on a very predictable schedule.
so that they can be attached to smaller insects like mosquitos and fruit flies for future studies. Â Photo:
Good news for an insect that does so much for our agriculture but has been the subject of the terrifying colony collapse disorder,
Once derided, insects have become a symbol of exclusivity. Chefs catering to diners willing to pay for luxury will search high and low for the most sought-after species
. While insects are a striking feature of pre-Hispanic food, the cuisine encompasses a broad range of vegetables, legumes and game oe many
They say that the food of the future will include a lot of insects said Ricardo Muã Â oz Zurita, chef-owner of Mexican restaurants Azul and Azul y Oro.
But thankfully Mexico's insects aren't so well-known. Although he touts the healthfulness of protein-rich edible bugs,
Muã Â oz Zurita doesn't use native insects in his restaurants due to the scarcity and the cost.
The insect is able to find precious liquid even in the ultra-arid Namibian desert in Africa.
She rolls her eyes every time the edible insects are mentioned. Shes somewhat frustrated with how little Australians know about their native foods.
Commercial queen breeders can rear large numbers of queen bees quickly, putting little to no upward pressure on bee prices following CCD.
and being weakened by drought or insect infestations, such as the mountain pine beetle. These circumstances, the researchers said,
Foods and beverages produced with the help of animal pollinators include almonds, apples, blueberries, coffee, melons and soybeans.
Over the past year or so, Noma's chef and co-owner, Renã Â Redzepi, has become a leading proponent of insects as food.
Now one of the lab's principal activities is exploring the gastronomic qualities of insects.
Some estimates say that 70 percent of the world's cultures have a tradition of eating insects
One reason for this cultural disparity is that insects are larger, more available and easier to harvest in tropical zones.
edible insects could become big business worldwide. What interests Redzepi is their potential as a new source of deliciousness,
and explained to me that the primary focus of the insect project is what they call the hedonic factor.
It doesn't matter how nutritious insects might be or how impressive their food conversion rate--if they don't taste good,
Reade explained that bee larvae were an excellent gateway insect for breaking down the mental barriers people have to ingesting bugs.
He said the first time you eat an insect is generally the hardest, but a positive experience can quickly change attitudes:
The staff at the Nordic Food Lab say there are many reasons for convincing Westerners to add insects to their diet.
Insects emit less greenhouse gases, can often be grown on organic waste, frequently prefer to be packed together,
With these facts in mind, the European union is investing some 4 million euros in a feasibility study of insects as protein in animal feed.
knowing which insects are safe to eat and which might make us sick. At the Food Lab, the staff use cultural practices as a starting point.
If a certain insect is part of a human diet somewhere in the world, it is more likely to be pathogen-free.
One main obstacle to eating insects is the exoskeleton, but the food processor quickly solves the problem.
The fermented cricket paste was the first of the Food Lab's insect-based creations to make it onto the menu at Noma.
Redzepi was careful to point out that insects are only a small fraction of what Noma serves.
The insects added a bright citrus note, followed by an aftertaste of something wild and alien--an almost aggressive flavor
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