insecta

Insecta

Ant (394)
Bee (762)
Beetle (480)
Bug (573)
Butterfly (845)
Caddice fly (5)
Cockroach (395)
Dragonfly (27)
Earwig (1)
Flea (17)
Flies (872)
Grasshopper (168)
Insecta (2067)
Louse (2)
Mayfly (3)
Neuroptera (6)
Phasmid (4)
Sawfly (1)
Stone fly (1)
Termite (65)
Thrip (13)
Wasp (181)

Yet these little insects are causing a buzz by helping thousands of rural farmers in East Africa.

"It's the only food that insects produce that humans eat regularly, it's packed with healthy micro-nutrients,

The mother queen and half of the worker bees leave the hive to seek a new location,

while the daughter queen and the remaining workers remain in place. Minutes later, the departed group identifies a temporary resting place on a nearby tree branch,

as if they were participating in some insect version of Dancing with the Stars. Some simply stop dancing,

A female honey bee becomes queen based on what she eats in the first days of her life

(though worker bees do seem to have some influence over who becomes queen, giving honey bees the most humanlike election process).

According to the survey, the majority of pest control operators from Europe, Africa, Australia and North america said bed bugs were the most difficult insect pest to control, more so than ants, termites and even the formidable cockroach.

Insect growth regulators, or IGRS, are chemicals that prevent bed bugs from completing their lifecycle, stunting their growth so they can't reproduce.

On the horizon, perhaps, are modified genetically versions of symbiotic bacteria that live in the insect's gut,

Entomologists always use two words for insects that are true to the common name they have oe so for example,

a disintegration that is assisted by microorganisms, insects and lichen. This organic matter decays, feeding more organisms, including, in time, plants.

and attracts microorganisms, worms and insects, which help maintain soil fertility and provide ecosystem services.

These represent the immune defense systems of vertebrates, insects, monocotyledons (grasslike plants) and dicotyledons (plants like beans that have seed two leaves.)

such as a virus, perhaps with the help of a sap-sucking insect, says Professor Bengtsson.

and queens to produce their extraordinarily different behaviors. This finding is not only crucial, but far reaching,

more than 550 genes are marked differentially between the brain of the queen and the brain of the worker,

¢Deep Fried Insects Topping off the list of specialty foods is this protein-rich delicacy from Thailand,

suggesting that insect nutrition is compromised somehow. Liaisons between the military and academia are nothing new, of course.

is a kind of insect insanity. In any event, the universitys bee operation itself proved vulnerable just last year,

Science Daily reports that despite their numbers and status as an important pollinator sweat bees are tough to study

and insects that were introduced by humans to correct an imbalance, and species that were endangered once

and why the animal or insect is considered costly: 1. Canada Geese for endangering public health by soiling parks and lakes,

#New Study Suggests Exposure to Pesticides Prime Cause of ADHD Organophosphate pesticides are used widely in the United states to control insects on food crops.

because the pesticides are designed to attack the nervous systems of insects. It is not surprising, then,

which are used widely in the United states to control insects on food crops. Epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi of UC Berkeley and her colleagues have been studying more than 300 Mexican American children living in the heavily agricultural Salinas Valley.

#Insects Sense Danger on Mammals Breath When plant-eating mammals such as goats chomp on a sprig of alfalfa,

they could easily gobble up some extra protein in the form of insects that happen to get in their way.

The insects sense mammalian breath and simply drop to the ground. oetiny insects like aphids are not helpless

Inbar said he had wondered always about accidental predation of small plant-dwellers based on his observations of insects that dont really move around. oeas soon as we started to work on this problem,

Ladybugs, an insect enemy of aphids, didnt inspire that kind of synchronous response either. Further studies with an artificial breath apparatus allowed the researchers to test what it was about the breath that tipped the aphids off.

in spite of the inherent cost of an aphids dropping off the plant, points to the significance of mammalian herbivory to plant-dwelling insects,

#Saving the Planet by Eating Insects and Other Creepy Crawlies A Chinese woman selling scorpions on stick in Beijing,

the trick may be to switch our diet to insects and other creepy-crawlies. The raising of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep occupies two-thirds of the worlds farmland

A policy paper on the eating of insects is being considered formally by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

an entomologist at Wageningen University in The netherlands and the author of the UN paper, says eating insects has advantages. oethere is a meat crisis,

Van Huis is an enthusiast for eating insects but given his role as a consultant to the FAO,

he cant be dismissed as a crank. oemost of the world already eats insects, he points out. oeit is only in the western world that we dont.

Grasshoppers The advantages of this diet include insects high levels of protein, vitamin and mineral content.

shows that farming insects produces far less greenhouse gas than livestock. Breeding commonly eaten insects such as locusts,

crickets and meal worms, emits 10 times less methane than livestock. The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas

and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming. Being cold-blooded, insects convert plant matter into protein extremely efficiently,

Van Huis says. In addition, he argues, the health risks are lower. He acknowledges that in the west eating insects is a hard sell:

oeit is very important how you prepare them, you have to do it very nicely, to overcome the yuk factor.

More than 1, 000 insects are known to be eaten by choice around the world, in 80%of nations.

Durst helped set up an insect farming project FAO project in Laos which began in April.

Locusts and crickets are calcium-rich and 90%of people in Laos have eaten insects at some point,

Durst says the FAOS priority will be to boost the eating of insects where this is already accepted

and protect forests where many wild insects are collected. oei can see a step-by-step process to wider implementation.

insects could be used to feed farmed animals such as chicken and fish which eat them naturally.

One of the few suppliers of insects for human consumption in the UK is Paul Cook,

Pics) The brightly coloured insect, which is only a few inches long, was snapped by wildlife biologist Jonathan Mays in Maine,

since these insects have magnetite in their bodies which helps them in navigation. oethere are reports of sudden disappearance of bee populations from honeybee colonies.

and in the egg laying rate of the queen was observed. The behaviour of exposed foragers was influenced negatively by the exposure

The UK Government has set aside £10 million for research into the decline of pollinators like bees,

which provide energy for the potential pollinators. But the floral nectar of some plant species also includes small quantities of substances known to be toxic,

The presumption is that natural selection has favored those plants that satisfy the desires of their pollinators.

#Use Cucumbers and Other Natural Products To Keep Insects Away Repel Pests Naturally! You may not know it,

If confirmed, the study could bolster the idea that early angiosperms promoted the rise of certain insects.

Modern insects like bees and wasps rely on flowers for nectar and pollen. oethe fossil record suggests that a lot of these insect groups originated before angiosperms appeared,

said Stephen Smith of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. This study shifts the oldest angiosperms back farther in time towards the origin of groups like bees and flies,

and superimpose them on the evolutionary tree for these insect groups, all of a sudden you get a match,

said Donoghue. oebut its hard to imagine flowering plants would have had a big impact on the origin of major insect groups

The consortium released the 464 megabyte draft genome of the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) in the current issue of PLOS Biology. oebecause this is a different kind of insect not a fruit fly, not a beetle,

not a hymenoptera (butterfly and moth) we are seeing things that people have not seen in other projects,

He agreed with Richards that the aphid presents a special case. oelook at this little insect,

000 in other insects and 25,000 in humans, said Richards, a corresponding author of the paper. oethus it seems that pea aphids (one among the 4,

Heres hoping the ongoing global bee die off comes to an end soon it seems were losing some of the smartest insects on the planet.

The honey-making insects prefer nectar with small amounts of nicotine and caffeine over plain nectar, researchers revealed.

which provides energy for the potential pollinators. But the floral nectar of some plant species also includes small quantities of substances known to be toxic, such as caffeine and nicotine.

A big surprise to tumble out of the new tree is that the closest living relatives of insects include a small and obscure group of creatures called remipedes that were discovered only in the late 1970s living in a watery cave in the Bahamas.

the researchers are putting the strange shrimp together with the six-legged insects, Hexapoda, to form a new group they dubbed Miracrustacea,

As a oesister clade to hexapods, the Xenocarida likely represent the sort of creature that came onto land to start the spectacular flowering of the insect lineage,

#Hotlix Insect Candy in Pictures Hotlix insect candy Even the sweetest tooth might find these confections easy to resist.

Pics) Californian based candy creators HOTLIX have been making people cringe with delight with their outrageous confections for over 25 years. oeour first insect candy was flavoured a tequila lollipop with a worm in it back in 1982,

and our insect candy has taken off worldwide. The brainchild of Larry Peterman, 70, HOTLIX have expanded their line to include devilish delights from apple,

what he calls the worm ranch where he grows all of the insects for food products,

revealed Katy. oeour latest insect candy has been flavoured the chocolate scorpion which have proved to be very popular.

And like the chocolatier from Roald Dahls hit childrens book, Larry is very protective of the secret process behind making insect candy. oethe owner does not divulge exactly what the process is before they are cooked

Panacanthus cuspidatus, is projected one of 100,000 insect species in Yasuni. A team of scientists has documented that Yasunã National park,

in the core of the Ecuadorian Amazon, shatters world records for a wide array of plant and animal groups, from amphibians to trees to insects.

an Ecuadorian botanist working with both the Smithsonian Institution and Finding Species. Perhaps the most impressive statistic of all is that a single hectare of forest in Yasunã is projected to contain 100,000 insect species. According to eminent entomologist Dr

For centuries, a preparation made from the insects dried and crushed bodies (a substance known as cantharides) was used medically as an irritant and diuretic.

#Punishment Important in Plant-Pollinator Relationship Charlotte Jander placed either a wasp carrying pollen or a pollen-free wasp in a bag around a fig fruit.

and their wasp pollinators. said lead author, Charlotte Jandr, graduate student in Cornell Universitys Department of Neurobiology and Behavior,

Similar results have been found among human societies and in social insects. It is very appealing to think that the same general principles could help maintain cooperation both within and among species. more via science news Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati d

This highlights the need for additional studies of our major pollinators, #and not just honeybees, he told me.

Megacopta cribraria, an insect that hitched a ride to Atlanta on a plane from Asia in 2009, eats kudzu.

$4. 99 4. Bugs and Insects Speaking of bugs, with a database of more than 900 pests, the Bugs and Insects app is a great resource for gardeners looking to determine the culprits who have been nibbling on their harvests,

#European union is conducting $4. 3 million study on nutritional value of eating insects Love bug salad Would you like a bowl of scorpion soup?

Experts in Brussels believe insects and other creepy crawlies could be a vital source of nutrition

They have launched a three million euro (£2. 65 million) project to promote the eating of insects

Proponents of entomophagy#insect eating#argue that bugs are a low-cholesterol low-fat protein food source.

Insects emit less greenhouse gases than cattle and require less feed, supposedly making them environmentally-friendly.

The European commission is offering the money to the research institute with the best proposal for investigating Insects as novel sources of proteins#.

By 2020, you will be buying insects in supermarkets. We will be amazed that in 2011 people didnt think it was going to happen.

I think it will start with ground-up insects in sauces and burgers. Grinding them up will make them look more palatable.#

and that flying insects should be regarded as shrimps of the sky#.#Old sources of protein will be feed insufficient to the growing world population,

#However, Stuart Hine, a senior entomologist at the Natural history Museum, said insects still may not solve all problems.

and insect diseases can spread rapidly enough to kill a farms entire stock in a day.

Insects are fantastic, but they arent the ultimate solution if the world desperately needs food.

Surviving on insects when you cant cook them is one thing; but most cultures who eat insects,

cook them, #he added. In addition to the research project, the EU is also asking national watchdogs including the UK Foods Standards Agency to investigate current insect-eating habits to decide which,

if any, bugs will need safety assessments. This follows the recent emergence in the UK of a very niche market in edible insects,

which supplies insects for human consumption to Selfridges and Fortnum & mason, said the EU interest in the area was unlikely to help.

People arent suddenly going to start eating insects because the EU is spending money researching. It would be great

but our eating habits wont change until our stigma about consuming insects is removed.##Previous attempts to achieve this have failed.

Those enjoying their Sunday lunch today may also wish to consider that some studies found so many insect fragments slip into food that we eat the equivalent of 500g of bugs per person, per year.

#The primary jailbreak apps store, Cydia#named after the insect that bores into apple trees#now earns about $10 million in annual revenue and counts about 4. 5 million active weekly users hunting

because they eat large numbers of crop damaging insects, reducing the amount that has to be spent on pesticides.

According to the researchers, a single colony of 150 big brown bats in Indiana ate almost 1. 3 million potentially damaging insects a year.

while others are beneficial predators that feed on insects#but now its just the brown marmorated one in the USA thats causing all the fuss.

and then kill the insect once it moves to a location ideal for the fungi to grow

Once the insect dies the fungus rapidly spreads through the body. During the first couple days,

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.

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.

though little is known about the fungus species that brought this insect to its horrific end.

Aphids and flea beetles are the two most common insect pests when growing peppers. While both can be controlled with insecticidal soap,

#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,

there is always theweekday vegetarian diet as an alternative. grasshopper taco 1000 edible insect via Treehugger Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati T

#These are one of the most important pollinators of native plants,#Sydney Cameron of the University of Illinois, Urbana,

Bumblebees are also important pollinators, Cameron said, but are studied far less. Bumblebees pollinate tomatoes, blueberries and cranberries,

Pollinators such as bees and bats often have specific tongue lengths and pollination behaviors that have evolved

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.#¢

because bees#beyond producing honey#are prime pollinators of roughly one-third of the crop species in the U s,

#Insects have Personalities too, research on novelty-seeking honey bees indicates Some honey bees, too, are more likely than others to seek adventure.

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:

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

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.

given that honeybees are among the best-studied insects of the world, #Hafernik said. We would expect that

Prevent birds from destroying high value crops Identify insects, worms, and other unwanted plant devastation Precision pesticide, herbicide,

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,

#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?

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,

In their eyes, eating insects was considered primitive. Some indigenous groups in Sub-saharan africa were afflicted similarly#nd much more recently too.

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!

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...

Because insects may be the key to our future. Looking at population growth alone, the global population will reach 9 billion people in 2050

Last month, the UN released a comprehensive 185-page document advocating the rearing of edible insects to be used as food by humans

#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,

#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,