Invasive Ladybugs Use Biological Warfare On Native Species
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online German researchers have uncovered another cautionary tale about the importation of a species that quickly becomes an invasive threat. Introduced to Europe and North America for the purpose of...
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WASHINGTON, May 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced that the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island are free from the invasive Asian longhorned beetle (ALB). USDA remains focused on carrying out its mission, despite a time of significant budget uncertainty. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130514/CL13559LOGO ) "The mission to eradicate this destructive...
Twenty researchers — more than half of them Simon Fraser University graduates and/or faculty — could become eastern Canada’s knights in shining white lab coats. 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. The journal Genome Biology has published the paper. “We know a lot about how beetle infestations can devastate forests, just as...
BioMed Central The sequencing and assembly of the genome of the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, is published online this week in Genome Biology. The species is native to North America, where it is currently wreaking havoc in an area of forest ten times larger than previous outbreaks. This paper determines genes that may be involved in colonizing the trees, such as enzymes for degrading plant cell walls, and identifies potential sex chromosomes in the beetle. D. ponderosae...
Pensoft Publishers The beetle family Cerambycidae, also known as long-horned beetles or longicorns, is characterized by emblematic extremely long antennae, which are usually longer than the total body length of the animal. The family is rather rich in diversity with more than 20 000 species known, distributed worldwide. Some representatives of these bizarre-shaped beetles, are also known as serious pests with their wood-feeding larvae causing extensive damage to living trees or untreated...
Pensoft Publishers Four new species from the Steninae subfamily of the large family of rove beetles (Staphylinidae) have been discovered in the Ningxia Autonomous Region, China, as part of an exploration of the insect fauna of the Liupan Shan Natural Reserve, where a large number of specimens has been collected. The expedition also yielded 11 new records for the Ningxia province of previously described Steninae species. The study was published in the open access, peer reviewed journal...
Pensoft Publishers The tropics are home to an extraordinary diversity of insect species. How great is it, exactly? We do not know, but today, researchers at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History published a study on tropical beetles that can help us progress towards an answer to this question. The paper was published in the open access, peer-reviewed journal Zookeys. Entomologists Michael Caterino and Alexey Tishechkin have named 138 new species within the genus Operclipygus (the...
Penn State As the emerald ash borer ravages North American ash trees, threatening the trees' very survival, a team of entomologists and engineers may have found a way to prevent the spread of the pests. Emerald ash borers (EABs), a type of beetle native to Asia, first appeared in the U.S. about 20 years ago. They are now moving east from Michigan, killing ash trees on the Eastern Seaboard as far south as North Carolina. "Within 25 years, practically no ash trees may remain on either...
University of Guam Everyone needs to eat. But it's a dog-eat-dog world, and with the exception of the top predators, everyone also gets eaten. To cope with this vicious reality, a tiny insect that eats plants has learned to employ the plant's hairs for physical protection from its beetle predator. The pest is called the cycad aulacaspis scale, and its invasion into numerous countries in recent years has caused immeasurable loss of biodiversity. Cycads belong to an ancient lineage of...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Back before technology emerged into everyone's pockets, sailors used the stars as their GPS system when navigating the seven seas. While that way of navigation is a little outdated for humans, it’s still a modern technology for dung beetles. Scientists wrote in the journal Current Biology about how dung beetles guide their way through even the darkest of nights by the soft glow of the Milky Way in the sky. Researchers say that...
A research team involving several scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder has found an unexpected silver lining in the devastating pine beetle outbreaks ravaging the West: Such events do not harm water quality in adjacent streams as scientists had previously believed. According to CU-Boulder team member Professor William Lewis, the new study shows that smaller trees and other vegetation that survive pine beetle invasions along waterways increase their uptake of nitrate, a common...
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The Scarlet Lily Beetle (Lilioceris lilii) is native to Europe but is now widely found in North America. Larvae damage cultivated lily and Fritillaria plants. Photo by Keith Edkins The beetle family Chrysomelidae, or leaf beetles is a family of over 35,000 species in more than 2,500 genera. Leaf beetles are recognizable by their tarsal formula and distinguished from long-horned beetles (family Cerambycidae) by their short, filiform antennae. Adult and larval leaf beetles feed on all...
PHOTO CAPTION: The common asparagus beetle Crioceris asparagi is an important pest of asparagus crops. Photo by Keith Edkins 2003 The Common Asparagus Beetle (Crioceris asparagi) is an chief pest of Asparagus crops both in Europe and in North America; asparagus is its only food plant. The adult beetles and the larvae strip the needle-like leaves off the asparagus fronds which deprives the plants of the ability to build food reserves for future years. They also damage the shoots, thereby...
Ladybirds, also known as ladybugs or lady beetles are a family, Coccinellidae ("little sphere"), of beetles. The name is thought to allude to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Catholic faith. Ladybirds are found worldwide, with over 4,500 species described - more than 450 native to North America alone. Ladybirds are small insects, ranging from 1 mm to 10 mm (0.04 to 0.4 inches), and are usually yellow, orange, or red with small black spots on their carapace, and black legs, head and feelers. As...
The longhorn beetles (Cerambycidae) are a family of beetles notable for their extremely long antennae. These antennae are often as long as or longer than the beetle's body in fact. The family is large, with over 20,000 species described. Several are serious pests, with the larvae boring into wood, where they can cause extensive damage to either living trees or to wood in buildings; the house longhorn Hylotrupes bajulus being a particular problem indoors. A number of species mimic ants and...
The beetle family Chrysomelidae, or leaf beetles, is a family of over 35,000 species in more than 2,500 genera. Leaf beetles are recognizable by their tarsal formula and distinguished from long-horned beetles (family Cerambycidae) by their short, filiform antennae. Adult and larval leaf beetles feed on all sorts of plant tissue. Many are economically important pests of agriculture, for example the colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata), the asparagus beetle (Crioceris...
