Latest Insect ecology Stories
The American bee population continues to decline, leaving experts wondering why.According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, the number of beehives decreased for the third consecutive year in 2009. The beehive numbers fell by 29-percent last year, following declines of 36-percent in 2008 and 32-percent in 2007. Scientists in other countries have noticed similar results and have taken to calling the results "colony collapse disorder."David Mendes, president of the American...
Jasmonic acid triggers nectar accumulation in rapeseed flowersRapeseed is one of the ten most important agricultural crops worldwide. In spring, the rapeseed fields with their bright yellow flowers are widely visible: this year winter rapeseed is being cultivated on 1.46 million hectares in Germany; at least 2.2 million tons of rapeseed oil can be expected. Beekeepers set up their beehives in the vicinity of rapeseed fields, so that the worker bees can gather nectar This ensures that the...
Hebrew University researchers developing 'breakfast of champions'An improved method for sustainable pest control using "super-sexed" but sterile male insects to copulate with female ones is being developed by agricultural researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The scientists thus hope to offer yet another efficient and promising avenue for supplying produce to the market by eliminating pests without damage to the environment.An assortment of chemicals, such as DDT, have...
MONTREAL, March 4 /PRNewswire/ - With nearly 30 years of experience in managing creative and design teams in New York and Boston, David Rollert has joined Pheromone, the interactions agency as its vice president of interactive design. He will be heading up the agency's key interactive sector that includes teams involved in concept development, design, creation, user experience, prototyping and user research. Since the 1980s, David has lent his talent for building and managing design,...
Social insects - ants in particular - are usually thought of as selfless entities willing to sacrifice everything for their comrades. However, new research suggests that ant queens are also prepared to compromise the welfare of the entire colony in order to retain the throne.A team from the University of Copenhagen, led by postdoc Luke Holman of the Center for Social Evolution, describes in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, published on February 24, 2010, that ant queens are much more...
OAKLAND, Calif., Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- The honey bee crisis in the U.S. continues to threaten the U.S. food supply. Bad weather in the Midwest and East this summer and fall seriously impacted the health of a significant number of hives over the winter, adding to the already difficult problem of keeping the bees alive. The shortage is sending almond farmers scrambling to find enough hives to pollinate the almond orchards in California this month. With colony losses at approximately 30...
Has the almond tree developed a unique way of drawing potential pollinators? A group of researchers at the Department of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Science Education at the University of Haifa-Oranim speculate that the toxin called amygdalin that is found in almond tree nectar is in fact an evolutionary development intended to give that tree an advantage over others in its surroundings.Previous studies have already shown that amygdalin can be found in almond...
Messenger molecule in oral secretions of herbivorous insects changes flower opening time of their host plants: Hummingbirds take over role as pollinators from mothsButterflies and moths are welcome visitors to many plant species. Plants attract insect pollinators with the colors, forms, nectars and scents of their flowers to ensure fertilization and reproduction. However, female moths are also threatening to the plant: Once attracted by the flower's scent, they lay their eggs on the green...
Development and morphology of insect-mimicking spots on the flower petals of a South African beetle daisyDark spots on flower petals are common across many angiosperm plant families and occur on flowers such as some lilies, orchids, and daisies. Much research has been done on the physiological and behavioral mechanisms for how these spots attract pollinators. But have you ever wondered what these spots are composed of, how they develop, or how they only appear on some but not all of the ray...
One of the most devastating obstacles to development in Africa is the tsetse fly, which causes a sometimes fatal disease in cattle and humans. Experts fear global warming will cause the flies to spread to new areas. But one answer to the problem is being developed in a very unlikely place, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna.The African Union is trying to eradicate the fly from its continent and since there is no vaccination available against the disease a number of countries in...
Latest Insect ecology Reference Libraries
The baculoviruses, are a family of large rod-shaped viruses, divided into two genera: nucleopolyhedroviruses (NPV) and granuloviruses (GV). Baculoviruses have species-specific tropisms among the invertebrates with over 600 host species having been described. Moth larval is the most common hosts but sawflies, mosquitoes, and shrimp are also known hosts. The viruses are not known to replicate in mammalian or other vertebrate animal cells. In the early sixteenth century the first records of...
The ants, one of the most successful groups of insects, are of particular interest because they form advanced colonies, and can constitute up to 15 percent of the total animal biomass of a tropical rainforest. They belong to the order Hymenoptera and are close relatives of the vespoid wasps. Ants appear in amber, found in central New Jersey, believed to be from the Cretaceous period. It is thought that they evolved from the wasps that had appeared during the Jurassic period. They are...
