Latest Insect ecology Stories
U.S. Department of Agriculture While one team of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists is testing the effectiveness of pesticides against mosquitoes, another group is learning how repellents work. At the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Fla., entomologist Sandra Allan is using toxic sugar-based baits to lure and kill mosquitoes. Allan and her CMAVE cooperators are evaluating insecticides and...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online There’s more bad news for bees. Biologists from the University of London say that exposure to pesticides are having a broader, previously unforeseen effect on bumblebee populations. While pesticides have been blamed for bee decline in the past, studies on the issue have focused mainly on single pesticides at high doses. The new British study is the first to take a more direct look at the effect of a combination of chemicals and...
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- MGK, the family-owned provider of insect control solutions to a wide variety of markets, announced the sale of one of its subsidies, Baltimore-based ICR Inc., to i2L Research Ltd. ("i2L") of Cardiff, UK. ICR Inc, formerly known as Insect Control and Research, provides efficacy testing and regulation consulting to the insect control product industry. According to MGK President Steve Gullickson, the purchase of ICR by i2L, a product testing...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online As the nights grow longer and Halloween draws closer, the walking dead aren’t the only horror lurking just outside the front door. Americans from coast to coast should be aware that sightings of the flying dead are on the rise as well. More specifically, ‘zombie bees’ have now been spotted in Washington State, hundreds of miles from their first sighting in 2008 by a San Francisco State University biologist. These undead insects...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Agricultural yields have always depended on pollinators and their symbiotic ability to spread the powdery substance necessary for plant reproduction, a fact that has become more important as the unexplained drop in the worldwide bee population continues. Pollinating insects add to the production of 84 percent of European crops and officials there are looking to boost the efforts of domesticated pollinators, such as honeybees, and wild...
Decline of pollinators will have severe impact on nature and mankind Two thirds of the crops humans use for food production and the majority of wild plant species depend on pollination by insects such as bees and hover-flies. This ecosystem service, however, provided by nature to humans for free, is increasingly failing. As an example, after 3000 years of sustainable agriculture, farmers in the Chinese province Sichuan have to pollinate apple flowers themselves by using pollination sticks...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online One thousand rare and protected ants have been fitted with tiny little backpacks to try and understand the social network of how a colony works. A research team from the University of York is fitting tiny radio receivers to a colony of hairy wood ants in the world's first experiment to find out how they communicate and travel between nests. The nests are located on the National Trust's Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire, UK, which is a...
SAINT LOUIS, Aug. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- A mild winter, early spring and hot summer have caused more reported infections of West Nile virus this year than any other year since 2004, according to public health officials. The majority of West Nile virus cases are reported in August and September - peaking in mid-August - but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expects this year's season to last into fall. Through August 21, a total of 1,118 cases of West Nile...
Most people are not aware of the fact that 84% of the European crops are partially or entirely dependent on insect pollination. While managed honeybees pollinate certain crops, wild bees, flies and wasps cover a very broad spectrum of plants, and thus are considered the most important pollinators in Europe. The serious decline in the number of managed honeybees and wild bees reported in Europe over the last few decades has the potential to cause yield decreases with threats to the...
Bayer collaborates with non-profit to increase awareness of the importance of bees to the planet. Research Triangle Park, NC (PRWEB) August 03, 2012 Each time someone goes to the grocery store to pick up fresh apples or blueberries; they witness the work of a pollinator. Thanks to the work of bees, birds, butterflies and other pollinators, billions of people around the world are able to enjoy an abundance of nuts, fruits and vegetables. And as the world population continues to grow, the...
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...
