Latest Insect Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online History is filled with stories of groundbreaking scientific discoveries that happen by chance--the most famous being Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin on a Petri dish, which had been accidentally left open for several days. Another recent accident may lead to preventing the transmission of a wide range of insect-borne viruses that impact both crops and humans, according to a new report in the journal PLoS...
University of Utah Symbiotic microbes' origin discovered after man impales hand on branch Two years ago, a 71-year-old Indiana man impaled his hand on a branch after cutting down a dead crab apple tree, causing an infection that led University of Utah scientists to discover a new bacterium and solve a mystery about how bacteria came to live inside insects. Because the new bacterial strain is easy to grow in the laboratory and is related to Sodalis, a genus of bacteria that lives...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online [ Watch the Video: Leggiest Animal On Earth ] Scientists in California re-discovered the leggiest animal on Earth several years ago living outside Silicon Valley. Paul Marek and colleagues provided details of the millipede lllacme plenipes' complex anatomy and its rarity in the journal ZooKeys. The female lllacme plenipes have up to 750 legs, compared to the males who only have a maximum of 562 legs. The scientists said the...
Researchers find that gene related to germ cell formation is far older than first thought Harvard scientists have solved the long-standing mystery of how some insects form the germ cells – the cellular precursors to the eggs and sperm necessary for sexual reproduction – and the answer is shedding new light on the evolutionary origins of a gene that had long been thought to be critical to the process. As described in a November 1 paper published in Current Biology, a team of...
This month's special issue of Physics World is devoted to animal physics, and includes science writer Stephen Ornes explanation of how pond skaters effortlessly skip across water leaving nothing but a small ripple in their wake. As Ornes writes, our current understanding of the mechanisms adopted by the pond skater is down to the efforts of David Hu, who as a mathematics graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent four years studying their behaviour. Hu, along with his...
To solve the acute, global problem of securing food resources for a continuously growing population, we must work constantly to increase the sustainability and effectiveness of modern agricultural techniques. These efforts depend on new insights from plant ecology, particularly from work on native plants that grow in the primordial agricultural niche. Based on field studies on wild tobacco plants in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, USA, researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers at Oregon State University have found an extraordinarily rare fossil. Trapped in amber is what the research team describes as the only example of a spider attack on prey caught in its web – a 100 million year old snapshot of an engagement frozen in time. Found in the Hukawng Valley of Nyanmar, the fossil dates from the Cretaceous between 97 and 100 million years ago. Giving some evidence to oldest examples of spider...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Economists know that the consumer's taste drives variety and innovation in almost every field of industry. It is the same in the natural world. An international team of researchers has determined that just as consumers' diverse food preferences give rise to varied menu offerings, the preferences of plant-eating insects' play a role in maintaining and shaping the genetic variation of their host plants in a geographic area. The new...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online As companies continue to pump out smartphone-controlled devices like the Ar.Drone 2.0, one set of researchers has taken things a step further with a remote controllable cockroach. North Carolina State University researchers have developed a system that uses an electronic interface to steer cockroaches. The team said that their goal was to determine whether they were able to create a wireless biological interface to control the...
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Sept. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As VIPs come to Charlotte, N.C., for the Democratic National Convention, some are being greeted by undesirable guests in their hotels. No, not protesters. Bed bugs. Reports of the little blood-suckers have been on the uptick in Charlotte, and they are a growing problem in the lodging industry throughout the country. The good news: Delegates, and anyone who travels, can take precautions against bed bugs--small insects that feed on...
Latest Insect Reference Libraries
Image Caption: I took this picture myself on 7th March, 2007. John E. Hill 04:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC) Specimen caught by Jim Symes in Laura, Queensland. It measures over 16 cm from its' head to the end of its' body and is the largest recorded specimen of this species so far. John E. Hill 11:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC). Credit: John E. Hill/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) The giant centipede (Ethmostigmus rubripes) can be found in Australia, Indonesia, New Guinea, China, Southeast Asia, and the...
Image Caption: Scutigeromorph centipede, probably Allothereua maculata. Credit: Chris Bloke / Wikipedia (CC BY 2.0) Allothereua maculate is a species of house centipede that can be found in Australia. Its range extends from Queensland to Western Australia, an area where it is commonly found. It prefers a habitat within moist woodland areas or urban areas. It can reach an average body length of up to one inch. Its body is dark brown in body, with darker striped marking the fifteen...
The Migratory Locust (Locusta migratoria), is the most widespread species of locust. It occurs throughout Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. It was once very common in Europe but has now become rare there. Because of the vast geographic area it occupies, which comprises many different ecological zones, numerous subspecies have been described. However, not all experts agree on the validity of some of these subspecies. Pigmentation and size of the migratory locust vary according to its...
Pentatomidae is a family of insects that includes some of the stink bugs and shield bugs. If disturbed, stink bugs will emit a pungent, bad-smelling liquid, whose rancid almond smell is due to cyanide compounds. Their antennae are 5-segmented, which gives the family its name. Their bodies are usually shield-shaped. Many stink bugs and shield bugs are considered agricultural pest insects, because they can create large populations; they suck plant juices and damage crop production, and...
A cicada is any of several insects of the order Hemiptera, suborder Homoptera, with small eyes wide apart on the head and transparent well-veined wings. Cicadas live in temperate to tropical climates. Taxonomy There are many thousands of cicada species. The largest are in the genera Pomponia and Tacua. There are some 200 species in 38 genera in Australia, about 100 in the Palaearctic and exactly one species in England, the New Forest Cicada (Melampsalta montana), which is widely...
