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redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online By studying dust mites, two University of Michigan biologists claim to have found evidence that contracts Dollo’s law – a long standing scientific belief claiming evolution is irreversible. According to Pavel Klimov and Barry O’Connor of the Ann Arbor-based university’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the free-living dust mites that typically inhabit our homes evolved from parasites. Those...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Three tiny ancient insects have been found trapped in amber. These well-preserved specimens are encased in what is likely Earth's oldest bug trap. They were found in Italy, and though it sounds like something out of the plot of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, it isn't. These bugs are much older than that. They are about 230 million years old, which puts them in the Triassic period, and about 100 million years older than what had...

Blueprint of spider mite may yield better pesticides A University of Utah biologist and an international research team decoded the genetic blueprint of the two-spotted spider mite, raising hope for new ways to attack the major pest, which resists pesticides and destroys crops and ornamental plants worldwide. The voracious mites, which technically are not insects, can eat more than 1,100 plant species – a rare trait. The mites' newly revealed and sequenced genome contains a variety of...

Wheezy toddlers who have a sensitivity to house dust mites are more at risk of developing asthma by the age of 12, a University of Melbourne led study has shown. Children aged one – two years with a family history of allergy, who had a positive skin prick test to house dust mites, had a higher risk of developing asthma later in life. Results showed 75 per cent of these children had asthma at aged 12 compared to 36 per cent of children without a positive skin prick test. Lead author Dr...

The Science Museum in London says it has unearthed several of the world's first science films, including the revolutionary film Cheese Mites. The museum said Mites, a one-minute film that was first to offer a microscopic view of life, is part of a new exhibit entitled Films of Fact, The Daily Telegraph said Thursday. Mites was first broadcast at the Alhambra Music Hall in 1903 and its close-up look at microscopic life proved groundbreaking at the time, the newspaper said. The new Science...