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Nothing stops an expert in the art of living
Date:8/14/2008

This release is available in German.

There are few things more irritating than a fly buzzing around the house. South African's have an unconventional solution to the problem. They hang up a bunch of Roridula gorgonias leaves. Attracted to the shiny adhesive droplets on the leaf's hairs, the hapless pest is soon trapped by the natural flypaper. However, this is not the end of the story. Each R. gorgonias plant is home to a population of Pameridea roridulae (mirid bugs), which dine on the trapped insects. Yet the mirid bugs successfully evade their host's sticky clutches. Curious to find out how, Dagmar Voigt and Stanislav Gorb from the Max-Planck Institute for Metals Research, Germany, decided to take a look at the apparently non-stick bugs to see how they elude R. gorgonias' grasp. (Journal of Experimental Biology, August 8th, 2008)

The team needed to get their hands on Roridula gorgonias plants, complete with their own private mirid bug colonies, and that so far from the plant's home in South Africa. 'Fortunately there are a few R. gorgonias enthusiasts in Germany' says Voigt, and after contacting Klaus Keller in Augsburg, he agreed to supply the team with the hairy plants and their residents.

Back in their Stuttgart lab, Voigt and Gorb decided to test how non-stick mirid bugs really are. Wrapping a bug in a leaf the team were amazed when they unrolled it and 'the bug jumped up and ran away!' says Voigt. The bug was completely non-stick. Next, the team checked the mirid bug's surface by pressing a bug against a glass slide and looked at the slide under a microscope to see if they were covered in a special glue-proof coating. The bugs seemed to be coated in a greasy fluid. Voigt explains that all bugs are covered in a greasy layer, so what made the mirid bug's surface more non-stick than other insect coatings?

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Contact: Dr. Dagmar Voigt
voigt@mf.mpg.de
49-711-689-3456
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Source:Eurekalert  

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