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Tag: "insect" at biology news

Detecting explosives with honeybees

...interfering agents, such as lotions, motor oil, or insect repellant. In addition, the team studied structural units in the honey bee's antenna and looked for biochemical and molecular mechanisms that could advance their ability to be trained and retain their training for longer periods of time. ...

Bacterial protein shows promise in treating intestinal parasites

...rium sprayed on crops by organic farmers to reduce insect damage, is highly effective at treating hookworm infections in laboratory animals. Their discovery, detailed in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could pave the way for the development of more...

New genetic analysis forces re-draw of insect family tree

... 185 genes found in the genomes of eight different insect families, which together represent 45 per cent of all known animal species. This enabled the international group of scientists to work out the evolutionary relationships between the insects based on changes and mutations within those genes. Pre...

Biotech cotton provides same yield with fewer pesticides

...acre, use fewer chemical insecticides and maintain insect biodiversity when they plant the biotech cotton kn...ecticides and other types of insecticides known as insect growth regulators. Carrière and his colleagues studied how Arizona farmers actually planted their ...

Parasitic plants sniff out hosts

...ond to their environment, and have looked at plant insect interactions," says Dr. Consuelo M. De Moraes, assistant professor of entomology. "It was surprising to see how little was available on how above-ground parasitic plants find their hosts from far-off." The researchers looked at Cuscuta pentagona, f...

Tweedle coat fashions stocky flies

...ssor of biology who headed the research team. "An insect needs to build up the flexibility, strength and sh...o insects. "We've discovered Tweedle genes in all insect species we've examined, but not in any other species," said Xiao Guan, a graduate student working wi...

Tamed 11,400 years ago, figs were likely first domesticated crop

...nown as parthenocarpic, the fruit develops without insect pollination and is prevented from falling off the tree, allowing it to become soft, sweet, and edible. However, because such figs do not produce seeds, they are a reproductive dead end unless humans interfere by planting shoots from the parthenocarpi...

Surprising symbiosis: Glassy-winged sharpshooter eats with friends

...s from sap to the bacteria, which in turn feed the insect vitamins, cofactors, and essential amino acids. ... the plant be somehow providing amino acids to its insect predator? Unlikely. Was the sharpshooter somehow cranking out its own amino acids? Doubtful. Could t...

Copying nature could save us energy, study shows

...to develop a new kind of dehumidifier technology), insect sense organs (for structural health monitoring) and the egg-laying organ of a wood-wasp (for a new type of steerable endoscope). "Evolution has sculpted animals, insects and plants to produce incredibly efficient machines that carry out a range of i...

Major initiative proposed to address amphibian crisis

...al ripple effects ?they provide a major control of insect pests, and in turn serve as part of the food supply for birds, fish and other animals. The demise of entire species also eliminates their possible use in biomedicine and biotechnology. One of the leading problems is a fungus that causes an infecti...

Primates take weather into account when searching for fruits

...n are known to accelerate maturation of fruits and insect larvae inside them. The researchers were able to s...lar radiation and the maturation rate of fruit and insect larvae. The findings are also consistent with the idea that the evolution of primate cognitive skill...

Viral hitchhiker inhibits Wolbachia bacteria's ability to proliferate

... One way it does this is by hijacking sperm of its insect hosts and genetically tricking them to bear more i...llular process that allows Wolbachia to manipulate insect reproduction. Because Wolbachia are found in about 75 percent of the world's insects, the discovery...

Bumble bees can estimate time intervals

...nimal kingdom, researchers have discovered that an insect pollinator, the bumble bee, can estimate the durat... depletes and renews with the passage of time, and insect communication and navigation may also require the ability to estimate the duration of time intervals...

Wild bees and the flowers they pollinate are disappearing together

...ht not be too worrying, so long as other surviving insect pollinators are similar, and capable of pollinatin...tion, but not in plants that can make use of other insect pollinators. Thus the plant declines closely mirror those of the pollinators. This difference be...

African parasite makes component of fat differently from all other organisms

...n its life cycle. One such form is harbored by the insect and the other multiplies in a host's bloodstream. There, the parasite avoids detection by the human immune system by replacing each of the 10 million proteins on its outer layer - known as the cell membrane - with different proteins that are not re...

Insect predation sheds light on food web recovery after the dinosaur extinction

... shows that at certain times and places, plant and insect diversity were severely out of balance, not linked... extinction, for 800,000 years, there was very low insect predation and plant diversity. We know that 9 million years afterwards, there was renewed diversity ...

Pest control research leads to pain control discovery

...tially interested in regulating the development of insect larvae," said Hammock, a distinguished professor of entomology and member of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery switched the focus of the research from "pest control to pain control." M. Eric Gershwin, chief of the Division of Rheumato...

Study finds how organs monitor themselves during early development

... as a model Why care about the fruit fly? This insect is helping researchers to grasp fundamental principles of biology and body function, explains Dr. Gilboa. "Drosophila inspires scientists in other fields and they can build on those general principles to further their work," she says. A researcher st...

Value of services performed by insects tops $57 billion in US

...study that shows the dollar value of some of those insect services is more than $57 billion in the United St...ell. This analysis of the economic value of these insect services is the first analysis of its type, said Losey, who co-authored the study with Mace Vaughan,...

Oxidation defense in mosquitoes benefits malaria parasite

...efense could stop the parasite as well as make the insect a victim of oxidative stress. Rizzi's group at the University of Piemonte Orientale focuses on the structural characterization of enzymes involved in tryptophan degradation in mosquitoes, which results in the synthesis of XA. "Deciphering the molecu...

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