Caterpillars

Hormone Transforming Caterpillars to Moths Identified

Recent research has led to the identification of a starter hormone responsible for initiating the transformation of caterpillars into moths//. The research was led by David Champlin, a biology professor at the University of Southern Maine, and assisted by students Paul Allee of Portland and Ste...

Bioparasite Envisioned To Control Terror Of Fire Ants

...nything and can reduce tick populations in pastures and yards. Also, cotton and sugarcane growers see them as helpful. The ants munch on boll weevils, caterpillars and sugarcane borers. "But on balance they're an ecological disaster," Merchant opines. "The good that they do is far outweighed by the negative." ...

Caterpillars in Biological News

Plants tell caterpillars when it's safe to forage

The world is filled with cues that could influence the daily feeding patterns of an organism. Many plants, for example, respond to foraging damage by releasing specialized chemical signals - volatile organic compounds that evaporate in the air - that attract the forager's natural enemies. This stra...

Sex involved in plant defense

...North Carolina State University and Duke University discovered that sexually produced evening primrose plants withstand attacks from plant-eaters like caterpillars better than plant relatives that reproduce by themselves. The findings are important steps to learning more about how plants have evolved defenses...

Understanding natural crop defenses

...s plants grow taller," explains Chory. But plants also react to chemical cues in the oral secretions of herbivores and mechanical damage caused by caterpillars and their ilk nibbling on foliage. They increase the production of defense-related hormones, particularly jasmonic acid, which ramps up the concentrat...

Honeybees as plant 'bodyguards'

... The insects' buzz also defends plants against the caterpillars that would otherwise munch on them undisturbed. ...iversitt Wrzburg, Germany, earlier found that many caterpillars possess fine sensory hairs on the front portions o...hairs are not fine-tuned," Tautz said. "Therefore, caterpillars cannot distinguish between hunting wasps and harml...

Diversity among parasitic wasps is even greater than suspected

...asp that lays its eggs under the skin of unwitting caterpillars belongs to one of the most diverse groups of insec...species.) All of the wasps were reared from caterpillars collected in Area de Conservacin Guanacaste (ACG),...b. "Since there are an estimated 10,000 species of caterpillars there, including many unsampled ones that mine ins...

Climate change and species distributions

...graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, conducted experiments revealing that warmer temperatures increased the survivorship and body size of caterpillars in its most northern habitats. A lack of oak trees in more northern climes, however, would preclude them from moving further north. The range shift of...

Milkweed's evolutionary approach to caterpillars: Counter appetite with fast repair

...g away from elaborate defenses against specialized caterpillars toward a more energy-efficient approach. Genetic a... more effort into repairing themselves faster than caterpillars -- particularly the monarch butterfly caterpillar ...olved elaborate resistance strategies to fight off caterpillars that eat their leaves. These include hairs on thei...

Tufts to develop morphing 'chemical robots'

...l diagnosis. They will also be capable of carrying miniature or micro versions of themselves for access to areas on an even smaller scale. Bionic caterpillars The robot design is inspired by the team's findings on both the remarkable neuromechanical system of the Manduca sexta caterpillar and the extraor...

Monarch butterflies help explain why parasites harm hosts

...um School of Ecology, researchers infected monarch caterpillars with varying levels of spores from a protozoan par...es onto eggs or leaves of the milkweed plants that caterpillars feed on. These spores are then consumed by caterpillars as they feed. Each butterfly had one stalk of milk...

Insects take a bigger bite out of plants in a higher CO2 world

...many more adult Japanese beetles, Western corn rootworms and, during outbreaks of Asian soybean aphids, more of these than soybeans in other plots. caterpillars and other insect larvae need nitrogen to grow and build new tissues, but adult insects can survive and reproduce on a high carbohydrate diet. So it ma...

Caterpillars in Biological Technology

GM crops protect neighbors from pests

...ce 1960. It is considered non-toxic to humans, animals, fish, plants, micro-organisms, and most insects. However, it is highly selective and lethal to caterpillars of moths and butterflies. Bt is currently registered and marketed for use as an insecticide in more than 50 countries worldwide. It does not contamina...