Post oak grasshoppers emerging
They're not afraid of heights, they're voracious, and Dr. Spencer Behmer wants to know if you've seen them hanging out in oak trees or on your house. They're post oak grasshoppers, and Behmer, a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station entomologist, wants to research their life cycle and behavior. ...Penn State entomologists seek fungus to blunt mosquitoes' sense of smell
...ains, hanging cloth or residual sprays in human dwellings with an insect infecting fungus like one already registered in Africa to control locusts and grasshoppers and infect malaria mosquitoes so that they no longer can smell and attack humans," the researchers said. ...Warmer springs mean less snow, fewer flowers in the Rockies
...and so they may disappear, too if there are no flowers to produce seeds. Parasitoid wasps that feed on those flies will then feel the loss, as well. grasshoppers also feast upon the flower petals. And, these plants are eaten by many kinds of large herbivores, including deer, elk, cows and sheep. What will...New hope for horse lovers as effective control for killer ragwort is proposed
...gwort. One example of CABIs work is the LUBILOSA project, which developed Green Muscle, a highly successful fungal product used to control locusts and grasshoppers in Africa. Mycoherbicide options for other UK weed species such as Buddleia, Rhododendron and Japanese knotweed are also being investigated. ...Birth rate, competition are major players in hominid extinctions
...g a specialized large mammal predator, modern humans would eat anything they could get their hands on. They eked out a living even if it meant eating grasshoppers or whatever," says Jablonski. "Even with this, modern humans barely hung on from 12 to 16,000 years ago. "Why did Neandertal not adapt cultural...Grasshopper love songs give insight into sensory tuning
.... They found that the OSEs of the receptors particularly matched characteristic features of species-specific acoustic communication signals used by grasshoppers to attract mating partners. "Hence, instead of maximizing the average information gained about natural stimuli, the receptors appear to maximize th...Locusts' built-in 'surface analysis' ability directs them to fly overland
... swarms were predominantly directed by prevailing winds. Now, Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists have shown that a physiological trait of these grasshoppers ?namely their polarization vision -- provides them with a built-in source of "surface analysis" ?a discovery that could pave the way for efforts to ef...Why do insects stop 'breathing'? To avoid damage from too much oxygen, say researchers
...nal oxygen that can cause oxidative damage -- the destruction of biomaterial due to excess oxygen -- to tissues. To protect their bodies, insects like grasshoppers discontinue breathing. "We propose that most insects stop breathing in order to lower their internal oxygen concentration to physiologically safe l...