Ant Pheromone May Aid Alzheimer's Patients
...k to the prey-- perhaps a worm or grub or an adult insect of some kind. Then they attack theprey with their stings, inject a neurotoxin that paralyzes muscles and drag theprey back to the nest." Gas chromatographic and mass spectrometric analyses in the Cornell laboratoryidentified four components in th...Corn Rootworm Changing Behavior, Posing New Threat To Crops
...corn crops this year, scientistssay. As the major insect pest of corn, rootworms have changed their behavior,laying their eggs in soybean fields instead of corn. The conclusion isthat crop rotation itself has selected for a rootworm strain that circumventscrop rotation. By laying their eggs in soybean fi...Plants Thrive With Insect-Induced Immune Responses
...issue. (Previousresearch indicates that potential insect pests are deterred by chemical changesin the mustard oils that make the plant less tasty and an accompanying increasein numbers and stiffness of tiny leaf hairs, Agrawal noted.) Still, Agrawal needed to determine not only that such a response was tri...Butterfly Wings, Beetle Horns Teach Biologists Basic Lesson In Development's Laws
...uring metamorphosis they were "closedsystems." An insect pupa does not feed and instead contains a fat body thatprovides the only nutrition for the developing adult animal, making the resultsof competition far more clear-cut. "Such competition would be more difficult to detect in organisms suchas...Insect Taste Buds Target Of Control Method
...ats when it comes to their diets, so a Penn State insect toxicologist is targeting their taste buds in an ... crops. Dr. Christopher A. Mullin, professor of insect toxicology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, is working with corn rootworm to devel...Two Environmental Articles: Deformed Frogs & Dioxin In Old Soil
... La Clair's group found that S-methoprene, an insect growth regulatorthat was introduced in the late 1970s to control fleas and mosquitos, posedlittle risk to the development of amphibians. However, when exposed tosunlight, water and microorganisms, La Clair found that S-methoprene breaks upinto othe...Biggest Acoustics Meeting Ever
...f insects could help scientists monitor changes in insect populations (4aAB2). Studyinghow female midshipman fish distinguish between the concurrent mating calls ("hums") of males singing tothem together, Andrew Bass's lab at Cornell University ( ahb3@cornell.edu ) will present evidence that theregularly re...Peas With Built-In Weevil Resistance
...as in every way except in their susceptibility to insect attack," says Dr Higgins. Having shown that the technique is successful in peas, the researchers will now attempt to apply the same method to other important food legumes such as chickpeas, cowpeas and mungbeans. According to Dr Higgins, ...... When we expose asimilar set of plants to a unique insect elicitor, the plants secrete a set ofcompounds containing novel biopesticides. Most importantly, these elicitorsalso evoke the secretion of a wide range of compounds with novel, unexpectedactivity, such as anti-cancer." Several pharmaceutical and ag...UF Researcher's Innovative Fence Helps Control Sand Flies
...edge of the marsh with insecticide, you kill every insect that lands onthat vegetation, not just sand flies. "What we have essentially done is remove insecticide from the marsh. Webring the sand flies to the trap and catch them," Day said. "So we're notkilling butterflies, fireflies, parasitic wasps or beet...New Microbial Insecticide As Potent As Bt
...ive and environmentally benignweapon in the war on insect pests. Moreover, in the last few years the genesth...ible, giving it,in effect, a microbial monopoly on insect control worth hundreds of millions ofdollars. But the development of new, naturally occurring insect...News Backgrounder: Duke Primate Center Successfully Fosters Mysterious Aye-Ayes
...refilled them withpacked sawdust, just as a boring insect would leave behind as it ate through thewood. He n...ight tend to look for the ends of tracks,where the insect would most likely be," he said. "But I found that aye-ayes werejust as good finding grubs midway alo...Clever Chemistry Protects Beetle Babies
..., the squash beetlepupae would be easy picking for insect predators if they hadn't long agoperfected a scien...pupal hairs on the cover of Science . . The tiny insect pioneered anendeavor in which human chemists, with their costly and sophisticated machines,only now ...Biologist Wins Simon Fraser University Controversy Prize For 'Silent Spring' Of The '90s
...are being aired." Winston is an expert in insect behavioral ecology, and honey bees inparticular. Since joining SFU in 1980, he's won numerous awards, including (withSFU chemical ecologist Keith Slessor) the Manning Award of Distinction (1997)and a gold medal from the Science Council of B.C. (1992)...A 300-Million-Year Old Twosome: The Cycad And Its Pollinator
...on, protecting the larvae frompredators. The next insect generation, covered with pollen, flies from cycad tocycad, staying long enough on the female cones to spread the necessary pollenfor germination. The pollinators even adjust to the 2- to 3-year reproductioncycle of thecycads as the end-of-the-season...Study Shows Aspirin Blocks "Plant Pain"
... other plants. This seems to particularly apply to insect attack,as the alerted plants then produce specific...have in the plant reaction. Unless you're a hungry insect ransacking a patch of plants, that is, and youwant to shut off the neighborhood's burglar alarms... ...Grassland Birds Are Not Nesting In Non-Native Grasses
... The researchers are also looking at whether insect populations differamong grass varieties. "A community of native plants support native insects. Theexotic grasses may not support the insects that the birds like to eat," Haassays. She would also like to determine the economics of establishing...... one of the key pacemakers ofaging," says UC Davis insect demographer James R. Carey. Results from thestudy of 2,500 medflies will be published in the Aug. 14 issue of the journalScience. Carey and colleagues compared the fertility and life span of medflies receivinga diet of only sugar to those receiving...... genomes of poxviruses, adenoviruses and large DNA insect viruses. Dr. Roizman himself hasused it to identify at least some of the functions of all 84 HSV genes--inparticular how they enable the virus to infect host cells and then use thehost's reproductive machinery to replicate itself. **Unchecked Virus ...