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+2 +1
'Exploding Ant' Rips Itself Apart To Protect Its Own
High in the treetops of Borneo, there’s an ant with a deadly secret. It can explode. On the outside, it’s just an inconspicuous, brownish-red ant. It lacks large mandibles, cannot sting, and generally seems like easy pickings for any predator with a rumbly in the tumbly. But when these ants feel threatened, they raise up their rumps as a warning, says Alice Laciny, an entomologist with Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria who described the first new species of exploding ant since 1935 in the journal Zookeys.
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+14 +2
Drugs from Bugs: Bioprospecting Insects to Fight Superbugs
Our best bet to avoid 'peak pharma' may be beneath our feet, in the diminutive world of insects.
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+21 +3
Australian native cockroaches aren’t as gross as you think
Don’t let the cockroach that feeds on your forgotten leftovers stop you from appreciating these native beauties.
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+26 +4
The Caribou and the Mosquito
The impacts of climate change ripple through ecosystems in unexpected ways.
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+15 +3
What If A Drug Could Make Your Blood Deadly To Mosquitoes?
A pesky mosquito sips some of your blood. Hours later, the blood-sucker drops dead, poisoned by the very blood it just slurped down. That may sound too good to be true, but it's a tantalizing possibility, according to research published this week in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The study points to a potential new tool to fight malaria: the medication ivermectin. Studies conducted in the 2000s, including one in 2010, show that malaria-carrying mosquitoes die after feeding on individuals who have ingested the drug.
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+25 +9
When Twenty-Six Thousand Stinkbugs Invade Your Home
These uniquely versatile bugs are decimating crops and infiltrating houses all across the country. Will we ever be able to get rid of them?
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+37 +9
Termites Are Finally Being Recognized for What They Really Are: Social Cockroaches
Very quietly, and without any formal announcement, the Common Names Committee of the Entomological Society of America has decided to list termites in the same category as cockroaches. It seem weird to lump the two together, but it’s a move that scientists have been considering for nearly a century.
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+33 +7
Mosquitoes infected with bacteria to make them infertile released in battle against viruses
In order to fight Zika and other similar viruses, researchers are going to release thousands of sterilised mosquitoes in south Miami, Florida this week. Researchers infected the male of the species with a bacteria in a lab and when they mate with females, the resulting eggs will die before hatching. The Miami-Dade County Mosquito Reduction Test Program is a collaboration from the University of Kentucky and Kentucky-based company MosquitoMate.
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+21 +7
Scientists make tiny 3D glasses for insects to understand how they see the world
Scientists fitted praying mantises with tiny 3D glasses to understanding how they see the world, and discovered the insects have a “completely new form” of vision unlike that of any other known creature. Researchers used beeswax to glue the miniature eyewear to the faces of mantises and study how their vision compares to human sight.
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+18 +5
These termite-hunting ants lick the severed legs of their friends to treat them
Termite-hunting ants in sub-Saharan Africa treat each other’s wounds by licking them, according to new research. It might sound icky — but the treatment actually saves lives. The ant, called Megaponera analis, specializes in raiding termite nests. These hunts, however, are dangerous: The ants can lose legs or antennas, and sometimes they die. A study last year showed that the ants rescue their injured friends in the battlefield...
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+16 +4
Reflector causes color and surface change : Tortoise Beetle
The exoskeleton of the tortoise beetle changes color and reflective properties due to a chirped multilayer reflector filled with grooves that fill and empty of fluid to cover and reveal, respectively, the bottommost layer.
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+18 +3
CRISPR/Cas9 -mediated gene knockout of Anopheles gambiae FREP1 suppresses malaria parasite infection
Author summary The causative agent of malaria, Plasmodium, has to complete a complex infection cycle in the Anopheles gambiae mosquito vector in order to reach the salivary gland from where it can be transmitted to a human host. The parasite’s development in the mosquito relies on numerous host factors (agonists), and their inhibition or inactivation can thereby result in suppression of infection and consequently malaria transmission.
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+31 +6
What Is It Like to Be a Bee?
A philosophical and neurobiological look into the apian mind.
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+18 +5
The butterfly hunter
Margaret Cox searches for butterflies, but there's no joy if she finds them. They are the by-product of what she terms a "geophysical anomaly". We know it by its common name: a mass grave.
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+34 +8
Swatting Mosquitos Will Actually Prevent Bites
Biologists from the University of Washington have discovered that the act of swatting at mosquitoes may actually deter them from biting you, and the degree
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+16 +4
Insects took off when they evolved wings
The evolution of wings not only allowed ancient insects to become the first creatures on Earth to take to the skies, but also propelled their rise to become one of nature’s great success stories, according to a new study.
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+31 +4
The Insect that Painted Europe Red
Truly vibrant red was elusive for many years: until a mysterious dye was discovered in Mexico. Devon Van Houten Maldonado reveals how a crushed bug became a sign of wealth and status.
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+15 +3
‘Spectacular’ finding: New 3D vision discovered in praying mantis
Miniature glasses have revealed a new form of 3D vision in praying mantises that could lead to simpler visual processing for robots. Publishing their latest research in Current Biology, the Newcastle University team have discovered that mantis 3D vision works differently from all previously known forms of biological 3D vision. 3D or stereo vision helps us work out the distances to the things we see. Each of our eyes sees a slightly different view of the world. Our brains merge these two views to create a single image, while using the differences between the two views to work out how far away things are.
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+22 +3
New imaging technique reveals how dragonfly wings tear bacteria apart
Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have used a new technique to produce detailed images of dragonfly wings, showing more than 10 billion tiny 'fingers' (nanostructures) lining the wing surface that make bacteria tear themselves apart.
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+18 +2
Climate change pushes ticks into Canada, bringing lyme disease (and confusion) with them
Joanne Seiff, a resident of Manitoba, contracted Lyme disease a couple of years ago but didn’t remember pulling off the tick that bit her; nor did she have the telltale bullseye rash of a tick bite. Her husband Jeff Marcus, who grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley, about an hour and a half from the eponymous town of Lyme, Connecticut, recognized her symptoms immediately because Lyme disease was common there.
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+37 +10
Filming mosquitoes reveals a completely new approach to flight
Mosquitos generate lift via three mechanisms, two of them new to us.
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+23 +6
Female dragonflies fake sudden death to avoid male advances
Female dragonflies use an extreme tactic to get rid of unwanted suitors: they drop out the sky and then pretend to be dead. Rassim Khelifa from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, witnessed the behaviour for the first time in the moorland hawker dragonfly (Aeshna juncea). While collecting their larvae in the Swiss Alps, he watched a female crash-dive to the ground while being pursued by a male. The female then lay motionless on her back. Her suitor soon flew away, and the female took off once the coast was clear.
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+23 +6
The decline of bees threatens plant evolution, stunting plant growth and muting scents
The feared demise of bumblebees could bring the evolution of the plants they pollinate grinding to a halt – leaving them vulnerable to new diseases and other threats – a new study suggests. Researchers in Switzerland tested what happened when field mustard plants were pollinated solely by bumblebees or hoverflies over nine generations. The results were dramatic: the bee-pollinated plants grew taller and produced twice as much scent.
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+20 +10
This Weird AF Hercules Beetle Pupa Is Our New Favourite Alien Baby
Just when we thought we'd seen it all, the internet dishes up a fat, red alien baby that looks like it's been ripped from the scorching sand dunes of Venus (we wish). In reality, it's just a Hercules beetle in its pupa form, enshrined in a chrysalis as it prepares to take on its adult form. But let's not talk it down too much - this writhing cocoon is about to become one of the largest insects on Earth.
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+32 +6
Clues as to why cockroaches are so prolific
Asexual reproduction increases when female cockroaches are housed as a group, not alone, enabling them to maintain a colony for at least three years without a male's contribution.
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+21 +6
Bumblebees: Pesticide 'Reduces Queen Egg Development'
Using the insecticide thiamethoxam in spring could reduce bee numbers later in the year, a study finds.
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+51 +15
Ten years after the crisis, what is happening to the world's bees?
It's a decade since US beekeepers first noticed that their bees were mysteriously dying. Now we know much more about Colony Collapse Disorder, raising hopes that we can turn bees' fortunes around.
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+22 +8
Where have all the insects gone?
Surveys in German nature reserves point to a dramatic decline in insect biomass. By Gretchen Vogel.
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+17 +6
Researchers test self-destructing moth pest in cabbage patch
Researchers in a New York cabbage patch are planning the first release on American soil of insects genetically engineered to die before they can reproduce. It's a pesticide-free attempt to control invasive diamondback moths, a voracious consumer of cabbage, broccoli and other cruciferous...
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+19 +9
Is Noise Pollution Making Desert Bugs Disappear?
Gas compressors in New Mexico seem to mess with some arthropods’ behavior.
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+30 +9
Fungus creates zombie beetles that crave flowers before death
The infected beetles seek out flowers, stick their heads in and bite for their life. Then, hours after dying, their wings mysteriously spring into action
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+27 +10
Insect Returns From The Dead - Wild New Zealand
The Mountain Stone Weta, boasts perhaps the most extraordinary survival technique of all - the ability to come back from the dead. With the aid of a specialized filming chamber we are able to witness stunning footage of life slowly returning to this frozen insect.
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+23 +8
How to wipe out mosquitoes? A mutant fungus holds the answer
Scientists genetically modify fungus using poison from spiders and scorpions to reduce population of the disease-carrying insects. By Stephen Chen.
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+46 +13
Oh, Lovely: The Tick That Gives People Meat Allergies Is Spreading
A rare meat allergy used to be limited to places the lone star tick calls home. But recently it's started to spread.
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+32 +8
Nanostructures explain why jewel scarab beetles look like pure gold
The secrets of why central-American jewel scarab beetles look like they are made from pure gold, has been uncovered by physicists at the University of Exeter.