Articles with the keyword: 
How Did Insects Get Their Wings?
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (blogs.sciencemag.org)
Exactly how insects evolved flight is a heated issue, in part because the fossil evidence for winged insects remains full of gaps. But living insects that are similar to ancestral species could also shed light on the origins of insect flight. In a study reported online this week in Biology Letters, researchers report that bristletails, primitive, wingless insects that live in the tropical forests of Peru, can use long antennae-like filaments extending from their rear ends to help them glide to tree trunks as they jump or fall from forest canopies 
Ancient Virus Gave Wasps Their Sting
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
There's no consent for these surrogate parents. Tens of thousands of wasp species lay their eggs inside caterpillars, injecting toxins that paralyze the hosts and allow their young to feast on the innards with impunity. Researchers have long wondered what exactly these toxins are and where they came from. The answers, a new genetic analysis reveals, have to do with a virus that infected wasps millions of years ago.
The first clue to the nature of the wasp's toxins came in the 1970s
The Sound of Six-Legged Majesty
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
Although better known for their chemical signals, ants also chirp. They scrape a tiny guitar pick-like appendage on their abdomens against grooved ridges on their posteriors, like a spoon against a washboard. Now researchers have discovered that the sounds allow one kind of ant to distinguish between workers and queens. Some caterpillars can mimic the queen's noises, the research also reveals, granting them food, care, and protection.
Researchers believed the chirps mainly functioned as alarm calls and were not part of normal communication
First Rule of the Ant Colony: No Hanky Panky
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.time.com)
To the long list of reasons you should be glad you're not an ant, add this: You'd have to forget about having sex. You'd also have to forget about even trying. Sneak off for a little insectile assignation and the others members of the colony would know immediately — and attack you for it. Entomologists have long known this was the practice in the ant world, but what they didn't know is the forensic science that allows the community to uncover the crime. Now, thanks to a study in the current issue of Cell Biology, they do.
Ancient odor-detecting mechanism in insects discovered
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.sciencedaily.com)
A team of scientists from Rockefeller University scientists has found a new family of receptors in the noses of flies, revealing a previously undiscovered means by which multicellular organisms experience scents. The results will be published in the January 9 issue of Cell.
Honey bees on cocaine dance more, changing ideas about the insect brain
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.eurekalert.org)
In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate.
Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they've found high quality nectar or pollen, and only when the hive is in need. They do this by performing a dance, called a "round" or "waggle" dance, on a specialized "dance floor" in the hive. The dance gives specific instructions that help the other bees find the food
Ancient Insect Hails from Sunken Island
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
Which came first: the tree lobster or the island? You may not have been asking that odd question, but researchers have nonetheless answered it with a report indicating that one species of this flightless insect is apparently older than its native home, Lord Howe Island off the coast of Australia. The find suggests that the bug originally evolved on an older island, one now submerged under the Pacific Ocean.
Stretching up to thirteen centimeters long, tree lobsters look like a cross between a grasshopper and a cockroach
Pristionchus pacificus: an appropriate fondness for beetles
jerry submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (www.nature.com)
The nematode Pristionchus pacificus associates with one particular beetle and eats its rotting corpse. The report of the genome sequence of P. pacificus, the fifth nematode to be sequenced and a useful secondary nematode genetic model system, highlights genes that may have influenced the route to parasitism.
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 11 months (www.nature.com)
It is so new, and so bizarre, that uber-naturalist E. O. Wilson has christened it "the ant from Mars." Martialis heureka, a native of the Brazilian Amazon, is the founding member of a new subfamily of ants. It adds a new branch to the ant family tree which split off from the others extremely early in the family's evolution. "It could represent a 'relict' species that retained some ancestral morphological characteristics," says discoverer Christian Rabeling, a graduate student in integrative biology at the University of Texas in Austin
DEET's Not Sweet to Mosquitoes, Groundbreaking Research Shows
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 11 months (www.sciencedaily.com)
Spray yourself with a DEET-based insect repellent and the mosquitoes will leave you alone. But why? They flee because of their intense dislike for the smell of the chemical repellent and not because DEET jams their sense of smell, report researchers at the University of California, Davis.
Fancy Footwork Helps Flies Cheat Death
jerry submitted, created time 2 years 5 days (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
A study discovered that the fly anticipates the direction of a looming threat and makes split-second movements that better prepare it to take off in the opposite direction. The findings reveal a level of movement planning rarely seen in such a simple organism.
kavin submitted, created time 2 years 3 months (web.ebscohost.com)
This experiment was undertaken to assess the advantages of using diallel crosses to define combining ability and understand heterosis in a broad-based wheat-breeding population across different environments affected by yellow rust. This research shows the power of available quantitative breeding tools to help breeders choose parental sources in a population improvement programme.
Searching for a better mosquito repellent
sea-maid submitted, created time 2 years 3 months (www.pnas.org)
Most people in hot places--or even just hot weather--are troubled by mosquitos. What is an annoyance in some parts of the world, however, can be fatal in others. In this stuty, the scientists point out that it is necessary to search for more effective repellents, one of which is introduced in this article, lasting a record 85 days!
Eusocial insects could have started with monogamous pairs
Darkfrog submitted, created time 2 years 3 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
After reading all those depressing articles about how even monogamous species like swans and wolves cheat on their partners, this one was a bit refreshing. The authors posit that monogamy might be the foundation of cooperative species, at least in the beginning. These findings support the idea that cooperative insects group together because of the chance to let a sister pass on her genes and less because of straight survival.
Global warming threatens tropical insects
sea-maid submitted, created time 2 years 3 months (news.bbc.co.uk)
From this study, we know that insects in the tropics are much more sensitive to temperature changes than those elsewhere. U.S. scientists have said that many tropical insects face extinction by the end of this century unless they adapt to the rising global temperatures predicted.
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