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Voodoo wasps that could save the world
Steve Connor, The Independent
They are so small that most people have never even seen them, yet “voodoo wasps” are about to be recruited big time in the war on agricultural pests as part of the wider effort to boost food production in the 21st century.
The wasps are only 1 or 2 millimetres long fully-grown but they have an ability to paralyse and destroy other insects, including many of the most destructive crop pests, by delivering a zombie-inducing venom in their sting.
Now scientists believe they have made the breakthrough that will enable them to recruit vast armies of voodoo wasps to search and destroy farm pests on a scale that could boost crop yields without polluting the wider environment with insecticides.
The researchers have decoded the full genomes of three species of parasitic wasp, which could lead to the development of powerful new ways of deploying these tiny insects against the vast range of pests that destroy billions of tonnes of valuable crops each year.
There are more than 600,000 species of parasitic voodoo wasps and they already play a critical role as a natural regulator of insect populations. However, scientists believe that the decoding of their genomes will open the door to new and better better ways of targeting them against specific pests…
(15 Jan 2010)
Groups ask U.S. to regulate shipping of commercial bumblebees
Adrian Higgins, Washington Post
Conservation groups said four species of native bumblebees are close to extinction and called on the federal government Tuesday to begin regulating the shipping of bees raised commercially as crop pollinators.
Researchers believe the precipitous declines in the species are being caused by diseases linked to the cultivation of a species of native bumblebee sold to farmers. The bees are used to increase fruit yield in a number of crops, including hothouse tomatoes and field-grown raspberries and blueberries.
During the past decade, wild bee species “went from being — some of them — very common to species that are now going extinct,” said Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society.
In the Eastern United States, the yellow-banded and rusty-patched bumblebees have declined markedly. In Western states, populations of the Franklin’s and Western bumblebees have crashed, according to scientists. “We believe this is a disease that has been spread by commercial bumblebees because these [wild] species are closely related to one of the species moved to Europe [for rearing] and then moved back,” Black said…
(13 Jan 2010)
The cricket that pollinates plants
Michael McCarthy, The Independent
Grasshoppers and their relatives can pollinate plants like bees, scientists have discovered.
The unexpected finding has come from the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where a cricket has been seen pollinating an orchid – that is, transferring pollen, which contains a plant’s male sperm, to another plant’s female organs, enabling it to produce seeds.
Crickets, like most members of the insect order Orthoptera (grasshoppers and their allies), are well-known for eating plants rather than helping them to reproduce. Until now, the insects known to be involved in pollination, with honey bees leading the way, have included ants, beetles, hoverflies, butterflies and moths, while birds and even bats can be involved in the pollination process – but no crickets or grasshoppers.
The unprecedented behaviour was recorded on a nocturnal camera set up by orchid researcher Claire Micheneau in a Réunion cloud forest, which caught a raspy cricket in the act of pollinating a species of epiphytic, or tree-growing, orchid called Angraecum cadetii…
(13 Jan 2010)
Bee decline linked to falling biodiversity
Richard Black, BBCNews
The decline of honeybees seen in many countries may be caused by reduced plant diversity, research suggests.
Bees fed pollen from a range of plants showed signs of having a healthier immune system than those eating pollen from a single type, scientists found.
Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the French team says that bees need a fully functional immune system in order to sterilise food for the colony.
Other research has shown that bees and wild flowers are declining in step.
Two years ago, scientists in the UK and The Netherlands reported that the diversity of bees and other insects was falling alongside the diversity of plants they fed on and pollinated…
(20 Jan 2010)
The Vexing Bugs in the Global Trading System
Kris Maher, Wall Street Journal
Perched on a platform 50 feet above the ground in a big hemlock named Fern, Geoff Elliott points to an unwelcome Asian import: a little bug known as the hemlock woolly adelgid.
Small fuzzy white nymphs cling to the undersides of hemlock branches throughout the grove of trees. Both nymphs and adult adelgids can work quickly to destroy hemlocks 150 feet tall.
“This tree is believed to be somewhere between 200 and 300 years in age and can be taken out by the adelgid in as little as two to four years,” says Mr. Elliott, a tour guide for Adventure West Virginia Resort LLC, which operates zip-line tours through the treetops. The company is trying to educate visitors about the dangers of the invasive insect as it diminishes the landscape the business relies on.
“Without any action we could lose the species,” said Mark Whitmore, a forest entomologist at Cornell University. He described the hemlock as a “keystone species,” because it provides shade that cools streams so fish can survive as well shelter for birds and animals. Losing it would be like “having all your front teeth fall out,” he said.
As global trade has mounted, more goods are coming in from overseas, sometimes bringing with them the accidental cargo of destructive bugs and plants. An estimated 500 million plants are imported to the U.S. each year, and shipments through one plant inspection station doubled to 52,540 between 2004 and 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Today, about 30 new invasive insects are discovered annually in the U.S., up sharply over the last decade, the USDA says…
(Jan 15, 2010)
