Last month, engineers at Georgia Institute of Technology unveiled a creepy, crawly centipede-inspired robot sporting a plethora of tiny legs. The multitude of extra limbs wasn’t simply meant to pay homage to the arthropods, but rather to improve the robot’s maneuverability across difficult terrains while simultaneously reducing the number of complicated sensor systems. Not to be outdone, a separate team of researchers at Japan just showed off their own biomimetic “myriapod” robot which leverages natural environmental instabilities to move in curved motions, thus reducing its computational and energy requirements.

[Related: To build a better crawly robot, add legs—lots of legs.]

As detailed in an article published in Soft Robotics, a team at Osaka University’s Mechanical Science and Bioengineering department recently created a 53-inch-long robot composed of six segments, each sporting two legs alongside agile joints. In a statement released earlier this week, study co-author Shinya Aoi explained their team was inspired by certain “extremely agile” insects able to utilize their own dynamic instability to quickly change movement and direction. To mimic its natural counterparts, the robot included tiny motors that controlled an adjustable screw to increase or decrease each segment’s flexibility while in motion. This leads to what’s known as “pitchfork bifurcation.” Basically, the forward-moving centipede robot becomes unstable.

But instead of tipping over or stopping, the robot can employ that bifurcation to begin moving in curved patterns to the left or right, depending on the circumstances. Taking advantage of this momentum allowed the team to control their robot extremely efficiently, and with much less computational complexity than other walking bots.

As impressive as many bipedal robots now are, their two legs can often prove extremely fragile and susceptible to failure. What’s more, losing control of one of those limbs can easily render the machine inoperable. Increasing the number of limbs a lá a centipede robot, creates system redundancies that also expand the terrains it can handle. “We can foresee applications in a wide variety of scenarios, such as search and rescue, working in hazardous environments or exploration on other planets,” explained Mau Adachi, one of the paper’s other co-authors.

[Related: NASA hopes its snake robot can search for alien life on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.]

Such serpentine robots are attracting the attention of numerous researchers across the world. Last month, NASA announced the latest advancements on its Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), a snake-bot intended to potentially one day search Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus for signs of extraterrestrial life. Although EELS utilizes a slithering movement via “rotating propulsion units,” it’s not hard to envision it doing so alongside a “myriapod” partner—an image that’s as cute as it is exciting.

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Termites are often thought to be structural pests, but two researchers have taken a slightly contrarian viewpoint. As detailed in a new paper recently published in Frontiers in Materials, David Andréen of Lund University and Rupert Soar of Nottingham Trent University studied termites’ tens of millions of years of architectural experience exhibited within their massive mounds. According to the duo’s findings, the insects’ abilities could inspire a new generation of green, energy efficient architecture.

Termites are responsible for building the tallest biological structures in the world, with the biggest mound ever recorded measuring an astounding 42-feet-high. These insects aren’t randomly building out their homes, however—in fact, the structures are meticulously designed to make the most of the environment around them. Termite mounds in Namibia, for example, rely on intricate, interconnected tunnels known as an “egress complex.” As explained in Frontiers’ announcement, these mounds’ complexes grow northward during the November-to-April rainy season in order to be directly exposed to the midday sun. Throughout the rest of the year, however, termites block these egress tunnels, thus regulating ventilation and moisture levels depending on the season.

To better study the architectural intricacies, Andréen and Soar created a 3D-printed copy of an egress complex fragment. They then used a speaker to simulate winds by sending oscillating amounts of CO2-air mixture through the model while tracking mass transference rates. Turbulence within the mound depended on the frequency of oscillation, which subsequently moved excess moisture and respiratory gasses away from the inner mound.

[Related: Termites work through wood faster when it’s hotter out.]

From there, the team created a series of 2D models of the egress complex. After driving an oscillating amount of water through these lattice-like tunnels via an electromotor, Andréen and Soar found that the machine only needed to move air a few millimeters back-and-forth to force the water throughout the entire model. The researchers discovered termites only need small amounts of wind power to ventilate their mounds’ egress complex.

The researchers believe integrating the egress complex design into future buildings’ walls could create promising green architecture threaded with tiny air passageways. This could hypothetically be accomplished via technology such as powder bed printers alongside low-energy sensors and actuators to move air throughout the structures.

“When ventilating a building, you want to preserve the delicate balance of temperature and humidity created inside, without impeding the movement of stale air outwards and fresh air inwards,” explained Soar, adding the egress complex is “an example of a complicated structure that could solve multiple problems simultaneously: keeping comfort inside our homes, while regulating the flow of respiratory gasses and moisture through the building envelope,” with minimal to no A/C necessary. Once realized, the team believes society may soon see the introduction of “true living, breathing” buildings.

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When it comes to the critical process of pollination, butterflies and especially bees are typically the most lauded participants. These pollinators fly from flower to flower to feed and fertilize plants by spreading pollen around. But, these fluttery creatures are far from the only species that help flowers reproduce and bloom. It turns out that some of nature’s most unsung and diverse pollinators are a type of long-snouted beetles called weevils.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

A study published May 25 in the journal Peer Community in Ecology wiggles into the world of weevils, including some who spend their entire lifecycle in tandem with a specific plant they help pollinate. 

“Even people who work on pollination don’t usually consider weevils as one of the main pollinators, and people who work on weevils don’t usually consider pollination as something relevant to the group,” study co-author and assistant curator of insects at the Field Museum in Chicago said in a statement. “There are lots of important things that people are missing because of preconceptions.”

The quarter-of-an-inch long  weevils can be considered pests, especially when found munching on pasta and flour in pantries. Weevils used to find their way into the biscuits on Nineteenth Century ships that even highly ranked officers ate, as depicted in the 2003 seafaring film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. They can be so destructive that from 1829 to 1920, boll weevils completely disrupted the cotton economy in the South as they fed on cotton buds. 

Despite this less than stellar reputation, the insects are still beneficial to many of the world’s plant species. 

Scientists have identified roughly 400,000 species of beetles, making them one of the largest groups of animals in the world. Among this already big bunch of bugs, weevils are the largest group. “There are 60,000 species of weevils that we know about, which is about the same as the number of all vertebrate animals put together,” said de Medeiros.

The authors looked at 600 species of weevil, reviewing hundreds of previously published data on how weevils and plants interact to get a better sense of their role as prime pollinators. It focused on brood-site pollinators—insects that use the same plants that they pollinate as the breeding sites for their larvae. It is similar to the relationship between Monarch butterflies and milkweed, which is the only plant that Monarch caterpillars can eat. 

“It is a special kind of pollination interaction because it is usually associated with high specialization: because the insects spend their whole life cycle in the plant, they often only pollinate that plant,” said de Medeiros.  And because the plants have very reliable pollinators, they mostly use those pollinators.” 

[Related: This lawn-mowing robot can save part of your yard for pollinators.]

Unlike Monarchs, brood-site pollinators take the relationship with the plant a step further. They rely on only one plant partner as a source for both food and egg laying, unlike adult Monarchs who will eat the nectar of many different types of flowers. 

“This kind of pollination interaction is generally thought to be rare or unusual,” said de Medeiros. “In this study, we show that there are hundreds of weevil species and plants for which this has been documented already, and many, many more yet to be discovered.”

The relationship like the one between weevils and their plants means that they both need each other to flourish. Some industries, like palm oil,  have already hurt forests, therefore disturbing the animal species that rely on them. 

“Oil palm, which is used to make peanut butter and Nutella, was not a viable industry until someone figured out that the weevils found with them were their pollinators. And because people had an incorrect preconception that weevils were not pollinators, it took much, much longer than it could have taken,” said de Medeiros.

Misconceptions about weevils were one of this team’s motivations for the study. The team hopes that by summarizing what is known about the pollinators, more scientists and the general public appreciate the role of weevils as pollinators, particularly in the tropics. 

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Excerpted from The Jewel Box: How Moths Illuminate Nature’s Hidden Rules by Tim Blackburn. Copyright © 2023. Published by Island Press.

The composition and structure of ecological communities doesn’t only depend on what happens in their immediate vicinity. Events in the wider environment are important, too. All of nature is connected. This is why migration matters.

Indeed, migrants have never mattered so much. Humanity has destroyed a substantial proportion of natural habitat worldwide, and much of what is left is now heavily fragmented—small islands in a sea of inhospitable cropland, pasture, or concrete. The populations they house will be small, too, and susceptible to the vagaries of bad
luck. Luckily, as we’ve seen, fragmented populations can still persist if they are connected by migrants. Migrants can bolster birth rates and counteract death rates, preventing population extinction and recolonizing sites when local extinction does take populations out. Humanity’s fragmentation of nature has only increased the relevance of these dynamics.

Migration can ameliorate some of the damage caused by fragmentation, but only some. Metapopulations are most secure when there is a large “mainland” population acting as a plentiful source of immigrants. Unfortunately, habitat destruction tends to reduce the extent and productivity of such mainlands, to the detriment of surrounding patches dependent on their largesse. Remaining fragments are often viewed as unimportant from a biodiversity perspective, but destroying them can increase the distance between surviving patches, and so lower the likelihood of colonization. When colonization rates are lower than extinction rates, populations will eventually disappear. More isolated habitat fragments have fewer species, moths and others.

On top of that, not all species are well adapted for a peripatetic lifestyle. Female vaporer moths, for example, lack wings, essentially being furry sacks for laying eggs. They are ill equipped for moving between habitat fragments. Likewise, winter moth, mottled umber, and early moth—all widespread species I’ve trapped in Devon but not in London, where the patchy nature of suitable habitat does them no favors. Even apparently mobile species often will not move far, like the cinnabar moth. Many skulking bird species of the Amazon rainforest understory evidently will not cross open spaces to the extent that major rivers in this basin become boundaries to their geographic distributions.

Specialists on certain habitats or food plants will fare especially badly when fragmentation increases. Species like the scarce pug, which in Britain feeds only on sea wormwood on a few east coast salt marshes. Extensive coastal development means that salt marshes are rarer and more-fragmented habitats than of old, and these are the only habitat of sea wormwood in Britain. Greater distances between suitable patches reduces the chances that dispersing individuals will find them, to colonize or rescue.

Migrants can also allow species to respond to changes in conditions— to take advantage of new opportunities as they develop, or escape from sinking ships. This is especially important in the face of the ongoing climate crisis. When environmental conditions change beyond the physiological tolerances of individuals, the species has only three options: adapt, move, or go extinct. The current speed of environmental change makes adaptation difficult, especially for those with slower life histories, leaving movement as the best option for survival.

Unfortunately, the ability of species to track changes in the climate is significantly hampered by habitat destruction and fragmentation. It’s easy for populations to move through continuous tracts of habitat. But remember the effects of area and isolation on the species richness of islands: small, remote pockets of habitat are harder targets for dispersing individuals to hit. Humanity has increased the need for species to move while simultaneously making it harder for them to do so.

We can help, though—right? If species need to move, we can step in and do the leg work. It’s called assisted colonization—the translocation of individuals beyond the current limits of their distribution in order to conserve species that would otherwise go extinct thanks to their inability to reach new areas in the face of a changing environment. Humans have been moving species around for all sorts of reasons for millennia now. Why not for conservation?

Well, precisely because of those species we’ve moved—the impacts of pesky aliens like the box-tree moth. In truth, that species is second division when it comes to damage. Other aliens have been much worse. I’ve already mentioned cats and rats, but take the rosy wolfsnail. It was moved to several islands across the Pacific to control populations of another alien, the giant African land snail, but instead ate its way through the entire world populations of more than 130 other snail species. Alien diseases can wipe out naïve host populations, like the fungal pathogens Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and B. salamadrovirans that, between them, have been responsible for the extinction of almost 100 amphibian species worldwide, and population declines in hundreds more. Alien plants can modify ecosystems to their own advantage, and suppress native plant species. Native birds tend to do worse in habitats dominated by alien plants, because their insect prey often cannot make a living on those plants. Aliens in general have been associated with the global extinction of more species in the last 500 years than any other human intervention, including habitat destruction. They remain one of the main drivers of global population declines.

It’s trebly ironic that not only has humanity caused problems for species by increasing the need for them to move while simultaneously making it harder for them to do so, but also has caused problems for some species by moving others. The pressure for assisted colonization is growing, but we are rightly wary of taking species to places where they have no prior history.

Buy The Jewel Box by Tim Blackburn here.

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Up until 100 million years ago, butterflies were night creatures. Only nocturnal moths were living on Earth until some rogue moths began to fly during the day. These enterprising members of the order Lepidoptera took advantage of the nectar-rich flowers that had co-evolved with bees by flying during the day. From there, close to 19,000 butterfly species were born.

[Related: Save caterpillars by turning off your outdoor lights.]

In 2019, a large-scale analysis of DNA helped solve the question of when they evolved. Now,  the mystery of where in the world colorful winged insects evolved plagues lepidopterists and museum curators. A study published May 15 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution found that butterflies likely evolved in North and Central America, and they forged strong botanical bonds with host plants as they settled around the world.

Getting to this conclusion took a four-dimensional puzzle that makes 3D chess look like a game of Candyland. Scientists from multiple countries had to assemble a massive “butterfly tree of life” using 100 million years of natural history on their distribution and favorite plants, as well as the DNA of more than 2,000 species representing 90 percent of butterfly genera and all butterfly families. 

Within the data were 11 rare butterfly fossils that proved to be crucial pieces to the story.  Butterflies are not common in the fossil record due to their thin wings and very threadlike hair. The 11 in this study were used as calibration and comparison points on the genetic trees, so the team could record timing of key evolutionary events.

They found that butterflies first appeared somewhere in central and western North America. 100 million years ago, North America was bisected by an expansive seaway called the Western Interior Seaway. Present day Mexico was joined in an arc with the United States, Canada, and Russia. North and South America were also separated by a strait of water that butterflies had little difficulty crossing.

The study believes that butterflies took a long way around to Africa, first moving into Asia along the Bering Land Bridge. They then radiated into Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and eventually the Horn of Africa. They were even able to reach India, which was an isolated island separated by miles of open sea at this time. 

[Related: The monarch butterfly is scientifically endangered. So why isn’t it legally protected yet?]

Australia was still connected to Antarctica, one of the last remnants of the supercontinent Pangaea. Butterflies possibly lived in Antarctica when global temperatures were warmer, and made their way north towards Australia before the landmasses broke up. 

Butterflies likely lingered along the western edge of Asia for up to 45 million years before making the journey into Europe. The effects of this pause are still apparent today, according to the authors. 

“Europe doesn’t have many butterfly species compared to other parts of the world, and the ones it does have can often be found elsewhere. Many butterflies in Europe are also found in Siberia and Asia, for example,” study co-author and curator of lepidoptera at the Florida Museum of Natural History Akito Kawahara said in a statement. 

Once butterflies were established all over the world, they rapidly diversified alongside their plant hosts. Nearly all modern butterfly families were on Earth by the time dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. Each butterfly family appears to have had a special affinity for a specific group of plants.

“We looked at this association over an evolutionary timescale, and in pretty much every family of butterflies, bean plants came out to be the ancestral hosts,” Kawahara said. “This was true in the ancestor of all butterflies as well.”

Over time, bean plants have increased their roster of pollinators to include multiple types of bees, flies, hummingbirds, and mammals, while butterflies have similarly expanded their palate. These botanical partnerships helped make butterflies blossom from a minor offshoot of moths to one of the world’s largest groups of insects, according to the study.

“The evolution of butterflies and flowering plants has been inexorably intertwined since the origin of the former, and the close relationship between them has resulted in remarkable diversification events in both lineages,” study co-author and Florida Museum curator Pamela Soltis said in a statement. 

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This month marks the fifth anniversary of “No Mow May,” an annual environmental project dedicated to promoting sustainable, eco-friendly lawns via a 31-day landscaping moratorium. In doing so, the brief respite gives bees and other pollinators a chance to do what they do best: contribute to a vibrant, healthy, and biodiverse ecosystem. To keep the No Mow May momentum going, Swedish tech company Husqvarna has announced a new, simple feature for its line of robotic lawnmowers: a “rewilding” mode that ensures 10 percent of owners’ lawns remain untouched for pollinators and other local wildlife.

While meticulously manicured lawns are part of the traditional suburban American mindset, they come at steep ecological costs such as biodiversity loss and massive amounts of water waste. The Natural Resource Defense Council, for instance, estimates that grass lawns consume almost 3 trillion gallons of water each year alongside 200 million gallons of gas for traditional mowers, as well as another 70 million pounds of harmful pesticides. In contrast, rewilding is a straightforward, self-explanatory concept long pushed by environmentalists and sustainability experts that encourages a return to regionally native flora for all-around healthier ecosystems.

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’.]

While convincing everyone to adopt rewilding practices may seem like a near-term impossibility, companies like Husqvarna are hoping to set the literal and figurative lawnmower rolling with its new autopilot feature. According to Husqvarna’s announcement, if Europeans set aside just a tenth of their lawns, the cumulative area would amount to four times the size of the continent’s largest nature preserve.

Enabling the Rewilding Mode only takes a few taps within the product line’s Automower Connect app, and can be customized to change the overall shape, size, and placement of the rewilding zones. Once established, the robotic mower’s onboard GPS systems ensure which areas of an owner’s lawn are off-limits and reserved for bees, butterflies, and whatever else wants to set up shop.

Of course, turning on Rewilding Mode means owning a Husqvarna robotic mower that supports the setting—and at a minimum of around $700 for such a tool, they might be out of many lawn care enthusiasts’ budgets. Even so, that doesn’t mean you should abandon giving rewilding a try for your own lawns. It’s easy to get started on the project, and as its name suggests, doesn’t take much maintenance once it’s thriving. If nothing else, there’s still two weeks left in No Mow May, so maybe consider postponing your weekend outdoor chore for a few more days.

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Sadly, vitamins and supplements will not really keep the mosquitoes from biting you this summer, but scientists are still trying to figure out why the insects seem to love sucking some blood more than others.

[Related: How can we control mosquitos? Deactivate their sperm.]

In a small study published May 10 in the journal iScience, a team of researchers looked at the possible effects that soap has on mosquitoes. While some soaps did appear to repel the bugs and others attracted them, the effects varied greatly based on how the soap interacts with an individual’s unique odor profile.

“It’s remarkable that the same individual that is extremely attractive to mosquitoes when they are unwashed can be turned even more attractive to mosquitoes with one soap, and then become repellent or repulsive to mosquitoes with another soap,” co-author and Virginia Tech neuroethologist Clément Vinauger said in a statement.

Soaps and other stink-reducing products have been used for millennia, and while we know that they change our perception of another person’s natural body odor, it is less clear if soap also acts this way for mosquitoes. Since mosquitoes mainly feed on plant nectar and not animal blood alone, using plant-mimicking or plant-derived scents may confuse their decision making on what to feast on next.  

In the study, the team began by characterizing the chemical odors emitted by four human volunteers when unwashed and then after they had washed with four common brands of soap (Dial, Dove, Native, and Simple Truth). The odor profiles of the soaps themselves were also characterized. 

They found that each of the volunteers emitted their own unique odor profile and some of those odor profiles were more attractive to mosquitoes than others. The soap significantly changed the odor profiles, not just by adding some floral fragrances. 

“Everybody smells different, even after the application of soap; your physiological status, the way you live, what you eat, and the places you go all affect the way you smell,” co author and Virginia Tech biologist Chloé Lahondère said in a statement. “And soaps drastically change the way we smell, not only by adding chemicals, but also by causing variations in the emission of compounds that we are already naturally producing.”

The researchers then compared the relative attractiveness of each human volunteer–unwashed and an hour after using the four soaps–to Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. These mosquitoes are known to spread yellow fever, malaria, and Zika among other diseases. After mating, male mosquitoes feed mostly on nectar and females feed exclusively on blood, so the team exclusively tested the attractiveness using adult female mosquitoes who had recently mated. They also took out the effects of exhaled carbon dioxide by using fabrics that had absorbed the human’s odors instead of on the breathing humans themselves.   

[Related from PopSci+: Can a bold new plan to stop mosquitoes catch on?]

They found that soap-washing did impact the mosquitoes’ preferences, but the size and direction of this impact varied between the types of soap and humans. Washing with Dove and Simple Truth increased the attractiveness of some, but not all of the volunteers, and washing with Native soap tended to repel mosquitoes.

“What really matters to the mosquito is not the most abundant chemical, but rather the specific associations and combinations of chemicals, not only from the soap, but also from our personal body odors,” said Vinauger. “All of the soaps contained a chemical called limonene which is a known mosquito repellent, but in spite of that being the main chemical in all four soaps, three out of the four soaps we tested increased mosquitoes’ attraction.”

To look closer at the specific soap ingredients that could be attracting or repelling the insects, they analyzed the chemical compositions of the soaps. They identified four chemicals associated with mosquito attraction and three chemicals associated with repulsion. Two of the mosquito-repellers are a coconut-scented chemical that is a key component in American Bourbon and a floral compound that is used to treat scabies and lice. They combined these chemicals to test attractive and repellent odor blends and this concoction had strong impacts on mosquito preference.

“With these mixtures, we eliminated all the noise in the signal by only including those chemicals that the statistics were telling us are important for attraction or repulsion,” said Vinauger. “I would choose a coconut-scented soap if I wanted to reduce mosquito attraction.”

The team hopes to test these results using more varieties of soap and more people and explore how soap impacts mosquito preference over a longer period of time. 

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The piercing and malevolent gaze of Sauron, the powerful villain The Lord of the Rings, is being honored in a way that may even make Gandalf’s heroic eagles envious. A new genus of butterflies has been named Saurona in honor of one of fiction’s greatest villains.

[Related: Scientists Calculate Calories Needed To Walk To Mordor.]

With their fiery orange hindwings and piercingly dark eyespots, Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first two species described in this new genus, described in a study published April 10 in the journal Systematic Entomology. Scientists believe that there are more species within this genus waiting to be described.  

“Giving these butterflies an unusual name helps to draw attention to this underappreciated group,” study co-author and Senior Curator of Butterflies at London’s Natural History Museum Blanca Huertas said in a statement. “It shows that, even among a group of very similar-looking species, you can find beauty among the dullness. Naming a genus is not something that happens very often, and it’s even more rare to be able to name two at once. It was a great privilege to do so, and now means that we can start describing new species that we have uncovered as a result of this research.”

Saurona triangula and Saurona aurigera are the first butterflies to be named after the epic villain, but they are not the only animals named after Sauron and other characters from JRR Tolkien’s epic trilogy. A dinosaur (Sauroniops pachytholus) and an insect (Macropsis sauroni), and has also been named after the antagonist and his eye that constantly surveys the lands of Middle Earth. Sauron’s foil and heroic wizard Gandalf also has some animals named for him, including a species of crab, moth, and beetle and a group of fossil mammals. The tragic and troubled creature Gollum has fish, wasps, and fish named after him. 

Naming animals after fictional characters can help draw attention to them in the real world. A recent example comes from the devastating 2019-202 wildfires that struck Australia. The fires burned over 42 million acres and harmed 3 billion animals. Three Australian beetles that were devastated by the fires were named after Pokémon in an effort to attract conservation funding.

The Saurona butterflies are found in the southwestern Amazon rainforest and belong to a butterfly group Euptychiina. This group is difficult to tell apart by their physical characteristics alone, and the scientists on this study used genetic sequencing to help differentiate the new species.

“These butterflies are widely distributed in the tropical lowlands of the Americas, but despite their abundance they weren’t well-studied,” Blanca said. “Historically, the Euptychiina have been overlooked because they tend to be small, brown, and share a similar appearance. This has made them one of the most complex groups of butterflies in the tropics of the Americas.”

[Related: How are dinosaurs named?]

Even with major advances in DNA sequencing like target enrichment and Sanger sequencing that can produce vast amounts of DNA from samples, it took the team over 10 years to assess more than 400 different butterfly species. 

They deciphered the relations between groups and described nine new genera including one called Argenteria. In English, Argenteria translates to “silver mine,” and was named by Blanca and her team due to the silver scales on their wings. Argenteria currently has six species within the genus, but there are likely more out there waiting to be discovered.

The researchers on this study estimate they uncovered up to 20 percent more uncovered species than there were before the project began, and they hope to describe even more. More description will help scientists to better understand the relationships between the different species and the issues they face. 

“It’s important to study groups like the Euptychiina because it reveals that there are many species we didn’t know about, including rare and endemic ones,” said Blanca. “Some of these species are threatened with extinction, and so there’s a lot to do now we can put a name to them. There are also many other butterfly and insect groups that need attention so that they can be better understood and protected.”

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If humans want to learn more about our higher brain functions and behaviors, some scientists think we should look towards insects—including everything from busy bees to social butterflies  to flies on the wall. A study published May 5 in the journal Science Advances found three diverse, specialized Kenyon cell subtypes in honey bee brains that likely evolved from one single, multi-functional Kenyon cell subtype ancestor.

[Related: Older bees teach younger bees the ‘waggle dance.’]

Kenyon cells (KCs) are a type of neural cell that are found within a part of the insect brain. These cells are  involved in learning and memory, particularly with the sense of smell called the mushroom body. They are found in insects in the large Hymenoptera order from more “primitive” sawflies up to the more sophisticated honey bee. 

“In 2017, we reported that the complexity of Kenyon cell subtypes in mushroom bodies in insect brains increases with the behavioral diversification in Hymenoptera,” co-author and University of Tokyo graduate student said in a statement. “In other words, the more KC subtypes an insect has, the more complex its brain and the behaviors it may exhibit. But we didn’t know how these different subtypes evolved. That was the stimulus for this new study.”

In this study, the team from University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) looked at two Hymenoptera species as representatives for different behaviors. The more solitary turnip sawfly has a single KC subtype, compared to the more complex and more social honey bee that has three KC subtypes.

It is believed that the sawfly’s more “primitive” brain may contain some of the ancestral properties of the honey bee brain. To find these potential evolutionary paths, the team used  transcriptome analysis to identify the genetic activity happening in the various KC subtypes and speculate their functions.

[Related: Like the first flying humans, honeybees use linear landmarks to navigate.]

“I was surprised that each of the three KC subtypes in the honey bee showed comparable similarity to the single KC type in the sawfly,” co-author and University of Tokyo biologist Hiroki Kohno said in a statement.  “Based on our initial comparative analysis of several genes, we had previously supposed that additional KC subtypes had been added one by one. However, they appear to have been separated from a multifunctional ancestral type, through functional segregation and specialization.” 

As the number of KC subtypes increased, each one almost equally inherited some distinct properties from a single ancestral KC. The subtypes were then modified in different ways, and the results are the more varied functions seen in the present-day insects.

To see a specific behavioral example of how the ancestral KC functions are present in both the honey bee and the sawfly, they trained the sawflies to partake in a behavior test commonly used in honey bees. The bees, and eventually sawflies, learned to associate an odor stimulus with a reward. Despite initial challenges, the team got the sawflies to engage in this task. 

Then, the team manipulated a gene called CaMKII in sawfly larvae. In honey bees, this gene is associated with forming long-term memory, which is a KC function. After the gene manipulation, the long-term memory was impaired in the larvae when they became adults, a sign that this gene also plays a similar role in sawflies. CaMKII was expressed across the entire single KC subtype in sawflies, but it was preferentially expressed in one KC subtype in honey bees. According to the authors, this suggests that the role of CaMKII in long-term memory was passed down to the specific KC subtype in the honey bee.

Even though insect and mammalian brains are very different in terms of size and complexity, we share some common functions and architecture in our nervous systems. By looking at how insect cells and behavior has evolved, it might provide insights into how our own brains evolved. Next, the team is interested in studying KC types acquired in parallel with social behaviors, such as the honey bee’s infamous “waggle dance.”

“We would like to clarify whether the model presented here is applicable to the evolution of other behaviors,” co-author and University of Tokyo doctoral student Takayoshi Kuwabara said in a statement. “There are many mysteries about the neural basis that controls social behavior, whether in insects, animals or humans. How it has evolved still remains largely unknown. I believe that this study is a pioneering work in this field.”

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Carnivorous plants come in a variety of shapes and colors—and it’s often their looks that help them attract their prey. However, these floral tricksters may use a different scene to attract their dinner: smell. A small study published this month in the journal PLOS One found evidence that different species of Sarracenia, a genus of North American pitcher plant, produces scents that are directed at certain groups of prey.

[Related: Two newly discovered Andes Mountain plant species have an appetite for insects.]

Sarracenia pitcher plants typically make their home in bogs and in poor soil throughout North America. Their signature purple or reddish flowers are actually leaves which form a cup called the “pitcher”  filled with digestive enzymes.  If an insect gets too close to the plant, the pitcher traps it and digests the insect to help supplement their diet in a nutrient-poor home. 

The odor of carnivorous plants hasn’t been well-studied by humans, but has been suspected for over a century. Charles Darwin wrote about the unique plants about 150 years ago, but it’s been more difficult to find concrete evidence of its olfactory mechanisms. 

“Of the signals involved in communication, odor is probably the most cryptic to humans,’ co-author and carnivorous plant expert French National Centre for Scientific Research Laurence Gaume said in a statement. “In plants, it is often correlated with other plant characteristics such as nectar, shape and visual signals, which make it difficult to disentangle its effect from others.”

In this new study, a team identified the odor molecules emanating from four types of pitcher plants. The scents appear to correlate with the types of incense that wound up inside of the pitchers. The chemicals that make up some of the scents are similar to ones known to act as signals to certain insects, which may mean the pitcher plants have evolved to take advantage of their prey’s senses.

“It offers potentially interesting avenues in the field of biological control, and one can imagine drawing inspiration from the olfactory cues of these pitcher plants to control plant pests, for example,” said Gaume.

The team grew Sarracenia purpurea and three of its hybrids with other pitcher plants in a lab.  

They found that all of the pitchers produced a scent that was similar to more generalist plants that are pollinated by many different species. This can allow them to cast a wide net for prey, but they noted that there were subtle differences in the volatile organic compounds that they produced. 

[Related: Dying plants are ‘screaming’ at you.]

The pitchers attracting butterflies and bees were rich in compounds like limonene, a chemical that gives citrus fruits their unique smell. The aroma comes from a class of chemicals found in the scents of around two thirds of flowering plants which attract these pollinators.

Meanwhile, S. purpurea also had an odor that was high in fatty acid chemicals known to attract parasitoid wasps and possibly other insect predators. Wasps and insects made up a large part of the plant’s diet, which suggests that the scent could be targeting them directly. 

The team found that both the odor of a pitcher and its dimensions could help predict the prey caught by a plant about 98 percent of the time. This is not definitive proof, but it suggests a possible link between a pitcher plant’s scent and its prey. 

Since carnivorous plants cannot move to hunt for their prey like a lion or a shark, smells can help them not only find food, but communicate with other plants. Plants being eaten can release scents that tell other plants nearby to get their defenses ready or produce a smell that attracts predators. 

Plants that are pollinated by animals often rely on scents to attract pollinators, like bees. Anything that hides their scent–like air pollution–can cause a drop in the number of pollinators that can find them. 

Further studies could help explain how carnivorous plants that are pollinated by insects can attract some for pollination and other for food. For example, the most important pollinators of Venus fly traps are never found inside its traps, and scent could play a role in this. 

 “However, we remain cautious because our results are currently based on correlations. Even with strong correlations, further tests are necessary to investigate whether the different insect types are indeed attracted to particular scents,” said Gaume.

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Imagine yourself trapped in a building’s rubble following an earthquake. It’s a terrifying prospect, especially if time is of the essence for search and rescue operations. Now imagine  one of your rescuers turns out to be a cyborg cockroach. 

Regardless of how you feel about insects, a team of scientists at Osaka University in Japan apparently believe these resilient little bugs can come in handy in times of disaster. According to the researchers’ paper recently published within the journal Cyborg and Bionic Systems, society is closer than it’s ever been to deploying cybernetically augmented bugs to aid in real world scenarios such as natural disasters and extreme environment explorations. And everyone owes it all to their legion of semi-controllable cyborg Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

[Related: Spider robots could soon be swarming Japan’s aging sewer systems.]

Insects are increasingly inspiring robotic advancements, but biomimicry still often proves immensely complex. As macabre as it may seem, researchers have found augmenting instead of mechanically replicating six-legged creatures can offer simpler, cost-effective alternatives. In this most recent example, scientists implanted tiny, stimulating electrodes into the cockroaches’ brains and peripheral nervous systems, which were subsequently connected to a machine learning program. The system was then trained to recognize the insects’ locomotive states—if a cockroach paused at an obstacle or hunkered down in a dark, cold environment (as cockroaches are evolutionarily prone to do), the electrodes directed them to continue moving in an alternative route. To prevent excess fatigue, researchers even fine-tuned the stimulating currents to make them as minimal as possible.

Importantly, the setup didn’t reduce the insects to zombie cockroaches, but instead simply influenced their movement decisions.  “We don’t have to control the cyborg like controlling a robot. They can have some extent of autonomy, which is the basis of their agile locomotion,” Keisuke Morishima, a roboticist and one of the study’s authors, said in a statement. “For example, in a rescue scenario, we only need to stimulate the cockroach to turn its direction when it’s walking the wrong way or move when it stops unexpectedly.”

[Related: This bumblebee-inspired bot can bounce back after injuring a wing.]

While the scientists currently can’t yet control their cockroaches’ exact directions this way, their paper concludes the setup “successfully increased [their] average search rate and traveled distance up to 68 and 70 percent, respectively, while the stop time was reduced by 78 percent.” Going forward, they hope to improve these accuracy rates, as well as develop means to intentionally direct their enhanced cockroaches. Once that’s achieved, then you can start worrying about the zombie cyborg cockroach invasion.

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Plenty of species have traits evolved for more than one purpose. Deer antlers are built-in weapons as well as seductive doe-magnets. Octopus suckers can trap prey in their suction but also taste and smell. Bright colors in frogs signal danger to predators while flaunting reproductive viability to potential mates. The Luna moth has uniquely shaped wings that thwart predation from bats, but what else might they be good for? How does one determine the evolutionary role of a trait? 

In two recent complementary studies published in Behavioral Ecology and Biology Letters earlier this year, researchers expanded our understanding of the adaptation by testing the role of wing tails against sexual selection and bird predation.

Luna moths are native to the Eastern half of North America. Like all silk moths, they have distinctive long, trailing tails on their hindwings, or “twisted, cupped paddles” as lead author of both studies and doctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural history Juliette Rubin said in a statement. Bats use echolocation to detect the position of objects with reflected sound, but the moth’s wing shape reflects sound waves in a way that makes the flying mammals aim for the ends of their wings. In a flap of a wing, the moth just barely dodges their predators. 

[Related: What bats and metal vocalists have in common]

First, the researchers wanted to see if the wing tails also played a role in sexual selection. When female Luna moths are ready to mate, they perch in one spot and release pheromones. Males, with extremely sensitive antennae, can detect and follow a pheromone trail, according to the University of Florida’s entomology department. Then, the female has her pick of suitors. 

In the first experiment, researchers placed a female moth in a flight box with two males: one with intact wings and one with the wing tails removed. Initial data suggested that females preferred tails over no-tails, but further trials demonstrated otherwise. When researchers removed tails by clipping them, the resulting damage may have hindered these males’ performance in the first trial, allowing the intact males to mate successfully.

They recreated the tail/no-tail experiment by removing tails from both males, and re-gluing them to one male, while placing glue only on the hindwings of the other. Researchers found no significant difference in mating success between them. 

To ensure the glue did not confound the results, researchers conducted an additional experiment with two intact males, one with glue on the hindwings. Similarly, they had equal mating success.

Though their elegance is attractive to us humans, the experiment revealed that Luna moth wing tails aren’t the result of sexual selection. 

Then, researchers wanted to see if the moths’ tails had any obvious drawbacks. They help moths to survive bats, a species that relies on echolocation, but what about visually-oriented predators? 

Luna moths sit still during the day, since flying in broad daylight with their large bright green wings would make them easy targets. To test whether or not their tails would have any impact on daytime predation, researchers wrapped pastry dough around mealworms and molded them to the size and shape of real Luna moths. They attached full wings and wings without tails to each half. They placed the replicas around branches and leaves in an aviary, and introduced Carolina wrens. 

The wrens ate the fake moths at the same rate regardless of wing type, indicating that the tails had no effect on whether or not birds could locate them. Some research suggests that birds rely on search images, mental representations of objects, when they are searching for prey. They use visual cues, such as the shape of moth wings, to distinguish between the prey from patterns in the background. So, the wrens may ignore the hindwing tails, using the overall shape of Luna moths to identify food, according to the press release.

[Related: A new technique reveals how butterfly wings grow into shimmery wonders.]

These experiments show that despite being a noteworthy feature to humans, the Luna moths’ tails do not play a role in attracting a mate, nor do they affect predation by birds.

“When we see these really obvious physical features in animals, we’re often drawn into stories we’ve heard about them,” Rubin said in the statement. “A trait that’s obvious to us, as visual creatures, might not stand out to the predators that hunt them, and the traits that we think are dynamic and alluring might not seem that way to a potential mate.”

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Carpenter bees are some of the largest bees native to the US. They resemble bumblebees, but you’ll be able to tell them apart because they will burrow in fences, telephone poles, dead trees, and other types of wood. These insects are major pollinators, but they’ve earned a bit of a bad rap thanks to the damage they do to human structures.

If these bees have decided to call your home their home, it can be tempting to simply exterminate them, but you should take a more peaceful route. Because of how hugely beneficial they are to local ecosystems, many beekeepers say it’s important to safely move them instead.

The female bees start crafting these nests in the spring, laying their eggs inside for the males to visit and fertilize. The hatchlings emerge in late summer and leave the nests in search of flowers, before spending the winter inside the nest tunnels. You can identify a carpenter bee’s nest by the sawdust around or below it.

[Related: City gardens are abuzz with imperiled native bees]

The bees themselves are generally larger than bumblebees, often between a half-inch and 1 inch long, and do not have yellow stripes. You’re more likely to see the male bees, especially during mating season because they’re extremely territorial and hover around the nests. They can be intimidating, but they have no stingers and are unlikely to hurt you—the aggressive buzzing is all an act to protect their nests. Female carpenter bees, on the other hand, do have stingers, but won’t attack unless confronted directly.

Because they create tunnels, and may come back to them year after year, these bees can cause structural damage to load-bearing fence posts and other wooden constructions. They may also cause indirect damage, as woodpeckers like to go after carpenter bee larvae and can splinter the wood in their search for food.

How to safely get rid of carpenter bees

Despite the issues carpenter bees can cause, they are extremely effective pollinators. Nick Hoefly, a beekeeper at Astor Apiaries in Queens, New York, says that thanks to their size, these hefty bugs are excellent “buzz” pollinators. “This is a type of pollination where the insect vibrates the blossom to dislodge pollen, allowing it to fall onto the female parts of the plant,” he says. “Many vegetables and fruits, including tomatoes and some berries, rely on this type of pollination.”

Use almond, citrus, or another scented oil

That’s why it’s best to get rid of carpenter bees without hurting them. Hoefly recommends applying a drop of almond or citrus oil inside any nest holes you find. Since they don’t like the smell, they will most likely vacate and search elsewhere for a less-stinky place to build a nest. After they leave, you’ll need to fill the holes with wood putty or steel wool. If you have wood the bees haven’t found yet, take some time to sand it down, wipe away any excess sawdust with a wet sponge, and then paint it. Carpenter bees are attracted to unfinished wood.

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This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.

It’s evening at the northern tip of the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Aqaba, and Tom Shlesinger readies to take a dive. During the day, the seafloor is full of life and color; at night it looks much more alien. Shlesinger is waiting for a phenomenon that occurs once a year for a plethora of coral species, often several nights after the full moon.

Guided by a flashlight, he spots it: coral releasing a colorful bundle of eggs and sperm, tightly packed together. “You’re looking at it and it starts to flow to the surface,” Shlesinger says. “Then you raise your head, and you turn around, and you realize: All the colonies from the same species are doing it just now.”

Some coral species release bundles of a pinkish- purplish color, others release ones that are yellow, green, white or various other hues. “It’s quite a nice, aesthetic sensation,” says Shlesinger, a marine ecologist at Tel Aviv University and the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, Israel, who has witnessed the show during many years of diving. Corals usually spawn in the evening and night within a tight time window of 10 minutes to half an hour. “The timing is so precise, you can set your clock by the time it happens,” Shlesinger says.

Moon-controlled rhythms in marine critters have been observed for centuries. There is calculated guesswork, for example, that in 1492 Christopher Columbus encountered a kind of glowing marine worm engaged in a lunar-timed mating dance, like the “flame of a small candle alternately raised and lowered.” Diverse animals such as sea mussels, corals, polychaete worms and certain fishes are thought to synchronize their reproductive behavior by the moon. The crucial reason is that such animals — for example, over a hundred coral species at the Great Barrier Reef — release their eggs before fertilization takes place, and synchronization maximizes the probability of an encounter between eggs and sperm.

How does it work? That has long been a mystery, but researchers are getting closer to understanding. They have known for at least 15 years that corals, like many other species, contain light-sensitive proteins called cryptochromes, and have recently reported that in the stony coral, Dipsastraea speciosa, a period of darkness between sunset and moonrise appears key for triggering spawning some days later.

Now, with the help of the marine bristle worm Platynereis dumerilii, researchers have begun to tease out the molecular mechanism by which myriad sea species may pay attention to the cycle of the moon.

The bristle worm originally comes from the Bay of Naples but has been reared in laboratories since the 1950s. It is particularly well-suited for such studies, says Kristin Tessmar-Raible, a chronobiologist at the University of Vienna. During its reproductive season, it spawns for a few days after the full moon: The adult worms rise en masse to the water surface at a dark hour, engage in a nuptial dance and release their gametes. After reproduction, the worms burst and die.

The tools the creatures need for such precision timing — down to days of the month, and then down to hours of the day — are akin to what we’d need to arrange a meeting, says Tessmar-Raible. “We integrate different types of timing systems: a watch, a calendar,” she says. In the worm’s case, the requisite timing systems are a daily — or circadian — clock along with another, circalunar clock for its monthly reckoning.

To explore the worm’s timing, Tessmar-Raible’s group began experiments on genes in the worm that carry instructions for making cryptochromes. The group focused specifically on a cryptochrome in bristle worms called L-Cry. To figure out its involvement in synchronized spawning, they used genetic tricks to inactivate the l-cry gene and observe what happened to the worm’s lunar clock. They also carried out experiments to analyze the L-Cry protein.

Though the story is far from complete, the scientists have evidence that the protein plays a key role in something very important: distinguishing sunlight from moonlight. L-Cry is, in effect, “a natural light interpreter,” Tessmar-Raible and coauthors write in a 2023 overview of rhythms in marine creatures in the Annual Review of Marine Science.

The role is a crucial one, because in order to synchronize and spawn on the same night, the creatures need to be able to stay in step with the patterns of the moon on its roughly 29.5-day cycle — from full moon, when the moonlight is bright and lasts all night long, to the dimmer, shorter-duration illuminations as the moon waxes and wanes.

When L-Cry was absent, the scientists found, the worms didn’t discriminate appropriately. The animals synchronized tightly to artificial lunar cycles of light and dark inside the lab — ones in which the “sunlight” was dimmer than the real sun and the “moonlight” was brighter than the real moon. In other words, worms without L-Cry latched onto unrealistic light cycles. In contrast, the normal worms that still made L-Cry protein were more discerning and did a better job of synchronizing their lunar clocks correctly when the nighttime lighting more closely matched that of the bristle worm’s natural environment.

The researchers accrued other evidence, too, that L-Cry is an important player in lunar timekeeping, helping to discern sunlight from moonlight. They purified the L-Cry protein and found that it consists of two protein strands bound together, with each half holding a light-absorbing structure known as a flavin. The sensitivity of each flavin to light is very different. Because of this, the L-Cry can respond to both strong light akin to sunlight and dim light equivalent to moonlight — light over five orders of magnitude of intensity — but with very different consequences.

After four hours of dim “moonlight” exposure, for example, light-induced chemical reactions in the protein — photoreduction — occurred, reaching a maximum after six hours of continuous “moonlight” exposure. Six hours is significant, the scientists note, because the worm would only encounter six hours’ worth of moonlight at times when the moon was full. This therefore would allow the creature to synchronize with monthly lunar cycles and pick the right night on which to spawn. “I find it very exciting that we could describe a protein that can measure moon phases,” says Eva Wolf, a structural biologist at IMB Mainz and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and a collaborator with Tessmar-Raible on the work.

How does the worm know that it’s sensing moonlight, though, and not sunlight? Under moonlight conditions, only one of the two flavins was photoreduced, the scientists found. In bright light, by contrast, both flavin molecules were photoreduced, and very quickly. Furthermore, these two types of L-Cry ended up in different parts of the worm’s cells: the fully photoreduced protein in the cytoplasm, where it was quickly destroyed, and the partly photoreduced L-Cry proteins in the nucleus.

All in all, the situation is akin to having “a highly sensitive ‘low light sensor’ for moonlight detection with a much less sensitive ‘high light sensor’ for sunlight detection,” the authors conclude in a report published in 2022.

Many puzzles remain, of course. For example, though presumably the two distinct fates of the L-Cry molecules transmit different biological signals inside the worm, researchers don’t yet know what they are. And though the L-Cry protein is key for discriminating sunlight from moonlight, other light-sensing molecules must be involved, the scientists say.

In a separate study, the researchers used cameras in the lab to record the burst of swimming activity (the worm’s “nuptial dance”) that occurs when a worm sets out to spawn, and followed it up with genetic experiments. And they confirmed that another molecule is key for the worm to spawn during the right one- to two-hour window — the dark portion of that night between sunset and moonrise — on the designated spawning nights.

Called r-Opsin, the molecule is extremely sensitive to light, the scientists found — about a hundred times more than the melanopsin found in the average human eye. It modifies the worm’s daily clock by acting as a moonrise sensor, the researchers propose (the moon rises successively later each night). The notion is that combining the signal from the r-Opsin sensor with the information from the L-Cry on what kind of light it is allows the worm to pick just the right time on the spawning night to rise to the surface and release its gametes.

Resident timekeepers

As biologists tease apart the timekeepers needed to synchronize activities in so many marine creatures, the questions bubble up. Where, exactly, do these timekeepers reside? In species in which biological clocks have been well studied — such as Drosophila and mice — that central timekeeper is housed in the brain. In the marine bristleworm, clocks exist in its forebrain and peripheral tissues of its trunk. But other creatures, such as corals and sea anemones, don’t even have brains. “Is there a population of neurons that acts as a central clock, or is it much more diffuse? We don’t really know,” says Ann Tarrant, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who is studying chronobiology of the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Scientists are also interested in knowing what roles are played by microbes that might live with marine creatures. Corals like Acropora, for example, often have algae living symbiotically within their cells. “We know that algae like that also have circadian rhythms,” Tarrant says. “So when you have a coral and an alga together, it’s complicated to know how that works.”

Researchers are worried, too, about the fate of spectacular synchronized events like coral spawning in a light-polluted world. If coral clock mechanisms are similar to the bristle worm’s, how would creatures be able to properly detect the natural full moon? In 2021, researchers reported lab studies demonstrating that light pollution can desynchronize spawning in two coral species — Acropora millepora and Acropora digitifera — found in the Indo-Pacific Ocean.

Shlesinger and his colleague Yossi Loya have seen just this in natural populations, in several coral species in the Red Sea. Reporting in 2019, the scientists compared four years’ worth of spawning observations with data from the same site 30 years earlier. Three of the five species they studied showed spawning asynchrony, leading to fewer — or no — instances of new, small corals on the reef.

Along with artificial light, Shlesinger believes there could be other culprits involved, such as endocrine-disrupting chemical pollutants. He’s working to understand that — and to learn why some species remain unaffected.

Based on his underwater observations to date, Shlesinger believes that about 10 of the 50-odd species he has looked at may be asynchronizing in the Red Sea, the northern portion of which is considered a climate-change refuge for corals and has not experienced mass bleaching events. “I suspect,” he says, “that we will hear of more issues like that in other places in the world, and in more species.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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The waste honeybees discard in their hives could hold valuable insight into the public health of our cities. In a study published this week in the journal Environmental Microbiome, scientists shared a new method for collecting microbial information from the environment using honeybee debris. Identifying germs in a city gives researchers a snapshot of the diversity of a city’s microbiome, which could lead to better health outcomes. The technique might also help in surveilling illness-causing bacteria and viruses among bees and humans. 

While we can’t see microorganisms, they play a critical behind-the-scenes role in shaping our survival. For example, microbes in the human gut support digestion, help keep our immune system healthy, and are the first line of defense from “bad” bacteria that cause food poisoning and other infections. Typically, the more diverse a person microbiome, the greater their health and well-being. One way to increase said variety is interacting with outside surroundings.

[Related: A link to depression might be in your gut bacteria]

“A lot of [microbes] are beneficial to human health,” says lead study author Elizabeth Hénaff, an assistant professor at the center for urban science and progress at New York University. “The goal of this study is understanding the whole breadth of diversity of microbiomes and the ones we’re interacting with in urban environments.” 

Hénaff and her colleagues knew they wanted to create microbial maps of different cities to get a better sense of  the diversity in each area. However, they weren’t sure what was the best way to move forward. One idea was swabbing noses, but it would be impractical to swab everyone in a broad and diverse area. The urban microbiomes might also differ from block to block, requiring extensive swabbing. Another option was wastewater surveillance, but the researchers wanted to look at everything urbanites came into contact with—not just what they digested. Then came the aha moment: they could study bee hives.

Because honeybees constantly interact with the environment when they forage for nectar, and they often carry back some bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms from their travels  when they return to the hive. “As bees are foraging, they’re traversing all of these microbial clouds related to other aspects of the built environment,” explains Hénaff. “They’ve traversed the microbial cloud of a pond, a body of water, and groups of human beings if they happen to be in the same park where they’re going.”

The scientists used a technique called metagenomic sequencing to study all the genes found in a single environmental sample. This allowed them to match genes to different microbial species related to hive health and, in turn, learn the health status of the bees. But first they had to figure out what sample should be collected from the hive.  

In a pilot project in Brooklyn, New York, the scientists worked with local beekeepers. They took swab samples of honey, propolis (a resin-like material used to cover the inside of hives), debris, and bee carcasses—anything that could provide the most information on microorganisms.

Subsequently, they discovered that the microbes found in honey and propolis were similar across hives. “Bees are really good at controlling the microbial environment of their own beehives,” adds Hénaff. The only material that differed from hive to hive was the debris left at the bottom of the hive, and this became the source they collected in the next set of experiments.

To profile urban microbiomes, the team took samples of debris from 17 tended hives from four cities across the world: Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, Tokyo, and Venice. The DNA extracted from the bee debris contained material from different sources, including plants, mammals, insects, bacteria, and fungi in the area. 

Each city carried a unique microbial profile that gave a snapshot of how life is like there. The single Venice hive used in the study was filled with wood-rotting fungi. Hénaff says the findings makes sense since most buildings are built on submerged wood pilings. In Australia, the two Melbourne hives had large amounts of eucalyptus DNA, while Sydney’s revealed high levels of a bacterium called Gordonia polyisoprenivorans, that breaks down rubber. Tokyo’s dozen hives displayed genetic hints of lotus and wild soybean—a common plant found in Eastern Asia. There were also high levels of a soy sauce fermenting yeast called Zygosaccharomyces rouxii. 

“Most interesting to me was that [the results] didn’t feel like a disjoint metric from all the other things we know about these cities and their culture, but it actually felt like a puzzle piece we didn’t know existed that fit into our general understanding of these cities,” says Hénaff.

The debris were also helpful in identifying microbes involved in bee health. The team found three honeybee crop microbial species—Lactobacillus kunkeii, Saccharibacter sp. AM169, and Frishella perrara—along with five species related to the insects’ gut health. Three honeybee pathogens were also identified across cities. 

Next, the study identified the human pathogens bees could pick up when venturing outside. The researchers focused on the hive information collected in Tokyo because it had more hives than the other cities, and so had more data for DNA sequencing. They detected two bacteria: one that could cause bacillary dysentery and another involved in cat scratch fever. They then took the pathogen behind cat scratch fever, Rickettsia felis, and reconstructed the genome. Doing so allowed them to not only confirm the species was in the city, but that it had the bacteria-associated molecules to allow it to spread disease. 

[Related: 5 ways to keep bees buzzing that don’t require a hive]

Profiling the microbiome of different cities may be an additional tool for detecting potentially harmful pathogens in humans, says Hénaff. It could also open up new ways of surveying airborne pathogens—a growing interest since the recent arrival of SARS-CoV-2.

Jay Evans, a research entomologist at the US Department of Agriculture who was not involved in the study, says the new approach is “fine” and can help in identifying at least the microorganisms found in urban floral environments. However, he expressed reservations about overvaluing some results. Evans notes that one of the species genome-mapping algorithms used in the study is known to be “a bit greedy,” matching the best microorganism available at the moment. This suggests some genetic matchups to bacteria may not actually be the right fit, and that further tests would be needed to confirm their presence. Because bees can pick up non-living hitchhikers like pesticides, Evans also says it would be nice for the researchers to contrast these biological results with pesticide-specific studies and how that affects hive microbiomes.

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For decades, scientists have been studying a South African daisy’s (Gorteria diffusa) deceptive way to attract pollen. It uses its petals to trick male flies into believing the flower is actually a female fly. When a male insect approaches the flower, it jiggles around trying to mate, and typically buzzes off after a few unsuccessful attempts, leaving pollen behind.

In a study published March 23 in the journal Current Biology, scientists have identified three sets of genes that help build the fake fly appearance on the daisy’s petals. To determine what these genes do, the team compared which genes were ‘switched on’ in petals that had fake flies compared to petals without. They then compared the petals to a different type of daisy that produces a simple spot pattern on its petals, to figure out which genes were specifically involved in making the more deceptive fake fly spots.

According to the team, the surprising find is that all three sets of insect lookalike-creating genes already have other functions in the plant. One set moves iron around, one controls when flowers are made, and one makes hairs on the roots grow. 

[Related: Ecologists have declared war on this popular decorative tree.]

“This daisy didn’t evolve a new ‘make a fly’ gene. Instead it did something even cleverer – it brought together existing genes, which already do other things in different parts of the plant, to make a complicated spot on the petals that deceives male flies,” said study co-author and University of Cambridge plant biologist Beverley Glover, in a statement.

To make this work, the ‘iron moving’ genes add iron to the flower petal’s typically reddish-purple pigments, which changes the color to a more fly-like hue of blue-green. The root hair genes create hairs that expand the petal and give it more texture, making  the fake flies appear in different positions on the petals.

According to the team, this method of attracting more male flies to pollinate gives the plant an evolutionary advantage. The daisies grow in a harsh desert environment with a short rainy season, with makes for a  compressed flower producing, pollination, and seeding schedule. There’s intense competition for the plants to attract pollinators, and these fake lady flies help the daisies stand out. 

By evolutionary standards, this daisy is fairly young at 1.5 to two million years old. These fake fly spots were not on the planet’s oldest daisies, so they likely appeared on petals early on in their evolution. 

“We’d expect that something as complex as a fake fly would take a long time to evolve, involving lots of genes and lots of mutations. But actually by bringing together three existing sets of genes it has happened much more quickly,” said study co-author and plant evolution specialist Roman Kellenberger, in a statement. 

[Related: Bees can sense a flower’s electric field—unless fertilizer messes with the buzz.]

The authors add that this is the only example of a flower producing multiple fake flies on top of its petals. Other daisies make simpler spots like those around the petals, but they are not as convincing to real flies. Orchids can also use sexual deception to trick males into mating with its petals.
“It’s almost like evolving a whole new organ in a very short time-frame,” said Kellenberger.“Male flies don’t stay long on flowers with simple spots, but they’re so convinced by these fake flies that they spend extra time trying to mate, and rub off more pollen onto the flower – helping to pollinate it.”

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Artificial light at night can wreak havoc on a number of animals, from confusing moonlight-following sea turtle hatchlings to disrupting the sleep patterns of free-living animals like birds, to even stressing out caterpillars and making them age quicker.

Scientists are continuing to look more at the effects of artificial night light on insect larvae–like caterpillars.  A study published this month in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences found that even moderate levels of artificial light attract more caterpillar predators and reduce the chance that their larvae grow up into moths. Moths are part of the order lepidoptera that also contains butterflies and skippers ,and their larvae can serve as food for larger prey like birds, wasps, and some small amphibians. 

[Related: The switch to LEDs in Europe is visible from space.]

To test this light theory, scientists from Cornell University placed 552 lifelike caterpillar replicas made of soft clay in a forest in New Hampshire, gluing them to leaves to look as real as possible. They were made from a green clay that mimics the color and size of two moth caterpillars: Noctuidae (owlet moths) and Notodontidae (prominent moths). The marks of predators like birds, other insects, and arthropods can be left in the soft clay if they tried to take a bite of the fake caterpillars. 

Some of the models were placed on experimental lots that had 10 to 15 lux LED lighting, or roughly the brightness of a streetlight. The lights stayed on at night for about seven weeks in June and July 2021.

Of the 552 caterpillars deployed, 521 models were recovered. Almost half (249 fake caterpillars) showed predatory marks from arthropods, during the summer-long nighttime study. Additionally, they found that the rate of caterpillar predation was 27 percent higher on the experimental plots compared with the control areas that didn’t have the LED lighting.

Since the night sky is getting increasingly more polluted with artificial light, this poses another ecological problem for lepidopterans. These creatures already suffer from  threats like  habitat loss, chemical pollutants used in farming, climate change, and increasingly prevalent invasive species, according to the team.

[Related: ‘Skyglow’ is rapidly diminishing our nightly views of the stars.]

These findings are particularly worrisome for caterpillars at a larval stage when they are eating leaves to ensure that they grow into their next stage of development. Study co-author and research ecologist Sara Kaiser told the Cornell Chronicle, “When you turn on a porch light, you suddenly see a bunch of insects outside the door. But when you draw in those arthropod predators by adding light, then what is the impact on developing larvae? Top-down pressure – the possibility of being eaten by something.”
Some simple ways to reduce artificial light are by using smart lighting control to remotely manage any outside lighting, making sure that lights are close to the ground and shielded, and using the lowest intensity lighting possible.

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Given their habit of bouncing off their surroundings with surprising regularity, bumblebees certainly live up to their name. But despite their collision records, the small insects’ wings can withstand a comparatively hefty amount of damage and still function well enough to continue along their pollination routes. This surprising, natural wing strength often outperforms most flying robots’ arrays, which can be grounded by the smallest issues. It’s a resilience that recently inspired researchers to delve into just what makes bumblebees so hearty, and how engineers can mimic that in repairing their own artificial wings.

In an upcoming issue of the research journal, Science Robotics, a team at MIT detailed the new ways they improved tiny aerial robots’ actuators, aka artificial muscles, to handle a sizable amount of damage and continue flying. In this instance, the test robots were roughly the size of a microcassette tape while weighing slightly more than an average paper clip. Each robot has two wings powered by ultrathin layers of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) placed between two electrodes and rolled into a tube shape. As electricity is applied, the electrodes constrict the elastomers which then cause the wings to flap.

[Related: MIT engineers have created tiny robot lightning bugs.]

DEAs have been around for years, but miniscule imperfections in them can cause sparks that damage the device. Around 15 years ago, however, researchers realized that DEA failures from a single minor injury could be avoided via what’s known as “self-clearing,” in which a high enough voltage applied to the DEA disconnects an electrode from the problem area while keeping the rest of its structure intact.

For large wounds, such as a tear in the wing that lets too much air pass through it, researchers developed a laser cauterization method to inflict minor damage around the injury perimeter. After accomplishing this, they were then able to utilize self-clearing to burn away the damaged electrode and isolate the issue. To assess efficacy, engineers even integrated electroluminescent particles into each actuator. If light shines from the area, they know that portion of the actuator works, while darkened portions mean they are out-of-commission.

[Related: This tiny robot grips like a gecko and scoots like an inchworm.]

The team’s repair innovations showed great promise during stress tests. Self-clearing allowed the aerial robots to maintain performance, position, and altitude, while laser surgery on DEAs recovered roughly 87 percent of its normal abilities. “We’re very excited about this. But the insects are still superior to us, in the sense that they can lose up to 40 percent of their wing and still fly,” Kevin Chen, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), as well as the paper’s senior author, said in a statement. “We still have some catch-up work to do.”

But even without catch-up, the new repair techniques could come in handy when using flying robots for search-and-rescue missions in difficult environments like dense forests or collapsed buildings.

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Following an unusually warm winter in a decent chunk of the Northern Hemisphere, this spring could bring more mosquito bites than there was frostbite.  Colder temperatures typically kill off or slow down the reproduction of the blood sucking insects and warm temperatures have added almost 10 extra days to Washington DC’s mosquito season since the 1980s. 

While increasingly longer summers and shorter and warmer winters could mean more mosquitoes in the future, some new research might help control increasing populations of the common pest. In a study published March 16 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers find that it’s likely that the proteins that activate mosquito sperm can be shut down. This action would prevent the sperm from swimming to eggs and fertilizing them. This could help control populations of a species of common house mosquito that is known to transmit West Nile Virus and brain-swelling encephalitis called Culex.

[Related: Singapore’s new plan to fight mosquito-borne diseases: bug-infecting bacteria.]

The new paper details all of the proteins that are in the insect’s sperm, which helped researchers find the specific proteins that maintain the quality of the sperm while they’re inactive, as well as the ones that activate the sperm to swim.

“During mating, mosquitoes couple tail to tail, and the males transfer sperm into the female reproductive tract. It can be stored there awhile, but it still has to get from point A to point B to complete fertilization,” said study co-author Cathy Thaler, a cell biologist at the University of California, Riverside, in a statement. 

The specialized proteins secreted during ejaculation activate the flagella (aka sperm tails) and power their movement are key to completing their journey into the female mosquito’s reproductive tract. 

“Without these proteins, the sperm cannot penetrate the eggs. They’ll remain immotile, and will eventually just degrade,” co-author Richard Cardullo, a University of California, Riverside biology professor, said in a statement. 

To get this very detailed information on proteins from a very small insect, the authors worked with a team of students who were able to isolate as many as 200 male mosquitoes from a larger population of bugs. Then, they extracted enough sperm from their reproductive tracts so that mass spectrometry equipment could not only detect the proteins, but identify them. 

In previous studies, the team found that sperm need calcium to power their forward motion upon entering a reproductive tract.  “Now we can look in the completed protein profile we’ve created, find the calcium channel proteins, and design experiments to target these channels,” said Cardullo. 

[Related from PopSci+: Can a bold new plan to stop mosquitoes catch on?]

According to Thaler, profiling proteins offers a path towards controlling mosquito population in a way that is more environmentally friendly and less toxic than methods that use harmful pesticides that can kill other insects and plants and hurt animals—also known as biological control.

Biological control does not mean that mosquitoes would be eradicated as a species. Immobilizing the sperm would be 100 percent effective for the treated mosquitoes, but it is not possible or desirable for scientists to kill all mosquitoes. Using a method like this would instead alter the proportion of fertile to infertile males.

In 2022, scientists from the biotech firm Oxitec completed the first open-air study that released mosquitoes genetically modified to be male, non-biting, and only capable of producing male offspring in the Florida Keys. They found that when the modified mosquitoes matured to adulthood, their flight and exploration behavior matched the abilities of wild mosquitoes and that they successfully mated with native female mosquitoes. The females then laid eggs in traps that the team collected to watch them hatch in a lab. All of the eggs hatched were males. However, the gene that killed female eggs lasted for roughly three mosquito generations.

“Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals on Earth. But as much as people hate them, most ecologists would oppose a plan to completely eradicate them. They play an important role in the food chain for fish and other animals,” Cardullo said.

While this study just looked at Culex, the team is hopeful that this information would apply to some of the more than 3,000 species of mosquitoes. As the planet continues to warm and climate change intensifies, more species of mosquitoes are moving into the Northern Hemisphere, including those that carry malaria. 

Learning more about Culex sperm motility could also have implications for improving fertility in humans. Many cells have flagella, and according to Cardullo, what we can learn about one body system may translate to other species.

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Air pollution is messing with the love lives of fruit flies, warns a new study published on March 14 in the journal Nature Communications. Male common fruit flies had trouble in recognizing their female counterparts after breathing in toxic gas, causing them to make a move on another male. 

Though there’s been some research hinting at bisexuality among fruit flies, the current results suggest it has to do more with ozone pollution. Even brief exposure to O₃ was enough to alter the chemical makeup of pheromones, a unique trails insects use to detect and attract mates. Increasing levels of air pollutants from cars, power plants, and industrial boilers around the world could stop common fruit flies from reproducing, causing a dramatic decline in the insect species.

[Related: Almost everyone in the world breathes unhealthy air]

The chemical ecologists placed 50 male flies into a tube and exposed them to 100 parts per billion (ppb) of ozone—global ozone levels range from 12 ppb to 67 ppb—for two hours. After two hours, fruit flies showed reduced amounts of a pheromone called cis-Vaccenyl Acetate (cVA) in compounds involved in reproductive behavior.

A closer look revealed that ozone seems to have changed the chemical structure of pheromones. Most insect pheromones have carbon double bonds, explains Markus Knaden, a group leader for insect behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology in Germany and study author. Whenever a compound has carbon double bonds, it becomes highly sensitive to oxidization by ozone or nitric oxide and starts to separate. The explanation is in line with their findings of high amounts of the liquid heptanal in the flies, a product that emerges after cVA breaks down. 

Did the altered pheromones affect a male’s chances at finding a partner? It appears so. A separate experiment exposed male flies to 30 minutes of either ozone ranging from 50 to 200 ppb or regular air with a much lower amount ozone before being placed them with female fruit flies. While males from both groups wasted no time in trying to court females, ozone-exposed fruit flies had more trouble getting a mate. 

“The male advertises himself with pheromones. The more he produces, the more attractive he becomes to the female,” says Knaden. Losing the chemical aphrodisiac made ozone-exposed males a less desirable option to females, who took nearly twice as much time choosing from the corrupted bachelors than the clean ones.

Not only is ozone pollution hampering the males’ ability to get female attention, it’s also affecting how they identify other individuals. Knaden says his team expected the altered pheromones to affect the ability for male fruit flies to distinguish between a male and a female, but what they didn’t expect were males to jump on each other. “In the beginning, it was a very funny observation to see really long chains where one male was courting the next and then the next down the line,” he describes. With the altered pheromones, “the male basically jumps on everything that is small and moves a little bit like a fly, regardless of what it is.”

“Very little is known about how air pollution interferes with insect sex pheromone signaling, so it is great to see this work underway,” says James Ryalls, a research fellow in the Center for Agri-environmental Research at the University of Reading in England, who was not affiliated with the research. “The study demonstrates how disruptive air pollution can be to insect communication, with potential ecological ramifications such as reduced biodiversity.”

[Related: Flies evolved before dinosaurs—and survived an apocalyptic world]

Getting rid of the buggers that crowd your bananas and melons might seem like a good idea at first glance. However, Ryalls warns that these agricultural pests contribute greatly to the world’s ecosystem. As nature’s clean-up crew, fruit flies help decompose rotting fruit, releasing nutrients for plants, bacteria, and fungi to use. They also serve as food for other animals like birds and spiders. Lastly, they are a common insect model used in biomedical research and have contributed to countless neuroscience and genetic discoveries.

Fruit flies are not the only ones feeling the effects of air pollution. Knaden says he has seen dangerous ozone levels affecting flower volatile compounds, which are used as cues for pollinators. His 2020 study found moths were less attracted to flower odors from plants exposed to the gas, resulting in less pollination. 

“Insects are on the decline, and we thought it was from pesticides and habitat loss,” says Knaden. “It seems there are more screws we have to turn, one of them being air pollutants.”

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Tiny, annoying, flying pests might seem as old as time. Gnats are the general name for a bunch of species in the diptera suborder Nematocera, which the Smithsonian describes as “non-biting flies, no bigger than a few grains of salt, [that] are attracted to fluids secreted by your eyes.” 

While their average lifespan is only about a week long, their survival through evolutionary history stretches way further. According to new research, the insects may have been around 247 million years, older than the earliest dinosaurs. 

In a new study published March 10 in the journal Papers in Paleontology, geologists and biologists from Spain and England delved into a recently discovered fossil that can teach us more about the beginnings, and incredible survival abilities, of the gnat. The fossil was found in a small harbor in Estellencs, located in Spain’s Balearic Islands, known for its bluish rock layers that hide remains of plants, insects, fish, and more from the Middle Triassic. 

[Related: When insects got wings, evolution really took off.]

Mallorcan scientist Josep Juárez spotted the find—a complete larva sample that left an imprint on the sides of a split rock. Upon further examination, the well-preserved fossil was identified as part of the insect order that now claims mosquitoes, midges, flies, and of course, gnats. It may be the oldest diptera specimen discovered to date, and could be a common ancestor to the more than million species in the group today.

“While I was inspecting it under the microscope, I put a drop of alcohol on it to increase the contrast of the structures,” says study author Enrique Peñalver, a scientist from the Spanish National Research Council at the Spanish Geological Survey, said in a press release. “I was able to witness in awe how the fossil had preserved both the external and internal structures of the head, some parts of the digestive system, and, most importantly, the external openings to its respiratory system, or spiracles.”

But beyond just revealing what a baby gnat looked like at the time, the existence of this fossil shows the insect’s remarkable ability to adapt to what Oxford University Museum of Natural History’s Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente called a “post apocalyptic environment.” 

[Related: Eyeless army ants chomped their way through Europe millions of years ago.]

The Permian-Triassic extinction occurred around the last 15 million years of the Permian period, and is famous for the extinction of around 95 percent of marine species and 70 percent of terrestrial species in such a, evolutionarily speaking, short period of time. (Some scientists even propose that the bulk of these species disappeared over a 20,000-year span right at the end of the period.) It’s known as the most severe of any major extinction episodes in Earth’s recorded history, wiping out more than half of the taxonomic groups that roamed the land and seas. Potential causes include a change in the planet’s atmosphere that led to radiation poisoning or a change in oxygen levels.

The authors of the new study also noted how this newly discovered specimen has a similar breathing system to that in some modern insects. Perhaps it’s time to add gnats to the short list of animals that could survive an apocalypse alongside tardigrades and cockroaches.

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Social learning and knowledge sharing from generation to generation is a hallmark of a culture among living things. While it’s been documented in many animals including tiny naked mole rats, songbirds, sperm whales, and humans, early social learning has only just been demonstrated in insects. 

A study published March 9 in the journal Science is offering evidence that generational knowledge is fundamental for honeybees.

[Related: The first honeybee vaccine could protect the entire hive, starting with the queen.]

“We are beginning to understand that, like us, animals can pass down information important for their survival through communities and families. Our new research shows that we can now extend such social learning to include insects,” said study co-author and University of California San Diego biologist James Nieh, in a statement. 

Nieh and a team of researchers took a deeper look at a bee’s “waggle dance.”  Bees have a highly organized community structure and use the waggle dance to tell hivemates where critical food resources are located with an intricate series of movements. In the waggle dance, bees circle around in figure-eight patterns, while wagging their bodies during the central part of the dance. It’s kind of like a breakdance performed at a breakneck speed, with each bee moving a body length in less than one second. 

The very precise motions in the dance translate visual information from the environment around the hive, Sending accurate information is especially remarkable since bees must move rapidly across an often uneven honeycomb hive surface. The team discovered that this dance is improved by learning and can be culturally transmitted. 

Nieh and fellow researchers Shihao Dong, Tao Lin, and Ken Tan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences created colonies with bees that were all the same age as an experiment to watch how experienced forager bees pass this process down to younger, less-experienced nestmates. 

Bees typically begin to dance when they reach the right age and always follow the lead of experienced dancers first, but in these experimental colonies, they weren’t able to learn the waggle dance from older bees.

[Related: Bees choose violence when attempting honey heists.]

By comparison, the bees that shadowed other dancers in the control colonies that had a mix of different aged bees didn’t have problems learning to waggle. The acquired social cues stayed with them for the roughly 38 day lifespan of the bees in the study. 

Those that didn’t learn the correct waggle dance in that critical early stage of learning could improve by watching other dancers and by practicing, but they couldn’t correctly encode the distance which created distinct “dialects.” The dialect was then maintained by the bees for the rest of their lives. 

“Scientists believe that bee dialects are shaped by their local environments. If so, it makes sense for a colony to pass on a dialect that is well adapted to this environment,” said Nieh. The results therefore provided evidence that social learning shapes honey bee signaling as it does with early communication in many vertebrate species that also benefit from learning.

The next steps for this research is better understanding the role that the environment plays in shaping bee language. Additionally, the team would like to know more about external threats like pesticides to bees that could disrupt early language learning. 

“We know that bees are quite intelligent and have the capacity to do remarkable things,” said Nieh. “Multiple papers and studies have shown that pesticides can harm honey bee cognition and learning, and therefore pesticides might harm their ability to learn how to communicate and potentially even reshape how this communication is transmitted to the next generation of bees in a colony.”

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The exterior paint on a building is often a major factor in keeping their indoors appropriately warm or cool, and a lot of work goes into developing new concoctions to improve insulation. Unfortunately, the volatile organic compounds found in modern synthetic paint have been shown to have harmful effects on both the environment and humans. On top of all that, air conditioning still contributes to over 10 percent of all electricity consumption in the US. Thankfully, we have butterflies and squid.

Those species and others inspired a researcher at University of Central Florida’s NanoScience Technology Center to create an ultra-lightweight, environmentally safe “plasmonic paint.” The unique paint relies on nanoscale structural arrangements of aluminum and aluminum oxide instead of traditional pigments to generate its hues. As detailed in Debashis Chanda’s recent paper published in Science Advances, traditional pigment paint colorants rely on their molecules’ light absorption properties to determine colors. Chanda’s plasmonic paint, in contrast, employs light reflection, absorption, and scattering based on its nanostructural geometric arrangements to create its visual palettes.

[Related: Are monarch butterflies endangered in the US?]

“The range of colors and hues in the natural world are astonishing—from colorful flowers, birds and butterflies to underwater creatures like fish and cephalopods,” said Chanda in a statement on Wednesday. Chanda went on to explain that these examples’ structural color serves as their hue-altering mechanism, as two colorless materials combine to produce color.

Compared to traditional available paint, Chanda’s plasmonic version is both dramatically longer lasting, eco-friendly, and efficient. Normal paints fade as their pigments lose the ability to absorb light electrons, but plasmonics’ nanostructural attributes ensure color could remain as vibrant as the day it was applied “for centuries,” claimed Chanda.

A layer of plasmonic paint can achieve full coloration at just 150 nanometers thick, making it arguably the lightest paint in the world, and ensuring magnitudes less is needed for projects. Chanda estimated that just three pounds of plasmonic paint would cover an entire Boeing 747 jet exterior—a job that usually requires around 1,000 pounds of synthetic paint.

[Related: A new paint can reflect up to 98.1 percent of sunlight.]

And then there’s the energy savings. Plasmonic paint reflects the entire infrared spectrum, thereby absorbing far less heat. During testing, a surface layered with the new substance typically remained between 25 and 30F cooler than a surface painted with commonly available commercial options. That could save consumers’ bucket loads of cash, not to mention dramatically cut down on energy needed to power A/C systems.

Chanda said fine-tuning is still needed to improve plasmonics’ commercial viability, as well as scale up production abilities to make it a feasible replacement for synthetic paint. Still, natural inspirations like butterflies could be what ultimately help save their beauty for centuries to come.

“As a kid, I always wanted to build a butterfly,” said Chanda. “Color draws my interest.”

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When humans first took to the skies in airplanes–long before GPS–they used roads, railways, buildings, and other linear landmarks on the ground to navigate. The method appears in nature as well. Honeybees use dominant elements in the landscape to find their way home, according to the results of a study published March 6 in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

As expert travelers, honeybees are known to use the sun, their sense of smell, and changes in polarized light in the sky to navigate as they fly. They even use the tiny hairs on their bodies to sense a flowers’ electric field. This new study takes a deeper look at the role that memory of specific visual cues plays in their navigation.

[Related: Male wasps use their genital spines to sting frogs (and people).]

“Here we show that honeybees use a ‘navigation memory’, a kind of mental map of the area that they know, to guide their search flights when they look for their hive starting in a new, unexplored area,” Randolf Menzel, a neurobiologist from Free University of Berlin in Germany and study co-author, said in a statement. “Linear landscape elements, such as water channels, roads, and field edges, appear to be important components of this navigation memory.”

Menzel and his team caught 50 experienced forager honeybees in 2010 and 2011. In unfamiliar territory, these bees fly in exploratory loops in different directions and distances that are centered from where they were released. The team used radar to track each bee’s exploratory flight pattern for between 20 minutes and three hours.  

The bees were from colonies located in five different home areas and were tested in one common area to see how each group responded to differences in landmarks. The most notable linear landmarks were two parallel irrigation channels that ran northeast and southwest. The test area didn’t include any other landmarks that honeybees are known to use to navigate, such as structured horizons, or vertical elements that stand out like trees or plants. Next, the team glued a tiny transponder on the bees’ backs and released them in a test area that was too far away from their home hives for them to already be familiar with. They then used a radar that could detect the transponders at a distance of up to 2,952 feet in the test area. 

The team then used software to simulate two sets of the bees’ seemingly random flight patterns observed in the experiment, centered on the release spot. These paths generated different algorithms. Since these observed flight patterns were very different, the researchers concluded that the honeybees weren’t simply conducting random search flights, but instead had more purpose and direction.

[Related: A swarm of honeybees can have the same electrical charge as a storm cloud.]

They then analyzed the orientation of the search flights and how often the bees flew over each 100 x 100 meter block within the test area using advanced statistics. The models showed that the honeybees tended to spend a disproportionate amount of time flying alongside the irrigation channels. 

Deeper analysis showed that the channels continued to guide the bees’ exploratory flights even when the bees were more than 98 feet away from the channels, which is the furthest distance the honeybees can see linear landscape elements such as these. The team theorizes that this implies that the bees kept the landmarks in their memory for prolonged periods of time.

“Our data show that similarities and differences in the layout of the linear landscape elements between their home area and the new area are used by the bees to explore where their hive might be,” said Menzel.

According to the study, the results suggest that the bees can retain a navigational memory of their home territory based on landmarks and then try to generalize what they saw in the test area to find their way home. This behavior is also found in bats and birds–and now, honeybees. 

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To give grasshoppers some credit—leaping across yards and between branches takes a lot more expertise than it might appear. There are incredibly tiny factors to consider, such as the resistance in launchpad material (Are the blades of grass bouncy? Is the plant twig brittle?), as well as desired distance, speed, and landing.

Most jumping robots can’t compete with the insect, as their leaps are limited to starting atop extremely rigid surfaces. But a new bouncing bot developed by researchers in Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering is soaring over those hurdles, and showing immense promise for how autonomous devices could operate in the future.

[Related: Watch these tiny bugs catapult urine with their butts.]

A team of scientists led by professor of mechanical engineering Sarah Bergbreiter recently optimized a robot’s latch mechanisms used to propel it upward. Previously, these latches were primarily thought of as simple “on/off” switches that enabled the release of stored energy. However, Bergbreiter and her team employed mathematical modeling to illustrate that these latches both were capable of steering energy output, as well as controlling the transfer of energy between the jumper and the launch surface.

To test their work, the team positioned a small leaping robot atop a tree branch and recorded the precise energy transfers in its jumps’ first moments. Watching the branch recoil before the robot jumped, they could tell the device recovered at least a bit of the energy first transferred to the branch right before liftoff.

“We found that the latch can not only mediate energy output but can also mediate energy transfer between the jumper and the environment that it is jumping from,” said Bergbreiter.

Researchers also noticed an “unconventional” energy recovery in other instances which employed a different latch variety. In those situations, the branch actually provided a little push for the bot after it leaped off its surface, thus returning some of its momentum to boost it higher.

[Related: This tiny robot grips like a gecko and scoots like an inchworm.]

Now that researchers better understand the interactions at play in the opening moments of leaping, they can now begin working on ways to integrate this into future robotic designs. Likewise, biologists can gain a better insight into how insects maneuver through variable terrains, such as grass or sand.

“It has been nearly impossible to design controlled insect-sized robots because they are launched in just milliseconds,” explained Bergbreiter. “Now, we have more control over whether our robots are jumping up one foot or three… It’s really fascinating that the latch— something that we already need in our robots—can be used to control outputs that we couldn’t have controlled before.”

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Picture it—you walk into a typical Walmart in Arkansas on a grocery run, but instead of a traditional Walmart greeter welcoming you in, you find an insect whose origins date back to the Jurassic Period. This sci-fi like story actually happened back in 2012 and luckily the person who spotted the insect is a bug expert.

“I remember it vividly, because I was walking into Walmart to get milk and I saw this huge insect on the side of the building,” Michael Skvarla, who was then a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas and is now the director of Penn State University’s Insect Identification Lab, said in a statement. “I thought it looked interesting, so I put it in my hand and did the rest of my shopping with it between my fingers. I got home, mounted it, and promptly forgot about it for almost a decade.”

[Related: Watch these tiny bugs catapult urine with their butts.]

The insect was a giant lacewing (Polystoechotes punctata),  the first of its kind recorded in eastern North America in over 50 years and the first ever recorded in Arkansas. The moth relative with a one inch wingspan used to be widespread across the continent, but disappeared from eastern North America by the 1950s. With this find, scientists believe that there may be relic populations of this insect with roots back to the Jurassic (about 201.3 million to 145 million years ago) yet to be discovered. 

The creature is described in a study published late last year in the journal Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington. Skvarla is a co-author on the paper. 

In the study, the team describes how the insect was originally misidentified,  and how students in one of Skvarla’s online courses helped re-identify the specimen.

“We were watching what Dr. Skvarla saw under his microscope and he’s talking about the features and then just kinda stops,” Codey Mathis, a doctoral candidate in entomology at Penn State, said in a statement. “We all realized together that the insect was not what it was labeled and was in fact a super-rare giant lacewing. I still remember the feeling. It was so gratifying to know that the excitement doesn’t dim, the wonder isn’t lost. Here we were making a true discovery in the middle of an online lab course.”

To confirm, Skvarla and his colleagues performed molecular DNA analyses on the specimen and revealed that it was in fact a giant lacewing.

The discovery could reveal a larger story about biodiversity in North America and changing environment since the giant lacewing was spotted in the urban area of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Skvarla says that the explanations for the giant lacewing’s disappearance from North America are varied and mostly a mystery. Scientists hypothesize that it may have disappeared due to increasing artificial light, pollution, and urbanization, the suppression of forest fires in the eastern part of North America since they rely on post-fire environments to live. Even the introduction of non-native predators like ground beetles may have had an effect.

[Related: Eyeless army ants chomped their way through Europe millions of years ago.]

“Entomology can function as a leading indicator for ecology,” Skvarla said. “The fact that this insect was spotted in a region that it hasn’t been seen in over half a century tells us something more broadly about the environment.”

The city of Fayetteville lies within the Ozark Mountains, which the team says is a suspected biodiversity hotspot. According to Skvarla, dozens of endemic species, including 68 species of insects, are known to live in these mountains and at least 58 species of plants and animals have highly disjunct populations with representatives in the region. 

However, the mystery of how the elusive bug arrived on the outer facade of a Walmart remains. They believe that because it was found on the side of a well-lit building, it was likely attracted to the lights

 “It could have been 100 years since it was even in this area — and it’s been years since it’s been spotted anywhere near it. The next closest place that they’ve been found was 1,200 miles away, so very unlikely it would have traveled that far,” said Skvarla.

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Going to the bathroom is different for every creature. Tigers and penguins are known for projectile excretion that shoots out a fire hose, whereas wombats poop in cubes, sloths only poop once a month, and some wood-boring clams use poop chimneys to build a home. 

All animals, even insects need to get rid of their waste. What goes in, afterall, must eventually come out. After Georgia Tech biomechanics specialist Saad Bhamla caught the rare sight of an insect urinating in his backyard, he was curious what mechanisms the critter used to relieve itself. He watched as the bug formed an almost perfectly round droplet on its tail before quickly launching away, a pattern repeated for hours.

[Related: These clams use poop to dominate their habitat.]

To learn more, Bhamla and bioengineering graduate student Elio Challita studied glassy-winged sharpshooters– an insect the size of a millimeter known notorious for spreading disease among crops like almonds, wine, and citrus. While they are smaller than the tip of a pinky finger, the mechanism behind their excrement can produce superpropulsion– a feat of physics and bioengineering. Their study, published February 28 in the journal Nature Communications, describes the first observation and explanation of this phenomenon in a biological system. 

“Little is known about the fluid dynamics of excretion, despite its impact on the morphology, energetics, and behavior of animals,” said Bhamla, in a statement. “We wanted to see if this tiny insect had come up with any clever engineering or physics innovations in order to pee this way.”

Sharpshooters eat an almost zero-calorie diet of a nutrient deficient liquid called plant xylem sap. It only has water and a trace of minerals and they drink up to 300 times their body weight in xylem sap per day. To survive, they need to constantly drink and efficiently excrete their mostly-water fluid waste. 

In this study, the team used high-speed videos and microscopy to watch precisely what was happening on the insect’s tail. 

First, the scientists looked at the role played by an anal stylus, or as the team called it a “butt flicker.” When the sharpshooter is ready to pee, the butt flicker rotates backwards from a neutral position to make room as the insect squeezes out the liquid. As the flicker remains at the same angle, a droplet forms and gradually grows. When the droplet is at an optimal diameter–or roundness–the flicker rotates farther back about 15 degrees and then launches the droplet at more than 40 G’s. That’s 10 times higher than the fastest sports cars. 

“We realized that this insect had effectively evolved a spring and lever like a catapult and that it could use those tools to hurl droplets of pee repeatedly at high accelerations,” Challita said.

They then measured the speed of the butt flicker’s movement and compared it to the speed of the droplets. They expected the droplets and butt flicker to move at the same speed but instead found that the speed of the droplets in air was faster than the butt flicker that flicked them. This ratio of speed suggested the presence of a principle previously shown only in synthetic systems called superpropulsion. This occurs when an elastic projectile gets a boost of energy when launch and projectile timing is matched up, like a diver timing their jump off a springboard of a diving board.

[Related: These insects have 80 times the suction power of an elephant and pee at an alarming rate.]

After taking a closer look, they saw that the butt flicker compressed the droplets which had energy stored in them because of the surface tensions on the water just before launch. To test this, they  placed water droplets on an audio speaker and used the vibrations of the sound to compress the droplets at high speeds.  At tiny scales, the droplets store energy due to inherent surface tension. When dropped, and if timed just right, the droplets can be catapulted at extremely high speeds.

To figure out why sharpshooters urinate in droplets, Bhamla and Challita studied micro CT scans of their morphology and took measurements from inside the insects. They calculated the pressure that is required for sharpshooters to push the fluid through a very small anal canal and found that peeing in droplets is the most energy efficient way for them to excrete waste.

The team hopes that better understanding how excretion affects animal size, behavior, and evolution can be used to prevent crop losses. Sharpshooter excretion could possibly be a vector surveillance tool infestations from bugs like the sharpshooters will likely get worse with climate change. 

“This work reinforces the idea of curiosity-driven science being valuable,” Challita said. “And the fact that we discovered something that is so interesting–superpropulsion of droplets in a biological system and heroic feats of physics that have applications in other fields–makes it even more fascinating.”

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Conifer forests across Europe are under siege from a tiny threat with a gigantic impact. Abnormally high temperatures and summer droughts have helped populations of the Eurasian spruce bark beetles (Ips typographus) soar, eventually killing the trees. Forest management entities are rushing to fix the problem. In July 2022, the United Kingdom’s Forestry Commission began a new management program to handle outbreaks of beetles and to combat future spread, particularly in southwestern England. Germany alone has lost half a million hectares of forests since 2018, with spruce tree species being hit particularly hard by the species, also called the European bark beetle. 

[Related: Mother dung beetles are digging deeper nests to escape climate change.]

These small beetles burrow into the bark of Norway spruce trees, and once inside, they mate and lay their eggs. They also seem to preferentially attack the spruce trees that are already infected with a symbiotic fungus, such as Grosmannia penicillata, which is believed to weaken trees and break down their chemical defenses. This allows the beetles to successfully reproduce within the bark.

In a study published February 21 in the journal PLoS Biology, a team investigated the chemical signals that the insects use to identify host trees that are infected with the fungus. The team performed experiments in a lab on captive bark beetles and samples of Norway spruce bark. 

The experiments found that the fungus breaks down monoterpenes–chemicals present in tree bark resin–into new compounds, including camphor and thujanol. They also found that the fungus-produced compounds dominated the chemical mixture emitted by the bark samples after 12 days of infection. 

Additionally, single cell recordings of sensory neurons in the beetles’ antennae revealed that the bugs can detect camphor and thujanol. Behavioral experiments found that the bark beetles were attracted to the bark that had these fungus-produced compounds. The compounds may allow bark beetles to assess the presence of the fungus and find trees that are suitable to eat and breed in. 

[Related: The government is raising an army of parasitic wasps to fight invasive beetles.]

According to the study authors, understanding the role that these chemical compounds play in bark beetle attacks could help create better pest-management strategies and protect European conifers from future epidemic outbreaks.

“The bark beetles currently killing millions of spruce trees every year in Europe are supported in their attacks by fungal associates,” said study co-author Jonathan Gershenzon, a biochemist from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany, in a statement. “We discovered that these fungi convert volatile compounds from spruce resin to products, which may serve as cues for bark beetles to find them.”

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

At Singapore’s National Environment Agency, more than a million mosquitoes buzz inside plastic boxes in a breeding room that smells of fermented sugar. The male insects, which don’t bite, feed on plant juices in the wild, but here, they nourish themselves on sugar water. Meanwhile, their female counterparts lay eggs on paper-like strips half submerged in trays of water. Each week, the insects inside this facility produce 24 million tiny black eggs.

The NEA’s mosquitoes are all Aedes aegypti, a species that can transmit viruses to humans, including dengue — a growing global threat which, by some estimates, infects 100 to 400 million and kills about 21,000 people each year. These captive insects are disease-free, however, and they are being bred to stop the spread of the viral illness. Specifically, the insects in the NEA lab have been infected with a bacterium called Wolbachia, which they will pass on to the next generation of mosquitoes.

The Wolbachia bacterium is ubiquitous in nature: It can be found in as many as 60 percent of insect species, from butterflies and wasps, to bees, dragonflies, and some species of mosquito. However, these bacteria do not naturally occur in Aedes aegypti. When scientists infect Aedes aegypti with Wolbachia, the insects no longer transmit dengue readily to humans. Additionally, under some circumstances, the bacterium can interfere with mosquitoes’ ability to reproduce. (The precise mechanisms behind these changes are not fully understood.)

Wolbachia-based protocols for insect control have been used in countries across the globe for more than a decade, and in many cases, they have reduced the incidence of mosquito-related disease. But scientists are still learning the best ways to employ these methods at scale. Wolbachia-infected insects are difficult to mass produce, and NEA’s researchers have responded by automating some of the steps that were previously done by hand. Even so, it would be tough to cover “the billions of people, living in the 10,000s of towns and cities in more than 100 countries, that are at risk of dengue,” Jérémie Gilles, the director of production development and supply at the not-for-profit World Mosquito Program, said in an emailed response to Undark.

The WMP and other research organizations use an alternative Wolbachia-based approach — one that doesn’t require such large numbers of lab-bred insects. Thus far, the approach has been effective and cost-efficient, though more time is needed to monitor the long-term outcomes, including the possibility that dengue may evolve to evade the bacterium.

Despite the challenges, officials in Singapore have been game to try Wolbachia to fight dengue — a common scourge in this densely-populated city-state that offers a perfect breeding ground for Aedes aegypti, which favor urban environments and warm climates. Singapore’s National Environment Agency has fought the virus for decades: spraying insecticides, advising people to avoid getting bitten, providing detailed instructions for preventing mosquitoes from reproducing inside one’s home, and fining those who fail to comply. Yet all these efforts are like chasing a runaway train, experts say, which is why the government turned to Wolbachia.

Since 2016, NEA scientists have been setting free male Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes around Singapore. Though the program started small, by 2019, the NEA was releasing up to 2 million insects per week. Thanks to automation, that number increased to as many as 5 million per week in 2022. So far, at intervention sites, this has led to dramatic reductions of wild Aedes aegypti populations — and far less dengue.

Once the insects have laid their eggs in the mosquito breeding room, the NEA researchers move the millions of tiny black dots down the hall to a hatchery — a bright, hot, humid place that stinks of fish. The eggs are placed in small, water-filled trays, waiting to hatch into larvae.

By releasing male Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes into the community, Singapore is following a protocol that aims to suppress the population of native mosquitoes. When such males mate with local Wolbachia-free females, the females lay eggs that won’t hatch, and in time the number of mosquitoes decreases. This suppression method is tricky. As it happens — and for reasons that are not well understood — mosquitoes can successfully breed when both partners are infected with Wolbachia. To prevent this, NEA scientists separate the females from the males before the latter are released.

But first, the larvae need to be counted and transferred to a rack with larger trays, each holding precisely 26,000 larvae. The exact number is important for keeping the rearing conditions constant, and initially, NEA staff would manually count all the hatched larvae. It took a sharp-sighted lab assistant two hours to count just 4,000 larvae, said the NEA’s senior research officer, Deng Lu. Now, the tally is automated: Pour millions of larvae into a machine, and within minutes it will count the 26,000 needed to fill one tray.

Once in their new, larger trays, the larvae are kept at a water temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit and fed a customized mixture of fish meal, carbohydrates, and fats (hence the smell). In nature, male pupae are generally smaller than females, but the difference is not large and it can be hard to distinguish males from females. To solve this issue and make separation by sex a bit easier, NEA scientists have perfected the larvae-rearing process. The diet, the temperature, and the humidity have to be kept perfectly constant, Deng said, to ensure that the females and males end up as different in size as possible.

Separating male from female pupae also used to be done by hand, a job that was both tedious and prone to error. Now, however, NEA scientists are helped by another new technology: the pupae sex sorter. Here, the process starts with scanning a batch of pupae — basically, taking pictures of each individual and gathering its measurements. An AI-based computer system will then draw a type of graph called a distribution curve. If everything up to now has been done correctly, the graph on the screen will show two clearly separated peaks: a small upward curve indicating males to the left and then another, larger bump, indicating females, to the right.

Scientists can calculate the male-female size differential in a particular mosquito batch by measuring the distance between the two peaks. “In this batch, the male and female distance is about 200 microns,” Deng said. “So we actually can do the female separation.” Based on that 200-micron distance, he picked up a sieve that would only let the smaller pupae through and inserted it into the sorter, a white machine shaped like a mini-fridge. After the pupae are poured in, the females will stay on the sieve while the males pass through into a container underneath. The whole process takes about 10 to 12 minutes.

Singapore is not the only country that fights dengue by releasing Wolbachia-infected male mosquitoes. A facility run by Verily Life Sciences — formerly Google Life Sciences — which bred mosquitoes for release in a trial in Fresno, California, can produce close to 3 million males per week, also with the help of AI and automation. The world’s largest mosquito factory in Guangzhou, China, can churn out even 10 times as much.

Automation and AI may have allowed some laboratories to produce huge batches of mosquitoes, but these tools are not cheap. (The NEA would not divulge its budget.) This is one reason why many efforts use a different Wolbachia-based method, known as population replacement, which does not require sex sorting and can work with fewer factory-bred mosquitoes. This method aims to replace native populations with one that is unable to transmit dengue.

Scientists begin by infecting both male and female mosquitoes with Wolbachia. For reasons that are so far unclear to scientists, the bacterium impairs females’ ability to transmit certain viruses, dengue included. A non-randomized study conducted in Yogyakarta City, Indonesia, showed that two years after initiating a population-replacement protocol, dengue incidence in the intervention area fell by 73 percent compared to a control area. A similar study conducted in Brazil showed a 69 percent reduction in dengue incidence and a 56 percent reduction in cases of another virus called chikungunya.

Though male mosquitoes do not bite — and therefore can’t spread dengue — it’s still important to infect them with Wolbachia and release them along with the infected females. When Wolbachia males mate with wild infection-free females, the eggs will not hatch, and over time, there are fewer infection-free females to compete with their lab-produced counterparts. At the same time, as the Wolbachia females mate with both wild and lab-bred males, the eggs will hatch and the offspring will carry Wolbachia. The hope is that ultimately the native Aedes aegypti mosquito population will be made up of individuals infected with the bacterium.

This makes the approach simpler than Singapore’s because there’s no need for sex sorting.

Additionally, population replacement requires considerably fewer lab-grown mosquitoes. “The aim is to get Wolbachia to spread into that population rather than to suppress it, and so the numbers of mosquitoes that need to be released are an order of magnitude lower than with a male-only suppression program,” said Steven Sinkins, a professor of microbiology and tropical medicine at University of Glasgow.

In the Yogyakarta City study, only 1.7 million mosquitoes were released over a 7-month period — compared to Singapore’s 5 million per week. This makes the method more affordable. “Where the budget is restricted, the health budget, we would definitely be recommending the replacement approach because of the smaller scale of releases needed,” Sinkins said.

What also potentially makes the replacement method easier to employ is that it’s designed to be self-sustaining. “If you’ve done it correctly, it will be a discreet period of releases and then you can stop. The Wolbachia will be at a high stable frequency and it will stay there and block dengue transmission long term,” Sinkins said. In Australia, where Wolbachia-mosquito releases to fight dengue were conducted in 2011, the first replacement project in the world, the bacterium was still stable in the Aedes aegypti population nine years later.

The simplicity and affordability of the replacement method is one reason why it was chosen by the World Mosquito Program, which has launched Wolbachia programs in 12 countries, from Brazil and Mexico to Vietnam and Australia. “We aim to simplify our production process as much as possible,” Gilles wrote in an email. “We try to minimize automation throughout our program.”

Why did Singapore choose the suppression method, then? One reason, according to Ng Lee Ching, director of NEA’s Environmental Health Institute, is the issue of bites. To replace a mosquito population, researchers need to release those pesky females. “Our people are not used — not comfortable with mosquito bites, so I think the public acceptance for the replacement approach would not be as high,” she said. After decades of various mosquito control programs on the island, there simply aren’t many mosquitoes flying around Singapore anymore. And for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who has ever been swarmed, local residents are not keen to bring the insects back.

On a November morning, Matthew Verkaik arrived in the Singaporean town of Yishun to release about 4,400 lab-reared male Aedes aegypti. Yishun used to be a dengue hotspot, brimming with mosquitoes. Now, after six years of releases, the local Aedes aegypti population is down by as much as 98 percent, and dengue cases are down by 88 percent. “The before and after is very startling,” said Verkaik, a senior research officer at the National Environment Agency. “You don’t pay attention until you are like, ‘Okay, wait. There’s no mosquitoes. What’s going on?’”

He picked up a basket containing 22 black canisters, each filled with about 200 Wolbachia-infected males, and walked to the first release spot located at the back of a 12-floor apartment block. The place was not random — Verkaik chooses these spots carefully. In general, he freed about six mosquitoes per inhabitant, and did so at even intervals alongside the buildings, both on the ground floor and on higher ones, too.

Standing by the building’s trash chutes, Verkaik grabbed a canister, opened the lid, and gave it a shake. The insects emerged as a cloud of tiny black shapes. A few open containers later and the mosquitoes were everywhere: buzzing around, sitting on walls. In general, the locals seemed not to mind, as the program has strong community support. In a 2021 study, 92 percent of households reported no concerns with releases in their neighborhoods.

According to Sinkins, replacement projects also tend to be welcomed by the public, biting females notwithstanding. “I think mainly because we’ve been targeting areas that have high dengue transmission rates,” he said. “The community acceptance has been very good because nothing else has really been working.”

Reducing mosquito bites, however, is not the only reason why Singapore chose the suppression method over population replacement. The other one is the potential risk of viral evolution, Ng said. Just like Covid-19, dengue is caused by an RNA virus that can evolve relatively quickly. Replacement areas still have a lot of mosquitoes, and there is always the risk of sporadic dengue infections occurring in a small number of the insects. Such breakthrough infections might provide opportunities for dengue viruses to evolve and adapt to the bacterium.

Virus evolution is something that concerns some experts. “It’s a risk, ” said Kat Edenborough, a microbiology research fellow at Monash University in Australia, the institution that owns the World Mosquito Program. “It’s something that we’ll be actively surveying.” She noted, however, that unlike SARS-CoV-2, which can evolve as it spreads person-to-person, dengue needs two species to serve as hosts: the mosquito and the human. This, according to Edenborough, should slow down the viral evolution. A recent study in which researchers passed the dengue virus 10 times through Wolbachia-infected cells of Aedes aegypti did not show signs of the virus adapting.

While Wolbachia programs have gained momentum over the last few years, there is still a lot of ground to cover. Scientists want to understand how exactly Wolbachia works inside mosquitoes, how it evolves, and whether it pushes viruses to fight back. And researchers want to find out if Wolbachia can help fight other diseases, such as malaria. (There are some indications that it might.) The World Health Organization has set a goal to lower the incidence of dengue by 2030 by 60 percent compared to 2016 numbers. “To get to that point,” Edenborough said, “we need to just be using everything that we can.”

UPDATE: A previous version of this piece incorrectly stated that the male mosquitoes at Singapore’s National Environment Agency are infected with Wolbachia after they are sorted from the female mosquitoes. In fact, the males are infected with the bacteria prior to this sorting. The story has been corrected.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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Animal-inspired robots are all the rage now, with recent creations drawing abilities from birds, snakes, octopuses, and even insects.The buggy creature kingdom just offered its newest inspiration, one which could offer huge benefits at a very small scale.

A group of mechanical engineering researchers across multiple universities have spent the last decade delving into click beetles’ evolution, anatomy, and movements. In recent years, the team focused on how a muscle within the tiny insect’s thorax enables it to not only travel many times its body length, but also right itself if turned over on its back. The propulsion, known as snap buckling, is seen as a natural feature that could be adapted into the field of robotics.

[Related: Watch this bird-like robot make a graceful landing on its perch.]

As detailed in a new paper published with Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team lead by Sameh Tawfick designed a series of coiled actuators which mimic click beetles’ anatomy. When pulled, the beam-shaped device buckles and stores elastic energy like the insects’ thorax muscle. Once the actuator is released, the resultant amplified boost propels the tiny robots upward, allowing it to maneuver over obstacles at roughly the same speed as the real bug. The movement, known as dynamic buckling cascading, could be used by future robots to traverse and examine the innards of large systems like jet turbines using small, on-board cameras.

Tawfick explained in a statement that the team experimented with four robotic actuator variations to determine which were the most economical and effective based on biological data and mathematical modeling. In the end, two designs successfully propelled the robots without any need for manual intervention.

[Related: This robot gets its super smelling power from locust antennae.]

“Moving forward, we do not have a set approach on the exact design of the next generation of these robots, but this study plants a seed in the evolution of this technology,” said Tawfick, explaining that the entire trial-and-error process is similar to biological evolution.

Scientists also believe that future, insect-sized robots using the dynamic buckling cascade actuators could be deployed among agricultural settings like large farms. Often technology such as drones and rovers monitor fields, but these miniscule devices could open up entirely new, more delicate methods of observation and recording.

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Earthlings, get ready for your closeups.

Close-up Photographer of the Year has revealed its fourth annual contest winners, and the results are a doozy. With 11 different categories, the Top 100 features everything from octopuses and Atlas moths, to trails of pheromones and the delicate cross sections of leaves.

The story behind the overall winner (seen above):

“Northern pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea) are carnivorous, allowing them to survive in nutrient-poor bog environments. Here there is no rich soil, but rather a floating mat of Sphagnum moss. Instead of drawing nutrients up through their roots, this plant relies on trapping prey in its specialised bell-shaped leaves, called pitchers. Typically, these plants feast on invertebrates—such as moths and flies—but recently, researchers at the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station discovered a surprising new item on the plant’s menu: juvenile spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum).

This population of Northern Pitcher Plants in Algonquin Provincial Park is the first to be found regularly consuming a vertebrate prey. For a plant that’s used to capturing tiny invertebrate, a juvenile spotted salamander is a hefty feast!

On the day I made this image, I was following researchers on their daily surveys of the plants. Pitchers typically contain just one salamander prey at a time, although occasionally they catch multiple salamanders simultaneously. When I saw a pitcher that had two salamanders, both at the same stage of decay floating at the surface of the pitcher’s fluid, I knew it was a special and fleeting moment. The next day, both salamanders had sunk to the bottom of the pitcher.”

– Photographer Samantha Stephens

The next entry period for the Close-up Photographer of the Year awards will open in March. But before you start prepping your cameras, get a little inspiration by scrolling through more of the recent winners below.

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Although human snouts aren’t quite as weak as they’ve been made out to be, they still pale in comparison to a lot of our world’s fellow inhabitants. After all, you don’t see specially trained (human) police officers sniffing baggage at the airport. Even something as tiny as the mosquito, for instance, can detect a 0.01 percent difference in its surrounding environment’s CO2 levels. That said, you’ll never see a mosquito construct a robot to help pick up our species’ olfactory slack, which is exactly what one research team at Tel Aviv University recently accomplished.

The group’s findings, published in the journal Biosensor and Bioelectronics, showcases how the team connected a biological sensor—in this case, a desert locust’s antenna—to an electronic array before subsequently using a machine learning algorithm to hone the computer’s scent detection abilities. The result was a new system that is 10,000 times more sensitive than the existing, commonly used electronic devices currently available. This is largely thanks to the locust’s powerful sense of odor detection.

[Related: This surgical smart knife can detect endometrial cancer cells in seconds.]

Generally speaking, sensory organs such as animals’ eyes and noses use internal receptors to identify external stimuli, which they then translate into electrical signals that can be processed by their brains. Scientists measured the electrical activity induced within the desert locust’s antennae from various odors, then fed those readings into a machine learning program that created a “library of smells,” according to one researcher. The archive initially included 8 separate entries, including marzipan, geranium, and lemon, but reportedly went on to incorporate differentiations between different varieties of Scotch whisky—probably a pretty nice bonus for the desert locust.

The ability for such delicate readings could soon offer major improvements in the detection of everything from illicit substances, to explosives, to even certain kinds of diseases and cancers. The researchers also stressed that the new biosensor capabilities aren’t limited to simply smell—with additional work and testing, the same idea could be applied to touch or even certain animals’ abilities to sense impending natural disasters such as earthquakes. The team also explained they hope to soon develop the means for their robot to navigate on its own, thereby honing in on an odor’s source before identifying it.

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Despite the rapid rise in vehicles’ collision avoidance systems (CASs) like radar, LiDAR, and self-driving software, nighttime navigation remains a particularly hazardous endeavor. While only a quarter of time behind the wheel takes place after the sun sets, an estimated 50 percent of all traffic fatalities occur during this time. Knowing this, the natural inclination for many researchers might be to develop increasingly complex—and, by extension, energy hogging—CAS advancements, but one recent study points towards a literal bug-brained method to improve safety for everyone on roadways.

As detailed in new research published in ACS Nano from a team at Penn State, insects like locusts and houseflies provide the key inspiration behind the new novel collision prevention programming. Many current systems rely on real-time image analysis of a car’s surroundings, but the accuracy is often severely diminished by low-light or rainy conditions. LiDAR and radar tech can solve some of these issues, but at a hefty cost to both literal weight and energy consumption.

[Related: What’s going on with self-driving cars right now?]

Commonplace bugs, however, don’t need advanced neural networks or machine learning to avoid bumping into one another mid-flight. Instead, they use comparatively simple, highly energy efficient, obstacle-avoiding neural circuitry to navigate during travel. Taking this into account, the Penn State researchers devised a new algorithm based on the bugs’ neural circuits reliant on a single variable—car headlight intensity—for its reactions. Because of this, developers could combine the detection and processing units into a much smaller, less energy consuming device.

“Smaller” is perhaps a bit of an understatement. The new, photosensitive “memtransistor” circuit measures only 40-square micrometers (µm) of an “atomically thin” construction comprised of molybdenum disulfide. What’s more, the memtransistor needs only a few hundred picojoules of energy—tens of thousands of times less power than current cars’ CASs require.

[Related: Self-driving EVs use way more energy than you’d think.]

Real-life nighttime scenario testing showed little, if any, sacrifice in the ability to detect potential collisions. While employed, the insect-inspired circuits alerted drivers to possible two-car accidents with between two- and three-second lead times, giving drivers enough time to course correct as needed. Researchers argue that by integrating the new bug-brained circuitry into existing CAS systems, vehicle manufacturers could soon offer far less bulky, more energy efficient evening travel safety protocols. Unfortunately and perhaps ironically, however, the study fails to mention any novel way to avoid those inspirational bugs smacking into your windshield while on the highway.

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This time of year, as the days are short and the calendar winds down to a single page, it’s easy for many to ask “where did the time go?” Perception of time varies partially because time measurements are a social construct, but also due to biological difference- even for animals other than humans.

Some preliminary research presented at the annual meeting of the British Ecological Society on December 20 shows that the animals that perceive time the fastest can fly, are small, or are marine predators.

[Related: Time isn’t real. Here’s how people capitalized on that.]

The to-be published study looked at 138 species and analyzed temporal perception, or the rate at which they perceive changes in the world. The team found that animals who have more fast-paced lifestyles are equipped with visual systems that can detect changes at higher rates.

“Having fast vision helps a species perceive rapid changes in the environment. Such detailed perception of changes is very useful if you move quickly or need to pinpoint the trajectory of  moving prey,” said Kevin Healy, an ecologist from the University of Galway in Ireland, who presented the research.

Dragonflies were able to detect the changes at the highest rate, with vision that could see changes 300 times in one second, or 300 hertz (300 hz). This is much faster than humans, who can only handle changes 65 times in a second (65 hz).

Among vertebrates, the pied flycatcher, a small bird similar to a sparrow, wins the prize for the fastest eyes at 146hz. Dogs clocked in at 75 hz (quicker than humans) and salmon could see at 96hz.

At only 0.7hz, the crown-of-thorns starfish had the slowest eyes in the study.

One of the unexpected findings is that many terrestrial, or land-based, predators perceive time relatively slowly when compared to their aquatic counterparts.

According to Healy, “We think this difference may be because in aquatic environments predators can continuously adjust their position when lunging for prey, while in terrestrial environments, predators that lunge at prey, such as a jumping spider, are not able to make adjustments once they’ve launched.”

Fast temporal perception takes a lot of energy and is limited by how quickly the neurons that are liked to retinal cells in the eye can recharge. For animals that don’t require such rapid eyesight, this energy is better used in reproduction or growth, according to the research.

[Related: How to slow down time because you’re not getting any younger.]

Not surprisingly, variation in the perception of time can also occur within species, including humans. Some studies suggest that goalkeepers in soccer/football can see changes at a higher rate and coffee can briefly give perception a small boost.

This analysis relied on the data from numerous studies that used flickering light experiments to measure time perception. In these experiments, a light is flickered and the rate at which the eye’s optic nerve sends the information to the brain is measured using electroretinograms. The electroretinograms in turn measured critical flicker fusion frequency, or how quickly an animal was able to detect the rate of a light flashing.

The research will help shed light on multiple aspects of an animal’s environment, namely how predators and prey interact with one another.

“By looking at such a wide range of animals, from dragonflies to starfish, our findings show that a species’ perception of time itself is linked to how fast its environment can change,” said Healy. “This can help our understanding of predator-prey interactions or even how aspects such as light pollution may affect some species more than others.”

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Worm spit, aka silk, has inspired a relatively simple, new process of nanofiber weaving that could advance everything from wound bandages to flexible electronics.

As unappealing as it may all sound, the popular, luxurious fabric indeed stems from a two-protein compound secreted by its namesake worm, which uses its threads to help weave cocoons. However, a team of Chinese researchers have also found that—apart from expensive sheets—humans can produce far more uniform micro- and nanofibers by imitating silkworms’ head movements as they secrete, pull, and weave their silk.

[Related: How researchers leveled up worm silk to be tougher than a spider’s.]

The group recently showcased their work in a new paper published with the American Chemical Society’s journal, Nano Letters. At first, researchers poked microneedles into foam blocks soaked in a polyethylene oxide solution, then pulled the needs away via a procedure known as microadhesion-guided (MAG) spinning to create nanofiber filaments that are thousands of times smaller than a single strand of human hair.

Existing nanofiber production methods are either slow and expensive, or otherwise result in inefficient, wadded material. By imitating silkworms’ weaving movement, however, the team found they could create an array of products—pulling the foam blocks straight away from one another offered orderly fibers, while a vibrating retraction crossweaved the material. Twisting the setup gave a similarly shaped “all-in-one” fiber. Regardless of the array, the results proved to clump far less than existing methods.

[Related: Watch this bird-like robot make a graceful landing on its perch.]

Going a step further, however, the team realized that the microneedling step wasn’t actually needed at all—the foam’s abrasive surface was enough to pull apart the polyethylene oxide solution into nanofilaments. It was so simple, in fact, that one can use the foam stretching method to hand-wrap a nanofiber bandage around a person’s wrist. In their experiments, the team utilized an antibiotic fiber to ensure a sterile, bacterial growth-inhibiting dressing that easily washes off with warm water, offering a potential new medical application in the near future.

Turning to the animal world for inspiration consistently offers impressive discoveries and advancements in tech and robotics, whether it’s for weaving, flying, running, or capturing. 

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Sometimes science bites—stings even. Researcher Misaki Tsujii from Kobe University in Japan found this out firsthand while studying the life history of the mason wasp (Anterhynchium gibbifrons) when she got stung. While stings are part of the risk when studying bees, something unexpected happened.

“Surprisingly, the male ‘sting’ caused a pricking pain,” said Tsujii’s research partner Shinji Sugiura, also from Kobe University. With wasps, it’s usually the females that sting predators. “Based on her experience and observations, I hypothesized that the male genitalia of A. gibbifrons function as an anti-predator defense,” Sugiura said.

[Related: Bees can sense a flower’s electric field—unless fertilizer messes with the buzz.]

It’s already known that female bees and wasps use modified ovipositors—a body part also used in egg-laying—to sting their attackers, including humans. These venomous stings are used to defend themselves and their colonies, but since the females have evolved venomous stings from ovipositors, scientists believed that these male bees weren’t as dangerous. A study published Monday in the journal Current Biology details how male mason wasps use their sharp genital spines to attack and sting predatory tree frogs to avoid being swallowed.

“The genitalia of male animals have frequently been studied in terms of conspecific interactions between males and females but rarely in terms of prey-predator interactions,” said Sugiura, in a statment. “This study highlights the significance of male genitalia as an anti-predator defense and opens a new perspective for understanding the ecological role of male genitalia in animals.”

To learn more, they placed male wasps with tree frogs (Dryophytes japonica). All of the frogs attacked the male wasps, and just over a third of the frogs spit the wasps out.

[Related: Bees choose violence when attempting honey heists.]

“Although all of the pond frogs ate the male wasps, 35.3 percent of the tree frogs ultimately rejected them,” they write in the study. “Male wasps were frequently observed to pierce the mouth or other parts of frogs with their genitalia while being attacked.”

They then gave tree frogs wasps that didn’t have their genitalia, and the frogs promptly ate them. Since frogs ate all of these genital-less male wasps, the results of the experiment appear to show the male wasps used their genitalia as a stinging mechanism to prevent the frogs from swallowing them.

The paper says that this is evidence that, just like their female counterparts, males use their genitalia to avoid being eaten by stinging their predators. These genital spines, called “pseudo-stings,” are found in some other wasp families (including Tiphiidae and Sphecidae, among others), so the team believes this newly discovered defensive role is likely found in multiple other wasp species in addition to the mason wasp.

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A longstanding medical myth suggests that taking vitamin B1, also known as thiamine, can make your body repel mosquitoes.

A “systemic repellent” that makes your whole body unappealing to biting insects certainly sounds good. Even if you correctly reject the misinformation questioning safe and effective repellents like DEET, oral repellents would still have the benefit that you wouldn’t need to worry about covering every inch of exposed skin or carrying containers of bug spray whenever you venture into the great outdoors.

Along with thiamine, other alleged oral mosquito repellents include brewer’s yeast, which contains thiamine, and garlic, the legendary vampire repellent. If oral repellents sound too good to be true, it’s because they are.

As a professor of entomology in Taiwan, where the mosquito-transmitted Dengue virus is endemic, I was curious what science really says about food-based repellents. After a very deep dive into the literature and reading practically every paper ever written on the subject, I compiled this knowledge into the first systematic review of the subject.

The scientific consensus is, unequivocally, that oral repellents don’t exist. Despite extensive searches, no food, supplement, medication, or condition has ever been proven to make people repellent. People with vitamin B1 deficiency don’t attract more mosquitoes, either.

So where did the myth that mosquitoes hate vitamins come from, and why is it so hard to exterminate?

Making of a myth

In 1943, Minnesota pediatrician W. Ray Shannon gave 10 patients varying doses of thiamine, which had only first been synthesized seven years prior. They reported back that it relieved itching and prevented further mosquito bites. In 1945, California pediatrician Howard Eder claimed 10 milligram doses could protect people from fleas. In Europe in the 1950s, physician Dieter Müting claimed that daily 200 milligram doses kept him bite-free while vacationing in Finland, and hypothesized a breakdown product of thiamine was expelled through the skin.

These findings drew rapid attention, and almost immediate repudiation. The U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute tried to replicate Shannon’s findings, but failed. By 1949, Californians using thiamine to repel fleas from dogs were reporting it as “completely worthless.” Controlled studies from Switzerland to Liberia repeatedly failed to find any effects at any dose. The first clinical trial in 1969 concluded definitively that “vitamin B1 is not a systemic mosquito repellent in man,” and all controlled studies since suggest the same for thiamine, brewer’s yeast, garlic, and other alternatives.

The evidence was so overwhelming that, in 1985, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration declared all oral insect repellents are “not generally recognized as safe and effective and are misbranded,” making labeling supplements as repellents technically fraud.

Medical mechanisms aren’t there

Scientists know much more about both mosquitoes and vitamins today than ever before.

Vitamin B1 does not break down in the body and has no known effect on skin. The body strongly regulates it, absorbing little ingested thiamine after the first 5 milligrams and quickly excreting any excess via urine, so it does not build up. Overdose is almost impossible.

As in humans, thiamine is an essential nutrient for mosquitoes. There is no reason they would fear it or try to avoid it. Nor is there evidence that they can smell it.

The best sources of thiamine are whole grains, beans, pork, poultry and eggs. If eating a carnitas burrito won’t make you repel mosquitoes, then neither should a pill.

What explains the early reports, then? Along with shoddy experimental design, many used anecdotal patient reports of fewer bite symptoms as a proxy for reduced biting, which is not a good way to get an accurate picture of what’s going on.

Mosquito bites are followed by two reactions: an immediate reaction that starts fast and lasts hours and a delayed reaction lasting days. The presence and intensity of these reactions depends not on the mosquito, but on your own immune system’s familiarity with that particular species’ saliva. With age and continued exposure, the body goes from no reaction, to delayed reaction only, to both, to immediate reaction only, and eventually no reaction.

What Shannon and others thought was repellency could have been desensitization: The patients were still getting bitten, they just stopped showing symptoms.

So, what’s the problem?

Despite the scientific consensus, a 2020 survey of pharmacists in Australia found that 27% were still recommending thiamine as a repellent to patients traveling abroad: an unacceptable recommendation. Besides wasting money, people relying on vitamins as protection against mosquitoes can still get bitten, potentially putting them at risk of diseases like West Nile and malaria.

To get around the American ban and widely agreed-upon scientific consensus on oral repellents, some unscrupulous dealers are making thiamine patches or even injections. Unfortunately, while thiamine is safe if swallowed, it can cause severe allergic reactions when taken by other routes. These products are thus not only worthless, but also potentially dangerous.

Not every problem can be solved with food. Long sleeves and bug spray containing DEET, picaridin or other proven repellents are still your best defense against biting pests.

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Update (March 23, 2022): The journal Biology Letters retracted “An Eocene army ant” on March 22, 2023. According to the New Jersey Institite of Technology, “once published, other scientists in the field questioned the age of the specimen based on similar samples and upon further analysis, the researchers concluded that their findings were unfounded, and worked with Biology Letters to issue a retraction.”

The army ant (Dorylinae) is generally good at two things: traveling all around the world and having a ravenous appetite. Through their highly coordinated foraging, the ants can eat up to 500,000 prey animals in a single a day. Its nomadic lifestyle has taken the insects to most continents on Earth and there are currently about 270 army ant species living in the planet’s Eastern Hemisphere and roughly 150 species across North and South America.

Thanks to a rare fossil discovery, scientists are now exploring the first evidence that the predators once swarmed where they are not eating and scrurrying around today—Europe.

In a new paper published yesterday in the journal Biology Letters, researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and Colorado State University detail the discovery of the oldest army ant on record. The specimen was preserved in Baltic amber dates back to the Eocene Epoch, about 35 million years ago.

[Related: How many ants are there on Earth? Thousands of billions.]

The specimen is about three millimeters long (less than an inch), shows an animal without eyes, and is named Dissimulodorylus perseus (D. perseus), after the mythical Greek hero Perseus. The legend goes that Perseus defeated Medusa with limited use of sight.

The fossil is just the second fossilized evidence of an army ant species ever described and is the first army ant fossil recovered from the Eastern Hemisphere, according to the study.

The team says that this ant fossil is evidence of previously unknown army ant lineages that would have existed across Continental Europe before going extinct throughout the past 50 million years AGO.

Incidently, this huge find was hidden for nearly 100 years at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.

“The museum houses hundreds of drawers full of insect fossils, but I happened to come across a tiny specimen labeled as a common type of ant while gathering data for another project,” the paper’s lead author and NJIT PhD candidate Christine Sosiak said in a statement. “Once I put the ant under the microscope, I immediately realized the label was inaccurate. I thought, this is something really different.”

It’s likely that the amber encasing the fossil was excavated sometime near or before the 1930s.

“From everything we know about army ants living today, there’s no hint of such extinct diversity,” said Phillip Barden, assistant professor of biology at NJIT and senior author of the paper. “With this fossil now out of obscurity, we’ve gained a rare paleontological porthole into the history of these unique predators.”

The team used X-rays and CT-scans to analyze the fossil and determined that D. perseus as a close relative to eyeless species of army ants currently found in Africa and Southern Asia, named Dorylus.

[Related: Ants have teeth. Here’s how they keep them sharp.]

When this fossil was formed, Europe had a much hotter and wetter climate than it has today, which might have provided an ideal living environment for ancient army ants. Since the Eocene (over tens of millions of years), Europe has undergone several cooling cycles, which may have made the continent been inhospitable for the ancient ants.

They also found an enlarged antibiotic gland on the specimen that is typically found in other army ants, that helps them live underground. This gland suggests that this European army ant lineage was well suited for subterranean living.

According to Sosiak, it’s one factor that sets this fossil a rarity.

“This was an incredibly lucky find. Because this ant was probably subterranean like most army ants today, it was much less likely to come into contact with tree resin that forms such fossils,” said Sosiak. “We have a very small window into the history of life on our planet, and unusual fossils such as this provide fresh insight.”

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Imagine an old-growth forest in the fading light of a summer evening. As the last of the sun’s rays disappear beneath the horizon, a tiny flash catches your eye.

You turn around, hold your breath; it blinks again, hovering 2 feet above the leaf litter. Across the dusky glade, a fleeting response. Then another one, and another, and within minutes flickering fireflies spread all over the quiet woods.

At first they seem disorganized. But soon a few coordinated pairs appear, little tandems flashing on the same tempo twice a second. Pairs coalesce into triads, quintuplets, and suddenly the entire forest is pulsating with a common, glittering beat. The swarm has reached synchrony.

Firefly congregations are sprawling speed-dating events. Flashes convey a courtship dialogue between advertising males and selective females. Shaped by the interplay of competition and cooperation among thousands of fireflies in interaction, collective light patterns emerge, twinkling analogs to the murmurations of bird flocks swooping together. The mystifying phenomenon of some fireflies’ flash synchronization has puzzled scientists for over a century.

Synchrony is ubiquitous throughout the universe, from electron clouds to biological cycles and planetary orbits. But synchrony is a complex concept with many ramifications. It encompasses various shapes and forms, usually revealed by mathematics and later explored in nature.

Take the firefly swarm. Wait a little longer and among the illuminated chorus, something else appears: Some discordant flashers secede and continue off-beat. They blink at the same pace but keep a resolute delay with their conformist peers. Could this be evidence of a phenomenon predicted by mathematical equations but never seen in nature before?

Synchrony, with a twist

Twenty years ago, while digging deeper into the equations that form the framework of synchrony, physicists Dorjsuren Battogtokh and Yoshiki Kuramoto noticed something peculiar. Under specific circumstances, their mathematical solutions would describe an ambivalent ensemble, showing widespread synchrony interspersed with some erratic, free-floating constituents.

Their model relied on a collection of abstract clocks, called oscillators, that have a tendency to align with their neighbors. The nonuniform state was surprising, because the equations assumed all oscillators were perfectly identical and similarly connected to others.

Spontaneous breaking of underlying symmetry is something that typically bothers physicists. We cherish the idea that some order in the fabric of a system should translate into similar order in its large-scale dynamics. If oscillators are indistinguishable, they should either all get in sync, or all remain chaotic – not show differentiated behaviors.

It piqued the curiosity of many, including mathematicians Daniel Abrams and Steven Strogatz, who named the phenomenon “chimera.” In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a hybrid monster made of parts of incongruous animals – so a fitting name for a hodgepodge of mismatched clusters of oscillators.

At first, chimeras were rare in mathematical models, requiring a very specific set of parameters to materialize. Over time, learning where to scout, theorists began to uncover them in many variations of these models, dubbing them “breathing,” “twisted,” “multiheaded” and other eerie epithets. Still, it remained mysterious whether these theoretical chimeras were also possible in the physical world  – or merely a mathematical myth.

A decade later, a few ingenious experiments set up in physics laboratories yielded the elusive chimeras. They involved finely tuned networks of interactions between sophisticated oscillators. While proving that engineering the coexistence of coherence and incoherence was a delicate, but possible, venture, they left the deeper question unanswered: Could mathematical chimeras also exist within the natural world?

It turned out it would take a tiny luminescent insect to shed light on them.

Chimera amid the fireflies’ blinking chorus

As a postdoc in the Peleg Lab at the University of Colorado, I work on deciphering the inner workings of firefly swarms. Our approach builds on the foundations of a little-known niche within modern physics: animal collective behavior. Simply put, the overarching objective is to reveal and characterize spontaneous, unsupervised large-scale patterns in the dynamics of groups of animals. We then investigate how these self-organized patterns emerge from individual interactions.

Advised by knowledgeable firefly experts, my colleagues and I drove across the country to Congaree National Park in South Carolina to chase Photuris frontalis, one of few North American species known to synchronize. We set up our cameras in a small forest clearing among the loblolly pines. Soon after the first flickers poked through the twilight, we observed a very rhythmic, precise synchrony, apparently as clean as predicted by equations.

This was an enchanting experience, yet one that left me reflective. I worried that this display was too orderly to let us infer anything from it. Physicists learn about things by looking at their natural fluctuations. Here, there seemed to be little variability to investigate.

Synchrony manifests itself in the data in the form of sharp spikes in the graph of the number of flashes over time. These peaks indicate that most flashes occur at the same instant. When they don’t, the trace looks irregular, like scribbles. In our plots, I first saw nothing but the flawless comblike pattern of impeccable synchrony.

It turned out the chimera was hiding in plain sight, but I had to roam further along the data to encounter it. There, in between the spikes of the light chorus, some shorter peaks indicated smaller factions in sync among themselves but not with the main group. I called them “characters.” Together with the synchronized chorus, these incongruous characters make up the chimera.

Like in the ancient Greek theater, the chorus sets the background while characters create the action. The two groups are intertwined, roaming the same stage, as we revealed from the three-dimensional reconstruction of the swarm. Despite the split in their rhythm, their spatial dynamics appear indistinguishable. Characters don’t seem to congregate or follow one another.

This unexpectedly intermingled self-organization raises even more questions. Do characters among the swarm consciously decide to break away, maybe to signal their emancipation? Or do they spontaneously find themselves trapped off-beat? Can mathematical insights enlighten the social dynamics at play among luminous beetles?

Unlike abstract oscillators in math equations, fireflies are cognitive beings. They incorporate complex sensory information and process it through a decision-making pipeline. They are also constantly in motion, forming and breaking visual bonds with their peers. Streamlined mathematical models don’t yet capture these intricacies.

In the quiet woods, the synchronized flashes and their dissonant counterparts may have illuminated a trove of new chimeras for mathematicians and physicists to chase.

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Without honeybees, next week’s Thanksgiving feast would be pretty boring. Their hard work makes foods like creamy mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie possible, since the power pollinators are crucial for growing the crops that eventually make it to the dinner table. The FDA estimates that bee pollination accounts for about $15 billion in added crop value and says honey bees are, “like flying dollar bills buzzing over US crops.”

But bees have been in trouble for quite some time. In 2006, beekeepers from Pennsylvania began to notice that their hives were dying off over winter. “Those were colonies that had, a couple weeks earlier, looked healthy, full of strong bees,” Nathalie Steinhauer, science coordinator of the Bee Informed Partnership, a national nonprofit that monitors honeybee populations, told PopSci earlier this year. “And they came back and the apiary was basically just full of empty hives.”

[Related: Do we still need to save the bees?]

The problem has only gotten worse. Between April 2020 and April 2021, beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5 percent of their managed honey bee colonies, according to an annual nationwide survey conducted by Bee Informed Partnership.

In addition to this staggering colony loss, a study published yesterday in the journal Scientific Reports finds that the lifespan of individual honey bees that were kept in a controlled, laboratory environment is 50 percent shorter than it was in the 1970s. The lifespan decreased from 34.3 days to 17.7 days.

The team modeled the effect of these shorter lifespans on bees and it aligned with the increased colony loss and reduced honey production trends that have been seen in the last few decades.

According to the authors, this is the first study to show an overall decline in honey bee lifespan potentially independent of environmental stressors like pesticides, which hints that genes may be influencing what’s happening in the beekeeping industry.

“We’re isolating bees from the colony life just before they emerge as adults, so whatever is reducing their lifespan is happening before that point,” Anthony Nearman, a Ph.D. student in the University of Maryland’s Department of Entomology and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “This introduces the idea of a genetic component. If this hypothesis is right, it also points to a possible solution. If we can isolate some genetic factors, then maybe we can breed for longer-lived honey bees.”

The team researchers collected bee pupae, or the stage of bee growth between a larvae and an adult, from honey bee hives when the pupae were within 24 hours of emerging from the wax cells they grow in. Once collected, the bees finished up their growth in an incubator and were kept in laboratory cages as adult bees.

[Related: The first honeybee vaccine could protect the entire hive, starting with the queen.]

Nearson supplemented the caged bees’ sugar water diet with plain water to better reflect conditions in nature and noticed that the caged bees had a median life span that was half of those in similar experiments in the 1970s.

“When I plotted the lifespans over time, I realized, wow, there’s actually this huge time effect going on,” Nearman said. “Standardized protocols for rearing honey bees in the lab weren’t really formalized until the 2000s, so you would think that lifespans would be longer or unchanged, because we’re getting better at this, right? Instead, we saw a doubling of mortality rate.”

Bee life in a lab setting is different from life in a colony, but records of lab-kept bees show a similar lifespan to colony bees, and previous studies have shown that in shorter honey bee lifespans corresponded to less foraging time and lower honey production in real-world observation. This is the first study to connect those factors to colony turnover rates, according to the authors.

The team modeled the effect of a 50 percent decrease in lifespan on a traditional beekeeping operation, where lost colonies and replaced every year. In this setting, the loss rate was about 33 percent, which is similar to winter losses of 30 percent and 40 percent that beekeepers have reported over the past 14 years.

In the study, they noted that the lab-kept bees might be exposed to a virus or pesticide during their larval stage, but the bees didn’t show any obvious symptoms of those exposures. Also, a genetic component to longevity has been shown in fruit flies, which could help explain what is going on in bees.

The team will compare these trends to honeybees in other countries. Any differences in bee longevity will be used to compare possible reasons for a decrease in life-span including viruses, pesticide use, and bee genetics.

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It’s relatively easy to observe and study the world’s insects, but it’s another thing entirely to safely interact with them physically. Take a pillbug, for example—you can watch them live their tiny pillbug lives all day long, but any attempts to handle them at best only annoys the little insects… and at worst, literally and figuratively squashes their future plans.

[Related: The monarch butterfly is scientifically endangered. So why isn’t it legally protected yet?]

The days of clumsy interactions with the itty-bitty world may be drawing to a close, however: Researchers at Japan’s Ritsumeikan University recently published a paper detailing their advancements in micro-robotics that allows for unprecedented physical interactions with extremely small subjects. As detailed in a paper published last month via Scientific Reports, developers have created “microfingers” that use artificial muscle actuators and tactile sensors to provide a “haptic teleoperation robot system” which they then tested on aforementioned pillbugs. Apparently, the results were extremely successful, although judging from the illustration provided, it sure looks like Ritsumeikan University invented a very ingenious way to finally achieve a truly adorable goal:

That’s right. We can tickle bugs now.

As researchers explained in their paper, while microsensors have previously been used to measure forces exerted by walking and flying insects, most other studies focused on measuring insect behavior. Now, however, with the new robotic glove “a human user can directly control the microfingers,” says study lead, Professor Satoshi Konishi, adding, “This kind of system allows for a safe interaction with insects and other microscopic objects.”

[Related: Scientists made the highest-ever resolution microscope.]

To test their new device, researchers fixed a pillbug in place using a suction tool, then used their microfinger setup to apply an extremely small amount of force on the bug to measure its legs’ reaction—10 mN (millinewtons), to be exact. While the device currently serves as a proof-of-concept, researchers are confident the advancement can pave the way for more accurate and safe interactions with the microworld around us. The paper’s authors also noted the potential to combine their technology with augmented reality systems in the future. Hopefully, this implies they’ll be able to see the bugs laughing when they’re being tickled.

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If the TV series “Dirty Jobs” covered animals as well as humans, it would probably start with dung beetles. These hardworking critters are among the insect world’s most important recyclers. They eat and bury manure from many other species, recycling nutrients and improving soil as they go.

Dung beetles are found on every continent except Antarctica, in forests, grasslands, prairies and deserts. And now, like many other species, they are coping with the effects of climate change.

I am an ecologist who has spent nearly 20 years studying dung beetles. My research spans tropical and temperate ecosystems, and focuses on how these beneficial animals respond to temperature changes.

Insects don’t use internally generated heat to maintain their body temperature. Adults can take actions such as moving to warmer or colder areas. However, earlier life stages such as larvae are often less mobile, so they can be strongly affected by changing temperatures.

But dung beetles appear to have a defense: I have found that adult dung beetles modify their nesting behaviors in response to temperature changes by burying their brood balls deeper in the soil, which protects their developing offspring.

Champion recyclers

It’s easy to joke about these busy insects, but by collecting and burying manure, dung beetles provide many ecological benefits. They recycle nutrients, aerate soil, lessen greenhouse gas emissions from cattle farming and reduce pest and parasite populations that harm livestock.

Dung beetles are also important secondary seed dispersers. Dung from other animals, such as bears and monkeys, contains seeds that the beetles bury underground. This protects the seeds from being eaten, makes them more likely to germinate and improves plant growth.

There are roughly 6,000 species of dung beetles around the world. Most feed exclusively on dung, though some will feed on dead animals, decaying fruit and fungi.

Some species use stars and even the Milky Way to navigate along straight paths. One species, the bull-headed dung beetle (Onthophagus taurus), is the world’s strongest insect, able to pull over 1,000 times its own body weight.

That strength comes in handy for dung beetles’ best-known behavior: gathering manure.

Rolling and tunneling

Most popular images of dung beetles show them collecting manure and rolling it into balls to spirit away. In fact, some species are rollers and others are tunnelers that dig into the ground under a dung pat, bring dung down into the tunnel and pack it into a clump or sphere, called a brood ball. The female then lays an egg in each brood ball and backfills the tunnel with soil. Rollers do the same once they get their dung ball safely away from the competition.

When the egg hatches, the larva feeds on dung from the rood ball, pupates and emerges as an adult. It thus goes through complete metamorphosis – from egg to larva to pupa to adult – inside the brood ball.

Warmer temperatures produce smaller beetles

Dung beetle parents don’t provide care for their offspring, but their nesting behaviors affect the next generation. If a female places a brood ball deeper underground, the larva in the brood ball experiences cooler, less variable temperatures than it would nearer the surface.

This matters because temperatures during development can affect offspring survival and other traits, such as adult body size. If temperatures are too hot, offspring perish. Below that point, warmer, more variable temperatures lead to smaller-bodied beetles, which can affect the next generation’s reproductive success.

Smaller males can’t compete as well as larger males, and smaller females have lower reproductive output than larger females. In addition, smaller-bodied beetles remove less dung, so they provide fewer benefits to humans and ecosystems, such as nutrient cycling.

Beetles in the greenhouse

Climate change is making temperatures more variable in many parts of the world. This means that insects and other species have to handle not just warmer temperatures, but greater changes in temperature day to day.

To examine how adult dung beetles responded to the types of temperature shifts associated with climate change, I designed cone-shaped mini-greenhouses that would fit over 7-gallon buckets buried in the ground to their brims. Will Kirkpatrick, an undergraduate student in my lab, led the field trials.

We randomly placed a fertilized female rainbow scarab, Phanaeus vindex, in each greenhouse bucket and in the same number of uncovered buckets to serve as controls. Using temperature data loggers placed at four depths in the buckets, we verified that soil temperatures in “greenhouse” buckets were warmer and more variable than soil temperatures in uncovered buckets.

We gave the beetles fresh cow dung every other day for 10 days and allowed them to make brood balls. Then we carefully dug through the buckets and recorded the number, depth and size of brood balls in each bucket.

Digging deeper

We found that beetle mothers in greenhouse environments created more brood balls overall, that these brood balls were smaller, and that these females buried their brood balls deeper in the soil than beetle mothers in control buckets. Brood balls in the greenhouses still ended up in areas that were slightly warmer than those in the control buckets – but not nearly as warm as if the beetle mothers had not altered their nesting behaviors.

However, by digging deeper, the adults fully compensated for temperature variation. There was no difference in the temperature variation experienced by brood balls in greenhouse buckets and control buckets. This reflects the fact that soil temperatures become increasingly stable with depth as the soil becomes more and more insulated from the changing air temperatures above it.

Our findings also hint at a possible trade-off between burial depth and brood ball size. Beetle mothers that dug deeper protected their offspring from temperature changes but provided less dung in their brood balls. This meant less nutrition for developing offspring.

Climate change could still affect adult dung beetles in ways we did not test, with consequences for the next generation. In future work, we plan to place brood balls of Phanaeus vindex and other species of dung beetles back into the greenhouse and control buckets at the depths at which they were buried so that we can see how the beetle offspring develop and survive.

So far, though, my colleagues and are encouraged to find that these industrious beetles can alter their behavior in ways that may help them survive in a changing world.

Kimberly S. Sheldon receives funding from the US National Science Foundation.

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This article was originally featured on High Country News.

From the top of Pigeon Butte in western Oregon’s William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge, the full width of the Willamette Valley fits into a gaze. Slung between the Coast Range and the Cascades, the valley is checkered with farmland: grass-seed fields, hazelnut orchards, vineyards. In the foreground, however, grassy meadows scattered with wildflowers and occasional oaks trace the land’s contours.

Upland prairie landscapes like these once covered 685,000 acres of the Willamette Valley. By 2000, only a 10th of 1% remained. Their disappearance has meant the decline of countless species that once thrived here; some are endangered, others have disappeared. Among the nearly lost is a nickel-sized butterfly called Fender’s blue. 

Endemic to this valley, Fender’s blue was first collected in 1929. Shortly thereafter, it vanished, and, for 50 years, no one could find the sapphire-winged insect; it was presumed extinct. But in 1988, a 12-year-old boy netted a few in a meadow outside Eugene, and a lepidopterist officially rediscovered the butterfly the following year. It was added to the endangered species list in 2000, when fewer than 3,400 remained. 

Now, the butterfly’s population has quadrupled and the species is slated to be downlisted from endangered to threatened. If this status change is finalized, as is expected to happen this year, Fender’s blue will become only the second insect to have recovered in the history of the Endangered Species Act.

I’d come to the Pigeon Butte prairie one May morning in search of Fender’s blue because I wanted to see firsthand the particular beauty of this rare butterfly. But also, at a time when an estimated half-million insect species worldwide face extinction and butterfly populations are shrinking at unprecedented rates, I wanted to witness the thing this creature represented — proof that amid such overwhelming loss, recovery, too, remains possible. 

It wasn’t until I’d given up and started back down the hill that I saw them: two blue butterflies circling near my knees. When one landed, I peered at the underside of its wing and found the double arc of black spots that differentiate Fender’s blue from its more common look-alike, silvery blue. 

My first thought was one of wonderment: How had this delicate creature, with its tissue-thin wings and sunflower-seed sized body, come to be flitting about on this spring morning nearly 90 years after it was declared lost forever? My second thought was less romantic: So what? In the face of an ecological crisis of such grand scale, it was hard to imagine what difference the survival of one small blue butterfly might make.

A FEW YEARS AFTER the rediscovery of Fender’s blue, a graduate student named Cheryl Schultz found herself just outside Eugene, slogging through blackberry brambles taller than her head. Here, at what is now a Bureau of Land Management area called Fir Butte, pockets of remnant prairie persisted among a snarl of woody invasives. In these openings a few dozen Fender’s blues resided. Today, much has changed, and the site hosts more than 2,000.

Schultz, now a Washington State University professor, has helped lead Fender’s conservation for nearly three decades. But as a kid, she didn’t carry around a butterfly net. Instead, she came to butterflies by way of her interest in something else. She started her career in the years following the fiercely divisive debate over the addition of the northern spotted owl to the endangered species list. The fight pitted environmentalists against the timber industry and framed the issue as an either/or battle of good versus evil, jobs versus owls. Schultz grew wary of such dichotomies. She wanted to explore how science could help wildlife and people better share a landscape.

Trying to save Fender’s blue offered a challenge well-suited to this line of inquiry. Biologists knew the butterfly’s limited habitat would need to be expanded to prevent its extinction, but its range overlaid a landscape dominated by the human endeavors of agriculture, urban development and private land ownership.

Schultz began by observing Fender’s blues to better understand their particular ecology: How far will a Fender’s travel? How much nectar is needed to support a population? How do fires and herbicides affect the species? Then, she and her colleagues used their findings to help develop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Fender’s blue recovery plan. But science alone, Schultz told me, cannot enact conservation. “Recovery takes three things,” she said. “Science, time and partnerships.”

PERHAPS THIS STORY OF RECOVERYbegins not with an insect but with a plant: Kincaid’s lupine, a perennial wildflower with palm-shaped leaves and spikes of muted purple blossoms. Like many butterflies, Fender’s blue exists in tight relationship with a particular host plant. From the moment a Fender’s caterpillar hatches in early summer until it unfurls from its chrysalis as an adult butterfly the following spring, the host plant — almost always Kincaid’s lupine — provides its sole source of food and shelter. “They’re a species pair,” Tom Kaye, the executive director of the Corvallis-based nonprofit Institute for Applied Ecology, told me. “To conserve the butterfly, you have to conserve the lupine.” 

After the butterfly’s rediscovery in 1989, researchers began searching for Kincaid’s lupine. Like the insect, the plant was exceedingly rare. It grows in upland prairies, ecosystems comprised of grasses and forbs that build soil and, unless something interrupts the process, eventually give way to shrubs and trees. To remain prairie-like, a prairie requires disturbance. 

In the Willamette Valley, that disturbance historically came in the form of fires managed by the Kalapuya people, who burned the prairies regularly to facilitate hunting and sustain plant communities that provided crucial foods, including camas and acorns. When settlers displaced the Kalapuya via disease, genocide and forced removal, burning ceased. The long-tended prairies, invitingly flat and graced with a mild climate and plentiful water, were swiftly plowed under for agricultural fields and turned into settlements.

Without fire, what little prairie habitat remained began to transform: Hawthorn and poison oak encroached, fir and ash trees took root, and the diversity of grasses and flowering plants that had once flourished — including Kincaid’s lupine — withered. 

Researchers at the Institute for Applied Ecology have been studying Kincaid’s lupine in an effort to reverse that trend since the organization’s founding in 1999. Many of the conservation strategies they’ve developed have to do with the ways the lupine interacts with its environment, such as the symbiotic relationships it forms with mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobium bacteria. Rhizobium live in nodules attached to the lupine’s roots, where, in exchange for nutrients, they provide the plant with a steady supply of fixed nitrogen. In new restoration sites where these fungal and bacterial partners are scarce, inoculation with soil from areas currently supporting robust lupine populations can bolster the new plants’ chances of success. 

On a June afternoon, Kaye and I stood amid rows of flowering plants at the organization’s seed production farm. The lupine was nearly ready to harvest, and Kaye lifted a pod and held it skyward. Sunlight flooded the husk to reveal the dark orbs of just two seeds cupped inside. Kincaid’s lupine, he said, produces scant seeds, especially in the wild, where predators such as weevils abound. That made it nearly impossible to collect enough for restoration. “I could hold in my hand the entire seed output of a population,” Kaye told me. “Meanwhile, from a production field I could fill bags.” 

So he and his colleagues sought ways to boost the cultivated supply. In collaboration with the Sustainability in Prisons Project, the organization established a seed production field inside the Oregon State Correctional Institution. Through this program, incarcerated people have produced tens of thousands of Kincaid’s lupine seeds, and, by extension, adult plants that now host Fender’s caterpillars in restored prairies across the Willamette Valley.

ONE LATE MAY MORNING, I met Soledad Diaz, an ecologist with the Institute for Applied Ecology, at Baskett Butte in the Baskett Slough National Wildlife Refuge. Here, in one of the Willamette Valley’s largest restored Fender’s prairies, I found her crouched with a crew of sun-hatted researchers, counting flowers to estimate available nectar resources. 

Diaz gestured to my shoulder. I spun around to watch the flicker of a Fender’s blue as it flitted off and landed upon a nearby lupine. “Looks like an old one,” Diaz said, pointing out the tattered edges lacing the butterfly’s wings. In the life of a Fender’s blue, “old” means just nine or 10 days. On the slopes around us, knee-high grasses rippled and flowers bloomed: checkermallows, mariposa lily, Oregon iris, plenty of host lupine. Blue butterflies flew from plant to plant with such carefree buoyancy it was hard to remember they were urgently attending to the task of finding nectar and a mate under the ticking clock of their brief lifespan. 

Most remnant populations of Kincaid’s lupine are found on hills like Baskett Butte, explained Graham Evans-Peters, the Baskett Slough Refuge manager. Because steeper terrain makes farming difficult, landowners historically used these uplands for livestock rather than crops. Grazing cattle, like fires, keep woody encroachment at bay and mow down tall grasses. And, Evans-Peters told me, “They don’t like lupine.” 

The Fish and Wildlife Service began restoring Fender’s habitat at Baskett Slough in the mid-1990s. The agency removed encroaching weeds from the existing lupine patches on the butte, then controlled invasive species on the adjacent slopes and replanted them with native vegetation. As the populations of these plants grew, so did that of Fender’s blue.

Today, high-quality Fender’s habitat covers over a hundred acres at Baskett Slough. But the work isn’t done; the prairie must be actively managed. “One of the most important tools for holistic prairie management,” Evans-Peters said, “is fire.” While burning kills some Fender’s larvae, it keeps meadows open and leads to such significant leaps in vigor of both nectar and host plants that the butterfly’s numbers, too, rise in ensuing years.

Burning also benefits another species interaction, this one between Fender’s caterpillars and their caretakers: ants. Fender’s caterpillars produce nectar several ant species eat. In exchange, the ants stand guard against predators and parasites. These ant-tenders, however, don’t always show up. When dense grass surrounds the caterpillars’ host plants, it cools the soil, reducing ant activity, and creates a maze that prevents ants from finding the caterpillars in the lupine above. Burning cleans up this accumulated thatch, which researchers suspect is one of the reasons fire increases ant-tending. Studies show that the caterpillars’ survival rates can be three times higher when the caretakers are present than when they’re not. 

At Baskett Slough, the Fish and Wildlife Service burns sections of the prairie annually in partnership with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, which include bands of the Kalapuya. Over the past two decades, the tribes’ fire program has increasingly focused on reintroducing cultural burning practices to manage land and enhance traditional food sources. Now, due to growing interest in using fire as a tool for restoration, many agencies are seeking the tribes’ expertise. “We want to get to the point where we’re conducting cultural burns that have the restoration effort behind them,” Colby Drake, burn boss and natural resources manager for the Confederated Tribes, explained at a forestry summit in 2021. “The momentum is ripe right now to get that good fire on the ground.”

NINETY-SIX PERCENT of the Willamette Valley is privately owned. Partnerships with private landowners such as Jim and Ed Merzenich of Oak Basin Tree Farm are crucial to conservation efforts. 

At the Merzenichs’ farm outside of Brownsville, a population of Fender’s blues resides in a series of open meadows that spill down the southwest slope of an otherwise forested hillside. These meadows were once overrun with blackberry and isolated by surrounding stands of firs. But Jim Merzenich, working with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Institute for Applied Ecology, has removed blackberries and cleared connecting corridors through the forest. He’s now working with the Greenbelt Land Trust to establish a conservation easement to permanently protect the area. 

“A lot of landowners have a fear of government interference,” Merzenich told me. “But we’ve had no conflicts.” On the contrary, partnerships with federal agencies have provided the funding and expertise to restore oak and prairie habitats on Merzenich’s farm even as timber harvests continue. 

When I visited Merzenich’s prairie in early July, it was too late in the year to see Fender’s blues flying, but Kincaid’s lupine bloomed purple amid grassy meadows splashed pink with clarkia and ribboned with bands of yellow tarweed. New blackberry canes, too, were abundant, already resprouting and reaching into the open space of the recently cleared corridors. “The population here is precarious,” Merzenich said. “The worst thing that could happen to these meadows is for people to just turn around and ignore them. You’d lose your lupine, lose your butterflies.”

Even the most robust Fender’s populations remain dependent upon humans. To keep at bay the myriad plants ready to rush into the open space, people — restoration technicians, landowners, fire crews — must regularly mow or spray or burn the butterfly’s habitat. At first glance, this can appear to undermine the significance of the species’ recovery. Despite decades of conservation, the butterflies are far from self-sufficient. 

But this relationship is nothing new. Without the fires tended by the Kalapuya, the prairies of the Willamette Valley, along with Fender’s blue, would have vanished long ago. Nor is the entanglement unique when examined in light of the other partnerships surrounding the species — those entwining butterfly and host-plant, rhizobium bacteria and Kincaid’s lupine, caterpillars and ant-tenders. Self-sufficiency, it seems, is irrelevant: Survival is a collaborative process. 

Butterflies, despite their poster-child fame, are not great pollinators. Their long, slender tongues often reach nectar without touching pollen or stigma. If not pollination, what ecological purpose do they serve? Their niche is to turn plant material into food for animals like the western meadowlark, also a species of conservation concern. But Fender’s most significant function might be its ability to evoke the attention, and care, of humans. “People respond to butterflies in a way that doesn’t always happen with insects,” Schultz said. 

It’s hard to imagine a coalition of scientists, farmers, incarcerated adults, government agencies, nonprofits and tribal nations coming together with such resolve on behalf of, say, a modest ant or lupine. But in the course of Fender’s conservation, these organisms too — and the suite of other prairie species whose survival is bound up with the butterfly’s — have benefited. So while Fender’s owes its recovery to the prairie community, one could also argue that the butterfly, by recruiting the assistance of humans, has saved the prairie. The truth, I suspect, contains no such dichotomies, only a tangle of relations binding each to the rest.   

The post At long last, a homecoming for the Fender’s blue butterfly appeared first on Popular Science.

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Bees are well-versed in the unspoken language of flowers. These buzzing pollinators are in tune with many features of flowering plants—the shape of the bulbs, the diversity of colors, and their alluring scents—which bees rely on to tell whether a reward of nectar and pollen is near. But bees can also detect signals that go beyond sight and smell. The tiny hairs covering their bodies, for instance, are ultra-sensitive to electric fields that help bees identify flowers. These electric fields can influence how bees forage—or, if those fields are artificially changed, even disrupt that behavior.

Today in the journal PNAS Nexus, biologists found that synthetic spray fertilizers can temporarily alter electric cues of flowers, a shift that causes bumblebees to land less frequently on plants. The team also tested a type of neonicotinoid pesticide—known to be toxic and detrimental to honeybee health—called imidacloprid, and detected changes to the electric field around flowers. Interestingly, the chemicals did not seem to impact vision and smell cues, hinting that this lesser-known signal is playing a greater role in communication. 

“Everything has an electric field,” says Ellard Hunting, lead study author and sensory biophysicist at the University of Bristol. “If you are really small, small weak electric fields become very profound, especially if you have lots of hairs, like bees and insects.” 

[Related: A swarm of honeybees can have the same electrical charge as a storm cloud]

Biologists are just beginning to understand how important electric signals are in the world of floral cues. To distinguish between more and less resource-rich flowers within a species, bees, for instance, can recognize specific visual patterns on petals, like spots on the surface, and remember them for future visits. Shape of the bloom also matters—larger, more open flowers might be an easier landing pad for less agile beetles, while narrow tube-shaped bulbs are hotspots for butterflies with long mouthparts that can reach nectar. Changes in humidity around a flower have also been found to influence hawkmoths, as newly opened flowers typically have higher humidity levels.   

An electrical cue, though, is “a pretty recent thing that we found out about,” says Carla Essenberg, a biologist studying pollination ecology at Bates College in Maine who was not involved in the study. A 2016 study found that foraging bumblebees change a flower’s electric field for about 1 to 2 minutes. The study authors suggested that even this short change might be detectable by other passerby bees, informing them the flower was recently visited—and has less nectar and pollen to offer. 

A flower’s natural electric field is largely created by its bioelectric potential—the flow of charge produced by or occurring within living organisms.  But electric fields are a dynamic phenomenon, explains Hunting. “Flowers typically have a negative potential and bees have a positive potential,” Hunting says. “Once bees approach, they can sense a field.” The wind, a bee’s landing, or other interactions will trigger immediate changes in a flower’s bioelectric potential and its surrounding field. Knowing this, Hunting had the idea to investigate any electric field changes caused by chemical applications, and if they deterred bee visits. 

He first started out with pesticides because of the well-studied impacts they can have on insects. “But then I figured, fertilizer also has a charge, and they are also applied and it is way more relevant on a larger-scale,” he says. These chemical mixtures used in agriculture and gardens often contain various levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. “Everyone uses [fertilizers], and they’re claimed to be non-toxic.”  

First, to assess bumblebee foraging behavior, Hunting and his colleagues set up an experiment in a rural field site at the University of Bristol campus using two potted lavender plants. They sprayed a commercially available fertilizer mixture on one of the potted plants while spraying the other with demineralized water. Then, the team watched as bumblebees bypassed the fertilizer-covered lavender. Sprays that contained the pesticide or fertilizer changed the bioelectric potential of the flower for up to 25 minutes—much longer than shifts caused by wind or a bee landing. 

[Related: Arachnids may sense electrical fields to gain a true spidey sense]

But to confirm that the bees were avoiding the fertilizer because of a change in electric field—and not because of the chemical compounds or other factors—the researchers needed to recreate the electric shift in the flower, without actually spraying. In his soccer-pitch-sized backyard, a natural area free of other sources of electricity, Hunting manipulated the bioelectrical potential of lavender plants in order to mimic the change. He placed the stems in water, wired them with electrodes, and streamed a current with a DC powerbank battery. This created an electric field around the plant in the same way as the fertilizer. 

He observed that while the bees approached the electrically manipulated flowers, they did not land on them. They also approached the flowers significantly less than the control flowers, Hunting says. “This shows that the electrics alone already elicit avoidance behavior.”

Hunting suggests that the plant’s defense mechanism might be at the root of the electrical change. “What actually happens if you apply chemicals to plant cells, it triggers a chemical stress response in the plant, similar to a wounding response,” he explains. The plant sends metabolites—which have ionic charge—to start to fix the tissue. This flux of ions generates an electric current, which the bees detect. 

The researchers also noted that the chemicals didn’t seem to impact vision or smell, and that, interestingly, the plants sprayed with pesticide and fertilizers seemed to experience a shift in electric field again after it rained. This could indicate that the effect persists beyond just one spray. The new findings could have implications for casual gardeners and major agricultural industries, the researchers note. 

“Ideally, you would apply fertilizer to the soil [instead of spraying directly on the plant],” Hunting says. But that would require more labor than the approach used by many in US agriculture, in which airplanes spray massive fields. 

[Related: Build a garden that’ll have pollinators buzzin’]

Essenberg says that luckily the electric field changes are relatively short lived, making it a bit easier for farmers to find workarounds. For instance, they could spray agricultural chemicals during the middle of the day, when pollinators forage less frequently because many flowers open in the morning and typically run out of pollen by then. 

The toxicity of chemical sprays is probably a bigger influence “at the population level” on bee decline, Essenberg says. But this study offers a new idea: that change in electric potential might need to be taken into account for effectively spraying plants. “It raises questions about what other kinds of things might influence that potential,” she adds, such as contaminants in the air or pollution that falls with the rain.

Essenberg says it would be helpful to look at the impacts of electric field changes in more realistic foraging settings over longer periods of time. Hunting agrees. “Whether the phenomenon is really relevant in the long run, it might be, but we need to uncover more about this new mechanism.” 

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The springtail is a tiny, fascinating semiaquatic invertebrate capable of escaping predators by impressively leaping ten times’ its height, performing a midair U-turn, and finally landing atop the water’s surface. Although there are thousands of known springtail species in nature, the close relative to the flea remains a relatively obscure animal, despite its astounding capabilities. Thanks to a closer examination, however, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and South Korea’s Ajou University have not only gained a better understanding of the creature’s acrobatic skills, but recently pulled off mimicking the movements in their own penny-sized robotic imitator. The implications could one improve the movement of robots much larger than a grain-sized springtail. The authors recently published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[Related: Watch a snake wearing robot trousers strut like a lizard.]

Per a recent report from The New York Times, biologists and keen-eyed observers previously believed springtails’ evasive maneuvers were largely random and uncontrolled. The key to a springtail’s gymnastics is a tiny organ called a furcula, which slaps the water underneath it to launch the animal into the air. In less than 20 milliseconds following liftoff (a world record for speed, by the way) springtails manage to orient themselves so as to land on their hydrophilic collophores—tubelike appendages capable of holding water and sticking to surfaces, thus allowing the springtails to sit comfortable atop ponds and lakes.

[Relate: Watch this penny-sized soft robot paddle with hydrogel fins.]

Using a combination of machine training and observations, researchers were then able to construct a tiny, relatively simple robot that mimics springtails’ movements, down to their ability to accurately land around 75 percent of the time. Actual springtails, by comparison, stick 85 percent of their landings.

While extremely small, the robotic springtails’ results could help developments in the fields of engineering, robotics, and hydrodynamics, according to Kathryn Dickson, a program director at the National Science Foundation which partially funded the research, via a news release. Researchers also hope that further fine-tuning and study will allow them to gain insights into the evolutionary origins of flight in various organisms, as well as implement their advancements on other tiny robots used in water and airborne studies.

The post One of nature’s tiniest acrobats inspired a leaping robot appeared first on Popular Science.

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In recent years, the monarch butterfly population has decreased by more than 80 percent. A lack of milkweed is one of the major causes of this decline, as the plant is the only food source for the species’ larvae and caterpillars, and the only place monarchs will lay their eggs. 

Planting milkweed in your own outdoor spaces is not only a way to help the butterflies, but it’ll also upgrade your garden or windowsill with beautiful, low-maintenance wildflowers. You can get seeds from marketplaces such as Amazon, but getting them from non-profit organizations like Save Our Monarchs or the Live Monarch Educational Foundation, will allow you to get seeds while supporting conservation efforts at the same time. 

Fall and spring are great times to plant milkweed, and even though this plant has an arguably undeserved bad rap amongst pet owners, there are ways you can incorporate it into your garden safely. 

Any seemingly inhospitable nook, including side yards, alleyways, or patios, can be home to milkweed—even if it’s surrounded by hardscapes like cement slabs. And your neighborhood’s furry residents shouldn’t worry if there are no walls or fencing around the area. Even though milkweed can be toxic to wildlife due to the cardenolide-rich sap it uses as a defense mechanism, it’s only dangerous in large quantities, and bugs that feed on it and become toxic themselves (like the monarchs and their offspring) have bright coloration that warns predators away, van Rees explains. Animals don’t usually eat milkweed unless they’re forced to—like when they’re corraled and have no other food available. Still, if you are neighbors to a lot of pets and wildlife in general, opt for variations such as Joe Pye weed, and stay away from the most toxic kind known as Utah milkweed.

“If you have more waterlogged soils, look for moisture-tolerant species like the swamp milkweed,” he says. These plants “don’t mind wet feet.” 

Next, think about the amount of sunlight your plant would receive. Most milkweed species evolved in open meadows, so they adapted to thrive in full sunlight. Only a few species of milkweed like partial shade, like the purple milkweed (native to Eastern, Southern, and Midwestern United States) or the whorled milkweed (native to eastern North America). 

Regardless of the variety, plant your milkweed seeds under 1/4 of an inch of soil and half an inch apart. Finally, water the area frequently until the plants begin to sprout to ensure they take root.

Some species, like common milkweed, can self-propagate through underground rhizomes, which allows them to spread aggressively even without the help of pollinators. Keeping the plant in a flowerpot can protect your pets’ eyes by preventing milkweed from spreading unchecked to spots your fur babies regularly hang out at. Most milkweed species have a milky white sap that can irritate eyes, Lenhart explains. “But milkweed getting in your dog’s eyes is rare,” and wouldn’t impact your animal’s health seriously, he says. 

To plant milkweed, choose a plastic container. While other materials work just as well, plastic is lighter, which will allow you to move the plant easily indoors for winter storage. Size is also important. Prefer spacious and deep containers around 10- to 12-inches tall and 5-inches wide, as milkweed root systems tend to grow large. You should also make sure your pot has a drainage hole to prevent the plant from becoming waterlogged. 

“Wild animals learn after one bite that milkweed isn’t good to eat,” says Ellen Jacquart, botanist and president of the Indiana Native Plant Society. “Most pets would react the same—that milky sap tastes awful!” 

Still, you should prevent any accidental ingestion of milkweed by fencing off the area. To do this, make sure the fence or protection you install is tall enough to keep pets out. A 24-inch barrier will generally dissuade most dogs from leaping into a patch of milkweed. 

“Native plants offer exponentially more value than plants that are not native,” says Lenhart. This is because native species co-evolved with local animals, learning with time to be best pals with them as they both changed, he explains. 

Variety is also a plus, as grouping different kinds of milkweed together seem to attract more pollinators, Jacquart explains. As long as all the species you choose are native to your area, you can plant as many as you want. 

“It’s important to realize that there are many species of milkweed. All can serve as host plants [for monarch butterflies],” Jacquart says. 

Start your planting now and by Spring you’ll hopefully enjoy a garden filled with beautiful butterflies and other helpful pollinators. You won’t only be getting a pretty landscape, but you’ll also be helping nature thrive. 

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Weather radar has been known to pick swarms of grasshoppers, dragonflies, and possibly cicadas as they take to the sky. While these big brigades of bugs aren’t generating their own rain showers or thunderstorms, the organisms carry with them a very small electrical charge that could impact electricity in the atmosphere as they fly. But just how much of a charge can the buzzing of the bees create?

The short answer is a lot. A team of scientists in the United Kingdom measured the electrical fields near swarming honeybees and found that the insects can produce as much atmospheric electric charge as a thunderstorm cloud. Their research was published today in the journal iScience and demonstrates how this type of electricity can shape weather events, help insects find food, and even lift spiders up in the air when they migrate.

[Related: When insects got wings, evolution really took off.]

“We study how different organisms use the static electric fields that are virtually everywhere in the environment,” study first author Ellard Hunting, a biologist at the University of Bristol, says in an email to Popular Science. “For instance, flowers have an electric field and bees can sense these fields. And these electric fields of flowers can change when it has been visited by a bee, and other bees can use that information to see whether a flower has been visited. Or trees create an increased electric field in the atmosphere, and spiders can use this electric field to take off, and balloon, allowing them to migrate over large distances.”

The team found that honeybee hive swarms change the atmospheric electricity by 100 to 1,000 volts per meter, which increases the electric field force that is normally experienced at ground level rather than in the air. They then developed a a model that can predict the electrical influence of other species of insects. When comparing thunderstorms and other weather events with the the bees’ highest charge, the authors found that a dense swarm of bees had a higher electric charge. The bees had a charge density that was about eight times greater a thunderstorm cloud and six times greater than an electrified dust storm.

“How insect swarms influence atmospheric electricity depends on their density and size,” co-author Liam O’Reilly, also a biologist at the University of Bristol, said in a press release. “We also calculated the influence of locusts on atmospheric electricity, as locusts swarm on biblical scales, sizing 460 square miles with 80 million locusts in less than a square mile; their influence is likely much greater than honeybees.”

[Related: These insects preserved in amber are still glowing 99 million years later.]

The bees most likely acquire their charge through the friction they face during flight. While it would take about 50 billion bees to light one LED light, they can actually increase the background atmospheric electric field two to 10 fold, which Hunting called a “big surprise. “This makes it the first report of biology as a source of biogenic space charge, which can be as relevant as physical phenomena such as clouds,” he tells PopSci.

The discovery of electrical fields happened shortly after Benjamin Franklin’s famous kite experiment, but scientists are still trying to unlock the secrets of electricity as it exists in nature.

“We only recently discovered that biology and static electric fields are intimately linked and that there are many unsuspected links that can exist over different spatial scales, ranging from microbes in the soil and plant-pollinator interactions to insect swarms and the global electric circuit,” says Hunting. “This makes it an exciting new area of empirical research. The true implications of this remain speculative, and whether these dynamics induced by insects affect weather is definitely worth investigating.”

According to Hunting, understanding electric charge in the atmosphere can answer questions in fields beyond physics, including how and why dust particles can be found thousands of miles away from the Sahara Desert. “The true implications of this remain speculative, and whether these dynamics induced by insects affect weather is definitely worth investigating,” said Hunting.

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The world’s first insect vaccine is here, and it could help with stopping a fatal bacterial disease in honeybees. A study published on October 17 in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science found honeybees born from vaccinated queens were more resistant to American Foulbrood (AFB) infection than hives with unvaccinated queens. Not only would the vaccine help in improving colony health, but it might increase commercial beekeeping to make products, such as honey and medical wax.

Several factors have contributed to declining honeybee populations—higher temperatures from climate change, pesticides, and drought to name a few. “Bee health is a multifaceted problem and many factors play into the survival or perishing of a beehive,” says Dalial Freitak, associate professor at the University of Graz in Austria and senior author of the study. “As in any organism, diseases can cause havoc, especially if other stressors are at play.” The current vaccine tackles AFB, a devastating disease that’s caused early outbreaks in US beehives since the early 1900s. 

AFB is caused by the spores of the larva of the bacteria Paenibacillus. Young honeybees ingest the spores in their foods and in one to two days, the spores take root in their gut, sprouting out rod structures. Like an aggressive cancer tumor, the rods quickly multiply before invading the blood and body tissues and killing the young insect larva from the inside. By the time they die, new spores have formed to infect the bees that come in to clean up the honeycomb cells where the deceased laid. Beekeepers may also accidentally spread the disease by exposing contaminated honey or equipment to other bees. Freitak estimates at least 50 percent of beehives globally have AFB. While cultivators may not see any noticeable symptoms of the disease at first, it can feel like a ticking “time bomb” with an outbreak potentially happening at any moment, she says.

The recent study tests the safety and effectiveness of an oral breeder vaccine—an immunization that’s passed down from parents—to increase resistance against Paenibacillus larva. The oral vaccine is mixed into a new queen’s food which she ingests before being introduced into the hive. Once digested, the vaccine contents are transferred into the fat body, the storage organ in insects. Vitellogenin, or the yolk proteins that provide nutrients for growing embryos, bind to pieces of the vaccine and deliver it to eggs in the ovaries. “A little piece of vaccine into the ovaries stimulates an immune response and it’s where you need it the most,” says Annette Kleiser, the CEO of biotech company Dalan Animal Health that created the vaccine. “A lot of these diseases are when the larvae get infected in the first few days when they hatch.”

[Related: Do we still need to save the bees?]

In the current study, two queen honeybees were vaccinated with either the vaccine or the placebo before entering their hive and laying eggs. After the eggs hatched, the two hives were brought to the lab (to avoid infecting other colonies in the wild) and exposed to AFB spores for several days. The team found that vaccinating the queen decreased the risk of AFB by 30 to 50 percent. What’s more, the vaccine did not impact the health of bee colonies. The study authors saw no difference in hive losses between the placebo and vaccinated groups before spore exposure.

“They have shown a proof-of-concept,” says Ramesh Sagili, a professor of apiculture at Oregon State University who was not affiliated with the study. He notes, however, the study took place in an isolated, lab-controlled setting and the challenge with this type of technology is the lack of success when tested in the field. One suggestion is to conduct large-scale field studies, expanding from two honeybee hives to thousands split between vaccine and placebo groups. Other questions Sagili would like answered in future research is how the vaccine fares against different AFB strains and how long immunity lasts in the long-run.

“I’m convinced they have something promising here, but only if they do some large-scale field studies with the beekeeping industry,” adds Sagili. If successful, he says this could open doors to the production of vaccines for other viral diseases plaguing honeybees.

Still, finding solutions to assist honeybees with illness is important: “A declining honeybee population has made it difficult to pollinate enough food for everyone to eat,” explains Kleiser.

Honeybees pollinate one-third of food in the US. Beyond honey, they are essential for the production of apples, broccolis, melons, and even your favorite cup of java. But as much service honeybees provide, humanity has provided them a disservice in keeping them safe and alive. Beekeepers estimated a 45.5 percent loss in honeybee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021, which is largely associated with human activity. According to the United Nations, if bees continue to disappear, we may see permanent disruptions in our food supply chain and the disappearance of fruits, vegetables, and other crops heavily dependent on pollination.

[Related: Temperature tells honey bees what time it is]

There are other options currently on the table to mitigate the spread of AFB. Once beekeepers notice the first signs of disease, they can burn the honey, tools, and other equipment in contact with the hive. Additionally, they could quarantine the hive to prevent infected bees from swarming nearby colonies. However, both options aren’t ideal because they slow down honey production and affect the food supply chain. “You have a withdrawal period where you have to wait and that costs money to beekeepers,” says Kleiser. “The flowers won’t wait so if you miss the season you miss your entire yield.” 

Another option is antibiotics. Sagili explains that antibiotics are effective against AFB, and beekeepers have been using antibiotics to manage the spread of spores. Because of its availability, he says it doesn’t rise to the level of other challenges that honeybees presently face. That said, there is always a risk of antibiotic resistance that could lower honeybees’ protection against the bacterium. “Beekeepers have options, but it would be nice to have a vaccine for [AFB] so they have one less problem to deal with,” Sagili says.

Right now, the vaccine is pending conditional license by the US Department of Agriculture Center of Veterinary Biologics. Kleiser emphasizes the vaccine would not only benefit bees, but the larger ecosystem as well. “It’s a survival issue,” she says. “We have to understand the critical importance of these animals.”

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The Cordyceps mushroom, an exotic fungus, grows by infecting insects with its spores. The spores use the animals’ bodies as all-you-can-eat buffets, feasting on their flesh. This parasitic relationship ends only when the spores fully grow and mature, sprouting out and mercilessly killing their hosts. Despite its unorthodox but popular survival method—Cordyceps are the inspiration behind some apocalyptic films and video games—the mushroom has some sought-after medicinal properties. For years, scientists have attempted to replicate this process in the lab, because the mushroom is hard to find in the wild. Using brown rice, a common experimental substitute for bugs, often fell short.

It turns out the best way to grow the ever-elusive Cordyceps mushroom is on the backs of fatty insects, finds a new study published Wednesday in Frontiers in Microbiology. Cultivating this rare species of fungus could increase the availability of a bioactive compound called cordycepin, which boasts potential antiviral and antitumor properties.

“Cordycepin has diverse biological effects such as anticancer and anti-inflammation, several aspects that must be considered for the treatment of diseases,” explains Mi Kyeong Lee, a professor of pharmacy at Chungbuk National University in South Korea and senior study author. “In addition, Cordyceps mushrooms may be widely used for prevention of diseases through immune enhancement.” 

Lee’s interest in the fungi came after searching for bioactive ingredients from natural products. However, Cordyceps mushrooms are rare in nature, and when grown on brown rice the fungus produces little cordycepin, perhaps because the grain has low protein content. In the outside world, Cordyceps mushrooms prefer snacking on insects and the study authors hypothesized they may prefer insects with a high protein content. “In particular, insects have recently been approved as a protein substitute in Korea,” Lee says. 

In the new study, Lee and his team sought to replicate how Cordyceps mushrooms grow in the wild with the goal of maximizing cordycepin levels. But first they would need to know whether the type of insect it ate mattered.

[Related: This deadly mushroom can literally shrink your brain—and it’s probably more widespread than we thought]

The team collected an assortment of insects—crickets, silkworm pupae, grasshoppers, Japanese rhinoceros beetles, mealworms, and white-spotted flower chafer larvae—exposed to the spores of the Cordyceps mushroom. The fungi grew for two months with the largest ones coming out of the bodies of silkworm pupae and mealworms. Mushrooms that bloomed out of chafer larvae and grasshoppers grew the smallest mushrooms. 

The size of the fungus, though, doesn’t matter for cordycepin levels. Cordyceps mushrooms that sprouted out of Japanese rhinoceros beetles were the most rich in the cordycepin compound, which had nearly 100 times more cordycepin than those grown out of brown rice. And compared to the giant mushrooms from silkworm pupae, Cordyceps cultivated from Japanese rhinoceros beetles had 34 times more cordycepin.

It was not the amount of protein that made a difference, the scientists determined, but the fat content in the invertebrates. Insects with high amounts of a fatty acid called oleic acid seemed to make more cordycepin. (For example, the Japanese rhinoceros beetle held 10.8 percent of oleic acid while silkworms only had 0.4 percent of oleic acid.)

What’s more, genes involved in the production of cordycepin, cns1 and cns2, were found at higher levels in the beetle than the other insects. Adding oleic acid to a low-performing insect raised cordycepin levels by 50 percent.

[Related: A South Pacific island could help us understand how fungi evolve]

“Raising medicinal fungi on farmed insects is a more sustainable practice than collecting these species in the wild,” notes Nicholas P. Money, a mycologist at Miami University in Ohio who was not affiliated with the study. However, he warns that “the clinical benefits of the metabolite examined in this study”–referring to cordycepin–“remain a matter of faith rather than science.” Ongoing research suggests cordycepin may have the potential to ward off viruses such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2 by acting as an inhibitor for viral replication as well as mitigating any severe symptoms by lowering inflammation levels. However, there is a lack of evidence from preclinical and clinical studies to support these claims.

Yet with an improved supply of Cordyceps, which the new work aims to provide, researchers will have an easier time studying its therapeutic potential. Lee says his goal is to find the optimal living environment for producing the highest quality of Cordyceps mushrooms. His next work will test different plant species as another possible breeding ground for the fungi to grow.

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The Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly is only found in the far southwest corner of New Mexico, near the state’s borders with Arizona and Mexico and the small community of Cloudcroft. While it’s a local specialty, not many people living in the area have seen it or even heard about it. And for good reason: Recent surveys by biologists found only eight of the orange, black, and white butterflies, and no sign of eggs.

But even as the species teeters on the edge of extinction, the federal government hasn’t stepped in to save it. In 1999, when the insect’s population still numbered above a thousand, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to grant the butterfly legal protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Since then, the agency has received and declined another petition to list the vanishing critter, and is presently considering a third. 

The ESA is one of the most powerful tools in fighting the massive biodiversity crisis gripping the world right now. Yet examples of omission like the Sacramento Mountain checkerspot’s are all too common. 

[Related: Wildlife populations have decreased 70 percent in only 50 years]

A study published this week in the journal PLOS identifies a few troubling trends in the way the FWS administers the ESA. It points out that species are often not listed until their populations have already reached perilously low numbers, and that, on average, the agency takes nine years to deliver verdicts on petitions that are supposed to be decided within two. 

One reason for this bottleneck is administrative. “The number of species listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act has more than tripled since 1985, but funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t kept pace,” says Erich Eberhard, a PhD candidate in ecology at Columbia University and lead author of the research. 

Some of the species listed with low numbers were driven to that point even before conservationists petitioned for their listing. Eberhard points to the Mariana mallard and the Guam broadbill, two bird species that received protection relatively quickly in the 1970s and ‘80s, but whose populations were less than 100 apiece at the time of listing. Both are now extinct. The paper identifies small population sizes at the time of listing (as in the case of the birds) and long petition wait times (as in the case of the checkerspot butterflies) as two issues that hinder the act’s effectiveness.

Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, has seen similar trends detailed in the study over the 20 years he’s spent working on petitions to get species listed under the ESA. He doesn’t only attribute it to limited capacity on the FWS’s part, though. 

“Some of it is just bureaucratic malaise,” says Greenwald. “The process for listing species is terribly cumbersome.” The review process, he points out, includes more than 20 agency officials. 

The language of the ESA is clear that the decision to designate a species as “endangered” or “threatened” should be based solely on the best available science. Given that, Greenwald suggests that a process more like peer-review for academic studies, where other experts in the field evaluate the evidence in a petition, would be more streamlined and effective than what the FWS currently does. 

Political decision-making can also make the ESA slower and less effective. Since taking office, President Joe Biden has undone measures that former President Donald Trump put in place to severely limit the act’s scope. What’s more, for the last couple decades, the number of protected species has fluctuated depending on the party in power, with Trump listing fewer on average than any other president since the ESA was enacted. 

[Related: The monarch butterfly is scientifically endangered. So why isn’t it legally protected yet?]

Both Greenwald and Eberhard are quick to say that the ESA has been highly effective at protecting the species that do end up being listed, which right now includes around 1,300 species. More than 99 percent of them have survived, and 39 former members of the list have fully recovered. But with 9,200 species considered “imperiled” or “critically imperiled” by biologists in the US, that success rate only reflects a piece of the country’s biodiversity needs. 

Given the ESA’s proven effectiveness at protecting species when it’s invoked, the study suggests giving FWS more resources to consider petitions and reach verdicts quickly. “The Fish and Wildlife Service is receiving less funding now on a per species basis than in the past,” says Eberhard. “What we need is a more serious investment.” 

For some wildlife, like the Sacramento Mountains checkerspot butterfly, the lost time between filing a petition and receiving protection is critical, potentially even fatal. The Center for Biological Diversity filed a new petition to the FWS to protect the insects in 2021, and can only hope the butterflies will still be around by the time the agency weighs in.

“You’d think the Fish and Wildlife Service would want to err on the side of protecting species, and wouldn’t wait until they were on the brink,” says Greenwald. “But right now, they want incontrovertible proof that a species is in serious danger before listing—it’s cautious, but in the wrong direction.”

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Termites are often thought of as pests, munching away at the foundations of homes and buildings. But in tropical forests, these master wood carvers are actually important decomposers. Termites help break down rotting wood, releasing the nutrients and carbon back into the soil and atmosphere. And now new findings from a large international effort spanning six continents showcases that the hotter it is, the faster termites whittle down decaying wood. 

The rate of termite wood decomposition and consumption increases more than 6.8 times with every 10°C increase in temperature, a new study published Thursday in Science revealed. In comparison, microbial wood decay only doubles under the same rise in temperature. “It’s like if you go from, say, Boston to Miami, and if there’s a 10 degree [Celcius] increase in temperature, termites will respond by increasing their decomposition rates sevenfold,” says Amy Zanne, lead author of the new paper and biology professor at the University of Miami. “What it means is the wood is cycled out more quickly—you are releasing carbon more quickly.” 

Fallen trees, stumps, branches, leaf litter and other plant debris are major sources of locked-up carbon—in total storing some 73 billion tons. This “deadwood” contributes to the carbon cycle, in which stored carbon atoms are released and reused back into the environment. The process promotes new plant growth and influences the planet’s temperature and climate by emitting carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. There are many factors that cause wood to decay, from wildfire to solar radiation to microbes to fungi. “If we didn’t have decayers in the world, the world would be filled up with dead plants and animals,” explains Zanne, who specializes in decomposition and the carbon cycle. 

But insects—such as termites—are also an important player in wood decay, says Zanne. Termites are temperature-sensitive creatures, increasing in abundance and diversity toward the equator. Unlike the pests that chew homes in more temperate regions, in the tropics, termites are more abundant and diverse. Certain species specialize on leaf litter, grasses, or dung. Another group of termites found in Asia and Africa farm a “garden” of white-rot fungus, Zanne explains. The fungus’ ability to mineralize the wood’s lignin—one of the hardest materials to break down in the world—paired with the termites’ metal-laced mandibles can easily decimate rotten wood. 

To get a better grasp on these wood-devouring insects, Zanne teamed up with 108 coauthors across 133 sites around the world, including an equal representation of temperate and tropical regions in the northern and southern hemispheres. The researchers selected one type of wood, radiata pine also known as Monterey pine, that could be locally found and accessible at all the sites. Each participating group would dry out blocks of the wood, weigh them, and wrap them in a tight mesh that only microbes could slip through—half had holes cut in the bottom so termites could colonize. Researchers monitored the blocks for up to 48 months, looking out for fungi and the intricate tunnels and canyons created by termites. (A few exotic critters—including a tiny poisonous snake and a black widow spider—also snuck into the pine blocks, says Zanne.) 

[Related: Termites are nature’s most amazing skyscraper engineers]

Clearing all that away, the teams dried out the wood and reweighed it to compare how much had been decomposed over time. Previous studies have shown that microbes have faster wood decay rates under warmer conditions, which was reflected in the new data collected from the wood blocks. But Zanne and her colleagues were surprised by how much more sensitive termites were to temperature—termites were four times more responsive than microbes. 

“These were just astronomical numbers,” says Zanne. “They’re super sensitive to increases in temperature, meaning that with a small increase in temperature, they’re going to really jump how fast they’re cycling the carbon out of the wood.” 

These new findings align with previous research. A 2021 study in Nature found that the rate of insect deadwood decay increased with rising temperatures, most notably in the tropics compared to cooler regions. But Zanne and the study authors noted that the termites were also sensitive to precipitation, but in an unanticipated way: While the termite decay was expectedly the greatest in tropical environments, the team saw they had a noticeable effect on decomposition in drier places like tropical savannahs and subtropical deserts. 

The study highlights important trends about the carbon cycle under a changing climate, says Kenneth Noll, a professor emeritus of microbiology at the University of Connecticut who was not involved in the research. “I found the study interesting because it aims to plug a rather large hole in our knowledge about the rate of decomposition of deadwood,” Noll wrote to PopSci in an email. “The rate of release of this stored carbon back into the atmosphere will undoubtedly increase as the planet warms, so we must have better measures of this to have better climate models.”

As climate change is expected to shift environments towards more tropical conditions, it could create more suitable habitat for termites and cause populations to expand. This could increase their role as wood decomposers in the carbon cycle, Zanne and the study authors suggest. However, Noll notes that global temperature rates are generally expected to rise only about two-fold, which would mean that the increase in termite decomposition globally would not go up nearly seven-fold so “the implications could be relatively small.” What remains to be seen, he adds, is how termite communities in temperate and boreal regions would respond to climate change, where temperature increases will be higher.

He also noted that it would be worthwhile to investigate termites as a source of methane—a powerful greenhouse gas. Zanne agrees. “Termites are like little cows, and they are releasing methane” through their digestive systems, she says. “We also think that they have the potential to alter how much is going up as methane versus getting locked in soil. So they might alter how carbon is leaving the wood.” 

While scientists are working on unpacking how climate change will displace various organisms in the future, Zanne says it’s just as important to understand how it will influence carbon cycling. 

It’s important to consider “the role of some of these little things in the world, such as the microbes and termites, that we often can’t see,” she says. “They’re incredibly important for maintaining and affecting the Earth that we co-inhabit with them.”

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Anyone who has ever had an ant infestation know how insidiously and rapidly they can take over a kitchen or home. The humble ant is one of the most successful and dominant animals on the planet. They are hyper-organized and have developed tight interaction with everything from plants to fungi to other insects and larger vertebrates. American biologist Edward O. Wilson called them “the little things that run the world.” “Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects,” Wilson wrote in 1990 book The Ants, co-written with Bert Hölldobler. “There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.”

In plain terms, they are everywhere. Due to their ubiquity, scientists have long wondered just how many of these six-legged bugs are on this planet and what their total weight would be.

A study out today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA has a potential answer. The new research from The University of Hong Kong estimates that the Earth is home to 20 quadrillion (or 20 × 10¹⁵ or 20,000,000,000,000,000) ants. The previous estimates, including one from famous Hölldobler and Wilson, ranged from 10¹⁵ to 10¹⁶ individuals and were essentially educated guesses, since a a global, representative dataset was not available while they conducted their research. In this new study, the total number of ants on Earth is estimated to be 2 to 20 times that number.

This international team of researchers gathered data on ground-dwelling and arboreal (tree-dwelling) ants from 465 studies, spanning continents, major biomes, and habitats. This gigantic global dataset took six years expands on previous efforts to pinpoint just how many ants there are on this planet.

[Related: When insects got wings, evolution really took off.]

“For decades, ant researchers have been incredibly busy studying ant communities the world over. They have collected thousands of ant samples to identify the species, and often counted all the ants as well when publishing their results in scientific articles. We were able to compile such data from nearly 500 different studies from all over the world and written in many different languages. In this way, we have been able to quantify the density of ants in various parts of the globe, and also to estimate the total number of ants on Earth,” co-lead author Patrick Schultheiss, now a Temporary Principal Investigator the University of Würzburg in Germany, told Popular Science in an e-mail.

The insects are incredibly important as ecosystem engineers in many biomes and ecosystem types, like rainforests, grasslands, and deserts. They turn and aerate the soil, which allows water and oxygen to reach plant roots. They spread seeds to grow new plants, eat a wide variety of organic material, and also provide food for other predators.

This many ants on Earth corresponds with biomass of approximately 12 megatons of dry carbon.

“Our estimate of the global ant population is 20 × 10¹⁵ individuals”, says co-lead author Sabine Nooten, now a researcher at the University of Würzburg wrote in a statement. “That’s a 20 with 15 zeroes, which is difficult to appreciate. In terms of biomass, all the ants on Earth weigh more than all the wild birds and mammals combined, or about 20 percent of human biomass.”

The study also found that ants are unevenly distributed over the global land surface. Typically, tropical regions harbor more ants than non-tropical regions, but this also depends on the local ecosystem.

The team was quite surprised since most scientists don’t go out to specifically individually count the numbers of ants, but instead strive to generally answer questions regarding biodiversity, ecological processes, and evolution. The number of ants is often reported as a measure of sample size. The team was also surprised that the final list didn’t cover everywhere on the planet. According Schultheiss and Nooten, there are areas of the world (Central Africa or some parts of Asia) where they have hardly any data of this kind.

[Related: A killer fungus could help the US South fight back against insatiable ants.]

“We hope that this study raises awareness of how important ants are on a global scale. We also hope to inspire scientists and other citizens to go out there and study ants in the parts of the world we know the least about. Counting ants using standard methods is really not difficult to do, but our study has shown that even very basic data can be incredibly informative. In the end, we need such global datasets to help us understand what we should or need to protect,” said the authors in an email.

With this global dataset in hand, the team’s next step is to investigate why some parts of the world have more ants than others. They speculate that it is due to climate, human land use, or other environmental features.

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Ritual enema ceremonies depicted in pottery. The synchronizing heart rates of new lovers. Scorpion constipation. Why the words in your iPhone “Terms of Agreement” are so complicated. Moose crashes.

Research into all of these burning topics and more was honored yesterday at the 2022 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Now in its 32nd year, the good-natured parody of the Nobel prize recognizes the most unique, silly, and downright bizarre research that “first make people laugh and then make them think.” The Annals of Improbable Research gives out the awards less than one month before the real Nobel prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden.

The ceremony is usually held at Harvard University, but has been online since 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Per tradition, actual Nobel laureates handed out the prizes. The winners received a virtually worthless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill.

And the winners are…

Art History: ancient Mayan enemas

Peter de Smet and Nicholas Hellmuth wrote “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Ritual Enema Scenes on Ancient Maya Pottery” in a 1986 paper, but withstands the test of time. The paper was adapted from de Smet’s doctoral dissertation and focuses on polychrome pottery of the late classic Mayan period (600–900 CE). Palace scenes, ball games, hunting parties, and dances associated with human sacrifice (via decapitation) are usually painted on this kind of pottery, but 55 years ago, scholars discovered one Maya jar showing the administration of an enema. Other discoveries of fine fecal art followed.

Applied Cardiology: syncing hearts with your crush

Eliska Prochazkova, Elio Sjak-Shie, Friederike Behrens, Daniel Lindh, and Mariska Kret discovered evidence that shows when two new romantic partners meet for the first time and feel attraction, their heart rates synchronize, publishing their findings in November, 2021. Prochazkova said she did not have problem finding matches on dating apps, but often didn’t feel that spark when they met in real life. She set people up on blind dates in real social settings and measured their physiological reactions, and found that the heart rates of the pairs with real chemistry synchronized. So, did the team discover “love at first sight”? “It really depends, on how you define love,” Prochazkova, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, said in an email to the Associated Press. “What we found in our research was that people were able to decide whether they want to date their partner very quickly. Within the first two seconds of the date, the participants made a very complex idea about the human sitting in front of them.”

Literature: Terms of Agreement are too tricky

Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, did what has long needed to be done by analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand. Taking a closer look at any Terms of Agreement on a new software or device is enough to make you want to eschew all new technology forever. Martínez, Mollica, and Gibson were frustrated by all of this legal jargon. Their analysis focused on some key psycholinguistic characteristics: nonstandard capitalization (those written out in boistrous ALL CAPS), the frequency of SAT words (aforesaid, herein, to wit, etc.) that rarely appear in everyday speech, word choice, the use of passive versus active voice, center-embedding, where lawyers embed legal jargon within convoluted syntax. “Ultimately, there’s kind of a hope that lawyers will think a little more with the reader in mind,” Martínez told the AP. “Clarity doesn’t just benefit the layperson, it also benefits lawyers.”

Biology: scorpion constipation

Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado did the grueling work of investigating constipation affects the mating prospects of scorpions. Scorpions are better known for their deadly venom and creepy crawly pincers, not so much for their poop habits. In a process called autonomy, scorpions can detach a body part to escape a predator. However, they also lose the last portion of the digestive tract when they do this. This can lead to a constipation and eventually death and the long term decrease in the, “locomotor performance of autotomized males may impair mate searching,” they wrote.

[Related: Cockatoos are pillaging trashcans in Australia, and humans can’t seem to stop them.]

Medicine: ice cream as cancer therapy

A team of scientists at the University of Warsaw in Poland showed in their 2021 study that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure. This sweet study looked at cryotherapy, where cancer patients often suck on ice-chips to prevent oral mucositis (which causes sores in the mouth, gums, and tongue, increased mucus and saliva, and difficulty swallowing). But this can become uncomfortable really quickly. This now prize winning study found that only 28.85 percent of patients who used ice cream cryotherapy developed oral mucositis, compared with 59 percent who did not receive the Ben and Jerry’s approved cryotherapy.

Engineering: knob turning technique

Gen Matsuzaki, Kazuo Ohuchi, Masaru Uehara, Yoshiyuki Ueno, and Goro Imura, discovered the most efficient way for people to use their fingers when turning a knob. The 1999 study stressed the importance of a good universal knob design, particularly for, “instruments with rotary control,” particularly in elderly people who might find rotary knobs and faucet handles easier to use than a lever. Subjects in the study were asked to turn a series of different sized knobs clockwise with their right hand. They found that the the forefingers and thumb were used most frequently and extra fingers were used as the knobs became wider.

Physics: keeping your ducks in a row

Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, dove into the world of understanding how ducklings manage to swim in formation. Getting your ducks in a row appears to be all about energy conservation. They found that the ducklings instinctively tended to “ride the waves,” generated by the mother duck to significantly reduce drag. They then use technique called drafting, like cyclists and runners do in a race to reduce drag. “It all has to do with the flow that occurs behind that leading organism and the way that moving in formation can actually be an energetic benefit,” Fish told the AP.

Related: 8 animals being naturally hilarious.]

Peace: the gossip conundrum

An international group of scientists ranging from Bejing to Ontario developed an algorithm to help gossipers decide when to tell the truth and when to lie. Essentially, their work can help determine when people are more likely to be honest or dishonest in their gossip, drawing on models of behavior signaling theory. “Signals are adaptions shaped by marginal costs and marginal benefits of different behaviors, and the ultimate function of the signaler’s behavior is to maximize their fitness,” wrote the authors. The gossiper may be willing to pay some personal cost (being labelled a gossip or losing trust) to provide a benefit to the receiver. That’s because the gossip could gain a secondary benefit as a result of the receiver gaining juicy new information.

Economics: it pays to be lucky

Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda, used math to explain why success most often goes not to the most talented people but instead to the luckiest. The 2018 paper noted that the qualities most often associated as leading to success follow a normal Gaussian distribution around a mean. For example, the average IQ is 100, but nobody boasts an IQ of 1,000 or 10,000. “The same holds for efforts, as measured by hours worked,” the authors wrote. “Someone works more hours than the average and someone less, but nobody works a billion times more hours than anybody else.” However, the distribution of wealth follows a power law, where there are significantly more poor people than the few hugely wealthy billionaires. The study suggests simple, random luck is the missing ingredient based on the agent-based model the authors developed.

Safety Engineering: moose tracks

Magnus Gens developed a moose crash test dummy, and shockingly it is actually useful information. Sweden’s highways are the scene of frequent collisions between the large mammals and cars, which can result in injury or death to both the moose and human. This crash test dummy will allow car makers to use animal crashes in their safety testing. Gens tested the dummy at the Saab facility using one modern Saab and one old Volvo traveling at about 45 mph and a second Saab at 57 mph. Fortunately for car makers, the dummy is robust and able to be reused in multiple crash tests before it needs to be replaced.

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This article was originally featured on Undark.

As the sun began to set on Delhi, 45-year-old Rani hiked up her salwar pants, squatted next to the iron pan just outside her home, and lit a match. The plastic grocery bags were the first items to catch fire. Soon the cow-dung cakes ignited, their chocolate-brown edges glowing in the dusk. Rani coughed as smoke rose from the pan.

All around, Rani’s neighbors performed a similar drill. Some substituted egg trays for cow dung, or omitted the plastic bags, but no matter the kindling, the goal was the same: to repel mosquitoes by means of smoke and other toxic fumes. Indians have long employed this do-it-yourself approach to insect control, but over the past couple of years, as the city’s mosquito population has exploded, the burning has become a nightly ritual in low-income housing developments across this city of more than 30 million people.

According to a recent survey conducted by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation, Delhi’s mosquito density was almost nine times higher than normal this past March and April, a 50 percent increase over the previous year. Yet local authorities did not mount a vigorous response because the insects belonged to the Culex genus, which is not known to transmit the well-known diseases—malaria, dengue, chikungunya—that are at the forefront of India’s public health initiatives.

When it comes to malaria in particular, India has achieved success in reducing disease. But even as malaria deaths are on the decline, the sheer number of mosquitoes, particularly in urban areas, has shot up. This is partly due to climate change, said Ramesh C Dhiman, an expert in malaria epidemiology who spent three decades as a government researcher at the Indian Council of Medical Research before becoming an independent consultant. Mosquito populations are on the rise in other countries, too, fueled not just by climate change, but by increased urbanization and the decay of residual DDT in the environment.

A spokesperson for Delhi’s municipal government, Amit Kumar, told Undark that the local government has taken a number of actions to combat the problem, including spraying insecticides on public drains and other water bodies, which serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

These measures were temporary and did not address the severity of the issue, said a Delhi public health official, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from his employer.

The mosquitoes in Rani’s neighborhood are so insufferable that children and adults struggle to sleep through the night. While not yet much of a problem in Delhi, residents could also face some risk of diseases that are transmitted by Culex mosquitoes, including West Nile and Japanese encephalitis. According to experts, this risk may increase as mosquitoes evolve in response to changing climatic conditions. For the moment, low-cost do-it-yourself remedies like smoke and insecticides offer some measure of relief. But researchers note that these approaches pose a risk to human health and fail to address the underlying problems that allowed the mosquitoes to flourish in the first place.

Delhi’s surge of Culex mosquitoes comes at a time when public health officials are declaring notable victories against other kinds of mosquitoes, including the Anopheles genus that transmits malaria. While those gains have saved lives, the situation, mosquito experts say, is complicated: The very changes that have reduced Anopheles’ numbers may be allowing other species to thrive. And amid a changing climate, mosquitoes have found new niches to exploit, especially in urban areas.

Over the last few decades, malaria’s global footprints have diminished, thanks in part to interventions such as mosquito nets and insecticides used to target Anopheles. In India, such interventions have been implemented with the help of a government agency called the National Center for Vector Borne Diseases Control. The program’s efforts helped dramatically reduce malaria deaths in recent years.

A retired government official who worked in northeast India at the ICMR for nearly three decades, Vas Dev, said deforestation likely contributed to declining malaria rates in India, but it came at a cost. Increased urbanization creates more habitat for mosquitoes that prefer urban and suburban landscapes, including Culex and Aedes, the mosquito genus that transmits dengue, Zika, and chikungunya. Since 1970, dengue has spread dramatically in poor countries, killing thousands of people each year, mostly children.

Scientists are working to better understand how changing landscapes and climate will affect mosquito populations in the future. In Delhi, climate change has already extended the breeding season by bringing higher temperatures to months that were formerly too cool for reproduction. Untimely rains have also fueled the mosquito population by increasing humidity levels and contributing to standing water in the environment. As a result, said Dhiman, areas that might have once experienced a one-month mosquito season are now experiencing seasons that stretch for six to eight months.

The insects are known to adapt quickly to changes in their local environment. Anopheles mosquitoes provide an interesting example, said ‪Karthikeyan Chandrasegaran, a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech who has expertise in evolutionary ecology and mosquito biology. The malaria-transmitting insect is known to bite between dusk and dawn, so public health organizations working in sub-Saharan Africa invested in bed nets for the local residents there. Initially, these interventions proved effective, but within less than a decade, cases spiked. It turned out the mosquitoes were feeding in the early morning—after people had gotten out of bed. Mosquitoes can also evolve resistance against commonly used insecticides.

City-dwellers are likely to experience the brunt of any problems, said Chandrasegaran. Poor waste management, lack of sanitation, and irrigation all create opportunities for the insects to thrive. Some cities like Delhi are also contending with water shortages, a situation that has led residents to hoard scarce supplies in buckets that can become breeding sites. These conditions are less acute in rural areas, which also harbor greater numbers of mosquito predators, including certain fish and frogs.

But rural areas have challenges, too, including poor health care infrastructure and poor awareness of vector-borne diseases. “So, you’ll have to probably tailor your solution differently to urban areas, tailor your solution differently to suburban areas, rural areas, forested areas,” said Chandrasegaran. “If you do not identify the pain points exactly, you are going to spend a lot of time and effort and money trying to implement one scheme across the entire country, which is going to waste a lot of things.”

Rani, who like many Indians goes by one name, sat outside with her children on a high cot not far from the iron pan and its steady smoke. They chatted about the day, and one of Rani’s daughters, Meenakshi, mentioned how her teacher had asked the class to participate in a mindfulness activity. The children were to keep their eyes closed and their bodies calm. Unlike her wiggly classmates, Meenakshi excelled at the task. In reality, she told her mother, she had fallen asleep.

Rani took this news in stride. The previous night, the mosquitoes made it hard to sleep, she explained. Many children skipped school because they were exhausted in the morning—a common occurrence that keeps low-income children out of classrooms. Adults struggle to sleep during mosquito season, too. One woman told Undark that her blood pressure rises when the mosquitoes get really dense. Other residents reported sleeping on busses, rickshaws, and trains while commuting to and from work.

Some families leave their pans burning all night, but when Rani is ready for bed, she douses hers with water so she won’t feel suffocated by smoke as she tries to sleep. Rani and her children do use mosquito netting, but they rarely spend the whole night behind its protective shield. Sometimes the children need to get up to use the toilet or get a drink of water, she said, or they get too hot inside. And even a small opening in the netting allows the mosquitoes to enter.

Research indicates that mosquito nets can protect the individual user while also reducing disease transmission within the wider community. Despite this, many individuals who own nets do not use them consistently. A small study conducted in homes in Asia and Africa found that the nets decrease airflow, and researchers have hypothesized that this could explain the spotty uptake. In homes like Rani’s, which lack regular electricity for fans or air conditioning, the reduced airflow can make it even harder to sleep at night.

But the DIY remedies that have become popular across various parts of India bring their own set of problems. Palak Balyan, a scientist in New Delhi who works for the U.S.-based nonprofit Health Effects Institute, said that burning of any kind of material produces the tiny particles known as PM2.5, a type of air pollution that is responsible for millions of premature deaths each year. Research suggests that emissions of PM2.5 have shortened the average Delhi resident’s lifespan by up to 10 years. While the biggest source of this pollution in Delhi is transportation, experts worry that DIY mosquito control is worsening the problem.

In addition to burning cow dung and plastic, Delhi residents also use coils, liquids, and incense sticks to repel insects with odor and fumes. The repellants’ effects on human health have not been well-documented, but the available research suggests that caution may be warranted. One study found that burning a coil releases the same amount of PM2.5 as burning 75 to 137 cigarettes. Another study found heavy metals like zinc, cadmium, and lead in popular coil brands. “Carcinogenic risk is there for 350 people per million population,” said the study’s lead author, S.N. Tripathy, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.

On its website, the National Center for Vector Borne Diseases Control lists the use of these mosquito repellents as one of several strategies for vector control. But the Delhi public health official characterized the repellants as a short-term strategy of dubious effectiveness. In India, they are part of a 50-billion-rupee business—over half a billion dollars—but they are not a solution. For one thing, the repellants don’t even kill the mosquitoes; they merely prompt the insects to go elsewhere. The mosquitoes, the official said, “just move from one place to another but they do not die.”

The Delhi public health official and other experts interviewed by Undark said they were unaware of the extent of the outdoor burning in Rani’s neighborhood and beyond. The city’s low-income neighborhoods tend to be isolated, overlooked by the city, and looked down upon by other Delhi residents.

Several researchers said that municipalities need to step up and address mosquitoes so the burden doesn’t fall on individuals. This means better insect surveillance, as well as improvements to sanitation and drainage systems. In Rani’s neighborhood, for example, the homes do not have indoor plumbing, so wastewater flows directly into the streets, creating a breeding habitat for mosquitoes. The city’s biggest drain, which carries sewage into a local river, passes about 10 feet from Rani’s one-room house.

Housing quality is important, too. Mosquitoes love the dark, humid, and unventilated spaces so often inhabited by India’s poorest residents, said Dhiman. Rani’s house has just one window, often open so that air can circulate. Even so, moisture lingers on the mud floors and cement walls. A small light bulb hangs from a wire in the ceiling, providing minimal lighting.

Outside that house, as the evening wears on, Meenakshi turns to her homework. She’s still sitting on the cot, her hands kept busy, turning book pages, fanning the air to scatter smoke. She swats mosquitoes, scratches the bites. Rani is thinking of buying a topical repellant, but the ointment is expensive and who knows if it will work. Perhaps tonight Rani will leave the pan burning, just to see if it helps her fall asleep.

The post Delhi’s mosquito problem is getting worse appeared first on Popular Science.

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IN THE NORTHWESTERN outskirts of Visalia in Tulare County, California, Bryan Ruiz drives down a familiar dirt road that cuts through farmland. He comes up to an irrigation pipe that’s created a “pretty nasty” situation—a small patch of vegetation and algae-covered water baking under the early June sun. As his shadow looms over the pool, a wormlike critter less than half an inch long quickly tries to submerge out of sight, but before it can, Ruiz scoops it up with a long metal dipper. He squints at his catch: a larva of Culex, a genus that includes common house mosquitoes.

While it may seem innocent at this phase, even a bit clumsy and silly tumbling in the water alongside perhaps hundreds more wrigglers, the larvae grow up to be disease-carrying bloodsuckers—what scientists call vectors. So Ruiz flags the spot for treatment with bacterial spray toxic only to the insects. This is a typical day for Ruiz, a technician at Delta Mosquito and Vector Control District (DMVCD): hunting for an insect that also hunts for him.

Tulare County, located in the agricultural center of California, the San Joaquin Valley, has long battled the pest. DMVCD, an independent abatement district, was founded with a push from the Visalia Women’s Club in 1922, when mosquito-borne malaria once ravaged the area. Today, a new threat menaces the 712-square-mile region, known for its dairy farms, citrus orchards, and vineyards surrounded by growing development. Aedes aegypti—an invasive mosquito species capable of spreading the Zika virus, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever—has expanded its reach in California by making itself at home in anything from dog bowls to small toys left out under sprinklers. Ruiz’s job has become even trickier as Ae. aegypti evolves to evade almost all conventional control tactics aimed at adult skeeters. “Most of the stuff we have doesn’t affect them,” he says.

With insecticide resistance increasing and climate change priming the environment for longer breeding seasons and a wider geographic range, the DMVCD and state biologists are concerned the area might see a bug boom. “Before, we haven’t really had the Ae. aegypti population,” says Crystal Grippin, the biologist and scientific program manager who coordinates surveillance of the insect at DMVCD. “Now we’re getting multiple locations with 10 female Ae. aegypti per trap.” (Only female mosquitoes draw blood; males consume nectar and fruit juice.)

Local abatement units like DMVCD and international companies alike are seeking new ways to combat the pests. The biotech company Oxitec has advanced one of the more novel—and controversial—approaches to curbing Ae. aegypti: releasing more Ae. aegypti. But theirs are no ordinary mosquitoes. These are non-biting males engineered to carry a time-bomb gene that passes on to offspring and kills females in the larval stage. “It is 100 percent fatal to female larvae carrying this gene,” says Rajeev Vaidyanathan, an entomologist and director of US programs at Oxitec. As the population drops, so does the risk of disease.

Oxitec hopes to make Tulare County the next site where it will test out its strategy. After the company showed promising results from a 2021 pilot project in Florida, the US Environmental Protection Agency cleared it in March 2022 to do a second trial in the state and to see how it does in Central California’s vastly different climate. Officials at the California Department of Pesticide Regulation are reviewing the firm’s permit request, which, if approved, might mean the trial would start moving forward in spring 2023.

While Oxitec’s invention is trademarked as “Friendly” mosquitoes, not everyone is charmed by the genetically tweaked insects making a buzz in the neighborhood. National and local groups have complained about the state’s review process and the company’s approach to consulting and communicating with residents.

If the Tulare County project moves forward, though, it could aid DMVCD techs like Ruiz by taking down the swarm from within. While his agency awaits the state’s decision, it is working with Oxitec, providing a much-needed community connection and history of the local landscape. “I’m really excited and lucky to be collaborating with Oxitec,” says Mustapha Debboun, a medical and veterinary entomologist and DMVCD’s general manager. “I’m always interested in seeking additional techniques that would work.”

IT’S A BIT of a surprise that these black-and-white insects have been able to survive in the arid landscape of Tulare County, given their tropical beginnings. Ae. aegypti originated as a forest mosquito, supposedly in Africa, before a strain of the species spun out across the globe when humans began to settle in villages and store water in containers. Their arrival in the Americas aboard slave-trading ships in the 17th century brought outbreaks of yellow fever, and in more recent times, they have caused other viral infections: chikungunya and dengue, known for causing fever and joint pain, and Zika, which can trigger birth defects in the children of infected pregnant people.

The species largely stuck to more tropical areas of North and Latin America for about a century before migrating northward, their eggs or larvae often hitching a ride with humans. Then, in 2013, health officials detected Ae. aegypti in California. As of July 2022, 22 of the state’s 58 counties have reported the mosquitoes’ presence to the California Department of Public Health. (They’ve also been spied as far north as Ontario, Canada.)

That spread is partly influenced by climate change, says Erin Mordecai, an infectious disease ecologist at Stanford University. Mosquitoes are ectotherms, meaning they’re dependent on external sources of heat. “Every life cycle process they go through,” she says, “is dependent on temperature.” A warmer environment speeds up their life cycle, so they reach adult stages faster, have more offspring over a longer breeding season, and bite more humans. To avoid the drier triple-digit heat that would otherwise desiccate their bodies, Ae. aegypti have begun sheltering indoors and in the shade, and DMVCD’s mosquito season now typically begins in April and lasts until November.

A longer season and a bigger population increase the risk to humans. While California has reported travel-associated cases of dengue, chikungunya, and Zika, there haven’t been any known instances of Ae. aegypti spreading the diseases in the state—but they could. In 2018, Ae. aegypti was the fifth most prevalent species detected by DMVCD, with 2,129 nabbed in surveillance traps; in 2021, the agency caught 16,450, making it the second most abundant species in the district.

To gauge local populations, the agency uses traps that cater to the likings of target species. The one used to fool Ae. aegypti is the BG-Sentinel, a laundry hamper–like cylinder that lures the bug with CO2 emitted from a sugar-yeast solution and a scent similar to dirty jeans wafting from a tube of pellets. “I don’t even smell it anymore,” says DMVCD’s Grippin. A small motorized fan in the contraption then sucks up unsuspecting females hungry for a blood feast. Laboratory technicians set about 90 devices baited for some 16 mosquito varieties every day, tucking them in the shade of bushes in residential front yards and parks. Some units can collect more than 4,000 skeeters by the time they’re picked up the next morning.

To push down mosquito numbers, the district tries to stop them when they are young and most vulnerable. First, the team urges locals to eliminate standing water. But the microscopic black eggs of Ae. aegypti are easily mistaken for mold, dirt, even shaving stubble, Grippin says. Simply emptying containers doesn’t always work, because eggs can survive without moisture for up to a year. “Once you put more water in, they hatch,” Ruiz says. He recommends deep scrubbing and repeated checkups.

For larvae, team members tap biological methods like deploying Gambusia affinis, commonly called mosquitofish. These freshwater swimmers are easy to breed and maintain, so the district keeps a large hatchery where residents can pick them up for free. If fish aren’t an option, the squirmers can be treated with natural larvicides, such as Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis, in water.

If DMVCD detects an abundance of adult mosquitoes or the presence of pathogens in them, technicians apply chemical fogging treatments before dawn, when fewer people are outside. Ruiz says it’s a last resort. “Our main objective is to not use chemicals at all.”

The compounds might not even do the trick. Decades of pesticide overuse have given mosquitoes time to develop immunity. In 2020, researchers from the California Department of Public Health published a study on Ae. aegypti in the state that pointed to the possibility of the species developing resistance to pyrethroids, a group of commonly used insecticides. DMVCD’s own tests on certain lab-born and wild-caught species have shown resistance to the compounds as well.

With an eye toward finding alternative ways to thwart Ae. aegypti, in 2022 DMVCD was selected by Oxitec from more than 10 other districts in California to host a test of the company’s genetic assassins. Hot off its first trial in the US, Oxitec was looking to expand and see how its mosquitoes would fare in a more arid environment. The dry heat of Tulare County was just right. “I describe Visalia as kind of our Goldilocks spot,” says Oxitec US program director Vaidyanathan. “It has high numbers of Aedes aegypti.… It’s small enough that we can get all over Visalia in a way that we would not be able to in Los Angeles. It also has a very supportive mosquito and vector control district in Delta.”

Officials in Visalia see a potential panacea in the firm’s novel approach. “The technique that Oxitec has is very ingenious,” says DMVCD general manager Debboun. “I think this will work.”

IN MAY 2022, colorful weatherproofed containers about the size of rice cookers began dotting yards in the Florida Keys. But popping open the lid and pouring in water didn’t result in steamy, fluffy grains. Part of Oxitec’s second round of releases, these vessels will incubate some 7 million eggs of the company’s lab-bred male Ae. aegypti. The bugs hatch and emerge in about 10 days to seek out females within a few hundred feet and share the killer gene that Oxitec’s been developing for two decades.

The firm was founded in 2002 with the support of Oxford University in the United Kingdom, where the headquarters and research and development facilities of the now-US-owned company remain based. From the start, Oxitec focused on developing scalable genetic technologies that would squash harmful insect populations—from crop pests like the soybean looper caterpillar to disease-carrying vectors like Ae. aegypti. Oxitec’s solution is a technique it calls RIDL: Release of Insects with a Dominant Lethal. In other words, company scientists have been fine-tuning a genetic time bomb fatal to targeted insects.

It all began with Oxitec’s very own engineered strain of male Ae. aegypti, called OX513A. While they don’t look any different from their counterparts in the wild, these lab-reared specimens are genetically designed Trojan horses that carry two genes—one that identifies their offspring under UV light and another that spells demise for any female progeny. In the lab, the insects are fed tetracycline, an antibiotic that functions as a lock that stops the killer gene from flipping the death switch so the skeeters can reproduce in captivity. But once Oxitec frees the bugs, the gene turns back on in the absence of the drug. (Modern agriculture does tap tetracycline, and while a 2022 EPA statement noted the possibility of the mosquitoes being exposed to sufficient amounts is “remote,” it said the company could not release its males within 500 meters of certain enterprises that use the drug.) After Oxitec males successfully mate—passing on the gender-targeting lethal gene—the wild Ae. aegypti females go on to lay viable eggs, but their female larvae never make it to bloodthirsty adulthood.

Since Ae. aegypti males mate only with females of the same species, Oxitec says its approach shouldn’t have an impact on the overall diversity of the world’s more than 3,500 other mosquito species. Omar Akbari, a molecular biologist who studies the genetics of mosquitoes at the University of California San Diego, and is working with his own team to engineer a sterile male Ae. aegypti, says that Oxitec’s process could help reduce the overuse of insecticides. “In a lot of ways, I would view it as a green technology,” Akbari says. “I would argue it is a great approach, a safe approach.”

Starting in 2009, Oxitec began conducting trials, first in Grand Cayman, and later in Malaysia, Brazil, and Panama. The firm reported that targeted areas with wild Ae. aegypti saw up to a 95 percent drop in population numbers.

Despite these apparent successes, the technology sparked criticism. In 2019, an article published in Scientific Reports found that Oxitec males bred with local Ae. aegypti in a city in the Brazilian state of Bahia resulted in hybrid female mosquitoes. The authors pointed out that it is unclear how this may affect disease transmission or other control efforts. Shortly after, Oxitec responded that the paper had identified no unanticipated effects. UC San Diego’s Akbari says the findings actually show that the hybrids with Oxitec genes didn’t persist in the population, and Scientific Reports eventually noted editorial concerns over some of the authors’ claims and interpretations of the data. Nonetheless, opponents of the company’s real-world experiments still cite it as evidence.

Oxitec’s first US trial faced a long road before the EPA gave the company a green light to let its second-generation Ae. aegypti, OX5034, take wing in 2021, in partnership with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD). The application was passed to two regulatory agencies before landing with the EPA in 2017, kicking off the whole review process. Controversial from the start, the plan drew 448 responses during the agency’s public comment period. A state agency also had to weigh in. “In the meantime, it was extremely important to try to educate the public on this project,” says Andrea Leal, executive director of FKMCD. “It’s not a very simple thing to explain to folks.”

While data from the 2021 release has not been peer-reviewed, Oxitec reported that every single larva that matured became an adult male and all the blood-hunting females died. The EPA has since allowed the company to continue its experiment in the Keys, where it aims to reiterate its data from the first trial on a larger scale, all while moving forward in California. Oxitec stated that the mosquitoes used in Florida wouldn’t be given tetracycline at any stage, meaning the killer gene should work as intended on the female offspring.

On the ground in California, Oxitec’s permitting process has also been bumpy. National and local groups took issue with the review process. Organizations like the Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth noted that Tulare County covers more than 4,800 square miles, yet the locations of proposed releases have not been disclosed, so residents have no way to know if the project would directly affect them.

As part of its review of Oxitec’s application, the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (CDPR) held a 15-day public comment period in April 2022. “Fifteen days is simply not enough for something that is new to this area,” says Tulare County native Ángel García, co-director of Californians for Pesticide Reform. Garcia adds that the CDPR did not adequately attempt to notify farm-working families about the feedback period, and national groups also cited the brief window. In its announcement of the public comment period, the CDPR listed only an email address for feedback. A CDPR spokesperson, responding to Popular Science’s request for comment, stated that the department is working to provide additional opportunities for public input, including a second comment period that will be announced at a later date. The spokesperson noted that the CDPR always takes public comment by phone, email, or letter and that this would be clearly stated in its next communication with the media, stakeholders, and the public.

At DMVCD’s monthly board meeting in May, about a dozen farmworkers living and working in Tulare County, a community that has wrestled with exposure to agricultural pesticides, voiced concerns about an Oxitec release and gaps in the firm’s communication. Some held signs, one of which was marked in Spanish: “#No somos ratas de laboratorios”—“We are not lab rats.” Cecilia Andrade, secretary of a local group affiliated with Californians for Pesticide Reform, who was there, points out that many rural residents, including her, do not have robust internet connections or any service at all, making it difficult for them to learn about Oxitec’s plan. “A lot of the information references the website, but a lot of people in this community don’t go to the website to get their information,” she says.

Oxitec responded to Popular Science via email that all its community outreach materials and web content are available now in English and Spanish. It stated it has been canvassing door to door, distributing informational flyers, pushing to social media, rolling out booths at local farmers markets and events, and hosting monthly webinars, some in collaboration with DMVCD. “We’ve probably knocked all together on thousands of doors,” says Oxitec US programs director Vaidyanathan. “The real story is that people are overwhelmingly well informed and supportive of this technology. In both Florida and California, we typically get two to three times as many people signed up to host [release boxes] than we actually need.”

AS SUMMER TEMPERATURES climbed into the 90s in Tulare County, the CDPR proceeded with its regulatory review for Oxitec’s permit application. The department hasn’t made public a timeline for its decision, only that the review process will take at least several months. But while it waits, Oxitec is building a research facility in Visalia and hiring field and lab techs. DMVCD, in its collaborative role, has been supplying historical local mosquito data to the company and directing residents to Oxitec’s information.

The long game for Oxitec’s US trials is to gather as much data as possible to turn in to the EPA with an application for product registration and eventually market the genetically edited bugs to mosquito control districts and consumers. If it does gain that approval, however, Oxitec will likely face competition.

MosquitoMate, a company based in Lexington, Kentucky, produces a lab-created strain of male Aedes albopictus infected with a species of the naturally occurring bacteria Wolbachia. When these males mate in the wild with females of the species, which can carry dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses, the eggs that are produced don’t hatch. A large-scale trial in 2018 in Fresno County, north of Tulare County, showed a 95 percent reduction in targeted populations. These bacteria-laden mosquitoes are currently priced between $699 and $1,199 depending on the size and type of property.

UC San Diego’s Akbari and his team are using the genetic-engineering tool CRISPR to try to create a sterile male Ae. aegypti. They’ve done surveys, online focus groups, and interviews to better understand the public’s reaction to emerging genetic technologies applied to mosquito control. Responses were across the board, he says, but it was grounding to hear hesitations over the release of an organism that researchers might not be able to control. “We need to take these concerns into our designs,” Akbari says.

Oxitec, with its genetically modified mosquitoes, he says, “is in a way paving the yellow brick road. They’re first to market, they’re going to deal with all these difficult things, but as long as they’re successful, it makes space for the next technology that might be better than Oxitec’s.”

DMVCD head Debboun says he’d be interested in adopting Wolbachia and Oxitec’s method if the data show they work—and if they are sustainable and attainable. “We’re not a private organization that has a lot of money,” he says. “Sometimes you do the best you can with what money you have.” As the new technologies advance, he hopes they will become inexpensive enough to add to the inventory, alongside mosquitofish and larvicides. “As they come into the market and then become affordable, this is what we’re going to be doing,” he adds.

In the meantime, the team at DMVCD continues to monitor and battle the enemy. Bryan Ruiz is redoubling his efforts to thwart Ae. aegypti: Earlier this year, he was assigned to help lead a new program to educate the public on lowering the bloodsucker’s population. That’s why this summer he’s going door to door, educating residents and doing a bit of detective work to find potential breeding sites.

As for new technologies that may be on the horizon, he says, “If you’re able to implement them, then you do. But right now it’s all about house to house.… If we weren’t here, it’d be worse, so I say we are making a difference.”

This story originally ran in the Fall 2022 Daredevil Issue of PopSci. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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When I first started my job as a biologist at the University of South Florida, I drove my Jeep to a grassy field, dug up a mound of fire ants and shoveled it into a 5-gallon bucket. Immediately, thousands of ants swarmed out of the soil and up the walls of the bucket headed for freedom. Luckily I had a lid.

How do ants make climbing walls, ceilings and other surfaces look so easy? I’ve been studying ants for 30 years, and their climbing abilities never cease to amaze me.

Worker ants–who are all female–have an impressive toolbox of claws, spines, hairs and sticky pads on their feet that enable them to scale almost any surface.

Human hands vs. ant feet

To understand ant feet, it helps to compare them with human hands. Your hand has one broad segment, the palm. Sprouting from your palm are four fingers and an opposable thumb. Each finger has three segments, while your thumb has only two segments. A hard nail grows from the tips of your fingers and thumb.

Humans have two hands–ants have six feet. Ant feet are similar to your hands but are more complex, with an additional set of weird-looking parts that enhance them.

Ant feet have five jointed segments, with the end segment sporting a pair of claws. The claws are shaped like a cat’s and can grip irregularities on walls. Each foot segment also has thick and thin spines and hairs that provide additional traction by sticking into microscopic pits on textured surfaces like bark. Claws and spines have the added benefit of protecting ant feet from hot pavement and sharp objects, just as your feet are protected by shoes.

But the feature that truly separates human hands from ant feet are inflatable sticky pads, called arolia.

Sticky feet

Arolia are located between the claws at the tip of every ant foot. These balloonlike pads allow ants to defy gravity and crawl on ceilings or ultrahard surfaces like glass.

When an ant walks up a wall or across a ceiling, gravity causes its claws to swing wide and pull back. At the same time, its leg muscles pump fluids into the pads at the end of its feet, causing them to inflate. This body fluid is called hemolymph, which is a sticky fluid similar to your blood that circulates throughout an ant’s body.

After the hemolymph pumps up the pad, some of it leaks outside the pad, which is how ants can stick to a wall or a ceiling. But when an ant picks up its foot, its leg muscles contract and suck most of the fluid back into the pad and then back up the leg. This way an ant’s blood is reused over and over–pumped from the leg into the pad, then sucked back up the leg–so none is left behind.

Ants are feather-light, so six sticky pads are enough to hold them against the pull of gravity on any surface. In fact, at home in their underground chambers, ants use their sticky pads to sleep on the ceiling. By sleeping on the ceiling, ants avoid the rush-hour traffic of other ants on the chamber floors.

A unique gait

When you walk, your left and right feet alternate so one is on the ground while the other is in the air, moving forward. Ants also alternate their feet, with three on the surface and three in the air at a time.

The walking pattern of ants is unique among six-legged insects. In ants, the front and back left feet are on the ground with the middle right foot, while the front and back right feet and the middle left foot are in the air. Then they switch. It’s fun to try to copy this triangular pattern using three fingers on each hand.

The next time you see an ant crawling up a wall, look closely and you might witness some of these fascinating features at work.

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Almost one year after the historic approval of the world’s first malaria vaccine, a new vaccine called R21 showed up to 80 percent protection against the deadly mosquito-borne disease. Nearly half of the world’s population is at risk for malaria, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The most recent world malaria report found 241 million cases of malaria in 2020, with 627,000 fatalities.

The vaccine was developed by Oxford University and the trial results of 409 children ages five to 17 in Nanoro, Burkina Faso were published yesterday in the Lancet Infectious Diseases. The vaccine was given in three initial doses with one booster a year later, and continued to meet the WHO’s Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap goal of a vaccine with at least 75 percent efficacy. Twenty-eight days after a booster dose, antibody levels were close to the same level following the primary three vaccinations, and no adverse events were reported. This is even more effective than the Mosquirex vaccine from GSK approved by the WHO last year.

“It is fantastic to see such high efficacy again after a single booster dose of vaccine,” principal investigator Halidou Tinto, a professor in Parasitology, Regional Director of the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (IRSS) in Nanoro, said in a press release. “We are currently part of a very large phase III trial aimed at licensing this vaccine for widespread use next year.”

[Related: Why did it take 35 years to get a malaria vaccine?]

The larger trial with 4,800 children conducted by Oxford and partners at five sites in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, and Tanzania and is scheduled to be complete by the end of the year. Further trials will continue to see if additional booster doses are needed and the Serum Institute of India is already lined up to manufacture more than 100 million doses next year.

“We are delighted to find that a standard four dose immunization regime can now, for the first time, reach the high efficacy level over two years that has been an aspirational target for malaria vaccines for so many years,” co-author Adrian Hill, the University of Oxford’s Director of the Jenner Institute and Lakshmi Mittal and Family Professor of Vaccinology, said in a press release.

It has taken over 100 years to develop effective malaria vaccines, partially because the malaria parasite is complex and elusive. However, late-stage trial data published in 2021 found that if Mosquirix was administered ahead of peak malaria season in high transmission areas, it was nearly 63 percent effective against clinical malaria.

[Related: The first malaria vaccine is finally ready to roll out.]

Despite the incredible advances, getting shots in the arms of those most at risk will be a challenge due to a potential lack of funding. The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which provides more than half of the world’s funding to malaria programs, has cautioned that unless it receives significantly more money from leading donor countries (including the UK) at its September pledging conference this month, it will not be able to reorient it’s work following stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Today’s R21 vaccine results from Oxford’s renowned Jenner Institute are another encouraging signal that, with the right support, the world could end child deaths from malaria in our lifetimes,” said Gareth Jenkins, Director of Advocacy at Malaria No More UK, in a press release. “But for new British inventions to achieve their potential, British leadership must continue, not least at the imminent US-hosted Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria replenishment conference this September.”

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When Lagria beetles, a genus of fuzzy, brass-colored bugs that live on soy plants, lay eggs, they protect them with special juice. A set of glands by the mother’s reproductive organs smear the clutch with symbiotic bacteria. As the eggs grow, the beneficial bacteria produce chemicals that fight off mold and other harmful microbes, like a homebrewed antifungal cream.

When those babies hatch into larvae, they’ll carry the bacteria with them for the rest of their lives, and females will pass them along to their own eggs. But Lagria beetles go through metamorphosis: They’ll disappear into a pupa, and emerge with an entirely new body. So how do they hold onto their bacterial partners during the transformation? According to a study published this week in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, two species of Lagria larvae have developed “pockets” on their backs, which store bacteria through the ravages of metamorphosis.

Plenty of insects depend on microbes for defense, or even to regulate their behavior. And so they’ve repeatedly evolved tools for carrying those partners through life. “There are lots of unique structures [for carrying symbionts],” says Rebekka Janke, the study’s lead author, and a doctoral student in ecology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany. A species of predatory wasp, called a beewolf, inoculates its offspring with bacteria stored in its antennae. Leaf-rolling weevils tuck bacteria into a pouch on their belly. “But this is always in the adult stage,” says Janke. In other insects, larvae even stash their bacteria in the environment, and pick them up again later as adults. “But Lagria beetles don’t need shelter, or anywhere to store them. They always have them with them.”

[Related: Bees make more friends when they’re full of healthy gut bacteria]

“It’s a great example of how hosts innovate to support their microbial partners,” says Tobin Hammer, who researches symbioses at the University of California at Irvine and was not involved in the paper. “Symbionts like these can provide useful services to hosts, but they also tend to be fragile.”

Studying Lagria beetle bacteria, called Burkholderia, is particularly challenging, because researchers have been unable to grow the bacteria in the lab. “My supervisor tried to cultivate [the symbiont], I tried to cultivate it, and then two other students tried to cultivate it, and we have another Ph.D. who’s trying now,” Janke says. So instead, they placed microscopic, glowing beads in the pockets that they could watch throughout the life cycle of the insect.

When it’s time to go through metamorphosis, Lagria beetle larvae hide in leaf litter under soybean plants. For about six days, “they’re just laying around, and they’re still relatively whitish,” Janke says. “They don’t have a cocoon, it’s just a little squishy thing.” Inside, they’re growing legs, genitals, and wings. But as that transformation is happening, the pockets remain in place on the outside of the pupa, protecting the bacterial partners. When the adult beetles are fully shaped, the back of the pupa splits open, right along the line that carries the bacteria. “The beetles are then crawling out, and the symbionts are then transferred all over the body.”

Janke says it’s not clear how the bacteria, which have no obvious way of moving on their own, then end up colonizing the adult female’s glands. But the fact that the microbes are so immobile, and so challenging to rear anywhere but inside a beetle, suggests that while the beetles have shaped their body to carry bacteria, these tiny companions are growing to be wholly dependent on the habitat the beetle provides. “The authors’ experiment using latex beads shows how much the host is in charge of where the symbionts go, and when,” Hammer notes.

Other similar types of bacteria aren’t so specialized. Janke says the team has succeeded in cultivating a related strain that sometimes shows up in beetles, but is more commonly found as a pathogen in soybean plants themselves. And Janke says that it’s possible that adult beetles are also picking up some symbionts as they eat. “It would also be interesting to know whether the pockets come with ecological costs,” Hammer notes. “For example, in the wild, perhaps they can be hijacked by parasites or pathogens to further their own transmission.”

Perhaps that’s how the partnership evolved in the first place: After rubbing shoulders while eating soy plants, the beetles may have adopted a guard dog, while the bacteria got a ride from plant to plant. For all the lengths that an insect will go to protect its bacteria, Janke says, “how the symbiont benefits from the host is always a bit unclear.”

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Take a honeybee worker from almost anywhere on Earth, look inside its guts, and you’ll most likely find just nine types of bacteria.

The remarkable consistency of this microbial package across the planet—similar across species, including social bumblebees—is a sign that the bacteria play some fundamental part in the survival of honeybees. Research published earlier this week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution may partly explain why: Bees with healthy microbial partners grow up to have more complex social relationships and even different brain chemistry from bees with sterile guts.

The gut biome—the community of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that live inside us—plays a potentially enormous, but mysterious, role in many animals. It might even shape human cognition. “The gut-brain axis is highly interesting from an evolutionary perspective, because gut symbionts were likely there when the first neural systems evolved,” says Joanito Liberti, the paper’s lead author, and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. There are some signs that the microbes might affect our behavior—but unlike honeybees, we have hundreds of organisms inside us, making it hard to match cause to effect.

And in this study, the role of gut bacteria was stark. “This [finding] really shows that the gut microbiome may be vital to the functioning of the hive,” Liberti says. The essential role of those gut bacteria may also help explain bees’ vulnerability to human threats—particularly agricultural chemicals.

Honeybees are particularly well-suited to microbial experiments because they’re born sterile, unlike human babies. Bees only pick up their microbial package as they hit adulthood and begin interacting with other members of the hive. By plucking days-old grubs from the hive and incubating them in sterile conditions, the researchers can grow blank-slate bees without a drop of antibiotics. In half, the team reintroduced bacteria from the lab’s microbial bank. The rest grew up sterile.

[Related: 5 ways to keep bees buzzing that don’t require a hive]

Those sterile bees didn’t show obvious signs of distress, like flying badly or keeling over dead, at least not during the 10-day study period. They just didn’t socialize like their microbially-complete siblings. They were much less likely to brush heads with other bees—which, in bee terms, means exchanging food or information. “They also interacted more randomly, more equally, with the rest of the group,” Liberti says. “It seems like the gut microbiome made these bees make ‘friendships.’”

It might sound like a good thing to have egalitarian bees, but Liberti says that a colony with lots of specialized relationships is actually better at navigating the complexities of the world. “Not everybody is doing everything at the same time,” he says. “If you are doing brood care, you don’t care whether foragers found a food patch—you want information about the brood.”

When the team looked inside the bees, they found differences down to the function of their DNA. Of 60 different chemicals they measured in bee brains, a third were less abundant in the sterile population. Four specific amino acids that were much more common in bacterial-bees were specifically involved in the neurotransmission or brain fuel supplies. In brain tissue itself, genes involved in memory, vision, smell, and taste were all affected—essentially, the microbiome fiddled with the copying machinery that translated those genes into chemicals.

“Maybe the microbiome doesn’t have a direct effect on the survival of bees,” Liberti says. “But if they’re not working very well in their brain, then of course they will be less efficient at storing the food they collect, producing the honey they need, and that will eventually have effects on the survival of the entire hive.”

[Related: Do we still need to save the bees?]

That could help explain why wild and domestic bee populations are under such stress. Over the past decade, research has shown that high doses of a common herbicide disrupt honeybee microbiomes. The weedkiller may affect learning and sensory skills without killing the bees outright.

While some agricultural exposures may be altering the insects indirectly through the microbiome, they can also have direct effects depending on the dose, Liberti says. Research he co-authored earlier this year found that chronic, low-level exposure to pesticides and herbicides—which might be closer to real-world doses—messed up honeybee metabolisms without changing their microbiomes. Scientists have already shown that many common pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and even antibiotics can directly poison honeybees. 

It may be that the microbiome is another essential feature of honeybee biology that we’ve been unknowingly disrupting.

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The iconic migratory monarch butterfly has had a rough past couple decades. While its numbers can vary year to year, populations east and west of the Rockies have seen an overall long-term decline—to the point where conservation biologists and butterfly lovers are concerned for its survival as a species. Yet despite its dwindling health, the monarch has not been placed under federal protections in the US.

A global leading authority on endangered species conservation disagrees, however. After conducting a two-year assessment, last month the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) designated the monarch butterfly as endangered on the organization’s Red List of Threatened Species. 

“This is an assessment by an international scientific body that looked at all of the data and said monarchs are endangered,” says Karen Oberhauser, an expert on monarch butterfly biology and conservation and the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. “That means they’re in danger of their population going so low that it wouldn’t be able to recover.” 

In other words, monarch butterflies could be at risk of extinction. The destruction of precious milkweed habitat as well as climate change are the primary threats to their survival, researchers report, with the IUCN stating that numbers have sunk between 22 to 72 percent over the last decade. The boldly striped insect lays its eggs and feeds on milkweed in breeding grounds in Canada and the US. After journeying up to 3,000 miles, the Western monarch subspecies overwinters on the California coast, while the Eastern one migrates down to Mexico. The “bellwether” for monarch populations, Oberhauser says, is how many butterflies make it to the overwintering grounds each year.

[Related: A parasite could be killing millions of monarch butterflies as they migrate]

Oberhauser and the IUCN scientists hope that the designation will prompt the public, and even policy makers, to see the urgency of the state of monarchs. However, moving a species onto the IUCN Red List does not initiate federal protective measurements. “This is purely a scientific designation,” says Oberhauser, who helped draft the IUCN assessment. “It doesn’t have any legal requirements.”

The unique migratory lifestyle of monarchs presents a tricky conservation conundrum. Canada, Mexico, and the US each have separate wildlife agencies and processes that determine whether a species should be federally protected. While certain areas and states like California have monarch-specific legislation, protection is “piecemeal” and imperfect, says Oberhauser. Mexico does federally protect the butterflies and the bioreserve where they overwinter. In Canada, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife has deemed the species endangered, but still does not protect it under the Species at Risk Act. Similarly, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), which establishes recovery efforts and reviews candidate plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act, has not listed the monarch as endangered. 

While the IUCN Red List is scientifically reviewed, it is separate from threatened and endangered species lists regulated by individual countries. This might cause some confusion among the public, says Delbert André Green II, who studies the genetics and evolution of migrating monarchs at the University of Michigan.  

“It might even cause a bit of a panic in that, now, people might think that it’s a listing of ‘endangered’ under the Endangered Species Act, which is not true,” says Green. “The IUCN recognizes many more species as endangered compared to the Endangered Species Act, so monarchs are not the only one that are in this situation.”

Currently, more than 1,300 species are listed as endangered or threatened in the US, compared to the more than 147,500 species on the IUCN Red List. The USFWS has been made aware of the IUCN’s decision, an agency spokesperson told Popular Science in an email, further stating that “this action does not constitute a US Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing decision.”

That decision was on the table just a few years ago. After the species’ southern migration in 2013, the World Wildlife Fund-Mexico (WWF-Mexico) reported that overwintering sites in Mexico saw Eastern monarch butterflies squeezed down to an alarming 2.94 acres of forest area—a 59 percent decrease from the previous season and the lowest area covered in 20 years. “Alarm bells went off in that year,” says Green. “It was dramatically low, below what was predicted.” The public submitted petitions to the USFWS, prompting agency biologists to kick off a six-year assessment to determine if monarchs should be listed. 

In December 2020, federal officials determined that the monarch was “warranted but precluded” by other higher priority species that faced greater risk, and placed it on the backburner as a candidate for endangered species listing. “They said they are threatened, but there are so many species worse off than monarchs,” says Oberhauser. “I think the initial thought was that it seemed like a prudent decision, although there were some groups who could have wanted the full-on designation as threatened.”

In the US, the Endangered Species Act is one of the strongest measures for not only recovering at-risk animals and plants, but creating protective actions to preserve the environment, says Oberhauser. “Once a species is listed, it means that its habitat has to be protected,” she says. “In my opinion, the act is one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation.”

[Related: To save monarch butterflies, we need more milkweed]

As a candidate species, USFWS biologists will monitor the status of migratory monarchs annually. The agency’s spokesperson states that USFWS “intends to propose listing the monarch in fiscal year 2024,” if legal protection is still warranted at the time of reassessment. While the IUCN Red List might not have any legal clout, Green thinks that it could still have an impact on the US government’s next steps. 

Official protections, however, could make it illegal to remove or interfere with monarchs or their habitat in the wild, explains Green. This, he adds, has the potential to ripple out to grassroots education and restoration programs, which have played a big role in monarch conservation efforts. Special permit applications might be needed for research groups and the public to physically interact with monarchs. Green cautions that it could have a “complete chilling effect” on some current campaigns.

“The additional exposure for monarchs [from the IUCN Red List] is great, but we want to make sure that we don’t inadvertently lose them as this important model for promoting conservation,” he says. “It’s certainly going to be a balance that we’ll have to strike.”  

While it’s unclear exactly how the US government will find this balance, countries that already protect the species can provide a picture. “In Mexico, nobody can take monarchs for anything without special permission from the federal government,” says Eduardo Rendón-Salinas, a monarch expert with WWF-Mexico who leads surveys on overwintering grounds. “We are very concerned here in Mexico on all levels about the monarch migration and the monarch overwintering. It’s a really, really special topic that we must protect here.” 

It’s also crucial to learn how climate, habitat availability, and other environmental factors come together to affect the stability of monarch butterfly populations, which do see year-to-year fluctuation. Green says that determining the exact causes for sporadic swings is tricky. “There have been some surprises that we’ve seen in the past few years. For instance, there was a bounce back of the California population recently,” he says. While the bump in the Western subspecies doesn’t nearly bring numbers close to historic counts, it’s still notable and unexpected. Similarly, this past overwintering season in Mexico also saw a 35 percent increase of Eastern monarchs, according to the most recent survey led by WWF-Mexico—a sign that the population is recovering. However, experts remain cautious, given that numbers are still trending downward.

“Especially in the past five years or so, we’ve been trying to understand much more deeply what exactly is contributing to these trends,” Green says. 

Since the 1990s, loss of milkweed from agricultural herbicides and deforestation in overwintering habitats have been the main contributors to monarch population decline, says Oberhauser. (Rendón-Salinas points out that there have been improvements in canopy cover following the Mexican government’s actions to crack down on illegal logging and protect monarchs.) In recent years, however, climate change has added another pressure on both populations. In a 2021 study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, Oberhauser, Rendón-Salinas, and a team of scientists in the US and Mexico reported that between 2004 and 2018, breeding season weather in the US was nearly seven times more important than other factors in determining the numbers of overwintering monarchs.  

The same can be true on both ends of the migration. A single snowstorm in the overwintering grounds in Mexico, for instance, can wipe out 70 to 80 percent of Eastern populations in a season, while hot and dry conditions during the spring and summer in the southern and northeastern US can also spell bad news. Rendón-Salinas says similar trends have been seen in both monarch butterfly subspecies in the East and West.  

“This new IUCN category of the migratory monarch in North America is an opportunity to reinforce our efforts in the conservation of the species,” he notes. “To do that, we need support from the governments, from the NGOs, from the private institutions—but the most important thing is that we need help from all kinds of people involved in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.” 

Oberhauser, Rendón-Salinas, and Green all note that the public can play a big role in the future of monarch butterflies: planting flowering plants, growing milkweed, and participating in monarch monitoring. USFWS for its part agrees. “Monarch populations benefit from widespread, ongoing conservation measures that are helping reduce threats,” the agency’s representative said in a statement. “We strongly encourage continued efforts to improve the status of monarchs.”

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As a kid, you might have first encountered earwigs as a kind of playground mythological creature. Although the tiny, wriggling insect lives in the same wood-chip hideouts as pill bugs and other creepy crawlies, the story goes that if you’re not careful, it will take up residence in the deep recesses of your ear canal.

The legend, it turns out, isn’t confined to the playground. A surprising number of medical journals, entomologists, and ethnographers have written about the earwig, and tend to trace the name back hundreds or thousands of years. Depending on who you read, it either comes from a myth of central European or Old English origins where earwigs “crawl into the ears of sleeping persons,” and from there, the brain, perhaps to cause insanity.

But while accounts in medical journals emphasize the scattered reports of earwigs in their namesake organ, entomologists stress that the idea makes very little sense, given what we know about the animals.

[Related: Modern medicine still needs leeches]

While the earwigs, an order of insects with 2,000 different species on six continents, do use their admittedly alarming-looking pincers, or forceps, to hunt and hold one another during mating, they’re too small to pierce human skin. Mostly they eat plants, grabbing dead or slow-moving bugs only when the opportunity presents. (A few types of earwigs suck on rat blood, but those look substantially different from the playground burrowers.) They like small, wet crevices, and when they shelter in houses, often over the summer, they tend to favor basements and floors rather than beds. And though it might seem like a snug tunnel in the side of the head suits the insect’s needs, earwax is actually a fairly effective pest repellent—to the point that at least one paper has discussed its potential as a DEET replacement.

The myth also spans the world. In German, earwigs are called “earworms”; in French, “ear piercers.” A 2016 survey of modern central European insect folklore reported that the critter “climbs in your ear and drills it,” at times causing deafness. That seems to reflect a much older backstory, with some writers attributing it to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, published in the first century CE.

Writing in American Entomologist in 2007, decorated University of Illinois insect ecologist May Berenbaum noted that although there are case reports of earwigs found in people’s ears, they’re few and far between—so rare, in fact, that even a 1783 dictionary was skeptical of the etymology, describing it as “an instance of such an accident was perhaps never known.” In the 1970s and ‘80s, two reports from Arizona purported to expose earwigs in their namesake habitat. “A light sleeper,” wrote a Phoenix doctor in 1986 of his 8-year-old daughter, “she had been aroused ‘by the sound of little feet.’” Looking in her ear, he spotted what he described as an earwig, which, under the light of his otoscope, “cautiously emerged.”

[Related: Do we still need to save the bees?]

Since then, at least one more case has made it to press. In 2021, a team of doctors at a university hospital in Seoul treated a 24-year-old who presented with tinnitus and was “very agitated.” The physicians were able to remove the six-legged culprit with tweezers, and the patient suffered no lasting harm. Before they did so, however, they took a video of the insect, producing the world’s first footage of an earwig in an ear.

“This lends credence to an ancient myth,” the Phoenix author concluded. That said, it seems that if earwigs were regularly holed up in ears, science would have more evidence of it.

Or would it? Perhaps, the Korean medical team wrote about their finding, earwigs are being overlooked in the flood of other things doctors pull out of human ear canals: “Considering that clinicians meet many patients who have insects in their ears at the clinic, the present case may not be that [rare].”

After surveying the literature around bugs in ears, Erenbaum concluded that cockroaches are by far the most common culprits—probably because they’re around people all the time. In fact, she noted that “of all the arthropod fauna reportedly found in ears, earwigs are conspicuous by their absence.”

[Related: 3 DIY bug traps that actually work]

But that doesn’t rule out the historic stories entirely. Maybe the straw of a medieval mattress would have been a more attractive home for the insects—and from there, the ear. Hungarian lore—which, its cataloguers pointed out, is often quite precise in describing the behavior of other invertebrates—holds that if one were to hang a coat from a tree, earwigs might take up residence. 

Bear in mind that writing on earwigs is often colored by how the author wants readers to understand the animals, either as part of an ancient legend or a misunderstood scavenger. Take the often-cited reference from Pliny the Elder: The actual passage instructs a reader that, if they discover a living object in their ear, another person may spit into the orifice to evict the occupant. Sometimes the intruder is translated as earwig, sometimes as insect. Maybe the point is that any bug can be an earwig if you let it get too close to your ears.

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Bees have long impressed behavioral scientist Lars Chittka. In his lab at Queen Mary University of London, the pollinators have proven themselves capable of counting, using simple tools, and learning from nestmates. What really surprised Chittka, however, were the nuances of the insects’ behavior.

In 2008, for instance, a study from Chittka’s lab looked at how bumblebees reacted to a simulated attack by a fake spider on a flower. The bumblebees later approached suspect flowers cautiously and sometimes left even spider-less flowers quickly “as if they were seeing ghosts,” Chittka recalled. By contrast, the bees were seemingly more upbeat after receiving a sugar treat.

To Chittka, these observations defy a long-held view that insects are robot-like, controlled by hard-wired cognitive programs. Rather, the bees’ behavior seemed to be influenced by subjective experience—a perception of pleasant and unpleasant. Chittka said he increasingly suspects “there’s quite a rich world inside their minds.”

[Related: “Do animals feel pain? Science author Ed Yong says that’s the wrong question.”]

Early in his career, Chittka never protested when his colleagues opened bees’ skulls and inserted electrodes to study their nervous system. But he now wonders whether such procedures might create “potentially very unpleasant situations” for the insects. Like most invertebrates—any animal without an internal skeleton—insects tend to be legally unprotected in research. Regulations intended to minimize suffering in vertebrates like rodents largely don’t apply.

Some countries have already improved the welfare of select invertebrates, such as octopus, squid, crabs, and lobster. But there’s disagreement over whether other invertebrate species—a kaleidoscopically diverse cast of animals—also deserve protection. Some scientists believe species with relatively simple brains, like insects, or perhaps even those with no central nervous system at all, also deserve ethical consideration, although the details are under debate.

None of the experts who spoke with Undark argued that research on these invertebrate species should stop. Some organisms, including widely used species of fruit flies or nematode worms, have long led to breakthroughs in genetics, cell development, and other biological processes, and have played important roles in roughly a fifth of Nobel Prizes for Physiology or Medicine that were based on animal research. Many scientists are also shifting their research from vertebrates to invertebrates to avoid ethical bureaucracy associated with animal welfare regulation.

Still, recent research is prompting some scientists to rethink traditional research ethics. As Adam Hart, an entomologist at the University of Gloucestershire, put it: “I think we are at a point where people are willing to entertain the idea that perhaps ethics isn’t just something for animals with backbones.”

The rational to legally protect animals in scientific research typically rests on their presumed ability to feel pain and suffer—one facet of consciousness, or sentience. Nearly all animals are capable of physically detecting injuries and displaying reflexes to avoid a threat. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they experience pain, which is not just a sensory experience, but a cognitive, conscious experience of harm and suffering.

Establishing that an animal experiences pain is tricky, but there are some behavioral clues that go beyond simple reflexes—including coping mechanisms like nursing wounds and learning from previous injuries. “It’s kind of complicated,” said animal behaviorist Jennifer Mather of the University of Lethbridge. “But we can get a decent idea of whether they have something that we would call pain if it were in us.”

Scientists have long observed that vertebrates display behaviors consistent with a conscious experience of pain, like avoiding places where they’ve been harmed or withdrawing from social activity. Legislation to protect vertebrates dates back to at least 1876, when British parliament passed the Cruelty to Animals Act. Today, in many countries, regulations mandate that the use of vertebrates in research be scientifically justified, and limits any possible suffering. Standing committees at universities and research institutions typically provide oversight, reviewing research proposals and deciding whether a specific approach is justified.

But invertebrates have historically been deemed incapable of conscious experiences like pain. The resulting scarcity of regulations means that for most invertebrate species, there’s not much to stop scientists from, say, using large numbers of individuals for a particular experiment, amputating limbs without using anesthetic, keeping them in cramped containers, or dissecting them live. Invertebrates are largely left “open to do whatever you want with them,” Mather said.

Yet some scholars have questioned this binary classification. As two philosophers of science, Irina Mikhalevich and Russel Powell, argued in a 2020 commentary, lumping invertebrates together reflects an outdated interpretation of evolution as a ladder of increasing complexity where spineless creatures rank lower. This idea is morally inconsistent with a growing body of research on the cognitive abilities of insects and certain other invertebrates. Whether an animal has a spine shouldn’t be the criterion for its moral status, said Mikhalevich: “It should be what kind of capacities they have to suffer, to experience joys, pleasures, pains.”

Some countries have acknowledged this for a group of invertebrates called cephalopods, comprising octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and nautiluses. Cephalopods, which are popular subjects in neuroscience, are known for their intelligence and large, complex nervous systems. They also meet the behavioral criteria some scientists use to determine sentience, including experiencing pain, Mather said. For instance, evolutionary neuroscientist Robyn Crook at San Francisco State University has found that octopuses will cradle an injured arm, swim towards areas of a tank doused in pain-numbing substances like lidocaine, and avoid locations where they’ve previously experienced harm. In recent decades, Canada, Australia, the European Union, and New Zealand have granted cephalopods similar protections as vertebrates. (Cephalopods are not protected under U.S. law but many university ethical committees nevertheless treat them like vertebrates.)

Although crustaceans—including crab, lobster, and crayfish—generally have much smaller brains than cephalopods, there’s similarly strong evidence that they also experience pain, Crook said. Because of this, a few countries have also included certain crustaceans under the regulatory umbrella. This happened most recently in the United Kingdom after a group of philosophers tasked by British lawmakers concluded that these species are sentient, a recognition long called for by some advocacy groups. In particular, some crustaceans can suppress pain in exchange for a reward, suggesting that their reaction to harmful things isn’t purely a reflex: Hermit crabs, for instance, tend to abandon a poor-quality shell upon receiving an electric shock, but they’ll tolerate the shock for an especially attractive shell.

A 2021 review counted only one country—Norway—that regulates research on insects, namely honeybees. But Chittka and others argue that, much like cephalopods and crustaceans, insects also exhibit sentience and should be similarly protected. For instance, in recent experiments of Chittka’s that are yet to be peer-reviewed, he observed bumblebees making similar trade-offs as hermit crabs, choosing to sit on a very hot surface if it contained a particularly sweet dollop of sugar water.

Other scientists still think that many insect behaviors are more consistent with robot-like reflexes. In the 1960s, British researchers showed that decapitated cockroaches moved their legs to avoid an electric shock. Similarly, locusts will continue feeding while being eaten by predators, while cockroaches have been observed devouring their own guts. “I think this shows insects don’t have the same sense of self, minimally,” remarked Shelley Adamo, a behavioral physiologist at Dalhousie University. While auto-cannibalism isn’t unusual in the insect world, she said, that doesn’t necessarily mean insects don’t react to painful stimuli. “But hunger may trump that,” she continued. “And they don’t have the cognition to recognize and look and go, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s me. They just say ‘protein, eat.’” In addition, Adamo doubts that tiny insect brains—similar in size and complexity to crustacean brains—can support the neural infrastructure required for rich, subjective experiences. But perhaps, Mather added, size isn’t a good indicator for cognitive capabilities in insects.

As it stands, most scientists probably don’t see a need to make ethical considerations with insects, said evolutionary biologist Chris Freelance of the University of Melbourne. But he sees an ethical responsibility to take a precautionary approach—that is, to treat them as if they do feel pain until proven otherwise. After all, he said, “we would absolutely adopt the precautionary principle if it was a fluffy furry thing or something with feathers.” In 2019, Freelance published ethics recommendations for other insect researchers, including adopting a widely-used framework in vertebrate studies called the 3R guidelines: Use other models, such as dead insects, wherever possible (replacement), use only the numbers strictly necessary (reduction), and avoid or minimize experiments that could cause pain (refinement).

Even neuroscientist Matthew Cobb of the University of Manchester, who said he doubts insects are conscious, on principle tries to limit harm to the fruit flies he studies. In the past he has let excess flies, which hadn’t been genetically altered, buzz out the window instead of killing them. And when he does have to euthanize flies, instead of drowning them in alcohol—which “looks kind of sad,” he said—he’ll put them into a chill coma in a fridge. If anything, he added, allowing animals to live as naturally as possible could help produce better-quality data.

Such moral predicaments are acute in entomology, which frequently involves trapping, killing, and dissecting wild insects in order to properly identify them—often as part of studies that inform conservation efforts. But some entomologists have begun to question the approach, Hart said. He’s cut down on training students in the Victorian era-practice of killing large numbers of insects and sticking them on pins, only doing so upon request. In 2019, Hart and his colleagues also encouraged using the 3R framework in entomological research, alongside using non-lethal and selective traps to avoid catching non-target species. The guidelines were partly motivated by what he sees as mounting interest among the public—at least in the U.K.—in the welfare of insects.

But does it matter how insects are treated in science, when, every day, agricultural insecticides kill countless pests and people swat fruit flies and cockroaches in their kitchens? Cobb argued that, yes, research should be subjected to higher ethical standards, for one because, in his view, the public — who funds most research—are particalarly concerned about the welfare of lab animals. Another difference is that research scientists deliberately experiment on individual animals, rather than indiscriminately spraying fields. Crook added that, unlike in agriculture, scientists only interact with a few animals at a time, so they can afford to treat them as humanely as possible.

The question, then, becomes what those ethical standards should look like. Some scientists, including Chittka, argue that insects should receive some form of regulatory protection—although, as Mather added, not necessarily the same protection as granted to vertebrates; each species is different and deserves the protection that fits it best, she said.

The European Union’s 2011 decision to expand vertebrate protections to cephalopods showed the challenges with a one-size-fits-all approach, as the laws encouraged the use of anesthetic substances to both immobilize subjects and curb their pain—even though there were no known anesthetics for the animals at that time. And while scientists can identify when lab rats are in pain, it’s not yet clear how to do the same with insects (if they do feel pain), let alone how to lessen suffering, Freelance said: “There would be no possible way you could comply with those regulations.”

From Crook’s point of view, regulations should be as cautious and as specific to the cognitive abilities of each species as they can be. There might be appropriate ways of protecting invertebrates with even simpler nervous systems, like sea slugs or worms. “I think it would be good to move towards a slightly more expansive way of considering animal welfare and ethics,” she said, “that perhaps takes into account that animals are not all or nothing, and there’s probably shades of experience out there.”

But she acknowledged that more regulation might be a hard sell in the U.S. in particular, which has even exempted some vertebrates like lab rats from regulation. Nor is the idea popular among scientists who have recently switched to using invertebrate models to avoid what Freelance describes as “overwhelming” bureaucracy in vertebrate science. A greater regulatory burden on researchers would only stifle scientific innovation in the eyes of Kirk Leech, the executive director of the European Animal Research Association, which advocates for animal research. To him, the moral case for using animals in science — especially vertebrates, which he considers more useful research subjects—should be prioritized.

Indeed, precautionary regulation could come at a big cost if it ends up restricting work relevant to human welfare, like curbing disease-causing pests, Adamo added, whose research includes finding efficient ways to kill ticks. For pests, he said “we want to be careful that we don’t put barriers in the way of regulating insect populations, because if we don’t, humans that we know suffer will suffer terribly.”

Perhaps, Freelance suggested, scientific journals could create a new path forward. Most journals already require their authors to follow laws and ethical requirements in their own countries, but some have gone a step further. The journal Animal Behavior, one of the leaders in its field, has created its own ethical principles—even for some invertebrates—regardless of whether study subjects are legally protected. If more journals adopted such standards, that could encourage more scientists to adapt, Freelance said via email, “as their publication options would be very limited if they decided to follow no ethical standards at all when it came to studying insects.”

Compared to legislators, journal editors would be more flexible in setting ethical standards, too, ensuring that they are feasible for scientists and could adapt to new understanding of invertebrate consciousness. Aaron Ellison, the executive editor of the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, which published Hart’s paper, agreed there could be a role for journals in raising the ethical standards. However, he added, “I don’t know if there is enough support yet in the community to require it.”

In the meantime, cultural changes might influence the way researchers handle invertebrates, Adamo said. Although she doesn’t believe the insects in her lab are conscious, she still chills her caterpillars for invasive experiments. Beyond any possible benefits to the caterpillars, she thinks it’s good practice for junior researchers to cultivate respect for the lives in their care, however small. “It almost doesn’t matter what they feel or don’t feel,” she said, “but I think it’s important to just be respectful.”

The post If insects feel pain, should we reconsider how we experiment on them? appeared first on Popular Science.

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On a hot Wednesday morning in early June, Joseph Bravata pulled a black SUV with federal plates into a suburban playground parking lot outside New Orleans. The asphalt was bounded on the north by a tangle of oak and tallow trees, and to the east it faced a subdivision with big lawns and wide streets. Bravata, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s state plant health director, opened the trunk, revealing a white cooler which had arrived via FedEx the previous morning.

Inside were six clear plastic containers, full of stingless, parasitic wasps, each the size of a poppy seed. As the sun warmed the containers, the wasps sprung to life, and began bouncing up the sides of the plastic like popcorn.

The freshly excited wasps, called Tamarixia radiata, prey primarily on Asian citrus psyllids, gnat-like, sap-sucking insects. The tiny wasps lay eggs under the bodies of psyllid nymphs, and their larvae grow by eating the host and sheltering in its husk. A single female can eat at least 500 pests over her short life. These hunters are just one of dozens of species that the government has imported to the US to manage other newcomers—an invasive species management approach called biocontrol.

One by one, Bravata twisted off the container lids and—with a few taps of encouragement—the wasps disappeared into the warm breeze to look for prey. Scattered through the surrounding neighborhood were citrus trees—satsumas, kumquats, and oranges—all now home to psyllids. The psyllids are native to Asia, with populations distributed from Pakistan to Vietnam. While they cause minor damage to infested trees, these herbivores are also vectors for an incurable disease called citrus greening, which leaves fruit shriveled and bitter.

The Tamaraxia wasps are just one arm of the USDA’s biocontrol program, which aims to soften the blow of introduced species by raising and releasing their predators to the US. “It’s not rocket science,” Bravata says. “What nature gives us, we use as we can.”

Most of the time, the USDA’s invasive species programs are focused on keeping foreign species out—Bravata’s office monitors grain shipments and other cargo at the port of New Orleans for hitchhikers. But inevitably, life slips through the cracks, and the question becomes: How do you live with an invasive species?

Whenever a new pest shows up on US shores, USDA biologists are dispatched to the insect’s native home to find its local predators. That can involve hiking the woods of Siberia, or combing Taiwanese jungles. And even when an obvious predator doesn’t present itself, there’s growing interest in using fungi, bacteria, and other pathogens instead.

Entomologists working with the agency are typically looking for a predator that eats the pest and nothing but the pest. The risk is that a disaster like the cane toad could play out again. The cane toad, a Brazilian species that was introduced to Australia in 1935 to chow down on native sugarcane beetles, turned out to be a prolific hunter of all kinds of native fauna—now, the Australian government is researching how it might develop a second biocontrol agent to target the toads. 

But parasitoid wasps, like Tamaraxia, are often a near-perfect tool. For nearly every insect on the planet, there is a parasitoid wasp that has evolved to target it specifically. A 2018 review estimated that there are between 400,000 and one million species of the parasitoid wasps (technically unrelated to more familiar stinging wasps, like yellowjackets), more than any other group of animals on the planet. And once the right species is located, researchers try to press their hyper-specialized diets into service.

The citrus psyllid first arrived in Louisiana in 2008, in a New Orleans backyard. It found a feast. The number of citrus trees in the city, Bravata says, is surprising: backyard satsuma trees, scraggly street trees in the French Quarter, mock oranges filling out front yard landscaping.

At first, there wasn’t a lot the USDA could do. Citrus greening became established in the city, with cases popping up years apart on both sides of the Mississippi River. But the real fear was that the disease would spread south and wipe out the last of the state’s venerable and threatened citrus industry. Psyllids can be killed with pesticides—Louisiana has approved two for home use, and a southern parish sprayed every single acre of orchard by helicopter in 2009—but not every backyard citrus grower wants their plants exposed to the chemicals.

Over the past 20 years or so, entomologists have fanned out across the globe, searching for “natural enemies” of the psyllid. One population of wasps was found in Pakistan, while others came from Vietnam and Taiwan. And in 2011, after years of prodding the wasps to see if they would eat native insects, the USDA gave the thumbs up for their controlled release. They’re raised in greenhouses in Texas and Florida, then sucked up and sent across the country for about $0.22 per female. 

[Related: To help stop voracious tree-killing beetles, send in the Russian wasps]

When a shipment of wasps finally came to Louisiana in 2015, Bravata says he was optimistic, but cautiously so. He’d seen other biocontrol programs fall flat, allowing pests to continue spreading.

The first Louisiana release took place at a mock orange in City Park, in the middle of New Orleans. “You could tap the plant, and you could literally see the psyllids fly off,” Bravata says. The program released every wasp available: 1,000 in all. “When we came back two weeks later, we could not find one psyllid,” he recalls. That’s when he got excited.

The beauty of the Tamarixia is that they find their targets as far as a mile away. But releasing Tamarixia radiata isn’t about achieving a competitive balance between wasps and the psyllids: it’s about harnessing nature to protect a crop. Because the goal is to wipe out the sap-suckers and the citrus greening they spread, the USDA has “saturated” the city with an excess of wasps.

Now, says Bravata, it’s challenging to find psyllids around the city. The program has moved out from the city of New Orleans, and is focusing on the surrounding area.  “We’re trying to find that line: where has it stopped? Because if we put some wasps out there, we can knock it back and keep it from spreading.”

For the foreseeable future, the wasp shipments will continue, along with work on quarantine facilities, and even disease-sniffing dogs—projects that the USDA has put at least $25 million into over the past decade.

Still, in a profession that’s often about holding back a never-ending tide of new insects, the success that comes with making common cause with a predator can feel like a breath of fresh air. “Sometimes it’s frustrating,” Bravata says. “Then you get one success, and you think, all this is worth it.”

The post How hungry, stingless wasps became USDA’s weapon of choice to save southern citrus trees appeared first on Popular Science.

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Stepping into a botanical garden can be an exhilarating experience. The temperature of the outside world vanishes, and suddenly you’re surrounded by giant plants and warm, wet air. But, in the last 40 or so years, some gardens have become more than just somewhere to admire perfectly cultivated flora. Butterfly houses offer visitors a chance to interact with the fluttering beauties, but their presence is about more than inspiring awe.

In a butterfly house—a walk-through greenhouse—the flying, colorful insects float above heads, balance gracefully on plants, and even sometimes land delicately on arms. The experience, some argue, is a means to ease the insect world’s icky-sticky PR problem, and help the public appreciate the essential ecological roles such critters play.

“I think our little butterfly house ventures have become ever more important in reminding people of the symbiosis between nature, between insects, between humans and the whole thing,” says Stephen Fried, who’s built the enclosures across Western Europe. Butterflies and other insects play a myriad of roles in our natural systems—from pollinating plants to knocking out harmful pests.

But, like most experiences with wildlife, butterfly houses have pros and cons. While they inspire and open doors to insect education, some conservationists are concerned about the impact of moving butterflies from all over the world to houses far from their original habitats.

The history of the butterfly house

The first version of the butterfly house was demonstrated in Guernsey, an island in the English Channel, in 1976, when people were invited by businessman David Lowe to walk through a humid greenhouse filled with plants and exotic creatures. This idea was taken to the next level by lepidopterist (the term for a person who studies butterflies and moths) Clive Ferrel in 1980, when he set up the London Butterfly House, the first ever entertainment-focused installation which ran from 1981 to 2007. Ferrel went on to establish butterfly farming facilities in places like Costa Rica and Malaysia throughout the mid-1980s, which, according to a study in Conservation and Society, is what really got the attractions off the ground.

Nowadays, butterfly houses appear worldwide—from Missouri to Austria and even the Singapore airport—often attached to museums and botanical gardens. Some make their home old buildings; the Schmetterlinghaus in Vienna is part of a 200-year-old group of structures and gardens. While larger, newer facilities can house more space for even more butterflies; Stockholm’s Fjarilshuset, for instance, holds more than 700 kinds of butterflies in a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse. 

Despite its size, the butterfly house industry hasn’t set a common goal for itself—the way many zoos now have reframed themselves as stewards of conservation and biodiversity research. Many sites are marketed for entertainment and fun, but some tout their educational value. 

In a world where some species of butterflies are declining due to climate change and habitat destruction, teaching is all the more important. “I’m also very interested in educating people about how fantastic insects are and what they are able to do and all kinds of evolutionary adaptations and so on, and butterfly houses are a prime place to teach people,” says Micheal Boppré, a retired professor at the Forstzoologisches Institut in Freiburg, Germany, and author of the Conservation and Society paper. “But people usually don’t go to a butterfly house because they want to learn something.”

But simply having butterflies around might not be enough.

Where do the butterflies come from?

As the greenhouses have flourished, demand for butterflies has also steadily increased. As of 2010, for instance, two million pupae were imported into the European Union each year, largely from South and Central America, tropical parts of Asia, and several countries in Africa. And while farming can be done sustainably, Boppré says, ranching butterflies always starts with gathering pupae or specimens from the wild. 

Early on, trading and farming (or “ranching”) had a set of standards set through the Insect Farming and Trading Agency (IFTA), which was founded in 1978 to “ranch exceptionally desirable and supposedly endangered butterflies for collectors to promote species and habitat conservation in a sustainable manner through local economic benefit,” writes Boppré. But practices have become muddied over the decades. In a sustainable model, a certain number of the butterflies must be rereleased back into the wild, whereas the others can then be exported. But, there are no real numbers on this. “No breeder tells you how many butterflies they are exporting to a rich country, and no breeder tells you how many insects they take from the field,” Boppré adds. 

Still, small farms and families can make a decent living selling pupae either to places abroad or to larger butterfly farms. Costa Rica, the top butterfly breeding nation in the world, pulls in $2 million each year through farming various species, much of which goes to small farms. Around 100 of the country’s 1,500 native species are transported out.

Some scientists see an opportunity in the photogenic creatures crossing borders. “Butterflies have become universal vehicles in environmental education throughout the world. Through butterfly exhibits, awareness is raised about biodiversity in the tropics,” entomologist Ricardo Murillo told a University of Costa Rica newspaper back in 2019. “The butterfly is charismatic, it is a vehicle that connects nature with human beings around the world.”

Even seeing only the most common species—like Costa Rica’s Morpho butterflies and Ecuador’s Heliconius sapho—has clear benefits. It doesn’t take away from the experience of being in a butterfly house, but it does take away some of the concerns about shipping rare and endangered creatures around the globe. “It’s absolutely not my intention to have bloodsucking butterflies, Rare butterflies, Huge butterflies,” says Fried. “If you come to our place, we’ve just got ordinary run of the mill, everyday butterflies that you would see in tropical and subtropical environments.”

Naturally, there are still risks. Once butterflies arrive in their new homes, genetic problems can arise from inbreeding closely related insects over and over. Another potential problem, notes Boppré, is the risk of introducing an invasive species in transit. A tropical butterfly that escapes the greenhouse in northern Europe isn’t likely to cause an issue, but an accidental deposit of pupae or live butterflies in tropical regions where the trade is common can wreak havoc on the natural environment. The Pieris rapae, for example, was introduced from Europe to Canada and the US in the 1850’s and still is invading local habitats and munching up weedy mustards. 

Why butterfly houses matter

At the end of the day, butterfly houses do give viewers something special: seeing nature in real life, even if you live very far from it. Certain butterfly houses, like the The Magic of Life Butterfly House in Wales tout their resources for butterfly lovers young and old, but others like Vienna’s Schmetterlinghaus are located just a quick walk away from a natural history museum. Taking a look at the resources nearest to you can help decide if a trip to the butterfly house is enough learning for one day, or if popping over to a museum as well can take the pretty experience and turn it into a chance for deeper understanding.

The post If you have a serious fear of bugs, a butterfly house might change your tune appeared first on Popular Science.

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Dengue and Zika viruses manipulate skin-dwelling bacteria to make their mammalian hosts smell more attractive to mosquitoes, a new study indicates. It’s the first hard evidence of viruses using scented subterfuge to accelerate their spread.

Disease experts used a series of experiments to determine that “skeeters” prefer to dine on a small group of mice infected with dengue and Zika. These infections caused the bacterial communities on the animals’ skin to boost production of a molecule called acetophenone, which in turn piqued the interest of mosquitoes. However, giving the rodents a chemical derived from vitamin A–that also happens to be a medication for severe acne–countered the effect after several days.

Treating dengue and Zika patients with the compound could ward off mosquitoes and cut down on transmission of both diseases, the team reported today in the journal Cell.

The team was “very excited to find this interesting phenomenon, and offer a novel strategy to interrupt [the virus] lifecycle, thus controlling [them from] naturally spreading,” Gong Cheng, a microbiologist at Tsinghua University in China and coauthor of the findings, wrote in an email. “Our study may provide some novel [concepts] to inform real-world public health strategies.” 

[Related: Climate change could introduce humans to thousands of new viruses]

Previous studies have reported that mosquitoes are drawn to the scent of people infected with the malaria parasite. Infectious disease scientists have strongly suspected that this is also the case for certain viruses spread by insects and other arthropods. But this is the first time that researchers have actually identified a molecule that can prompt the attraction, Rollie Clem, a virologist at Kansas State University who wasn’t involved in the research, said in an email.

“This is very elegant and important science. Virologists are realizing more and more that we need to take into account not only the direct interactions between viruses and their hosts, but also with the other microorganisms that are present in or on the host,” he explained. “All of the living things that we as humans generally think about, whether they are animals or plants, are not single entities, but are communities of organisms.” 

Zika virus is spread by infected mosquitoes in tropical and subtropical regions. It usually causes mild or no symptoms, but infection during pregnancy can lead to microcephaly and other congenital problems. Dengue also occurs in tropical and subtropical climates and causes an estimated 100 to 400 million infections each year, although most are not severe. 

To understand how the viruses might use odor to aid their own transmission, Cheng and his team first demonstrated that when given the choice between infected and healthy mice, more mosquitoes tried to feed on the sick rodents. The researchers then filtered out chemicals known as volatiles from the air around the rodents to mute the scent of their infections. Without that cue, mosquitoes downwind of the mice went after healthy animals just as often as sick ones.

The researchers next analyzed the chemical composition of the volatiles, and identified 20 compounds that increased or decreased in both dengue- and Zika-infected mice. The team used a technique called electroantennography, which measures electrical signals being sent from an insect’s antennae to the brain, to assess the mosquitoes’ interest in the different chemicals. They saw that acetophenone, a common byproduct from skin bacteria that’s also used as a fragrance and flavoring agent, prompted the strongest physiological response in the blood suckers. 

To test this further, Cheng and his colleagues set up side experiments involving the compound. They found that mosquitoes were more drawn to chambers filled with acetophenone than empty ones. The insects were also significantly more interested in mice with acetophenone sprinkled on their skin, and to humans with acetophenone rubbed on their hands, than those without. Additionally, mosquitoes were eager to feed on human volunteers with filter paper laced with volatiles attached to their palms. (The non-infectious samples were swabbed from the armpits of dengue patients.)

Separately, the researchers discovered that mice infected with dengue and Zika produced 10 times more acetophenone than uninfected ones. Human dengue patients produced more acetophenone than healthy subjects, too, but the exact difference was not measured.

Finally, to confirm the origins of the tip-off scent, the team used an alcohol spray to remove the skin microbiota from infected and uninfected mice. That caused the rodents to hardly produce any acetophenone.

While several types of bacteria were more plentiful on the skin of infected mice than healthy ones, four species of Bacillus bacteria notably registered as “potent producers” of acetophenone, the researchers wrote. When they spread those four species on healthy mice, the rodents drew more mosquitoes compared to others treated with the non-acetophenone-producing bacteria.

One way animals typically keep their skin bacterial populations in check and ward off disease-causing microbes is by secreting antimicrobial proteins. Cheng and his colleagues found evidence that dengue and Zika viruses block production of such proteins. Sick mice had reduced amounts of an antimicrobial protein called RELMα on their fur, as well as reductions in genetic material related to the protein. 

All of this indicates that by suppressing RELMα, the viruses encourage Bacillus bacteria to multiply and pump out more acetophenone, ultimately making the host more appealing to hungry mosquitoes.

Fortunately, Cheng and his team had a potential remedy in mind. Earlier research has indicated that rodents produce more RELMα and are more resistant to skin infections after eating compounds derived from vitamin A. The group fed infected mice a vitamin A derivative known as isotretinoin, which can be found in acne medication. After treatment, the rodents had significantly more RELMα protein and less Bacillus bacteria on their skin. That change did not make them mosquito-proof, however: They attracted a similar number of insects as the healthy mice, but fewer than the untreated infected ones.

[Related: 8 ways to repel insects without bug spray]

The study’s major limitation is that the majority of the results come from experiments in mice, which have different skin physiology than humans, Cheng wrote in his email. It’s possible that dengue and Zika could take advantage of different, unidentified bacteria when they infect humans, so further studies about how the viruses affect the skin microbial community and acetophenone production in humans are needed.

This summer, Cheng’s team will investigate whether administering vitamin A derivatives to dengue patients will shield them from mosquito bites. They also plan to explore whether gene editing can be used to create mosquito populations that cannot smell acetophenone, and therefore, wouldn’t make a beeline for virus-infected people. 

Another question for future research is whether other kinds of insect-borne viruses use similar tricks to turn their hosts into mosquito magnets, Clem said in his email. 

“People shouldn’t conclude, based on this study, that taking vitamin A will make them less attractive to mosquitoes,” he added. “It will only make the infected people look like normal, uninfected people to a mosquito.” In other words, the compound would keep sick people from being bitten more, but it wouldn’t work as a prophylactic for healthy people. 

Still, Clem said, the findings raise hope for limiting dengue and Zika transmission in parts of the world where these viruses are common. With close to half of the world’s population is at risk of being infected, even a tiny breakthrough could have important outcomes.

The post These mosquito-borne viruses have a bizarre way of making you smell sweeter to their minions appeared first on Popular Science.

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The insect world teems with beautiful and dazzling species. Silverfish are not one of them. The insects resemble tiny fishing sinkers, with their teardrop proportions and lead-gray complexions. They dwell in basements and musty rooms, where they nibble on dandruff and book bindings. And unlike most insects, they don’t have wings, instead scuttling through life on their bellies.

But these household scavengers are glimpses of history before mammals or dinosaurs—peeks at the mysterious first insect, which paleontologists believe looked something like a silverfish. That primordial creature couldn’t fly, either. Flight transformed insects, launching them on a trajectory to abundance: Today, across nearly every corner of Earth, some 10 quintillion insects hunt, pollinate, and digest. When insects first existed, though, such vastness wasn’t the case. Wings—and winglessness—can explain why. 

Preserved insects are patchily found across time and space, with fewer than 10,000 species described in the scientific literature. Although fossil ants alone outnumber fossil dinosaurs, the insects tucked in rock and amber are a fraction of the estimated 5.5 million living species. “The trend that we see across the fossil record is that insects are really sparse,” says Jessica Ware, a curator at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, who studies how dragonflies evolved. 

[Related: A close look at amber fossils that have stuck through the ages]

Complicating matters still is that the oldest possible insect fossils are squashed and small, inviting interpretation but no clear answers. Ware says it’s not unusual for separate members of her lab to come to different conclusions about the same body part; what might look like a fossilized insect wing under a microscope to Ware could appear as a leg to another researcher, she says.

The first proposed insects can be traced to the Devonian, the geologic period that began 420 million years ago. In 2004, a pair of entomologists argued that a pair of 400-million-year-old jaws just one-tenth of a millimeter long must have belonged to the oldest known insect. They also claimed the mandible so closely resembled a mayfly’s, that this insect must have had wings, too. But more than a decade later, another entomologist duo re-analyzed the jaws and countered that the specimen doesn’t have insect attributes—it was probably another leggy, grounded invertebrate, a centipede, they said.

The status of this animal has yet to be conclusively resolved. Paleo-entomologist and University of Hawaii research fellow Sandra R. Schachat thinks the idea of a 400-million-year-old flying insect is difficult to support without any fossil wings to point at. A fragment of compound eye uncovered on the other side of the Atlantic is more clearly insect-like, she says.

The remnant was found in Gilboa, New York, amid the fossilized tree trunks of the world’s first known forest. The eyeball, several million years younger than the Scottish jaw, “really, really looks like it should belong to Archaeognatha,” Schachat says, referring to the order biologists use to classify bristletails, wingless relatives of silverfish who are still around today. 

But for tens of millions of years after that eyeball, there’s zilch in the fossil record for insects. Schachat and other entomologists call this the “Hexapod Gap,” which refers to the six legs—“hexa” plus “pod”—of insects and their close cousins. This gap lasted from around 385 million to 325 million years ago, until, on its more recent side, buggy parts are once again sprinkled through the fossil record.

In a paper published in 2018 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Schachat and her colleagues examined several theories why ancient insects had a vanishing phase. Perhaps something about the environment changed, and only a few insects survived in that 60-million-year-long blank space. Or maybe the animals weren’t actually missing—instead, only their fossils were. 

In the end, the team found that environmental causes didn’t seem to explain the missing bugs. They estimated amounts of oxygen in the Devonian air from preserved chemical traces, and determined there should have been a sufficiently healthy atmosphere for ancient insects to breathe. 

What’s more, that era contains fossils from spider-, centipede-, and millipede-like animals, all about the size of insects and made of similar stuff. “We see way more fragments of arachnids and of centipedes than we do of possible insects,” Schachat says. That’s a sign the right kinds of sediment existed to preserve little invertebrates.

Instead, Schachat and her colleagues say this gap reflects that insects were a lot rarer back then. What made the difference in allowing bugs to take over the modern world, they concluded, was wings—specifically, that the Hexapod Gap reflects a period when insects hadn’t yet evolved them. “The fossil record may accurately record the transformative impact of the evolution of insect flight,” they wrote in the study.

Before wings, insects were confined to crawl, like silverfish still do, or were otherwise reliant on the prehistoric equivalent of hitching a ride in luggage. Then insect wings developed—the first fossil evidence of them dates to 324 million years ago, just after the Hexapod Gap ended. And, suddenly, the sky was theirs to inhabit. 

Aside from a few hundred known species of bristletails, silverfish, and their relatives the firebrats, almost all insects have wings—or, in the case of groups like fleas, lost those appendages from flying ancestors in their evolutionary history. “Once winged insects do appear in the fossil record, all of a sudden they are the vast majority of what we see,” Schachat says.

Sporting wings spiced up how insects looked and behaved—changing how they caught food, how they mated, and how they evaded predators. Flying insects could be bumblers or darters, small creatures or large ones. Some species grew to gigantic proportions: 300-million-year-old insects called griffinflies had wingspans that stretched over two feet.

“Having wings allows you to open your niche space,” Ware says. “There was the entirety of the atmosphere that wasn’t being used.” 

Insects beat bats, birds, and pterosaurs to the air by hundreds of millions of years—and thrived there. “There’s very, very good reason to believe that wings facilitated the diversity of insects and the abundance of insects,” Schachat says. They branched out into new species, taking to not only the skies, but also burrowing into the soil and swimming through fresh water as they traveled into new areas and claimed novel ecological roles. By inhabiting so many corners of the planet, insects shaped life.

[Related: The land of lost fireflies is probably a humble New Jersey bog]

For such influential organisms, insects remain brimming with secrets. How they learned to fly in the first place is an open question. There are no discoveries yet of an ancient insect with intermediate wing-like structures, Schachat says. Maybe an early species experimented with soaring; modern arboreal bristletails have been observed gliding toward tree trunks. Perhaps, according to another hypothesis, insect wings began as gills.

Tracing insects to their roots isn’t simply an academic exercise, Ware says—it’s essential. These animals are so key to agriculture and human diets that, if every insect were snapped out of existence, our species would die off in about three months, she points out. 

“Understanding their evolution is understating 400 million years of life on Earth,” Ware explains. “It’s the closest thing we’re going to get to a time machine.” We live among both extremes of insect evolution—the animals that buzz and flutter above us, and the primitive silverfish at our feet, heirs to an earthbound lineage. 

The post When insects got wings, evolution really took off appeared first on Popular Science.

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As entomologists around the world raise the alarm about the loss of insects, one firefly fanatic in the Mid-Atlantic has made an unexpected discovery: four new species of bioluminescent beetles. 

These particular lightning bugs, all in the Photuris genus, may have long escaped detection because no one was really looking for them. Few people spend their free summer nights cataloging minute differences in firefly flashing patterns. But Delaware State University wildlife ecologist Christopher “Kitt” Heckscher treks out a few times during the season, seeking out the perfect wetland wilderness for the hypnotizing insects.

Among firefly experts, Heckscher is something of an outlier, targeting what he believes will be the fireflies’ favored landscapes in hopes of discovering new species. The blinking beetles rely on specific habitats and geographic ranges that offer moisture across all stages of the bug’s life cycle. Land surrounding bodies of water, including bogs and marshes, are critical to their survival. 

As dusk set over one such wetland on a warm June day, Heckscher geared up for his first search of the season. He pulled out a compass to mark the spot where he would enter a wooded area on the edge of the pine barrens in coastal New Jersey. He had first heard of this site years ago from other local insect enthusiasts, who said that this isolated acidic bog within the Millville Wildlife Management Area would be a perfect place to find fireflies. Perhaps he’d even make another unprecedented discovery.

A single greenish-yellow flash signaled from the brush in the peatland. Then another. And another. Several flew by with their light stuck on—a relatively common behavior among the world’s 2,000-plus firefly species that scientists have no clue how to interpret. The darker the sky became, the more the light show picked up, but most of the beetles were out of Heckscher’s net’s reach, including one that glimmered with a trembling pattern he’d never seen before. As he walked back to his car, he wondered if he’d just spotted another undescribed species. He’ll have to return to try to catch it. 

[Related: Macro portraits reveal the glamor and peril of endangered insects]

Heckscher left this new site with six specimens: a single Photinus firefly found closer to the roadway and five fireflies of two different Photuris species, neither of which have ever been found in New Jersey before, as far as Heckscher was aware. In fact, Heckscher himself had first discovered one of those species in similar swamp forests in Delaware, on the other side of the bay.

All five of the firefly species Heckscher has found—the four announced late last year and another he identified nearly a decade ago—rely on particular wetland habitats in Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. He’s not sure why the insects are restricted to these environments, but suspects they “have adapted to the precise chemical and physical environmental parameters” that could include soil pH levels or specific types of vegetation. 

It had been known that some lightning bugs need hyper-specific habitats, such as the Bethany Beach fireflies that dwell only in small freshwater wetlands, known as interdunal swales, along Delaware and Maryland’s coasts. The fireflies Heckscher collected, meanwhile, are found only in acidic peatland floodplains. “That hasn’t been suggested for this particular group before,” he said. But further research is needed to figure out exactly why these species are restricted to certain wetlands, and whether it’s some specific chemical balance in the soil or simply the temperature of the muck.

Photuris fireflies act and look slightly differently from the glowing beetles found in grassy American backyards. But all fireflies depend on some level of moisture or humidity, whether that’s the muck of a New Jersey peatland or the wet leaf litter in a neighbor’s backyard. 

[Related: Firefly tourism has a surprising dark side]

“You don’t even know what you’re protecting when you leave your leaves down,” says Lori Ann Burd with the Center for Biological Diversity, a proponent for people not raking their yards in the fall. “The amount we don’t know is truly remarkable,” she adds, and species can “blink out in the time it takes for us to learn everything.”

The habitats where Heckscher has found new species are of high ecological quality, meaning the wetlands are not impacted by pollution, artificial light, encroaching development, or other damaging human activities such as damming.

As climate change threatens to bring drier or wetter conditions to these wetlands, depending on the future impacts, it is also expected to change air, water, and land temperatures. Since experts still don’t know what conditions influence firefly survival success the most, Heckscher makes sure to collect temperature data, including that of the spongy soil in case it might be relevant to future studies. “If we come back in 20 years and the temperature is like 82 [degrees Fahrenheit] in the peat and the fireflies are gone, well, maybe that’s one of the things that triggered the extinction,” he said during the pine barrens hunt.

As to what exactly these fireflies are looking for in these habitats, that may all depend on the specific species’ needs, Hecksher explained. 

These mysteries, and the fact that he now knows undiscovered species can still exist in even the most developed American states, are what got Heckscher hooked on this research in the first place, back in the late 1990s. 

“A lot of research to date has really focused on their bioluminescence and courtship and signaling and that flashy behavioral stuff that’s really exciting,” says Candace Fallon, a senior conservation biologist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Few firefly experts are thoroughly identifying species and the details of their local habitats, she adds, as Heckscher is. 

“It’s awesome because we have so much more information about fireflies in that area than others,” Fallon says. “It also makes me nervous because if we had someone like Kitt in other regions, would there be more threatened species because we knew more?”

The charismatic beetles spend most of their lives secretly, living for years as little-studied larvae within moist soil or organic litter. Their time spent flying and blinking is, on average, just a matter of weeks.

But because their bioluminescence is the main draw for scientific study—and, most importantly for working researchers, available funding—the lesser-known larval forms and basic life history are woefully understudied. For many species of fireflies, there’s no record of what they look like, what they do, where they live, or even what they eat. That’s why Heckscher continues searching, even though he doesn’t have any dedicated money for these efforts.

“It’s a mission that’s never gone away, one that I have to figure out,” he said on that firefly-filled night in June. “Look at how much money we’re putting into exploring Mars, searching for life on Mars, when we don’t even know what the heck is in a New Jersey bog.”

The post The land of lost fireflies is probably a humble New Jersey bog appeared first on Popular Science.

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The Lord Howe Island stick insect might look more lobster than bug. Nicknamed the “land lobster,” this critter can grow up to seven inches long and gleams like polished obsidian among tree trunks and twigs, blending into the forest environment. For decades, Lord Howe Island, a small volcanic isle just northeast of Sydney, Australia, was the only known home of the species, Dryococelus australis. But in 1918, a shipwreck introduced predatory black rats that decimated the stick bug and many other native animals. Locals and biologists thought the insect was extinct until 2001, when a tiny population was discovered on a small nearby spired island, Ball’s Pyramid. Zoo and museum scientists are breeding the insects to restore this once-lost species and soon return it back to the wild—their original home on Lord Howe Island. 

The Lord Howe Island stick insect represents one of 40 species brought to life in a new macrophotography exhibit, Extinct and Endangered: Insects in Peril, by photographer Levon Biss at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The large format photos not only reveal the insects’ diverse textures and minute hairs in vivid detail—they also shed light on these often overlooked creatures whose existence is threatened by human-induced climate change and other ongoing pressures. 

“Right now, we’re just in the process of trying to quantify how much insects are in trouble,” says David Grimaldi, the museum’s invertebrate zoologist who curated the exhibit, in a video. “We have to rely on entomologists and other biologists to go out into the field and monitor insects, but we shouldn’t wait for the counts. We should start protecting natural areas.”

[Related: Do we still need to save the bees?]

Insects make up 80 percent of animal life on Earth, shaping a significant slice of our ecosystem from pollinating crops to decomposing waste. In 2017, a study in PLOS One revealed that more than 75 percent of the total biomass of flying insects in protected nature reserves in Germany had been lost over 27 years—scratching just the surface of an alarming trend of species diversity loss and insect population decline.

“Without hyperbole we’re in a very serious conundrum,” says Jessica Ware, entomologist and associate curator in invertebrate zoology at the museum, in AMNH’s press video. “Insects have undergone mass extinctions in the past, but right now the mass extinction that we’re seeing, that we’re witnessing, seems to be the largest that’s ever been recorded.”

With the power of macrophotography, Biss hopes that the insect portraits of Extinct and Endangered: Insects in Peril will be an eye-opening look at insects that showcases both their beauty and their value. These tiny creatures, Biss says in the video, go underappreciated despite being so important to humans and the planet.

“We need to understand that they’re important and we can’t just ignore them because they’re hard to see,” Biss says. “Hopefully people will walk away with an appreciation of them and they’ll marvel in them, and realize that they’re too beautiful to be lost, they’re too important to be lost.”

Images and specimen captions from Endangered: Insects in Peril are provided by AMNH.

The sabertooth longhorn beetle, Macrodontia cervicornis, lives in the Amazon River basin and is among the longest beetles in the world. Habitat loss has contributed to its vulnerable status. The practice of collecting and selling these beetles—a single specimen can go for thousands of dollars—is another cause of their decline.

Dragonflies may be the most acrobatic fliers in the insect world, and stygian shadowdragons are no exception. Late in the twilight, they soar high above dark waters, swooping down to capture mosquitoes and other insect prey. Living near lakes and rivers in the eastern US and Canada, stygian shadowdragons, Neurocordulia yamaskanensis, start out life in the water. Females lay their eggs and larvae develop there, breathing through internal gills.

[Related: Inflatable tentacles and silk hats: See how caterpillars trick predators to survive]

For now, their numbers appear stable in some parts of their range, but in other areas they have completely disappeared. In coming years, climate change could have many detrimental effects on remaining populations. Much remains to be learned about how dragonfly larvae manage in northeastern rivers and lakes, and if those waters warm dramatically, the larvae may not be able to survive. Depending on how the waters are affected by heat, drought and other factors such as water pollution, researchers have estimated that more than 50 percent of this dragonfly species’ preferred river habitat could be lost as the climate shifts.

The raspa silkmoth, Sphingicampa raspa, lives in hot, arid areas of Arizona, West Texas, and in Mexico, and depends on the “monsoon” season as part of its life cycle. If these reliable yearly rainstorms are affected by climate change, it could imperil these and other southwestern moths and butterflies.

This colorful tiger beetle may look flashy, but in the pink sand dunes of its Utah habitat, its cream and green hues actually help the animal blend in. The cream forewings also help these beetles handle desert heat, by reflecting rather than absorbing sunlight. In the dunes, these tiger beetles are predators—note the insect’s curving mandibles, used to capture ants, flies, and other small prey.

The beetles’ tiny range lies on public lands, and researchers and wildlife officials there have closely monitored them for years. In low-rainfall years they have found the beetle population falls—a decline that may only become steeper with climate change. A different type of risk comes from people driving off-road vehicles over the dunes. To prevent the larvae in their burrows from being crushed, officials have set aside some conservation areas where the vehicles are now prohibited.

Every 17 years when the weather warms, millions of periodical cicadas (Magicicada septendecim) have a mass emergence, digging themselves out of the soil where they’ve been growing, climbing up trees, and splitting out of their skins into winged adults. But land clearing and development may destroy the underground nymphs before they can emerge and reproduce. And pesticides applied to lawns, golf courses, and parks seep into the ground where the nymphs feed.

The post Macro portraits reveal the glamor and peril of endangered insects appeared first on Popular Science.

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Best overall		Thermacell E55 Rechargeable Mosquito Repeller		SEE IT	No application is required for this wide-range tabletop bug repellent, which offers over five hours of protection with each charge.
Best for babies		Cutter Family Mosquito Wipes		SEE IT	These towelettes make putting on bug repellent quick and easy and give parents greater application control for small kids that want more playtime.
Best budget		OFF! Deep Woods Insect & Mosquito Repellent		SEE IT	This aerosol spray doesn’t feel greasy or oily upon application.

Whether we’re in the middle of nature or in the comfort of our own homes, biting bugs can wreak havoc on humans and pets, so effective insect repellant is the first defense. It’s a proactive way to keep the rude critters away before these scores of Davids leave their mark on our sensitive Goliath skin … or do even more serious damage. But it can be overwhelming to browse through rows of sprays, lotions, wipes, bracelets, and even electronic bug control options. We’re here to help you find the best insect repellents that really, genuinely work.

• Best overall: Thermacell E55 Rechargeable Mosquito Repeller
• Best picaridin: Sawyer Products 20% Picaridin Insect Repellent
• Best for babies: Cutter Mosquito Wipes
• Best premium: Thermacell LIV Smart Mosquito Repellent System
• Best for dogs: Wondercide Flea, Tick, and Mosquito Spray
• Best budget: OFF! Deep Woods Insect & Mosquito Repellent

How we chose the best insect repellents

What do solar generators, tents, and coolers have in common? They’re all things you enjoy outdoors—or at least you should enjoy outdoors, insect adversaries allowing. That’s why we’d argue that effective repellent is one of the most important things you can pack on a camping trip—without it, you’d be itchy, uncomfortable, and putting yourself at risk of getting a bug from a bug. We turned to reviews, recommendations, and user testing to find the best insect repellents.

What to consider when buying the best insect repellents

So how do you go about choosing the best insect repellent your money can buy? There’s a wide variety, which vary in effectiveness, application style, and whether their effects are scientifically proven. (Mosquito repellent bracelets, for example, are an option but experts are not unanimously sold on their effectiveness.) 

Before settling on any product, it’s important to read the label and look for one of three key ingredients: DEET, oil of lemon eucalyptus, and picaridin. Some experts are less than enthusiastic about natural insect repellents, like citronella, because their active ingredients aren’t as effective. That doesn’t make them useless, but they’re not ideal as a primary protector; they’re best used in tandem with the stronger stuff. Also, beware of products that combine sunscreen and bug repellent. Since sunscreen has to be reapplied every few hours, you’ll risk overexposing yourself to the chemicals in repellent.

When applying insect control, be sure you cover only exposed body parts, using only the recommended dose. Keep it away from cuts and bruises and, when using it on your face, rub it in using your hands and avoid touching your eyes, mouth, and ears. At the end of the day, wash it off using soap and water, and if you’ve sprayed it onto your clothing, keep them in a separate wash pile. The best insect repellent is also often some pretty harsh stuff: it can damage leather, vinyl, and some synthetics, so proceed with caution when applying bug spray directly to fabric.

DEET vs. picaridin

DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide, in case you needed to know for a Jeopardy! question or bar trivia) is the most widely used active ingredient in insect repellent, and it offers a strong defense against mosquitoes, ticks, and some flies. The amount used in most products ranges between 10 percent and 100 percent, with a protection time of two hours to 10. The level of protection maxes out at a concentration of 30 percent, with higher levels only increasing the protection time. Control-release DEET can keep working for up to 12 hours.

DEET, which was developed by the United States Army during the 1940s, is perfectly safe to use if you follow the instructions that come with it. It’s considered the old faithful of the best insect repellent, but you have to be sure to handle it carefully and keep it away from your sunglasses and trekking pole grips since it doesn’t always mix well with plastics. It can also cause some temporary numbness in your lips if it comes into contact with them, so be careful when applying.

Picaridin is the synthetic version of a repellent found in pepper plants, and it’s often mentioned alongside DEET as a prime active ingredient in insect repellent. The maximum protection of picaridin is reached at 20 percent concentration, with spray and lotion forms providing different lengths of protection. In insect repellent spray, it can keep you covered against mosquitoes and ticks for 12 hours and flies for eight. In lotion form, it can protect you from mosquitoes and ticks for 14 hours and flies for eight.

Picaridin has a few advantages over the older competitor, DEET. When dealing with mosquitoes and ticks, picaridin is similarly effective as DEET, and it’s actually a bit more effective on flies. Picaridin also has less of an odor, and when used in the best insect repellent, it doesn’t do any damage to plastics and other synthetics.

Can kids use insect repellent?

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, insect repellent used on children should not contain any more than a 30 percent concentration of DEET, and insect repellent shouldn’t be used at all on babies younger than two months. Picaridin is also generally safe to use on children, though it can irritate their eyes and skin. To avoid exposing kids to these fairly serious chemicals, you might want to consider an alternative like essential oil insect repellent, but keep in mind that repellents with plant oils as a main active ingredient offer fewer hours of protection than DEET and picaridin products.

To further protect babies from the effects of bugs outdoors, cover their strollers with netting. When applying the best insect repellent to children, adults should follow the same safety guidelines when applying it to themselves.

How do I protect my pets from insects?

Collars, pills, chewables, and drops provide pets with varying levels of pest protection. DEET can be toxic to dogs, especially in large quantities, so it’s best to avoid using DEET insect repellent on dogs, or even on yourself if you’re hanging out with a dog. (They do like to lick skin, remember.) Natural bug repellent is a safer option, but some essential oils are harmful to dogs, so it’s a good idea to check with your veterinarian before using any of them.

The safe list for dogs generally includes citrus, soybean oil, and geranium oil, and you can apply those to their coat or collar. Another option is filling your yard with plants like basil, catnip, lavender, lemon balm, peppermint, and rosemary as a mosquito repellent for dogs. But dog owners beware: Plants such as geranium, citronella, and garlic can be dangerous if eaten by dogs, and if you have a cat, essential oils can be especially toxic, causing an upset stomach and damage to the liver and central nervous system.

How much will you have to pay for bug protection?

The best insect repellent won’t set you back very much—if it’s designed for humans. Solid options can be found for under $10. But specially formulated bug control for pets tends to be a bit more expensive; it can even approach the $100 range. Home systems can also get pricey, and can go for around $600-$700 dollars.

The best insect repellents: Reviews & Recommendations

The best insect repellents will help you reduce your calamine lotion and anti-itch cream use. Here are the ones we found:

Best overall: Thermacell E55 Rechargeable Mosquito Repeller

Thermacell

SEE IT

Why it made the cut: No application is required for this wide-range tabletop bug repellent.

Specs

• Volume: .33 fluid ounces
• Form: Liquid
• Scent: No
• Active ingredient: Metofluthrin

Pros

• No application
• Long-range coverage
• Rechargeable

Cons

• Reviews say refills tend to deplete quickly

This rechargeable mosquito repeller from Thermacell gives you a 20-foot protection zone. Its refills are long-lasting (from 12 to 40 hours), and the spray-free design makes for a more comfortable gathering. One charge gets you 5.5 hours of continuous mosquito protection. The metofluthrin-based repellent is scent-free and has been independently tested and EPA-reviewed for safety. Additionally, it’s covered by a two-year warranty that can be extended an extra year with item registration.

Best picaridin: Sawyer Products 20% Picaridin Insect Repellent

Sawyer Products

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Why it made the cut: Get 14 hours of protection against bugs with this non-greasy, non-scented lotion bug repellent.

Specs

• Volume: 4 fluid ounces
• Form: Lotion
• Scent: No
• Active ingredient: Picaridin

Pros

• Long-lasting
• Scent-free
• Repels ticks

Cons

• Spray not as effective as lotion

This bug repellent is completely fragrance-free and offers a stronger defense against biting flies than most DEET products. The lotion offers longer-lasting protection on skin, while the pump spray lingers longer on clothing. The lotion protects from mosquitos for up to 14 hours and provides eight hours of protection against flies and gnats. The spray provides 12 hours of protection against mosquitos and the same level of protection against flies and gnats. It is non-greasy and dries quickly. Additionally, it won’t damage synthetic coatings, and you can use the spray on clothing, backpacks, and more.

Best for babies: Cutter Mosquito Wipes

Cutter

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Why it made the cut: These wipes make putting on bug repellent quick and easy for more playtime.

Specs

• Volume: N/A
• Form: Wipes
• Scent: Yes
• Active ingredient: DEET

Pros

• Non-greasy
• Clean scent
• Easy-to-use

Cons

• Only 15 wipes

These wipes use a 7.15 percent DEET-based formula to keep mosquitoes away. They’ve got a cooling, clean scent, and don’t feel sticky, greasy, or oily on the skin. You can use them on your face, ears, and neck, which usually go untreated. A resealable packet keeps them moist and allows you to take them on the go. They repel against mosquitoes, deer ticks, gnats, biting flies, fleas, and chiggers. You can use it on children two months and older. And, DEET will not damage nylon, cotton, or wool, but it can damage some synthetic fabrics. You’ll have to buy multiple packages for heavy use since each pack only contains 15 wipes.

Best premium: Thermacell LIV Smart Mosquito Repellent System

Thermacell

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Why it made the cut: Get on-demand protection season after season with this yard system.

Specs

• Volume: N/A
• Form: Liquid
• Scent: No
• Active ingredient: Metofluthrin

Pros

• Wide coverage
• Customizable placement
• Effective

Cons

• Expensive

Protect your entire backyard from mosquitos this summer with the LIV Smart Mosquito Repellent System. You can choose between three, four, or five repellers to place around your property lines, and each kit includes a smart hub, mounts, 24-foot cables, and ground stakes. The amount you receive of each depends on the size of the kit you purchase. Each repellent can last for 40 hours and uses scent-free, heat-activated metofluthrin as its active ingredient. The Smart Hub connects multiple repellers and can be controlled using the LIV+ app. The kits are expensive to purchase (it ranges from $699-$899) and the refills are pricey too—as a six-pack is $120. However, if you want to eradicate bugs from your outdoor entertainment spaces, it might be a worthy investment.

Best for dogs: Wondercide Flea, Tick, and Mosquito Spray

Wondercide

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Why it made the cut: This plant-based insect repellent smells great and keeps your pooch pest-free.

Specs

• Volume: 4 fluid ounces; 16 fluid ounces; 32 fluid ounces, 1 gallon
• Form: Spray
• Scent: Yes: Lemongrass; peppermint; rosemary; cedarwood
• Active ingredient: Essential oils

Pros

• Not harmful to your pet
• Wide variety of sizes
• Plant-based

Cons

• The scent might irritate skin

This flea and tick control is so much more than an insect killer. It uses pet-safe plant-based essential oils to combat pests at all stages of their life cycle. As an added bonus, it won’t harm birds, bees, and butterflies that eat insects that have been treated with the product. You can use it on your pooch, or you can use it on yourself. If your pet has sensitive skin—especially cats—the scent might irritate your pet. Bathe your pet in soap and discontinue use if your pet experiences a negative reaction.

Best budget: OFF! Deep Woods Insect & Mosquito Repellent

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Why it made the cut: This long-lasting, non-greasy insect repellent comes in a two-pack for more bang for your buck.

Specs

• Volume: 4 fluid ounces
• Form: Aerosol
• Scent: Lemon
• Active ingredient: DEET

Pros

• High DEET concentration
• Non-greasy feel
• Scent not overpowering

Cons

• Propellant can leave a white residue on clothes

This DEET OFF insect repellent approaches the maximum level of protection with a concentration of 25 percent, and it’s especially effective at repelling deadly and/or annoying mosquitoes, along with ticks, biting flies, gnats, and chiggers for long periods of time. Its powder-dry insect-repelling formula protects without feeling oily or greasy, and its lemon scent is light and pleasant. Use caution when spraying on or near fabrics, as its included propellant can leave a white residue. It can be washed off easily, however.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best insect repellents

The best insect repellent is likely to include one of the two power ingredients, those being DEET and picaridin. It doesn’t take a high concentration of either to maximize bug control, but the higher the concentration, the longer you’ll be protected. Natural insect repellent is an alternative to these, but they’re not always as effective. Since DEET poses a danger to dogs, natural bug repellents are a better pet option, but you have to be careful to stay away from toxic plants and essential oils that might threaten their health.

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This article was originally featured on Field & Stream.

Maine is moose country. Outside of Alaska, it has the country’s largest population of the world’s largest cervid. But the Pine Tree State’s iconic animal is under threat from a far smaller creature. Since winter, in a corner of the state with the highest concentration of moose, encompassing parts of Piscataquis and Somerset counties, 86 percent of calves tracked by scientists have died. The culprit in most cases: winter ticks.

Lee Kantar, the lead moose biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, told Maine Public Radio, “You look at one data sheet after another of what we found in the woods on these moose and it’s the same profile every time: it is winter tick.” Sixty of 70 calves collared in the fall did not survive their first year.

Winter ticks, or moose ticks, which scientists first documented in Maine in the 1930s, prey mostly on moose. In autumn, their larvae form large interlocking clusters on forest vegetation. As moose wander the woods far and wide during the fall breeding season, the clusters cling to them. The arachnids feed on their hosts throughout the winter, dropping off in the spring to lay their eggs. The eggs hatch in the summer and the cycle begins again. 

Winter, though, has traditionally limited the damage that winter ticks inflict on moose. Early fall snow or cold snaps kill many of the larvae before they find a host. Late spring snow can also kill many eggs. Climate change, however, has been a boon for the ticks—and a bane for the moose. 

Alexej Siren, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vermont who works with Kanter, said: “The winters have shortened and the falls are longer, which means longer time for those ticks to quest and actively seek their host, which means (moose) have accumulated much more on them.”

Some moose end up with infestations of over 100,000 ticks. A century ago, Maine’s moose population had dwindled, mostly due to overhunting, to around 2,000. But conservation efforts since then have restored the official state animal’s number to over 70,000. Maine carefully manages its moose, using helicopters to locate and collar them, and establishing different hunting regulations in 21 distinct districts. The state’s moose population remains stable, but this year’s calf die-off, which is the worst recorded so far, coupled with worsening reproduction rates, is an alarming trend.

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AMBER IS a portal to the past. The pieces often capture insects and other tiny organisms in stained-glass mausoleums, providing vivid glimpses of flora and fauna that lived more than 100 million years ago. Each reveals subtle clues about how life on Earth evolved—and where it might be headed. “Because it preserves with such intricacy, you can make detailed comparisons with living species,” says entomologist David Grimaldi, who curates the incredibly diverse amber collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “There’s nothing like it.”

Trees create these time capsules when injuries trigger a rush of wound-sealing resin. The compound seeps slowly over bark, enveloping buggy bystanders in an effective glue trap. Most specimens form near lakes and rivers, where moist ground or water protects them as they congeal. Over many millennia, layers of sand and clay bury and fossilize them, forever capturing one small moment in history.

Most Cretaceous earwigs were strong enough to escape the sticky snare of tropical conifers, making these specimens an unusual discovery. Imprints like this confirm that descendants of the ancient scavengers haven’t changed much over millions of years.

This jagged jewel from Lebanon is approximately 120 million years old, and fossils from this region contain some of the oldest insect records available, Grimaldi says. The rough chunk is quite brittle, so his team coated it with synthetic resin to fill in its myriad cracks.

At 500 years old, this specimen from Colombia is young amber, or a copal. The resin oozed from a flowering tree called Hymenaea courbaril found throughout the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. Though relatively new, copals can highlight subtle environmental changes or ecosystem shifts over recent centuries.

Amber has a way of illuminating critter behaviors, both ordinary and unusual. A pair of mating leafhoppers were caught in the act by a resin flow that created this piece of Dominican amber 17 million years ago.

As resin trickles toward the ground, it often collects bark fragments and other debris. Microscopic examination of this prehistoric Dominican sample reveals that the structure of the wood within matches that of modern Hymenaea trees.

This centipede met its doom on an extinct Hymenaea tree in Mexico some 17 million years ago. Miners digging in the mountains of Chiapas often find such stones, which vary in color from yellow to deep red, among veins of lignite and clay.

Paleontologists and botanists identify the tree that produced an amber by comparing chemical compounds in the sample to those of modern species. In the rare instances that the specimen includes plant remains like this glazed flower, believed to be from Hymenaea protera, the results are easier to confirm.

The concentric rivulets in this chunk of Dominican amber formed when one flow ran over another containing some unsuspecting Proplebeia bees. Workplace casualties are an occupational hazard for these creatures, which harvest the gummy secretion to build nests.

The rich diversity of flora and fauna in Burmese amber has revealed a lot about the early evolution of social insects. Take, for example, this pair of worker ants from the extinct genus Gerontoformica. Closely related species have even been caught fighting one another.

This story originally appeared in the Messy issue of Popular Science. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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THE IDEA THAT you swallow eight arachnids each night is a load of malarkey popularized by a list of random “facts” that went viral in the early days of the internet. Still, there is a reason this stomach-churning urban legend persists: Humans unknowingly gulp down all manner of disgusting detritus each day, from random animal parts during lunch to their own pearly whites while sleeping. You’re usually none the worse for ingesting this stuff—as long as you don’t think too much about how nasty it is. Here are some of the grossest, and strangest, things that go down your gullet without your knowing it.

1 / INSECTS

Countless arthropods swarm your sustenance, leaving traces as it moves from field to market. The Food and Drug Administration says everything from macaroni to wine can contain dozens, even hundreds, of bug bits before regulators deem it contaminated.

2 / RODENT FILTH

Vermin scurrying around food-processing sites introduce fur and other, uh, leavings to myriad products. The FDA allows one rat hair for every 100 grams of peanut butter, to offer just one example. That means there could be as many as four in a 16-ounce jar.

3 / MOLD

It’s inevitable that some fruits, veggies, and other goods sprout fungus on their way from farm to table. Depending upon the mycelium and federal standard, Uncle Sam lets around 3 percent of canned peaches and 5 percent of spices like cinnamon be moldy.

4 / DENTURES

You’d think folks would notice if they downed a tooth, but no: Studies of people hospitalized for accidental ingestions found that dentures accounted for between 4 and 18 percent of unintentional swallows, many of which occurred while dozing off.

 5 / DIRT

Young children will put almost anything in their mouths. A series of stool-sample surveys in the 1990s determined that the average child digests as much as 500 milligrams of soil—about a thimbleful—daily. That works out to a few ounces per year.

This story originally ran in the Spring 2022 Messy issue of PopSci. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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The first open-air study that released genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys has just concluded. The experiment was designed to show whether these modified bugs could help suppress disease-spreading mosquito populations.

In this first-of-its-kind study, the biotech firm Oxitec placed genetically modified mosquito eggs on private properties in the Florida island chain. These mosquitoes are engineered to be male, non-biting, and only capable of producing male offspring. The eggs were surrounded by capture sites designed to snag adult mosquitoes and traps to collect the eggs of future mosquito generations. Researchers wanted to see whether the Oxitec mosquitoes would successfully mate with local insects—if they did, and only produced male non-biting offspring, that would reduce the number of wild mosquitoes. 

The trial was a success, according to a company announcement earlier this month—the data will be further analyzed and published at a later date. Oxitec scientists found that when modified mosquitoes matured to adulthood, their flight and exploration behavior matched the abilities of wild mosquitoes. The insects also successfully mated with native female mosquitoes, which in turn laid eggs in the Oxitec traps. Researchers collected more than 22,000 eggs to watch them hatch in a lab. Oxitec confirmed that all of these eggs hatched males—though the gene that killed female eggs only lasted for about three mosquito generations.

The genetically modified mosquitoes are the species Aedes aegypti. In the wild, A. aegypti are invasive and carry diseases such as Zika, dengue, and yellow fever, among others. While the ultimate goal for these mosquitoes is to quash the spread of disease, the current trials do not have any public health conclusions—the studies were not designed to test for disease transmission to humans. To do that, Oxitec would have to run massive controlled trials that would be difficult and expensive.

“They’re not going to be able to do a trial to show that it actually has a public-health impact,” Thomas Scott, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis, told Nature. “There’s not enough Aedes-transmitted viral infection” in the continental United States to do that kind of study, he added. Plus, disease transmission can happen even with very low population levels of A. aegypti, so reducing the mosquito population with Oxitec mosquitoes won’t guarantee disease suppression anyway, Scott said. “It’s just not that simple.” 

[Related: Evolution made mosquitos into stealthy, sensitive vampires]

These trials in the Florida Keys are not without controversy. Until this study, no genetically engineered mosquitoes had been tested in the open air in the US, and many residents of the Florida Keys had reservations about using their neighborhoods as testing grounds. One group tallied a list of purported wrongdoings by Oxitec in previous experiments, claiming the company failed to monitor disease in the countries where it has released mosquitoes, had not revealed the price of its technology, and it had overstated the success of other trials.

“I cannot trust this company. I cannot trust this technology,” Mara Daly, a resident of Key Largo who says she’s been following Oxitec’s plans for nine years, told Undark in 2021. She and other residents were concerned about how the mosquitoes would affect their local ecosystem. “This is not a traditional pesticide. This is not a chemical that you can trace,” Daly added. “This is something completely different, new emerging technology and we need better regulation.”

Scientists have been working on genetically modifying insects to mitigate disease transmission for more than a decade. Mosquitoes have been the primary target, but researchers have also looked into modifying ticks to curb diseases like Lyme.  

Whether Oxitec’s mosquitoes can make a difference for public health remains to be seen, but the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, a local abatement group, supports Oxitec’s trials. “We’ve dealt with multiple disease outbreaks, so we’ve got to do everything we can to protect our people down here and the economy,” Andrea Leal, executive director of FKMCD, told Nature. That means trying new things, she said. “We’re looking at any tool that could be helpful.”

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Around 15 years ago, a slogan began to appear on bumper stickers, license plate holders, and tote bags: Save the bees. The sense that these pollinators—and the food system they support—were in critical condition was all-pervasive. In 2014, an online poll in the UK found that respondents ranked the decline of bees as a more serious environmental threat than climate change.

But do we still need to save the bees?

The answer is complicated: The public began worrying about bees at a time when western honeybees were dying in alarming numbers from a mysterious syndrome, colony collapse disorder. Now, their populations are much more stable. However, wild bees, which play an entirely different role in our food system and environment, are still in trouble. 

Colony collapse

The recent intense focus on honeybee health began after the fall of 2006, when beekeepers from Pennsylvania began to notice that their hives were dying off over winter. “Those were colonies that had, a couple weeks earlier, looked healthy, full of strong bees,” says Nathalie Steinhauer, science coordinator of the Bee Informed Partnership, a national nonprofit that monitors honeybee populations. “And they came back and the apiary was basically just full of empty hives.” What made the event especially mysterious was that there was no discernible cause. There were no dead bees around to suggest starvation, nor traces of parasitic mites. The bees had simply vanished.

Over the winter, other beekeepers experienced the same die-offs, losing anywhere from a third to more than half of their hives. “It really acted like an epidemic,” says Steinhauer. Affected hives showed no obvious signs of stress, and scavengers strangely avoided the abandoned honey. The cluster of symptoms came to be known as colony collapse disorder, or CCD. The disorder was alarming enough that it led to a wave of research on honeybee health, including the monitoring now led by the Bee Informed Partnership.

But the last verified case of CCD occurred in 2008. Entomologists still don’t know exactly what caused this bee epidemic, but the most likely explanation is that exposure to pesticides, fungicides, and parasites made hives more vulnerable to some kind of pathogen—like a virus. “[The disorder] appears to have existed,” says Geoff Williams, president of the Bee Informed Partnership, and a bee pathologist at Auburn University. “But it just for whatever reason didn’t persist.”

Die-offs, but stability

So why is there a lingering sense that bees are still in trouble? Well, says Williams, honeybee mortality is still high—but not because of colony collapse. The term has been misapplied in the years since. CCD was a galvanizing force for bee conservation within the industry, and quickly captured public attention. Both beekeepers and the media have used the term to describe unrelated die-offs.

Bee hives can naturally collapse during the stress of winter. Entomologists don’t know what the baseline rate of collapse looked like before the 2006 CCD outbreak, because national counts only began in 2007. But over the last 15 years of data, there are no obvious trends. “On average, winter loss hovers around 30 percent,” Steinhauer says.

“Some years are worse, some are slightly better,” she says. “Overall, it’s higher than what beekeepers tell us is acceptable.”

Williams says it’s likely that honeybee losses each winter did increase over the last 20 or 30 years, before baseline data was gathered.

In the late 1980s, a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor arrived in the US. As it spread, Varroa put extra strain on hives—Williams says it’s hard to get exact numbers, but that old-time beekeepers say that they remember times when losses were about three times lower, around 10 or 15 percent. The damage from mites are compounded by the continuing spread of monocrop agriculture. Soybean farmers have taken over regions of the northern prairie, where honeybees often summer—which has reduced the variety of the bee’s diet, likely making them more vulnerable to illness. And the proliferation of neonicotinoid pesticides, which are particularly toxic to bees, adds even more stress.

[Related: Want to help the bees? Keep these out of your garden.]

Despite of winter losses, overall honeybee populations in the US have remained stable over the last 15 years, and have even grown globally. 

The key to understanding how populations can be stable through losses is to recognize that honeybees are a domestic species. They’re more like cattle than butterflies. Every year, American farmers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rent honeybee hives to pollinate almonds, blueberries, cherries, and more. To get there, the hives travel across the country on the back of semi-trucks, usually following the growing season from Florida to California.

Losing hives can devastate a beekeeper (“picture 30 or 40 percent of cows or chicken dying every winter,” Williams says) but they can be regenerated.

Honeybee hives reproduce by fission, a lot like the way a cell divides. In the spring, a healthy queen can fly away with half of the workers to form a new hive, leaving queen-eggs behind to pick up the baton in the original colony. A beekeeper can start this process manually, but it takes time, cutting into the bottom line.

So the pressures on honeybees have real stakes for the livelihoods of beekeepers, and possibly the food system more broadly. In theory, a bad year could knock out enough honeybees to screw up fruit harvests across the country. But honeybees aren’t at risk of dying off and leaving entire ecosystems without pollination.

Wild bees

Western honeybees are just one of hundreds of bee species in North America. Threats to domestic honeybees also hit wild bees, which don’t have farmers nursing them back to health.

And this is where the slogan “save the bees” becomes confusing. While honeybee populations are currently stable, wild bees and other pollinators, including flies and moths, are in immediate trouble. The loss of these pollinators have ramifications for both agriculture and ecosystems.

Of the 46 species of bumblebees in North America, more than a quarter are in decline or threatened, says Jess Tyler, who works on pollinator conservation and science with the Center for Biological Diversity. “If bumblebees are representative of bees at large, that could be hundreds that are in decline, potentially,” he says. The data on wild bees is fairly sparse in comparison to honeybees, but plenty of once-common species, like the rusty-patched bumblebee, have been reduced to tiny remnant populations.

Both wild bees and domestic honeybees are critical in our food supply—one study estimated that wild pollinators provide roughly the same crop value as domestic honeybees. Honeybees aren’t especially efficient pollinators, especially for North American crops like tomato and sunflower. They’re used because they’re portable, easy to breed, and convenient for farmers who need pollination on a schedule. (Over the last 50 years, apiarists have tried to get the best of both worlds by domesticating new species, like the eastern bumblebee and the solitary blue orchard mason bee.) The benefits of wild bees go beyond agriculture: They also pollinate native plants, creating the backbone for diverse, non-agricultural landscapes. 

Wild and domestic bees require different kinds of support. And wild bees might need to be protected from domestic honeybees. Honeybee hives, for instance, can drive other bee species off of flowers after they’re done pollinating a crop. Even when they don’t compete, they can pass along diseases. “Honeybees are very messy,” says Tyler. “They’ll poop on flowers, and if another bee visits the same flower it can pick up a virus.” 

As a 2018 commentary in Science pointed out, some efforts to shore up honeybee populations that put hives in wildland far from crops might have actually hurt other types of bees.

[Related: City gardens are abuzz with imperiled native bees.]

According to another provocative commentary in the Journal of Insect Science earlier this year, honeybees are both a victim and driver of intensified agriculture. The author concludes that focusing on mites, malnutrition, or CCD as individual causes of honeybee decline misses the bigger picture. They’re actually suffering from industrialization, the model of farming that relies on large monocultures and off-farm inputs, like pesticides, fertilizers, seeds—and domestic pollinators.

“Honeybees are livestock,” says Tyler. “They’re cared for by humans. Their health is the result of what humans do to them.” And when industrial farms bring in high densities of honeybees, it might be inevitable that they will get sick.

Steinhauer thinks that while this framing is useful for understanding the problem, it shouldn’t be used to dismiss the struggles of working beekeepers. “In a lot of entomology departments, we are trying to improve industrial agriculture,” she says. Her work with Bee Informed Partnership pushes to reduce pesticides or improve farm diversity to improve the health of bees even within industrial farm contexts. “That’s going to be helping beekeepers next year.” She also points out that non-agricultural forces, like suburban construction and lawn chemicals, put pressure on both wild and domestic species.

If the critique from the Journal of Insect Science is right, more diverse, less chemical-drenched farms would make for healthier honeybees. Farms just might not need as many of them, because they’d also have wild pollinators.

Is your head constantly spinning with outlandish, mind-burning questions? If you’ve ever wondered what the universe is made of, what would happen if you fell into a black hole, or even why not everyone can touch their toes, then you should be sure to listen and subscribe to Ask Us Anything, a podcast from the editors of Popular Science. Ask Us Anything hits Apple, Anchor, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every Tuesday and Thursday. Each episode takes a deep dive into a single query we know you’ll want to stick around for.

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Pollinators are a vital component of our ecosystems. Approximately 80 percent of crops used for human consumption require animals like bees, butterflies, and even bats to transport pollen from one plant to another in order to reproduce. 

Unfortunately, pollinators face several challenges around the world. Honey bees currently suffer from colony collapse disorder, caused by habitat loss, pesticides, and disease. These negative factors also affect native bees. Additionally, butterflies like the monarch are seeing substantial population declines, too. 

Without pollinators, we’d be lost. No, worse: We’d be hungry. And, in time, our planet would be in serious danger of mass extinction. 

But research shows that people can help propagate pollinators by planting native species in their gardens. To do so, you’ll need to “think like a bee,” says Douglas Tallamy, professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware. 

Guiding principles

Sunflowers, for example, are one of the best plants for your garden, because they benefit many bee species. If you plant a bed of them, you will not only draw the appropriate specialist bees, but also generalists like bumble bees and honey bees. 

No matter what flowers you plant, their benefits will go beyond bees. At the end of the blooming season, sunflowers dry up, leaving seeds that attract various kinds of birds, bats, and mice in search of a nutritious meal. 

You should also consider maintaining a healthy and diverse population of plantlife so you have blooms throughout the year. Following the previous example, most sunflowers bloom mid-summer to early fall, so you would want to make sure you also had spring blooms, such as common yarrow or wild geranium in your garden. Maintaining flowers year-round (or as close as you can get) will ensure your pollinator garden reaches its fullest potential. 

[Related: A sting-free guide to becoming a DIY beekeeper]

Your garden should be more of a lush habitat for wildlife than a curated display for passersby, so don’t focus entirely on flowers, either. If you learn what plants your pollinators like to nest in or hang out around, your garden will be even more useful. A common misconception, for example, is that people should not plant milkweeds because, well, they are weeds.

But research shows that fewer milkweed plants is the main cause for the declining monarch butterfly population. These majestic insects prefer to lay their eggs on milkweed leaves, so planting more of these perennials is the one way you can truly help this species. 

Other weeds, such as dandelions and clover, will also attract pollinators to your garden during the spring and summer.

What to plant

If you can’t find one of the plants listed above at your local nursery, Pollinator Partnerships has region-specific garden cards that will give you secondary options for your local pollinators. 

For even more specific guidelines, you can also enter your zip code on their website and get comprehensive information about selecting plants for your area. 

Build your garden

Every bit matters

As a responsible citizen of the world, we owe it to ourselves and the planet to use our land to its fullest potential. No matter its size, your garden and the pollinators it attracts will play an important role in maintaining a thriving local ecosystem. 

With your plant knowledge and gardening skills in hand, you can start thinking beyond gardens, too. You can volunteer at forest preserves to help plant native species, or you can educate people in your community about native pollinators and plants so they can do their part. 

Each of us has the power to contribute. If every city rooftop, windowsill, home garden, and empty plot of land were dedicated to ecological conservation, there’s no doubt it would create quite a buzz. 

Correction August 17, 2021, 10:34 hrs.: The main picture in this story depicted a pollinator fly instead of a bee. It has been changed.

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This story has been updated. It was originally published in June 8, 2021.

Bees are awesome, and they play an important role in making sure we have food on our tables. But you’ve probably heard these incredibly intelligent insects are in trouble. Pesticides are making these buzzers stupid or even killing them, and urban sprawl means bees have to travel farther from their hives to feed.

People have responded to this threat by jumping on the beekeeping bandwagon. The practice of caring and looking after thousands of bees has become popular in recent years, especially in cities, where bee-lovers install hives in their backyards, on their roofs, and even right in their living rooms. 

[Related: Roads and highways disrupt bee pollination]

But as exciting as beekeeping may be, it is a hobby that requires the same commitment and responsibility as adopting a puppy. And not everyone is suited for it. Don’t be disappointed, though. There are plenty of other things you can do to help bees, and some of them don’t even require you to interact with insects or even leave your chair. 

1. Install a feeder

Bigger cities often mean fewer and smaller patches of green. For people, it means less space to barbecue on the weekends. But for bees and other pollinators, it means they have to fly farther from their nests and hives to get the food they need. And as anyone who has driven down the highway on fumes will tell you, gas stations are crucial. 

Feeders are exactly that. Buy one or make one yourself, fill it with fresh water, put it where pollinators can find it (shady trees are good spots) and you’re set. You can also set up a watering station. Put out a shallow plate with water and add some pebbles to provide a non-slippery surface the insects can stand on. (Bees can’t swim, so if they don’t fall into the water, they will drown.)

Place your feeder or watering station away from high traffic areas and where pollinators can find it (shady trees are good spots). Check the water every day and replace it when it’s stagnant or dirty.

2. Plant a pollinator garden

If a feeder is a gas station for a bee, a pollinator garden is a full rest stop—with bathrooms, a diverse food court, and maybe even a cozy park nearby. 

[Related: Humans need bumble bees—and they are disappearing faster than we thought]

Whether you have a backyard or only a windowsill, you can make pollinators’ lives easier by growing a variety of plants. Which ones you get, however, will depend on where you live. Luckily for you, we have a complete guide on how to start your own pollinator garden. Here, you’ll learn how to make the best out of your space and get a list of exactly what plants to pick up at your local nursery.

3. Volunteer

There are plenty of organizations out there that want you to help them save the bees. Search for “bee conservancy organizations near me” to find the option that suits you best. Most websites have specific pages where you can sign up as a volunteer, and if they don’t, you can always contact them directly and ask if there are volunteering opportunities available.

The good news is you can help the bees even if these black-and-yellow buggers make you nervous. For example, the nonprofit Puget Sound Beekeepers Association in Seattle has jobs that range from beekeeping assistants to content contributors and even honey salespeople.   

As with every volunteer program, make sure you investigate all the information on the organization’s website and contact them to ask about requirements for the position you’re interested in, as well as any other questions. If you can, talk to other volunteers to get a better sense of what they’re doing and if the program fits your abilities and schedule. 

4. Find a mentor

Becoming a beekeeper’s mentee is like babysitting your baby nephew once a week—you have fun, you work hard, and you get to go home free of responsibilities. But above all, you get to learn the ins and outs of beekeeping directly from someone experienced. 

Mentorships are the way most beekeepers learn their trade. But unlike volunteer programs, most organizations don’t have a sign-up sheet or application you can write your name on. Instead, finding a mentor is a much more intuitive process and a lot has to do with the chemistry you have with your would-be mentor. 

[Related: A sting-free guide to becoming a DIY beekeeper]

But before you hit your local beekeeping club in search of a beacon of wisdom, make sure you do your research. It’s unlikely someone will agree to be your mentor if they have to teach you everything from scratch, so your best bet is to hit the internet or your local library and do some reading. There are plenty of resources out there, and you can even find reading lists for beginner beekeepers that will get you started on all the basics. 

You may also want to do some volunteer work before finding a mentor, as it can give you the experience you require to be a good beekeeper’s helper. The blog Beekeeping Like a Girl has some great advice on how to find a mentor, including vetting candidates and setting realistic expectations. 

Remember that everyone was a noob at first, so don’t be afraid to reach out to people at your local beekeeping club and ask questions.  

5. Donate to a bee conservation program

This is definitely the most boring of all your bee-saving options, but that doesn’t make it any less important. 

Every conservancy organization needs resources, and if donating your work and time is not an option for you, sharing your bucks can certainly make a difference. Choosing a local non-governmental organization or program is the best way for your donation to make an impact in your community. Just search the internet for an initiative near you, or consult with your local beekeeping club and ask them how you can make a donation. 

You can also find ways to help national or even international organizations, like the American Beekeeping Federation or Pollinator Partnerships. Most of these big initiatives have pages on their websites where you can make recurring or one-time donations without leaving your seat. 

Correction June 14, 2021: This story stated feeders should be filled with a water and sugar solution. Plain water is better, as added sugar affects the quality of honey.

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In November of 2020, a volunteer-run monarch butterfly count across California spotted less than 2,000 of the insects. It was the third consecutive winter they’d tallied less than 30,000 individuals—a worrying trend. But the same count this past Thanksgiving brought a glimmer of hope: Volunteers found 247,237 butterflies over 283 sites, a remarkable turnaround in just a year’s time.

“This year we saw surprising results, and they’re really exciting, ” says Isis Howard, an endangered species conservation biologist with the Xerces Society, which helps to lead the count. “Everyone is feeling hopeful, but what we’re trying to convey is cautious optimism.”

But as these orange, black, and white patterned butterflies show hints of recovery out West, entomologists raise questions about the ever-worsening fate of the species’ Eastern counterparts. 

Since 1997, Western monarchs have declined by more than 95 percent. At one point, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considered placing both populations on the endangered species list, but decided to hold back after concluding that the monarch’s condition was “warranted but precluded by higher priority listings.”

While Howard says it’s incredible to see the Western population’s resilience in action with the uptick in numbers this year, there are still a lot of unknown factors at play. “We don’t know what next year will look like. We don’t know what five years from now will look like,” she says, “Is it possible that monarchs could go back down to less than 2,000? Yes, it’s possible. Could they jump up next year to over 300,000? Yes, it’s possible too.”

Howard suspects that extreme environmental conditions such as storm events and fires in California might have influenced the dramatic year-to-year shifts in Western monarchs. There is even some consideration that there could be an influx of Eastern monarchs that traveled down to Mexico and then joined the Western flight. 

Traditionally, the Rocky Mountains form a natural barrier between the Eastern and Western monarch populations. The Eastern monarchs are famous for their unique migration spanning more than 2,500 miles to their winter sites in the central Mexican states of Mexico and Michoacán, and back to their summer sites all up the US Eastern Seaboard and into the southern regions of Ontario, Canada. The Western monarchs, on the other hand, take a much shorter route from Mexico along the Pacific coast to California (the exact waypoints still remain a mystery).

In North America, the Eastern monarch accounts for nearly 99 percent of all monarchs. Research published in 2016 showed that as it’s population declines, the Eastern monarch has a significant chance of reaching quasi-extinction over the next 20 years. One of the main culprits behind this decline is habitat loss across the continent. One estimate suggests that the 5.2 acres of land monarchs currently use in Mexico would need to increase to 14.8 acres to pull the species out of danger.

[Related: To save monarch butterflies, we need more milkweed]

Skye Bruce, a PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, focuses on monarch landscape ecology, which is essentially the study of the best possible ways to conserve the species’ habitats. In her work she seeks to answer questions such as: Do monarchs need lots of habitat in the landscape in order to find a patch? Do they need continuous, non-isolated habitat like a lot of butterflies and other insects do? Or can they find these isolated patches?

The loss of milkweed in monarch habitats is the biggest threat to their numbers. Bruce pins this to an increase in industrial agriculture across the US, which has resulted in monocultures of corn and soy. “The introduction of glyphosate has taken milkweed out from the landscape,” Bruce says. “So we’ve lost millions of milkweed stems from the edges of farm fields because weed herbicides are sprayed.”

In addition to milkweed, pesticides also crush nectar-rich flowers, leaving the monarchs with fewer sources of sustenance to power their long flights. But habitat loss is not the only problem plaguing the monarchs; climate change is also changing the way they migrate across both the Eastern and Western US.

Rodrigo Solis, a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University in Canada, is part of eButterfly, a citizen science platform that monitors monarchs and compiles a database. As temperatures warm across the continent, monarchs might be less inclined to fly south as winter approaches. This can push off their cycle by 10 days to two weeks, meaning that flowering plants may no longer be blooming and unable to provide nectar when the insects return to breed in spring, Solis says.

Solis notes that weather events can influence the monarch’s journey in several ways. If temperatures are lower in the Midwest in the winter, the insects might have to grapple with a scarcity in milkweed––the sole food source for monarch caterpillars.

The Eastern monarchs’ particularly long migration also means that they’re more at risk to a slew of changes. From insecticides to nectar availability to intensifying hurricanes, there’s no shortage of dangers for the Eastern monarchs, Solis says. That’s why the population has steadily declined to a now-critical stage. 

Despite the downward trend, individuals and organizations are rallying to find ways to restore the monarch’s numbers. Certain groups like Monarch Joint Ventures have proposed taking back developed land such as highways to cultivate feeding spaces for monarchs. Their Monarch Highway along I-35, which runs through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota, is one way of restoring habitat.

While Bruce commends the Monarch Joint Ventures in their efforts to restore the butterfly’s habitats, she says their placement along highways put the fluttering insects at higher risk of being hit by cars. As an alternative, she’s researching preexisting grasslands as potential homes for monarchs. She says these landscapes are great because they are already managed or deliberately burned in some way. 

“Grasslands that are used for agricultural purposes, namely, grazing for cattle or sheep, often contain milkweed and plants for butterflies to nectar on,” Bruce explains. “And I think that it’s so important to learn how to optimize those conservation metrics on those protected lands. “

For people who want to plant blooms to help out monarchs, she stresses the importance of planting both early-flowering and late-flowering plants to bookend the season and ensure that there’s plenty of nectar to go around for different generations of the species. Solis and Bruce also both warn that there’s a variety milkweed. One common type called tropical milkweed is often found at convenient spots like Home Depot, but isn’t native to this part of the world, Bruce says. Unlike common milkweed, which dies off every year, tropical milkweed is perennial, which means that it blooms in multiple seasons and lasts for years. While that may sound good in theory, Solis says, this allows parasites that would have died off naturally with the plant to accumulate and infect the monarchs when they perch for nectar. Tropical milkweed can also trick monarchs into staying put during winter, throwing off their entire migration cycle.

[Related: It’s time to rip up your lawn and replace it with something you won’t need to mow]

All of these landscape-level changes could lead to long-term rebounds in North American monarch populations. But in the case of the recent bump in numbers in California, the effects might be more fleeting. Solis cautions that while 247,000 may be a good count, it still suggests a very low survival rate for the Western monarch eggs. He agrees that the drastic uptick is probably a result of wildfires, which might have made the land more favorable to milkweed growth. 

“[Monarch] are super flexible like that,” Solis says. “They have that plasticity to adapt to whatever the habitat is providing. If it provides a lot, they’ll fill it up as much as possible.”

Given that the 247,000 figure is still only a fraction of the Western population from the ‘90s, conservationists like Howard remain concerned. Population numbers for invertebrates like monarchs often bounce all over the place when their numbers bottom out because of increased susceptibility to environmental changes, she says. 

Even if the monarchs’ troubles aren’t over, their ability to climb back is cause for hope for all those trying to change the butterfly’s fate. With their capacity to respond to positive environmental changes, North America could one day see a healthy monarch population that uses a kaleidoscope of spaces tended by people to feed, rest and reproduce.

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To pollinate the food we eat and the flowers in our gardens, insects like bees and butterflies rely on a keen sense of smell.

“Our sense of smell is terrible compared to most other organisms,” says Robbie Girling, an associate professor of agroecology at the University of Reading in the UK. “[Pollinators] really use odors to kind of navigate and move around and communicate with one another.”

But Girling, along with other researchers at the University of Reading, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and the University of Birmingham have found air pollutants might throw pollinators off the scent. A study they published in Environmental Pollution today indicates that ozone and diesel exhaust significantly reduces the presence of the pollinators, the number of times pollinators visit plants, and how many seeds the plants produce.

[Related: Roads and highways disrupt bee pollination]

Prior research suggests common pollutants such as ozone and diesel exhaust alter floral odors, making it harder for pollinating insects to find the plants. But there hasn’t been much light shed on what the effects of this are on pollination rates.

Some bugs might get the first sniff when chemical compounds from a flower land on their antennae. They then follow that odor plume like a treasure map back to the plant, says James Ryalls, a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Reading and one of the authors of the study.

After feeding, Girling says insects such as honeybees learn which compounds lead to the tastiest flowers and return to them like Pavlov’s dog. But ozone, which is a byproduct of factory and vehicle emissions, and diesel exhaust can muddy those perfumes. 

“[The pollutants] can degrade the signal that they use, so they might not be able to find the flower anymore,” Ryalls says. 

So Girling and Ryalls set out to understand the impact of ozone and diesel exhaust on insects and pollination in the natural environment. Previously, all studies on this topic were conducted in a lab. At the University of Reading farm, the researchers laid out about 26-foot octagonal rings. In each of the rings, they pumped in either ozone, diesel exhaust, a combination of both, or nothing at all. The rings also contained black mustard plants; prior research had shown that pollutants degrade the species’ floral odor.

The rings were open to the ambient air to allow local insects access to them. Then the team observed how often pollinators like bees, flies, butterflies, and moths entered the rings and visited one of the mustard plant flowers. The results were stark. In the rings with a combination of ozone and diesel exhaust, the pollinators’ presence was down 70 percent compared to the rings with no pollutants; the number of times they visited the flowers was also down 90 percent. 

The researchers also found a 31 percent reduction in the rate of pollination by measuring the number of seed in the pods the plants produced. They also noted that the air pollutants had little to no direct impact on the plants themselves. (The scientists hand pollinated a few by hand and found that their seed production didn’t vary significantly depending on exposure to pollutants.) So this means that the reduction in pollinator visits directly resulted in the reduction in seed production.

But Girling and Ryalls were surprised by how dramatically the pollutants affected the pollinators, particularly because they weren’t able to pump as much ozone and diesel exhaust into the rings as they wanted due to equipment limitations. “We were thinking, ‘Oh, we’re not gonna see anything here,” Girlings says. “So when James came back with the first set of results, I made him go and check them again.”

The researchers were able to maintain levels of ozone and nitrogen dioxide (found in diesel exhaust) at about 35 parts per billion and 21 parts per billion respectively. These levels were about half as high as the standards set for safe levels of ozone and nitrous dioxide set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

[Related: City lights could trigger a baby boom for some moths and butterflies]

Girling says that these findings not only have an impact on biodiversity but also on the food in your fridge. “Seventy percent of all the different crops that we eat require insect pollination,” he explains. He adds that lack of insect pollination could cause food prices to rise because of low supply, or cause growers to resort to more labor-heavy measures like pollinating by hand.

While Girling and Ryalls say that air pollution won’t kill all insects or signal the end times, they do emphasize that it’s one of the many stressors pollinators face.

“Insects are under a lot of pressure at the moment from human influence,” Girling says. “And when you start to push at things from all different directions, at some point, they can’t stand up to it. And they collapse.”

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This story originally featured on Saveur.

Beekeeping heritage permeates Slovenian culture. In the small Central European country, approximately one in 200 people keep and tend to bee colonies. Locals share a deep respect for the winged insects as indispensable pollinators in the food system, and honey appears often in traditional Slovenian delicacies. Beekeeping tradition runs so deep that in the Slovenian language, saying one’s “ax fell into the honey” is a proverb used to describe a sudden stroke of good luck. 

“If you want to have a tomato, you must have a bumblebee,” says Maruška Markovčič, who works in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana’s Department for Environmental Protection. As pollinators, bees enable crops to flourish and are thus critical for agricultural production.

Slovenia has long held a high regard for these insects. In the 18th century, Maria Theresa, then empress of the Habsburg Empire, launched the world’s earliest beekeeping school in Vienna and named Anton Janša as the instructor. “He was the first beekeeping teacher in the whole world, and he was a Slovenian,” explains Blaž Ambrožič, who looks after more than 100 colonies and sells bee products on his family farm in Bled. 

Centuries later, bees are dying at alarming rates around the globe, due to factors like pesticide use, disease, and climate change. But in Slovenia, the beekeeping tradition continues to thrive, fueled by the country’s respect for nature and commitment to sustainability and conservation. In 2016, the European Commission awarded Ljubljana the title of European Green Capital. Domestically, the Slovenia Tourist Board certifies destinations and businesses that exemplify sustainable practices by giving them a Slovenia Green Label. This attitude of eco-consciousness extends directly to the care of bees.”If something bad happens in the environment, beekeepers immediately see the mistakes because bees will be dying,” explains Peter Kozmus, who heads the breeding program for the 8,000-member strong Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association and also led the initiative for the United Nations to declare May 20 as World Bee Day. Bees’ sensitivity to environmental pollutants and disturbances, Kozmus explains, makes the insects important bio-indicators—and their caretakers critical stewards. “If bees are doing well in the city, this is very good proof that the city is healthy,” he says. In 2011, Slovenia became one of the first European Union countries to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides after beekeepers suspected the pesticides were killing their bees. To further protect its native Carniolan honey bees—which Slovenians revere for their industrious and gentle nature—the country does not allow the import of other bee species.

When bees return to their hives after pollinating plants, the nectar they bring back is very fluid. “They need to dry it with their wings,” explains Nika Jere, who works with her beekeeper father in the family’s meadery business Jere in the countryside of Ljubljana. “If you have mass production and big hives, they cannot really dry it well, so the honey is usually pretty liquid.” Slovenian honey, on the other hand, is thicker and more firm—”like the taste and the minerals are concentrated, because the water has been removed by the bees,” says Nika. “That’s why the taste is really intense.”

Today, honey is still a regular fixture on Slovenian breakfast tables and a primary sweetener in desserts. It’s a sweetener in traditional foods like potica, leavened pastries often rolled with walnut filling, as well as medenjaki, ginger-scented honey biscuits. At Jere, Nika’s father Gregor looks after 300 beehives, producing raw honey and using it to make both regular and sparkling mead, an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey with water.

In 2007, the Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association launched a breakfast campaign to reemphasize the nutritional and environmental value of native bee products. Beekeepers visited their nearby schools bearing honey for schoolchildren to enjoy for breakfast. “While these children in kindergarten were eating honey, the beekeepers explained to them why bees are so important, why it’s important for us to eat bee products—because they are very healthy,” says Kozmus. Eventually, the initiative expanded to include other locally produced foods like bread and milk. The Traditional Slovenian Breakfast is now an annual event held on the third Friday of each November. 

“When my children were small, getting a spoon of honey was like, for them, a lollipop,” says chef Ana Roš, who was voted the World’s Best Female Chef in 2017 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. “For me, it’s completely natural that at home I have a few different types of honey, but I don’t have sugar.” At Hiša Franko, Roš’ restaurant in Soča Valley, the menu springs entirely from local ingredients that reflect the diversity of the Slovenian landscape. The country’s varied topography, she explains, produces many distinct flavors of honey. Chestnut honey, for example, is dark-hued and tends to carry bitter and smoky notes, while the light-colored linden honey has a woody, minty aroma. These variations wouldn’t be possible without Slovenia’s attention to preserving a pristine and biodiverse environment. “It’s a direct result of the beauty and the quality of the nature,” says Roš. “Whatever the bee is going to collect, this is how the honey is going to look. There is no cheating in that. It’s a direct production.” At Hiša Franko, Roš regularly features bee products in innovative creations like bee pollen ice cream with hydro honey, and fondue made from beeswax and local cheeses. 

Named the European Region of Gastronomy 2021, Slovenia is increasingly becoming a global food destination for its culinary philosophy that supports local growers and makes the most of its diverse topography. Food-minded tourists can experience the wide range of bee products not only at dining establishments, but also at the apiaries themselves. In a growing apitourism trend, many professional beekeepers across the country have opened their doors to visitors, introducing them to the unparalleled taste of Slovenian honey and offering a glimpse into the pollinators’ important care. Some apiaries allow visitors to don beekeeping gear and learn how to extract honey from a hive, while others even provide apitherapy experiences. “They arrange the apiaries so that you can relax in there, you can listen to the bees, you can lie on top of the beehives so that you can feel the buzzing of the bees,” explains Markovčič.

Intertwining beekeeping with tourism is one way the country continues to champion bee conservation and educate people around the world about sustainable beekeeping practices. “If we are really disturbing one point of the chain, the whole [environmental] system can collapse,” says Markovčič. “We are responsible for the environment of the bumblebees. They cannot plant wildflowers for themselves.” 

Every third spoonful of food consumed in the world depends directly on the pollinating efforts of bees, which means we have bees to thank for much of what we eat. Slovenia has been returning the favor all along. 

“Here in Slovenia, bees are like pets,” says Ambrožič. “Save the bees, and we will save ourselves.”

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Doug Tallamy is a professor of Entomology, University of Delaware. This story originally featured on The Conversation.

E.O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist who makes a single seminal contribution to his or her field has been a success. By the time I met Edward O. Wilson in 1982, he had already made at least five such contributions to science.

Wilson, who died Dec. 26, 2021 at the age of 92, discovered the chemical means by which ants communicate. He worked out the importance of habitat size and position within the landscape in sustaining animal populations. And he was the first to understand the evolutionary basis of both animal and human societies.

Each of his seminal contributions fundamentally changed the way scientists approached these disciplines, and explained why E.O.—as he was fondly known—was an academic god for many young scientists like me. This astonishing record of achievement may have been due to his phenomenal ability to piece together new ideas using information garnered from disparate fields of study.

Big insights from small subjects

In 1982 I cautiously sat down next to the great man during a break at a small conference on social insects. He turned, extended his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Ed Wilson. I don’t believe we’ve met.” Then we talked until it was time to get back to business.

Three hours later I approached him again, this time without trepidation because surely now we were the best of friends. He turned, extended his hand, and said “Hi, I’m Ed Wilson. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Wilson forgetting me, but remaining kind and interested anyway, showed that beneath his many layers of brilliance was a real person and a compassionate one. I was fresh out of graduate school, and doubt that another person at that conference knew less than I—something I’m sure Wilson discovered as soon as I opened my mouth. Yet he didn’t hesitate to extend himself to me, not once but twice.

Thirty-two years later, in 2014, we met again. I had been invited to speak in a ceremony honoring his receipt of the Franklin Institute’s Benjamin Franklin Medal for Earth and Environmental Science. The award honored Wilson’s lifetime achievements in science, but particularly his many efforts to save life on Earth.

My work studying native plants and insects, and how crucial they are to food webs, was inspired by Wilson’s eloquent descriptions of biodiversity and how the myriad interactions among species create the conditions that enable the very existence of such species.

I spent the first decades of my career studying the evolution of insect parental care, and Wilson’s early writings provided a number of testable hypotheses that guided that research. But his 1992 book, The Diversity of Life, resonated deeply with me and became the basis for an eventual turn in my career path.

Though I am an entomologist, I did not realize that insects were “the little things that run the world” until Wilson explained why this is so in 1987. Like nearly all scientists and nonscientists alike, my understanding of how biodiversity sustains humans was embarrassingly cursory. Fortunately, Wilson opened our eyes.

Throughout his career Wilson flatly rejected the notion held by many scholars that natural history—the study of the natural world through observation rather than experimentation—was unimportant. He proudly labeled himself a naturalist, and communicated the urgent need to study and preserve the natural world. Decades before it was in vogue, he recognized that our refusal to acknowledge the Earth’s limits, coupled with the unsustainability of perpetual economic growth, had set humans well on their way to ecological oblivion.

Wilson understood that humans’ reckless treatment of the ecosystems that support us was not only a recipe for our own demise. It was forcing the biodiversity he so cherished into the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history, and the first one caused by an animal: us.

A broad vision for conservation

And so, to his lifelong fascination with ants, E.O. Wilson added a second passion: guiding humanity toward a more sustainable existence. To do that, he knew he had to reach beyond the towers of academia and write for the public, and that one book would not suffice. Learning requires repeated exposure, and that is what Wilson delivered in The Diversity of Life, Biophilia, The Future of Life, The Creation, and his final plea in 2016, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life.

As Wilson aged, desperation and urgency replaced political correctness in his writings. He boldly exposed ecological destruction caused by fundamentalist religions and unrestricted population growth, and challenged the central dogma of conservation biology, demonstrating that conservation could not succeed if restricted to tiny, isolated habitat patches.

In “Half Earth,” he distilled a lifetime of ecological knowledge into one simple tenet: Life as we know it can be sustained only if we preserve functioning ecosystems on at least half of planet Earth.

But is this possible? Nearly half of the planet is used for some form of agriculture, and 7.9 billion people and their vast network of infrastructure occupy the other half.

As I see it, the only way to realize E.O.’s lifelong wish is learn to coexist with nature, in the same place, at the same time. It is essential to bury forever the notion that humans are here and nature is someplace else. Providing a blueprint for this radical cultural transformation has been my goal for the last 20 years, and I am honored that it melds with E.O. Wilson’s dream.

There is no time to waste in this effort. Wilson himself once said, “Conservation is a discipline with a deadline.” Whether humans have the wisdom to meet that deadline remains to be seen.

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A fossil found in sandstone near the England-Scotland border contains the largest millipede ever found—and the discovery was completely by accident. 

In January 2018, Neil Davies, an Earth scientist at the University of Cambridge, had taken a group of PhD students on a “social trip” to Northumberland, England, where he had previously gone on holiday. The group noticed some rocks had crashed onto the beach where they were walking. One of those chunks happened to contain a paleontological surprise. 

“The way the boulder had fallen, it had cracked open and perfectly exposed the fossil, which one of our former PhD students happened to spot when walking by,” Davies said in a statement. “It was a complete fluke of a discovery.” 

Davies and his colleagues were at first unsure about what they had found. In May 2018, they extracted the fossil and brought it back to Cambridge for analysis. The specimen is just the third known example of an Arthropleura, a genus of giant millipede that roamed the Earth during the Carboniferous Period, between 359 million and 299 million years ago. But that’s not all: This Arthropleura fossil is also the oldest ever found, dating back to 326 million years ago, as well as the largest. It measures a whopping 30 inches by 14 inches. 

That suggests a pretty impressive beast. The millipede itself was likely around 8.5 feet long and nearly two feet wide, and probably weighed about 110 pounds. The team’s results were published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

[Related: This eyeless millipede shattered the record for most legs]

“Finding these giant millipede fossils is rare, because once they died, their bodies tend to disarticulate,” Davies told BBC. This particular specimen is likely just part of a molted exoskeleton, rather than a piece of a millipede’s corpse. Such a sparse fossil record means that these bugs largely remain a mystery. To this day, “we have not yet found a fossilised [millipede] head,” Davies added, “so it’s difficult to know everything about them.”

For example, researchers are unsure how many legs these millipedes had. Current best guesses are either 32 or 64—a paltry set compared to the maximum 1,300 legs recently found on some living millipedes. Scientists also don’t know what these giant bugs ate to sustain their lumbering bodies, though they seem to have thrived due to an abundance of resources and little competition. But later, in the Permian Period, they went extinct—either because of a changing climate or due to new reptile species outcompeting them for food. To uncover the mysteries still lurking in giant millipedes’ history, researchers will need more examples of them to fill out the fossil record.

The area of Northumberland where the fossil was found is mostly sandstone, which “is normally not brilliant for preserving fossils,” Davies told NPR. So “the fact that this has been preserved is, on the one hand, surprising. But it just suggests that actually there might be a lot more and similar things in places where people haven’t really looked for fossils before.”

The fossil will go on public display at Cambridge’s Sedgwick Museum in the New Year.

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At long last, scientists have discovered a millipede that lives up to its name and actually has 1,000 legs. 

The unique critter was found deep underground in Western Australia and boasts up to 1,306 legs—more than the paltry 750 legs previously documented in millipedes, or indeed any other animal. The newly-named Eumillipes persephone and the dethroned previous record holder probably both evolved their seemingly excessive number of limbs to shove themselves through narrow spaces in the soil, the researchers reported on December 16 in Scientific Reports. 

E. persephone’s subterranean environment is imperiled by mining activities, making conservation efforts critical, says Paul Marek, an entomologist at Virginia Tech and coauthor of the findings. 

“These undiscovered fauna are living in a realm that was previously thought to be devoid of life, but also an ecosystem that we really rely on for screening of environmental toxins and also filtering our water,” he says. “So by studying the organisms that live in these ecosystems, we can help conserve biodiversity on this planet but also help preserve the environment.”

Although the term millipede literally means “thousand feet,” most species actually have fewer than 100 legs, Marek says. The arthropods have been around for more than 400 million years, with some extinct members reaching 2 meters (6.6 feet) in length. Millipedes play an important role in their ecosystem by feeding on decaying organic matter. 

The new species comes from an area dotted with drill holes used to prospect for gold, nickel, and other minerals. These holes also offer scientists a portal to a remote and unexplored environment. To find out what might be crawling belowground, Bruno Buzatto, of Macquarie University in Sydney and the University of Western Australia in Perth, and his colleagues lowered in cups baited with rotting leaf litter to attract hungry invertebrates.

When the researchers withdrew a cup from a depth of 60 meters (almost 200 feet) in August 2020, they spied a pale, thread-like millipede. Suspecting that the creature might be packing more legs than any known species, the team reached out to Marek, a millipede specialist. When he examined several specimens, Marek realized that he was looking at “a true millipede.” He counted a whopping 1,306 legs sprouting from 330 ring-like segments in a female member of the species, and up to 818 legs and 208 rings in males (female arthropods tend to be larger than males, Marek says, the better to carry more eggs). 

[Related: Glowing millipede genitalia give scientists a leg up in the lab]

In addition to observing the millipedes under a powerful scanning electron microscope, the researchers took DNA samples from E. persephone and compared its genome to those of other species. This confirmed that E. persephone was only a distant relative of the 750-legged Illacme plenipes, which is found in California. The findings indicate that super-elongated bodies evolved independently several times in millipedes that thrive underground.

“Extra legs translates to extra pushing force,” Marek says. “This is coupled with their highly extensible and compressible body, which is amazingly good at squeezing into crevices.”

E. persephone—which is named for the Greek mythological goddess Persephone, who was taken to the underworld by Hades—displays a number of other characteristics suited for its life beneath the surface. The cream-colored millipede lacks both pigmentation and eyes, but has a cone-shaped head with “enormous” antennae and a beak for feeding, the researchers wrote. The females can grow to 0.95 millimeters (0.04 inches) in width and 95.7 millimeters (3.8 inches) long. 

In the future, Marek will search for other ultra leggy millipedes in the southwestern United States. “Folks in Phoenix and Tucson have reported super-elongated millipedes that occasionally come up in their backyard when it’s extremely rainy,” he says. 

More work is also needed to understand the underground habitat E. persephone and many other invertebrates call home. Scientists wouldn’t have discovered the record-breaking millipede without the drill holes necessary to the very mining practices that may threaten it, Marek notes.

“We’re trying to avoid this phenomenon of anonymous extinction, where a species goes extinct without us knowing about it and without it being described,” he says. “[Anonymous extinction] is  a potential in a lot of areas, in particular where we found this millipede.”

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Bees are essentially vegetarian wasps. Around a hundred million years ago, we know, the common ancestor of all modern bees was a hunter. But over the last 80 million years, bees have become vegetarians. Most get everything they need from flowers: They sip nectar to make honey, lick up floral oils, and pack protein-rich pollen into built-in pouches on their legs.

But there are exceptions to every rule. Vulture bees, a trio of stingless species in Costa Rica, never touch buds or blossoms. Instead, they get sugar from fruit and “extrafloral nectaries”—drippy nodules on the stems and leaves of some plants.

Vulture bees still need protein, though, and they get it from somewhere else entirely: rotting meat. But putrid flesh poses a few challenges not found in poppies or marigolds.  Corpses are full of microbes locked in a territorial battle for the remains. “It’s microbes fighting against other microbes that produce a lot of the toxins that we associate with dead bodies,” says Jessica Maccaro, a PhD student in entomology at the University of California, Riverside. “It’s just microbial warfare.” Vulture bees are able to digest that mess with the help of acid-loving microbes in their guts, according to a new survey of carnivorous bees published in microbiology journal mBio.

Although they can be lured in with hunks of raw chicken, vulture bees are otherwise a lot like honeybees. They live in large, honey-producing colonies, (which they defend by “immediately biting your head,” Maccaro says) and have systems of preserving the meat within the hive. “If you think about bringing a dead body to your colony, that sounds like a recipe for a pandemic,” Maccaro says. “So they store the meat in these special pots, and they wait 14 days,” until the meat is “cured,” like gravlax. Then, they feed it to their young, who need the protein to grow.

They even repurpose the leg pouches that honeybees use to carry pollen. “They [have] little chicken baskets,” study author Quinn McFredrick, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside, said in a press release.

The researchers also had some surprise meat lovers turn up at their experimental chicken traps. Three other species of bee, all previously thought to be vegetarian, turned out to be interested in meat when it was on offer. That shouldn’t be such a surprise, since plenty of animals have more flexible palates than we often imagine. (See: a giant tortoise hunting a tern, and a pelican eating a pigeon.) Bumblebees have been recorded harvesting meat as far back as the 1700s.

Like us, all bees rely heavily on the microbial partners in their guts to survive. Vegetarian bees share the same five core species, which chop up certain sugars and pollen byproducts that would otherwise be toxic to the insects.

The meat eaters play with an entirely different deck of microbes. Vulture bees were full of Lactobacillus strains—the type of bacteria that’s used to ferment sour beer, sourdough, and pickles—while the omnivores had the most diverse guts, with a mixture of standard-issue bacteria and some unusual strains.

Similar settlements have been found in other scavengers. Vultures have ultra-acidic stomachs that are full of the same bacteria that live on rotting carcasses. It appears that the combination of bone-melting acidity and hungry helpers allows them to ingest things like botulism toxins or anthrax that would kill many other animals.

Unlike vultures, however, vulture bees don’t carry so many bacteria from rotting meat itself. Instead, their gut bacteria appear to be a combination of ancestral species, and new species that are often found on plants.

The team’s future work will unravel how those species actually contribute to digestion. But right now, they believe that the bacteria may help create the proper conditions for breaking down carrion.

“We hypothesize that the bees are using those acid-producing bacteria to acidify their gut,” Maccaro says. Vultures, she points out, have genes that allow them to produce lots of stomach acid on their own. The bees might not be able to do that, and so they’ve formed a relationship with bacteria that can. There’s a precedent in bumblebees. “They get these pathogens which infect them through their gut,” Maccaro says. “So they have all these Lactobacillus in there that will acidify the gut—and that literally pickle the pathogen.”

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Unlike many vibrant insects, who rely on pigment alone for their colors, a butterfly’s radiant shimmer has a special source: The precise structure and arrangement of microscopic scales on its wings. Those small but mighty scales provide iridescence as well as maintenance of body temperature and protection against the elements. 

For the first time, MIT scientists have engineered a way to watch and record those microscopic scales as they grow and tile themselves on a developing butterfly inside its chrysalis. The team raised painted lady butterflies, Vanessa cardui, waiting for the caterpillars to encase themselves in chrysalises. Once metamorphosis began, the team sliced into the cuticles of each chrysalis and covered the openings with glass coverslips, allowing them to view developing wings through that window. The team recorded wing scale development from start to finish and published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Butterfly scales are complex microstructures, but most of what is known about their formation is based on still images of developing and mature butterfly wings. The team knew they needed a clearer, more comprehensive view of butterfly wing development to understand how the scales work. 

“Previous studies provide compelling snapshots at select stages of development; unfortunately, they don’t reveal the continuous timeline and sequence of what happens as scale structures grow,” co-author and mechanical engineer Matthias Kolle said in a statement. “We needed to see more to start understanding it better.”

[Related: A beginner’s guide to butterfly watching]

To visualize that continuous sequence, the team used speckle-correlation reflection phase microscopy, a light-based imaging technique that applies a dispersed field of light speckles over a target. Concentrated wide beams of light can damage the delicate butterfly wing cells—but this method creates detailed, three-dimensional maps of the scales without that residual damage. Co-author and biological engineer Peter So compared speckle field microscopy to “thousands of fireflies that generate a field of illumination points.”

Thanks to their high resolution imaging, the scientists found that butterfly scale cells quickly lined up in rows within days of the chrysalis forming. The cells developed into cover scales, which lie on top of the wing, or ground scales, which grow underneath. As the cells continued to grow, the research team expected each cell to wrinkle and compress, like an accordion. Instead, each cell developed a sort of waviness, like the corrugation on a metal roof. 

The authors hope to investigate the mechanism of that corrugation further, seeking to use butterfly scales as inspiration for the design of new materials. Butterfly scales have other fascinating properties such as water repellency and the ability to regulate temperature. Understanding scale formation, lead author and mechanical engineer Anthony McDougal said in a statement, could help “give both color and self-cleaning properties to automobiles and buildings. Now we can learn from butterflies’ structural control of these complex, micro-nanostructured materials.”

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Bees may need multiple generations to recover from the lingering impacts of pesticide exposure, according to a new study. 

Scientists at the University of California, Davis tracked how blue orchard bees that encountered chemical-laced nectar and pollen as larvae or adults fared over two years. The researchers found that exposure early in life could impair reproduction, as could exposure during adulthood. However, the effects were especially dramatic in bees that faced a double whammy of pesticide exposure as youngsters and adults; these unlucky insects produced 44 percent fewer offspring than bees that were never exposed to the chemical. 

These delayed, or “carryover,” effects should be taken into account for future conservation efforts, the team reported on November 22 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We have a better understanding now of the way pesticide exposure affects bee populations over time,” says study co author Clara Stuligross, a PhD candidate in ecology at UC Davis. “This really shows that pesticide exposure to bees in agricultural areas is additive, and exposure to pesticides in multiple years has a greater effect than just a single exposure.”

Pesticides are one of many threats contributing to declining insect populations. “But mostly the studies have focused on the current effects of pesticide exposure, despite the fact that pesticides could affect organisms long after direct exposure,” Stuligross says. “That’s where we came in.”

She and her colleague Neal Williams decided to investigate the long-term impact of pesticides on blue orchard bees, a common species in North America that pollinates crops such as almonds and cherries. Unlike honeybees and bumblebees that live in large colonies, blue orchard bees are solitary, with each female responsible for collecting pollen and nectar to provision her own offspring.

In agricultural areas, pesticides are often applied several times a year. This means that bees in these areas will likely come into contact with the chemicals at multiple stages of their life cycles and over multiple years, Stuligross says. 

To recreate these conditions, she and Williams allowed groups of captive bees to forage from flowers with or without pesticide treatment. The following year, they divided up the bugs’ grown offspring; once again, some groups foraged on pesticide-treated flowers and some did not. The team then counted how many offspring the insects produced. 

[Related: 5 ways to keep bees buzzing that don’t require a hive]

They found that bees exposed to insecticide as adults were slightly less likely to produce offspring and constructed their nests more slowly than other bees. Overall, they raised 30 percent fewer offspring than bees that didn’t encounter the chemical as adults. 

For individuals that had only been exposed as larvae the previous year, the damage was more subtle. The bees’ nesting behavior was unaffected, but they had 20 percent fewer offspring compared with bees without past exposure. “It means that it can sometimes be hard to detect these carryover effects,” Stuligross says. “It may be easy to miss them if you don’t look all the way through the life cycle.”

Bees that had fed on tainted pollen and nectar as larvae, and were then exposed again as adults, had 44 percent fewer offspring than bees that had never faced the insecticide. Overall, their population growth rate was 72 percent lower than that of the unexposed bees, the researchers calculated.

The pesticide that Stuligross and Williams used, a common one in the US known as imidacloprid, affects the nervous system and has been shown to interfere with bees’ learning ability, behavior, and physiology, she says. It’s likely that the chemical harms bees in multiple ways that collectively hinder their reproduction, foraging, and ability to build nests.

“We just looked at one little slice of how this one pesticide exposure could affect bees,” Stuligross says, noting that the study focuses on just one bee species and a single type of pesticide—in the wild, bees are often exposed to many chemicals at once. In the future, she will investigate how pesticides and other stressors, like limited food and the emergence of parasites, work together to influence bee populations.

Understanding the delayed effects that pesticides can inflict on bees and other pollinators will help researchers plan better guidelines for how, when, and where to apply the chemicals in ways that harm the critters as little as possible, Stuligross says.

“We can enable practical actions to mitigate these risks,” she says. 

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From the iridescent blue wings of the Eumaeus atala butterfly to the painted lady’s signature fiery orange, it’s no secret butterflies have some pretty captivating flappers. For a long time, it seemed as if the insects achieved such radiance through sets of lifeless cells. But now, new research suggests a butterfly’s wings actually contain a network of living cells that serve a key purpose: to carefully regulate wing temperature. This network can contain something called a “wing heart,” which beats a few dozen times per minute to control blood flow.

To better understand such complex structures within butterfly wings, researchers from Columbia and Harvard developed a new infrared imaging technique.

The team removed the wing scales of more than 50 butterfly species to get a closer look at the interior neurons lurking underneath. Their custom thermal camera then recorded the wing’s cooling process, highlighting where heat dissipated from certain areas.

Ultimately, as they showcase in their study published last week in Nature, they produced colorful maps of temperature distributions among butterfly wings.

“This has been difficult to do until now because of the thinness and delicacy of butterfly wings,” says study author Naomi E. Pierce, an entomologist at Harvard University. Their noninvasive thermal camera was key in observing fragile wing structures without disturbing them.

The heat maps illuminate the narrow temperature range that butterflies require to soar at their best. They rely on the sun as their primary heat source—but a butterfly’s wings can quickly overheat in the sun, while cold environments can slow blood blow and hinder their movement.

To recreate the insect’s natural environment, researchers simulated sunlight by shining a lamp from above; they found that the butterfly wing’s living cells sense the sun’s direction and intensity, and counter with certain behaviors to maintain an ideal temperature. For example, some species may correspondingly close their wings or tilt away from the sun.

“They’re very much able to sense heat on their wings,” says Adriana Briscoe, an evolutionary biologist at University of California, Irvine who wasn’t involved with the study. “It’s super cool to show that [butterflies] both sense the heat and respond behaviourally, looking in detail at the physiological basis of it.”

Briscoe recently published a different study that also examined butterfly thermoregulation, though her team focused on behavior within real-life habitats. A warming world will challenge butterflies as they adapt to their local environments, Briscoe says.

In the future, the Columbia and Harvard teams hope that a butterfly’s heat regulation techniques could inform the development of heat-resistant aircraft. This could be particularly useful since high temperatures have already grounded commercial flights.

“This is an inspiration for designing the wings of flying machines,” study author Nanfang Yu, an applied physicist at Columbia University, said in a press release. “Perhaps wing design should not be solely based on considerations of flight dynamics.”

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To cope with the threat of marauding hornets, honeybees in Vietnam have developed a distinct, siren-like noise that serves to marshal the hive’s defenses, scientists reported this week. 

Scientists recorded honeybee hives during times of peace and in the midst of hornet attacks, and discovered that the arrival of the winged predators triggered a cacophony of noise and activity. Particularly striking was a harsh sound that changed pitch quickly and unpredictably—qualities also heard in the alarm shrieks, fear screams, and panic calls of mammals and birds. At the same time, worker bees began assembling at the entrance of the nest to repel the invaders.

Across the animal kingdom, abrupt sounds that change dramatically in frequency are used as alarm calls because they’re so hard to ignore, says Heather Mattila, an entomologist at Wellesley College, who published the findings on November 9 in the journal Royal Society Open Science. 

“You never get used to them; they always grab your attention because they sound a little bit different every time,” she says. “It’s really interesting to see that the ways bees do this share a lot of the same traits with the ways mammals do it too, including ourselves.”

The Asian honeybees that she and her colleagues observed are more petite and live in smaller groups than the European honeybees commonly kept for their nectar. “They’re small and quick, and that’s because in Asia they face these really numerous hornet predators,” Mattila says. These include Asian hornets (Vespa velutina), which are solitary hunters that hover in front of nests to pick off individual bees.

The deadliest threat, however, comes from the giant hornet species known as Vespa soror, which resembles its close relative the so-called murder hornet (Vespa mandarinia). These insects attack in groups capable of decimating entire honeybee colonies. 

It all starts when a hornet scout finds a beehive and returns with reinforcements. After slaughtering the defending bees, the hornets take over the nest and feed any eggs and larvae they find inside to their own hungry offspring. “It’s kind of a brutal scene, because these giant hornets are really focused on finding a lot of food quickly and honeybees are a great target for that,” Mattila says.

But honeybees have a few tricks to help them fight back. When an Asian hornet approaches, the bees gather outside in a group and shake their abdomens back and forth, apparently to let the hornet know it’s been spotted and can’t sneak up on them. 

[Related: Murder hornets are officially here, but don’t freak out yet]

Unfortunately, this move doesn’t work on giant hornets. “They’re not afraid of bees,” Mattila says. “They’re much larger, they’re heavily armored.” They do seem to have an aversion to animal dung, though, which the bees smear around their nest entrances as a deterrent. 

Another nifty home security system  is known as bee balling. This tactic involves hundreds of bees working together to engulf an unlucky hornet, causing it to simultaneously overheat and suffocate. 

Mattila and her colleagues were studying these defenses in Vietnam’s Hanoi Province when they noticed that the honeybees also made quite a racket whenever giant hornets struck. “You could stand a couple feet away from a hive and hear the sounds the bees were making,” she says. “The bees sounded very upset, very distressed and agitated.” 

The researchers decided to record the insects with microphones and video cameras under several different scenarios. These included times when hornets were absent, during the course of genuine Asian hornet and giant hornet attacks, and experimental sessions in which the team presented the bees with the scent of pheromones giant hornet scouts use to mark nests for destruction. 

Even when the honeybees weren’t being harassed by hornets, the researchers noted, the hive was a bustling place. The bees used a variety of signals to communicate with each other, including several kinds of sounds made by vibrating the wings and thorax very quickly. This technique, known as piping, produces vibrations that the bees perceive through sensors in their legs. “Rather than hearing it with their ears like we would, they would feel it with their legs,” Mattila says.

The bees became noisier and signaled more frequently during skirmishes with Asian hornets and when the scent of giant hornets was present. However, during actual giant hornet assaults, the hive became downright frenzied and “got extremely loud,” Mattila says. When listening to an audio recording of the hive, she says, she could always tell when a giant hornet had shown up. “The bees would just go nuts.” 

Part of the reason for this, she and her team realized, was that the giant hornets provoked a kind of piping from the bees that hadn’t been documented before, which the researchers referred to as antipredator pipes. “They make them in rapid series, and so it sounds like a siren that’s going on and on and repeating,” Mattila says. “They change a lot in tone; they’re really harsh and noisy.”

While piping, the honeybees also raced about, buzzed their wings, and raised their abdomens to reveal a pheromone-producing gland. This could mean they were warning the hive of danger through multiple senses.

“Our hypothesis is that the sound is like, ‘the hornets are here,’ and the smell is like, ‘everyone come and gather at the entrance to start defending,’” Mattila says. “At this point we know that these things are linked: the hornet shows up, the bees make the sound, and also, at the same time, a lot of bees start showing up outside the colony and getting ready for defense.”

Although the antipredator pipe does seem to be a rallying call, more research is needed to determine what exactly the signals mean and whether they prompt a particular defense. It also remains to be seen whether other bee species use antipredator pipes, and whether the Asian honeybees make these signals when faced with other predators.

“We don’t know if it’s the giant hornets—the fact that they’re this particular species—or just that they’re big, or that they get right up to the entrance,” Mattila says. “But something about how they attack makes the bees inside produce this really urgent sound.”

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For most ant species, being born as a worker ant means you’ll spend your whole life on the clock. But for Harpegnathos saltator (also known as Jerdon’s jumping ants or Indian jumping ants), there’s always hope of ascension. If the colony’s queen dies, workers face their peers in a showdown for a shot at the crown. The contenders all turn into “gamergates” (the “gam” rhymes with “ham”)—ants with queen-like qualities. 

Workers and queens have socially distinct roles in their colonies. The masses of workers find food and fight invaders, while the sole queen gives birth to more workers. When workers become gamergates, their bodies change to reflect their new potential role—their venom sacs shrink and their ovaries expand. Previous research also shows that the transformation from worker to gamergate involves changes in brain size, altered hormones, and a 5-fold lifespan increase. But the exact mechanism triggering these shifts has long remained a mystery. In a new paper in Cell, a team of biologists and geneticists report that they’ve cracked it. Switching the expression of just a single protein, Kr-h1 (Krüppel homolog 1), in the brains of ants is enough to initiate a cascade of changes and launch a worker toward queendom.

Kr-h1’s job is to respond to the commands of two hormones—a juvenile hormone found more in workers and an ecdysone hormone found in greater abundance in queens. Give a 10-day old ant more juvenile hormone, and Kr-h1 will shut down genes related to queenliness and promote worker genes. Give an ant ecdysone and Kr-h1 will do the opposite, promoting queen-like behaviors. The researchers also found that if they deleted Kr-h1 from ant neurons, worker ants started to behave more like gamergates, and gamergates more like workers. 

[Related: In the battle for the crown, Indian jumping ants shrink and regrow their brains]

“This protein regulates different genes in workers and gamergates and prevents the ants from performing ‘socially inappropriate’ behaviors,” Shelley Berger, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “That is to say, Kr-h1 is required to maintain the boundaries between social castes and to ensure that workers continue to work while gamergates continue to act like queens.”

In these ants, Kr-h1 acts like a toggle between two states. But future work will need to determine just how these proteins and hormones influence specific behaviors, University of Fribourg neuroscientist Adria LeBoeuf, who studies social insects but did not participate in the work, told The Scientist. “Somehow these hormones end up in the brain, [but] we don’t know how they get there,” or why only certain genes respond to them, she said. Plus, understanding how these pathways affect ovaries and other key body parts during these transitions will be important to uncover, she added.

Still, the fact that the same protein silences different genes in the brains of different ant castes and essentially controls that segregation is surprising, Roberto Bonasio, a molecular epigeneticist at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-author of the paper, said in a statement. “We thought that these jobs would be assigned to two or more different factors, each of them only present in one or the other brain.”

The key message is that ants have all the wiring for multiple behavioral patterns that are only carried out depending on which genes are activated, Berger said in the same statement. “In other words, the parts of both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are already written into the genome; everyone can play either role, depending on which gene switches are turned on or off.”

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CATERPILLARS ARE masters of deception. Some imitate sticks and leaves to avoid becoming lunch. Others flash bright colors to convey their toxic nature. A few even wave pumped-up limbs to frighten foes. Despite such impressive maneuvers, humans tend to overlook these wee wonders. But they rarely escape the eye of Samuel Jaffe, an entomologist who’s spent his life uncovering their anonymous exploits, a fascination that began when he was a kid collecting the critters near his Massachusetts home. Before long, Jaffe started photographing them. In 2013, that project blossomed into the Caterpillar Lab, an education center in New Hampshire with thousands of live specimens. The nonprofit’s scores of caterpillar close-ups provide a fascinating glimpse of the secrets hiding in backyards everywhere, just waiting to be found.

Baltimore checkerspot (above)

Studying caterpillars can reveal other minutiae of the natural world. For example, this polka-dotted larva’s favorite food, the pink-flowered white turtlehead, has grown increasingly scarce along the East Coast. That’s prompted Euphydryas phaeton to dine on its distant cousin, English plantain, which suggests the flora are more closely related than believed.

Pine devil

These aptly named insects live on only a few coniferous species and blend into the barbed texture of the branches with their spiky horns. Jaffe believes the shiny spheres atop Citheronia sepulcralis’s crown could also mimic dripping sap. Its reliance on pines, however, makes it vulnerable to deforestation.

Filament bearer

Nematocampa resistaria sports four odd tentacles that fill with fluid, swelling large enough to send pursuers running. The critters inhabit yards across the US and look a bit like spiders as they dangle on silk threads, freezing in spooky poses to further deter predators.

Silvery blue

The young Glaucopsyche lygdamus, which will become a cerulean butterfly, defends itself against wasps and other threats with a security detail of ants. Some varieties of the species feed their guards sugary drops to keep them around. Others excrete a cocktail of chemicals that makes the trusted servants abandon their queen and colony.

Evergreen bagworm

This scrappy city dweller carries its pupal shell throughout its larval stage, adding bits of food, poop, and silk to form a cocoon that can reach the size of a pine cone. Once that’s complete, Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis tucks itself inside for seven to 10 days for its transformation into a brown, furry moth.

Milkweed tussock

While it may look like a fluffy ball of yarn, the orange-splotched Euchaetes egle signals danger to birds that might otherwise try to chow down—and for good reason. The caterpillar, like the beloved monarch butterfly, absorbs the poisonous cardiac glycosides in the milkweed leaves it eats.

White-blotched prominent

In a vivid display of adaptation, Heterocampa umbrata caterpillars change their skin tones to blend in. This one has a pinkish hue to help it fade into the forest floor. Jaffe has seen more green specimens during wet, cool summers and larger numbers of red and other shades in hot, dry conditions.

Pitcher plant moth caterpillar

Exyra fax spends its entire childhood inside one of its boggy namesakes. It hatches in the carnivorous flower, slurps up the plant’s acidic digestive fluids to fuel its growth, then spins silk to seal the abode and continue feeding on leaf tissue. Some may move on to new hosts and hibernate through winter before completing their life cycle in the spring.

Black-etched prominent

When Tecmessa scitiscripta feels threatened, it expands the colorful tentacles located on its last row of limbs by more than half the length of its body. The little critter then flails around, almost as if it’s throwing a fit to scare off hungry birds, Jaffe says.

This story originally ran in the Fall 2021 Youth issue of PopSci. Read more PopSci+ stories.

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In Nordic city regions, one butterfly and one moth species are enjoying autumn, although they aren’t exactly hitting the pumpkin patches. The insects in these urban spaces fly for longer into the fall than the same species in rural areas, and take longer to induce diapause, which is when they pause development and reduce feeding to survive the winter.

A study carried out in Finland and Sweden shows these results stem from the heat and light in these urban areas, altering the way these bugs behave. These behavioral differences could be the case for many other species that depend on temperature to know when seasons are changing. 

“This situation, where animals use day length to tell what time of year it is, and sort of make seasonal decisions, is a really common one,” says Matthew Nielsen, a physiology researcher at Stockholm University, and one of the authors of the study. “It’s quite possible that we’d see similar effects in urban environments for many, many other species.”

Nielsen’s work focuses on seasonal plasticity, a term that includes how butterflies make decisions on when to develop, the timing of generations, and when diapause is induced. 

“Climate change is changing the relationship between daylength and temperature,” Nielsen says. “The same thing is happening in cities.” He explains that the team looks at these factors, like climate change and light pollution, that affect how insects behave. “[This change] potentially messes up the ability of insects to predict when they need to start preparing for winter.”

[Related: The world needs dark skies more than ever. Here’s why.]

Scientists and citizens alike contributed to this study, since the project required lots of data collected across a broad area. This study used data that had been collected on the two species, Pieris napi and Chiasmia clathrata, using citizen science apps. These apps allow individuals to observe and record data on the natural world, and that data can then be accessed by researchers for investigations like this one. The researchers for this study were looking at how long into the fall individuals were seeing the two species. 

The data showed that the two species studied were typically flying days to weeks into the fall before inducing diapause in urban areas than in rural areas. The researchers also sought to find out whether these longer flight patterns were heritable, and not just a behavior change. To do this, they conducted tests called common garden experiments, where researchers capture insects from both rural and urban areas in two cities, Stockholm and Helsinki, and then raise their offspring in a controlled setting. This enabled them to observe whether the offspring in the labs were exhibiting differences in their diapause induction time depending on where their insect parent was collected. The differences between the rural and urban insect offspring in Helsinki were not strong enough to be significant, but the Stockholm bugs had clear and statistically significant differences in their diapause induction, supporting the concept that this behavior is heritable.  

These researchers expect that these traits are not only heritable, but adaptive, as these insects inducing diapause later might be able to have an extra  generation of offspring in the fall. To prove that, though, researchers will have to conduct tests to contrast the fitness of rural and urban populations of these insects. 

Humans continue to have effects on wildlife in ways we are just beginning to understand. “We’ve only studied two cities so far,” Nielsen says. “We don’t know how this generalizes to other species.” These insects and their changing behavior are just one example of human impacts on the world of bugs.

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The tooth of an ant is a powerful tool. Even though ant chompers are less than the width of a human hair, they’re capable of some incredible feats of cutting. Now, scientists have found a reason: a thin coat of heavy metal atoms.

By applying techniques and technology from materials science to a piece of biology, researchers were literally able to deconstruct an ant’s tooth. In doing so, they found zinc atoms that harden and sharpen the tooth, like diamond dust on a blade. The researchers published their work in the journal Scientific Reports on Thursday. 

“As we reveal these nanoscale structures, I’m pretty sure we will uncover things that we didn’t know before about the natural world,” says Arun Devaraj, a materials scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington, and one of the authors of the paper.

Devaraj’s work focuses specifically on metals. The man-made variety, which humans can tinker with and fine-tune themselves, are engineered to the very edge of their lives. But Devaraj has long been interested in their natural, biological counterparts: materials that have developed impressive properties through slow eons of evolution.

“I’ve been interested in figuring out how nature kind of engineers these things,” says Devaraj.

That, he says, is why he began collaborating with Robert Schofield, a biophysicist at the University of Oregon and the paper’s lead author. Schofield has long studied invertebrates’ “tools,” like ant teeth, for example, but also things like spider fangs, scorpion claws, and worm jaws. Having measured those tools’ properties, Schofield knew well that they’re capable of far greater strength than their tiny sizes would suggest. He wanted to learn more about why.

[Related: Ants could help us beat future pandemics]

Since at least the 1980s, scientists have known that such tools contain two sorts of materials. The first consists of elements like calcium and iron, the kind you might find in your teeth or bones. But the second kind contains more surprising elements like zinc and manganese. The part those heavy metals play isn’t quite as well understood, even though they’re just as common.

Take an ant’s tooth, tapering off into a tip less than the size of a dust particle. Something that hadn’t been studied was the arrangement of atoms out on the tip. That’s where Devaraj’s expertise entered the picture. “In materials science, it’s pretty routine for us to look at how atomic structure dictates properties,” he says.

So Schofield’s group extracted teeth from an ant colony at the University of Oregon and sent them six hours away to PNNL. There, Devaraj and his colleagues—including doctoral intern Xiaoyue Wang—extracted an even tinier sample, just a few atoms across.

With that sample, Devaraj and his colleague applied a technique called atom probe tomography. They placed the sample inside a vacuum chamber, then quite literally began evaporating the sample, one atom at a time. By watching how the atoms flew off, they could determine what the atoms were and where on the sample they came from.

It’s a technique originally meant for analyzing human-made materials. But by using it on this ant’s tooth, the researchers were able to determine which atoms sit where on the tooth’s tip.

[Related: Why can some people smell ants? Here’s the answer to TikTok’s latest mystery.]

They found zinc atoms evenly distributed across the tooth, serving to harden the tooth’s surface and sharpen its point. The zinc atoms allow the ant, when it bites, to exact a great deal more damage upon its quarry than it would first seem, while requiring less force and not dulling its tool.

“Human engineers might also learn from this biological trick,” said Schofield in a statement. “The hardness of ant teeth, for example, increases from about the hardness of plastic to the hardness of aluminum when the zinc is added. While there are much harder engineering materials, they are often more brittle.”

As we learn more about how materials like these work in invertebrates like ants, we might be able to find out how to make better materials in real life. That’s part of why, for Devaraj, Schofield, and their colleagues, this paper is just the beginning. They’re planning years’ worth of further research into this field, and not just in invertebrates: they suspect they might find similar sharpening materials in the teeth of everything from crocodiles to dinosaurs.

“There may be other materials that we haven’t discovered yet,” Devaraj says.

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Entomophagy—the technical name for the more mundane “eating bugs”—has been around for ages. It’s a cornerstone to different cuisines around the world, including those of Latin American, Asian, and African countries. But there’s no sign of it in Western culture, and least of all in the US, where consuming insects is something you’d most likely only see on Fear Factor.

But it doesn’t have to be. Insects are the basis of many food webs in nature, are very rich in nutrients—including protein and all nine essential amino acids for human development—and can be delicious. Yes, you read that right—bugs are actually tasty.

Introducing them to your diet doesn’t mean serving a tarantula on a lettuce leaf or biting into crunchy crickets right away (though, you could because, yum). If you’re curious about the insect-protein movement and wonder how you can start incorporating it into your menu, know that it’s easier than ever, and that there are experts out there who’ve tested the waters and want to show you the way.

Why bugs, though?

As a species, we need to rethink the way we grow and produce what we eat, and there are two very important reasons for that—climate change and food security.

In the last decade, the global meat industry has been questioned for being responsible for at least 20 percent of manmade greenhouse gas emissions and overall, being an unsustainable practice. Raising cattle requires a lot of space and water, and more room for cattle means less trees, which in turn means a diminished natural capacity of the planet to process carbon dioxide. Also, cows and other ruminant animals fart a lot. The inescapable conclusion is that those delicious steaks are one of the least environmentally friendly ways to nurture our bodies.

Plus, there are a lot of bodies to feed on Earth. In 2018 there were 7.5 billion people in the world, and 815 million of them suffered from chronic undernourishment, according to the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. By 2050, the UN estimates the world population will reach 9.8 billion, requiring us to almost double our food production. Considering we’re already running out of space to farm, famine rates are expected to rise beyond what we’ve seen so far.

Most people in less food-secure areas depend on meat as their main source of protein: It’s readily accessible and cheap. But bugs are way more efficient. In 2013, the FAO published a report attesting to the benefits of entomophagy, and how this practice may be just the answer humanity is looking for. The report highlighted the rich nutritional content of bugs, which even though it varies from species to species, can have up to twice the amount of protein as beef and 1.5 times the amount of protein as fish and poultry. Their tiny size is also a plus.

“Insects are definitely in the lower end of environmental impact,” says Andrea Liceaga, an associate professor of food science at Purdue University’s College of Agriculture. “They don’t need a lot of water, nor a lot of space or food, and their feed to growth ratio is almost 1 to 1.” That feed conversion, as it’s technically known, is more efficient than poultry’s 2 to 1 ratio, and way better than cattle’s 6 to 1.

Bugs have another upside—they can be hacked to improve their nutritional content even further. Researchers have long been experimenting with insect flours to make them blend better with other ingredients such as carbohydrates and fats. Though there are many ways to do this, enzymatic hydrolysis, a process in which enzymes and water are used to break down complex protein chains, is one of the most common. This boosts the flour’s nutrient count by rendering the chitin—the main compound in insects’ exoskeletons—soluble, and allowing more protein bits to bond with other ingredients.

Overcoming the fear factor

One thing is true—becoming an insect foodie is all about a shift in culture. No matter how beneficial science finds bugs to be for dining, if people don’t want to eat them, you can’t force them to.

“The true mass adoption has to start with ‘This tastes freaking delicious.’ How do you get people to eat if not through it tasting good?” says Joseph Yoon, chef and founder of Brooklyn Bugs, a catering company and education platform in New York that serves an entire menu featuring insects.

Other than experimenting with new recipes like black ant ceviche, Yoon travels across the country talking to people (including kids) about eating bugs. Research shows Western cultures don’t have positive views on entomophagy, labeling it as “famine food” that should only be considered when traditional resources are scarce. Still, Yoon finds his audiences are curious about the practice, especially when he offers up samples. Climbing the ladder from cricket bars to entire scorpions takes time, the chef explains; not many folks get to that point, but he insists that watching people conquering their fear is highly rewarding.

OK, I’m intrigued. How do I start?

The first step to eating bugs is to shop for some. A warning though: The edible-insect market is still very small. Retail options are limited, and they’re usually pricier than buying chicken or ground beef by the pound at the grocery store. This might change in the near future—projected growth for the industry worldwide is expected to be up to 47 percent by 2026—but in the meantime, don’t try to compare bugs and meat side by side.

“You can’t look at crickets in the same manner that you look at steak, because you’re most likely not going to eat a pound of crickets at one time. Nor do you need to,” says Yoon, adding that most people gradually add insects into home-cooked dishes. So even if you spend the same amount of money on crickets as you would on a couple of steaks, your six-legged fixings will last longer.

Where to get them

Online you’ll find a variety of products to satiate all your bug hankerings—from protein powder and flour, to snacks and fresh insects. You can buy them on Amazon or from specialty sites such as Entomo Farms or Exo Protein. Make sure to read the “labels” before you purchase: If you buy fresh crickets, for example, you’ll want ones that were farmed specifically for human consumption, as opposed to food for your pet iguana.

Now, you’re probably wondering why you would buy crickets if you can just pick them up from the park or any open green area near your home. Yoon explains it’s better to leave the crickets in your backyard alone—there’s no way of knowing if they’ve been exposed to pesticides or contaminants that could be harmful to you.

“Just like you don’t want to pick up roadkill and eat it, you want to get responsibly sourced food,” he says.

What to get first

When people think about eating bugs, they most immediately picture a taco with chapulines or a bowl of sautéed crickets. But the truth is, you can opt for a less shocking alternative. Products made of insect protein (powders, flours, pastes) run aplenty, and they provide a perfect first step into entomophagy, given that there are no eyes, legs, or antennae involved. You can also buy flour wholesale—cricket and mealworm are the most common—and bake it into cricket ginger cookies or chocolaty chip mealworm cookies.

If you want to go a step further, take Yoon’s advice and sprinkle roasted, ready-to-eat insects on a dish you already love. “You can fold them in, just as you’d add capers and croutons,” he says.

Yoon also recommends experimenting with different ways of cooking insects. Just as boiled chicken tastes very differently from fried chicken, you might like your bugs cooked in a certain way and not another. You can sauté them, drench them in oil, and even turn them into soup.

Find some inspiration

If you’re not sure what dishes to start with, you can always get some ideas from local restaurants that include bugs in their menu. Put in a few orders and decide what you like—it may be a snack or a dessert, or something so simple as guacamole and chopped crickets. Once you’ve settled on your favorites, look for a recipe online and try to replicate it at home.

Try easy flavor combos

If you don’t have a great idea of what insects taste like or what their texture is, it might be hard to think of how they’d fit best in recipes. Don’t worry—that’s what experts are for.

Culinarily speaking, crickets one of the most versatile insects you’ll find, Yoon says: They take on the flavor of whatever you cook them with. If you buy them frozen or already roasted, you can sauté them with an aromatic oil like sesame and play around with spices to give them a deeper, more interesting zest.

Ants, meanwhile, have a more defined taste profile, thanks to their evolutionary history. They use formic acid—also found in lemon—as a defense mechanism against predators, giving them a “wonderful tanginess,” Yoon says. “I find they pair extremely well with shellfish and guacamole—or anything you want to add a little kick to.”

Mealworms have an earthy flavor, similar to mushrooms or beets. Yoon says he likes to combine them with chocolate desserts, and suggests adding them to a brownie or cookie recipe.

No matter which route you choose, eating insects can make every day an adventure. You can be as safe or as experimental as you want to be, all while knowing you’re contributing to a healthier environment. Get ready to be surprised and let go of your prejudices—when we said bugs were actually delicious, we meant it.

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Seaweed with a side of maggots might be a regular feature on menus of the future—at least according to some researchers. Turns out these strange ingredients might be just what we need to insulate farming and food production from catastrophe.

In a new perspective piece, researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk explain that in a world of climate change, pandemics, wildfire, and additional disasters, there is a high potential for a devastating constellation of events to destabilize the global food production system, putting the world at risk. 

Asaf Tzachor, a research associate at Cambridge, and colleagues write that to help reduce the risk of large disturbances that could upend our ability to adequately feed people, we need to consider “future foods.” These futuristic snacks may sound more like fish food than anything—including algae, fungal protein, and insect larvae. But considering the many stresses ranging from environmental changes to pathogens currently plaguing our animal and plant-based food system, they argue it’s a risk to stake our future on those foods alone.

It’s unlikely that a dinner made of algae can act as a replacement for our current food system, but instead, it could act as a necessary supplement, he says. “Human nutrition will continue to rely on several conventional dietary items, including vegetables and fruits and legumes, cultivated in conventional farming techniques,” Tzachor says, but he adds diversifying our diets can “future-proof our nutrition.”

[Related: 11 percent of food waste comes from our homes.]

According to the World Health Organization, over 205 million children under the age of five suffer from some degree of undernutrition. “Our attention is primarily focused on easing the global burden of macro and micronutrient deficiencies,” Tzachor says. 

The types of future foods they propose—kelp, maggots, and fungus—are already consumed in many parts of the world such as in Asia and Africa, but may meet some resistance in areas where eating food such as arthropods is not as common. “Reservations about eating novel foods like flies, algae, beetles, and bivalves, could be overcome by using them as ingredients and additives rather than eating them whole,” Tzachor says. It may not take too much convincing either, as the popularity of alternative food sources is on the rise: Seaweed farming is a rapidly growing sector of aquaculture and fungal proteins have been growing in popularity as a food source for decades. 

The beauty of these future foods, Tzachor says, is that they can be grown outside of the traditional agricultural environment in self-contained, modular units. Vertical farming and similar methods have been a growing research interest for rural communities and urban environments alike— and can even provide fresh leafy greens on the International Space Station.

[Related: Trying to eat eco-friendly? These charts show how different diets could change the planet.]

He says they analyzed over 500 scientific papers and have conducted field studies to determine the best way to engineer systems to grow future foods efficiently without leaving a large carbon footprint. Some of the best options are “enclosed, modular facilities that use an artificial light source” that can actually support the growth of multiple types of food at once, from fungus to aquaculture. Modular designs, they say, aren’t at the whims of land availability and climate—meaning you can grow types of food far from their original homelands. 

These modular units may also promote a “circular economy,” which in sustainability speak means keeping resources inside the system. “In the instance of insect larva breeding facilities, we are able to use organic waste as feedstock for flies,” Tzachor says.

Tzachor says there is no time to waste in risk-proofing our food system. “Contemporary society has painted itself into a corner,” he says. “Our conventional approach to food production has prioritized productivity over resilience. To provide consistent, safe, and sustainable food to billions of people into the future, this narrative must now change.”

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With heatwaves becoming more common across the US, butterflies are just some of the many wild creatures that may not be getting enough fluids and nutrition. Butterflies, as books and television have shown us, obtain a lot of their hydration from flower nectar. Yet sipping water from muddy soil, known as puddling, provides key nutrients for reproduction that nectar can’t provide.

“It’s mostly male butterflies who puddle, and you often see them in large groups,” says Nathan Brockman, butterfly wing curator at Iowa State University’s Reiman Gardens. The more males at a location, the more likely other males will stop to see if there’s something they should be getting. Watering areas are often muddy soil or… other sources of fluid.

David Mizejewski, naturalist with the National Wildlife Federation and author of Attracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife, said many people “have an image of butterflies being magical creatures that flit around drinking flower nectar.” In reality some butterflies sip liquid from dung, urine, and rotting fruit. Males incorporate salts and minerals from these sources or mud into their sperm. Females absorb those nutrients during mating, increasing egg survival.

By adding a butterfly-friendly watering area near your pollinator garden or flower bed, you can provide butterflies with much-needed moisture and nutrients. Try your hand at one of these three easy-to-build watering areas.

Fill a dish with soil and water

If you like the idea of a contained watering area that roughly mimics a natural mud puddle, a simple dish may be a good option for you. Find a shallow bird bath or a saucer such as the drainage dish that goes under a flowerpot. Any container smaller than the size of a standard bird bath, or 15-20 inches wide, will be difficult for butterflies to find. Add organic garden soil since soil with chemical fertilizers can harm butterfly health. Mix in compost, sand, and even manure, which “sounds kind of gross but it’s got a ton of minerals and other nutrients in it,” says Mizejewski.

[Related: Build a classy, easy bird bath with vintage finds]

Next, add enough water to the mixture so it is muddy but does not have standing pools of water, which can encourage mosquitos to breed. Butterflies also have a hard time landing in water that is more than 1/4 to 1/8-inch deep and can get stuck. Place the dish on the ground or elevate it on a stand in a sunny spot in your yard.

Assemble a fruit feeder

Want to find a good use for overly ripe fruit you didn’t get around to eating? Place rotting bananas, watermelon, oranges, or apples in a shallow bowl or plate. Sprinkle some salt on the buffet to make it even more enticing. Some people add water to the dish to repel ants; if you do this, keep the water shallow, around a quarter-inch in depth. If you keep the water any deeper because it is drying quickly in hot weather, add plenty of rocks to ensure there are places for butterflies to land. Brockman also recommends adding little footholds to smooth dishes by dispensing lines of hot glue perpendicular to where the water line will be so butterflies can climb out. Don’t forget to bring your fruit feeder in at night—raccoons also like rotting fruit.

Be prepared to also see many other types of insects such as beetles, wasps, flies, and bees visiting your watering area. All have their roles in your backyard ecosystem. For example, insects are a large part of many songbirds’ diet. Mud is a critical resource for ground-nesting native bees that use it to build a protective chamber wall for their eggs in underground tunnels. By helping native bees, you will also aid the many wildflowers, vegetables, and fruits that they pollinate.

If you want to go further, the watering area you make can be part of an oasis for butterflies, especially when combined with other habitat features such as native plants and places where adults and larvae may safely shelter, such as under leaves, brush piles, and rocks. Whatever you do, large or small, you’re sure to get a close-up view of nature. 

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Kristine Grayson is an associate professor of biology at the University of Richmond. This story was originally featured on The Conversation.

The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is a deceptively attractive metallic-green adult beetle with a red abdomen. But few people ever actually see the insect itself – just the trail of destruction it leaves behind under the bark of ash trees.

These insects, which are native to Asia and Russia, were first discovered in Michigan in 2002. Since then they have spread to 35 states and become the most destructive and costly invasive wood-boring insect in U.S. history. They have also been detected in the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

In 2021 the U.S. Department of Agriculture stopped regulating the movement of ash trees and wood products in infested areas because the beetles spread rapidly despite quarantine efforts. Now federal regulators and researchers are pursuing a different strategy: biological control. Scientists think that tiny parasitic wasps, which prey on emerald ash borers in their native range, hold the key to curbing this invasive species and returning ash trees to North American forests.

I study invasive forest insects and work with the USDA to develop easier ways of raising emerald ash borers and other invasive insects in research laboratories. This work is critical for discovering and testing ways to better manage forest recovery and prevent future outbreaks. But while the emerald ash borer has spread uncontrollably in nature, producing a consistent laboratory supply of these insects is surprisingly challenging – and developing an effective biological control program requires a lot of target insects.

The value of ash trees

Researchers believe the emerald ash borer likely arrived in the U.S. on imported wood packaging material from Asia sometime in the 1990s. The insects lay eggs in the bark crevices of ash trees; when larva hatch, they tunnel through the bark and feed on the inner layer of the tree. Their impact becomes apparent when the bark is peeled back, revealing dramatic feeding tracks. These channels damage the trees’ vascular tissue – internal networks that transport water and nutrients – and ultimately kill the tree.

Before this invasive pest appeared on the scene, ash trees were particularly popular for residential developments, representing 20-40% of planted trees in some Midwestern communities. Emerald ash borers have killed tens of millions of U.S. trees with an estimated replacement cost of US$10-25 billion.

Ash wood is also popular for lumber used in furniture, sports equipment, and paper, among many other products. The ash timber industry produces over 100 million board feet annually, valued at over $25 billion.

Why quarantines have failed

State and federal agencies have used quarantines to combat the spread of several invasive forest insects, including Asian longhorned beetles and Lymantria dispar, previously known as gypsy moth. This approach seeks to reduce the movement of eggs and young insects hidden in lumber, nursery plants and other wood products. In counties where an invasive species is detected, regulations typically require wood products to be heat-treated, stripped of bark, fumigated or chipped before they can be moved.

The federal emerald ash borer quarantine started with 13 counties in Michigan in 2003 and increased exponentially over time to cover than a quarter of the continental U.S. Quarantines can be effective when forest insect pests mainly spread through movement of their eggs, hitchhiking long distances when humans transport wood.

However, female emerald ash borers can fly up to 12 miles per day for as long as six weeks after mating. The beetles also are difficult to trap, and typically are not detected until they have been present for three to five years – too late for quarantines to work.

Next option: wasps

Any biocontrol plan poses concerns about unintended consequences. One notorious example is the introduction of cane toads in Australia in the 1930s to reduce beetles on sugarcane farms. The toads didn’t eat the beetles, but they spread rapidly and ate lots of other species. And their toxins killed predators.

Introducing species for biocontrol is strictly regulated in the U.S. It can take two to 10 years to demonstrate the effectiveness of potential biocontrol agents, and obtaining a permit for field testing can take two more years. Scientists must demonstrate that the released species specializes on the target pest and has minimal impacts on other species.

Four wasp species from China and Russia that are natural enemies of the emerald ash borer have gone through the approval process for field release. These wasps are parasitoids: They deposit their eggs or larva into or on another insect, which becomes an unsuspecting food source for the growing parasite. Parasitoids are great candidates for biocontrol because they typically exploit a single host species.

The selected wasps are tiny and don’t sting, but their egg-laying organs can penetrate ash tree bark. And they have specialized sensory abilities to find emerald ash borer larva or eggs to serve as their hosts.

The USDA is working to rear massive numbers of parasitoid wasps in lab facilities by providing lab-grown emerald ash borers as hosts for their eggs. Despite COVID-19 disruptions, the agency produced over 550,000 parasitoids in 2020 and released them at over 240 sites.

The goal is to create self-sustaining field populations of parasitoids that reduce emerald ash borer populations in nature enough to allow replanted ash trees to grow and thrive. Several studies have shown encouraging early results, but securing a future for ash trees will require more time and research.

One hurdle is that emerald ash borers grown in the lab need fresh ash logs and leaves to complete their life cycle. I’m part of a team working to develop an alternative to the time- and cost-intensive process of collecting logs: an artificial diet that the beetle larva can eat in the lab.

The food must provide the right texture and nutrition. Other leaf-feeding insects readily eat artificial diets made from wheat germ, but species whose larva digest wood are pickier. In the wild, emerald ash borers only feed on species of ash tree.

In today’s global economy, with people and products moving rapidly around the world, it can be hard to find effective management options when invasive species become established over a large area. But lessons learned from the emerald ash borer will help researchers mobilize quickly when the next forest pest arrives.

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If you come across the nest of a paper wasp colony and happen to have a blacklight handy, you may get the chance to see a green alien glow emanating from its hexagonal cells. 

Paper wasps create a fine silk, most notably to wrap young wasp larvae in their cocoons for metamorphosis. But new research shows that inside those dainty strands are fluorescent proteins that become visible to humans under UV light. Paper wasps stitch this silk into their nests, giving their homes that same eerie glow, though the insects’ bodies themselves do not have that same fluorescence. The findings were published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

While trekking through northern Vietnam, blacklight in hand, University of Paris chemist Bernd Schöllhorn spotted a strange yellow-green shape. He turned off his light, and the shape disappeared. Schöllhorn got closer and realized what he had discovered: the brilliant color of paper wasp hives normally invisible to us. 

This finding was quite serendipitous. “We were not searching for wasp nests in particular,” Schöllhorn told Live Science. “To our knowledge, this phenomenon has not been observed in the past, neither by scientific researchers nor by any photographers.”

[Related: We finally know why sea pickles glow]

Schöllhorn and colleagues searched for paper wasps in other countries, finding nests from six species total, in other regions of Vietnam as well as in the Amazonian rainforest of French Guiana and in the south of France. Different species glowed slightly differently; the nests from the two species outside of Vietnam, for example, glowed more of a teal blue-green. But in the light of day, all paper wasp nests are a vaguely yellow off-white. 

This fluorescence in wasp nests had never been documented before, so “finding this in so many species, and across three different continents, is remarkable,” Swanne Gordon, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies insect signaling and wasn’t involved in the study, told The Atlantic. But of course, with a new discovery comes many new questions.

While wasps are able to see Day-Glo wavelengths invisible to mere human eyes—they’re particularly sensitive to greens—it’s still unclear what purpose the fluorescence serves, if any. The highlighter hues may be a signal flare that guides the wasps home. Or, the slight variations in color might be a way for different colonies to differentiate their homes from their neighbors’. Fluorescence may also have protective qualities, like shielding paper wasp pupae from overexposure to the sun’s harmful UV rays. 

There’s also the possibility that this fluorescence is merely a result of chance, the strange aftermath of coincidental biophysics. “It’s still possible this is just an incidental by-product of how the silk is made,” said University of Michigan paper wasp expert Liz Tibbetts, to The Atlantic. 

The next steps are to determine the chemical structures in place that allow this silk to glow. Those insights might provide clues about its function, and how scientists might utilize this fluorescence for future tech or biomedical purposes.

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The plight of pollinators is growing more visible than ever before. Increasingly, scientists are documenting the decline of bees and butterflies, evidence that the loud hum of buzzing insects on many landscapes is turning to a whisper.

For bees, the threats are numerous, including habitat loss, climate change, and intensive agriculture. As fields of flowering plants are converted to roads and row crops, sources of food for wild pollinators dwindle. And when insects forage in farms, they suffer from poor nutrition due to a lack of diverse food sources and become exposed to agricultural chemicals. Honey bees—a managed, non-native species in the US—are transported into many farms to provide pollination, but still face threats from poor nutrition, pests, and pathogens. 

A new analysis in the journal Nature shows that some of these threats, when put together, kill more bees than the combination of each threat alone. It turns out, cocktails of agricultural chemicals may have a synergistic effect on bee mortality. In other words, more bees die than would have if the effects of the chemicals simply added to each other.

The authors of the paper analyzed 90 studies that in total documented 356 effects from interacting bee stressors, such as combinations of chemicals, nutritional problems, and parasites. Each study included at least two factors harming bees. They categorized whether the stressors negated each other, added to each other, or compounded to cause extra damage— compounding would indicate a synergistic effect. For example, if one pesticide used alone caused 10 percent of bees to die, and another pesticide killed 15 percent, the two combined would have a synergistic effect if more than 25 percent of bees died. 

Across the studies, the researchers repeatedly found that when bees were exposed to multiple agrichemicals, the combination had a synergistic effect on mortality. Meanwhile, combos of other stressors, like parasites and nutrition, tended to have effects that just added together.

[Related: 5 ways to keep bees buzzing that don’t require a hive]

It’s still unclear why pesticides would have such an effect. In the analysis, the bee stressors didn’t have synergistic effects on non-lethal health measures, like colony growth rates. In other research, however, scientists have found that certain pesticides can weaken a bee’s immune system, potentially making them extra vulnerable to other chemicals or pathogens. There are also numerous other processes that may be responsible for the compounding effect, says Elizabeth Nicholls, an ecologist studying bees at the University of Sussex who was not involved in the analysis. “It also might be that their detoxification pathways might be impaired if they’re being bombarded with lots of chemicals at one time.”

The findings give reason to worry—these pesticide effects held up at realistic levels used in agriculture. Studies have found that bees are exposed to a range of pesticides, both from crops and nearby wildflowers. “Exposure to multiple agrichemicals is the norm, not the exception,” says the study’s lead author Harry Siviter, an ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin. “The actual commercial formulas that are used on farms often have multiple chemicals in them.”

Especially with bees tending to forage across many plants, their chances of getting exposed to multiple toxins are high, says Nicholls. “[The study] shows that you need to be thinking about exposure at a landscape level,” she says. “And it’s not okay just to test exposure from one crop and one chemical.”

We’re already seeing the effects of declining pollinators. In the United States, apples, cherries, and blueberries are among crops threatened by declining pollinators. In southwest China, farmers have to hand pollinate fruit trees to make up for the decline in insects.

Importing extra honey bees to fill the gap isn’t an option, either. Honey bee colonies have experienced greater rates of collapse in recent years. And wild bees are probably even more sensitive to threats, because they tend to be solitary and lack the robust social networks of honey bees. “Wild bees are really important, and those are the bees that are doing really badly,” says Siviter. 

An ideal regulatory process for pesticides would look at interactive effects as well as continue monitoring after their initial approval, says Siviter. Right now, the licensing process for pesticides is more limited, with little monitoring after a product is approved and in use. “If you don’t consider the interactions, you’re underestimating the impact of environmental stressors on bees.” That, ultimately, could undermine the abundance of many fruits, vegetables, and nuts at the grocery store.

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Frank A. Hale is a professor of Horticultural Crop Entomology at the University of Tennessee. This story originally featured on The Conversation.

The spotted lanternfly was first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014 and has since spread to 26 counties in that state and at least six other eastern states. It’s moving into southern New England, Ohio, and Indiana. This approximately 1-inch-long species from Asia has attractive polka-dotted front wings but can infest and kill trees and plants. Professor Frank Hale is an entomologist who is tracking this species.

How did the spotted lanternfly get to the U.S., and how quickly is it spreading?

It is native to India, China, and Vietnam and probably arrived in a cut stone shipment in 2012. The first sighting was in 2014 in Berks County, Pennsylvania, on a tree of heaven—a common invasive tree brought to North America from China in the late 1700s.

By July 2021 the lanternfly had spread to about half of Pennsylvania, large areas of New Jersey, parts of New York state, Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. It also had been found in western Connecticut, eastern Ohio, and now Indiana. To give an idea of how fast these lanternflies spread, they were introduced into South Korea in 2004 and spread throughout that entire country—which is approximately the size of Pennsylvania—in only three years.

How do they spread so fast?

The lanternflies lay egg masses in late summer and autumn on the trunks of trees and any smooth-surfaced item sitting outdoors. The egg masses, which resemble smears of dry mud, can also be laid on the smooth surfaces of cars, trucks, and trains. Then, they can be unintentionally transported to any part of the country in just a few days. Once the eggs hatch, they crawl to nearby host plants to start a new infestation.

How do they damage trees and plants? What do they feed on?

They feed by piercing the bark of trees and vines to tap into the plant’s vascular system to feast on sap. For a sucking insect, lanternflies are relatively big. They remove large amounts of sap and excrete copious amounts of clear, sticky “honeydew” that can coat the tree and anything beneath. A black sooty mold grows wherever the honeydew has been deposited. While unsightly, sooty mold isn’t harmful when growing on the bark of the tree or beneath it. Lanternfly feeding seriously stresses trees and vines, which lose carbohydrates and other nutrients meant for storage in the roots and eventually for new growth. Infested trees and vines grow more slowly, exhibit dieback—begin to die from the branch tips—and can even die outright.

How are scientists and officials trying to stop their spread?

Biological control shows some promise for the future. Two naturally occurring fungal pathogens of spotted lanternflies have been identified in the US. Also, US labs are testing two parasitoid insects—insects that grow by feeding on lanternflies and killing them in the process—that have been brought from China for testing and possible future release.

How worried should people be about this lanternfly?

Very worried. Lanternflies easily build to high numbers. The area where host trees live is relatively wide, and lanternflies damage crops, the forest, and the landscape. They damage many plants and cause a major nuisance to the general public. The heavy flow of honeydew and the resulting sooty mold makes a mess of the landscape. The adults start to aggregate on plants and structures to lay their egg masses in September. Their sudden, mass appearance can be alarming to people the way periodical cicada populations shock people when they come out of the ground. But lanternflies are more shocking because the few predators that could feed on them, like wheel bugs and predatory stink bugs, do not seem to control the infestations. That is why the introduction of parasitoids from Asia are important for achieving some meaningful level of biological control.

Lanternflies can be a serious pest of grapes, and where found, they have reduced grape yields and damaged or killed vines. Multiple applications of insecticides are often needed to kill them, but this increases the cost of crop production. The pest threatens the major wine-producing regions in the East, such as the Finger Lakes and Long Island in New York; parts of Virginia; and Newport, Rhode Island.

Have any other pests similarly damaged trees?

Yes, the emerald ash borer, which arrived in the US from China by accident and was discovered in 2002. It has killed millions of ash trees in North America. The Asian longhorned beetle, which feeds on and kills many species of trees, has turned up in multiple locations, most recently near Charleston, South Carolina. Maple, buckeye, horse chestnut, willow, and elm would be threatened if this pest ever got widely established.

The box tree moth damages boxwoods and is known to live in Canada. It has been seen in Connecticut, Michigan, and South Carolina. It possibly was spread accidentally into the US in shipments of boxwoods from Canada. It is not known to be established in any state, but a federal government order has halted importing host plants like boxwood, euonymus, and holly from Canada.

What should I do if I see one?

If it has already infested the region where you live and you find spotted lanternflies on your property, contact your local county extension office for control recommendations.

But if it has not been found in your county or state, report it to your state department of agriculture. If the infestation is caught early before it can become established in your area, hopefully it can be eradicated there. Eventually, it will spread to many parts of the country. We can slow the spread by identifying and eradicating new infestations wherever they arise.

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As July passes into August, the tips of broadleaf tree branches all around the mid-Atlantic will come alive with the new generation of Brood X cicadas. A single female cicada can lay up to 600 eggs over several different nests—and though not all of them survive, hundreds of millions will hatch into miniscule nymphs, only to drop down from the canopy and disappear into the earth.

Unlike the pomp and circumstance that surrounded Brood X’s emergence a few weeks back, this midsummer bug shower will largely go unnoticed because of the nymphs’ diminutive size, says John Cooley, an entomologist at the University of Connecticut who studies cicadas. Mating is the most conspicuous stage of the creatures’ life cycle; what comes next is a quiet return to underground for a 17-year-long growth period.

But even with their enormous numbers, certain aspects of the cicadas’ subterranean phase are mysterious—and even divisive—for biologists. While the nymphs have forelimbs specifically modified to burrow like a mole’s, they can also maneuver through existing cracks and holes with their rice-grain-sized bodies. Some might even begin their journey by following the tunnels the previous generation made to crawl out of the ground.

Once they’re an inch or two below the surface, the nymphs likely feed on grass roots, says Gene Kritsky, an entomologist at Mount St. Joseph University who’s written a book on Brood X. Cooley is less sure of that idea, however. “I don’t think we know a lot about what goes on down there,” he says. “If you had X-ray vision and could look at the soil, it would be a big mass of roots, and it would be nearly impossible for you or anybody else to tell what the roots went to.”

Both Kritsky and Cooley agree, though, that the next step is for the nymphs to find deeper, more substantial roots to support their long journey to adulthood. But how low do they go? Older nymphs in their last underground stages of development can typically be found 4 to 6 inches from the surface, Kritsky says. But one cold November, he tracked them 8 to 12 inches down, which makes him think that the bugs were burrowing farther to reach warmer temperatures. Still, that depth is above the frost line in many places, Cooley notes, “which raises some interesting questions.” How do they avoid freezing? And how much do they really move between different layers and roots? 

[Related: A fine dining guide to the Brood X cicadas]

Experts like Kritsky and Cooley rely on digging up cicada nymphs to study them between emergences. Getting live specimens, however, is a serious challenge: In the process of being separated from their food source, the nymphs die. In an ideal world, there’d be a better way.

“We’ve always had these fantasies of building an ant farm kind of thing” to observe the cicadas throughout their entire life cycle, Cooley says. But so far, no researchers have successfully raised periodical species (like the ones that comprised Brood X) from egg to adult in the lab. Cicadas’ soil needs are too specific, Cooley explains; he posits that the soil texture or consistency could be the sticking point. “We don’t know what is just right,” he says. “It’s something about the soil, something about the kind of roots. We’ve tried everything we can think of. Apparently, there’s some obvious but important part of the whole thing that we’re missing.”

Even the cicadas’ coolest party trick, their coordinated emergence, is still a puzzle. The same brood can mature at variable rates, yet somehow hit the same graduation cues. The leading idea is that the insects will keep track of the years through the seasonal change in trees, absorbing information as leaves grow in spring and drop in fall. “Cicadas don’t have clocks. They don’t tell time—they count,” says Cooley. “But it’s still hypothetical.”

“What we don’t know is how they remember what year has gone by,” Kritsky notes further.

[Related: Bees can tell time by the temperature in their hive]

Thankfully, researchers won’t have to wait until Brood X resurfaces in 2038 to study living periodical cicadas above ground again. A historic 221-year dual emergence is set to happen in the southern and midwestern US in 2024, when Broods XIII and XIX’s 17- and 13-year life cycles will align. All seven Magicicicada species will molt into adults at once—a phenomenon that entomologists are truly jazzed about it. “It’ll be a great opportunity to look at questions having to do with their lifecycle,” Cooley says.

In the time being, folks in the mid-Atlantic states can check out the second act of the Brood X cicada show by placing a piece of black construction paper at the base of a tree where there’s evidence of egg laying. “You’ll see the little nymphs fall onto [the paper],” Cooley says, “and then find their way down into the soil and start the whole cycle over again.”

The post Baby Brood X cicadas are headed underground. What lies ahead is still a mystery. appeared first on Popular Science.

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Tiger beetles are aggressive hunters that sometimes run so fast their eyes stop working until they pause again. This combination of sprinting and resting means the tiger beetle must use clever pursuit trajectories to intercept its prey.

“Tiger beetles pursue prey using a proportional control law with a delay of one half-stride,” says a new paper by Andreas F. Haselsteiner, Cole Gilbert, and Z. Jane Wang. The researchers analyzed the chase strategy of the insects and found that the beetles are constantly readjusting themselves to intersect their meals’ projected path.

Two Tiger Beetle Pursuits

The above chart is made from recorded pursuits. The pursuit is broken into two parts: the prey (in this case a bead dangled on a string by scientists) is represented by spiked circles and dotted lines. The tiger beetle is shown as the arrows, pointed in the just the right direction to intercept the prey. Both paths show the beetle running toward the bead head-on and then adjusting when the bead starts to flee.

Tiger beetles’ eyesight isn’t stellar (they are, after all, fooled into chasing beads), but it’s a key part of how they hunt. According to the paper, the beetles adjust their pursuit based on seeing where the prey was a half-stride ago. Since the beetles are so fast, this adjustment, made enough times in a high-speed chase, enables them to reliably catch and enjoy their tiny, tasty, fleeing morsels. Or angrily curse at the scientists for fooling them with beads, as the case may be.

Science Daily

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