Insect on EARTH Magazine

Pesky ticks even plagued dinosaurs

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 15:13:08 -0400

A tick grasps a dinosaur feather in a piece of 99-million-year-old amber. Credit: E. Peñalver et al., Nature Communications, December 2017.

Blood-sucking, disease-spreading ticks are one of the most maligned parasites in the world, and new evidence shows they’ve been doing their dirty work for a long time: Fossilized ticks dating to the mid-Cretaceous represent the first direct evidence that the ancestors of today’s pesky critters once plagued dinosaurs.

Neonicotinoids: Prominent pesticides escape into the environment

Fri, 14 Apr 2017 09:48:30 -0400

Credit: K. Cantner, AGI.

The 1990s was a watershed era in pest control — and, by extension, agriculture — thanks to a particular bit of chemical innovation. With the emergence of a compound called imidacloprid onto the insecticide market, farmers — from those growing rice, corn and other staples, to orchard owners cultivating fruit trees, to backyard gardeners tending vegetable patches — had a powerful new tool with which to combat aphids, beetles, weevils, whiteflies and a host of other insects with a knack for damaging crops.

To find a mate, go big or go small, just don't go medium

Wed, 29 Mar 2017 14:48:45 -0400

New research provides an explanation for the bimodality in male ornamentation seen in some animal species, such as in male dung beetles, which can either have large horns or no horn at all. Credit: Alex Wild.

The showy features of male animals are often advantageous for attracting mates. Yet these same traits can also prove harmful: A peacock’s long, many-eyed feathers — great for enticing females — can get in the way if a predator gives chase, and a red deer’s elaborate antlers can become stuck in branches, potentially trapping the animal. In a new study, researchers report that a distinctive bimodality in male ornamentation occurs in some species, suggesting that when it comes to successfully courting females, it pays for males to either have the flashiest, most elaborate ornaments, or no such parts at all.

Ants developed farming millions of years ago

Thu, 09 Feb 2017 09:12:04 -0500

A new study in Nature suggests that ants may have invented agriculture as much as 3 million years before humans.

On the Fijian islands of Viti Levu, Vanua Levu and Taveuni, the ant species Philidris nagasau actively cultivates at least six species of Squamellaria plants, using the plants for both food and shelter. All of the Squamellaria are epiphytes, or plants that grow on other plants, using their hosts for support and nutrients. The ants were observed gathering seeds from the fruits of the Squamellaria and inserting them into crevices in host trees. Worker ants constantly patrolled the seeds and, as the seedlings took root in the host, they defecated in the crevices, fertilizing the young plants. As the plants mature, they form hollow chambers at their bases, which the ants were observed using for nests. The ants also harvested the Squamellaria fruit, eating the flesh and collecting seeds for planting.

Busy as a bee: New species of bee quarries into sandstone

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 17:27:36 -0500

Michael Orr scales cliffs to investigate sandstone-boring bees. Credit: David Denlinger.

Researchers have discovered five nesting sites of a new species of bee (Anthophora pueblo) that prefers to make its home in sandstone. The newly discovered nests are located in natural formations as well as Ancestral Puebloan sandstone cliff dwellings in the southwestern U.S.

Ant bodies shaped by environment

Tue, 27 Dec 2016 16:37:32 -0500

Environmental conditions such as temperature and UVB exposure help determine the coloration of ant species — dark or light— that predominate in an area. Credit: left: Shannon Hartman, www.antweb.org, CC BY 4.0; right: Will Ericson, www.antweb.org, CC BY 4.0.

Ants are ectotherms, which means their metabolisms are controlled by the temperature of their environment. New research shows that the environment also influences their color and size.

Cretaceous amber suggests societal behavior in insects is at least 100 million years old

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 12:46:14 -0400

Cretaceous-aged ants, thought to be fighting one another, preserved in amber. Credit: AMNH/D. Grimaldi and P. Barden.

Researchers recently identified previously unknown termites in fossilized amber samples. At left is the soldier caste of Gigantotermes rex, while at right are specimens of Krishnatermes yoddha from three castes: winged reproductive, worker and soldier. Credit: AMNH/D. Grimaldi.

Many insects are social animals. Some, including ants, form colonies with complex social hierarchies, wherein specific roles like reproduction and colony construction are assigned to specific groups of ants, like queens or workers, for example. This kind of sociality, known as eusociality, is found in many other insects, like beetles, honeybees and termites. When it evolved, however, has remained unclear. Until now, the earliest evidence of eusociality came from 20-million-year-old fossils, even though the insect lineages were known to be much older. But two new fossil discoveries have pushed the first known appearance of eusociality back by 80 million years.

Underground ants can't take the heat

Tue, 22 Mar 2016 19:11:07 -0400

According to a recent study, underground species of army ants are much less tolerant of high temperatures than aboveground ants. Credit: Kaitlin Baudier.

Army ants, which move in swarms and show their prey little mercy, are some of the most ferocious insects in the animal kingdom, but a recent study reveals a weakness in some underground species: warm temperatures.

Bark beetles not to blame for big fires?

Thu, 16 Jul 2015 13:19:11 -0400

Bark beetles flourish in warm, dry conditions and have killed millions of hectares of pine forests in the western U.S. Credit: Don Becker, USGS.

Since the mid-1990s, outbreaks of voracious bark beetles have devastated more than 71,000 square kilometers of forests in the Rocky Mountain West. Contrary to popular belief, however, the huge swaths of standing dead trees left behind don’t necessarily pose an increased fire hazard, according to a new study. The finding calls into question the efficacy of recently enacted policies entailing the thinning of beetle-killed forests.

Crumbly amber holds dinosaur secrets

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 16:41:39 -0500

Insects preserved in amber can't be used to reengineer dinosaurs, but they can reveal details of Mesozoic habitats. Credit: University of Alberta Strickland Entomology Museum specimen, R.C. McKellar.

In the movie “Jurassic Park,” dinosaurs were resurrected from DNA in blood harvested from Mesozoic mosquitoes preserved in amber. The plot was pure science fiction, but a new study has found another use for the biological material trapped in fossilized tree resin. By studying microscopic inclusions of plant material, pollen and feathers preserved in bits of amber recovered alongside dinosaur fossils, paleontologist Ryan McKellar of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada is recreating a more complete picture of the Mesozoic landscape.