News by Subject Biology

Since the 1950s, "Africanized" honeybees have spread north and south across the Americas until apparently coming to a halt in California and northern Argentina. Now genome sequencing of hundreds of bees from the northern and southern limits shows a gradual decline in African ancestry across hundreds of miles, rather than an abrupt shift.

Getting run over by a car is not a near-death experience for the diabolical ironclad beetle. How the beetle survives could inspire the development of new materials with the same herculean toughness, engineers show in a paper published Wednesday (Oct. 21) in Nature.

Materials science researchers at the University of California, Irvine conducted a nanoscopic examination of the diabolical ironclad beetle, a species native to the Southwestern US, to learn what makes it so tough and crush resistant. Their results are the subject of a new study in Nature.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba identified a novel mechanism by which mating affects the behavior of germline stem cells (GSCs). By studying Drosophila melanogaster, the researchers showed that the neurons that are activated during mating result in increased intracellular calcium signaling in cells adjacent to GSCs, which in turn resulted in the activation of the protein matrix metalloproteinase to increase GSCs. This study describes how stem cell behavior is regulated by environmental cues.

A new study by a bevy of expert mosquito researchers offers an important warning to consumers: Products claiming to reduce mosquito populations with salt-water solutions are ineffective. In a series of lab tests using nine mosquito species, researchers found no evidence that adult mosquitoes are killed by salt ingested at concentrations used in several popular mosquito-control products. The findings are reported in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

Researchers found significant increases in floral abundance and wild bee diversity in outbreak-affected forests, compared to similar, undisturbed forest.

Honey bees rely on chemical cues related to their shared gut microbial communities, instead of genetic relatedness, to identify members of their colony. This new work is significant in part because it shows an integral role for the microbiome in the essential, everyday social interactions of honey bees, the Earth's most important pollinators, researchers said.

The Guam team's 2017 discovery of the new Cycadophila samara beetle and its pollination of cycads is now contributing to an international effort to more fully understand the intimate relationship between plant and insect.

The female mosquito has an amazing ability to detect blood using her syringe-like "tongue." Now scientists have identified the neurons that give her blood-seeking powers.

The banyan fig tree Ficus microcarpa is famous for its aerial roots, which sprout from branches and eventually reach the soil. The tree also has a unique relationship with a wasp that has coevolved with it and is the only insect that can pollinate it. In a new study, researchers identify regions in the banyan fig's genome that promote the development of its unusual aerial roots and enhance its ability to signal its wasp pollinator.