News by Subject Biology

Ants adjust their social interactions to accommodate changes in population density, according to researchers at Penn State and Georgetown University. The findings suggest that ant colonies are capable of maintaining their sophisticated social organization despite potentially drastic changes in their environments.

A mite that spreads a dangerous virus among honeybees also plays an indirect role in infecting wild bumblebees, new research shows.

The diversity and availability of pollen foraged by honey bees across urban and suburban areas in the US varies drastically with the seasons, according to a study published June 12, 2019 in PLOS ONE by Juliana Rangel from Texas A&M University, USA, and colleagues.

Scientists from the Universities of Regensburg and Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology discovered that the eggs of the European beewolf produce nitric oxide. The gas prevents the larvae's food from getting moldy in the warm and humid brood cells. The results were published in the Journal eLife.

In an unexpected discovery, two species of macro-moths were described as new species endemic to the South Island, New Zealand. Each is restricted to only a couple of subalpine/alpine localities, which makes them particularly vulnerable to extinction, point out the scientists. Described in the open-access journal Alpine Entomology, the insects were named A. titanica and A. avatar simultaneously in reference to mythological deities and the top-grossing blockbusters by James Cameron: Titanic and Avatar.

Viruses, spread through mosquito bites, cause human illnesses such as dengue fever, Zika and yellow fever. A new control technique harnesses a naturally occurring bacterium called Wolbachia that blocks replication of viruses and breaks the cycle of mosquito-borne disease, according to an international team of researchers.

Deborah Matthews hunts for plume moths in darkness, waiting for the halo of her headlamp to catch a brief flicker. Her vigilance helped her discover four new species in the Bahamas.

Proteasome inhibitors have significant promise as components of novel combination therapies to treat multidrug-resistant malaria, according to a study published June 6 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by David Fidock, Caroline Ng, and Barbara Stokes of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Matthew Bogyo of Stanford University School of Medicine, and colleagues.