The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. […]
A Michigan State University study is the first to show an association between unusually high pesticide exposure and poor sense of smell among aging farmers. The research examined more than 11,200 farmers over a 20-year period. At the start of the study, about 16 percent of participants reported having experienced a high pesticide exposure event, […]
A Varroa mite on a honey bee pupa. Credit: Gilles San Martin(Phys.org)—A fungus normally used to control insect pests may help honey bees protect themselves from a destructive mite by both infecting the mites and preventing suppression of the bee immune system, says a team of bee researchers at the University of Guelph. The Varroa mite is […]
Northern brown argus in Swedish landscape. Credit: Karl-Olof Bergman For pollinating butterflies, it is more important to be close to forests than to agricultural fields, according to a study of 32,000 butterflies by researchers at Linköping University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Uppsala. The results provide important knowledge about how to […]
Trained to pick the lowest number out of a series of options, a honeybee chooses a blank image, revealing an understanding of the concept of zero. Scientists have discovered honeybees can understand the concept of zero, putting them in an elite club of clever animals that can grasp the abstract mathematical notion of nothing. By […]
Africanized honeybees, commonly known as “killer bees,” are much more aggressive than their European counterparts. Now researchers have examined neuropeptide changes that take place in Africanized honeybees’ brains during aggressive behavior. The researchers, who report their results in the Journal of Proteome Research, also showed they could turn gentle bees into angry ones by injecting them […]
Researchers have found bees can do basic mathematics, in a discovery that expands our understanding of the relationship between brain size and brain power. Credit: RMIT University Researchers have found bees can do basic mathematics, in a discovery that expands our understanding of the relationship between brain size and brain power. Building on their finding […]
February 4, 2019, John Innes Centre Researchers have pioneered a new method which allows them to rapidly recruit disease resistance genes from wild plants and transfer them into domestic crops. The technique called AgRenSeq or speed cloning has been developed by John Innes Centre researchers alongside colleagues in the United States and Australia to speed up […]
February 4, 2019 by Misti Crane, It’s about time for the annual mass migration of honeybees to California, and new research is helping lower the chances the pollinators and their offspring will die while they’re visiting the West Coast. Each winter, professional beekeepers from around the nation stack hive upon hive on trucks destined for […]