- Samuel L Jackson gave Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds ’10lbs of bees’ as a wedding gift in 2008: ‘They go Daily Mail
- Samuel L. Jackson Gave Scarlett Johansson, Ex Ryan Reynolds Bees for Wedding: ‘They Abandoned the Hive’ PEOPLE
- Scarlett Johansson & Ryan Reynolds Got 10 Pounds Of Bees From Samuel L. Jackson For Their Wedding Access Hollywood
- Samuel L. Jackson Explains Giving Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds ‘10 Pounds Of Bees’ HuffPost
- Samuel L. Jackson Shares 2008 Wedding Gift for Ryan Reynolds, Scarlett Us Weekly
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: bees
Whoopsies! Fossil From The Dawn Of Life Actually Just Bees – Defector
- Whoopsies! Fossil From The Dawn Of Life Actually Just Bees Defector
- New Evidence Suggests the Historic Dickinsonia Fossil Found At Bhimbetka Caves Was Actually A Beehive Print! The Weather Channel
- ‘Oldest animal fossil’ that rewrote India’s history turns out to be recently ‘decayed bee hive’ The Independent
- “Fossil” That Rewrote Indian Geologic History Is Actually A Beehive IFLScience
- ‘Beehive imprints’, not 550 mn-yr-old fossil: Bhimbetka find proven false, scientists accept mistake ThePrint
- View Full Coverage on Google News
US government approves use of world’s first vaccine for honeybees | Bees
The world’s first vaccine for honeybees has been approved for use by the US government, raising hopes of a new weapon against diseases that routinely ravage colonies that are relied upon for food pollination.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has granted a conditional license for a vaccine created by Dalan Animal Health, a US biotech company, to help protect honeybees from American foulbrood disease.
“Our vaccine is a breakthrough in protecting honeybees,” said Annette Kleiser, chief executive of Dalan Animal Health. “We are ready to change how we care for insects, impacting food production on a global scale.”
The vaccine, which will initially be available to commercial beekeepers, aims to curb foulbrood, a serious disease caused by the bacterium Paenibacillus larvae that can weaken and kill hives. There is currently no cure for the disease, which in parts of the US has been found in a quarter of hives, requiring beekeepers to destroy and burn any infected colonies and administer antibiotics to prevent further spread.
“It’s something that beekeepers can easily recognize because it reduces the larvae to this brown goo that has a rancid stink to it,” said Keith Delaplane, an entomologist at the University of Georgia, which has partnered with Dalan for the vaccine’s development.
The vaccine works by incorporating some of the bacteria into the royal jelly fed by worker bees to the queen, which then ingests it and gains some of the vaccine in the ovaries. The developing bee larvae then have immunity to foulbrood as they hatch, with studies by Dalan suggesting this will reduce death rates from the disease.
“In a perfect scenario, the queens could be fed a cocktail within a queen candy – the soft, pasty sugar that queen bees eat while in transit,” Delaplane said. “Queen breeders could advertise ‘fully vaccinated queens.’”
American foulbrood is only found in the US and Canada but Dalan said the breakthrough could be used to find vaccines for other bee-related diseases, such as the European version of foulbrood.
As they have been commercialized, transported and pressed into agricultural service, honeybees have been exposed to a cocktail of different diseases that typically lay waste to large numbers of colonies and require major interventions by beekeepers to keep numbers up.
The US is unusually dependent upon managed honeybee colonies to prop up its food pollination, with hives routinely trucked across the country to propagate everything from almonds to blueberries.
This is because many wild bee species are in alarming decline, due to habitat loss, pesticide use and the climate crisis, fueling concerns around a global crisis in insect numbers that threatens ecosystems and human food security and health.
Astonishing Experiment Shows Bumble Bees “Play” With Objects
First-ever study shows that bumble bees ‘play’. The experiment, in which bumble bees rolled wooden balls, was the first time that object play behavior has been shown in an insect.
Bumble bees play, according to new research published in the journal Animal Behaviour. It is the first time that object play behavior has been shown in an insect, adding to mounting evidence that bees may experience positive ‘feelings’.
Numerous experiments were set up by a team of researchers, who were led by scientists from Queen Mary University of London, to test their hypothesis. They showed that bumble bees went out of their way to roll wooden balls repeatedly despite there being no apparent incentive for doing so.
According to the findings, younger bees rolled more balls than older bees. These results mirrored the human behavior of young children and other juvenile mammals and birds being the most playful. Additionally, male bees rolled the balls for longer than their female counterparts.
Forty-five bumble bees were followed in the study as they went through an arena. They were given the option of walking through an unobstructed path to reach a feeding area or deviating from this path into the areas with wooden balls. Individual bees rolled balls between 1 and, impressively, 117 times over the experiment. The repeated behavior suggested that ball-rolling was rewarding.
This was further supported by another experiment where a different set of 42 bees was given access to two colored chambers. One chamber always contained movable balls, while the other one did not have any objects. When tested later and given a choice between the two chambers, neither containing balls at the time, bees showed a preference for the color of the chamber previously associated with the wooden balls. The set-up of the experiments removed any notion that the bees were moving the balls for any greater purpose other than play. Rolling balls did not contribute to survival strategies, such as gaining food, clearing clutter, or mating and was done under stress-free conditions.
The study expands on earlier work from the same Queen Mary lab that showed that bumble bees can be trained to score goals by rolling a balls to targets in exchange for a sugary food reward. During the previous experiment, the team observed that bumble bees rolled balls outside of the experiment, without getting any food reward. The new research demonstrated that the bees rolling balls repeatedly without being trained and without receiving any food for doing so — it was voluntary and spontaneous — therefore akin to play behavior as seen in other animals.
Samadi Galpayage, first author on the study and PhD student at Queen Mary University of London said: “It is certainly mind-blowing, at times amusing, to watch bumble bees show something like play. They approach and manipulate these ‘toys’ again and again. It goes to show, once more, that despite their little size and tiny brains, they are more than small robotic beings. They may actually experience some kind of positive emotional states, even if rudimentary, like other larger fluffy, or not so fluffy, animals do. This sort of finding has implications to our understanding of sentience and welfare of insects and will, hopefully, encourage us to respect and protect life on Earth ever more.”
Professor Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary University of London, head of the lab and author of the recent book ‘The Mind of a Bee’, said: “This research provides a strong indication that insect minds are far more sophisticated than we might imagine. There are lots of animals who play just for the purposes of enjoyment, but most examples come from young mammals and birds.
“We are producing ever-increasing amounts of evidence backing up the need to do all we can to protect insects that are a million miles from the mindless, unfeeling creatures they are traditionally believed to be.”
Reference: “Do bumble bees play?” by Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona, Cwyn Solvi, Amelia Kowalewska, Kaarle Mäkelä, HaDi MaBouDi and Lars Chittka, 19 October 2022, Animal Behaviour.
DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013
Astonishing Experiment Shows Bumble Bees “Play” With Objects
First-ever study shows that bumble bees ‘play’. The experiment, in which bumble bees rolled wooden balls, was the first time that object play behavior has been shown in an insect.
Bumble bees play, according to new research published in the journal Animal Behaviour. It is the first time that object play behavior has been shown in an insect, adding to mounting evidence that bees may experience positive ‘feelings’.
Numerous experiments were set up by a team of researchers, who were led by scientists from Queen Mary University of London, to test their hypothesis. They showed that bumble bees went out of their way to roll wooden balls repeatedly despite there being no apparent incentive for doing so.
According to the findings, younger bees rolled more balls than older bees. These results mirrored the human behavior of young children and other juvenile mammals and birds being the most playful. Additionally, male bees rolled the balls for longer than their female counterparts.
Forty-five bumble bees were followed in the study as they went through an arena. They were given the option of walking through an unobstructed path to reach a feeding area or deviating from this path into the areas with wooden balls. Individual bees rolled balls between 1 and, impressively, 117 times over the experiment. The repeated behavior suggested that ball-rolling was rewarding.
This was further supported by another experiment where a different set of 42 bees was given access to two colored chambers. One chamber always contained movable balls, while the other one did not have any objects. When tested later and given a choice between the two chambers, neither containing balls at the time, bees showed a preference for the color of the chamber previously associated with the wooden balls. The set-up of the experiments removed any notion that the bees were moving the balls for any greater purpose other than play. Rolling balls did not contribute to survival strategies, such as gaining food, clearing clutter, or mating and was done under stress-free conditions.
The study expands on earlier work from the same Queen Mary lab that showed that bumble bees can be trained to score goals by rolling a balls to targets in exchange for a sugary food reward. During the previous experiment, the team observed that bumble bees rolled balls outside of the experiment, without getting any food reward. The new research demonstrated that the bees rolling balls repeatedly without being trained and without receiving any food for doing so — it was voluntary and spontaneous — therefore akin to play behavior as seen in other animals.
Samadi Galpayage, first author on the study and PhD student at Queen Mary University of London said: “It is certainly mind-blowing, at times amusing, to watch bumble bees show something like play. They approach and manipulate these ‘toys’ again and again. It goes to show, once more, that despite their little size and tiny brains, they are more than small robotic beings. They may actually experience some kind of positive emotional states, even if rudimentary, like other larger fluffy, or not so fluffy, animals do. This sort of finding has implications to our understanding of sentience and welfare of insects and will, hopefully, encourage us to respect and protect life on Earth ever more.”
Professor Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary University of London, head of the lab and author of the recent book ‘The Mind of a Bee’, said: “This research provides a strong indication that insect minds are far more sophisticated than we might imagine. There are lots of animals who play just for the purposes of enjoyment, but most examples come from young mammals and birds.
“We are producing ever-increasing amounts of evidence backing up the need to do all we can to protect insects that are a million miles from the mindless, unfeeling creatures they are traditionally believed to be.”
Reference: “Do bumble bees play?” by Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona, Cwyn Solvi, Amelia Kowalewska, Kaarle Mäkelä, HaDi MaBouDi and Lars Chittka, 19 October 2022, Animal Behaviour.
DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013
First-ever study shows bumble bees ‘play’
Animal Behaviour (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013″ width=”800″ height=”343″/>
Experimental set-up for the training stage (aerial view). A nest was connected to a colored chamber via a tunnel. The chamber was connected to a flight arena with feeders providing ad libitum sucrose (S) or pollen (P); their positions were swapped each experimental day. The colored training chamber was either yellow or blue. One of the colored chambers contained movable balls and the other was empty. Baffles at the entrance of the colored chamber prevented bees seeing the presence/absence of objects. Only one colored chamber was presented at a time and they were alternated every 20 min (six times each) for a total of 2 h exposure for each color. One group of bees was trained with the yellow chamber containing balls and the other group with the blue chamber containing balls. This experimental stage was carried out on 2 consecutive days for each bee. Credit: Animal Behaviour (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013
Bumble bees play, according to new research led by Queen Mary University of London published in Animal Behaviour. It is the first time that object play behavior has been shown in an insect, adding to mounting evidence that bees may experience positive “feelings.”
The team of researchers set up numerous experiments to test their hypothesis, which showed that bumble bees went out of their way to roll wooden balls repeatedly despite there being no apparent incentive for doing so.
The study also found that younger bees rolled more balls than older bees, mirroring human behavior of young children and other juvenile mammals and birds being the most playful, and that male bees rolled them for longer than their female counterparts.
The study followed 45 bumble bees in an arena and gave them the options of walking through an unobstructed path to reach a feeding area or deviating from this path into the areas with wooden balls. Individual bees rolled balls between 1 and, impressively, 117 times over the experiment. The repeated behavior suggested that ball-rolling was rewarding.
This was supported by a further experiment where another 42 bees were given access to two colored chambers, one always containing movable balls and one without any objects. When tested and given a choice between the two chambers, neither containing balls, bees showed a preference for the color of the chamber previously associated with the wooden balls.
The set-up of the experiments removed any notion that the bees were moving the balls for any greater purpose other than play. Rolling balls did not contribute to survival strategies, such as gaining food, clearing clutter, or mating and was done under stress-free conditions.
The research builds on previous experiments from the same lab at Queen Mary, which showed that bumble bees can be taught to score a goal, by rolling a ball to a target, in exchange for a sugary food reward. During the previous experiment, the team observed that bumble bees rolled balls outside of the experiment, without getting any food reward.
The new research showed the bees rolling balls repeatedly without being trained and without receiving any food for doing so—it was voluntary and spontaneous—therefore akin to play behavior as seen in other animals.
Study first-author, Samadi Galpayage, Ph.D. student at Queen Mary University of London says that “it is certainly mind-blowing, at times amusing, to watch bumble bees show something like play. They approach and manipulate these ‘toys’ again and again. It goes to show, once more, that despite their little size and tiny brains, they are more than small robotic beings.”
“They may actually experience some kind of positive emotional states, even if rudimentary, like other larger fluffy, or not so fluffy, animals do. This sort of finding has implications to our understanding of sentience and welfare of insects and will, hopefully, encourage us to respect and protect life on Earth ever more.”
Professor Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioral Ecology at Queen Mary University of London, head of the lab and author of the recent book The Mind of a Bee, says that “this research provides a strong indication that insect minds are far more sophisticated than we might imagine. There are lots of animals who play just for the purposes of enjoyment, but most examples come from young mammals and birds.”
“We are producing ever-increasing amounts of evidence backing up the need to do all we can to protect insects that are a million miles from the mindless, unfeeling creatures they are traditionally believed to be.”
Sick queen bees have shriveled ovaries, putting their colonies at risk
More information:
Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona et al, Do bumble bees play?, Animal Behaviour (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013
Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona et al, Do bumble bees play?, Animal Behaviour (2022). DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013
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First-ever study shows bumble bees ‘play’ (2022, October 27)
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Before There Were Birds or Bees, This Is How Trilobites Made Babies
The sturdy, calcite-infused exoskeletons of trilobites and their segmented shells are nearly ubiquitous in fossil deposits from the Cambrian Period to the Permian. But this trove of trilobite fossils has revealed frustratingly little when it comes to how the Paleozoic animals reproduced across 250 million years of living on ancient Earth.
A recently re-examined fossil from the Burgess Shale is pulling back the shroud of mystery over the ancient arthropods’ sex lives, and revealing that some trilobites most likely sported a loving grip. In a study published Friday in Geology, paleontologists at Harvard University identified a pair of modified appendages that probably helped males of one trilobite species grasp females during copulation in a similar manner to that of modern horseshoe crabs.
The team examined several spiny Olenoides serratus trilobites collected from the Cambrian site. Most were just under four inches long. While the Burgess Shale is known for its detailed preservation of even delicate tissue, one of the Olenoides specimens the team examined at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto looked more like a badly broken lobster tail than an intact trilobite.
“It’s a sad looking specimen — it’s missing most of the head and half of the body,” said Sarah Losso, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard and an author of the study.
The fragmented nature of the specimen was a lucky break because it revealed the anatomy often hidden under a trilobite’s shell. Importantly, nine of the arthropod’s rarely fossilized appendages were preserved in detail. “There are millions of broken trilobites and you don’t see limbs in many of them,” said Javier Ortega-Hernández, a co-author on the new study and Ms. Losso’s Ph.D. adviser. “Having this specimen that is broken in just the right way that you can see these limbs is a one in a million sort of situation.”
Two sets of limbs stood out. The standard trilobite limb is segmented into three distinct portions — a walking leg, or endopodite, and a gill structure, the exopodite, are connected to the body by a spiny food-processing section, the protopodite. But two appendages along the trilobite’s midsection had a noticeably warped anatomy. Instead of having a spiny, triangular protopodite for processing food, they had a smooth, rounded structure attached to a short, flexible fingerlike endopodite that was just half the length of the creature’s other walking legs. When the trilobite was standing on its other legs, these modified appendages would not have reached the seafloor.
The researchers were able to deduce that, based on their growth patterns, the strange morphology of these shriveled limbs was probably not caused by an injury or regeneration.
Instead, Ms. Losso and Dr. Ortega-Hernández concluded that these modified legs served a sexual purpose. They based their hypothesis on horseshoe crabs, distant relatives of trilobites that swim contemporary beaches today. The crabs are often used as a trilobite proxy because of their similar body forms. They use gripping appendages, called claspers, to hook themselves onto a female’s spines, giving males an inside track to fertilize the female’s eggs as soon as she releases them from a compartment in her head. Because female trilobites also probably practiced external fertilization, emitting their eggs into the swirling tide for males to fertilize, the Olenoides trilobites may have used clasping appendages in the same way.
The structure and placement of these clasper-like appendages on the trilobite are slightly different from those of living horseshoe crabs. Instead of being near the head in the contemporary species, the modified legs are along the trilobite’s midsection, which places them in the perfect spot to latch onto the female’s spiny backside.
But it isn’t likely that all trilobites mated this way. “I think there’s probably genuine variation in how trilobites mate,” said Thomas Hegna, a paleontologist at the State University of New York at Fredonia who was part of a team that described the first cluster of trilobite eggs ever found. “I don’t think everybody was clasping.”
Ms. Losso agrees that diverse species of trilobites probably used a variety of reproductive approaches beyond clasping. Many trilobites lack the spines of Olenoides, making them difficult to grasp.
But she believes identifying one of these sexual methods underscores that complex reproductive strategies evolved early on.
“This behavior of holding onto a female to be in place for fertilization evolved by the mid-Cambrian,” Ms. Losso said. “Only a few million years after the first trilobites, they’ve already developed this unexpectedly complex behavior.”
Millions of Bees Died in Atlanta After Delta Rerouted Alaska-Bound Jet
- About 5 million bees bound for Alaska were forced to stop in Atlanta, where most died, per APM.
- Sarah McElrea, who ordered the bees, was told by carrier Delta they would have to sit on the tarmac.
- Delta apologised for the “unfortunate situation.”
Millions of bees bound for Alaska died on a Delta Air Lines flight after the plane was left on the tarmac in Atlanta, Georgia, following a diversion.
Alaska Public Media (APM) reported on Wednesday that a Delta plane carrying a shipment of around 5 million bees bound for Anchorage, Alaska, was forced to reroute to Atlanta. Most of the bees died in the Georgia city.
The shipment of 200 crates, ordered by Sarah McElrea of Sarah’s Alaska Honey on behalf of 300 Alaskan beekeepers, carried 800 pounds of bees and was worth an estimated $48,000.
The crates had been due to travel from Sacramento, California, to Anchorage Airport via Seattle, Washington. But the bees did not fit on the Seattle-bound flight and were instead rerouted through the Delta hub in Atlanta.
Delta told McElrea the bees would have to wait in a cooler last Saturday but they were transferred to the tarmac the next day over fears the bees were escaping. McElrea told APM the temperature in Atlanta was 80 degrees Fahrenheit on the day they were left there.
“I really panicked when they found they had moved them outside because the pheromones that those honeybees emit are attractive to other honeybees that are native to the area,” she told APM. Because the bees were outside, it made it harder to rescue those in the crates.
MacElrea told APM that she connected on Facebook to “a page that is based in Georgia.” She got through to Edward Morgan, a beekeeper in Georgia, Atlanta, who told Atlanta radio station WABE he and more than 20 others from Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association rushed to the airport to try and save the bees.
“It’s devastating to see that many dead,” Julia Mahood, a Georgia master beekeeper, told WABE. “Just clumps of dead bees that had no chance because they were left outside with no food and basically got lost in Delta’s machinery.”
In an emailed statement, a Delta spokesperson told Insider: “Delta was made aware of the shipment situation that occurred on DL2390 from Sacramento to Atlanta and quickly engaged the appropriate internal teams to assess the situation.
“We have taken immediate action to implement new measures to ensure events of this nature do not occur in the future. We have been in contact with the customer directly to apologize for the unfortunate situation.”
McElrea did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment outside normal working hours.
McElrea told The New York Times in an interview that Alaskans increasingly rely on imports for bees to pollinate crops for spring and autumn harvests.
“People don’t grasp just how dependent we as a species are on honeybees for pollination,” MacElrea told the New York Times. “And this is just a waste, an absolute tragedy.”
What You Eat Has The Power to Reprogram Your Genes. An Expert Explains How
People typically think of food as calories, energy, and sustenance. However, the latest evidence suggests that food also “talks” to our genome, which is the genetic blueprint that directs the way the body functions down to the cellular level.
This communication between food and genes may affect your health, physiology, and longevity. The idea that food delivers important messages to an animal’s genome is the focus of a field known as nutrigenomics.
This is a discipline still in its infancy, and many questions remain cloaked in mystery. Yet already, we researchers have learned a great deal about how food components affect the genome.
I am a molecular biologist who researches the interactions among food, genes, and brains in the effort to better understand how food messages affect our biology. The efforts of scientists to decipher this transmission of information could one day result in healthier and happier lives for all of us.
But until then, nutrigenomics has unmasked at least one important fact: Our relationship with food is far more intimate than we ever imagined.
The interaction of food and genes
If the idea that food can drive biological processes by interacting with the genome sounds astonishing, one need look no further than a beehive to find a proven and perfect example of how this happens. Worker bees labor nonstop, are sterile, and live only a few weeks.
The queen bee, sitting deep inside the hive, has a life span that lasts for years and a fecundity so potent she gives birth to an entire colony.
And yet, worker and queen bees are genetically identical organisms. They become two different life forms because of the food they eat. The queen bee feasts on royal jelly; worker bees feed on nectar and pollen.
Both foods provide energy, but royal jelly has an extra feature: its nutrients can unlock the genetic instructions to create the anatomy and physiology of a queen bee.
So how is food translated into biological instructions? Remember that food is composed of macronutrients. These include carbohydrates – or sugars – proteins and fat.
Food also contains micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals. These compounds and their breakdown products can trigger genetic switches that reside in the genome.
Like the switches that control the intensity of the light in your house, genetic switches determine how much of a certain gene product is produced. Royal jelly, for instance, contains compounds that activate genetic controllers to form the queen’s organs and sustain her reproductive ability.
In humans and mice, byproducts of the amino acid methionine, which are abundant in meat and fish, are known to influence genetic dials that are important for cell growth and division.
And vitamin C plays a role in keeping us healthy by protecting the genome from oxidative damage; it also promotes the function of cellular pathways that can repair the genome if it does get damaged.
Depending on the type of nutritional information, the genetic controls activated and the cell that receives them, the messages in food can influence wellness, disease risk, and even life span. But it’s important to note that to date, most of these studies have been conducted in animal models, like bees.
Interestingly, the ability of nutrients to alter the flow of genetic information can span across generations. Studies show that in humans and animals, the diet of grandparents influences the activity of genetic switches and the disease risk and mortality of grandchildren.
Cause and effect
One interesting aspect of thinking of food as a type of biological information is that it gives new meaning to the idea of a food chain. Indeed, if our bodies are influenced by what we have eaten – down to a molecular level – then what the food we consume “ate” also could affect our genome.
For example, compared to milk from grass-fed cows, the milk from grain-fed cattle has different amounts and types of fatty acids and vitamins C and A . So when humans drink these different types of milk, their cells also receive different nutritional messages.
Similarly, a human mother’s diet changes the levels of fatty acids as well as vitamins such as B-6, B-12 and folate that are found in her breast milk. This could alter the type of nutritional messages reaching the baby’s own genetic switches, although whether or not this has an effect on the child’s development is, at the moment, unknown.
And, maybe unbeknownst to us, we too are part of this food chain. The food we eat doesn’t tinker with just the genetic switches in our cells, but also with those of the microorganisms living in our guts, skin, and mucosa.
One striking example: In mice, the breakdown of short-chain fatty acids by gut bacteria alters the levels of serotonin, a brain chemical messenger that regulates mood, anxiety, and depression, among other processes.
Food additives and packaging
Added ingredients in food can also alter the flow of genetic information inside cells. Breads and cereals are enriched with folate to prevent birth defects caused by deficiencies of this nutrient.
But some scientists hypothesize that high levels of folate in the absence of other naturally occurring micronutrients such as vitamin B-12 could contribute to the higher incidence of colon cancer in Western countries, possibly by affecting the genetic pathways that control growth.
This could also be true with chemicals found in food packaging. Bisphenol A, or BPA, a compound found in plastic, turns on genetic dials in mammals that are critical to development, growth, and fertility.
For example, some researchers suspect that, in both humans and animal models, BPA influences the age of sexual differentiation and decreases fertility by making genetic switches more likely to turn on.
All of these examples point to the possibility that the genetic information in food could arise not just from its molecular composition – the amino acids, vitamins and the like – but also from the agricultural, environmental, and economic policies of a country, or the lack of them.
Scientists have only recently begun decoding these genetic food messages and their role in health and disease. We researchers still don’t know precisely how nutrients act on genetic switches, what their rules of communication are and how the diets of past generations influence their progeny.
Many of these studies have so far been done only in animal models, and much remains to be worked out about what the interactions between food and genes mean for humans.
What is clear though, is that unraveling the mysteries of nutrigenomics is likely to empower both present and future societies and generations.
Monica Dus, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Bees can play soccer – 10 little-known facts about insects | Climate crisis
The labyrinthine world of insects is in deep trouble. Scientists have uncovered startling declines in their populations , with the United Nations estimating that half a million species could be lost by the midpoint of this century.
In writing about this silent unfolding disaster for my new book, The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World, I explored how the loss of insects imperils our food security, potentially deprives us of new medicines and degrades the ecosystems we all rely upon to sustain life. Through habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change, we are creating a version of hell for our greatest allies on this planet.
But there is another reason to care about the insect crisis – their astonishing characteristics and abilities. Some seem otherworldly – such as the butterfly that has an eye on the tip of its penis.
“Each insect is like an alien life form with a detailed life history that often is so bizarre, you couldn’t create it as fiction if you wanted to,” as Michelle Trautwein, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences, told me.
Here are 10 of the most interesting things I found out about them.
Bees can do almost everything
Most of us are aware of the crucial pollination role that bees play in ensuring a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. But researchers have uncovered an array of abilities in bees that may cause some surprise.
Honeybees understand the concept of zero, can add and subtract numbers and can even be trained to detect land mines more effectively than sniffer dogs. Their pollination services have become so valuable in the US that there is a growing criminal operation among “bee rustlers” to steal beehives in California’s farming heartland.
Some bumblebees, meanwhile, are able to fly at an altitude of 5,500 meters (18,000 feet) above sea level (a height just shy of Mount Kilimanjaro’s summit), can be taught to play soccer, and remember good and bad experiences, suggesting they have a form of consciousness.
All of this is energy-intensive work. If a human male devoured a Mars bar, he’d burn the energy off in about an hour; a bumblebee of an equivalent size would use the same energy in just 30 seconds.
Beetles have the abilities of tiny superheroes
The world is awash with not rats, sheep or even humans, but beetles – around 350,000 species and counting. Some have adapted to humanity’s altering of the world, such as the weevils that feast on our grain.
Others are noteworthy in their own right. A horned dung beetle is so strong that if it were a human, it would be able to hold aloft six double-decker buses. Another type of beetle, a water beetle called Regimbartia attenuata, can even survive being eaten by a frog by swimming through the amphibian’s stomach and crawling out of its bottom.
There are people who will strongly defend mosquitoes
Mosquitoes are usually viewed as either an annoyance or a deadly menace. Indeed, there are fears that the threat of malaria and dengue will spread as we continue to heat up the world to mosquitoes’ liking.
But some entomologists have warm feelings towards mosquitoes, pointing to their pollination of certain flowers and their little-known environmental work, where they help cycle nutrients through soils and plants and provide food for animals higher up in the food chain, such as frogs and birds. Wiping out all mosquitoes would cause a cascade of detrimental impacts.
Cockroaches are hated – but impressive
The only insects that rival mosquitoes in our displeasure are cockroaches. There are thousands of species of cockroach found in forests but we tend to focus on the two – American and German – that have adapted themselves to our homes.
Objectively, these creatures are marvels. Slow-motion video footage reveals that the cockroach can crash into a wall at high speed with no loss of momentum before scaling it vertically. These great survivors can fit into cracks as thin as a small coin, bite with a force 50 times their body weight, and survive for two weeks after being beheaded.
Insects have shaped human history
Insects may not be celebrated like horses, tigers or dolphins, but they have played interesting cameo roles in our own history.
The common marsh mosquito was called the “founding mother” of the United States by one historian due to the malaria that ravaged the British army and helped force its surrender during the American Revolution. A century later, the emergence of modern beehive boxes unlocked the productivity of farmland and revolutionized agriculture.
What would you think the first animal in space was? A monkey? A dog or cat, perhaps? It was, in fact, a fruit fly that was propelled beyond the atmosphere in a US military rocket in 1947 to ascertain the potential impact of cosmic radiation on astronauts.
Moths are unfairly maligned
Moths are often slandered as powdery vandals that enjoy chomping their way through the clothes in our wardrobes. This is largely unfair – it’s the moth larvae, not adults, that feed on clothes, and even then only a couple out of the thousands of moth species do this.
Behold, instead, the Hercules moth of northern Australia. The world’s largest moth, the species has a wingspan as wide as a dinner plate but no mouth – it lives off the food reserves gobbled up while a bulky caterpillar – and has two false eyes in its rear to confuse would-be predators.
We should think more highly of wasps
Wasps aren’t just the pillagers of bucolic picnics. They are also important pollinators of plants and predators of the pests that chew through our most valued flowers and crops.
Research has additionally found that paper wasps can grasp transitive inference, a logical arrangement whereby if A is greater than B, and B is greater than C, then A must be greater than C. These wasps can also recognize other individual wasps by looking at their faces.
The production of chocolate and ice cream depends on insects
Enjoy chocolate? Be thankful, then, for the tiny midge that pollinates the cacao plant. Want a world with ice cream in it? Then you’ll want the pollinators that ensure dairy-producing cows have enough alfalfa to eat.
Crickets may become the food of the future
Insects have been on the menu for societies across Asia, Africa and South America for generations but are still viewed with unease by many western diners. That may change as the ruinous environmental impact of meat eating prompts some to switch to insects such as crickets, which can be farmed in huge numbers with little resulting pollution.
Crickets can be seasoned with chili; ants can be dipped in lemon. These are high protein snacks that could alter our relationship with and appreciation of insects in general.
People will show a fondness for insects in unusual ways
Winston Churchill’s butterfly collection helped ease his depression. Walter Rothschild, scion of the banking family, enjoyed dressing fleas in costumes. People across North America plant milkweed to aid monarch butterflies. Giant burrowing cockroaches are doted on as pets in Australia.
It’s lazy to dismiss insects as pests or irrelevances. Many of us see how precious they are to our world. That feeling will need to be multiplied, and harnessed, if we are to stem the greatest crisis they’ve ever faced.
The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World, is out now in the US