Tiny fly brains can process visual movements in only fractions of a second. Flies can process a vast amount of information about motion and movement in their environment in real time. This is a feat that no computer, and certainly none the size of a fly's brain, can match. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology are attempting to decode the underlying mechanisms of the fly's rapid motion vision.
Dierk Reiff from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried says one sixth of a cubic millimetre of fly rain matter contains more than 100,000 nerve cells - each of which has multiple connections to its neighbouring cells. Neurobiologists in Martinsried have managed to single out the reaction of a certain cell to any particular movement stimulus.
"We had to find some way of observing the activity of these tiny nerve cells without electrodes", Dierk Reiff explains one of the challenges that faced the scientists. The scientists used the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and some of the most up-to-date genetic methods available. They succeeded in introducing the indicator molecule TN-XXL into individual nerve cells. By altering its fluorescent properties, TN-XXL indicates the activity of nerve cells.
To examine how the brains of fruit flies process motion, the neurobiologists presented the insects with moving stripe patterns on a light-diode screen. The nerve cells in the flies' brains react to these LED light impulses by becoming active, thus causing the luminance of the indicator molecules to change.
The scientists observed the activity of cells known as L2-cells, which receive information from the photoreceptors of the eye. The photoreceptors react when the light intensity increases or decreases. The reaction of the L2-cells is similar in that part of the cell where the information from the photoreceptor is picked up. However, the neurobiologists discovered that the L2-cell transforms these data and in particular, that it relays information only about the reduction in light intensity to the following nerve cells. The latter then calculate the direction of motion and pass this information on to the flight control system.
Now that the first step has been taken, the scientists intend to examine - cell by cell - the motion detection circuitry in the fly brain to explain how it computes motion information at the cellular level.
Thomas Shahan takes beautiful photographs of fairly common insects and spiders. Pictured above is a closeup photograph of a leafhopper. You can see many of his photos here on Flickr. Al Roker recently talked to Thomas Shahan about his growing collection of impressive bug photos. Take a look:
One of Australia's rarest creatures has returned home. The stick bug, or phasmid, had thought to have been eaten into extinction but instead they were found inhabiting an island just offshore. The AP says the Melbourne Zoo is now breeding the insects in hopes of returning them to the mainland.
Scientists Discover 120 Million Year-Old Ant Species
Reuters reports that biologists discovered a species of ant living in the Amazon that they believe has been around for 120 million years. The ant species is blind, subterranean and predatory. German biologists believe it is the oldest ant species on the planet
Researchers from Karlsruhe's Natural History Museum found the 3-millimeter-long (0.118 inch) insect in the Amazon rainforest in 2007, and hope it will shed light on the early evolution of ants.
"It's by far the most spectacular find of my 26-year career," said museum biologist Manfred Verhaagh on Tuesday.
Scientists from Karlsruhe originally found an unidentified species of ant of a similar type in the Brazilian rainforest in 2003. However, due to an accident in the laboratory, the insect dried up, making further research impossible, Verhaagh said.
Last year a separate team from the museum's research body was in the forest investigating fungus when they stumbled upon the tiny insect, and named it "Martialis heureka".
The ant discovery is yet another reason why the Amazon rainforest needs to be preserved. Sciam says the scientists hope it will help lead to more information about how ants have evolved over time.
Photo Credit: Christian Rabeling, the University of Texas at Austin
There is a giant spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas. The web was found in August by Texas Parks & Wildlife employee Freddie Gowin while mowing the trails at Lake Tawakoni State Park. The web sparked interest from experts and bloggers when Donna Garde, Lake Tawakoni State Park Superintendent, posted her photo of the web -- click here to see a larger version of the web photo. Wired says that thousands of spiders from 12 different species have built the web that reaches 200 yards.
Normally, the spiders are competitors and enemies, and work individually on their own orb-shaped webs. But entomologists say that bountiful insect hatches caused by heavy rainfall have provided so much food that the spiders instinctively repressed their traditional enmities in favor of cooperation. It's a population-level evolutionary behavior that's never before been witnessed (and thank goodness for that; spiders are scary enough on their own!)
The web, first reported earlier in the summer, took more than a month to build; it's been blown down three times by wind and rain, and re-spun each time. Visitors describe the web as something out of science fiction.
Said a park volunteer, "Hollywood couldn't have done as good a job in their best day as nature has done with this."
In the movie Arachnophobia a new species of spiders was discovered in South America that operates more like organized army ants and killer bees than solitary spiders. Fortunately, these Lake Tawakoni spiders are neither poisonous or very scary.
The BBC reports that scientists in New York have discovered the mechanism mosquitoes use to zero in on their targets. Mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide in exhaled breath. The scientists discovered that mosquitoes have protein receptors in their maxillary palp - a "finger-like structure extending from the jaws" - that helps them fixate on the exhaled carbon dioxide.
Lead researcher Professor Leslie Vosshall said: "Insects are especially sensitive to carbon dioxide, using it to track food sources and assess their surrounding environment.
"The neurons in insects that respond to carbon dioxide were already known, but the molecular mechanism by which these neurons sense this gas was a mystery.
"Though we don't know what other proteins might be involved in the signalling pathway, the identification of the carbon dioxide receptor provides a potential target for the design of inhibitors that would act as an insect repellent.
"These inhibitors would help fight global infectious disease by reducing the attraction of blood-feeding insects to humans."
Dr Simon Hay, an expert in malaria at the University of Oxford, said: "Curiously, the work could also open the opportunity for the development of attractants, used to lure mosquitoes away from humans."
There are already some mosquito devices - CO2 mosquito traps - that use CO2 to attract mosquitoes to the trap and then kill them. With this new information something even better might be imagined. The New York Times has an article discussing the kinds of mosquito traps available today.
The Telegraphreports that global warming has allowed a vicious giant asian hornet called Vespa velutina to spread rapidly in France. The hornets are a huge threat to honey bees.
Thousands of football-shaped hornet nests are now dotted all over the forests of Aquitaine, the south-western region of France hugely popular with British tourists.
"Their spread across French territory has been like lightning," said Jean Haxaire, the entomologist who originally identified the new arrival.
He said he had recently seen 85 nests in the 40-odd miles which separate the towns of Marmande and Podensac, in the Lot et Garonne department where the hornets were first spotted.
The hornets can grow to up to 1.8in and, with a wingspan of 3in, are renowned for inflicting a bite which has been compared to a hot nail entering the body.
The article says just a few of the hornets can "can destroy a nest of 30,000 bees in just a couple of hours." It also says that France now has to import honey. 25,000 tons of honey are now imported into France each year. Global warming is already making many changes to ecosystems and the economy in Europe. The hornets are expected to eventually make it to Britain.
Some Asian bees actually have a unique defense trick to protect themselves from the giant hornets called heatballing. They bees surround a hornet and raise the temperature of the hornet with their body heat and literally cook it to death. Unfortunately, the European bees do not share this defensive behavior with Asian bees.
The Environment News Service reports that a new study from the National Research Council has found that honeybees and other pollinators are declining in North America.
The report sounds a specific warning for the honeybee, which are vital to U.S. agriculture, pollinating more than 90 commercially grown crops. It can take a massive amount of bees to ensure a crop is suitably pollinated.
For example, it takes about 1.4 million colonies of honeybees to pollinate 550,000 acres of almond trees in California.
U.S. honeybee populations have declined at least 30 percent since the 1980s, when a non-native parasitic mite was introduced.
The committee said that the full extent of the decline is unclear because of problems with the way the federal government collects statistics on the beekeeping industry.
Antibiotic-resistant pathogens and encroachment by Africanized honeybees also are hurting North American honeybee levels, the committee said, and there is clear evidence of a honeybee shortage.
The populations of other pollinators like butterflies, bats and hummingbirds are also on the decline.
The Montgomery Advertiserreports that massive nests made by carnivorous yellow jackets are turning up in Alabama.
At one site in Barbour County, the nest was as large as a Volkswagen Beetle, said Andy McLean, an Orkin pesticide service manager in Dothan who helped remove it from an abandoned barn about a month ago.
"It was one of the largest ones we've seen," McLean said.
Attached to two walls and under the slab, the nest had to be removed in sections, McLean said.
Entomologist Dr. Charles Ray at the Alabama Cooperative Extension System in Auburn said he's aware of about 16 of what he described as "super-sized" nests in south Alabama.
Ray said he's seen 10 of them and cautioned people about going near them because of the yellow jacket's painful sting.
The article said the nests contain multiple queens, which is highly unusual. It says that in the past the largest wasp nests contained about
"3,000 workers and one queen." Some of these nests are home to over 100,000 workers.
Trap-jaw ants have the most powerful bite of any animal. The BBC reports that the jaws of trap-jaw ants slam shut at more than 100 km/h (62mph) and deliver a force over 300 times their bodyweight. The ants can also bite the ground and fly into the air to escape predators.
The ants are named after their characteristically long jaws, which they use to hurl unfamiliar neighbours from their nests, cripple prey, or deliver a brutal bite to anything they consider a threat.
Employing the same high-speed imaging methods as those used to film flying bullets, an American research team now shows that the jaws can move at exceptional speeds. Peak velocities exceed 180km/h (110mph)
"This is really by far and away the fastest recorded animal limb movement," said lead researcher Sheila Patek, of the University of California, Berkeley, who worked with ants from Costa Rica.
"The ants' jaws are relatively short, but they deliver such a powerful bite because they can accelerate so quickly. It's simple physics."
The BBC article also has a video that shows a trap-jaw ant using its bite to hurl itself high into the air. It really has to be seen to be believed.
A hatch of mayflies in Wisconsin was so large that it looked like a rainstorm on the local rader. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreports that the mayflies were very annoying to people trying to enjoy the outdoors.
So what was it last Friday that turned the radar in the La Crosse area into a sea of white?
It turns out that it was a gigantic hatch of mayflies.
The bugs were so thick that they showed up as a rainstorm of mayflies on National Weather Service radar.
For about 1 1/2 hours starting at 9 p.m., the insects drifted north, with the radar showing them blanketing areas along the Mississippi River.
"They were dive-bombing in the root beer floats," said Gary Rudy, owner of Rudy's Drive-In, whose family has been slinging burgers and soft drinks since 1966.
That could easily ruin someone's appetite. (via Boing Boing)
The Asp, also known as a Puss Moth Caterpillar, is a dangerous pest that many people are unaware of since caterpillars and moths are typically seen as harmless. The Asp can be found in Texas and other southern states. The UT Houston Medical School offers a webpage with more information about these unusual caterpillars including an explanation of why they are a serious health risk.
Puss moth caterpillars can pose a genuine health hazard. Intense, throbbing pain develops immediately or within five minutes of contact with the caterpillar. Stings on the arm may also result in pain in the axillary (armpit) region. Erythematous (blood-colored) spots may appear at the site of the sting. Other symptoms can include headaches, nausea, vomiting, intense abdominal distress, lymphadenopathy, lymphadenitis, and sometimes shock or respiratory stress. Pain usually subsides within an hour and spots disappear in a day or so -- however, with a larger dose of the venom, it is not uncommon for the symptoms to last up to 5 days.
More information can be found on this website which refers to the asp as the most toxic caterpillar in the U.S. An article on PubMed explains more about the health risk from Asps:
The most frequently reported caterpillar envenomation in Central Texas is by the puss caterpillar or "asp," Megalopyge opercularis. This caterpillar is described by patients and physicians as inflicting intense radiating pain. The intensity of symptoms may be underestimated leading to undertreatment. Adequate treatment protocols have been lacking and those in use are not very successful.
Reuters 
There is a giant spider web at 
Trap-jaw ants have the most powerful bite of any animal. The BBC 
A hatch of mayflies in Wisconsin was so large that it looked like a rainstorm on the local rader. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 
The Asp, also known as a Puss Moth Caterpillar, is a dangerous pest that many people are unaware of since caterpillars and moths are typically seen as harmless. The Asp can be found in Texas and other southern states. The UT Houston Medical School offers 
