Entomology news in mass media

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31.03.2019 5:18, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://mir24.tv/news/16349266/s-komarami-n...nnoi-inzhenerii - They will start fighting mosquitoes with the help of genetic engineering.

Italian scientists are developing a new method of controlling insects that carry dangerous diseases. They intend to apply the CRISPR genome editing technology, according to the NPR publication.
During the experiment, mosquito larvae will be introduced with genetic mutations that will be transmitted through the female line (it is known that females bite people and spread infections).

It is assumed that mutations that make females infertile will spread over the entire population in a short time and lead to its destruction.

But the authors of the study can not yet say what consequences such an experience can lead to in practice.

It is already known that any intervention in nature has long-term consequences. The disappearance of at least one native species disrupts the entire ecosystem.

In this regard, the experiment will be conducted in isolated laboratory conditions, although as close as possible to real ones.

Earlier it was reported that a Swiss company has developed a bracelet that repels mosquitoes using electromagnetic signals. The device simulates natural vibrations that occur before a thunderstorm, and insects, sensing them, tend to hide.

31.03.2019 5:22, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://mir24.tv/news/16354751/gennaya-inzh...-dlya-nasekomyh "Genetic engineering will make humans invisible to insects.

American biologists have found a way to make people "invisible" to blood-sucking insects, reports Current Biology.

It is known that mosquitoes and their relatives are guided by body odor and exhaled carbon dioxide. But for a long time, scientists could not determine which enzymes or molecules they react to when choosing a victim.

Some insects, such as Aedes aegyptii mosquitoes, purposefully "hunt" people, paying little attention to other mammals.

This is not only unpleasant, but also dangerous, as mosquitoes are carriers of deadly diseases: malaria, yellow fever, Zika virus and others.

In a new study, researchers at Florida International University in Miami alternately switched off different sections of DNA in genetically modified mosquitoes.

The genes involved in the experiment were responsible for the work of the antennae – the main olfactory organ of insects. The results showed that the IR8A gene plays a key role in the victim recognition process.

Mosquitoes in which it was inactive, sharply lost interest in people as a food source. Scientists have found that IR8A helps bloodsuckers capture lactic acid molecules that are present in human sweat.

In addition, mosquitoes stopped biting people when the orco gene, which is associated with detecting excess carbon dioxide in the surrounding air, was damaged.

The authors of the study noted that the data obtained by them will help in the development of effective repellents or traps for dangerous pests.

Earlier it was reported that Italian scientists intend to fight mosquitoes using the CRISPR genome editing technology.

31.03.2019 16:28, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2017/1...odnoy-olimpiady - 600 years for one Olympics. The history of the destruction of Colchis boxwood, listed in the Red Book.

Once upon a time there was a forest. He had seen dinosaurs and wintered through the Ice Age. But he didn't survive the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Colchis boxwood is a relict plant. There is paleontological evidence that it grew in the Caucasus more than thirty million years ago. This species is listed in the Red Book of Russia.

I was in the Yew-boxwood forest very young, with my parents on an excursion to Sochi. The grove in Khost is a popular tourist destination. Then the impressions of the film "Jurassic Park"were fresh. During the whole tour, I thought that a pterodactyl was about to fly out from behind a tree. The friends I told about this business trip also remembered the Boxwood Grove in Khost, the smell of boxwood souvenirs and the unique feeling of antiquity of this forest.

Boxwood's troubles began five years before the Sochi Olympics, when large-scale construction took place. The ecological situation has greatly worsened. Boxwood forests have been weakened by infectious diseases. And when the railway and the Adler — Krasnaya Polyana highway were built, the forest was cut down en masse. Many rare plant species were affected.

Boxwood got more than the rest: only in one Veselovsky district forestry, twenty-three hectares were cut down.

In autumn 2012, evergreen boxwood was imported from Italy for the Olympic Village. This is a park variety of the plant. And on the roots of the purchased trees, larvae and caterpillars of the fire moth arrived. The same firefly that feeds only on the leaves and bark of all varieties of boxwood. And nothing else.

31.03.2019 17:01, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

I saw these forests in the South of the Krasnodar Territory at the height of the tragedy. Lonely dry trunks of Colchis boxwood covered with moss in places and not a single green leaf, completely hopeless dead places.

During my visit to the famous Khosta yew-boxwood grove, which is part of the Caucasus Biosphere Reserve, I talked with local caretakers. I asked them if you really didn't have a single living plant left here. What's left, they said, is one growing over there by the main entrance. I went and looked at it - a half-meter young sapling looked like a barely living stub with obviously not healthy leaves. But how did it survive alone in the end? The caretaker took a large bottle of household aerosol “Anticlop” from the windowsill, so he says, we spray it once a day.

In fact, the scale of this catastrophe is still not completely clear, but it seems that they are truly global and have a planetary character. Colchis boxwood is disappearing not only in parks near Sochi, but also in neighboring states-Abkhazia, Georgia up to Batumi, and possibly North-Eastern Turkey. Humanity is really faced with the possibility of losing this type of plant. The bright botanical country of Colchis, about which Soviet classics wrote so much, faded under the pressure of thoughtless human actions. Who knows, but I'm sad about all this.

01.04.2019 6:53, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://m.sputnik-abkhazia.ru/Abkhazia/2017...obile_return=no - Chitanava about the fight against firewood: a third of the boxwood forests remained.

Boxwood firefly came to Abkhazia in 2012 from Sochi, according to the State Committee for Ecology and Nature Protection of Abkhazia, during the construction of the Olympic complexes, Russia bought boxwood planting material from China in Italy, which contained an insect.

Of the five thousand hectares of boxwood forests in Abkhazia, only one-third remains, which is also on the verge of extinction due to the firestorm. Savely Chitanava, Chairman of the State Committee for Ecology and Nature Protection of Abkhazia, said this in an interview with Sputnik radio.

The fight against firefly in the republic has been going on for several years, but the climatic conditions have turned out to be so favorable for the insect that vegetation occurs even more often than at home.

"The growing season from May to September-five to six generations develops. In their homeland, only two or three generations develop during this period. This suggests that our climate is very favorable for breeding fireflies, " said Chitanava.

01.04.2019 6:57, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://www.newsgeorgia.ge/kolhidskomu-sams...ozit-vymiranie/ - Colchis boxwood in Georgia is threatened with extinction.

Colchis boxwood in Georgia is threatened with extinction due to an unknown disease and the spread of a parasite-boxwood firefly (Cydalima perspectalis). "Novosti-Georgia" in the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

The disease, which is called "boxwood burn", first appeared three to four years ago. It causes the plant to dry out.

"Then experts studied this disease, but could not give effective recommendations. This year, boxwood fireweed has also been added to this disease. The parasite has become particularly active over the past month, " said Natia Iordanishvili, head of the Forest Care and Restoration Department of the Ministry's National Forest Agency.

"Boxwood burn" began to spread from Adjara and almost 100% destroyed the plant in the protected areas of the region. The disease has also spread to the Samegrelo – Zemo Svaneti and Guria regions. The eastern part of Georgia suffered the least.

In August, experts from Ukraine were invited to Georgia. They will make recommendations to the Georgian authorities after the results of the research are announced in October.

Employees of the forestry agency collected healthy grains and created a special grain bank, as well as artificially propagated them.

"In the event that specialists fail to find an effective means to save boxwood, we will have to think about preserving this species, so we had to take such preventive measures," Iordanishvili stressed.

01.04.2019 7:02, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3389734 - I was dissuaded by a grove in the Caucasus. A butterfly from Europe destroyed a Russian relict boxwood.

Russia is facing a large-scale environmental disaster: relict boxwood forests have been destroyed in the Krasnodar Territory and Adygea. A species that survived the ice Age was almost completely destroyed by the firefly moth, a pest introduced in plants that were purchased in 2012 in Italy for the Sochi Olympics. Environmentalists claim that the fire could have been stopped several years ago, but " departments shifted responsibility to each other." Now we are talking only about an attempt to save the species — the Ministry of Natural Resources is going to create a nursery for growing boxwood, so that someday we can try to plant it again in nature.

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01.04.2019 16:31, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

http://www.sochiru.com/item/3391 - Red palm weevil destroys palm trees in Europe, like locusts crops. Next up is Sochi.

As you know, in addition to the firefly and palm moth, another dangerous pest-insect — the red palm weevil-was also brought to Sochi with foreign planting material.

The Red Palm weevil (Rhynchophorus ferrugineus) is native to Southeast Asia and Polynesia. The size of an adult insect is 2.5 cm. The weevil clearly shows an elongated head tube, thanks to which it got its name. The insect has a rusty-red color with dark spots. The beetle's life span does not exceed four months. For all the time of life, the female lays 350 eggs. At the same time, during the season, it can lay eggs 3-4 times. The insect feeds on the core of palm trees, so the process of infecting the plant passes unnoticed. The weevil leaves the palm tree and goes in search of a new victim, when she is already dying.

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01.04.2019 16:53, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://nauka.vesti.ru/article/1199277 - Plants of the Jurassic period were pollinated by a fly with a record-breaking long proboscis.

Researchers from the Borisyak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have studied in detail the fossilized remains of the long-tailed sharovka fly found in the Upper Jurassic deposits of Kazakhstan. Experts came to the conclusion that ancient insects could have taken part in pollination long before the appearance of flowering plants.

The age of the find is about 160 million years. According to paleontologists, the fly belongs to the species Archocyrtus kovalevi and is the oldest representative of the living family of globules (Acroceridae).

Scientists note that the history of studying the fly A. kovalevi began in 1996, but its initial description was published without any photos. Therefore, the presence of a proboscis in this insect for a long time remained questionable. Some believed that the elongated structure next to the fly's body was a foreign object or a piece of vegetation.

Now, Russian paleontologists have put an end to this dispute by re-examining the fossil using state-of-the-art stereomicroscopes and elemental analysis. It turned out that the fly really had a long proboscis: the inner canal and other structural details characteristic of the mouthparts of diptera can be distinguished in it. And the chemical composition completely eliminated the assumption of a plant origin of this structure.

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01.04.2019 16:57, Tsutsugamushi-Fieber

https://nauka.vesti.ru/article/1163611 - Red-eyed mosquitoes can stop the spread of the Zika virus.

A few years ago, experts actively discussed the rapid spread of the Zika virus, although the disease itself appeared in the last century. This seriously worried the public, and researchers from different countries began to come up with ways to combat this disease, which, by the way, has not disappeared anywhere: it still poses a danger to millions of people in Africa, Asia and some countries in South and North America.

Recently, scientists presented a new technology aimed at the Zika virus carrier, the Aedes aegypti mosquito. It can be used to create insects that are largely immune to the dangerous virus.

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