Insects News & Research Articles

[Flutterby]

Ja, we are restocking slowly.

[Flutterby]

The LionHeart Experience
14 hrs ·
'Black Beauty!!!'

I have been (oh so patiently) waiting since almost a year ago to share this post.... and now the time has come!

Ladies and gentlemen, meet one of the worlds most fantastic and most beautiful spiders!!

The newly discovered and described Phinda Button Spider - Latrodectus scientificnamusnotreadytoberevealedyetbuttrustmeitissupercoolus!!!

It lives in the beautiful sand forests of Northern Zululand, and we were lucky enough to see this incredible, large, brightly coloured female in Phinda Private Game Reserve whilst on a trip with Bishops Diocesan College and we all got to marvel at this mindblowing girl. She was really docile and even allowed me to gently coax her out for a photo, before moving back into her impressive and strong web.

Not only is she the largest of all the South African Latrodectus species, but she has purple egg sacs! How awesome.

Many refer to black button spiders as 'black widows', but all our South African species are commonly known as 'button spiders' with the black widow being known from America. Another common mistake in South Africa, is that the brown button - Latrodectus geometricus is so often mistaken for a black button, especially because the females can be large and very black in some cases. The difference is that they will always have the red 'hourglass' on the underside of the abdomen and have banded legs. The tricky part is that the black widow from North America also has the red hourglass on the underside.... (but fortunately they don't overlap so we don't need to worry about that...)

A massive congratulations to all involved in the work of this from start to finish, but in particular to WTF Zululand Entomology for undertaking the massive task of gathering data, breeding, studying, and describing this species (and all the other things you must have had to battle through to get to this place!)....

Well done guys!!!

We are elated to have this amazing creature in our world and feel so privileged to have seen it in the wild!!!

Please do go and have a look at the amazing write up they've done here:

http://wtfentomology.org/

Long may she live.... the Black Beauty!

[Lisbeth]

A real beauty!

I wonder how big it is

[Lisbeth]

2019-02-12 07:02
World seeing 'catastrophic collapse' of insects


Nearly half of all insect species worldwide are in rapid decline and a third could disappear altogether, according to a study warning of dire consequences for crop pollination and natural food chains.

"Unless we change our way of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades," concluded the peer-reviewed study, which is set for publication in April.

The recent decline in bugs that fly, crawl, burrow and skitter across still water is part of a gathering "mass extinction," only the sixth in the last half-billion years.

"We are witnessing the largest extinction event on Earth since the late Permian and Cretaceous periods," the authors noted.

The Permian end-game 252 million years ago snuffed out more than 90 percent of the planet's life forms, while the abrupt finale of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago saw the demise of land dinosaurs.

"We estimate the current proportion of insect species in decline - 41 percent - to be twice as high as that of vertebrates," or animals with a backbone, Francisco Sanchez-Bayo of the University of Sydney and Kris Wyckhuys of the University of Queensland in Australia reported.

"At present, a third of all insect species are threatened with extinction."

An additional one percent join their ranks every year, they estimated. Insect biomass - sheer collective weight - is declining annually by about 2.5 percent worldwide.

"Only decisive action can avert a catastrophic collapse of nature's ecosystems," the authors cautioned.

Restoring wilderness areas and a drastic reduction in the use of pesticides and chemical fertiliser are likely the best way to slow the insect loss, they said.

'Hardly any insects left'

The study, to be published in the journal Biological Conservation, pulled together data from more than 70 datasets from across the globe, some dating back more than a century.

By a large margin, habitat change - deforestation, urbanisation, conversion to farmland - emerged as the biggest cause of insect decline and extinction threat.

Next was pollution and the widespread use of pesticides in commercial agriculture.

The recent collapse, for example, of many bird species in France was traced to the use insecticides on industrial crops such as wheat, barley, corn and wine grapes.

"There are hardly any insects left - that's the number one problem," said Vincent Bretagnolle, an ecologist at Centre for Biological Studies.

Experts estimate that flying insects across Europe have declined 80 percent on average, causing bird populations to drop by more than 400 million in three decades.

Only a few species of insects - mainly in the tropics - are thought to have suffered due to climate change, while some in northern climes have expanded their range as temperatures warm.

In the long run, however, scientists fear that global warming could become another major driver of insect demise.

Up to now, rising concern about biodiversity loss has mostly focused on big mammals, birds and amphibians.

Dung beetles in deep

But insects comprise about two-thirds of all terrestrial species, and have been the foundation of key ecosystems since emerging almost 400 million years ago.

"The essential role that insects play as food items of many vertebrates is often forgotten," the researchers said.

Moles, hedgehogs, anteaters, lizards, amphibians, most bats, many birds and fish all feed on insects or depend on them for rearing their offspring.

Other insects filling the void left by declining species probably cannot compensate for the sharp drop in biomass, the study said.

Insects are also the world's top pollinators - 75 percent of 115 top global food crops depend on animal pollination, including cocoa, coffee, almonds and cherries.

One-in-six species of bees have gone regionally extinct somewhere in the world.

Dung beetles in the Mediterranean basin have also been hit particularly hard, with more than 60 percent of species fading in numbers.

The pace of insect decline appears to be the same in tropical and temperate climates, though there is far more data from North America and Europe than the rest of the world.

Britain has seen a measurable decline across 60 percent of its large insect groups, or taxa, followed by North America (51 percent) and Europe as a whole (44 percent).

https://www.news24.com/Green/News/world ... s-20190212

[Richprins]

In the long run, however, scientists fear that global warming could become another major driver of insect demise.



I have noticed a big drop in insects here over the past 5 years or so.

[Lisbeth]

Even the tiniest creature is important to the well being of this poor sick planet!

They even die in the toilet lamps

[RogerFraser]

New species of Angolan 'horned' spider unearthed
https://www.enca.com/life/new-species-a ... 1550333244



JOHANNESBURG - South African researchers have revealed the discovery of a new species of spider with an unusual horn-like protrusion on its back from the forests of central Angola, considered the first of its kind.

Named 'Ceratogyrus attonitifer', the arachnid belongs to the group known as the horned baboon spiders that possess a type of protuberance, but nothing like the softer and longer protrusion of this species.

"So this spider is absolutely unique in the world. It has this huge horn sticking out the middle of its head and no other spider in the world has anything like that," South African national biodiversity institute arachnologist Dr Ian Engelbrecht told AFP.

"There are other species that have a horn on the carapace but that's a muscular structure... This structure looks like it's full of fatty tissue."

Researchers first came across the odd looking spider in 2015 when collecting specimens as part of surveys done in the Okavango catchment, straddling Angola, Namibia and Botswana.

Several female specimens from the Miombo forests of central Angola were collected out of burrows for the Okavango Wilderness Project.

Surprisingly locals were able to furnish experts with information on the biology and behaviour of the spider they had long dubbed as "chandachuly".

South African researchers have only sketched the description of their new specimen but remain unsure of the horn function.

"It doesn't make sense that the spider has such a big horn," Engelbrecht said adding that it might "provide some functionality similar to a camel hump or something like that but at this point we really have no idea."

AFP

[Flutterby]

[Lisbeth]

If at least there were one new species for each one that goes extinct

[Lisbeth]

Though detailed studies have in the past been done regarding damage phenology of known macadamia pests, little scientific work has so far been done on less important insects.

11.03.2019



Reasons for this were that it is difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of stink bugs by field collection alone, and that breeding and maintaining these insects is far from a simple task.

During 2017/18 sufficient quantities of bugs were obtained, so it was possible to do a trial. Five adult individuals of each stink bug species were placed in sleeve cages tied around a bearing macadamia branch of Beaumont. Five cages were used for each replicate (species).

The early season trial was conducted during October 2017 and nuts were exposed to stink bugs for three consecutive days. At the termination of the trial, immature nuts were harvested and each nut was dissected and microscopically examined to quantify typical feeding punctures on the inside of the husk.



The same trial layout was followed for the late season exposure trial (April 2018). After exposure, nuts were de-husked, dried, cracked individually with a hand cracker and rated for stink bug-induced kernel damage.

As was expected, the coconut bug was able to inflict significant damage during the early season. What was not expected, however, was that the yellow-edged and woolly stink bugs were also responsible for considerable damage.

The grey-brown stink bug had no effect on nut quality both during the early and late season exposure trials. At ± 5,5mm it was assumed that the mouthparts of the yellow-edged bug were too short to damage the kernels of mature nuts, but results contradict this, as severe kernel damage was observed.



In order to prevent damage, the woolly and yellow-edged bugs should also be considered during the weekly scouting sessions, not just the two-spotted and coconut bugs.

https://lowvelder.co.za/471573/research ... m=27448989