Why climate change is making parasitic diseases harder to predict
It's a sunny day. Look out of your window. See anything unusual flying by? Look closely. There are midges, and they are not friendly.
It's a sunny day. Look out of your window. See anything unusual flying by? Look closely. There are midges, and they are not friendly.
Ecology
May 13, 2024
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Did you know that the world's deadliest animal is the mosquito? And Aedes aegypti is one of the most dangerous. This bug spreads viruses that cause dengue fever, which was recently declared as an epidemic in Puerto Rico.
Molecular & Computational biology
Apr 8, 2024
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As the days grow longer and the air warms up, nature is bursting back to life. Even before their leaves return, trees produce delicate, fuzzy structures known as catkins. These tiny, downy threads, often described as kitten ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 2, 2024
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Their dragon-like appearance has earned lobsters the moniker "dragons of the sea." It is one reason why they are a favorite fixture during Lunar New Year banquets. The Chinese call them longxia or dragon shrimps. And in some ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 29, 2024
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Insects of all stripes are in the midst of a vanishing act, a catastrophic sleight-of-hand occurring so rapidly that scientists can't keep up. Things get even trickier when you consider that insects have a complex life cycle ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 25, 2024
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Mosquito-borne illnesses remain a formidable challenge threatening millions of people each year with diseases such as malaria, dengue, zika and chikungunya.
Biochemistry
Mar 18, 2024
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Audio recordings of healthy reefs—an underwater chorus of fish songs and crackles from snapping shrimp—may help efforts to restore coral ecosystems harmed by climate and human impacts, scientists said Wednesday.
Ecology
Mar 17, 2024
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A team of marine biologists and oceanographers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has found that creating soundscapes for coral larvae encourages them to settle on desired coral reefs.
Functional eyes are not required for a working circadian clock in zebrafish, as a research team including CNRS scientists has now shown. The work is published in the journal PLOS Genetics.
Plants & Animals
Mar 7, 2024
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Kelp flies and marine yeast cultivated on by-products from the seafood industry can be used in feed for farmed salmon. Replacing fishmeal and soybeans can create more sustainable and circular food production, according to ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 28, 2024
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A larva (Latin; plural larvae) is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle. Larva is Latin for "ghost".
The larva's appearance is generally very different from the adult form (e.g. caterpillars and butterflies), and a larva often has unique structures and larval organs that do not occur in the adult form. A larva's diet can be considerably different from that of the adult form.
Larvae are frequently adapted to environments separate from adults. For example, some larvae such as tadpoles live exclusively in aquatic environments, but as adults can live outside water as frogs. By living in distinct environments, larvae may be given shelter from predators and reduce competition for resources with the adult population.
Animals in the larval stage will consume food to fuel their transition into the adult form. Some species such as barnacles are immobile as adults, and use their mobile larvae form to distribute themselves.
The larvae of some species can become pubescent and not further develop into the adult form (for example, in some newts). This is a type of neoteny.
It is a misunderstanding that the larval form always reflects the group's evolutionary history. It could be the case, but often the larval stage has evolved secondarily, as in insects. In these cases the larval form might differ more from the group's common origin than the adult form.
Names of various kinds of larvae:
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA