Domain: entsoc.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to entsoc.org.
Comments · 8
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Re:Other categories
From Does the United States have a national insect?
No, the United States does not have a designated national insect. However, Congress did consider the Monarch butterfly as the national insect, but the legislation did not pass. Some U.S. states have "state insects," which are usually noted on state government web sites.
And List of U.S. state insects. Interestingly I recently head an entomologist talking about state insects on NPR. Apparently there had been cases where specific insects were nominated, but they actually weren't native species.
Monarch Butterflies fly back to Mexico every year, so no wonder they never got the bill passed. Don't tell Trump, or the wall will have to get taller.
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Re:Other categories
From Does the United States have a national insect?
No, the United States does not have a designated national insect. However, Congress did consider the Monarch butterfly as the national insect, but the legislation did not pass. Some U.S. states have "state insects," which are usually noted on state government web sites.
And List of U.S. state insects. Interestingly I recently head an entomologist talking about state insects on NPR. Apparently there had been cases where specific insects were nominated, but they actually weren't native species.
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Re:Bash transgenic foods all you want
After cursory glance at that, it seems neither of the graphs in the EWG thing you linked to even mention GE. More widely accepted publications tend to say otherwise, depending on the situation.
I also like the part where no one ever explains how insect resistance is supposed to increase insecticide use, but only when that resistance is transgenic. No one would ever argue against conventionally bred resistances, and somehow, once genetic engineering is involved, then the genetic component of integrated pest management (which is to say, select varieties and/or species resistant to your local insect populations as a first line of defense against them, as opposed to chemical controls later) is suddenly a bad thing.
I do love that they mentioned the insects that have overcome the transgenic defenses. Typical anti-GE nonsense: deny the crops help pest problems, meanwhile say the crop resistances are creating selection pressure for resistance overcoming insects (which shows they slept through population genetics), then deny there are benefits, meanwhile say that the resistant pests are a huge problem. I mean, yeah they genuinely are a problem, but because they threaten the benefits we've already gotten.
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Maybe they should try using sewer plants
It seems that if you use a sewer treatment plant as a spider farm you will get much better results.
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Re:Spelling error in summary?
Whoever claimed that spider-farming is historically unproductive probably hasn't read this fascinating and (to some) horrifying article. Check the Images showing the sheets of webbing being harvested.
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Re:Underwhelming picture
Here try this report. Unrelated the article, but if you want pictures of webs it's hard to beat.
http://www.entsoc.org/PDF/2010/Orb-weaving-spiders.pdf
As an interagency team with expertise in arachnology, urban entomology, and structural pest management, we were unprepared for the sheer scale of the spider population and the extraordinary masses of both three-dimensional and sheet-like webbing that blanked much of the facility’s cavernous interior. -
Open = !free in publishing
Folks who do not publish in scientific, refereed journals may not realize this but authors pay a lot in Publication charges. There are some that are open and free for the author but they are few. I suspect if this bill passes page charges in many of our higher-end journals (e.g., Science, Nature, PNAS, Cell, Virology) are going to increase. Now if this happens researchers will need to allocate more money from there NIH grants to cover higher page charges. And where does the funding for NIH come from? Federal taxes. Just something to think about in time when funding for science research has been scaled back and you puzzle as to why some scientist might not be so keen on the idea.
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Re:Not studied?That Dr Karl took May Berenbaum's Rad Roaches took out some cool parts and did not give credit... The original is a good read:
[(Wharton 1959)] conclusively demonstrated that the American cockroach was, compared with the rest of the known irradiated insect world, a wimp; P. americana died at doses of 20,000 rads. In comparison, it was noted that D. melanogaster [fruit flies] had an LD100 [the dose that kills any member of the species] of 64,000 rads and the parasitoid wasp Habrobracon an LD100 of 180,000 rads.
Dr Karl lifts the vocabulary and omits the data... good journalism.