The Soldier Fly

Immunities to antibiotics are increasing rapidly in many species throughout the world. Have you ever wondered what scientists are doing about it? Well the answer is right in front of us. The following review is about an article that tests the effects of extracts from black soldier fly larvae. These little flies can be found in almost any country and are usually very common. There are many species of these in New Zealand.

                    

The following article is written by Won-Hyung CHOI, Ji-Hye YUN, Jong-Phil CHU and Ki-Back CHU and is called:

Antibacterial effect of extracts of Hermetia illucens (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) larvae against Gram-negative bacteria.

It can be found here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.lincoln.ac.nz/doi/10.1111/j.1748-5967.2012.00465.x/pdf

The article begins by explaining our need for new antibiotics as species are developing resistances to the strains we already have. Many species of insects and plants have already been tested for their viability. Many insects have antimicrobial substances that are located within or on the surface of their digestive tract; this is to prevent microbial infection. For this reason, this has been utilised in Europe for the treatments of burns and open wounds. The introduction continues to describe other species that have been used for their antimicrobial larvae such as the house fly (Musca domestica).

The black soldier fly’s larvae was previously used for the bioconversion of dairy manure, conversion of organic materials and forensic science; for determining human postmortem duration.

The equipment used to test the soldier fly is described next, it was bought from several places. Luria broth, agar powder, petri dishes, paper discs and many other chemicals and reagents were described.

The methods section first describes the extraction of the soldier fly larvae. 600g of larvae was rinsed three times with distilled water to remove any unwanted material. The larvae were extracted with 6 L of n-hexane, chloroform, ethanol, methanol and distilled water (H2O) at room temperature for 24 hours.

The extracted larvae were tested on gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria.

The results have shown that there was no inhibition of gram positive bacteria; however gram-negative bacteria seemed to be inhibited.

The following table is taken from the article and sums up the results of the tests, There was a huge difference in effect when comparing gram-positive with gram-negative bacteria.

The soldier fly larvae possess unique properties that may be utilized for various defense purposes, which contain various antibacterial peptides as effective inhibitory substances against many pathogens. However, the presence of an antimicrobial substance derived from the larvae has not been found yet. The purpose of the article was to identify potential antibacterial properties, as well as antibacterial effects of the soldier fly’s larvae extracts. Because the extracts only showed antimicrobial activity against a few bacteria, more study will have to be performed to see if this species is viable. 

This article explains everything in great detail and provides very thorough results and explanations. Its amazing what can be found in things such as little and as common as a soldier fly.

Whats Brown and Sticky? No that's disgusting, i'm talking about stick insects. The article i am reviewing below is all about a newly discovered genus of stick insects. So read it, "stick" at it or ill give you "stick" about it.

An enigmatic new stick insect from the Philippine Islands by Marco Gottardo and Philipp Heller.

The abstract of the article focuses mainly on the new features that this genus of stick insect exhibit. Many features are described briefely here to make the difference clear. The genus is called Conlephasma. After just reading the abstract i found out quite a lot about this genus. The most interesting thing i think is the fact that they are ground dwelling insects. This is very cool, imagine walking along and all of a sudden a stick walks across your shoe - Awesome!!! They are also flightless so what i wonder is why they weren't found sooner! To add to all that they have very distinct and vivid colours, they look amazing - see picture below.

The article talks about the Phillippine archipelago, this is where the new stick insects were discovered. It is the second hottest biodiversity hotspot on earth. The type specimens were preserved and pinned in many collections around Europe.

Within the discussion of the article there are several main sections describing different aspects of the species. The first section describes male morphology. The main things i should point out is that they are considerably small in size, bright orange in colour and the head is longer than it is wide. The next section describes female morphology. The main difference being that they are considerably larger and broader than males and they are a bright olive green colour. The egg morphology is described in the next section. They are dark brown in colour and are about 4mm long.

The entire article is written and structured very well. It is very detailed and very easy to read. It sums up by stating the uniqueness of the newly discovered genus.

The reference for this article:

Marco Gottardo, Philipp Heller, An enigmatic new stick insect from the Philippine Islands (Insecta: Phasmatodea), Comptes Rendus Biologies, Volume 335, Issue 9, September 2012, Pages 594-601.

The article can be read at:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631069112001643

I think that article was:

For more about stick insects visit:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/stick-insect/

Bad beehaviour; Entomology by general onefile:

The bumble bee has always fascinated me and that is why i have chosen to write my first article about a paper about bumble bee behaviour. Not only do i find it fascinating, it may be arguable that it once or still is a NZ icon:

Bad beehaviour; Entomology by general onefile:

Well i chose this article for a very specific reason; the name has a pun in it and i love puns. Although to be honest that was my first intention, this article was very interesting as well and that's really why i plan to talk about it. This article focuses on the behaviour of bumble bees; specifically their nectar robbing behaviour. It talks about experiments that were done to determine whether the nectar robbing behaviour is innate (inherited) or learned.

The article starts off by saying that most people (Including myself actually) think of the bumble bee as a charming little creature that's slightly absurd. But it also discusses the bumble from a plants point of view; Flowering plants (if they could think) must only think of them as annoying little thieves.

It then talks all about nectar robbery. Let me explain in lay man’s terms; honey bees and wasps collect nectar in flowers then fly off once they are done. Bumble bees on the other hand, do a little bit more damage, in some cases when a bumble bee is unable to collect the nectar it must drill a hole in the side of the flower to collect it. This is why they are bad from a plants point of view.

Scientists used to believe that learned behaviour only occurred in vertebrates. In this article they performed experiments to see if nectar robbing is learned. A team monitored bumble bees in 13 different meadows and watched a bumble bee until it had visited 20 flowers. They noticed that all the bumble bees drilled the hole on the left side of the flower. After a period of dormancy, and new bumble bees were born, the older bees continued to drill holes on the left side and the younger bees learned this behaviour from the other bees.

The article concluded that nectar robbing is a learned behaviour and not innate.The bees have, in other words, created a simple culture. It is a criminal culture, admittedly. But no one ever said that nature was pretty.

Reference: "Bad beehaviour; Entomology." The Economist 27 Apr. 2013: 75(US). General OneFile. Web. 8 May 2013.

This article can be read at 

http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lincoln.ac.nz/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA327557116&v=2.1&u=lincoln1&it=r&p=ITOF&sw=w

For more information on bumble bees, i recommend this site: 

www.bumblebee.org

For more information on nectar robbing i recommend this site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nectar_robbing

Here's a video of nectar robbing to see what i'm talking about:

Blogging... What's all the "Buzz" about

Well to be honest, i never would have predicted that i would be writing a blog, but actually what a great idea! Not only can this be a great procrastination tool, but also i can talk about what i enjoy and learn at the same time. I made this blog for a course assignment in ENTO304 at Lincoln University, the assignment is to review three articles from 2012/2013 and post them as a blog entry. So my goal is to find really "ento-resting" articles and tell you what i think. So comment and ask questions, let me know what you think, and i will certainly do the same.

My first review will be up soon it will be about the bumble bee. I have always found them "ento-resting"!!!