For Large-Scale Pest Insect Detection, Traps in Parallel Lines More Efficient Than Grids | Entomology Today

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Detecting pest insects across large areas means placing vast numbers of traps, with associated costs to set them up and check them regularly. Grid patterns have been the traditional choice, but a new study shows trap-placement patterns using parallel lines could be just as effective with much lower servicing requirements.

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Tick Blitz: How Community Science is Helping New York State Monitor Ticks | Entomology Today

This post Tick Blitz: How Community Science is Helping New York State Monitor Ticks appeared first on Entomology Today - Brought to you by the Entomological Society of America.

With a little bit of training, 59 citizen scientists in New York collected more than 3,700 ticks across 15 counties in a two-week period in the summer of 2021, greatly expanding the reach of professional tick researchers at the Northeast Regional Center for Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases. The "New York State Tick Blitz" is now an annual project and a model that tick-surveillance programs elsewhere can follow.

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Next Time You Eat a Kiwifruit, Don’t Thank a Bee | Entomology Today

This post Next Time You Eat a Kiwifruit, Don’t Thank a Bee appeared first on Entomology Today - Brought to you by the Entomological Society of America.

Honey bees and bumble bees excel at pollinating wide varieties of plants and crops, but kiwifruit is not one of them. A study investigating kiwifruit pollination methods found fruit developed on barely 3 percent of bee-pollinated flowers, leaving artificial pollination (by human hand) as the primary choice for kiwifruit growers.

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Curious About Edible Insects? There’s a Free Online Course for That | Entomology Today

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The first-ever massive open online course (MOOC) on edible insects was launched in March, based on one entomologist's popular university course. Learn more about the development of the "Edible Insects" MOOC and what it offers to online learners around the world.

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Mosquito Migration: Study Finds More High-Altitude Dispersal of Disease Vectors in Africa | Entomology Today

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Following the discovery that mosquitoes can ride high-altitude winds to travel long distances, further research is adding to both the scope and variety of species engaged in such migrations—factors sure to complicate efforts to curb transmission of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases in Africa.

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Mosquito Populations Linked Across Further Distances Than the Viruses They Carry | Entomology Today

This post Mosquito Populations Linked Across Further Distances Than the Viruses They Carry appeared first on Entomology Today - Brought to you by the Entomological Society of America.

In an analysis of mosquito sampling across 20 years in Connecticut, mosquito populations were often correlated at sites 10 kilometers apart and sometimes as far as 40 kilometers apart. But the same data showed the presence of mosquito-borne viruses rarely correlated across distances more than 5 kilometers, complicating potential approaches to managing mosquitoes and the risk of vector-borne disease.

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