Meloe Franciscanus
''Meloe franciscanus'' is a species of blister beetle in the family Meloidae. It is found in the deserts of the southwestern United States. The larvae are parasites of bee larvae, eating them and consuming their provisions. Distribution and habitat ''Meloe franciscanus'' is endemic to the southwestern United States where it is found among dunes in deserts. This habitat is variable and includes patches of vegetation surrounded by barren areas of sand. One of the plants here is ''Astragalus lentiginosus'' which provides food for the adult beetles, which are flightless, and nectar for their host bees. The eggs of the beetle are typically laid at the base of the plants in these "islands" of vegetation. Ecology The larvae of this beetle successfully make use of sexual deception by mimicking the mating signals of another insect species. Adult female beetles lay eggs in a compact mass underground, with the egg aggregations on average containing 761 eggs. The beetle larvae emerge from ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edwin Van Dyke
Edwin Cooper Van Dyke (April 7, 1869 – September 28, 1952) was an American physician and entomologist. A leading authority on beetles (Coleoptera) of the Pacific Coast of North America, he was also an expert on insect pests of forests and forest products. He became a professor of entomology at the University of California, Berkeley and worked on the curatorial staff at the California Academy of Sciences for almost fifty years. Biography Van Dyke was born in Oakland, California on April 7, 1869. His father, Walter Van Dyke, came from New York and traveled cross-country to California during the gold rush in 1849. His mother, Rowena Cooper, came by ship to California in 1850. The couple married in 1854 and Walter went on to a successful career as lawyer, judge, and State Supreme Court justice.Mallis (1971) Van Dyke went to school in Oakland and began collecting insects while in high school. In 1885 his family moved to Los Angeles where he continued to collect and study insects. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pollen
Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of gymnosperms. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and forensics. Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in cross-pollination. In a case of self-pollination, this process takes place from ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parasites Of Bees
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation. One major axis of classification concerns invasiveness: an endoparasite lives inside the host's bod ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Beetles Described In 1928
Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal life-forms; new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species. Found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions, they interact with their ecosystems in several ways: beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates. Some species are serious agricultural pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle, while others such as Coccinellidae (ladybirds or ladybugs) eat aphids, scale insects, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects that damage crops. Beetles typically have a particularly hard exo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Articles Created By Qbugbot
Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: Government and law * Article (European Union), articles of treaties of the European Union * Articles of association, the regulations governing a company, used in India, the UK and other countries * Articles of clerkship, the contract accepted to become an articled clerk * Articles of Confederation, the predecessor to the current United States Constitution * Article of Impeachment, a formal document and charge used for impeachment in the United States * Articles of incorporation, for corporations, U.S. equivalent of articles of association * Articles of organization, for limited liability organizations, a U.S. equivalent of articles of association Other uses * Article, an HTML element, delimited by the tags and * Article of clothing, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Habropoda Miserabilis
''Habropoda'' is a genus of anthophorine bees in the family Apidae Apidae is the largest family within the superfamily Apoidea, containing at least 5700 species of bees. The family includes some of the most commonly seen bees, including bumblebees and honey bees, but also includes stingless bees (also used .... There are at least 50 described species in ''Habropoda''.Sharkey M.J. (2007). ''Phylogeny and Classification of Hymenoptera''."Phylogenetic relationships among superfamilies of Hymenoptera", Sharkey M.J., Carpenter J.M., Vilhelmsen L., et al. 2012. ''Cladistics'' 28(1): 80-112. Species References * Michener, Charles D. (2000). ''The Bees of the World'', xiv + 913. * Michener, Charles D. (2007). ''The Bees of the World, Second Edition'', xvi + 953. Further reading * Arnett, Ross H. (2000). ''American Insects: A Handbook of the Insects of America North of Mexico''. CRC Press. Apinae Bee genera {{Apinae-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Habropoda Pallida
''Habropoda pallida'', known generally as the pallid habropoda or white-faced bee, is a species of anthophorine bee in the family Apidae. It is found in Central America and North America.Sharkey M.J. (2007). ''Phylogeny and Classification of Hymenoptera''."Phylogenetic relationships among superfamilies of Hymenoptera", Sharkey M.J., Carpenter J.M., Vilhelmsen L., et al. 2012. ''Cladistics'' 28(1): 80-112. References Further reading * Apinae Insects described in 1937 {{Apinae-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert ( ; mov, Hayikwiir Mat'aar; es, Desierto de Mojave) is a desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Southwestern United States. It is named for the indigenous Mojave people. It is located primarily in southeastern California and southwestern Nevada, with small portions extending into Arizona and Utah. The Mojave Desert, together with the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Great Basin deserts, forms a larger North American Desert. Of these, the Mojave is the smallest and driest. The Mojave Desert displays typical basin and range topography, generally having a pattern of a series of parallel mountain ranges and valleys. It is also the site of Death Valley, which is the lowest elevation in North America. The Mojave Desert is often colloquially called the "high desert", as most of it lies between . It supports a diversity of flora and fauna. The desert supports a number of human activities, including recreation, ranching, and military training ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nectar
Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats. Nectar plays a crucial role in the foraging economics and evolution of nectar-eating species; for example, nectar foraging behavior is largely responsible for the divergent evolution of the African honey bee, ''A. m. scutellata'' and the western honey bee. Nectar is an economically important substance as it is the sugar source for honey. It is also useful in agriculture and horticulture because the adult stages of some predatory insects feed on nectar. For example, a number of parasitoid wasps (e.g. the social wasp species '' Apoica flavissima' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Digger Bee
The Anthophorini are a large tribe in the subfamily Apinae of the family Apidae. Species in this tribe are often referred to as digger bees, although this common name is sometimes also applied to members of the tribe Centridini. It contains over 750 species worldwide, all of which were previously classified in the obsolete family Anthophoridae along with members of several other tribes; the vast majority of species in the tribe Anthophorini are in the genera ''Amegilla'' and ''Anthophora''. Description All Anthophorini species are solitary, though many nest in large aggregations. Nearly all species make nests in the soil, either in banks or in flat ground; the larvae develop in cells with waterproof linings and do not spin cocoons. The characters used to define this group are subtle, but they are nonetheless fairly recognizable. * They are generally large (up to 3 cm), very robust, hairy bees, with visibly protruding faces, and the apical portion of the wings are studded with m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blister Beetle
Blister beetles are beetles of the family Meloidae, so called for their defensive secretion of a blistering agent, cantharidin. About 7,500 species are known worldwide. Many are conspicuous and some are aposematically colored, announcing their toxicity to would-be predators. Description Blister beetles are hypermetamorphic, going through several larval stages, the first of which is typically a mobile triungulin. The larvae are insectivorous, mainly attacking bees, though a few feed on grasshopper eggs. While sometimes considered parasitoids, in general, the meloid larva apparently consumes the immature host along with its provisions, and can often survive on the provisions alone; thus it is not an obligatory parasitoid, but rather a facultative parasitoid, or simply a kleptoparasite. The adults sometimes feed on flowers and leaves of plants of such diverse families as the Amaranthaceae, Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Solanaceae. Cantharidin, a poisonous chemical that causes b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pheromone
A pheromone () is a secreted or excreted chemical factor that triggers a social response in members of the same species. Pheromones are chemicals capable of acting like hormones outside the body of the secreting individual, to affect the behavior of the receiving individuals. There are '' alarm pheromones'', ''food trail pheromones'', '' sex pheromones'', and many others that affect behavior or physiology. Pheromones are used by many organisms, from basic unicellular prokaryotes to complex multicellular eukaryotes. Their use among insects has been particularly well documented. In addition, some vertebrates, plants and ciliates communicate by using pheromones. The ecological functions and evolution of pheromones are a major topic of research in the field of chemical ecology. Background The portmanteau word "pheromone" was coined by Peter Karlson and Martin Lüscher in 1959, based on the Greek φερω ''pheroo'' ('I carry') and ὁρμων ''hormon'' ('stimulating'). Pheromone ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |