Articles tagged Insects
(15 results)

When female Anopheles mosquitoes take a blood meal from someone with malaria, a tiny Plasmodium parasite enters the mosquito’s digestive tract. That parasite can invade the mosquito’s salivary tissues, so when the insect takes another blood meal, the intruder can slip into the next human host and start a new malaria infection. Malaria is a…

Researchers used a forward genetic approach to identify genes that affect a social behavior in honey bees. For more than 30 years, honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page, Jr. and his colleagues have sought the genes that influence a colony trait that only emerges from interactions between thousands of individual bees — a social phenotype.…

Termites may have evolved sterile castes through hormone signaling changes in their cockroach ancestors. Eusocial insects, like ants, bees, and termites, have rigid caste systems: some individuals reproduce, while others are temporarily sterile workers or permanently sterile soldiers. This division of labor allows colonies to thrive, but the question remains:  how did these species evolve…

Photosensitive alternative splicing of a malt fly circadian clock gene varies between northern and southern populations. Over the course of a day, most organisms undergo profound changes. Over the course of a season, the changes can be even more dramatic. For example, insects’ responses to the brisk nights and cooler days of fall and winter…

Beer, doughnuts, and genetics textbooks have one thing in common: they were all made possible by collaborations between humans and yeast. Our fungal ally Saccharomyces cerevisiae resides not only in breweries, bakeries, and laboratories, but also sometimes in our own bodies—where, on rare occasions, it betrays us. S. cerevisiae is increasingly being reported as an…

The Genetics Society of America’s George W. Beadle Award honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers and who exemplify the qualities of its namesake. The 2017 recipient is Susan A. Gerbi, who has been a prominent leader and advocate for the scientific community. In the course of her research…

A green, iridescent bee perches on a pink flower, extending its proboscis to reach the sweet nectar inside. He’s not just after a meal—he’s also collecting fragrant substances to store inside his hollow rear legs. Later, he’ll buzz his wings to release the aroma with the hope of attracting a mate. The cover of the…

Genes involved in male reproduction tend to evolve rapidly. This has been observed in many different species and is thought to be due to sexual selection as males compete over mating opportunities. But in the August issue of GENETICS, Whittle and Extavour present results that flip this paradigm upside down. They find that in the…

Taking probiotics might be the latest health fad, but for people with inflammatory bowel diseases, the microbiome is a more serious matter. With these autoimmune diseases, the composition of the gut microbiome can have critical health consequences. In the June issue of GENETICS, Mistry et al. use fruit flies to determine whether immune system activity…

In the life of a butterfly, color is crucial. Color helps these flashy insects attract mates, avoid being spotted, or even signal to predators that they would make a bad meal. On the cover of the March issue of GENETICS is a close-up view of Junonia coenia, a butterfly with stunning blue eyespots on its…

In the genomic era, population geneticists are flooded with molecular data on the evolution of natural populations. This deluge started in 1966 as a trickle of data from protein electrophoresis studies, including the landmark GENETICS papers published by Richard Lewontin and John Hubby. As Lewontin is honored this week at the Annual Drosophila Research Conference…