Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/tag/insects/)
It’s October, and the stink bugs are moving into my house for the winter. So many things stink in a deliberate attempt to be repulsive. Other things stink to be attractive, but because they’re not trying to attract us, we may not like their aromas.
For the past 10 years or so, entomologists have been looking for a way to control the population of spotted wing drosophila, a fruit fly that feeds on healthy cherries and blueberries. They say they may have found their answer in releasing the samba wasp, which kills fruit flies by laying its eggs inside them.
In July, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the monarch butterfly as endangered for the first time in history. Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Michigan, first installed a pollinator garden in 2018. With the recent news of the monarch’s decline, the zoo is encouraging people to build wildlife habitats of their own.
While invasive species are always threatening crops, a native pest is the biggest threat to the state’s blueberries –– the stem gall wasp. The Michigan Blueberry Commission has funded research to combat the stem gall wasp and help growers stay competitive.
Bees in the D’s new pollination center is expected to increase the fruits and vegetables produced in Detroit community gardens. The pollination center, breaking ground in April, will be home to roughly 100,000 honeybees in multiple hives.
The steady sound of crickets chirping in the evening is a staple of a midwest summer. And with some simple math that chirping can be utilized to tell the temperature.
Insect populations fluctuate from year to year, depending on factors like weather and breeding, but the long-term downward trend in the monarch butterfly population is concerning conservationists.
By Weiting Du
Summer is here and so are the annoying mosquitoes. But so, too, are creatures that limit their number. Water mites are close relatives to spiders and live in freshwater. Some of them can parasitize or prey on mosquitoes, according to a recent review study published in the Diversity journal. Understanding these water mites could be important for developing new ways to control them, the study said.
The bee’s population has mysteriously declined, falling by nearly 90 percent since the early 2000s. In 2017, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated it an endangered species.
The endangered Poweshiek skipperling butterfly, is now known to survive in the wild in only two places on earth: Michigan and Manitoba.