Story by: Robert Krulwich

All Photos Credited to:John White, Google Maps, Rod Morris, Patrick Honan, and Matthew Bulbert.

No, this isn’t a make-believe place. It’s real. 

They call it “Ball’s Pyramid.” It’s what’s left of an old volcano that emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is extremely narrow, 1,844 feet high, and it sits alone.What’s more, for years this place had a secret. At 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush, and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don’t know.

Actor Will Smith and his son Jaden are Filming for a new movie in Costa Rica, they didn’t expect they would run into bugs this big! Looks more like the aliens from Independence Day. Looks like they could have used our service.

 Will Smith

This Bug was outside Jaden’s trailer in Costa Rica. DAMN!!!!

Look at this. A spider condominium complex. Do spiders give you that uneasy feeling. At night you wouldn’t be able to see these guys.

After 32 years in pest control I had a new experience today. Inspecting a home for termites I come upon a sickly coyote. We look at each other from about 10 ft. I say Hi! He growls. I yell he runs away. I had a thought. Could he have been sick maybe rabid. He didn’t look healthy and usually they just run away. Never had a coyote growl at me before.

Continued….

They found that wasps that laid two eggs in aphids infected with the bacterium and the phage were much more successful at producing live offspring.

However, laying two eggs in uninfected hosts had little effect on the number of surviving wasps as only one wasp can complete development in each aphid. This suggests that having twice the amount of factors secreted by the developing wasp overpowers the protection due to bacterial infection, and is an adaption to ensure the survival of one wasp at the cost of two. 

“The protection of the aphids is very tightly correlated with the presence of the bacteriophage,” Hunter said. “The phage genes encode one or another of different toxins, and we think those toxins have more of an effect on the wasp than on the aphid. The aphids depend on the phage for those defense toxins, and the phage depend on the bacteria that they infect. If the phage is absent, the aphid is not protected against the wasps.”

As if that wasn’t enough to wow any observer of the unassuming tiny aphids fighting it out with the equally unassuming tiny wasps, the research team found that the wasps are able to work out which aphids are harboring the symbionts and which are not.

“They can tell if the aphid is protected by a bacterial symbiont and will act to overcome the bacterial defenses,” Hunter said.

“We discovered that the wasp would preferentially lay two eggs in infected hosts, and a single egg if the aphids were unprotected,” said Kerry Oliver, who led the study while he was a postdoctoral fellow in Hunter’s lab. He is now an assistant professor at the university of Georgia’s College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.

“We don’t know for sure how wasps discriminate, but when we looked for differences between the aphids, we found that infected aphids produced less of the compound trans-b-farnesene. This compound is a major component of aphid alarm pheromone and wasps are known to use this cue to find hosts.”

“Aphids secrete this alarm pheromone when they’re attacked,” Hunter explained. “They’re usually surrounded by closely related individuals, even clones, and when they perceive this chemical alarm call, they drop to the ground or take another course of action to escape from a threat.”

Whatever the trick they are using to work out which aphids are infected, wasps appear to be able to lay just enough eggs to stay ahead in the arms race.

“The fact that the phage provides the toxin that protects the aphid against the wasps means that the bacteria depend on the phage for their own survival,” Hunter said. “After all, if the aphid goes down, so do the bacteria. The relationships among those different players really do remind us of a set of Russian dolls.”

Continued..

The wasp, A. ervi, lays an egg inside the pea aphid, where the egg hatches and converts the aphid’s insides into a wasp nursery. The wasp larva uses the still-living aphid as a food source, eventually pupating inside the aphid and emerging as a fully formed mature wasp.

However, the pea aphid is not defenseless. It is protected by the bacterium Hamiltonella defense, and its associated bacteriophage called APSE. Bacteriophages are viruses that exclusively infect bacteria.

The bacteria with their incorporated phage float around in the aphid’s hemolymph, “the insect’s equivalent of blood” said Hunter, and also make their home in specialized cells provided by the aphid for the purpose of hosting their symbionts. In addition to conferring greater resistance to heat stress on the aphids, the main job of the bacteria and their phages appears to be protection against the parasitic wasps.

Although the wasps still lay their eggs inside aphids hosting the bacterial symbiont, the larvae that hatch from those eggs are unable to develop normally. The research group, which included Judith Becerra, a chemical ecologist in the UA’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology also affiliated with Biosphere 2, set out to investigate what tactics the wasps might use to overcome the aphids’ symbiont defense strategy.

A research team including Martha (Molly) Hunter from the department of entomology in the University of Arizona’s College of Agriculture of Life Sciences has disentangled relationships in an assembly of players that resemble Russian dolls: a bacterium that lives inside a tiny insect, a virus that infects those bacteria, and a parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in the insect.

In a war between parasite and host, the parasitic wasp, Aphidius ervi, and the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, are locked in a battle for survival.

Hailing from Europe, the pea aphid hitchhiked to North America before the turn of the 20th century, where it spread as a pest of peas and related crops in the legume family. Later, the parasitic wasp was introduced as a biological pest control agent, in an effort to keep the pest in check.

One of our technicians had this experience today. Today was his first day on the job. Good way to begin his carrier at Conquistador Pest & Termite

.A Hutterite colony near Cut Bank has been ordered to pay $90,274 after two horses belonging to neighboring ranchers died of strychnine poisoning.

The Seville Colony and farm boss Thomas Wipf pleaded guilty in October to misapplication of pesticides after the horses ate strychnine-laced oats being used to kill gophers. Colony secretary Edward Walder pleaded guilty to false statements for lying to an Environmental Protection Agency inspector about the pesticide use.

An EPA cleanup found about 300 acres of illegally applied pesticide.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Monday the colony and Walder received a year of probation, and Wipf six months.

The plea agreement recommended the colony pay restitution to the EPA.

Wipf and Walder were each ordered to pay $1,000 in addition to the $90,274 the colony must pay

Identifying Bed Bug Infestations

Much of the time, a bed bug infestation is only suspected when bites appear on a person. Oftentimes, the bites are misidentified, thus allowing infestations to go unnoticed, which gives the bed bugs time to spread to other areas of the house.

When cleaning, changing bedding, or staying away from home, look for:

• Dark spots (about this size: •) which are bed bug excrement and may bleed on the fabric like a marker would
• Eggs and eggshells, which are tiny (about 1mm) and white
• Skins that nymphs shed as they grow larger
• Live bed bugs
• Rusty or reddish stains on bed sheets or mattresses caused by bed bugs being crushed

Preventing Bed Bug Infestations

Bed bugs are very successful hitchhikers, moving from an infested site to furniture, bedding, baggage, boxes, and clothing. Although they typically feed on blood every five to ten days, bed bugs can be quite resilient; they are capable of surviving over a year without feeding.

A few simple precautions can help prevent bed bug infestation in your home:

• Check secondhand furniture, beds, and couches for any signs of bed bugs.
• Use a protective cover that encases mattresses and box springs which eliminates many hiding spots. The light color of the encasement makes bed bugs easier to see. Be sure to purchase a high quality encasement that will resist tearing and check the encasements regularly for holes.
• Reduce clutter in your home to reduce hiding places for bed bugs.
• When traveling:
  • In hotel rooms, use luggage racks to hold your luggage when packing or unpacking rather than setting your luggage on the bed or floor.
  • Check the mattress and headboard before sleeping.
  • Upon returning home, unpack directly into a washing machine and inspect your luggage carefully