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Insects, Climate Change and the Future of Pest Management
When you sit at the dinner table enjoying a colorful salad full of fresh produce, are you considering the impact that insects play in the loss of global crop production? If you’re not in pest management, probably not. But if you are, the numbers are staggering. Approximately 20% to 40% of crops produced around the…
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Why the Uptick in Insects After Natural Disasters?
Natural disasters can have consequences beyond displacing people from their homes and threatening their lives and livelihoods. Some types of natural disasters cause insect populations to grow exponentially — often the most undesirable species. Here we’ll examine which types of natural disasters bring the bugs out en masse and why extreme weather is frequently the…
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Will Cockroaches Outlive Humans?
A nuclear war, if it comes, will not be won by the Americans … the Russians … the Chinese. The winner of World War III will be the cockroach. — 1965 advertisement sponsored by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy Cockroaches have an impressive win record. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, which eliminated 80% of…
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Five of America’s Most Wanted Invasive Insects
With sightings of the Asian giant hornet (popularly called the murder hornet in the media) popping up across the northwest, we thought we’d take a look at some of America’s most notorious invasive insects. Unlike Asian giant hornets, these invertebrates already have a strong foothold in the United States and are responsible for millions of…
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How Does Entomology Relate to Public Health?
Public health initiatives include efforts to warn people of the dangers of smoking, heart disease and obesity. In many cases, simply informing the public of a problem is enough to mitigate it. However, not all problems can be solved with a persuasive pamphlet. Transmitted by insects, some of the world’s most infectious diseases can spread…
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The Unsung Heroes of Pollination
Bees have a close connection with pollination, and their appetite for nectar and pollen has a huge impact on our survival on this planet. When they fly from one flowering plant to another, bees transfer pollen between the plants, helping those plants fulfill their natural cycle of reproduction. This process is critical to us because…
