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Transgenic Bt crops have been a very successful tool for managing various insect pests in field crops. However, like all pest management strategies, they have both pros and cons. Dr. Dominic Reisig, from North Carolina State University, discusses the challenges of managing resistance against Bt crops, using the example of Helicoverpa zea, an important pest of both corn and cotton.  The mechanisms of exactly how mosquitoes locate their human hosts still elude the scientific community. Dr Conor McMeniman’s lab at Johns Hopkins has made advances in understanding the important role that the CO2 we exhale has to play in mosquitoes’ host-finding abilities. With the urgency of the Zika threat looming, understanding its mosquito vectors’ human-finding processes is vital to public health.
Annual emergences of chronomid (non-biting) midges at the subarctic Lake Myvatn in northeastern Iceland are being studied for their interesting effects on arthropod food webs. Understanding the aquatic-terrestrial linkages in the near-shore ecosystems will shed light on the role midges play in the nitrogen cycle.  |
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