Subduing the killer

A team of British scientists claim to have found a solution to the locust menace- A solitary locust is inactive, while a gregarious one in the company of thousands of others can mean mass destruction. Stephen Simpson and his colleagues at Oxford University discovered that the foam on which locust eggs are laid contained a chemical which determined whether or not the locust emerging from the egg will have gregarious or solitary tendencies. By using this chemical present in the foam, locusts can be transformed from being ravenous beasts to harmless insects.

Salt, the saviour

A SEEMINGLY nonsensical trait displayed by the moth is that it spends a few hours of its short lifespan guzzling down enormous quantities of water from the one end and throwing it out of the other with great force. According to scientists, this activity - puddling - is a life-saving mechanism by which the moths absorb salt from 'stands of water or moist soil' and preserve it for future use.

Beauty with a purpose

Butterfly and moth wings do seem to reflect the motto inspiring beauty pageants: 'beauty with a purpose'. The attractively coloured and designed wings make these cold blooded creatures not just beautiful but warm too. Chitin, the material constituting butterfly scales acts as a thermoregulatory mechanism. The air gaps present in between are responsible for absorbing and reflecting sunlight. The thickness of the scales is also responsible for thermoregulation.

"Nature is not loved in India"

On the state of natural and lepidopteran science in India: This is a crucial issue because there is a serious lack of interest in this field here. I feel Indian culture has never really been interested in nature. During the Vedic period, nature served only medicinal and ritualistic purposes and the Upanishads too hold nature in contempt. Indians therefore tend to view nature only in terms of it serving a Purpose and do not love it for its own sake. Interviewee:  Harish Gaonkar

MEXICO

A rare sudden spell of snow - nearly 12 inches - in central Mexico, has driven millions of Monarch butterflies, which have their winter sojourn in Mexico, to a cold death. The distinct orange and black insects fly every year from their summer haunts in Canada across the expanse of US to spend their winter in specially built butterfly sanctuaries in Mexico. The spectacular clumps of orange and black coating the fir trees draws many visitors to the country. In the cold

The biochemistry of growing old

THE phenomenon of senescence or aging is one of those problems that - as Mark Twain said about the weather - everyone talks about but no one does anything to solve. A number of experiments carried out on animals suggest that we may age because we burn ourselves up. As a result of our actions, we appear to generate highly active oxygen radicals in our tissues, thereby oxidising - 'burning' - the essential molecules necessary for thesupport and maintenance of life processes. This hypothesis gains increasing support as a result of research carried out by Sanjiv Agarwal and

Gossamer gifts

Harish Gaonkar, a Danish International" Development Agency march scientist, has recently come up with unportant observations on P famall diversity of butterfly-ecol Vilm haillia. His research shows that ps, is mat a single butterfly 'host W Mw plant on which it feeds) a Is am used for medicinal pur w Two tribes of the genus Troides Ow most beautiful and most diverse of all Indian butterflies - have been chosen as an illustration of this relationship. Aristollochia bracteolata (Hindi: Kiramar) is used against snake-bite Like all other Aristolochiae. It is also a

Foes forever

INSECTS, today make up the vast majority of living organisms. Although insects appeared almost 350 million years ago, they really began to diversify only after flowering plants came on the scene about 150 million years ago. The catalytic role played by flowering plants in the diversification of insects stems from the myriad ways in which plants offer themselves as food for insects. A rather elegant example of this is the case of leaf mining insects - larvae of some beetles,

MOTH-EATEN OAKS

The Indian Gypsy Moth is slowly but surely munching its way through Bhutan's treasure of oaks. A study conducted by the Forestry Research Institute, based in Taba, reveals that the swarm has since April devoured the leaves of oak trees spread over 300 acres in the forests of Tashiyangtsi. Villagers are now worried about the safety of their crops, despite being told that the Gypsy Moths are forest insects with no taste for crops.

Web of protection

ACKNOWLEDGED by farmers since time immemorial, the significance of spiders in pest management of crops is all the more being recognised now in view of the ill-effects of chemical pesticides. Following this trend, entomologists at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines have recently recorded 7 species of spiders in rice fields of Asia that protect the crops from pests by devouring them (Pesticide Post, Vol 3, No 3). Known for increasing crop yield by