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The culmination of all these interactions is what defines a community and what differentiates one from another. Insects often play numerous roles in these communities, although these roles vary widely based on what species is present. Insects recognize their host (source of food) by means of their visual, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile cues ...
Pest insects are attracted by sex pheromones, allowing farmers to evaluate pest levels, and if need be to provide sufficient pheromone to disrupt mating. Chemical communication in insects is social signalling between insects of the same or different species, using chemicals.
The "Spanish fly", Lytta vesicatoria, has been considered to have medicinal, aphrodisiac, and other properties. Human interactions with insects include both a wide variety of uses, whether practical such as for food, textiles, and dyestuffs, or symbolic, as in art, music, and literature, and negative interactions including damage to crops and extensive efforts to control insect pests.
Certain insects, such as the cherry fruit fly, mark their oviposition sites in such a way that other females of the same species avoid the site and lay their eggs elsewhere to avoid competition for food among the offspring. [73] Territorial social insects, such as colonies of ants, also mark territories they claim with pheromones. [74]
Most insects, however, lead short lives as adults, and rarely interact with one another except to mate or compete for mates. A small number provide parental care , where they at least guard their eggs, and sometimes guard their offspring until adulthood, possibly even feeding them.
Biological interactions range from mutualism, beneficial to both partners, to competition, harmful to both partners. Interactions can be direct when physical contact is established or indirect, through intermediaries such as shared resources, territories, ecological services, metabolic waste, toxins or growth inhibitors.
Bee learning and communication includes cognitive and sensory processes in all kinds of bees, that is the insects in the seven families making up the clade Anthophila. Some species have been studied more extensively than others, in particular Apis mellifera, or European honey bee. Color learning has also been studied in bumblebees.
Insects have spiracles on their exoskeletons to allow air to enter the trachea. [1] [page needed] In insects, the tracheal tubes primarily deliver oxygen directly into the insects' tissues. The spiracles can be opened and closed in an efficient manner to reduce water loss. This is done by contracting closer muscles surrounding the spiracle.