Pests and Parasites News

April 5, 2025

Top Headlines

Discovery of Bacteria's Defense Against Viruses Becomes a Piece of the Puzzle Against Resistance

Apr. 4, 2025 — Antibiotic resistance is a global health challenge that could overtake cancer mortality within a few decades. In a new study, researchers show that the emergence of resistance can be understood in ...

How a Small Number of Mutations Can Fuel Outbreaks of Western Equine Encephalitis Virus

Apr. 4, 2025 — New research shows how small shifts in the molecular makeup of a virus can profoundly alter its fate. These shifts could turn a deadly pathogen into a harmless bug or supercharge a relatively benign ...

Picky Eaters by Day, Buffet by Night: Butterfly, Moth Diets Sync to Plant Aromas

Apr. 3, 2025 — The scent of blooming flowers and fresh plant life is not just a perk of springtime; it is a key driver in the survival and evolution of butterflies and moths. New research reveals how the daily ...

Plant Doctor: An AI System That Watches Over Urban Trees Without Touching a Leaf

Apr. 2, 2025 — Monitoring urban plant health traditionally requires extensive manual labor and botanical expertise, creating challenges for cities facing expanding green spaces, higher population densities, and ...

Latest Headlines

updated 5:11pm EDT

Migrating Flies Vital for People and Nature

Apr. 2, 2025 — Buzzing insects may be seen as pests -- but globally, hundreds of fly species migrate over long distances, with major benefits for people and nature, new research ...

Understanding the Immune Response to a Persistent Pathogen

Mar. 28, 2025 — Researchers show that the immune system can recognize and control the latent stage of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, a finding that can inform the study of latency in other infections of the nervous ...

Rare Disease Drug Nitisinone Makes Human Blood Deadly to Mosquitoes

Mar. 26, 2025 — A study found when patients take the drug nitisinone, their blood becomes deadly to ...

Getting Hit by Lightning Is Good for Some Tropical Trees

Mar. 26, 2025 — Getting zapped with millions of volts of electricity may not sound like a healthy activity, but for some trees, it is. A new study reports that some tropical tree species are not only able to ...

How Zika Virus Knocks out Our Immune Defenses

Mar. 25, 2025 — This research comes as many mosquito-borne viruses are spreading ...

Insecticides May Contribute to Bigger Problems With Certain Weeds

Mar. 25, 2025 — Insecticides may help growers hoping to protect their crops from harmful insects, but they also may contribute to a larger amount of some weeds, according to a new ...

Natural Insect Predators May Serve as Allies in Spotted Lanternfly Battle

Mar. 18, 2025 — Insect predators found in the United States could help keep spotted lanternfly populations in check while potentially reducing reliance on chemical control methods, according to a new ...

New Eye Drops Slow Vision Loss in Animals

Mar. 21, 2025 — Researchers have developed eye drops that extend vision in animal models of a group of inherited diseases that lead to progressive vision loss in humans, known as retinitis ...

Plant Patch Can Detect Stress Signals in Real Time

Mar. 19, 2025 — Environmental conditions can cause damaging stress to plants, posing challenges for home gardeners and farmers. Therefore, early detection -- before leaves visibly discolor, wilt or wither -- is ...

Protecting Crops: Researchers Open Up New Avenue to Combat a Widespread Plant Virus

Mar. 18, 2025 — New RNA-based active agents reliably protect plants against the Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), the most common virus in agriculture and horticulture. ...

Nature's Viny Vampire: Discovering What Drives Parasitic Cuscuta Campestris

Mar. 27, 2025 — Researchers have discovered the mechanism that drives the parasitic vine Cuscuta campestris to insert organs into plants after making contact with the ...

Park Entrances May Be Hotspots for Infective Dog Roundworm Eggs

Mar. 27, 2025 — In an analysis of soil samples from twelve parks in Dublin, Ireland, park entrances were more heavily contaminated with infective roundworm eggs than any other tested park ...

New Discovery in Plant-Pest Warfare Could Lead to Sustainable Farming Solutions

Mar. 17, 2025 — Overuse of chemical pesticides has driven resistance in agricultural pests, including the adaptable two-spotted spider mite. Researchers have discovered novel elicitor proteins, Tet3 and Tet4, in ...

Researchers Demonstrate New Technique for Boosting Plant Growth With Bacteria

Mar. 17, 2025 — Researchers have demonstrated a technique for successfully encapsulating bacteria that can then be stored and applied to plants to improve plant growth and protect against pests and pathogens. The ...

Antigenic Variation: Decoding the Mechanism Controlling Antigen Activation in Trypanosomes

Mar. 13, 2025 — A new study shows how pathogens control changes in their cell surface to evade the immune ...

Researchers Use a 'Trojan Horse' Approach to Develop New Antimalarial Drugs

Mar. 5, 2025 — Antimalarial drug resistance is a pressing issue in combating the spread of malaria worldwide. In a new study, researchers discovered a key process where malarial parasites take up a human blood cell ...

Midwestern Field Trials Suggest Overuse of Rootworm-Resistant Corn Reduces Farmers' Profits

Feb. 27, 2025 — An analysis of data covering 12 years and 10 U.S. Corn Belt states reveals that farmers suffer economic loss from the over-application of genetically engineered corn designed to combat rootworm ...

Discovery of a Common 'Weapon' Used by Disease-Causing Fungi Could Help Engineer More Resilient Food Crops

Feb. 27, 2025 — The discovery of a powerful 'weapon' used by many disease-causing fungi to infect and destroy major food crop staples, such as rice and corn, could offer new strategies to bolster global ...

Select Corn Lines Contain Compounds That Sicken, Kill Major Crop Pest

Feb. 26, 2025 — The corn earworm causes the loss of more than 76 million bushels of corn in the United States annually, and there is mounting evidence that increasingly extreme weather events and temperatures will ...

Genomic Tools Provide Clearer View of Health for Endangered Bats

Feb. 26, 2025 — How do wildlife researchers know when an endangered population is sick? They can detect infectious microbes in animal waste, but the presence of a microbe doesn't always equate to impactful ...

Hidden Allies: Trees and Fungi

Feb. 26, 2025 — Researchers report on the influence of an endophytic fungus of the genus Cladosporium on the defense of black poplars against herbivorous insects. The fungus, which lives inside the leaves, not only ...

Promising New Class of Antimalarial Drugs Discovered

Feb. 20, 2025 — Epigenetic inhibitors as a promising new antimalarial intervention strategy? A new study identifies an inhibitor of gene regulation that specifically kills the malaria ...

Parasitic Orchids Are Healthier

Feb. 19, 2025 — Why have some orchids stopped photosynthesis and become parasites feeding on fungi? Researchers found that in at least one species the transition may be driven by the opportunity -- more than by the ...

Combining Millions of Years of Evolution With Tech Wizardry: The Cyborg Cockroach

Feb. 13, 2025 — A research team has developed two new autonomous navigation systems for cyborg insects to better navigate unknown, complex environments. The algorithms utilized only simple circuits that leveraged ...

Influenza A Viruses Adapt Shape in Response to Environmental Pressures

Feb. 10, 2025 — Influenza A virus particles strategically adapt their shape -- to become either spheres or larger filaments -- to favor their ability to infect cells depending on environmental conditions, according ...

Bats Play a Key Role in Combating Rice Pests in Southeast Asia

Feb. 10, 2025 — Scientists have demonstrated that Wrinkle-lipped free-tailed bats not only travels great distances, but also hunt at impressive altitudes of up to 1,600 meters above ground -- the altitude at which ...

An Unexpected Mechanism Regulates the Immune Response During Parasitic Infections

Feb. 7, 2025 — Researchers have uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that regulates the immune response against parasites. During a parasitic infection, specific immune cells, known as virtual memory T cells ...

Essential Genome of Malaria Parasite Plasmodium Knowlesi Mapped

Feb. 6, 2025 — A new, comprehensive map of all the genes essential for blood infections in Plasmodium knowlesi (P. knowlesi), a parasite that causes malaria in humans, has been generated. The map contains the most ...

Hijacking of Plasmin by Dengue Virus for Infection

Feb. 3, 2025 — Biological scientists have uncovered how the dengue virus uses its envelope protein to capture human plasmin from a blood meal to enhance the permeability of the mosquito midgut for ...

A Window Into the Future of Amazonia

Jan. 29, 2025 — New research from a team of tropical biologists forecasts some of the changes that may occur in the Amazon rainforest as temperatures rise due to climate ...