Sentences with word «hoverfly»

The researchers» work began with collecting observations on hoverfly behavior in three of these insects» natural habitats — tropical Bangalore, alpine Sikkim, and hemi - arboreal Uppsala.

The modest heatwave of the summer of 2004 brought a new insect to our shores, the Episyrphus Balteatus, or Marmalade Hoverfly, locals were horrified.

Karin Nordström studies the visual system of hoverflies using electrophysiology, behaviour and field work to understand the constraints and optimizations that allow small neural systems to extract vital information with high spatial and temporal resolution.

How do hoverflies make sense of this multimodal input?

As global populations of domestic bee pollinators decline, it is of utmost importance for us to understand what factors attract wild pollinators such as hoverflies to flowers, and how these preferences differ in the face of environmental change.

For example, flower models of small blue models with a specific scent were highly attractive to hoverflies in Bangalore, but not so in Sikkim or in Uppsala.

Intrigued, Wotton set up camp at a spot in the Pyrenees at the border of Spain and France to study migrating hoverflies.

Sherratt studies hoverflies, a group of flies that resemble bees and wasps to various degrees.

Olsson and Nordström hope to continue their studies on how hoverflies and other generalist pollinators perceive flowers, and the factors affecting these pollinators» preferences.

But if hoverfly numbers are dropping, that would mean fewer are around to eat destructive aphids and to spread beneficial pollen.

The researchers hope to see whether the American hoverflies, probably a different species, are moving in the same ways their European cousins do.

As adults, the traveling hoverflies help pollinate plants.

Hoverflies also migrate in North America, in ways that are far less understood than in Europe.

Funneled by the high mountain topography, hoverflies whiz through the passes like rush hour commuters through a railway station.

This month, Menz and Wotton are visiting Montaña de Oro State Park on California's Central Coast, where last year an entomologist reported spotting a rare hoverfly migration.

Hoverflies navigate unerringly across Europe for more than 100 kilometers per day, chowing down on aphids that suck the juice out of greening shoots.

Not all taxa were examined as part of this study, but future work will look in detail at hoverflies, spiders and flowering plants.

Bumblebees — along with hoverflies and other native insects — pollinate most insect - pollinated crops.

Food webs are made up of many dynamic feeding relationships; for example herbivore aphids feed on Ground Elder and are themselves eaten by hoverfly larvae.

Schiestl and his colleague grew field mustard plants, and exposed them to two types of pollinators: efficient bumblebees and inefficient hoverflies.

Because hoverflies are lousy pollinators.

The experiments with the artificial models indicate that hoverflies prefer certain combinations of flower characteristics in specific environments.

Hoverfly pollinators visited buttercups in Thangu Valley, North Sikkim, one of the trans - continental sites chosen.

This helped them gather data on the characteristics of flowers that hoverflies found attractive and those that they found unattractive.

These insects use a multimodal sensory mechanism — in other words, hoverflies require a combination of clues including shape, size, color and scent — to recognize flowers in different environments across the world.

From a «statistical soup» of all their findings, the team then extracted information about the features that hoverflies seemed to find most attractive and less attractive.

One emerging model species is the marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus), which migrates from northern to southern Europe and back each year.

Extrapolating to all of Europe, Wootton estimates that many billions of hoverflies are probably migrating.

As global populations of domestic bee pollinators decline, it is of utmost importance for us to understand the factors that attract wild pollinators such as hoverflies to flowers, and how these preferences differ in the face of environmental change.

Now, through their collaborative work on hoverflies, the two teams have found an answer.

He was also a visiting research fellow at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, visiting in 1998 to study pollinator ecology, which included different species of bees and hoverflies, and again in 2003 to study wild bee ecology.

«The butterflies are getting turned around like in a tumble dryer, but the hoverflies just shoot straight over.»

Hoverflies, which pollinate a wide range of plants, are the second most important group of pollinators in Europe after bees, Wotton says.

Scientists like Menz are fanning out across the globe to track butterflies, moths, hoverflies and other insects on their great journeys.

Only at the passes do the hoverflies become noticeable, a never - ending stream of tiny bodies glinting in the mountain light.

Marmalade hoverflies have translucent wings and an orange - and - black striped body.

Season after season, the researchers are building up a hoverfly census.

NOTHING BUT NET Butterflies, hoverflies and other migrating insects poured across the Col de Bretolet pass in the Swiss Alps on this day in September 2016.

But both bees and hoverflies that depended on particular plants or habitats suffered while their more migratory or generalist brethren prospered.

The researchers also looked at another pollinating species, hoverflies, and found conflicting overall results.

Another spider that likes to blend in with its environment is the crab spider (Thomisus onustus), which hides among flower petals to nab bees, hoverflies, and other unsuspecting pollinators.

Observations showed that hoverflies, skippers, and parasitic wasps (such as the sphecid wasp shown here on Coreopsis «Cosmic Eye») were frequent visitors to butterfly and conservation gardens.

The radars recorded medium - sized insects (hoverflies, ladybird beetles, and water boatmen) and large ones (hawk moths, painted lady butterflies, and aquatic beetles) flying between 150 meters and 1200 meters high; balloon sampling flights helped provide estimated counts for smaller insects.

Hoverflies, skippers, predatory plant bugs, and parasitic wasps were frequent visitors to Butterfly and Conservation Gardens.

«This hoverfly specimen collected at an altitude of 4000 meters in the Himalayas, is the same species of hoverfly, Eristalis tenax, that is also found in Sweden, Germany, USA, and Australia,» she adds.

Using the results of their statistical analyses, the researchers then modelled a set of hypothetical flowers, whose attractiveness to hoverflies were then tested in Bangalore, Sikkim and Uppsala.

Robert Raguso, a behavioral ecologist from Cornell University, uninvolved in this study, is excited about the unique and creative approach taken by the authors in «interviewing» hoverflies.

Now, a team of scientists from Uppsala and Flinders University and the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) have discovered that hoverflies, a group of generalist pollinators, use a combination of cues such as color, shape and scent to identify flowers.

When Olsson from NCBS contacted her long - time friend and collaborator Karin Nordström at the University of Uppsala and Flinders University for help in identifying a hoverfly species, little did they know that this would be the beginning of a major project.

Without these cues, hoverflies may not recognize flowers as flowers,» he says.