Today’s blog will provide you with some interesting bug news. We hope you find it interesting. The current number of identified animal species is 1,659,420. Not surprisingly, approximately 80% of those identified are arthropods, or insects. While humans are at the top of the food chain, arthropods claim dominance over the earth, as any homeowner in need of pest control in Fort Worth knows. Naturalists have pondered the mystery of when arthropods arose and filled the earth for centuries.
In an ambitious international collaboration, 100 scientists have combined their molecular, computational biology, statistics, paleontology, and taxonomic expertise to draw some surprising conclusions on when major groups of insects evolved.
Though we frequently hear of new fossil findings, fossils are actually rare. Fossils of insects are even rarer. The current research utilizes accumulated changes in DNA to determine the amount of time that has passed.
Looking at the genetic information in thousands of modern insect samples from hundreds of species produces an extraordinary amount of sequencing information. For all of our computing advances in the past half century, the required capacity simply doesn’t exist to handle the data counting into the quadrillions.
Alexander Stamatatakis, a computer scientist and bioinformatics expert and his research team devised a mathematical method to exclude unlikely combinations, thereby reducing the amount of data to the most likely combinations.
While the information may change as the project continues, current major findings of interest are:
- Insect ancestors appear to have originated during the Early Ordovician Period, approximately 479 million years ago.
- Insect flight emerged approximately 406 million years ago, about the same time plants began to diversify on land and gain height as forests.
- The rapid diversification of insects into the major orders we see today occurred before the emergence of Angiosperms (flowering plants).
Insects diversified at an extraordinary speed. When you consider that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, it’s only in the last 10% of earth’s history that plants were established. In the past 80 million years insects comprising the majority of the major groups still alive today populated the earth.
New information will undoubtedly be discovered, change and refocus once more. Eventually science will uncover the mystery of what came first, and the relationships between the groups, and when they emerged. The science may provide solutions to unwanted pests, and additional natural approaches for pest control in Fort Worth.
As long as mankind questions, science will continue to seek an answer.
Bed Bug Busters
Frequent travelers will be glad to know that control of bedbugs is in sight, providing a natural and safe approach for pest control in Fort Worth. Researchers at Simon Fraser University announced they may have solved the chemical code of bed bugs. In field trials, their bed bug attractant caught 100 percent of bed bugs.
If the early results are any indication, bed bug traps will help to prevent new infestations, and will potentially provide travelers with a means to ensure bugs traveling in your bags don’t gain ground in your home. Of course, natures creatures are always evolving and adapting, and pheromones are tricky substances to begin with. For now, the field trials are heralding a success in the war against bed bugs.
If you’re experiencing problems with bed bugs, one of our qualified specialists will be glad to provide you with pest control in Fort Worth.
Super Webs
In a true-to-life Twilight Zone moment, the Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant sent out a major SOS for help in 2009, when a giant spider web covering almost 4 acres of their facility was discovered. The discovery led to an eventual estimate of over 107 million spiders living in the structure.
It was reported that over 95% of the space was filled with spider web in some areas of the plant. The spider webs were so dense that it pulled 8-foot long fluorescent light fixtures completely out of place. However, the mega-web wasn’t the first found in the U.S. In 2007 a mega spider web was reported at Lake Tawakoni State Park in Hunt County, Texas.
Colossal webs are usually dominated by two species of spider in the United States, Tetragnatha guatemalensis and Larinioides sclopetarius, and always occur near water. Global warming has been named by some scientists as the direct cause of larger, longer lived spiders and an increase in the number of their offspring. If your home has pests, contact us today for pest control in Fort Worth.
No one wants bugs in their home, and our specialists can assist you in ridding your home of unwanted pests with professional pest control in Fort Worth. Homeowners often provide ineffective do it yourself pest control. Don’t suffer unwanted pests in your home, contact the pest control specialists at The Bug Dude to schedule effective pest control in Fort Worth. We serve Fort Worth and the surrounding areas. We hope you found our bug news interesting and informative.
