Ammonia-releasing substances are known to play an important role in fruit fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) attraction to food sources, and this information has been exploited for the development of effective synthetic food-based lures and insecticidal baits. In field studies conducted in Hawaii, we examined the behavioural response of wild female oriental fruit fly (Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel)), mel...

BACKGROUND Trypanosoma spp, biologically transmitted by the tsetse fly in Africa, are a major cause of illness resulting in both high morbidity and mortality among humans, cattle, wild ungulates, and other species. However, tsetse fly distributions change rapidly due to environmental changes, and fine-scale distribution maps are few. Due to data scarcity, most presence/absence estimates in Keny...

The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster performs at least two distinct types of flight initiation. One kind is a stereotyped escape response to a visual stimulus that is mediated by the hard-wired giant fiber neural pathway, and the other is a more variable ;voluntary' response that can be performed without giant fiber activation. Because the simpler escape take-offs are apparently successful, it...

The stage-regulated HASPB and SHERP proteins of Leishmania major are predominantly expressed in cultured metacyclic parasites that are competent for macrophage uptake and survival. The role of these proteins in parasite development in the sand fly vector has not been explored, however. Here, we confirm that expression of HASPB is detected only in vector metacyclic stages, correlating with the e...

Drosophila melanogaster has been used for decades in the study of circadian behavior, and more recently has become a popular model for the study of sleep. The classic method for monitoring fly activity involves counting the number of infrared beam crosses in individual small glass tubes. Incident recording methods such as this can measure gross locomotor activity, but they are unable to provide...

Neural networks in vertebrates exhibit endogenous oscillations that have been associated with functions ranging from sensory processing to locomotion. It remains unclear whether oscillations may play a similar role in the insect brain. We describe a novel "whole brain" readout for Drosophila melanogaster using a simple multichannel recording preparation to study electrical activity across the b...

A new Erythrina alkaloid glycoside, named erythraline-11β-O-glucopyranoside, was isolated from the seeds of Erythrina crista-galli L., together with five known Erythrina alkaloids and an indole alkaloid. The structure of the new alkaloid glycoside was elucidated by spectroscopic methods, and all of the compounds were evaluated for their antiviral activity against tobacco mosaic virus.

Two glycosides were isolated from the n-Butanol soluble portion of the ethanolic portion of the stem and leaves part of stachytarpheta angustifolia. Their structures were elucidated as Iridoid glycoside (1) and a caffeic glycoside ester named as –β(3 1 , 4 1 dihydroxyphenyl)–ethyl-O-α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1-3)-β-D-(4-O-Caffeoyl) glucopyranoside (2) by spectroscopic Method.

Column chromatographic separation of a MeOH extract of the aerial parts of Saussurea triangulata led to the isolation of a new sesquiterpene glycoside 6, together with three quinic acid derivatives, two phenolics, two sesquiterpene glycosides and two flavonoids. The new compound 6 was identified as amarantholidol A glycoside by spectroscopic and chemical methods.

Anoxybacillus thermarum AF/04(T) was isolated from the Euganean hot springs in Abano Terme, Italy. The present work reports a high-quality draft genome sequence of strain AF/04(T). This work also provides useful insights into glycoside hydrolases, glycoside transferases, and sugar transporters that may be involved in cellular carbohydrate metabolism.