Getting to the bottom of how red flour #beetles absorb water through their butts https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/12/getting-to-the-bottom-of-how-red-flour-beetles-absorb-water-through-their-butts/ by @JenLucPiquant

NHA1 is a cation/proton antiporter essential for the water-conserving functions of the rectal complex in #Tribolium castaneum https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217084120

"A unique group of #cells pumps water into the #kidneys to help harvest moisture from the air."

#animals #invertebrates #insects

How some beetles drink water using their butts https://www.sciencenews.org/article/flour-beetles-drink-water-using-butts

NHA1 is a cation/proton antiporter essential for the water-conserving functions of the rectal complex in #Tribolium castaneum https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2217084120

Red flour #beetles, a major agricultural pest, open their anus to get water vapor in the air flowing into the lower gut and condensing on any poop there. The #insects draw water out of the fecal material using special cells lining their lower digestive system.

Lego models of invertebrates: needs to reach 10,000 supporters to enter production.

“This set features four arthropod model organisms: the fruit fly #Drosophila melanogaster, the red flour beetle #Tribolium castaneum, the amphipod crustacean #Parhyale hawaiensis, and the two-spotted cricket #Gryllus bimaculatus.”

The LEGO account setup accepts throwaway emails, so no need to commit to endless spam.

#entomology #lego #invertebrates #insects #crustaceans

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/c629ad44-59f8-452a-bfba-2b6b96e29f54

Playing god with #beetles: "An explanation for unexpected population crashes in a constant environment" by Johnson et al. 2022 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ele.14110

"Most of the time, populations can be described as fluctuating randomly around a weakly-stable equilibrium. However, some populations experience unexpected population crashes... ecological #blackswan events. These crashes, however rare, have outsized consequences for conservation and management"

"we use mechanistic models and flour #beetle microcosm experiments to derive a novel mechanism of population crashes... can occur when stochasticity occasionally ‘pushes’ population density into a regime where overcrowding is severe."

Curiously: "Obviously, only females can oviposit. Less obviously, females are far more voracious egg cannibals than males—using industrial die to perform an egg mark-recapture experiment, Sonleitner (1961) found that #Tribolium castaneum females ate 19 times as many eggs as males."

#ecology