Application of plant metabarcoding to identify diverse honeybee pollen forage along an urban-agricultural gradient.

Understanding animal foraging ecology requires large sample sizes spanning broad environmental and temporal gradients. For pollinators, this has been hampered by the laborious nature of morphologically identifying pollen. Identifying pollen from urban environments is particularly difficult due to the presence of diverse ornamental species associated with consumer horticulture.

Flowers in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Pollinator Plantings and the Upper Midwest Agricultural Landscape Supporting Honey Bees.

A present goal of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is to manage land in agricultural landscapes to increase pollinator abundance and diversity. CP42, or the pollinator seed mix, is planted and managed to support foraging pollinators with blooming flowers present at all points in the foraging season. This high-quality habitat provides an excellent opportunity to study honey bee nutrition and determine whether honey bees located near CRP sites use known resources included in planting seed mixes.

Seeking quantitative morphological characters for species identification in soldiers of Puerto Rican (Dictyoptera, Blattaria, Termitoidae, Rhinotermitidae).

Subterranean termites in the genus Froggatt (Rhinotermitidae: Heterotermitinae) are pantropical wood feeders capable of causing significant structural damage. The aim of this study was to investigate soldier morphological attributes in three Puerto Rican species of previously identified by sequencing of two mitochondrial genes and attributed to (Hagen), (Snyder) and (Snyder). Soldiers (n = 156) were imaged and measured using the Auto-Montage image-stacking program.

Species Diversity of Puerto Rican Heterotermes (Dictyoptera: Rhinotermitidae) Revealed by Phylogenetic Analyses of Two Mitochondrial Genes.

The goal of this study was to infer Heterotermes (Froggatt) (Dictyoptera: Rhinotermitidae) species diversity on the island of Puerto Rico from phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequence data from two mitochondrial genes, 16S rRNA and cytochrome oxidase II (COII). This termite genus is a structural pest known to be well adapted to arid environments in subtropical and tropical regions worldwide including Puerto Rico and many other Caribbean islands. Extensive sampling was accomplished across Puerto Rico, and phylogenetic analyses of individual gene sequences from these samples indicated robust datasets of congruent gene tree topologies showing three monophyletic groups: H.

Population Genetic Baseline of the First Plataspid Stink Bug Symbiosis (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Plataspidae) Reported in North America.

The stink bug, Megacopta cribraria, has an obligate relationship with a bacterial endosymbiont which allows it to feed on legumes. The insect is a pest of soybeans in Asia and was first reported in the Western Hemisphere in October 2009 on kudzu vine, Pueraria montana, in North Georgia, USA. By October 2010 M.