Week 6 - Insect Control, Entomophagy, Heros Flashcards
Key Points: Chemical Control
- Important ancient pesticides
- Botanical insecticides
- Underlying reason for development of synthetic insecticides
- Advantages/Disadvantages of DDT
- Define Integrated Pest Management (IPM)
Ancient/early insecticides (4 groups)
- tobacco and other botanicals
- soapsuds
- fish and whale oil (“dormant oil”)
- dusts: charcoal, soot, sulfur & ground tobacco, lime powder, plaster of Paris
Botanicals as insecticides (4)
- tobacco
- rotenone
- hellebore
- pyrethrum (from a daisy Chrysanthemum cinerarifolium)
First synthetic insecticides (4)
- Bordeaux mix
- Paris Green
- Elementals
- Hydrocyanic gas
Tobacco
A botanical, used as an early insecticide
Soapsuds
Used as an early insecticide (and still is)
Fish and whale oil (“dormant oil”)
Used as an early insecticide
Dust( charcoal, soot, sulfur, ground tobacco, lime powder, plaster of Paris)
Used as early insecticides
Bordeaux mix
- Hydrated lime and copper sulfate
* One of the first synthetic insecticides
Paris Green
- Copper acetoarsenite
* One of the first synthetic insecticides
Elementals (antimony, arsenic, mercury, selenium)
- Of the first synthetic insecticides
Hydrocyanic gas
- A fumigant in citrus, ca. 1880
* One of the first synthetic insecticides
ARBOR disease definition and examples
- Arthropod Borne disease
- Malaria, typhus, dengue fever, encephalitis
- Spurred effort to control insects
DDT (about)
Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane
- Created in Germany in late 1800’s
- Used heavily in US between 1941 and 1976
DDT (advantages)
- Kills a huge variety of insects
- Simple/cheap to manufacture
- Lasts a long time in the environment - effective a long time in the environment
- Low effect on mammals (including humans)
DDT (disadvantages)
- So effective, it was overused/abused
- Persistence in the environment means bio-magnification and bio-accumulation (fish eat contaminated food, eagles eat contaminated fish)
- The above is what lead to health effects
Chlorinated Hydrocarbons
Similar in structure to DDT, very persistent, spreading widely in the environment
Organophosphates
Less persistent insecticides, but very toxic to birds and mammals
(Malathion, Parathion)
Problems with synthetic insecticides
- Non-specific (kills pests and beneficials)
- Overuse/buildup
- Development of resistance in target insects (resulting in overuse)
4th Generation Insecticides (description and examples)
- More target pest specific
- Growth/hormone inhibitors
- GMO plants (problems with resistance)
Integrated Pest Management
- Multiple methods used at once
* Natural and chemical means of control
Key Points: Insects in Your Diet
- What are Defect Action Levels
- 2-3 examples of Entomophagy
- Rationale for Entomophagy
- Efficiency of energy conversion between conventional food sources and insects
- Nutritional levels between conventional food sources and insects
Edible Arthropods from the sea
Shrimp, lobsters, crab
What are Defect Action Levels? (examples)
- Cherries - 4%
- Peaches - 5%
- Peanut butter - 30 fragments/100g
- Tomatoes - 10 fruit fly eggs/500g
Why are there Defect Action Levels?
Economically impractical to grow and distribute raw food without defects (including insects).
How DALs are set
By market tolerance
Weight of insects the average American eats in lifetime
1 lb
Examples of entomophagy (know 2-3 min.)
- Asian weaver ants
- Beetles
- Crickets
- Silkworm moth pupae
- Bamboo worms
- Hornet larvae
- Grasshoppers
Rationale for Entomophagy
- World protein crisis
- Losing farm land (7,863 acres per day from 1999 to 2009)
- Food security
- Alleviate poverty
- Dietary quality
Energy Conversion (chicken, sheep&lamb, beef, hogs, fish)
- chicken: 38-40%
- sheep&lamb: 5%
- beef: 10%
- hogs: 20%
- fish: 20%
Energy Conversion (grasshoppers, bed bugs, silkworm larvae, beetles, screw worm fly larvae, termites)
- grasshoppers: 12%
- bed bugs: 40%
- silkworm larvae: 31%
- beetles: 40%
- screw worm fly larvae: 36%
- termites: 68%
Nutritional Value (beef, pork, fish, eggs, milk)
- beef: 17-19%protein, 16-25%fat, 0%carbs
- pork: 15-17%protein, 23-31%fat, 0%carbs
- fish: 19%protein, 5%fat, 0%carbs
- eggs: 13%protein, 12%fat, 1%carbs
- milk: 4%protein, 4%fat, 5%carbs
Nutritional Value (termites, grasshoppers, fly pupae)
- termites: 33%protein, 33%fat, 0%carbs
- grasshoppers: 15-46%protein, 2-10%fat, 7%carbs
- fly pupae: 63%protein, 16%fat, 0%carbs
Key Points: Insect Impacts on Society
- Biotech
- Business (different types)
- Philosophy
- Taxonomy
- Disease control
Insect that is the basis of biotech as we know it
- Fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster
Gregor Mendel
- Monk from mid-1800’s who pioneered DNA-based plant propagation
Reasons to use fruit flies in genetic manipulation (8)
- Small size (easy to rear lots in a small space, pose no danger)
- Cost efficient
- Short life span (time efficient)
- Stable population (ubiquitous and expendable)
- Selected matings easily controlled
- Experimental “confounds” can be easily reduced
- Allow for intricate experiments requiring large datasets
- Results are easily generalized
Top 5 Biotech companies
US: * Amgen * Genentech * Genzyme * Gilead Sciences Belgium: * UCB
Gompertz Law
- “The risk of death grows exponentially as we age until reaching 100%.”
Fruit flies have been used for life table studies, which are used by insurance companies to set insurance rates based on age and gender.
Higher risk = higher cost
Morgan & Muller
Discovered that x-rays and other short-wave radiation drastically increased genetic mutation frequency.
Aesop
- Greek who lived 2500 years ago
- A slave, deformed
- A poet who used insects in homilies (more than 25)
Aristotle
- Founded entomology as a science
- Gave first functional system of insect classification
- Gave first dichotomous identification system (one based on wings, one on mouth parts)
Baghdad Boils
ARBOR disease, vectored by a true fly in Diptera
- Lutzomyia longipalpis
Just by controlling this one fly, can control the disease
