Press release 2010





Bottom-up effects of plant diversity on multitrophic interactions in a biodiversity experiment
(October 2010)

Bottom-up effects of plant diversity on multitrophic interactions in a biodiversity experiment

(Nature 2010 Oct 27), has been selected and evaluated by Andrew Hector, a Member of the Faculty of 1000 (F1000), which places the work in our library of the top 2% of published articles in biology and medicine. The service is widely used to find significant new research articles, and the inclusion of the article should significantly increase its visibility.
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read the paper here:
Nature: 2010 Oct 27; 440 (7081) DOI: doi:10.1038/nature09492











Not in this toad’s backyard
Native Indonesian amphibian takes on invading ants
(September 2010)

(Susan Milius) After so many sad tales of invasive species overwhelming hapless natives, scientists have found a native toad in Indonesia that’s fighting back.

The common Sulawesi toad turns out to be a prodigious eater of ants, even aggressive invading ones, says Thomas C. Wanger of the University of Göttingen in Germany and the University of Adelaide in Australia. On the island of Sulawesi, the Ingerophrynus celebensis toads readily feast on yellow crazy ants, which are colonizing the island as well as other tropical locations.

Yellow crazy ants get their name from their color and their zigzag scurrying, and they have crowded out native ants and disrupted ecosystems elsewhere. The invaders meet any foe aggressively, releasing noxious chemicals during battle. The Sulawesi toads eat them nonetheless, Wanger says. ... more





Native Toad Fights Back Against Yellow Crazy-Ant Invasion

(Susan Milius) After so many sad tales of invasive species overwhelming hapless natives, scientists have found a native toad in Indonesia that’s fighting back.
The common Sulawesi toad turns out to be a prodigious eater of ants, even aggressive invading ones, says Thomas C. Wanger of the University of Göttingen in Germany and the University of Adelaide in Australia. On the island of Sulawesi, the Ingerophrynus celebensis toads readily feast on yellow crazy ants, which are colonizing the island as well as other tropical locations. ... more





Sulawesi Toads Eat Ants, Save Chocolate

Goettingen, Germany. The world’s supply of chocolate depends partly on the hard work of ugly Indonesian toads , a group of German and Australian agriculture scientists has discovered.

The toads, according to a study published in the British Royal Society’s journal Proceedings, like to dine on an invasive pest — the yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) — which has overrun Indonesian cocoa plantations ... more










To Double Spud Production, Just Add a Little Spit
(May 2010)

When a major South American pest infests potato tubers, the plant produces bigger spuds, reports a study by Cornell, University of Goettingen and National University of Colombia researchers.

The secret is in the spit, write the researchers online in the journal Ecological Applications (April 28).

They found that the saliva of the Guatemalan potato moth larvae (Tecia solanivora) -- a major pest that forces farmers to spray plants with pesticides every two weeks -- contains compounds from the insect's foregut that elicits a systemwide response in the Colombian Andes commercial potato plant (Solanum tuberosum) to produce larger tubers.... more








Saliva from moth larva increases potato crop yields in Colombia

(Katie Kline) Many farmers throughout Latin America and around the world rely on pesticides to control pest invasions; this method is not only costly but has been shown to cause adverse health effects as well. Due to the risks involved in pesticide usage, and the ever-increasing demand for high-yield crops, new methods of controlling pest invasions are being explored by researchers regularly. And as counterintuitive as these new findings sound, ecological scientists have discovered that, in the case of Colombian potato farms in the Andes, the pests themselves could actually increase productivity. ... more





Potato Pest Increases Crop Yield Dramatically

(Heather Carr) Scientists studying a major potato pest have found that the larvae feeding on tubers can actually increase crop yield. Greenhouse tests indicate that caterpillar saliva increases the marketable yield by up to 2.5 times from a potato plant when less than half the potatoes are infested.

The pest in question is the Guatemala moth (Tecia solanivora), which started moving out of its native habitat in Guatemala and destroying potato crops throughout much of South America in 1970. ... more










Mosquitos provide better cocoa harvest
(May 2010)

Mosquitos provide better cocoa harvest

(pug) The yield of a cocoa tree depends much more on how many blossoms are pollinated by mosquitos than its supply of water, light, and nitrogen. This is what agricultural ecologists of the University Göttingen recently found out in Indonesia. The stagnation of world-wide cocoa production is driving up prices for cocoa beans and is leading to bottlenecks in the industry: so far, efforts to raise the agricultural output concentrated either on the cultivation of more productive and more resistant varieties or an increase of the yield through greater use of fertilizers and light. "So far, the role of pollination has remained largely unnoticed,“ states the Göttingen agricultural ecologist Dr. Yann Clough, who conducted the investigations. ... more










Persistent negative effects of pesticides on biodiversity and biological control potential on European farmland
(February 2010)

Persistent negative effects of pesticides on biodiversity and biological control potential on European farmland

Evaluated by Marcel van der Heijden, a Member of the Faculty of 1000 (F1000)
This nice study performed simultaneously in eight European countries indicates that agricultural intensification has negative...
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read the abstract here: Basic and Applied Ecology 2010: 11, pp 97-105






Pesticides most important barrier for the recovery of biodiversity on farmland

(PhysOrg.com) Since the early nineties the EU has implemented policies to reduce the dramatic negative effects of the use of pesticides on farmland. Nevertheless, a Europe wide study showed that insecticides and fungicides still had major negative effects on wild plant and animal species on arable farms.
The Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group of Wageningen University, The Netherlands - together with eight other universities in West and Eastern Europe - investigated the effects of intensive farming on wild plant and animal species and the potential for biological pest control. The study showed that a two-fold increase in agricultural production was associated... more