Invertebrates - Animations

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Water Flow and Feeding in Sponges
Life Cycle of Obelia
Life Cycle of Jelly Fish
Protonephridia Vs Metanephridia
Nereis Swimming
Locomotion in Earthworm
Bivalvian Gill
Locomotion in Squid
Sea Urchin and Aristotle’s Lantern
* copyright Heather Kroening, A.Richard Palmer and Bio-DiTRL

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CnidariaQuiz

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Cnidaria

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Alternative to Honeybees for Pollination

According to an article published in June 2009 Edition of Scientific American, honeybees have been dying in record numbers, yet many commercial crops depend on them for pollination. Entomologists who have been struggling to find an alternative now report that another bee might fill the void.

The blue orchard bee, also known as the orchard mason bee, is undergoing intensive study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture pollinating insect research unit at Utah State University at Logan. A million blue orchards are now pollinating crops in California. Like honeybees, the species can pollinate a variety of flora, including almond, peach, plum, cherry and apple trees. Unlike honeybees, however, they tend to live alone, typically in boreholes made by beetles in dead trees. In cultivation, the bees will happily occupy holes drilled into lumber or even Styrofoam blocks.

The blue orchards rarely sting and, because of their solitary nature, do not swarm. They are incredibly efficient pollinators: for fruit trees, 2,000 blue orchards can do the work of 100,000 honeybees. Their biggest drawback is that beekeepers can increase their population only by a factor of three to eight a year; a honeybee colony can expand from several dozen individuals to 20,000 in a few months.

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A Cockroach Can Live without Its Head!

Cockroaches can live without their heads. Entomologist Christopher Tipping at Delaware Valley College in Doylestown, Pa., has actually decapitated American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) very carefully under microscopes. He sealed the wound with dental wax, to prevent them from drying out. A couple lasted for several weeks in a jar. And it is not just the body that can survive decapitation; the lonely head can thrive, too, waving its antennae back and forth for several hours until it runs out of steam.

To understand why cockroaches—and many other insects—can survive decapitation, it helps to understand why humans cannot, explains physiologist and biochemist Joseph Kunkel at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who studies cockroach development.

Why Humans Can't Survive Decapitation?	Why Cockroaches Can Survive Decapitation?
Decapitation in humans results in blood loss and a drop in blood pressure hampering transport of oxygen and nutrition to vital tissues.	Cockroaches have open circulatory system with low blood pressure. They don't have a huge network of blood vessels like that of humans, or tiny capillaries. After you cut their heads off, very often their necks would seal off just by clotting. There's no uncontrolled bleeding.
A drop in blood pressure hampering transport of oxygen and nutrition to vital tissues.	Insect blood does not carry oxygen. The spiracles carry air directly to tissues through tracheae.
Humans breathe through their mouth or nose.	Cockroaches breathe through spiracles, located in each body segment.
The brain controls that breathing, so breathing would stop.	Their brain does not control this breathing. Insects have ganglia distributed within each body segment capable of performing the basic nervous functions responsible for reflexes.
The human body cannot eat without the head, ensuring a swift death from starvation should it survive the other ill effects of head loss.	Cockroaches are also poikilotherms, or cold-blooded, meaning they need much less food than humans do. An insect can survive for weeks on a meal they had one day.

Source: Scientific American

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