Tag : Unusually

Washington: Despite the decrease in the population of bugs, researchers at the University of Wyoming discovered that insects are nevertheless causing tremendous damage to plants. The first-of-its-kind study compares insect herbivore damage of modern-era plants with that of fossilized leaves from as far back as the late Cretaceous period, nearly 67 million years ago. The research and the findings at the University were published in the journal: 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'. "Our work bridges the gap between those who use fossils to study plant-insect interactions over deep time and those who study such interactions in a modern context with fresh leaf material," says lead researcher, UW PhD graduate Lauren Azevedo-Schmidt, now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maine. "The difference in insect damage between the modern era and the fossilized record is striking," -Schmidt added. Azevedo-Schmidt conducted the research along with UW Department of Botany and Department of Geology and Geophysics Professor Ellen Currano, and Assistant Professor Emily Meineke of the University of California-Davis. The study examined fossilized leaves with insect feeding damage from the Late Cretaceous through the Pleistocene era, a little over 2 million years ago, and compared them with leaves collected by Azevedo-Schmidt from three modern forests. The detailed research looked at different types of damage caused by insects, finding marked increases in all recent damage compared to the fossil record. "Our results demonstrate that plants in the modern era are experiencing unprecedented levels of insect damage, despite widespread insect declines," wrote the scientists, who suggest that the disparity can be explained by h ...