Cochineal

• PLYMOUTH, Wis., April 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Sartori® Cheese , a Wisconsin-based artisan cheese company, is continuing its 85-year tradition of flavor innovation with the arrival of two new flavors.
• Sriracha Cheddar and Italian Herb Cheddar are now available nationwide, adding to the brand's renowned cheddar lineup.
• An exciting take on Sartori's Old World Cheddar, the subtle heat and satisfying spice of Sriracha Cheddar adds a flavorful pop to every plate.
• "We're excited to share Sriracha Cheddar and Italian Herb Cheddar with people all over the world," said Sartori Cheese CEO Bert Sartori.

• The top 20 Allergy Capitals™ for 2024 are:
  This year’s report again calls attention to the urgency of the climate crisis.
• Due to climate change, growing seasons start earlier and last longer than they did just 30 years ago.
• “Climate change fuels a perfect storm of conditions that make allergy season worse for people with pollen allergy,” said AAFA President and CEO Kenneth Mendez.
• “Allergies are a common asthma trigger and lead to increased hospital visits for asthma during peak pollen seasons.”
  For information on preventing and treating allergies and asthma, visit aafa.org .

• When the first cane toads were brought from South America to Queensland in 1935, many of the parasites that troubled them were left behind.
• But deep inside the lungs of at least one of those pioneer toads lurked small nematode lungworms.

An eternal arms race

• Parasites and their hosts are locked into an eternal arms race.
• But at the same time, any new trick that enables a host to detect, avoid or repel the parasites is favoured as well.
• So it’s a case of parasites evolving to infect, and hosts evolving to defeat that new tactic.

The march of the toads

• But when hosts invade new territory, it can play havoc with the evolutionary matching between local hosts and parasites.
• The Queensland toads are homebodies and spend their lives in a small area, often reusing the same shelter night after night.
• For a lungworm larva, having lots of toads in a small area, reusing and sharing shelter sites, makes it simple to find a new host.

Lungworms from the invasion front

• To understand how this co-evolution is playing out between cane toads and their lungworms, we did some experiments pairing hosts and parasites from different locations in Australia.
• What would happen when toad and lungworm strains that had been separated by 90 years of invasion were reintroduced to each other?
• Read more:
  In the evolutionary arms race between cane toads and lungworms, skin secretions play a surprising role

Lee A Rollins receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Rick Shine receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Greg Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Bats count on their secret weapon, echolocation, to find and catch their flying prey, and in response, nocturnal insects have evolved interesting defences.
• Many silk moths, for instance, rely on a kind of sound-absorbing stealth cloak that makes them “disappear” from bat sonar.
• However, scientists have long been puzzled about the many earless moths that cannot detect their predators and are too small for decoys.
• We recently discovered that even earless moths, such as ermine moths (Yponomeuta), use acoustic signals as a defence against bat attacks.

Protective wing beats

When we studied the ermine moth’s wing under a microscope, it became clear that one part of the wing stands out from the rest. While most of it is covered by small hairs and scales, one patch of wing is clear and located adjacent to a corrugated structure of ridges and valleys. In our new study, we found this structure produces sound perfectly tuned to confuse bats.

• As the drum skin is struck by a drumstick, the skin vibrates at its natural frequencies and transmits these vibrations into the surrounding air as sound.
• In ermine moths, the clear patch in the hind wing serves as the drum skin, while the corrugated structure of valleys and ridges act as drumsticks.
• During flight, the moth’s wing makes the ridges snap one after the other in a sequence.
• To our team of biologists and engineers, these wing structures are fascinating because they rely on a mechanism that we teach our engineering students to avoid.

Inspired by nature

• One example is engineers designing morphing structures for future aircraft wings that autonomously adapt their shape to perform better when the environment changes.
• The aeroelastic tymbal of ermine moths embodies this concept and demonstrates how nature can be an inspiration for new technology.

• BB/N009991/1) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant no.
• Alberto Pirrera has received funding for this research from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant no.
• 530777/472285) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Composites for Innovation and Science (grant no.