Corn borers, beware of chips.Corn borers, beware the chips Life and death imitate art at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where researchers have developed computer models of unicellular unicellular /uni·cel·lu·lar/ (-sel´u-ler) made up of a single cell, as the bacteria. u·ni·cel·lu·lar adj. Having or consisting of a single cell, as the protozoans; one-celled. protozoa attacking moth larvae Larvae, in Roman religion Larvae: see lemures. , which in turn are attacking corn. The intricate graphics-- which model the spread through a corn-field of moth larvae called corn borers, and their parasites called microsporidia-- are based on 700,000 numbers and 68 years of literature in insect pathology. Because microsporidia attack, weaken and sometimes kill the larvae, which are currently treated with chemicals, scientists hope to use them to control the borers. In the latest three-dimensional graphics,representing a field of 800 corn plants, the red segments show the microsporidia-infected borer borer, name applied to various animals that are injurious because of their ability to penetrate plant or animal tissues. Among insects, some borers are beetles, e.g. population per plant, while the green indicates uninfected larva larva, in zoology larva, independent, immature animal that undergoes a profound change, or metamorphosis, to assume the typical adult form. Larvae occur in almost all of the animal phyla; because most are tiny or microscopic, they are rarely seen. populations; yellow signifies large concentrations of both sick and healthy larvae. At present, the height of the lines also represents larva density, but those developing the model are modifying the program so height represents spore density per plant. "The model is more complex than mostothers ever made,' says David Onstad, an entomologist on the Illinois team. "No one in the past has looked at [this type of biological system] using a model.' But Onstad, art professor Donna Coxand computer specialist Ray Idaszak aren't just making pretty pictures. Corn borers are a serious threat to cultivated crops, causing income losses totaling millions of dollars each year. Turning "a mountain of data' into computersimulations of the daily changes in corn borer infestation infestation /in·fes·ta·tion/ (-fes-ta´shun) parasitic attack or subsistence on the skin and/or its appendages, as by insects, mites, or ticks; sometimes used to denote parasitic invasion of the organs and tissues, as by helminths. over the 140 days of a growing season growing season, period during which plant growth takes place. In temperate climates the growing season is limited by seasonal changes in temperature and is defined as the period between the last killing frost of spring and the first killing frost of autumn, at which requires the use of a supercomputer at the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications (body, World-Wide Web) National Center for Supercomputing Applications - (NCSA) The birthplace of the first version of the Mosaic World-Wide Web browser. Address: Urbana, IL, USA. http://ncsa.uiuc.edu/. . It still takes a 6.7-minute run (more than 1 billion calculations) to compute the model, according to Onstad. Adding to the complexity of the model are factors such as the 40 life stages of healthy corn borers, movement from plant to plant, the size of the larvae when attacked by the parasite, and different modes of transmission. |
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