The practice of eating insects has been documented for a long time. With obvious economic and environmental advantages, edible insects are in the spotlight recently due to their enormous potential in multiple industries. A number of research has been conducted to maximize their value, but concerns have been raised for the food security. In this review, we compared the characteristics of edible insects with other traditional protein sources. The progress of modern entomophagy was introduced. The benefits and risks of eating insects were summarized. Additionally, the shortcoming of current production were discussed. Feasible ways and strategies were proposed to promote the consumption of edible insects.
Mosquitoes are of great medical significance as vectors of deadly diseases. Despite this, little is known about their evolutionary history or how their present day diversity has been shaped. Within a phylogenetic framework, here we show a strong correlation between climate change and mosquito speciation rates: the first time to our knowledge such an effect has been demonstrated for insects. Information theory reveals that although climate change is correlated with mosquito evolution there are other important factors at play. We identify one such driver to be the rise of mammals, which are predominant hosts of Culicidae. Regardless of the precise mechanism, we demonstrate a strong historical association. This finding, taken in combination with projected rises in atmospheric CO2 from anthropogenic activity, has important implications for culicid vector distributions and abundance, and consequently for human health.
The complete mitochondrial genome of Eristalis tenax (Linnaeus, 1758) (Diptera, Syrphidae) is reported here. This is the first sequenced mitogenome from the subfamily Milesiinae. The whole mitochondrial genome is 16,091 bp in length and contains 37 canonical genes, which include 22 transfer RNA genes, 13 protein-coding genes and two ribosomal RNA genes, the control region is 1125 bp in length. Most PCGs start with standard ATN codons, while CO1 and ND1 use TTG, CO3 uses TGG as start codons. All PCGs terminate in the common stop codons TAA. In addition, the nucleotide composition of the coding region was 40.0% of A, 40.1% of T, 11.2% of C, 8.7% of G and 80.1% of A þ T content. The phylogenetic tree shows that Syrphidae is the sister group of Pipunculidae.
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