Beehive ginger (Zingiber spectabile)

Beehive ginger (Zingiber spectabile) is a species of plant in the Zingiberaceae, herbaceous shrub, growing erect, leaves and flowers growing from the rhizome and separate, leaves long and mostly oblong, tapering to a point at the tip, up to 4.5 meters or even more.

Z. spectabile has elongated leaves with band-shaped units, sitting opposite, horizontal, pointed tip, a main vein moving linearly in the middle, thick, green on top and pale underside.

Inflorescences appear at the tips of the spikes, erect, up to 30 cm high. Bracts attached to the structure, are white or yellow or orange or red or a combination, often dark in color as they mature and develop. Small flowers, purple petals and yellow spots with a crumbly paper texture.

Beehive ginger is used as a cut flower that is able to adapt widely in the lowlands to the highlands. Flowering in October to February and will repeat again in the same year. The growing period requires shade with a light intensity of 45%.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Liliopsida
Order: Zingiberales
Family: Zingiberaceae
Subfamily: Zingiberoideae
Tribe: Zingibereae
Genus: Zingiber
Species: Zingiber spectabile

Elephant bell gourd (Trichosanthes tricuspidata)

Elephant bell gourd ( Trichosanthes tricuspidata ) is a plant species in the Cucurbitaceae, stems grow elongated to propagate or climb, many branches, cylindrical in shape and green in color. T. cochinchinensis has stem tips or branches that twist to attach themselves to a support or other plant. It grows to climb to cover a support, usually on another plant, up to several meters and creeps along the ground to reach another support. Arrow-shaped leaves, split base, sharp apex and two wings at an acute angle, have many veins ending at a sharp edge, green and have a long petiole. Single flower is white. The fruit is round to oval, ends with a tail, young green and turns red with maturity, thin skin, thick flesh and reddish yellow, has a short stalk and hangs. The seeds are in the middle of the fruit. Seeds are white, oval and flat. Black coated seeds. Elephant bell gourd grows wild in primary and secondary forests, agricultural land, roadsides, watersheds, especially on slopes, damp a

Banded dragonfish (Akarotaxis gouldae) diverged from Akarotaxis nudiceps 780,000 years ago

NEWS - A new species of dragonfish, Akarotaxis gouldae or banded dragonfish, off the western Antarctic Peninsula by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point, the University of Oregon at Eugene, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, highlights the unknown biodiversity and fragile ecosystems of the Antarctic. A. gouldae was named in honor of the Antarctic Research and Supply Vessel (ARSV) Laurence M. Gould and crew. The larval specimen was collected while trawling for zooplankton and was initially thought to be the closely related Akarotaxis nudiceps hundreds of thousands of years ago. DNA comparisons with A. nudiceps specimens held in collections at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Yale University, and the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris showed significant variation in mitochondrial genes that suggested the larval sample was a distinct species. Andrew Corso of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and colle

Yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) use thermal infrared to navigate hosts

NEWS - Aedes aegypti transmits the viruses that cause dengue, yellow fever, Zika and other diseases every year, while Anopheles gambiae transmits the parasite that causes malaria. Their capacity to transmit disease has made mosquitoes the deadliest animals. Moreover, climate change and global travel have expanded the range of A. aegypti beyond tropical geography. The mosquitoes are now present in subtropical climates that were previously unheard of just a few years ago. Male mosquitoes are harmless, but females need blood for egg development. There is no single cue that these insects rely on to feed; they integrate information from many different senses across a wide range of distances. " A. aegypti very adept at finding human hosts. This work provides a new insight into how they achieve this. Once we got all the right parameters, the results were clear and undeniable," says Nicolas DeBeaubien of the University of California at Santa Barbara UCSB. The researchers added

Nactus simakal, gecko evolved in geomorphological habitat of Dauan Island

NEWS - Researchers report a new species of Nactus simakal that lives in a boulder-strewn habitat with deep crevices on Dauan Island in the northern Torres Strait. The Torres Strait Islands lie between Cape York Peninsula, north-eastern Australia, and the southern coast of Papua New Guinea and are rare in gecko biodiversity. The vertebrate fauna of the islands is a mix of Australian and New Guinean species with only two endemic species described to date. Conrad Hoskin of James Cook University in Townsville and colleagues describe the new species as highly distinctive based on ND2 mtDNA genetics and morphologically on its slender, elongated striped pattern. N. simakal is broadly similar to Nactus galgajuga (Ingram, 1978) which is restricted to a boulder-strewn habitat about 750 km to the south in mainland north-eastern Queensland, but is easily distinguished morphologically and genetically from saxicolines. N. simakal is the second vertebrate species to be described and considered

Dlium