Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers generated the first chromosome-scale reference genome for the rice stink bug, Oebalus pugnax, identifying more than 13,000 genes with broad biological and agricultural relevance. The development created a foundational resource to help scientists better understand how the insect feeds, adapts to host plants and potentially develops resistance to insecticides. The study was published in the Journal of Heredity and provides the most detailed genomic analysis to date of the rice stink bug, which feeds on more than 15 host plant species, including grain sorghum, and has shown resistance to pyrethroid insecticides in some populations.

Large-scale oyster reef restoration in the Chesapeake Bay is successfully creating three-dimensional habitats that support larger, more diverse fish communities, according to new research led by UMBC’s Allison Tracy in collaboration with scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The study merged GoPro video and sophisticated sonar imaging, offering a template for effective monitoring in murky estuaries. And, by studying reef habitat years after restoration, the team could "see how the efforts paid off—and they did pay off," Tracy says.

Scientists have discovered several 518-million-year-old fossils that reshape the origins of the group of animals that contains starfish, and found that they ate their food using tentacles, and not passively using their gills as previously thought.