I am Happy and Worry...

After struggling with submission deadline, continued by preparing presentation for only 10 minutes, and in the morning of the competition one of the judge of committee (I know him verywell) said Ohh..alan you were in trouble (I knew, he meant to encourage me to be confidence and well prepared when presenting the paper)....

Finally I was elected as first winner in King Saud University Student Research Conference (KSUSRC) event in agriculture category ....

Alhamdulillah,Subhanallah..It was out of my expectation due to short preparation and highly competition.
As I said to my supervisor, I am happy and worry...(My supervisor said Why...?) because I don't want to satisfy with this achievement and not to be stopped at this state...(he said...yes this is a starting point insyaAllah..).
So Thanks to my lovely supervisor Prof.Dr. Yousif N. Aldryhim and My advisor Dr.Abdulrahman S. Aldawood...Keep guiding me to be better.......
Also thanks to all brothers in KSU that supporting me from the beginning, and congratulation also to Brother Jhonny Herawan that was elected also as first winner in Engineering category.

May Allah accept this as one of our effort to be more close to Him, and Know that Allah is the Greatest....

The influence of sex ratio to the some biological aspects of adult Ephestia sp. (progress report)

The content of the title above are under construction, it may due to the uncomplete experiment. But it doesn't matter if you have the same idea as above let share and learn together

Your Goal on the highest sky

Wooowww amazing, lets do it

Ephestia sp. biology under two regimes

What a tiring experiment, but eventually the result coming, so lets discuss....
notes: you can have better sight of the chart by double left click of the chart

Ephestia Experiment methodology

Here is one of my experiment that is still running, the metodhology was build up based on some preliminary experiment. the proposed titel will be around

Experiment Topic: The influence of Duration mating, Delaying mating and sex ratio on the fecundity and eggs hatchability of Ephestia cautella



Experiment Methodology

Experiments will be conducted in Entomolgy Laboratory, King Saud University. Incubator from Sterdium company (Pic.1) will be used and maintained at 25 + ˚C , 65 + 5 % RH and 15D:9L photo period during the experiments. HOBO logger is going to be used to monitor those temperature, RH and Light intensity (Pic.6)
Last instar larvae from colony that have wandering, will be collected using plastic bags attached on upside of the jars (Pic.2), subsequently those larvae will be transferred using fine brushes to small cups (height:2.5 cm, diameter: 7 cm) (Pic.3) , each cups will contain individual larvae and determined its sexes based on the presence of testes on dorsal side of abdomen. Those larvae are let to develop with small amount of diet till adult. Confirmation of the sex will be done on pupae based on the presence or absence of testes in dorsal side of the abdomen and on adult based on the edge shape of the abdomen.
The observation will be done daily to collect the emerging date data. Due to the different behavior of emerging time between male and female, and in order to have the same age of adult, many larvae with different age will be used. During the experiment, adult will be provided with 10% sugar solution (Shoukary, 1978).
On the date in which the pupae emerge to adult, they will be confined male and female to plastic jar (Pic.4). In gathering male and female, cages will be used to prevent adult escape (Pic.5). Male and female are confined according to some treatments, they are mating duration, delaying mating and sex ratio. Some parameters that are going to be observed for all treatment are:
1. The longevity period (male and female),
2. The number of eggs produced per day per individual female, and
3. Eggs hatchability per day per individual female.
Small cups (Pic.3) will be used for eggs container, each cup for one day collection and for one individual female. The larvae that already hatched will be counted and removed.
a. Mating duration
A pair of newly emerged adults of E. cautella (0-24 hours old) will be confined in a plastic jar (height: 6 cm; diameter: 7 cm) (Pic.4) for the periods: 0-24 hours; 0-72 hours; 0-120 hours; 0-168 Days; and Control (gathered until the end). The plastic jars are specially designed for mating, it is equipped with plastic mesh tied around with rubber band on the open side of the jar before the lid is attached. The position of the jars is flip down. The mesh is used to allow the eggs passing down to the lid while preventing the adult to go down to the lid, so the eggs will be save and easier to collect.
Number of replicates per treatment will be fifteen. Male of each replicate would be separated after those duration period and would be placed in a separate jar.
b. Delaying mating
There are three experiments within this topics. First experiment, A single male and female would be confined in a jar at age of 24, 48, 72, 120 hours for 24 hours mating, subsequently they will be separated into individual jars until their death.
Second experiment, A female at age of 0 hours, 48 hours , 96 hours and 144 hours days old each would be paired with a male at age of 24 h for 24 hours, subsequently the male is removed and provided directly with new 24 h old male, then again with the same pattern continuously until the females are death.
Third experiment, A female at age of 0 hours, 48 hours , 96 hours and 144 hours days old, each would be paired with a male at age of 24 h. This female is allowed to mate with male for 24 h only then separated individually for 24 h, after this separation the female are introduced with 24h old male, continuously until its death.
Number of replicates for each treatment will be fifteen. During delaying period female may lay sterile egg, they will be collected and counted as well.

c. Sex ratio
Female and male at 0-24 hours old will be confined according to several sex ratio (female:male) as follow; 1:1;1:2;1:3;2:1;3:1. The gathering of male and female will be up to it death. In each sex ratio design, Fifteen pairs will be used.


Prediction of the demand of adult during experiment are:
1. Mating duration
There are four treatment, each has fifteen pairs, so we need 60 male and 60 female of the same age.
2. Delaying mating
First experiment, there are four treatments, each has fifteen pairs, so we need 60 male and 60 female of the same age
Second experiment, there are four treatments, each has fifteen pairs, we need 60 female for once time and and 60 male daily till the female death
Third experiment there are four treatments, each has fifteen pairs, we need 60 female for once time and and 60 male every two days till the female death
3. Sex ratio
There are five treatment on this experiment, each has fifteen replication, so we need 120 of female and 120 of male at the same age
So total, if we conduct those experiment in one time we need 240 male and 360 female of the same age and 60 new emerge of male daily until female death

Prediction of experiment duration
Based on preliminary experiment we have some data:
1. On the situation in which male and female confined for their whole adult life span, the female have life span ranged from 4 to 15 days, while males have life span ranged from 2 to 9* days (data was token from 4 pairs)
2. If male and female were confined for certain mating duration ranged from 1 day to 5 days, the female life span would be 8 to 11 days, while male 9 days
3. If females were let to be alone, their life span would be 17 to 19 days (from three replications)

My team

As you see...they are my inspiration


I'am Naqiyya I am Azzam and Fikri

Insect Hunting

Ready for travelling....






Where are you......

Go.....Entrepreneur

When hearing entrepreneurship, it looks like so strange, for me especially, who never touched this word, but now I feel entrepreneurship is a must….unfortunately the road that I see is far away. The article below, I took from journal, it is realy interesting especially with the idiom "a person cannot win a game that they do not play", It discussed about the motivation of entrepreneurship, so lets enjoy…..

It is often said that a person cannot win a game that they do not play. In the context of entrepreneurship, this statement suggests that success depends on people’s willingness to become entrepreneurs. Moreover, because the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunity is an evolutionary process in which people select out at many steps along the way, decisions made after the discovery of opportunities—to positively evaluate opportunities, to pursue resources, and to design the mechanisms of exploitation—also depend on the willingness of people to ‘‘play’’ the game. In this paper, we argue that human motivations influence these decisions, and that variance across people in these motivations will influence who pursues entrepreneurial opportunities, who assembles resources, and how people undertake the entrepreneurial process.
For detail discussion, have a look in http://wsomfaculty.cwru.edu/shane/pem/PEM1.pdf

Bursicon Hormone

Papers below will discuss about Bursicon Hormone. It was writen as a part to fulfill one of the requirements for Insect Physiology courses. Thanks to Dr. Alqarni for his guidance during the writing.
So What is bursicon hormone...how it is work to insect etc...you will find out hopefully below

Bursicon: a brief
Insects has provide themselves a protection , mechanical support, and an effective barrier to desiccation and infections by their exoskeleton, however during their immature stages they have to replace the exoskeleton, the process called as molting. On this process a new cuticle is synthesized and secreted then is hardened after the remains of the old cuticle are shed at ecdysis. Molting and ecdysis are regulated by at least six different hormones, one of them is Bursicon (Luo et all, 2005). Bursicon bioactivity is essential for tanning of the exoskeleton and for wing spreading behavior that occur in newly emerged adult insects (Van Loy et al., 2007)


The discovery story
In 1935 Gottfried Fraenkel discover a hormone that responsible in the poupation formation of blowflies, this hormone later called as ecdyson, which was released by the brain (Reynold, 1983 and Truman, 1973)
At this time people considered this hormone as a universal hormone that responsible for three consecutive stages: splitting and shedding of the old cuticle; stretching and expansion of the new cuticle, and sclerotization (darkening) (Seligman,1980) molting, including the tanning and (sclerotization). Much work on the mechanism of action of ecdyson has been proceed on this assumption (Reynold, 1983).
In other papers in the same year Fraenkel’s also found that the newly emerged of blowflies could be delayed for 24 hours or more by forcing them to dig in sawdust so preventing them to have space for expanding and spread their wing, the result they remained pale and shrunken. Here there might be some other agent that control the tanning. This situation lay in abeyance for 27 years (Seligman, 1980 and Reynold, 1983).
Finally in 1962, the hormone that responsible for tanning were discovered by Cotrell (1962) and Franklen and Hasio, (1962).
Discovery fact
The discovery of bursicon mechanism can be understood clearly in two explanation, First A newly emerge adult blowflies must dig their way to the surface, when they expose to the air, they will swallow the air and the hormone (Bursicon) will be released to the blood and tanning begin. Secondly When newly emerged blowflies were decapitated or ligatured about their necks within a few minutes of eclosion, the rest of the body did not darken, when blood from tanning flies was injected into recipients neck ligatured, the block on tanning was lifted (Reynold, 1983).

Functional aspect of Bursicon (Reynold, 1983)
1. Bursicon control insect sclerotization
2. Bursicon control cuticle plasticization
3. Bursicon control Cuticle Deposition
4. Bursicon control Cell death
5. Responsible in Diuresis (reduction in blood volume)
6. Have a role in tracheal air-filling

Chemical nature of Bursicon
Bursicon properties is consistent as a peptide. It is destroyed by the proteolytic enzymes trypsin and pronase also by heating (Reynold, 1983).
The purification of Bursicon has not meet success so far. Apparently the hormone is unstable when purified. Fraenklen et al. (1966) cit in. (Seligman, 1980) had try to purify partially the hormone from the tissue by using acrylamide gel electrophoresis and Bio-Gel columns.

Mode of action of Bursicon

Bursicon’s principle physiology effect is on tanning of the cuticle. The exact sclerotization process is not very well understood, but it is agreed that an important cellular control of tanning is exerted at the level of synthesis tanning substrate from tyrosine (Reynold, 1983). Bursicon does not appear to have any effect on the interaction between tanning substrate (N-acetyldopamine) and the proteins cuticle (Seligman, 1980).

Overview and Prospect
Bursicon is distributed throughtout the nervous system and is present in the brain neurosecretory cells and corpora cardiac, they only released to the blood just after the time of ecdysis, they release in a massive then quickly cleared from the circulation (Mordue, 1982 and Renold, 1983). Here the absolute concentration of the hormone is less important than the timing of release. Just after the insect uses eclosion hormone to ensure the ecdysis occurs, the bursicon meet correct time in cuticle timing. Tanning must be fast to minimize the period in which the insect become vulnerable from accident or predator, it must not occur too soon , because once the new cuticle has begun to stiffen , it becomes imposible to extract it from the exuvia or toinflate it ti its proper size (Reynold, 1983).

Reference
Luo, Ching-Wei , Elizabeth M. Dewey, Satoko Sudo, John Ewer, Sheau Yu Hsu, Hans-Willi Honegger, and Aaron J. W. Hsueh. 2005. Bursicon, the insect cuticle-hardening hormone, is a heterodimeric cystine knot protein that activates G protein-coupled receptor LGR2.PNAS February 22, 2005 vol. 102 no. 8
Mordue W.1982. Neurosecretory peptides and biogenic amines. In Neuropharmacology of insect.Pitman. London.329p.
Reynold, Stuart E. 1983. Bursicon in Endocrinology of insects Vol.1. Ed. Downer, Roger G.H. and Hans Laufer. Alan R. Liss, Inc. NewYork.707p
Truman, James W. 1973.Physiology of insect ecdysis.II. The assay and occurence of the eclosion hormone in the chinese oak, silkmoth Antheraea pernyi.Biol. Bull., 144 : 200—211. (February, 1973)
Van Loy, T.,Matthias B. Van Hiel, Hans Peter Vandersmissen, Jeroen Poels, Fernando Mendive, Gilbert Vassart, Jozef Vanden Broeck. Evolutionary conservation of bursicon in the animal kingdom, Gen. Comp. Endocrinol.(2007), doi:10.1016/j.ygcen.2006.12.004

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Effect of Nitrogen Fertilizer and Different Host Plant to the Biology and Population Dynamic of Melon Aphid Aphis gossypii Glover

If you are interest on Aphid, here is the paper that may (hopefully) bring benefit to you, it discussed about the effect of nitrogen fertilizer and different host plant cultivar to the biology and population dynamic of Aphis gossypii.
This paper also submitted to the committee of King Saud University Student Research Conference (KSUSRC). It conducted during enrolling in Insect Biology Course Supervised by my lovely Lecturer Dr. Yousif Aldryhim.


Effect of Nitrogen Fertilizer and Different Host Plant to the Biology and Population Dynamic of Melon Aphid Aphis gossypii Glover.
By Soffan, Alan*2 and Yousif N. Al Dryhim*3.

Fertilizer and certain host plant cultivar are commonly used by farmers to increase the crop production. However those inputs have an effect to the pest infestation. In cucumber and squash, Aphis gossypii is one of the economic major pests that may reduce the yield. The economic losses are by inducing direct injury to the plant or indirectly as a vector for many plant diseases. An inappropriate use of nitrogen fertilizer and host cultivar may lead the farmers to have economic losses instead of a maximum yield. This experiment is going to measure the effect of different level of nitrogen fertilizer and different host plant cultivar (cucumber Cucumis sativus L var. Beit Alpha and squash Cucumis pepo var. Bianca Di Trieste) to the biology and population dynamic of Aphis gossypii Glover.

The experiments were conducted from April 21st to May l1, 2009. Two growth chambers were used and maintained at 21¬¬+1˚ C with photoperiod 16L:8D. The biology study of A.gossypii was carried out by using C. pepo var. Bianca Di Trieste and C.sativus var. Beit Alpha with 4 to 5 true leaves. They were grown in plastic pots with diameter and height 14 cm and 11 cm respectively, while the medium was a mixture of soil, sand and peat most (1:2:1). A Newly born of A. gossypii nymph were introduced to single leave for each plants. Observation was carried out every 24 hours for nymphal period, prenymphal position period, nymphal position period, post nymphal period and the number of progeny. Additional biology study of A. gossypii was conducted by providing them single fresh squash leaves in Petri dish (diameter 9 cm, and 1.5 cm height) instead of the whole squash plant. The temperature maintained at 21¬¬+1˚ C with photoperiod 24h light. The population dynamic study of A.gossypii was carried out in squash plant (C. pepo var. Bianca Di Trieste). Three level of nitrogen fertilization 0, 1, and 2 gr were applied in each plant including the control. Aphid infestation was made by introducing five individual of three days old of A. gossyipii to the plant. After 16 days all aphids were examined for the number of apterous nymph, alatae nymph, alatae adult and apterous adult. Data were analyzed using SAS program.
Performance of A. gossypii on different hosts (squash and cucumber) were significantly different. A. gossypii performed better on cucumber than on squash, which was indicated by higher value of nymphal position period, number of progeny and total life span. The quality of the plant supposed to be responsible for A. gossypii performance, as well as the presence of secondary metabolite substances that may influence negatively to the aphid performance on squash. When the biology of A. gossypii on whole squash plant and on single squash leaves in petri dishes were compared, it was found that the total nymphal period of A. gossypii on single squash leaves in petri dishes were shorter than on whole squash plant, on the other hand the nymphal position period, total lifespan and number of progeny had a higher value on single leaves in petri dishes. The different performance of aphid in whole plant and on single leave in petri dishes, it may be due to the photoperiod, or by defensive allelochemical produced by whole squash plant during the aphid infestation. Population dynamic of A.gossypii on squash varied among the level of nitrogen fertilizer, positive correlation occurred between level of nitrogen and their density, as well as the presence of alate form either nymph or adult. Nitrogen fertilizer significantly increase the density of A.gossypii on squash plant (LSD α:0,005).

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We must need to share to everyone whatever wordly material and wealth that we have , our potential and our lives are much more precious. Therefore as long as we are still alive, we posses good mind,wisdom , health and kind hearth, then someday we will get whatever we dream if we strive and fight ahrd and wholeheaertedly for it.