Effects of glyphosate on survival, developmental rate, larval weight, and midgut bacterial diversity of Apis mellifera were tested in the laboratory. Larvae were reared in vitro and fed diet containing glyphosate 0.8, 4, and 20 mg/L. The dependent variables were compared with negative control and positive control (dimethoate 45 mg/L). Brood survival decreased in 4 or 20 mg/L glyphosate treatments but not in 0.8 mg/L, and larval weight decreased in 0.8 or 4 mg/L glyphosate treatments. Exposure to three concentrations did not affect the developmental rate. Furthermore, the intestinal bacterial communities were determined using high-throughput sequencing targeting the V3-V4 regions of the 16S rDNA. All core honey bee intestinal bacterial phyla such as Proteobacteria (30.86%), Firmicutes (13.82%), and Actinobacteria (11.88%) were detected, and significant changes were found in the species diversity and richness in 20 mg/L glyphosate group. Our results suggest that high concentrations of glyphosate are deleterious to immature bees.

We report the detection of a substellar companion orbiting the intermediatemass giant star 11 Com (G8 III). Precise Doppler measurements of the star from Xinglong station and Okayama Astrophysical Observatory (OAO) revealed Keplerian velocity variations with an orbital period of 326.03±0.32 days, a semiamplitude of 302.8±2.6 m s −1 , and an eccentricity of 0.231±0.005. Adopting a stellar mass of 2.7±0.3 M ⊙ , the minimum mass of the companion is 19.4±1.5 M J , well above the deuterium burning limit, and the semimajor axis is 1.29±0.05 AU. This

The superior colliculus (SC) in the mammalian mesencephalon is involved in avoidance or escape behaviors, but little is known about the response properties of collicular neurons to an object approaching on a collision course towards the animal. The present study identified two classes of looming-sensitive neurons, rho and eta cells, in the SC of the cat, but did not find any tau cell, which has been observed in the pigeon tectofugal pathway. The looming responses were characterized by distinct firing patterns, in which the neuronal discharge steadily increased as the object was approaching, and peaked approximately at the time of collision (rho cell) or some time earlier (eta cell). The response onset time of both rho and eta cells was linearly related to the square root of the diameter/velocity ratio of looming objects; whereas for eta cells, the response peak time was linearly related to the diameter/velocity ratio. The receptive fields of these collicular cells were composed of an excitatory center and a suppressive surround, but the occurrence and development of neuronal responses to looming stimuli were independent of the receptive-field organization. Although the cell number was relatively small in the deep layers of the SC, the proportion of looming-sensitive neurons was close to that in the superficial layers. These results suggest that a population of collicular cells is involved in signaling impending collision of a looming object with the animal and the neural mechanisms underlying the collision avoidance behaviors are to some extent conservative across species from insects to mammals.