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A retrospective analysis of known and potential risks associated with exotic toadflax-feeding insects

To date, eight exotic toadflax-feeding insect species have been accidentally or intentionally introduced to North America. Reports on their establishment and impact have been recorded for more than 60 years. Environmental risks linked to biological control of toadflax were identified in terms of host resources and undesirable impacts on the target species through the critical review of this record. Data gaps revealed during this retrospective analysis are addressed through suggestions for future research and associated experimental methodologies. Known and potential impacts of toadflax-feeding insects on both invasive toadflax and non-target species are examined. Recent programmatic demands for demonstrated agent efficacy and stringent host selectivity during the prerelease screening process clearly illustrate that classical biological control of invasive toadflax in North America is progressing beyond the so-called lottery approach.

To date, eight exotic toadflax-feeding insect species have been accidentally or intentionally introduced to North America. Reports on their establishment and impact have been recorded for more than 60 years. Environmental risks linked to biological control of toadflax were identified in terms of host resources and undesirable impacts on the target species through the critical review of this record. Data gaps revealed during this retrospective analysis are addressed through suggestions for future research and associated experimental methodologies. Known and potential impacts of toadflax-feeding insects on both invasive toadflax and non-target species are examined. Recent programmatic demands for demonstrated agent efficacy and stringent host selectivity during the prerelease screening process clearly illustrate that classical biological control of invasive toadflax in North America is progressing beyond the so-called lottery approach.

This piece in the Zen Abstractions series is dedicated to the memory of the women weavers of Bauhaus, arguably the most influential and successful of all the workshops in the Institute, whose struggle to achieve parity with their male architectural and art/design colleagues within the organisation was hard faught. Several of these women were forced by the Nazis into exile in the USA and operating from institutions like Black Mountain College and the Art Department of the School of the Chicago Instutute, exercised a major influence over the development of internatonal textile and weaving designs to the present day.

"The Bauhaus always had a rather small student body. It began with about 40 students in 1919, and towards the end in 1930 there were about 190 students. In the beginning about one fourth of the students were women. By 1929 there were 170 students in the Bauhaus, 51 (30%) of them were women, and 19 of the women were in the weaving workshop.... The first Christmas that the school was open, the students made toys and decorations out of paper, wood, and fabric scraps to sell at a "Dada-ist stall" in the Weimar Christmas market. It was a very successful venture, and from this experience textiles became one of the first Bauhaus workshops.

Gunta Stolzl and two other women students asked Gropius to start a class for women in which they made wall hangings, covers, and toys from scraps of material donated by women Weimar. Stolzl then found a needle work teacher named Helen Borner. Borner had taken over the looms of the former Weimar kunstgewerbeschule during World War I. The looms and the dye shop from the old school were taken over by the Bauhaus under Borner's supervision even through she knew embroidery not weaving. Paul Klee was made form master for a short time, but Georg Muche succeeded him with Helen Borner as technical director. For the early years of the workshop students were primarily self-taught. Gunta Stolzl and Benita Otte began to learn dying weaving on the machines by trial and error. The students sought technical knowledge and learned from each other in textiles more than in any other workshop. In 1921, the weaving students were able to go for 2 month courses in the textile town of Krefeld to learn dyeing and weaving techniques. ....

The development of the weaving workshop was based on the work of Gunta and her co-worker students: Ottie Berger, Anni Albers, Lis Beyer, and Helene Nonne-Schmidt....In the summer of 1926, the weaving workshop wanted to have classes. Gropius asked Muche to head the classes, but the weavers claimed that they didn't need him as part of the workshop. Gunta Stolzl did not get involved, but the rest of the student body supported the weaving workshop's position as a test to see if they still held any power in the school. Gropius tried to persuade Muche to stay, but on March 31, 1927 he left the Bauhaus to join Itten who had begun a private school in Berlin..... Gunta [Stolz] ltook charge of the workshop and managed both the positions of form master and master craftsperson. (She was often assisted by Ottie Berger, Benita Otte, Anni Albers, and Margarete Leischner. .... In 1931 when Stolzl was forced to leave an entire issue of the school magazine was devoted to her. Gunta headed the workshop until the fall of 1931, and after she left Anni Albers and Ottie Berger headed the workshop until Lilly Reich took over in January of 1932. ...In 1932, Mies van der Rohe brought Lilly Reich to be head of both the weaving workshop and the interior design seminars. Reich was an interior architect and close associate of Mies van der Rohe since 1927. She was not a weaver, but she knew textiles and had been a dress designer Under Reich, the work continued in the tradition Stolzl had begun, but most designs did not reach the manufacturing stage. ... By 1932 the National Socialists were in control of the Dessau city council, and they attacked the Bauhaus as a manifestation of Jewish-Marxist propaganda. On October 1, 1932 the Bauhaus in Dessau was closed, the staff were dismissed, and the building was ordered destroyed.....

In the beginning of this paper I referred to the Bauhaus as an artistic revolution and feminist advancement. It is common to credit the Bauhaus for revolutionizing art education; however, the achievements of the Bauhaus women are not as celebrated. The cultural and artistic advancements of the Bauhaus women were extraordinary. They expanded their traditional cultural roles to devote themselves to their art work. In Weimar, the textile workshop raised the craft standard of weaving to that of a fine art, and proved the validity and quality of "women's work". Then in Dessau they proved that their work was systematic and extremely productive. Yet during both of these stages, the Bauhaus weavers promoted alternative (often holistic) organizational structures based on self-expression, experimentation, and collaboration which are often found in

Weaver ants or Green ants (genus Oecophylla) are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae (order Hymenoptera). Weaver ants are obligately arboreal and are known for their unique nest building behaviour where workers construct nests by weaving together leaves using larval silk.[1] Colonies can be extremely large consisting of more than a hundred nests spanning numerous trees and contain more than half a million workers. Like many other ant species, weaver ants prey on small insects and supplement their diet with carbohydrate-rich honeydew excreted by small insects (Hemiptera). Oecophylla workers exhibit a clear bimodal size distribution, with almost no overlap between the size of the minor and major workers.[2] [3] The major workers are approximately eight to ten millimeters in length and the minors approximately half the length of the majors. There is a division of labour associated with the size difference between workers. Major workers forage, defend, maintain and expand the colony whereas minor workers tend to stay within the nests where they care for the brood and 'milk' scale insects in or close to the nests. Oecophylla weaver ants vary in color from reddish to yellowish brown dependent on the species. Oecophylla smaragdina found in Australia often have bright green gasters. These ants are highly territorial and workers aggressively defend their territories against intruders. Because of their aggressive behaviour, weaver ants are sometime used by indigenous farmers, particularly in southeast Asia, as natural biocontrol agents against agricultural pests. Although Oecophylla weaver ants lack a functional sting they can inflict painful bites and often spray formic acid[4][5] directly at the bite wound resulting in intense discomfort.