Pea aphids can avoid ladybug predators by dropping from the food plant when disturbed. Once off the plant the aphid must find another food plant. If temperatures on the ground are high, the aphid may die before finding a new food plant. In Kamloops, B.C., summers are hot and dry, compared with Vancouver where the climate is warm and moist. Pea aphids from Kamloops generally exhibit back-up behaviour and rarely drop from the plant when approached by a ladybug. By contrast, Vancouver pea aphids readily drop from the plant when disturbed by a predator. Adult aphids from Kamloops are more tolerant of heat under moist conditions at 37.5 °C than Vancouver adults but under dry conditions and at 42 °C, both groups have similar survival times. First instars of both aphid biotypes die sooner at high temperatures than adults. Mortality of aphids on the ground is sufficiently high to select against dropping behaviour as a first line defense against predators in areas with hot, dry climates.

Two nuclear polyhedrosis viruses were fed to larvae of the Douglas-fir tussock moth, Orgyia pseudotsugata. Mixtures of the two viruses in varying proportions and separate doses of the two with a varying time interval between were administered. Larvae dying of polyhedrosis were examined to determine the proportions of the two viruses found in the bodies of the insects. The multicapsid virus (BV) showed a tendency to predominate over the unicapsid virus (SV), particularly in massive doses. In small doses, SV appeared in mixed infections even when the proportion of SV in the infective dose was small. When BV was administered 24 h in advance of SV, the development of SV was inhibited completely. At shorter intervals of time between doses, mixed infections occurred.

Analysis of neurotransmitter levels in individual insect brains has been hampered by the unavailability of a suitable tissue homogenizer. Commercially-available homogenizers are expensive, often fragile, and generally ill-designed and cumbersome for handling microlitre volumes. This report describes the fabrication of an efficient, inexpensive microhomogenizer suitable for routine processing of small amounts of soft tissue using an idea suggested by Meek (1976).

Archaeological excavation on the Augustine Mound, New Brunswick, Canada is adding new insights into Canada's prehistoric people as well as into entomology. This human burial site (Cfd1-2) consists of an artificially constructed mound of earth, approximately 11 m in diameter and 0.8 m into the gravel subsoil of a river terrace. The site has been dated between 2000 and 2500 years ago, based on cross-dating to other archaeological sites in Eastern North America and on one carbon date of 2330 ± 110 B.P. (F1-344) which was unfortunately from a disturbed context. The artifacts placed with the dead indicate some form of close cultural contact between the people of Atlantic Canada and the American mid-west (Turnbull 1976). The most unusual aspect of the site is the quantity of preserved organic materials recovered from the graves. Many fragmentary pieces of hide, and copper beads (the likely agent of preservation) were found with the dead.