When the guard honey bees, Apis mellifera L., form a clump at the hive entrance or on the flight board, the oriental hornet, Vespa orientails L., either creeps toward the clump or hovers over it in order to take a bee. Once the hornet creeps, only few bees facing the hornet become alert, rock their heads and antennae, open their wings, and take a posture of defense. The rest of the clump stays listless without any signal of concern. However, the clump stays dense and the defending bees do not detach themselves neither from the rest of the clump nor from each other. For this reason, it is very difficult for the hornet to grab a bee unless the latter makes a “mistake” by detaching herself from other adjacent bees. If the hornet grabs s

The study was conducted from November 2021 to May 2022 at the three study sites within the Baghdad governorate. The study aims to identify the impact of human activities on the Tigris River, so an area free of human activities was chosen and represented the first site. A total of 48 types were diagnosed, 6204 ind/m3 spread over three sites. The following environmental indicators were evaluated: Constancy Index (S), Relative abundance index (Ra), Richness Index (between 17.995 and 23.251), Shannon Weiner Index (0.48-1.25 bit/ind.), Uniformity Index (0.124 -0.323). The study showed that the highest percentage recorded was for the phylum Annileda 34%; and the stability index shows that taxes (Stylaria sp., Aoelosoma sp., Branchinra sowerby, Ch

Eleven species of parasitic insects were recovered from puparia of house fly Musca domestica L. developing in animal dung in Baghdad during 1985-1987. Of the parasites obtained, representatives were found in five families of Hymenoptera and one family of Coleoptera. The most prevalent parasites were Spalangia cameroni Perkins, S. nigroaenea Curtis and S. endius Walk. Average parasitism for the two year was 11.30 %, the highest number of parasitism occurred in May and October.

The current study included a detail morphological study of all parts of the two species of the genus Tropaeolum L. (Tropaeolumceae) cultivated in different gardens, the roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruit were studied in detail, also the pollen grains were studied, and there are photographs for all that parts were putted. A specimens of that taxa were studied in some Iraqi herbaria. The study found that there are many characters were used in differentiation of two species under study.

Naidid worms were sorted from 27 samples of aquatic macrophyta including ceratophyllum demersum , Potamogeton crispus and, Hydrilla verticellat with associated filamentous algae were collected from Euphrates River at Al-Mussayab city, 60 Km southwest Baghdad. The result of sorted worms revealed the presence of eight species of subfamily Naidinae, which are consider as new records for Iraq, including Stephensoniana trivandrana; Paranais frici, Ophidonais serpentine, Specaria josinae, Dero (Dero) evelinae , Dero (Aulophorus) indicus , Nais pseudobtusa and finally N. stolci. This investigation includes morphological descriptions for each species illustrated by identification criteria photos.

The current study was conducted to test the efficiency of the vegetative part (plant leaves) of plant species of shrubs and trees involved in forming semi-artificial vegetation in the city of Baghdad, Karkh, in the uptake and accumulating the lead element that pollutes the air in the city atmosphere. Five plant sampling sites were selected: Al-Kadhimiyah, Al-Mansour, Al-Ma'aml (Al-Salam district), Al-Adl, and Al-Ameriya district intersections (Al-Seklat), and symbols were given (A, B, C, D, E) respectively. The spread and distribution of plants vary in terms of human activities and pollution levels, affecting the five sites that recorded more than 20 species. For a real comparison between plant efficiency and the effect of the nature of

    Three bacterial species were isolated from three polluted soils with gasoline which leaks from electricity generators that used in different regions in Baghdad; the regions choices to collect the polluted soils were (Al-Shaab, Al- Jadryia and Al-Saydiya).     The bacterial species were identified according to international biochemical   methods. It was found that these species were Escherichia coli, Enterobacter    aerogenes and serratia marcesens.      It was found that the optimum temperature and pH were 37C°and 9 these were to cultivate E.coli and S.marcesens, while for   E.aerogenes   were 25 C° and   9. &

    The current study presents the cellar spiders genus Nita Huber & El-Hennawy, 2007 (Araneae, Pholcidae) as the first record for Iraq spider fauna, this genus represented by the species Nita elsaff Huber & El-Hennawy, 2007 were identified based on morphological characteristics and DNA sequence data. A short morphological description is also presented for cellar spiders listed in Iraq; including this species in addition to Artema Atlanta Walckenaer, 1837.

In fish, a complex set of mechanisms deal with environmental stresses including hypoxia. In order to probe the hypothesis that hypoxia-induced stress could be manifested in varieties of pathways, a model species, mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio), were chronically exposed to hypoxic condition (dissolved oxygen level: 1.80±0.6mg/l) for 21 days and subsequently allowed to recover under normoxic condition (dissolved oxygen level: 8.2±0.5mg/l) for 7 days. At the end of these exposure periods, an integrated approach was applied to evaluate several endpoints at different levels of biological organisation. These included determination of (i) oxidative damage to DNA in erythrocytes (using modified comet assay), (ii) lipid peroxidation in liver sample

    Ten species of whiteflies (Hemiptera, Aleyrodidae) representing six genera were studied from a collection from different localities in the middle of Iraq. These species are Acaudaleyrodes rachipora (Singh, 1931); Bemisia afer  (Priesner and Hosny,1934); Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius, 1889); Dialeurodes citri (Ashmead,1885); Dialeurodes kirkaldy (Kotinsky, 1907); Neomaskellia andropogonis Corbett, 1926;  Siphoninus phillyreae (Haliday, 1835); Trialeurodes ricini (Misra, 1924); Trialeurodes vapovariorum (Westwood,1856) and Trialeurodes irakeensis (Al-Malo and Abdul-Rassoul, 2000). Notes are given on their localities, date of c