David B. Hogg, executive associate dean in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, has been named interim dean while University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John D. Wiley considers two finalists for the post.

Ants that tend and harvest gardens of fungus have been closely studied for dozens of years, and are often cited as a model system for symbiosis. However, two other key players-an antibiotic-producing bacteria and a garden parasite, which have likely been co-evolving with the ants and the fungus for tens of millions of years-have been identified in recent years.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist is one of the few who eagerly await the year’s first yellow jackets. He studies how communities of wasps behave, interact and communicate.

A pin-head-sized parasitic wasp can find, parasitize and kill the soybean aphid, College entomologists have found.

The first soybean aphids, probably descendents of a stowaway from China, were discovered in Wisconsin in 2000. Since then, the pests have spread across the region, growing at rates one scientist calls

University of Wisconsin-Madison spin-off company Unifinium Ltd. enters an eighth holiday season with its Forest FreshTM product, which keeps needles of cut Christmas trees green and on the tree for up to six weeks. Sales of the proprietary mixture have increased about 10 percent annually since it was introduced in 1995.

White cabbage butterflies may soon be soaring through space as well as fluttering across your garden. The butterflies and special fast-growing plants will be the focus of a NASA-sponsored workshop for biology teachers in late July on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

Heidi Goodrich-Blair has received a $400,000 award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, as part of its program to encourage research on the interaction between disease organisms and humans. The University of Wisconsin-Madison molecular biologist will use the award to learn how some bacteria are able to evade the immune system’s first line of defense.

When you think of a Wisconsin animal, chances are you visualize a deer or a badger. But mammals, though highly visible, are just a small fraction of the state’s overall diversity of wildlife.

When the soybean aphid first appeared in the United States in 2000, Wisconsin farmers saw what it could do. Where infestations were severe, the aphids and the viruses they transmit cut soybean yields by 10 to 15 percent.