African armyworm "S. exempta" larvae feed almost exclusively on Poaceae, also called Gramineae. Poaceae is a family of flowering grasses which includes cereal grasses and the grasses of grasslands and pastures. The species targets most cereal crops, including maize, sorghum, rice, millet, and other grasses. Young caterpillars are also known to feed on wheat and oat seedlings. The larvae eat the upper and lower surfaces of the plant tissue first, preferring to feed on younger and recently germinated crops. Studies have shown that two larvae can completely consume a 10-day-old maize plant with 6-7 leaves, indicating the devastating potential of a high-density
History of model organisms had been until then invisibly killing tobacco plants across England. It was Stanley who would accomplish this task first by changing the pH to one a more acidic one. In doing so he was able to conclude that the virus was either a protein or closely related to one, thus benefiting experimental research. There are very important reasons why these new, much smaller organisms such as the Tobacco Mosaic Virus and "E. coli" made their way into the molecular biologists’ laboratories. Organisms like "Drosophila" and "Tribolium" were much too large and too complex for the simple quantitative experiments that men