Stick insects keep evolving to have the same strange body plans over and over again, scientists have discovered. This evolutionary blueprint has enabled researchers to predict the critters’ next developments. Researchers identified just 20 distinct body types that hundreds of different stick insect species have independently evolved. These body types include the “tree lobsters,” which […]
Brian Handwerk Science Correspondent Life is short, the old saying goes, but in the world of animals, we humans are pretty fortunate: Our species is quite long-lived. With 122 being the oldest documented age, humans can enjoy decades more life than most fish, birds and mammals—including our primate relatives. But we’re not alone in experiencing […]
every year, at the beginning of November, one of the most impressive natural spectacles in the world takes place in Michoacán, Mexico. Hundreds of millions of migrating monarch butterflies settle in the forested massifs of the country’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, roughly 100 kilometers west of Mexico City. Having flown south for eight months, beginning […]
Mealworms feast on bran and microplastics in the lab. Credit: Michelle Tseng Plastic pollution occurs in every ecosystem on the planet and lingers for decades. Could insects be part of the solution? Previous research found that insects can ingest and absorb pure, unrefined microplastics—but only under unrealistic, food-scarce situations. In a Biology Letters paper, UBC […]
The white substance on this fly is a fungus called Entomophthora muscae. Filippo Castellucci A fly is going about its day, buzzing here, buzzing there—but then, it starts behaving weirdly. Its movements become sluggish; its abdomen swells. Its body sprouts white fuzz. Around sunset, there’s a sudden a burst of movement as the fly climbs—or […]
Brian Handwerk Science Correspondent When the sun sets, darkness guides the ways many animals live and die. The night helps wary mice hide from some predators, but it also helps hunters like keen-eyed owls score their next meal. Many species mate under cover of darkness, like calling crickets that find one another in the night. […]
This developing field, known as aerial electroreception, opens up a new dimension of the natural world. “I find it absolutely fascinating,” said Anna Dornhausa behavioral ecologist at the University of Arizona who was not involved with the work. “This whole field, studying electrostatic interactions between living animals, has the potential to uncover things that didn’t […]
On a sweltering summer day in Madison, Wisconsin, Jade Kochanski wades through a prairie bursting with wildflowers. Insect net in hand, she carefully scans the colorful blossoms. She’s on a mission to capture and identify the bumblebees that live there. If she’s lucky, she’ll discover a rare find—an endangered rusty patched bumblebee, named for the […]
Joe Spring Associate Editor, Science Thanks to a time stamp, Thorben Danke knows the exact moment he got hooked on photographing insects. On July 22, 2016, at 6:05 p.m. he happened to see a green bottle fly sitting near him on his garage wall. Danke had been playing around with the settings on his pricy […]
Joe Spring Associate Editor, Science Well before ornithologist Lucas Berrigan embraced technology to find out where birds travel around the world, he started bird-watching around his home. At around 10 years old, anytime he heard a new call in Nova Scotia, he’d search out the bird. At 14, he went to a remote station on […]
