Thinking insects
Science Daily peeks into the mind of insects with new research that shows that fruit flies think before they act: In experiments asking fruit flies […]
entomology
It really is the nicotine-based pesticide that’s killing all the bees.
The Guardian (with a little help from Harvard) confirms what folks have suspected for a while – that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is largely due […]
A viral aphrodisiac. Like, literally – a virus that makes sexytime happen. Then it kills you….
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), as NPR reports, it only affects crickets. They get infected, then want to have more sex, spreading the virus to more […]
My, madam, what a spiky member you have… in me….
Nature has published an article about a cave insect that combines the words “marathon sex session” with “the female’s spiky penis”: In desolate caves throughout […]
Science Art: Ventral view of an adult small hive beetle, Aethina tumida Murray, by Josephine Ratikan.
Florida beekeepers, know your enemy.
Science Art: Surface of a Western honeybee’s eye, by Janice Carr and Connie Flowers.
Click to embiggen Gaze into the eye of the bee, and the colony gazes into you. This is not honeycomb, but the individual components (ommatidia) […]
Robot swarms that build. By themselves…
Nature digs up the info on the termite robots built this castle: The robots all work independently. Each travels along a grid and can move, […]
SONG: “The Road We Wander”
SONG: “The Road We Wander.” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Monarch migration may become extinct,” Laboratory Equipment, 30 […]
Monarch migration may be over. Forever.
Laboratory Equipment has some bad news for butterflies: After steep and steady declines in the previous three years, the black-and-orange butterflies now cover only 1.65 […]
Science Art: Typical chemosensory hair of the blowfly Phormia regina Meigen, from Molecular structure and functional activity of nerve cells…., 1955
An up-close look at chemoreceptors, chemical-sensing nerves, from the 1950s. Not a flower, nor a machine, but somewhere between both. Found in the Biodiversity Heritage […]
Science Art: Plate CCCII, Fig. A.B. Capensis, from Pieter Cramer’s De Uitlandische Kapellen, 1779
A plate of geometrically arranged capensis moths, as recorded by Pieter Cramer, a fabric merchant and butterfly fan. The whole book is charming. From the […]
Living gears found in little bug’s legs.
This was all over Reddit and ScienceDaily today, because it’s cool. Biologists have found the first example of machine-like gears in a living organism, a […]
Mosquitos *taste* heat.
Science Daily has more on the strange, previously unknown sensory organ in insects: Notice how mosquitoes always seem to bite where there is the most […]
You don’t get bitten because you’re so sweet. Well, not exactly….
Smithsonian explains summer’s great mystery – why mosquitoes find some victims sweeter: An estimated 20 percent of people, it turns out, are especially delicious for […]
Science Art: The periodical cicada (”Magicicada septendecim”), Plate 7, from Insects, their way and means of living, by R. E. Snodgrass.
Click to embiggen It’s the year of magic. Or, well, the Magicicada septendecim – the 17-year magic cicada. Have you heard? They come back every […]