Finally! A Peek at Mysterious Bees in the Rain Forest Treetops
By Leslie Mertz Adam Smith, Ph.D., has been studying a certain group of very unusual bees in Panama for 15 years, but he had never actually been able to witness […]
Horn Fly Biocontrol: In Search of Faster Fungus
By Ed Ricciuti Soon after silkworm eggs were smuggled out of China in the 12th Century, northern Italy and France emerged as centers of silk production, an industry almost brought […]
Rearranging Nest Boxes Keeps More Blue Orchard Bees Around
Orchard growers looking for alternatives to honey bees for managed pollination services have new reason to be optimistic about the potential of one honey bee cousin, the blue orchard bee. […]
Exit Strategy: How Pupating Red Mason Bees Deal With “Misorientation” Inside Their Nests
By Kelly McKinne Most people would believe that insects rarely plan how they are going to emerge from their cocoons. From a human perspective, it seems to pale in comparison […]
Mosquito Repellents: DEET and PMD Sprays Most Effective, While Wearable Devices Disappoint, Study Finds
A search for “mosquito repellent” on Amazon.com delivers more than 28,000 product results. For a regular consumer, it can be difficult to find the ones that truly work among a […]
Teaching An Old Parasitoid Wasp New Tricks
By Josh Lancette You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but it turns out you can teach an old parasitoid wasp new tricks—and only the […]
New Research Reveals How Flesh Flies Hear
By Ed Ricciuti Scientists have clocked many hours studying how females of various parasitoid flies home in on the calls of cicadas, grasshoppers, and other insects that are their hosts. […]
Researchers Raise Maggots on Chicken Blood to Save Darwin’s Finches
By Meredith Swett Walker In 1676, the great scientist Isaac Newton (of gravity fame) wrote a letter to another scientific titan, Robert Hooke (who had coined the biological term “cell”), […]
How Do Honey Bees Curl Their Abdomens?
By Erin Weeks Watch a honey bee wiggle its abdomen on a flower or do the waggle dance in a hive, and you’ll have some idea of the variety of […]
Infrared Photography Shows Tsetse Fly Development from Pupa to Adult
By Ed Ricciuti Researchers employing near infrared still photographs and time-lapse video have peered into the pupa of the living tsetse fly and for the first time have watched its […]
Two Artificial Sweeteners Kill Fruit Flies
Continuing their research into potential ingredients for human-safe pesticides, Drexel University researchers recently found an artificial sweetener that, while harmless for male fruit flies, proved particularly lethal for females. Their […]
Parasitoid Flies Are Attracted to the Sounds of Their Cicada Hosts
By Ed Ricciuti Scientists have pondered why males of certain parasitoid fly species have ears that apparently function well enough but, as the Bible says, seemingly “do not hear,” while […]
Entomopathogenic Fungi Can Help to Control Filth Flies
By Josh Lancette Researchers at the University of Florida found that a commercial formulation of the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum was effective at reducing house fly and stable fly egg-laying […]
Nanopillars on Rat-tailed Maggots Reduce Bacterial Colonization
By Leslie Mertz If an insect ever needed a little love, it would be the immature stage of the drone fly (Eristalis tenax), which is known as a “rat-tailed maggot.” […]
A Cheaper, Lighter Moth Trap May Make Citizen Science Projects More Affordable
By Josh Lancette Researchers from Michigan State University believe they have invented a better — or at least a cheaper — version of the proverbial mouse trap. Except instead of […]
How a Journal Article on Mosquito Repellents Went Viral
By Josh Lancette Stacy Rodriguez, a researcher in Dr. Immo Hansen’s lab at New Mexico State University, became somewhat famous in November 2015, at least for a few days. Stacy […]