Collaborate Disseminate
To the extent that one has strong feelings about insects, they tend toward the extremes of a spectrum that runs from a complete fascination with their diversity and the specializations …read more Continue reading Mothbox Watches Bugs, So You — Or Your Grad Students — Don’t Have To
This enormous and important part of the animal kingdom may not be most people’s favorite, but insects are a diverse, resilient and ancient bunch that date back almost 400 million years. But because of their size, many of us don’t really get a chance to… Continue reading Otherworldly: Incredible images from the insect photography awards
A team of scientists at the University of California, Riverside is studying a species of “vulture bee” that has swapped a vegetarian diet for carrion meat by developing an extra tooth and gut bacteria similar to that found in vultures and hyenas.Contin… Continue reading Carrion-eater gut bacteria help vulture bees ditch nectar for meat
Humans and insects think on a different scale, but entomologists study the behavior of these little organisms, so they’re not a complete mystery. There isn’t much intelligence in a single ant or a cubic millimeter of gray matter, but when they all start acting together, you get something greater than the sum of the parts. It is easy to fall into the trap of putting all the intelligence or programming into a single box since that’s how we function. Comparatively, itty-bitty brains, like microcontrollers and single-board computers are inexpensive and plentiful. Enter swarm mentality, and new tasks become possible.
[Kevin …read more
Researchers have discovered that the early bloom of some tree buds might be down to increasing amounts of light pollution. Continue reading Light Pollution Is Throwing Off the Seasons