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Insects

French wine became imperilled in the mid-1800s as twin pests from America swept through European agricultural regions.

How One Mycologist Saved France’s Wine (Among Other Things)

Bordeaux mixture saved many crops besides grapes from fungus

Gertsacov looking at one of his fleas.

Revive the Charm of an 1800s Show with These Modern-Day Flea Circuses

Take a trip to the (very small) Big Top

The Ten Best Photography Books of 2017

These eye-opening works invite us to find ourselves in history and nature

Stanford scientists are building up an archive of mosquito sounds.

The Next Pandemic

Before You Swat That Mosquito, Record It on Your Cell Phone

That’s the strategy behind Abuzz, a crowdsourcing project designed to track mosquito activity around the world

The way a fruit fly fires neurons could inform machine learning.

How Fruit Fly Brains Could Improve Our Search Engines

Fruit flies have a unique way of matching data, which could teach scientists to create better, faster search algorithms

New Research

How Mosquitoes Sneak Away After Feasting on Your Blood

Special wingbeats and long legs help mosquitoes take off without getting smushed

New Research

Over Three Quarters of Flying Insects Disappear From German Nature Preserves

A combination of habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change may be behind the dramatic three-decade decline

How Flowers Manipulate Light to Send Secret Signals to Bees

Come-hither blue haloes are just one of the effects employed by nature’s first nanotechnologists

Themira lohmanus

Cool Finds

New Species of Fly Found Breeding on Central Park Duck Droppings

The creatures are likely drawn to the area by the high concentrations of duck poop

A horsehair worm seen in its adult state, in which it lives only to breed

Cool Finds

This Jumble of Writhing Sticks Is Actually a Bizarre Parasite

Observed flailing around in Taiwan, this so-called ‘alien’ turns out to be a horsehair worm

New Research

Researchers Find 98-Million-Year-Old Horned Vampire Ant Encased in Amber

A newly described species of Hell Ant impaled its tiny victims on its reinforced horn and may have slurped up their bug blood

Tapeworms, like this one imaged using a scanning electron micrograph, weaken their victims but don't typically kill them.

New Research

The World’s Parasites Are Going Extinct. Here’s Why That’s a Bad Thing

Up to one-third of parasite species could vanish over the next few decades, disrupting ecosystems and even human health

Trending Today

Harvey’s Next Danger: Massive Mosquito Clouds

Standing water is breeding billions of post-hurricane mosquitoes, which could transmit diseases like the West Nile Virus

A member of the Myrmoteras genus of trap-jaw ants, with mandibles deployed.

Prying Apart the Mighty Bite of a Malaysian Trap-Jaw Ant

Its mandibles strike in a fraction of a blink of an eye, but how does it do it?

A small group of floating fire ants

Trending Today

Another Danger of the Harvey Flood: Floating Fire Ants

The stinging insects are floating around Texas floodwaters in giant mats

Male wolf spiders may have eight eyes, but they still can't tell whether the female they're mating with is dead or alive.

Whoa: Polygamous Wolf Spiders Have a Natural Form of Birth Control

Females have figured out how to get rid of unwanted sperm, allowing them to reap the benefits of multiple mates

Monarch caterpillars feeding on milkweed leaves and dropping their feces (taken in the laboratory facility).

How Insect Poop Could Solve All Our Problems

Bugs use their feces for weapons, navigation and gardening. Can we tap into this poop party?

This butterfly is the same species, white-letter hairstreak, as the one spotted in Scotland. But the little beauty is shown here in Dorset, UK.

Cool Finds

Elusive Butterfly Spotted in Scotland For the First Time in 133 Years

The white-letter hairstreak has come under threat due to an outbreak of Dutch elm disease

The Joshua tree is one of the Mojave Desert's most iconic inhabitants. But it's under threat—and the key to saving it may lie in better understanding its tiny winged partner.

How a Tree and Its Moth Shaped the Mojave Desert

The partnership between the Joshua tree and the yucca moth may be key to understanding how plants and insects co-evolve

A green bluebottle fly, part of the Calliphoridae family of carrion flies.

How Fly Guts Are Helping Researchers Catalog the Rainforest

These tiny, buzzing lab assistants provide scientists with a treasure trove of conservation data

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