A barn swallow scoops an insect from the pond’s surface.
Richard Seeley/Shutterstock
Ponds create ‘insect chimneys’ which are a boon for hungry farmland birds.
Fried locusts.
Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Eating locusts is an old strategy used to get food after locusts devastated crops, but things have changed.
A Rosalia longicorn – the chosen insect of 2019 in Hungary by the Hungarian Entomological Society.
EPA-EFE/Peter Komka
The largest study of insect declines to date gives us the best indication of how species all over the world are faring.
Bumble bee collecting pollen from a flower.
dmitry grigoriev/unsplash.com
Humans obtain bacteria through the foods they eat. But how do bees collect bacteria that live in and on them? And where do they pick up these microbes?
In the heat, tomato plants can’t fight off the hungry tobacco hornworm, Manduca sexta.
From www.shutterstock.com
Plants have evolved techniques for protecting themselves from heat and insect attacks – but when both these stresses happen at once, one defense may neutralize the other.
La-Rel Easter/Unsplash
The game is a fantastic metaphor for understanding how extinctions cause ecosystems to become more fragile.
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You’ve probably seen ants marching over your kitchen bench this summer. Should you get out the insecticide, or learn to live with them?
Matt Beaver/DBEE
Wet and bulky cattle dung is very unlike marsupial dung that Australian dung beetles are adapted to deal with, meaning native dung beetles tend to leave it alone. But help from abroad is at hand.
These grasshoppers, like many insects around the world, are declining.
Dave Rintoul
Insect populations are falling as what they eat becomes more like iceberg lettuce and less like kale.
Some wasps are social insects, meaning they live in groups and have a queen.
umsiedlungen/Pixabay.com)
Bees aren’t the only species that has a queen.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation
Each B&B is a green sanctuary for pollinators, containing pollinating plants and shelters like beehives and nesting boxes.
GettyImages
Insects are essential to the functioning of land and freshwater ecosystems but species populations are being lost at a rapid rate globally.
The teddybear bee is a native Australian species.
James Dorey
In NSW, honeybees are listed as a key threatening process to biodiversity.
Flickr
First come the beetles, then the birds: how nature is surviving, and thriving, after a summer of fires.
A ruddy darter dragonfly perches on a stalk in Coleshill Park, Wiltshire, UK.
Ian_Sherriffs/Shutterstock
While many surveys show the numbers of wildlife falling, there is good news for some species – including pondskaters and various mosses and lichen.
Tobias Maschtaler/Unsplash
A new study has found that European and North American bumblebee populations have shrank by a third since 1970.
The presence of mayflies and stone flies indicates clean water is nearby.
Andrew/flickr
Mayflies and stone flies are extremely vulnerable to water pollution, which has implications for the larger food chain.
Individuals working together as one.
Orit Peleg and Jacob Peters
A swarm of honeybees can provide valuable lessons about how a group of many individuals can work together to accomplish a task, even with no one in charge. Roboticists are taking notes.
Although yellow fever does not currently exist in Australia, the species Aedes aegypti - which can transmit the disease - is found widely across northern Queensland. The virus remains a global health concern, but citizen scientists could help prevent its spread.
Simon Kutcher/flickr
Nuisance-biting and mosquito-borne disease are ongoing concerns for health authorities. But an effective citizen science program is now showing how all of us can help beat the bite of mozzies.
He died so that we might eat cheese.
Vasekk/Shutterstock
Your taste for cheese and yoghurt may never have been satisfied were it not for illicit microbial sex.