In the wake of Melbourne’s spectacular cricket swarm, we asked the author of Australia’s Guide to Crickets why insects gather in such large numbers and how to keep them out of our homes.
Eating insects can carry a much lower environmental footprint than conventional meat. Should western cultures be incorporating more of them into their diets?
Saliou Niassy, University of Pretoria and Sunday Ekesi, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology
Insects have often been described with words like “disgusting” and the idea of eating them horrifies some people. But this needs to change as they can be an important food source.
Crickets are nothing if not noisy, but populations on two Hawaiian islands have embraced silence by rapidly losing sound-producing wing structures to avoid infestation by deadly fly larvae. In Current…
Handcuffs, spikes and traps – you would think they were part of some bondage aficionado’s bedroom collection. But what are they doing in the insect world? A new study I worked on sheds light on why some…
The hairworm is a long, thread-like parasite that sits bundled up inside the body of its host. It grows so large that it takes up most of the room inside the host’s body, waiting for the right moment to…
If you had to guess what creature in the world had the largest testes, I doubt you would guess that the prize belonged to a cricket. The testes of the tuberous bush cricket (Platycleis affinis) are an…