Eating insects can carry a much lower environmental footprint than conventional meat. Should western cultures be incorporating more of them into their diets?
Walking vertically – or even upside down – is a piece of cake for ants.
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Ant feet are equipped with an array of tools – from retractable sticky pads to claws to special spines and hairs – enabling them to defy gravity and grip virtually any surface.
Mosquitoes need to feed on blood in order to reproduce. But how do they choose whom to feed on?
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The son of a formerly enslaved mother, Charles Henry Turner was the first to discover that bees and other insects have the ability to modify their behavior based on experience.
Studying bee sperm is difficult because of the way it coils, but fluorescent light illuminates the head of the sperm. Sperm quality may indicate stress levels in the bee colony.
Monarch butterflies cluster on a eucalyptus tree at Pismo State Beach’s Monarch Butterfly Grove in California.
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The iconic monarch butterfly has been added to the Red List of endangered species, but hasn’t received protection in the US yet. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Trees were already known for cooling and cleaning the air of cities. A Europe-wide, participative science project shows how much their density matters for urban biodiversity.
Cows eating hay and soy-based feed.
United Soybean Board/Flickr
Feeding insects instead of grain to animals is an inexpensive, sustainable way to increase the world food supply. An animal scientist explains what’s involved in developing insect feed for cattle.
Mosquitoes are commonplace in summer but where do they go once the weather cools? They don’t completely disappear but find fascinating ways to survive the winter.
Dozens of bed bugs and their eggs and fecal material on a metal bed frame.
Jerome Goddard
Bed bugs are pretty much universally reviled. But a public health entomologist explains how – while potentially traumatizing to deal with – they aren’t likely to make you sick.
Fungi underpin life on Earth, but are far less well catalogued and understood than animals and plants. Three scientists call for including fungi in conservation strategies and environmental laws.
When trees burn, all the carbon they have stored goes back into the atmosphere.
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More carbon dioxide in the air doesn’t necessarily mean more growth for trees, and the increasing risk of wildfires and drought has major consequences, as an interactive map shows.
Bumblebees at work, dotted with pollen.
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