Tiny fairy wasps are so small they can lay their eggs inside other insects eggs, but they punch above their weight when it comes to keeping pests down.
Bees and wasps can recognise people’s faces – despite having less than one million brain cells, compared to 86,000 million brain cells that make up a human brain.
Scientists in Japan have discovered a new species of wasp that induces a zombie-like state in spiders in order to manipulate them into protecting the wasp’s own offspring.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is a common refrain. But usually it is not followed by the words “because your neighbours may kill you”. However, this is precisely the scenario faced by some female…
Reproduction for a female fig wasp can be a nightmarish process. When she is ready to lay her eggs, she leaves the fig in which she was born and became pregnant and searches for another. After she finds…
Much like people, insect colonies like to know if her majesty is at home. In the ants, bees, wasps and termites (the “big four” of the social insect world), the queen has long been suspected of using special…
Recently a newspaper asked its readers to propose species that were, ecologically speaking, “useless”, such that their loss would not have any great knock-on effect on other species or biological cycles…
Few of us consider that having sex could result in a violent, instantaneous death. But in nature, where sex and violence are often two sides of the same coin, many animals are routinely subjected to such…