In this photograph are elegant, microscopic agents of death. They are crystals made not of minerals, but of protein, and are found not in vugs, but in guts. Bug guts. They are Cry protein crystals made by the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. You may know them better as Bt toxin. Bt toxin has gotten a lot [...]

Imagine you are a tiny caddisfly pupa. When you emerge from your pupal case, it is dark, but not pitch black, and high above you, you see the faint glow of a starry sky. On new wings, you rise. Cue angelic voices. Suddenly, you struggle against an invisible barrier. Cue scary cello. You begin to [...]

Every once in a while, a scientific work comes along of such import that it is impossible not to cover it. Such is the paper “Planthoppers of Iran” (well, actually “An annotated checklist of the planthoppers of Iran (Hemiptera, Auchenorrhyncha, Fulgoromorpha) with distribution data“). Now, I’ll wager you know what an Iran is. But did [...]

Author’s note: This essay was originally posted on April 19, 2011, at Artful Amoeba 1.0 honoring the work of the late Thomas Eisner, a world-renowned chemical ecologist. I’m reposting it in honor of Chemistry Day. Enjoy! If I read my notes correctly, Thomas Eisner once had a pet thrush named Sybil who rejected only five [...]

In honor of Mother’s day, I present a portrait of a Tennessee winnow ant with her mom. But wait! This scene is not as heart-warming as it may seem. This mother has a dark past of murder, impersonation, and trickery. To explain the story, I’ll start with a perhaps oversimplified observation about ant families. Ants [...]

A South American Mischocyttarus paper wasp hangs out on its characteristically long nest. The nest is made of chewed, processed plant fibers, similar to those of our temperate paper wasps but taking a much more unusual form. How long is the nest? Warm up your scrolling muscles! Here is a life-size photograph: photo details: Canon EF 17-40mm [...]

As you know, I photograph ants. Lots of them. There’s good reason for this, aside from my formal training as an ant biologist. Ants and other social insects make fascinating subjects. Their social habits parallel our own enough, perhaps, to allow us the illusion of relating to the insects. In ants, we see a little [...]

I started photographing insects about 10 years ago. Here’s a shot from the beginning: And a congener, from this week: Aside from the obvious improvements to technology, what has changed? I’d say my two biggest improvements come from an obsession with simplifying composition so the background doesn’t compete with the subject, and from my lowered [...]

Why is this beetle so crisp? The clarity results from the image being not a single photograph but a composite. I took 50 exposures at different focal depths and merged them in a file sharp enough to cut diamonds. This extra-clean look is increasingly common, and for a reason. Digital cameras and focus-stacking software are [...]

Swarms of army ants naturally inspire fear, of course, but to people who know ants this painting is even more terrifying. Hashime Murayama has not only drawn army ants, but undead army ants, their reanimated corpses lurching towards us in eerie procession. The bodies rigid, antennae jarringly askew, these ants are clearly chasing us from [...]

Here’s a Belizean bug that doesn’t look like much: I’m serious. In the field the insect looked like so little I thought it merely debris in a disorganized spider’s web. I didn’t see the faint outline of a young assassin bug until the debris shuddered, ever so slightly. The dramatic contrast of the above image [...]

Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500. [Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 - $300] I was out on an evening walk near my house when I spotted a dramatic, if diminutive, pavement ant battleground. Since I don’t ordinarily carry my heavy SLR gear around town, my option for photographing the skirmish was the [...]

[the following is a modified repost from Myrmecos blog] Dedicated insect photographers normally employ specialized macro lenses to focus on their tiny subjects. These can be pricey. My high powered MP-E lens costs $1,000, for example, and my 100mm f/2.8 is $500. But macro does not have to be expensive. Consider the effect of a single [...]

A couple weeks ago the science media was positively tipsy with news that common fruit flies fight parasites by… wait for it… ingesting enough ethanol to kill their inner tormentors. Fruit flies boast a higher tolerance for ethanol than most other insects, including the wasps whose larvae grow by consuming young fruit flies from the [...]

Three moth species have disappeared from the U.K. in the past decade and two thirds of the species that remain have suffered dramatic population crashes according to new research from the organizations Butterfly Conservation and Rothamsted Research. The news is published in the new report “The State of Britain’s Larger Moths 2013″ (pdf), which covers [...]

If you have seen any of Peter Jackson’s movies, such as this week’s release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, then you have probably noticed the logo for the special effects company Weta Workshop, which works on most of the director’s New Zealand–based projects. The workshop is named after a bunch of endemic New Zealand [...]

Counting butterflies in the wild is not an easy task, even when you are looking for the largest butterfly in the world, the Queen Alexandra’s birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae) of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Females of the species have an impressive and eye-catching 30-centimeter wingspan, 50 percent larger than the more colorful males. But the Queen [...]

Climate change and overharvesting have put a Himalayan fungus valued for its purported aphrodisiac qualities at risk of extinction. Known variously as yarsagumba, yarchagumba, yartsa gunba, yatsa gunbu and, more colloquially, “Himalayan Viagra,” the parasitic caterpillar fungus Cordyceps (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) grows on and kills Tibetan ghost moths during their larval phase underground. A tiny mushroom [...]

Frankincense—that aromatic staple of the original Christmas story—could soon be “doomed” to near-extinction, according to research published December 21 in the Journal of Applied Ecology. Frankincense is an aromatic resin used in perfumes and incense. It comes from trees of the Boswellia genus, which grow mostly in the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula. The [...]

Are fireflies disappearing? No one knows for sure, but based on anecdotal evidence firefly (aka lightning bug) populations appear to be fading, with fewer seen every summer. Unfortunately, the bioluminescent insects had always been so ubiquitous to backyards and campgrounds for so long that almost no one bothered to study them. Now the Museum of [...]

With fewer places left to breed and live, European butterflies, beetles, dragonflies and damselflies are dying in droves, according to the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The Red List update finds that 9 percent of Europe’s butterflies, 11 percent of its saproxylic beetles and 14 percent of dragonflies are threatened [...]

As goes the water, so go the dragonflies. That’s the finding of a new report from the IUCN concluding that one fifth of dragonflies and damselflies in the Mediterranean region are threatened with extinction as a result of increasing freshwater scarcity. Threats facing the insects include habitat degradation, pollution and climate change. According to the [...]

When Catherine Chalmers headed to Costa Rica for the third time this past January, she had a script in mind that told a very specific story: the stripping of nature. With a cast of hundreds, if not thousands, she would film a leafy branch being reduced to wood to represent the larger picture of clear-cutting [...]

Red-eyed periodic cicadas emerge every 13 or 17 years, but finding out why could take millennia In ""Too Hard for Science?" I interview scientists about ideas they would love to explore that they don’t think could be investigated. For instance, they might involve machines beyond the realm of possibility, such as particle accelerators as big [...]

Like many biologists, the German biologist Oliver Zompro spends thousands of hours looking at specimens of dead animals. He found his first new species when he was twenty. By the age of thirty he had named dozens of wild new forms. While other people around him did crossword puzzles and drank lattes, he explored the [...]

Perhaps it’s the summers I spent in college counting and identifying dragonflies and butterflies on the wing. Or maybe it was the hundreds of hours I endured in graduate school with my face dangerously close to a pan of full of muck, plucking out thousands of tiny stream insects. I reckon it’s just a lifetime [...]

Migrating animals are always impressive to watch. The ability to cover huge areas of land in massive groups can be a beneficial strategy for many animals; whether birds, mammals or shoals of fish. Yet even more impressive than migrations by groups of individuals are those that take place over several generations. In the case of [...]

As far as bacteria are concerned, other living creatures are just another niche to exploit, which means that pretty much every animal and plant has a set of bacterial pathogens that come along with it. These bacteria have made the animal in question their speciality, and are highly adapted to live inside their hosts. While [...]

I’ve been on holiday for the last few days, so haven’t had much time to read papers about bacteria. What I have been doing, however, is looking at butterflies. Since my sudden and unexpected discovery that I was obsessed with them I have since bought a butterfly field guide and now try to identify them [...]

Aphids are small insects that are a major pest in crop production. Dealing with these aphid pests often involves the use of pesticides, however growing resistance to these pesticides means that many farmers are now looking to use natural predators such as ladybirds or hoverflies to stop aphids destroying crops. However the problem with natural [...]

The humble dung beetle makes its living rolling big balls of excrement to feed its offspring and itself. But this lowly occupation doesn’t mean the insect doesn’t have its eye on the skies—even when the sun goes down. Recent research has shown that African ball-rolling dung beetles (Scarabaeus satyrus) use strong light cues from the [...]

Looking for the perfect holiday entrée? Something nutritious yet easy on the Earth? Something with a subtle, yet distinctive, je-ne-sais-quoi flavor? Have you considered the humble mealworm? What about the super superworm? Before you click away in disgust, remember that the creeping, shelled, 10-legged crustacean we now so lovingly dip in butter (ahem, the lobster) [...]

Wormholes aren’t just for time travel or teleportation anymore. Some very real and ancient wormholes are now helping to trace the distribution of insect species and artwork. A biologist found himself in the unlikely world of centuries-old European woodblock print art. There, he discovered that many of the small imperfections in the prints could be [...]

Anyone who’s been to the beach on a hot day knows the feeling of scorching sand underfoot. But do beetles that cross the sunny savanna or dwell in the desert feel it, too? Biologists have found that not only do dung beetles—which famously feed on feces rolled across the sand until it becomes a smooth [...]

Zombie bees are not science fiction. They are real—and real threat to already-threatened U.S. honeybee populations. Honeybees (Apis mellifera) in California and South Dakota have been observed acting zombielike, wandering away from their hives at night and crawling around blindly in circles. These insects have been rendered insensate by a parasitizing fly that lays eggs [...]

Moss, that cushy, moisture-loving ground cover, is more promiscuous than we thought. These plants might not have the sexy flowers of a peony, but according to new research, they do manage to attract small pollinators with a subtle sweet smell. Previously, scientists had presumed that these primitive plants needed a layer of water for their [...]

The word “sunflower” brings to mind a mane of vibrant yellow petals encircling a dark whorl of seeds. But not all sunflowers are alike. Some sunflowers have scraggly petals, for instance, or small centers. Many of the sunflowers Vincent Van Gogh depicted in his famous series of oil paintings look rather unusual, sporting wooly, chrysanthemum-like [...]

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are more than cookie-cutter drones, workers, foragers and queens. They might have individual personality differences similar to our own, according to new research. After studying hives—both in the wild and in the lab—and analyzing genetic and biochemical profiles of bees’ brains, researchers have found that some bees, like some humans, seem to [...]

Lyme disease is notoriously tough to diagnose. The symptoms often don’t appear for one or two weeks after a bite and can vary from feeling flu-ish to longer-term neurological damage. And ticks seem to lie in wait throughout much of the U.S., prepared to pounce and infect a passerby. Part of the difficulty in confirming [...]

A heap of dead bees was supposed to become food for a newly captured praying mantis. Instead, the pile ended up revealing a previously unrecognized suspect in colony collapse disorder—a mysterious condition that for several years has been causing declines in U.S. honeybee populations, which are needed to pollinate many important crops. This new potential [...]

“Hey you guys are having a party? Where’s my invite? JK, JK it’s cool, I don’t have a letter box anyway. Where should I stash my beers? Why isn’t there any music playing? Oh is this one of those silent discos…” “Sir, this is a very serious operation, we’re trying to save lives here and [...]

There have been a whole slew of articles about the merits of eating bugs lately. The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The New Yorker have all run articles within the last month on various people in Europe and the US who are trying to reverse our deep aversion to entomophagy, the practice of eating [...]

When the Europeans discovered the “New World”, they infamously brought with them diseases which that world had never before encountered. Infectious agents like smallpox, typhus and cholera were generously shared with the local population – often deliberately so – and were responsible for significantly decimating the natives’ numbers. It’s a common theme; a species colonizes [...]

It’s better than an ant farm. It’s more exciting than a flea circus. Welcome to Cricket Fight Club. The first rule of Cricket Fight Club is: you do not talk about Cricket Fight Club. The second rule of Cricket Fight Club is: you do not talk about Cricket Fight Club. In aggressive conflicts between individuals [...]

What information is contained in the call of a mammal? Some calls might reflect the internal emotional state of the animal, like fear or anxiety, or they can refer to an external object, agent, or event, like the presence of a predator. Rhesus monkeys, lemurs, baboons, and guinea pigs, for example, will produce calls when [...]