Gay sex – in beetles, at least – gives males a chance to indirectly fertilise females they may never encounter directly.
Homosexual copulations are common in insects, where they pose the same conundrum as in mammals: what evolutionary advantage, if any, might such apparently fruitless activity provide?
Over the years, biologists have proposed a range of explanations. [...]
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and cooperators are seeking the public’s help in surveying for once-common ladybug species that are now hard to find.
Researchers with ARS, Cornell University at Ithaca, N.Y., and South Dakota State University (SDSU) in Brookings want people to photograph every ladybug possible, and to send the photos to Cornell so researchers [...]
Continue reading about Searching For Rare Ladybugs, With Unusual Spots
The current scourge of the Rocky Mountain region — the mountain pine beetle — has been decimating lodgepole pine populations, leaving millions of acres of dead trees in its wake throughout western North America.
Now, researchers are predicting that on top of disrupting the timber industry and crafting the depressing vistas of dead trees that [...]
Continue reading about Beetle Epidemic May Affect Weather, Air Quality
Some of history’s most important figures have been rewarded with mountains, cities, even states that bear their names. Stephen Colbert got a spider. The host of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central recently had a California trapdoor spider, found last year, named after him: Aptostichus stephencolberti. He’s not alone. Rocker Neil Young has a spider [...]
The Wayne National Forest recently released 250 pairs of the American Burying Beetle (ABB) onto the Forest in an effort to reintroduce populations of this endangered species.
About 30 people made up of Wayne National Forest Athens Ranger District personnel, partners and volunteers released the beetles in northern Athens County. In 2006 and 2007, the area [...]
Continue reading about Endangered species returned to Wayne National Forest
The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and an international committee of taxonomists — scientists responsible for species exploration and classification — has just announced the top 10 new species described in 2007.
On the list are an ornate sleeper ray, with a name that sucks: Electrolux; a 75-million-year-old giant duck-billed dinosaur; a [...]
Continue reading about Scientists Announce Top 10 New Species In Last Year
Researchers have been unable to build an ideal “photonic crystal” to manipulate visible light, impeding the dream of ultrafast optical computers. But now, University of Utah chemists have discovered that nature already has designed photonic crystals with the ideal, diamond-like structure: They are found in the shimmering, iridescent green scales of a beetle from Brazil.
“It [...]
A new study has attributed the cause of most dinosaur skeletons exhibiting pits, grooves and furrows to flesh and bone-eating insects, which gnawed on the dinosaur bones.
According to a report in the Discovery News, the evidence comes from dinosaur bones that were buried under soft mud 148 million years ago after a nearby river overflowed.
Utah’s [...]
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There are 6.5 billion people in the world today, three times as many as 50 years ago. There are undoubtedly three billion fewer insects, the forgotten creatures that maintain the fabric of life.
These include bees, butterflies, moths and all flying mites and invertebrates and sea creatures that inhabit earth and slime. Not many people, excepting [...]
Continue reading about When little things that rule world are lost
Prepare yourselves. Guitar Hero may be getting even more, well, heroic.
To which particular heroes do we refer? The Beatles, of course. They’re heroic in the world of music if anyone ever was. To that end, rumors have been circulating that a Beatles-themed version of Guitar Hero may be in the works. [...]
Continue reading about Animal-esque Beatles may go Guitar Hero as well
