Insects

Science 05/02/19, 11:15

With their bulging red eyes and deafening mating song, the 17-year cicadas are about to emerge.The insects have been waiting underground for nearly two decades, and millions are about to make their debut around western Pennsylvania, parts of eastern Ohio and a small swath of West Virginia.Penn State Extension horticulture ...

Science 04/18/19, 04:52

More than a dozen wild bee species critical to pollinizing everything from blueberries to apples in New England are on the decline, according to a new study.Researchers from the University of New Hampshire wanted to understand if the documented declines hitting honeybees and bumblebees were also taking a toll on ...

Europe 04/03/19, 11:01

The German state of Bavaria is set to accept in large part a plan by environmentalists to save bees and protect biodiversity, averting a referendum on the issue.In February, backers of the plan collected nearly 1.75 million signatures, over 18 percent of the region's electorate and enough to force a ...

Asia & Pacific 03/19/19, 00:36

Fall armyworms, a longtime American pest, are munching their way around the globe, raising alarm now in Asia after entrenching themselves in Africa.Experts say the insect was first found outside the Americas in 2016, in Africa, where it has infested up to half of some crops of maize, sorghum and ...

U.S. 02/21/19, 10:21

Zebra stripes are dazzling — particularly to flies.That's the conclusion of scientists from the University of Bristol and the University of California at Davis who dressed horses in black-and-white striped coats to help determine why zebras have stripes.The researchers found that fewer horseflies landed on the bedecked horses than on ...

Nutrition 02/17/19, 03:15

Insects are crawling onto menus at restaurants across the United States.

Enviroment 02/14/19, 11:25

Review of over 70 studies of insect populations suggests that human pressures are causing insect populations to plummet, by as much as a quarter every decade

U.S. 01/26/19, 14:29

Something catastrophically wrong happened in 2018 to monarch butterflies.Idaho wildlife biologist Ross Winton spent years working with monarch butterflies. With the help of volunteers, he would carefully put a tiny tag the size of a paper hole punch on about 30 to 50 of the iconic insects each summer in ...

Science 12/05/18, 00:00

Roy Funch, an American botanist who has lived and worked in Brazil's hardscrabble northeast for decades, long looked at huge cone-shaped mounds of mud in the distance and wonder.What built them? How many were there? How long had they been there?After years of failing to generate interest in the mounds, ...

Science 10/13/18, 21:10

Third-grade students at Prairie View Elementary School can be heard cheering when it is time for science class these days, thanks to some visitors in the classroom.The students are studying crayfish as part of the “structures of life” unit at the school. Teacher Jennifer Sprenger said K-5 students in the ...

Europe 09/21/18, 11:23

It's not quite the World Wide Web — but the spiders of Aitoliko in Greece have made a good start.Spurred into overdrive by an explosion in the populations of insects they eat, thousands of little spiders in the western Greek town have shrouded coastal trees, bushes and low vegetation in ...

U.S. 09/20/18, 01:13

A staple of summer — swarms of bugs — seems to be a thing of the past. And that's got scientists worried. Pesky mosquitoes, disease-carrying ticks, crop-munching aphids and cockroaches are doing just fine. But the more beneficial flying insects of summer — native bees, moths, butterflies, ladybugs, lovebugs, mayflies and ...

U.S. 09/18/18, 09:32

Time to rake up the yard, deadhead the perennials and till the vegetable garden? Not so fast.