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Much like bees, dung beetles have a habit of shaking their groove thangs while undertaking that important task of rolling around balls of poop. When they form the ball, they crawl on top of it, and "rotate around their vertical axis". More »
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This is one of the most succinct and interesting videos I've ever seen about how bees communicate with each other. Using a series of precise dance moves, they inform their hive mates about the locations of food sources. The vid was made by researchers working with a group at Georgia Tech called the Multi-Agent Robotics and Systems Lab (MARS), where scientists study social insect behavior, and try to apply what they've learned to robotics. Essentially, they'd like to program groups of robots to work together autonomously, but first they need to understand how insects do it. More »
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Some ants crawl to where they want to go. Not this species. They fly, using no wings or sails. They have all they need to fly packed right behind them at all times. More »
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One ant sinks in water, but a bunch of them? It turns out they can link together and become an unsinkable life raft. New research shows that when fire-ants are dropped in water, they quickly form a pancake-shaped floating mass, which traps air beneath them. More »
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A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence's The Making of a Fly – a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists – consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping). More »
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We already know wasps are evil incarnate, but according to new research, they may yet have some redeeming features. Female beewolf digger wasps have colonies of symbiotic bacteria that inhabit their antennae and the wasps secrete this bacterial cocktail into the cocoons of their offspring. The bacteria create a potent salve of anti-bacterials and anti-fungals, and is the first known non-human case of prophylactic antibiotics. It's a symbiosis to fight infection, not provide food. More »
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The whitefly is a major agricultural pest, and over the last six years Southwest of America has seen the near total infection of the species by a symbiotic bacteria, which makes them super-breeders. The bacterium Rickettsia bellii was originally spotted in just a few specimens in 2000, but by 2006 was in 97% of the bugs. How did it spread so widely, so fast? The bacterium supercharged the the infected insects, and those carrying the symbiont had more offspring, developed faster, and were more likely to survive than the uninfected. The symbiont is passed on through the mothers and tweaked the infected to have a higher percentage of female offspring. More »
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Science has confirmed that wasps are nature's biggest trolls, adapting to deal with aggressive ants by taunting them. More »
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When groups of red wood ants interact and fight, the smaller groups fight harder and take more casualties. Ants are one of the few non-human animals that engages in close-contact group battles, and how they fight is directly linked to the makeup of that group. More »
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The insect known as S. invicta, or the fire ant, will bite the crap out of you, join up with its buddies to swarm everywhere, and ruin everything in its path. And they're everywhere! The truly scary part is that they didn't used to be so ubiquitous - in fact, fire ants used to live in a relatively small area in Argentina. But about a century ago, they made it to the southern United States - most likely as stowaways on boats. And that's when things got weird. Once the ant invaders created a successful colony in the southern U.S., they launched successful invasions of California, the Caribbean, China, Taiwan and Australia. A group of researchers have identified at least nine separate invasions launched by those original fire ant invaders. How did they do it? More »
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This ant, preserved in amber 50 million years ago, is evidence that we may have dramatically misunderstood the environmental history of India. More »
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Ant colonies are often part of bigger "mega colonies" that share genetic traits and will not make war on each other. One colony got so big it now rivals the human population in its reach, covering most of the planet. More »
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