Alcoholic fly larvae need fix for learning

Fly larvae fed on alcohol-spiked food for a period of days grow dependent on those spirits for learning. The findings, reported in Current Biology on November 29, show how overuse of alcohol can produce lasting changes in ...

Do the world's smallest flies decapitate tiny ants?

A new species of phorid fly from Thailand is the smallest fly ever discovered. At just 0.40 millimeters in length, it is 15 times smaller than a house fly and five times smaller than a fruit fly.

Filming life in the fast lane

New microscope enabled scientists at EMBL Heidelberg to film a fruit fly embryo, in 3D, from when it was about two-and-a-half hours old until it walked away from the microscope as a larva.

Flying jewels spell death for baby spiders

Spider flies are a rarely collected group of insects. Adults are considered important pollinators of flowers, while larvae live as internal parasitoids of juvenile spiders. Eight genera are recorded in Australasia, including ...

Weightlessness weighs heavy on genes -- a fly's perspective

On Earth all biology is subjected to gravity. Some biological systems require gravity for correct orientation (geotropism: plants grow up, roots grow down). In the absence of gravity even human biology is affected: astronauts ...

Predators hunt for a balanced diet

An international team of scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Oxford in the UK, University of Sydney (Australia), Aarhus University (Denmark) and Massey University (New Zealand) based their research on the ground ...

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