For bees and other social insects, being able to exchange information is vital for the success of their colony. One way honeybees do this is through their waggle dance, which is a unique pattern of behavior, which probably ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 25, 2019
0
435
Carpenter ants infected with a specialized parasitic fungus are not subjected to aggression or isolation from their nest mates, and they continue to share in the colony's food resources until they leave the nest for the last ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 13, 2018
0
300
If the first thing that comes to mind when you think about ants is "industrious," you might be in for a surprise. In 2015, biologists at the University of Arizona reported that a sizable chunk of the "workers" that make up ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 8, 2017
2
1157
Be it the Mima mounds of Washington state or the famous "fairy circles" of Namibia in southwestern Africa, people are captivated by the regular patterns of plant growth that blanket desert and grassland landscapes, often ...
Environment
Jan 23, 2017
0
22
Farmers who used pesticides that spared bees but sacrificed killed other insects might be ignoring important sources of crop pollination, according to an Australian-led international scientific study.
Ecology
Nov 30, 2015
0
40
One day a few years ago, while working on wasps in a rainforest in Costa Rica, entomologist Kevin J. Loope, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Riverside, began reading about the enigmatic matricidal ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 29, 2015
0
547
Ants, which are eusocial insects, have intrigued scientists for long as a model for cooperation inside a colony where they nurse the young, gather food and defend against intruders. Most recently, ants have been shown to ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 13, 2015
2
36
The society you live in can shape the complexity of your brain—and it does so differently for social insects than for humans and other vertebrate animals.
Plants & Animals
Jun 16, 2015
11
1669
Purdue University research shows that a small amount of nicotinoid pesticide substantially weakens termites' ability to fight off fungal diseases, a finding that could lead to more effective methods of pest control.
Plants & Animals
May 20, 2015
0
25
Research at the Universities of St Andrews and Dundee has confirmed that levels of neonicotinoid insecticides accepted to exist in agriculture cause both impairment of bumblebees' brain cells and subsequent poor performance ...
Plants & Animals
Feb 5, 2015
3
2501
