A clearer picture of how assassin bugs evolved

Assassin bugs, so named because these insects lie in ambush for prey that they attack with speed and precision, are found all over the world. Nearly 140 species of these bugs are blood-sucking; because they can bite humans ...

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 ...

Moths cloaked in color

Travelers to the neotropics -- the tropical lands of the Americas -- might be forgiven for thinking that all of the colorful insects flittering over sunny puddles or among dense forest understory are butterflies. In fact, ...

New leuciscin fish found in northern China

SU De-Zao, a retired paleoichthyologist of Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, found a new paleogene leuciscin fish, Tianshanicus liui sp. nov., in the Anjihaihe Formation ...

Can modern-day plants trace their New Zealand ancestry?

One hundred million years ago the earth looked very different from how it does today. Continents were joining and breaking apart, dinosaurs were roaming the earth, and flowering plants were becoming more widespread.

How grasses like wheat can grow in the cold

A new, large-scale analysis of the relationships among members of the largest subfamily of grasses, which includes wheat and barley, reveals gene-duplication events that contributed to the adaptation of the plants to cooler ...

page 1 from 2