Study achieves longest continuous tracking of migrating insects

Insects are the world's smallest flying migrants, but they can maintain perfectly straight flight paths even in unfavorable wind conditions, according to a new study from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) ...

Tobacco hawkmoths always find the right odor

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has discovered how tobacco hawkmoths are able to detect odors that are important to them against a complex olfactory background. By looking at the specific ...

Unexpected benefits from food competitors

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology has found that gravid tobacco hawkmoths (Manduca sexta) show an unusual preference for Datura plants that are already infested with leaf beetles when laying ...

A divided visual field in hawkmoths

Hummingbird hawkmoths are small insects that hover in the air like hummingbirds when drinking nectar from flowers. Dr. Anna Stöckl from the Biocentre of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, ...

Air pollution renders flower odors unattractive to moths

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, and the University of Virginia, USA, has studied the impact of high ozone air pollution on the chemical communication between flowers ...

Antennal sensors allow hawkmoths to make quick moves

All insects use vision to control their position in the air when they fly, but they also integrate information from other senses. Biologists at Lund University have now shown how hawkmoths use mechanosensors in their antennae ...

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