A worm whose favorite dish is – of all things—worm larvae has to take great care not to accidentally devour its own progeny. How these tiny worms of merely a millimeter in length manage to distinguish their own offspring ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 05, 2019
0
50
The Italian Crested Newt – Triturus carnifex – eats anything and everything it can overpower. Earthworms, mosquito larvae and water fleas are on its menu, but also snails, small fish and even its own offspring. A research ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 22, 2019
1
49
In certain ant species, queens invade the colonies of other species, kill the host queen or queens and lay their eggs in the host nest. After this, the host workers tend to the offspring of the parasitic queen as if their ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 20, 2019
0
7
Tropical fire ants (Solenopsis geminata), originally from central and South America, are a highly aggressive, invasive ecological pest. Our new research has shed light on how they successfully establish new colonies.
Plants & Animals
Mar 22, 2019
0
6
In Roman mythology, the larvae or lemures (singular lemur) were the spectres or spirits of the dead; they were the malignant version of the lares. Some Roman writers describe lemures as the common name for all the spirits of the dead, and divide them into two classes: the lares, or the benevolent souls of the family, which haunted and guarded the domus or household, and the larvae, or the restless and fearful souls of wicked men. But the more common idea was that the Lemures and Larvae were the same. They were said to wander about at night and to torment and frighten the living.
On May 9, 11, and 13, the Lemuralia or Lemuria, the feast of the Lemures, occurred, when black beans were offered to the Larvae in the hopes of propitiating them; loud noises were also used to frighten them away.
Lemurs were so named by Linnaeus for their large eyes, nocturnal habits and unearthly noises they make at night. Some species of lemur were identified by their calls before scientists had seen individuals. Linnaeus also coined the modern use of the word 'larva' to denote the caterpillar stage in the life cycle of insects.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
