Category Archives: Insects
FLIES ON A CRAB
September 2007 Essay from Current Biology about the varied lives of flies – including the three species that live in land crabs…
Filed under Ecology (scientific), Insects
MAKING SCENTS OF THE BEE WAGGLE DANCE
September 2007 Bees do a waggle dance in the dark of the hive to show their sisters where food can be found. It turns out they are also releasing chemical signals while they do this. Magazine article from PLoS Biology (open access); research article … Continue reading
MORE ON THE VANISHING BEES
May 2007 Disease? Pollution? Parasites? News article from this week’s Science magazine (you or your institution will need a subscription to get past the abstract).
AWESOME FLY FACT
March 2007 Let’s say I killed 52 flies when I was in France, 11 years ago. What would have happened to those flies if I hadn’t been around? At 12 generations a year, let’s suppose that 132 generations would have been born, … Continue reading
Filed under Insects
BEHAVIOURAL ECOLOGY MEETS NEUROBIOLOGY
March 2007 Article from PLoS (open access, by definition) explaining that there is a trade-off between performance and energetic costs in electrical signals recorded from single photoreceptors in different fly species. Big blowflies can transmit more information than tiny Drosophila, but their photoreceptors use … Continue reading
ONE GENE DOES IT ALL?
March 2007 Open Access article in PLoS Biology on the role of the vitellogenin gene on social organisation in honey bees, using RNAi to demonstrate its function at different stages
BEES IN DECLINE
March 2007 All over the USA, bee hives are empty. For an unknown reason, bees are leaving the hives. This could have disastrous effects on crops – commercial bees are a major pollinator. A similar situation is being reported in the UK. Article … Continue reading
COOL BUGS!
February 2007 Name that arthropod. The closing words are very good advice! If you have nothing better to do, you can then watch this video comment on the previous item and try and identify the arthropod he’s talking about. NB contains strong … Continue reading
FIERCE FOOD
January 2007 Excellent solution to the locust problem. 7 pictures from the BBC.
Filed under Ecology (political), Insects
