All posts tagged: insects

Insects survive 1,213 feet of pressure under water, defying physics

Insects survive 1,213 feet of pressure under water, defying physics

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Like it or not, insects are everywhere, including places where you may not want them to be. Yet there is one environment that they don’t call home—the open ocean. An enduring explanation for this absence is that deep water pressure would fill their tiny respiratory systems with air and they would then cave in. But one particular insect larva is challenging this idea.  Meet lake flies (Chaoborus edulis). In East Africa’s Lake Malawi, billions of their larvae spend their days over 656 feet (200 meters) below the surface of the water before coming back up to feed at night.  “Uniquely, Chaoborus midge larvae have modified their respiratory system into two pairs of air-filled sacs which they use to control their buoyancy,” Philip Matthews, …

From new insects to dying trees and bumblebees: 10 ways hotter weather is going to change the British countryside

From new insects to dying trees and bumblebees: 10 ways hotter weather is going to change the British countryside

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more If you thought you were sweaty and uncomfortable during the recent stint of heatwaves, spare a thought for the poor bumblebees. At least we humans can strip off to cool down; bees have no way of removing their thick, furry coats. But merely feeling “uncomfortable” is the least of their worries. New data analysis has found that heatwaves could, in fact, see a sharp decline in bumblebee numbers in the coming years as climate change delivers more extreme weather and accompanying droughts. Data from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust’s long-running national monitoring scheme shared with the BBC found a drop in bumblebee populations after the record-smashing temperatures of 2022, which saw parts of England reach a blistering 40.3C. That year, red-tailed, buff-tailed and common carder …

Bumblebee facial movements give clues to their inner lives

Bumblebee facial movements give clues to their inner lives

Published by skeptic

Bumblebees appear to like the taste of sugar Dawn Monrose/Alamy Bees seem to show when they are pleased and like something, rather than just needing it, in one of the strongest signs yet that insects have subjective experiences. In recent decades, it has become clear that bees are capable of more complex behaviours than we previously thought, such as counting and demonstrating a sense of rhythm. But discerning whether they have inner states akin to our emotions is more difficult. For one thing, insects don’t have the flexible facial musculature of mammals, which we use to communicate our feelings. “How can we get any behavioural readout of these insects with a hard body and their mask of a face,” asks Andrew Barron at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Do bees have any sort of inner state whatsoever?” To solve the mystery, Barron and his colleagues ran a series of experiments involving buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris). First, the team offered the bees a water droplet containing sugar, along with others that contained salt and quinine, while …

Earth may be home to 3x more insect species than scientists thought

Earth may be home to 3x more insect species than scientists thought

Published by Jenni Sidey

Insects may be even more dominant on Earth than scientists thought. A new estimate suggests the planet could hold 14 million to 20 million insect species, far above the long-accepted figure of about 6 million. If that lower-bound range holds up, it would mean millions of insect species remain unknown to science. Meanwhile, concern grows over widespread insect declines. Scientists have formally described about 1.2 million insect species so far. That leaves a staggering gap between what has been named and what may still be out there. “We cannot protect species if we don’t know that they exist, and so to be able to understand the biodiversity on our planet, it’s important to know how many there are,” said Laura Melissa Guzman, assistant professor of entomology at Cornell University and the study’s corresponding author. The new work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, builds its estimate from an enormous sampling effort in Costa Rica’s Área de Conservación Guanacaste, or ACG. This region is a protected area covering 169,000 hectares in the …

Ten of the best plants to attract pollinating insects to your garden this summer

Ten of the best plants to attract pollinating insects to your garden this summer

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Gardeners are being urged to prioritise pollinator-friendly plants, even as recent warm weather brings out insects in abundance, according to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Despite occasional “booms” linked to warmer temperatures, RHS entomologist Josie Stuart warns of a persistent “downward trend” in pollinator numbers. “The general consensus is that there is a decline of pollinators,” Ms Stuart stated. “We sometimes may see booms which come with the warm weather but there is still a downward trend. These have all been linked to various causes – lack of flowering plants, loss of nesting sites as well as climate change, land use changes, urbanisation – it’s a combination of lots of different things.” To combat this decline, individuals can play a vital role in boosting …

Worker bees help choose the next queen in bumble bee colonies

Worker bees help choose the next queen in bumble bee colonies

Published by Jenni Sidey

A baby bumble bee can end up on one of two very different paths. It can grow into a small worker that never reproduces, or become a large future queen built to survive winter and start a colony of her own. New research suggests that split is not dictated mainly by the queen. Instead, it is dictated by the workers doing the feeding. In Bombus impatiens, a common North American bumble bee, Penn State researchers found that worker bees help determine larval fate by passing along juvenile hormone in the food they make from nectar and pollen. In particular, larvae that received enough of that hormone during a narrow window late in development were far more likely to become queens. The finding shifts the picture of colony life. Rather than a top-down social order controlled by a single monarch, the study points to a more distributed system. In this system, caregivers can shape the colony’s future. “Since all these females share the same DNA, it’s a striking example of how the same genotype can produce …

10 of the best plants to attract pollinating insects to your garden

10 of the best plants to attract pollinating insects to your garden

Published by Daniella Wilson

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more The warm weather may bring insects out in their droves – but gardeners still need to be choosing plants for pollinators in their gardens to boost numbers, says the RHS. “The general consensus is that there is a decline of pollinators,” says RHS entomologist and plant health scientist Josie Stuart. “We sometimes may see booms which come with the warm weather but there is still a downward trend. “These have all been linked to various causes – lack of flowering plants, loss of nesting sites as well as climate change, land use changes, urbanisation – it’s a combination of lots of different things.” Whether it’s bees, wasps, hoverflies or other small creatures, you can attract insects to your garden or growing space, even if …

The US Has a Plan to Combat Screwworm. It Involves a Lot More Flies

The US Has a Plan to Combat Screwworm. It Involves a Lot More Flies

Published by skeptic

A flesh-eating parasitic fly that poses a major threat to livestock has returned to the United States after 60 years. This week, the US Department of Agriculture confirmed the presence of New World screwworm in a calf in southern Texas. Eliminated in the US in 1966 and as far south as Panama by 2006, its recent reemergence in Mexico made it likely that the screwworm would eventually enter the country again, with modeling showing that it could arrive as soon as summer 2025. It took slightly longer, but the screwworm has arrived. And to head off an outbreak, officials are deploying a tried-and-true technique: releasing lots and lots of adult screwworm flies. A screwworm infection occurs when a female fly lays its eggs in open wounds or other body parts of warm-blooded animals. When the eggs hatch, maggots emerge and feed on living tissue before turning into flies. As adults, screwworm flies do not bite or feed on flesh. Scientists in the 1930s and 1940s thought if they could prevent female flies from reproducing, they …

Millions of Bees Have Thrived Under a New York Cemetery for More Than a Century

Millions of Bees Have Thrived Under a New York Cemetery for More Than a Century

Published by skeptic

A morning walk through East Lawn Cemetery in Ithaca, New York, uncovered an immense colony of some 5.5 million subterranean bees. The discovery, which a Cornell University research team published in April in the journal Apidologie, documents one of the largest aggregations of these insects ever recorded. The population, belonging to the species Andrena regularis, occupies an area of about 1.25 acres and is crucial for pollination of the region’s orchards, demonstrating that historic cemeteries can prove unsuspected refuges for urban biodiversity. The Genesis of the Discovery In the spring of 2022, Rachel Fordyce, then a laboratory technician in Cornell University’s entomology department, noticed an anomalous presence of insects during her usual walk to work. After collecting some specimens, she showed them to Bryan Danforth, an entomologist at the same university. Analysis revealed that they were Andrena regularis, commonly called the mining or miner bee. Unlike honey bees, this wild species has a solitary lifestyle and nests by digging tunnels in the ground. Historical records indicate that the insect has been present in the cemetery, …

Why Garlic Repels Mosquitoes and Keeps Them From Breeding

Why Garlic Repels Mosquitoes and Keeps Them From Breeding

Published by skeptic

Garlic has been considered a natural mosquito repellent for centuries. In popular culture, it is believed that its pungent smell repels these insects, which, in addition to causing sleepless nights, transmit diseases such as dengue fever or malaria. Now, this belief has a scientific explanation. A group of scientists from Yale University conducted a phytochemical analysis of 43 fruits and vegetables to identify natural compounds capable of interfering with the reproductive behavior of flying pest insects. To do so, the team used fruit flies, a species that often mates on food, as a model organism. Based on this behavior, the researchers hypothesized that some fruits and vegetables might contain substances capable of altering the reproductive processes of these insects. After exposing different specimens to the mashed food included in the experiment, they observed that none of the products had a significant aphrodisiac effect. However, they found that garlic completely blocked mating and egg laying. After this initial finding, the researchers sought to determine the source of the effect and focused their attention on the influence …