It was, joked Matthew Oates, a “lunatic fringe” mission. Scouring the hedgerows for the caterpillar of a butterfly that has been extinct for more than half a century might not be most people’s idea of fun, but Oates, a National Trust naturalist, has spent 50 summers tracking down the most elusive British butterflies. I joined […]
Plan to prevent felines from killing much-prized native birds causes consternation. Call it the Kiwi cat wars. In the island nation said to harbour more cat owners per capita than any other country, a furore has broken out over a crusade to eradicate man’s second-best friend. The charge is being led by Gareth Morgan, a […]
The family Mymaridae includes more than 1,400 species of diminutive insects called fairyflies. They are not flies at all, but tiny wasps that deposit their eggs inside the eggs of other insects. Most of these parasitoids are found in tropical latitudes and the southern hemisphere, where they attack unborn offspring of true bugs, beetles, flies, […]