Bumblebees have become increasingly stressed by changes in climate over the past century, researchers examining museum specimens have found. Bees develop asymmetrical wings when they experience stress during development, and by examining a series of preserved specimens and their dates, the scientists found bees showed higher levels of wing asymmetry in hotter and wetter years. […]
Tag: moths
Moth Species with Nearly 10-Inch Wingspan Spotted in Washington State
A moth native to Asia has fluttered its wings on over to the United States and surprised agriculture officials in the process. The atlas moth, one of the largest moths in the world with a nearly 10-inch wingspan, was found outside a garage in Bellevue, Washington, in early July. After a University of Washington professor […]
North American bats decimated by fungal illness are now classified as “endangered”
In recent years, white-nose sickness has decimated northern long-ear bat populations. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that the flying creatures would be reclassified from threatened to endangered. This comes after a study found that by 2025, the devastating white-nose sickness will have affected 100 percent of northern long-eared bats. In 2012, white-nose […]
LED streetlights decimating moth numbers in England
“Eco-friendly” LED streetlights produce even worse light pollution for insects than the traditional sodium bulbs they are replacing, a study has found. The abundance of moth caterpillars in hedgerows by rural roads in England was 52% lower under LED lights and 41% lower under sodium lights when compared with nearby unlit areas. In grass margins, […]
The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them’
Ihave been fascinated by insects all my life. One of my earliest memories is of finding, at the age of five or six, some stripy yellow-and-black caterpillars feeding on weeds in the school playground. I put them in my empty lunchbox, and took them home. Eventually they transformed into handsome magenta and black moths. This […]
Halloween in the Amazon: baby bird dresses up like killer caterpillar
“Mama, I wanna be a toxic caterpillar,” says the little bird. “Okay,” mamma answers, “but first you gotta study your Batesian mimicry.” Meet the cinereous mourner (Laniocera hypopyrra), an ash-colored, Amazonian bird that looks rather hum-drum compared to many other birds found in the region (hence it’s name ‘cinereous’ which comes from the Latin meaning […]
Butterfly wings inspire cosmetics and bomb detectors
A tropical butterfly might not be the first place to look when seeking inspiration for the latest bomb sniffing technology for the US military, but the brightly coloured iridescent wings of a blue morpho provides one example of a promising branch of science – bio-inspiration. Other varied applications inspired by the South American butterfly’s shimmering […]
Moths migrate too, sometimes.
I started getting a bit bored with a lack of things to photograph a little while ago because it was blah and gray outside, so I started taking my headlamp and my macro lens outside at night to see what I could find. Insect friends! The only one I can identify is the last one, […]