An ant that is native to Eurasia is threatening to become the latest in a procession of species to invade Europe, as a result of inadvertent human introduction.

When it comes to deciding what harvester ant daughters will be when they grow up, mother queens hold considerable sway, according to a new study published online on February 14th in Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press. The researchers report evidence that eggs are predetermined to become workers or queens from the moment they are lain.

Shrews are tiny mammals that have been widely characterized as simple and primitive. This traditional view is challenged by a new study of the hunting methods of an aquatic member of the species, the water shrew. It reveals remarkably sophisticated methods for detecting prey that allow it to catch small fish and aquatic insects as readily in the dark as in daylight.

Natural flyers like birds, bats and insects outperform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and efficiency. University of Michigan engineers are studying these animals as a step toward designing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards.

When disease and insect problems in crops are visible to the naked eye, it may be too late to treat. That’s why Dr. Christian Nansen, Texas AgriLife Research entomologist, likes to take a closer look.

Splash! Ooch! Yum! And so another unsuspecting insect victim of Nepenthes alata (N. alata), commonly known as the carnivorous pitcher plant, falls victim to the digestive fluids at the bottom of the plant's famous cup-shaped leaf.

An unusual new species of whirligig beetle from India is being named Orectochilus orbisonorum in honor of the late rock ‘n’ roll legend Roy Orbison and his widow Barbara.

Ever since a forward-thinking trio of physicists identified the phenomenon known as self-organized criticality-a mechanism by which complexity arises in nature-scientists have been applying its concepts to everything from economics to avalanches.

Belly flop!!! You’ve seen them. Maybe you’ve done one and felt one — a stretched-out dive into the swimming pool in which your belly smacks the water hard. Then it’s splash, gurgle, sink! Now imagine belly flopping without sinking or hurting.

Among humans, making yourself smell more alluring than you really are is a fairly harmless, socially accepted habit that maintains a complete perfume industry.

Asteroid impacts or massive volcanic flows might have occurred around the time dinosaurs became extinct, but a new book argues that the mightiest creatures the world has ever known may have been brought down by a tiny, much less dramatic force – biting, disease-carrying insects.

When biologists set out to organize the family tree for the huge family of beetles, they ended up identifying previously unknown relationships for many of the beetle groups – somewhat like finding new cousins – and re-defining the major families, new research shows.