John E. Woodmansee Photo: Tobacco hornworm on a tomato plant that has been attacked by a parasitic Braconid wasp. The white capsules on its back are the pupal stage of the tiny wasp. Braconid larvae ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. On warm summer nights, green lacewings flutter around bright lanterns in backyards and at campsites. The insects, with their veil-like ...

On warm summer nights, green lacewings flutter around bright lanterns in backyards and at campsites. The insects, with their veil-like wings, are easily distracted from their natural preoccupation ...

While it might seem like an all-or-nothing process, insect metamorphosis likely emerged through gradual evolutionary changes. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

WORK on the biology of insects is becoming more exact than formerly. Attempts are more frequently made to control with precision some of the physical factors, particularly temperature and humidity ; ...

Like humans, insects go through puberty. The process is known as metamorphosis. Examples include caterpillars turning into butterflies and maggots turning into flies. But, it has been a long-standing ...

“For me, it was a road-to-Damascus type of moment,” James Truman, an entomologist, told me, recalling an encounter when he was sixteen. “My family had a summer place, a trailer, on the shores of Lake ...

Insects outnumber humans, and indeed almost all animals, in the number of organisms belonging to this class. Scientists say they make up over 950,000 insect species, with about 25,000 being bees, ...

Complete metamorphosis transforms caterpillars into butterflies, reshaping not only the bodies of the insects but their behaviors and identities. New work reveals in detail for the first time how ...

When a caterpillar hatches from its egg, it spends the first few weeks of its life eating as much as it physically can. Then, it hangs itself upside down from a leaf or stem and sheds its outer skin ...