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Fireflies seen in a new light
Anyone who has ever seen fireflies do their luminescent mating dance on a summer’s night has wondered: How do they light up like that? Now, two researchers, Sara Lewis from Tufts University and Thomas...
View ArticleDaddy longlegs have a global reach
Huge numbers of arachnid and insect species remain unknown. Arachnologists like Gonzalo Giribet, toiling in relative obscurity, routinely identify new species – and their work is far from over....
View ArticleBeetle mania
Grain weevils alone cost the global economy about $35 billion, or a third of the world’s grain crop, every year. Various other beetle species damage dozens of crops including bamboo, palm trees,...
View ArticleE.O. Wilson, “Ant Man”
E. O. Wilson reflects on insect societies, human society, and the importance of biodiversity.
View ArticleHow ant (and human) societies might grow
Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus Edward O. Wilson remains fascinated with the highly organized societies of ants, bees, wasps, termites, and humans. He and Bert Holldobler, with whom he shared...
View ArticleDominican insects make natural art
It’s the brilliant colors and otherworldly shapes of the Dominican insects that catch the eye and draw a viewer in. It’s the alien forms magnified for all to see clearly that keeps one standing before...
View ArticleDominican insects, digitized
It’s the brilliant colors and otherworldly shapes of the Dominican insects that catch the eye and draw a viewer in. It’s the alien forms magnified for all to see clearly that keeps one standing before...
View ArticleBeetles’ past tells volumes about tropical evolution
Experts seeking to explain the amazing diversity of the tropical rain forest have typically done so in two ways, viewing forests as either “evolutionary cradles” that encourage the rapid development...
View ArticleSweeping for Thompson Island Hoppers
Education meets hands-on science as roughly 100 Harvard undergraduates fan out from beach to beach collecting insects for a new database of Harbor Island insect life.
View ArticleFruit fly bouts show gender-specific styles
Fighting like a girl or fighting like a boy is hardwired into fruit fly neurons, according to a study in the Nov. 19 Nature Neuroscience advance online publication by a research team from Harvard...
View ArticleThe pine beetle’s tale
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have discovered how beetles and bacteria form a symbiotic and mutualistic relationship — one that ultimately results in...
View ArticleE.O. Wilson And Will Wright: Ant Lovers Unite!
Ants make some people cringe — but for E. O. Wilson and Will Wright, they provide never-ending fascination. Biologist E. O. Wilson, professor emeritus at Harvard University, is a two-time...
View ArticleOrphan army ants join nearby colonies
Colonies of army ants, whose long columns and marauding habits are the stuff of natural-history legend, are usually antagonistic to each other, attacking soldiers from rival colonies in border...
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Tracking insects for work and play
Gary Alpert spends a lot of time bringing ants to Harvard. He travels the world to exotic locations, collecting specimens in efforts that draw praise from eminent ant biologist Edward O. Wilson. On...
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‘Search until you find a passion and go all out to excel in its expression’
Experience is a series of interviews with Harvard faculty covering the reasons they became teachers and scholars, and the personal journeys, missteps included, behind their professional success. First...
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Baltic amber specimens to be returned to Königsberg collection
Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente held up a piece of ancient amber, peering at the 40-million-year-old insect inside. Preserved whole after being trapped in sap that hardened over millennia, the...
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Genetics decide just how social the halictid bee can be
If you ask most people what they know about bees, you’re likely to get answers ranging from their favorite type of honey to stories about their worst stinging experiences. As it turns out, not all bees...
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A passion for nature, in a massive beetle collection
For those bitten by the beetle bug, Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) just got a bit more interesting. Already one of North America’s premier natural history collections, with 25 million...
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E.O. Wilson urges a melding of humanities, sciences
Like Raymond Carver’s blind man in “Cathedral,” the entomologist Edward O. Wilson inspires readers to regard the world through an entirely uncommon lens, never more so than in his latest book, “The...
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