Aphids have mutualistic viruses!

Aphids can be a pain in the ass to gardeners and farmers. Although they look pretty harmless, they’re to plants what mosquitoes are to people and more. They transmit some pretty serious diseases which cause millions of dollars in damage per year. They’re also famous for their fecundity-they’re parthenogenic and their daughters are actually born [...]

Cheshire’s Top 5 Entomology Videos

I post a lot of videos here on this blog because I find them a very useful and interesting teaching tool. Why explain the life cycle of a parasitoid wasp in two or three boring paragraphs when I can simply hop over to youtube and find a video explaining the same thing narrated by David [...]

Insects use tools, but do they self-medicate?

This is my first researchblogging post in awhile…so I figured I’d make it worthwhile by writing a really, really long post and actually deconstructing a scientific paper. I’ve seen the video of the tool using octopus…and it is neat. Here’s a science daily article, and here’s the video below: Using tools is something which is [...]

A very short intro to beekeeping

Bug girl has a post about all the different crops that are brought to you by insects. I figured I’d give you an inside scoop as to how crop pollination works, since I’ve dealt with bees before. One of the most common misconceptions about beekeeping is that they mostly produce honey. A lot of beekeepers [...]

Parasites make the ultimate sacrifice for their young

I heart parasites. They’re strange-and frightening. And surprising. You wouldn’t neccessarily think of parasites as having any maternal instincts. They generally try to shed eggs off as fast as they can so that perhaps a lucky few may get into a new host. Kind of puts a whole damper on the parent thing, right? Well, [...]