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 [...]

Spider Stories

One of the cool things about being an entomology major is hearing stories about bugs. Generally, folks tend to notice spiders for whatever reason. I have no idea why people notice spiders over things like beetles or caterpillars. I think it’s because they like telling stories about encounters with large, potentially dangerous animals. Spiders have [...]

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 [...]

Mosquitoes and host range evolution on Galapagos

Let’s talk about something that really isn’t given top billing amongst many vector biologists for a minute. It’s not that the subject is taboo, it’s simply that most of the money that comes into researching vector borne disease comes in to fight diseases which afflict humans and animals that are important to humans. Most vector [...]

Vector-Born Diseases: An Introduction

Insects have a profound effect on human and animal health in many ways. Some of these, like the human botfly and the Tumbu fly cause their damage by feeding directly on people. Neither of these are particularly damaging, merely painful however some insects like Tunga penetrans infest people to the extent of actually needing medical [...]

Using Mosquitoes to ‘Smartbomb’ Breeding Grounds

So let’s continue the theme of the AWESOME papers I ran across this semester and didn’t get to blog about. I find every aspect of this paper to be simply cool. Controlling mosquitoes consists of two main methods, to put things as simply as possible. You can kill adults and larvae and you can destroy [...]

Do bats REALLY eat mosquitoes?

One of the debates a lot of entomologists have is whether bats actually have an impact on mosquito populations. Sure, we hear all the time that bats eat mosquitoes, but there are good reasons to doubt this. I’ve had this discussion with instructors before and there’s really no consensus. We know bats occasionally eat mosquitoes. [...]

More Sketchy Science: Do Tomatoes Really Eat Insects?

I’ve been seeing this story more and more around the news, exemplified by this Telegraph article…apparently, there are some researchers that discovered that tomatoes have hairs on them which trap and kill small insects. The Telegraph reports: New research shows that they capture and kill small insects with sticky hairs on their stems and then [...]

What can flies tell you about where you’re eating?

Going for coffee in Ohare International? Looks like Starbuck’s in Ohare international airport got closed down for a fly infestation. The article says that they didn’t maintain their distance far enough from the door…probably true. Dumpsters are notorious for breeding houseflies and I know more than a few restaurants who keep their dumpsters close to [...]

Periodical cicadas are out early in Staten Island!

Okay…this is seriously cool. I love periodical cicadas. They’re these almost evil looking bugs that emerge in masse about every other decade. They’re from the genus Magicicada and there are about 7 species here in North America. Depending on the species, they spend either 13 or 17 years underground, after which they come up and emerge [...]