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 [...]

Preventing release of alarm pheromones increases homosexual pairing in bed bugs.

I really don’t think it’s possible to write a boring post on bed bugs. The way in which they reproduce is simply one of the most bizzarre…and brutal…methods of insemination in the animal kingdom. One of my favorite webcomics, Dinosaur Comics described their reproduction quite well: I also like writing about the biological basis behind [...]

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 [...]

Institutionalized rape-stabs

If you don’t read Dinosaur Comics, you really should. They mentioned a favorite subject of mine…Traumatic Insemination. They also mentioned the female counter-adaptation…the paragenetalia. As the comic says…this is where the male bedbug splooges when he stabs his girlfriend. Here are some pictures of the paragenetalia. As you can see, there’s quite a bit of [...]

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 [...]

Traumatic insemination and sexual conflict.

PZ Myers over at Pharyngula has a great picture of a spiny beetle phallus. It’s a wicked, mace-like thing that is used to hold onto the female during mating. It’s also a great example of how we as humans tend to be biased by our own experiences. You see, sex for us is incredibly fun [...]

Aphid Wasps From National Geographic

A really cool video about parasitoid wasps from National Geographic. You can see the larva developing on the inside of the aphid and the wasp emerging from it’s mummy.

What can borax tell us about the difficulty of desert survival for insects?

One of the things that insects use to their advantage is their size…they’re relatively small. This is great for them because it allows them to conquer basically everywhere, be super-strong relative to their own weight and get lifted to far away places on the wind. At their scale, even their flight is different from birds…to [...]