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 [...]

Quite possibly the most incredible video I’ve ever seen.

Courtesy of Beetles in the Bush, I bring you a video of parasitic was development from inside a caterpillar. I also bring you a great opportunity to discuss wasp biology. A lot of people think parasites are just these idle, simple degenerate creatures. Hell…there’s an entire talkorigins page chastising creationists for touting them as ‘degenerate [...]

I’m not too happy with Graham Lawton of New Scientist right now…

see more pwn and owned pictures I’m not even going to pretend that I read everything what pops up in popular science. My exposure to pop-sci articles consists largely of stumbling into the Iowa State University bookstore and thumbing through the science magazines, usually after I look at the pretty women in fashion magazines. I’m [...]

Evolution of Tympanic Hearing Structures in Parasitoid Diptera

Google books is a wonderful thing. You can find pretty much anything on there, at least in part. Quite a bit of the stuff you’ll find is missing some pages, but it’s definitely enough to learn from…or at least find a title of something you’re looking for or interested in. Today’s example: Insect Hearing . [...]

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.

Sericulture Biocontrol: Trichopria khandalus…fighting parasites with parasites

To fully understand the context of this article, you probably need to read this article over at my old blog about the signficance of tachinid fly pests to silk production. It’s a great peice of work about a parasitoid fly (a tachinid…this blog’s namesake) that’s been devastating the silk industry in India. So…you have a [...]

Last part of the Captian Planet episode

First thing, they owe the poor professor an apology. Why can’t this ever happen in real life?