Tag Archive | "entomology"

Leafcutter ants—first in agiculture and antibiotics

Leafcutter ants—first in agiculture and antibiotics

Leafcutter Ants—an amazing species that has been employing agriculture and antibiotics for some 50 million years. [...more]

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Laboratory tests reveal precise way to measure vertical lift in bumblebees and other small insects and birds

Laboratory tests reveal precise way to measure vertical lift in bumblebees and other small insects and birds

Birds do it. Bees do it. And in a laboratory in northern California, scientists using bumblebees recently figured out the best way to measure it--vertical lift! [...more]

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For first time, scientists prove locusts use vision to place their legs when walking

For first time, scientists prove locusts use vision to place their legs when walking

In their laboratory, scientists from the University of Cambridge, the University of Southampton and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, observed as a number of adult locusts walked along a horizontal ladder. After covering the right or left eye of an insect, the scientists observed a significant increase in the error rate of rungs missed by the front leg on the side of the covered eye. [...more]

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Drugged spiders’ web spinning may hold keys to understanding animal behavior

Drugged spiders’ web spinning may hold keys to understanding animal behavior

“Spinning under the influence” is one way to describe recent activities in the Costa Rican laboratory of Smithsonian scientist William Eberhard. An entomologist at the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Institute, Eberhard recently carried out a series of experiments in which he observed the web-building behavior of dozens of spiders under the influence of drugs—specifically, a chemical injected into their bodies by parasitic wasps. [...more]

zoology Comments (2)

Prehistoric pollination: Sawfly mouthparts fit tubular channels of gymnosperm cones

Prehistoric pollination: Sawfly mouthparts fit tubular channels of gymnosperm cones

Smithsonian scientists and colleagues, however, have recently found evidence that gymnosperm plants shared an intricate pollination relationship with scorpionfly insects 62 million years before flowering plants appear in fossil records. [...more]

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Native bees prove resilient in competition with invasive African honey bees

Native bees prove resilient in competition with invasive African honey bees

The spread of Africanized honey bees across Central America has had a much smaller impact on native tropical bee species than scientists previously predicted... [...more]

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Meet our Scientists—Videos!

Caught on camera!

This short video of an ocelot was taken by Smithsonian scientists during a recent camera-trap survey of these animals in the Peruvian Amazon. [...more]
(Courtesy of Joseph Kolowski)

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