Here come the stinkbugs...With the cooler temperatures of fall the brown marmorated stinkbug begins a determined quest to find a warm place to spend the winter. Crowding around window screens and searching for other ways to get inside, homeowners in the United States will share their indoor living space this winter with millions of brown marmorated stinkbugs. In this video Gary Hevel, an entomolgist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, shares some information about these interesting creatures, as well as some advice about how to deal with those that inevitably gain entry to your home. [...more]
Flowers are usually associated with butterflies, but not the Dutchman’s Pipe (Aristolochia grandiflora). This deciduous vine, native to Brazil, has large flowers that emit an odor of decaying flesh, which attracts flies and beetles. [...more]
Now, for the first time ever, researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute are able to track the routes of these creatures by gluing tiny transmitters to the backs of individual bees. [...more]
What they observed was unique among all bird species: successful male caribs maintained and defended territories with nectar supplies that were two to five times greater than their daily needs and also isolated part of their crop for the exclusive feeding rights of visiting females. [...more]
Latinus 9333 is the Latin translation of the so-called Tacuinum sanitatis, a medieval handbook on wellness written in Arabic by the 11th-century physician ibn Butlan. It deals with factors influencing human health: from the air, the environment and food, to physical exercise and sexual activity. [...more]
In a series of ongoing experiments on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal, Kays and other researchers are using camera traps, radio collars and palm nuts with tracking transmitters attached to them to take a closer look at the nut-hoarding strategies of the agouti. [...more]
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]
Follow botanist Candy Feller of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center as she conducts field work on mangrove ecosystems at Carrie Bow Cay, a Smithsonian field research station in the Caribbean. [...more]
Subscribe 
