There's an army of tiny workers buzzing around our fields, helping our food grow. But over the past few decades, populations of bees and other insect pollinators have dropped precipitously. This looming "insect apocalypse" has many causes, from climate change to habitat loss, and it is already fueling malnutrition in some parts of the world.

One of the biggest factors in bee declines is industrial agriculture. "Big Ag" — with its emphasis on vast fields planted with a single crop, its heavy reliance on powerful pesticides, and its intensive use of commercial bee colonies to pollinate crops like almonds — reduces pollinator populations by killing and disorienting the insects, reducing their natural food sources, and leaving colony bees overworked and, therefore, prone to parasites like Varroa.

But industrial agriculture isn't the only force driving down bee populations. In her new book, "Bitter Honey: Big Ag's Threat to Bees and the Fight to Save Them" (Princeton University Press, 2026), writer and environmental researcher Jennie Durant takes a look at one surprising factor that may be hurting bees — and how new laws could protect these pollinators.

It's midsummer in Columbia, Maryland, and Janet Crouch's garden is in full bloom. It began in spring, when deep purple violets and bright yellow ragwort blossomed in April and early May. By midsummer, pink and purple-hued garden phlox emerged alongside scarlet bee balm, eventually giving way to Turk's cap lilies with their curled-back orange petals that dangle gracefully like bells. Pollinators creep and flutter throughout the garden, including bees and hummingbirds, moths and butterflies — and a host of other birds and insects.

It wasn't always like this. The yard was barren back in 1999, when Janet and her husband, Jeff, first bought their home. A solitary maple stood in the front yard, and a few nonnative barberry bushes flanked the house. Each property had a private lawn, but without fences, the yards blended into a seamless green expanse that bordered a fifty-acre county park forest. Over the years, the couple transformed their lawn into a lush pollinator garden.

Over time, the Crouches' yard became a sanctuary, especially for Jeff, a practicing therapist. "He'd come home from work, drop his keys, and head outside to see who was around," Janet said. "He'd check to see what new flower had bloomed, what butterfly or moth was in the yard, or spot a bird we hadn't seen before. It's become a huge, huge part of our lives." Sometimes, kids would even walk by and take an interest in the garden, and Jeff would pick them a flower.

But everything changed in 2017. The Crouches received a letter from their homeowners association (HOA), which they paid into biannually, that threatened to undo all the work they had poured into their garden. HOAs govern housing communities, from condominium complexes to suburban neighborhoods, and set rules for property maintenance and aesthetic standards.

An elected board of homeowners typically runs the HOA and collects fees to cover shared expenses like landscaping, common areas, and building maintenance. The first letter seemed harmless. It simply asked them to practice seasonal maintenance: mow the grass, trim overgrown plants, and tidy up. The Crouches worked with Janet's sister Nancy — a native plant gardener and advocate — to craft a response, explaining that the lawn was already mowed, and they were gardening ecologically, which meant things might look more natural than the typical lawn-centric yard.

Weeks passed without a reply. Then, just before Thanksgiving, the Crouches received a cease-and-desist notice from the HOA's attorney. They were given ten days to tear out their garden and replace it with turf grass or face legal action. By this point, the Crouches had tended their garden for seventeen years, so the thought of tearing it all out was gut-wrenching.

Instead, they hired an attorney, who argued that they hadn't broken any HOA rules because the community guidelines didn't address the type of garden they'd installed. Despite their tight deadline to get an attorney and craft a response, the Crouches heard nothing from the HOA for six months, leaving them in anxious limbo. When the HOA finally responded, it ignited a legal battle that drew the attention of state legislators and eventually changed Maryland law.

The Crouches were stunned by the HOA's reply: The board didn't just want them to do maintenance, they wanted them to pull out everything, including their pollinator gardens in the front and back. The Crouches were baffled — they'd never had any complaints about their garden until now.

Established in the 1970s, HOAs have a significant footprint in the United States: They govern millions of residential acres and house more than seventy-five million Americans, representing nearly 30 percent of the country's housing stock. HOAs offer a range of benefits for house and condo owners: They enforce rules and community standards; maintain shared amenities like parks, gyms, pools, and clubhouses; and foster a sense of community. Homes in HOA-governed communities often sell at a premium as well.

But the appeal of an HOA home is far from universal. The perks come with restrictions that often stifle a homeowner's freedom to manage their property as they wish. HOA boards can turn authoritarian, sparking conflicts with residents or fueling tensions between neighbors. Sky-high fees can trap homeowners, making it difficult to sell the house or keep up with payments, sometimes leading to legal trouble. It's no surprise that homeowners have mixed feelings about HOAs: A 2024 survey reported that nearly 60 percent of members had a negative view of their HOA.

While overtly abusive HOAs have made the news, their role in stifling pollinator gardens is less understood. It comes down to aesthetics: Many HOAs mandate manicured lawns and turf grass and dismiss pollinator gardens or wildflower meadows as messy, unruly, or unattractive. They tend to favor nonnative ornamental plants over native species to maintain a uniform, tidy look. The ornamentals are often chosen to match a landscaping style, signal status (nothing says wealth like a perfect row of hydrangeas), or simply because they're easier for the HOA's landscaping company to maintain.

But that manicured perfection comes at a cost. For pollinators, the mowed lawn is a food desert. Regular mowing prevents weeds like dandelions and clover from flowering and providing food. Lawns also replace diverse landscapes filled with wildflowers, shrubs, and native plants — the forage that pollinators evolved with over thousands of years and rely on for survival.

Lawns don't just deprive pollinators of food; they also eliminate their homes. More than 70 percent of native bee species nest in the ground, but manicured turf prevents bees from finding the loose, sandy soil they need to burrow. Mowing and trimming tall grass also strips away shelter for insects like butterflies and beetles. In pursuit of neatness, homeowners typically remove brush piles, leaf litter, tall grasses, or fallen logs — spaces pollinators might use as nests. Neighborhoods dominated by lawns fragment forage corridors and force pollinators to travel greater distances to find food, making survival even harder.

The pursuit of a pristine lawn also involves an arsenal of chemicals. Many of the same bee-toxic substances used in industrial agriculture — like neonics, organophosphates, and carbamates — are also sprayed on home lawns, gardens, and HOA common spaces. These chemicals affect plants, seep into the soil, and disrupt ecosystems. Healthy soil supports wild plants, insects, and fungi that benefit pollinators, but chemical lawn treatments can kill those beneficial insects and degrade soil health.

The Crouches received not only a cease-and-desist notice from their HOA but also threatening letters warning them not to garden in ways that might attract birds, as if birds were some kind of nuisance.

They soon discovered the HOA's attacks were driven by a complaint from their next-door neighbor. Instead of complaining to the Crouches directly so they could find a solution, he'd gone straight to the HOA. In September 2018, the Crouches and their neighbor had a contentious hearing before the HOA board, where the HOA's attorney argued that landscaping should only be for decoration, not wildlife habitat.

Many more months went by without a resolution, and then in 2019, the legal fight began in earnest. The Crouches sued the HOA board in August, citing a lack of actual violations, and the HOA countersued in November.

For many, this kind of fight might have soured the gardening experience altogether. But for Janet and Jeff, it only reinforced what they already knew: Their garden was about more than just aesthetics. It was a space of purpose, resilience, and joy. This helped fuel them throughout their ordeal.

The months that followed were rife with anxiety. As the lawsuit progressed into 2020, people drove by and took photographs of their lawn and garden, which made Janet feel exposed and overwhelmed. But still, it didn't deter them. "I don't like bullies, and we were being bullied in our own home," Janet said. "I just kept thinking about all the people who didn't have the capacity or resources I did, like my sister, who could provide suggestions and be an ear. I was more determined than ever to keep going."

Janet cast a wide net for support, turning to social media, local newspapers — anyone who could offer ideas or help spread the word. She attended environmental events to share her story and discuss the legal battle with her HOA.

Then, in October 2019, things started to turn in their favor. They got a call from Mary Catherine Cochran, the legislative assistant to their state representative, Terri Hill. Mary Catherine had an idea: Would Janet be interested in helping craft a law to stop HOAs from requiring turf grass lawns? By January of 2020, just months before the pandemic shut everything down, Nancy and several environmental groups joined Janet in Annapolis to provide testimony. The pandemic delayed their progress, but the bill eventually moved through both houses with overwhelming support — only two people voted against it.

On October 1, 2021, Maryland House Bill 332 was passed into law. Thanks to the bill, Maryland HOAs can no longer prohibit low impact landscaping, including pollinator gardens, rain gardens, and other environmentally beneficial practices. It was a massive victory for native plant and pollinator advocates throughout the state, and homeowners who hope to follow in the Crouches' footsteps.

The Maryland law set a precedent for other states as well: Maine passed a similar law in 2023 to create habitat for wildlife and pollinators by protecting low-impact landscaping. Illinois enacted the Garden Act in 2022 to support local gardens, followed by a Homeowners Native Landscaping Act in 2024 to allow gardeners in HOAs to plant native gardens.

The Maryland law's passage didn't happen in time to help the Crouches, who chose to settle with the HOA in December of 2020 rather than take the case to trial. Fortunately, the only concession they had to make — in addition to a jaw-dropping $60,000 in attorney's fees — was to keep their garden within a six-foot setback from the front property line and three feet from the neighbor's, the latter of which they'd already done.

Now that Janet and Jeff's battle is over, they can enjoy their yard and extend their efforts beyond their neighborhood. But their story highlights a simple truth: Individual actions can sometimes drive systemic change.

As the Crouches have shown, anyone, whether they have a sprawling yard, a small patch of land, or just a balcony, can take steps to support pollinators. A single garden might feel insignificant but small changes can rewrite laws, shift local norms, and transform ecosystems. If we rethink what a garden can be, we open the door to new possibilities — not just for pollinators, but for our landscapes and our connection to the natural world.

Insects are disappearing, and they are leaving global food security gaps in their wake. Over the past three decades, bugs have been declining at an alarming rate across the globe — up to 1% per year, by some estimates. The drop has been so intense that some scientists have dubbed it an "insect apocalypse."

Because many insects pollinate crops, lower insect abundance has hurt everything from ecosystem health to crop yields. But historically, such consequences have been tough for scientists to measure directly. Now, in a new paper published May 6 in the journal Nature, researchers have quantified the impact of insect pollinator declines on human health for the first time.

The scientists studied the relationships between wild pollinator populations, crop yields and human diet in 10 Nepalese farming villages over one year. Most of the food eaten in these settlements is grown on-site. The team conducted pollinator surveys every two weeks to determine which bugs (and how many of them) were visiting which crops, and then correlated this data with instances of malnutrition.

The finding was stark: Insect pollinators were responsible for an estimated 44% of the villagers' farming income and over 20% of their intake of some essential nutrients, including vitamin A, vitamin E and folate. As fewer and less-diverse pollinators visited the crops, people's income and dietary health declined.

"Over half of the children in our study were too short for their age, which is largely driven by poor diets that depend upon insect pollinated vegetables, legumes and fruits," study co-author Naomi Saville, a researcher at the University College London Institute for Global Health and a study co-author, said in a statement.

When Saville's team extrapolated their data into a future with even fewer pollinators, the impacts were more pronounced. If no agricultural practices changed, they predicted a 7% loss of vitamin A and folate intake for the villagers by 2030. Deficiencies in these nutrients can lead to vision loss and birth defects.

Although the researchers only studied farming communities in Nepal, the new results offer a glimpse into the hidden burden of pollinator loss worldwide. Roughly 2 billion people rely primarily on smallholder farming like the villages in the study. About three-quarters of global crops need insect pollination to thrive, and a few crops ‪—‬ like coffee, almonds and chocolate ‪—‬ are totally reliant on pollinating insects to survive. If current trends continue, it could jeopardize many farmers' ability to grow food on a meaningful scale, the study authors said.

But the new study also found ways to counteract this downward spiral. According to the team's models, simple interventions ‪— like planting native wildflowers near farms, keeping wild bees and reducing pesticide usage ‪— can help boost pollinator numbers. Such measures could increase farming income above current levels by up to 30% and boost vitamin A and folate intake by 5% and 9%, respectively.

"Biodiversity is not a luxury," study co-author Thomas Timberlake, an ecologist at the University of York in England, said in a statement. "It is fundamental to our health, nutrition and livelihoods."

A rare ant species in Japan has no males or workers ‪—‬ only queens, scientists have found. These ant queens live parasitically in the nests of another ant species and reproduce asexually to create clone queens to take over other nests.

The parasitic ant, Temnothorax kinomurai, is the "first known species with only queens," said Jürgen Heinze, a biologist at the University of Regensburg in Germany, and co-author of a new study describing the findings.

Most ants live in regimented, closely related societies in which queens retain sperm cells from when they mated before founding the colony. They use these sperm cells selectively to either lay fertilized eggs that will become female workers or queens, or unfertilized eggs that develop as short-lived males.

But there are also parasitic queens that infiltrate the colonies of other species and take them over, often getting the workers to serve them and rear their offspring until their own brood has taken over.

Keiko Hamaguchi, a biologist at the Kansai Research Center in Kyoto, Japan, and her colleagues have been investigating T. kinomurai, which has been found in only nine locations in Japan. The ant was suspected to operate differently and produce just queens without any workers or males, but it wasn't known for sure.

Young T. kinomurai queens invade the nests of a related species, Temnothorax makora, stinging the host queen and the most aggressive workers that try to stop the coup. If the takeover works, the surviving workers raise the alien queen's young.

"T. kinomurai needs the host workers for foraging and brood care and cannot produce offspring without them," Heinze told Live Science via email.

To work out what happens, Hamaguchi's team collected six colonies run by T. kinomurai queens and kept them in nest boxes in the lab. From these colonies, they reared 43 offspring, none of which were males, according to examination of the genitals, or workers, which would be smaller. All were queens.

When presented with new potential host T. makora colonies, seven of the 43 offspring, which had never mated, succeeded in coup attempts. This is in line with the typical high failure rate of the risky business of founding a parasitic colony. The seven queens produced a total of 57 offspring, which were also all queens. The findings were published Feb. 23 in the journal Current Biology.

Queens of some ant species can clone themselves through asexual reproduction, known as parthenogenesis. Other ants exploit social parasitism, hijacking the workforce of unrelated colonies to rear their own offspring.

"Yet, until now, no species had been shown to merge both strategies, despite the intuitive evolutionary logic behind such a combination," Jonathan Romiguier, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Montpellier in France who wasn't involved in the work, told Live Science via email.

"Given that there are over 15,000 ant species out there, this is quite unusual," added Daniel Kronauer, a biologist at The Rockefeller University in New York who wasn't involved in the study.

The benefits of sexual and asexual reproduction are normally finely balanced, he said. Asexual reproduction can allow an organism to maximize its own genetic contributions to the next generation by producing genetically identical daughters, and asexual species can often outcompete their sexual counterparts because they don't have to invest energy and resources into finding mates and producing males.

But sexual reproduction produces genetically diverse workers, which can be beneficial for an ant colony when it comes to pathogen defense and division of labor.

However, given that T. kinomurai queens don't produce workers anymore, those benefits have disappeared, Kronauer told Live Science. "This could shift the balance in favor of asexual reproduction and, ultimately, the loss of males," he said.

The spotted lanternfly has spread across the United States with unrelenting speed — and now we have a clue as to why: living in cities seems to have helped these invasive insects evolve to be more resistant to stresses.

"Cities may act as evolutionary incubators that help an invasive species to better deal with pressures like heat and pesticides, which then helps them to better adapt to new environments," lead author Fallon (Fang) Meng, a biologist at New York University, told Live Science.

The spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula) is a planthopper that uses its long mouthparts to suck sap from plants. The insect is native to China, but has spread through South Korea, Japan and to the U.S., where it was first detected in Pennsylvania in 2014, but is now seen in 19 states in the eastern U.S.

Its preferred host plant is the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima), which is also an invasive species — but it is able to sup on a wide range of plants, including economically valuable ones like grapevines, hops, maples, fruit trees and hardwood trees.

Spotted lanternflies can weaken plants, and as they feed, they also excrete a sticky, sugary fluid that promotes the growth of sooty mold. What's more, when bees decide to forage on this sugary waste rather than visiting flowers it gives the honey they produce a smoky aroma and a lingering aftertaste, although this honey is still safe to eat.

All this adds up to a potentially huge financial impact. For example, a 2019 study estimated that in Pennsylvania alone, if uncontrolled, the insect's effects could cost $324 million annually.

Lanternfly genetics

To get a better handle on how the lanternflies have adapted so well to life in the United States, researchers sequenced the genomes of lanternflies from urban and rural areas in Shanghai, China, and from New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey. The study was published Wednesday (Feb. 4) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

In the lanternfly populations in China, they found clear genetic differences between those in the urban and rural areas. "Even though they're just 30 kilometers [19 miles] away, they have very strong population differentiation," Meng said.

This is probably because although lanternflies can fly, they need to feed continuously, so they stick close to the host trees on which they depend. This means it is easy for populations to stay separate, Meng added.

This separation means the urban lanternflies in Shanghai evolved genetic tolerance to stresses that the rural ones didn't, adapting them to the hotter conditions of cities, and boosting their ability to detoxify and metabolize toxins and pesticides.

In the U.S., however, the lanternflies were genetically similar across all locations, even though some were sourced from locations 124 miles (200 kilometers) apart. The same genes that evolved for city living were further adapted in U.S. populations, according to the study.

Using demographic modeling on the genomic data to reconstruct the recent history of the lanternflies, researchers revealed three genetic bottlenecks, when populations were established from a limited pool of insects. One was more than 170 years ago, when Shanghai underwent rapid urbanization. The second aligned with when lanternflies moved from China to South Korea in 2004, and the third was in 2014 when the insects arrived in Pennsylvania — probably hitchhiking on goods shipped from overseas.

Adapting to China's cities may have primed the lanternfly to tolerate other hot, polluted environments, Meng said. "We should study invasive species and urbanization as interconnected parts of a whole. Those two major aspects are too often studied in isolation, but their effects actually can compound in synergistic and surprising ways."

The ability to handle a wider range of toxins might be helping spotted lanternflies spread in the U.S., said Zach Ladin, an ecologist at the University of Delaware, who wasn't involved in the study.

The relatively high densities of tree of heaven give spotted lanternflies a foothold in many cities, he told Live Science, "but some of those genes that they found that are related to overcoming toxic chemical exposure could really help them switch hosts and take advantage of other plants."

Ladin added that the new genetic information could help people slow or contain the spread of spotted lanternflies. "From a chemical control perspective, now we have some genes to target which could be important in making sure we're not just driving resistance to certain chemicals," he said.

Imagine driving down a highway in the summer. The windows are down, the music is loud, and the wind is whipping through your hair. Now picture your car's windshield. You might expect to see a handful of splats from unfortunate bugs. But 30 years ago, there would have been significantly more buggy skid marks plastered on the front of your vehicle.

"When I was a kid, you could go out driving in the summer, and you would come home and your car windshield was covered in bugs," said Cheryl Schultz, an ecologist at Washington State University. "Now, you can go across many areas at the same time of year and your windshield is clean."

This phenomenon, called the "windshield test," is indicative of a larger, very worrying trend: Insects, particularly the flying ones that pollinate many crops, are in steep decline. This nosedive is disrupting ecosystems around the world, and could jeopardize the global food supply. But tracking the decrease of insect populations over the past three decades has proved tricky — and stopping the decline may be even harder.

However, researchers are working quickly to find ways to stem the tide and even reverse the trend. Key to that is a collaborative approach that includes local and federal conservation efforts, new pollinator habitats, and a reduction in pesticide use.

The age of the "insect apocalypse"

Both the total number of insects and the number of insect species have been declining for decades in pretty much every place scientists have looked — prompting researchers to dub it "the insect apocalypse." Global bee biodiversity is down 25% compared with pre-1995 numbers, according to research published in 2021. A sweeping 2025 study showed that butterfly abundance across the U.S. fell by 22% over the past two decades. And a study in Germany found a whopping 76% loss of flying insects in some of the country's forested areas over 27 years.

"It's a worrisome thing," Scott Black, executive director of the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, told Live Science.

By and large, experts know why insects are becoming scarcer. The first factor is climate change. As the planet warms, key host plants for insects start to bloom earlier each year. This can cause a mismatch in life cycles for certain species, putting many newly hatched or metamorphosed bugs out of sync with their food sources. And extreme heat, reduced snowpack, severe storms and megadroughts can chip away at previously robust insect numbers. Many populations simply can't keep up. Meanwhile, milder winters can benefit a few adaptable pest species, which may outcompete sensitive insects and wreak ecological and agricultural havoc in some regions.

The second driver is habitat loss — the inexorable creep of urbanization, deforestation and sterile suburban lawns, which host fewer and less-diverse ranges of insects. As humans encroach on insect habitats, insects like ground-dwelling bees are left without space to build nests, rear young and overwinter, leading to population declines.

Finally, there are pesticides. For instance, neonicotinoids (often labeled as the active ingredients acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam), have been identified as a major threat to wild bees, and they're still used in the U.S. and some other industrialized countries, including parts of Canada and Australia. Other pesticides, like the common weed killer glyphosate, have been shown to weaken bees' ability to regulate hive temperature, leaving them vulnerable to plunging winter temperatures.

"It's really extremely rapid environmental changes that we're seeing," Roel van Klink, a researcher at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, told Live Science. "Those species that were adapted to the conditions that we had maybe 50 or 100 years ago are not adapted to the conditions now anymore. And so they go down."

Collecting data on the scale and scope of these declines has been challenging, however. For one thing, some insects are easier to find than others. Flying insects like beetles and dragonflies are much more mobile, and therefore easier to spot, than earthbound bugs like earwigs and ants. Likewise, charismatic insects like bees and butterflies tend to have more historical records of their numbers and are usually easier to identify.

But there's another reason these insects' declines have gotten more scientific attention: They are extremely important for global food security.

The importance of diverse pollinators

Disappearing insects are bad news for the global food system. As the world's population continues to grow, the stress that insect declines — and dropping pollinator numbers, in particular — put on the food system could lead to an agricultural economic collapse, as well as increased food scarcity.

"Preventing further declines is no longer enough," Francesca Mancini, an ecological modeler at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, told Live Science. "We need to restore insect biodiversity to past levels."

In the U.K. alone, insect pollinators provide an estimated $1 billion in economic value each year, Mancini said. For the U.S., it's in the ballpark of $34 billion.

Worldwide, three-quarters of the crops we eat — and just over one-third of total crop yields — depend on pollination by insects. The degree to which these crops rely on pollinators falls along a spectrum. Some, like soybeans, would be much less productive without insect pollination. Others would cease to exist. "Coffee and chocolate are actually 100% dependent on pollination by insects," van Klink said.

A lot of that pollination work is done by managed European honeybees (Apis mellifera), which beekeepers around the world diligently maintain, transport and unleash upon fields across the globe each year. But to flourish, many crops need more than just honeybees.

For example, fruits native to North America, like blueberries and tomatoes (which is technically a fruit), are more effectively pollinated by native bumblebees, such as Bombus fraternus. That's because bumblebees can perform what's known as "buzz pollination," where they land on a flower and vibrate rapidly to release even the most deeply held pollen grains. Cacao trees (Theobroma cacao) — the source of the cocoa beans used to make chocolate — are entirely pollinated by chocolate midges. And cotton yields would plummet by up to 50% without butterfly pollinators.

Some staple crops, like soybeans, can make it without insects. However, research has shown that soybean fields visited by pollinators have significantly higher yields.

Then, there are crops like alfalfa (Medicago sativa). This legume isn't widely consumed by humans, but it is a staple for livestock — particularly dairy and beef cattle. Like blueberries and tomatoes, alfalfa depends on insect pollinators to thrive. However, honeybees will only pollinate it reluctantly; given the choice, they'd rather buzz around plants with flowers that are easier for them to access. But wild bees, particularly the alfalfa leaf-cutting bee (Megachile rotundata), are extremely effective alfalfa pollinators.

A recent study found that alfalfa fields visited by a mix of honeybees, wild bees and other pollinators, like wasps and butterflies, produced significantly more and larger seeds than fields visited by honeybees alone. This higher yield translates to more food for cattle — and thus more milk, cheeseburgers and steaks for us.

Glimmers of hope

Of course, restoring insect abundance and biodiversity is no easy task, especially in the face of an all-encompassing threat like global climate change. Experts told Live Science that coordinated federal regulations aimed at slowing climate change, reducing industrial pesticide use, and preventing the destruction of wild spaces are essential for protecting insects. But there are also actions people can take at the local and personal level that can have a positive impact.

Although the current U.S. administration's cuts to federal science programs and green energy have dealt a harsh blow to progress on these fronts, many experts still see reasons for optimism.

"As much as the overall picture is overwhelming, there's lots of places for hope," Schultz told Live Science. In a detailed report about the state of U.S. butterflies written this year in collaboration with the Xerces Society, Schultz highlighted a number of "success stories" — species that bucked the trend and increased in abundance thanks to years of focused work at both the federal and local levels.

Chief among them is the Fender's blue (Icaricia icarioides fenderi), a tiny azure butterfly native to Oregon. In 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as endangered. In 2023, it became the second-ever insect to be downlisted to "threatened."

And the benefits of conservation efforts for one species had knock-on effects: Of the 342 butterfly species and subspecies analyzed in the report, 65 others had increased in number, and most were not on the endangered species list. This suggests that protections to conserve one insect could benefit others as well.

Increasing healthy habitat

One of the best ways to help butterflies and other pollinators is to create more habitat for them. Unlike grizzly bears or elk, these insects don't need large stretches of unbroken wilderness. Even something as small as a backyard butterfly garden or a flower-filled window box can go a long way, Wendy Leuenberger, an ecologist at Michigan State University, told Live Science.

One study in the Pacific Northwest found that converting a 5,400-square-foot (500 square meter) plot of land — roughly half the size of the average American lawn — into an insect-friendly habitat full of native or wild plants can increase pollinator species' richness and abundance by about 90%. However, that effect was fairly localized, and it dissipated when these patches were placed in plots of more than 150,000 square meters (37 acres) — about the size of seven or eight blocks in Chicago.

Some pollinators, like hoverflies (Syrphidae spp.) and certain types of bees, can cover miles in search of flowering plants. But others, including many butterflies, tend to stay closer to home — within a 650-foot 200 meter radius for more delicate species. This suggests that plots of native or wild flora are most effective at bolstering our food supply when interspersed within larger agricultural fields.

"I would say it's the closer, the better for your crops," Andy Grinstead, a conservation manager at Pollinator Partnership, told Live Science.

In agricultural communities, experts like Grinstead recommend planting "buffer strips" of native vegetation near (or, if possible, in between) crops. He also suggests planting hedgerows of woody, flowering plants around fields to act as both pollinator habitat and wind protection. But you don't have to be a farmer to support pollinators. Folks living within a few miles of farms can plant "bee lawns," which are filled with low-growing flowering plants like clover, instead of pure turfgrass.

And for those without yards, growing micro-plots of native wildflowers — even just a pot on a rooftop or balcony or hanging from a window — can create green "stepping stones" for bees, hoverflies, migratory butterflies and beetles passing through urban areas.

"Pollinator-friendly practices are valuable across all landscapes," Grinstead said. "It takes very little space to actually make an impact."

Reducing pesticide use on an industrial scale can also benefit pollinators, Black said.

One way to do this is to adopt an integrated pest management framework. This can mean rotating crops to keep soil healthy; accurately identifying pests before applying pesticides; and carefully spraying in targeted areas (away from blooms) when the wind is low to prevent the pesticides from drifting into the surrounding environment.

But even home gardeners can help reduce pesticides by replacing lawns or ornamental plants with hardier native species, hand-weeding rather than blanket-spraying small plots, and using screens or draining standing water instead of spraying for pests like mosquitoes, Black said. Taken together, these actions can help create havens where pollinators can thrive.

Taking action

Crucially, scientists are still researching the full scope of global insect declines, especially for species that have been historically understudied. This means we need field research to estimate insect numbers, Black said.

Community pollinator counts, whether as part of a formal program or through apps like iNaturalist, are also essential, Leuenberger told Live Science. These data help experts pinpoint which species are most vulnerable and which conservation efforts are most effective.

But with the future of the global food system hanging in the balance, it's important to try to restore these numbers now — not wait till researchers have published comprehensive data on how and where insect numbers are plummeting, Black said. "We don't want to wait until we have everything tucked into a perfect paper before we take action," he said. "We know how to take action."

Invading parasitic ant queens trick ant workers from different colonies into killing and dismembering their own mother, so the invader can step in and take the throne, according to a new study.

The parasite appears to infiltrate the colony then sprays the reigning queen with formic acid.

"The queen's odour is wiped out by the formic acid, and in an instant the individual whom workers most urgently protect turns into a vicious menace. For the host queen and for the workers alike, it is nothing but a nightmare," study lead author Keizo Takasuka, a biologist at Kyushu University in Japan, told Live Science in an email.

Some species of ants, such as Lasius orientalis and Lasius umbratus, operate as social parasites. Rather than starting their own colony from scratch, the queens from these species infiltrate the colonies of other species, such as Lasius flavus and Lasius japonicus, and take them over, making the workers serve them instead.

Scientists already knew that these invading queens use stolen scents to disguise themselves as a member of the colony. This works because ant vision is limited and the nest is dark, so workers rely heavily on odors for recognition and decision-making.

But they were still unsure how the invader convinced the worker daughters to kill their own mother. To investigate, Takasuka and his colleagues studied the ants' behavior in the lab. The findings were published Monday (Nov. 17) in the journal Current Biology.

First, they put an invading queen with host workers and cocoons to make sure she acquired the right scent, Takasuka said.

This scent acquisition mimics what would happen in the wild, Daniel Kronauer at the Rockefeller University in New York, who wasn't involved in the study, told Live Science. "You sometimes see these queens outside of the colonies of host species and they chew on host workers and groom themselves with the chemicals of the host workers, so they can acquire a kind of invisibility," he said.

Next, the researchers introduced an L. orientalis queen into an L. flavus nest, and an L. umbratus queen into an L. japonicus nest.

The invading queens were largely accepted by the workers and made their way towards the host queens.

Each parasite queen sprayed the host queen with abdominal fluid then quickly retreated as the agitated workers turned on their own queen and attacked her. If the host queen survived the onslaught, the parasite queen returned to spray her again, until eventually the host queen was killed and dismembered by her own daughters.

The ants can spray formic acid, which has a sharp, vinegar-like smell, when threatened — and this is what Takasuka thinks they are spraying at the host queen.

"When they get attacked, ants often spray the intruder with formic acid as a way of alerting other ants in the colony," Kronauer said. "So, it makes a lot of sense that this would be repurposed by the parasite queen. Basically, she's telling them that the queen is an intruder by spraying her with formic acid, and that's what triggers the attack."

When the situation has calmed down, the parasitic queen begins laying eggs of her own and the workers take care of her and her offspring. At this point, the workers are constantly crawling over her, and she blends into the general smell of the colony, Kronauer said, "so, the parasite queen doesn't have to keep killing workers and chewing on them."

Eventually the old workers die out and the parasite queen has a brood that is all her offspring.

In some other parasitic ant species, the invader queen kills the incumbent herself. Matricide, or offspring killing their mother, is unusual in nature, and when it does happen it tends to be for the benefit of the species, like a hump earwig (Anechura harmandi) mother offering herself up as food for her nymphs, or wasps killing their queen in an effort to boost the diversity within the colony.

But in the case of these ants, only the parasite species profits. "It's a manipulative behavior that is selfish from the perspective of the social parasite. And what the resident workers do is a very dumb, non-adaptive thing to do," Kronauer said.

When a caterpillar hatches from its egg, it spends the first few weeks of its life eating as much as it physically can. Then, it hangs itself upside down from a leaf or stem and sheds its outer skin to reveal its chrysalis. Inside, the caterpillar's body breaks down, and specialized cells called imaginal discs begin to form the framework of the butterfly that will emerge. Within weeks, it will be ready to mate and start the process all over again.

The process of metamorphosis is so strange, it almost seems like science fiction. So how did such a peculiar life cycle evolve in the first place?

The answer traces back about 480 million years ago, to the very first insects on Earth. These bugs didn't undergo major metamorphic changes throughout their lives, fossil evidence suggests; they simply emerged from their eggs as smaller versions of their adult selves. As they aged, they molted their skin to grow larger and larger. Today, there are still some insects that don't undergo metamorphosis, such as silverfish (Lepisma saccharinum) and jumping bristletails (in the order Archaeognatha).

But according to James Truman, a biologist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington, something changed about 400 million years ago. Small genetic mutations caused the adult and juvenile phases of insects to look different — a phenomenon called incomplete metamorphosis. Rather than hatching as tiny versions of their adult selves, insects that undergo incomplete metamorphosis — called hemimetabolous insects — start their lives in what's called the nymph phase.

Nymphs still roughly resemble their adult relatives, but they also have little pads where wings will grow. Each time the nymph molts, the wing pads develop further, until their final molt reveals functional adult wings. Those wings are what made incomplete metamorphosis such a big evolutionary step forward for insects — wings are so delicate that it would be difficult to hatch with fully functional wings, so it was easier for wings to develop with the insects throughout their lives.

After roughly another 50 million years, Truman said, more genetic mutations changed the early life stages of insects even further. These genetic shifts created holometabolous insects, which are insects that undergo complete metamorphosis. Rather than hatching out of their eggs as nymphs, these insects started to emerge as larvae — worm-like creatures that look nothing like their parents.

"The identity of the parents is [in] no way reflected in the identity of the young. There's just no resemblance at all," Truman told Live Science. "The [Latin] term for 'larva' means 'mask,' and indeed, the larval stage masks the adult stage."

Evolutionary benefits

Today, there are about 5.5 million insect species on Earth, and more than 80% of them undergo complete metamorphosis. Metamorphosis has likely been such a success because it provides insects with many evolutionary advantages, the first of which was flight. Hemimetabolous insects were the first animals to develop functional wings, and they took to the skies far before any vertebrates did.

"For 100 million years, the insects had the air as their playground," Truman said. "It's this ability that really allowed insects to take over."

Complete metamorphosis has even more advantages. Because the larval and adult life stages are so different, juveniles and adults can specialize in different things; generally, larvae spend most of their time eating, whereas adult insects are more concerned with reproducing. In some cases, the adults of some species, such as luna moths (Actias luna), don't even have functional mouths; after metamorphosis, they spend the rest of their short lives finding a mate and never eat again.

Metamorphosis also brings benefits related to resource competition, Truman said, because adults and larvae can eat entirely different diets. In many species, larvae often feed on short-lasting resources, such as carcasses and worms, whereas adults feed on longer-lasting resources, such as nectar. This means the larvae and young aren't competing for the same food, so greater numbers of each age group can survive.

Metamorphosis mysteries

While the evolutionary advantages of complete metamorphosis are clear, the details of how this complex process first evolved remain murky.

"There are two main schools," Xavier Bellés Ros, an ad honorem researcher at the Spanish National Research Council, told Live Science in an email.

One idea, supported by Bellés Ros, proposes that complete metamorphosis evolved as the nymph stage split into the larval and pupal phases. The opposing camp, supported by researchers including Truman, argues that the larval stage originated from an embryonic phase known as the pronymph, the brief phase when an insect first begins to emerge from its egg.

Scientists do know some of the key genes that control the larval, pupal and adult stages of insects with complete metamorphosis. "Each stage seems to be controlled by a master regulatory gene," Truman said. What remains unclear is how those same genes function in simpler insects that develop without such drastic transformations.

Still, researchers say the enduring mysteries of metamorphosis are part of its appeal.

"After 30 years of working with it (and I'm still working), I've only unraveled a few mysteries," Bellés Ros said. "There's still a lot of work to be done, work that should prove fascinating for future generations of entomologists."

Evolution quiz: Can you naturally select the correct answers?

If you love figs, you may have heard some unsettling lore about them: that every fig hides a wasp, because these insects need to crawl inside and die in order for the fruit to grow. But are there really wasps in the figs we eat, or is this just a myth?

The answer is somewhere in between. Wasps do play an essential role in the life cycle of many types of fig trees, but most figs from the supermarket are likely bug-free.

Fig wasps are a group of hundreds of species of small insects that spend much of their life inside figs. They're about the size of a fruit fly, and they're not the same type of wasps that sting humans. Figs and fig wasps have evolved alongside each other for millions of years, leading to a special relationship called mutualism, or a link between two species that benefits both of them.

"Fig trees and fig wasps are a great example of a mutualism," Charlotte Jandér, a plant ecology and evolution researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, told Live Science in an email. "Other examples of mutualisms include trees and the mycorrhizal fungi that help the trees take up nutrients, animals and their gut microbes, and flowering plants and pollinators in general."

In the case of figs and fig wasps, the fruit gets pollinated and the wasp is able to reproduce, leading to a mutualism. But this relationship is rather complex.

What we think of as the fig "fruit" is actually a hollow structure called a syconium filled with tiny flowers. Generally, when a female fig wasp crawls inside a synconium from a female fig tree, she spreads pollen, which the plant needs in order to produce seeds and ripen. The hole that the wasp crawls in is very small, and she may lose her wings and antenna in the process and can even die inside the fig.

So, it's possible that some types of figs may have dead fig wasps inside them.

But that doesn't necessarily mean the figs we eat have wasps inside. Not all types of figs require pollination in order to ripen. Humans eat the fig species Ficus carica, which has several cultivars that are parthenocarpic, meaning they can produce ripe fruit without pollination — and therefore, without fig wasps.

"Most figs we eat in the US have no wasps inside them," Carlos Machado, a biology professor at the University of Maryland, told Live Science in an email.

Mission figs and Brown Turkey figs are two commonly-sold fig cultivars that don't require wasp pollination to ripen and produce seeds, Jandér said. This doesn't apply to all figs that humans eat, though; Smyrna figs, Calimyrna figs, and wild figs around the Mediterranean all rely on wasps for pollination.

"Most wild figs do require pollination to produce ripe fruit," Machado explained. That means these types of figs could have a tiny wasp inside them — but it's still not a guarantee.

Related: How do plants with seedless fruit reproduce?

Just because a wasp was once in the fig, doesn't mean it's still in there by the time the fig is eaten. The synconia of Ficus carcia have a large enough opening that the fig wasp is sometimes able to leave the structure after entering. If the wasp does die inside, her body generally gets squished and decomposes from the process of the fig maturing, Jandér said.

"Even if there were remnants of the original pollinator there you probably would not see them," Jandér explained. Any crunchy texture is more likely from the plant's seeds, not wasp remains.

The fig wasp life cycle

Although wasps sometimes die inside figs, these fruits are actually an essential part of their reproduction cycle. Just as most types of figs need wasp pollination to make new fruit, fig wasps couldn't reproduce without the help of fig trees.

When a female wasp crawls into a fig syconium from a female tree — the type of figs we eat — she only pollinates it, because the flowers inside are too long for her to lay her eggs on. But if she ventures into a synconium from a male tree — which are called caprifigs and generally not eaten by humans — she'll start to lay her eggs.

There, the eggs hatch and develop from larvae into young wasps, which mate while still inside the fruit. Generally, the male wasps die inside the caprifig after mating, though they do help chew a tunnel that allows the female wasps to escape, sometimes even offering themselves as bait for the predatory ants that may be waiting outside. Eventually, the fertilized female wasps burst out in search of a new fig to lay their eggs in, carrying pollen from the old caprifig with them.

There are over 850 species of fig trees, and each one can only be pollinated by a specific species of fig wasp, Jandér said. The relationship between these plants and animals evolved millions of years ago, and both Machado and Jandér pointed to its importance. As a keystone species — an organism that many other plants or animals in the ecosystem rely on to survive — fig trees and their relationship with wasps continue to be of great interest to researchers.

"There are other plant-pollinator mutualisms in nature, but the fig-fig wasp mutualism is possibly the most diverse and most consequential of all," Machado said.

Queen ants in southern Europe produce male clones of an entirely different species — tearing up the playbook of reproductive biology and suggesting we need to rethink our understanding of species barriers.

The workers in Iberian harvester ant (Messor ibericus) colonies are all hybrids, with queens needing to mate with males from a distantly related species, Messor structor, to keep the colony functioning. But researchers found that some Iberian harvester ant populations have no M. structor colonies nearby.

"That was very, very abnormal. I mean, it was kind of a paradox," study co-author Jonathan Romiguier, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Montpellier, told Live Science. The team initially believed there was a sampling issue, but they went on to find 69 regions where this was the case.

"We had to face the facts and try to see if there is something special within Messor ibericus colonies," Romiguier said.

In setting out to resolve this paradox, Romiguier and his team found that queen Iberian harvester ants also lay eggs containing male M. structor ants, with these males ultimately fathering the workers. This discovery, published Sept. 3 in the journal Nature, is the first time any animal has been recorded producing offspring from another species as part of their normal life cycle.

"In the early stages, it was kind of a joke in the team," Romiguier said. "But the more we got results, the more it became a hypothesis and not a joke anymore."

Related: Single bee is making an immortal clone army thanks to a genetic fluke

Ants are eusocial insects, meaning their colonies form cooperative super-organisms predominantly made up of infertile females, called workers, and a small number of reproductive females, called queens. Males solely exist to fertilize queens during their mating flight and die soon after.

Queens only mate once in their lives and store the sperm from this meeting in a special organ. She then draws from this sperm stash to lay new eggs containing one of three types of offspring: queens, workers or males.

However, Iberian harvester ants mating with males of their own species can only produce new queens. This is thought to be a result of selfish queen genes, where the DNA from male M. ibericus guarantees its survival across generations by biasing larvae to produce fertile queens rather than infertile workers — known as "royal cheaters."

To avoid this, queens must use sperm from male M. structor ants to produce their workers.

This was why the presence of thriving isolated M. ibericus colonies was such a conundrum.

To find answers, the researchers first sampled 132 males from 26 Iberian harvester ant colonies to figure out whether there were M. structor males present. They found that 58 were covered in hair and 74 were hairless. A closer inspection of the nuclear genomes of a subset of these ants revealed that all hairy ones were M. ibericus and all bald ones were M. structor.

But this was not proof that the queens were laying male eggs of two different species — there could have been some hidden M. structor queens producing the odd male. So the team sequenced the mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down by the mother, of 24 of the M. structor males, and found it came from the same mother as the M. ibericus male nestmates.

"This was the detail that made me realize that 'maybe we are on to something very, very, very big,'" Romiguier said.

The team then separated 16 queens from laboratory colonies and looked at the genetic sequences of their freshly laid eggs. They found that 9% of their eggs contained M. structor ants. They then directly observed a single queen producing males of both species by monitoring its broods weekly over an 18-month period.

Together, all these findings show that Iberian harvester ant queens are cloning M. structor males and not passing on any of their own nuclear DNA. Researchers now need to pinpoint the exact mechanism underlying this cloning, Romiguier said, and find out at what point the maternal DNA is removed.

Denis Fournier, an evolutionary biologist and ecologist at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, who was not involved in the research, said that it was "almost like science fiction" when he first learned of this discovery. "It's jaw-dropping! Most of us learn that species boundaries are firm, yet here is a system where ants regularly cross them as part of normal life," he told Live Science in an email.

The team have called this new reproductive system "xenoparity," meaning the birth of a different species. Romiguier said the team aren't exactly sure when this system first emerged in the Iberian harvester ants, but it's somewhere between when M. ibericus and M. structor split along different evolutionary paths 5 million years ago and a few thousand years ago.

"This discovery is a great reminder to stay open to the unexpected," Fournier said, noting that the finding opens up new questions about cooperation, conflict and dependency in nature. "Now that we know such a system is possible, it’s exciting to think that old, puzzling data might suddenly make sense in light of this discovery," he added.

Update, Oct. 21, 2025 at 1:17 pm ET: Live Science has learned that Iceland is no longer mosquito-free. Three mosquitoes — two females and one male — were found in the garden of a private residence between Oct. 16 and Oct. 18 in the municipality of Kjósarhreppur (also known as Kjós), according to the Iceland Monitor. In a Facebook post in the group Skordýr á Íslandi ("Insects in Iceland"), the man who found them, Björn Hjaltason, said "I could tell right away that this was something I had never seen before."

Matthías Alfreðsson, an entomologist at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History, confirmed that the mosquitoes belong to the species Culiseta annulata, the Iceland Monitor reported.

"The last fortress has fallen," Hjaltason wrote in the Facebook post, although it still remains to be seen if the mosquitoes will survive Iceland's winter.

The original article, posted Sept. 1, is below.

Mosquitoes bite people in almost every country across the globe. But are there any countries that don't have this blood-sucking pest?

The answer is "yes," there is one country without mosquitoes: Iceland. While its neighbors — including Norway, Scotland and Greenland — are home to multiple mosquito species, Iceland remains mosquito-free. (Of note, Antarctica is also mosquito-free, but the southern continent is not a country.)

So how is it possible for Iceland to have no mosquitoes?

Scientists have several theories. One idea is that mosquitoes simply haven't made it to Iceland yet. The island nation is separated from its neighbors by hundreds of miles of ocean, creating a natural barrier that makes it difficult for mosquitoes to arrive by flight.

Yet mosquitoes do get transported aboard planes. Gísli Már Gíslason, a professor emeritus of limnology (the study of lakes and fresh water) at the University of Iceland, confirmed this after capturing a mosquito on a flight from Greenland to Iceland. Furthermore, mosquitoes can survive for hours on aircraft landing gear, even in freezing temperatures, he said in an interview with Reykavík Grapevine, an English-language publication in Iceland, in 2017.

So if mosquitoes have arrived, why haven't they established populations?

Gíslason explained that a lack of suitable breeding habitats is unlikely. Iceland has plenty of ponds and marshes near its airports — ideal places for mosquitoes to lay eggs. Instead, the most probable explanation is Iceland's harsh climate.

A mosquito's life cycle consists of four stages: egg, larva, pupa (like a caterpillar chrysalis) and adult. Adult mosquitoes lay their eggs in water. These eggs hatch into larvae, which develop in pupae. An adult mosquito then emerges from the pupa.

Robert Jones, an insect biologist and assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told Live Science that mosquito larvae require unfrozen liquid water to develop. In extremely cold regions like the Canadian Arctic, some mosquito species survive by entering dormancy in the egg stage, where they can endure months of frozen water.

"In warmer areas, such as parts of Central Europe, mosquitoes may survive the winter as eggs or larvae in relatively sheltered bodies of water that do not freeze, or as adults hidden in burrows and other protected sites," he said.

Iceland's climate falls in between: Long winters and frequent freeze-thaw cycles in autumn and spring cause water bodies to freeze, melt and refreeze repeatedly. "These cycles disrupt development and kill mosquito eggs and larvae before they can emerge as adults, making it much harder for populations to establish," Jones said.

Although Iceland's geothermal pools remain unfrozen in winter, their temperatures may be too warm for larvae of any mosquito species adapted to high latitudes. "In addition, the chemical composition of geothermal waters is unlikely to be suitable for mosquito development," he said.

However, with climate change, Iceland's mosquito-free status might not last forever. Jones noted that warmer springs and autumns could create longer periods of unfrozen standing water, allowing mosquitoes to establish permanent populations.

Immo Hansen, a professor of biology at New Mexico State University, agrees. "We're currently seeing tropical mosquitoes expanding their range north in the United States," he told Live Science, largely because that region's winters are warming.

If mosquitoes do eventually spread to Iceland, it wouldn't be the first time a mosquito-free zone disappeared. Hawaii, the most isolated archipelago in the world, was mosquito-free until 1826, when European and American ships inadvertently introduced them. Thanks to Hawaii's favorable climate, mosquitoes thrived and spread rapidly across the islands. Since then, climate change has pushed mosquitoes into Hawaii's higher-elevation forests that were once too cool for them to survive.

Despite the potential for mosquitoes to arrive in Iceland, the risk of disease-carrying species — like those in the Aedes genus, which are known to transmit diseases such as dengue and chikungunya — establishing there remains low because these insects need tropical and subtropical climates to survive, Jones said. While Southern Europe faces increased risks of such outbreaks due to climate change and modern transport, "modeling studies suggest that Northern Europe will remain largely unsuitable for dengue transmission even by 2080," he said.

A previously unknown giant stick insect has been discovered in the high-altitude rainforests of Australia — and it may be the heaviest insect ever recorded in the country.

The colossal critter, which researchers named Acrophylla alta, grows to around 16 inches (40 centimeters) long. The giant insect lives in the difficult-to-access tree canopies of tropical North Queensland, which may be the reason it has eluded scientists for so long.

Researchers documented A. alta in a recent study, published June 17 in the journal Zootaxa, and described it as a "spectacular new species."

It is not the longest stick insect in Australia — that honor goes to gargantuan stick insects (Ctenomorpha gargantua), which reach lengths of up to around 22 inches (57 cm) and live in the same region as A. alta. However, A. alta is heavier.

"There are longer stick insects out there [in the region], but they're fairly light bodied," study co-author Angus Emmott, a researcher at James Cook University in Australia, said in a statement. "From what we know to date, this is Australia's heaviest insect."

One individual in the study weighed in at about 1.6 ounces (44 grams) — roughly double that of a mature female gargantuan stick insect filled with eggs that researchers previously documented, according to the study.

Related: Invasive Asian needle ants are surging in US Southeast — and their bite can trigger anaphylaxis

The researchers discovered A. alta in the Tablelands region of North Queensland, which is 1,600 to 3,900 feet (500 to 1,200 meters) above sea level. A. alta apparently feeds on leaves in the forest canopy, where it would normally go unnoticed by humans, according to the study.

"It's restricted to a small area of high-altitude rainforest, and it lives high in the canopy," Emmott said. "So, unless you get a cyclone or a bird bringing one down, very few people get to see them."

The creature's giant size may be linked to its ability to survive in a colder, high-altitude environment. This would fit with the evolutionary trend called Bergmann's rule, which states that animals evolve to be larger in colder climates. Not all animals follow Bergmann's rule, and it's uncertain how well it applies to insects, but the idea is that larger animals have a smaller surface area-to-volume ratio, which helps to reduce heat loss — something A. alta would benefit from.

"It's a cool, wet environment where they live," Emmott said. "Their body mass likely helps them survive the colder conditions, and that's why they've developed into this large insect over millions of years."

Imagine you're a red-tailed hawk, soaring through the sky. You scan the ground, looking for your next meal. You spot a squirrel hundreds of feet below you. Its coat helps it blend into the ground, but its camouflage is no match for your sharp eyesight.

Birds of prey — such as hawks, eagles and falcons — are known for their hyperfocused vision. But you might wonder if these birds really come out on top, or if other animals have even more impressive eyesight.

So, what animal has the best vision?

In reality, there's no easy answer — but there are certainly some standouts.

"There is no perfect visual system," Esteban Fernandez-Juricic, a professor of biological sciences at Purdue University, told Live Science. He explained that from an evolutionary perspective, the development of advanced visual systems is extraordinarily costly. That's because eyes are a big component of the nervous system, which needs a lot of energy. To keep things efficient, evolution drives animals to develop only the visual systems they need for their environment and behavior.

Most detailed vision: raptors

Raptors such as eagles, hawks and falcons have a reputation for having great vision, and that reputation is well-earned. These birds need to detect food from very far distances — sometimes even miles away. To do this, their visual systems evolved to prioritize extremely high-resolution vision.

According to Thomas Cronin, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, raptor vision is about three to five times more detailed than humans', so having eagle eyes would feel like looking through a pair of binoculars.

Related: How do migrating birds know where they're going?

These birds have two adaptations that help them see clearly. First, their eyes are bigger relative to their body size. Second, they pack more photoreceptors — the specialized cells in the retina that detect light — into their eyes. Taken together, these traits help raptors spot prey from far away.

Most colorful vision: mantis shrimp

When it comes to color vision in the animal kingdom, there's a clear winner: the mantis shrimp. These alien-looking invertebrates live in shallow ocean waters, and they may be able to see colors we can't even comprehend.

To understand how mantis shrimp see the world, it's important to know how color vision works. Humans have three types of photoreceptor cells that detect different wavelengths of light, roughly corresponding to red, blue and green. Many vertebrates have four types of photoreceptors, meaning our color vision is worse than that of many other species.

"Most other animals have better color vision than we do," said Justin Marshall, a professor emeritus at the University of Queensland in Australia with a specialty in marine animal eye and brain structure and function. "We're comparatively colorblind monkeys."

Mantis shrimp have an even more staggering number of photoreceptors, though. According to Marshall, these crustaceans boast 12 types of color photoreceptors. Some of those receptors are even tuned to detect light in the ultraviolet range, likely making the world of the mantis shrimp look very different from our own. Mantis shrimp also have special photoreceptors that can detect the polarization of light — a feature of light waves that derives from how sunlight scatters through Earth's atmosphere.

But it's not clear exactly how the mantis shrimp brain processes all of this information. Their brains may be picking up on patterns of color combinations rather than detecting individual inputs from photoreceptors.

"They're probably not trying to see four times as much color as us — they're just decoding the information in a different way," Marshall explained.

Fastest vision: insects

Our vision may feel like a continuous stream, but there's a limit to how quickly our eyes and brains can process information. According to Cronin, humans see at a rate of about 60 frames per second. Our creepy-crawly friends, on the other hand, can pack in much more visual information over the same period.

The visual systems of most insects can capture hundreds of frames per second. That's so fast that fluorescent lights — which flicker at or below the perceptible rate for human vision — would look like strobe lights to them.

"If a fly were to fly into a movie theater, it would just think it's watching a really fast slideshow," Cronin explained.

This ultra-high-speed vision is why it's so hard to swat a fly; they literally see us coming before we do. Flies accomplish this because their bodies are so tiny that the electrical signals between their eyes and brain have a much smaller distance to travel, meaning they process visual inputs much more quickly.

The trade-offs

All of these specialized visual systems are impressive in their own ways, but they also come with compromises. For example, both mantis shrimp and insects have compound eyes, which are made up of distinct subunits. There are only so many subunits that can fit, so these animals' vision is much lower-resolution than ours, like a pixelated photo.

With these trade-offs in mind, human eyes are adequate, according to Cronin.

"People are a pretty good compromise," he said. "I wouldn't want to be a mantis shrimp, because my brain would be the size of a small pea. So I'm happy with what I have, to be honest."

More than half of all known animal species on Earth are insects — critters with a hard external skeleton, three pairs of jointed legs, antennae and a body divided into three segments (the head, thorax and abdomen). There are about 1.4 billion insects for every human on the planet, and their combined weight is 70 times that of all people. Insects are found on every continent and in almost every habitat type, including hot deserts, salty coastal waters and frigid mountain streams. While 97% of insects live on land, some thrive in fresh water and seawater.

5 fast facts about insects

• More than 1 million insect species have been described so far, but scientists estimate there could be up to 30 million we haven't discovered yet.
• Insects are the only invertebrates (creatures without a backbone) to have wings. Most insects have two pairs of wings, but some — including fleas, ants and lice — have no wings.
• Parasites can transform insects into real-life zombies. Infected insects do what the parasite wants, which can be to go up to a predator to be eaten or jump into a pool of water where the insect will drown.
• Many insects are cannibals. For example, female praying mantises may attack and eat males during or after they mate.
• Bees and moths pollinate plants, which helps give us food. But harmful pesticides are leading to large declines in these insects' numbers.

Everything you need to know about insects

Insect pictures

Discover more about insects

• These insects keep evolving to look like sticks. Why?
• How do insects know which flowers have pollen?
• Why are insects attracted to artificial lights?

Further reading

• "Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control"
• "The Jewel Box: How Moths Illuminate Nature's Hidden Rules"
• Discover fun facts about insects at the Smithsonian Institution and learn more from the Australian Museum about how scientists categorize insects.

Invasive ants whose sting can cause fatal allergic reactions in humans are surging across the U.S. Southeast and beyond — and experts are growing increasingly alarmed.

Asian needle ants (Brachyponera chinensis) went relatively unnoticed for many years following their introduction to the U.S. roughly a century ago, but entomologists recently documented their spread from a handful of southeastern states to New England and the Midwest. Asian needle ants are capable of invading many of North America's temperate forests, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and with the spring swarming season about to start, there's a chance that these ants could trigger medical emergencies up and down the country.

"We are now considering it a medically important pest," Dan Suiter, a professor of urban entomology at the University of Georgia, told Fox Weather on April 29.

Suiter said he recently noticed an uptick in Asian needle ant stings. In 2024, he received three calls from people who suffered anaphylaxis as a result of Asian needle ant stings — a high number compared with previous years, he told Fox Weather.

Anaphylaxis is an acute, whole-body allergic reaction that happens very quickly in some people after exposure to certain medicines, foods or insect stings. Symptoms include a rapid and weak pulse, a skin rash, nausea and vomiting, according to the Mayo Clinic. Anaphylaxis can be fatal, because it causes the immune system to release a flood of chemicals that constrict the airways, which prevents breathing. These chemicals also trigger a dangerous drop in blood pressure, increasing the risk of cardiac arrest.

Related: 'The parasite was in the driver's seat': The zombie ants that die gruesome deaths fit for a horror movie

Ants are common pests, but "it gets a little bit more serious when the sting of an insect can be life-threatening to people who suffer anaphylaxis," Suiter said. It is unclear how many people have died from Asian needle ant stings globally and in the U.S. since their introduction.

Asian needle ants are small, shiny, dark brown-to-black ants native to China, Japan and Korea. They were first discovered in the U.S. in 1932 following introduction via shipping — but by that point they were already present in at least three southeastern states, according to the USDA.

Asian needle ants are not aggressive or defensive of their nests in the way that fire ants (Solenopsis) are, but they will deliver a venomous sting if they get trapped inside human clothing or beneath someone's hand. People in affected areas should look out for these ants' light-orange antennae and leg-tips, although it takes an experienced eye to positively identify the species, according to the USDA.

There's no way to predict who will get anaphylaxis after an Asian needle sting, but people who react adversely to other insect stings or carry an EpiPen should be especially cautious of these ants, Suiter said. Regardless of whether someone is vulnerable to anaphylaxis, Asian needle ant stings cause severe pain at the site of the sting, according to the USDA.

There have been some control measures to limit the spread of Asian needle ants, but these efforts are extremely costly, according to the USDA. Asian needle ants typically nest beneath logs, stones and leaf litter, but they may also be found in wood piles. They do not form trails like other ants but instead walk alone and chaotically, Suiter said.

"This critter kind of wanders around," he said. "It looks lost."

The bone collector is not just a very hungry caterpillar — it has an appetite for flesh. And once it finishes scavenging on dead or dying insects trapped in a spider's web, the bone collector covers itself in the legs, wings or heads of its prey for camouflage to avoid being eaten.

The newly discovered caterpillar inhabits a roughly 6-square-mile (15 square kilometers) area in the Wai'anae mountain range on Oahu and lives exclusively in and around cobwebs in logs, tree hollows or rock cavities. The bone collector uses the dark setting to its advantage: If the spider host detects movement on its web, it will rush over to attack the intruder. But under the cover of darkness, the silk casing layered in inedible body parts smells, or tastes, like last week's lunch. The tactic works well, as the caterpillars have never been found to be eaten by spiders or wrapped in their silk, according to a study in the journal Science.

The bone collector is part of the genus Hyposmocoma, small moths that live in Hawaii and are known for weaving mobile silk containers. Whereas other varieties might decorate their shelters with bits of algae or lichen to look like tree bark, for example, no other known Hyposmocoma species  recognizes random insect body parts and attaches them to its case.

The species evolved at least 6 million years ago, according to the researchers, making it older than the island of Oahu. This suggests bone collector moths migrated from an even older Hawaiian island that has since disappeared to get to their current forest.

Carnivorous caterpillars are extremely unusual. They make up about 0.13% of the world's moth and butterfly species, but the bone collector, in particular, is especially rare — after more than two decades of fieldwork, researchers have found only 62 specimens.

In terms of survival, the bone collectors aren't helping their cause. They are territorial, and typically only one caterpillar is found on a single cobweb because they cannibalize the competition.

Fortunately for us, the bone collector caterpillar is only about a quarter of an inch (5 millimeters) long.

" I have no doubt that if we were their size, they would eat us," Daniel Rubinoff, lead author of the study and an entomologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told Live Science. "There's no way that they would just eat insects. That just happens to be their fighting class, so to speak."

At this very moment, in a corner of your backyard, dozens of wasp larvae may be burrowing through the insides of a caterpillar. After chewing holes in its exoskeleton, these larvae build cocoons on the caterpillar's back so they can grow into adults while still feeding off their host.

Such parasitism is more common than you think. Some of the most blood-curling forms of parasitism can transform the host — whether ant, beetle or caterpillar — into a zombie-like puppet that acts according to the whims of the parasite.

In her book "Rise of the Zombie Bugs" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), science writer, media producer and former Live Science senior writer Mindy Weisberger shines a light on the sinister tactics used by parasites to manipulate other critters. Through captivating descriptions of the forms this mind control can take, Weisberger reveals that zombies are all around us — zombie insects, that is.

Related: 'Zombie' spiders infected by never-before-seen fungus discovered on grounds of destroyed Irish castle

Live Science sat down with Weisberger to understand the damage zombifying parasites can inflict, how they evolved, and why they are reminiscent of zombies in pop culture.

Q: As a science writer and media producer, there are so many topics that you could have written about. Why did you choose to write about parasitic mind-control and zombie bugs?

Weisberger: Because they're fascinating — that's the short answer! I think it's because of the way that we humans think about autonomy and free will. It seems like the whole notion of someone who outwardly looks familiar but is being manipulated by some external force so that their behavior is not under their control is something uniquely terrifying.

There are so many examples in the natural world of this type of behavior manipulation — where there are these parasites that not only infect and kill their hosts, but along the way actively change their behavior in ways that do not benefit the host at all. This book was a terrific opportunity to not only collect a lot of really interesting examples of behavior manipulation, but also to look at the deep history of these relationships and at some of the similarities across many different groups of organisms that do this — and also to see how scientists are piecing these stories together, and where the science is going.

Q: Could you tell me about the most skin-crawling example of behavior manipulation that you came across during your research?

Weisberger: The most horrible one, and also the one that I think people are most likely to see themselves because it's something that's commonly found in backyards in temperate climates worldwide, is caterpillars that are infected by Ichneumonid and Braconid wasps. These wasps lay their eggs inside caterpillars — and one caterpillar can be targeted by multiple wasps, so they can have dozens and dozens of these wasp larvae inside them. The larvae grow, and when they are ready to pupate, they chew their way through the skin of the caterpillar and they spin their cocoons on the caterpillars' backs.

Charles Darwin was so horrified by this that he wrote in a letter to a biologist friend that it made him question the existence of a benevolent God. If it's a relationship that could horrify Darwin, then that definitely makes it noteworthy. This is something that happens to caterpillars that are very common in gardens, so I think it's proof that you're probably a lot closer to a zombie than you think.

Q: Do you have a favorite zombifying parasite, and if so, could you tell me what its relationship with its host looks like?

There's another type of wasp, the jewel wasp (Ampulex compressa), that infects and manipulates cockroaches. It has a much more direct approach: It stings cockroaches directly in the brain and targets a very specific brain region that is related to locomotion. By doing so it delivers venom that makes the cockroach very docile, so it will walk when it's led, but it won't walk under its own power. After the wasp has stung the cockroach, the wasp will lead it back to its burrow and feed it alive to the wasp's young.

But cockroaches can actually deflect these attacks with kicks. The Catania Lab at Vanderbilt University filmed interactions between these wasps and roaches, and scientists found that cockroaches were very effective at repelling attacks by wasps. The wasp has to be in a very specific position, because it is targeting a very specific brain region, but the roaches were able to protect themselves.

Q: Do we know when some of these relationships evolved?

These relationships in some cases go back millions of years. In the case of the zombie-ant fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis), there is a fossil from the Messel Pit in Germany that is 48 million years old. The zombie-ant fungus changes an ant's behavior by compelling it to leave the colony, climb a plant and bite down on a vein on the underside of a leaf. The ant dies there with its jaws locked in place, and then the fungus grows a stalk from behind the ant's head and a mass grows on the stalk that releases spores.

The fossil is of a leaf, and there are these marks along the veins of the leaf that are pretty identical to the marks that are left on leaves by zombie ants today. Scientists who found this fossil and who study the behavior of modern ants zombified by Ophiocordyceps say this fossil is indirect evidence that the zombifying relationship between Ophiocordyceps and ants is at least 40 million years old.

Q: How might a relationship like that have evolved — do scientists have any clues?

There was a paper in 2019 that looked into the potential origins of behavior manipulation by Ophiocordyceps. Scientists were able to trace all of the behavior-manipulating species in Ophiocordyceps to an ancestor that infected beetles but did not manipulate them. And what they hypothesized is that within the ecosystem where these beetles lived there were likely ants, so Ophiocordyceps made the jump from beetles to ants.

The difference between ants and beetles is that ants are social insects. They have suites of behaviors that evolved to preserve the health of the colony, which means that ants that are found to be infected with parasites will be destroyed by their nestmates. That does not work out so well if you're a parasite that needs to develop within your host, so with the move to ants there was now a selective pressure for the fungus to actively change its host's behavior, so that it would essentially self-isolate from its nestmates [by climbing plants and hooking onto leaves] at the opportune time.

Q: How difficult is it to study these relationships and unpick the neurochemicals involved in changing a host's behavior?

Behavior is something that is controlled by so many complex interactions, and trying to pinpoint any one thing that shifts behavior dramatically is extremely complex. In some cases, it's especially tricky to study because of the nature of the organism.

For example in North America, within about a month, we are going to see an emergence of periodical cicacas in Brood XIV, which is absolutely spectacular. Periodical cicadas come out in cycles every 13 to 17 years. There's a fungus that parasitizes and manipulates the behavior of only periodical cicacas and it's called Massospora cicadina. If you are a researcher who is trying to understand how a relationship works between a parasite and its host, ideally you want to cultivate that in a lab. That is pretty much impossible when the organism that you want to study has a life cycle that keeps it underground for 13 to 17 years.

Q: Can you tell me more about the relationship between periodical cicadas and M. cicadina?

One thing scientists do know about how M. cicadina manipulates periodical cicacas is that it produces a type of amphetamine. This creates hyper-sexualized behavior in the cicadas. Once the fungus infects cicadas, it grows inside their bodies and produces this mass of fungal spores in the rear end of their abdomen. It also weakens the cicadas' exoskeleton, so that the back third of their shells drop off, leaving this exposed mass of spores. And then you have this amphetamine flooding the cicadas' little insect brains, so you have infected cicadas that are trying to mate with as many cicadas as possible, and thereby spreading the infection.

Q: In the book, you focus on parasites that infect and manipulate invertebrates — but are there examples of parasites that infect and alter the behavior of humans?

There are a couple of known pathogens that affect mammals and humans. Rabies is, I think, the most commonly recognized one. More recently, there's been a lot of attention turned toward the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii.

T. gondii needs to be in cats to reproduce. In rodents that carry this parasite, studies show that it reduces their normal aversion to cat urine and makes them attracted to it. So it tweaks their behavior in a way that makes them more risk-taking around the predators that they would normally avoid, which makes them more likely to get eaten, which makes it more likely that the parasite is going to end up inside its definitive host.

There have been some studies that have shown that chimps and hyenas infected by T. gondii also display more boldness around felids that they would normally avoid. As far as humans go, we are rarely in a position where any parasite that we're carrying is going to end up being eaten by a cat. That said, some studies suggest that people carrying T. gondii can show signs of more aggressive behavior, more risk-taking behavior, in some cases more nurturing behavior. But because human behavior is very complex and there are many factors that shape human behavior, it's difficult to say with certainty if T. gondii is the one that is actually driving those behavioral changes.

Q: What keeps zombifying parasites in check? Why haven't we had a zombie bug apocalypse?

These relationships don't evolve in a vacuum; they're part of larger ecosystems. No strategy for a parasite is going to be successful long-term if it's successful 100% of the time, because then you're going to run out of hosts. So, as much as I'm talking about all the success stories, obviously there are many failed attempts for any of these parasites. And the fact that insects are quite numerous, especially ants, also helps to balance out the distribution of infected versus uninfected. Because what we're seeing here is the result of millions upon millions of years of evolution, at some point some type of balance was achieved — which is not to say that that can't change.

Q: What's next for you in terms of writing? Have you got another book in the pipeline?

I'm looking to develop a version of this book for younger readers, because since I started writing my niece who was 7 at the time just had so many questions. I'm hoping for an opportunity to adapt it that way.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for length.

"Rise of the Zombie Bugs" sheds light on the fascinating — and nightmarish — world of behavior manipulation by parasites and pathogens. You can read an excerpt from the book here.

Zombies are among us. And these tiny undead creatures are everywhere. In this excerpt from "Rise of the Zombie Bugs" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), author Mindy Weisberger examines the very grisly end for worker ants that get zombiefied by the decapitating fly Pseudacteon wasmanni.

Scientists first described the gruesome habits of ant decapitators in the phorid genus Pseudacteon more than 90 years ago, from observations among ant populations in Europe, South America, and the United States. A female fly begins by staking out a worker ant — carefully keeping her distance at first, as she is no bigger than her target's head.

To scientists observing phorids in the field, "they appear as minute, fuzzy specks as they hover over host ants," Lloyd Morrison, an ecologist for the National Park Service, wrote in a guide to insect parasitoids in North America.

Females don't have a lot of time to be choosy about their hosts, as adult flies live only for about a week or less in the wild. When the female fly sees an opening, she darts in and lays an egg inside the ant's thorax — one and done — in less than a second (analysis of the female reproductive system in the phorid fly Pseudacteon wasmanni revealed that eggs are torpedo-shaped and measure 130 micrometers long, or about 0.005 inches).

A single Pseudacteon female can produce from 200 to nearly 300 eggs, and in a single hour she may make more than 100 parasitizing attempts (though she only lays one egg per host).

Newly parasitized workers "frequently appear stunned after an oviposition strike," U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist Sanford Porter wrote in Florida Entomologist, and the ants "often stilt upon their legs for a few seconds to a minute before running away."

These egg-laying attempts don't all succeed; indeed most of them flop. In laboratory experiments, when Pseudacteon females tried to implant an egg in an unwilling ant, they failed at least 65% of the time. But when an egg does manage to end up inside an ant, its host enters the realm of the walking dead. Once the egg hatches, the ant has only a few weeks of life before it succumbs to the manipulations of its attacker, stumbling away from its home and family and then undergoing decapitation from the inside out.

Within days after hatching, the phorid larva migrates from the thorax into the ant's head; little is known about how the parasitoid avoids being destroyed by the ant's immune system, but one possibility is that moving quickly into the host's head may help the larva evade an immune response. For the duration of the larva's second instar — about two to three weeks — it makes itself comfortable in the ant's head cavity, sipping on hemolymph.

This liquid nutrition is all the larva needs until it reaches its third instar. For an infected ant during those initial honeymoon weeks, despite carrying and nourishing a growing parasite inside its head, life is pretty much business as usual; the ant looks and behaves normally, according to scientists with the Louisiana State University (LSU) College of Agriculture.

Through "intensive observation" of ant parasitism by the phorid fly Pseudacteon tricuspis, LSU researchers found that a parasitized ant stayed with its nest mates until about 8 to 10 hours before the larva in its head was ready to pupate. It would then depart the nest on what appeared to be a normal foraging expedition, alongside its non-parasitized sisters. But for the zombified ant, this final excursion was a one-way trip.

Once the ant turned its back on the colony and walked away, it was on a death march. And the parasite was in the driver's seat. "Parasitized ants were highly mobile after they left the nest and ultimately entered the thatch layer at the soil surface," the scientists reported. "The term 'zombie' fire ant workers was coined to characterize the behavior while under parasitoid control."

Finally, the phorid larva is ready for its metamorphosis. It releases an enzyme that degrades membranes in the wandering ant's exoskeleton, causing the ant to stop walking and eventually collapse. The ant's head loosens from the body, as does the first pair of legs; other legs may be affected, too. Its mandibles weaken, rendering it unable to bite or burrow. As for the larva, it indulges a new appetite for solid food; namely, ant head tissue. You can probably guess where this is headed; the ant's hollowed-out, larvae-stuffed head falls off (the ant, unsurprisingly, is already dead by now, even though its legs are often still twitching as its head rolls away).

The parasitoid, however, is just fine. It finishes off the last of the tasty bits inside the decapitated ant head and pushes the mandibles out of the way — the ant's no longer using them, after all — and then the larva wriggles into position so that its first three pupal segments are stuffed into the gap where the ant's mouthparts used to be.

These segments harden and darken, becoming a tough, protective plate that's roughly the same color as the ant's exoskeleton, and two hairlike breathing "horns" extend from the pupa out on either side of the ant's mouth opening. Other parasitoid insects keep their zombie host alive until the larva's metamorphosis is over, but phorids pupate unguarded inside their dead hosts' disembodied heads.

However, the exoskeleton of an ant's head is extremely hard — tougher than other parts of its body — and therefore lends extra protection to the pupating larva, Brown says. Two to six weeks later, depending on air temperature and species size, the adult phorid fly is ready to pop out from inside the detached ant head, like the goddess Athena of legend springing fully grown from the head of her father, Zeus.

Only, this newborn is a lot smaller than an ancient Greek deity and has more legs than most. A few hours after emerging, the adult phorid fly is ready to mate — and continue its head-splitting reproductive cycle.

Excerpted from Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control by Mindy Weisberger. Copyright 2025. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press

Exploring anywhere on Earth, look closely and you'll find insects. Check your backyard and you may see ants, beetles, crickets, wasps, mosquitoes and more. There are more kinds of insects than there are mammals, birds and plants combined. This fact has fascinated scientists for centuries.

One of the things biologists like me do is classify all living things into categories. Insects belong to a phylum called Arthropoda — animals with hard exoskeletons and jointed feet.

All insects are arthropods, but not all arthropods are insects. For instance, spiders, lobsters and millipedes are arthropods, but they're not insects.

Instead, insects are a subgroup within Arthropoda, a class called "Insecta," that is characterized by six legs, two antennae and three body segments — head, abdomen and the thorax, which is the part of the body between the head and abdomen.

Most insects also have wings, although a few, like fleas, don't. All have compound eyes, which means insects see very differently from the way people see. Instead of one lens per eye, they have many: a fly has 5,000 lenses; a dragonfly has 30,000. These types of eyes, though not great for clarity, are excellent at detecting movement.

What is a species?

All insects descend from a common ancestor that lived about about 480 million years ago. For context, that's about 100 million years before any of our vertebrate ancestors — animals with a backbone — ever walked on land.

A species is the most basic unit that biologists use to classify living things. When people use words like "ant" or "fly" or "butterfly" they are referring not to species, but to categories that may contain hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of species. For example, about 18,000 species of butterfly exist — think monarch, zebra swallowtail or cabbage white.

Basically, species are a group that can interbreed with each other, but not with other groups. One obvious example: bees can't interbreed with ants.

But brown-belted bumblebees and red-belted bumblebees can't interbreed either, so they are different species of bumblebee.

Each species has a unique scientific name — like Bombus griseocollis for the brown-belted bumblebee — so scientists can be sure which species they're talking about.

Related: What is a species?

Quadrillions of ants

Counting the exact number of insect species is probably impossible. Every year, some species go extinct, while some evolve anew. Even if we could magically freeze time and survey the entire Earth all at once, experts would disagree on the distinctiveness or identity of some species. So instead of counting, researchers use statistical analysis to make an estimate.

One scientist did just that. He published his answer in a 2018 research paper. His calculations showed there are approximately 5.5 million insect species, with the correct number almost certainly between 2.6 and 7.2 million.

Beetles alone account for almost one-third of the number, about 1.5 million species. By comparison, there are "only" an estimated 22,000 species of ants. This and other studies have also estimated about 3,500 species of mosquitoes, 120,000 species of flies and 30,000 species of grasshoppers and crickets.

The estimate of 5.5 million species of insects is interesting. What's even more remarkable is that because scientists have found only about 1 million species, that means more than 4.5 million species are still waiting for someone to discover them. In other words, over 80% of the Earth's insect biodiversity is still unknown.

Add up the total population and biomass of the insects, and the numbers are even more staggering. The 22,000 species of ants comprise about 20,000,000,000,000,000 individuals — that's 20 quadrillion ants. And if a typical ant weighs about 0.0001 ounces (3 milligrams) — or one ten-thousandth of an ounce — that means all the ants on Earth together weigh more than 132 billion pounds (about 60 billion kilograms).

That's the equivalent of about 7 million school buses, 600 aircraft carriers or about 20% of the weight of all humans on Earth combined.

Many insect species are going extinct

All of this has potentially huge implications for our own human species. Insects affect us in countless ways. People depend on them for crop pollination, industrial products and medicine. Other insects can harm us by transmitting disease or eating our crops.

Most insects have little to no direct impact on people, but they are integral parts of their ecosystems. This is why entomologists — bug scientists — say we should leave insects alone as much as possible. Most of them are harmless to people, and they are critical to the environment.

It is sobering to note that although millions of undiscovered insect species may be out there, many will go extinct before people have a chance to discover them. Largely due to human activity, a significant proportion of Earth's biodiversity — including insects — may ultimately be forever lost.

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In this excerpt from "Carbon: The Book of Life" (Viking, 2025), author and environmentalist Paul Hawken delves into the world of insects and the incredible adaptations critters like dragonflies and butterflies have evolved to help them survive. Hawken hopes that by zooming in on some of Earth's less popular inhabitants, people can gain a better appreciation for life, which he says is the key to stopping and reversing the climate crisis.

A flame skimmer hovers 2 feet (0.6 meters) from my face, looking straight at me. Its red bulbous eyes have 24,000 corneas, allowing it to see 360 degrees — up, down, backward, forward and around simultaneously. What it makes of me visually is unimaginable.

It has 30 opsins, the universal photoreceptor molecule that resides in the visual systems of the animal kingdom. I look back with my three opsins and two blue corneas. At the fishpond where I am sitting, the skimmer hovers and dashes about with its satin wings, red and orange, body and wing. My visitor weighs 0.1 ounces (2.8 grams) and darts around at speeds up to 60 mph (96 km/h) for the few weeks it lives in the air.

Its three- to four-year lifespan is mainly spent as larva, a freshwater nymph, an underwater omnivore feeding on tadpoles, spot tails, minnows and other nymphs. Today, it is sporting iridescent wings that sparkle like ball gowns, looking to mate, which it prefers to do immodestly in the air. As it sparkles and pulsates in front of me, perfectly stationary, I am looking at 350 million years of evolution.

Dragonflies' compound eyes see ultraviolet light, giving them a unique ability to detect shape and movement. Military experts have studied their behavior to develop software for stealth aircraft because they employ active motion camouflage. When a dragonfly hunts, it hovers perfectly still and positions itself between its prey and a shadow cast behind it by, say, a tree, concealing its position. It's a bit like creeping up on someone in a forest hiding behind branches. The dragonfly can continually change its position based on where its prey moves to keep the tree and its prey lined up — a butterfly or mosquito won't notice. The dragonfly gradually looms closer until it reaches striking distance. This evolutionary adaptation has suited dragonflies well, and they have become highly successful predators despite living short lives.

A remarkable example of Indigenous observational science was revealed in 1949. Ethnoentomologists documented how the Diné (Navajo) named and classified over 700 species of insects, describing their sounds, behavior and habitats, knowledge that had been shared, memorized and passed on for generations. Why did the Navajo do this? Maybe because they are scientists. They wanted to know their world better, knowledge that could be the difference between surviving and thriving for people who live completely on and with the land.

In the forests of Mexico resides the giant owl butterfly (Caligo eurilochus) that flaps its papery 7-inch (18 centimeters) wings at dusk when predator birds are absent. At the base of each wing is a perfectly formed eyespot that, together, uncannily resemble the eyes of an owl. An artist would be challenged to create such replicas.

English naturalist Henry Walter Bates first explained the copycat wings. Arriving in 1848, Bates traveled far up the Amazon and its tributaries. Aside from its racist tropes, his book, "The Naturalist on the River Amazons," is a stunning description of 11 years of study wherein he collected over 14,000 species and identified 8,000 new ones, from mundane foraging ants to jaw-dropping, foot-wide, bird-eating Mygales spiders that giggling children paraded around leashed like a pet dog.

Like other naturalists of his day, John James Audubon and Alphonse Dubois, Bates shot birds right and left to be packed in formaldehyde and handed over to natural history museums. However, his primary interest was Amazonian butterflies.

He noticed edible butterflies being ignored by insectivorous birds and dragonflies because their wing coloring mimicked noxious or predatory species. The spicebush swallowtail caterpillar (Papilio troilus) is born black and white disguised as bird poop. It will molt three more times with spots on its head that make it appear like a snake — known as Batesian mimicry.

This evolutionary process rewarded deceptive wing patterns and coloring to protect species. He was an early supporter of Darwin's theories of evolution, and Darwin called Bates's book the best on natural history ever published in England.

What neither Darwin nor Bates could explain is how butterflies manage to disguise themselves. Had caterpillars ever looked at an owl's eye? They evolved, to be sure, and failures are gobbled up, but how exactly does the pupa of a caterpillar morph into a butterfly with perfect replicas of owl eyes on its wings?

The scientific explanation is a regulatory network that allows genes to collaborate and learn from each other. That does not tell us how the genes were programmed in the first place. Millions of years ago, genes began to paint wings with pigmented designs of extraordinary fidelity and complexity. Who was the artist?

Text from "Carbon" by Paul Hawken, published by Viking, a division of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (C) 2025 by Paul Hawken. Reprinted with permission from Penguin Random House.

To delve deeper into Paul Hawken's work, you can read an interview with the author here, in which he tells Live Science about the paradigm shift needed to start valuing, protecting and restoring the planet and its inhabitants.

Mountain fly maggots have evolved fake faces on their butts as a cunning disguise to infiltrate termite colonies, a new study has found.

Researchers spotted the fake faces, which resemble termite heads, on the rear of a previously unknown blow fly larva living in the mountains of Morocco. These faces are part of an extreme mimicking strategy that trick harvester termites (Anacanthotermes ochraceus) into thinking the fly larvae are part of their colony.

Soldier termites typically kill colony intruders on site, but disguised larvae live among the soldiers without any problems and are granted full access to the termite mound's food chamber. The disguise is so good that the termites even appear to groom the guileful grubs, according to the study published Monday (Feb. 10) in the journal Current Biology.

Researchers discovered the two-faced larvae by chance while looking for ants in the Anti-Atlas mountain range in southern Morocco. The team lifted a stone and found a termite mound with three of the never-before-seen fly larvae inside, study lead author Roger Vila, a scientist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Spain, explained in a statement.

"It must be an extremely rare species, because we have made three more expeditions in that area and, despite lifting hundreds of stones, we found only two more flies, together, in another termite mound," Vila said.

Related: Kamikaze termites blow themselves up with 'explosive' backpacks — and scientists just figured out how

Termite nests are protected, food-rich habitats for any species cunning enough to get inside. The fly's strategy is one of social integration, which requires extreme morphological, behavioral and physiological adaptations to pull off, according to the study.

Researchers collected the disguised fly larvae and termites and took them back to the lab for further study, and found a number of extreme adaptations. For example, the larvae had modified breathing holes to act as fake termite eyes and modified sensory organs called papillae that resembled termite antennae.

Chemical disguise

The larvae have also evolved scent chemicals to match the termites' unique odor. Vila noted that the team studied the chemical composition of the larvae and found they were indistinguishable from the termites in the colonies where they lived.

"They smell exactly the same," Vila said. "In addition, the larvae and termites in a particular colony have slight differences in their chemical profile that differentiate them from other termite mounds. This odour is key to interacting with the termites and benefiting from their communal life. It is a chemical disguise."

The researchers found that the larvae were part of the fly genus Rhyncomya. No other member of this group is known to do this kind of mimicry, so the team suspects the larvae are a newfound species. However, the team was unable to raise the larvae to adulthood to be sure as they all died in the lab before they were able to mature.

Villa noted that there may be elements of the termite nest and the relationship between the two species that they were unable to transfer to the lab.

"Their diet is currently unknown, and their adult form remains a mystery," Vila added.

There's hardly a more irritating noise than the sound of a fly buzzing around your head. These tiny insects have the uncanny ability to track down humans and nimbly dodge our attempts to swat them away.

But why do flies hang around us? The reason depends on the species of insect, experts say.

"For a certain group of them, they're interested in us because we are mammals with warm blood that they can feed on," Jonathan Larson, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, told Live Science. "That's things like mosquitoes and deer flies and a few others, where they are attracted to our carbon dioxide that we are expelling out as we breathe."

Human bodies are easy for flies to find because we are constantly releasing odors that the insects are naturally attracted to, like carbon dioxide, lactic acid and carboxylic acid, Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, an entomologist at Cornell University and a senior extension associate at the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program, told Live Science.

Related: Why are flies so hard to swat?

Those specific smells, however, depend on the person.

"If you could see smell, you would see a cloud of effervescence around the bodies of all of the people that you know," Sammy Ramsey, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Live Science. "Everybody's oil compositions and the aerosolized molecules that are coming off of their skin — those are different based on your genetics and your diet and the activities that you've gone about that day. But some people are much more attractive than others."

Sweat slurpees

Whereas parasitic flies stick near us to suck our blood, other species, like houseflies (Musca domestica), are more interested in the nutrients on our skin.

"Our skin is covered in stuff that they can drink up. So there's carbohydrates and proteins and all kinds of stuff in our sweat and just in our skin oils, and they can lick it up. It's like a 7-Eleven." Larson said. "They can get lots of things real fast just by swiping [their] sponging mouth part across that surface and slurping it up."

But flies don't rely on sweat for sustenance, Ramsey said. While some do imbibe the nutrients on our skin, these are very dilute, so it's likely that they primarily lap up sweat to replenish salt concentrations in their bodies, he said. Flies are more likely to feed on our food when they're looking for a heartier meal. While some species, including houseflies, prefer decomposing matter, they are not picky eaters and will graze on a bit of everything. To break down solid food, these flies vomit up digestive enzymes to liquefy their meal and then suck it up through their straw-like proboscises.

Systems for sensing potential food sources vary among the 110,000 fly species, and even between fly sexes. Many rely on tiny hairs on their antennae or body that have sensory receptors for specific odors. These sensory cells can detect a meal from miles away and send different signals to the fly's brain depending on which chemicals the cells find in the air.

If a fly sniffs something it likes, it buzzes closer and lands on it. Flies have taste receptors on their feet, so they can quickly tell if something is edible. This comes in handy when they want to grab a fast snack before being swatted away by their host. Flies also have large, bulbous eyes made up of thousands of individual lenses that are extremely sensitive to movement and shaped in a way that allows a nearly 360-degree field of view. Many flies use visual cues to find food and escape danger.

Houseflies can be particularly annoying because they are naturally curious creatures, Ramsey said.

"It's this back-and-forth between their curiosity and their capacity to always detect movement and to relate that movement to potential danger that allows them to constantly land on you and other surfaces," Ramsey explained. Yet this natural curiosity also makes them perfect vectors for spreading illnesses, including cholera, tuberculosis and typhoid fever.

"They land on poop. They get their feet all dirty. They don't wash their hands, and then they come and they throw up on your sandwich," Larson said. "So they're touching all that and then spreading germs."

While there's no one-size-fits-all method for making yourself less attractive to all fly species, Gangloff-Kaufmann said wearing long clothing and repellents like DEET or oil of lemon eucalyptus can help deter some of them.

Stick insects keep evolving to have the same strange body plans over and over again, scientists have discovered. This evolutionary blueprint has enabled researchers to predict the critters' next developments.

Researchers identified just 20 distinct body types that hundreds of different stick insect species have independently evolved. These body types include the "tree lobsters," which have lobster-like features; the "bark huggers," which blend in with a tree; and the "large-headed sticks," which have massive jaws or mandibles.

The same body types keep popping up all across the planet because many stick insect lineages have colonized similar environments and need the same features to survive. These similarities enable researchers to predict stick insect evolution, even when the critters have evolved independently from one another for tens of millions of years, according to the new study published Monday (Dec. 23) in the journal PNAS.

"What we're really diving into here is the predictability of evolution," study first author Romain Boisseau, a postdoctoral researcher studying stick insect evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, told Live Science. "If you have a similar lineage that invades a very similar environment you actually can predict where it's going to go."

Related: Plastic-eating mealworms native to Africa discovered

When different organisms evolve similar traits, it's called convergent evolution. Previous research has highlighted a few examples of convergent evolution in stick insects. For example, a 2008 study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that Australia's Lord Howe Island stick insects (Dryococelus australis) — once thought to be extinct — independently evolved the same "tree lobster" shape as New Guinea's thorny devil stick insects (Eurycantha).

However, Boisseau noted that nobody had conducted a large-scale study of convergent evolution across multiple different stick insect lineages. To understand how common convergent evolution was, the team measured and compared features from 1,359 stick insects across 212 species.

Boisseau and his colleagues found that 20 body plans — out of a total of 21 — had evolved at least twice in different regions, and that a broad stick-like appearance had evolved at least 10 separate times.

"In all these areas of the world it looks like many different body forms repeatedly evolved independently," Boisseau said.

Stick insect camouflage

Habitat was a key factor in the evolution of the body plans. Boisseau noted that stick insects use camouflage as their main line of defense against predators, so when the predators and the habitat are similar, the same kind of camouflage is needed to survive.

The team also looked at how closely related the different stick insects were. A pattern emerged: stick insects with the same body plans shared an ancestor, even though that ancestor looked totally different. In other words, the stick insects followed similar evolutionary paths once they were separated from one another.

"They tend to basically follow the same trajectory," Boisseau said. "That's probably related to the fact that they're genetically more similar. It's potentially the same genes or the same mechanisms that are re-employed in these closely related species."

Boisseau and his colleagues will now look more closely at the genetics of stick insects to learn what drives convergent evolution at the molecular level.

Invasive "murder hornets" have been completely eradicated in the U.S., officials have announced, after there were no confirmed sightings of the giant wasps in the last three years.

Northern giant hornets (Vespa mandarinia), nicknamed "murder hornets," are the world's largest wasps with a fearsome reputation, posing a threat to U.S. wildlife and human health. Native to Asia, the hornets arrived in North America in 2019, and authorities have been trying to eradicate them ever since.

On Wednesday (Dec. 18), the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced they had successfully removed the hornets from Washington state, which was their only known location in the U.S.

"We're pleased to announce the eradication of the northern giant hornet in Washington state," WSDA director Derek Sandison said in a statement.

Related: Here's how to tell a 'murder hornet' from other nasty wasps

These giant hornets, which are also known as Asian giant hornets, kill smaller insects and pose a significant threat to honeybees. Famous for their "slaughter" attacks, the hornets sometimes launch coordinated group assaults on honeybees and can quickly take out entire hives.

The hornets also pose a threat to human health, mostly because some people are allergic to wasp venom, but also because large numbers of hornets attacking all at once can, in rare instances, trigger organ failure even in people who aren't allergic.

The hornets were first reported in North America on Vancouver Island, Canada, and were later confirmed near Blaine, Washington. Authorities responded by targeting and eliminating the hornets' nests.

In 2020, scientists used dental floss to attach tiny radio trackers to live hornets and then followed them back to their nests, The Associated Press reported. Pest control teams have also worked with members of the public to find and eliminate the insects.

"Without the public's support for this effort, it is unlikely we would be announcing the eradication of northern giant hornet today," Sven Spichiger, pest program manager at the WSDA, said in the statement. "All of our nest detections resulted directly or indirectly from public reports. And half of our confirmed detections came from the public."

How did the hornets arrive?

Researchers are unsure how the hornets reached the U.S., but they may have been intentionally or unintentionally imported. Hornets are consumed throughout Asia for food and used in traditional medicines, so it's possible they were illegally imported for those purposes, or they may have accidentally stowed away on international shipments.

In 2021, authorities determined that one dead hornet near Marysville in Washington was unrelated to the original 2019 batch of invaders and must have arrived separately, suggesting multiple introductions. However, this dead hornet was the only one ever found with this genetic makeup, and the 2019 batch now appears to have been eliminated.

A member of the public reported a suspicious hornet in October 2024 in Kitshap County, but the WSDA was unable to locate and identify the insect. Officials placed traps in the area and spoke to members of the community, but they didn't find anything, according to the statement.

"Luckily, we were already on the lookout for hornets when they showed up in Washington in 2019," Spichiger said. "Although they are now eradicated from the state, we'll always be keeping an eye out for them and encourage community members to do the same. They got here once and they could do it again."

Scientists may have discovered an unlikely ally in the fight against plastic waste: the lesser mealworm. Native to Africa but now widespread across the planet, a beetle larvae from the Alphitobius genus can consume and degrade plastic, the researchers found.

The finding could be particularly useful in combating plastic pollution in Africa, the researchers noted. The continent is the second-most plastic-polluted continent in the world, despite producing only 5% of the world's plastic pollution, according to the World Health Organization.

In the study, published Sept. 12 in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers found that the lesser mealworms can digest polystyrene, a type of plastic commonly found in Styrofoam food containers and packaging. The team isn't sure of the species yet, and think it may be a new subspecies that needs to be identified.

This finding follows similar results with other mealworm species worldwide. "However, this is the first time that the lesser mealworms, which are native to Africa, have been documented to have this capacity," study author Fathiya Khamis, a scientist at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya, said in a statement.

The researchers found that the larvae could consume close to 50% of the polystyrene they were fed, with their efficiency increasing if the plastic feed was mixed with bran or grain husks.

The bacteria living in the mealworms' gut help them break down the complex polymers in plastic. Microbial communities, including those in the genera Kluyvera, Lactococcus and Klebsiella, play a crucial role in digesting the polystyrene, turning it into simpler compounds that the mealworm can process without harm.

Related: Plastic-eating fungi could help take a bite out of Earth's rampant pollution crisis, study suggests

These bacteria produce enzymes capable of digesting the plastic, and so increasing the number of these bacteria or enzymes in mealworms could increase their plastic-processing efficiency, while not harming the insects themselves.

In the future, scientists could identify the specific bacterial strains and enzymes involved in breaking down polystyrene and use them in recycling plastic waste, the researchers said. The research may lay the groundwork for a future pathway to turn plastic into high-value insect protein for animal feeds.

"We will also explore the mechanisms of the bacteria in the lesser mealworm in the degradation of plastic. We want to understand if the bacteria are inherent in the mealworms, or if they are a defence strategy acquired after feeding on plastic," study co-author Evalyne Ndotono, a scientist who conducted the research as part of her master's studies at ICIPE, said in the statement.

Extremely close-up images of a cannabis plant, spider eyes and a mouse brain are among the winners of the 50th annual Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.

A panel of judges selected 20 winners, shortlisted from around 2,100 entries, for capturing the smallest details in extraordinary clarity.

"Sometimes, we overlook the tiny details of the world around us," Eric Flem, senior manager of CRM and communications at Nikon Instruments, said in a statement shared with Live Science. "Nikon Small World serves as a reminder to pause, appreciate the power and beauty of the little things, and to cultivate a deeper curiosity to explore and question."

Bruno Cisterna and Eric Vitriol, both researchers at the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at Augusta University in Georgia, won first place with their image of differentiated mouse brain tumor cells — where the cell has developed specialized functions or features. Their image reveals how disruptions in the cell cytoskeleton (which maintains the cell's shape and enables it to carry out essential functions) can lead to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

Astronomer-turned-photographer Marcel Clemens was awarded second place for his image of an electrical arc between a pin and a wire, while marijuana photographer Chris Romaine won third place for his image of a cannabis plant leaf.

You can see all 20 winning images below.

Mesmerizing microscopic footage showing "waves" inside a developing fly embryo has won the 14th annual Nikon Small World in Motion competition.

These "mitotic waves" occur during cell division as tissue forms and moves in the embryo of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). Understanding this biological process in flies could help reveal the forces that build embryos across the animal kingdom. Many of these fundamental processes can go awry in humans, leading to neurological disorders, congenital defects and cancer.

"The beauty of basic research in biology is that what we learn in one organism is often applicable to others and has the potential to contribute to the understanding of human diseases," Bruno Vellutini, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, who filmed the fly embryo, said in a statement.

Vellutini's video was chosen from among 370 entries as overall winner of the competition on Tuesday (Sept. 17).

He captured the film using light sheet microscopy, a technique in which a focused "sheet" of laser light illuminates a sample to produce high-resolution 3D images of living cells, tissues and organisms.

Vellutini's video shows cell division occurring in waves during fly embryogenesis — the process where a single-celled fertilized egg develops into a multicellular organism.

"Fruit fly embryos [that] are in our homes, developing in our kitchens and our trash bins, are undergoing the same processes as shown in the video. I believe the video is particularly impactful because it shows us how these fascinating cellular and tissue dynamics are happening every day, all around us — even in the most mundane living beings," Vellutini said.

Vellutini's video was selected as winner as it captures "mesmerizing movement within the microscopic world that helps deepen our understanding of a process that shapes life itself," panel judge Eric Flem, senior manager of communications and CRM at Nikon Instruments, said in the statement.

Researchers in Mississippi have discovered a previously unknown species of parasitoid wasp that matures inside the bodies of living, adult fruit flies before bursting out of them like a xenomorph in the "Alien" movies.

The sneaky predator, which researchers have named Syntretus perlmani, is the first wasp found to infect adult fruit flies — similar wasp species are known to target flies during their younger, more vulnerable larva and pupa life stages. The wasps are parasitoids rather than parasites because they always kill their hosts, while parasites usually don't.

A team of scientists came across the wasp by chance while collecting a common fruit fly called Drosophila affinis in their backyards in Mississippi. They published their findings Wednesday (Sep. 11) in the journal Nature.

Study lead author Logan Moore, a biologist who worked on the research as part of his doctorate at Mississippi State University, told Live Science that female S. perlmani use their needle-like ovipositor organ — the stinger in stinging wasps — to stab and deposit an egg within a fruit fly's abdomen. The egg then hatches into a tiny wasp larva, which grows inside the fly for about 18 days before leaving its host for dead.

"It will effectively emerge out of the side of the fly," Moore said. "And just to add an additional layer of horror, the fly will normally remain alive for several hours after that."

Related: These bacteria trigger a sex change in wasps — scientists finally know how

The researchers were screening fruit flies for parasitic worms called nematodes in March 2023 when they first came across a spiky-tailed wasp larva inside the abdomen of one of the flies.

"At the time we didn't think it was real," Moore said. "If you dissect thousands of flies, you will see some things that are strange and odd, and you'll never see them again."

However, the scientists found more wasp larvae and eventually confirmed their discovery by rearing the wasps in a lab and studying their DNA. In the lab, mature S. perlmani larvae exited their hosts, explored for a few hours and then buried themselves in whatever substrate the researchers provided. Once undercover, they entered a cocoon stage for around 23 days before emerging as adults, according to the study.

The team paired adult wasps with other fruit flies from the genus Drosophila and found that S. perlmani was also capable of infecting Drosophila acutilabella. The researchers also discovered S. perlmani's DNA signature in publicly available genomic data of mashed-up Drosophila melanogaster, confirming the wasp infected that species as well.

Scientists have been studying Drosophila fruit flies for centuries. For example, D. melanogaster is ideal for genetic research because humans share 75% of the genes responsible for human diseases, according to the University of California, Davis. They're also easy to find, breed and study.

"Almost everybody in the world has had some sort of interaction with this fly, usually not in a good context," Moore said. "They're annoying little pests that fly around your fruit."

Finding the wasp was a surprise for the researchers because Drosophila flies are so common and well studied, which begs the question: "Why has it taken so long for this wasp to be discovered?"

"I would say maybe the one thing that would explain why it's gone undiscovered for so long is because nobody is expecting it," Moore said. "No parasitoid wasp has been known to infect the adult stage of not just Drosophila, but of flies in general."

Moore noted that the juvenile stages of insects are far more vulnerable. They aren't equipped with a thick exoskeleton like adults, and without wings, they're far less mobile.

The team still has much to learn about how this newfound species evolved to infect adults, but it seems to be very good at it. Moore and his colleagues found infected flies in Mississippi, Alabama and North Carolina, while the D. melanogaster DNA data revealed the wasp was present across the eastern United States.

"This is all around us, infecting one of the most well-studied animals on the planet," Moore said. "It just leaves you wondering what else is out there on our doormat right now."

Kamikaze termites in French Guiana have evolved a unique defense mechanism — carrying "rucksacks" filled with a toxic liquid that they can trigger to explode, poisoning their enemies in the process. Now, scientists have solved the mystery of how these deadly backpacks can be safely carried around then detonated on demand.

In 2012, researchers discovered that older Neocapritermes taracua worker termites are armed with blue spotted backpacks that explode when they are threatened.

The N. taracua workers have a specialized pair of glands in their abdomens that gradually secrete the enzyme blue laccase BP76 into pockets on their backs. As they age, the termites accumulate "rucksacks" filled with these blue, copper-containing blue crystals.

When faced with a threat, the aging workers rupture their bodies, mixing the enzyme with relatively benign secretions produced in their salivary glands. The result is a sticky liquid, rich in highly poisonous benzoquinones that can immobilize or kill predators.

However, researchers were puzzled by how BP76 could remain in a solid state stored on the termites' backs, while still staying primed for an instant reaction upon rupture.

The new study, published Aug. 15 in the journal Structure, solved the mystery by providing the first high-resolution crystal structure of this enzyme.

"The enzyme's three-dimensional structure reveals that BP76 employs a variety of stabilization strategies," study lead author Jana Škerlová, a researcher at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.

The enzyme is tightly folded, much like folding a piece of paper into a compact shape, which helps it resist degradation over time. Another layer of protection comes from sugar molecules that are attached to the protein, forming a protective shield that further stabilizes it.

Related: Scientists discovered the oldest termite mounds on Earth — and they're 34,000 years old

One of the more intriguing features of BP76 is a rare and unusually strong chemical bond between two amino acids, lysine and cysteine, near the enzyme's active site. This bond is not commonly found in enzymes and plays a crucial role in maintaining BP76's structure, especially when the enzyme is stored as a solid on the termite's back, the researchers found.

This bond acts like a special locking mechanism, ensuring that the enzyme retains its shape and remains fully functional, ready to be deployed in an instant when the termite needs to defend its colony.

"Just as knowledge about individual components of an instrument sheds light on how it works, knowing the three-dimensional structure of a molecule helps us understand a biological process," study co-author Pavlína Řezáčová, a structural biologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences, said in the statement.

The ability for termites to stably store and accumulate this enzyme as they age is critical to protect the colony. Previous research theorized that, because the mandibles of termites dull over time, older termites may not be as effective at foraging or maintaining the nest as younger workers.

With their exploding rucksacks, older workers may instead specialize in providing a final, deadly act to defend the colony.

Researchers have discovered how the brain of the largest animal group evolved after finding the remains of a microscopic, worm-like creature that lived half a billion years ago. 

The creature died while still in its early development, or larval stage, and belongs to a new species named Youti yuanshi, which combines the standard Chinese words "yòutǐ," meaning "larva," and "yuánshǐ," meaning "primitive," according to a new study published Wednesday (July 31) in the journal Nature. 

Y. yuanshi inhabited the Cambrian seas and helped give rise to living arthropods like insects, spiders and crabs. Despite being about the size of a grain of sand, the fossil is exceptionally well-preserved, revealing never-before-seen details that help explain how arthropods developed complex brains. 

"When I used to daydream about the one fossil I'd most like to discover, I'd always be thinking of an arthropod larva, because developmental data are just so central to understanding their evolution," study lead author Martin Smith, an associate professor in paleontology at Durham University in the U.K., said in a statement. "But larvae are so tiny and fragile, the chances of finding one fossilised are practically zero — or so I thought!" 

Related: Stunning 3D images show anatomy of 500 million-year-old Cambrian trilobites entombed in volcanic ash

A team of researchers recovered the fossil from the Yu'anshan rock formation in the Yunnan Province of China. They scanned the fossil with X-rays to create virtual 3D images of its internal structures. The images revealed a brain and primitive circulatory system, including traces of nerves serving the larva's simple legs and eyes, according to the study.

"I already knew that this simple worm-like fossil was something special, but when I saw the amazing structures preserved under its skin, my jaw just dropped — how could these intricate features have avoided decay and still be here to see half a billion years later?" Smith said. 

While researchers aren't sure how the animal became such an exceptional fossil, at some point soon after death, its soft tissues were replaced with phosphate and preserved in rock. Smith told Live Science that there must have been higher levels of phosphorus in the water that provided the raw materials for the creature's cells to be converted into phosphate minerals. 

The exceptional preservation allowed researchers to see more of an early arthropod's anatomy than they normally would. This included signs that arthropod brains were becoming more sophisticated during Y. yuanshi's time. For example, the larva had an ancestral brain region that would become the nub of a more specialized arthropod head with antennae and various other appendages, according to the statement. These specialized heads meant the creatures could adopt a variety of lifestyles, including becoming sophisticated predators. 

"As the arthropod brain has developed, that's allowed arthropods to exhibit much more complicated behaviors and even more complicated morphologies," Smith said. 

This "led to their rapid rise in diversity, which they've maintained to the modern day," he added. 

Name: Panda ant (Euspinolia militaris)

Where it lives: Chile

What it eats: Nectar from flowers, small insects

Why it's awesome: Despite the name, panda ants are a type of wasp belonging to the Mutillidae family, whose wingless females resemble large, hairy ants. They have a velvety white coat, with black spots around the eyes and body — similar to pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca).

This unusual coloring is generally only seen in females, according to National Geographic. It is aposematic, meaning it  warns predators of its powerful, venomous sting, which isn't deadly to humans but can be very painful. Only females have stingers, which are roughly half the length of their 0.3-inch-long (8 millimeters) bodies, as they are modified egg-laying organs.

Like in all wasps, the stinger is smooth, meaning the insects can sting time and time again.

Panda ants don't form colonies but lead solitary lives in hot, dry coastal areas of Chile. They forage for food, which includes flower nectar and small insects, and they tend to live in sandy areas where they can easily hunt for food and find other insects’ nests to lay their eggs in.

Related: Ants perform life saving operations — the only animal other than humans known to do so

Panda ants mate in the air, with the winged males lifting the flightless females. It's not known exactly why they do this, but it may be to avoid predators, to stop other males mating with the female or to prevent the female from getting away.

Afterwards, females go underground to find a suitable place to lay their eggs. These insects don't create their own nest but instead lay their eggs in the nest of another insect, such as a ground bee or wasp. Once the panda ant eggs hatch, they consume the host's larvae. They then grow inside the nest, turning from larvae to pupa before becoming fully grown panda ants. A female panda ant can lay up to 2,000 eggs within her two-year life cycle.

Panda ants have another unusual skill — the ability to produce high-pitched sounds by rubbing together parts of their bodies such as their legs or antennae to warn off predators. Although other wasps from the Mutillidae family can produce similar sounds, the noise made by panda ants can reach ultrasonic levels. These noises may act as a mating signal, as well as keeping predators like rodents away.

Ants in Florida perform life-saving surgery on their peers, scientists have discovered. They are only the second animal in the world known to do this — along with humans. 

The researchers found that Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) identify limb wounds on their nestmates, then treat them with either cleaning or amputation.

The team published its findings Tuesday (July 2) in the journal Current Biology.

"When we're talking about amputation behavior, this is literally the only case in which a sophisticated and systematic amputation of an individual by another member of its species occurs in the animal kingdom," study first author Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany, said in a statement.

In 2023, Frank's team discovered that an African ant species, Megaponera analis, can treat infected wounds in their nestmates with an antimicrobial substance produced in their glands. Florida carpenter ants do not have any equivalent glands, so the team wanted to find out how this species handles wounds in members of the colony. 

Specifically, the researchers looked at two types of leg wounds: lacerations on the femur (thigh) and those lower down on the tibia.

Related: 'Supergene' mutation turned ants into parasitic wannabe queens

In experiments, they observed that the ants treated their nest members' femur injuries by cleaning the wound with their mouths before amputating the leg by repeatedly biting it, while the tibia wounds were treated with just cleaning.

The surgeries resulted in significant improvements in the survival of their ant patients. Survival rates for femur injuries improved from less than 40% to between 90 and 95% when amputations were performed, while survival rates for tibia injuries improved from 15% to 75% following cleaning.

The scientists suggest ants only amputate femur injuries, rather than all leg injuries, because of speed limitations.

An amputation takes ants at least 40 minutes to complete.

After studying micro-CT scans of the ants, the researchers speculated that the damage to blood-pumping muscles in the femur causes blood circulation to slow. This would mean that bacteria-laden blood would take longer to enter the body, allowing the ants enough time to amputate the limb.

Ant tibias, meanwhile, have relatively little muscle tissue, so infections can spread faster. This means amputation would take too long for the ants to stop the spread of harmful bacteria, so they instead focus on cleaning the wound.

"The ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it's infected or sterile, and treat it accordingly over long periods of time by other individuals — the only medical system that can rival that would be the human one," Frank said.

The ants' ability to identify and treat wounds selectively is innate, the researchers said, and that they did not find evidence of learning.

The scientists are now extending their research to other ant species that don't possess special antimicrobial glands to see if other ants have the ability to perform surgeries. 

Scientists have found the first evidence of insects crossing an entire ocean — after finding butterflies that made a 2,600-mile (4,200 kilometers) journey across the Atlantic.

Gerard Talavera, an evolutionary biologist at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, made the discovery in French Guiana in 2013, when he spotted a flock of painted lady butterflies (Vanessa cardui) sitting on the sand, their wings tattered and shot through with holes.

This discovery puzzled scientists, as the tiny species can be found around the world, but not in South America. Now, after a decade of investigation, the researchers have pieced together an answer for how the butterflies got there: They embarked on the first transoceanic flight recorded in an insect. 

The researchers published their findings Tuesday (June 25) in the journal Nature Communications.

"We tend to see butterflies as a symbol of the fragility of beauty, but science shows us that they can perform incredible feats," study co-author Roger Vila, a researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, said in a statement. "There is still much to discover about their capabilities."

Insect migrations aren't uncommon, but they're difficult to track. Scientists usually rely on records from amateur insect watchers and radar coverage to study insect movements, but these are limited and not always reliable.

Related: 'Russian doll' set of stomach-bursting parasites released inside butterfly on remote Finnish island

To work out how the painted lady butterflies got to French Guiana, the researchers pulled together multiple strands of evidence. They sequenced the butterflies' genomes, which revealed that they were closely related to populations in Europe and Africa. The team also analyzed pollen DNA on the insects' 2-inch-long (5 centimeters) bodies and identified two plant species only found in tropical Africa. In addition, they studied isotopes of hydrogen and strontium on the butterflies' wings, finding that they were unique to western Europe. 

Taken together, this evidence ruled out a North American origin for the insects and suggested that their lives began in Africa or Europe.

"The painted lady butterflies reached South America from West Africa, flying at least 4,200 km over the Atlantic. But their journey could have been even longer, starting in Europe and passing through three continents, implying a migration of 7,000 km [4,350 miles] or more," study co-author Clément Bataille, a professor of earth and environment science at the University of Ottawa in Canada, said in the statement. "This is an extraordinary feat for such a small insect." 

Painted lady butterflies are already known to migrate up to 9,000 miles (14,500 km) between Europe and Africa, including crossing the unforgiving expanse of the Sahara. 

But this trip is made with nightly stops to rest and refuel. To reach French Guiana from West Africa, the butterflies would have to fly for up to eight days without rest.

To resolve this part of the mystery, the scientists analyzed wind currents that rise from the Sahara and blow dust from Africa to the Americas. They found that by gliding upon these aerial highways, the butterflies could complete their remarkable journey.

"The butterflies could only have completed this flight using a strategy alternating between minimal effort to avoid falling into the sea, facilitated by ascending winds, and active flight, which requires more energy consumption," study co-author Eric Toro-Delgado, a doctoral student at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, said in the statement. "We estimate that without wind, the butterflies could have flown a maximum of 780 km [485 miles] before exhausting all their fat and thus their energy."

The finding highlights insects' abilities to traverse huge distances in ways scientists previously haven't considered.

"This discovery opens new perspectives on the capabilities of insects to disperse over long distances, even across seas and oceans. It is possible that we are underestimating the frequency and impact of these movements on our ecosystems," study lead-author Talavera said in the statement. "Throughout history, migratory phenomena have been important in defining the distributions of species that we observe today."

Scientists in South Africa have discovered the world's oldest known active termite mounds, which have been occupied for tens of thousands of years. 

"Recent radiocarbon dating has revealed that these mounds are far older than any previously known, with some dating as far back as 34,000 years — that's older than the iconic cave paintings in Europe and even older than the Last Glacial Maximum, when vast ice sheets covered much of the northern hemisphere," Michele Francis, the lead author of the study published in May in the journal Science of the Total Environment, said in a statement.

The massive insect dwelling was discovered along the banks of the Buffels River in Namaqualand, a region along the west coast of South Africa where around 20% of the landscape is covered by such mounds. The residents of these ancient "little hills," called "heuweltjies" in Afrikaans, are southern harvester termites (Microhodotermes viator). As they go about their daily forage, these termites collect pieces of wood that they add to their nests. Over the years, these organic materials pile up and form a carbon-rich reservoir.

An earlier study by Francis, who is an environmental scientist at Stellenbosch University, and her team estimated that each termite mound could harbor about 15 tons (14 metric tons) of carbon. 

So Francis was interested in understanding how groundwater, the atmosphere and the soil in these little hills interacted to lock away so much carbon. To do so, the team conducted a chemical analysis of the termite hills and characterized the chemical processes that transfer atmospheric carbon into the tiny hills. They found that as termites harvest organic materials and bring them into their nests, they disturb the soil and make it easier for water to infiltrate. Microbes in the soil then convert these caches of carbon into calcium carbonate, past research found. 

During heavy rains, calcium carbonate in the mounds then chemically reacts with carbonic acid, which forms when atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in rainwater. The chemical cascade increases the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This process locks new carbon about 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface in long-term storage, Francis wrote in The Conversation.

"By studying these mounds, scientists can gain a better understanding of how to combat climate change, utilizing nature's own processes for carbon sequestration," she said in the statement. 

The scientists estimated the age of these termite mounds through radiocarbon dating. The previously discovered oldest termite mounds found in Brazil were 4,000 years old. 

"The discovery of the world's oldest termite mounds in Namaqualand is a testament to the incredible history hidden beneath our feet," Francis said in the statement. "These mounds not only illuminate the past but also offer vital clues for our future. As we continue to uncover the secrets of these ancient structures, they stand as a reminder of the delicate interplay between climate, environment, and life on earth."

Trillions of red-eyed cicadas are emerging across the eastern U.S. this spring — but hidden among them are a handful of "one in a million" blue-eyed bugs, recent sightings show.

Earlier this month, 4-year-old Jack Bailey from Wheaton, Illinois, discovered a blue-eyed cicada in his family's yard. Experts at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago identified the specimen as a female Brood XIII cicada belonging to the species Magicicada cassini. Brood XIII cicadas are made up of three species and emerge every 17 years to mate. This year, for the first time since 1803, Brood XIII cicadas are appearing at the same time as Brood XIX, which comprises four species and emerges every 13 years.

Jack and his mother Greta Bailey donated the blue-eyed cicada to the Field Museum, where scientists will try to sequence its DNA and identify the genes responsible for the unusual eye color, according to a statement. The blue pigment is likely the result of a rare mutation. 

"I have been in Chicago for five periodical cicada emergences of our Brood XIII, and this is the first blue-eyed cicada I have seen," Jim Louderman, a collections assistant in the insect division of the Field Museum, said in the statement. "I have also seen two emergences of Brood X in Indiana and two emergences of Brood XIX in Central Illinois. These rare [blue-eyed] insect emergences are always infertile and can not have offspring, which is why they remain so rare."

Related: Double cicada bloom 2024 — Google Doodle celebrates once-in-221-year event with band of bugs

Another blue-eyed cicada was photographed in the Orland Grassland forest preserve southwest of Chicago, NBC Chicago reported. 

Blue-eyed cicadas are rare and are "one in a million," Gene Kritsky, a professor of biology at Mount St. Joseph University in Ohio, told the news channel. 

Kritsky told NBC Chicago that the image of the blue-eyed cicada in Orland Grassland is only the second he has seen this year out of 40,000 photographs submitted to his app, Cicada Safari, which tracks cicadas in the United States. In previous emergences, only two or three reports out of 500,000 were of blue-eyed cicadas, he said.

Cicada sightings in the Chicago area exploded earlier this month after a rise in temperatures. Cicadas emerge from the soil when temperatures a few inches below the surface reach 64 degrees Fahrenheit (18 degrees Celsius), according to a blog post by Martha Weiss, a professor of biology at Washington D.C.'s Georgetown University. 

Today's Google Doodle celebrates the ongoing "cicada-geddon" — where two broods of the insects have simultaneously emerged for the first time in 221 years. The double bloom event has led to billions if not trillions of cicadas rising from the ground across parts of the Midwest and Southeast. 

Brood XIII and Brood XIX emerge on 17- and 13-year cycles, respectively. "The co-emergence of any two broods of different cycles is rare, because the cycles are both prime numbers," John Cooley, founder of the Periodical Cicada Project and a professor in University of Connecticut's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, previously told Live Science. "Any given 13- and 17-year broods will only co-emerge once every 13 x 17 = 221 years." 

The first cicadas of this year's dual emergence appeared in April, and the event is now in full swing. During the event, juvenile bugs that have been living underground hatch and appear at the surface as nymphs. They then transform into adults and shed their exoskeletons, before climbing upwards into trees, where they mate. 

Males emit a loud shrieking noise to attract females, which return their calls with a clicking sound. After mating, the females lay their eggs. After the eggs hatch, they feed on tree sap before burrowing underground to begin a new cycle. 

Related: A trillion cicadas will descend on the US this spring in rare event that could leave unforgettable stench

The event lasts until all the cicadas that have been living underground have come to the surface and complete their life cycle — about 3 to 4 weeks after emerging, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. 

This year's double brood event is expected to last until June, although timings depend on exactly when the cicadas start appearing. In Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kansas and Missouri, sightings were being widely reported by April 25, according to the Cicada Safari app, which tracks the event. 

"In any given area, the emergence lasts on the order of a month, depending on the weather," Cooley said. "But since this year's emergences cover such a range of latitude, there will be cicadas out much longer," he added.

Today's Google Doodle was created not only to celebrate this rare event but also to remind people that there is no reason to fear the bugs, which play an important role in their ecosystems.

"As the cicada shells pile up on trees and sidewalks and the buzzing fills your ears, try not to let them bug you," Google Doodle representatives said in a statement. "These clumsy insects fly by the trillions but don't sting, bite, or poison. Plus, many predictions show they'll be out of your hair by late June, leaving behind a feast for local animals like birds and raccoons."

It's one of the quintessential signs of summer in parts of the United States: fireflies twinkling in the night. Fireflies' ability to produce their own light is called bioluminescence, which is found in select animals, bacteria and fungi all over the world. Most of these creatures live in caves or oceans. But a handful live where humans can see them, including the more than 2,000 species of beetle that make up the firefly family.

So we know what the effect is called. But how do fireflies (family Lampyridae), also called lightning bugs, create these dazzling displays?

The key to their light is a chemical reaction based on a compound called luciferin, said Timothy Fallon, a biochemical geneticist at the University of California, San Diego.

Luciferin makes light by losing electrons — a process called oxidation — in the presence of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that provides energy for cells, and magnesium. This reaction is mediated by the enzyme luciferase. Fireflies have light organs in their abdomens where these reactions occur, which contain a layer of crystallized uric acid that helps reflect and boost light. 

This system of using luciferin and luciferase has evolved independently several times in bioluminescent animals, including in another group of light-up beetles called Sinopyrophoridae.

Related: Which group of animals has the most species?

Only in the last few hundred years have scientists started to understand how some living things are able to make light. One of the first people to make headway on this was a 17th-century Royal Society member in Oxford who discovered that air was essential for a bioluminescent fungus to glow. 

Indeed, oxygen is one of the main ingredients for firefly bioluminescence. 

Glowing starts early for fireflies. Pupae — and even eggs — are able to make light, possibly as a signal to predators that they won't make good eating, as some of them are poisonous due to chemicals called lucibufagins, which they synthesize from their diet. When fireflies have finished metamorphosing and reach adulthood, they make new light organs. But the overall system is the same, with light coming from inside special cells found in light organs on some fireflies' undersides, turning them yellow, orange, green or even blue.

These cells are chock-full of luciferin and luciferase, as well as an unusually high number of mitochondria. These tiny organelles pump out the ATP fireflies need to get the chemical reaction going. Fireflies turn their light on and off through the flow of oxygen to these cells. No oxygen means darkness. Lots of oxygen? You've got a glow. 

This on and off switch is important for U.S. East Coast fireflies that use flashing signals as adults to find the right breeding partner. Finding mates as a beetle can be tough and each flashing species has evolved its own light sequence to distinguish itself from the others. That makes bioluminescence a "Morse code love song in light," said Lynn Faust, an independent firefly researcher based in Knoxville, Tennessee. "With their extremely short adult lives, it's a race against time" to find a mate. 

Researchers have come a long way in understanding the science behind firefly bioluminescence. But countless firefly species remain undocumented in Asia and Africa, and researchers are still struggling to understand how beetles first evolved their glow-in-the-dark specialty 130 million to 140 million years ago, according to research published on the preprint database BioRxiv.

"The biggest unanswered questions are, like, what are all the genes that are involved in bioluminescence?" Fallon said.

A major breakthrough came in 1985 when researchers discovered the gene responsible for making luciferase. This enzyme is now used in biomedical research to artificially light up specific proteins in plants and animals. In 2024, researchers in Wuhan, China discovered two more genes in a Aquatica leii, a rare aquatic firefly, that they suspect may help position the lantern — the adult firefly's glowing organ — in the abdomen and enable light-generating genes, such as luciferase. 

Besides deciphering firefly bioluminescence, scientists are still learning what makes fireflies tick in the wild. Recent years have seen firefly numbers dwindle due to light population, habitat loss and climate change. "We know so little" about fireflies in their natural habitat," Faust said. "How on Earth can we conserve and protect [them] if we barely understand their most basic requirements?"

For the first time in 221 years, two gigantic broods of periodical cicadas are emerging from the ground simultaneously in the U.S. ready to engage in a raucous mating frenzy. 

The rare double cicada brood includes the two of the largest cicada broods, Brood XIII and XIX, which will co-emerge en mass after having lived underground for 17 and 13 years, respectively. 

Periodical broods are found only in eastern North America. When they finally emerge after a long juvenile period, they do so in enormous numbers. Once hatched, the immature periodical cicadas, known as nymphs, live off tree root sap underground before emerging in adulthood to mate — a noisy and frantic display that takes place over several weeks. 

This incredibly rare wildlife spectacle last occurred in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president, and it won't happen again until 2245. 

Although there are more than 3,000 cicada species, just seven are periodical cicadas (Magicicada). Of these, three have 17-year life cycles, and four have 13-year life cycles. Periodical cicadas have much longer life cycles than nonperiodical cicadas, which mature each summer and are found globally. 

When will the cicadas start emerging? 

Scientists at the University of Connecticut (UConn) have mapped cicada brood activity in the Periodical Cicada Project database, which shows that the double brood will begin emerging in late April 2024 and continue for several weeks.

The first cicadas emerged around April 25, with sightings in Illinois, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kansas and Missouri, according to the Cicada Safari app, which tracks the event. 

The emergence will last for around a month and a half, according to Indiana's Purdue University, so by mid-June the billions of bugs now surfacing will be gone.  

On May 29, Google Doodle celebrated the emergence with a band of bugs playing instruments. "As the cicada shells pile up on trees and sidewalks and the buzzing fills your ears, try not to let them bug you," Google Doodle representatives said in a statement. "These clumsy insects fly by the trillions but don't sting, bite, or poison. Plus, many predictions show they'll be out of your hair by late June, leaving behind a feast for local animals like birds and raccoons."
 

How many cicadas could emerge at the same time?

"Billions, even trillions, of cicadas are going to emerge at the same time across 17 states," Chris Simon, a professor in UConn's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and one of the scientists who runs the database, told Live Science. 

Despite the huge volumes of insects set to emerge, the co-emergence of Brood XIII and XIX likely won't look much different from other periodical cicada emergences. That's because, for the most part, they won't emerge from the same locations. There's only a small woodland area in Springfield, Illinois, where the two broods may co-emerge.

Related: A trillion cicadas will descend on the US this spring in rare event that could leave unforgettable stench

"The broods won't overlap significantly due to the latitudinal spread involved," John Cooley, founder of the Periodical Cicada Project and a professor in UConn's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, told Live Science. "But there will be a lot of cicadas … just as there are a lot of ants, flies. Insects come in large numbers."

Blue-eyed mutant cicadas

Most of the billions of cicadas emerging have blood-red eyes. But a handful — around one-in-a-million — have blue eyes due to a rare mutation. Two of these blue-eyed bugs were recently found outside of Chicago, with 4-year-old Jack Bailey from Wheaton, Illinois, finding one in his yard, while another was spotted in the Orland Grassland forest preserve.

Jack and his mother Greta Bailey sent the rare cicada to the Field Museum for analysis. "I have been in Chicago for five periodical cicada emergences of our Brood XIII, and this is the first blue-eyed cicada I have seen," Jim Louderman, a collections assistant in the insect division of the Field Museum, said in a statement. 

"I have also seen two emergences of Brood X in Indiana and two emergences of Brood XIX in Central Illinois," he added. "These rare [blue-eyed] insect emergences are always infertile and can not have offspring, which is why they remain so rare."

Why is this event so rare? 

It is a rare occurrence for two specific periodical broods of different life cycles to emerge at the same time and overlap in location. 

"The co-emergence of any two broods of different cycles is rare, because the cycles are both prime numbers,” Cooley said. "Any given 13- and 17-year broods will only co-emerge once every 13 x 17 = 221 years." 

Despite their geographic proximity, the two broods have not emerged at the same time for 221 years, although many other 13-year and 17-year broods have appeared in the same year. 

"2015 was the last time a 13-year brood emerged with a 17-year brood, when Brood XXIII emerged with Brood IV. However, the two broods weren't geographically close," Simon told Live Science. "Similarly, adjacent Brood IV and Brood XIX both appeared in 1998 but, again, weren't close." 

What areas will be affected? 

According to the scientists who are tracking the broods, the Periodical Cicada emergence map offers the best guess of where they will appear. Brood XIII is expected to emerge in the Midwest, mostly around north-central Illinois, Ohio and Iowa. Brood XIX will cover parts of Illinois, as well as a wider geographic area in the southeastern U.S., including Louisiana, Virginia and North Carolina.

What will happen if they interbreed? Will an entirely new brood be created, with a new cycle? 

The two broods are not likely to interbreed as there is limited overlap between them. "There will not be a new brood or cycle,," Simon said. And even if the two broods do interbreed, scientists don't expect much to happen. "Even if the broods were to interbreed, any offspring would be indistinguishable from cicadas that were not hybrids," Simon said.

Working with scientists from Kyoto University and Shizuoka University in Japan, UConn researchers found evidence of extensive interbreeding between 13 and 17-year cicadas of the same lineage (excluding Magicicada tredecim), but they didn't note any change between the life cycles. There are four genetic lineages of periodical cicadas in the genus Magicicada: M. decula, M. cassini, M. decim and M. tredecim. 

"Scientists in the past have speculated that mating between 13-year and 17-year periodical cicadas would not create an intermediate life cycle (e.g., 15-year); instead, the offspring would be either 13-year or 17-year, but not both," Simon said. "We still only see either 13 or 17-year cicadas in nature. Whether one life cycle is dominant to another is unknown. And, importantly, there are very few places where 13-year and 17-year cicadas currently overlap." 

What can people expect to see?

The double brood is expected to look like a normal periodical cicada emergence, with huge numbers of cicadas emerging from the ground in the evening. In the first week of the emergence, cicadas will be seen in the mornings, sitting on lower vegetation after shedding their exoskeleton shell, before climbing upward into trees to mate and, eventually, for females to lay eggs. A fresh batch of cicadas will appear the next morning until all of the cicadas have emerged. 

After climbing high into trees, the males will emit a loud shrieking mating noise, using powerful drum-like organs known as tymbals to attract females. The females will then return the call in a chorus of clicks that increase in intensity and volume as mating gets underway. 

"It will look like a pretty normal periodical cicada year with lots of active, flying adults for about three weeks, depending on how the spring goes, as the adults complete their mating and egg laying activities," Cooley said. "Then the adults will die, and things will go back to normal. About six weeks later, the eggs will hatch, but most people won't notice that, since the hatchlings are tiny and inconspicuous."

What will happen to the cicadas after they emerge? 

Most of the cicadas will die within two to six weeks after reproducing, with many dying in the crush of emergence. After three weeks, most of the cicadas will be high in the trees, and after a month, there will be large numbers of female cicadas laying eggs in trees. The eggs will then fall to lower ground to hatch and burrow underground.

"Emerging isn't without risk, as many of the cicadas will be eaten by predators, while others may be killed by later cicadas walking on them while their outer casing is still soft,"Simon said. "Some will survive to move into the higher vegetation and mate and lay eggs."

 Do cicadas bite?

Cicadas are mostly harmless to humans. They aren't poisonous and don't bite or sting, as they lack the physical structures required to do so, according to Purdue University. "Their mouth parts are… more like a straw than teeth so they can't bite," representatives wrote in a statement. "The worst that most cicadas will do to a person is startle them."

The cicadas could cause problems to pets if consumed — but only if they gobble up enough of the insects. "In most cases, your dog will be fine after eating a few cicadas," Dr. Jerry Klein, chief veterinary officer for the American Kennel Club, said in a statement. "However, dogs that gorge on the large, crunchy insects will find the exoskeleton difficult to digest and can suffer serious consequences."

These include a stomach upset, abdominal pain, vomiting and bloody diarrhea that may require treatment, Klein said. 

When will the next dual emergence be, and how will it differ from this one?

The next co-emergence is expected in 2037, but the two broods involved (IX and XIX) will not be adjacent. The next time this will happen with adjacent broods is in 2076, according to the UConn researchers.

You can contribute to the periodical-cicada research by downloading the free Cicada Safari app to report local cicada sightings. 

Giant water bugs that can deliver painful bites are invading the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, a study has found.

The bugs, also called "toe biters," belong to the Lethocerus genus, which includes bird-eating species that can grow to around 4.7 inches (12 centimeters) long. Researchers discovered the fearsome bugs with the help of swimmers on the island's east coast and warned the public to look out for more.

"Cypriots should keep their eyes open and their toes out of the water," the study authors said in a statement on March 20.  The researchers presented their findings in a study published Dec. 31, 2023, in the Journal of "Grigore Antipa" National Museum of Natural History.

Giant water bugs live in freshwater habitats such as ponds and marshes around the world, according to the National Park Service. They're equipped with pincer-like appendages and venomous saliva, which allows them to immobilize and suck the liquid out of their prey. These bugs are also known to bite unsuspecting humans between the toes, hence why they're called "toe-biters," though this bite is nontoxic and we're far too big to be their prey.

Related: Watch bizarre video of termites trapped in 'death spiral'

Lethocerus is found near Cyprus in the mainland countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Egypt but has never before been observed on the island. In the new study, the team looked at posts on local Facebook groups between 2020 and 2021 to collect records of the bugs and learn more about their sudden arrival.

"The records reported in this study were based almost entirely on people who posted photographs and videos on social media groups requesting species determination," the authors wrote in the study.

Seven giant water bugs were recorded on the eastern lowland part of the island, and the researchers went out and found two of these specimens. The retrieved bugs belonged to the species Lethocerus patruelis, which can grow to about 3 inches (8 cm) long. However, the team couldn't identify the remaining bugs' species from photos alone and so recorded them as Lethocerus.

The researchers suspect the bugs flew over from the mainland — but they're not sure why they crossed the open sea. One theory is that lights on the island's east coast attracted the bugs. Another idea is that the bugs migrated to the island for food or were carried there by the elements.

"The specimens landed exhausted on the shoreline, or in some cases in the sea, which could indicate that they were transferred by wind or sea currents from nearby countries," the authors wrote.

While the researchers are confident these bugs are new to the island, and more could be coming, they don't think Lethocerus is a threat to Cyprus' ecosystem. The country has habitats similar to the mainland and hosts some of the bugs' natural predators, including white storks (Ciconia ciconia) and black kites (Milvus migrans).

"This could ensure the biological control of a possible established population," the authors wrote.

Bizarre footage shows termites locked in a "death spiral" — where they walk round and round in a circle following the insect ahead until they die from exhaustion.

In the clip, uploaded by Simon Jeffery to the Australia & New Zealand Fungus Identification group on Facebook, the termites  follow each other in a ring. The phenomenon has been observed in some colonies of social insects, such as termites and, more commonly, ants (Formicidae).

The footage was captured in Maleny in Queensland, Australia, about five years ago, Jeffery told Live Science in a message on social media. He was at a woodworking show and a man at one stall was giving a talk about the roles fungi and insects play in the ecosystem.    

"[He had] all different types of bark and all sorts of critters that break down the forest… It was a very cool stall," Jeffery said, adding he is not sure if the stall owner put the termites in the fungus. 

Related: A trillion cicadas will descend on the US this spring in rare event that could leave unforgettable stench

Trail-following behavior in termites is controlled by specific pheromones that are produced by the abdominal sternal gland. They deposit these pheromones so nestmates can find the path back to the nest.

Thomas Chouvenc, assistant professor of urban entomology at the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center at the University of Florida, told Live Science that trail-following enables termites to navigate blindly around their habitats. However, this way of navigating the world can sometimes go wrong.

"In this video, they are engaged in a 'death spiral,' which is well documented in ants and a few termites," he said. "When a group of foraging social insects get accidentally caught into a death spiral, they usually end up dying of exhaustion," he added.

"For termites, the physical contact of following a predecessor in the queue is often a simple way to organize good traffic flow," he said . "Such lines are very common in termites, leading them from A to B. In the case of this video, that line made a loop because of the physical circle from the morphology of the fungi."

Researchers have investigated a similar phenomenon in army ants. Occasionally, a colony of ants will form an "ant mill." If some ants become separated from the main foraging colony — for example, because of a feature of the terrain — they may lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a rotating circle until they die.

However, Chouvenc said he is unsure how the termites ended up on the fungus. "What puzzles me here is: How in the heck did the termites end up here? Termites are cryptic — meaning that they don't come out into the open — so they should not naturally be exposed to the elements like this, unless they chewed through the fungus from the inside and accumulated over time, and ended up being stuck in this circular structure."

Chouvenc added that someone may have placed the termites on the fungus. "Regardless, this is unusual, to say the least," he said.

Name: Hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum)

Where it lives: Europe and North Africa, migrating north in summer and south in winter

What it eats: Nectar 

Why it's awesome: — It's a bird! No, it's a hummingbird hawk-moth! This fascinating creature looks like a hummingbird, but it's actually a moth. It even hovers in a way reminiscent of hummingbirds, with its wings fluttering so fast they produce an audible hum — a striking example of convergent evolution.

It beats its wings around 85 times per second — more than some species of hummingbird, according to PBS Nature.

The hummingbird hawk-moth is partial to flowers with tube-shaped petals and uses its long, curled proboscis — an elongated sucking mouthpart — to extract nectar from the flower's center. Its proboscis is almost as long as its entire body and is kept curled up when not in use.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the hummingbird hawk-moth is its vision. Unlike most insects, this moth depends on its eyes to precisely position its giant proboscis in the center of the flowers. 

To imagine how difficult it is for a hummingbird hawk-moth to maneuver its large appendage, Anna Stöckl at the University of Konstanz in Germany, whose research focuses on how animals see the world, likes to imagine a human trying to move a straw sticking out of their mouth into a glass — and the straw happens to be as tall as them, she told Live Science.

Related: Rarely seen supersized moth with 10-inch wingspan found at Australian school

In a study published Jan. 29 in the journal PNAS, Stöckl and her colleagues used high-speed cameras to film hawk-moths as they hovered next to artificial flowers with different patterns on them. They realized that the hawk-moths were using continuous visual feedback to fine-tune their movements along the patterns and make sure that the proboscis reached the center of the pattern, where the nectar should be.

Visually guided reaching requires a rather sophisticated neural circuit, which is why it is more prevalent in mammals. However, hummingbird hawk-moths show that they are also able to perform this complicated behavior even with their relatively simpler nervous systems.

"Using vision to guide an appendage is really something we don't find as much in insects. So having a potential example of an insect that guides a very unusual appendage using vision, was really exciting," Stöckl said.

​​When pollinators land on a flower, they're on a mission: They're looking for sweet nectar to eat and specks of nutritious pollen to bring back to their young.

But how do insects know where to find pollen? In theory, the process is easy: A flower flaunts bits of tasty, aromatic dust in plain sight, letting pollinators know where to go right away. But the reality is quite different. "It's not in the plant's interest to emit an honest signal," said Casper van der Kooi, a biologist who studies flower color evolution at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

For plants, pollen is about reproduction. The goal of creating this powder is to transfer a flower's gametes, or reproductive cells, to another flower to create a seed. Plants often need pollinators for that job, but it takes a lot of energy and nutrients to make pollen. So, if insects end up eating the pollen, or if the wrong pollinators get to it first, the energy the plant has invested goes to waste, van der Kooi explained.

So, for most plants, pollen is hidden, making an insect's mission harder to accomplish. But a plant can't be too dishonest, van der Kooi said; otherwise, the insects will learn of this deception and stop visiting the plant. So, instead of communicating directly, plants often use subtle signals to convey information, said Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, a professor who researches the behavior, senses and cognition of social insects at the University of Exeter in the U.K. Insects then pick up on certain cues to decide which flowers to visit.

Visual cues are one of the main forms of plant-pollinator communication. Flowers are colorful, and insects have this innate affinity to colorful objects, Hempel de Ibarra said. Some flowers have so-called nectar guides, which are patterns, visible only in the ultraviolet spectrum, that illuminate a path to the nectar and/or pollen that an insect can follow. Various studies have documented that these nectar guides, as well as the hue of the flowers themselves, can change color as pollen and nectar supplies decrease. Lantana camara, a popular garden plant, is an example of this type of signaling, turning yellow to red.

Related: Do bees really die if they sting you?

Smell can also indicate the amount of pollen. Flowers release all sorts of chemical compounds into the air, and insects can pick up on these so-called olfactory cues. Some plants can adjust the amounts of compounds they release as an additional signal. For example, blueberry flowers have evolved to emit a lower amount of compounds after being pollinated, according to a 2011 study in the journal Annals of Botany.

Pollinating insects can also detect other subtle signals. One interesting example is the electric field. Flowers have a weak electric field, Hempel de Ibarra said, and this field is affected by the shape of the flower. It can also be disrupted after an insect visits it. Research has shown that bumblebees and some other insects can pick up this disruption using specialized hairs.

But ultimately, how insects make their pollen-finding decisions varies widely among species. Flowers can also evolve highly specialized relationships with specific pollinators, thus influencing how insects make their choices. Some flowers, like dandelions, have their pollen in plain sight, attracting a whole suite of pollinators, Hempel de Ibarra said. But tomato flowers, which rely specifically on bees to be buzz pollinated, hide their pollen in special structures to attract this specific insect.

In addition, different insects are attracted to specific colors, van der Kooi said. For example, flies tend to gravitate toward yellow, whereas bees prefer blue.

Decision-making can even vary among individuals. Hempel de Ibarra, who studies bees, said that individuals within a social colony can make different decisions in pollen gathering as they learn and experience the environment around them. "That makes it quite complicated for the bees to decide what kind of pollen it should be collecting," she said. "It's such an intricate relationship."

More than a trillion cicadas could emerge throughout the U.S. Midwest and Southeast this spring as the schedules of two separate broods align for the first time since 1803.

Brood XIII and Brood XIX represent two distinct groups of periodical cicadas (Magicicada) that emerge according to 17- and 13-year life cycles, respectively. In a rare natural event that occurs once every 221 years, these two broods will synchronously tunnel through the ground to the surface starting in late April across 16 states.

The event, known as a dual emergence, could potentially lead the two broods to interbreed, experts told The New York Times. 

"Under just the right circumstances and with just the right number of individuals cross breeding, you have the possibility of the creation of a new brood set to a new cycle," Floyd Shockley, an entomologist and collections manager at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, told the Times.

Periodical cicadas, which comprise seven species, spend most of their lives underground as nymphs and feed off of sap that oozes from tree roots. After 13 or 17 years starved of daylight (depending on the species), the insects burrow to the surface using their front legs and transform into adults. The males vibrate membranes on the sides of their bodies to produce a song — potentially louder than a plane in a chorus — that attracts mates, according to The New York Times. Once a pair has finished mating, the females cut slits in tree branches to lay their eggs in. 

Adult periodical cicadas survive for three to four weeks and don't live to see their eggs hatch roughly three weeks later. The newly hatched nymphs then drop to the ground and tunnel down into the soil to repeat the cycle.

Related: Why are insects attracted to artificial lights? 

Brood XIII, which has a 17-year cycle, and Brood XIX, which has a 13-year cycle, will overlap along a narrow band in northern Illinois and eastern Iowa. Brood XIII, also known as the Northern Illinois Brood, will also emerge in small parts of Wisconsin and Indiana, whereas Brood XIX, or the Great Southern Brood, will be widespread throughout the Midwest and Southeast. 

The overlap zone is so narrow that the number of cicadas may not be noticeably bigger in Illinois and Iowa than in other states, said Gene Kritsky, a professor emeritus of biology at Mount St. Joseph University in Ohio and author of "A Tale of Two Broods: The 2024 Emergence of Periodical Cicada Broods XIII and XIX" (Ohio Biological Survey, 2024). 

More than 1.5 million cicadas may emerge within an acre (0.4 hectare) of forested land, Kritsky told Live Science in an email, but deforestation has eliminated much of the canopy these insects need to thrive.

The cicadas will likely cluster in forested areas and green urban spaces close to where the insects emerge, Shockley told the Times. "In urban areas, there will be sufficient numbers to necessitate removal of their bodies," which produce an unforgettable smell similar to that of rotting nuts as they decay, he added.

This year's dual emergence event will likely end in early July. Scientists recommend leaving the cicadas alone if possible, as they are beneficial to the ecosystem, don't bite or sting, and don't carry diseases.

Emerging cicadas aerate the soil when they burrow into the surface, and when the females lay their eggs, they perform a natural pruning service that results in more flowers and fruit growing the following year, Kritsky said. 

"The large number of adult cicadas provides a food bonanza to all sorts of predators, which can have a positive impact on their populations," he said. "Finally, after the cicadas die their decaying bodies contribute a massive amount of nitrogen and other nutrients to the soil."

"Don't be scared of it," Shockley told the Times. "Embrace it for the wondrous event that it is, and embrace the fact that it's very temporary. It will be intense but short-lived."

Discover the fascinating world of camouflage and masterful mimicry in this gallery of hidden animals. From elusive snow leopards to tiny mantises, these animals of all shapes and sizes can blend seamlessly into their environments. 

Walking leaves

Just a photo of leaves? Take a closer look …

Found across Asia, three leaf insects (Cryptophyllium westwoodii) cling to the wooden branches of a plant. 

Hidden beneath the sand

The venomous horned rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes) is a master of disguise. Hidden deep within the sand, it waits patiently for its prey to come near before striking. It is sometimes called the sidewinder rattlesnake because it throws its body sideways across the ripples in the sand to move around very quickly.

Somewhere in this photo, a golden eye can be seen peeking out from beneath the sand.

Pygmy seahorse

Hippocampus bargibanti was the first pygmy seahorse described in the world. As the name suggests, pygmy seahorses are incredibly tiny, only growing to 0.8 inch (2 centimeters) in length. They seamlessly blend into the coral in the ocean. 

A family of mallard ducks

Time for a tricky one. Amid this rocky shore, a mother mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) and her three baby chicks are camouflaged perfectly against the terrain.

Almost mistaken as another group of rocks, they sit just left of the two big rocks in the center frame.

Color-changing antics

Chameleons are famous for their camouflage. Their ability to change color is controlled primarily by their top skin layer, which can change its structure to manipulate how light is reflected.

In this photo, a high-casqued chameleon (Trioceros hoehnelii) hides among the lichen- and moss-covered tree bark. 

Lurking in the coral

The most venomous fish in the world is the stonefish (Synanceia verrucosa), and it has a disturbing resemblance to coral-covered rocks in shallow waters.

Look closely, and you may be able to see a face emerge from the coral. 

Peering through the tall grass

A wildcat lurks through the tall grass in this photo. Can you spot it?

Bobcats (Lynx rufus) are quiet hunters that use their dull, dense coats to blend into their surroundings before they pounce at prey. 

Himalayan tahr

In the Himalayas and certain parts of New Zealand, large hoofed and goat-like Himalayan tahrs (Hemitragus jemlahicus) live on the mountain slopes and hillsides. 

Up high in the trees

Spotted coats help leopards (Panthera pardus) blend into tall grass or tree canopies.

Buried for protection

While they rest and digest their food, stingrays use their wings to bury themselves in the sand to hide from predators.

Look closely to spot a pointed tail protruding from the sand.

Wild waved sphinx moth

Hiding in plain sight, the waved sphinx moth (Ceratomia undulosa) rests on the bark of a tree.  

Amidst the rocky terrain

This photo was taken in France's Mercantour National Park after mountain goats were spotted moving across the mountainside. 

Hidden in the tundra

Another challenge: Spot the camouflaged hare, which is nearly invisible among the moss, lichen and rocks in the tundra.  

White-tailed deer

Behind the trees is a group of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), which can be found throughout most of North America. 

Although their coats change color from reddish-brown to gray in the winter for camouflage, these deer depend on their excellent hearing and speed to escape large predators such as wolves, bears and mountain lions.

How many do you see?

Hidden woodland songbird

Rightly named a brown creeper (Certhia americana), this tiny, woodland songbird is a common-but-elusive critter in Central America. These birds spiral up and down large trees, looking for loose bark to nest behind. Their brown and speckled bodies make it difficult to find them when they are perched on a tree. 

Concealed in the moors

The mottled brown and tan plumage of this wild mallard helps it blend into its surroundings, providing perfect concealment amid the grass of the moors. 

Mimicking caterpillar

Many insects use camouflage to mimic objects or animals. Many species of caterpillar in the family Geometridae use camouflage to mimic twigs on plants. Some copy not only the shape, but also the color of a twig. 

Mysterious nightjar

Is it a snake? A lizard? No, it's a bird.

The common pauraque (Nyctidromus albicollis) is a type of nightjar. These medium-size birds have pointed wings and long tails and are active only at night.

During the day, this bird sleeps on the open ground, and its unique coloration allows it to remain hidden.

Cloaked stalking tiger

You may have been quick to spot the tiger prowling in the background of this photo, but if you were a deer, it would not have been that easy.

In the wild, tigers prey on many types of deer. Deer's vision is limited to colors on a spectrum between green and blue. This means they don't see the predator as orange, so the tiger would be green and thus hidden in the dried grass. 

Brightly colored crab spider

Camouflaged on the tops of flower heads, the goldenrod crab spider (Misumena vatia) waits, with its legs held out to its sides, for pollinating insects to ambush. These spiders' cryptic colors allow them to hide in white or yellow flowers. 

Devil scorpionfish

The devil scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis diabolus) is a venomous and well-camouflaged marine fish found in the Indo-Pacific region. It possesses spines with toxic venom for defense and relies on its unique appearance to ambush prey.

This species is known for its intricate patterns and colors, making it a fascinating-yet-dangerous inhabitant of coral reefs.

Seamlessly hidden common sole

The common sole (Solea solea) is a flatfish that lives in the North Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Its upper side mimics the seafloor, blending in with the sand or gravel, while the underside is white to avoid detection from below while it swims. This adaptation helps the sole avoid predators and ambush prey effectively. 

Protection for new born chicks

The pied avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta) is a shorebird that boasts a striking black-and-white pattern and an upturned bill, which the bird uses to sift through sand to find small invertebrates in shallow pools at low tide. 

The chicks have silver-gray feathers, which provide effective camouflage in the avocet's marshy habitat. This plumage helps the bird blend in with its surroundings, offering protection from potential predators. As the chicks grow, their black-and-white coloring will gradually appear.

Amidst the rocky terrain

Let's zoom out for this one.

Known for its shifty nature and distinctive coat, the snow leopard (Panthera uncia) inhabits the steep, rugged terrain of Central and South Asia. The snow leopard has a thick coat, wide paws and a long tail that it uses for balance while climbing mountains.

The king of camouflage

Nestled against the coral sits an octopus, the king of camouflage. These alien-like creatures can not only change the color of their bodies but also mimic textures. 

An unwelcome tagalong

Be careful where you step!

At first glance, this photo may seem like a standard image taken during a hike — but the fallen leaves mask an unwelcome tagalong.

Viperidae is a family of snakes, commonly known as vipers, that are venomous, nocturnal and found all over the world. Some are very colorful. Others, like the one in this photo, are dark and marbled, allowing the snakes to blend into the scattered shadows on the forest floor. 

Insect or plant?

Stick insects are known for their mimicry of twigs or branches. Found in the tropics, these critters have elongated bodies and legs, making the insects tricky to spot among the plants. 

Perched high in the trees

The Eastern screech owl (Megascops asio), native to North America, is a small bird known for its trill-like calls. With a height of around 6 to 10 inches (16 to 25 cm), it comes in two colors: red and gray. These nocturnal hunters often inhabit wooded areas and are cavity nesters, using abandoned nests or tree hollows. 

Amongst the rocks and boulders

You have eagle eyes if you can spot the small bird in this photo.

Oenanthe melanura, commonly known as the blackstart, grows to a maximum height of 5.5 inches (14 cm). It is found in rocky habitats and arid landscapes across Southern Europe and North Africa, and often nests in rock crevices. 

The floral mimicry of an orchid mantis

Orchid mantises (Hymenopus coronatus) look and behave like flowers. This behavior involves swaying from side to side to resemble a flower blowing in the wind. They use this technique for both hunting and hiding. 

A stealthy stalker hidden in the tall grass

The fastest mammal in the world is also one of the best-camouflaged animals. The spots on cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) help camouflage their bodies by offsetting shadows against the tall grasses in their habitats. While camouflaged, they can stalk their prey without being seen and protect their cubs from predators. 

Eurasian bittern amongst the reeds

The Eurasian bittern (Botaurus stellaris) is a wading bird known for its elusiveness and camouflaged plumage. Found in wetlands across Europe and Asia, it is known for its booming calls during breeding season. 

Frosty disguise of an arctic hare

The Arctic hare (Lepus arcticus) is adapted to harsh Arctic climates. Known for its white fur in the winter and dark fur in the summer, it has large hind legs and padded feet that hold its weight above thick snow for running swiftly at up to 37 mph (60 km/h).

Mealy amazon parrots

How many can you see?

A group of southern mealy Amazon parrots (Amazona farinosa) is found high in a subtropical forest in Ecuador. 

Long-spinnered bark spider

Can you find the eight-legged trickster hidden in this photo?

This spider is known as a long-spinnered bark spider or two-tailed spider, part of the genus Hersilia. It is named after its large spinnerets, the silk-spinning organ on the back of its abdomen. 

Amazing new footage captures the moment when thousands of fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) create a life-saving raft by interlocking their limbs and mandibles.

The clip, from National Geographic's new series "A Real Bug's Life," which premieres on Disney+ on Jan 24, shows a colony of fire ants living beneath a water feature in the backyard of a home in Texas. As the water level starts to rise, the colony is seen collecting their babies and banding together before being swept over a waterfall and into a swimming pool.

Related: Watch translucent cockroach babies burst from their egg cases in skin-crawling footage

Ants are known for their collective social behavior in large colonies. When they try to swim, however, their kicking legs actively repel one another. Despite this repulsion, fire ants in groups of 10 or more are forced together by a phenomenon called the "Cheerios effect," which is caused by surface tension. This occurs when small objects, like cheerios in a bowl of milk, create a concave indentation on the liquid's surface that brings nearby objects together into clusters. 

The fire ants exploit this phenomenon to protect their queen. The larvae, pupae and worker ants are brought together, then interlock their legs and jaws to form a large raft that dips in slightly at the center. Then they place the queen on top, sitting safely in the center of this massive raft. .

The ants' nest was found while scouting backyard locations for shooting footage. Location scouts turned on a water feature in a pool, unaware that a colony of fire ants was living inside. The fire ants then flooded the pool. Bill Markham, the series producer, told Live Science that they recorded this intricate behavior with the help of Drexel University entomologist, Sean O'Donnell, using "macro lenses, split-level housings and super slow motion". Although the team did not count how many ants were part of the raft, Markham said "there were easily 5,000 on this occasion" and to their surprise, they found the ants collected trapped air bubbles to keep the raft afloat and remain buoyant. 

By smooshing together to protect their queen, they create a structure that "would take 400 times their body weight to break" said Markham. He added that these rafts can stay afloat for 12 days, but in this case they found a pool noodle and got to dry land within a few minutes.

Researchers have solved Alaska's "snake worm" mystery after discovering a new species of fungus-eating fly whose juveniles band together and slither around like a long, gray serpent. 

The snake worm mystery began more than 16 years ago in the summer of 2007, when Ester resident Maggie Billington spotted thousands of tiny, wormlike larvae crawling across a road in a long line. 

Billington was a volunteer at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks at the time, so she documented the bizarre sighting and brought photos and samples to Derek Sikes, the museum's curator of insects. 

"I figured they must be fly larvae but had never heard of this snakeworm phenomenon," Sikes said in a statement. "I was dumbfounded. This was totally an X-Files case for me."

Sikes and his colleagues have now identified the larvae in a new study published Dec. 30 in the journal Integrative Systematics: Stuttgart Contributions to Natural History. The species, which they've named Sciara serpens, is one of several scarcely studied flies in which the larvae appear to mimic snakes.

The researchers speculated that these larvae take the shape of a snake to scare off birds and other would-be predators or to preserve moisture on dry ground by crawling over one another in a line.

Related: Tortoise beetle larvae use their telescopic anuses to build shields from shed skin and poop 

The new species belongs to the Sciaridae fly family, commonly called fungus gnats because they feed on decaying organic matter. Many flies are hard to tell apart in their juvenile life stage, so Sikes cared for larvae collected from a second snake worm sighting in 2007 until they morphed into their dark-winged fly form.

The Alaskan fungus gnats raised by Sikes appeared to most closely resemble a European gnat called Sciara mirabilis, rather than previously identified North American species reported in Maryland and Arkansas. 

But it wasn't until 2021 that the team confirmed the gnat was a species new to science. Lead author Thalles Pereira, an insect researcher at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, examined the male gnats' genitalia under a powerful microscope and found notable differences in the shape, compared with those of its European relative.  

While it might seem odd for an Alaskan gnat to have more in common with gnats in Europe than with its fellow North American species, the study authors noted that this follows a pattern among other insects in Alaska, such as grasshoppers and beetles, and likely dates back to the Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). During that time, Alaska was connected to Europe and Asia via the Bering Land Bridge, allowing insects to disperse from eastern Siberia to Alaska while giant ice sheets blocked off the rest of North America. 

Though Sikes and his team were able to identify the species behind the snake worm phenomenon, scientists still have a lot of work to do to fully understand these fungus gnats and their peculiar larvae habits. 

Furthermore, Sikes and other snake worm witnesses reported seeing beetles running alongside the larvae, which could also be investigated. The beetles may feed on the juvenile flies, but when Sikes put them together in a lab, the beetles mostly ignored the larvae, according to the study.

Name: American burying beetle or giant carrion beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) 

Where it lives: U.S. and Canada

What it eats: Dead animals

Why it's awesome: The American burying beetle exhibits a rare behavior for its kind — parental care. And to take it a step further, both the male and female are involved in this duty. 

Upon emerging from hibernation in late spring, the males and females search for mates — and importantly, a dead vertebrate. It's a bit of a Goldilocks mission to find just the right size carcass — between 2.8 and 7.1 ounces (80 and 200 grams) — for what's ahead. Once beetles find a suitable carcass and mate, and any potential competitors shooed off, the male and female get to work. Not mating just yet, but working together to bury the carcass underground. 

Once this step is complete, they can finally mate and create a brood chamber. The duo strips the dead animal of its fur (or feathers) and then rolls it into a ball, before coating it with a mix of anal and oral secretions that reduce decay.

Related: Tortoise beetle larvae use their telescopic anuses to build shields from shed skin and poop

They lay the eggs in the soil next to the carcass, and once hatched, the parents feed the larvae regurgitated food before the young progress to feeding directly on the carcass.

Generally a female with a larger carcass produces more eggs, but sometimes they choose their incubator poorly. If the parents don't pick a large enough carrion for the number of larvae, they will cannibalize some of the brood — a brutal but effective method to improve the survival of their surviving larvae. 

The American burying beetle is the largest of the carrion beetles in North America. It measures up to 1.8 inches (4.5 centimetres) in length, and has distinctive orange-red antennae tips and a large orange-red marking on its pronotum (the section behind the head). 

The American burying beetle is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species, as it had become extinct across much of its natural range. Scientists are now working now to breed and reintroduce the species, and in 2015 it was chosen as the state insect of Rhode Island. 

Editor's note: This article has been corrected to say the American burying beetle is the the largest of the carrion beetles in North America.

We are biodiversity researchers — an ecologist, a mathematician and a taxonomist — who were locked down together during the COVID pandemic. Being restricted to the house, it didn't take long before we began to wonder how many species of plants and animals we were sharing the space with. So we set to work counting them all.

We guessed we would find around 200 to 300, and many of our colleagues guessed the same.

There was nothing extraordinary about our 400 square meter [4,300 square feet] block of land in Annerley, a suburb of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. Roughly half the block was occupied by a three-bedroom house.

What was extraordinary was the number of species we discovered there. As revealed in our just-published study, starting on the first day of lockdown and continuing over the course of a year, we catalogued 1,150 species on our inner-city property.

Familiar faces and rare recluses

Many of the species were what any east coast suburban Australian would expect: ibises, brush turkeys, kookaburras, possums and flying foxes. But, surprisingly, others had rarely been recorded.

In fact, three of the 1,150 species had never been documented in Australia's leading biodiversity database at that point. This included a rare mosquito, a sandfly and an invasive flatworm that can cause populations of native snails to decline.

We found common foes, but also many friends. That rare mosquito was just one of 13 mosquito species we found. The cupboards accommodated pantry moths and grain weevils, but also spiders to prey on them (we recorded 56 species).

Our lack of assiduous garden-tending meant weeds were prolific; of the 103 plant species we documented on the property, 100 were non-native.

Apart from weeds, however, the vast majority of species were actually native. Our two massive lilly-pilly trees provided shade, shelter and food, magnets for numerous pollinators and other species.

Bees and butterflies

The yard was filled with pollinators. For example, there were hoverflies which, at a quick glance, you'd think were wasps. We had 10 species of those, a fraction of the more than 109 species of flies we found.

Native blue-banded bees and fluffy teddy bear bees roosted in the hedges under our windows at night. They were just two of more than 70 bee and wasp species we observed.

We also counted a mindblowing 436 species of butterflies and moths. A few were as large as a human hand, but most were tiny and barely noticeable. Some were brightly coloured, while others — like the vampire moth Calyptra minuticornis — seemed boring until we began to study their behaviour.

Related: All butterflies evolved from ancient moths in North America 100 million years ago

The moth Scatochresis innumera is another interesting one: as a caterpillar, it lives inside a single possum poop before emerging as an adult.

The caterpillars of Parilyrgis concolor, yet another moth, live in spiderwebs, surviving on the spider's food waste, while the adults can be found hanging bat-like from the spiderwebs. It is not known how they avoid getting eaten by the spiders.

Wasps and beetles

We recorded ten species of lycaenid "blue" butterflies, many of which use ants to protect their caterpillars from predators, including certain wasp species which would lay eggs in them if they got a chance.

These wasps are called parasitoids — meaning their young develop in other organisms, eventually killing them. Some of these wasps even parasitise other parasitoid wasps. Our urban homes are clearly complex ecosystems.

We were surprised to only find just under 100 beetle species (the fourth most common group of organisms in our study). Beetles are widely believed to be the most diverse order of insects on the planet.

Our finding may be a sign of declining beetle populations, which has been observed around the world. On the other hand, it may just have been a bad year for beetles in our neighbourhood.

An urban environment teeming with life

Overall, we found far more species than we expected, and we showed that even urban environments can be teeming with wildlife.

A big reason for that was surely the vegetation: the shrubs, trees and weeds in the yard. The monotony of perfectly tended lawn and heavily sprayed and manicured flowerbeds may be nice to look at and for the kids to play on but, as habitat for urban wildlife, it is lacking.

Our own laziness meant we did little work in the garden. However, by giving the mower and pesticides a break, and by sacrificing some lawn for native trees, shrubs and flowering weeds, we ended up with something much more valuable.

But no matter what you do to maintain your home, definitely check your porch or balcony light tonight, and keep your eye out for urban wildlife around your home. You too can experience some pretty amazing nature, no matter how urban the environment you live in.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A remarkable reconstruction shows a 300 million-year-old millipede the length of a small car crawling around a forest floor looking for love.

The footage was created for Netflix's "Life on Our Planet" — a series that brings extinct creatures back to virtual life in video footage. The clip shows Arthropleura, which at 8.5 feet (2.6 meters) long and 1.6 feet (0.5 m) wide was the biggest millipede to ever live. It likely weighed about 110 pounds (50 kilograms).

Scientists first discovered Arthropleura fossils 170 years ago. They lived in what is now the U.K., continental Europe and North America during the Carboniferous Period (359 million to 299 million years ago). In 2018, a chance discovery of an enormous, near-complete specimen provided a new, detailed look at the creature's anatomy — which the team behind "Life on Our Planet" used to help them reconstruct this ancient creature.

"Arthropleura is one of the most factually accurate creatures in the series and one of the most accurate versions of this creature ever brought to life," series producer and director Sophie Lanfear told Live Science in an email.

Tom Fletcher, a Honorary Research Fellow of Palaeobiology at the University of Leicester in the U.K., and paleontologist Dave Marshall, a PhD student studying the evolution of chelicerates at the University of Bristol, U.K., acted as scientific advisors on the clip, while the team kept pet millipedes — "tiny versions of arthropleura," Lanfear said — to help them develop the animation and overall look of supersized insect.

Related: 'Once again, innovation and proliferation ended with catastrophe': The environmental disaster of plants taking over the world

At the time Arthropleura lived, oxygen levels on Earth were far higher than they are today. Forests had sprouted up, sucking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Giant arthropods dominated the planet, along with other huge insects like Meganeura — a bird-size dragonfly — and giant cockroaches up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) long. The high oxygen levels likely played a role in the giant millipedes' enormous size, although exactly how it helped them grow is unclear.

In the clip, a male of the genus walks around the forest in search of a mate. "Genitals in millipedes are modified legs… You can see the male's genitals in the very first shot of arthropleura as he goes through frame," Lanfear said.

The clip also highlights the creature's blindness. "We know this by looking once more at its modern day descendants," series producer Dan Tapster told Live Science in an email. "Most millipedes of today have a type of 'lateral compound eyes' which only provides them with basic vision — so limited that most are only able to gauge relative levels of light and dark rather than any form of vision as we would know it. Arthropleura boasts those same type of eyes so it's reasonable to infer that he too was virtually blind."

Tapster said Arthropleura was one of the most straightforward reconstructions of the whole series, because paleontologists have found such well-preserved fossils of the animal, its carapace, or hard shell, which it shed occasionally, and its footprints."Put all of those together and the evidence for what it looked like and how it moved is very persuasive," Tapster said. With these details, Arthropleura was built up "one pixel at a time.".

The last piece of the reconstruction was the color of the enormous millipede. Modern proxies can be very colorful, but they likely evolved this trait to scare off predators. As  Arthropleura had no known predators, the team toned its colors down, and the reconstruction was complete.

"Life on Our Planet" is available to stream on Netflix now.

Name: Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules)

Where it lives: Rainforests of Central and South America, plus a few Caribbean islands

What it eats: Rotting wood (as a larva), fruit and tree sap (as an adult)

Why it's awesome: 

Hercules beetles are among the largest flying insects in the world, with males of some subspecies measuring up to 6.8 inches (17.2 centimeters) long. They are also extraordinarily strong and can lift objects hundreds of times their own weight, according to the American Museum of Natural History. 

"The Demigod Hercules was famous for his strength, and the Hercules beetle can burrow its way out of hard ground and can lift surprisingly heavy objects," Max Barclay, curator of beetles, at the Natural History Museum in, London, told Live Science in an email. "It is well-named because you cannot easily contain a Hercules beetle in your hand without it forcing its way out."

Related: Beetles suck water into their butts to stay hydrated, and now scientists know how

Males sport magnificent horns, which they use to fight other males and impress females. 

 "Males use the two horns together like a giant pair of tweezers to grasp each other and throw each other, the strongest usually winning the female," Barclay said. The Hercules beetle males are "making a sacrifice, by investing in cumbersome and otherwise unnecessary structures that make them vulnerable but also more attractive," Barclay added. 

Females lay up to 100 eggs, which hatch after around 30 days. The larvae then go through three stages of metamorphosis, which lasts up to two years. They go from tiny eggs to hand-sized grubs, living underground and getting bigger and bigger. They then enter the pupa stage, where they encase themselves in a shell before breaking out as fully grown adults. 

Like the adults, Hercules beetle larvae are huge. A 2018 video from Nat Geo WILD showed this incredible transformation in all its glory.

Name: Gum leaf Skeletoniser (Uraba lugens)

Where it lives: Australia and New Zealand

What it eats: Eucalyptus leaves

Why it's awesome: The caterpillar of the gum leaf skeletonizer moth is a hairy little creature that keeps its old head capsules and stacks them on its head. This macabre adornment has earned it the nickname of the "Mad Hatterpillar," inspired by the character from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

But why undertake this elaborate millinery? One study published in 2016 investigated this question by holding trials involving the caterpillars and their natural predators — spiders and stink bugs. The researchers found that attacks on larvae with a stack of headcases took more than 10 times longer than attacks on larvae that had had their stack removed. They found that the empty head capsules acted as a false target for predators and could also be used to deflect the piercing rostrum of a predator.

Related: Caterpillars evolved their weird chubby little 'prolegs' from ancient crustaceans

Gum leaf skeletonizers are also covered with hollow venomous spines — or hairs — containing histamines that can cause erucism, or caterpillar dermatitis. If these spines pierce human skin, they cause a stinging sensation, itching and a rash. This venom can remain within the spines even after a caterpillar sheds its skin.

Its common English name is derived from the caterpillar's eating habits. The caterpillars eat eucalyptus leaves gregariously, with multiple individuals on the same leaf. They eat through both the under and upper sides of the leaf but avoid the veins — leaving just the skeletal-looking remains of the munched leaf. The presence of these caterpillars can slow the growth of eucalyptus trees and even kill them.

Endemic to Australia, these caterpillars have also spread to New Zealand where they are considered a pest. To combat them, ecologists released a species of small parasitoid wasp (Cotesia urabae) to act as a biological control agent.

"It was a big project." Toni Withers, senior entomologist at the New Zealand research institute Scion, told Live Science in an email. "New Zealand has no native insects with this stinging hair, and human health was one of the reasons we wanted to avoid outbreaks."