Double Vortices Give Mosquitoes a Boost
Our understanding of how insects fly didn’t explain how mosquitoes managed to stay on the wing. It took eight slow-motion cameras to help researchers reveal how mosquito wing beats shape the air to give the insect extra lift.
This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on March 29, 2017. It is a Nature Video production.
Drones Spy On Birds in Flight
Quadcopters appear to be a relatively benign tool to study the behavior and numbers of wetland birds. Christopher Intagliata reports
Nevada Celebrates Pollinator Week
The title of this article probably is an overstatement. Perhaps instead it should have been ‘a small subset of people in Reno, and possibly in Vegas (because everything you can think of exists there) celebrated pollinators for a week.
Psychic Animals and Football-Playing Bees
Working in the field of animal behaviour means that around World Cup season it’s hard to avoid being sent links to so-called ‘psychic’ animals that predict the outcome of matches, such as Paul the octopus, Leon the porcupine and Anton the tamarin.
U.S. Sets Plan to Save Honey Bees and Other Pollinators
Bees Build Mental Maps to Get Home
The insects rely on more than the sun as a compass
Bees Living in Cities Are Building Their Homes with Plastic
It’s the first documentation of insects incorporating plastic trash into nests
Bees Crucial to Many Crops Still Dying at Worrisome Rate
In Bees, A Hunt for the Roots of Social Behavior [Slide Show]
By comparing the genomes of social and solitary bees, scientists hope to uncover the basis for communal behavior
The Beguiling History of Bees [Excerpt]
The first bees existed around 130 million years ago at a time when our own ancestors were small, ratlike creatures
Up to One Third of Honeybee Colonies Dies per Year in Europe
Survey finds beehives died off at higher rates in northern Europe
2013-2014 Winter Honey Bee Losses Are Likely To Be Large
Over the next few months we will hear news of this winter’s honey bee losses in North America. The news won’t be good. Although official loss tallies have yet to be released, persistently cold weather across the northern part of the continent has made the 2013-2014 winter an unusually difficult one.