All articles tagged with #insects
Researchers mapped a fruit fly’s brain and wired the neural data into a chess engine, which then defeated Claude Opus 5 in 11 moves, illustrating how biological neural networks can drive AI experiments and sparking a wave of related projects.
A Seoul court fined Evett, a two-Michelin-star restaurant, 10 million won and its chief executive 15 million won for serving a dessert topped with ants, an insect not approved for food under Korean law. The ants were imported from the US and Thailand and served on a sorbet, with authorities citing unapproved ingredients and concerns like heavy metals. The founder was not charged; his wife, the registered CEO, faced the case. Violating food-safety rules can carry up to five years’ imprisonment or a 50 million won fine, and appeals can be filed within seven days. The incident has highlighted Korea’s strict permit list for edible insects and notes that insect consumption varies by country.
Germany’s Malaise-trap program, spanning 75 sites over 2019–2020, sequenced roughly four billion DNA fragments to identify 10,803 insect species. Modeling suggests about 32,000 species are present, but most remain unnamed due to gaps in reference DNA barcodes, underscoring the urgent need to expand barcode libraries to better monitor insect declines.
Researchers reconstructed the mating calls of Jurassic Orthoptera from exceptionally preserved fossils, using AI to simulate the sounds and revealing a surprisingly rich ancient soundscape, including a species that produced ultrasonic calls beyond human hearing.
A Carboniferous fossil, Chosha praecursor, reveals amphibious stem-insect traits (ovipositor and paddle-like abdominal legs) and is placed as an early-diverging hexapod, suggesting insects colonized land earlier than some molecular clocks imply. The find helps bridge the ‘hexapod gap’ in the fossil record, indicates a semi-aquatic lifestyle for at least some stem-insects, and revises views on early insect morphology while providing open data for phylogenetic analysis.
A 324‑million‑year‑old fossil from Texas, Chosha praecursor, reveals a stem insect with 24 legs (including paddle-like abdominal limbs), suggesting early hexapods spent a prolonged amphibious phase between water and land rather than making a single leap to terrestrial life; the discovery, found in the Tesnus Formation, helps fill an 80‑million‑year gap in the hexapod fossil record and supports a gradual evolutionary transition.
A 324-million-year-old fossil from Texas, long misidentified as a crustacean, has been reclassified as a new 24‑legged insect species called Chosha praecursor, suggesting early insects were more morphologically diverse and possibly amphibious, with the sea-to-land transition occurring gradually according to recent phylogenetic analyses.
In a West Wales Wildwatch morning, volunteers and recorders identify a range of species—from a dark giant horsefly to marmalade hoverflies and a Rosa micrantha—before spotting a tortoise beetle larva whose prehensile anus forms a self-made fecal shield to deter predators, illustrating how dedicated citizen scientists uncover extraordinary wildlife in ordinary fields.
A Brazilian megaproject is surveying insects across a 10,000‑hectare central Amazon site from ground to canopy, deploying multi‑level traps and a blitz of methods. After 14 months they’ve collected about 5.5 million specimens, with around 600,000 slated for DNA sequencing, and preliminary data suggest as many as 40,000 species may inhabit this patch—roughly 0.7% of the world’s estimated six million insect species—work being carried out by ~400 taxonomists who will describe and name new species, often drawing on Indigenous languages, rivers and regional history.
Scientists tracking Chaoborus edulis in Lake Malawi found larvae descend more than 200 metres into the oxygen-free bottom layer by day to avoid predators, then feed at night; their reinforced air-filled buoyancy sacs actively adjust depth and resist crushing under pressure, a surprising adaptation that could help insects colonize pelagic marine environments.
A Kobe-based second-grader, Jo Nagai, with guidance from entomologist Dr. Martha Weiss, conducted home-based experiments showing swallowtail caterpillars can be conditioned to avoid a lavender scent after mild shocks, with 80% of the conditioned group later avoiding the scent as butterflies. Nagai then explored whether memories could be inherited by offspring, reporting preliminary evidence that memories may be passed to the next generation. He plans to present the findings to the Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society and hopes to pursue a career as an insect vet.
The White House South Lawn hosts an outdoor UFC event that could be disrupted by mid-90s heat, humidity, thunderstorms, and a swarm of insects. Dana White cites rain, lightning, and bugs as major risks, with an entomologist predicting abundant insects from midges to mosquitoes. A canopy will shelter fighters, but forecasters say weather could be the bigger challenge as fighters, including Michael Chandler, stay unfazed for the historic spectacle.
Texas has confirmed two new screwworm cases, a flesh-eating parasite that targets livestock, prompting renewed containment efforts across the state. The USDA is expanding sterile-insect programs and planning a large Texas facility to curb the outbreak, while Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller advocates using poison bait as a faster, local solution—despite concerns from experts about risks to other insects and even humans. The situation is tied to cross-border exposure from Mexico, and officials briefed at Kerrville’s U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory.
Meganeuropsis permiana and other griffinflies reached wingspans over 70 cm in an oxygen-rich Late Carboniferous–Early Permian atmosphere, but recent research suggests insect size was shaped by multiple factors—oxygen delivery, flight mechanics, and ultimately predation by birds and other aerial predators— meaning the giant-insect era ended as skies filled with competitors and oxygen levels shifted.
Finnish researchers report that bumblebees can spontaneously solve a box-and-banana–style task to reach a flower, showing goal-directed problem-solving without prior training. Across several designs, 16 of 22 bees succeeded when the task included visible training cues and barriers, while 23 of 30 succeeded in a test that limited visual feedback, with some solving without first moving the ball to an incorrect spot. The results suggest bees can generate novel solutions and demonstrate insight beyond reinforcement learning, laying groundwork for studying insect cognition further.