High in the treetops of Borneo, there’s an ant with a deadly secret. It can explode. On the outside, it’s just an inconspicuous, brownish-red ant. It lacks large mandibles, cannot sting, and generally seems like easy pickings for any predator with a rumbly in the tumbly. But when these ants feel threatened, they raise up their rumps as a warning, says Alice Laciny, an entomologist with Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria who described the first new species of exploding ant since 1935 in the journal Zookeys.

Our best bet to avoid 'peak pharma' may be beneath our feet, in the diminutive world of insects.

Don’t let the cockroach that feeds on your forgotten leftovers stop you from appreciating these native beauties.

The impacts of climate change ripple through ecosystems in unexpected ways.

A pesky mosquito sips some of your blood. Hours later, the blood-sucker drops dead, poisoned by the very blood it just slurped down. That may sound too good to be true, but it's a tantalizing possibility, according to research published this week in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The study points to a potential new tool to fight malaria: the medication ivermectin. Studies conducted in the 2000s, including one in 2010, show that malaria-carrying mosquitoes die after feeding on individuals who have ingested the drug.

These uniquely versatile bugs are decimating crops and infiltrating houses all across the country. Will we ever be able to get rid of them?

Very quietly, and without any formal announcement, the Common Names Committee of the Entomological Society of America has decided to list termites in the same category as cockroaches. It seem weird to lump the two together, but it’s a move that scientists have been considering for nearly a century.

In order to fight Zika and other similar viruses, researchers are going to release thousands of sterilised mosquitoes in south Miami, Florida this week. Researchers infected the male of the species with a bacteria in a lab and when they mate with females, the resulting eggs will die before hatching. The Miami-Dade County Mosquito Reduction Test Program is a collaboration from the University of Kentucky and Kentucky-based company MosquitoMate.

Scientists fitted praying mantises with tiny 3D glasses to understanding how they see the world, and discovered the insects have a “completely new form” of vision unlike that of any other known creature. Researchers used beeswax to glue the miniature eyewear to the faces of mantises and study how their vision compares to human sight.

Termite-hunting ants in sub-Saharan Africa treat each other’s wounds by licking them, according to new research. It might sound icky — but the treatment actually saves lives. The ant, called Megaponera analis, specializes in raiding termite nests. These hunts, however, are dangerous: The ants can lose legs or antennas, and sometimes they die. A study last year showed that the ants rescue their injured friends in the battlefield...

The exoskeleton of the tortoise beetle changes color and reflective properties due to a chirped multilayer reflector filled with grooves that fill and empty of fluid to cover and reveal, respectively, the bottommost layer.

Author summary The causative agent of malaria, Plasmodium, has to complete a complex infection cycle in the Anopheles gambiae mosquito vector in order to reach the salivary gland from where it can be transmitted to a human host. The parasite’s development in the mosquito relies on numerous host factors (agonists), and their inhibition or inactivation can thereby result in suppression of infection and consequently malaria transmission.

A philosophical and neurobiological look into the apian mind.

Margaret Cox searches for butterflies, but there's no joy if she finds them. They are the by-product of what she terms a "geophysical anomaly". We know it by its common name: a mass grave.

Biologists from the University of Washington have discovered that the act of swatting at mosquitoes may actually deter them from biting you, and the degree

The evolution of wings not only allowed ancient insects to become the first creatures on Earth to take to the skies, but also propelled their rise to become one of nature’s great success stories, according to a new study.

Truly vibrant red was elusive for many years: until a mysterious dye was discovered in Mexico. Devon Van Houten Maldonado reveals how a crushed bug became a sign of wealth and status.

Miniature glasses have revealed a new form of 3D vision in praying mantises that could lead to simpler visual processing for robots. Publishing their latest research in Current Biology, the Newcastle University team have discovered that mantis 3D vision works differently from all previously known forms of biological 3D vision. 3D or stereo vision helps us work out the distances to the things we see. Each of our eyes sees a slightly different view of the world. Our brains merge these two views to create a single image, while using the differences between the two views to work out how far away things are.

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have used a new technique to produce detailed images of dragonfly wings, showing more than 10 billion tiny 'fingers' (nanostructures) lining the wing surface that make bacteria tear themselves apart.

Joanne Seiff, a resident of Manitoba, contracted Lyme disease a couple of years ago but didn’t remember pulling off the tick that bit her; nor did she have the telltale bullseye rash of a tick bite. Her husband Jeff Marcus, who grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley, about an hour and a half from the eponymous town of Lyme, Connecticut, recognized her symptoms immediately because Lyme disease was common there.

Mosquitos generate lift via three mechanisms, two of them new to us.

Female dragonflies use an extreme tactic to get rid of unwanted suitors: they drop out the sky and then pretend to be dead. Rassim Khelifa from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, witnessed the behaviour for the first time in the moorland hawker dragonfly (Aeshna juncea). While collecting their larvae in the Swiss Alps, he watched a female crash-dive to the ground while being pursued by a male. The female then lay motionless on her back. Her suitor soon flew away, and the female took off once the coast was clear.

The feared demise of bumblebees could bring the evolution of the plants they pollinate grinding to a halt – leaving them vulnerable to new diseases and other threats – a new study suggests. Researchers in Switzerland tested what happened when field mustard plants were pollinated solely by bumblebees or hoverflies over nine generations. The results were dramatic: the bee-pollinated plants grew taller and produced twice as much scent.

Just when we thought we'd seen it all, the internet dishes up a fat, red alien baby that looks like it's been ripped from the scorching sand dunes of Venus (we wish). In reality, it's just a Hercules beetle in its pupa form, enshrined in a chrysalis as it prepares to take on its adult form. But let's not talk it down too much - this writhing cocoon is about to become one of the largest insects on Earth.

Asexual reproduction increases when female cockroaches are housed as a group, not alone, enabling them to maintain a colony for at least three years without a male's contribution.

Using the insecticide thiamethoxam in spring could reduce bee numbers later in the year, a study finds.

It's a decade since US beekeepers first noticed that their bees were mysteriously dying. Now we know much more about Colony Collapse Disorder, raising hopes that we can turn bees' fortunes around.

Surveys in German nature reserves point to a dramatic decline in insect biomass. By Gretchen Vogel.

Researchers in a New York cabbage patch are planning the first release on American soil of insects genetically engineered to die before they can reproduce. It's a pesticide-free attempt to control invasive diamondback moths, a voracious consumer of cabbage, broccoli and other cruciferous...

Gas compressors in New Mexico seem to mess with some arthropods’ behavior. 

The infected beetles seek out flowers, stick their heads in and bite for their life. Then, hours after dying, their wings mysteriously spring into action

The Mountain Stone Weta, boasts perhaps the most extraordinary survival technique of all - the ability to come back from the dead. With the aid of a specialized filming chamber we are able to witness stunning footage of life slowly returning to this frozen insect.

Scientists genetically modify fungus using poison from spiders and scorpions to reduce population of the disease-carrying insects. By Stephen Chen.

A rare meat allergy used to be limited to places the lone star tick calls home. But recently it's started to spread.

The secrets of why central-American jewel scarab beetles look like they are made from pure gold, has been uncovered by physicists at the University of Exeter.