In order to avoid males of the species bothering them for sex, female dragonflies fake their own deaths, falling from the sky and lying motionless on the ground until the suitor goes away. A study by Rassim Khelifa, a zoologist from the University of Zurich is the first time scientists have seen odonates feign death as a tactic to avoid mating, and a rare instance of animals faking their own deaths for this purpose. Odonates is the order of carnivorous insects that includes dragonflies and damselflies.

Matabele ants nurse each other back to health after battle with a surprisingly high success rate, a new study finds.

Last month a search team embarked on a journey to Indonesia to find the “holy grail” of bees. The world’s largest bee, initially discovered by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858, had not been seen since 1981.

Study is 'first of its kind' to show ivermectin drug can help control malaria across whole communities without causing harmful side effects

Claims that insects will disappear within a century are absurd, but the reality isn’t reassuring either.

Found in Indonesia, the bee lives inside termite mounds.

Insects like the cold-hardy emerald ash borer could see mass die-offs, but survivors could have hardier offspring

Exclusive: Insects could vanish within a century at current rate of decline, says global review

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review. More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.

The humid air in the northern Maluku Islands of Indonesia, also known as the Spice Islands, is heavy with nutmeg and clove. These lowland rainforests were the backdrop for the recent rediscovery of a remarkable animal—Wallace’s giant bee, known locally as raja ofu, meaning “king bee,” and with good reason. Wings spread, the largest specimens (who are actually queens) can be the size of an extra large chicken egg, and they sport jaws like pliers.

Many scientists think the planet wouldn’t much miss mosquitoes.

Diplomatic officials may have been targeted with an unknown weapon in Havana. But a recording of one “sonic attack” actually is the singing of a very loud cricket, a new analysis concludes.

Scientist Brad Lister returned to Puerto Rican rainforest after 35 years to find 98% of ground insects had vanished

The next great insect repellent might come from a strain of bacteria that lives inside a common parasitic worm. A study published Wednesday in Science Advances has found that a compound derived from these bacteria is three times more potent than DEET in repelling mosquitoes. More research must be done to demonstrate its safety, but this bacterial chemical could play an important role in the fight against mosquito-borne illness.

Cockroaches use defensive moves against "zombifying" parasitic wasps. By Mindy Weisberger.

The markets of Southeast Asia are common places to find the fossils of insects, embedded in amber millions of years old. But last year, gemologist Brian Berger found something much more rare and astonishing.

While soybean farmers watched the drift-prone weed killer dicamba ravage millions of acres of crops over the last two years, Arkansas beekeeper Richard Coy noticed a parallel disaster unfolding among the weeds near those fields. When Coy spotted the withering weeds, he realized why hives that produced 100 pounds of honey three summers ago now were managing barely half that: Dicamba probably had destroyed his bees’ food.

Insects likely won't ever disappear. But they are in trouble in a changing world.

For the first time in 50 years, a new tick species has arrived in the United States — one that in its Asian home range carries fearsome diseases. The Asian long-horned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, is spreading rapidly along the Eastern Seaboard. It has been found in seven states and in the heavily populated suburbs of New York City.

Nearly 700 million people suffer from mosquito-borne diseases—such as malaria, West Nile, Zika and dengue fever—each year, resulting in more than 1 million deaths. Increasingly, many species of mosquitoes have become resistant to the popular pyrethroid-based insecticides. Today, researchers report a new class of mosquito repellents based on naturally occurring compounds that are effective in repelling mosquitoes with potentially fewer environmental side effects than existing repellents.

“Pretty freaky”

Parasitic gall wasps have some of the freshest cribs nature has to offer.

Using insects as templates, researchers are buildings robots that are very small, very mobile—and very useful.

Parasites have a leisurely lifestyle — set up camp at someone else’s place, live off their food, profit (evolutionarily speaking). But new research shows that sometimes the parasite gets a taste of its own medicine, and from an unexpected source. Scientists studying wasps that target oak leaves found that a second parasite, a vine, can get its tendrils into the homes set up by the wasps, called galls, subverting their diversion of the host’s resources. After that, things don’t go so well for the wasp.

Britain's native bee species face being “wiped out” by a "highly aggressive" Asian hornet, conservationists have warned after the invasive insect was spotted in two locations at opposite ends of the country. The honey bee-killing Asian hornet, which is believed to have first arrived in Europe on crates imported from China to France in 2004, has been confirmed at locations in Liskeard, Cornwall and Hull. The creature, which is smaller than the UK's native hornet, poses no greater risk to humans than the humble wasp, but feasts on honey bees and is capable of killing around 50 a day.

Wasps are being wiped out as quickly as bees - and their disappearance will be just as disastrous, according to new research. But the plight of wasps is going under the radar compared to that of their close cousins - because of their unpopularity. Nature's unloved insects are best known for ruining picnics - and leaving a painful sting when we try to swat them away.

Scientists demonstrate that a "gene drive" can rapidly spread a genetic mutation through a species, perhaps providing a potent new weapon against malaria. But there are plenty of skeptics.

When an Aedes aegypti mosquito bites you, she – because only the females, which need blood as nutrients for their offspring, bite – will probe your skin with her proboscis as many as 20 times. Two pairs of sharp cutting edges, the fascicle, break the skin and then search for a blood vessel, withdrawing and re-entering until a suitable target is found. When the blood starts to flow, a salivary tube delivers a protein that stops it clotting. The mosquito holds still and then begins to suck; in 90 seconds’ time, she feels full, and stops. And then, if you are in parts of South and Central America and bang out of luck, you will have Zika.

The Pentagon is studying whether insects can be enlisted to combat crop loss during agricultural emergencies.

The long read: Beekeepers are sounding the alarm about the latest developments in genetically modified pollinators

Think of it as a biological antenna. Researchers have discovered a species of butterfly that enlarges its wing veins to pick up sounds it wouldn’t otherwise hear—a strategy that may be critical to its survival. Many butterflies possess tiny ears, often in the form of membrane-covered cavities at the base of their forewings. But scientists didn’t know the insects could boost their hearing with other parts of their bodies.

New ultra-slow-motion footage captures aggressive roach defense mechanisms

Found in the Amazon rainforest, this incredible arachnid looks like a strange cross between a dog and a spider.

Climate change could reduce fertility rates in male insects by at least half, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. This is bad news for bugs and humans alike, because insects play a crucial role in pollinating our crops and stabilizing many of the food webs and ecosystems that we rely on. Led by Kirs Sales, a postgraduate researcher at the University of East Anglia in the UK, the research found that increasingly intense heat waves pose a serious threat to the reproductive fitness of insects worldwide.

The nests of Florida ants called Formica archboldi are adorned with the carcasses of their enemies — namely, the heads of other species known as trap-jaw ants. How Formica archboldi acquire these gruesome home accessories has perplexed scientists since the 1950s. But now, thanks to high-speed and time lapse videos, we have a better picture of this bizarre behavior.