Every spring, I see spiny bugs that look like tiny alligators. They spend all day chomping up other insects outside my window. I asked my friend Rich Zack about them. He’s an insect scientist at ...

Life in an ant colony is a symphony of subtle interactions between insects acting in concert, more like cells in tissue than independent organisms bunking in a colony. Now, researchers have discovered ...

Every other Friday on Morning Edition, the Outside/In team answers a question from a listener about the natural world. “What happens inside a chrysalis during metamorphosis?” asked Chris, writing from ...

Knowing the stages of development in a bug’s life is a critical component to successful fly fishing. Deciphering the hatch on a river is a challenging game. Larva, pupa or adult stages have been ...

The life of a fruit fly consists of four phases: egg, larva, pupa and fully-formed fly. At 25 degrees, the fly embryo hatches one day after the egg is laid, and it then lives for five days as a larva.

A mass of writhing maggots on a decomposing murder victim is not a sight for the squeamish, but for some, it is evidence. A maggot’s age and species can give essential information to forensic ...

How complex ant societies emerged among ants’ solitary ancestors remains one of the big mysteries of social insect biology. Ants are eusocial, meaning that they have overlapping generations, ...

A nutrient-rich liquid that could be produced by all ant species while the insects are in their pupal stage is consumed by adults and larvae. The creation of this fluid hadn’t been reported by ...

Life in an ant colony is a symphony of subtle interactions between insects acting in concert, more like cells in tissue than independent organisms bunking in a colony. Now, researchers have discovered ...