Nicknamed “aphid wolves,” lacewings are beneficial insects with a voracious appetite for common pests. These generalist predators consume various prey in their larval and adult stages. Surprisingly, ...

Standing in a tropical forest at night, you might hear what sounds like a small bird calling from high in the canopy. Listen ...

It sounds like a just-so story—“How the Insect Got its Wings”—but it’s really a mystery that has puzzled biologists for over a century. Intriguing and competing theories of insect wing evolution have ...

About 350 million years ago, our planet witnessed the evolution of the first flying creatures. They are still around, and some of them continue to annoy us with their buzzing. While scientists have ...

Modern insects are versatile wing conversationalists. Crickets can scrape a leg against a wing or rub two wings together. Some grasshoppers beat their wings like castanets; others crackle and snap the ...

A photograph showing a winged insect with a goblin-like face made the rounds on the internet in September 2022, claiming that it was a real species known as the “American winged goblin,” or “Angelus ...

In a remarkable scientific achievement, researchers have made significant strides in understanding the intricate biomechanics of insect wings, with a particular focus on the wing hinge mechanism of ...

We may be fascinated by the glowing aura of fireflies gently lighting up a summer evening — but their flashing lights aren’t for us. Instead, these bright bursts are a form of communication. Other ...

Different insects flap their wings in different manners. Understanding the variations between these modes of flight may help scientists design better and more efficient flying robots in the future.

Genes from a tiny shrimp-like crustacean could help in the search for the origin of insect wings, a new study finds. To be clear, there is no evidence that any crustaceans ever evolved to fly, ...

The hinge enables insects to control their wing movements, but how it works is hard to study. Multidisciplinary research, using imaging and machine-learning methods, now sheds light on the mechanism ...