Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have shown for the first time that an insect – the bumblebee Bombus terrestris – can decide where to forage for food based on different durations of visual cues.  

New research has shed light on the vast and largely unmonitored trade of wildlife around the world, revealing alarming threats to biosecurity and the survival of many species.

In a new study out today in Science Signaling, researchers at the University of Notre Dame present a computational process that can scan hundreds of proteins in a few days, screening for pH-sensitive protein structures.

Over time, non-native plant species increasingly integrate into native food webs. Their region of origin or relatedness to native plants plays only a minor role. Far more decisive is how widely they have spread and how long they have been growing in Europe. The longer they have been established and the wider their distribution range, the more they are used by microherbivores such as leaf miners, gall midges and aphids – leading to similarly diverse interactions as with native plants. These are the findings of researchers from Leipzig University and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), led by Dr Ingmar Staude. They have just published their study in the journal Ecology Letters.

A new study demonstrates for the first time that in tawny crazy ant societies, nest spatial structure is of primary importance in allowing social immune behaviors to prevent diseases from reaching the colony core, where the queen and brood live.