An international team of scientists has uncovered new information about the natural enemies of the weevil beetle Lixus subtilis, a notorious agricultural pest. Published in the journal ZooKeys, the study reveals the discovery of an entirely new species of hyperparasitoid wasp in China, named after the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, alongside the first regional record of a wasp species that parasitises the weevil pest. Together, these findings offer critical insights into complex agricultural food chains and provide a foundational step toward developing better biological pest control methods. 

Insects have evolved remarkable ways to avoid predators, with plant mimicry among the most effective. Many living and extinct insects resemble twigs, bark, mosses, lichens or leaves, allowing them to blend seamlessly into their surroundings.

Inspired by insect compound eyes, Prof. Ji Chen’s team from Southeast University proposes a bioinspired motion detector based on planar metalens arrays. It realizes an ultra-wide 135° field of view and achieves high-precision perception of moving targets’ velocity and direction. The design effectively detects tiny and slow-moving objects in complex backgrounds and enables intelligent motion trajectory prediction. Featuring high integration and lightweight structure, it provides solid technical support for autonomous perception, industrial early warning and unmanned intelligent systems.

Inspired by insect compound eyes, Prof. Ji Chen’s team from Southeast University proposes a bioinspired motion detector based on planar metalens arrays. It realizes an ultra-wide 135° field of view and achieves high-precision perception of moving targets’ velocity and direction. The design effectively detects tiny and slow-moving objects in complex backgrounds and enables intelligent motion trajectory prediction. Featuring high integration and lightweight structure, it provides solid technical support for autonomous perception, industrial early warning and unmanned intelligent systems.

An international research collaboration, from Sun Yat-sen University, South China University of Technology, University of Liverpool and JiangSu CheeShine Performance Materials Co., has developed a mechanically adaptive artificial interphase for ultrafast zinc metal batteries. By constructing a spider-web-like nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) nanofiber interphase, the researchers achieved synergistic regulation of homogeneous Zn²⁺ transport, free-water blocking, and interfacial deformation buffering. This strategy transforms unstable zinc growth into a uniform and confined surface deposition process. Based on this interphase, Zn//Zn symmetric cells can operate stably for more than 6,000 hours, while Zn//V₂O₅ full cells deliver stable cycling for 20,000 cycles at an ultrahigh rate of 50 A g^-1, providing a new interfacial engineering strategy for safe and high-power aqueous zinc batteries.

Hydrogel electrolytes are pivotal for flexible zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) yet suffer from an intrinsic trade-off between mechanical robustness and ionic conductivity. Herein, drawing inspiration from the “adhesion-conduction” architecture of spider webs, we developed a hierarchical hydrogel electrolyte (MTP) by incorporating tannic acid (TA)-modified MXene nanosheets (MT) into a polyacrylamide (PAM) skeleton to construct uniform 3D ion-conductive pathways. This bioinspired hierarchy serves a dual function: The PAM framework ensures mechanical integrity, while the MT network creates directed low-resistance channels for Zn²⁺ transport. Specifically, the dense array of polar groups on MXene and phenolic hydroxyls on TA act as “sticky sites”, which accelerate desolvation kinetics and homogenize Zn²⁺ flux. Consequently, the MTP electrolyte achieves an impressive ionic conductivity of 27.69 mS cm⁻¹ and a high Zn²⁺ transference number of 0.833. Enabled by this design, Zn//Zn symmetric cells demonstrate an ultralong lifespan of 4600 h (> 6 months) at 0.5 mA cm⁻²/0.5 mAh cm⁻². Furthermore, Zn//Z-VO full cells exhibit outstanding cyclability, retaining 74.5% capacity after 2000 cycles at 2 A g⁻¹ and maintaining durable operation for over 10,000 cycles at 5 A g⁻¹. This work successfully translates a biological blueprint into a practical strategy for resolving the kinetic and stability challenges in high-performance flexible ZIBs.