Species with thinner protective barriers may need fewer resources and tend to have a greater ability to adapt to new habitats ...

Ant species that evolved thinner shells traded individual armor protection for increases in colony size, University of ...

Deep inside an ant nest, some of the youngest members are primed to die for the group. When infection strikes, these baby ...

The rapid diversification of ants has “led to their role as ecological engineers” that can work in habitats across the world, said Mathieu Molet, a professor at the Institute of Ecology and ...

The trade-off between quality and quantity is a fundamental economic dilemma. Now, a team of British, American, and Japanese researchers describes how it applies to biology, as well. They have ...

Zombies are among us. And these tiny undead creatures are everywhere. In this excerpt from "Rise of the Zombie Bugs" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), author Mindy Weisberger examines the very ...

Ants are among the most physically fragile insects on the planet, yet they dominate almost every land habitat and outweigh many larger animals in total biomass. New research argues that this success ...

A recent study into the biomechanics of the necks of ants – a common insect that can amazingly lift objects many times heavier than its own body – might unlock one of nature's little mysteries and, ...

Most ants dextrously grasp and snip their food with a pair of chopstick-like mandibles. But trap-jaw ants are also capable of crashing their jaws together at blisteringly fast speeds, striking victims ...

The first thing to understand about velvet ants is that they are not, in fact, ants. They're wasps, some of which are wingless, and are named in part for their fluffy exteriors. About the size of a ...