A well-curated collection of local grasshoppers is useful for identification and display. Insect taxonomists often identify species by comparing unknown specimens with identified museum specimens.

You know those scientific displays of labelled insects stuck on pins? Well, they decay over time, and sometimes even get eaten by an insect known as the museum beetle. That's why German scientists ...

CHAMPAIGN — A single leafhopper is small, but the task at hand is enormous. Scientists at the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign, part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of ...

A new bug is joining the shelves of the Museum of Comparative Zoology’s 7-million-strong insect collection, one made not of antennae and exoskeleton, but of wires and lenses: “Lightning Bug,” a ...

Ancient DNA can now be retrieved from various insect remains without destruction of the specimens. Ancient DNA can now be retrieved from various insect remains without destruction of the specimens.

A first-of-its-kind study used herbarium specimens to track insect herbivory across more than a century, and found that, across four species -- shagbark hickory (Carya ovata), swamp white oak (Quercus ...

Last fall, the Yale Peabody Museum had a surplus of cigar boxes — dozens of them. It’s not that folks there were lighting up stogies left and right, though. The boxes had served a scientific purpose: ...