Insects

There is virtually no end to the list of strange life histories insects have evolved. I came across a good example as I tended a moth sheet (a white sheet […]

To be successful at hunting or fishing, the saying goes, you need to learn to think like your prey. The same is true of insect study: by learning to imagine […]

Flies – the order Diptera – are an incredibly diverse group, and they’ve evolved an astonishing array of bizarre life histories. I recently encountered an example of one of the [...]

Friday, May 20, is both Endangered Species Day and World Bee Day. What could be a more appropriate topic for that dual celebration than  an endangered bee? Walsh’s Anthophora (Anthophora [...]

Spring is a time of year when many of us focus on clearing out the old to prepare for the new.  If you’ve watched or read anything by Marie Kondo, […]

While spring is still just getting started, the first of the Vineyard’s native bees are already on the wing. Queen bumblebees, having overwintered under the leaf litter, are starting to [...]

Over the course of 50 years, populations of terrestrial insectivorous birds have declined by about 2.9 billion individuals (Tallamy & Shriver, 2021). Recent research suggests a strong [...]

Perhaps because of their elongated shape, members of the fly family Therevidae have acquired the common name “stiletto flies.” This is a smallish fly family, widespread but said to be [...]

Human travel and commerce have completely rewritten the book on wildlife distribution. Deliberately or by accident, humans have transported many thousands of species from their native ranges to [...]

With 4 million contributors, more than 67 million records, and a third of a million species documented, iNaturalist might seem like a complete archive of biodiversity. But with an estimated […]