What's up in
insects
Q&A
A Scientist Who Delights in the Mundane
From crumpled paper to termite mounds to three-sided coins, L. Mahadevan has turned the whole world into his laboratory.
evolution
How Two Became One: Origins of a Mysterious Symbiosis Found
Carpenter ants need endosymbiotic bacteria to guide the early development of their embryos. New work has reconstructed how this deep partnership evolved.
Q&A
Secrets of Math From the Bee Whisperer
As Scarlett Howard taught honeybees to do arithmetic, they showed her how fundamental numbers might be to all brains.
Abstractions blog
Why Evolution Reversed These Insects’ Sex Organs
Among these cave insects, the females evolved to have penises — twice. The reasons challenge common assumptions about sex.
Insights puzzle
Solution: ‘How Equality and Inequality Shape Birds and Bees’
Puzzle solvers explored how evolution may have used negative and positive control mechanisms to shape the conflicting parental functions of reproduction and child rearing.
Insights puzzle
How Equality and Inequality Shape the Birds and the Bees
Two dynamic, seemingly opposing forces likely played an important role in the evolution of reproduction and child rearing in social animals like bees and humans.
Abstractions blog
How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies
Evolution may have coopted an ancient metabolic mechanism to set social insects on the path toward one of the most puzzling behaviors found in nature.
Q&A
A Mathematician Who Decodes the Patterns Stamped Out by Life
Corina Tarnita deciphers bizarre patterns in the soil created by competing life-forms.
evolution
Insects Conquered a Watery Realm With Just Two New Genes
Minor genetic changes can have big evolutionary consequences. When a gene duplication gave some water striders a novel leg part, it opened up a new world for them.