There are different amounts of cognition involved in navigation when considering different species and different goals. This starts with simple aiming and obstacle avoidance already present in one-cell organisms, over route-following for example in insects, to high-level survey navigation which includes both topological and metric information. A useful categorisation of these different skill le...

background : appropriate methodology for storage biological materials, extraction of dna, and proper dna preservation is vital for studies involving genetic analysis of insects, bacteria, and reservoir hosts as well as for molecular diagnostics of pathogens carried by vectors and reservoirs. here we tried to evaluate the utility of a simple filter paper-based for storage of insects, bacteria, r...

When counting-like abilities were first described in the honeybee in the mid-1990s, many scholars were sceptical, but such capacities have since been confirmed in a number of paradigms and also in other insect species. Counter to the intuitive notion that counting is a cognitively advanced ability, neural network analyses indicate that it can be mediated by very small neural circuits, and we sh...

in recent years a large number of pesticides used in the warehouses fumigation have been abandoned, and only methyl bromide and phostoxine are widely used for fumigation of foodstuffs and storage spaces. due to possibility of health impairment, environmental contamination and resistance enhancement of insects, the use of these two fumigants is under scrutiny and restriction. under such circumst...

Insect larvae and adult insects found on human corpses can provide important forensic evidence however it is useful to be able to prove evidence of association. Without this, it could be claimed that the insect evidence was a contaminant or had been planted on the body. This paper describes how mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and STR analysis of the crop contents of larvae of the blowfly Aldrichina g...

Researchers interested in biodiversity could make no better start than with insects. A new illustrated book looks at the extremes in these species, highlighting just how diverse and numerous these animals are. “Through looking at insects,” the author Richard Jones says, “you can study the world — the whole natural environment — far better than you can by looking at humans. In fact, there’s a lo...

■ Abstract Reproductive-skew theory can be broadly divided into transactional models, in which reproduction is shared among group members in return for some fitness benefit, and tug-of-war models, in which reproductive sharing arises solely from an inability of each group member to fully control the others. For small-colony social insects in which complete reproductive control by a single indiv...

What are scale insects? Scale insects (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha: Coccoidea) are a group of small, plant feeding insects closely related to aphids and whiteflies. They are characterized by their unusual shapes, so much so that it is sometimes hard to recognize them as insects or even as animals! Adult females hardly ever move, lacking wings and often even legs. Instead of being able to run away...