Bee

The ability to detect viruses and other harmful pathogens is highly advantageous for animals, as it can guide their behavior and prevent them from illness, and—in severe cases—death. When it comes to species that live in organized groups, such as bees, ants and some other insects, it can be even more crucial, as it can prevent the spread of pathogens across entire colonies.

Researchers at the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) and the University of the Ryukyus have developed a new imaging method that makes it possible to see, in real time, how food is distributed and exchanged inside groups of ants. The work sheds light on how social insects organize themselves, and it could eventually help scientists detect early signs of disruption in insect communities that play essential roles in pollination, agriculture, and biodiversity.

Pollinating insects are important for agriculture and ecological flourishing, but they are difficult to monitor, as identification is tricky, labor-intensive, and typically requires killing some insects. Publishing in PNAS Nexus, Adam Narbudowicz and colleagues use machine learning to identify insects by the changes in their radar reflection, caused by the flapping of their wings. The machine learning model extracted more than 70 harmonic, spectral, and temporal features from the Doppler radar […]

Nature is a riot of color. In the animal kingdom, many species, from insects to cephalopods, use their permanent color or change it for communication, camouflage, and thermoregulation. While this type of reversible shift has been extensively studied, less is known about how the environment may passively affect coloration. In a paper published in the journal Biology Letters, scientists report that sweat bees change color as ambient humidity fluctuates.

With their dazzling blooms, orchids are among the most famous and collected flowering plants on Earth. But orchids are not just beautiful and rare. They can also provide clues into the broader health of global ecosystems.