The Darnest Bugs

GOOD NEWS:  Scientists might have finally found a way to stop the parasitic cancer wiping out Tasmanian devils

by FIONA MACDONALD

It’s no secret that the news has been pretty grim for the environment of late, and Australia in particular has had a bad run.

Not only has 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now officially been damaged by bleaching, one of the country’s most enigmatic animals, the Tasmanian devil, has been steadily wiped out over the past 20 years by a parasitic facial cancer, leaving less than 30 percent of the species remaining.

But researchers have just reported the discovery of several antibodies that seem to fight off the disease, providing some hope that we might finally have a way to save our favourite carnivorous marsupials…

(read more: Science Alert!)

better view of The Spider

Dung beetles may have evolved to eat dinosaur poop

by Patrick Monahan

Modern-day dung beetles mostly eat the excrement of mammals: cows, elephants, you name it. But a new study hints at a reptilian source for the beetles’ original dung diet.

Using ancient fossils and DNA from 450 modern scarab beetle species, scientists now estimate that dung-eating beetles popped up at least 115 million years ago, 30 million years earlier than previously thought. At the time, the only mammals around were tiny and would have produced dry dung pellets—poor eating for a dung beetle (like the one above).

But the beetles’ origin does line up with the age of the dinosaurs and the rise of flowering plants…

(read more: Science Magazine/AAAS)

A peek inside a stingless beehive…

‘Sugarbag bees’ are the common name for Australia’s native and social stingless bees, which home themselves in hollow logs and produce these amazing hexagonal spiral combs to rear their baby bees in.

Inside the hive, there’s two main aspects of how the colony is set up – there’s the central spiral comb where the brood is housed, and the surrounding ‘sugarbag’ which is a complex arrangement of conjoined small resin pots, that the bees manufacture to hold their stores of honey and pollen.

Australia’s social stingless bees just got re-named recently, but I doubt this ancient and exquisite species noticed much. What was Trigona, is now Tetragonula. The bees remain the same.

Family Halictidae- Sweat Bees

Halictid bees are small and often metallic in color. They exhibit a variety of social behaviors from solitary to fully eusocial. They get their common name, the sweat bees, from the habit of some species to land on the skin and lick up perspiration.

Not only are these pea-sized treehoppers amazing to look at - they sound like tiny dinosaurs. Scientists have studied their calls by pressing phonograph needles to the leaf stems where the treehoppers are often found. They send chattering, moaning calls through the plant to attract mates and warn other treehoppers about predators. I listened to those noises here and they are INCREDIBLE.

The treehoppers shown here are all members of the true bug family Membracidae. Image credits: