Merry Beetle



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Throughout Mexico legions of fans remain devoted to the Volkswagen Beetle, or as it's known, the "vocho."

Airing on the aquarium's Twitch channel at 4 p.m. EST today, the two-hour session will focus on the video game's diverse insect population

Everyone who knows anything about education seems to now be running a livestream from their room, and the explosion of home-schooling resources can be enough to send a busy parent into lockdown meltdown. That's why we've created a check-list of some of the books and sites that could help. It’s not all about BBC Bitesize and the Khan Academy – it can be all the more fun when you go a little off the beaten path.

Kelsey L. Jones, Rahmatollah Rajabzadeh, Guncha Ishangulyyeva, Nadir Erbilgin, and Maya L. Evenden

Flight polyphenisms naturally occur as discrete or continuous traits in insects. Discrete flight polyphenisms include winged and wingless morphs, whereas continuous flight polyphenisms can take the form of short- or long-distance fliers. The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) exhibits polyphenic variation in flight distance but the consequences of this flight variation on life history strategies of beetles is unknown. This study assessed the effect of flight on two particular aspects of beetle biology: (1) an energetic trade-off between flight distance and host colonisation capacity; and (2) the relationship between flight distance and pheromone production. A 23-h flight treatment was applied to a subset of beetles using computer. After flight treatment, both flown and unflown (control) beetles were given the opportunity to colonise bolts of host trees, and beetles that entered hosts were aerated to collect pheromone. A trade-off occurred between initiation of host colonisation and percent body weight lost during flight, which indicates energy-use during flight affects host acceptance in female mountain pine beetles. Furthermore, production of the aggregation pheromone trans-verbenol by female beetles was influenced by both percent weight lost during flight and flight distance. Male production of exo-brevicomin was affected by beetle condition following flight but not by the energy used during flight. These novel results give new insight into the polyphenic flight behaviour of mountain pine beetles. Flight variation is adaptive by acting to maintain population levels through safe and risky host colonisation strategies. These findings suggest mechanisms that facilitate the extremities of the continuous flight polyphenism spectrum. These opposing mechanisms appear to maintain the high variation in flight exhibited by this species.

For most people, living along southern Chesapeake Bay with a scenic view over the waterfront might sound idyllic, but for nearly 100 residents who do, it's turned into a nightmare. Slowly, the

A concept water bottle pulls water from the air like the Namib Desert Beetle.

The Mountain Pine Beetle is getting more press because of the havoc it is causing in the Southern Rocky Mountains, but the Spruce Beetle has the potential to be equally or even more devastating in Colorado.

I love the look of the new Volkswagen Beetle Cabriolet which makes its world debut at the Los Angeles Motor Show on November 28 and will go on sale in Britain in spring.

It’s no slouch. On Germany’s unrestricted motorways, it’ll cruise happily and legally top-down in the ‘slow’ lane at 100 mph.

Namib desert beetles live in an area with little ground water, so how is it that they have no trouble finding H2O? Find out how the resourceful insects use their wing scales to absorb water droplets from fog, and how we can use them as a model for combating water shortages.

Rhino beetles love to fight and to hump. They use huge scoops on their heads to joust, launching each other off branches to win the right to mate.

Poop rules everything around the dung beetle, including its sex life.

Yipes! The tiger beetle, not to be confused with teen magazine Tiger Beat!, is pretty much six-legged death incarnate for spiders, grubs, and even ladybugs. Watch out!