Deadwood is generally said to be a great thing for insects and other arthropods. It provides places to hide, feed and breed — and is particularly useful to help species survive the winter. In nature reserves, leaving deadwood piled up wherever possible is a key part of land management. It…

Improving agricultural ecosystems is often required if growers want premium pest control from naturally-occurring insect predators and parasites. Flowers are often at the heart of this, with planting selections traditionally based on factors such as floral attractiveness and duration, as well as the nectar supplies on offer. It’s becoming clear…

In explaining the difference between an insect parasite and a parasitoid, a film reference tends to come as standard with the latter. Parasitoids, often wasps but sometimes flies and other insects, ultimately kill their hosts, rather than living off their continued life. …

There’s much to be concerned about in the world of pollination, and a lot tends to centre on the impact of commercially-produced bees, namely honeybees and bumblebees. Backed by a growing body of research, they have been accused of outcompeting native pollinators by their sheer abundance, spreading diseases, and simply…

A piece of ‘weird lit’ originally published by Occullum, 2017 Drip droplets rolling south down skin is it sweat or condensation on the outside of air conditioning units stationed above and tempted by gravity is it tears for this or that or the other it is probably something more practical…

Biological controls are farmers’ friends, able to reduce populations of crop pests without the potentially-damaging use of pesticides. Such controls can come in the form of pests’ natural enemies that are already present in agricultural environments, but increasingly, growers are adding to their ranks with commercially-reared specimens. …

There is an assumption that for a large amount of insect-related field research, some insects will have to die — and for a fair portion of that work, such as studies trying to work insect populations on a large scale, such ‘destructive sampling’ can be extensive. There’s more than a…

The success or failure of one species generally has knock-on effects on others. This is, admittedly, not particularly dazzling ecological insight: take away a plant favoured by herbivores in an ecosystem and just watch the cascade, for example. …

‘Weed’ is very much a loaded term. Plants are plants, but some of them we have defined as being against our economic, and sometimes aesthetic, interests. In truth, one organism’s weed is another’s livelihood — and this has been profoundly underlined in a recent study from the University of Sussex…