The interactions of the cicada, the cicada killer wasp, and the velvet ant provide a fascinating look into insect relationships. As dusk fills with the sound of male cicadas wooing females, so too ...

OAKLEY, Md. (WHTM) — It certainly looks like an ant, doesn’t it? In fact, the red velvet ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis) isn’t an ant at all, but a wasp. At around 3/4 of an inch long, it’s the largest ...

“I just saw this giant red and black ant in my garden. It almost didn’t look real. Are they dangerous?” — B.H. I’m pretty sure you are referring to an insect known as the red velvet ant aka ...

August is when I see velvet ants and I saw my first one last week on the 9th. They are beautiful velvety orange-red and black wingless female wasps. The common name for them is “cow killer” because ...

Life in an ant colony is a symphony of subtle interactions between insects acting in concert, more like cells in tissue than independent organisms bunking in a colony. Now, researchers have discovered ...

Whenever I asked students to tell me how insects were ecologically important, two of the most common responses were “as plant pollinators” and “some insects were vectors/carriers of diseases.” It ...

How complex ant societies emerged among ants’ solitary ancestors remains one of the big mysteries of social insect biology. Ants are eusocial, meaning that they have overlapping generations, ...

Parental-care behaviours include mammalian lactation to provide milk for offspring. The discovery that adult ants harvest nutritious fluid from pupae and give larvae this fluid reveals social feeding ...