Smithsonian Year of Music
Where science meets music: a banjo player listens for the songs of katydids
Abril 17, 2019
What do playing the banjo and recording katydids have in common? We join Sharon Martinson on Barro Colorado Island to find out.
What do playing the banjo and recording katydids have in common? We join Sharon Martinson on Barro Colorado Island to find out.
By taking on characteristics from another, younger stage in its life-cycle, this fossil crab was probably able to adapt to new conditions.
Why did some bee species become social, while the majority have remained solitary? On Barro Colorado Island, a bee that adopts both strategies interchangeably, may unlock the evolutionary origins of sociality in insects
Fever may be less effective at repelling infections in cold-blooded creatures
Bats can find motionless insects on leaves in the dark. This was thought to be impossible, because the acoustic camouflage provided by the leaves should confuse their echolocation system. Inga Geipel and colleagues discovered how they overcome this problem.
As some of the most savvy and sophisticated predators out there, bats eavesdrop on their prey and even on other bats to collect a wide variety of information about their prey.
Imprinting on parental color may be more important than genetics when it comes to the evolution of new species.
A collaborative effort at Barro Colorado island described the daily rhythm of a rare half male-half female bee
Researchers learned from some unusual sweat bee species on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, how the sophisticated division of labor in highly complex insect societies can arise from humble beginnings.
Just as contemporary human societies depend on large-scale agriculture, leaf-cutter ants depend on a long, co-evolved relationship with a fungus. As humans, we may share some of the same rules that govern their relationship.