Insects

Student scientists from Syracuse, New York, say they plan to finish their ants-in-space experiment started aboard space shuttle Columbia in honor of the seven fallen astronauts and their commitment to scientific discovery.

“[The students] feel that their experiment should not be in vain, they want to finish their project,” said Charlotte Archabald, the students’ teacher at Fowler High School in Syracuse. “They feel that what happened with the shuttle was a tragedy, but they need to fix it at NASA and move on. Space needs to be explored, research needs to be done.”

Overturn a wet rock or poke into a pile of damp leaf litter, and you may send a mass of tiny creatures known as Collembola jumping for cover.

The world’s most abundant insect (although taxonomists debate if they are true insects), Collembola have been around for at least 400 million years and exist in as many as 100,000 varieties.

The complex group behavior of social insects such as ants and bees has long intrigued scientists and other observers. This activity is thought to be shaped by a combination of factors, including genetics, learning, and the environment. But a new study shows that when it comes to fire ants, a single gene plays a major role.

The finding may offer important insight to researchers who are working to determine what genes influence social behavior in people.

When merchant ships embarked from the shores of Brazil and Argentina in the early 1900s to carry coffee and sugar to South Africa, North America, and the Mediterranean, they carried a mischievous stowaway: Linepithema humile.

The tiny black insect, better known as the Argentine ant, used burgeoning global trade to invade ant communities around the world. Scientists are just now beginning to tally the damage. The reports are grim. Entire native ant populations have disappeared.