John E. Woodmansee Photo: Tobacco hornworm on a tomato plant that has been attacked by a parasitic Braconid wasp. The white capsules on its back are the pupal stage of the tiny wasp. Braconid larvae ...

Complete metamorphosis transforms caterpillars into butterflies, reshaping not only the bodies of the insects but their behaviors and identities. New work reveals in detail for the first time how ...

“For me, it was a road-to-Damascus type of moment,” James Truman, an entomologist, told me, recalling an encounter when he was sixteen. “My family had a summer place, a trailer, on the shores of Lake ...

Michelle Starr is CNET's science editor, and she hopes to get you as enthralled with the wonders of the universe as she is. When she's not daydreaming about flying through space, she's daydreaming ...

entmain copy 39088019137645 purchased with funds from the S. Dillon Ripley Endowment. "Insect Metamorphosis: From Natural History to Regulation of Development and Evolution explores the origin of ...

Young children are often taught that caterpillars form a chrysalis and transform into butterflies. However, the exact details of metamorphosis aren’t always clarified due to the complicated biological ...

Every spring, I see spiny bugs that look like tiny alligators. They spend all day chomping up other insects outside my window. I asked my friend Rich Zack about them. He’s an insect scientist at ...

If you enjoyed this article, I’d like to ask for your support. Scientific American has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in ...

Complete metamorphosis seems to have arisen in insects only around 350 million years ago, before the dinosaurs. Most researchers now believe that metamorphosis evolved to lessen the competition for ...