In the 1830s a German naturalist named Renous was arrested in San Fernando, Chile for heresy. His claim? He could turn caterpillars into butterflies. A few years later, Renous recounted his tale to ...

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 ...

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 ...

Many people use 'bug' and 'insect' interchangeably. Scientifically, insects are a broad class. True bugs are a specific order within insects, known as Hemiptera. They have unique piercing-sucking ...

The transformation of metamorphosis evolved gradually over hundreds of millions of years. It involves both genetics and natural selection pressures on species. This insect is studied by scientists to ...

New University of Washington research shows that a regulatory gene named broad, known to be necessary for development of insects that undergo complete metamorphosis, also is key for the maturation of ...

“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 ...

Metamorphosis signifies a profound transformation, not just a minor shift. This term, rooted in Greek, describes dramatic changes in living organisms, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, and is ...

Holometabolous insects undergo complete metamorphosis to become sexually mature adults. Metamorphosis is initiated by brain-derived prothoracicotropic hormone (PTTH), which stimulates the production ...