Hollow trees host massive moth slumber parties
Unlike social insects such as bees and ants, moths are generally loners. So, when Florida Museum of Natural History lepidopterist…
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Moths with larger hindwings and longer tails are best at deflecting bats
Each night, dramatic aerial battles are waged above our heads, complete with barrel rolls, razor-sharp turns, sonar jamming, cloaking devices…
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Houses of silk, poop and plants: Meet the sack-bearer moths
Ryan St Laurent, a doctoral student at the Florida Museum’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, studies an obscure, strange…
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Butterfly expert Thomas Emmel has died
The Florida Museum is shocked and saddened by the passing of Thomas Emmel, our colleague and friend, who died over…
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40 years of friendship, 70,000 specimens: Amateur entomologists donate lifetimes’ worth of butterflies and moths
As a 4-year-old, butterfly net in hand, Ed Knudson set out to catch insects in his neighborhood. Little did he…
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Austin, Bullen 2018 student research award winners named
The Florida Museum of Natural History recently announced the winners of the 2018 Austin Award and Bullen Award for student…
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New butterfly species discovered nearly 60 years after it was first collected
In 1959, a then-teenage lepidopterist Thomas Emmel collected 13 fawn-colored butterflies in the highlands of Mexico. Nearly 60 years later,…
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New butterfly species named for Field Museum’s Emily Graslie
As the Field Museum’s chief curiosity correspondent, Emily Graslie has plunged elbow-deep into wolf guts, dug up 52-million-year-old fish fossils…
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Luna moth caterpillars vs. brown anoles
Florida Museum researcher Andrei Sourakov recently published a paper in the Journal of Natural History on his observations of the…
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At last, butterflies get a bigger, better evolutionary tree
For hundreds of years, butterfly collecting has often inspired a special kind of fanaticism, spurring lengthy expeditions, sparking rivalries and…
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