Featured Creatures

Beetles come in a diversity of shapes and sizes. Ladybugs may be the most familiar and beloved beetle but there are 350,000 described species of beetles. That means there are likely thousands more that scientists don’t know about.

We all know that bees are pollinators. And that their pollinating is essential to ecosystems and the food we eat.Sadly, wild bees and honeybees have been in decline in recent decades. Parasites, pesticides, pathogens, and the climate crisis are main factors impacting bees today. As the only insect that is responsible for at least one third of our food, we may literally starve from their decline.Can robot bees help?Photograph credit: Denise Ryan

Like monarch butterflies, dragonfly migrations are multi-generational journeys. The dragonflies migrate to maximize breeding opportunities in warm water ponds. They build up fat reserves before setting off, just like migratory songbirds do. And some species even follow the same migratory pathways as songbirds. Dragonflies can fly up to 100 miles a day (160 km). People have observed dragonfly migrations on every continent except Antarctica.Green darners, fly each summer to the northern U.S. and Canada to breed. Their offspring return south in the fall. If you’re lucky, you might see these and other species as they fly south by the millions. About 16 of 326 North American species migrate. The major migratory species in North America are: common green darner (Anax junius, wandering glider (Pantala flavescens), spot-winged glider (Pantala hymenaea), black saddlebags (Tramea lacerata), and variegated meadowhawk (Sympetrum corruptum).

Did you know that one out of every three bites of food we eat is brought to us from our friends the honey bees? Just watching a hive for a few minutes, you can see more functional order than our culture can imagine. If bees were to disappear, human mankind would have less than four years to live.