On the pest chart not many insects out rank the mosquito. Throw in that they carry and spread disease throughout the globe and you have a pretty solid case for making them a public enemy. Enter Evarcha culicvora, a small spider that has specialized on dining on those flying phlebotomist's. Interestingly the spider is dining on the blood the mosquito holds, and does it for mate attraction as much as nutrition according the paper "Mosquito-specialist spiders".

Which came first .... the chicken, or the egg? The philosophical mystery that has perplexed generations has finally been "cracked" by scientists from Sheffield University and the University of Warick. The researchers have discovered that a protein required for the formation of the chicken egg shells is found in only one place - inside the ovaries of the chicken.

Insects may have tiny brains the size of a pinhead, but the latest research from the University of Adelaide shows just how clever they really are.

For the first time, researchers from the University's Discipline of Physiology have worked out how insects judge the speed of moving objects.

On May 12th the EPA released a new clean up plan for the Chesapeake Bay. This comes 38 years after the original clean water act was signed into law. How has 38 years of the clean water act faired? Well according to the lawsuit that was just settled out of court between the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the EPA it has been unsuccessful.

The European Space Agency and NASA have been diligently monitoring the gulf oil spill via satellite since it began. Today the ESA released new images with the statement that it has extended into current flow and will be carried towards Florida over the coming week.

From the European Space Agency Release on May 19th

The images below come from the European Space Agency, and the NASA Earth Observatory. In order to observe the clean-up efforts, the US Geological Survey, on behalf of the US Coast Guard, requested satellite maps of the area from the International Charter Space and Major Disasters.

This latest video documentary from the USGS discusses the rapid decline in the health of Coral reefs and reports on the latest findings.

The opening of this video is great, as Dr. Jack Dumbacher, Curator of Birds and Mammals at the California Academy of Sciences, talks about his field expeditions to Papua New Guinea. His hunch after being bitten while releasing a bird from a net is that it may be poisonous. He checks with locals and they all confirm "those birds are poisonous and you shouldn't be touching them."

This image gallery brings to focus the splendid vascular systems of common plants, and showcases the beauty that resides at all levels of the natural world. See the entire gallery.

The loss of wetlands in the prairie pothole region of central North America due to a warmer and drier climate will negatively affect millions of waterfowl that depend on the region for food, shelter and raising young, according to research published today in the journal BioScience.