Find Stuff
Posts
January 2026 M T W T F S S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Author Archives: joeballenger2005
Why do some insects pee sugar?
So let’s unpack this one, because insect pee (watery poop, actually) is really interesting in every way. Here’s a video of what Anastasia was talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnvUEAHOUaE If you want to see more insects doing this, look for Insect Honeydew … Continue reading
What happens when two queen bees meet?
Your Name: Dominic Your Bug Question: Hi, I have a question in my head that I know only an Entomologist can answer. it’s about bees. I tried searching for answers on the internet haven’t found any. My question is, What … Continue reading
Zika virus update
Written by Joe Ballenger An important paper came out in the journal Science, which I think is a great update of the Zika virus situation in Brazil. Here are the highlights: Microcephaly and Zika The correlation between Zika cases and … Continue reading
Do insects get trapped in water drops? Why aren’t they constantly drowning?
Frankwmcarr Question: Is it true that very small insects (e.g., ants) can get trapped inside water drops due to the high surface tension forces of water? We got this question in the comments of Nancy’s post, What do Bugs do … Continue reading
Questions about head lice.
Written by Joe Ballenger We get a lot of questions about lice, and these are really important. On Biofortified, I wrote an article about head louse treatments that was relatively depressing. There are a lot of companies which market louse … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Pest Management, Physiology, Research
Tagged Lice, Lice Treatments, Medicine, Parasites
4 Comments
Why is Oxitec using tetracycline for a genetic switch? Why not something else?
Written by Joe Ballenger Here’s where we get to the meat of the question our follower asked…why use the antibiotic tetracycline as a switch? Why not something else? Last week, we discussed a system which could potentially work for this … Continue reading
Posted in Chemistry, Pest Management, Physiology, Research
Tagged Biochemistry, Genetic Control, GMOs, Mosquitoes, Oxitec, Pest Control, Physiology, RIDL, Tetracycline
7 Comments
So let’s talk about another type of GMO for a minute…
We’ve gotten this question, and it’s a really good question, but I didn’t initially understand what the person was asking. I knew what they were getting at-why is Oxitec using a tetracycline dependent system-but I wanted to wait for them … Continue reading
Posted in Chemistry, Education, Evolution, Insect Rearing, Pest Management, Physiology, Research
Tagged Biochemistry, genetics, Genomics, GMOs
1 Comment
Our next few posts will be about GMO mosquitoes.
We’ve gotten a handful of questions about GMO mosquitoes via Twitter, and through an interview Joe did for a radio station (details of which are forthcoming). So, we decided to switch the post midstream. We’re still planning on doing a … Continue reading
Ask an Entomologist 
You must be logged in to post a comment.