Nests

Poo matters: Earwig young survive on siblings’ poo

Desperate times call for desperate measures. As food shortages hit, European earwig babies resort to eating each other’s faeces in their underground homes, helping to keep hunger and death at bay.

In times of plentiful food, the earwig offspring, or ‘nymphs’, feast on scraps of plant and insect material that their mother brings back from her trips above ground, and on food she regurgitates.

But when faced with limited supplies, the nymphs have to make do with what’s around them to survive.

Unlike many other insects that live in groups, European earwigs don’t clear their nest of faeces. Availability of faeces in hard times keeps the nymphs alive for about two more days on average than without them, researchers have now found.

In the lab, researchers deprived 56 five-day-old nymphs of food, and offered 28 of them faeces from their siblings. Nymphs with nothing to feed on survived for an average of 14 days, but those with access to their siblings’ faeces lived for an average of 16 days.

Read the rest of the story over at New Scientist.

Photo credit: Joël Meunier

Secrets of the insect architects

Insects are skilled architects that build homes of all kinds, from basements to tree houses and even skyscrapers.

Weaver ant (Oecophylla smaragdina)

This ant weaves a nest out of tree leaves high up in the canopy. To build one, a group of workers forms live ant bridges to bring the leaves together, while another fetches larvae from an existing ant nest.

Worker ants hold these larvae in their jaws and squeeze them while moving along the leaf edges. On squeezing, the weaver ant larva produces a fine silk fibre that glues the leaves. As more and more leaves are pulled along, a lump of fresh green leaves lined with a white silk mat is formed.

Know about other insect architecture in my story for BBC Earth.

The 13 most shielded eggs laid by birds

Birds prepare their eggs for the worst, whether the risk comes from predators or just the location of their nests. This Easter I wrote about some of these amazing eggs for BBC Earth. Here’s one of the birds eggs I highlighted in my piece for their sheer camouflage (besides their beauty): 

Japanese Quail (Coturnix japonica)

A female Japanese quail is selective about where she lays her eggs. She chooses a background that matches either the colour of her eggs or their pattern, whichever is more striking.

If her eggs have only a faint pattern, the female chooses a site that matches their colour. But if they have a strong pattern, she goes for a site that blends with it, and which hides the contour of the egg. This means the female must know the pattern of her own eggs.

To read about other wonderful bird eggs, click here!

The 16 most amazing nests built by birds

Birds build some staggering structures, from nests the size of walnuts to makeshift rafts and even apartment complexes.

European Bee Eater (Merops apiaster):

This bird digs a horizontal cavity into the sand on a river embankment. To build a nest, a bee eater hovers over a suitable site, drills a hole with its bill, alights and then excavates a burrow using its feet to scoop out sand. The bird chooses the nest site with the utmost care, as the soil has to be soft, yet safe from caving in.

Read about other utterly amazing bird nests over at BBC Earth.