New research from Virginia Tech University shows that small insects called springtails (Collembola species) help farmers fight herbicide-resistant weed species in the soil. These tiny wingless insects ...

In all these many years, I have never written a column on springtails, and yet I am pretty sure you have them all over your yard. In fact, you have more of them than any other arthropod. You probably ...

Beneath our feet, in the dark layers of the soil we rarely notice, live some of nature’s most vital yet invisible workers. This week, scientists at the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) announced the ...

As we walk through our natural surroundings, we may unwittingly pass thousands of tiny soil inhabitants. The soil is neither inert nor boring, but is actually teeming with life on many scales. It’s a ...

Inspired by these agile hexapods, researchers at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have built a robot that not only walks but also jumps, redefining the ...

Globular springtails (Dicyrtomina minuta) are small bugs about five millimetres long that can be seen crawling through leaf litter and garden soil. While they do not have wings and cannot fly, they ...

You may not know what a springtail is but man, those little things can jump! Scientists have now copied the creatures' jumping mechanism in a small robot that could one day explore places that people ...

Springtails, small bugs often found crawling through leaf litter and garden soil, are expert jumpers. Inspired by these hopping hexapods, roboticists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of ...

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have unveiled a micro-robot that mimics the extraordinary leaping abilities of springtails—tiny ...

Springtails, small bugs often found crawling through leaf litter and garden soil, are expert jumpers. Inspired by these hopping hexapods, roboticists have made a walking, jumping robot that pushes the ...

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. At first, you notice one or two bugs in the shower, but you reason that they are few, feeble, and inconsequential. The following day, you spot ...