Predators are far more likely to attack adult moths than caterpillars, highlighting the protective power of metamorphosis.

One example is the importance of pollinators. It is estimated that only about 3% of insects are pests. Metamorphosis refers to the insect’s life cycle, and how it changes and grows into an adult.

Researchers have studied gene expression dynamics during metamorphosis in two species of flies. Published in the Genome Biology and Evolution, the study aims to identify patterns of changes in gene ...

Complete metamorphosis seems to have arisen in insects only around 350 million years ago, before the dinosaurs. Most researchers now believe that metamorphosis evolved to lessen the competition for ...

More than 60% of all animal species are insects. The majority of these species undergo complete metamorphosis, whereby the ...

Like other flying insects that undergo complete metamorphosis, caterpillars go through five regular moults during their mindless hungry lives, upsizing their outer skin each time.

With insect metamorphosis, the time line runs, so to speak, backward, with the more recent development, the larva, appearing first and then proceeding as if reversing in time, to become the ...

Going through this type of complete metamorphosis is surprisingly common. About 8 in 10 insects, including beetles, flies, bees, and ants live and grow this way. Butterflies just get all the ...

Complete metamorphosis transforms caterpillars into butterflies, reshaping not only the bodies of the insects but their behaviors and identities. New work reveals in detail for the first time how ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. On warm summer nights, green lacewings flutter around bright lanterns in backyards and at campsites. The insects, with their veil ...