Thirty years ago, they came up with an answer known as the “oxygen constrain hypothesis.” For decades, we thought that any dragonflies the size of hawks needed highly oxygenated air to survive because ...

Rather than rely solely on passive diffusion, insects use discontinuous patterns of gas exchange to avoid the toxic effects of oxygen, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

Scientists rethink why giant insects once ruled the skies, finding oxygen may not explain their size or disappearance.

Three hundred million years ago, dragonfly-like creatures with wingspans stretching 70 centimeters patrolled the skies of a world nothing like our own. These griffinflies, as paleontologists call ...

Flip a damp log in your backyard, and a crowd of tiny gray roly-polies usually rushes for cover. These pill bugs may look like insects, but they are actually crustaceans, distant relatives of crabs ...

What might be mistaken for a waterslide in this image is actually the breathing tube, or trachea, of a dragonfly. This tube connects to openings in the insect's exoskeleton (outer “shell”) called ...

I love taking selfies with my insect friends. They’re so tiny and look so different from me. But my friend Rich Zack told me that insects and humans have lots in common. He’s an insect scientist at ...