If Miss Muffet in the children’s nursery rhyme had known more about garden spiders, she might not have been so frightened. Spiders are beneficial garden inhabitants that are much more interested in ...

The way gardeners view insects has come a long way in the past few decades. The importance of pollinators and the natural pest control provided by beneficial insects is increasingly recognized as many ...

Although many people have a built-in aversion to them, spiders rank as one of the gardener's best tools for biological pest control. They also are one of the few pest predators that don't eat plants. ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

Orb-weaver spiders produce fine threads made of nanofibers, arranged like beads on a string with puffs and intermediate zones. The spiders have an organ called a cribellum, which pushes out silk ...

University of Guelph provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. University of Guelph provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR. On farms, spiders are important ...

A: The good news is that your spider is one of the “good guys” and is totally harmless. It does have fangs and would bite if threatened, but it does not have any toxin significant to man. There are ...

At night in the forests of East Asia, fireflies glow to attract mates. But sometimes their signals are hijacked. Sheet web spiders have been caught turning these insects into unwilling accomplices, ...

What happens when an insect touches a spider’s web? Most web-spinning spiders line their silken threads with droplets of glue, which snag blundering insects. But one group—the cribellate spiders—does ...