Moths with larger hindwings and longer tails are best at deflecting bats
Each night, dramatic aerial battles are waged above our heads, complete with barrel rolls, razor-sharp turns, sonar jamming, cloaking devices and life-or-death...
The man behind the world’s largest private shell collection
Volunteer Harry Lee has been transferring shells to the Florida Museum one car load at a time for eight years Nearly every Wednesday at 7:05 a.m. for the past...
Fossils show ancient primates had grooming claws as well as nails
Humans and other primates are outliers among mammals for having nails instead of claws. But how, when and why we transitioned from claws to nails has been an...
Amber fossils provide oldest evidence of frogs in wet, tropical forests
About 99 million years ago, a tiny juvenile frog in present-day Myanmar was suddenly trapped in sap with a beetle, perhaps its intended next meal. Unlucky for...
Houses of silk, poop and plants: Meet the sack-bearer moths
Ryan St Laurent, a doctoral student at the Florida Museum’s McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, studies an obscure, strange family of moths...
Butterfly expert Thomas Emmel has died
The Florida Museum is shocked and saddened by the passing of Thomas Emmel, our colleague and friend, who died over the weekend, apparently from natural causes,...
40 years of friendship, 70,000 specimens: Amateur entomologists donate lifetimes’ worth of butterflies and moths
As a 4-year-old, butterfly net in hand, Ed Knudson set out to catch insects in his neighborhood. Little did he know his hobby would grow into a lifelong...
Teachers receive fossils, create lesson plans at museum workshop
Florida Museum of Natural History researchers and amateur paleontologists teamed up to give K-12 teachers a crash course that came with some impressive party...
NSF grant will improve digital access to museum vertebrate fossils
The Florida Museum of Natural History recently received a $500,000 collections grant from the National Science Foundation to improve online accessibility of...
Museum biologist joins ‘moonshot’ project to sequence DNA of all eukaryotes
Florida Museum of Natural History plant biologist Pam Soltis is part of a 24-member team that aims to sequence the DNA of all of Earth’s known plants,...