Monarch butterfly migration, termite fortresses, and the fleeting life of a mayfly are just a few of the topics covered at this educational site from PBS. "Alien Empire" is the title of a recently aired program on insects, part of PBS's series Nature. The interactive Website presents short Flash animations on insect behavior and lifecycles, puzzles and activity ideas for kids, teacher resources,...

Created by software developer and amateur insect photographer Troy Bartlett, BugGuide.Net is an "online resource devoted to North American insects, spiders and their kin, offering identification, images, and information." Site visitors can locate animals by browsing the extensive and image-rich indices for Arachnids, Centipedes, Millipedes, Hexapods, and Malacostracans. At present, the main...

The Bugscope project, offered through the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, allows K-12 classrooms to remotely operate a scanning electron microscope (SEM) in real time from a classroom computer to create incredibly cool images of insects and other "bugs" at high magnification. Detailed instructions for scheduling a session and...

AntWeb, an excellent service of the California Academy of Sciences, provides users with "tools for exploring the diversity and identification of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). These tools have been developed to facilitate the use of ants in inventory and monitoring programs and provide ant taxonomists with images and types." At present, AntWeb offers information on all ant genera worldwide as...

Maintained by the US Geological Survey (USGS), this modest site is a nice starting point for younger users interested in butterflies. All users, however, will enjoy the butterfly photo gallery, which offers pictures of common butterflies from around the world, organized by continent. The section currently contains thumbnail images of butterflies from Western Europe and Britain and North America,...

The spring season marks the long-awaited arrival of the Magicicada Brood X periodical cicadas. The Magicicada cicadas are emerging in great numbers after spending 17 years underground. The following websites offer information about the periodical cicadas, and other cicadas as well. The first (1) site, from the University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology, provides a variety of short information...

The journal Conservation Ecology, first reviewed in the February 4, 1998 Scout Report for Science & Engineering, has just posted a special feature issue on insect pollinator declines. Ten articles review the current state of knowledge on this topic and provide evidence (or speculations) on potential causes of pollinator declines, from population genetics through habitat degradation.

Associated with the University of Alberta, the EH Strickland Entomological Museum has some unique features on its Web site. Along with information on some of the research being conducted and some of the interesting volunteer opportunities, this site has some cool online features. Visitors to the site can take a panoramic virtual tour to see what's behind the scenes at the entomological museum....

UK-based Butterfly Conservation presents the preliminary results of the Garden Butterfly Count (GBC), which enlisted the help of private residents to survey backyard butterflies and moths. Over 11,000 completed survey forms were returned to Butterfly Conservation at the end of the 2002 season, and the Web site provides a brief look at early results and analysis. The information is presented for a...

Located at Harvard University, the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) "insect type collection, one of the largest in North America, currently preserves the primary types of more than 28,000 species, representing 29 orders, 565 families, and 7, 578 genera." This database makes records from the MCZ insect type collection available to Internet users. Records include high resolution images, Type...