Contrary to prevailing wisdom concerning one of the most famous textbook examples of a tightly co-evolved mutualism, not every fig species is pollinated by its own unique wasp species. In this week's ...

The fig, a sweet and nutritious fruit enjoyed by millions, shares an extraordinary, symbiotic relationship with a tiny, often ...

University of Maryland Biology Professor Carlos Machado studies the extraordinary partnership between figs and their tiny pollinators—and what happens when some evolutionary partners turn into ...

These days many of the fig varieties that we buy in grocery stores and at farmers markets in the US don’t require pollination. Mission, those purplish-black ones I bought, Sierra, Celeste, Adriatic, ...

The life of the fig wasp is nature at its worst—from our human perspective, anyway. In order to lay their eggs, female fig ...

Researchers have been studying the effect of rising temperatures on the lifespan of pollinating fig wasps. The findings show that the wasps lived much shorter lives at high temperatures, which would ...

Fresh figs are irresistible from late summer through early fall, when trees droop from the weight of these luscious, caramelly fruits. Nothing stands between fig lovers and this bounty, except … wasps ...

Mutually beneficial relationships are common, but what happens when one partner stops enforcing the other's good behavior? An exception to the usual relationship between figs and their ...

Removal of an offender's hand, tongue or ear: punishments described in Babylon's Hammurabi Code, depended on the nature of the crime. Published in 1771 B.C., the code set the first formal standards ...