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

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

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." You’ve probably heard rumors about figs being filled with dead wasps. That's only sort of true. It is ...

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 ...

If you've ever bitten into a fresh fig, you've tasted the delicious result of one of nature's most extraordinary and longstanding partnerships. But the figs in your local grocery store only tell a ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Figs and fig wasps have evolved to help each other out: Fig wasps lay their eggs inside the fruit where the wasp larvae can safely develop, and in return, the wasps pollinate the figs.

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 ...

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, ...

If you don’t believe in soulmates, then the closest thing is the scientific notion of codependent evolution. (Very different from plain ol’ codependency.) This evolutionary kismet takes millions of ...