Insects

In this Ohio city, it seems, it really is tough to stop the bedbugs from biting. When complaints about the bloodsucking insects first trickled in to Cincinnati's public health department three years ago, officials assumed it was an anomaly -- or perhaps the overactive imagination of a bug-phobic public. After all, Cimex lectularius had all but vanished here by the 1950s because of the frequent use of DDT and other now-banned pesticides.

The windshield of Dave Hawks' 1994 Toyota 4Runner is splattered yellow, but Hawks doesn't mind. He's speeding north on U.S. 395, past Adelanto, Boron and Ridgecrest and running the wipers would only make matters worse. Besides, it's now a point of discussion. "It's all the fat in their bodies," he says, explaining why this butterfly -- the painted lady -- makes such a distinctive impression. "They need that fat for energy because they have such a long migration."

They were called night crawlers in German, pursuers in Portuguese and stinkers in French. In medieval Britain they were dubbed goblins, in New York they were once called red coats. Humans have always kept close quarters with bugs (dust mites, termites and fleas come to mind), but only the bedbug, Cimex lectularius, is notorious for getting under the covers at night and biting human flesh.

When Bonnie Friedman first heard about New York's burgeoning bedbug problem, she felt lucky to live in an upscale neighborhood. "I remember thinking, 'I'm so glad I live in Brooklyn Heights. I will never get a bedbug,' " Friedman said. Her first bite came a few weeks later. And as many others have learned, getting rid of the tiny intruders is often a months-long odyssey that requires equal parts detective work, obsessive-compulsive cleaning strategies and emotional healing.

Art lovers were evacuated from the crowded Magritte exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday after a guard noticed ladybugs escaping from a Ziploc bag on the floor in one room of the gallery. Visitors were asked to leave about 1:45 p.m. and wait outside while workers cleaned up the insects, said Allison Agsten, the museum's media relations manager. They were allowed back in about 15 minutes later. The exhibit, open since Nov. 19, closes today.

An international team of archeologists has found a new way to trace the rise and fall of the Inca civilization -- the fossils of tiny soil-dwelling organisms called mites. In the absence of written records, the mites may provide the most reliable way to document the Incas and other South American societies, said the study's leader, paleoecologist Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty of the University of Montpellier in France.

Brent Karner likes to think of butterflies as a lure, a way to capture the public imagination. If he can use swallowtails and mourning cloaks to draw people into his net-walled pavilion, he says, maybe he can pique their interest in less lovable insects. Grasshoppers, perhaps. Even termites. One might call it a case of entomological bait and switch. "They're the one group of bugs that people really like," Karner said of butterflies. "They speak for the cockroaches."

SINCE that fateful day some 45 years ago when a radioactive spider first bit a bespectacled Peter Parker, spiders have become an inextricable part of comic book lore. With that in mind -- not to mention the much-anticipated opening of the third Spider-Man movie -- the Los Angeles Zoo is literally and figuratively taking a page from the comics for its newest exhibit, "Spider City."

It's May, love is in the air -- and motorists on Florida highways during the Memorial Day holiday should expect it on the windshield, grille and paint job. Or for motorcyclists, in their teeth. Once again, it's the season of the lovebug, or \o7Plecia nearctica\f7. From Florida to North Carolina, the smallish black and red bugs hatch, mate, lay eggs and die, all in a matter of days.

The dead bees under Dennis vanEngelsdorp's microscope were like none he had ever seen. He had expected to see mites or amoebas, perennial pests of bees. Instead, he found internal organs swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection.