An immense and towering thunderhead was gliding to the east, forming a stark backdrop for Crane Lake in the Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. I walked up a hill, ...

Yucca moths are most well known for their obligate pollination mutualism with yuccas, where pollinator moths provide yuccas with pollen and, in exchange, the moth larvae feed on a subset of the ...

Insect larvae such as those of yucca moths that feed on small, patchily distributed food items often face an elevated risk of intraspecific competition or cannibalism. For this reason, ovipositing ...

For going on 40 million years now, neither the yucca plant nor the yucca moth have been able to do without one another. The relationship is the classic instance of a concept referred to by biologists ...

The Karner blue butterfly is one of many species of butterflies that depend on specific host plants. Because the caterpillars only feed on blue lupine plants, they depend on hatching at the right time ...

If you haven’t gotten yourself out of town over this past month, you have only weeks to see our prairie looking as handsome as it ever will. Bluebells, evening primrose, pasqueflowers, lupine, phlox — ...

! Yucca at Conference House Park 2017-03-05 13.16.24.jpg Yucca are tough plants that grow in dry, arid regions and in sandy lowlands along the eastern seaboard. Though naturally found as far north as ...

Brush up against a yucca plant and you won’t forget it. The needle-like points on its long, narrow leaves can deliver memorable puncture wounds. Yuccas are relatives of aloes, hostas, asparagus, and ...

While Joshua Trees get all the press at the National Monument, other local yuccas remain unknown and largely ignored. Yet here are two important desert species that are just as long lived as their ...

Moths and butterflies collectively belong to a big taxonomic group called Lepidoptera. That name means “scale-wing”, referring to the tiny scales that cover the wings of most of these species. The ...

With the heat come moths, denizens of the warm desert nights. They wander through our yards seeking particular flowers that suit their unfashionably late feeding times. Because so many flowers close ...