Now, a team of researchers from the University of Macau's Department of Electromechanical Engineering and Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics has published (DOI: 10.1016/j.esci.2026.100549) a comprehensive perspective on this very question. In the journal eScience (Volume 6, Issue 4, July 2026), the team lays out a roadmap for achieving embodied intelligence in insect‑scale robots—charting a course from laboratory prototypes to practical, intelligent systems.

New comprehensive survey catalogues 21 ant species across seven South China Sea islands, revealing human activity as primary driver for exotic ant establishment amid climate-vulnerable coral island ecosystems.

Insect ‘detectives’ have discovered two new types of large stick insects, showing scientists are still uncovering new species in some of Australia’s most well-studied landscapes.

Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers generated the first chromosome-scale reference genome for the rice stink bug, Oebalus pugnax, identifying more than 13,000 genes with broad biological and agricultural relevance. The development created a foundational resource to help scientists better understand how the insect feeds, adapts to host plants and potentially develops resistance to insecticides. The study was published in the Journal of Heredity and provides the most detailed genomic analysis to date of the rice stink bug, which feeds on more than 15 host plant species, including grain sorghum, and has shown resistance to pyrethroid insecticides in some populations.

A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology discovered a previously unknown strategy by which certain fungi neutralize spruce defense compounds. These fungi are introduced into trees by bark beetles, and their success makes it easier for bark beetles to invade the trees. The researchers showed that many of these introduced fungi can metabolize the trees’ chemical defenses and spread through the bark rapidly. Two of them can further deactivate the initial degradation products by binding the sugar molecule ribose to them. These transformed defense compounds are harmless and stable, and they cannot be converted back into the original, more toxic substances by cleaving off the ribose. The fungus that was most effective at neutralizing spruce defense compounds by binding ribose thrived particularly well in spruce bark. These findings could lead to new methods of combating bark beetle infestations in European forests, such as selectively altering the microbial communities within the trees.