If you love figs, you may have heard some unsettling lore about them: that every fig hides a wasp, because these insects need to crawl inside and die in order for the fruit to grow. But are there ...

Are there really dead wasps in figs? You’ve likely heard the rumors, and it turns out that it’s (sometimes) true. Sure, it sounds kind of gross and a little sad. But when you find out about the whole ...

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 ...

You might not know this, but most figs have dead wasps in them at some point. That’s right. Wasps. And if that surprises you, then hold onto your hat: Scientists have found out how another species of ...

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 ...

The story of the fig and the wasp goes back as many years as man has grown fig trees, because fig wasps are the only pollinators for several species of fig trees. It is said that they co-evolved. This ...

The larvae of pollinating wasps in the inner flowers of figs are safe from parasitic wasps. Parasites may contribute to stability in the fig-pollinator mutualism because outer flowers avoided by ...

You’ll never see a fig’s flowers until you open one up. Unlike a blossoming plum, apple, or pear tree, figs hold their many microscopic white blooms inside of plump pouches at the end of their stems.

Textbooks that marvel over an extreme example of the buddy system–fig species that supposedly each pair up with a lone pollinating wasp species–may need rewriting, according to a new genetic analysis.