The firing rates of neurons in the grasshopper auditory system are surprisingly robust to changes in temperature, and cell-intrinsic mechanisms are sufficient to explain this temperature insensitivity.

The processing of light and dark contrast information for detecting impending visual threats within grasshopper neurons reveals new mechanisms of information processing in the brain.

Hemilineages link neuronal stem cells to behavioral functions by providing a conserved ground plan of neuronal types that evolution then uses to sculpt different types of walking and flight behaviors.

Developmental cell death plays a key role during insect neurogenesis and is increased in specific neuronal populations in flies that have evolved flightlessness.

Active dendritic processing enables an individual neuron to discriminate the spatial pattern of synaptic inputs, increasing neural and behavioral selectivity for escaping an impending threat.

An ancestral apical brain center contributed to the evolution of the insect central complex requiring foxQ2, which is essential for the development of midline structures of the insect brain.

Hypotheses on brain homologies between insects and vertebrates are tested by comparing gene expression patterns from flies and beetles with those from vertebrates at early neuroectoderm stages.

Hundreds of fossil remains shed new light on the evolution of grasshoppers, gryllids, and katydids and their ecological role 300 million years ago.

This sesquiterpene hormone likely acted as a morphogenesis-to-differentiation switch in archaic embryos before it evolved its postembryonic function as the status quo regulator of insect metamorphosis.