Spring has come and while temperatures are rising, the Las Vegas valley is seeing more pesky insects crawling and flying around.

It’s a classic science fiction trope: Astronauts on an interstellar journey are kept in sleek, refrigerated pods in a state of suspended animation. Although such pods remain purely fictional, scientists have pursued research into inducing a hibernation-like state in humans to lessen the damage caused by medical conditions such as heart attacks and stroke, and to reduce the stress and costs of future long-distance space sojourns.

Who can forget the 2019 grasshopper invasion? Grasshoppers were covering gas stations, overcoming the skies, and fast forward to today, the question that everyone may have is, “Will this be a repeat of 2019?”

Officials with the Southern Nevada Water Authority pushing a proposed bill in the Nevada Legislature say converting those systems to the sewer lines would help Las Vegas conserve and reuse more of its small share of Colorado River water.

Many Las Vegas locals have already reported seeing swarms of grasshoppers. The pallid-winged grasshopper is the most common type of grasshopper seen here in the desert according to Professor Allen Gibbs at UNLV. While they can be pesky, grasshoppers are harmless except for some plants and gardens.

Bacteria are literally everywhere -- in oceans, in soils, in extreme environments like hot springs, and even alongside and inside other organisms including humans. They're nearly invisible, yet they play a big role in almost every facet of life on Earth.

Monday marks one week from the beginning of spring which means people who suffer from allergies are on high alert. This allergy season is expected to be more intense this year as temperatures are warming up later than usual.

News reports and social media are awash with photos and videos of coyotes roaming the streets of Las Vegas — but why? Are we in the middle of a coyote population boom, is climate change driving them out of their natural habitat, or are we simply moving into the coyotes’ neighborhoods?

According to data from short-term rental analytics firm AirDNA, Arizona’s Phoenix and Scottsdale area, the home of the 2023 Super Bowl, has seen a huge increase in booking demand, up 41% year-over-year, as of December 2022. This Sonoran Desert location has also seen an uptick in rental supply, with 23,249 listings in December 2022, up 47% year-over-year. These dynamics have pushed the area’s occupancy rate down 6%. A similar trend has been playing out in other desert destinations such as California’s Coachella Valley, where the Sonoran eventually meets the Mojave Desert, and in Marfa, Texas, in the Chihuahuan Desert.

Prompted by video last week of a coyote pack trotting merrily along a Henderson street — to say nothing of mountain lion sightings in edge-of-town neighborhoods — we talked to an expert in the human-wildlife interface.

The team of UNLV microbiologists set up their equipment in the end of a pipe connected to a natural spring, hoping to filter some of the smallest known living things out of the nearly 4,000-year-old water.

One study conducted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas found that solar farms provide better habitat than the wide-open desert.