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Fighting ants and Freeloading flies
Harvester ants fight while a freeloader fly awaits the spoils of war. I snapped this picture of fighting harvester ants in Arizona, and it wasn’t until I could see the images under the camera’s...
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May Taxonomy Fail: Insect Tattoos
And when they say “insect” they mean… It’s been a while since I’ve posted a good taxonomy/morphology fail. This one’s got a little of both. A friend gave me this wonderful little booklet of temporary...
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Life of a carpenter ant
Carpenter ant pupa cocoon and first instar larvae. Ants, like butterflies, are holometabolous and go through complete metamorphosis with an egg, a larva (~caterpillar), a pupa (~chrysalis/cocoon), and...
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June Morphology Fail
Here’s another Taxonomy Morphology Fail for your edification and/or entertainment. See if you can spot this one. I present: Pedipalps are not, as it would happen, gonads. In male spiders these...
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When is a fly not a fly?
A wingless phorid fly from an army ant raiding column under magnification. Here’s a pretty cool little critter. This strange-looking bug is actually a wingless phorid fly that we captured running in a...
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Do fire ants cause weddings?
aka the “Correlation is not Causation” post Google search activity for “fire ant” and “wedding gift” show a strong correlation. (via Google Correlate) While playing with Google Correlate recently, I...
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The beautiful beautiful hairy maggot blowflies
A pair of hairy maggot blow flies. I posted a while back on maggot art as an outreach activity, and in that post I made the claim that adult hairy maggot blowflies are quite lovely. My friend (and...
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Go away or I will glow at you
Pyrophorus sp. click beetle collected in Argentina. (aka Deilelater sp.) Here’s a cool beetle I found a while back, all the way down in Argentina. This is a member of the family Elateridae, the click...
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American Cockroaches
I sat in on a introductory entomology lecture about cockroaches this week, so this seemed like a good topic. Above you see my least favorite insect and also my frequent friend and visitor for night...
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Beekeeping, in Miniature: the Sugarbag Bees
A stingless bee worker, preparing to fly. (Tetragonula carbonaria) While at the IUSSI conference in Australia this summer, I got the chance to tour some stingless beehives. It was a really lovely...
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