insects
grrlscientist | October 31, 2006
Mystery Caterpillar on Gaura,
Nelson Farms Preserve, Katy Prairie Conservancy, Texas.
NABA Butterfly Count, 4 September 2006.
Image: Biosparite.
I thought this image was appropriate for the day, given this caterpillar's sporty Hallowe'en stripes.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: butterfly, caterpillar, Lepidoptera, insect, zoology
grrlscientist | October 29, 2006
Fiery Skipper, Hylephila phyleus,
Nelson Farms Preserve, Katy Prairie Butterfly Count,
4 September 2006.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: butterfly, fiery skipper butterfly, insect, lepidoptery, zoology
grrlscientist | October 28, 2006
These beautiful creatures are day-flying moths from the family Ctenuchidae,
in the process of mating.
This picture was taken in Kerala, southern India by a reader, Basia. You can read
more about these insects at India Ink.
Image: Basia Kruszewska.
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"Insects commonly remain together for hours when mating. However, the actual sperm transfer occurs quickly," says Phil Nixon, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"In many insects, the female's eggs are fertilized by the sperm of the last male to mate with her before the eggs are laid. It is thought that the male…
grrlscientist | October 27, 2006
A common garter snake, Thnmonphis sirtalis,
with a hitchhiking ladybug, Hippodamia convergens,
on its nose. This photo was taken in northeastern North Dakota.
Image: Justawriter.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: snake, common garter snake, ladybug, insect, reptilia, zoology
grrlscientist | October 26, 2006
Ladybug species, Neoharmonia venusta,
which was photographed near "the willows,"
a hot birding area at Anahuac NWR, Texas.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: ladybug, insect, Coleptera, zoology
clock | October 25, 2006The honeybee genome project has been finished and a bunch of papers are coming out tomorrow. As soon as they become available online I will comment, at least on the one paper that shows that the molecular machinery of the bee circadian clock is much more similar to the mammalian clock than the fruitfly clock - something that makes me very excited.
In the meantime, you can read more about the bees and their genome on The Loom, The Scientist, Scientific American and EurekAlert.
grrlscientist | October 24, 2006
This is a pictorial tutorial on distinguishing
the Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae (individual on left),
from the Sleepy Orange butterfly, Eurema nicippe (group on right).
This photo was taken just north of US 290 on the east side of Roberts Road at a vacant lot posted "For Sale" for commercial development. Puddling is a social activity of butterfly species. The butterflies are fortifying themselves with dissolved salts from the soil.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me,…
grrlscientist | October 22, 2006
Clouded Sulfur butterfly, Colias philodice,
nectaring at the garden of the (now defunct) Tierra de los Suenos
Bed and Breakfast near Patagonia, Arizona, mid-July 2003.
Image: Biosparite.
If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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tags: butterfly, clouded sulfur butterfly, insect, lepidoptery, zoology
clock | October 4, 2006For easy-to-understand quick look at the evolution of vision I have to refer you to these two posts by PZ Myers, this post of mine, and these two posts by Carl Zimmer.
Now, armed with all that knowledge, you will curely appreciate the importance of this new study:
Compound Eyes, Evolutionary Ties:
Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have discovered that the presence of a key protein in the compound eyes of the fruit fly (which glow at center due to a fluorescent protein) allows the formation of distinct light gathering units in each of its 800 unit eyes, an evolutionary…
clock | October 2, 2006
From January 20, 2006, on the need to check the model-derived findings in non-model organisms.
There are pros and cons to the prevalent use of just a dozen or so species as standard laboratory models. On one hand, when a large chunk of the scientific community focuses its energies on a single animal, techniques get standardized, suppliers produce affordable equipment and reagents, experiments are more likely to get replicated by other labs, it is much easier to get funding, and the result is speedy increase in knowledge.
On the other hand, there are drawbacks. One is narrow focus which can…
clock | September 13, 2006One of the coolest parasites ever (from February 04, 2006):
I am quite surprised that Carl Zimmer, in research for his book Parasite Rex, did not encounter the fascinating case of the Ampulex compressa (Emerald Cockroach Wasp) and its prey/host the American Cockroach (Periplaneta americana, see also comments on Aetiology and Ocellated).
In 1999, I went to Oxford, UK, to the inaugural Gordon Conference in Neuroethology and one of the many exciting speakers I was looking forward to seeing was Fred Libersat. The talk was half-hot half-cold. To be precise, the first half was hot and the second…
clock | September 12, 2006Baby bugs team up for sex scam
The moment they're born, beetles of one species join forces for a curious drill.
The larvae hatch out of their eggs and together, as a group, climb to the tip of the plant. There, they secrete a sex pheromone that attracts a male of a bee who tries to couplate with the ball of larvae. They jump on him. He flies away carrying the little buggers.
When he finds a female to mate with, the larvae jump ship and go away hithhiking on her. When she goes back to her nest they disembark, eat the nectar she collected and her eggs before their final metamorphosis.…
clock | September 11, 2006Destructive insects on rise in Alaska:
Destructive insects in unprecedented numbers are finding Alaska forests to be a congenial home, said University of Alaska forestry professor Glenn Juday, and climate change could be the welcome mat.
Warmer winters kill fewer insects. Longer, warmer summers let insects complete a life cycle and reproduce in one year instead of two, the forest ecologist said.
Warm winters also can damage trees and make them less able to fend off insect attacks by changing the nature of snow. Instead of light, fluffy snow formed at extreme cold temperatures, warm winters…
clock | September 5, 2006
Hypotheses leading to more hypotheses (from March 19, 2006 - the Malaria Day):
I have written a little bit about malaria before, e.g, here and here, but this is my special Malaria Action Day post, inspired by a paper [1] that Tara sent me some weeks ago and I never got to write about it till now.
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In a journal called "Medical Hypotheses" Kumar and Sharma [1] propose that jet-lagged travellers may be more susceptible to getting infected with malaria. They write:
Rapid travel across several time zones leads to…
clock | August 26, 2006Bumble Bees Can Estimate Time Intervals:
In a finding that broadens our understanding of time perception in the animal kingdom, researchers have discovered that an insect pollinator, the bumble bee, can estimate the duration of time intervals. Although many insects show daily and annual rhythms of behavior, the more sophisticated ability to estimate the duration of shorter time intervals had previously been known only in humans and other vertebrates.
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Bees and other insects make a variety of decisions that appear to require the ability to estimate elapsed…
clock | August 25, 2006First written on March 04, 2005 for Science And Politics, then reposted on February 27, 2006 on Circadiana, a post about a childrens' book and what I learned about it since.
When I was a kid I absolutely loved a book called "Il Ciondolino" by Ricardo Vamba - a book in two slim volumes for kids (how times change - try to publish a 200+ page book of dense text for children today!). I later found out that it was translated into English under the title The Prince And His Ants in 1910 (Luigi BERTELLI (M: 1858 or 1860 - 1920) (&ps: VAMBA) The Prince And His Ants [It-?]. Holt.(tr S F WOODRUFF…
mikethemadbiologist | August 23, 2006From the Montgomery Advertiser comes a story about gigantic yellow jacket nests. By giant, I mean taking over the entire interior of a car.
(photo by Rob Carr)
The nests are thought to contain multiple queens and about 100,000 workers. So far, 16 have been sighted in Alabama.
clock | August 17, 2006Snuck into the very end of this, otherwise very interesting article on neurobiology of cephalopods and moths, is this little passage:
As for flies, Tublitz outlined a tantalizing question, as yet unanswered, that has continued to take flight out of his lab for the last decade. Scientists for years, he said, have held "one hard rule" about what constitutes a neuron -- that a neuron cell always arises from the ectoderm of a developing embryo. However, a discovery in Drosophila -- fruit flies -- has softened that assumption.
Cells arising from the mesoderm rest in a layer on top of the fruit fly…
clock | August 9, 2006
This post from January 21, 2005, is about insects, parasitoids and the mental approach to science:
This really cool science post (Speaking of sex differences reminds me of a seminar I attended a few years ago, about a parasitoid wasp that injects a single egg (together with some toxins and a DNA virus) into a (somewhat larger) egg of its moth host.
The speaker spent his 50 minutes describing his painfully difficult and inconclusive molecular experiments, trying to figure out where the DNA (from the injected viruses) inserts itself into the host genome and how does that insertion affect the…