I love people almost as much as I love unicorns.
Which is a lot.
Posts tagged: insect
Bee types.
a neotropical Cockroach in the rainforest of Guyana
(photo: Artour_a)
Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides for 80 Years
by Robert Krulwich
They call it “Ball’s Pyramid.” It’s what’s left of an old volcano that emerged from the sea about 7 million years ago. A British naval officer named Ball was the first European to see it in 1788. It sits off Australia, in the South Pacific. It is extremely narrow, 1,844 feet high, and it sits alone.
What’s more, for years this place had a secret. About half way up, at 225 feet above sea level, hanging on the rock surface, there is a small, spindly little bush and under that bush, a few years ago, two climbers, working in the dark, found something totally improbable hiding in the soil below. How it got there, we still don’t know.
Here’s the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there’s a bigger Island, called Lord Howe Island.
On Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It’s a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a “tree lobster” because of its size and hard, lobster-like exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fisherman used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait…
(read more: NPR)
(images: TL - John White, TR - Rod Morris, BL/BR - Patrick Honan)
Plants Use Circadian Rhythms to Prepare For Battle With Insects
provided by Rice University
In a study of the molecular underpinnings of plants’ pest resistance, Rice University biologists have shown that plants both anticipate daytime raids by hungry insects and make sophisticated preparations to fend them off.
“When you walk past plants, they don’t look like they’re doing anything,” said Janet Braam, an investigator on the new study, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “It’s intriguing to see all of this activity down at the genetic level. It’s like watching a besieged fortress go on full alert.”
Braam, professor and chair of Rice’s Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, said scientists have long known that plants have an internal clock that allows them to measure time regardless of light conditions. For example, some plants that track the sun with their leaves during the day are known to “reset” their leaves at night and move them back toward the east in anticipation of sunrise…
(read more: Science Daily) (image: Tommy LaVergne/Rice University)
Malaysian Moon Moth (Actias maenas), family Saturniidae
- Fraser’s Hill, Malaysia
(Photo: Alexey Yakovlev)
Golden Emperor Moth (Leopa sikkima), family Saturniidae
- Fraser’s Hill, Malaysia
(Photo: Alexey Yakovlev)
entomolog: Gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) (by ganglionn on Flickr)
The gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar, is a moth in the family Lymantriidae of Eurasian origin. Originally ranging from Europe to Asia, it was introduced to North America in the late 1860s and has been expanding its range ever since. It is also known as the Asian gypsy moth.
read more: Wikipedia
entomolog: Mimela junii (by Matteo Di Nicola on Flickr)
Mimela junii is a species of shining leaf chafer belonging to the family Scarabeidae subfamily Rutelinae. These scarabs are mainly present in Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland.
The head, pronotum and the inner margin of elytra are metallic-green, antennae are reddish, while elytra are coppery-brown, with longitudinal darker stripes.
The adults can be encountered from June (hence the Latin word junii) through July on flowers, especially on elder flowers (Sambucus species).
The adults beetles mainly feed on leaves of various wild shrubs and grasses, while larvae prefer sandy soils and are rhizophagous, feeding on roots at the expense of psammophilous and herbaceous plants or on decaying vegetables.
(Wikipedia)
These guys look awfully similar to popillia japonica, or japanese beetles. These little fucks are found in Japan and across much of the eastern half of N America, where they are normally an unchecked pest that skeletonizes many varieties of plants.
European Wool Carder Bee (Anthidium manicatum)
… a species of bee in the family Megachilidae, the leaf-cutter bees or mason bees. They get the name ‘carder’ from their behaviour of scraping hair from leaves such as lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina). They carry this hair bundled beneath their bodies to be used as a nest lining... (read more: Wikipedia)
(photo: Bruce Marlin)
