NEWS: Lars Chittka, Ph.D., professor of sensory and behavioural ecology at Queen Mary University of London, has been selected to deliver the Founders' Memorial Award Lecture at Entomology 2024. Chittka will recount the pioneering accomplishments of Charles Henry Turner, Ph.D. (1867-1923), a Black entomologist whose discoveries on insect sensory systems, learning, personality, and intelligence were a century ahead of their time. #EntSoc24#entomology#insects MORE: https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/lars-chittka-2024-founders-memorial-lecture
Cicadas are back, but climate change is messing with their body clocks.
CBS News reports: "Cicada watchers used to be able to predict their emergence as easily as astronomers could predict the recent solar eclipse. But that has become more challenging as the cicadas' patterns are changing as warm spring days happen more often."
Spent some time hanging out with some blue #damselflies at the lake before coming back home 😊
Damselflies have existed since the Late #Jurassic period & found on every continent except Antarctica. Presence of damselflies & the larger dragonflies, indicates a healthy #ecosystem.
Let's go micro! As well as about 900 larger #moth species in the UK, there are nearly 2000 micros, some barely a couple of mm long. Many of these are from the TORTRICIDAE family, or leaf-rollers. Here are four that visited me last night:
Butterflies, bees, bugs and more: The summer of insect-counting gets underway in Germany.
AP reports on the country's "'insect summer,' now in its seventh year, organized by the country’s Nature And Biodiversity Conservation Union, or NABU."
It's firefly season at Congaree National Park in South Carolina, and a lucky few won the park lottery this year — an opportunity to see thousands of fireflies, blinking in synchrony, for a few short weeks this spring.
NPR reports: "According to the National Park Service, there are just three types of fireflies in North America that are synchronous, meaning they coordinate their belly lanterns to flash at exactly the same time."
The hornet has landed: Scientists combat new honeybee killer in the U.S.
@KnowableMag reports: "An invasive yellow-legged wasp has been decimating beehives in Europe — and bedeviling Georgia since last summer. Researchers are working nest by nest to limit the threat while developing better eradication methods."
"workers are not simply scaled-down versions of queens that have lost their wings."
"Instead workers have a distinct thorax architecture with an enlarged muscle system to strengthen the neck and increase the range of motion of the head ... appears to be a key adaptation to allow ants to lift and carry objects or prey that are many times their own weight"
Arthropod Photo of the Week: May 22, 2024
Long-snouted weevil
Hammatostylus sp.
Coleoptera: Curculionidae
By Steve Long, Florida, USA #arthropodPOTW #entomology#insects#photography
How cockroaches spread around the globe to become the pest we know today.
From AP: "A new study uses genetics to chart cockroaches’ spread across the globe, from humble beginnings in southeast Asia to Europe and beyond. The findings span thousands of years of cockroach history and suggest the pests may have scuttled across the globe by hitching a ride with another species: people."
Ok, here's an update on the Verbena bonariensis situation from my post yesterday. Less than 12 hours later and the two plants have been almost totally skeletonized by something I cannot see. There is a healthy Verbena less than 6 inches to the left of the picture that is totally untouched. Any thoughts? #gardening #allotment #zone6b #NewEngland #insects #entomology @gardening
Another unusual insect: Tenthredo baetica (ssp. dominiquei), with only 118 observations world wide, of which 29 for this particular subspecies. It's a wasp – sort of: a sawfly.
The rear limbs are rather large, and I wonder why. For carrying prey?
Wikipedia points out an interesting reversal: in the Tenthredo genus, the larvae eat plants while the adults prey on other insects. Whereas many typical wasps do the opposite: the adults sip nectar but hunt insects to feed their young. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenthredo One wonders then what is this adult doing on a flower, engaging in motion patterns characteristic of foraging on nectar and pollen.