I know it's hard to believe but I mostly keep this account to try to get people to watch my ant videos. (why I want people to watch ant videos is a question I can't really fathom...) I made a really good new video today with a time lapse that shows how heat sensitive Camponotus discolor are. They move their pupae constantly to maintain ideal development conditions.
Ok Masto-insect people, I’m sitting outside at a brewery near Cincinnati Ohio with my coworkers and this fluorescent friend is crawling nearby. What is this? #insectodon#entomology
The honeybee brain hosts over 600,000 neurons, at a density higher than that of mammalian brains:
"Our estimate of total brain cell number for the European honeybee (Apis mellifera;
≈ 6.13 × 10^5, s = 1.28 × 10^5; ...) was lower than the existing estimate from brain sections ≈ 8.5 × 10^5"
"the highest neuron densities have been found in the smallest respective species examined (smoky shrews in mammals; 2.08 × 10^5 neurons mg^−1 [14] and goldcrests in birds; 4.9 × 10^5 neurons mg^−1 [16]). The Hymenoptera in our sample have on average higher cell densities than vertebrates (5.94 × 10^5 cells mg^−1; n = 30 species)."
Ants, on the other hand ...
"ants stand out from bees and wasps as having particularly small brains by measures of mass and cell number."
this fella was about 4-5cm long, slow-walking, no attempt at flying and sort of ambled dozily towards me every time i tried to take a photo from a different angle 😅 what is it? #entomology#bugID#kanto#japan
Anyone able to help me out here with identifying this bug? I can't spend 10 minutes in my garden without having at least one waltzing over me. They're annoying just because there are so many of them! They're like, say, 5mm tall or so, not huge. The pic should show that clearly unless you really believe that those fingers belong to a giant. Location is in the Netherlands. #Gardening#Bugs#Entomology
Are some #insects evolving in response to light pollution?
"We find a stark decline in blacklight trap efficacy over 25 years of monitoring in Delaware, USA, mirrored over 10 years of monitoring in New Jersey, USA. While the precise causes of this decline remain a subject for discussion, the practical consequences are clear: insect conservationists cannot fully rely on long-term trends from entomological light traps."
Yesterday I witnessed a behaviour I never expected from a solitary bee: she unloaded all its pollen baskets onto a leaf, then tasted it, and soon after flew off, releasing a cloud of pixie dust as she jumped and beat its wings down to take off. As if she had had a change of heart, and the pollen wasn't good enough?
Velvet ants are solitary wasps with hardened exoskeletons and often very powerful and painful venom; they hunt viciously, accumulating paralised prey in burrows where they lay their eggs. The hatching larvae will eat the prey alive.
This one showed herself a great digger. Dug multiple times, a few seconds at a time, as if looking for something. How bees and wasps manage to dig so effectively never ceases to amuse me.
Howdy! New to this whole Mastodon thing (I'm not even sure what instance I should be on) but eager. Name's Bug — I'm a queer master's student in an entomology lab, passionate about scientific outreach.
When I’m not staring at insects, I spend my time creating zines, comics, other art, and playing D&D. I want to learn how to make video games. Let’s connect if you think little critters are cool!
Large body size differences across species in Hymenoptera. Here, an example of a small masked bee (~7 mm) next to a minute ant (<3 mm) on a flower of European sea rocket (Cakile maritima). https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/120155371
And these two are both tiny next to a violet carpenter bee (Xylocopa violacea), measuring well over 40 mm in body length! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/178658335 Similarly dramatic size differences exist within ant castes of the same species.
And on the way back from checking the swarm trap, my son noticed a giant cricket disappear into a hole. So obviously we had to explore with the endoscope. Is this a Jerusalem cricket? Didn’t seem too pleased that we had discovered it’s lair… #entomology
If "Jurassic Park" inspired so many children to become paleontologists https://nhm.org/stories/jurassic-perks perhaps it's about time to have a good thriller movie on insects to inspire the rise of the next generation of entomologists.