Presumably ovipositing, otherwise I don't understand the curious dance this colourful fly was doing. Quite the display given its wing and body colours and patterns.
This is a wild headline from NPR: "A fungus is turning cicadas into horny zombies — but don’t panic."
"[The fungus] Massospora cicadina has been observed in cicadas in more than half a dozen states — both those belonging to Brood XIII, which emerges every 17 years and is concentrated in Illinois, and of Brood XIX, a 13-year group that is distributed across much of the southeast."
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: