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The Spider Thread
Yikes 😉I'm not going to keep liking this every time you say it!
Also I don't know when Yikes'ing became a thing for me but it just feels so right and is sometimes the only adequate way to express my feelings on a subject.I'm not going to keep liking this every time you say it!
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WildZoo
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And I still read it in Frank Ocean's voice every time
Me, when I saw you weren't greyscale
You're clearly greyscale blind. It's okay I'm not shaming you about it just had to break it to you
You must not have heard how I feel about shame.
A pink Culex spp. mosquito (it went through a gravid trap so it's missing a lot of parts, if you can't tell)
Why is it pink? No one really knows. A few came through the lab last summer and all we could figure is that maybe it had been feeding on artificial nectar like the pink/red kind you put out for hummingbirds.
Aedes dorsalis, Salt Marsh Mosquito - it's large and covered in white scales
Orthopodomyia signifera - pretty little mosquito with cool white markings on its back
Anopheles punctipennis
Why is it pink? No one really knows. A few came through the lab last summer and all we could figure is that maybe it had been feeding on artificial nectar like the pink/red kind you put out for hummingbirds.
Aedes dorsalis, Salt Marsh Mosquito - it's large and covered in white scales
Orthopodomyia signifera - pretty little mosquito with cool white markings on its back
Anopheles punctipennis
you said pretty and mosquito in the same sentence. I like basically everything else, but mosquitoes are the line for me.
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Agreed. Mosquitos should never be anywhere near the words good, like, any positive word in any language ever written or hieroglyphiced.
Skeeter haters.
Some mosquitoes are horrible creatures that cause a great deal of suffering, but most species don't vector diseases and don't bother humans. Some don't even consume blood, like this little beauty.
The Elephant Mosquito (Toxorhynchites rutilus) - it eats plant nectar and its larvae are predatory and eat the larvae of other mosquitoes that do vector diseases.... and it's totes gorgeous under the scope - dark metallic blue and purplish scales and lots of large golden scales
Needs to be recategorized then, and it can live in happy words and praise.
the fact that you had a caveat of "some don't even consume blood" indicates that most do and therefore suck (pun intended)
that's so it can make you itch before you itch 😉
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Dude, we have our own bugs. If you're gonna come here you should embrace our bugs. You think your bugs are better? So rude.
Well it's only cold for like 2 months out of the whole year here so they're out more often so yes..
"Cold"
Oh how you sufferLos Angeles "cold" is what I meant
It's cold enough for insects to go away and that does make me suffer
Come to Michigan so I can watch you freeze.
Good.
I'm going to freeze regardless of where I go lol
Ah, but I want to watch.
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Here's that collection I promised, before and after presentation...it wasn't very flashy, but I was proud of my pretty labels and using the leftover small bugs as decor 😛
Also, I'd never heard of a tarantula hawk before, but I was in Louisiana and we had cicada hawks, which I was also totally unfamiliar with. They look pretty terrifying, but don't really mess with humans. Unfortunately didn't manage to grab one for my collection, since I never carried my net.
Also, I'd never heard of a tarantula hawk before, but I was in Louisiana and we had cicada hawks, which I was also totally unfamiliar with. They look pretty terrifying, but don't really mess with humans. Unfortunately didn't manage to grab one for my collection, since I never carried my net.
Do I spy a brown marmonated stink bug?! I really don't like them (and I actually do like bugs).
Rather impressive collection! Just looked up cicada hawks and they look awesome! I wanted a velvet ant female (the wasp, not the lame tree ants lol) but the only time I Saab one I didn't have my jars with me lol. I like the way your collection is organized by order! We had to line them up all straight and nice by order but without the labels, and i was too lazy to change it up after. Also terrified of destroying my insects, lol.
Attachments
That's just how it works. I can't tell you how many times I've been walking somewhere and found a representative for an order I didn't get points for in my initial collection. I still angrily mutter "six points" under my breath.
I took my general entomology in the autumn quarter in Ohio so there was a very narrow window to collect before the weather changed and I had a busted up arm so I stayed near campus and caught whatever I could find in the ag school's plot fields. I murdered a lot of pollinators that quarter.
Probably--I don't remember what all was in my collection though, since it was so long ago now (fall of 2011...woah
). I actually still have all these pinned bugs put away in a box somewhere though! (no way I was going to throw them away after all that work) Hopefully they haven't gotten crushed in storage.I find it funny looking back, but whenever I was starting up the collection, I asked my parents to please catch & date any interesting bugs they happened to find so I could pick them up whenever I went back home for thanksgiving (because who else in my class would have specimens from South Texas?) One insect my mom labeled simply as "weird bug"...was a triatominae/kissing bug, now infamous down here for Chagas Disease 😱
Yep, we were required to label the orders! For the collection I think we were required to have representatives for a number of specified orders (like hemiptera, coleoptera, blattodea), plus a minimum number of species for those orders? And then whatever miscellaneous things from other orders...something like that.
Your next post..."don't touch my sticks"
what is it with only finding the really cool bugs AFTER the class is over--once I finished that semester, I came across so many things where I was like "UGGH, why couldn't I have found this back when I could've used it for collection?" ('sticks being some of them; I find them often around my house, but of course never while in the class...) I also took it in the fall though, so that may've had a lot to do with it 😛
@Devastating
I swear if someone had stolen or ruined them o would have lost it lol. They're what I wanted most all semester long! And a preying mantis that my gf at the time got me after class was over but then we broke up so it's tainted lol. We had to label them all as well but just on the micro labels underneath the pins (order, family, location as exact as possible, time/date and coordinates if possible). We needed at least 30 representative orders to pass and 40+ recommended for a best chance at an A lol.
Interesting! We don't have it in the fall because of the weather impacting chances of insects and all. Even the year I took it was pretty bad because of peak CA drought. I'm jealous of people taking it this spring due to the rain in CA lately ! I'd take it again for fun if I could
I swear if someone had stolen or ruined them o would have lost it lol. They're what I wanted most all semester long! And a preying mantis that my gf at the time got me after class was over but then we broke up so it's tainted lol. We had to label them all as well but just on the micro labels underneath the pins (order, family, location as exact as possible, time/date and coordinates if possible). We needed at least 30 representative orders to pass and 40+ recommended for a best chance at an A lol.
Interesting! We don't have it in the fall because of the weather impacting chances of insects and all. Even the year I took it was pretty bad because of peak CA drought. I'm jealous of people taking it this spring due to the rain in CA lately ! I'd take it again for fun if I could
What area was the stink bug collected from? If you don't mind me asking.Probably--I don't remember what all was in my collection though, since it was so long ago now (fall of 2011...woah
I find it funny looking back, but whenever I was starting up the collection, I asked my parents to please catch & date any interesting bugs they happened to find so I could pick them up whenever I went back home for thanksgiving (because who else in my class would have specimens from South Texas?) One insect my mom labeled simply as "weird bug"...was a triatominae/kissing bug, now infamous down here for Chagas Disease 😱
Yep, we were required to label the orders! For the collection I think we were required to have representatives for a number of specified orders (like hemiptera, coleoptera, blattodea), plus a minimum number of species for those orders? And then whatever miscellaneous things from other orders...something like that.
Your next post..."don't touch my sticks"
My undergrad started an entomology class right after I graduated. I was so sad I didn't get to take it. I continued on for a masters at that school, but the entomology course was a 300 level class and I couldn't take those for credit. Killing the bugs would make me sad, so maybe it's good I didn't take it.
WildZoo
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It's only "cold" for like 2 weeks in Florida. Bug heaven.
Dead things under glass
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It could've been either from where I live (south TX) or from around the school (Baton Rouge), I think that one was probably BR.
I feel you on the bug killing...I felt a bit guilty about it at first. Beats squashing or bug spray, though--still don't like when people squish harmless things just for the sake of it being an insect/arachnid.
Also, I love that the poster above me made their first post here just to show us a spider captioned "Cute". Thank you Bjornar, that post is giving me life
Probably not a brown marmonated then. They are an invasive species from China that started in Allentown, PA, and I don't think they have made it to Texas yet. Lucky you!
How do you kill insects for collections?
😍 That is adorable and beautiful. I love the iridescence!
In my lab we had a contraption that dropped them into a bag of ethanol. I upset my lab instructor by casually wondering how pleasant of a death that would be.
How big was it? It looks like a jumping spider to me, but those are really nice-quality images if the spider is that small.
WildZoo
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SO CUTE
Yeah, that's what our quick Google search turned up. It never jumped, though haha. It wasn't big, but it wasn't very small either. My coworker caught it in a kid's shoe box-sized Tupperware:
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
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