On this night, let's not forget that the reason for the season is souls coming out of holes in the ground.

Spookiest decoration at the "Zoo Goes Boo" event at the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids? Giant model of parasitoid wasps hatching from cocoons affixed to their caterpillar host.

Naw, it just needs a bigger label. A grocery receipt or paper towel would do.

Just published! A new discovery in biological pest control: Synopeas ruficoxum, a natural enemy of the soybean gall midge in North America. 🧪🧵 doi.org/10.3897/jhr....

through the magic of AI, MS word suggested the following alt-text for this image: "a closeup of human skin".

It's moth butts

(credit: Arnaud Martin lab)

Somebody told me about them a week or two ago, but verbally during the workday, so of course my sieve-brain forgot. Write me on a Sunday afternoon, and I'll attend to it :-) I'm curious how long the population will last.

Thanks! I netted one, spread, labeled, databased it. I've heard they were seen here years ago, but none ended up in the collection. Maybe came on plants from a nursery.

Say hello to Florida's newest established species, Typhlonectes natans - the Rio Cauca Caecilian! You can read about their relative abundance, distribution, & natural history, in our brand new paper:

journals.ku.edu/reptilesanda...

Here is one individual I CT scanned that had 7 babies inside!

This is the site... really rather unburned sandhill next to lots of rosemary and what I can only describe as lichen undergrowth.

Oh to be a moth that cannot fly...

Meet the newly described genus/species Coloradactria frigida, a moth with females that don't fly- they scurry around on the ground like a spider or silverfish...

lepscience.com/wp-content/u...

@inaturalist.bsky.social observations helped us locate populations!

Yep, I get it there too!

Micromoths & company from a UV trap in scrub west of Gainesville. Every time, I get a range from common species to things I've never seen before.

Charles Darwin famously laboured for years to write a 4-volume monograph on barnacles. It won him accolades and helped establish his reputation as a zoologist - well before 'The Origin of Species'. And these are some of his own specimens (at the Danish Natural History Museum, Copenhagen).
1/2

This is Iconella melitaraevora, a new wasp species parasitoid of Melitara subumbrella caterpillars. Find out more about it here: doi.org/10.3897/jhr....

#wasps #newspecies #entomology @texasscience.bsky.social #biodiversity

I propose we start calling parasitoid wasps "friend wasps" and launch a massive PR campaign to make people love them

On the La Chua Trail at Paynes Prairie today, we stopped counting at 160 alligators.

How small can moths get? 🔎
Very.

shield bearer #moth at UV light #Heliozelidae: #Coptodisca
Raleigh, NC, USA

@dradriansmith.bsky.social finger for scale

Gall midges and their parasitoids are abundant, megadiverse, and very hard to identify! Such "double dark taxa" systems present special challenges for ecology and agriculture. 🧵🧪🐙 @smnstuttgart.bsky.social @marinamoser.bsky.social @krogmann.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/aesa...

The "cataclystiform" wing pattern in moths mimics jumping spiders, with angular lines like legs and dark eyespots. It evolved many times, but this unusually has it on the ventral side. I wonder how it displays its wings in life? (Furcivena rhodoneurialis, Cameroon, on loan from the Carnegie MNH.)

Pyraloid moths aren't into blue so much, but this Parotis sp. from Indonesia is a delicate aquamarine. Parotis prasinalis in Madagascar looks similar. Specimen in the Florida State Collection of Arthropods / FLMNH McGuire Center. #BlueBugs