The trailer for the 2010 documentary horror film:
Posts under ‘Australia’
Pison the spider hunter
For those of you who dislike spiders, I’d like to introduce you to your new favorite friend: The genus Pison refers to a small group of crabronid wasps containing about 200 species worldwide. These insects raise their young on a diet of living, but paralyzed, spiders. Paralyzed spiders don’t decay, staying fresh while the wasp [...]
Friday Beetle Blogging: A Buttload of Hydrogen Cyanide
Among the more conspicuous insects we encountered during our Australian travels were Paropsisterna eucalyptus leaf beetles. Most trees I looked at in southern Australia hosted clusters of pudgy yellow larvae hanging around in plain view, munching on the aromatic leaves in happy abandon. The beetles have good reason to be seen: they are toxic. Unusually among [...]
The Australia Photographs: Done
Finally! Working up the insect images from my recent Aussie trip took longer than I thought- probably because I pay more attention to post-processing now that I’ve become a Lightroom convert. In December I brought home some 3,000 images from Australia. 200 of these I judged good enough to add to my galleries. And, 12 of [...]
Doleromyrma, a new (for me) ant right under my nose!
While stalking ants in the southern Australian state of Victoria, I encountered one minuscule species over and over again. Another stone, another nest. It was a nearly translucent little dolichoderine: I didn’t think much of it. The insects resembled- in appearance and odor- the ubiquitous Tapinoma that is so abundant elsewhere in the world. That [...]
A Dominant Dolichoderine
Several years ago Australian myrmecologist Alan Andersen proposed a set of categories for arranging ant species by “functional group“. These groups carried names like “cold-climate specialists,” and “subordinate camponotines,” and they were widely adopted by ecologists for their ease of use. The scheme also drew considerable ire from taxonomists, especially since the categories were somewhat [...]
An unusual wasp
Here’s why I love the internet. Within 24 hours of tweeting a new photo of an odd Australian wasp, I received this tweet back from the fine folks at the NCSU insect museum: I emailed chrysidid expert Lynn Kimsey, a friend from my grad school days back at U.C. Davis. I hadn’t recognized the wasp [...]
Podomyrma adelaidae
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 7D ISO 200, f/13, 1/250 sec diffuse twin flash
Answer to the Monday Mystery: the infamous redback spider
Yesterday’s red smear looked to me like a lava field on some distant planet. Zoom out, though, and we see this: The redback spider is an Australian equivalent of our Northern hemisphere black widow. Both are in the widow genus, Latrodectus, and both build low, tangled webs near the ground. I could blather on about this [...]
Australia buried under a plague of soldier beetles?
The insect news is carrying stories of soldier beetle swarms overrunning Australia: A local Bondi resident, Sandra Bianchi, said she and her husband first noticed the beetles on Tuesday afternoon. ”We were looking out onto the balcony and then all of a sudden there was a swarm,” Mrs Bianchi said. ”There were millions of them. When [...]
A personal weblog by Illinois-based biologist and photographer Alex Wild.
