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Our graduate student Steven found this unusual two-eyed spider last night out in hill country. If you spend any time staring at spider faces, you’ll know most have 8 or 6 eyes, or maybe none at all for cave dwellers.
But two? Almost humanoid. Weird.
(Orthonops lapanus)
A nest of Syneoca cyanea warrior wasps in Paraná, Brazil. Two things I love. Wasps. And Brazil.
#Wasps #Synoeca #WaspLove #Hymenotera #Insects
A gallery of Cephalotes turtle ants.
I've been photographing ants for over two decades, and I still haven't managed to shoot even 20% of the species in one of my favorite genera.
#ants #insects #photography #biodiversity
is a diverse genus of heavily-armored, tree-dwelling myrmicine ants found in forested regions of the new world tropics and subtropics. A number of canopy species show the unusual habit of controlled gliding flight when knocked from tree branches. Most species are polymorphic, having a soldier caste with an enlarged head used for blocking the nest entrances as a living door.
(www.alexanderwild.com)
Silky field ants tending black locust treehoppers for honeydew. Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
This finding that some ant queens can lay eggs of another species is astonishing. Biology is far stranger than we can possibly imagine.
An extraodinarily elegant insect, Taphroscelidia linearis, a passandrid flat bark beetle. Austin, Texas. #Coleoptera #Insects #Passandridae #Beetles
An immature Phidippus jumping spider, Texas. #spider #Photography #salticidae
@futurebird Many don't, but this is Aedes albopictus, and we are its favorite food.
Me: I'm gonna plant native wildflowers and attract lots of pollinators!
The pollinators:
#pollinators #Mosquitoes #Insects