Monday macrobug: Mantisfly
Mantisflies: an awesome, under-appreciated family of insects. This one was on a glass sliding door on our house: I love the diversity of insects that we get around our new house.
Mantisflies: an awesome, under-appreciated family of insects. This one was on a glass sliding door on our house: I love the diversity of insects that we get around our new house.
That’s an adult Monochamus clamator, the spotted pine sawyer, a kind of longhorned beetle. This one was on my deck this morning. My, what long antennae you have! “Give me a kiss,” the beetle says…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a “macrobug” photo. So here’s two for you: a harvestman (“daddy longlegs”), and a pelecinid wasp:
Got access to the wife’s photos from South Africa. Here are two other charismatic insects:
Here is a collection of creepy-crawlies I saw in South Africa: Big grasshopper/katydid orthopteran: Another big orthopteran (“locust”?), obviously beefier than the previous one: Beach roach (Blattodea): Mating true bugs (hemipterans): Here’s a big snail, too: And best of all? This solpugid! Solpugids are arachnids, but they are not spiders. Along with vinegaroons, scorpions, pseudoscorpions, … Read more
It’s that kind of day. Grasshopper? Cricket? Katydid? Some kind of orthopteran, anyhow. Not a full adult, to judge by the lack of well-formed wings. And, here’s a yellow crab spider:
Callan visits the Burgess Shale in British Columbia’s Yoho National Park on a guided tour. This photo-heavy post discusses the depositional setting of this world-famous Cambrian fossil deposit, the landscape along the hike, and (of course) the fossils themselves.
Callan attends a field trip in the Blue Ridge of Virginia, looking first at a Paleozoic shear zone that disrupts (and improves) Mesoproterozoic basement complex rocks.
Two macrobugs from yesterday’s field trip to the Rockfish River area south of Charlottesville… … a really fast orange-and-maroon grub: …and an elegant fly: We also saw some rocks, but I’ll have to blog about them later because right now I have to pack up for summer travels.