Insect Picture of the Day

Click for larger version

Earlier this summer I went out in the woods behind my house, searching for insects to submit to this website.  I found more than a few bugs, but nothing wanted to stand still long enough for me and my little camera to take a good photo.  I must have been out there for an hour or so, crawling around the woods in search of some Really Cool Bug ™, but in the end I came back with shots that were blurry, and just not very good.

Defeated, I walked into my backyard, and paused.  Did something just move on the fence?  A closer look revealed this little beauty!  I was really pleased, because I don’t often find Lightning Bugs during the day time, and I personally think they look pretty cool.

While researching fireflies (a different name, but the same bug) I came across something interesting that I thought I’d share since it was definitely news to me.  Apparently their light-up butts* contain luciferin and luciferase, two rare chemicals used in research on cancer, multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, and heart disease!  I don’t know what kind of results they’re getting, but I think it’s pretty cool that something that fuels so many childhood evenings with a bit of magic and fun could also help save people from pain, disease, and even death!

*Heheheheh.  Butts.  Yes, I am a child.  Why do you ask?

Click for larger version

Jesse Moore sent in a handful of images last month, and I am not kidding when I tell you that this one is the most boring. There is some seriously freaky crazy coming your way soon here at InsectPOD, and you all have Jesse Moore to blame.

But this fly. This picture is actually rotated from vertical. The picture was taken on a sliding glass door.

Robber flies are predators that hunt other flies, and they—oh my.

Okay, this is why I love running InsectPOD. Go over here at BugGuide and check out the fact sheet on Family Asilidae! They inject saliva into their prey, which contains neurotoxic enzymes.

How freakin’ cool is that?!? I’m upgrading Robber Flies on this site to venomous.

Thanks, Jesse!

I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. I started a twitter feed just for insectpod. The feed probably won’t follow you back as I don’t have a good way to consume two twitter feeds at once, but I will try to tweet regularly on it when I am working on InsectPOD-related stuff.

If you follow the insectpod feed, and I find your feed interesting, you may get  followed by “chalain”, my personal twitter feed. If you are interested, you are welcome to follow me there but be warned that it’s a 40/60 mix of personal stuff and software engineering.

Disclaimer: Please also bear in mind that I actually read my Twitter feed, so I do not automatically follow back. I do check every follower, however, and I do follow back on feeds that are interesting to me. The feeds I most often follow are the ones that make me laugh, teach me something new, and aren’t completely filled up with context-free replies like “@jim me too.”

P.S. Thank you, Scott, for bringing this grievous oversight to my attention!

Click for larger version

This moth photo comes courtesy of Steve Allen, who has done this sort of thing before.

Unfortunately for me, moths are some of the most varied and hard-to-identify species out there. I’m gonna open this up to you guys for a stab; this moth was photographed in Seattle, WA in July. Any takers?

Thanks (again), Steve!

Hi Gang,

I have noticed that pretty much nobody uses the pingback and traceback features except for spammers, so I have disabled the feature. Please comment if you have been using this feature and I have been unaware.

While we’re talking about features, however, is there a  feature of InsectPOD that you wished existed? I wonder sometimes if a forum, or at least threaded comments, would better  facilitate discussion. What about polls, or a voting system? Is there external format support you would like, such as Twitter notification or a Facebook mashup?

Davi

Click for larger version

Aaron Wadley sends in this picture of a large wasp cruising around his front lawn. I believe that this is a red paper wasp, except for one thing: the size. Check it out. Aaron trapped the wasp and broke out the tape measure:

Click for larger version

Now I’m not a scientist, but numbers don’t lie. It says right there on the tape that this wasp is ten feet long.

HOLY FREAKING CRAP.

Most paper wasps don’t get much bigger than about 2cm, so this one is clearly some kind of radioactive mutant.

Guys, I am flattered that you are doing dangerous things like taunting spiders and braving hornets and such, but please: don’t get yourself killed. All handling of wasps larger than one meter should be left to professionals, okay?

You’re lucky this was a red paper wasp, Aaron. They’re much less aggressive than the European variant, and I hear their sting is actually fairly mild for a wasp. (It still stings, mind you! I said for a wasp.) Either way, it’s a gorgeous specimen and a great photo. Thanks!

Click for larger version

My Father-in-law, Birk Petersen, has been taking modeling photographs for years.

Not that kind of modeling. This kind of modeling. (Though he has been known to call his models “cute little darlings”.)

When I told him about my bug photography, he rushed out and took a picture of some ants. Not this picture. The picture was badly blurred, and we ended up having several discussions about optics and CCD sensors and the latest camera technology. He finally broke down and bought a new camera, a Canon PowerShot A560. One of the first things he did with it was snap this photo. As you can see, it gives terrific results.

This is a classic Myrmica ant swarm, the kind that can be found on any sidewalk in June in Utah, just walk along looking at the edge where the lawns meet the cement. You can’t miss them. I still don’t know what the ants are doing. Moving? Attacking? Mating? Wild frat¹ parties?

¹ Again, technically, sorority parties. We’ve been over this.

Click for larger version

This cranefly picture comes from Andrew Lin, who has a great name for it:

I was just about to go out into the backyard when I got buzzed by this
mosquito hawk. I guess the proper common name is Crane Fly (genus
Tipula), but I’ve always referred to them as “mosquito hawks” (even
though, if Wikipedia is correct, they don’t eat mosquitoes) or “those
really fragile long-limbed flying things”. Anyway, it bounced off the
sliding glass door for a bit, then landed on the frame to recover from
the concussion, allowing me to take some pictures.

Andrew says it was about 15-20mm long.

I was about to post this as a mosquito—in fact, I had it slotted up as such. I was about to point out that you can’t see the halteres (the little nubby “fiddly bits” where the hind wings would be on a four-winged bug), but then I remembered how bad I suck at identifying bugs, and had another look. You’ll need the larger image to see them, but they’re there. Look where the far hind leg raises up from the body: that little clear dot is the haltere.

Thanks, Andrew!

Click for larger version

I’m afraid of spiders.  Anyone who has seen my comments on Spider Friday knows this is true.  The smallest little eight-legged beast can send me skittering across the room in fear, except for when I have a camera in hand.  The second that camera is placed in my hands, the fear melts away, and I start doing things like reaching into the open-air Golden Orb Weaver (Nephila madagascarensis) exhibit at the Washington DC Zoo, past smaller spiders, in order to get a shot of the largest one that I could see.

Something about the camera makes me feel invulnerable, even when my arm is easily within bite range of a spider with a body more than an inch long.  I wanted a picture of the one shown above, because it was easily over an inch and a half long, but in order to do that I had to reach around webs, near similar but smaller spiders.

I’m not trying to toot my own horn here.  After taking a few pictures, extracting myself from the open air spider exhibit*, and breathing deeply, I was a quivering mess.  It’s just something about having that camera in my hand that makes me feel temporarily invincible.

So I’m wondering if it’s just me.  Do any of you have any particular bug you’re afraid of, but are willing to approach to get a good picture, or am I just a particularly interesting brand of crazy**?

*Did I mention Open Air Spider Exhibit? Gyahh!

**Yes.

Click for larger version

Today is July 24th, which is a state holiday in Utah. It’s Pioneer Day here, comemmorating the arrival of the first mormon immigrants to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847.

When they arrived, the Salt Lake Valley was nothing but a huge stretch of hard clay desert, with a giant lake of salt at the bottom of it. The mormons said “this is the right place” anyway, and started farming. Oh, the wacky fun they had trying to farm the desert! But they did it–and just as the crops were coming in, the skies were darkened by clouds of crickets descending on their new crops.

Well, they weren’t really crickets. They’re actually a type of shieldback katydid, but they are a unique species and so bear their common name “mormon cricket”.

Mormon crickets eat everything in sight, including each other when they run out of other food. (In fact, one recent study’s findings were that mormon crickets migrate because they want to eat the cricket in front of them—and not be eaten by the cricket behind.) The pioneers were saved when flocks of seagulls suddenly arrived and ate the crickets.

Mormon crickets get over 7cm long. A friend once drove a highway and observed about one cricket in every square foot of the highway, and then shuddered to discovere that it was not actually a “swarm” year. In swarm years, you can’t see the asphalt at all. They are still a problem in farming areas of Utah. Nowadays we rely on insecticides. The seagulls are still here, but apparently they’d rather hang out at the landfill.

I have to confess that I mined this image off the Internet. I didn’t realize until two days ago that I needed to get a picture of a mormon cricket for today, and they’re not exactly plentiful anymore, at least not in the urban areas of Utah. So I pulled this image from wikipedia. The image is copyrighted under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means I am obligated to tell you that:

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this image under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.