Jim Hayden

Little sidhe with illuminated passageway as Halloween decoration

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

Large model of a green caterpillar, the back of which is covered by dozens of white cocoons. Wasps can be seen emerging from some of the cocoons.

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.

A small black platygastrid wasp, around 1.5 mm long, with an elongate metasoma, veinless wings, and a small spine on the mesoscutellum. Lateral view.

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.

A 3d rendering of a CT scan of a Rio Cauca caecilian with transparent body and bone colored skeleton, showing 7 baby caecilians inside, each rendered in a different color - counter-clockwise from tail to head - red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue, purple.

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.

This female moth cannot fly. She has wings, but they are not fully developed (called brachypterous). Females of this species require warm bare ground and stubby grass to be active during their late October-late November adult emergence. Currently known habitats are regularly mowed. Before the evolution of lawn mowers, we speculate that their specialized habitat was maintained by grazing and movements of large mammals such as bison, pronghorn, elk, deer, and prairie dogs. Females lay 250-400 eggs near the bases of highly disturbed Sand Dropseed grass. When larvae eclose in the spring, they immediately burrow down into bases of the grass clumps, and they apparently develop underground feeding on the roots of Sand Dropseed. While described from and currently only known from Colorado, we suspect this species will be found to occur elsewhere once targeted searches are conducted. Perhaps additional species in this genus will be found? Unidentified observations at iNaturalist helped us find additional populations once we knew what to look for. Several males and one female were found there, as cited in the paper linked in this post. They are now identified at iNaturalist as Coloradactria frigida.

This male moth spends all of this time looking for females in highly disturbed (= mowed, trampled) patches of Sand Dropseed grass. The late October to late November flight time of this moth is unusually late for its known habitats in Colorado. The other moth that is common during this period is the geometrid Alsophila pometaria, which also has flightless females. Why do late-season moths evolve flightless females? We talk about this near the end of our paper linked in this post.

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.

A dozen or so glass jars with heavy glass lids, each partly full of liquid containing barnacle specimens.

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

After paying people to leave, one federal agency is scrambling to fill positions USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has opened up 73 jobs to internal candidates. They include roles just vacated by people who are receiving full pay and benefits through September.

www.npr.org/2025/05/03/n...

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

Alligators on creek bank

Two big fat alligators basking on a creek bank

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

A small pearlescent moth with dark and yellow markings near the tip of the wing. It's resting on a white sheet, and it's so magnified you can see the weave. The moth is about 2mm long.

A finger pointing at a small pearlescent moth with dark and yellow markings near the tip of the wing. It's resting on a white sheet, and it's so magnified you can see the weave. The moth is about 2mm long.

How small can moths get? 🔎
Very.

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

@dradriansmith.bsky.social finger for scale

Untangling host specialization in a “double dark taxa” system Abstract. Platygastrine wasps (Hymenoptera: Platygastridae) are parasitoids of gall midges (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae). They and their hosts are exceptionally

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.)

Tropical African crambid moth with spider-mimicking pattern on ventral side of wings.

Photo of a pinned tropical moth, aquamarine in color.

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