Erin Powell

my modest collection of flies with WIDE heads 🙇

a hammer-headed Richardia (Ecuador),
a stalk-eyed Chaetodiopsis (Mozambique),
a pointy-eyed Ophthalmoptera (Colombia),
and an antlered Richardia (Colombia)

why though? male-male competition? sexual selection? chime-in if you know!

Light brown and red leggy arachnid in a bit of wet wood, her booty in the air like a spire, with her ghostly white babies facing downward clustered around it almost like an unopened flower

Day 19 of my 2025 Favorites: Schizomida mom and her cluster of baby clones!

I've had many generations of these tiny arachnids from 2 females (they're parthenogenic) collected in a public park near Miami a few years ago, and happened to spot this one with her babies one evening. Delightful lump 🥹

Dark orange fan-winged planthopper, colored roughly like a peach, with a little pointy snoot

Red veiny winged planthopper, shaped roughly like a maple seed, with a pointy snoot

Tiny shiny iridescent brown lacewing with long black and tan antennae

Slender red jumping spider boy with big immature palps, which hits big black eyes are peering over at you. He's waving one leg like antennae

Things Found Under Palmetto Fronds Today:
Otiocerus stollii (derbid planthopper)
Apache degeeri (derbid planthopper)
Sisyra sp (tiny lacewing)
Little An't Man (Synemosyna formica jumping spider)

let me share a little story about a remarkable wasp that I encountered yesterday in our local deserts

I stumbled across her, and scrambled to get a few crappy photos .... but then realized that she had a burrow, perhaps a better photo op was possible ??

here she is at her burrow entrance.

Genome report: Genome sequence of tuliptree scale, Toumeyella liriodendri (Gmelin), an ornamental pest insect Abstract. Scale insects are of interest both to basic researchers for their unique reproductive biology and to applied researchers for their pest status. I

Reposting because the final version finally came out and there are way more people on the site now. To you it might just be a genome note, to me it's the first fully Mongue lab paper (feat. @erincpow.bsky.social and @kkbugtime.bsky.social )!

A #newPI milestone!

academic.oup.com/g3journal/ar...

Florida's newest invasive mealybug currently prefers roadside weeds but may pose a threat to solanaceous crops (e.g., tomatoes, peppers).

This species was only recently described from Japan where it is likely also introduced.

New open access paper: www.degruyter.com/document/doi...

A tiny weevil (Euplatypus compositus) with several mites on board.

North central Florida

This moth was attracted my head torch and decided to rest on the net-casting spider I was photographing!

Deinopis spinosa (Deinopidae) with Arta olivalis (Pyralidae) in north central Florida. #SpiderSunday

Terrible in Spanish but apparently a tasty treat in the Philippines 😅😆

Likely a reduction of compound eyes. Putoids are thought to have diverged from archaeococcoids that have a pair of compound eyes. The majority of extant scale diversity (Neococcoidea) has males with a pair of dorsal simple eyes, a pair of ventral simple eyes, and a pair of ocelli.

New paper out! We describe three new species of giant mealybugs from Mexico & Guatemala. You think spiders have a lot of eyes until you see male Puto mealybugs. Some species have 18 eyes!

The drawing is Puto philo, pictured alive is a Puto decorosus from California.
www.mapress.com/zt/article/v...

It's since been reported from several Caribbean islands + French Guiana. Codiaeum variegatum is native to Australasia though, so perhaps it's from there and just has never been collected or reported. Invasive species often prefer their native hosts once they arrive in a new area

More of the sentient gherkins 🥒 from yesterday, this time on their preferred host, croton (Codiaeum variegatum). They blend in beautifully.

Phalacrococcus howertoni first showed up in Florida in 2008 and was undescribed at the time. It probably originates from the Caribbean or South America.

Ants tending their sentient pet gherkins 🥒

Little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) and croton scale (Phalacrococcus howertoni) in south Florida

Cockerell (1898) described this whitefly species as with "...ribbon-like rays of glassy secretion, not much shorter than itself. These rays are of a bright lemon yellow".

Now we have some live photos to show it! Lemon yellow indeed. Aleuroplatus vinsonioides (Aleyrodidae)

Trash Bug Versus Mealybug: Unique Insect Interaction Filmed for First Time "Trash bug" lacewing larvae eat mealybugs and use their wax as camouflage. But mealybugs fight back by oozing fluid that gums up the lacewing's mouthparts.

"Trash bug" lacewing larvae feed on mealybugs and then use the mealybugs' wax for camouflage. But mealybugs can fight back with "reflex bleeding," oozing fluid that gums up the lacewing's mouth. Entomologist @erincpow.bsky.social captures one-of-a-kind photos and video of this behavior.

Thank you! Everything is hand held, mostly in-situ. I rear out parasitoid wasps, male scales, etc. indoors sometimes. My set-up is a Canon 6D Mark II, a MP-E 65mm 1–5x lens, and twin-flashes.

The final guy of 2023 and #invertefest. A little subadult male Pardosa sp. (?) wolf spider (Lycosidae) in my yard this afternoon.

North central Florida #SpiderSunday

Only a small proportion of my photos end up on social media platforms. All of my observations go on iNaturalist, there's a total of 1,875 for 2023!
www.inaturalist.org/people/645281

L -> R Dysimia pseudomaculata mating pair, Cyarda sp., Encarsia noyesi, Colonus sylvanus eating Anasaitis canosa

Happy New Year! Here's a quick collection of just a few of my favorites from 2023.

An assortment of scale insects, spiders, various arthropods from Florida, and arthropods from my summer trip to Europe which spanned Georgia (Republic of), Switzerland, France, England, and Scotland.

My top inverts of the year! Pecan giant scales (Neosteingelia texana). Active for only a couple weeks, emerging from the bark briefly to mate. These were out on hickory in late October in north FL. This year was my first time seeing them, I was slightly obsessed.

Name a more sexually dimorphic duo!

Thank you for the shout out, Dan! I'm excited to have your photos back in my feed!

Yessss @erincpow.bsky.social is here!

Get your scale insect, harvestperson, and spider science fix here, along with *checks notes* trash bugs?? 🧪🌿🕷️

Supplemental video S1 from Powell, EC. 2023. Defensive behaviors of the mealybug Nipaecoccus nipae (Maskell, 1893) (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) and the green ... Trash bug (lacewing larva) dorsal packet loading

Finally trying out BlueSky! Ever wonder how a 'trash bug' gets its trash? My new paper (tinyurl.com/42pw4r5m), with videos, documents dorsal packet construction by a lacewing larva & defensive reflex bleeding by mealybugs.

See the videos here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=As95...

#InverteFest