Nicole Gerlach

A triangular moth. Its wings are dark brown with some light veins and circles, and a few black markings. Its head and thorax are a lighter tan, with two distinct black dots behind the head.

A triangular moth. It’s lighter brown than the one in the previous picture, closer to matching the tan head color. There are two dark spots on the wings, and the same two black dots right behind the head.

A pair of moths tentatively IDed in the genus Sericaglaea (possibly S. signata), from back in February.

#MothPorchParty #bugsky

I blame the time change. Who knows what time it really is? Not me! Maybe it IS time to go home! Who even knows anymore. What is time, anyways?

I have various phone alarms set throughout the day, all with their own unique sounds corresponding to what they are reminding me about.

I just had a very confusing 30 seconds before I realized that Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" had come up on shuffle as regular music, and it wasn't time to go home yet.

The teeth of the Californian Horn #shark (Heterodontus francisci) are incredible - this CT image by @ellanicklin.bsky.social shows the first rows of the juvenile dentition. How scary can this shark be when it has jazz-hands for teeth!? 🦈🦷 @ufresearch.bsky.social 👐

Bug (not a beetle, an actual bug) siting on a twig. The insect is large(ish) and round(ish) with a bright orange back edged with iridescent green. There are six big iridescent green blobs on the back, like a colourful but not very interpretable Rorschach test. Photo: Atherton Tablelands, Far North Queensland, Australia.

Just found this female Cotton/Hibiscus Harlequin Bug (Tectocoris diophthalma, Scutelleridae) chilling on a native Gardenia. Have now moved all the potted Hibiscus out of temptation's way.

Stunning insect. Females are orange with blue-green; males are blue-green with orange.

I really, really wish they weren’t all Audible exclusives. I’ve heard such good things about them (not only from you.)

Curses on the heads of the time changers.

A blueish-tinged green lizard, with a pale chin and belly, clings vertically to the trunk of a small tree.

An elongate beetle with black elytra and a black and coppery-brown mottled thorax sits on a palmetto leaf.

I also found a lovely little Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis) and a neat firefly-looking beetle (possibly a Red-shouldered Wireworm, Limonius auripilis, but I’m not at all confident in that guess) on our morning walk. #herps #lizard #bugsky #beetle

Benny from Rent. He’s played as the semi-villain of the piece, but as you get older, his plan seems a lot more reasonable and even generous to his former roommates, and they all seem like like self-absorbed brats.

Another bee interview I did. LOL

Three-lobed violet (Viola palmata), I think. A five-pétaled purple flower with white inside, petals have more bluish-purple near the center and more pinkish-purple on the edges. A three-lobed leaf is visible behind the flower.

Prostrate Blue Violet (Viola walteri). Two flowers, very light purple, with narrow petals. The leaves are distinctive rounded heart shapes, with darker veins.

Very tentatively aided as a Florida Violet (Viola floridana). The white central part of the flower extends out further onto all 5 petals, and there are dark purple stripes on the white part of the central bottom petal. Leaves are rounded spade shaped, although without a prominent point.

Really not sure on the ID on this violet, possibly another Viola palmata? The flower is dark blueish purple, much darker than the flowers in the other pictures.

A bunch of different violet species from this morning’s walk. Tentative IDs in alt text. #bloomscrolling 🌸💜

They’ve got good taste! I read Wonderful Life my sophomore year of college and it was mind-blowing, in the best possible way.

A largeish moth with its wings spread out to the sides. There is a horizontal line that runs nearly continuously across the fore and hind wings. Above the line, the moth is dark brown with a few light spots at the very top of each forewing. Below the line it’s lighter, shinier, and purple-tinged, with an additional row of tiny white speckles. The bottoms of both fore and hind wings have deeply wavy scalloped edges.

A similar moth as the previous picture, although this one is shot using the light from a lightbulb rather than the camera flash, so everything appears more yellowish. Rather than being uniformly dark brown above the mid-wing line, this one has lighter segments with dark veins in between, shading to the dark brown near the head.

A couple of Curved-toothed Geometer Moths (Eutrapela clemataria) from the past week for your Friday. They’re one of the larger species I see regularly at the #MothPorchParty, and a very pretty purplish-brown.

#moth #bugsky

Oh! I see the smiley face now. I was worried that the eyespots were testes or something and I had the wrong end entirely. 😂

From my experience, more will show up to the 5:40, but they’ll also grumble about it more and be antsier to leave.

Wait, now I’m doubting my own identification skills… I think I might be making the same mistake as your students. Clearly I need to brush up on my invert anatomy!

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Shut up and take my money!

A top-down closeup photo of a pale yellow flower with serrated-tip petals, with the ground and leaves below out of focus. There are two little moths in the flower; the moths have a fuzzy gray thorax, and cream-colored wings with thin bands and edges of deep pink.

These pretty, day-flying moths (Heliolonche pictipennis), only about 1 cm. long, are one of my favorite desert spring insects. The only flowers they visit (desert dandelion, desert chicory, or scale bud) close up at night; the moths sleep inside them, which is scientifically adorable. #BugSky 🌿🐙🌼

I love them so much. My herpetology class in college got to go out a few nights for the salamander run.

Evolution is weird, evidence # 53928477

I have this conversation with myself all the time.

Thrilled to have been a part of this project and the accompanying (but slightly younger and much bigger) Megamastax. The osteichthyan stem group is coming into focus!🧪

Sternotherus - Wikipedia

Clearing out old tabs/links that I'd saved, and I can identify why I saved most of them, but then there's a random Wikipedia page for musk turtles. Can someone hop in a time machine and ask 2025-me why I thought I needed to remember this? (other than them being cute and awesome?)

A shaky pencil sketch of what is recognizably a bowl of food, a bell, a dog, and some drops of drool, even though the dog looks sort of like an elephant, has its face way off center, and the drool drops are way off to the other side.

Bringing me joy this morning are the responses to this week's discussion, "Blind Pictionary" (i.e. draw a class concept with your eyes closed). I think it's good for students to occasionally be encouraged to do something that doesn't have to be perfect, and is actually more fun if it's not.

The moon going from full moon to a red moon and starting to go back to a normal full moon, then my camera battery door fell off.

Here's my first edit on the March 3rd Lunar Eclipse. 15 moon shots, 1 foreground. Taken over a 3 hourish period.

Hey if you're a bird photographer and you're using AI to "improve" your photos (like the image on the left, that changes the color of the bird, moves the eye, erases the tail, adds extra feathers that aren't there) know it makes me lose all respect for you, for just photo quality purposes alone.

No religious proselytizers today on my walk to class, but I did get to go right past a tour group of prospective students and their parents while wearing a dress covered in sperm, so that was an extra bit of fun.

Are you a postdoc, research scientist, non-tenure track faculty member, or lecturer who wants to attend #ABS2026? Apply to the Career Diversity Travel Award! The award helps fund scientists from less well-supported career stages.
Apply here by March 23:
www.animalbehaviorsociety.org/web/awards-c...

Aww, it looks so chipper from this angle!

And it's got pockets!