Yuchen

Bats Hunt Migratory Birds - Little, Big Science For years, scientists found only clues suggesting that bats prey on songbirds—for example, feathers in bat droppings and bird wings discovered beneath hunting grounds. But the full picture was missing...

Looks like Batman killed and ate Todd, and the Joker wasn’t even involved. This is macabre!

www.lbscience.org/en/2025/11/2...

トゲアリトゲナシトゲアリ Thorny thornless thornthorn…

that’s the Japanese vernacular for some chrysomelid leaf beetle Hispines (=bristly).

Makes sense since they’re species with spines within a group that generally are spineless (Agonita? Gonophora?) within a group that ARE generally spiny…

Aaaannnd a student replied to me with this. I’m more upset than I need to be with this.

3/2
4) breeds in the felled host for its next macabre cycle. The paper says “entomopathogenic” - I’m confused on how to classify them. As parasitoids (immatures that kill host internally during development) or as predators (free-living adults targeting prey for food)?

2/2

3)slither into host bodies (likely through a spiracle, YUCK!) to release a cocktail of symbiotic pathogens that then kill the host.

This is some high tier assassin specialist build right there- like a Zerg Roach Corpser build that targets air units. Nature’s stranger than science fiction!

Electrostatics facilitate midair host attachment in parasitic jumping nematodes | PNAS Jumping can be hazardous for entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) as those that fail to attach to an insect host face death by predation or starvation...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
How amazing is this! These entomopathogenic roundworms:

1) can coil their bodies to jump up >20x their length

2) use their -ve electrostatic bodies to home in on flying prey (which generate +ve potential)

1/2

Those are some really beautiful long big pedipalps…😍

There’s a genus of cylindrotomid crane flies named  𝘓𝘪𝘰𝘨𝘮𝘢. Largely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere.

About 10(?) described species.

None of them named nuts.

Yet.

What an opportunity.

#diptera #tipuloidea #cylindrotomidae #ligma