Alex Wenninger

Thanks, Adam!

A small yak leans her head on a woman's thigh as she pets its head. The yak has a purple ear tag that reads "Flora".

Visited Delta, AK this weekend to teach a pollinator workshop and I got to visit a coworker's yak farm after!! This is Flora, she is just 1 year old and I LOVE her ♥️
#babyyak #alaskalove

Get ready for Gall Week May 2025! Mark your calendars for the next Gall Week event - May 3-11! It's a bit later than last year, so hopefully, it's a better fit for some of us. Let me know what you think, and what you think might be a ...

Thank you! And there is one coming up May 3-11! There often is a spring and fall gall week but the spring one is typically a bit too early for Alaska. www.inaturalist.org/projects/gal...

A screen grab of an article titled "Community science collaboration enhances understanding of fireweed flower gall midge distribution in Alaska". The cover shows a three panel photograph displaying a fireweed flower spire on the left, a closeup of a galled bud in the middle, and an opened bud with larvae inside on the right.

An article about a recent community science project on the fireweed flower gall midge in Alaska! These galls caught my attention while doing field work for a pollinator research project but turned into a project all of their own! www.akentsoc.org/doc/AKES_new... #entomology #Alaska #cecidomyiidae 🧪🪰

A mini petri dish set on a table with many microhymenoptera inside, lit from the side.

A headlamp set on the table works great for when you want to prep mini hyms for mounting at the kitchen table instead of at your desk (filter paper underneath the mini petri for contrast)✨ #hymenoptera #entomology

Lateral habitus of a point-mounted rose seed chalcid, Megastigmus nigrovariegatus. She is about 4 mm long and a mottled golden brown color.

The Rosa acicularis seed from which the wasp emerged. A tiny circular hole is visible on the surface, which the wasp chewed when she was ready to emerge from the seed.

Seed-feeding chalcids are always a favorite to rear out; getting a whole adult wasp out of a tiny seed is nearly magical! This tiny rose seed chalcid (Megastigmus nigrovariegatus) emerged this week from a wild rose seed (Rosa acicularis) collected last month. 😍 🧪 #chalcidoidea #entomology #Alaska

A woman is standing next to a mossy boulder holding a white tray with one hand and raking the moss with her fingers using the other hand. The landscape is springtime in an Alaska coastal rainforest; some snow patches remain and the trees haven't yet leafed out but the moss is very green.

On today's episode of Moss Makeover, a moss-covered boulder gets brushed by an entomologist who decided to take a quick look for Boreus snow scorpionflies during a fishing trip. Sadly she did not find any Boreus but this moss looks really great. #entomology #mecoptera #Alaska 🧪

A puzzle picked together to depict many different caterpillars arranged by color starting with reds in the top left, yellows and greens diagonal across the center, and browns in the lower right corner. "The Caterpillar Lab" is printed down the right-hand side of the puzzle.

The world's cutest puzzle!! A gift from @danasaur406.bsky.social ♥️ 🐛🐛🐛
#thecaterpillarlab #entomology #lepidoptera

Very nice!!

Awesome!! I started mine in 2019... still working on it haha

I spy a hue shift afghan in the background!!

-8 flagellomeres
-ocelli present
-has a complete occipital carina
-has clear notali
-tibial spur formula appears to be 1-0-1
-protarsal chela does not appear to have a claw however this character is very difficult to get clear magnification of and I suspect there may be a claw there
- 2-3 mm length

The lateral view of a tiny female pincer wasp on a glue board. The head and mesosoma are coarsely textured and black in color. The metasomal is smooth and brown in color.

Anyone know of a good key to Nearctic dryinids? This one has been tricky to key out using Hymenoptera of the World, but seems to be either Anteoninae or Gonatopodinae subfamily. Specimen from Anchorage, Alaska. More details in comments. #hymenoptera #chrysidoidea #dryinidae

A black-and-white image of an insect point mount punch tool next to a few very small piles of finished points.

A little Sunday morning coffee and my least favorite bug chore. 500 points later and all I have to show for it is a very sore palm and what appears to be a pile of 12 points 🐝
#entomology #entomologistchores

Beautiful day!

A panel of nine photographs of folded paper moths, each decorated in an array of colors and patterns with crayons. Each moth is photographed on a bug-themed table cloth.

Putting a little art into entomology with STEM night elementary kiddos! Love to see their creativity in action 🦋🧪
#entomology #scienceforkids #scienceisart

A woman with glasses and dark hair worn in a ponytail holding an insect net in her left hand. She is wearing a greyish blue handknit fisherman's Gansey. A peat bog meadow and sparse spruce trees are visible behind her.

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science! 🧪 It's hard for me to resist a good insect collection opportunity, here I am taking a break between shrimp pot sets to do some bee collecting for the Alaska Bee Atlas 🐝 #entomology

(and in my hand-knit fisherman's Gansey, of course) #knitting

I feel like there are enough moths in the world to open a portal to a completely different dimension. Just staggering amounts of moths.

I think Cynipoidea

#entomology #gallformers

Very nice! I like how the cabinets have also infiltrated the hallway, as they should.

That's exactly how I ended up working on these in the first place lol. I'll have an article about a community science project involving these coming out in a couple months too, that one will be open access and I'll share that once it's ready! 🪰

Thank you! orcid.org/0000-0002-64...

Swollen fireweed flower buds galled by an insect called the fireweed flower gall midge.

Some highly photogenic flower galls on fireweed made by the fireweed flower gall midge in Alaska 🌸 My fly mom skills were put to the test but we pulled through and the adults were used to redescribe these Holarctic cuties 🪰
bioone.org/journals/pro...