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Do you know your plants?
For my Leafminers of North America project, I periodically need help identifying hostplants I find in my travels. You can peruse photos of them at iNaturalist. Thanks!
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Meta
Monthly Archives: October 2011
Late Bloomer
This time of year I’m always on the lookout for witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) flowers. One last burst of life before everything shuts down for the winter. They usually start to appear in the middle of October, but this year … Continue reading
Kleptoparasite
This morning was a good time for insect photography–it was chilly enough that a lot of things that normally would have jumped, flown, or scurried away were sluggish enough that they let me get my lens right in their faces … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aphid, Argyrodinae, Caloptilia, Cicadellidae, cobweb spider, Coelidia olitoria, Drapetisca alteranda, filmy dome spider, Gracillariidae, harvestman, kleptoparasitic cobweb spider, leafhopper, leafminer, Linyphiidae, moth, Neriene radiata, Odiellus pictus, Opiliones, Phalangiidae, sheetweb spider, spider, Theridiidae, web
5 Comments
Acorn Pip Galls
Last month Noah Charney, Sydne Record, and I spent four days surveying the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts for galls, leaf mines, and other species-specific invertebrate signs. The Nantucket Biodiversity Initiative had put out a request for proposals for research that … Continue reading
Tiny Things With Frilly Wings
On a recent crawl through the woods near my house, a white and thoroughly nondescript bracket fungus caught my eye. It was so plain-looking that I didn’t imagine I would ever know its name, but looking in George Barron’s Mushrooms … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged beetle, chalcid, Coleoptera, Diptera, fairyfly, featherwinged beetle, fly, fungus, moth, moth fly, Mymaridae, Nanosella, Nepticulidae, Psychodidae, Ptiliidae, thrips, Thysanoptera, Tyromyces chioneus, wasp
10 Comments
More Drama by the Back Door
This spring I wrote about a feather-legged orbweaver that subdued a jumping spider in the stone wall by my back door. Around the same time, while I was watching the sweat bees digging their burrows in the soil between the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cobweb spider, Lycosidae, Pompilidae, predation, spider, spider wasp, Steatoda, Theridiidae, wasp, wolf spider
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Stinkhorns
Not far from the dead squirrel, I encountered something else that was attracting a lot of flies. The smell was far more intense and unpleasant than from the squirrel parts, yet it wasn’t decomposing at all, but in the prime … Continue reading
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