Amos is bad with kids… really bad. He’ll generally growl at small children and has once lunged at a two-year-old, barely grazing the girl’s hand. Soon after that incident, I bought him a muzzle and occasionally make him wear it at parks, so he doesn’t associate it with punishment. Usually, for at least ten minutes, he’s concentrated on trying to remove it. Sometimes he even gives up walking and just lays down, acting sad.
Another unknown fly found in the wet, pre-montane forests of the Alberto Brenes Biological Reserve.
These eggs were discovered with the mother Mountain Dusky Salamander watching over them. You can see the larva wrapped around their yolks.
During the last Vertebrate Zoology field trip, we encountered Plethodon glutinosus. Unfortunately, its tail partly fell off during capture. A beautiful catch though!
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This was the desktop background of my lab computer for well over year, so folks have probably seen it. It looked much better on my 19” LCD screen than it did on that computer, so I’d figure I’d post it.
It turns out though, that’s it’s another fly, which I always assumed was a Tipulidae. I’m not sure if they have painted wings though, and it’s much more fun to post it here than look it up on Wikipedia.
If plant-insect interactions are cool, plant-insect photographs are cooler.
I wonder if any lichen specialists frequent my blog. If so, how are lichens categorized? Certainly the individual fungal and green algal/cyanobacterial species are ‘clearly’ described, but are lichens themselves able to be characterized and described in the own right? For example, if the mutualisms are usually formed between single fungal and algal species, can a particular pair be classified? If pairs are not usually species-specific in this way, but more general lineages of either the fungal component, the algal component, or both do form more generalized groups of lichen, do these ‘groups’ behave similarly? Would a particular group likely inhabit a vertical slate cliff in Western New York, while another likely inhabits the forest floor? What types of adaptations in lichen groups fit these habitats?
What if this photograph isn’t even a lichen and I’m totally incompetent?
Also, what if I had just gone to the damn Wikipedia site before I wrote all that.
So what’s this one?
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I’m learning a lot about my camera and lenses still. Here’s an example of aperture adjustment.
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What family does this fly belong to? I discovered it rested on a unknown shrub rooted on the bank of a stream.