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If I brought one back, would you eat this? You know when a big, juicy, harmless, herbivore presents itself to the world with this type of coloration, there must be something that is deterring predators from completely annihilating its population.
Tag Archives: Insects
Hovering fly
I don’t know if this is a Syrphid (hoverfly), but it was certainly hovering. Generally, Syrphids have some yellow-black patterning, but this individual lacked that generally obvious characteristic. I only took two photographs of the fly, but both turned out kind of cool.
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A cropped copy of the the image above… |
More Thalia herbivores
Echinodorus herbivory
In addition to a large caterpillar, there are ants foraging on Echinodorus paniculatus flowers. Are the ants stealing pollen or nectar?
Patrolling ant
Orb weaver wraps up a fly
While sampling Rio Camarone near the Sirena field station, I wandered upstream and noticed an orb weaver’s web. As I moved passed it, I bumped a leaf with a perched fly and the fly flew right into the spider’s web. Thus, it’s psuedo-unnatural, but from the look of the third picture, similar prey items are usually encountered by this spider species anyway. I had seen a number of flies from this family perched on leaves adjacent to streams many times in the past, and I hope one that I’ve collected for Dr. Foote will provide an identification.
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Ptychopteridae
A relative of the Tipulids, we encountered this Bittacomorpha clavipes at the beaver marsh on Thursday’s vertebrate zoology field trip, along with about four snakes, two of which we caught.
Leatherleaf flowers
Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) is blooming.
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Vespid nest
| A vespid wasp nest hangs under a fish-tail palm. Check out the eggs in the combs above. |  |
A Beetle
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I don’t know. Does any one even care about insect families anymore? |