do observe a pleasant little animal
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(Armadillidae sp. Rubber Ducky)
These patterned fungi are a collage of pressed flowers by Helen Ahpornsiri for her picture book, a Year in the Wild.
ALTInsect in 45 million-year-old amber photographed by Levon Biss.
His amazingly crisp macro photos are created by stitching together the best parts of 8,000-10,000 individual images. The size of a single image file is 4gb and the prints are 3 meters long!
I highly recommend exploring the interactive site Microsculpture, where you can zoom in to experience the full 4gb resolution of many gorgeous insect photos:
ALT
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This is Dendrocephalus proeliator, the rare fairy shrimp that I co-discovered in 2019. This is a mature male in a 1/4 teaspoon. They are found only in certain soils in central Florida and they refuse to hatch unless they have their special soil chemistry intact
Fun fact: common buckeye butterflies (Junonia coenia) can be selectively bred to be blue fairly easily!
It turns out the only thing needed to go from brown to blue is a slightly thicker lamina, which is a flat layer at the bottom of the wing scale:
The lamina’s iridescence is caused by the same phenomena as soap bubbles: thin-film interference. When light hits the transparent film of the lamina, it reflects off both the top and bottom of the layer.
Depending on the thickness and refractive properties of the material, the two reflected light waves can be in sync (image below) or cancel each other out. At the perfect thickness, the blue waves of light are enhanced and the butterfly becomes iridescent!
Because the difference in thickness needed to cause iridescence is so slight, it took less than a year to shift a population from just a few blue scales to full-on fabulous blue.
Photos & figures by Rachel Thayer, Nipam Patel, and Edith Smith.
a mysterious and handsome moth showed up at the light last night & wouldn’t stop wiggling its feet!
a little searching turned up the species Lepidotarphius perornatella. it’s probably of East Asian origin, but established in small parts of the US where it feeds on reed-like Acorus (not sure if it eats the native one or only the introduced species).
I think the spots and tapping legs might be some sort of jumping spider mimicry, since they resemble salticid eyes and palps.