lightsinthedistance-modernlife

A wheel bug from Costa Rica, preserved at the Museo de Insectos, University of Costa Rica, San José.   Let it be known that I am extremely excited for this summer. I applied for a few internships, but those didn't work out. I was disappointed, of course, but other opportunities popped up, ensuring that I won't be idle during my time off from classes. I applied for a grant from my college, and received it. Thanks to that, I will spend six weeks during the summer carrying out a project I designed. This will involve me romping around the college's field station with my exploring hat, bug nets, and a bag full of bug collecting equipment, investigating the assassin bug diversity at the field station. This is awesome for a number of reasons: I'll be investigating a question no one has yet researched I'll be acquainting myself even more with assassin bugs, a group of insects that is quickly becoming my favorite I will have ample time for exploration I'll find more th...

Nothing in Biology is ever as simple as it seems. That’s the beauty of it, and this is especially true whenever insects enter the picture. Last June, I was scouting out my backyard for insects and other things, and came across a small, brightly-colored insect: vivid green and orange, it was almost neon. So what did I do? I snapped two pictures of it and moved on, not thinking much of it.   Scudderia sp. on a leaf of Vitis sp. Obviously I wasn’t thinking very well that day. Returning to the pictures a little while later, I started to investigate to figure out what exactly it was. Truthfully, when I first saw it, I thought it was an assassin bug nymph. Actually, it’s a nymph of a bush katydid, genus Scudderia. An easy way to identify a Scudderia nymph is from their white and black-banded antennae. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten with this particular nymph. According to Bugguide, there are eight species of Scudderia (in North America at least). Ohio has five of...

I stumbled across a very interesting article the other day, via Wired . It elaborated upon a study on the spotted salamander ( Ambystoma maculatum ) and its relationship with algae. I hope you’ve got a good grip on your chair, because you’re liable to fall out of your seat otherwise. It’s pretty sweet news. Algae is quite useful. It’s food for smaller organisms, and photosynthesizes, providing the rest of us with oxygen, which is a good thing. In the case of the spotted salamander, it’s an even more intimate relationship. The salamander lives with algae within its cells, which is the truly exciting news. Symbiosis between salamanders and algae isn’t anything new: it was even known in this salamander before the new study. But the crux of the matter is the degree of the symbiosis. Since the algae are within the salamander’s cells, that is a darn close relationship. In fact, such an intense relationship was previously thought to only occur between algae and invertebrates. This is the fi...