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I like to emphasize how science (and entomology in particular) is a field focused on curiosity and exploration. When I'm talking about entomology, I like to call it "the great equalizer." Why? Because it's so easy to make your own discoveries and find something notable. You don't even need an advanced degree--just an interest. Case in point? A Taiwanese shopkeeper named Hsu Kun-chin who likes gardening. This article is from July 2011 (I'm a little late on getting this posted) and is a great story. Hsu Kun-chin discovered new information about the mating habits and molting process of the ogre-faced spiders in the genus Deinopis . Ogre-faced spider: photo by Hsu Kun-chin I suppose I can understand why they call it ogre-faced. It's not as cute as the jumping spiders, but it's still neat.  I feel like Hsu Kun-chin and I would get along pretty well; we seem to share some common traits. For example, his family wasn't too keen on him keeping these spider...

Let's talk about millipedes! You may have read my entry on a millipede that fluoresces under ultraviolet light I found this past fall that grabbed my attention. I've since done some more research, and after working on a poster a few weeks ago for the Ohio Natural History Conference, I have more information and motivation to summarize what I've learned. How did I find out about these UV fluorescing millipedes in the first place? I was on a night hike with some friends last fall and had the foresight to bring a UV flashlight along, just in case there was anything neat to look at under UV. It was a bit chilly, and we weren't finding much. Then I turned the flashlight on. As we passed by areas with fallen leaves, I started catching glimpses of blue-green light: millipedes were fluorescing while milling about in the leaf litter. If you haven't seen this, you owe it to yourself to grab a UV flashlight and check it out. As it turns out, the millipedes I was seeing were o...

My posters from the Ohio Natural History Conference are now online! I've updated my post from the conference with links, and also wanted to post them here for easy reference. I was the lead author on my first poster, "A Biological Survey of the Assassin Bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station", which is posted below. Click this link or right click on the picture and choose "view image" for a larger (and readable) picture. I was a contributing author on the second poster, titled " UV Fluorescing Millipedes from Southeastern Ohio ." There's a lot of interesting questions raised from this research that I would like to investigate. Hopefully it will inspire others to take an interest in millipedes as well. Note that there is a typo in the first paragraph of the Conclusion section. E. leachii is always found in decaying wood, not in leaf litter. For more information about the conference, you can read over my first blog post...

It's been warm the past few days, and Spring Break has started, so I went out tonight to see if any insects were flying around. I also left a porch light on, which returned some results. This pretty moth was attracted to the porch light I left on, and seemed content to hug the side of my house. The above wasp seemed to have suffered from damage and was limping about, which made it easier to get some pictures of. It looks to be a parasitic wasp. The scales on the wings probably help this moth be active before it has become consistently warm, and judging from the antennae, it's a male looking for a female. I'm thinking that this insect is a species of caddisfly, but I have yet to get a picture good enough to really say for sure. I'll have to put it under a hand lens or microscope to figure it out. Its long antennae have an interesting curl at the end. Hopefully I'll have an ID for these insects sometime soon, but I'll probably take this week off to relax a little....

Science Video Friday comes to you today as a double feature! One of the neatest topics within entomology is bioluminescence, the process by which insects can create their own light. The first insect you probably think of when you hear that is the firefly. Those of us in the eastern US are fortunate enough to live in areas where fireflies also live: west of the Rockies, you don't really find them. Fireflies can flash in a variety of colors, including orange, yellow, and even blue ! The color of their flash is one way they recognize their own species in the dark, so if you see fireflies in your yard at night and there are two different colors flashing, you have at least two separate species. Now it's time to learn a bit more about fireflies, with the wonderful series "Meet the Lampyridae." Enjoy!