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This fetching praying mantis looks like she is flirting with the camera! But the orchid mantis may be a male. An orchid mantis is one of the many flower mantis species that have camouflage to match the type of flower they live among. See a variety of flower mantises at Environmental Graffiti. Link
(Image credit: Luc Viatour / www.Lucnix.be)
This photo shows a replica of Bocydium globulare, the Brazilian Treehopper. It’s a real insect -scout’s honor! See more pictures of this treehopper and other bizarre bugs at Dark Roasted Blend. Link
(Image credit: Alfred Keller for Berlin’s Naturkundemuseum)
An insect called the cottony cushion scale has developed a way to produce offspring without a mate. Some females develop with their father’s sperm growing into an bundle of male tissue inside the female’s body. This tissue can later produce sperm needed for the female to produce baby scales.
This parasitic tissue, genetically identical to the female’s father, lives inside the female and fertilizes her eggs internally—rendering the female a hermaphrodite and making her father both the grandfather and father of her offspring, genetically speaking.
Though this new form of reproduction hasn’t replaced cottony cushion scale sex, “this parasitic male has taken off like an epidemic in population,” said study leader Andy Gardner, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Oxford.
“Once [this trend] gets started, it’s going to sweep through the population so all the females carry it. So there’s no point for regular males to exist,” Gardner added.
If the females begin passing on the parasitic male to their offspring, there may eventually be no more need for “baby boy” cushion scales that grow up and produce sperm and fertilize females, Gardner said.
Self-fertilizing species do not flourish as well as those that reproduce by sex because the genetic variability tends to die out. Gardner clarified that the female insects are not truly hermaphroditic, as much as they are two different individual insects within one body. Link
(Image credit: Peter Hollinger)
The gnat-ogre, Holcocephalus fuscus, is a tiny insect that eats even tiner insects. You’ve got to look really close to ever see them, although they may be in your back yard.
Aptly named, gnat-ogres are miniature robber flies, and every bit as carnivorous as their larger, more visible brethren. You’ve just got to look closely to see them. The gnat-ogre pictured above would be measured in millimeters. They are so small that a person would likely dismiss them as gnats or perhaps extremely tiny flower flies. With the naked eye, they are scarcely visible unless one happens to be closely studying the area in which gnat-ogres have staked out. To get these photos, I was using a heavy-duty macro lens, flash, and a tripod. Fortunately, gnat-ogres are fearless and will allow very close approach.
Ohio naturalist Jim McCormac describes them as “neat,” so that’s good enough for me! Link -Thanks, Manticore!
This beetle is named Onymacris unguicularis, or the ‘tok-tokkie’ beetle. Why does he look as if he’s trying to stand on his head?
He’s developed a rather nifty way of getting a drink. As a sea fog rolls in of a morning the beetle presents himself to it. This is where things get clever, his carapace is made up of a series of peaks and troughs. The peaks are very attractive to water and the fog settles on them, the troughs however are waxy and hydrophobic and the water rolls off the trough and begins to form droplets. The water naturally runs down the inverted beetles body and into his mouth, smashing!
The beetle derived its English name from his drinking habits. Read more at Ever So Strange. Link -Thanks, Danny!
Since kudzu was imported from Japan, it has grown the cover the southern United States. Now another Asian import is flourishing by eating kudzu. The globular stink bug (Megacopta cribraria), native to China and India, has spread across Georgia and has now been found in Alabama. They also come inside during cold weather, and emit a bad odor when threatened.
University of Georgia entomology Professor Wayne A. Gardner said he’s found them 30 stories high, coating the window sills of Atlanta condo high rises, and he has seen them swarming in roadside kudzu patches.
“You smell them when you get out of the truck,” he said.
More seriously, the bug likes to munch on plants other than kudzu, including soybeans. It also could be a threat to other legume crops such as peanuts, Gardner said.
In November, Auburn University researchers collected two individual specimens in east Alabama border counties, Cleburne and Cherokee. They now expect them to spread quickly across our kudzu-rich state.
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The exoskeleton of the oriental hornet is a solar collector and generator that converts sunlight into electricity! A team led by Marian Plotkin of Tel-Aviv University discovered the wasp’s power plant properties, but don’t know why the insects produce electricity.
Their research revealed that pigments in the hornet’s yellow tissues trap light, while its brown tissues generate electricity. Exactly how the hornets use this electricity is still not entirely understood, Plotkin noted.
“When I was running my experiment, people told me it was never going to work,” she said. “I’m so happy at the results.”
While solar cells using human-made substances are usually 10 to 11 percent efficient at generating electricity, the hornet’s cells are only 0.335 percent efficient. For instance, the hornet still gets the vast majority of its energy from food.
Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
(Image credit: Blickwinkel, Alamy)
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Realistic Insect Magnet by Re-Ment – $5.95
Here’s the perfect stocking stuffer for your budding entomologist: the Realistic Insect Magnet blind box by Re-Ment from the NeatoShop. Which one will you get? (Will you get the "rare" mystery insect?). Finding out is part of the fun – so be sure to get plenty!
Link | More Fun Magnet Stuff
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Beyond the Hive was a design competition where architects and designers vie to create urban housing facilities for insects. This one above, the "Insect Hotel" is the winning entry by architecture firm Arup Associates.
More entries over at Vidafine: Link
Is it bad that the first thing that came to mind was the phrase from roach motel insect trap? Roaches check in, but they don’t check out!
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Chillipedes Ice Tray – $8.95
Real insect larva in your drinks may be kind of gross, but ice-shaped like squirming bugs is SO cool! From the NeatoShop, behold the Chillipedes Ice Tray. Perfect for your budding entomologists: Link | More Fun and Unusual Ice Trays | Fun Party Supplies
Micrograph by Martin Oeggerli
Zebra longwing butterfly egg (Heliconius charithonia)
The orange hue of this zebra longwing butterfly egg may warn predators: "Eat me if you dare." The threat would not be idle. The egg contains cyanide and other toxins ingested by adults from the plants
they eat.
We don’t have to look far to find alien-looking lifeforms, as the September 2010 issue of National Geographic shows. All you need is a microscope and a few insect eggs.
Links: Article by Rob Dunn | Photo Gallery by Martin Oeggerli in cooperation with Prüftechnik Uri and School of Applied Sciences, FHNW
Fresh strawberries are delicious, but did you know that unless you wash them properly, you’d be eating a bit more than just fruit (technically an "accessory fruit")?
Here’s how you should wash your strawberries, as shown by Zev Steen of Star-K Kosher Certification.
A praying mantis is trying to catch the cursor on a computer screen! After the video was recorded, the insect was taken outside and set loose. -via Arbroath
Check the ingredients of your food. How many times have you seen the coloring agent "carmine red"? That famous red dye that the British Red Coats used actually comes from a small aphid-like insect called the Cochineal. They live on cactus pad, drinking the sap and growing fatter until ready to harvest. It takes over 70-thousands of these little insects to produce one pound of the red dye.
The insect as a defense against predation produces carminic acid which is the substance extracted and mixed with either aluminum or calcium salts to produce “cochineal” (carmine dye.) Carmine is still used today for food coloring and in some cosmetics although other sources have replaced its use. Because of sensitive skin and allergic reaction concerns to some modern and synthetic ingredients in cosmetics and food coloring, research is reexamining the use of insect-derived carmine as a potential non-allergic non-irritant colorant again. In the past, other uses of the crimson dye were for coloring fibers (yucca, woolen and other animal fibre, etc.) that would later be woven into rugs, made into other textiles, and for painting and decoration of household items like pottery.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by thestickman.
Transparency in animals is something that is still not entirely understood by science. The beautiful Glasswing butterfly possesses this feature in abundance – a great percentage of its wingspan is almost completely transparent.
It is thought that the wings have large amounts submicroscopic protrusions that have the same refractive index which means that they do not scatter light, so giving the impression of transparency. Whatever the reason, this is a startling and little known creature.
A butterfly with transparent wings? Surely not. Yet there is a species that exhibits this trait. Take a close look at the incredible Glasswing, an enchanting species that confounds science. Greta oto may sound like the name of a silent movie star from Eastern Europe but is in fact the scientific name for one of the most exquisite – and little known – species of butterfly on the planer. This butterfly’s claim to fame is that its wings, spanning up to six centimeters, are almost completely transparent. That’s right, you can see just about right through them.
Link – via webphemera
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by taliesyn30.
This infographic, titled Species-scape, purports to show various species at sizes relative to the number of known species in that group. Insects, represented by the fly, is the largest (at about 900,000 known species). If you’re wondering where we are, humans (and other mammals) are represented by the reindeer underneath the mushroom.
(image credit: Cessna 206)
