The life cycle of the conopid fly reads like a horror movie script. The fly attacks a bumblebee, the bee is knocked to the ground, but then assumes the fight is over and flies off. Only now the bee is carrying a fly egg that was forcibly inserted into her abdomen during the attack.
The egg’s new home is the bee’s fat stores. What was meant to be a source of energy for the bee becomes a source of nutrition for the fly larva. After devouring the fat stores, the growing larva continues to hollow out the bee’s body. It consumes internal tissues as if clearing furniture from someone’s apartment. The bee’s body is both the fly’s food and its home.
This micro-nightmare remains private for around 10 days, until the bee succumbs to its fate. It lands on the ground and digs itself into the soil. In a zombie-like motion, it uses its little bee legs to tunnel into its own grave, and die.
What appears to be torture and doom for the individual bumblebee is the normal survival scheme for conopid flies. How much damage could these flies do to the bees that pollinate our crops? Rosemary Malfi conducted a study to determine just that -and the results may surprise you. Read about the parasitic conopid fly at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: André Karwath)
Comments (1)
The passing popularity of Friendster and MySpace as social networking sites may have presented a pattern to us, but Facebook is way more of a behemoth than they ever were. It's like saying that Google is a fad of a search engine because AltaVista and Ask Jeeves are now passé. If Facebook DOES lose its popularity, it won't be to Tumblr. Tumblr isn't really in the same website category as Facebook; it's a blogging service, so it focuses more on sharing content than connecting with others.
you can't say no to facebook because there are no other options and everybody is already on it
The piece isn't about the overall popularity of Facebook, it is about how younger people are starting to turn elsewhere for their networking needs.
"With more than 900 million users, Facebook remains the most popular online hangout. But some young people are turning their attention elsewhere.
Fickle young consumers can make and break social networks, as evidenced by pioneers such as Myspace and Friendster whose appeal faded as tastes changed.
In fact, 8 of 10 teens who are online use social networking sites — and more than 93% of those users have a Facebook account, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Millions more kids under the legal Facebook age of 13 fib about their age to use the service.
Still, older people are the ones driving much of Facebook's growth. Users age 50 to 64 made up nearly a quarter of Facebook's audience in March, according to research firm Nielsen."
it's not a lambo but it will get you to the post office.
tumblr, twitter, and other sites are more ego driven in their social networking capacity.
(also buzzbo has made a good point with his non-anecdotal evidence)
And so I became a FaceBook user.
Years later 'Join this game' and 'Hey, I took my dog for a walk!' or some political rant seem abound on my page. I'm down to checking it once a quarter for no apparent reason.
Off to shoo kids off my lawn and yell at a cloud!
http://www.google.com/trends/?q=facebook,+twitter,+tumblr&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0