من النعناع Pericopinae. أنا سجلت هذا الفيديو على موقع في شمال كوستاريكا قبل بضع سنوات. عندما وصلت إلى أسفل لالتقاط هذه العثة, كان من الصعب تجنب يلاحظ السلوك. فراشة, Chetone angulosa (إريبيداي: Pericopina) ((تستخدم ليكون Arctiidae)), لديه آلية دفاعية مشتركة لهذه المجموعة – they excrete hemolymph to deter would-be attackers. Lots of moths do this, but I have never seen it so spectacularly displayed. If you listen carefully you can hear the hissing sound as the fluid is pumped form the body. What was most impressive is how strongly it smelled of peppermint… strongly enough that I just had to give it a go. للأسف, it didn’t taste as advertised. While it wasn’t excruciating, the most noticeable effect was an abrupt numbness that lasted for a several minutes. Pretty potent stuff, and I can imagine the effect on a small bird or mammal might be far less amusing.
It seems like biologists have a funny habit of tasting their subjects. I recently sat in on a herpetology talk regarding poison-dart frogs. On a slight tangent, did you know that the coloration of these famously aposematic frogs has NEVER been tested until recently? The fact that they were poisonous is well known, but no one ever took the time to see if their colors actually fit a true aposematic model, إنه – do they really deter predators in the wild? Turns out not surprisingly, نعم, they do. But it’s nice to actually have quantitate data to support this long held assertion. Back to tasting – a well known herper test is to give the frog or toad a lick. While this can actually help to identify the species of herp, it more likely seems to be an amusing side effect of long hours in the field. Not being a herper I can’t recall the name or group this applied to; but a famous paper went into great depths to describe the tastes, potent effect and the potential dangers associated with each licked toad species (this was a legit taxonomic review).
The only example for useful tasting in insects that I can think of right now is for two strikingly similar butterflies- Papilio thoas/cresphontes. I believe thoas has a sweet flowery smell when you catch it fresh (نعم, not a taste… but close), however I’ve never seen this published or tested it myself, so it may be apocryphal. It is however well known that many butterflies smell strongly of their hostplant: مثل Speyeria coronissmelling ofApocynum(strong vegetable odor). Lots of room for further investigation here. But without a doubt a biologist uses all five of his senses whenever he can.
لأربعة عطلة نهاية الأسبوع الماضية الآن لقد كنت على مطاردة أوزة, لفراشة واحدة, هيليولونش سيليريس. انها Noctuidae صغيرة جميلة مع forewings ردي وhindwings البرتقالي والاحمر مذهلة. لا يتم مواجهتها كثيرًا ولا توجد إلا على طول سلاسل جبال شمال كاليفورنيا التي تتغذى عليها Malacothrix floccifera– زهرة CA المستوطنة. في كل رحلة أخطأت فيها, حتى اليوم – جمعت اثنين! كما قد تتذكرون ، كانت أول نزهة لي قبل حوالي شهر, لا فراشة, ولكن سلسلة جميلة من العينات و صور عديلة العث. لم تقترب الرحلات القليلة الماضية من أن تكون منتجة مثل رحلة أديلا. إذن ماذا تفعل عندما لا تجد هدفك? احصل على حروق الشمس والتقط بعض الصور الرديئة.
مؤخرا جاء عبر بعض يبعث على السخرية تصنيف رهيب من الصين (.بي دي إف). إذا قمت بالتمرير لأسفل قليلاً ، يمكنك رؤية الترجمة الإنجليزية. للوهلة الأولى ، يبدو هذا وكأنه ورقة تصنيف معيارية تحتوي على أوصاف أنواع عارية. قد تفكر حتى في نفسك, “هاه, أتساءل لماذا يصفون الأنواع من عينة واحدة فقط”. ليست نهاية العالم, لقد فعلت ذلك بنفسي. حسنا, لنكون عادلين, كان لدي تاريخ حياة كامل و DNA لدعم تلك القرارات. هنا – ليس لديهم. و, بمجرد إلقاء نظرة على الرسوم التوضيحية للعينة, يجب أن يصبح شيئًا ما واضحًا بشكل صادم. ما هو القاسم المشترك بين هذه العينات (بخلاف جودة الصورة الرديئة)?
to fake a UFO encounter? I recorded this video two years ago over the desert of Arizona. To confess, it made my heart skip a beat at first. I turned around and there were three glowing lights floating silently above me. I literally thought to myself “holy s#@% I don’t believe in this crap!”. The scale is really lost in the video, but they were huge and hovering under a high cloud cover. When the video zooms in you see a small light on the ground for reference. Our brain, being so inclined, makes it appear as if these lights are linked together in a massive triangle.
I walked back to the car while keeping a careful eye out for cacti and rattlesnakes (I was photographing a mojave rattler at the time), and grabbed a pair of binoculars. With a decent magnification it was clear that these were flares. Now only could you see a flickering light on the clouds above, but long trails of smoke rising above them. As you followed the flares down they gradually winked out – only to reappear some distance away (another drop). This was then followed by a series of fighter jets flying extremely low over the desert. Basically, this is the exact same thing that caused the “lights over phoenix” flurry a few years ago.
هكذا, I uploaded this video to Youtube and didn’t call it a UFO – just some mysterious lights. Will it be adopted as UFO proof? I sure hope so. Not only that, I hope it appears on some UFO documentary in the future. It’s not as “compelling” as other “جسم غامض” videos, but my Canon point-and-shoot camera could only do so well.
While extra-terrestrials likely exist, there is absolutely zero compelling evidence to suggest they have visited us – and thanks to the laws of Physics, it is probable that they will never be able to visit regardless of how technologically advanced they become.
We need to be conservationists to be sure, preserving wetlands, forests, open spaces and coastlines. We need to reduce our waste — plastic trash and the like. But what we really need is big, new ideas: new ways to distribute and store energy for electric power, new ways to conserve and distribute clean water for farming and gulping, and new ways get ourselves and our cargo around, so that we don’t change the Earth’s climates too much as we burn our fossil fuels.
لقد كنت مشغولًا بنشر الميكروليبس خلال الأيام القليلة الماضية, وهنا مجموعة صغيرة من رحلاتي الصيفية للتجميع. لا يزال لديك على الأقل آخر 200 للذهاب قبل متابعة الأعمال المتراكمة الخاصة بي. أنا أعمل على توضيح كيفية نشر هذه العث… حتى لا تنزعج.
2009 كان موسمًا رائعًا. لقد استكشفت أطنانًا من الأرض الجديدة وجمعت على الأقل 6 أنواع جديدة. دعونا نأمل في ضعف هذا العدد في العام المقبل.
I’ve come across a few e-mail transcripts of questions sent into our entomology department and I can not resist sharing them. I promise these messages are (and will be) 100% real and unedited. Names have been changed or removed to protect the innocent. Hopefully, I will come across these every once in a while, and keep this as an ongoing series. Submissions of your own are encouraged!
آسف, this first one islong – but well worth the read.
1 مسيرة 2006: 3:23مساء.
“I am sending you pictures of a spider I possess that appears to be a Zoropsis spinimana. I need more information about this spider than is what is on the internet. أيضا, I do not know if this spider is male or female. I have had the spider for 2 أسابيع. It is still alive-but I am not sure what it eats. I have tried several things. If you are interested in this spider we can talk more-however, I get the feeling that this spider is not of real interest to your department. Please respond to me and examine the pictures. If you do not want me to email you again then, please tell me or I will assume that you did not get my email with the pictures. Both you and Dr. “X” are extremely busy and it appears that you travel a great deal. Probably with more interesting things than this spider. The pictures are below-if you cannot access them then please notify me and I will try “what ever I can do” to get these pictures to you. Thank you for any help you can give me,”
