Montag Moth

ANSWER: This wasn’t easybut this large and beautiful moth was from Australia and is in the family Xyloryctidae (Philarista sp.). We have a handful of representatives of this group here in the US and Ted MacRae over on Beetles in the Bush has a few great photographs of them. Somehow I think we . . . → Weiterlesen: Montag Moth

Montag Moth

Chiricahua multidentata (Geometrien)

This Monday’s moth is a spectacular species from the mountains of ArizonaChiricahua multidentata, a Geometrid. The only known location for this species is at the very top of the Chiricahua mountains above 9,000 Füße (which was just bruned to a crisp). Hopefully the fire was not . . . → Weiterlesen: Montag Moth

Montag Moth

I’ll keep the ball rolling with Arctiinae and post a photo today of Ctenucha brunnea. This moth can be common in tall grasses along beaches from San Francisco to LAalthough in recent decades the numbers of this moth have been declining with habitat destruction and the invasion of beach grass (Ammophila arenaria). Aber . . . → Weiterlesen: Montag Moth

Montag Moth

Ich werde den Ball mit dieser Serie am Laufen halten und versuchen, sie regelmäßiger zu machen. Ich werde mich auch darauf konzentrieren, jede Woche eine neue Art aus den riesigen Sammlungen hier an der California Academy of Sciences hervorzuheben. Das sollte mir genug Material dafür geben… mindestens ein paar hundert Jahre.

Gramm . . . → Weiterlesen: Montag Moth

Richard Branson ist ein Idiot

 

Quelle: Wikipedia

Es stellt sich heraus, dass Richard Branson hat eine neue Idee; die Katta sparen (Lemur Catta) by importing them to his private British Virgin Island. Wie der Artikel weist darauf hin, Branson verbrachte Millionen von Pfund und Jahren der Bemühungen, um die Insel in Kurve “the most ecologically . . . → Weiterlesen: Richard Branson ist ein Idiot

Geheimnis gelüftet

Ok – ein paar Entschuldigungen für nicht mit Vollbilder * noch * der Larven in Frage (Ich werde in ein paar Tagen!). Über das Wochenende war ich mit einer Gruppe von Berkeley Studenten auf dem Mount Hamilton und Doktorandin Meghan Culpepper ein paar Arten von Scaphinotus und eine gewisse Larven gesammelt! So the specimen . . . → Weiterlesen: Geheimnis gelüftet

Schätzungen der globalen Artenvielfalt

This recent article in the American Naturalist has taken a second look at some of the famously inflated species estimates, some going high as 100 million (Erwin, 1988). Estimates conducted by the authors indicate that projections above 30 million have probabilities of <0.00001. Their estimated range is more likely to be between 2.5 und . . . → Weiterlesen: Schätzungen der globalen Artenvielfalt

Aquamoth part 3

A continuation of the aquamoth series, this time with video from Science Friday! Ja, I have to link it because wordpress won’t embed… Dank Ted, figured it out!

Aquamoth part 2

I came across the full-text PDF of the amphibious moth article and extracted the tree showing the radiation of this species group and probable evolution of the amphibious traits. Interesting to note the case shape, and each moth is endemic to its own volcano in the Hawaiian archipelago.

This is a Bayesian analysis of . . . → Weiterlesen: Aquamoth part 2

Aquamoth!

Another amazing animal from Hawaiia completely amphibious caterpillar (published in the March 22 PNAS). While there are a few aquatic Lepidoptera, all of them have gills that keep them restricted to the water (mind you, we are talking only about the larval stage). If their stream dries up, so does the caterpillar. . . . → Weiterlesen: Aquamoth!