The Genetics of Stay at Home Vs “Exploratory” Butterflies

Science Daily has a fascinating bit on butterflies called Butterflies That Explore and Colonize New Habitats Are Genetically Different from Cautious Cousins.This extended quote from the press release is fascinating: In the new study, another gene variant also stood out as an important indicator of butterfly flight ability. New-population females were more often missing a [...]

Bee Porn and Male-Male Courtship in Drosophila melanogaster

PNAS has a couple of interesting articles in the most recent edition. The first, The evolution of imperfect floral mimicry touches on a subject that fascinated Darwin. I don’t have access to the paper, but here is the abstract:

I’m a Bit Late To The Fray, But The Best Phylum = Arthropods

The question has come up on ScienceBlogs as to which class of invertebrates are the best, coolest, etc. Like PZ I had though about saying Cephalopods (because of those nice octopi that helped the archaeology community find some pottery), but in the end I had to go with Arthropods. Let me give you a few [...]

Social Behavior in Spiders

According to New Scientist a new species of spiders has been discovered that lives in groups and cooperates when hunting: According to Avilés, there are over 39,000 identified spider species. While she has seen just over 20 species cooperate, she has never encountered any species quite like Theridion nigroannulatum. The spiders live in nests that [...]

Spiders: One from the Archive

You naughty, naughty people! Come looking for kinky spider lovin ! Come on admit it, thats why you here! Although I have posted some nasty buggers, it’s not that kind of nasty!

Spiderweb Trapped in Amber

Awhile back I mentioned the discovery of a 120-115 million year old orb weaver trapped in amber. National Geographic and New Scientistboth have a story on a spider web trapped in amber. The find dates to about 110 mya.

Ecology of 30,000,000 Year Old Spiders

Science Daily has an interesting article on spiders trapped in amber. This is a subject I have blogged about previously here. According to the article 671 species of spiders, dating to approximately 30 million years ago, from the Baltic and the Carribean were compared. Here is a picture of one:

New Species of Assassin Spiders Discovered

According to the California Academy of Sciences nine new species of assassin spiders (such as the one pictured above) have been discovered in Madagascar: These tiny arachnids in the Archaeidae family are only about 2 mm (less than 1/8 inch) long, but their bizarre fangs and spider-hunting practices have earned them a reputation as the [...]

Blood Drinking Spiders!

The above is a jumping spider native to Africa: Evarcha culicivora, is found only around Lake Victoria in Kenya and Uganda. A species of jumping spider, or salticid, it usually hunts insects on tree trunks and buildings. It stalks its prey rather than trapping it in a web. At the moment it is pretty unique. [...]

20,000,000 Million Year Old Spider

The above is a picture of a 20,000,000 year old spider trapped in amber. Sciectists recently created an interesting method for studying the creature – shades of Jurassic Park. According to BBC News: Palaeontologist Dr David Penney, of the University of Manchester, found the 4cm long by 2cm wide fossil during a visit to a [...]

Eocene Insect and Plant Diversity in South America

Since I have an anthropology background I really don’t post that much on plants and insects (What, no bones? Inconceivable!) But I found this really fascinating.Researchers collected over 3,500 fossils from from 25 quarries in Patagonia. Each fossil was examined for four types of insect damage: The four feeding groups are those insects that feed [...]

Black Widow Update

About a month ago I did a post on the Brown Recluse and the Black Widow. I have discovered an interesting article on widow spiders so I am publishing a link to it for those who are interested. It is in Science in Africa a great online magazine. The Button Spiders of Southern Africa .

Icons of Creationism: The Bombardier Beetle

I had originally intended to do this post yesterday in time for the Friday Ark, but got sidtracked. Normally I like to research what I post about for the Friday Ark and this time is no exception. Which is part of the reason why I didn’t get it written. My original intention was to post [...]

Friday American Burying Beetle Blogging

American burying beetles are the largest of the carrion eating beetles and is listed as an endangered species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. The St. Louis Zoo has been engaged in a breeding program to help save this vital and important species. Recently their efforts have been rewarded with the birth of 200 [...]

Friday Spider Blogging, Or Poisonous Spiders are my Totemic Animals!

You naughty, naughty people! Come looking for kinky spider lovin ! Come on admit it, that’s why you here! Although I have posted some nasty buggers, it’s not that kind of nasty! It all started back in the mid nineties. My wife, my two daughters and I had moved out of married student housing (in [...]