General Discussion

@Kahvinporo that's pretty metal lol, apparently they can smell like goats which is why the name but im not sure how close youd have to be to pick up that scent?

[quote name="Sick" date="2023-04-30 10:14:43" ] first let me begin with a not-friend, [b]*warning centipede alert) [/b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scolopendra_subspinipes][i]Scolopendra subspinipes.[/i][/url] being in plague for, what, 9 years now?? you'd think I'd enjoy [i]huge centipede tm.[/i] I don't. They are my certified enemies. Millipedes? Good friends of mine. [img]https://i.imgur.com/5XAwds1.png[/img] Why does one fear the centipede but embrace the millipede? Is it the 'pedes legs, its big old pinchers...? But I appreciate lobsters, and centipedes are kinda like long lobsters, or longsters if you will. I don't know, but I don't like these things. [i]Scolopendra subspinipes[/i] are an invasive species. I became acquainted with them while in Hawai'i where a very large specimen made its way into my friends' house. Much screaming ensured. A lot of invasive bugs live in Hawai'i, like mosquitoes... gah. If any pro-centipedes propagandists out there want to try and change my mind, I am open to trying to embrace the 'pede. [/quote] Okay, @sick , consider this: [url= https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5399133/Video-shows-6-inch-long-centipede-embracing-80-hatchlings.html]TW: centipede[/url] How could you say no to her? She is a friend and an awesome mom

should've asked this question earlier, would sharing an online image we find count for the badge count? i don't have any images of my own to share because... i don't take pictures of anything in the first place

@Sick - I will spare you the pics, but I'm a pro-centipede propagandist!! They're my favourite bug!

I don't know WHY I love them, it may have to do with how incredible cool-looking every Scolopendra manages to be. Maybe it's because I love the Pokemon Scolipede! Maybe it's that I've held a love for them ever since I was terrified of centipedes in my basement apartment, thus starting a google-spiral to try and figure out how to get rid of them.
I found an interesting answer that made me rescind my decision to get rid of them: for one, it's about as impossible as trying to remove common house spiders, but centipedes have the added benefit of rarely, if ever, biting humans! (Unlike spiders). Furthermore, much like our spidery friends, they eat pest-insects and don't carry any diseases for humans to worry about. Little friends, cleaning up my floor! They still give me a fright when I encounter them, but I have a new appreciation.

As for the Scolopendra variety that I've never encountered irl, I think it's the fact they look like awesome dragon monsters to me. All of those segments, the spiky legs, the curly antennae, the pincers that are really modified legs... darn it, they look like they could kill you and enjoy it! But in an extremely cool way. They're like Scorpions but with a much more pleasing (to me) body plan. I love millipedes too, don't get me wrong, but there's something about the deadly elegance of the centipede...
Oh, and mother centipedes curl around their ball of eggs (and babies, when they hatch) and it's extremely adorable. Check out this adorable picture (warning, BIG centipede curled around a BUNCH of tiny little baby centipedes) of a momma protecting her young! They're doting parents.
Sorry, I lied about the pics... it's just too precious not to share.

@bulrush - Sharing the bug love is all it takes for the badge! Doesn't have to be your own pic. =:)

[img]https://naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/7-24-10-gallium-sphinx-moth-img_2987.jpg[/img] here is a picture of a gallium sphinx moth i think is very nice, someone posted earlier a tomato hornworm which is the larval stage of this moth. i've no idea what species we have where i live because i've never been able to get a close look at our hawkmoths but i think they're a really neat species! the way they fly is incredible that's why it was so hard for me to figure out it was even a hawkmoth i was seeing in our backyard. [img]https://earthlingnature.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/anastoechus_nitidulus2.jpg[/img] also just a bee fly which is one of the badges for you guys's push, its so cool there's even a pokemon based off of it!

I did some digging for fossil arthropods yesterday at my new job!

For context, I live in an area with really abundant invertebrate fossils - about 300 million years ago, the whole region was a shallow sea that would have looked like a screenshot from Subnautica.

There's a park outside of town that used to be a quarry - the digging exposed a really rich fossil bed, and the same nonprofit that runs our science museum bought the land and converted it into a nature preserve. You can go down there, pay a small fee, and leave with whatever fossils you find. (Most fossil sites don't allow you to freely take things home.)

I got hired for the summer as an attendant/tour guide, and yesterday was my first day on the job. Part of my work is to collect small fossils for the "grab bags" we sell as souvenirs, so I was out there with a bucket gathering fossil shells, trilobites, and coral.

There were some guys there who were apparently regular visitors, and they'd shown up with stonecutting tools and sledgehammers to get some trilobites. (There's enough fossils that you can usually just collect what's on the surface without digging more than a couple of cm. They were hardcore fossil collectors.) They pulled up some really nice specimens, and their digging exposed some nice bits and pieces that they were fine with me taking - they only cared about trilobites, not coral or shells.

Just realized that I should probably explain what a trilobite is, because not everyone is a geologist or lives in an area where you can find them. [img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Trilobita_Diversity.png/1920px-Trilobita_Diversity.png[/img] Trilobites are extinct marine arthropods that went out of business shortly before the first dinosaurs began to evolve. In terms of ecology, they were very similar to isopods - small scavengers that lived on the seafloor and defended themselves from predators by curling up into armored spheres. There were thousands of species of them, and they shed and replaced their exoskeletons throughout their lives, meaning that fossils of them are much easier to find than, say, dinosaur bones. (Going through multiple shells meant that each one had multiple chances to leave behind a fossil.) They're popular with fossil collectors because you can easily see what they looked like when they were alive from the fossil, and they're common enough that a nice specimen isn't crazy expensive or at the "this should be in a museum" level of rarity.

I still can't believe that I got hired for a job where my main responsibilities include infodumping to people about paleontology and scrambling around like a goblin looking for cool rocks. Both of those are things I already do without getting paid for them...

[center][color=maroon][size=7][b]BUG FACTS![/b][/size][/color] [emoji=butterfly size=2] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=rhino beetle size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=butterfly 3 size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=spider size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=butterfly 2 size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=blue bee size=1] [size=4][b]Parental Care in Bugs![/b] Parental care is something commonly seen in vertebrates, and sometimes very obvious in animals such as birds, cats and dogs. Still, there’s parental care in invertebrates, and lots of interesting examples come from arthropods. From an evolutionary point of view, parental care does make sense – by caring for your eggs and/or your young, you’re effectively raising the odds of their survival. It would make sense, then, that this behaviour is selected and maintained through evolution, right? Interstingly, it appears that although genes and genetic expression do play some role in parental care, it seems there’s a huge overlap in function for these specific genes, as they are also related to many other metabolic processes and behaviours; also, the environment seems to also play an important role in maintaining paternal care. The details of the genetics and epigenetics of this, though, are very much a complex field of study and out of the scope of this fun post (I will, however, recommend a book that talks about this that I find very interesting!). The most basic form of direct parental care is remaining near the eggs, sometimes remaining after they hatch to protect the young from predators - [i]Umbonia crassicornus[/i], a species of treehoppers, displays a behaviour of buzzing to alert young of nearby predators, for example. The same is seen in young, buzzing to inform their mother of a nearby threat. [img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Umbonia_crassicornis_%28F_Membracidae%29.jpg[/img] [b]Umbonia crassicornus [i]with nymphs near an adult[/i].[/b] [i]Umbonia crassicornus[/i] also displays another interesting form of parental care: the mothers create spiral slits on plants, where the offspring can feed. Similarly, some species have brooding behaviour – have you ever seen, perhaps, a spider carrying around an egg sac? Although not the norm, it’s observed in some species! Some scorpions can carry their young on their backs for a little while, another way of caring and protecting the offspring. An interestingly complex form of parental care involves feeding the young; there’s a species of spider, [i]Stegodyphys lineatus[/i], that regurgitates food for the spiderlings and, eventually, the mother sacrifices herself so the young can feed. Juveniles of social spiders may also display collective hunting and feeding. [img]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Forficula-auricularia-04-fws.jpg[/img] [b]Forficula auricularia, [i]a species of earwig, also displays parental care in the form of regurgitating food for the young[/i].[/b] [emoji=butterfly size=2] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=rhino beetle size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=butterfly 3 size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=spider size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=butterfly 2 size=1] [emoji=plague rune size=1] [emoji=blue bee size=1] Overall, it’s very interesting to observe how parental care evolved throughout the tree of life. Invertebrates display many different patterns of parental care, with varying complexity. Have [i]you[/i] ever seen an example of parental care while observing bugs? Oh! By the way, the book I mentioned? It's right there below as a reference. It's a really interesting read, although it doesn't focus solely on invertebrates and rather talks about the evolution of parental care throughout the tree of life. ----- [size=2][url=https://academic.oup.com/book/25631]Kölliker, M. (2012). The Evolution of Parental Care (N. J. Royle & P. T. Smiseth, Eds.). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199692576.001.0001[/url] Images from [i]Wikimedia Commons[/i]! [/size] [b]Entomology Club - The Daily Pinglist![/b] @BeeWhisperer @Gormanghaste @Kauria @Tinytrashchild @TETRAHEDR0N @Airazon @KryoMichli @Vertigris @Doozie @BunnySox @kilorechoy Want to join? Just let me know!