Dorsal view by the same photographer:

And from the side:

(source: Sherwood & Hatchard, 2026. A case of gynandry and intersexuality in Phidippus regius C. L. Koch, 1846 (Araneae: Salticidae))

Charles Turner was born in the United States just a few years after the end of the civil war. His brilliance was evident from the start, and after graduating valedictorian of his high school class he quickly went on to earn his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in short order. While in school, Turner’s relentless curiosity became his greatest advantage. He was drawn to and fascinated by topics that were largely ignored by modern science at the time, namely the cognitive behaviors of insects and other invertebrates. While many of his colleagues believed insects to be mindless automata acting on instinct alone, Turner felt deeply that the brains of these oft overlooked animals were far more complex than the scientific community suspected. He performed extensive experiments to test his theories and found overwhelming evidence of problem solving and individualism among organisms as small as ants and spiders.

By the time Turner earned his zoology pHD in 1907 he had published dozens of papers in highly esteemed journals and had even co-authored a book. It is likely that Turner was the first African American to earn a pHD from the University of Chicago. With such a sparkling academic reputation and enormous body of research, one would expect this candidate to have no issues obtaining a professorship at a prestigious school. Though by every right Turner should have been head of science department at a top university, the systemic racism that permeated academia meant that doors a white man would have walked through were locked and bolted shut for Charles Henry Turner.

Turner did not allow this prejudice to dim in any way his blindingly bright passion for knowledge. He took a job as a high school teacher, and continued to perform and publish research on his own all while he instilled his students with a love for zoology. He published more than 70 papers in extremely respected journals and he remained passionately curious for the entirety of his life. If I tried to list here all of the incredible discoveries Turner made in his lifetime it would take me days to sufficiently express the impact he had on the field of invertebrate behavior. His experiments were so ahead of their time that entomologists today marvel at his research and wonder how much more we would know if Turner’s work had been given the attention and respect of other scientists working at the time. Turner’s mind was about a century ahead of those entomological contemporaries who had no interest in giving him a seat at the table. His tombstone simply reads “scientist”

Almost every single larva is female, and after two moults becomes reproductively mature, while still a larva. These give live birth to more female larvae through parthenogenesis. That’s it, they’re larvae that give birth to more larvae, all female parthenogenic species of insect aren’t exactly super uncommon though. However, while larviform adult females are kinda common in beetles, these are not that, they’re straight up larvae, no pupation involved.

Things change though when you turn up the heat. See, when conditions get way too hot most of them will die, however some of the second instar larvae, instead of turning into reproductive larvae, pupate and turn into adult female beetles. Some of the reproductive third instar larvae though produce an egg, which they do not lay nor give live birth to. Instead this develops inside her and eats her from the inside out, before pupating and becoming an adult male.

This in itself is weird but still not exactly unheard of in insects, the little freaks. Nah where this gets weird as shit is that, as far as we can tell, this is an error that shouldn’t happen anymore. Because, at least according to the one paper that really studied this (though I’ve a few thoughts in the read more), these adults are broken. They hatch out, leave the log, mate and…oh that’s it. They’re not actually able to breed. They show mating behaviours, complex mate competition and choice, dispersal behaviour as you might expect, but these adults don’t actually have functioning reproductive organs. The males are not capable of fertilising anything, the females do not produce eggs.

They’re evolutionary ghosts, a remnant of a past when under conditions of stress they could produce adults that left the log, mated and colonised new wood.

Maindronia beieri and Adamsiana sp.

Psychopsis mimica and Enchoptera nigricornis

Menidon falcatus and Celyphus sp. (pretty identifiable as flies still but christ just look at these things)

Unidentified hemipteran and Penicillidia conspicua (I'm familiar with hippoboscoids but again this would feel wrong not to include)

Scaphidomorphus bosci and Peloridora kuscheli

Paralecanium sp. (I know scale insects but it gets to a point. You are a 2D object) and Formiscurra indicus

Gardena melinarthrum and Dorymyrmex sp.

Stathmopoda orbiculata and Horama plumipes

Lagrecacanthops guyanensis and Caurinus tlagu

Unidentified thrips and unidentified lepidopteran

Merope tuber and Apterobittacus apterus

Nallachius americanus and Apioscelis sp. (+ bonus proscopiid because I love these guys)

Cylindracheta campbelli and Psedna nana

Myrmecophilus acervorum and Homoeogryllus orientalis

A Wilke's Mining Bee (Andrena wilkella) taking a break to blow some bubbles concentrate some nectar

July 15, 2025