wasps are nice

It only took me all semester, but i finally sat down and finished detailing my beloved glass Arapaima!

I will probably give the scales some touchups later, but i could not be happier with how this guy feels in the hand. Perfect size, perfect texture. I’ve been holding him & using him like a worry stone. Weighs a lovely 325g.

this sweet angel kept me company this morning after i found him sleeping on the side of the house. i put my finger in front of him and he quickly woke up, then climbed onto my finger almost immediately, which was surprising, and very endearing.

i spent some time in the yard, all the while he was walking between my hands, sipping leftover sugar on my skin from the donut i had for breakfast, or simply resting on my fingertips as i walked around. he flew off after a good half an hour/forty minutes. i was shocked he didn’t leave earlier. definitely one of the longer encounters i’ve had with a wasp, especially a bald faced.

Dolichovespula maculata, Bald Faced Hornet

This might be the biggest bug I've ever seen in the wild. It was sitting on a bush right by the sidewalk on the street I live on . . . it came to visit me.

Matera, Italy is famous for the Sassi, small homes built into the rock that supports the city. The residents shared the space with their farm animals. They were lived in until the 1950s.

Earwig, Auchenomus sp., Spongiphoridae

moths on lightsheet

It’s a fly-eat-fly world out there… in the sandy scrubland of central Florida, a hanging thief robberfly (Diogmites esuriens) devours a beefly (Exoprosopa fascipennis).

Interestingly enough, the beefly is a parasitoid that lays eggs in the nests of sand wasps (Bembix), which are themselves specialist hunters of flies including both beeflies and robberflies (though I’m not sure whether this hanging thief is too formidable to be on the wasps’ menu). Insect food webs are amazingly convoluted.