#nemaglev

Cyrtepistomus castaneus? From the MAGLEV impact area of Patuxent Wildlife Research Refuge and the Beltsville AG Center.  Not sure of my determination here, but it picture books to this weevil.  Picture by Cole Cheng. 

Zygogramma suturalis. One of the ragweed beetles. We rail against this plant. Nothing good...weed....allergies. But, it is our weed, native to the Americas, used in pollen profiles of soil cores going back millenia to mark the presence of open soils (ruderal in the parlance of the soiloglogists). taxonomically branded into a genus deliciously and sensually named Ambrosia, copious seed for doves and voles, and host plant for a whole group of insects... one of which you see here. What's not to like? We create the open poor soils it likes, it is resistant to many of the herbicides we apply, its tough, native, supports wildlife. All that we do has consequences and is tracked in Nature's ledger, ultimately some one has to pay off the balance.  BARC WEST Maglev train yard proposed site. Photo by Cole Cheng.

Photo by Elizabeth Panner. New photographer in the lab.

Ah, this is the duck spider....so named by Anders, the tech who took the photo.  It is duckish, but it is not actually named the "duck spider".  Fact is we don't know what spider it is.  It is the sort of thing that ends up in few flicks of our nets in the globally rare Pinus rigida forests of the Beltsville Ag center.  

Ah, here is one of the most annoying of insects (to mammals that is) a tabanid fly, aka deer fly. But almost all of them have some sort of beautiful neon rainbow eye pattern to gift those who look closely.  There must be reasons for this, and to make matters more interesting, it appears that there are many patterns to these color TV eyes, to some extent, by inspection of strings of pictures, they appear to be species specific.  More to learn.  I have a back shot I will put up, to help with ID, as there are many species in the state of Maryland.  I also find this group to be more common in the region's wild areas than in the average backyard.  This fly marker of biodiversity was captures where the MAGLEV corporation hopes to put in a 200 acre trainyard and repair facility. Photo by Anders Croft

Mini Beetle.  There had been a notion that Coleoptera were the most populous arthropod order.  But the long neglected micro-hymenoptera (and micro-hymenopterists) have presented information that indicates that this may not actually be the case and they not beetles are the queens of diversity.  Whatever.  This beetle is only about 2 mm or so...no face shot since we are really just taking photos to show how diverse the Maglev impact sites are on our research centers.   And.  We are also working on diversity surveys as a technique and doing some fancier mechanisms to document that diversity.  Watch this site pilgrims.  Photo by Jade Louis.  Big hug to all beetles and coleopterists.  

A very small,  but well marked with small flattened hairs, beetle from the MAGLEV impact site on the Beltsville Agriculture Research Center.  So much Biodiversity out there that no one person can even identify the species. Photograph by Cole Cheng.

OMG. Adhesive Putty Discovery!  Daniel Yuan (volunteer in our lab) showed me some Yellow Handitak putty (normal people use this to put posters on the wall  or pictures of their "children" on the frig) and I thought I would give it a go on a very tiny beetle (see in comparison to pins in photo) that I am of the notion is a buprestid. I simply stuck the putty  on the end of a pin and lightly touched the beetle in a petri dish and it stuck...I swung it about and it did not fall off!  Good by glue for our picture taking.   All sorts of things come to mind now.  I have ordered some white putty (sadly black putty seems not to exist) so we don't have to deal with yellow blobs in pictures (hmmm, maybe I could cover the rest of the ball with glitter (maybe not, bad for baby dolphins), or sand...beads? ... poppy seeds?)).  This mini-beetle from the MAGLEV Beltsville Research Center trainyard site.  Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun, and then, boom, Adhesive Putty.