illinois
dr. dolittle | April 1, 2015Yesterday (Tuesday) was another great day for Comparative Physiology!
Congratulations to Dr. Arthur DeVries (above; Professor Emeritus, Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology; Professor of Animal Biology, University of Illinois), this year's recipient of the August Krogh Distinguished lecturer award from the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology section of the American Physiological Society. Dr. DeVries gave an excellent seminar summarizing his career studying fish that live in some of the coldest waters without freezing! The fish accomplish this amazing task by having anti-…
lborkowski | February 13, 2014After having delivered prime-time telecasts from the Olympic Games since 1988, NBC’s Bob Costas had to step aside due to a pink eye infection. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff opined that Bob Costas did the right thing, noting, “People turning up to work sick is actually a vexing problem for employers that could, by some estimates, cost them as much as $150 billion a year.” Sick employees showing up to work can more easily spread their diseases to co-workers and customers, as well as fellow carpoolers or transit riders.
In Costsas’ case, his initial reluctance to stay home (or in his hotel room) to…
awild | June 2, 2010The bold, playful style of Graphocephala coccinea, the candy-striped leafhopper, is all the rage this season:
photo details:
Canon EOS 7D camera
Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec
diffused twin flash
awild | April 20, 2010
Forget the heavy pro-grade camera gear for a moment. This shot was taken with a $300 Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 digicam. These small cameras do wide-angle macro exceptionally well, and their tiny sensors and lenses give them a small-world perspective that SLR cameras struggle to replicate. Here, I placed the camera on the ground underneath a foot-high canopy of mayapples.
grrlscientist | April 16, 2010tags: 5th Annual Book Cart Drill Team World Championship, Wagner, Ride of the Valkyries, 2009 American Library Association Annual Conference, Oak Park Public Library Warrior Librarians, Chicago, Illinois, library science, humor, funny, silly, streaming video
This is a very special video that is well suited to Silly Saturday. In fact, if this video doesn't convince you that you want to be a librarian when you grow up, well, you're beyond all hope and probably are a nascent alcoholic.
h/t: Faculty of 1000.
awild | April 16, 2010
Philothermus glabriculus (Cerylonidae)
Urbana, Illinois
A while back I noted that, at a rate of one beetle per week, I'd need about 10,000 years to get through all the described species. Since I made that comment we're getting closer to needing only 9,999 years, but if the Coleopterists keep discovering new ones I'm not sure what I'll do*. There are an awful lot of beetles.
In any case, this little Cerylonid is common under the bark of dead trees across eastern North America. Its diminutive size (only a couple millimeters long) makes it rather difficult to spot, so to find Philothermus you'…
awild | April 4, 2010
Prenolepis imparis - winter ant (queen)
Urbana, Illinois
Photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f13, 1/250 sec, diffused flash
awild | April 2, 2010Dendroides fire-colored beetle,
Illlinois
We in the Friday Beetle Department don't often turn our attention to immature beetles. But these Dendroides larvae are too striking to pass up.
Dendroides fire-colored beetles inhabit the flat, two-dimensional space under the bark of dead trees. The oddly compressed body helps this insect squeeze through tight spaces looking for food.
update: Identification updated, on closer examination of the urogomphi. I think everyone should spend more time examining urogomphi.
Photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f13, 1/…
awild | March 29, 2010"Ah, an easy one!" you might think.
But no. I'm only handing out 4 points for identifying this common Illinois ant species. I'm more interested in this ant's quarry, for six points: 2 each for order, family, and genus. First correct guess in each category gets the points.
The cumulative point winner at the end of April gets an 8x10 print from the gallery, or a guest blog post on a topic of their choosing.
awild | March 23, 2010What am I doing this summer?
Good question. I'm teaching Integrative Biology 496: Introduction to Beekeeping.
If you are a University of Illinois student and would like to learn about the biology of Apis mellifera and how to manage a small apiary for honey or just for fun, please consider this 8-week class. Enrollment is capped at 22 in order to maintain a reasonable student to hive ratio.
The class website is here.
awild | March 15, 2010
Ok, so we all know this is a wasp. But what's with the lumps near the tip of the abdomen?
Ten points for identifying the lump, and five points for anyone ambitious enough to put a name on the wasp, too.
awild | March 10, 2010Also, my first ever video blog:
Watch the HD version if you can. The ants are actually visible, if you squint.
awild | March 10, 2010At the time I photographed this little scene (at Bell Smith Springs, Illinois) I was myself unsure of the drama playing out on the oak gall. I sent pictures to wasp expert Hege VÃ¥rdal to see if my preliminary guess of a pair of gall parasites was worth anything. Her reply:
I believe that you are on the correct track concerning the specimens. It is probably an inquiline and a parasitoid trying to reach the gall chamber. It looks like a unilocular (one-chambered) gall. Often the inquiline female kills the gall wasp larva when ovipositing in the gall or alternatively the inquiline larva kills…
awild | March 8, 2010Alright, Sherlock. What's going on here?
Five points each for the identity of the big round thing, for the insect at the top, and for the insect at the side. Ten points for describing the story.
And a freebie point to anyone who comes up with an idea for what to do with all these points.
This scene was photographed in the fall in southern Illinois. Here are close-ups of the critters:
mystery wasp #1
mystery wasp#2
awild | February 25, 2010Speaking of bug horror movies:
If you can make it to Champaign-Urbana this weekend, the 2010 Insect Fear Film Festival will feature The Black Scorpion (1957) and Ice Crawlers (2003). The grad students are assembling art displays, face painting, and an impressively large arthropod petting zoo. The've even shipped in live horseshoe crabs, as well as bess beetles, tarantulas, ginormous grasshoppers & cockroaches, and others. It's tremendous fun.
awild | January 27, 2010Mark this on your calendar: February 27 is the 27th annual Insect Fear Film Festival. Hosted by the entomology graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the festival showcases two (usually terrible) arthropod movies. This year's delectable offerings are The Black Scorpion (1957) and Ice Crawlers (2003).
If bad movies aren't your thing, the festival also has an insect art competition, live insect displays, face painting, and other buggy entertainment. As way of a preview, Jo-anne posted her pics of last years event here. I've put the full announcement below:…
awild | January 14, 2010
Arilus cristatus, the wheel bug
Photo details: (top, middle) Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D.
ISO 100, f/13, 1/160 sec, diffused twin flash
(bottom) Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D.
ISO 200, f/11, 1/160 sec, diffuse overhead flash
awild | January 5, 2010Yesterday afternoon, perhaps tired of keeping up with the subzero temps, our furnace up and quit. We were able to keep the house somewhat above freezing until the repair guy installed the replacement bits this morning. We're all fixed now. But the outage wasn't without a bright side: the ice crystals on the windows grew especially wild:
awild | January 2, 2010Ice on the windows:
Photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D.
(top) ISO 250, f/4, 1/320 sec; (bottom )ISO 160, f/5, 1/500 sec
awild | October 2, 2009
Chlaenius sp. ground beetle, Urbana, Illinois
This colorful beetle came from our back yard. It's a ground beetle in the genus Chlaenius, recognizeable from its pubescent elytra and pungent defensive secretions. Like most ground beetles, Chlaenius makes a living as a predator.
The beetle's metallic sheen is not the result of a pigment but of fine microscopic sculpturing on the integument. This is evident when the insect is viewed at a different aspect: notice how the color turns to green in lateral view:
The same beetle, in sideview.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a…