National BugAss Repository

Who cares about the Trampstampz, send me pics of cool bugs.

[crevicedwelling]

hi this is Tetra. they are a Japanese camel cricket (Diestrammena japanica) I’ve been raising over the winter after I found them as a baby.

I believe Tetra may be intersex since they have a much shorter ovipositor than a typical female, and I’d originally thought they were male as a younger nymph.

their hobbies include dwelling in crevices, eating dead roaches and cardboard, and spitting brown goop when picked up

btw Tetra is short for tetrabromomethane

[bugass-official]

Went apple picking for the first time today and i got to try so many apples i've never had before. The grocery store? limiting. you cannot simply take a bite and see if you like them. so i never did, i just knew red delicious sucked and honeycrisp were good and didn't know much about other kinds. i didn't really know there were such differences in apple flavor and texture profile.

being enCOURAGED to try all the apples and exploring how i felt about each type was enlightening! they're all different! Gibson Golds and Ida Reds and Snow Sweets and Empires--if you want a red delicious that's actually good, get an empire--and evercrisps (though i prefer honeycrisps to evercrisps, but if you like softer and sweeter flavor, evercrisps are IT),,,, so many

[bugass-official]

Repurposing this blog into me shitpostinf about my pets and adhd

[onenicebugperday]

Moss-mimic Bugs from Ecuador

All photos by Andreas Kay

1. Caterpillar, Saturniidae 2. Katydid, Championica sp. 3. Inchworm caterpillar, Geometridae 4. Stick insect, Trychopeplus thaumasius? 5. Grasshopper, Sciaphilacris sp. 6. Mantis, Pogonogaster latens? 7. Unidentified caterpillar 8. Katydid, Anaphidna sp.

[invertebrates]

wish i’d evolved to mimic moss and lichen :/ damn

[humblegrub]

uwu

[platycryptus]

Dewdrop spiders (Argyrodes) are small silvery spiders that live in the webs of larger spiders, like this golden silk spider (Nephila clavipes) whose massive web hosts several of them.

Argyrodes feed kleptoparasitically on insects trapped by the larger spider. In this case a dewdrop spider is sharing a dead honeybee with several jackal flies (Milichiidae), which are also specialized kleptoparasites of spiders and other predators.

Though Argyrodes are typically assumed to be freeloaders, studies have shown that their reflective silvery appearance can attract more moths and other prey to the host‘s web, and that they most often feed on leftovers and small prey that the host spider doesn’t want.

[humblegrub]

isopod tea party 🥺

[humblegrub]

spiderweb preservation DIY

(just make sure the resident has vacated first...)

[humblegrub]

I just went on a little journey. Would you like to come with?

While searching for the creator of this image (above), I learned the artist was someone named Mandy Howe.

As an artist, it's important for me to provide credit where it's due and link directly to other artists whenever possible. The link provided on the website seemed to be only to her old Facebook page- I wanted to see if she had an updated art or bug Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, whatever. I was excited - A fellow artist! A fellow enthusiast! Here's what I learned on my search.

--

Mandy Howe was a self taught arachnologist, like so many people on here. She went by Lady Arachnophile online. She found spiders to be beautiful, misunderstood creatures and loved them her whole life, and that enthusiasm helped a lot of people get over their personal fear of spiders. She took up a more serious interest in araneology (the study of spiders) starting around 2004. Her dedication led to her being employed as an independent research scientist providing web-based scientific support in araneology. She was a contributing editor for BugGuide.net, spiders.us (now spiderid.com), among other places. Personally, as someone who is also "self taught", I love stories of other people following their passions, especially without formal degrees.

Then, the sad news. Mandy died in 2016. It seems like the news hit everyone she knew - and didn't know - hard. She was such a beloved member of the North American arachnology community. Her work and photographs have been included in several scientific papers and books. In 2019, a spider was named after her. Epiceraticelus is a genus of North American dwarf spiders containing two species: Epiceraticelus fluvialis and Epiceraticelus mandyae. Pic below is from BugGuide.net.

I wrote this post because I'm in awe of what she accomplished and I don't want her to be forgotten.

Thank you, Mandy Howe.

--

TLDR; citizen scientists change the world and being dedicated to your field can earn you a treasured spot in both the memory of your peers and the taxonomic record.

[babyfoxcollectionthings]

[huffylemon]

[kommunistkaitou]

According to my brother, the camera operators are told in advance when they're going to be cut to or at least given a heads-up, so this guy assumed he was safe to use his camera basically as a pair of binoculars bc he wasn't supposed to get the focus. But the person who was switching between camera feeds accidentally cut to his camera by mistake instead of the one that was supposed to be filming, so they ended up televising what was supposed to me one man's private cockroach observation moment.

[bowelflies]

DEPLOY THE BOYS

[bogleech]

You really won’t ever appreciate how cool insect wings are until you’ve seen all this footage. The ones with wing covers that completely open up are beetles, by the way, but the ones LIKE beetles whose protective cover remains in place are bugs. Bug is supposed to be a special term for just one insect group! Mid-way through is an earwig’s wings, which is neither a beetle nor a bug, but does have very beetle-like wing cases.

[severeannoyance]

I’m so glad earwigs got their due here. They do some amazing origami to fold their wings up small enough under their wing cases.

[snuggleslug]

day 7 of @saturniidays insectober = social! let me walk you through the thought process on this one...😅

first, googling "social insects" (here's a good article on degrees of sociality in insects) ➡️ ended up on the ants wikipedia page ➡️ found the wikipedia page for honeypot ants ➡️ started ideation on what a good drawing of ants would look like ➡️ learned that some cultures eat honeypot ants ➡️ thought "wouldn't honeypot ant boba be a cool and funky future beverage??" ➡️ social insects as a drink you have when being social ➡️ here we are 😅

sorry if this is too "gross" for anyone, I just thought it was too cool of an idea to pass up lol👉👈🥺

[bugass-official]

Armadillidium granulatum.

Music is Snowpoint City Chill Remix by GlitchXCity

I got these as part of another order because they were on sale for $12. Didn't have high expectations since my first attempt to keep Armadillidium didn't go super well, but these were actually my first isopods to reproduce! You can see a few young pods scattered in here. They've been so chill the whole time I've had them, and now they're my reluctant favorite, even more so than my p. ornatus. If someone told me to grab one isopod colony to take with me for the rest of my life, it's gonna have to be these.

I'm still relatively new to podkeeping: my oldest colony is still barely a year old and only three adults remain, but I'm starting to get the hang of it and several have reproduced!

[pigeon-feet]

bye

[onenicebugperday]

Giant wood moth, Endoxyla cinereus, Cossidae. Found in Australia.

Giant wood moths can have a wingspan of around 23 centimeters. Larvae are wood borers, and along with other similar species, are commonly referred to as witchetty grubs. An interesting twitter thread here explaining how the term witchetty grub was derived from an indigenous term

Photos 1-2 by jessster78, 3-5 by questagame, 6-7 by vicfazio3, 8 by rqy-yong, 9 (larvae) by Sputnikcccp, and 10 (pupa) by orlandob

[fryeshiverbigman-deactivated202]