#insects tag

[sherwind]

look at my little praying mantis...

[1ore]

(slides under your door) do you have anything fun to share about mosquitos...... I'd love to hear about them 👀

took me a sec but WOOOO SKEETER FAX LETS GOOOOO

Apart from being important prey for birds and bats and fish and other insects, mosquitos are also pollinators! In fact, mosquito diversity spiked right around the same time that flowering plants appeared. Today they're ~nectarivores that happen to have an infamous dracula hobby, so this makes sense. "Nectarivores" gets a tilde because nectar isn't really the only thing that mosquitos eat (and neither is blood, for that matter.) They also eat fruit, honeydew (sugary aphid secretions), and plant tissue fluids, among other things.

Mosquitos are particularly important pollinators in the arctic North, where their mass spawning coincides with the short growing season. Someone needs to be responsible for all those fruits and berries 💪😤 it's hard work but honest.

One plant that has an especially close relationship with skeeters is the blunt-leaved orchid, Platanthera obtusata. Mosquitos have a keen sense of smell, which they use to discern between the scent of P. obtusata and other closely-related orchids in the same genus.

Of course, female mosquitos use the same sniffer to track you down, when they need the protein and iron necessary to lay eggs. This is the only time they really need to ingest blood, so mosquitos technically aren't true parasites because they don't continuously feed on the same organism throughout their lives (depending ofc on your definition of parasite.)

A bizarre detail about mosquitos that ingest human blood: certain plants contain the same chemical scents that mosquitos use to track down humans. This might point to how the 200-odd species of mosquitos that utilize human blood ended up on the evolutionary pathway that they did. (do we smell like flowers to them, or do flowers smell like us? 🤔)

On the flip side, there are mosquitos that go their whole lives without ever touching a drop of blood. Genus Toxorhynchites is one such example. Funny enough, their larvae actually predate on other mosquitos. Toxorhynchites splendens in particular is used to control the common disease vector, Aedes aegypti.

They're also..................... big mclargehuge.

Toxorhynchites Also contains some of the 'prettiest' skeeters.

Aedes aegypti is not native where I live (climate change is causing their range to expand north and south in much of the world, including where they've been introduced) but I think her tiger stripes are endearing. VVV

They make her easy to identify, once you know what to look for. There aren't many other introduced skeeters where I'm at, so it makes the more subdued native species more notable to me.

Culiseta inornata ^^^ one such native species, typically prefers other critters over humans for draculing.

I think mosquitos are neat! it bums me out that so many people only know about the ones that cause problems, and advocate for their eradication without realizing what a diverse group they are and what they do for the world around them. Not to say that 'pest' species of mosquitos don't have their reputations for a reason, but they do have a place in this world and have their own intrinsic worth. I like to think they teach us important lessons about our intimate, inescapable relationship with the natural world as funnie apes of the earth. and also how to stay humble.

Skeeters.............................

[m0r1bund]

[Image: Two illustrations. The first is a mesa top wreathed in green. The sky is low and heavy with stormclouds, grey sheets of rain rolling over distant canyons. The grass reaches for the sky, almost as tall as the basalt boulders scattered around the fields.

Two men wade through the green, holding one another’s hands.

The second spread is of Ashe, kneeling in that endless field. He shares the good weather with antelopehorn milkweed (Asclepias asperula) and tarantula hawk wasps (Genus Pepsis), who fly to and fro between the flowerheads. An especially docile one rests on the man’s knuckles, even as he rubs the tears from his eyes.

And if he’s brought to tears by something other than the rain, well--that’s just as well.]

And the suffering, one way or the other it will go away

It's all at rest 'cause I found a better place

◆

Feat. My three favorite men that could make me cry like a baby if they so chose to: tarantula hawk wasps, Morgan, and Ashe.

What a prohibitively busy semester. Good because that keeps me from getting in trouble, not so good because I am biting at the bit to draw.

Had an epiphany the other morning that this stage of my life would be unrecognizable to the me of just a few years ago, in no small part thanks to the kindness of people around me and the desert in general. I have been thinking about these captures of Perry Mesa during unusually wet seasons as well, and certain people who also go through radical transformations when the weather humors them.

[cygnahime]

It’s starting to be Lyme disease season over here, and by “here” I mean “in the woods, where I live” and by “starting” I mean “I’ve found two dog ticks so far on my personal body after doing normal daily tasks”.

Avoiding contact with ticks is just - not possible. They fall from branches onto my arms.

Sure would be nice if there were some kind of preemptive medical treatment I could take to make sure I didn’t get sick.

Fuckin antivaxxers!

[javert]

one school i work at is full of wasps, especially the bathroom, there’s usually like 3-4 flying around in there at any given time

[javert]

b/c I’m late to everything, some 2015 selfies

haven’t posted many selfies on tumbler dot com this yr b/c it’s decided it doesn’t like my webcam

anyway if you want more quality content like this, add me on snapchat- I’m natsinator on there

[cleromancy]

transgenderer replied to your post:A BUG JUST FLEW UP MY NOSE AND NOW I AM DEAD

What kinda bug are we talking here? Like gnat, beetle, fly etc? Those are all different experiences

im not a bug scientician but it was a p small fly. like maybe a lil bigger than fruitfly sized 

[cleromancy]

cooltrainershells replied to your post:geisterweg replied to your post:im too lazy to...

one time a cockroach fell on me when I was sleeping, idk that’s p. evil

that cockroach, specifically, is chaotic evil