#nemaglev

[usgsbiml]

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.  

[usgsbiml]

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.

[usgsbiml]

A marker of death.  One of the green bottle flies (Lucilia species).  You have seen this fly.  It feeds on dead things.  Common and a good cleaner upper if you like your dead things in the woods to be primarily bone.  Found on the MAGLEV train yard site on Beltsville Ag Center.  Unlike all the other species we have featured, this one will remain if the trainyard is built.  Pretty really, if you can disassociate from its preferred food.  I think of one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –   The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air –   Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –   And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset – when the King Be witnessed – in the Room –  

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away What portions of me be Assignable – and then it was There interposed a Fly –  

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –   Between the light – and me –   And then the Windows failed – and then I could not see to see –

        - Emily Dickinson

Photo by Elizabeth Panner. New photographer in the lab.

[usgsbiml]

Basic small ant from MAGLEV impact zone on Beltsville Agriculture Research Center.  For something so small there is a lot of architecture going on here.  I imagine it is identifiable to species. Perhaps a Myrmica?  In addition to just the unbelievable numbers of individuals per acre there are 128 species known from Maryland alone.  The amount of energy that passes through the ant kingdom with their endless toil spent tending, eating, rototilling the leaf letter, eating vegetation, perforating the soil, eating other insects and providing food, forage, and parasitism possibilities for all sorts of other creatures is worth a meditation on the scale of the individual human versus an ant.  Reminds me of one of my favorite Twain quotes (referring here to the ultrafamous Admiral Nelson of 100 years ago...). "Nelson would have been afraid of ten thousand fleas, but a flea wouldn't be afraid of ten thousand Nelsons."  - Mark Twain oh, photo by the inimitable Cole Cheng.  And yes, all ants will be gone if the MAGLEV is built.

[usgsbiml]

Think about crickets.  At this time of year (in the Eastern N. Am.) you can go outside on any warm night and you will hear choruses of many different species.  Some, you can't hear because their calls are so upregister.  A few don't call.  They process leaves, dead things, shred the environment, provide food, and lilt our environment with their song.  The audio counterpart of flowers.  .  Photo by Anders Croft.

[usgsbiml]

This fly mostly eye.   I don't know my flies well, so am not sure if this is actually one of the big-headed flies or something similar with its head mostly made up of its compound eyes.  This critter is small and taken with a 10x microscope objective on a 200mm lens and this is the underside of the head rather than the top...they compound eyes meet at the top...but then severla groups of flies have eyes that meet at the top...or nearly so.  Magnificent creatures. 

[usgsbiml]

What is in this picture? Here you have the head of an insect pin on the right and, as what now much be obvious, a very tiny fly. Much of the species count, the biodiversity, the creatures that give us a livable workable world are extraordinarily small. This example came form netting in the BARC WEST maglev train site. Any guesses as to what genus of fly this must be? Even though minute...check out the minutisisimo hairs on the wing of this fly. Photo by Anders Croft.

[usgsbiml]

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.