365 Aedeagi

Post insect genitalia illustrations every day. "All the insect genitalia are dressed up for a costume party on HP Lovecraft's birthday."

[zlkaiburington]

Genitalia from an undescribed Eucelatoria near leucophaeata. Hosts of this species are notodontid caterpillars. I am out of practice but I think this is still nice.

[zlkaiburington]

Female terminalia sample, for publication.

[zlkaiburington]

A sample parade of fly genitalia for an upcoming publication. You’ll note some stylistic evolution; they’re ordered from the first I completed to most recent. I’m going to try to rectify the differences.

[zlkaiburington]

I wrote a book!

About using Inkscape to make genitalia drawings and other sorts of biological line drawings faster, easier, and prettier. http://trichopterology.blogspot.com/2017/05/using-inkscape-for-biological.html

[zlkaiburington]

Vibrissina sp. (Diptera: Tachinidae) While this still needs to be checked against the specimen again, I’m particularly proud of the lines in this one. I can definitely see a stylistic evolution between the Lixophaga posted earlier and this. In the last several weeks I’ve completed 12 illustrations, and this was one of the last ones.

[zlkaiburington]

Been experimenting with Inkscape recently, making figures for my dissertation. Here’s one of Lixophaga, a tachinid in the tribe Blondeliini but not closely related to my “keel and piercer” Blondelia group flies. But externally they look very similar, almost identical to some Eucelatoria spp. The shape of the cercus in tail end view almost looks like the pincers of earwigs, something you don’t really find in the Blondelia Group.

I’ve been using a couple tricks to take down my production time: One, I’ve been using raw four-picture photostacks of the genitalia as base sketches rather than hand drawings. This allows me to more accurately represent proportions. And Two, I’ve been extensively using the ‘Tweak’ tool, which allows me to easily vary line thicknesses. From importing the raws into inkscape to laying down the white background took me ~2 hours in total for the three drawings. Although, these drawings aren’t quite finished, I still need to check them against the specimen and make sure there are no glaring errors. I’m overall please with the style here, simple, yet pleasing to look at.

[zlkaiburington]

Sword fly WIP. Thorax complete now!

[zlkaiburington]

In Ralph Idema method, or close.

[zlkaiburington]

Female piercer of probable member of Eucelatoria obumbrata group. Illustrated using a new grid reticule eyepiece. Proportions are much more accurate.

[zlkaiburington]

Testing new hatching and stippling. Trying similar style to Ralph Idema.

[zlkaiburington]

Sword fly WIP. Head finished. Thorax and Wing started.

[zlkaiburington]

Vector WIP, Mexican sword fly. With new brushes, homemade today. White stroke around big hairs look okay? What do you think?

[morgandjackson]

OK, so ainulindalenya‘s post on Quenya insect orders got me thinking about Giant Eagle lice, and because I wanted to be able to sleep last night, I worked out whether they would present an issue for hobbits escaping Mordor.

TL;DR - Yes, yes they would.

Golden Eagles, which are big freaking eagles, harbour a common species of louse called Laemobothrion maximum (Scopoli), which, according to this paper, can get to be at least 10mm long. There may be larger eagle lice, but this is a nice round number.

Golden Eagles have a wingspan of about 7′8″, which is huge. But, Thorondor, the greatest of the Great Eagles, was reported to have a wingspan of 30 fathoms, or 180′, which is just plain silly, but I digress. Assuming everything scales proportionately between real eagles and Tolkien’s Great Eagles, and that Middle-earth had a higher atmospheric oxygen concentration than we do, in theory, Thorondor could have been home to feather lice that were roughly 12″ long.

Now, assuming that regular Giant Eagles are ~3/4 the size of Thorondor, that would make their lice about 8″ long. For reference, Frodo was rumoured to be almost 4′ tall, and taller than most hobbits. Even still, Great Eagle feather lice would conceivably be the size of his thigh.

I’m no expert when it comes to eagle jockeying, but I would expect that with an injured hand, at least a mild state of shock, and the emotional and physical exhaustion that comes from saving the world from evil (after being at least partly consumed by said evil), having a louse the size of his thigh crawling across him would probably freak Frodo (and equally, Sam) right the hell out, and potentially cause him to fall off his eagle steed.

But, having the hero survive the quest into Mount Doom only to be killed by a wayward eagle louse would make for a pretty anti-climatic ending to an epic trilogy, so I don’t blame Tolkien for delousing his eagles. I guess.

Now to figure out which wood-boring beetles were responsible for chasing the Entwives away…

[zlkaiburington]

Mystery fly head and abdomen (Tahcinidae: Blondeliini: Blondelia group). Pencil sketch.

[zlkaiburington]

#taxonomyday sketch: Nameless fly. Weird Blondelia group (Tachinidae: Blondeliini) female that fits no know genera. From the paremo of Ecuador. Yet another reason why we need taxonomists. This is the only specimen I have seen. Pencil sketch. Maybe a full drawing at some point.

[zlkaiburington]

365 Aedeagi rule change.

Rule 1. One illustration every day. Except not when I forget. Or I don’t have time for drawing.

Rule 2. Arthropods. Most of the time genitalia. Not always. Anything arthropod related okay. This blog started with genitalia only, but not anymore. Genitalia drawings all the time make me tired of drawing.

Rule 3. People can request genitalia drawings. Send me a message. For fun only, not publications. I don’t have time for that.

[zlkaiburington]

Eucelatoria sp. (Tachinidae: Blondeliini), genitalia, from Arizona. Xiphomyia group.

End 9 drawing marathon.