A male Phidippus audax, aka a bold jumping spider. "Audax" means bold; I don't know if it refers to the spider's color pattern or its behavior. Honestly, it could be both. This handsome one posed nicely for me exactly seven years ago today, 1/6/2019.

this NPR write-up includes one of our 2025 new spider species! www.npr.org/2025/12/31/n....

Here's an early-instar ladybug larva in my rain-soaked backyard this morning. I like these spiky little aphid-eaters, but what I really like in this photo are the nodes on the manzanita plant, which look like creepy little ghoul fingers 🧟‍♂️ 🐙🌿 #bugsky

Birds are easy. Share your first *living* arthropod of the year. Please don’t dig for one, disturbing its diapause or habitat. My first was a small midge (Chironomidae) on the fence in our backyard. Leavenworth, Kansas, USA a few minutes ago. #bugsky #insect

I have updated my Lightroom watermarks to 2026 and changed the copyright to 2026 in my camera’s metadata settings. That’s my work for the new year sorted. Time for a nap.

25 for '25 – 🧵 of some favorite photos from the year, some picked for the quality of the photo, some for the quality of the memory, some for both. Cheers: 🌿🐙🐸📷 First up, here's the lone phone pic of the bunch, a one-handed shot of a European mantis taking flight from my fingertip (Montana)

I think this is my favorite single photo from 2025. I’m not sure exactly why but I think it’s because of how casual the Bobcat looks. (Bobcat, August 2025) #mammals #cats #2025recap

These are all fantastic - I especially love the hornworm and the spider ant 🐜

The tenth photo in my 25 for '25 series, a Snapping Turtle hatchling. #Turtles #Animals #Nature #Wildlife #Nature #Photography #PhotographersUnited #Photo #EastCoastKin #WildlifePhotography

Not the primary purpose of our Australia trip, but I did take some photos and have been uploading to my recents gallery:

Galaxy Spood 🌌 #InverteFest There's a tiny Micaria species of ground spider which looks like a galaxy full of stars and I love them 🖤

My daughter gave me a carnivorous plant for Christmas and I love it. (And she even made the ceramic pot.) It’s a tropical pitcher plant, Nepenthes spectabilis. Bugs are attracted to the pitchers, fall in and drown, and are dissolved by digestive enzymes. So cool. 🪰💀

A break in the rain Photos taken in my backyard this morning using a 1964 lens attached with an adapter to my modern camera. If you care to look closer, one photo has a bug, and another has evidence of where a bug was busy. 📷

Merry Christmas. May you have a day as happy as I did way back when I got the present ever. (For an explanation of the present, see alt text) 🪲🐙🕷️🦎

Have yourself a merry little Carboniferous. #Art #SciArt #PaleoArt #Inverts

Today I have something really special for you guys! Not too far from the caiman I posted recently, I found something MIND BLOWING This is a butterfly pupa, and it mimics the head of a snake. And not just any snake, but specifically the head of a boa snake!!! Probably Opsiphanes, an owlet butterfly.

I may have overcrowded the cookie sheet and ended up with ginger cubes

I haven't been taking many pictures the last couple of weeks, (and today it's pouring rain), but here's a photo I took on Christmas Eve three years ago, of a single green lacewing egg in my garden. Think of it as a wrapped present with a bug in it. 🎁🌿🐙📷 #bugsky

I don't know if it counts as a holiday miracle or the start of a biological horror novel (why-not-both meme), but this morning while picking blood oranges I found a hummingbird nest with a mummified baby hummingbird in it.🪹🐣💀

Starting tomorrow we're supposed to get several inches of rain here in the Los Angeles area. So I made the necessary preparations: I scattered a pound of mixed native wildflower seeds (from CA native plant nursery @theodorepayne.bsky.social) all over my front and back garden. 🌼 🌧️

Found a nest of one of my favorites! A true oddball. Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus, the red-headed spider ant.

It’s the “season of love and giving”…but this year, doesn’t it seem more like a “season of fear and taking”? Like many of you, I’ve been saddened by the human impact of draconian government budget cuts and how angry many housed Americans are at unhoused Americans. 🧵 1 of 9

Spring survivor #ArtAdventCalendar #Photography An overwintered Mourning Cloak butterfly warms up in the early spring sunshine

#TigerBeetles — the #Christmas lights of the #insect world! #biodiversity (Fig. 1 from Duran et al. 2020) doi.org/10.3390/genes1…

Here is your Wednesday White Weevil (Broad-nosed weevil, Colombia – zoom in on the face to see metallic pink-orange scales) #bugsky 🐙🌿

I have 3 little bottles of honey from 3 different species of stingless bees from my trip to Costa Rica earlier this year. I store them in a dark pantry like I do honeybee honey, but when I opened them today I discovered they’d started to ferment! Bee beer? Looks like I might get a bit of a buzz 🐝 🍺

Here is your Monday Moth. I think this pretty little insect is Portentomorpha xanthialis. They're found from the southern U.S. down into S. America; this one was in Colombia. #bugsky 🐙🌿

Put the tree up today🎄

Galaxy (Spider web, about two inches across, covered in micro-droplets of dew – North Carolina) #bugsky 🌿🐙📷🕷️

A little color to start off the weekend – a vibrant monkey grasshopper, Paramastax sp., from Colombia. They really do look like this - no saturation or vibrance added during processing. #bugsky 🐙🌿

This grasshopper has all the angles. (Found at night in Colombia a couple of years ago) #bugsky 🌿🐙

Here is your Wednesday Weevil, waving. It's a broad-nosed weevil, (unsure of the species), that I spotted on a dirt road in the mountains of Colombia in '23. I initially moved to pick it up because I thought it was a small piece of trash, like a bit of shiny candy wrapper. 🐙🌿📷 #BugSky

I started getting reports of an unseasonal Joshua tree bloom in the last few weeks, and looking over records on @inaturalist.bsky.social it's pretty widespread! So we're putting out the call for folks to record this "bonus bloom" and help us study it 🌿 lab.jbyoder.org/2025/12/10/w...

This morning, the weather app on both my wife’s and my iPhones decided, unprompted, that we needed to know the conditions in the Arctic Ocean. I don’t know anybody currently swimming there, and have no travel plans, but maybe Apple knows something I don’t?

sandhill cranes landing at dusk Bosque del Apache, New Mexico

Post a photo of an animal that looks Gen-AI but is 100% real. Giant Anteros (Anteros kupris), Colombia

A caddisfly from a beautiful mid-October day in Montana a few years ago. My brother and I had hiked a few miles into the mountains; this little insect was on the shore of a half-iced lake. Temps that day started in single digits F. and barely got to 32. The white background is snow. 🐙🌿#BugSky

I have not yet visited Australia, but the bobtail skinks are calling

An eyed click beetle (Alaus sp., guessing A. zunianus), SE Arizona. The eye spots, through a combination of black pigment and structural absorption, absorb over 96% of light. Measured in STUs (Spinal Tap Units), how much more black could they be? The answer is none. None more black. 🐙🌿⚫⚫ #BugSky

Another from the archives, a baby Southern Alligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata) peeking out amid just-sprouting grass. These are common lizards in my yard, and a favorite detail is the shape of their pupils - the points top and bottom remind me of two Hershey's kisses stacked base-to-base. 🦎🌿📷

A Western Grebe my wife found huddled against an apartment building a few years ago. It was stuck because their feet are set back far on the body - better for swimming than walking - and they need a water runway to get airborne. We took it to a wildlife rehabber and it was released after a few days.

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you’ve seen in the wild: Death’s-head Hawk Moth Burying Beetle Lance Fly Bullet Ant Assassin Bug #novertebratesnoapologies

Enjoy a very large number of snow geese Volume up Bosque del Apache, New Mexico

Fluffy Kitten (Okay, a tarantula from last November in Brazil, but still very fluffy) 🐙🌿 #BugSky

This is the Sunburst Candy Spider from Thailand. Not AI (sucks to have to declare this). Very real and had been on my wish list for a long time. The taxonomic placement is unclear, so we are leaving it at Cyrtarachninae.

Our youngest kid got married yesterday, a destination wedding at the express window of our County Registrar and Recorder. It took about fifteen minutes, and everyone in the office clapped for them. It was honestly delightful. Hands down the best wedding I ever attended. Plus we had cupcakes after.

Here's a nice frog to start the week. I think it's Hylarana nicobariensis, sometimes called a cricket frog, from Borneo. Check out its toes - see the little tubercles/bumps on the underside? Not sure of their purpose, but maybe they help hold on to slippery surfaces like wet leaves and rocks. 🐸🌿

Sunday Surfing in the photo archives - here's a giant shield bug (family Tessaratomidae) from Malaysian Borneo awhile back. These are larger than the typical stink bugs we see here in the U.S. They can spray a defensive chemical that not only smells unpleasant, but can damage skin. 🐙🌿 #Bugsky

Blind cave spiders~ This occurs due to the process of regressive evolution. In an environment without light, vision provides no advantage in finding prey or avoiding predators. The loss of their eyes means that energy and resources once used for eyes are instead allocated to other traits.

The #BlueSkyArtShow theme of this week, #Small, is making me really happy. #Macrophotography is my favorite photography genre! To start really small, here is a Lacewing egg on its stalk. It is barely bigger than a hair. #Insects #Arthropods #Invertebrates #BugSky #SciArt