let me share a little story about a remarkable wasp that I encountered yesterday in our local deserts I stumbled across her, and scrambled to get a few crappy photos .... but then realized that she had a burrow, perhaps a better photo op was possible ?? here she is at her burrow entrance.

male harvester (Leuronychus) with a heavy mite load, San Bernardino Mtns, soCAL

i suppose that there are many rare spiders in North America ... here's one of the rarest, known only from a couple stream drainages in the San Bernardino Mtns of far southern California Hypochilus bernardino ... a classic spider

We love jumping spiders because they are smol, cute, active, friendly and always looking around curiously with their huge eyes. But do you know they’re also masters of mimicry? Check out the bugs they pretend to be (and some of those are really good)!💚💚

more norNV kit foxes at the den isn't she pretty? and such a nonchalant look

Oh them spiders !!

kit fox mama with kits, from a few months back, far northern Nevada. two more kits were in the burrow, and even though I waited patiently, I couldn't capture a frame will all together when I first drove past (at 55 mph) I thought to myself, "hmmm, prairie dogs". then I contemplated further ....

Hybridization and introgression are major evolutionary processes. Since the 1940s, the prevailing view has been that they shape plants far more than animals. In our new study (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... ), we find the opposite: animals exchange genes more, and for longer, than plants

Over 20 yrs of flying insect counts at a remote high(3000m)-mountain meadow in Colorado (by a very dedicated observer) shows insect counts fell by an average of 6.6%/yr, overall a 72.4% drop. The main culprit was rising summer temperatures, especially warmer nights. ½ www.earth.com/news/remote-...

#SciArtSeptember 9 - Vanishing The blue-eyed spotted cuscus is a marsupial native to West Papua. It's critically endangered, mostly because of habitat loss. Demand for palm oil is a major cause of deforestation in Southeast Asia. In that, we can all have a small say in the grocery store.

Me walking in a forest full of fireflies in the Netherlands, earlier this week.

playing around with DNA data for these spiders today, pondering their evolution this is a female Habronattus dossenus from the southcentral NM/AZ border

Confused writing is usually a symptom of confused thinking. As we struggle to clarify writing, we clarify our thoughts. AI writing aids rob us of that struggle, leaving clean-looking text and thoughts still confused for lack of inspection. Writing is not just a product; it is a diagnostic tool.

RENO! A few tix left for my free Thurs 9/04 lecture! Register below:

Are you near Reno? I'm giving a free talk at 7pm Tuesday, Sept. 4! Pass it on. Come hang out: www.eventbrite.com/e/discover-s...

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers! This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Trump smearing us as ‘anti-American’. If Oak Flat is mined, the winners won't be Americans, and definitely not Native Americans, whose sacred site will be destroyed but two foreign mining giants, BHP (Australia) and Rio Tinto (UK) whose largest shareholder is a Chinese state-owned company.

The September cover of Molecular Biology and Evolution features the work of Zhang et al., who studied the genetics of cave adaptation in Triplophysa fish. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf175 📷 Yahui Zhao / Fanwei Meng #evobio #molbio

We're working on scoping comments on an oil & gas lease sale in the beautiful White River Valley of eastern Nevada. Trump wants to give 20,000 acres to oil companies for fracking in a sensitive groundwater system. Obama-era FWS recommended withdrawing the area from leasing.

Cool !

“Working with families and parents to engage children with nature with a real focus on that intergenerational transmission is key," said Richardson. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.

pretty killer robber fly (Asilidae) from last evening, eastern SD County. saw many of these on Eriogonum

Go arachnids!!

portrait of a female Habronattus kubai from far southern Washington, sw of Mt Adams from the grassy edges of a natural meadow opening

new paper, led by Lin Yan from the Elias Lab at UCB Latent preference for red ornamentation drives interspecific mating in nascent jumping spider species (Habronattus americanus group, F. Salticidae) Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

rough night to be a prowling spider (Syspira) well known that spider legs are the tastiest, like chicken wings ! sand scorpion from a couple of months back, local soCAL deserts

baby badger (or toddler badger) but probably not interested in snuggling

Hope they’re citing the before-it’s-time metapopulation research of the great Alan Templeton !

a lampshade spider (Hypochilus) from southern Appalachia feeds upon another spider (possibly a fishing spider?) this one is about the details ... requires a close look Zerene Stacker, based on field stack input images

South Fork Eel River courses lazily through old growth redwood forest along Ave of the Giants, Redwoods National Park along those shorelines is a magical place to take a long late afternoon walk

a male Habronattus americanus jumping spider from the Mt Hood OR region, from earlier this summer some "classic" males are, well, classic in certain places we saw 100s of these spectacular little animals

a globally rare blind harvester (Speleonychia) moves slowly through the perpetual darkness of a shallow but lengthy lava tube, far southern Washington

earlier this year we described the species Cybaeozyga furtiva from the Klamath Mtns Geomorphic Province of far northern CA at time of description, the male was unknown. here he is, from the type locality my son earned $10 for this find, later discussed how he'd like to go to a salary arrangement

female Pimus leucus (Amaurobiidae) oversees her spiderlings looking closely you can see the calamistrum on her 4th metatarsus (second from last distal leg segment), a hair comb used to card silk from her cribellum found her with my son, took quick photos, then gently returned her rock

the harvester genus Sabacon, named for the Egyptian ruler Sabakōn always one of my favorites to find in the damp forests of the Pacific Northwest (although they occur disjunctly in other north temperate forests...) with "sticky whip" pedipalps, for catching little springtails and such

There is still time. Will you help me - no matter what state - save all of THIS from foreign copper mining? Pls RT. By Aug. 27, send a quick email to BLM's AZ state & local office (tips and suggestions here: tinyurl.com/3ene6wa6).

lovely keels & details on this small pede (Amplaria?) found under rocks on the floor of a basalt talus cave

in a dark talus cave, a dainty (less than 2 mm) female sheetweb weaver spider hangs beneath her sheet web, holding on with her tiny tarsal (foot) claws click on the image to see more of the intricate wispy web

here is Silvestri's Cave Spider (Typhlonesticus silvestrii), a female carrying her egg sac attached to her spinnerets photographed as found, lava talus breakdown cave, with @gretabinford.bsky.social

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--is doing a threat display to look intimidating, with the pedipalps/claws held wide, but between you and me, it looked like it wanted a hug. (Out of respect, I let it think I was terrified.) Finally, here's a photo--

Reasonable setting Oregon

Intriguing Bigfoot from Happy Camp CA

Camped last night in southern Oregon and woke feeling a bit sluggish

Quality time with my son today on my favorite river in far northern California

turns out that a majority of spider species don't use webs to capture prey, but instead use special spines and adhesive hairs on the ventral surface of their anterior legs. the so-called "great silk alternative" here's an example from the CA spider genus Titiotus

a feather-legged spider in it's fuzzy cribellate web above the chicken wire, that sits atop my pond to keep the raccoons from eating all my small fish that eat little flies, competing with spiders with feathers on their legs

Here is your Wednesday Wee Weevil. It's spectacularly pretty and spectacularly small - about 2 mm., like 2 poppy seeds. @mhedin.bsky.social found it; here it's sitting on his knee. Per iNat it's a broad-nosed weevil, Pandeleteinus submetallicus, and feeds on juniper. (SE Arizona) #insects 🐙🌿🪲