Institutionalized rape-stabs

If you don’t read Dinosaur Comics, you really should. They mentioned a favorite subject of mine…Traumatic Insemination. They also mentioned the female counter-adaptation…the paragenetalia. As the comic says…this is where the male bedbug splooges when he stabs his girlfriend. Here are some pictures of the paragenetalia. As you can see, there’s quite a bit of [...]

Bug Photo of The Week

Thomas R. Buckley, Dilini Attanayake1 and Sven Bradler (2008). Extreme convergence in stick insect evolution: phylogenetic placement of the Lord Howe Island tree lobster Proceedings of The Royal Society

Uaraneida and the origin of silk in spiders

I do quite a bit of writing on spiders. Many entomologists deal with spiders, mites and other arachnids in their everyday working life. They’re important, ubiquitous predators. To this entomology undergrad, they’re essentially honorary insects. Everyone knows spiders spin webs. They can be organized and beautiful, such as this orb weaver web They can be [...]

Bug photo of the week

Newly emerged Actias luna photographed at the Christina Reiman Gardens butterfly wing on the Iowa State University campus.

Bug photo of the week

Atrophaneura semperi photographed on pointsettia at Christina Reiman Butterfly Gardens on the Iowa State University campus.