Category Archives: Entomology

Vote! (on my identity)

I keep getting more and more interesting things coming my way as Bug Girl…but the problem is, I like being Bug Girl, and not (fill in real name here).  Keeps life simpler, and boss happy.
What do you think? Should I give up and come out?

Word of the day: Egregious

egregious:

Exceptional, conspicuous, outstanding, most usually in a negative fashion.
Outrageously bad.

Example: this headline from Science Daily: Fruit Fly Sperm Makes Females Do Housework After Sex
Seriously. How freakin’ embedded in your culture do you have to be to project your heteronormist, traditional gender role shit onto FLIES, people?
Do fruit flies have a monogamous sex life? No.
Do [...]

Shiny Taxonomic Key is SHINY!

There is now an online key to the 86 species of Chrysididae in North America!
It is, of course, quite useful, but the best parts are all the detailed photos of these lovely Hymenopterans.
Thanks go to Nigel Jones for his lovely photo which you must view at full size, and to the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center [...]

Update on the Donors Choose Challenge!

The Donors Choose Challenge is now over, and the project to get more nature bloggers involved was a success!!
The total amount given for the Nature Blogs Group was $5,170.  That put our group at #11–not quite in the top 10, but still pretty darn good!  That also is quite a bit more than I managed [...]

2010 Native Bee Calendar!

Just in time for the holidays–Xerces has a new native bee calendar!
“The Xerces Society and the Great Sunflower Project are happy to offer the 2010 Native Bee Calendar, which was created by Celeste Ets-Hokin. With magnificent close-up photos by Rollin Coville, this calendar takes you on a tour of twelve commonly encountered types of native [...]

Book Review: At Large and Small

Ann Fadiman. At Large and Small: Familiar Essays. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2007.
Bug Rating:
I freely admit to being an Anne Fadiman fan-girl. Ex Libris is easily one of my favorite books. The Spirit Catches You is an amazing book about culture, epilepsy, immigration, and they way we don’t communicate.  So, I was pretty sure [...]

Teachers, Astronauts, and butterflies

A cool opportunity for teachers!!
WANTED: Up to 20 schools (in the U.S., east of the Rocky Mountains) to follow the development of monarchs on the International Space Station.
Background
The next Space Shuttle launch is scheduled for November 16th. Atlantis will carry three 4th instar monarch caterpillars to the International Space Station (ISS) in a small rearing [...]

And now for something completely different

Sorry to be a downer lately…I’m realizing that I have to go look for a job soon, and it’s rather a bummer. How about a pretty picture?  Ursja has uploaded more beautiful beetle photos! OMGSHINY!!

Update on the Challenge

You might remember that last month I threw down the gauntlet to some of the bigger cousins in the interwebs for the DonorsChoose Challenge!
DonorsChoose.org is an online charity that provides an easy way for people to fund projects in schools by donating online.  The Challenge is a  month-long competition between blogs to see who can [...]

Book Review: The War against the Chtorr

Bug Rating:
Synopsis: Long-winded Libertarians lead the fight against an extra-terrestrial insectish species in this 1983 sci-fi novel.
I had such high hopes for this book. Its cover promised all sorts of awesome. And then, I discovered the author wrote the Star Trek “Trouble with Tribbles” episode.
Cheezy cover! History of Tribbles! Silly rhyming title!  (War/Chtorr)
Alas, it was [...]