The Xerces Society’s Pollinator Conservation Resource Center is now on-line!

It has a clickable map of North America; you can find all sorts of resources indexed there.  For example, there is a Guide to Upper Midwest plants for Native Bees! Enjoy the downloading.

I could not resist this photo of an adorable little bee, even if it isn’t a North American bee; the colors were so lovely! Thanks to AussieGal for sharing!

I love, love, love these cartoons. And here’s one that has Entomology in it!  (sort of.)

Google Books has given me a late present–many past issues of WWN are now online! Readers of WWN (via the grocery checkout isle, anyway) will remember that they often feature amazingly badly pasted together stories about giant insects!

As a trip down memory lane, I give you–the 23lb. grasshopper (from New Zealand. In theory).

The stories are usually hilarious, and can serve as great classroom discussion points.  For example–why isn’t it likely that a 48 inch long grasshopper would exist?  I’ve included a shot of the story below (click to enbiggen).

Have fun searching the archives–and let me know if you get any other good insect stories!

WOW. That’s all I’ve got.

Not only is the insect built of LEGOs, so is the display box!!

Check out pupipupi’s photostream for additional insects–there is a wonderful longhorn beetle, as well as a dragonfly.

Via pupipupi, I found a bunch of other LEGO insects–probably my favorites were the dung beetles, complete with a little lego ball of poo.

There was also an entomological LEGO still life with bee, as well as a pretty credible firefly.

Enjoy!

Hey Everyone! I invited David over to announce some exciting entomophagy news–a way to get all the past issues of the Food Insects Newsletter!   Here’s what David has to say:

“It’s a great day for those of us laboring in the salt mines of entomophagy: after many months of planning, a bound reprint of The Food Insects Newsletter is finally available to the public!

While some of it has been online for years, this volume includes a great deal of additional material, including editorial introductions and an afterward; nutritional tables; images; and four comprehensive indices catering to a wide range of interests.  And hey, just in time for the gifting season!  This volume represents a vital part of the available literature on the subject.  Do the world a favor: order yours today!

But Wait! There’s more!
This reprint is meant to be the prelude to a renewal of The Newsletter, meaning that new content will be forthcoming in 2010.

The editors – Dr. Florence Dunkel and I – are currently pondering various ways of making this happen.  While we have some articles and other material ready to be shared with the world, we are very interested in receiving almost anything that people would like to contribute.  This means from entomologists of course, but other folks too — including non-academics.  I’m talking about: technical papers, observations, essays, anecdotes, images, and other formats.

Similarly, we remain committed to exploring our subject from a wide range of perspectives: through the lens of entomology, anthropology, sociology, engineering, nutrition science, chemistry, marketing, history, ecology, etc.    Please email us if you are interested in contributing!

You can view instructions for getting your copy here: BookFlyer.pdf

I’m back from the ESA conference, and will be parceling out reports on the cool research I saw over the next couple of weeks.  I also will have a special guest post tomorrow about a Resource/Cookbook I know we will all need for our Holiday Entertaining!!

A highlight from the meeting:

Immediately preceding the ESA meeting, there was a cheerleader conference in the same building the Entomologists used.

It was in fact the Greater Midwest Cheer Expo, and I am not linking that site, because there hasn’t been a website that made such horrible use of clip art and blinking GIFs since….um…1992. When it would have been state of the art.

And not just any cheerleaders were competing…JUNIOR cheerleaders. 
As in, kids from age 5 to 10.  I  cannot express to you just how horrible it was to see small children dressed in midriff-baring, lowcut cheer uniforms, stroking their stuff and pelvic thrusting as they tried to be Beyonce on a videophone.  Each of them had enough make-up on to cover at least 3 Tammy-Faye Bakers.

One of the folks at the meeting coined the term “prostitots”, which was appallingly accurate.  I could not find an online photo, and I was afraid to take any photos, but the uniforms were about this revealing.

On an adult woman–ROWR. On a kid–EWWWW.

There was a short period during which the two meetings overlapped. Entomologists in Suits. Kids in Thongs covered in glitter.

The end result: SPARKLY ENTOMOLOGISTS.

That part, at least, was awesome.

I  love this little animated film from 1912. So much embedded in this:  The chauffeur is a weevil! The club is named The Gay Dragonfly! The cock-blocking grasshopper! The lovely music!

Ok, well, the ending is pretty unpleasant.

Found at the blog Anthropomorphe, who has a bio of the animator Ladislaw Starewicz (1882-1965)

Yes. It will TOTALLY be like this

It’s time for the Entomological Society Annual Meeting–who wants to party with Bug Girl in Indy? I’ll be there from Dec. 13th to the 15th, and return on the 16th.

I promise, I will wear pants this time.

I’d love to have a NatureBlogger meet up, or chat to local skeptics. Leave me a comment if you’re interested!

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?

egregious:

1. Exceptional, conspicuous, outstanding, most usually in a negative fashion.
2. 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 fruitflies live in houses? No.
Do fruitflies live in nuclear families? No.
Do fruitflies iron, bake, or do any sort of traditional Western gender-role stuff? No.
Is it necessary to have all science news stories relate to humans? No.
Is it necessary to have all science news stories relate to sex? No. Maybe. Yes. What was the question?

PhD comics has an EXCELLENT description of the science news cycle. If you haven’t seen this, go print it out and stick it on your door/cube/whatever.

Anyway.

The paper they were actually describing is this one:

Isaac, R., Li, C., Leedale, A., & Shirras, A. (2009). Drosophila male sex peptide inhibits siesta sleep and promotes locomotor activity in the post-mated female Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277 (1678), 65-70 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1236

Oddly, no mention of dustpans and ironing there….

The paper is actually pretty fascinating–it provides a connection between a peptide in a male fruit fly’s sperm and a change in behavior in female flies after mating.  Mated females skip their afternoon naps (fruit flies take a siesta, as mentioned in the title of the paper) and spend that time looking for food, or places to lay eggs.

This is, regrettably, described as “domestic type activities” by one of the paper’s authors in the news story, although the actual research paper stays on point and doesn’t branch off into this sort of silly anthropomorpic speculation.

I was not aware that finding food was housework. Thank goodness I have science reporters to help enforce gender norms!

For bonus points, guess the Order of Insect covered in this news release before you click through:

Why Nice Guys Get the Girls

EDITED 11.30.09 TO ADD: Ha! the title of the article has now been changed to “Female fruit flies do chores after sex”. Screen shot of the original article now linked.