Lunes Moth

ANSWER: This wasn’t easybut this large and beautiful moth was from Australia and is in the family Xyloryctidae (Philarista sp.). We have a handful of representatives of this group here in the US and Ted MacRae over on Beetles in the Bush has a few great photographs of them. Somehow I think we . . . → Leer más: Lunes Moth

Lunes Moth

Chiricahua multidentado (Polilla geómetra)

Polilla de este lunes es una especie espectaculares de las montañas de Arizona – Chiricahua multidentado, un Geometrid. La ubicación única conocida para esta especie es en la parte superior de las montañas Chiricahua anteriores 9,000 pies (que se acaba de Bruned a cenizas). Ojalá el fuego no fuera . . . → Leer más: Lunes Moth

Lunes Moth

I’ll keep the ball rolling with Arctiinae and post a photo today of Ctenucha brunnea. This moth can be common in tall grasses along beaches from San Francisco to LAalthough in recent decades the numbers of this moth have been declining with habitat destruction and the invasion of beach grass (Ammophila arenaria). Sino . . . → Leer más: Lunes Moth

Lunes Moth

I’m going to keep the ball rolling with this series and try to make it more regular. I will also focus on highlighting a new species each week from the massive collections here at the California Academy of Sciences. This should give me enough material forat least a few hundred years.

Grammia . . . → Leer más: Lunes Moth

Richard Branson es un idiota

 

Fuente: Wikipedia

Resulta que Richard Branson tiene una nueva idea; para salvar al lémur de cola anillada (Catta de lémur) importándolos a su isla privada de las Vírgenes Británicas. Como señala el artículo, Branson gastó millones de libras y años de esfuerzo para convertir la isla en “lo mas ecologico . . . → Leer más: Richard Branson es un idiota

misterio revelado

Aceptar – a few apologies for not having full images *yet* of the larvae in question (I will in a few days!). Over the weekend I was out with a group of Berkeley students on Mount Hamilton and PhD candidate Meghan Culpepper collected a few species of Scaphinotus and a some larvae! So the specimen . . . → Leer más: misterio revelado

Estimaciones de la diversidad global de especies

This recent article in the American Naturalist has taken a second look at some of the famously inflated species estimates, algunos van tan alto como 100 millón (Erwin, 1988). Las estimaciones realizadas por los autores indican que las proyecciones por encima 30 millones tienen probabilidades de <0.00001. Es más probable que su rango estimado esté entre 2.5 y . . . → Leer más: Estimaciones de la diversidad global de especies

Aquamoth part 3

A continuation of the aquamoth series, this time with video from Science Friday! Sí, I have to link it because wordpress won’t embed… Gracias Ted, figured it out!

Aquamoth part 2

I came across the full-text PDF of the amphibious moth article and extracted the tree showing the radiation of this species group and probable evolution of the amphibious traits. Interesting to note the case shape, and each moth is endemic to its own volcano in the Hawaiian archipelago.

This is a Bayesian analysis of . . . → Leer más: Aquamoth part 2

aquamoth!

Another amazing animal from Hawaiia completely amphibious caterpillar (published in the March 22 PNAS). While there are a few aquatic Lepidoptera, all of them have gills that keep them restricted to the water (mind you, we are talking only about the larval stage). If their stream dries up, so does the caterpillar. . . . → Leer más: aquamoth!