Segunda-feira Traça

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 . . . → Leia mais: Segunda-feira Traça

Segunda-feira Traça

Chiricahua multidentata (Geometridae)

This Monday’s moth is a spectacular species from the mountains of ArizonaChiricahua multidentata, a Geometrid. The only known location for this species is at the very top of the Chiricahua mountains above 9,000 pés (which was just bruned to a crisp). Hopefully the fire was not . . . → Leia mais: Segunda-feira Traça

Segunda-feira Traça

I’ll keep the ball rolling with Arctiinae and post a photo today of Ctenucha brunnea. Esta mariposa pode ser comum em gramíneas altas ao longo das praias de São Francisco a Los Angeles – embora nas últimas décadas os números desta mariposa tenham diminuído com a destruição do habitat e a invasão de grama de praia (Ammophila arenaria). Mas . . . → Leia mais: Segunda-feira Traça

Segunda-feira Traça

Vou manter a bola rolar com esta série e tentar torná-lo mais regular. Eu também vai se concentrar em destacar uma nova espécie a cada semana a partir das imensas coleções aqui na Academia de Ciências da Califórnia. Isso deve dar-me material suficiente para… pelo menos algumas centenas de anos.

Grammia . . . → Leia mais: Segunda-feira Traça

Richard Branson is an Idiot

 

Source: Wikipedia

It turns out that Richard Branson has a new idea; to save the ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) by importing them to his private British Virgin Island. As the article points out Branson spent millions of pounds and years of effort to turn the island intothe most ecologically . . . → Leia mais: Richard Branson is an Idiot

Mistério revelado

Está bem – 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 . . . → Leia mais: Mistério revelado

As estimativas da Global Species Diversity

Este artigo recente no American Naturalist tomou uma segunda olhada em algumas das estimativas de espécies famosa inflados, alguns indo alto como 100 milhão (Erwin, 1988). As estimativas realizadas pelos autores indicam que as projeções anteriores 30 milhões têm probabilidades de <0.00001. A sua gama estimada é mais provável que seja entre 2.5 e . . . → Leia mais: As estimativas da Global Species Diversity

Aquamoth part 3

A continuation of the aquamoth series, this time with video from Science Friday! Sim, I have to link it because wordpress won’t embed… Graças 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 . . . → Leia mais: 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. . . . → Leia mais: Aquamoth!