Tacua speciosa is a very large Southeast Asian species of cicada. It is the only member of its genus. Tacua speciosa has a wingspan of 15–18 cm (5.9–7.1 in) and a head-body length of 4.7–5.7 cm (1.9–2.2 in). Megapomponia, Pomponia and Tacua are the largest cicadas in the world. Tacua speciosa has black wings, a yellow-green collar, a red transversal stripe on the thorax and a turqouise-blue abdomen.
NOPE
YUSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!
look at its derpy lil face tho
On the inverse, this thing must scream like a goddamn jet engine.
This little tiny guy start to posing for me 😛 but I think he got to by shy again and decide no more … Polyommatus dolyras ( but not sure ) Picture is also taken on Gotland so it may be dolyras … in other case P. icarus but he is to bright blue for …
When it comes to vaccinating their babies, bees don’t have a choice
– they naturally immunize their offspring against specific diseases
found in their environments. And now for the first time, scientists have
discovered how they do it.
Researchers from Arizona State University, University of Helsinki,
University of Jyväskylä and Norwegian University of Life Sciences made
the discovery after studying a bee blood protein called vitellogenin.
The scientists found that this protein plays a critical, but previously
unknown role in providing bee babies protection against disease.
The findings appear today in the journal PLOS Pathogens.
“The process by which bees transfer immunity to their babies was a
big mystery until now. What we found is that it’s as simple as eating,”
said Gro Amdam, a professor with ASU’s School of Life Sciences and
co-author of the paper. “Our amazing discovery was made possible because
of 15 years of basic research on vitellogenin. This exemplifies how
long-term investments in basic research pay off.”
Caption: With the discovery of how bees naturally
vaccinate their babies, researchers can now develop the first vaccine
for insects. This vaccine could be used to fight serious diseases that
decimate beehives. This is an important development for food production. Credit: Christofer Bang
Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators need access to abundant nectar and pollen resources throughout the growing season. At minimum, strive for three species to be blooming at any one time; the greater the diversity, the better. The links below will help you find the best plants for your garden. It is important to include flowers that bloom early in the spring to provide food for newly emerging bumble bee queens. Similarly, it is important to provide flowers that bloom in the late summer and fall to support new bumble bee queens for overwintering.
If you are adding plants to your garden, plant flowers in clumps at least three-feet-wide to help them be more attractive to passing pollinators. Choose native plants wherever possible, as they have evolved with native pollinators and the local environment. To attract butterflies, include their host plant in your pollinator garden…
(CLICK ABOVE TO GET REGIONAL GUIDES TO POLLINATOR GUIDES)
it’s so cute when a really fat bumblebee comes and bops against the window and immediately bumbles away like oh deary me I am terribly sorry that wasn’t where I should have been going oh what a silly sausage I am
i love your take on the inner commentary of a bee because we all see these things differently. i always imagined that if bees had a conscious inner commentary it was of a really really faint angry screaming. the bee’s just going ‘FUCK FUCK FUCK I HIT A FUCKIN WINDOW SHIT FUCK I’M GONNA FUCK UP THIS FLOWER INSTEAD S H I T I HIT ANOTHER WINDOW F U CK’ except it’s really really faint because it’s small because it’s a bee
This is the kind of quality content I want to see on my dashboard
Agraulis vanillae, Gulf fritillary
The Gulf fritillary is found mostly in the Southern U.S. and into Mexico. Their host plants are passionflower vines.
The larvae are generally bright orange with black spines and darker stripes down the body. According to BugGuide, “there is a larval variant with purple/lavender stripes, seen mostly in Texas” (where I live), seen in the last photo.
This is one of my most frequent questions. People love bees, but they think wasps are just mean and that they sting for no reason. I’ve been around so many wasps and picked up wasps and never been stung – if you respect them like any other animal they’ll leave you alone unless under very unusual circumstances.
They are also basically “keystone predators,” they feed on so many other insects that if wasps disappeared the balance would go so haywire that many insects would wipe out other species, then each other, then we would lose more species that depended on those insects.
Wasps are so important to insect population control that plant life communicates with them about it directly. When a tree is being eaten by caterpillars, it will release stress pheromones that evolved just to attract the one species of wasp that specializes in those caterpillars as prey! This is so precise, corn crops can tell if they’re being eaten by either bollworms or armyworms – very similar caterpillars, but parasitized by two different wasps.
They are also major pollinators – orchids and many other flowers are pollinated only by wasps, not bees, though wasps will also pollinate all the same flowers that bees do.
Most people convinced that wasps are just evil and useless seem to be recalling a yellow jacket sting more than anything else; yellow jackets make huge nests that can be underground, so you can be walking all over it and pissing them off without knowing, whereas other animals would hear the vibration and steer clear.
PiraticOctopus 