r/Entomology

Nothern VA area, kinda horrified at the moment.

Friends found this on some bark they purchased in the UK, anybody know what hatches from it?

Thanks in advance!

Wasps are essentially defensive and only sting when they feel threatened, swatted at, or when their nest is approached.

So if that's all the ammo you've got for wasp hate, I suggest you reconsider...

Wasps save farmers over $416 billion annually. Across all 100,000 species, they are essential to global ecosystems. As earth's ultimate pest controllers, pollinators, and natural recyclers, they protect crops, support plant diversity, and sustain the food web.

So for those who also want to argue wasps are useless, sorry... That's also untrue.

The majority of wasp species lay their eggs inside or on a host insect (like a caterpillar or beetle). When the larvae hatch, they consume the host, providing highly specific, natural biological pest control.

Without wasps, ecosystems and agricultural farmlands would be overrun with destructive insects, requiring billions more in chemical pesticide usage.

Follow me on insta and other socials @leifcollectsbugs

Vancouver BC area! Is the spider eating the bee or the other way around? Hanging out on a clematis flower.

Hi everyone,

I’m the producer (and proud dad) of my 9-year-old son’s podcast, Join the Fray. We recently sat down with Dr. Ted Gervan, and I thought this community might appreciate his unique perspective on how the industry has shifted over the last two decades.

Before he became an educational leader at institutions like Sheridan, Capilano, and the Centre for Digital Media in BC, Ted worked as a prosthetic makeup artist in Hollywood. He was part of the talented team that brought the original X-Men (2000) to life. [Ted got the chance to support the super talented team of Evan Penny or Ann McLaren who designed the look for Mystique and Sabretooth!]

He contributed to the character designs (including the drawings for Sabretooth) and helped building specific costumes, pouring and coloring the silicone, painting nails, and applying the makeup once the initial sculpts were molded.

Fraser and Ted had a great discussion about:

• The Reality of the Makeup Lab: The technical process of pouring, coloring, and detailing silicone prosthetics for a major film production, and how that hands-on experience shapes his view of modern 3D pipelines.
• The Evolution of the Craft: How he sees the industry shifting between physical, high-touch lab work to digital-first workflows, and how education needs to adapt to teach both.
• Advice for Future Artists: His take on "the fear of building"—how he teaches students to bridge the gap between a design idea and the messy, physical/digital reality of actually building it.

It’s a non-monetized, fun interview and thanks to the Mods here to enable me to share it.

Spotify Link - https://open.spotify.com/episode/53jpLDHotOh8mE8Vo6jgc8?si=Koxoja8jTwWTW0bBUTpLoA

Enjoy folks and thanks for the opportunity to share this fun chat!

Servus

Ich habe das heute hinter einem Bild im Hausflur entdeckt und frage mich was das sein könnte?

Hat da jemand eine Idee?

Dankeschön im voraus ^^

Edit: Vielen Dank für die Hilfe. Habe mal wieder was Neues gelernt. Jetzt ergibt es auch Sinn, weshalb Ich keine Spinnen gesehen habe xD

My friend's pool filter was a real treasure of insects, but we're wondering wth is that huge one on top?

On our way to see the actual monkeys we encountered a monkey slug! Real name is Phobetron hipparchia. I had never seen it before, so cool!

Location: Pilar, PY

Never seen one before. Cute !

I assume some sort of millipede, but was moving forward from the left side which I would assume is his butt. Moved very slowly, many many legs, very flat and pink. His lower (?) half seem injured when I found him in the path so I didn’t investigate his underside much, just put him in the garden. Never seen one like this!

Most of the weevil and moth paintings I've made over the past year.

I've made a few smaller ones in-between but these are the big main attractions.

Hello! Mud daubers built a nest on my dad's house a number of years ago. It had been abandoned for long enough that we decided to take a look inside, and found a couple of old pupal cases within. I opened one up (completely sealed, not the case in picture 1) under a dissecting scope, and found:

1. Three legs, measuring around 3mm in length (not pictured). Presumably from the original mud dauber pupa
2. Five pupae? molts? measuring 4mm each (slide 2).
3. The specimen on slide 3, measuring 1mm in length.
   In the mud around the pupal case, I also found two fully developed insects (slides 4&5) measuring ~1.5mm each.

Any ideas of what these parasites could have been? We read that cuckoo wasps and chalcid wasps are common parasites in mud dauber nests, but I was having trouble finding any information about the size, quantity and appearance of their pupae. If anyone has any insight into their identities or why none of them hatched from this case after eating the mud dauber, please let me know :) Thanks!

Hello! I have ZERO experience with handling and preserving bugs. Please help me with what to do with these beautiful wings. I think they are from the Cecropia moth, but I’m not positive. Found in western Montana.

Also - anyone have a guess as to how the wings are still in tact like this? What could have happened to this guy?