Whilst birding the Tabuk area I came across a number of darkling beetles resembling Pitted Beetle feeding around the edge of some large pivot irrigation fields. They were not this species and looked like a Seven-striped Darkling although this is mainly nocturnal? This was a medium sized beetle, with the head and thorax almost the […]
Tag: beetle
Pumas engineer their environment, providing habitat for other species
New research suggests that mountain lions in the western United States play an outsize role in changing their surroundings, leading the authors of the study to suggest that the big cats are “ecosystem engineers.” In a study published online Nov. 30 in the journal Oecologia, biologist Mark Elbroch and his colleagues demonstrate that the assortment […]
Blister Beetle – Wadi Grosbeak
The Blister Beetles (Coleoptera:Meloidae) are global distributed insects except for New Zealand and the Antarctic region and are also called Oil Beetles. The species seen near Bani Saad wasMylabris calidathat has a distribution in central Asia (east to China and Korea), Caucasus and Transcaucasia, southern Balkan Peninsula, Near East, Levant and Arabian Peninsula and northern […]
Trophy Hunting May Drive Extinctions, Due to Climate Change
Trophy hunters, as well as poachers who “harvest” the big males—antelopes and deer with the largest horns and antlers, elephants with the longest tusks, or lions with the most impressive manes—are putting those species at greater risk of extinction with climate change. That’s the finding of a new study published today by researchers at Queen […]
A Walk in Central Park
Last week I led a nature walk in Central Park for the American Museum of Natural History’s Membership Department. Even though I got rained on twice, there was a lot to see. Here are some of the wild creatures that were in the park on Wednesday. Turtles were basking in The Lake. Red-eared sliders are […]
Rose Weevil
Rose weevils have long beaks with chewing mouthparts at the end. They poke them into rosebuds and munch away, making holes. When the buds unfold, the damaged layers unfurl. Rose weevils lay eggs in some of the holes they drill in buds. The eggs hatch into wormlike larvae that feed inside the bud and can […]
Face your fears: extreme creepy-crawly close-ups – in pictures
Wildlife photographer Yudy Sauw has captured close-ups of insects revealing their colourful and alien-like faces. In these images the insects have bulging eyes and sharp pincers and appear more grotesque than usual. Yudy photographed the bugs at his home studio in Banten, Indonesia, from 2-10cm away. This article was first published by The Guardian.
Found: New Beetle Collected by Darwin 180 Years Ago
Call it a 205th birthday present: A beetle collected by Charles Darwin was declared a new species on the anniversary of his birth, February 12, 1809, a new study says. The beetle, dubbed Darwinilus sedarisi, after the naturalist and the author David Sedaris, is also a new genus of rove beetle—a group of highly diverse […]