Journal of the Plague Year: November 2005

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Skipper

Hesperiidae
11/30/05
Vero Beach, FL
Pretty little skipper. Pretty common, that is! I do not know which species happens to be, but I like the way I can get a nice macro shot of it just by zooming in.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Culex quinquefasciatus
11/29/05
Vero Beach FL
Just some eggs from my colony. I am taking some "eye candy" shots for a presentation and thought these looked kind of cool.The rafts stick to one another with via van der Waals forces, I believe. Makes for some pretty patterns. Also note that sometimes females die in the process of ovipostion, especially in a dense colony situation.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Macropezidae

A Stilt-Legged Fly
11/28/05
Vero Beach FL
Nothing too interesting out today, although there are some monarch butterflies flying around.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Dung

Phanaeus vindex
Gainesville FL
11/25/05
If the colour is off on this shot, it is because I am adjusting it on a crappy monitor. Anyway, it sure is purty in real life.
Tommorrow: Manatees!

Mothra

Syngamia florella
Gainesville FL
11/25/05
Don't really know what this is yet. I am suspecting it is a pyralid or something. Anyway this is what you do to entertain yourself when some crazy american (my girlfriend) shops for a new laptop.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/38074/bgimage

When I was pickin' oranges

Hyla cinerea
Gainesville FL
11/25/05
I done picked a bunch of oranges yesterday and found this little guy. Pretty cute iffin I do say so myself.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Rosary Pea

Abrus precatorius
Vero Beach, 11/14/05
Rosary Pea, an invasive exotic in FL. Extremely toxic, even one seed can kill. Check this out: http://www.vet.purdue.edu/depts/addl/toxic/plant53.htm
http://aquat1.ifas.ufl.edu/abrpre.html

Anticarsia gemmatalis

11/21/05
Vero Beach, FL
This moth looks so much like a live oak leaf that it is uncanny. When startled, it just flies to a new spot and remains still. It is a type of noctuid.

Bromeliad weevil

Probably Metamasius
11/22/05 Vero Beach FL
This is a bromeliad weevil, which seems to be killing large numbers of bromeliads in Florida. This plant was quite well destroyed by the action of this one larva. It is pretty cute though.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Nurse Shark

Key Largo FL
11/16/05
OK, against my better judgement I am going to start commenting on some of these photos. What ever happened to "a picture is worth a thousand words"?
So this is a nurse shark that I saw while snorkelling in the Keys. To get this shot I had to freedive down about 15 feet with a disposable underwater camera. I must say, that I find this snorkelling to be quite a lot of fun and if I do it much more I may become addicted. The sheer amount of living creatures of all sorts down there was amazing. If I could spend a few hours out there at a time I think I would get my fix.

Pretty fish

Bluestriped Grunt
Key Largo FL
11/16/05
Boy that is an ugly name for a pretty fish. I cannot believe how ignorant about fish ID I have become. It has only been 2 years since I took Ichthyology, and I cannot remember some pretty big orders and families.
Oh well, at least I have my insects.

Great Barracudas

Key Largo FL
Nov. 16 2005
Oh my golly, are these ever nifty! They just cruise around the reef with their big teeth and their silvery bodies lookin' too cool for school. They seemed to me to be pretty wary fish, and were always watching me.

Time for a review

OK blog-gods, maybe you can get around to checking this blog and removing me from your spam-blog list. As you can see I just post pictures here. I thought I already sent you one of these, but here goes again. Thanks.

Anole

Anolis sagrei
Vero Beach FL 11/21/05
The most common herp down here and yet this is the first picture I have posted. 2 reasons:
1) They are tough to approach
2) Familiarity breeds contempt, and while I do not have contempt for these, they do not seem remarkable. Only when they are doing a major territorial showdown or catching a big insect do I notice them Or when they are impaled on a barbed-wire fence:
http://triatoma.blogspot.com/2005/09/whodunnit.html

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Black Soldier Fly

Hermetia illucens

What can I really say? These guys hang around in shit as larvae and sometimes eat other maggots. The adults are pretty.

Black Soldier Fly

Hermetia illucens

Uranotaenia sapphirina

Fort Pierce FL
Nov. 20 '05
My lousy picture cannot do this justice. One day a great insect photographer will come along and capture the true beauty of this beast. Probably with a Hirox scope.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Hemidactylus mabouia

Key Largo, FL
Nov 16, 2005

All right, so this would be the 3rd Hemidactylus species I have seen in FL (if I have ID'ed it correctly). All are introduced and one has a lot in common with the Virgin Mary. Although unlike the Virgin Mary, Hemidactylus garnotii exists,
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/201/6138/1024/HPIM3772.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/201/6138/640/HPIM2614.jpg
By the way, what do you think of these links? Pretty fancy, eh?