#dead bugs

[onenicebugperday]

Entomopathogenic fungus (Engyodontium aranearum) infected spiders

Engyodontium aranearum is a species of ascomycete fungus in the family Cordycipitaceae. It parasitizes the long bodied cellar spider, Pholcus phalangioides. It causes 100% mortality in infected spiders.

Photo 1 by bugzone, 2 by garrett_brown, 3 by laurahuckleberry, 4 by lois_rancilhac, 5 by emilvus, 6 by komille277, and 7 (for scale) by samdeakin

[cnestus]

everyone please admire this genital dissection i did today while trying to identify this male longhorn bee. i avoided doing these for the longest time but it really is the only way to reliably ID a huge chunk of bee species. i spent like an hour trying to key this guy out using external morphological features but it only took about 10 seconds once i yanked his crazy little hog out and compared it against the big chart of bee dicks. he's a Eucera amsinckiae.

[unlikelycliteratureenthusiast]

Christopher Marley's collection of natural species is absolutely spectacular. 10/10 would recommend!

[jupiterswasphouse]

[PHOTOS TAKEN: MARCH 10TH, 2025 | Image IDs: Eleven photos of a pair of old organ pipe mud dauber nests that have been removed from their original surfaces, the first one shows the backs of both, each with a multitude of chambers; one on the right with sixteen or seventeen chambers and the other on the left with thirteen chambers. The pipe-like structures of each are individually shown from the front and the back in two pairs of photos, another three photos following each pair that show pieces of spiders in most, with a few containing spun silk from the former larval wasp residents making structures to pupate in /End IDs.]

A pair of old organ pipe mud dauber (Trypoxylon politum) nests I found on a metal barrel! Didn't initially intend to take them off, they just popped off of the surface with a slight touch, but it's a good opportunity to show you guys what these things look like from the other side!

This species is one of the many that are specialized to hunt spiders, provisioning their larvae with paralyzed spiders. You can see bits of leftover spiders in each chamber, which makes me wonder how much of it was eaten, assuming the nest was truly left behind already. What I am sure of, however, is; Despite the devastating precision and skill of these hymenopteran hunters when it comes to spiders, they are, like most parasitoid wasps, extremely difficult to provoke, so there's no need to be concerned about a sting around them!

You can also see that some of the chambers have silk spun inside of them—This is because, like many other holometabolous insects (i.e. insects that pupate into adulthood), hymenopterans are silk spinners, the cocoons that they pupate within being made of the material, much like the moth/butterfly chrysalises you may be aware of (yes, that does mean that ants, bees, and sawflies are silk spinners as larvae as well)! In line with that comparison, the adults of these and most wasp species cannot spin silk (apart from those in the genus Microstigmus)—Hence the nests that are built almost exclusively out of mud.

[creatureimages]

get snatched idiot

[rosjectum]

Our darling Sosáčisko died on December 3, 2024. It will be greatly missed.

learn more:

[ex0skeletal-undead]

by organizedchaoscollection on Instagram

[radmannotmadman]

bug Tumblr help

How do I preserve a dead bee no glue no borax

[herbalfaerie]

patiently waiting for spring so I can look for bugs

[prairiedeath]

american rot

[onenicebugperday]

Female pelican spider (with prey), Eriauchenus workmani, Archaeidae

Also called assassin spiders, pelican spiders in the family Archaeidae prey exclusively on other spiders.

Photographed in Madagascar by Frank Deschandol // Instagram

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

[cnestus]

HEY WANNA SEE A COUPLE FUCKED UP MUTANT BEES?

so i've mentioned in the past that while i don't go out of my way to catch bees, they often end up in the pest monitoring trap samples that i process for work. since i hate seeing cute animals go to waste i've made a project out of pinning and identifying them whenever possible. one of the more common bees that i see around this time of years are the tiny & shiny genus Ceratina:

(not my photos, but the rest in this post are mine)

(fun fact they're actually most closely related to the giant carpenter bees you're probably more familiar with)

okay so for reference here's a couple examples of standard male Ceratina faces:

kinda silly looking! but now check out this freak i found this week:

note that not only are the eyes nearly wrapping around the face but the ocelli are totally missing and the antennal insertions have merged into a weird giant pit in the middle of his face. sadly he's a little beat up and one of the antennae was broken off along with some leg parts.

but okay if you think that's weird, check out this NEXT guy:

what the fuck! that smaller antenna isn't broken off like the previous guy it's just... like that. i have absolutely no explanation for either of these oddities.

honestly Ceratina are so common that i'd almost gotten to the point of not bothering to keep them when they show up in my traps but i'm really glad i took a closer look and spotted these freaks. have not attempted to ID either to species yet.

[jupiterswasphouse]

[PHOTOS TAKEN: AUGUST 20TH, 2024 | Image IDs: Four photos of a green, black, and white, partially translucent lynx spider on a large green hydrangea leaf, holding a freshly caught, fluffy white and black erebid caterpillar, clearly preparing to eat it /End IDs.]

[creatureimages]

variably alive bugs washed up on the beach

[spiny-ant]

if it doesn’t freak you out too much, do you think you could do an ant with cordyceps stimboard…

July is close enough to Halloween I think

🍄-🍄-🍄|🍄-🐜-🍄|🍄-🍄-🍄

[ex0skeletal-undead]

by stones.and_bones on Instagram