#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]

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.

[ex0skeletal-undead]

by organizedchaoscollection on Instagram

[herbalfaerie]

You're in their dms, I'm a bug in the forest unaware what a dm is

[mycoblogg]

HORROR WEEK- FOTD #147 : zombie-ant fungus! (ophiocordyceps unilateralis)

the zombie-ant fungus is an insect-pathogenic fungus that infects & controls the muscular system of an ant. it is a member of the ophiocordycipitaceae family, & has received notoriety in popular media after inspiring parts of the hit series & game 'the last of us'. it mainly occurs in tropical forest ecosystems :-)

the big question : will it kill me?? only if you're an ant :-) if you're an ant, the fungus will take control of your body - not your mind, as is commonly falsely believed - force you to climb about a foot off the ground into a tree, latch your jaw into a "death grip" on the vein of a leaf, & sprout from your body !! you will be eaten from the inside.

[images : source & source] [fungus description : none]

[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

🍄-🍄-🍄|🍄-🐜-🍄|🍄-🍄-🍄

[blattodean]

dead cotinis sp.

[jupiterswasphouse]

[PHOTOS TAKEN: JUNE 22ND, 2024 | Image IDs: Four photos of a black, red, and yellow female metric paper wasp after hunting down a caterpillar, carrying it in its jaws. It also has a parasite underneath one of the exoskeletal plates of its metasoma. /End IDs.]

A beautiful Metric Paper Wasp (Polistes Metricus) female doing it's job, getting rid of caterpillars that pose a risk to the surrounding greenery! I've seen quite a few folks thinking that when adult wasps take a bite out of these guys that they themselves are the ones eating it, but this is not so! This wasp is gathering food for its larvae, as most adult Hymenopterans are incapable of eating something as solid as meat, but the larvae are! Paper wasps have to hunt down and carry their prey back to the nest, as, while the larvae of some insects have become fearsome predators themselves (many Neuropterans, and ladybugs are great examples), paper wasp larvae are largely incapable of leaving the nest (in a way that won't get them killed by other predators), instead opting to hang around upside down in their hexagonal cells as their much more mobile and powerful big sisters go out for the hunt!

But hold on there, the wasp and caterpillar aren't the only individuals visible in frame! Let's have a quick zoom in here-

[Image ID: Image number 2 from above, zoomed in on the wasp's metasoma and the parasite within /End IDs.]

Ah-ha! Here, just underneath one of the last few plates of the valiant hunter's metasoma (functional abdomen) is a female of the insect order Strepsiptera, or twisted-wing insects! As it turns out, social wasps (including bees as well), who are, themselves, related to an astonishing number of parasitic wasps, are no strangers to dealing with their own parasites! Males of this order have everything you would typically expect from an adult insect, but the vast majority of adult Strepsipteran females have no wings, legs, or even eyes! In all likelihood, the parasite will never leave the host, feeding constantly until its death, and this does include, perhaps surprisingly, the periods in which it mates! Although, in a story that's perhaps all too familiar to entomologists, the Strepsipteran females are eaten through and escaped from, but this time, instead of being an unexpected parasitoid from an external source like those of the aforementioned parasitic wasps, the ones emerging are the mother's very own young! Absolutely brutal-

[brainman1987]

Would anyone be interested in seeing a cool dead butterfly I found (it's in surprisingly good condition!)

[zuzsenpai]

[appalachiabrat]

[onenicebugperday]

Hanging thieves, Diogmites sp., Asilidae (robber flies)

Photo 1 by seaheart88, 2 by pat_tiller, and 3 by mayfly1963

[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.

[ex0skeletal-undead]

by stones.and_bones on Instagram

[herbalfaerie]

patiently waiting for spring so I can look for bugs

[westwardly]

just took some fresh photos so looks like its that time of year again~✨

✨behold✨

my bugs

i just added a couple newbies to this collection of over 50 different wildlife specimens 💖 (plz dont ask me to name them all ;-;)

they are beautiful. (and smelly)