#insect reproduction

[jensownzoo]

Soooooo...apparently mating cicadas get tied together like dogs.

The one on the left was slowly, but determinedly, dragging their partner around by the ass. They had other things to do, dammit!

[sparrowlucero]

funniest thing i own is a book that tries to psychosexually analyze basically everything that ever happened in doctor who in like the most reaching, overwrought and inhuman way possible and then when it gets to clara (probably the easiest character to discuss this way on a canonical level) the author is just like "nothing of note really happens in the text so I'm going to turn to viagra fanfiction instead"

[addicted2wasps]

Copidosoma floridanum is an Encyrtid wasp whose brood is a fascinating example of polyembryony, in which multiple embryos form from a single egg. It is primarily a parasitoid of Noctuid moths in the subfamily Plusiinae. The Encyrtid egg will produce thousands of clone embryos. The mother C. floridanum will sometimes lay one male egg per host, or one female egg, or sometimes both. What's even more fascinating is that the wasp larvae have a caste system: the reproductives and the (precocious) soldiers. The reproductive larvae emerge during the caterpillar's last instar, consume it, and pupate into adult wasps. The soldiers emerge earlier, but never molt and die when the host dies. Their sole purpose is to protect their reproductive siblings from other parasitoid rivals and to kill their own opposite-sex precocious siblings. Since male soldiers compete for resources (caterpillar), by killing some of them off, the sterile soldiers are helping their genes survive by securing more resources for their clone reproductive siblings. In mixed-sex broods, the male larvae will try to hide and encyst themselves in the caterpillar's fat body to escape their murderous sterile sisters. Copidosoma competes with Microgastrine species such as Microplitis demolitor and Glyptapanteles pallipes. C. floridanum demonstrates haplodiploidy where unfertilized eggs become haploid males and fertilized eggs become diploid females. There are both male and female soldiers, but male soldiers tend to be less aggressive towards competitors. However, C. floridanum isn't invincible. There is one competitor, Trichogramma, that is also an egg parasitoid, and only uses the eggs of the moths. The adult wasps emerge long before the caterpillars hatch. When Trichogramma and Copidosoma end up in the same egg, the former usually ends up victorious.

I spent many hours doing research on this topic, but if there are any mistakes, I welcome any corrections!

[o-craven-canto]

Just thought you guys would have wanted to know about this.

(picture source: Yoshizawa et al. (2014), "Female Penis, Male Vagina, and Their Correlated Evolution in a Cave Insect", Current Biology)

[dualitieds]

Twirls his stupidly big ears/

[greycatbird]

Some brush pile visitors from last week: what I think is a female Baltimore Oriole collecting fluff for her nest and a pair of Bumble Flower Beetles investigating a dying leaf (the second beetle is the blurry brown blob near the bottom, sorry about my phone camera lol)

[3142-redgrave-avenue]

hey guys does anyone have that one tumblr post/meme of Sparda asking Eva if they could have normal sex but Eva demanding "DEMON FORM! NOW!" please I cant find it anywhere because last time i saw it was from a reblog because the op was deactivated

[futurebird]

I just realized that Messor barbarus can't sting. And now I need to rethink something I thought was obvious about seed collecting ants.

Pogonomyrmex and Veromessor (the genuses of harvester ants we have in the Americas) can sting. It seems that much like "Army Ants" the group "harvester ants" isn't as cohesive as I thought.

That said... they are somewhat related, both practice social hybridogenesis.

I'm stunned. Ants shock me every single day! They can't keep getting away with this!

Please don't ask me to explain this yet I'm still trying to understand what the heck these ants are even doing.

[banesberry-anomoly]

would arache adopt me if I asked very nicely

sitting batting eyelashes image

[SURE, BUG. I ALREADY GOT THOUSANDS OF SPIDERS RUNNING AROUND, WHAT'S ANOTHER INSECT?]

[skydarcyedwards]

Well This Is Orchid

Sun Orchid, possibly Shy Sun Orchid, Thelymitra graminea.

Two weevils, soon to be more I suppose. I won't try to classify them, they need privacy right now.

Castle Rock, Porongorup.

2022

Canon 60D

Canon EF-s 35mm f/2.8 IS STM macro

[spricket-central]

sooooo Dirt and Loofah's introduction went well, id say... lmao

congrats on the sex 🎉

[thisgentlechild]

A parasitoid wasp that insinuates itself so completely into the life cycle of its insect host that the host never gets to form its own imago:

As they feed on their pupating host, male parasitoids absorb the host's gonads

Males with male gonads mate with males that have female gonads, forming fertile host eggs

Males with female gonads can then mate with females, using a host egg as a spermatophore

The female fertilizes her own eggs, then re-lays the host egg implanted with her own

The host larva is born with wasp larvae already inside

They act as symbionts, remaining unobtrusive, increasing vigor and hunger of the host larva so it grows extra large

When the nice fat larva pupates, the wasp larvae devour it except for the gonads, and the cycle begins anew

[hellsitegenetics]

String identified: ga! a t a g ag a t ga c t t a t t, t t acta ga t cat g tat t! a t a c t t t g t t a actg ct t ag a . t t.

Closest match: Oppiella nova Common name: Oribatid Mite

(image source)

guards! read me my bedtime yaoi

[shuvva]

Sims 4 octopus challenge. Short lifespan. Parents die or immediately jump to Elder life stage after reproducing. Sims are rigged towards twins/triplets through traits and lot challenges. Goal is to achieve as much as possible in light of these challenges. I’d probably have them living in colony/extended family units but do what you want.

[hellsitegenetics]

String identified: at t a a. t cg a a ac C at c at

Closest match: Bombyx mori genome assembly, chromosome: 15 Common name: Domestic Silk Moth

(image source)

I want to be an evil wizard. but I keep choosing kindness

[rjzimmerman]

Surprising New Research Links Infant Mortality to Crashing Bat Populations. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The connections are commonsense but the conclusion is shocking.

Bats eat insects. When a fatal disease hit bats, farmers used more pesticides to protect crops. And that, according to a new study, led to an increase in infant mortality.

According to the research, published Thursday in the journal Science, farmers in affected U.S. counties increased their use of insecticides by 31 percent when bat populations declined. In those places, infant mortality rose by an estimated 8 percent.

“It’s a seminal piece,” said Carmen Messerlian, a reproductive epidemiologist at Harvard who was not involved with the research. “I actually think it’s groundbreaking.”

The new study tested various alternatives to see if something else could have driven the increase: Unemployment or drug overdoses, for example. Nothing else was found to cause it.

Dr. Messerlian, who studies how the environment affects fertility, pregnancy and child health, said a growing body of research is showing health effects from toxic chemicals in our environment, even if scientists can’t put their fingers on the causal links.

“If we were to reduce the population-level exposure today, we would save lives,” she said. “It’s as easy as that.”

The new study is the latest to find dire consequences for humans when ecosystems are thrown out of balance. Recent research by the same author, Eyal Frank, an environmental economist at the University of Chicago, found that a die-off of vultures in India had led to half a million excess human deaths as rotting livestock carcasses polluted water and spurred an increase in feral dogs, spreading waterborne diseases and rabies.

“We often pay a lot of attention to global extinctions, where species completely disappear,” Dr. Frank said. “But we start experiencing loss and damages well before that.”