#leafcutter

[pinatadoodles]

Leafcutter

Harpy Gee got me back into 3D modeling, look at that. Just wanted to try painted textures and some shader nodes (made in blender)

[fumblebeefae]

Leafcutter bee (Megachile sp.) Sydney, Australia

[transingsomeformers]

Got some art commissioned by @geluatekurama of my girl leafcutter!!! She looks amazing thank you again!

[pogomcl]

Anthidium punctatum Canon 7D EFS 60 2.8 f/7.1 1/320 iso 160 Prague, Czech Republic 7/20/2020

[beeingapis]

"Emergent Conversant Verdant Merchant"

[usgsbiml]

Sand loving Silvery Leaf Cutter Bee, Megachile leachella.  Haunter of sand habitats, unlike its well known (In North America) kin M. rotundata this tiny leaf cutter makes its nest in the ground of sandy dune and sandpit sites

[sixteenseveredhands]

Strange Bedfellows: these unprecedented photos show a leafcutter bee sharing its nest with a wolfspider

I stumbled across these photos while I was looking up information on leafcutter bees, and I just thought that this was too cool not to share. Captured by an amateur photographer named Laurence Sanders, the photos were taken in Queensland, Australia several years ago, and they quickly garnered the attention of both entomologists and arachnologists.

The leafcutter bee (Megachile macularis) can be seen fetching freshly-cut leaves, which she uses to line the inner walls of her nest. The wolfspider moves aside as the bee approaches, allowing her to enter the nest, and then she simply watches as the leaf is positioned along the inner wall.

Once the leaf is in position, they seem to inspect the nest together, sitting side-by-side in the entryway; the bee eventually flies off again to gather more leaves, while the wolfspider climbs back into the burrow.

The leafcutter bee seems completely at ease in the presence of the wolfspider, which is normally a voracious predator, and the wolfspider is equally unfazed by the fact that it shares its burrow with an enormous bee.

The photographer encountered this bizarre scene by accident, and he then captured a series of images over the course of about 2 days (these are just a few of the photos that were taken). During that 2-day period, the bee was seen entering the nest with pieces of foliage dozens of times, gradually constructing the walls and brood chambers of its nest, and the spider was clearly occupying the same burrow, but they did not exhibit any signs of aggression toward one another.

The photos have been examined by various entomologists and arachnologists, and those experts seem ubiquitously surprised by the behavior that the images depict. The curator of entomology at Victoria Museum, Dr. Ken Walker, noted that this may be the very first time that this behavior has ever been documented, while Dr. Robert Raven, an arachnid expert at the Queensland Museum, described it as a "bizarre" situation.

This arrangement is completely unheard of, and the images are a fascinating sight to behold.

Sources & More Info:

Brisbane Times: The Odd Couple: keen eye spies bee and spider bedfellows in 'world-first'

iNaturalist: Megachile macularis

[humblegrub]

leafcutter bee song (unintentional)

see the video on tiktok here

[mushbeast]

silvery leaf cutter bee

[dinoserious]

invertober day 2, silvery leafcutter bee!

[onenicebugperday]

Ant cockroach, Attaphila fungicola, Blattellidae

Ant cockroaches live in the nests of leaf-cutter ants and disperse phoretically by hitching rides on virgin queen ants (photo 1) or by riding on leaves carried by ants returning to a nest. They have been suggested to feed on the fungus their host ants farm and are not attacked by host workers because they blend into the colony by mimicking the odor of their hosts ants. Adults measure only about 3mm in length.

Photo 1 by leg9 and 2-4 by myrmexflora

[thisismyideaofhumor]

Sometimes I remember that one of the JumpStart video games have a section where you play as a leafcutter ant, and one of the minigames involved running away from a parasitic fly that was trying to lay eggs in you

[celestialmacros]

So. Much. Pollen.

Carpenter-mimic Leafcutter Bee (Megachile xylocopoides)

August 16, 2023

Southeastern Pennsylvania

[pogomcl]

Megachile, Anthidium punctatum Canon 7D EFS 60 2.8 f/7.1 1/320 iso: 160 Prague, Czech Republic July 18, 2020

[feather-bone]

[ID: an illustration of an orange ant facing to the right holding a section of green leaf in its mandibles. It is on a painterly blue, green, and yellow background with patches of moss and lichen. End.]

Leafcutter ant! They cultivate a particular species of fungus by feeding it plant material and tending it like a little fungus garden. Adult ants eat the sap of leaves, but their larvae are fed the cultivated fungi. Ant farmers!

Timelapse below. :-)