Ants - Naturalists Handbook

I'll be honest, Hymenoptera give me the heebie jeebies, but ants surely have to be the most fascinating group of insects which have yet evolved. I'm naturally drawn to under-recorded groups and ants are very much neglected in VC55. With only 61 species occurring in Britain they are also a manageable size (compared to say, Ichneumons). But I must resist, I've made a deal with myself that I'll get to ants after I've sorted out aphids (but don't hold your breath!). When the day comes I won't be able to do better than Gary Skinner and Andrew Jarman's updated Ants book. In fact, I could splurge a lot of money on the Naturalists Handbooks Series ... but I must resist! 

Skinner, G.J. & Jarman, A.P. (2025) Ants (Naturalists Handbooks Vol. 24). Pelagic Publishing Ltd. ISBN 9781784273040 https://pelagicpublishing.com/collections/naturalists-handbooks/products/ants-second-edition

 

Entomology Journal - December 2024

Not a lot of entomology for me this month, I've been mostly thinking back on this year as well forward to 2025.

I've never kept a regular journal for a whole year before so this has been an interesting exercise. While it's nice to be able to recap the year easily, it hasn't been an easy process for me. I'm not a natural diarist and this journal has been rather selective. To be able to keep this up I need to make some changes, and from January I won't be writing a full journal each month, but I do want to continue on a more advanced ad hoc basis, so in future months it will be more of a digest than a diary. 

FIT Count Summary 2024 

Low carbon biological recording - and remembering sunny afternoons in the garden. 

Spider Surprise

First VC55 record for the Ray Spider, Theridiosoma gemmosum. 

My Journal, December 2024

03.xii.2024
A local trip to the Attenborough Arboretum. Not much to be found but lots of Giant Willow Aphids. After some effort I did manage to confirm a record of Mycena calvularis on a Willow trunk, a good result for my rusty mycology.

 
09.xii.2024
Weather pretty bad, so a week of microscope work catching up on the summer backlog.

 
13.xii.2024
LRES first ever online meeting on Aquatic Bugs seemed to be well received by guests. The members were possibly less keen on this format.

 
17.xii.2024
Went on a secret mission to a secret location to collect a secret species for a secret project! Sorry, but I hope to have an exciting update in 2025!

 
29.xii.2024
After two weeks of the gloomy weather I can remember, finally a pink dawn and some sunshine. With the days getting longer, a prospect of hope on the horizon for entomology in the year to come.

Read previous Journal entries