Wednesday, 13 August 2025
One of those days
Tuesday, 12 August 2025
This is either genius ... or incredibly stupid
Tuesday, 5 August 2025
Kybos Confusion
Friday, 1 August 2025
Entomology Update - July 2025
Much needed rain, now waiting for the Arthropods to respond. August is looking good.
Monday, 28 July 2025
Or Else
I'm still on my quest to become less rubbish with bees. I felt I'd stalled recently, so after several months of struggling with Steven Falk's "field guide" (a somewhat marginal call, but you can put it in a rucksack, and if you've got a 20X hand lens, good lighting, and no wind, use it in the field), after a great deal of hesitation, I splashed out on Else & Edwards monumental Bee Bible, The Bees of the British Isles.
And I'm glad I did. The Else & Edwards keys frequently use different characters to the Falk keys, often less subjective in my opinion, and this alone makes them easier to use. The photos & drawings are larger and better reproduced therefore it is much easier to see fine details. In addition, the Else & Edwards comes with a CD with 835 key photos - full screen screen viewing is great. So what's the snag (apart from not being able to put them in your rucksack): THE PRICE! £150!!
So is comparing these books like comparing apples and oranges? Yes it is. A reasonably priced "field guide" vs. the ultimate reference. For me it's worth it. You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Falk, S. (2019) Field guide to the bees of Great Britain and Ireland. Bloomsbury Publishing.Else, GR and Edwards, M.(2018) Handbook of the bees of the British Isles. Vols 1 and 2. The Ray Society, London.
Tuesday, 22 July 2025
Lumps, Bumps and Spines
Saturday, 19 July 2025
A walk in the park
With much needed rain on the way I took an early morning walk in my local park. I had a target species in mind but didn't find it, so abandoning the Acers, I went off piste. Walking past a large Salix alba, a quick rummage brought up a specimen of Blepharidopterus diaphanus (only a few previous VC55 records).
Before turning for home, I investigated a group of Wellingtonia, and found a few rather indistinctive bugs I took home for further investigation. Closer inspection revealed that one seemed to be Orthotylus caprai. This is a Mediterranean species which has spread across Europe and only has a handful of British records. However, with only a female specimen I couldn't be sure and it was a couple of days before I could go back and look for more. On my second visit I found a male and managed to confirm the first VC55 record for this species.
It's well worth looking out for O. caprai on scaly conifers (Cupressaceae), although you'll need sharp eyes - they're on the small side!
Monday, 7 July 2025
Contradictory spider
Tuesday, 1 July 2025
Entomology Update - June 2025
It's June, so it's Peak Bioblitz. Much of my activity this month has been dominated by organized group visits and walks. Sadly the results have been dented by the heat and ongoing drought.
Finishing with a bang
Apart from sleeping, I'd almost welcome more tropical nights.
Saturday, 28 June 2025
Got the stomach for it?
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
The Pattern
Sunday, 1 June 2025
Entomology Update - May 2025
May has been a busy month, dominated by bees. I am thankful for the relief from the spring drought at the end of the month.
Friday, 23 May 2025
Free Range Pollen
Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Where the bee sucks
So far so easy - I know the flowers I have taken the pollen from. But can I identify pollen taken from bees to work out what they have been feeding on? There are several useful websites for identifying pollen. The Global Pollen Project is good, but my favourite is the Northumbrian Bees pollen gallery.
By coincidence, this month's Microscope Club also involved messing around with pollen and as usual, I picked up some useful tips. Size as well as shape is a key feature of identifying pollen grains and the standard is to make sure the pollen is fully hydrated before measuring, thus aqueous media are used. Glycerol Jelly is the standard medium but is a pain to work with, so I'm using Magnacol aqueous mountant. In water alone pollen grains are quite frisky and move around, making photography difficult. The Magnacol mountant contains PVA and is quite viscous, which fixes the grains better.
This is very much a work in progress but it will be interesting to see what I can find as the season progresses (assuming there are enough hours in the day).
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
Book Recommendation: Micro ladybirds of Britain and Ireland
Friday, 16 May 2025
The Entomological Society - keeping the lights on
I'm troubled by the ongoing demise of traditional wildlife groups, the sort that (used to) meet in a village hall once a month. I observe them gradually blinking out, one by one. I don't have any magic solutions for this (maybe there are none), here I'm just whistling in the dark to console myself and using this as a sketchpad for ideas.
What is keeping local natural history groups alive? Mostly, talks on "I jetted off to an exotic location buring tons of carbon to photograph wildlife". Ironic, isn't it?
Characteristics of thriving wildlife groups:
- Tend to have an active website or Facebook group, frequently maintained by one or a few individuals. Facebook is probably not the best platform for this, but speaks to the demographic which dominates wildlife groups. Bulletin boards, which might be an obvious alternative, seem to have mostly died, being eaten by Facebook for the elderly, and Discord or WhatsApp groups for the young.
- Some wildlife groups may have an active website, maintained and driven by an individual who has the time and skills to support this (dangerous, can become fossilized as technology changes, single point of failure). Interestingly I'm not aware of any thriving wildlife group based around an email list or newsletter (which is odd considering the penetration of this technology into the demographic). Maybe I'm missing something?
- Tend to have synchronous face-to-face meetings in addition to online activities. This can be based on geography - local groups, or field meetings, etc, for taxon interest groups.
- And?
But:
Communities don't live forever, they have lifetimes (particularly since most are maintained by a small number of enthusiasts). Individual members' life circumstances change, so communities evolve (rather than die). This is a tough process for individuals - natural selection - but inevitable.
So where do we go now? DOBS
- Daylight: Daytime sessions exclude some, but given the demographic, fewer people are active after dark (except for online meetings).
- Online: works for some, not all. Neither better nor worse than the traditional organizations, but different.
- Go Big: national societies e.g. BENHS, BAS, etc - not good for carbon footprints.
- Go Small: local face-to-face meetings arranged directly between participants. Accept scheduling problems - everyone is too busy to do everything. Quality of interaction counts, not numbers.
- And?
Please insert your thoughts here:
Sunday, 11 May 2025
Floating frames for macro photography
Wednesday, 7 May 2025
Kleidocerys privignus
Kleidocerys resedae, the Birch Catkin Bug, is a familiar and very common species of Lygaeid. Two closely related species are more problematic. Kleidocerys ericae was differentiated from K. resedae based on pigmentation and the fact that it feeds on heathers (Erica spp but not Calluna so I'm told). Kleidocerys privignus also has a different pigmentation pattern and feeds on Alder (Alnus). My natural inclination is to be a taxonomic lumper so I'm inclined to disregard the pigmentation differences (intermediate forms occur) and the food plant preferences (which laboratory rearing experiments have shown are not absolute) and regard all three as a single species. My ultimate authority on Hemiptera, Pericart, wasn't sure about these three, and without the benefit of DNA analysis hedged his bets, so no clear answer there. I was able to live with that until recently when I did some DNA analysis which implies that all three are indeed distinct species, see: https://ajcarthropoda.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-kleidocerys-conundrum-resolved.html
Which brings us to the question at the heart of this - what is a species? These days, the answer depends a lot on who you ask, but everyone agrees that it's now a lot more complicated now than when the species concept was developed. I'm afraid I have the old-fashioned opinion (which is bound to upset some) that a species is a group of organisms which are reproductively isolated. There are lots of ways to be reproductively isolated, e.g. pioneers trapped on an island, but it is also possible to be reproductively isolated behaviourally. A good example of this is the wolf spider Pardosa lugubris. This was split into two species based on observations of the male courtship dance (Cryptic species and behavioural isolation in the Pardosa lugubris group (Araneae, Lycosidae), with description of two new species. (2000) Bulletin British Arachnological Society, 11(7), 257-274). Being eaten by the female if she rejects your dance moves is pretty strong selection leading to reproductive isolation. Which brings us to Kleidocerys again. Like many Hemiptera, Kleidocerys communicate by stridulation. In this genus, sound production may not to be associated with mating but occurs when they are disturbed, perhaps as a territorial statement. K. ericae stridulates at a frequency of 16 Hz while K. resedae uses a lower frequency of 8 Hz (Stridulation and its analysis in certain Geocorisae (Hemiptera Heteroptera). (1957) Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 129 (3): 351-358). This is equivalent to the Pardosa mating dance and is likely to cause reproductive isolation, which is borne out by the DNA analysis of the two species. I don't know about stridulation frequency in K. privignus but the DNA analysis means that if we accept K. ericae as a distinct species from K. resedae, we have to do the same for K. privignus.
Recently I sampled 20 Kleidocerys specimens from Alder here in Leicestershire. My overall impression is that they are quite variable in pigmentation, but in my sample, 1 out of 20 specimens has the pigmentation described for Kleidocerys privignus, the others appearing to be variants of the extremely common Kleidocerys resedae.
The upshot of all of this is that while it's not clear if K. ericae occurs in VC55 (we have limited heather here), I think it's clear that K. privignus does. Now we need boots on the ground to get out there and figure out the field ecology.
Many thanks to Jim Flanagan for helpful discussions, and for sharing this interesting paper:
Davranoglou, L.R., Taylor, G.K., & Mortimer, B. (2023) Sexual selection and predation drive the repeated evolution of stridulation in Heteroptera and other arthropods. Biological Reviews, 98(3), 942-981.
Tuesday, 6 May 2025
Bees Knees - Minding The Gap
Thursday, 1 May 2025
Entomology Update - April 2025
April has been a busy month for me, but here are my highlights.
Thursday, 17 April 2025
AI is coming of age - as this potentially useful tool demonstrates
Saturday, 12 April 2025
Transformation
Last night I gave a talk to a local wildlife group which unexpectedly turned into a discussion about insect decline. It had to be said but that doesn't mean I like saying it. If you were in the audience, I apologise again. Seeking solace this morning, I visited my favourite wood. Over the last few years this has been depressing as Ash Dieback has gradually decimated them. Today I discovered that most of the dead Ash has been removed, and the transformation from dank Ash woodland into a very open, light-filled Oak woodland was startling and marvellous.
Wednesday, 9 April 2025
Hidden Details - The Magic of Macro Photography
Tuesday, 1 April 2025
Entomology Update - March 2025
A variable month, weather-wise - frost at night but some days very Spring-like. Blossom and buds bursting, but with the cold nights only one moth in the first moth trap of the year.
Sunday, 23 March 2025
Knee deep in Malacostraca
Saturday, 15 March 2025
In it for the long term
Recovered grasslands need more than 75 years of continuous management to regain their biodiversity because specialized pollinators are slow to return (also applies to fungi, etc, e.g. waxcaps). This underscores the importance of preserving old grasslands as reservoirs of biodiversity. Don't let developers tell you otherwise!
Long-term management is required for the recovery of pollination networks and function in restored grasslands, Journal of Applied Ecology (2025). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.70017
Saturday, 1 March 2025
Entomology Update - February 2025
Friday, 21 February 2025
What's in a name? The Tangled History of the "Charnwood Spider"
- The name Cryphoeca arietina was first used by Thorell in 1871, having been previously misidentified as Hahnia pratensis by Menge.
- This species was then identified as Cryphoeca diversa by Octavius Pickard-Cambridge in 1893.
- In 1908 Pickard-Cambridge renamed it Cryphoeca recisam.
- In 1913 after wandering around Sherwood Forest, A.R. Jackson renamed it again as Tetrilus recisus (On some new and obscure British spiders. Transactions and Annual Report of the "Nottingham Naturalists' Society" 60: 20-49).
- In 1937 Eugène Simon renamed it Tetrilus diversus, and in 1953 Locket & Millidge called it Tetrilus macrophthalmus.
- In 1986 Wunderlich changed the genus (again) to Mastigusa macrophthalma, based on taxonomic priority from the species name Tuberta arietina macrophthalma used by Chyzer & Kulczyński in 1897.
- Which brings us to the taxonomic revision by Castellucci, Luchetti & Scharff in 2024, which suggested that UK specimens were likely to be a new species, Mastigusa diversa. (See: Charnwood Confusion Continues).
Friday, 14 February 2025
One (OM) Lens to Rule Them All
The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 gets looked down on by Olympus snobs because it's "not as sharp" as some of the much heavier OM Pro lenses. I've just picked up an excellent used copy of one of these compact, light, cheap (everythng is relative!) lenses. So what do I think?
For just over £200 I've got a 600mm full-frame equivalent lens which is capable of photographing a bird at the top of a tree, or at closest focus filling the frame with a 10cm long subject. And by clipping a Raynox DCR250 lens on the front I can get 1.5X magnification, filling the frame with a 1.5cm long subject. My reason for buying this lens is not to photograph birds though :-) This is the lens I want for photographing flying insects - dragonflies, butterflies, hoverflies - if only there were some flying insects around at present!
But is it sharp enough? I'll let you decide:
click for larger image
Monday, 10 February 2025
The Kleidocerys Conundrum - Resolved?
- Kleidocerys resedae and K. ericae each form sequence clusters with similar levels of relatedness. This supports the idea that they are indeed separate species.
- Kleidocerys privignus, very similar in appearance to K. resedae but which is said to occur on Alder, also appears to to be a separate species. (NB: one privignus sequence clusters within the resedae sequences (blue arrow) - presumably a misidentified specimen).
DNA Barcoding - where are we, and why should I care?
Saturday, 1 February 2025
Entomology Update - January 2025
Friday, 24 January 2025
It's not the dogs fault
Since the pandemic the number of dogs has exploded, and with that, the amount of environmental harm being caused. I've seen so much habitat degradation over the last few years, associated with much heavier traffic than years ago. I don't blame the dogs for this. Working from home also plays a large part... The question is, what are we going to do about it?
Unleashed: walking dogs off the lead greatly increases habitat disturbance in UK lowland heathlands. (2024) Urban Ecosystems, 1-10. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11252-024-01568-4
Abstract: Human population growth is associated with increased disturbance to wildlife. This effect is particularly acute in urban and periurban areas, where the area of effective disturbance extends beyond that of human presence by the roaming behaviour of pet dogs. Dogs are globally the dominant companion animal, with a population of ~12 million in the UK. As urban areas extend, dogs are exercised in green space close to housing. In southeast and southern England these areas include lowland heath, a habitat of high conservation value. To quantify disturbance caused by dog walkers and their dogs, we used GPS units to track the movement of people and their dogs across four lowland heath sites, used a questionnaire to ask about dog walking habits, and mapped potential areas of disturbance caused by dog walkers. Questionnaires were completed by 798 dog walkers and the walks of 162 owners and their 185 dogs were recorded. Mean (±SE) walk time was 56 ± 23 min, walk distance 3.75±1.68 km and dogs were a median distance of 20 m from the owner during walks. Dogs were walked once (44%) or twice (56%) a day. Most (always: 85%; always or occasionally: 95%) dogs were walked off the lead even when signs were present requesting that dogs were kept on a lead. This resulted in up to a 21% increase in reserve area disturbed. In one reserve (Snelsmore Common), >90% of the area was disturbed by dogs, greatly eroding its conservation value. This work highlights the importance of considering how dog ownership can exacerbate levels of disturbance in sensitive periurban habitats when housing developments are planned.
There's useful information on Managing visitors with dogs in your woodland from WWW.GOV.UK here.
Monday, 20 January 2025
UPF - Ultra Processed fertilizer
A new research paper shows a large and significant negative effect of the major plant nutrients (NPK) on the abundance, species richness and functional diversity of both pollinators and flowering plants. Even average use of nitrogen fertilisers cut flower numbers fivefold and halved pollinating insects. This isn't a novel finding but the data presented is incontrovertible. This helps to explain the lack of biodiversity in huge swathes of VC55.
Trade-off between pollinator-wildflower diversity & grassland yields. npj Biodiversity volume 4, Article number: 1 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-024-00070-6
Sunday, 19 January 2025
In Praise of the Flying Nun
Macro photography has been hugely improved by the development of "flying nun" flash diffusers (such as Cygnustech diffuser, AK, MK, etc - good comparison here: https://wildmacro.de/the-best-flash-diffusers-for-macro-photography/). The closeness of the flash to the subject causes hot spots and burnt out highlights, and shiny subjects such as beetles are particularly difficult. The curved diffusion surface helps to solve these issues.
Photography Equipment
- Macro photos taken using OM System OM-5, OM SYSTEM M.Zuiko Digital ED 90mm f3.5 Macro IS PRO lens, +/- Raynox DCR-250/DCR150, Godox V860IIIO flash, Cygnustech diffuser.
- Field Photographs (2023 on) taken using an Olympus TG-6 with the Olympus TG Light Guide.
- Sony a6500, Sony FE 90mm F2.8 Macro G OSS +/- Raynox DCR-250, Godox V860IIIS flash, Cygnustech diffuser.
- Microscope photos taken using a Sony a7Rii on a GXM UltraZoom-3 trinocular stereo zoom microscope. (Prior to 2022, I used a GXM XTL3T101 microscope.)
- Higher magnifications using a Sony a6000 on an Apex Practitioner compound microscope.
- Images stacked where necessary with Helicon Focus.
Saturday, 18 January 2025
Parasitic Pink Pom Poms
On a recent outing Arthropods were very hard to find, but while searching I spotted some pink dots on a lichen-covered twig. It was one of those occasions when I knew exactly what it was, the lichenicolous fungus (a fungus which is a parasite on lichens) Illosporiopsis christiansenii. You might think day-glo pink fungi would be hard to overlook, but sizeism kicks in and they are usually overlooked because of their small size. I've been looking for this species and while it's not rare I've not seen it before. There are a couple of species it could be confused with so to confirm I checked the characteristic coiled spores under the microscope.