Every picture tells a story
Dragonfly wings are thin and light and have a corrugated-like structure. There are lots of tiny cells between numerous veins and cross veins, which together form a stiff, yet relatively … Continue Reading Dragonfly wings: tried and tested over millennia!
The upper wing surfaces of butterflies are often brightly coloured and visually highly apparent (above), whilst the undersides are usually fairly dull and inconspicuous (below). Although this characterisation is a … Continue Reading How to build a butterfly!
Tiger beetles (Cicindelinae) are strikingly beautiful predatory insects which come in a bewildering variety of stunning colours: iridescent, metallic greens, reds, blues and so on. Researchers have speculated about the function of … Continue Reading Tiger beetles: colour for a purpose
The Common Blue is a gorgeous little butterfly. Although the bright blue male is flashy and showy, it’s the female I like best, with her subtle variations of blue and … Continue Reading Common Blues – female colour variation
When I first came across this large spider, I wondered what it was doing with a piece of old leaf. Large Nephila spiders like this produce large asymmetric orb webs on … Continue Reading Leaf butterfly: caught in the net!
If you go to college (I studied Zoology) you learn a lot of exciting new words and phrases – things like parapatric speciation – very useful for impressing your friends at the … Continue Reading The Bath White: a parapatric species or a peripatetic pierid?
Many homopteran species, including aphids, have evolved mutualistic relationships with ants. Such symbiotic relationships are beneficial to both species and will endure as long as the costs do not outweigh … Continue Reading Ant-attended aphids
When we look at an organism, we see a host of different adaptations which have evolved to improve or enhance the fitness and survival of that species. One such trait … Continue Reading A trick of the tail!
Stabilmenta are conspicuous patterns or decorations made by spiders – particularly orb-web spiders – in their webs. Google ‘stabilmenta’ (singular: stabilmentum) and you will see many wonderful examples of these … Continue Reading Stabilmenta: spider’s web decorations
Males butterflies in the family Lycaenidae, the so-called Blues, typically have brightly coloured, iridescent colours on the upper (dorsal) surfaces of their wings. Vivid blue iridescence such as this on the … Continue Reading Bright iridescent patches are honest signals!
The Longbanded Silverline (Spindasis lohita), Family Lycaenidae, is a beautiful insect with a remarkable structure – a tail, or ‘false head’ – at the end of its hind wing. There is … Continue Reading Bluff and deception in Blues
There’s not an awful lot to say about Komodo dragons, other than the fact that they are a huge lizard – the biggest in the world – and give us … Continue Reading Dragons on the beach
A little butterfly skipping from flower to flower in the late afternoon sunshine. Enjoying little sips of nectar. Seemingly oblivious to the cares of this world. Yet there lurks a … Continue Reading Watch out little butterfly!
In 1988, it was discovered that the Wood White butterfly (Leptidea sinapis (Linnaeus, 1758)) was actually two species, largely overlapping in their habitats, but virtually identical and only distinguishable by … Continue Reading Wood Whites go A-Courting!
It used to be thought that butterflies could not hear; that they were deaf. Well I suppose it is understandable, as they do not have ears sticking out from their … Continue Reading “Did you hear that?” Said the butterfly.
It is said that 50% of wild butterflies are killed and eaten before they get a chance to mate and reproduce (1). Poor things! One way to avoid being eaten … Continue Reading Peck me here! Butterfly predation.
Wildlife & Landscape Artist
Stories of natural history
Research blog of Renee Rossini
Award-winning blog - Living in rural Andalucia
For bloggers who aspire to inspire
Showcasing some of my digital photography and videography.
Science, skepticism and dragonflies
Lost Cities. Forgotten Spaces. Curious Places.
Seattle and Western Washington's source for breaking news, weather, and sports. Home of Washington’s Most Wanted and the Seattle Seahawks.
a linguist writes about Spanish
Every picture tells a story
The not so ordinary wildlife of an ordinary (but scruffy) garden
Books, birds and tales from the wild
The way I see the world around me...
and other Lepidoptera
Exploring the natural world.
