Mark Cocker’s Country diary piece in the Guardian this week, 1 June 2021 (‘the most seductive shade of green‘) got me thinking about leaves, trees and colours. As Mark reminded us, leaves look green because chlorophyll molecules absorb the red end of the visible light spectrum in photosynthesis, and the unused green light is reflected. Counterintuitively perhaps, they are green…
What is a face? It is our identity; what we present to the world and where we express our emotions. Do insects have faces? I think most people would agree that they do, even if they are not the flexible mirrors of the soul that faces are in humans (and other mammals). We humans have…
I went to Sulawesi, in Indonesia, primarily to visit Tangkoko National Park and see the Black Crested Macaques (Macaca nigra) known locally as Yakis. At the time, I did not possess a macro lens, so the pictures I took of butterflies were mixed, and I did not do anything with them. With the blessing of lockdown,…
Ever wondered what’s inside your favourite bottle of perfume (or after-shave)? How many compounds – fragrance notes – go to make that seductive smell? Turns out that there are lots, maybe 30 or 40 per perfume? It’s all a perfumers (parfumier in French) secret of course; the ‘formula’. But there are thousands of aromatic sources…
This blog is dedicated to Andreas Kay (1963–2019), a remarkable biologist and natural history photographer, some of whose photographs I have included below. I never met Andreas, but like many people, I followed him on Facebook and marvelled at his photographs documenting the diversity of life in Ecuador. He generously shared over 28,000 of his…
Insect antennae have been the focus of interest and speculation for as long as people have been observing our six-legged friends. We have seen in previous blogs in this series on Insect Antennae (I, II and III), how they are used for a wide variety of different purposes, from feeding ants, to detecting pheromones and…
Insect antennae often play important roles in courtship and mating. Not just for detecting pheromones, as we saw in the last blog, but also for transferring them, and for stimulating the opposite sex. Antennation – using the antennae to touch any part of the body of another insect – occurs for a variety of reasons…
Adult insects rely on their antennae to detect odours (smells!) which tell them all about what’s happening in their neighbourhood. Whether there is anything to eat nearby; whether there are any members of the opposite sex looking for a partner; who else is about, and so on. They wave their wonderful wands around and pick…
Insect antennae are the most wonderful sense organs. They are both the nostrils and feelers – tactile probes – of insects, and are covered with an array of sensory receptors that can be used to detect a host of different things, including: potential mates, hosts, prey items, oviposition sites and much more. They are used…
This site was created following the demolition of the old Futurist theatre on Scarborough seafront. Demolition of the building began in June 2018 and was completed in August 2018. A process called ‘slope stabilisation’ created an area of sloping ground (below) which, in this year of lockdown, has filled up with wild flowers. Some might…
