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The capricorn beetle, thought to be extinct in England since the late 18th century has been found hanging out on the side walk. Experts believe this wood-feeding insect may have hitched a ride on some imported wood pallets from a distant country, but are still intrigued by its arrival and subsequent discovery. The specimen was turned over to athorities and sent to the local butterfly reserve.
–Adrienne
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The World Health Orginazation has just released a comprehensive report, written by various pest athorities, about the status of urban pests. This report is meant to be a basis for public policy. The orgination asked leading experts on various pests to put together as much information about each pest as possible. The pests covered in the report include cockroaches, dust mites, bedbugs, fleas, pharaoh ants, fire ants, flies, body lice, ticks, and mosquitos. There’s also information about vertebrate pests, as well as a section on allergic asthmas.
The best part, though, is it is published on the web for free:
http://www.euro.who.int/document/e91435.pdf
Although if you’d rather have the bound, hard copy version, you can purchase it from WHO for $120 plus $12 shipping.
http://www.euro.who.int/InformationSources/Publications/Catalogue/20080617_9
Woo!
–Adie
Cloth and Fodder has a great, indepth post about the process of making a wasp cake
(it looks like Arachnospila sp. to me). The post takes you through the full process of making the cake, along the will the intricate steps and various photos. What a beautiful result!
–Adrienne
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Killerstartups.com just announced the creation of a new research resource: ISpecies.org. The service is simply a specialized search engine that allows for the targeted searching of a specific species. The engine mines everything from Wikipedia to Google Scholar and gives you a list of articles, the Wiki entry, up to 5 pictures, and a variety of other resources all about that organism. Excellent!
–Adrienne
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A fabulous blog, Dark Roasted Blend, has a series of close-up arthropod faces (they call them “bug” faces, but then the first picture is a hook worm….Civilians.) on their site today. It’s a great read, with some amazing photos. If only these came in 8×10! I know what I want for Christmas this year…
–Adrienne
Source (Oklahoma Microscopic Society via Dark Roasted Blend)
