Notices by Alex Wild (alexwild@mastodon.online), page 3

If you're willing to poke around underground, you might find some truly weird ants. Like these Syscia madrensis, whose blind, wormlike bodies are ideal for hunting in tight spaces. Arizona.
#Ants #Insects #Dorylinae #Syscia

Dear Science Journalists,

Please mention when your write-ups cover work that was funded by federal agencies that are now being dismantled, defunded, and censored.

The public needs to know what is being lost, and if you don't tell them in the context of Cool New Science, who will?

If I wanted to design the perfect beachead to introduce, incubate, and launch Yellow Fever into the United States, I would very much build something like this monstrosity.

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/miami-dade-mayor-slams-states-alligator-alcatraz-immigration-detention-plan-in-everglades/

Natural history collections house more than just specimens. Here is a homemade field guide that ecologist Larry Gilbert made for himself as a graduate student in the 1960s. Those are real butterfly wings.

Seen in the UT Insect Collection.

#Entomology #Collections #butterflies #NaturalHistory

Dung beetles are such handsome animals. Here’s a female Texas rainbow scarab, Phanaeus texensis. It is not rainbow colored like its congeners, but I’m not complaining.
#insects #phanaeus #dungbeetles .

Dear science journalism,

Please start including the funding source and whether it has been imperiled by the coup in your coverage of cool new science papers. The public should know the floor is being cut out from under us.

A weird little flat-headed leafhopper, Xerophloea, from UT Austin's Brackenridge Field Lab. #Cicadellidae #Leafhopper #Insects

We leave the venus flytrap outdoors in the summer. It's been busy, apparently. #VenusFlyTrap #Insects

The enemy. So pretty. So hungry. Eating my tomatoes and looking gorgeous. #insects #hornworm #lepidoptera #gardening

Just a flower. A flower with an ant. And definitely no moths or anything.

#Camouflage #Lepidoptera #Bloomscrolling #Noctuidae #insects

One of several blacklights the UT insect collection set up last night at our new Hill Country Field Station. Perfect conditions: warm, muggy, no wind, no moon. #entomology #utaustin #science

So many Ichneumonids, so little time. I also collected this Exetastes bifenestratus, a species I'd never seen before. #insects #ichneumonidae #wasps

Particularly happy that a few of these male Labidus army ants arrived to the blacklight. #ants #insects

I don’t usually photograph vertebrates, aside from the occasional wedding or some such, but this Panamanian agouti was irresistible. #agouti #panama #wildlife

A Sceliphron mud dauber wasp carries a glob of mud back to her mud nest, the weight of her load counterbalanced by her unusual petiolate abdomen. Texas. #sceliphron #sphecidae #wasp #insects #flight

Really wish people would stop talking about the problem with Science under Trump as “budget cuts”.

No. Budgets are set deliberatively by elected members of congress. Budgets haven’t been cut.

What’s happening are *purges* and *censorship*.

After nearly a century of prosperity, the United States has decided, apparently on purpose, to become a poor country.

When we said “Keep Austin Weird”, we meant artists and eccentric musicians and stuff. None of this Alex Jones, Elon Musk creepy incel loser weird.

Linepithema tsachila ants drink from an Inga nectary in Ecuador. I described and named this species with funding from the National Science Foundation. #NSF #Ants #science

Reddit post reminding us all why the liberal arts are worth saving.