My favourite lifer this week was this six spotted zigzag ladybird, which I found tons of.
Not much else. That’s the only thing I found this week -_-
Not much else. That’s the only thing I found this week -_-
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OMG I love the diversity of colors and patterns seen in Coccinellidae. Sometimes I just sift through the taxa tab for this family to see all of the different species. I haven’t seen this one yet, thank you for posting.
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My fave is sweetgum. Leaves smell good.
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Same! Ladybugs are some of the most coolest beetles in my not-so-humble opinion . Plus, they save my plants from aphids, so there. Btw, apparently this species is mainly found in here:
All the ladybugs and co I have ever seen : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=48486&user_id=austin_ajit&verifiable=any
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I meant “vile” as in too blurry too ID!
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Here’s a strange fungi I found just a little while ago. I don’t remember seeing one like it before.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255103225
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(@dominid I shared with @austin_ajit elsewhere that we get the other color variant of that Lady Beetle here!)
This was my last week fully in this home.* It feels like my garden knows I am on the verge of abandoning it, and nearly everything is hiding to me.
I am going to miss my little N. perilampoides bees so much. (They do not seem similarly emotionally affected. 
)
Nonetheless I did have two firsts:
At first I thought there was a piece of lint on one of the downshooting roots of the Ficus, but then when I looked closer, I could see it was definitely a type of mealybug. CV identified the Genus as Ferrisia (and one of iNaturalist’s most astute Identifiers agreed).
This thing was enormous, and I fairly raced to upload it to find out what it was. Pachylia ficus, more commonly known as a Fig Sphinx! This makes sense given the Ficus aurea that overhangs the laundry casita from the next patio over. (We have a Ficus maxima in our own garden, which looks very different.)
*Now we will begin s-l-o-w-l-y moving things from one home to another, plus handling utilities and such. Things move on a different timeline here. It is hard to explain; it is just how it is. Also it is the season when things move even more slowly. When will we be fully moved? Who can say? Right now I am pre-exhausted just thinking about all that needs to be done.
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Fantastic finds!
The move to here took me 3 months of work and back and forthing, in a Michigan winter. You have my empathy. It will go as it must, and honestly, a slower move is not bad.
I’m looking forward to you finding goodies in your new surroundings!
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I realise that I was a bit in a rush when I posted this one, the plant is a Sagittaria platyphylla in the Alismataceae family, and it’s a weed in Australia.
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Amazonian Peru week two so many lifers hard to narrow down, hope 10 is okay.
White-lined Leaf Frog
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255164298
Syntermes aculeosus
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255376735
Paecilaema manifestum
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254082982
Cyriocosmus perezmilesi
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254883933
Bates’s Tree Boa Corallus batesii
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254883847
Eupastranaia tumidifrons
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254201737
Amazonian Horned Frog Ceratophrys cornuta
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255164292
Tityus gasci
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/255061917
Colossal Roach Blaberus colosseus
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254082989
Likely Pyrearinus glowing larvae of a luminous click beetle.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/254883856
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https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/255330376
Macrotrista intersecta aka Corroborree Cicada.
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Courtesy of a pair of helpful identifiers who brought this down to a taxonomic level that became a lifer for me, the beaded lacewing species Isoscelipteron pectinatum:
-
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Wow! Those are incredible!
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Thanks, having such a diverse environment really helps.
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Sometimes when I look at an observer’s photos I wish iNat had a way to “fave” their entire catalogue…your observations are an excellent example - amazingly gorgeous photos and diverse too! (only 10? 
)
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Under your hat
Once again, I’m trying to see how long I can go through the winter finding living (hopefully new) arthropods.
Spotted this lifer, a Common Rough Woodlouse, on top of a wooden fence post.
Same spot, much smaller (at the limit of the lens I was carrying) was this tiny mite from the family Rhagidiidae. And another lifer.
Despite its tiny size, and the cold, it was moving faster than I could focus, so this is actually a still cropped from a video frame.
But – they both kind of cheated in terms of surviving that cold snap. When I approached the fencepost, it was topped with somebody’s lost toque – which I recognized as being there for at least a week. So I thought, hmm… wonder if anybody would take advantage of this insulated cover? Those black shapes behind the mite are the wool fibers in the cap. Unlike the woodlouse, it stayed in the cap when I lifted it up to peek.
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Does that extend to fireflies (larvae)? Which I always think are very cool.
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Your photos are gorgeous! I’ve always wanted to see the herptiles of the Amazon, there’s so much biodiversity. That photo of the Bates’s Tree Boa belongs in a Herpetology Atlas!
I don’t think so, but the firefly larva do look similar to snail eating beetle larva.
Your photos are gorgeous! I’ve always wanted to see the herptiles of the Amazon, there’s so much biodiversity. That photo of the Bates’s Tree Boa belongs in a Herpetology Atlas!
ditto
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