circus of spineless 6

Circus of the Spineless #6

Welcome to the Circus of the Spineless. I hope you all forgot the

beauty and elegance of the previous edition of the Circus by now, so

you won't say "Yeew, this is, like, soooo con-ven-tio-nal!".

I was thinking of organizing the carnival according to Borges' Chinese

Classification of Animals, but that did not work: "dogs" and "pigs"

are explicitely forbidden here. How many Invertebrates are capable of

breaking a vase? Not to mention that most invertebrates look like a

fly from a distance anyway.

Then, I was thinking of making a similar type of classification

myself, e.g., "pretty pictures", "blogs with yellow background",

"bloggers with the middle name starting with T", but that did not work

either: some categories were very full, and others quite empty.

In the end, I had to go with the conventional classification, which

revealed a bias in itself. While we may complain about the

propenderance of cat and dog pictures on blogs, why are there no posts

about sponges, cnidarians and annelides, not to mention tardigrades,

rotifers and chaetognaths? Ah, well, we go with what we have:

Butterflies and Moths

Let's start with Some tropical lepidoptera from Urban Dragon Hunters.

From Aydin �rstan's Snail's Tales lots of kinky stuff: An upside down

butterfly, What are these butterflies doing? and Sex on the grass.

Firefly Forest Blog took some great pictures of a Great Purple

Hairstreak, Gray Hairstreak Revealed and a Texan Crescent.

Photography Class - Butterflies and More butterflies (and a moth) from

TBG from Tortoise Trail.

Pharyngula explains a recent paper on the Evolution of a polyphenism

in moths.

Stridulations is an entomologist who adds more to the story in The

amazing polyphenic Manduca.

What butterflies are these, asks Annotated Budak.

Follow the life cycle of a sulphur: Sulphur Chrysalis - "Artsy"

Lighting, Sulphur Chrysalis, Sulphur Larva - Early Instar (otra vez),

Sulphur Larva - Early Instar, Pigs (Two Different Ones), Gorged on the

greeenery and Flower Afficionado on The Taming of the Band-Aid.

Social Insects

Matt Dowling of Ontogeny runs a series called Here's Your Moment of

Friday Ant Zen. You can see some fancy ants there, including

Temnothorax curvispinosus, Mexican Honeypot Ants, or Torture-rack

ants.

Matt is not the only one. You can find Friday Ant Blogging on Henry's

Webiocosm Blog, too: Ants, Pupae and Larvae.

City Bees keeps a couple of hives of honeybees on her rooftop in New

York City. You can see the hives in Snow bees. Then, follow the daily

adventures of a novice beekeper in Let's Not Split Quite Yet, Battling

the Midwinter Mite Menace, Part 2, The Spaghetti Method and Dirty

Bees.

Have you ever seen bee-swarms in a tree? Carola of Bee-si-ness saw

some Swarms in January.

Bees Being 'Trained' as Odor Detectors from Apitherapy News.

From the Firefly Forest Blog some more: The Assassinated Honeybee and

a Sweat Bee.

Other Insects

Chaotic Utopia is in a Kafkaesque mood this week. Ecdosteroids and

Juvenile Hormone are in just the right alignment for the onset of

Metamorphosis.

From Rigor Vitae, an illustrated discussion of the Orthoptera's

importance to humans, as competitor and food: If You Can't Beat 'em,

Eat 'em! and an unfairly whimsical look at Megarhysa, the queen of

North American insects: Giant Ichneumon Wasps.

Carl Zimmer of The Loom wrote about the wasp that parasitizes

cockroaches in The Wisdom of Parasites.

I added some more information in Revenge of the Zombifying Wasp and

Carl had an update: Answers to your parasite questions.

A chorus for raucous souls also comments.

Michael Brown of Macro Art In Nature is a professional nature

photographer (do not copy or download his pics - they are

copyrighted!). Check out these beauties: Nature's Dragons, And

Understanding Them, The Fly, Swallowtail Butterfly and A Final Moment

In The Spotlight - Lacewing.

From Naturally Connected some pictures: Giant Stickbug and Mantid

Territory.

From Concrete to Cottages a Dragonfly At Rest.

From Invasive Species Blog, Jennifer sends a gypsy moth and an ant.

Ben Cruachan shows us a Tachinid fly.

This is old, but I don't think it was in an older edition of the

Circus: At home with the dragon.

Bug's Eyes caught a tiger beetle, then wrote some more about it.

ScienceBase explains Cannibal Mormon Crickets.

Spiders

Chris Clarke has moved Creek Running North to a new URL (so change

your links accordingly). This month's entry, The cursorial life, is

really worth reading, as long as you are not afraid of spiders.

Annotated Budak, is a blogging duck who went to see a talk - all about

spiders.

Spiderblog ran away from scary and dangerous assassin spiders to find

a comfy new home under the new name of Points Of Departure, where he

observes a spider in action: The Leaf Curler.

The Saga of a Spider in the Bathroom in two Acts: Act I and Act II.

Along Came A Spider and it's a Dockside.

Burning Silo is a wonderful new nature blog. Here are some Watchful

Spiders and Assassin Spiders.

Ben Cruachan again, this time with a Wife Frightener.

Firefly Forest Blog again: some Mealybugs and a Cricket.

Julie of Stridulations lists some of her favourite bug-related

websites.

Other Arthropods

Nuthatch of Bootstrap Analysis finds many legs in Footloose.

Journal of the Plague Year has nothing but post after post of

beautiful photographs of insects and other arthropods.

Nemesiario is a blog in Spanish. I think that Parasitos refers to

mites parasitising bees.

Also from Burning Silo, you can see Narceus Millipedes and a variety

of Snow Creatures.

The importance of Krill Feces, from Deep-Sea News.

Firefly Forest Blog has found a Winged Aphid.

Molluscs

What is the meaning of snails? The other ultimate question asked by

Snail's Tales. The answer? Just look at these beauties: An alien in

Florida: Subulina octona, A twisted snail, Gallandina annularis and

Land snails of Turkey: Discus rotundatus

There cannot be a Circus of the Spineless without the grogeous

Nudibranchs of Bouphonia. Check out Flabellina expotata, Kentodoris

rubescens, Discordoris boholensis and Plocamopherus tilesii.

As most of you know, PZ Myers of Pharyngula is the prime source of

cephalopod blogging. First, there is a whole Friday Cephalopod Series:

Moroteuthis robusta, Argonauta nodosa, Sepioteuthis sepiodea in

flagrante and Iridoteuthis iris. But there is more, as in cuttlefish

mating strategies: Sensitivity, charm and cleverness: very sexy. PZ

has also been moving some old cephalopod sex posts to the new blog:

The cephalopod sex series, most of which have predate the Circus of

the Spineless.

If you have not seen this dramatic movie clip before, go to Lancelet

to see the Giant Octopus catching and eating a decent-sized shark.

Deep-Sea News reports on the invasion of Humboldt Squid.

There are two blogs titled Squidblog. One is COM, the other is NET.

From the Squidblog.com a look into the role squid are playing in

William Gibson's new work. From the Squidblog.net comes Squids may

help determine global warming impact: scientist.

Other Invertebrates

Snail's Tales messes up my classification by combining an arthropod

and an "other invertebrate": a water scorpion and a peanut worm.

Ragesoss 2.02 is doing us a great favour by scanning in and making

freely available the gorgeous Haeckel's illustrations.

How Vertebrates evolved out of Invertebrates is far from clear. A new

study suggests a big reorganization of our understanding of the family

relationships between vertebrates, tunicates, lancelets and

echinoderms. Carl Zimmer of The Loom explains in The Dawn of Brains

and Bones.

Since that study involves lancelets, it is expected that Lancelet

would pick it up, and he does: Old icons will die hard.

And Evolgen adds his own take in Long Branch Attraction and the

Branching Order of Deuterostomes.

The force that through... is enchanted by organisms that live in

extreme environments, including the Xtreme Worms.

Matt Downling of Ontogeny explores toxins in Marine Flatworm + Puffer

Fish Toxin = Deadly Invertebrate.

Both Matt and Carl comment on the Evolution of Leeches.

Apostropher observes penis-fencing in Moral degeneracy in flatworms

(and here is the movie).

A duck went to a museum and saw a lot of different invertebrates.

Fragments From Floyd ponders Parasites.

Bouphonia brings in some less-represented phila in the wall charts of

Karl Georg Friedrich Rudolf Leuckart.

In this post by Deep-Sea News, you need to skip the Vertebrates in the

beginning before you get to some Guinness record-holding

Invertebrates.

Other Organisms

Premenopaws is taking biology and just went over a cool lab with a

bunch of wonderful creatures.

Pim van Meurs on Panda's Thumb wrote about humans. I know - these are

Vertebrates, not really elligible for this carnival, but those are

very Spineless-friendly humans: Entomologists unite behind

evolutionary theory.