Spent the last few days in Banff National Park, not bug-hunting, but attending the wedding of niece Teresa and her beau, Nial. A great time was had by all, and the event was mostly bug free – not even a cockroach to be found… 
♦ That greatest of insect documentaries, Life in the Undergrowth, featured a remarkable segment that showed the remarkable attraction of a a nectar-sipping moth to a lantern bugs rear-end …
Well, the intrepid Piotr Naskrecki has enlarged upon that theme – check out the remarkable photographs at The Mystery of the Flying Honeydew and the still more amazing images at The Mystery of Flying Honeydew: A Strange Case of Unabashed Thievery.
♦ Alex Wild also never fails to impress. This time with pictures of Plectroctena cristata, an ant from the Kibale Forest in Uganda that specializes in hunting millipedes! Amazing!
- A Plectroctena cristata forager poses with a millipede she has paralyzed. Kibale Forest, Uganda
Visit the Plectroctena cristata gallery for more, and don’t fail to visit Alex’s blog, Myrmecos.
♦ Spider stops traffic. More than that, the discovery of a threatened Braken Bat Cave meshweaver (Cicurina venii) has even managed to stop the construction of a 15.1 Million dollar highway project…
♦ The Brazilian Wandering spider is more humble, and doesn’t resort to stopping traffic to get attention. However, a bite from this (aptly named?) banana spider could still be quite embarrassing…
♦ Hermit Crab stampede, as captured by Steve Simonsen:
♦ And to close, Tamron is adding a new lens to their macro line, a new soon-to-be-released 90mm macro lens, now with image stabilization. Suitable for full size sensors, look for reviews of this lens to see if it provides the well-respected sharpness of its predecessors.
See you next week…
