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A small greenish weevil with a long snout boring into a fig
The second place winner of the 2022 photo contest was Supratim Laha, a PhD student studying pollinators at the University of Calcutta. We asked about the story behind this amazing picture…
How did this image come about?
The story behind this image is another interesting part apart from the ecological fact. There is a large banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) on our university campus. One day I was just crossing the tree and suddenly a tiny insect fell on my shirt from the tree. I picked it up and noticed that it was a damn tiny weevil with a ridiculously long snout! I was astonished and started observing the tree closely. After a while, I found a lot of them walking on the tree; however, they were a bit sensitive and used to fly away if disturbed. So, I planned to photograph them the next day. I went to the campus early in the morning. With a lot of patience and slow movements, I searched for a few minutes and found a few individuals drilling through the immature fig fruits. I had my camera with an external flash and a homemade diffuser attached. When I looked at them through the viewfinder, it was an amazing sight! It was spinning its head sideways while drilling. I took a few shots and checked that out on the camera LCD screen, and it was done! The snout was so long that it had to lift its body first by stretching the legs and then it could properly place the tip of the snout on the ostiole. Altogether, it was a bizarre thing to me, I must say! Later on, I observed that they laid eggs inside the fig right after the drilling was done.

What do you like best about this image?
The best part I feel in this image is that we may think of a fig as insignificant or just a regular fruit, but for this tiny cute weevil this fig serves as a whole world wherein their babies will grow and come out successfully one day. The fig trees are often called the queen of the trees. It supports a great diversity of life alone! Conservation of fig trees should be one of the important criteria in land-use management plans. 

What is one piece of advice you would give to newcomers to insect photography?

From my little experience, I would suggest newcomers to wait and observe patiently during insect photography, so that they could predict the next move that the insects would make.

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PRAYING MANTIS Sterling silver, copper, 14K & 18K gold 18.5″l x 12″w x 9.5″h

 

We have featured the wonderful metalwork of Canadian artist Elizabeth Goluch before, in this awesome interview by Crystal Ernst. Now Ben Proudfoot of Breakwater Studios has produced this wonderful video featuring Elizabeth, her inspiration and work. If you are fascinated by insects aesthetically, or have a love for metalwork and sculpture, this is a great introduction to the artistic process!
[vimeo 125539638 w=560 h=315]

Lady Bug from Breakwater Studios Ltd. on Vimeo.

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BUMBLEBEE Sterling silver, 14K & 18K gold 7″l x 7″w x 4″h

 

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Catherine Scott and I continue on our Honduran odyssey, finally making it out into the field to begin our work on Red-throated Caracaras. We are working in a medium-elevation pine forest, consisting of mainly Pinus oocarpa and a couple oak species. This makes the surroundings seem very much like the foothills of the Rockies, except the species composition is way off!

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In these pine forests, one of the main defoliating species are fungus-rearing leafcutter ants!

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On some of the flowering plants, mantids lie in wait of unwary pollinators.

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Catherine Scott and Isidro Zuniga, our main Honduran collaborator, check out the cryptic mantid.

Being weird gringos, and something of a novelty, we get great opportunities to chat with curious kids. Some of them are really enthusiastic about birds and insects, and some can be persuaded to show us where to find the cool bugs. 

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We will keep searching out these cool bugs, as our Honduras fieldwork continues. Please stay tuned for more updates from the field, when and where we can fit them in.

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By Sean McCann, ESC/SEC blog coordinator and PhD student at Simon Fraser University —— © 2011 S. McCann, all rights reserved It seems that a popular pastime for Canadian entomologists in winter is to reminisce about warmer times and abundant insects. Edmonton bug photographer Adrian Thysse just posted a video of his National Moth Week experience at Devonian Gardens in Edmonton over the summer, and it looks like an entomological wonderland compared to the insect famine that is the Canadian winter. That video reminded me of my own light trapping experiences in much warmer times, namely in the rainforest of French Guiana. I was not actually doing the trapping, but I had the good fortune to do some observation. Guelph’s own Alex Smith and Rodolphe Rougerie were using UV lamps and white sheets to do their sampling, but of course all kinds of amazing insects were coming to the sheets. If you have never experienced tropical light trapping, the video below provides a taste of the sheer biomass of insects coming to a single sheet. [flickr video=11200757316 secret=7ec05d78b3 w=560 h=315] Here is a small gallery of images of insects that caught my eye (bonus points if you can ID them in the comments!).

Human hangers-on were not the only beneficiaries of this insect bonanza. Under the sheet, toads gathered to feast, while bats swooped in from above. The next morning, the diurnal predators took over, with scores of birds waiting above to snatch the tasty morsels from the  air as they tried to fly back to their homes in the trees. Here a Black Nunbird (Monasa atra) shows up on a perch with a gift. [flickr video=11200587055 secret=bdf1a44633 w=560 h=315] This gift-giving was a bit of a theme, with a Black-bellied Cuckoo offering a large katydid to an associate. mag (10 of 19) For an entomologist who studies birds such as myself, the light traps were a wonderful thing to see. Waking up at dawn to see a concentrated slice of bird-insect interaction in the warmth of the tropical rainforest is something I will never forget. As the winter tightens its grip on Canada, its insects, and those who study them, I hope this post helps warm you up!