Arthropods--the most ubiquitous and diverse animals on Earth.

Wheel bug, another species of assassin bug, this one a bit scary looking.

There is a lot of mimicry in insects used to avoid detection and predation. Background mimicry is one example as in these treehoppers disguised as thorns.

Swallowtail butterfly chysalis mimicking tree spur.

The three swallowtail butterflies in Dallas that I've identified.


Giant swallowtail. Papilio cresphontes


Tiger Swallowtail Papillio glaucus


Some female tiger swallowtails are black.

Black Swallowtail Papillio polyxenes

Caterpillars of giant swallowtail Papilio cresphontes

All our swallowtails spread themselves out onto either cilantro, fennel, or dill plants. They all gravitate to some member of the "carrot" family on which to lay their eggs. The black swallowtail caterpillars seem to hang out on the cilantro plants. Thus we have several hatchings over the summer but always the blackies are out because our cilantro starts growing earliest of all the carrots or nightshades.

NOT to slight other sub-classes and orders of arthropods, here is the elusive (but quite tasty) Chesapeake Mantis Shrimp. They can pack a whallop with their claws and catch your thumb if you grab the wrong end; Kinda like a blood worms little radula.

also, about the adult swallowtails seem to hang out mostly on buddlia plants (Butterfly bush) and purple loosestrife weed, and the blackies seem to prefer the cultivars that grow along roadsides like the good invasive plants they are. Pretty, but dominating the nvironment

The giant swallowtails feed only on citrus family plants. I've got to tickle tongue trees, Zanthoxylem, but I've only had three caterpillars this year and they were all eaten by wasps. There's a great shortage of butterflies around here lately, and and I attribute that to the spraying for West Nile. Hackberry butterflies, red admirals, were as common as hackberry trees. I used to feed the Hackberry butterflies mashed bananas, and they were on me before I could even set the bananas on the ground. Now I see a few a year.

I've got some passion flower vines for the Gulf fritillaries, and there were quite a few caterpillars but none succeeded to adulthood, and I attribute that to the predatory wasps.

we probably have one of the many varieties that mimic the tropical species of the "giant..."
Since we dot have any citrus but do have the quince bushes and one species targts that plant for its eggs.

I was just perusing the site an looking at all the 500 species of Papilonidae ( just this clade alone) and boy, from your neighborhood SOuth, there are some real beauties.

I have to keep my eyes peeled for some of those listed as occasional varieties . We sometimes get hummingbirds from the west and lately have seen a change in migration habits of rufus .
Maybe the many species of the Papilonids will also make it over our . way.

How Not To Die In Australia Part 2: Spiders

Australia’s snakes may be scary, but I think its spiders are definitely worse: these guys are much more likely creep into your bedroom and get you when you’re sleeping, or hide somewhere in your house just waiting to bite you if you inadvertently disturb them…

How Not To Die In Australia Part 2: Spiders | Unbridled Optimist
https://unbridledoptimist.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/how-not-to-die-in-australia-spiders/

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Gulf fritillary butterfly Agraulis vanillae on passion flower vine Passiflora incarnata



Young Gulf fritillary caterpillar on tendril of passion flower vine.
I noticed that the female butterflies a reluctant to lay the eggs directly on the leaves. They seem to prefer laying the eggs on the tendrils or even on the fence underlying the Vine. Ants swarm on these plants seeking nectar from the extra Floral nectaries on these plants. I think the ants may knock the caterpillars off the plant or perhaps even kill them. Passion flower vines and the butterflies that feed upon them have co-evolved and the behavior and anatomies that resulted are complex and interesting.

I think all the butterflies of the heliconidae family have this relationship with plants of the passion flower family. Most of them are tropical.

Giant red-headed centipede
Scolopendra heros

I've only seen a couple of these in Texas, but they are quite impressive.







Range of Scolopendra heros

Even more impressive is the giant centipede, Scolopendra gigantea of South America, which reaches a length of 12 in.

This is a male mosquito, probably of the genus Anopheles, which are carriers of Plasmodium, the protozoan that causes malaria.

Notice the plumose antennae and bifurcated palps sticking farther out. These are sensory structures used to hear the frequencies of the females beating wings and also to detect carbon dioxide and other chemicals.

The male antennae function to hear the beating of a female's wings of their own species and allow the males to home-in to the females for mating purposes.

The palps are also a sensory apparatus to detect carbon dioxide and, perhaps, other chemicals. The male's do not feed on blood, so the question arises as to why the males would want to detect carbon dioxide. Females detect carbon dioxide to home-in on warm-blooded prey, which exhale carbon dioxide. Males feed on plant nectars from flowers and extra-floral nectaries. Plants, through the process of cell respiration, give off carbon dioxide at night, so this may be how the male mosquitoes home-in on plants.

Male mosquitoes have shorter mouthparts than females and are unable to pierce skin for a blood meal. However, in lab experiments male mosquitoes willingly drank blood presented to them openly, but this proved fatal to them because of a lack of an enzyme to digest the blood.

This is a female mosquito as evidenced by their non-plumose antennae.
Also notice the very short palps and the ommatidia, the compound eyes.
Females find their prey by sensing the carbon dioxide exhaled and chemicals emitted from the skin and sweat. Mosquitoes home-in on their prey long distance by following the carbon dioxide trail and then locate exposed skin by following the other chemicals.

How to distinguish an Anopheles mosquito from other mosquitoes.



Mosquitoes of the genera Aedes, Culex, and others hold their proboscises at right angles to the long axis of the body when eating. Anopheles mosquitoes hold the proboscis in line with the long axis of the body when eating and, therefore, when they're feeding the body is held up at a great angle to the skin.



Anopheles mosquito

http://bugwoodcloud.org/images/768x512/1366025.jpg the Asian tiger or white-spotted mosquito. It's bright colors and white spots distinguish it from most other mosquitoes except for the Aedes egypti, which it resembles.





Aedes egypti

Culex pipiens-- close up of a very common mosquito. With the plumose antennae, it's easily recognized as a male. Notice also the long sensory palps.