Monday 29 April 2013

In celebration of EU ban on Neonicotinoids....

So, bees.

They're an important pollinator group - along with moths, flies, wasps, butterflies, bugs, beetles - and, in the tropics, birds, bats and occasionally lizards.

They are also a flagship species. People jump on board for a bee more quickly than they do for a fly, and any insect pollinator is just as dead as a dead bee if it gets hit with a dose of Neonicotinoids...

I'm a pessimist, by the way. I believe that - although pesticides have been known since their first usage to cause long term losses in productivity - farmers will continue buying up the latest pesticide that hasn't been banned quite yet. But that doesn't make historic bans any less important - from DDT then to neonicotinoids today.

Well, yesterday, in most of Europe, where this applies...

If you're outside of Europe, just smile and nod. If you're inside Europe, enjoy the feeling of hope that we may see some recovery in our pollinators.

And enjoy all the pictures of bees.
clockwise, spiralling in from top left: Xylocopa (Mesotrichia) flavorufa, Nomada goodeniana, Bombus (Bombus) terrestris, Thyreus sp., Bombus (Pyrobombus) hypnorum, Amegilla (Zebramegilla) sp., Andrena (Trachandrena) haemorrhoa, Andrena (Melandrena) cineraria, Andrena (Melandrena) nigroaenea (See own page), Bombus (Melanobombus) lapidarius, Nomada ruficornis, Sphecodes sp. (also seen on the Metadon inermis page), Xylocopa (Xylomelissa) erythrina, Euaspis abdominalis, Apis mellifera scutellata, Anthophora (Clisodon) furcata (See own page), Anthidium manicatum, Andrena (Melandrena) nitida, Megachile chrysorrhea, Xylocopa (Xenoxylocopa) inconstans, Osmia rufa, Megachile centuncularis, Megachile sp., and Xylocopa sp..

And yes, these are all bees.

I'll expand in their individual posts, in the future...

Thelotornis capensis oatesii (Günther, 1881)

For anyone who's taken the time to browse the pictures already up, you'll notice that invertebrates dominate the subject headings - almost as much as they dominate animal diversity...

Today, we're taking a step back to one of my favourite - although taxonomically iffy - groups. Prepare yourselves. Oh, and a word to any herpetophobes - it's only a picture. You'll live. 

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa (some day soon, I'm going to shock you all and post a picture of a sea sponge. Just not today, evidently). 
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Deuterostomia
            Chordata
              Craniata
                Vertebrata (told you so)
                  Gnathostoma
                    Teleostomi
                      Osteichthys
                        Sarcopterygii
                          Tetrapoda
                            Reptiliomorpha
                              Amniota
                                Reptilia 
                                  Romeriida
                                    Diapsida 
                                      Sauria (Includes birds and crocodiles)
                                        Lepidosauromorpha
                                          Lepidosauria (Includes Tuatara)
                                            Squamata
                                              Scleroglossa
                                                Serpentes
                                                  Alethinophidia
                                                    Coenophidia
                                                      Colubroidea
                                                        Colubridae
                                                          Colubrinae

(As always with vertebrate taxonomy, there are three places where uncertainty remains - the higher taxonomy, the lower taxonomy, and the middly bit. 
The areas I particularly want to draw to your attention are the Craniata/Vertebrata, in which this phylogeny would consider the hagfish an invertebrate, but the externally very similar lamprey a vertebrate (although in my opinion, a reasonable distinction), the Amniota/Reptilia/Romeriida/Diapsida/Sauria/Lepidosauria sequence, within which the Mammals (and close relatives), the turtles (Anapsids), and the birds-dinosaurs-and-crocodiles (Archosaurs) are split off, in that order. The precise placement of the mammals (inside or outside reptiles) is a fairly minor point, but the details of the bird/snake/turtle split are not. Turtles (which includes the terrestrial lineage of tortoises) are usually split off first, hence the terms "Anapsid" (Turtles and extinct relatives) and "Diapsid" (Snakes, Lizards, Birds, Tuatara, Crocodiles and friends). However, the features used to seperate them thusly are probably derived, as genetic studies indicate that actually, birds-dinosaurs-and-crocodiles (Archosauria) are more closely related to the turtles (Anapsida) than to the other half of the Diapsida (snakes, lizards and friends)
Finally, the Colubroidea and every level beneath it are currently under revision, and likely to continue thusly for some time... because lazy taxonomists of the past just chucked any old snake that wasn't particularly venomous, in there, and so most of them don't belong. 

Our species of the day probably does belong, however, and it is:

Thelotornis capensis oatesii
(Günther, 1881)

Thelotornis capensis oatesii (Günther, 1881) Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, 2011

Thelotornis, the genus to which this rather lovely snake belongs, is native to more-or-less the entirety of sub-Saharan Africa. The species - T. capensis - is predominantly found in non-rainforest areas below the equator, and this subspecies, Thelotornis capensis oatesii, recogniseable by the dull green cap to its head (which is unfortunately not fully visible from this angle, but I assure you, it is there), is centred over south-central Africa. They are known variously as bird, twig or vine snakes, and if you ever see a pair of bulbuls making a fuss, but can't see why, the chances are that one of the sticks near their nest is actually one of these (assuming that you're in sub-Saharan Africa at the time)

It's not a large snake, topping out at under five feet, but, ironically enough for a snake in the taxon previously called "Harmless snakes" (Colubridae), it's quite venomous. Like the related Boomslang, its venom is Haemotoxic, or active on the blood. The specifics of this mean that there's a grace period of around twenty-four hours between envenomation (Getting bitten) and showing any symptoms. When symtoms do show, resulting from the aggregation of blood cells, they aren't pleasant and can potentially be fatal if left untreated.

Before you rush off an start cutting the heads off every well camouflaged snake you see, bear in mind one very important point. 

Across Southern Africa, where this snake is common in gardens, you are more likely to be killed by lightning than bitten by a snake. 

It may sound like a broken record, but most snakes avoid confrontation, and in almost all cases where people are bitten, the person was attempting to handle or harm the snake at the time. 

Also, they're awesome. 

Sunday 28 April 2013

Zebronia phenice (Cramer 1780)

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that thus far, we've missed a rather massive insect order. It's not as big as the beetles, or the flies (both, at the time of writing, represented by one species each on this blog...), but it's around the same size as the wasps (including bees), and much bigger than the bugs...


I'll give you a taxonomically ordered string of hints: 

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                        Manopterygota
                          Neoptera
                            Eumetabola
                              Endopterygota
                                Panorpida
                                  Amphiesmenoptera
                                    Lepidoptera
Have you got it yet? Extra hint - in Greek, Lepidos (Λεπίδως) means scaly, Ptera (φτερό) means wing... Scaly wing...

No?

The Lepidoptera are the moths (including butterflies). Just so that you're aware, Lepidopterists (people who study moths, partially for money but mostly because they just like them) are a little bit like ornithologists in terms of taxonomy, in that they've got such a rich and varied history of being wrong that they have a lot of trouble sorting out quite where everything belongs, and so finding out precisely where various moths belong in relationship to one another is more than a bit iffy.

So, as we continue onwards, bear in mind that the phylogeny here is largely subjective.
                                       Glossata
                                         Neolepidoptera
                                           Heteroneura
                                             Ditrysia
                                               Tineina
                                                 Tineina (unranked clades don't always follow naming patterns like the rest of taxonomy does, which is why we there's a clade here with its parent's name)
                                                   Pyraloidea (an awful lot of the so-called 'Micromoths' belong to this superfamily, including:
                                                     Crambidae (snout moths)
                                                       Spilomelinae (Pearls. The moths, not the nacreous result of an irritated bivalve...)

Zebronia phenice
(Cramer, 1780)
                                                       
As you may guess from the Generic name (Zebronia), this one's a bit stripy...
Zebronia phenice (Cramer 1780), Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, February 2013


This is a fairly average-sized moth, probably a little under an inch across its wings, and because of its habit of landing upside down beneath leaves that are larger than it, it really shouldn't be very conspicious. However, it is at least partially active during the day, and it's very difficult not to be noticed fluttering around when you look like this: 



As you may imagine, its common name also refers to its stripes - Zebra Pearl Moth, or Zebra pyrale, or, probably most widely used, just plain old Zebra Moth


Thursday 25 April 2013

Anoplocnemis curvipes (Fabricius, 1781)

Continuing our bug theme - remember, it is absolutely okay to call any member of the insect order Hemiptera a 'bug'. It is not okay to call beetles (Coleoptera), wasps, ants and bees (Hymenoptera), Flies (Diptera), Moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera), Scorpionflies (Mecoptera), lacewings (Neuroptera), grasshoppers (Orthoptera), mayflies (Ephemeroptera), Dragonflies (Odonata), Termites, mantids and Cockroaches (arguably all Dictyoptera), Stick insects (Phasmatida), Earwigs (Dermaptera), Fleas (Siphonaptera), Caddisflies (Trichoptera), Silverfish (Thysanura), jumping bristletails (Archaeognatha), webspinners (Embioptera), heelwalkers (Notoptera), alderflies (Megaloptera), stoneflies (Plecoptera), snakeflies (Raphidioptera), or no-real-common-name orders Strepsiptera and Zoraptera, bugs. Because they're not bugs. 

Thrips (Thysanoptera), barklice (Psocoptera) and Lice (Pthiraptera) are also not bugs, but they're closely related, and so I'll forgive people who occasionally slip up there.

I'm afraid that the concession of three orders is all anyone's getting. Even Americans. Sorry, but just because it's a near universal vernacular doesn't mean it's correct. And come on, I'm giving you three whole orders to get wrong here... 


So, anyway, into the taxonomy...

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Dicondylia
                    Pterygota
                      Metapterygota
                        Neoptera
                          Eumetabola
                            Paraneoptera
                              Condylognatha
                                Hemiptera
                                  Heteroptera
                                    Pentatomorpha
                                      Coreiodea
                                        Coreidae
                                          Coreinae
                                            Mictini

Anoplocnemis curvipes
(Fabricius, 1781)

As you may be able to guess from the early description, it's a widespread and conspicuous insect... (originally described by Fabricius in 1781, just 28 years after Linnaeus jump-started the taxonomy game as we now know it) - and here it is:
Anoplocnemis curvipes (Fabricius 1781)Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, February 2013

And now to the continuation of the bug theme: 

Anoplocnemis are stink-bugs - as you can tell from the bright orange stink gland between the second and third pair of legs. However, they are, and I cannot stress this enough, NOT shield bugs. All shield bugs are stink bugs, but not all stink bugs are shield bugs.

Remember this. It'll be referred to again later.



Acknowledgements/notes: identified as Anoplocnemis by me... identified as A. curvipes by Mick Webb of the Natural History Museum of London. 

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Pephricus, Amyot & Serville, 1843.

We're going to start with a quick word on Bugs.

Americans in my limited readership are forgiven, but not excused here - yes, the vernacular "Bug" has a deep and rich history of use for all small invertebrates west of the pacific, similar to the Afrikaans (only slightly more broadly used) Goggo, but in such use, both terms are reductionist, and allow users not to contemplate the life-form they are describing so dismissively. 

So, back to the word Bug. It has a wealth of meanings, but when discussing insects, it should be used for the order Hemiptera, which comprises a lot of species with a few unifying features:

1) They are hemimetabolous, which is to say that their nymphs look more-or-less like wingless miniatures of the adults.

2) They have a piercing rostrum, a modified and highly effective mouthpart, which tends to limit them to a liquid diet.

3) They usually have only five segments to their antennae.

This is not a tiny order, with over 50,000 species, but it certainly does not include all insects. We're going to talk about one it does:

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Bilateralia
        Nephrozoa
          Protostomia
            Ecdysozoa
              Arthropoda
                Hexapoda
                  Insecta
                    Dicondylia
                      Pterygota
                        Metapterygota
                          Neoptera
                            Eumetabola
                              Paraneoptera 
                                Condylognatha (presumably from latin Condylus (reed) and the greek gnath (jaw bone)
                                  Hemiptera (literally 'half wing', includes all true bugs)
                                    Heteroptera (literally 'different wing', reflecting that the wings are asymmetrically held at rest, with one partially crossing over the other)
                                      Pentatomomorpha (mostly herbivorous sap-suckers, a few predatory species. Includes all the 'Stink bugs', most notable among which are the shield bugs of Pentatomidae).
                                        Coreoidea
                                          Coreidae
                                            Coreinae
                                              Phyllomorphini

Pephricus
Amyot & Serville, 1843

And here... it is:

Pephricus (Amyot & Serville, 1843). Kabulonga, Lusaka, Zambia, October 2011.
This quite extraordinary bug is really quite difficult to notice when it's not just flown off or landed - the first I saw was immediately dismissed as a burr, until it started moving. This one was seen a few weeks later, in Kabulonga, Lusaka, Zambia. 

The genus does extend out of Africa, and into parts of the middle east, but its distribution is centred on sub-saharan Africa. 


                             


Hagenomyia tristis (Walker, 1853)

We'll not mention St. George and the Gecko... er, Dragon (Context: Yesterday, 23/04, was the day of England's Patron Saint, George, whose primary claim to fame is slaying a dragon. Recognising that tales of a fire breathing dragon are likely exaggerated from accounts of a more-or-less bog-standard reptile, a friend and I theorized that in fact, as opposed to the typical conclusion that the dragon was one of the not-unheard-of historic crocodiles-that-crossed-the-mediterranean-in-search-of-the-promised-land, the dragon was an inch-long gecko that terrorized early christian villagers by licking its eyeballs at them).

Instead, today, we're going to explore the fourth major Superorder of the Endopterygota. We've introduced - elsewhere - wasps and co. (Hymenopterida), beetles and pals (Coleopterida) and flies et al. (including moths, scorpionflies and caddisflies, Panorpida). Any guesses as to whom the fourth group could comprise?

No?

Ah, well, you'll find out soon enough. Once more into the taxonomy!

We've already established that we're looking in Eukaryota-Animalia-Eumetazoa-Bilateralia-Nephrozoa-Protostomia-Ecdysozoa-Arthropoda-Hexapoda-Insecta-Dicondylia-Pterygota-Metapterygota-Neoptera-Eumetabola and Endopterygota. 

So where to go from here?

Neuropterida, the superorder dominated by (and named for) the
  Neuroptera, or lacewings. These are best known as small, pearly-green insects that flutter out of the grass around dusk in late summer, with species such as the (species complex) Chrysoperla carnea. We're going to leave them, and their suborder of Hemerobiiformia behind, and instead jump into the:
    Myrmeleontiformia,
      Myrmeleontoidea and the
        Myrmeleontidae, the family most often referred to as the ant-lions. As a suborder, they are fairly universally distributed, but in Northern Europe, they are scarce to - over most of the UK - entirely absent.
          Myrmelontinae
            Mymeliontini and, taking a rare dive into the mysterious world of sub-tribes,
              Myrmeleontina, where we find our genus and, within, the species:

Hagenomyia tristis
(Walker, 1853)

So let's meet it: 
Hagenomyia tristis (Walker 1853) Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, February 2012

This lovely creature is also known as the Gregarious Antlion, largely because you very rarely see one on its own, but instead, walking through a drift of thick-leaved grasses in lightly shaded woodland, you'll disturb hundreds at once. This one and its companions seen in an orchard in Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, in February 2013. 

As with most of their relatives, the young are subterranean predators with large jaws and mouthparts well designed for sucking the juice out of any insect small and unfortunate enough to be caught in their jaws. Adults of this family, despite their generally weak flight, are typically also predatory, with chewing mouthparts. 

It is important to note that scale is everything here - they may be terrifying monsters to an unsuspecting mosquito or aphid, but to human beings they are completely harmless. 

To put the above image in full body context, here's a more inclusive shot: 
Hagenomyia tristis (Walker 1853), Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, February 2013



Images captured February 2013, in Chongwe Distr., Lusaka, Zambia, using an Olympus E-420, and all editing, cropping etc. done using GIMP 2.

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Megistocera filipes filipes (Fabricius 1805)

Happy Earth Day (yesterday, in case you didn't catch the google doodle)!

Mine was spent failing to convince three-items-or-less customers at the local convenience store not to ask me for a bag. Oh, the glamourous life I live.

Anyway, enough about me - On with the show.


As a post-Earth Day treat, I'll be uploading a few animals only recently photographed, and even more recently identified to species level (I only found out what this one was at 7.40 this morning).

Eukaryota - It has a nuclear membrane, and (usually) cell organelles such as mitochondria (allowing an innovative and widespread delegation of aerobic respiration, reducing the effective toxicity of nasty oxygen). 
  Animalia - it has multiple cells and, more importantly, isn't a plant, a fungus or any of various Protists. 
    Eumetazoa - it has tissues. So it can't be a sponge. 
      Bilateralia - It has two way symmetry - at some point in its life. 
        Nephrozoa - it possibly isn't a member of several disputed taxa that probably actually belong somewhere within this group... (this is a bit of a redundant clade). 
          Protostomia - it's not a chordate, an echinoderm or an arrow-headed worm. 
            Ecdysozoa - It sheds its skin, and isn't a mollusc or a member of a bunch more obscure groups of worms... 
              Arthropoda - it has a jointed exoskeleton. 
                Hexapoda - it has six legs. 
                  Insecta - it is an insect. 
                    Dicondylia - not a jumping bristletail...
                      Pterygota - it has wings! 
                        Metapterygota - it has wings and it's not a mayfly!
                          Neoptera - it's also not a dragonfly! Exclamation marks can be nauseating!
                            Eumetabola - it's not a cockroach, grasshopper, stick insect or earwig. 
                              Endopterygota - it undergoes complete metamorphosis. It's not a true bug or a booklouse. 
                                Panorpida - it's not a wasp, beetle or lacewing. 
                                  Antliophora - it's not a moth or a caddisfly either. 
                                    Diptera - and it's not a scorpionfly... it has two wings, (usually) reduced mouthparts, and relatively short antennae... we'll come back to that bit. It's a true fly.
                                      Nematocera - it has multi-segmented antennae (more than three), and is part of a lineage which includes mosquitoes, march flies, drain flies and the: 
                                        Tipulomorpha - the crane flies and their closest relatives. 
                                          Tipuloidea - the crane flies (multiple lineages).
                                            Tipulidae - the true crane flies.
                                              Tipulinae - the... really true... crane flies. That bit's not true. It's more "the ones that have turned out to be related to the large european crane-flies", and are therefore grouped in or close to the genus Tipula. 

Megistocera filipes filipes 
(Fabricius 1805)


Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia (Africa) March 2013.
Now, you remember that passing comment I made about flies having short antennae? Well, for males of Megistocera, that's a bit of a fib. Although they don't seem to have more segments in their antennae than other craneflies, their antennae go on... and on... and on... for quite some distance... I didn't actually manage to get a picture which included their entire length without losing focus. 

This is the best I can show you:

Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia (Africa). March 2013

This ridiculous oversize serves one very good function (bear in mind that the fly's body isn't far off two centimetres long, the antennae were around five times that) - it makes males of the genus instantly recogniseable (other crane-flies with massively over-extended antennae are found in the Tipulidae, in which they do not typically reach, let alone extend beyond, the tip of the abdomen, and in the Limoniidae, which, while proportionally similar, is a much smaller fly than Megistocera). Better yet, only two species are recognised from the genus, M. filipes in Africa, Asia and Australia, and M. longipennis in the Americas and the Caribbean. At various points, other species (notably M. fuscana) have been described, but have since been regrouped into one of these two species. 

Acknowledgements: Identified as Megistocera by diptera.info member John Carr, further identification deduced from the Catalogue of Craneflies of the World, and confirmed by John Carr.  

Friday 19 April 2013

Synagris proserpina, Gribodo 1891

Possibly my favourite wasp of all (and it's worth noting that I'm generally quite keen on wasps).

If we're being complete about it, there's a subgenus and a subspecies as well (because after nearly a year of failure, I wrote to an entomologist with a published interest in the genus. That doesn't usually work. That's just how awesome Synagris wasps are. People write back), so I'll expand it to:


Synagris (Synagris) proserpina nyassae

(although I don't know who gave it the subspecific name, which is why Gribodo 1981 remains in pride of place in the title)


Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia. October 2011

The subspecific epithet - nyassae - is a reference to a pre-independence name for Malawi, in central Africa.

The specific epithet is the name of the roman goddess of spring (wiki tells you more, here), although the origins of the word is from the latin "to emerge", proserpere. 

The generic (and subgeneric) seems to be from the latin agrum, meaning field, and the greek συν ("syn"), or with/together (As far as I'm aware, the same root prefix for "Sympathy" and so forth).

If we were to take this on face value to make up a "common" name for the subspecies, we'd go with Malawi Proserpina's (or emergent) True Field Associated Wasp. We'd probably tone that down to Malawi Proserpina's Field Wasp.

Alternatively, I could just reveal that the genus Synagris is often referred to as "Tusk(ed) wasps". for a reason which I can reveal quite simply with an image of a male specimen:


(I apologise for interrupting your day with an image of a deceased insect, but it may help to know that it was found dead rather than killed, in an area thronging with females, and so probably died happy. Very happy)
Specimen, originally from Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia.

In case you're having trouble working it out, it has long, curved tusks springing from the base of its (also quite long) mandibles. 

So, today's special guest might be best described as a Malawi Proserpina's (or emergent) Tusked Wasp. 

We're going to talk about behaviour, now. 

Some of you may have been told that insects are simple creatures which basically lay their eggs and leave them (I was first told this by a secondary school biology teacher. However, she was a young earth creationist, so her misgivings about insects aren't her major disqualification there).

The wasps (which includes the bees and ants, by the way), are the most stunning illustration of this not being true. While some - notably the parasitoid Ichneumons, and many of the herbivorous sawflies - have no contact with their young after meticulously selecting a suitable host/foodplant, several lineages have evolved complex social organisations and even the most complex invertebrate communication system known entirely for the purpose of raising the next generation. 

Potter wasps in the subfamily Eumeninae are not truly social, unlike the paper wasps of the Vespinae and Polistinae, but do, as individuals, go to impressive lengths to provide for their undeveloped offspring. In most cases, this simply involves finding a suitable site, building an elaborate structure to keep the elements off the soon-to-be larva, preparing a suitable meal and sealing the egg in with it. 

As if doing this for each and every egg they lay is not enough work for an animal less than an inch long and with only a year or two to live, Synagris (and several other groups) go further. They don't seal the pot, which has usually been built on a sturdy blade of grass, high enough to be overlooked by roving ants and similar ground predators, but not so high as to attract the attention of birds, but instead keep it open and, every day until the larva pupates, they find food, mash it up, and give it to their larva. When they're not doing this, they sit on top of the nest, ready to chase away any parasitoid wasps or flies that would otherwise harm their young. They also try - with some success - to chase away birds and mammals (including humans) that get too close. And I've heard of them unsuccessfully trying to chase away a tractor.

So now, before I lament that this group isn't better studied, conserved and loved (people shouldn't drive tractors at them), on with the show:

Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Nephrozoa
        Bilateralia
          Protostomia
            Arthropoda
              Hexapoda
                Insecta
                  Dicondylia
                    Pterygota
                      Metapterygota
                        Neoptera
                          Eumetabola
                            Endopterygota
                              Hymenopterida
                                Hymenoptera
                                  Apocrita
                                    Aculeata
                                      Vespoidea
                                        Vespidae
                                          Eumeninae
                                            Synagris
                                              Synagris (Synagris)
                                                Synagris (Synagris) proserpina
   
 Synagris (Synagris) proserpina nyassae. 



That's all, folks.



Acknowledgements. Identified as probably belonging to Synagris by me, confirmation of genus and species through Dr. Rob Longair, of the University of Calgary. 

Thursday 18 April 2013

Lygodactylus capensis (Smith, 1849)

We're going to start with a taxonomically irrelevant discussion for this one.

Some years ago, a university friend of a friend said, upon learning that my primary interest in vertebrates was amphibians and reptiles, "What, the relict groups?"

I should note that he was British.

It is easy to get the impression, in the temperate zones and particularly in Western Europe, that amphibians and reptiles as world-wide groups are insignificant and composed entirely of a few species that are clinging on. Bearing in mind that each group on its own is more diverse than the mammals, and the amphibians almost rival the birds in terms of sheer number of species, this is clearly a false impression. Having considered this, I believe that it can only be perpetuated because of two euro-centric factors:

1) Both groups are composed primarily of ectothermic species, which are usually dependant upon periods of warm weather for breeding, so relatively few species have colonised our cold and geographically (but NOT historically) insignificant peninsula since the beginning of this most recent interglacial.

2) Members of both groups suffer disproportionately (among vertebrates) around human settlements, as they lack the dispersive ability of many birds, and unlike mammals, which have popular appeal, amphibians and reptiles both suffer (quite unjustified) persecution at the hands of many ill-informed persons who variously think they are unsightly, dangerous or even evil.

Which is why snakes could make a very good case suing the Vatican for slander.

Before this becomes a religious argument, though, onto the good news: the kind of news that has large, unblinking eyes, a scaly tail and four (often adhesive) feet.

Geckos. (Eukaryota, Animalia, Eumetazoa, Bilateralia, Nephrozoa, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Craniata, Vertebrata, Gnathostomata, Teleostomi, Osteichthys, Sarcopterygii, Tetrapoda, Reptiliomorpha, Amniota, Reptilia, Romeriida, Diapsida, Sauria, Lepidosauromorpha, Lepidosauria, Squamata, Scleroglossa, Gekkota, Gekkonidae)

Many geckos, particularly in the tropics, enjoy a much greater respect from the human population than their less adhesive relatives elsewhere, and a number of species have come to thrive not only on the edges of human settlements, but actually within the concrete hearts, where their habits of eating various pest insects earns them a welcome place in the disused corners of the human home.

Today's species is an imperfect synanthrope, meaning that it can do well out of a certain level of human settlement, but eventually (usually at the point at which people start poisoning ants), it can no longer survive in that environment (in case you didn't work it out, it eats ants. Poisoning ants kills the individuals that then eat those ants, and starves the survivors, who have nothing left to eat. Don't poison ants if you have lizards, frogs or threadsnakes in the area).

Anyway, without further ado;

Lygodactylus capensis
(Smith, 1849)


Lygodactylus capensis (Smith 1849), Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia. September 2011.

(Photographed wild in Chongwe District, Lusaka, Zambia in September 2011, Using an Olympus E-420) 

Otiorhynchus (Arammichnus) atroapterus (De Geer, 1775)

You knew it had to happen eventually. After all, three quarters of all known life on earth is made up of insects, and half of those are beetles, and about two thirds of those... are weevils.

We'll skim the the taxonomy today:
Eukaryota
  Animalia
    Eumetazoa
      Nephrozoa
        Bilateralia
          Protostomia
            Hexapoda
              Insecta
                Dicondylia
                  Pterygota
                    Metapterygota
                      Neoptera
                        Eumetabola (Grouping the true bugs in Hemiptera with the following taxon)
                                              Endopterygota, the insects that undergo 'complete' metamorphosis.
                            Coleopterida (Beetles and their closest chums)
                              Coleoptera (Beetles)
                                Polyphaga (most beetles excluding Carabids and water beetles)
                                  Cucujiformia (flat bark beetles and relatives)
                                    Curculionoidea (weevils)
                                      Curculionidae ('True' weevils)
                                        Entiminae (broad-nosed weevils)
                                          Phyllobini (leaf weevils)
                                            
Otiorhynchus (Arramichnus) atroapterus
(De Geer, 1775)

Otherwise known as the Black Marram Weevil. Behold:
Otiorhynchus (Arammichnus) atroapterus (De Geer, 1775), East Head, West Wittering, Sussex, UK, March 2012

Although quite closely related to a number of pest species (most notably the Black Vine Weevil, Otiorhynchus sulcatus), this weevil, as the common name suggests, is a specialist feeder on marram grass and a handful of closely related plants.

Its flightlessness, common in its genus, ensures that it does suddenly zoom out of its narrow band of preferred habitat and into the sea (which is a simplification of an explanation as to why a lot of island animals become flightless). It also has reasonably enlarged feet to allow it to walk without undue difficulty on the sandy dunes where its food-plants grow.

This lovely little individual was found on the successional dunes between salt-marsh and the Solent, at East Head, West Wittering, West Sussex, UK, back in March 2012. 

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Pseudagrion hageni, Karsch, 1893

I'm going to shake things up a bit, and start with the picture, this time.


While I've yet to fork out for the most comprehensive (but already outdated) text on central African dragonflies, this colourful character seems to be

Pseudagrion hageni 
Karsch, 1983

Or Hagen's sprite. Which, as is expected of the species it seems to be, was hanging out in the thickets around a shady stream just off Leopard's Hill Road, in Lusaka, Zambia. 

Starting with that seems to ruin the suspense a little. Ah well. 

It is a member of, in ascending order;
                                      Pseudagrioninae, a subfamily commonly referred to as "Sprites" (but no known magical powers, and also not trademarked by the a soft-drinks company.
                                    Coenagrionidae, the narrow-winged damselflies.
                                  Coenagrionoidea, the friends and relatives of narrow-winged damselflies.
                                Zygoptera, or the damselflies. 
                              Odonata, the Dragonflies and pals (i.e. dragonflies and damselflies) 
                            Holodonata, which includes a few more distant (and extinct) relatives of the dragonflies. 
                          Odonatoptera ('Dragonfly-winged' insects), includes yet more extinct relatives (precise contents vary, as genetic comparison with long-extinct species is very difficult (a.k.a impossible) when said species exist only as inorganic impressions in rocks, and the alternative - morphologically derived phylogenies - can be very unreliable)
                        Metapterygota includes most modern insects, with the exception of the mayflies, silverfish, and various bristletails. 
                      Pterygota includes the mayflies, but continues to exclude the ancestrally wingless (i.e. they don't have wings, and neither did any of their grandparents, or great-grandparents, or great-great-great-great...(etc)...grandparents, back to the very dawn of life on Earth). 
                    Dicondylia still leaves the jumping bristletails (Archaeognatha) out in the cold, but every other extant insect is included. 
                  Insecta... I'm going to let you work out what group of insects joins the reunion party here. 
                Hexapoda - six legs (although animals exist which have six walking legs and are not hexapodes, but we'll come back to them another time), which brings in a couple of groups, such as the Collembola, which didn't quite make the grade to be called insects, but have been off a-partying elsewhere. 
              Arthropoda. In uncertain order, the crustaceans and chelicerates (spiders, scorpions, horseshoe crabs and friends) join the party. 
            Ecdysozoa also brings the nematodes and a handful of other worm-like creatures into the picture. These deserve more of a mention, really, but they don't photograph all that well, so we'll probably never get around to most of them. 
          Protostomia includes on another important invertebrate group, the Lophotrochozoa, which is comprised of Molluscs (Slugs, snails, nudibranches, nautilus, clams etc.), Annelids (segmented worms, including earthworms and their relatives), and a handful of free-living and parasitic worm-like creatures. 
        Nephrozoa... still not sure whether this level has a function. It includes the vertebrates and assorted relatives in the Deuterostomes, and may exclude several very primitive (and quite small) groups of animals, although most if not all of these groups have been suggested to have quite close relationships within the Nephrozoa, so... 
      Bilateralia is the taxon uniting all animals which, at some point in their life, have only one line of symmetry - that is, animals that have a left side, a right side, dorsal side, a ventral side, a front and a back. It is important to bear in mind that our front, in this definition, actually comprises our head, not the ventral side of our body which, due to our bipedal (walking on two feet) lifestyle is general in front of us. 
    Eumetazoa includes all modern animals except for a few ancestrally deviant (think very, very, very distant cousins) groups, such as the sponges, which themselves are included in:
  Animalia, which hopefully needs no introduction,

and 

Eukaryota, which includes almost all multicellular life, and a good deal of unicellular life, but excludes the Archaea, a group of phylogenetically troubling extremophiles (Adrenaline junkies on a microscopic level, which thrive in corners of the planet where no-one else could live even if they wanted to), and the Prokaryota (the bacteria, best identified by their lack of a nuclear membrane (i.e. their genetic material is floating freely around their cells, rather than tidied away in a bag)).

Well, that's that. Enjoy Pseudagrion hageni, or (as is possible) a startlingly similar relative. 


Sibylla pretiosa, Stal, 1856

You may - or may not, I suppose - notice that today's entry is missing the second part (specific epithet) of its 'binomial'. That's because, with my limited resources (A handful of outdated books and Google), it's very difficult to identify an awful lot of the world's wildlife with any real accuracy.

Let's start with what we have got.

We'll skip through Eukaryota,
                               Animalia
                          and  Eumetazoa (still no sponges, so my apologies to any Poriferophiles), and into
                                   Bilateralia (no corals, either... sad times),
                           Nephrozoa and get straight down to business in:
                            Protostomia - which, I would like to note, contains in addition to the dominant life-forms (in terms of ecological importance, diversity and sheer annual biomass) on earth, the vast majority of the diversity of land and the very first truly successful animal colonists of the land. But that's not important, because we're now heading into
                                         Ecdysozoa, and those earliest colonists are stuck over in its sister taxa, Lophotrochozoa, where they have rasping tongues but do not (generally) shed their skins. Onwards to
                                            Arthropoda, Phylum of the jointed exoskeleton, but arachnophobes need not fear because today we're heading into:
                                              Hexapoda, which, for those of you whose Greek is letting them down, means "Six Footed". Which, as you may remember from primary school science classes, is a trait commonly associated with the  
                                                Insecta (or insects to their friends), which constitute well over half of the diversity of life on Earth. Who knew? Well, most people. At this point, some people like to note that everything alive on earth is full of nematodes, and so Nematoda are really the dominant life form on the planet in simple terms of their ubiquity (and that really is a word), but in terms of amateur photography, most nematodes don't offer any exciting opportunities. So I'm going to stick with diversity, annual biomass and ecological significance.
                                                  Dicondylia is our next stopping point, where we say goodbye to the most ancestrally divergent insect group, the 'jumping bristletails' of Archaeognatha (Not to be confused with the Bristletails of Thysanura, which we now say goodbye to as we head into the
                                                    Pterygota, or winged insects. Fleas and lice, by the way, are counted within the Pterygota because their ancestors had wings, but learned to live without them as they hopped and blood-sucked their way through life.
                                                       Metapterygota excludes a handful of primitive flying insects, most notable of which are probably the mayflies in Ephemeroptera, which are unique amongst winged insects for many reasons, not least that they are the only insect to shed their skin while possessing usable wings (all other insects have their final shed at metamorphosis, and never grow or, in any real term, heal after that. Be nice to insects. They're fragile.
                                                          Neoptera excludes another, but radically different, group of primitive flying insects, the dragonflies. Unlike the Ephemeroptera, which take to the air for a few hours to weeks to mate and breed before starving to death (they physically cannot feed as adults), the Odonata take to the wing after months to years as the minute masters of the pond and become, on their scale, masters of the skies. Their scale is a little less impressive now than it once was, as in the relative low oxygen of our modern atmosphere, even the largest tropical species cannot grow beyond a twenty centimetre wingspan, and don't reach a fraction of the weight of their crow-sized relatives of prehistory. But enough about them, because now we're heading into the
                                                            Polyneoptera, sometimes grouped with several unrelated clades in the Exopterygota (literally "outside wings", referring to the external development of wings through the nymphal stages of development), but incomplete metamorphosis seems to be an ancestral state, so I'm sticking with Polyneoptera for now. But the contentiousness continues, as we take another step into:
                                                              Dictyoptera, which is either a superorder or an order, depending on your preferences, and unites, essentially, three orders of cockroaches. Blattophobes beware.
Fortunately for said Blattophobes, cockroach is here used in its very broadest sense, to encompass the three (rather disparate) groups of cockroaches which are often given separate orders of their own; the cockroaches as traditionally defined in Blattodea, which are commonly held to be the ancestral group from which the colonial, herbivorous cockroaches in Isoptera (otherwise known as termites) sprang, and (probably) also the parent group to the solitary, predatory third order of, admittedly not-very-cockroachy after all insects in the:
                                                                  Mantodea, which you might guess comprises the animals commonly known as Mantises. As far as insect orders go, it's not all that huge (2400-odd species), which is part of the reason that it's not been consistently divided into superfamilies just yet. The vast majority of its species are within the (possibly over-assigned) family Mantidae, but we're heading into the much smaller:
                                                                     Sybillidae, which has three genera and a mere sixteen described species. That should make things easy but, turns out, it doesn't. I'm going to venture (at this point - and I hope to be able to commit further at a later date) is that our current subject is in the only subfamily:
                                                                       Sibyllinae, and the only tribe:
                                                    Sibyllini, and the largest of the three genera:


Sibylla (Sibylla) pretiosa
Stal, 1856

[UPDATED 28-03-2014 - a lot of what follows was written before the specimen was narrowed down to a species, in March 2014] 

So, before you notice that I'm not even committing to a subgenus, let's meet the lovely Sibyl...la

If anyone feels like pointing out that it is a dead ringer for the one reasonably well known species of the family (Sibylla (Sibylla) pretiosa), I'll be obliged to counterpoint that in fact, the trade in exotic insects as pets is not known for its attention to taxonomy. So I am waiting for the Bulletin du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Section A: Zoologie, Biologie et Ecologie Animales to become available online, specifically part one of their 1996 issue, and then I may have more to tell you... 

This nymph - and its teddy-bear head ornament - was one of dozens seen on walls, branches and occasionally rocks around Chongwe, Lusaka Province, Zambia in September 2011, and could be trusted to eat as many of the endless mosquitoes as they got their jagged little claws into. By late October, adults had begun to appear, which added to the suspicion that this is not S. pretiosa, which is often touted as having green wings;
Whereas this individual - and its compatriots - sported dead-leaf pink instead.


BUT [update 28/03/2014]

When this was originally written, I had not yet managed to find the Mantodea species file - a fantastic resource approaching openly-available information from the same angle as the oft-cited Orthoptera species file, although as yet in the significantly younger stages of its development.

While not as user-friendly as its parent project, it nevertheless indicates that of all the various species of Sibylla, only one extends down into our area of interest, and that is Sibylla pretiosa. While I didn't completely rule out that species based on the green-ness of wings, I am going to remind myself and anyone who reads this that a single colour character really is not a valid species dismissal tool - because, pink though the adults of the ploughing rains were, by December-January, most of them looked more like this:
Photographed in Chongwe, December 2013, using Olympus E-420 DSLR, Zuiko 40-150mm and 3 KOOD magnifiers.
Note the green wings.

So, yes, Sibylla pretiosa, and the rest of it is now update to reflect this.