Welcome to the 8th edition of Circus of the Spineless!
Aydin Örstan submitted some really nice shot-by-shot pictures of the function of the pneumostome in How a slug breathes. I was disappointed in him that he didn't pass along two other posts that I dug up on his site: Mmm…worms and Feast in the backyard, both articles about slugs eating worms, the former post staged, the latter naturally observed.
Bootstrap Analysis brings us the ultimate crevice bug, a.k.a. Labia minor...don't worry, it's an earwig, not lewd at all. He then talks about a few other earwigs, including Forficula auricularia.
Marie Freeman has a nice picture of a bee in Gettin down and dirty with a dandelion...
Neil Kelley intimately details Harmonia axyridis copulation in Natura graphica -- ladybug sex, hard to top that one.
David Winter corrects any misconceptions about who really adapted to land first, pointing out that Pneumodesmus newmani [among other arthropods] beat Tiktaalik to land by about 52 My: When animals first conquered the land
Sahotra Sarkar reflects on the movement of Danaus plexippus in A Year in Texas: Monarch Migrations
Bora Zivkovic (courtnix) sends us:
- a post on "hive mind"
- his take on falling ants
- an experience learned in getting chemical supplies pre-ordered and fetal pigs dissected
- and, my favorite, a review of research on aggression in crayfish, the influence of the light cycle, and its correlation to human depression
Craig R. McClain is the "mode" of our CotS data set, check out this prolific palette of pithy posts:
- Another Ancestor of Decapods
- Giant Corals May Be Listed As Threatened
- Giant Sea Anemone
- Crabzilla! Queen Of The Deep!
- Deep phytoplankter Prochlorococcus
- Yeti Crab From Hydrothermal Vents
- Humboldt Squid Invading Chilean Shores
- Microbes Numerous and Slow But Not Stupid
- Krill Feces Important for Deep Sea
Jennifer Forman Orth puts out Bumbling Around and follows up with a nice picture of what may be: 1) a fungus gnat 2) a Sciarid 3) a midge of Chironomidae on a forsythia. If you have the ID on good authority as to which it was, leave a comment there.
Bev Wigney hooks us up with some beautiful shots of spider eyes, her evening visitor, a little king kong, the carrion gang, and some of a predaceous diving beetle.
Steve Reuland informs us about the ghost crab, Ocypode quadrata, in his Friday Animal Blogging.
Angie sent in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which she told me was harmed during the making of the post. I hope your outrage at the squish is tempered by the knowledge that she did it out of her inordinate affection for her perennials [lucky for her there's no invertebrate equivalent of PETA...well...except for a few choice cephalopods].
Karen at Rurality snaps two great pictures of a recently-hatched batch of unidentified orange spiders, on some reader-identified lyre-leaf sage, in her post, Eek. Anyone familiar with Araneae, please give us some guesses as to the critters' credentials.
Henry wraps up the Circus with the latest output from his webiocosm: Friday Caterpillar Blogging: Eastern Tent Caterpillars, Malacosoma americanum. Although a few pictures struck me for their beauty, this was the only one to ring the nostalgia bell: these guys were everywhere in the spring back home in Southwestern Virginia.
Another Circus of the Spineless bites the dust. Next month's edition is scheduled to be held at Burning Silo. Please feel free to point out errata in the comments section, and I'll spruce up the post. Thanks for reading!
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As I stated before, I decided to take an indefinite break from writing here.
Those interested in what I'm interested in these days can check out the site I contribute to the most frequently, Debunking Christianity, or a forum I spend time bashing ID-iots and cretinists on, CreationTalk.
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