Did A Small #tutorial For Class On “How To Improve Storytelling In Panel Layouts”! Thought It Might

Giant Flower Beetles (Genus Mecynorhina), family Scarabaeidae, from various parts of tropical Africa

M. savegei

M. torquata

M. polyphemus

M. obertheri

photograph by Ennis Fei (@ennisanna_fei)

Ngl every time someone follows this blog I automatically assume they’re a bot lol

girls love to eat soup

pensive Mercédès today. what is she thinking about

Microwave before

Microwave now

enjoying the variation in these handsome Graphocephala versuta, including the last poor hopper who has a mite sucking on its head

Sometimes “rizz” (charisma) just isn’t enough. To attract a mate, a male Lady Amherst’s Pheasant (Chrysolophus amherstiae) will engage in an elaborate courtship dance. What’s more? He has dazzling plumage to add to his appeal, along with tail feathers that can reach an impressive 31.5 inches (80 cm) long!

While this bird prefers to stay on the ground, it occasionally takes flight to escape from foes or to reach treetop roosts. One might spot this species in parts of Asia, such as southwestern China, where it inhabits bamboo forests.

Photo: Henry Koh, CC BY 2.0, flickr

#birds #birdsofinstagram #wildlife #biodiversity #nature https://www.instagram.com/p/CoIsMKPvrKN/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

I'd love to hear more about what makes the wings of the stylops so unique! Wings are always fascinating to me

Almost all insects with wings normally have four of them, except that in beetles, the front wings became the shields we call Elytra:

And in the true flies (diptera), the HIND wings became little vibrating knobs we call halteres, which are organic gyroscopes for collecting information about air pressure, direction and elevation, easiest to see on larger flies like this crane fly:

So, the male Strepsiptera is actually the only insect other than flies to have evolved halteres, but the Strepsiptera's halteres are evolved from the FRONT wings:

Their hind wings are odd enough too; simple "fans" unlike the intricately veined wings of other insects, but still not as unusual as forewing halteres. It's thought to be convergent evolution, and that they may have once been elytra like the beetles have. A connection to beetles is also suggested by the fact that a few beetle groups have larvae very similar to those of the strepsipterans, which look like this:

Lovably nasty larvae! They jump, and they're all spiny, and they actually use an acid secretion to melt their way into their first host.

There's one other insect group that incidentally evolved elytra shields, earwigs!

But earwigs can't be ancestral to either beetles or strepsiptera, because earwigs don't go through a larval stage, which the big evolutionary divide for insects; all the insects with larvae are thought to have just one common ancestor, splitting off from the other insects fairly early.