Comments | tceisele: Aaahh! Zombie mouse!

tceisele

Aaahh! Zombie mouse!

Jun 16, 2007 20:16

OK, so on Wednesday[1], there was some stuff I had to haul out of the basement. The basement has one of those outdoor cellar entrances, with a slanting hatchway covering a set of concrete steps leading down. Since this was the best way to haul out bulky things, I opened up the lid . . . and saw . . . a dead mouse laying on the stairs [2]. Ok, ( Read more... )

arthropod project, sexton beetle

Comments 2

serendith June 17 2007, 00:42:31 UTC

Great pics and Great beetles! We recently messed with a dead deer to get a batch of various carrion beetles for our gallery. I admit it wasn't the most glorious part of my week.

... or maybe some other similar species that hasn't gotten into "Bug Guide" yet.

You made me so happy when you said that last part! It seems like so many people nowadays tend to think they can go down to a species level identification with great ease and online searches. Not to say that I don't use Bugguide or other online searches - it just isn't as easy as a lot of people want to make it.

Species ID tceisele June 17 2007, 15:57:24 UTC

Yes, while the "bug guide" is way better than the normal sorts of field guides that the bookstores sell, it becomes obvious right away that it is a long way from complete (and, given the way it is put together, it probably always will be. People post pictures of pretty or unusual things, not so much of nondescript ones).

Something I've been noticing is that it is a lot easier to identify the imported species than the native ones. The native ones usually have all these similar species that they are related to and easily confused with, while the relatives of the imported ones are generally still back in someplace like Asia.

One of my problems is that, while this region has a pretty sparse ecosystem as far as number of species (mainly because they've only had 10,000 years to migrate in since the glaciers melted, so hardly any new species have had a chance to evolve), I'm pretty much guessing as to which species migrated in. So, while there might be only one species of, say, sexton beetles around here, it's hard to sort out which of ( ... )