Coleopterans, Scales, and Stereoscopes

Greetings,

     We have had some interesting developments as of recently. Not only have my Saturniid cocoons been vibrating rather noisily (indicating that they will soon emerge), but also my mealworm has finished metamorphosing into a full-fledged darkling beetle (more specifically, an adult Zophobas morio)! At first, it was a very light, slightly translucent tan (second picture below), but then it became a very bold maroon, and finally black, when it was completely hardened. I was very surprised that it took so long for its exoskeleton to harden! I don't have any pictures of it after it completely turned black because now it looks pretty boring. If you want to see how it looks, you can google it.

     I also got to find a surprising weevil--surprising in that I was able to get it down to a Species identification: Cyrtepistomus castaneus, the Asian Oak Beetle. (OK, maybe iNaturalist's A.I. suggested it, but let's pretend that I keyed it.)

Here is a closeup of its mandibles, showing the emerald green "throat" that makes it look pretty cool.

      What is really cool about these pictures (and which you might not have noticed due to the relatively poor image clarity) is that every part of the insect is in focus, at a microscopic level. This is not your normal iPhone quality picture. Rather, it is the work of an EPIC stereoscope I have access to through my high school. It has a "z-stacking" function that causes it to take like fifty-gazillion pictures and merge the images. It takes forever, but the end pictures are super cool. Not every microscope can focus on the tarsus and the coxa simultaneously. It can also create 3-D images and be hooked up to a 3-D printer (barring the myriad technical issues that have insofar prevented us from doing so).
     While I was at it with the weevil, I decided to get some detailed pics of some infinitesimal arachnids I found that I don't have time to key. (OK, I just don't want to key them.)

 To perfect my skills, I decided to practice on a not-so-infinitesimal Leiobunum sp. (it had about a 4-5 cm leg span). 

I then took a picture of an Episinis sp. spider that was about 3 yoctometers across (that's 10^-24 meters). Not super great quality. I'll blame it on the technology. After all, there's no way it could be user error. </sarcasm>

While I was looking for spiders in those curled up dead leaves that get stuck on branches and are pretty easy to see this time of year (yeah, those have spiders in them, generally), I found several of these tiny wasps. They were inside little web-nests, which leads me to believe they somehow parasitize the spiders. I just thought that was pretty interesting.  

 On the subjects of pictures, arthropods, and prey/food items, I found this rather amusing. Searching for "food" in my iPhone photos revealed nothing but arthropods, mainly spiders. 

 Also, a sizable number of my "reptiles" and "selfies" were, in fact, neither squamates nor Homo sapiens. Apparently, the "smart phone" is unable to distinguish between a dung beetle and my face. 

     Changing the subject, I found a bloodthirsty monster under a brick in our garden. You guessed it! A leech. A nice, pleasant ethanol spa caused it to thrash around in pure glee for a few minutes before fading into a blissful eternity. 

      I never was very fond of leeches.

      On the subject of blood, I found some interesting insects on an unidentified tree: Ceroplastes sp., or wax scales. At first I supposed them to be galls or fungi or something. But I was quite surprised to cut one open to spurts of red bodily fluid!

Looks a tad like a fungus, right?

The hiss of the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull,
 tapering groan; 
These so—these irretrievable.

--Walt Whitman, in "Walt Whitman"

I suggest that it was Sargent Grey, with the knife, in the drawing room... 

     On the subject of gross, squashed things, I found one of my old classmates from school, crawling pitifully on the ground, with his entrails spilling out onto the cold tile floor. Being a rather merciful individual, I squashed him and tossed him in the trash.

What? Did you actually think it was a person?

 Apparently, one of the 100 baby cockroaches had escaped.