Close up of tan bark with a pale circle in the center where a scale insect was. On top are two small, oval dark mites.

Three panels showing an oval mite specimen under the microscope. Left ot right the first shows the top of the mite with a few hars and a pair of moderately long sword-like setae near the rear. The back also has a network of reticulate cells. The middle panel shows the underside with two pairs of legs near the front and two pairs near the rear. There are two pairs of large setae on the rear, one pair sword-like and the other pair flat and fan-like. The final panle shows the middle plane of the mite showing two balloon-like setae near the head.

Drawing of the genus showing the underside of the mite on the left half and the dorsal side on the right half. It looks just like the mite described in the photo before.

Who are these dark little mites hiding under an armored scale shell?

Didn't take long after slide mounting to find out: no need to run through a dichotomous key, when the figure looks exactly like the #mite! 😆 And what beautiful one at that 😍

#Tarsonemidae: #Daidalotarsonemus
North Carolina, USA

A new species of scale #insect, 𝘗𝘶𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘶𝘴, has been discovered living on #oak #trees in the high-altitude mountains of Tibet! 🏔️

This discovery facilitates #researchers in the mapping out of unique #biodiversity hidden in high-elevation #ecosystems: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1275.179423

stop the presses, WEEVILS CAN SWIM?
(not just any weevil, but the excellent genus Ludovix, a member of the ant-mimic (?) tribe Erodiscini-- paper here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...)

The Pasture Mealybug: A New Invasive Pest of Pastures and Hayfields in Texas   - Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service The pasture mealybug is a newly recorded insect in the US whose feeding and excretions destroy productive grazing land

Rough time to be a cattle rancher in Texas.

Not just the imminent arrival of screwworm. Pastures are getting hit by a new invasive mealybug, Heliococcus summervillei, that kills grass at scale.

The first complete mitochondrial genome for the armoured scale insect family has been assembled, and it holds the record for the highest "AT" DNA content ever seen in an insect.

Find out more: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1272.178506

An unknown scale insect from Costa Rica.

I'm back with another weird scale insect repro study. Previously I've talked about the simultaneous hermaphrodite cottony cushion scales and (functional) haplodiploidy paternal genome elimination in mealybugs. But how did these systems evolve? The Mongue lab has some answers! 1/n #genomics

An image from Krantz’s A Manual of Acarology showing the general morphology of Trematuridae, a family within the Uropodina.

Again really awesome images! I misspoke about Europidinae, his initial ID was Europodina (infraorder). With these new images he is thinking it belongs to Trematuridae! If you have it mounted in Hoyer’s medium it should clear over the next few days and then we can potentially get it to genus/species!

Dr. Ron Ochoa of the USDA Systematic Entomology Laboratory confirmed to me that it is a Uropodinae, but he could not go further than that without images of it slide mounted. He said your images are excellent!

A fuzzy, bright red mite crawls along a log.

A fuzzy, bright red mite crawls along a log.

There is a fallen log surrounded by leaf litter and tall, slender trees.

Consider your sign to stop and stare at logs a little more often because just LOOK at this glorious velvet mite! (Third photo is where it was spotted.)

📷 jeremyhegge on iNaturalist
📍 Australia
🔗: www.inaturalist.org/observations...
#ObservationOfTheDay

Silly bright red mayfly-esque scale insect boy with gossamer wings and long waxy fiber-optic tail filaments, atop a bright red female who looks like a puffy sleeping bag with tiny legs disappearing into a crevice of maple bark

The silly boy on another female, long tail filaments looking like a rooster tail

These little scale boys really don't need my help in finding a mate, but the way the little guy would climb onto my finger instantly and hop off when I put him next to a female*... 🥹
I love the yearly emergence of these silly Neosteingelia texana scale insects on my maple trees. ♥️🧪

flat color cartoon drawings of several thrips, small insects which may have four wings or none. clockwise from top left: a thrips with very complex fringed wings, a thrips with large crab claws, two drawings of thrips with no wings and a dark brown front end and tan back, and a long and thin black thrips with red legs

photos of the real animals that are drawn in the previous image; Arachisothrips has large and complex wings, Stephanothrips is wingless with a dark brown head and thorax, Idolothrips is very long and thin, and Carcinothrips has very large crab claw-like forearms

thrips

Illustration of maple tree leaves and branches showing various scale insects and infestations. The image includes large green leaves with white powdery scale fungus, brown branches densely covered with round, dark brown scale insect galls, small insect larvae, and a winged insect. Several numbered close-ups highlight different life stages of the scale insects on bark and leaf surfaces. The drawing is detailed and botanical in style, emphasizing the impact of scale insects on the tree's health. The image is titled "Maple and Other Scale Insects," dated 1905 by L.H. Joutel.

🌷 Trees as good citizens.
Washington, D.C.American Tree Association[1922]

[Source]

An inscription reading “Asa Fitch, Salem New York, May 1, 1855. Received from Paris”. Found on the title page of Insecta Lapponica (Zetterstedt, J. W. 1840). This book is part of a larger collection bequeathed by Frederick C. Hottes to the USDA Systematic Entomology Lab.

The first page of Asa Fitch’s biography from American Entomologists (A. Mallis 1971).

Lesser known than his federal counterparts, Asa Fitch was appointed by New York as the first state entomologist in 1854.

L.O. Howard noted his work to be “… as finished and as valuable as anything that [C.V.] Riley ever wrote…” (Howard 1930).

An honor to work with a book once owned by Dr. Fitch.

I was out looking for Toumeyella parvicornis this morning and was seeing what I believe is Hadrobunus grandis on 2/3 of the plants I checked!!