A few years ago I was at the Museum of Natural History in London to examine several type specimens of African katydids. One of them was the holotype of a conehead katydid Lanista africana, a species described by the infamous 19th century entomologist Francis Walker. (Stories abound about the quality of his taxonomic work, such…
Month: September 2013
Mozambique Diary: The Cat mantis
Arriving in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique at this time of the year, when the grasslands are bone dry and green has all but disappeared from the color palette of this immense ecosystem, I did not expect to see too many insects. Sure, there will always be ants and a bunch of grasshoppers, but the…
A song of ancient Earth
Those who have been reading this blog with some regularity may have noticed that I find virtually all organisms equally fascinating. But some are more equal than others, and few animals and plants excite me more than phylogenetic relics. These are the last remaining members of lineages that were once dominant, or at least species-rich,…
The Smaller Majority 