Costa Rica – The Smaller Majority

Lungless and happy about it

Of all the organs in my body, the one that I would be most reluctant to part with (perhaps with the exception of my eyes) are the lungs. It seems that we need them more than anything else. True, we need all the other bits, but lungs seem particularly useful. Without them the brain stops working in…

Treehoppers

“I need to have my vision checked” was the first thought that popped into my head when my eyes met a treehopper of the genus Bocydium sitting on a thin branch in the Braulio Carillo National Park in Costa Rica, where I was researching several newly discovered katydid species. I had seen many mind-boggling organisms…

Hugewings

As somebody who grew up in Europe I was really hoping that enrolling in a graduate school in the US would give me a chance to see many organisms that are rare or completely absent from the Old Continent. And, sure enough, as soon as I arrived in New England I almost got into a…

The amazing Glass katydid

Once again things have been slow on my blog as I am trying to finish a million little things before my upcoming departure for Mozambique. I will be arriving there at the beginning of the rainy season, which means tons of insects and other invertebrates, a multitude of frogs, and hopefully some great new stories…

The miracle of parallel evolution

I have been going through photos taken during a recent trip to Mozambique, and every now and then I am struck by the similarity of some of the African organisms to their counterparts on other continents. One of the best such examples is that of Neotropical glass frogs (Centrolenidae) and some African reed frogs (Hyperoliidae)….