The Smaller Majority

So long, 2014

It was an interesting, busy year, which explains in part why I have been neglecting this blog recently. I am not going to give a month-by-month account of 2014 but thought that a few highlights might be in order. That’s about it – I am looking forward to 2015, which promises to be even more…

Mozambique Diary: Not all flies fly

After a long hike in the scorching heat of the African savanna the cool, shady patch of tall miombo forest looked like heaven to us. I was in the southern part of Gorongosa, looking with a few friends for some elusive species of arthropods. But we were having little luck finding any and after several…

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…

What to do?

This morning, in my bathroom, I was faced with a dilemma. And here are the results of the poll on what I should do about this sticky situation. It is heartening to see that the majority of voters would release the spider (which is what I did), but also rather sad that over 38% of respondents (discounting…

Involuntary Bioslaughter and Why a Spider is Dead

“Hey, where is the spider post?”, you may be asking if you arrived at this page by following one of the thousands of links that sprung up overnight in the online media and social circuits. In the fine tradition of online publishing I took the liberty of pulling a “bait-and-click” switcheroo, and turning the hysteria…

A new voice in the chorus

Yesterday evening, right before the weather turned nasty, as I stood on the deck over my garden I suddenly caught a sound wave, one that I immediately recognized but had never before heard around my house. I ran to grab my recorder and was able to capture a snippet of the call. Seeing me pointing…