The insects scandalously embracing in this picture are decorated crickets (Grylllodes sigillatus), which can be found in the southwestern United States, among other places. The droplet on the male’s tail is–for want of a better word–a gift. After producing this glob he sticks it onto the package of sperm he places on the female. After the crickets are finished with their encounter, the female will grab the gift and snack on it.
Category: Blog
Back in March I described a provocative paper that suggested that plants might be able to get around Mendel’s laws of heredity. Reed Cartwright, the grad student behind De Rerum Natura, left a commentexpressing some deep skepticism. Now he reports that he and Luca Comai of the University of Washington have published a letter in the journal Plant Cell. You can read the letter for free. (There’s another paper commenting on it in the journal, but it requires a subscription.)
A new autumn has brought another burst of red and yellow leaves. And it has also brought an interesting new idea about why trees put on this show every year.
Peter Brown, anthropologist on the hobbit team, jumps into the comment fray himself on the nature of the fossils he discovered.