Entymology

Friday Ark #112

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We add boarders all day Friday plus intermittently on Saturday and Sunday so visit frequently.

Do link to the Ark every week!

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Update: 1:02 PM CST Staff will be on the road for the next 4-5 hours. Next watch for the next Ark boardings early this evening.

Cats

Dogs

Other Vertebrates

Invertebrates

Birds

In Memoriam

  • x

Didn’t Make It

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (73 shouts as of 10/19)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 136th edition, 11/5, is up at Crazy Meezer. The 137th edition will be hosted by The Whole Kitten Kaboodle on 11/12. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 11/11 by Skeezix’s Scratching Post . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 36th edition is up and hosted by Words & Pictures. The 37th edition will be hosted on 11/30 by Five Wells.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 14th edition is up at The Neurophilosopher’s Weblog. The 14th edition will be hosted at the end of November by Ocellated.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I have, though, for the past month been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.

Friday Ark #111

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We add boarders all day Friday plus intermittently on Saturday and Sunday so visit frequently.

Do link to the Ark every week!

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Cats

Dogs

Other Vertebrates

Birds

Invertebrates

In Memoriam

Didn’t Make It

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

*Should have boarded last week.

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (75 shouts as of 11/2)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 136th edition, 10/29, is up at Watermark. The 136th edition will be hosted by Crazy Meezer on 11/5. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 11/4 by Lali et Cie . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 35th edition is up and hosted by Migrations. The 36th edition will be hosted on 11/9 by Words & Pictures.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 14th edition is up at The Neurophilosopher’s Weblog. The 14th edition will be hosted at the end of November by Ocellated.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I have, though, for the past month been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.

Friday Ark #109

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We add boarders all day Friday plus intermittently on Saturday and Sunday so visit frequently.

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.

Update: Send your support to Princess Gracie! Update here.

Cats

Dogs

Birds

Invertebrates

Other Vertebrates

In Memoriam

  • x

Didn’t Make It

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (73 shouts as of 10/19)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 134th edition, 10/15, is up atHouse of (Mostly) Black Cats. The 135th edition will be hosted by Catcall on 10/22. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 10/21 by I Got Two Shoes . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 34th edition is up and hosted by Tortoise Trail. The 35th edition will be hosted on 10/26 by Migration.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 13th edition is up at Deep Sea News. The 14th edition will be hosted at the end of October by The Neurophilosopher’s Blog.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I have, though, for the past month been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.

Friday Ark #105

This entry was posted in Bird Blogging Cat Blogging Dog Blogging Entymology Friday Ark Invertebrate Blogging Pet Blogging Pets Weekend Cat Blogging Weekend Dog Blogging on by

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page (construction underway).

Problems 9/23 11:49 PST: The server hosting Modulator broke Friday, 9/22, at about noon. I probably have permanently lost any trackbacks sent during the past 24 hours and assume comments did not work. Also, I may have lost any mail sent in the past 24 hours. I have quite a few links that I prepped yesterday but could not post and will put them up in a few minutes…check below the break in each category.

I know there are some regulars that have been missed but I will probably not catch up with anything else until tonight.

Cats

Other Vertebrates

Invertebrates

Dogs

Birds

In Memoriam

Didn’t Make It

Are The Queens Cooperating?

This entry was posted in Entymology on by

Or is some other factor leading to the large number of multiple queen yellow jacket nests in Alabama this year:

Entomologist Dr. Charles Ray at the Alabama Cooperative Extension System in Auburn said he’s aware of about 16 of what he described as “super-sized” nests in south Alabama.
….
In previous years, a yellow jacket nest was no larger than a basketball, Ray said. It would contain about 3,000 workers and one queen. These gigantic nests may have as many as 100,000 workers and multiple queens.
Without a cold winter to kill them this year, the yellow jackets continued feeding in January and February — and layering their nests made of paper, not wax. They typically are built in shallow underground cavities.
….
He said the “super colonies” appear to have many queens.
“We’re not really sure how this multiple queen thing works,” Ray said. “It could be that the daughters of the original queen don’t leave the nest or that the queens have developed some way to cooperate.”

The over winter survival probably contibutes heavily to the large size allowing a longer egg laying season. The multiple queen thing though is interesting. Are they really cooperating? Why didn’t the new queens move on to form their own nests? What makes these large nests a superior survival mechanism? What if there are a series of years without a die off?
Perhaps even more interesting is this:

Yellow jackets, often confused with bees, may visit flowers for sugar, but unlike bees, yellow jackets are carnivorous, eating insects, carrion and picnic food, according to scientists.

It is probably consistent that some food was avaiilable through the warmer winter. However, where did enough food to sustain a colony 30 times normal size come from? Is something dying off more than normal? Are they preparing for even larger feasts in the future?
Yellow Jacket Fact Sheet
Eastern Yellow Jacket Vespula maculifrons (the above article did not indicate if Easterns are the big colony builders):
EasternYellowJacket.jpg

Via boingboing.