Images

Xylocopa mordax, female, Dominican Republic, March 2012

Ahhhhhh, the beauty of the wings of Carpenter Bees, this lovely specimen from Thailand, found lounging around the Packer Lab, Trivia = Carpenter Bees lay the world's largest insect eggs.

A black and white version of the previous picture...can't decide if I should have left that straying barb on the left in there or not...it adds a lot of tension to the picture...perhaps too much.

Membracid from Dominican Republic floating in hand sanitizer in a quartz cuvette

Vespula squamosa - The Southern Yellow Jacket....the two yellow racing stripes on the top of the thorax (scutum) are diagnostic in the SE U.S. Collected by Tim McMahon from Talbot County, Maryland

Yucca filamentosa. A wild eastern Yucca. I always thought the odd Yucca in some beatup corner of the East was an escapee. But this is not the case as you can see here. Pollinated by moths, not bees. Specimen and picture by Helen Lowe Metzman.

Zanysson - A crabronid wasp. Most of the stinging wasps are fairly badass in aspect, to use a technical term. This one certainly is worthy of a tattoo on someone's chest and was collected by Merle Shepherd from Spring Island along the coast of South Carolina. It is unclear which species this is, but perhaps someone will reveal that to us.

Zanysson - A crabronid wasp. Most of the stinging wasps are fairly badass in aspect, to use a technical term. This one certainly is worthy of a tattoo on someone's chest and was collected by Merle Shepherd from Spring Island along the coast of South Carolina. It is unclear which species this is, but perhaps someone will reveal that to us.

White-throated Sparrow, Died in downtown Washington D.C. in the fall or spring of 2012 from striking a building at night. Retrieved by the Lights out DC program

White-throated Sparrow, Died in downtown Washington D.C. in the fall or spring of 2012 from striking a building at night. Retrieved by the Lights out DC program

Rarity here. This is species was described in the 1950s, named after the town it was collected near and only a handful of specimens have ever been collected that I am aware of. In fact it is so rare that it was on our list of "missing" species, published in 2011.

A December view of the Nebraska Sandhils - the largest uncultivated grassland in the North America.  This is one of the control sampling localities for the project on effects of crop production on prairie grouse microbiome. 

One of our frequent visitors at the Conte Lab: a juvenile bald eagle over the Turners Falls power canal. The canal provides the lab with water for fish rearing and flumes, and provides sustenance for eagles and osprey, minks and otters.

Histology laboratory with microtoming area to the left.  Microtoming is when tissues are cut into very thin slices and placed on glass slides prior to being stained and coveslipped.  In the center is the incubator where slides are dried when needed.

Histology laboratory with coverslipping area to the left.  Coverslipping is when tissues cross-sections that are dried onto slides are coverslipped with a thin piece of glass.  In the center is the file/record keeping area where every sample was logged and given a study number.

Kirby on a beach in Iceland, Nov 2019                                          

USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center - Kearneysville, WV campus           

Kirby on a beach in Iceland, Nov 2019                              

Two USGS scientist implant a radio tag in a sedated brown trout as a Deerfield River Watershed Chapter of Trout Unlimited volunteer looks on

When Brown Pelican hatch they are small, featherless and helpless. These birds can grow from tiny nestlings to flighted juveniles in 12 weeks.

Melissa Roach, biologist with the Patuxent Bird Banding Lab, bands a pelican chick on Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay.