Let’s go straight to the punchline: 2018 was a successful year for me. This is important because I am posting this late into 2019, so I had the time to reflect on the passing year’s events. I was debating if I should write a summary post for 2018 at all. These things get old quickly, especially around the last two weeks of December, when such posts pop up everywhere. Even though I know I am…

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Today’s Little Transformer is a little unusual. First off, it is a spider. This spider is so unique in its appearance and behavior that I am surprised it has not inspired any exaggerated depictions in popular culture. It spends most of its time hidden, posing as a harmless twig among the forest vegetation. It is so good at what it does, that unless it moves it would be very easily overlooked. However, when night falls…

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For the past five months I have been working at the Royal Ontario Museum’s “Spiders: Fear & Fascination” exhibition as a full-time spider wrangler, taking care of the live spiders and scorpions, as well as performing live venom extractions. One of the most common interactions I have at the museum are with people looking to confirm certain misconceptions about venomous arachnids. There is a lot of information available out there, and I understand it can…

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After a long hiatus of nearly 5 months, I thought it is about time I shake the dust off this blog and return to posting. This month we are celebrating Arachtober, highlighting spiders and other arachnids to promote appreciation and understanding that these animals are crucial to the normal function of ecosystems, and that they have their rightful place on this planet. Today is also International Jumping Spider Day, so it is a great opportunity…

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Some of my favorite insects to find while out in the field are hawkmoth caterpillars, or hornworms (named after the characteristic “tail”). They are big, squishy sausages that often show off dazzling colors, sometimes with interesting anti-predator adaptations like eyespots and mimicry. All these characters make the hawkmoth caterpillar look like a toy just waiting for you to play with. The sad truth is that being big and flashy in the natural world often comes…

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Art comes in many forms. In my previous insect art posts I focused mainly on graphic art that closely follows natural appearance, from natural history illustrations to arthropod-based characters. What these creations have in common is that they attempt to portray nature as accurately as possible. However, when we look at different media around us, there are many imaginary creatures that borrow heavily from existing organisms. To say that fictional creatures are often inspired by real…

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Little Transformers are back with another coleopteran representative. I usually use this platform to present insect adaptations from the tropics, however this time I am focusing on a local species with a wide distribution in central and eastern North America: the forked fungus beetle (Bolitotherus cornutus). It is one of the most iconic North American beetle species, and I remember that flipping through pages of insect books as a kid, there was always an image…

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High-magnification macrophotography was once a niche mostly reserved for Canon users, thanks to the unique MP-E 65mm 1-5x Macro Lens, and for photographers willing to experiment with microscope objectives and focus-stacking techniques. This has recently changed, and slowly more macro lenses with a reproduction ratio higher than 1:1 are being introduced into the market. Two of them belong to Venus Optics Laowa: the 60mm f/2.8 2X Ultra Macro lens that was introduced in 2015, and…

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If you are an entomologist or an insect enthusiast, it is highly probable that you like ants. It is hard not to be impressed with their diversity, abundance, complex social structure and behaviors, as well as their interactions with other organisms. Ants are everywhere and do almost anything you can think of. To most people however, ants could not be any less exciting. They are often seen as a generic insect, with a relatively uniform…

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It has been a while since I started photographing for Meet Your Neighbours global biodiversity photography project, and throughout the years I have assembled a collection of some fantastic beasts (along with the information where to find them). But early on I had the idea of creating another collection of photos, a spinoff to the original MYN concept, bringing together neighbours that we often do not want to meet, or the way I refer to them: Unwanted…

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