I needed a break today and that meant that the blog post I had planned never quite materialized. What can you do? Even I need a break from the bugs occasionally! I’ll tell you all about the joy that was BugFest tomorrow, but for today I leave you with this gorgeous girl:
Chinese mantid
She was one of the many live insects at BugFest on Saturday and represented this year’s theme (mantids) well. Look how fat she is! She is far and away the biggest mantid I’ve ever seen.
Until tomorrow!
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Unless otherwise stated, all text, images, and video are copyright © C. L. Goforth
The Dragonfly Woman 
Just curious. From a “buggish” standpoint, how does North Carolina compare to Arizona??? Very favorably, I’d guess.
Arizona has an incredibly high insect diversity, so they seem rather similar when you’re talking number of species. I think I see more insects here than I did in AZ though, so the biomass seems to be higher – or at least it is for the species that I care about. I haven’t gotten to explore the aquatic habitats nearly as much as I’d like yet though, so this is all based on terrestrial insects.
I’ve never been to Arizona, but picture it as completely dry and barren. Wish you could be here Friday, as I travel north 75 miles for a fieldtrip/lecture on “Ecology of A Fishless Pond”. I’ve been told to bring “my collection gear”, including my brand-new Official Dragonfly Woman Soup Strainer (I already wore the first one out!!).
Nope, the Sonoran Desert where I lived was absolutely full of life and spiky plants. This is pretty typical of the area around Tucson:
There are of course more barren areas too, but most of the desert where there isn’t too much interference from humans (grazing, development, etc), looks pretty much like the photo. LOTS of bugs there! Now, when you got into the Mojave Desert or the Chihuahuan Desert, then things got considerably more sparsely vegetated and less diverse, but still not completely bare. I find that people who have never been to AZ think of it like the Sahara, with big sand dunes everywhere. It’s not like that at all, in spite of the now frequent summer haboobs in Phoenix. The Sonoran desert is one of the most lush deserts in the world.
Glad to hear that you’ve been putting your strainer to good use! I am trying to convert my coworkers to them. They use little aquarium nets, the kind you use for goldfish, and they’re just not up to the sort of vigorous scooping that I do. :) Ecology of a Fishless Pond sounds fun – I wish I was there Friday too!