Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009

On the 27th October 2009 (yet another timely post) I visited the Wildlife Photographer of the Year preview at the Natural History Museum, London. This year the exhibit has moved to a different gallery, giving it a bit more breathing room and has a more modern feel with blue lighting - it all looks very impressive.

The exhibition has a new sponsor, Veloia Environnement

The layout of the exhibit is pretty awkward though, with various inter-locking rooms and no clear idea as to which way round to go. I would like to see the photos in the order highly commended, runner-up, and winner - at various points this happened, at others I ended up seeing the winner first.

Of course this is all just a distraction from the photographs which, as always, were stunning. Not a huge number of invertebrates, but I have included a selection here for you to enjoy.

Mating Barnacles Video

Mating barnacles from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.

For more information about barnacle mating check out Mating when you are stuck to a rock by Creature Cast.

Have you got a good marine invertebrate blog post?

... then send it to Southern Fried Science for their 'The Best Marine Invert Blog Posts'.

The AES Exhibition

Erica
Originally uploaded by edwbaker

Every year the Amateur Entomologists' Society has an exhibition where you can buy all kinds of live and dead insects, and all the equipment that goes with having an interest in either or both.

As usual I was tied up with helping the Phasmid Study Group and Blattodea Culture Group for a lot of the time (which is fun but doesn't always leave time to have a good look around the rest). One of the people who stopped by to chat was Erica (responsible for the Curator of Diptera's blog). She can be seen here with the phasmid Anchiale maculata.

Somewhat surprisingly I only took two photographs - the Flickr set could just as easily have been called dipterists meeting phasmids really.

Blog Post on Stick Insects

See this post on Diapheromera femorata.

Cicada Parasite Beetle

Check out the post on Cicada Parasite Beetles on Myrmecos

New U of I Entomology Blog

The IB 401 students at the University of Illinois (I was there briefly earlier in the year: U of I Pollinatarium) have started an entomology blog. So far they seem to be pretty keen and doing a fine job, so check it out.

Good to see they have chosen an orthopteroid as the logo image too!

Snail Porn

Since my women and cockroaches post Aydin at Snail's Tails has been mourning the lack of snails and women. Never one to shy away from sticking a hand down the back of the internet to see what probably shouldn't be found, I discovered these:




The non-safe version of above image



The non-safe version of above image

Yes, it seems that the internet really does have everything you had no desire to find......

Culture List

I have recently been talking to various people involved in captive breeding of invertebrates (of the hobbyist rather than professional type) and several times a desire for an online system of managing livestock cultures and the exchange of livestock has been mentioned.

There seemed to be some merit in this, particularly in the context of the Phasmid Study Group and Blattodea Culture Group. As both of the groups use Scratchpads as a website platform it makes sense to develop this within the context of the Drupal framework - so I have started to implement a livestock management system on my own website (has been under-development for months, but I'm working on it).

So does anybody have any suggestions as to features?

Mail Eating Snails

The Times reports that snails have been eating mail from Royal Mail post boxes. The article suggests the molluscs are after the gum on the envelope, however Aydin from Snail's Tales suggests they after the cellulose content of the paper.

I can't say that I have ever had slimy mail, however I have fallen for the paper data label trap for collecting live snails.