Welcome to May! Expiscor is still going strong, and thanks to everyone for the continued support and interest. I’m certainly thrilled about this, and will continue to post weekly links about entomology, arachnology, natural history, biology and a dash of the curious and odd.

• Please don’t be afraid of spider bites.  Despite the sad news about Jeff Hanneman, spider bites are exceedingly rare.  Rick Vetter’s site is one of the most informative and clear on this topic – check it out if I can’t convince you.

• Leaping spiders!  A neat paper about the role of airflow and the ability of spiders to catch their prey.

• Bug’s eye view: a digital camera that mimics an insect’s eye. Neat idea and very cool to see technology inspired by earth’s smaller majority.

• The roving beetles: Stelio Chatzimanolis placed a bunch of his videos about rove beetles up on figshare. Worth a look! (I do like the mating one…).

• Silk farming and biotechnology: the future is here. This paper describes some things that I don’t fully understand, and I am partially fascinated by, and partially terrified about, the idea (anyone read Margaret Atwood‘s book, Oryx & Crake?).

• On the death of a bug blog? Ted MacRae posts about waning interest by readers, and perhaps by him, with his fabulous Beetles in the Bush blog. Ted will keep posting (phew!) but less regularly. Actually, I have noticed that over the past six months or so quite a few bug blogs have been less active.  This saddens me – high quality entomology blogs are an important way for this discipline to reach a wide audience.  Come on, folks – keep them going!

• Palpal action. and check out this stunning photo from Chthoniid!  Yes, Harvestmen are among the most lovely of the Arachnida.

A charming harvestmen. © Chthoniid, reproduced here with permission.

• Worried about the decline of bees and colony collapse disorder?  Read this –> an important message (thanks Bug Girl for posting this)

• On-line reading – I have been enjoying Nautilus this past week. Here’s their motto: “Nautilus is a different kind of science magazine. We deliver big-picture science by reporting on a single monthly topic from multiple perspectives. Read a new chapter in the story every Thursday”.  Definitely one to follow. And it’s a lovely site to look at.

• Attention Scientists! Are you afraid of social media?  Don’t be.  Have a look at this post by Colin Shultz and you’ll see what I mean

• Avoid that mumbo-jumbo.  Here’s Alan Alda’s take on scientific jargon.  Here’s a great quote from him:  “There’s no reason for the jargon when you’re trying to communicate the essence of the science to the public because you’re talking what amounts to gibberish to them“.  He’s right.

• Think you’r a pretty big deal? What to think about your place in the Universe? Think again. (thanks Sam Heads for tweeting that link!)

• TRILOBITES! TRILOBITES! We all love those TRILOBITES! A great resource… (thanks Protohedgehog for the link!)

• On the evolution of feathers. A truly lovely video via Carl Zimmer – art and science do mix well.

• Saving coral reefs with robots. The future is here. A terrific kickstarter project (thanks Ed Yong for retweeting that story!)

• Kids have an interesting fashion sense. Here’s a photo of my 9 year old, en route to school.  I wish we could all worry a little less about whether or not things might clash, and just be happy that we have clothes to wear and food to eat.

Fashion. That is all.

• Old Finnish People with Things On Their Heads.  Yes, you read that correctly. (thanks Kyle Mackie for that link – very, um, interesting!)

• Amazing Dads. In last week’s Expiscor, I linked to a pretty awesome Dad who draws things on sandwich bags. Here’s another awesome Dad doing drawings on lunch bags! Great work, Adam.  But I’m feeling inadequate, now. (thanks Ainsley for directing me to Adam’s work)

• Creativity with ice cube trays. Need I say more?

• Unless you’ve been off the grid for months, you have probably heard of the great Canadian Chris Hadfield, up on the International Space Station. He and Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson teamed up a while ago to write and perform a song (yes, Chris was in SPACE during the recording). Well, this was all leading up to MUSIC MONDAY, which is today. A fabulous celebration about music – all the details are here.  And the video of the Hadfield/Robertson song is below. Worth a listen.

• ….on a related note, Chris Hadfield has more twitter followers than Canada’s Prime Minster (and for good reason).