It’s full on summer in my part of the world! Great to have heat, humidity and fireflies giving a nice show. Here’s Expiscor for this week… some discoveries fished out from the past week, from spiders and insects, to art and flying bikes. Hope you enjoy!

• 43,678 species and counting: Spider systematics, present & future [PDF].

• Next up, a shocking story of spiders: some webs may be more effective at catching insects because of electrostatic charges. Awesome. What’s also terrific is one of the authors ‘discovered’ this while observing his daughter’s magic wand interact with spider silk.

• A win for Arachnology: the surprising cause of spider bites (and it made Yahoo news, too); great work, Douglas Main!

• Harvesting air pollution in London with the help of designs inspired by spiders. (thanks Sam Evans, for this!)

• Naughty business: how to photograph a spiders’s privates.

• Spider egg parasitoids oh my! 32 new wasp species described from the Platygastridae (Hymenoptera)
  

• Just look at this lovely spider! (photo by Chthoniid, reproduced here, with permission)

• Dragonflies and the afterlife. A beautify post by Chris Goforth. Just read it, OK?

• Invasive fly moves northwards… and forensic entomologists ought to pay attention.

• Taxonomy is a beautiful thing. Check out this post on beetles, “A new lineage of Bembidion?” (thanks for tweeting that one, Morgan Jackson!)

• Taxonomy can be a tricky business, though: case in point, taxonomic vandalism.

• Hummingbird makes a nest with spider silk.

• Tennis is OK, but watching wee insects on the tennis courts is even better. Look out, little beetle! (via May Berenbaum)

• Stempunk Cicadas. Oh yeah!

• Ants of Alberta – fabulous new key, on-line.

• Ants, ants, ants… Dr. Eleanor’s book of common ants is available free as a download.

• Killing rats to save biodiversity.

• Nature is amazing: Guillemot eggs are self-cleaning.

• So you think mosquitoes are bad in your backyard…?? Check out this photo from the Arctic (my experience agrees with this, by the way!)

• Gosh it was a fun week on twitter, including a hilarious conversation about Odd Science Equipment – weird things that scientists use to get the job done. Here’s the storify of the hashtag, and there are a couple of other related posts over at Dynamic Ecology (here, and here)

• Vintage geology panorama. Lovely!  (thanks Jacquelyn Gill for that link)

• More on Art & Science (and Entomology…) – using art to enhance science engagement. (yes, you should follow ‘biocreativity‘)

• Exams – do we need them?  A thoughtful post about assessing students.

• Some science funnies. (Thanks Chris MacQuarrie!)

• And the tweet of the week goes to…. Avi Goldberg.  I love coffee, too.

• Phew! Pluto’s tiny moons have names. (spoiler: Kerberos and Styx)

• Another home run for Malcolm Campbell.  Here’s a quote from his latest post: As children, we make use of our human home bases – like mobile harbours – from which we venture out to investigate new surroundings or circumstances. They are also the safe harbours to which we return for comfort, support and reinforcement when we feel unsure, challenged, or threatened by what we have found

• In honour of the Tour de France (my favourite sporting event to watch, despite the past problems), a game changer: a flying bicycle (thanks Matthew Cobb for that one!)

• Man wears same polyester outfit for 40 years, in a series of school photos. The most fascinating part of this is watching him age. (thanks Rose Eveleth for that link)

• Some promotion for my PhD student Dorothy Maguire – here’s a neat video from Ecosystem Services Montreal, about her work on forest fragments, herbivory and insects. And yes, tree-climbing too!