Another week has passed… here are some discoveries!

• New spiders! Two new species of burrowing spiders from Uruguay.

• Run and hide everyone in the UK RUN AND HIDE! MILLIONS OF SPIDERS ON THE LOOSE. (but seriously folks, relax. This is not journalism.  (thanks to my UK friend, e.g., Graham Scott, for tweeting me this story)

• A moth that mimics a spiders. Nature is wonderful.

• Something small. That is all.

• Congrats to Daniel Llavaneras on finding something very special.

• Twig tethered to a twig: a caterpillar has Ted a wee bit stumped. 

• Bugshot was down in Belize – some lovely buggy & spidery images are posted here. 

• Speaking of bugshot, here’s one of Nash Turley‘s pics from that adventure (Thanks, Nash, for letting me post it here!)

• Students in my intro Entomology class are teaching me a lot (they are lecturing on the Insect Orders). Last week, I learned of Desert Locusts that can swim, underwater. (note: they ‘can’ but they don’t necessarily ‘do’ the swimming.)

• My students also told me of the hip, cool family of Orthoptera called…. Cooloolidae. Yeah, that’s awesome.

• Diesel exhaust screws up the ability of honeybees to forage. I’m not surprised by this, but still glad the study was done.

• Bees hop between green roofs. 

• Weather forecasting by insects……

• Why are there no ants north of the treeline? It seems that should have been answered by myrmecologists already…. discussions on twitter suggest this may not be the case…? Or perhaps Francoeur’s ideas are spot-on…?

• Speaking of Ants – how about thinking of Universities like Ant colonies – a fascinating post by Terry McGlynn over at small pond science.

• You like ants?  What about a jumping spider that looks like an ant? Here you go:

• Got the sniffles? Maybe you’ve got a tick… maybe it’s a new species…?

• Beware of the warble fly... yikes! (thanks H. Stiles!)

• Heading the the Entomological Society of Canada’s annual meeting in a couple of weeks?  Check out the AWESOME (and free!) workshops.

• Fly regurgitation and Art. Yeah, I’m serious –> check this out (Thanks Claudio Gratton for that link)

• More on insects and art: here is something ridiculously interesting – bee and beetle models.

• Over at the Boreal Beetle – an eloquent post about finding, reading and appreciating ‘old’ literature

• Centipede venom might be a pretty good painkiller! 

• Bug Girl is now posting over at Wired Science… “Charismatic Minifauna“. Worth a follow!

• Beetles collected by Darwin! Have a look…

• Tweet of the week goes to …  Erin McKiernan. This is awesome. Don’t worry: My neighbours think I’m crazy too. I’ve been caught running up and down the street with a sweep net.

• Animal animal. Totally tautonyms. (thanks Heidi for tweeting that!)

• Cowardice in Academia: a very important message for those who sit on tenure review board (thanks to Alan Townsend for writing that post)

• Science reporter spoofs hundreds of Open Access journals with fake papers. 

• Um, fix all your lectures, people: new fossils push the origin of plants back 100 million years.

• Underdogs: the them of a new Malcolm Cladwell book. Here’ s nifty interview with the author.

• So many reasons to love Patrick Stewart. However, here’s another one.

• Communicate this: Science has a special issue devoted to communication in science. 

• What exactly is a doctorate? 

• Why are there still so few women in Academia. An excellent piece.

• XKCD has a good one:  Penumbra. I learned something new.

• Hobbit fans! Some never-before-seen art by Tolkien.

• Robotic jungle – a wired woodland. 

• On robots: here’s a Wild Cat: This is both terrifying and amazing: