cotinis's Favorites

Revisiting the skunk cabbages with a group of interested folks - there were a lot more up now than when I checked them the first time this year (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/200809465), including some color variants.

In addition to the main spider photo, I've added more, showing where there were hundreds of thee spiders in their orb webs. There's a "scene" photo, in the middle of which you can see the main lit informational kiosk where there had to be something around 80 webs, most of which were these (including this spider). The whole structure to its left was also covered in webs - some even inside that vending machine, which contains fishing tackle, not snacks. They were around back, all the way around that stuff. That tree to the right was a veritable apartment building of webs, and I've added a screencap of a video I took showing that. They were on the signs and Dasani machine, and then you see the railings of the dock there - they were in between each upright, often multiple webs, and I included photos of that, too. There was another dock that had the same situation. On the far side of the parking lot is a fish processing station? Kind of a small roofed structure with counters, a wooden deck with railings, and three or four sets of bleachers. These spiders were in the deck railings and all over the bleachers as well.

I spotted bioluminescence on the hillside beside the trail on the Night Owl Hike; some photos with flashlight

The larvae look typical of beetle grubs, females look like the larvae (larviform, neotonous, or paedomorphic: retaining juvenile features into adulthood), both larvae and females having luminescent organs ("lanterns"); however, females communicate with males via pheromones (chemical perfumes), not light intensity, (explaining the male’s lovely, sensory antennae, for in his brief life he does not eat but lives only to mate), and then the female lays eggs in clusters on the ground, encircles and guards them, glowing the whole time, until her death about a week later; eggs may not glow immediately but may luminesce before hatching

For the adult male beetle here at the Betsy-Jeff Penn 4-H Center, cf. inaturalist.org/observations/157456482