Imaginings
stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, and other imaginative accounts of the natural world
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Tracing Landscape Change through Dung Beetles
By Olea Morris: In some ways, the dung beetles and I had a lot in common! Working as a volunteer on a farm in the highlands of Veracruz, Mexico, I was assigned the very unglamorous but important role of tending to the manure of the animals raised there.
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Insect Portrait: The Dung Beetle
By Olea Morris The family of insects known as “dung beetle,†or escarabajos del estiercol, is a diverse one—even amongst those that make the same misty cloud forests of Mexico their home. Some, like Onthophagus corrosus, are jet black and no bigger than the fingernail of a pinky finger, while others, like Phanaeus endymion, have…
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Mosquitopia? Could We or Should We Eradicate Mosquitos: A Short Film
In this short film created by the Mosquitopia team following the Rachel Carson Legacy Symposium “Mosquitopia? The Place of Pests in a Healthy World,†21 experts give their opinions and insights on this critical question.
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Portrait of an Insect Lover: Alexandra Magro
By Birgit Müller I met Alexandra Magro this spring, at the first Grand Conference of the French Academy of Sciences entitled “Insects: Friends, Foes, and Models.†I had contributed a presentation of the blog series Silent Spring Continued at the poster session, hoping to attract insect lovers ready to tell me their stories of love…
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Insect Portrait: Ladybird Beetles
*Image: ©Alexandra Magro Ladybird beetles (of the family Coccinellidae) are a fascinating group of insects. Thriving in all kinds of habitats, they are extremely diverse; around 6,000 species have been described worldwide. Although they are often recognized as beneficial predatory insectivores, their food preferences are in fact very large: some species are fungus feeders, and…
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Insects as Inspiration
By Jan Goedbloed My name is Jan, I am now 67 years old. I studied biology between 1969 and 1976, and then could not find a job. I helped start a bird hospital, and then worked as an educational assistant in a natural history museum where I tried to incorporate nature meditation.
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Overcoming the Fear Factor: Teaching and Learning about Insects and Biodiversity
By Tony Weis Insects have fascinated Nina Zitani for as long as she can remember. She vividly recalls making her first bug collection at age five, and searching for insects and other arthropods in her backyard and nearby forests in Moorestown, New Jersey, throughout her childhood.
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Mosquitopia Part 3: Key Reasons for Killing Mosquitoes
By Marcus Hall and Dan Tamir Human health: First and foremost, despite the many and important reasons for saving mosquitoes, or at least saving certain mosquitoes in certain situations, there remains a dire need to eradicate these creatures—even when it means undertaking extreme measures to accomplish this goal.
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Mosquitopia Part 2: A few Reasons for Saving Mosquitoes
By Marcus Hall and Dan Tamir We must remind ourselves that we are ultimately battling disease, not mosquitoes, and that there may be more effective, more economical, more ethical ways to do this than mosquito control. Malaria once emanated from swamps and bad air, though with more evidence it became clear that mosquitoes were the…