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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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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The Bellflower Specialists
By Eunice Blavascunas and Alie J. Zagata I grew up in Switzerland, in a family of natural historians. I often say that I grew up in a sleeping bag because my family went camping in the wilderness most weekends and throughout the summers.
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Insect Profile: The Apollo
*Featured image: Specimens of Parnassius Apollo in a collection case at the Zoologische Staatssammlung München. Photo: Susanne Schmitt. By Susanne Schmitt and Birgit Müller Classified as moderately endangered, Parnassius apollo is a species of butterfly that inhabits mountain meadows and rocky alpine sites. These creatures’ large wings make them visible from afar, even for visually clumsy…
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Fifty Years Ago, Cockchafers Belonged to Spring…
By Birgit Müller and Susanne Schmitt We met Ernst-Gerhard Burmeister at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology where he has dedicated most of his professional life to the amazing collection of over 25 million zoological specimens, one of the largest natural history collections in the world.
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Insect Profile: The Cockchafer
“The Cockchafer, Part 1†By Birgit Müller and Susanne Schmitt On a warm night in May, the cockchafer crawls out of the earth for the first time to take flight into the bushes and trees. It has been living below ground for four years since it first hatched: a pale, fat, maggot-like grub that will…