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Tag: Carolyn Bernhardt

Closeup of two beetles on yellow goldenrod flowers. The beetles have long bodies with narrow wing covers, which are yellow-orange in color except for a dark oval covering the bottom third of each wing cover.

Pixelated Entomology: Analyzing Beetles’ Flower Use Through Digital Samples

With the continuing growth of community-driven, digital nature observations on platforms like iNaturalist, entomologists and other scientists are tapping into that store of knowledge to make new discoveries. A new study shows the potential for photo observations to answer species-specific behavior and ecological questions.

Overhead view of a table with various contents of a tick-collection kit neatly laid out. Items include a bottle of bug repellent spray, tall white socks, a white cloth, two white plastic tubes, a roll of masking tape, a black Sharpie marker, small plastic vials, an empty plastic zip-lock bag, a magnifying glass, a zip-lock bag with cotton balls and blue rubber gloves inside, two large nails, white string, a "tick blitz data collection sheet," a pamphlet titled "Insect Repellent Essentials: A Brief Guide," and a card titled "Life Cycle of the Blacklegged Tick."

Tick Blitz: How Community Science is Helping New York State Monitor Ticks

With a little bit of training, 59 citizen scientists in New York collected more than 3,700 ticks across 15 counties in a two-week period in the summer of 2021, greatly expanding the reach of professional tick researchers at the Northeast Regional Center for Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases. The "New York State Tick Blitz" is now an annual project and a model that tick-surveillance programs elsewhere can follow.

Spider Solidarity: Scientists Discover New Species With Unprecedented Social Behavior

Sociality in spiders is quite rare, but a new species found in Madagascar takes it a step further. Isoxya manangona kite spiders build large colonies of webs, all connected by a central silk line where multiple adult males gather harmoniously. Researchers suggest the males could be "lekking," gathering in a group to perform mating displays for females, a behavior never before seen in spiders.