Splendid Unknowns: September 2025

Xerophloea peltata, Micrutalis sp.

Here's another filler image for decoration. The Xerophloea, Micrutalis, and singular Graphocephala female have all been doing well now that I seem to be getting a hang of the invisible mystery forces that increase and decrease host palatability over time, although I'm still trying to find a shelter object for the disabled Eleodes acuticauda female that it won't either reject the smell of or get its senile legs caught on. Finding the teneb a piece of bark that doesn't smell like mold is a weirdly difficult task in this part of the country.

But without further ado, here's some research papers/books that I've found fun and/or useful. Useful ones that are not so fun are clustered together, for your convenience. I expect to periodically update this every now and then (last update: 6/10/2026).

Also this isn't really a paper but I wrote a thing here on adult feeding in Saturniidae.

An insect-induced novel plant phenotype for sustaining social life in a closed system
(aphids bioengineering trippy gall-sanitation systems)

Cockroaches: ecology, behavior, and natural history
Free book! Most of the later chapters get boring tho.

How aphids lose their marbles

(more cool gall sanitation)

Love spots

Arthropod eye multitasking. See also: gyrinid split vision.

The nuptial dance of male mayflies helps avoid mistaken interception by other males

Hidden in plain orange: aposematic coloration is cryptic to a colorblind insect predator

Learning ability and longevity: a symmetrical evolutionary trade-off in Drosophila

Controlled iris radiance in a diurnal fish looking at prey
(no not bioluminescence, it's cooler than that)

Xmrks the spot: life history tradeoffs, sexual selection and the evolutionary ecology of oncogenesis
Swordtails that use melanomas in courtship displays

Experimental evidence of pollination in marine flowers by invertebrate fauna

Animal-mediated fertilization in bryophytes

Bird feeders have caused a dramatic evolution of California hummingbirds

The Californian urban butterfly fauna is dependent on alien plants

Lethal trap created by adaptive evolutionary response to an exotic resource

Glassfrogs conceal blood in their liver to maintain transparency

Behavioral sabotage of plant defenses by insect herbivores

Method of handling affects post-capture encounter probabilities in male Hypolimnas bolina (L.) (Nymphalidae)

Do bumble bees play?
This paper thinks so, and peer reviewers don't seem to have complained about it but there's serious flaws in the study. Namely: even though the path is unobstructed, bees (like most flying insects that aren't Heliconius) have little to no understanding of obstacle avoidance when transparent objects are involved, and are also negatively geotactic. I myself have never seen any arthropod unambiguously play, and few examples that even seem to be ambiguous play.

Suggested methodology improvement: present fully free-ranging Bombus with balls in front of the nest exit, or at least use a cage with a higher ceiling to rule out geotaxis-induced ball climbing (in the video, the bees repeatedly flap their wings while rolling; high ceiling would allow flapping bees to fly upwards in a straight line away from the ball if they wanted to, and thus confirm or rule out ball rolling being an accidental result of geotaxis).

Fungus and fruit consumption by harvestmen and spiders (Opiliones, Araneae): the vegetarian side of two predominantly predaceous arachnid groups

Conservation biology of Cryptocephalus species and other threatened UK beetles
Mostly just worth reading about for the whole "needs successional mosaic habitat" thing. Also since my local climate is more arid than the paper's I believe cryptocephalines in my area are probably population-limited in part by excessive insolation/drought, not a lack of it. They do seem more common in areas adjacent to shade objects.

Ode to Alabama: the meteoric fall of a once extraordinarily abundant moth
If I'm not mistaken, Spodoptera littoralis (which shares the same common name as Alabama argillacea) has been mistakenly used as the adult moth in the header image. The actual paper's findings seem valid tho (I suspect Dissosteira longipennis may also be in serious danger by the way, and a few other pests).

Disproportionate declines of formerly abundant species underlie insect loss

On the perils of ecological restoration: lessons from the El Segundo Blue Butterfly
(The dangers of locally-nonnative native plants)

Laboratory methods for rearing soil beetles
Free semi-book!

Owlet caterpillars of Eastern North America
Free book!

The Spanish and Mexican baseline of California tree and shrubland distributions since the late 18th century

Assaying lepidopteran flight directionality with non-invasive methods that permit repeated use and release after testing

The butterflies of Southern California
Free (but somewhat outdated; it's from 1973) book! The comments about Phoebis sennae being "no longer abundant, and in danger of dying out" are intriguing, given that it was known to be previously common, and in the 21st century is now common again.

Screenshots section:

Ethics reasons aside, freezing also takes forever for big or endothermic insects and does not kill taxa able to withstand it through antifreeze secretions

From Cambridge Handbook of Play. The original paper says "autumn-born males play rarely" [not never] and that administering spring-born males' secretions apparently caused autumn-borns to play more.