Insects and Spiders

The amount of stacking (and image processing power) that must be needed to achieve even those short videos is insane.

Hadn’t come across the wiggle stereoscopic before. It’s cool and actually does work to give the image depth, but makes me feel a bit drunk!

It’s a bit like how you if continually make micro-adjustments up and down focal planes with a microscope/camera lens you can pick out details that your eye misses just looking at a single plane

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/14/wildlife-experts-urge-action-on-pesticides-as-uk-insect-populations-plummet

Spotted lurking on a little path near Heidelberg castle

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Common Carder Bumblebee (Bombus pascuorum) in early evening sunlight

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Gorgeous, lovely picture.

Aye, that's a smasher.

Thanks both.

Worlds biggest slug, L. cinereoniger spotted in Heidelberg. Flippin ‘uge

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good eating on that

Don't forget the woefully under-contributed slug and snails thread for more sluggy action https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/390812/#comment17290066

This evenings insect 'sundown' shot is a Little Snipefly (Chrysopilus asiliformis) - beautiful, dainty flies barely 5 mm in size. This one is a shimmering silver / gold male.

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Lyme disease is a proper threat there.

Ah yes, will contribute the plentiful sluggery that’s demolishing our garden any time I plant something

More so than uk? Think it’s about 4% of ticks here. This big old Ixodes ricinus was literally just off the biggest tourist attraction in Heidelberg so can understand a lot more people getting bitten. Plenty in Richmond/bushy park though

In Odenwald region it's very common and I have several friends and family affected. Glad I live in a place where we barely have to worry about it. In fact I haven't even seen a tick down here.

Also tick borne encephalitis

Yeah, my futuresister in law was asking if I’d been vaccinated. Not common over here that I’m aware of, plenty of other weird tick borne diseases about.

Super warm and humid out here so pretty much perfect for them, + they’ll be extra hungry.

In the UK there is a good tick identification and recording scheme run out of Porton Down to keep track of tick-borne diseases - see https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tick-surveillance-scheme . I've sent ticks t them in the past and got really good feedback. Plus useful advice on general tick and tick-borne disease awareness.

Ah cool - visited there once. To be honest was wondering about doing a little study in my spare time locally to see how many are knocking about in Ashton court.

Few more here. Some obvious beetle voyeurism, little cryptic leafhopper and I’m guessing a parasitoid wasp of some sort

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ID?

Lesser or Greater?

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I think it's probably a female Greater but difficult to tell from the photo. Were the wing cases black, shiny and pitted or were they more chestnut brown? If the latter definitely a female Greater if not then a female Lesser. See here https://www.ukbeetles.co.uk/lucanus-cervus and here https://www.ukbeetles.co.uk/dorcus-parallalopipedus for the best descriptions of the differences.

This shows the brown so I think female Greater.

Let her back into the undergrowth.

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Definitely - thumbs up emoji!