Albatrossity2
Posts: 2780
Joined: Mar. 2007
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I watched a lovely burying beetle (Nicrophorus marginatus) on my walk in to work today. It was thoroughly investigating a stained spot on the street; probably a place where some critter got flattened recently. It gave up and flew off after figuring out that it wasn't a useful activity; I continued on to work, to engage in other less-than-useful activities...
This is the most common of the large Nicrophorine species in this part of the world; these critters are over an inch long and quite impressively marked, as you can see from the image below. They also have a truly wretched odor if you get close enough; I stayed back from this guy and just watched him decide that this smelly spot on the asphalt was not going to be a useful resource for raising the next generation of beetles!
In other news, my department head has accepted a position as the interim dean of our college (Arts and Sciences) for the upcoming year, and I have accepted the position as his replacement here in the Division of Biology at KSU. So for the next year I will be the interim Director of the Division of Biology, and that may cut down on my time available to browse, chuckle, and comment here. But I will be back!
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Flesh of the sky, child of the sky, the mind
Has been obligated from the beginning
To create an ordered universe
As the only possible proof of its own inheritance.
- Pattiann Rogers
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