hermann_gruber 的最愛

What is this?? I think some sort of mold on a small volvate, white Amanita. I know and have found Mycogone rosea but this is much redder and darker, a beautiful color and true as pictured. Also quite wet. Update: It's a bacteria. See below. Last photo, a domestic habitat (shower stall)

I just looked closer at these pictures and the queen and workers carried by the Temnothorax unifasciatus workers. I already thought the coloration was strange but looking closer, it isnt T. unifasciatus. For me a crazy exciting find for my thesis.

It's quite similar to T. rathkii. They can be distinguished by the location of the pore fields. While they are close to the margin of the tergites in T.rathkii, they are separated from the margin 2-4x their diameter in T. nodulosus (on pereionites 2-4). The pores are triangular.
Also, according to Schmidt 1997, in T. nodulosus the lateral cephalon lobes surpass the median lobe, while they are of equal length in T. rathkii.
https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/121/2/129/2633670
http://biozoojournals.ro/nwjz/content/v11s1/nwjz_e150301_Tomescu.pdf

The previous inhabitants of the home of this crustacean were sradines in a spicy sauce. He seemed very happy in his hypermodern dwelling, even gaining a bonus to his movement speed... at the expense of charisma. :-)

American foulbrood

An infectious disease which targets the bees' larvae. By law you are required to report all cases to the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The hive, comb and honey have to be burnt as the only way of destroying the bacterial spores. Any hive tools used must be sterilised.

adult female, I checked the epigyne. Not rare around here, just rarely collected. Quite difficult to catch, as it sits in a silken cell and moves very quickly if disturbed.

found deep inside a dead tree.

Edit: Added epigyne in-situ (specimen died in June), scale line = 0.2 mm. The debris is due to the old age of the specimen, removing it by hand would break off most of the hairs. Therefore, I left it there for morphological integrity.