I took the kids out for some bug collecting this morning at the local park and it was a really exciting trip. Even though we are in the middle of Dallas Fort Worth we saw some great creatures.
A bobcat walked right across the trail about 30 yards in front of us. This was really exciting and was sufficient for calling the trip a success. However we got even luckier when we found out that it was the right time for scorpion flies. These chimeric looking bugs were everywhere today feeding on any dead bug in site. Below is a picture of three attracted to a dead grasshopper. Followed by a close up of a female nearby. Despite the malicious attitude and looks these guys are harmless which my daughter illustrated by bravely holding a struggling male so we could get a shot of their abdomen.

Cheers
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  1. Nice scorpion flies. I haven't seen one of those since doing my ento undergrad.

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I am broadly interested in the application and development of comparative methods to better understand genome evolution at all scales from nucleotides to chromosomes.
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