Art on Six Legs

Thanks, unknown artist from Iowa State University (edit: Josh Byrne), for this gorgeous mantid! This on the blackboard brightened class today!

Also: a cute little Xylebornius saxesenii (fruit-tree pinhole borer) inspired by an excellent talk by Dr. Peter Biedermann. These little beetles are not only eusocial, their larvae contribute to best well-being (unheard of in other eusocial taxa), and they also culture fungus as food!

Some neat insect-art from the ESA 2015!

Wow, has some serious skills! Also: she does a great .gif of insect respiration! Check out her other stuff on tabletopwhale.com!!

An animated chart of 42 North American butterflies The next best thing to butterfly watching in the American wild.

Amy loves Hymenoptera! So here's some , with some and for good measure.

Holy cow! Jessica Zappe is an amazing insect artist!

Just finished yesterday! :D

Zeichnung mit Farbstiften
Drawing with coloured pencils
© Jessica Zappe
photo credit - Hazel Lewry

Hey, it's ! Amy made a sweet, gigantic Ichneumonid for you to enjoy on such a festive day! She humbly notes, though, that this lovely lady's ovipositor is a bit too short in this image.

Amy says: Hooray for Gasteruptidae! These are also known as "Carrot Wasps", as they are commonly seen nectaring on the flowers of carrots and carrot-relatives (i.e. wild parsnips, etc).

These are cute little parasites that lay eggs in with the eggs/larvae of other wasps or bees; Carrot Wasp larvae have diverse lifestyle habits, ranging from proper brood parasitism, wherein they eat their cellmate, to iniquiline brood parasitism, wherein they just eat all the food the host parent leaves for their cellmate (and sometimes both!).

While their host species may not be particularly fond of them, we can still definitely appreciate them!

And here's a little Braconid wasp Amy drew today!

This is a little Cotesia, the parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in caterpillars; the larvae will burst out of the caterpillar and spin beautiful silken cocoons, covering the unfortunate caterpillar in little cotton-y extrusions all along its body.

What's extra cool about this wasp are the tiny, feather-y scale-like projectiles that cover the surface of their wings; when these catch the light, it's like a tiny kaleidescope of color (this was Amy's favorite part to create). Rainbows: not just for unicornsand faeires anymore!

Since it's field season, Amy doesn't have a lot of time to write a ice post about this long-horned bee (Apidae; Melissodes), but she figured folks might like it anyways.

Amy is currently working on a layperson guide to the major Hymenoptera in Iowa (and is illustrating it, 'cause Hymenoptera are super fun to illustrate). This is partially because she is trying to get more familiar with them and partially because she is creating the guide for the 2015 BioBlitz at the Whiterock Conservancy near C**n Rapids, IA. If you're an Iowa native, please come hang out there and check out bugs with Amy; it promises to be a blast!

Details about the BioBlitz to follow in comments.

Here is a Polistes dominula face commissioned especially for Reiman Gardens [first annual] Pollinator Fest in Ames, IA. The cool thing about it is the fact that the artist (A. Geffre) has actually seen P. dominula faces the have heart-shaped clypeal markings, like the one shown in the image.

Clypeal markings in several Polistes species are very important for intraspecies interactions on colonies. For example: in P. dominula, the proportion and convolution of the black facial markings is linked with social dominance in certain populations; in P. fuscatus, each wasp has their own individual facial pattern, which allows members of a colony to recognize each other, much like we do as humans.

In short, Polistes and their beautiful faces are really cool, and not always so different from us - they certainly deserve some !

Hello everyone! This is the official first post of Art on Six Legs! We would like to begin with a brief description of 1) who we are and 2) what we want to see happen with Art on Six Legs:

1) Who we are: Currently, we are Kathryn B, a graduate student at University of Texas and Amy G, a graduate student at Iowa State University. Kathryn studies ****; Amy studies host-parasite interactions in social insects.

2) What we’re doing here: Kathryn and Amy both trained as visual artists during their academic career, and have since found that the visual arts are excellent mediums for communicating about and exploring the fantastic lives of insects.

We want to share this experience with everyone, because insects are cool and art is fun [and they both work together exceedingly well].

In this tumblr, we are going to illustrate some of our very favorite insects and tell everyone why they’re so dang cool! In the future, we hope to find more art-/insect-lovers who want to use this site as a way to communicate about their art and the awesome insects that inspire it!

We hope you will enjoy the art and especially enjoy the insects!