Alex Wild
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alexwild.bsky.social
Alex Wild
@alexwild.bsky.social
Entomologist and Photographer in Austin, Texas.

https://www.alexanderwild.com
November 17, 2025 at 5:50 PM
A female cattle-poisoning sawfly, Lophyrotoma interrupta, lifts off. Presumable to poison some cattle? Who knows.

(Australia).
November 17, 2025 at 4:32 PM
The distinctively-patterened Caribbean Banded Carpenter Ant, Camponotus zonatus. Panama.
November 17, 2025 at 2:07 PM
It's that time of the year when the rotting Halloween pumpkins start delivering tremendous bug content.

I got these shots of Pheidole dentata ants successfully hunting fruit fly adults and larvae in the muck.
November 17, 2025 at 2:34 AM
Guess who we’re about to see?
November 16, 2025 at 1:34 AM
I do like taking the occasional bug photo that gives the subject space in the frame.

Here's a Liometopum luctuosum tree ant in Arizona, taking home a gall midge it has caught.
November 15, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Not as big as it looks.
November 14, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Up close with a Texas cave scorpion from UT Austin's Brackenridge Field Lab.
November 14, 2025 at 9:48 PM
Another gem from the archives that I'd missed on the first round through. Camponotus aeneopilosus, the golden-tailed sugar ant, carrying a pupa through the brood nest. Victoria, Australia, 2012.
November 13, 2025 at 1:10 PM
A closer shot, also newly processed from the archives:
November 11, 2025 at 3:49 PM
An Oxytrigona cagafogo fire bee launches from her nest in subtropical Brazil.

When I took this photo in 2012, the resources available for species IDs were sparser than now, and I often left images unprocessed if I couldn’t figure it out.

Turns out I’ve got buried treasures!
November 11, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Trying to identify African Crematogaster is a mess. I *think* this photo I took in 2012 in Uganda shows C. nigrans, but there are a zillion published species names with inadequate descriptions and no modern research that ties these names to real world populations.
November 10, 2025 at 3:09 PM
November 9, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Kudos to this little lemon tree, one foot tall, somehow producing three massive fruits in its first year.
November 8, 2025 at 10:20 PM
What is this
November 8, 2025 at 9:07 PM
A Texas leafcutter ant, Atta texana, hauls spring Prunus buds along a tree branch on her way back to the nest.
November 8, 2025 at 1:22 PM
This tiny hemerobiid lacewing, Sympherobius occidentalis, arrived to the porch light last night. With magnification, we can see its hypnotic wing venation.
November 6, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Why yes, I never progressed beyond the mental age of 14. Here's the epicenter of public lice in the U.S., according to GBIF:
November 5, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Say what you will about crusty old museum collections, but in regards to pubic lice, collections are leaving iNaturalist in the dust.
November 5, 2025 at 4:13 PM
The different colors of the cells indicate pollen from different species of plants, packed away to be used as food for hungry honey bee larvae.
November 4, 2025 at 11:45 PM
A colony of aphids tended by a Camponotus noveboracensis carpenter ant. South Bristol, New York.
November 3, 2025 at 11:10 PM
I wasn't that excited about this stock standard photo of a darkling beetle (Eleodes goryi), until I noticed the parasitic tachinid fly egg attached above the insect's midleg. This beetle is on borrowed time.
November 3, 2025 at 2:21 PM
A small huntress ant, Neoponera crenata, foraging along a rotting log in the Peruvian Amazon.
November 2, 2025 at 11:44 PM
A better shot of the Beelzebub bee-eater fly, Mallophora leschenaulti.
November 1, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Last minute addition to this year’s Spider zoo: Mallophora leschenaulti, found by a neighbor just now.
October 31, 2025 at 10:12 PM