Another spider

Despite my visceral fear of spiders, they make great subjects.
Especially cute little jumping spiders, wrapped up in silk blankets,
waiting for their next houseguest...

Bailing out

We had a huge thunderstorm the other day. The lab flooded, but just a
bit! But we weren't the only ones affected -- these wasps appear to
have gotten some water in the nest. Lacking buckets, they bail it out
with their crops. I just love the refracted image in this droplet!

Lunch

Busy time in the jungle. Here's a neat spider!

This is not an ant

It's actually an ant-mimicking staphylinid beetle! But it sure had me
fooled -- it took an email to a friend of mine to track it down. It
must take some kind of selection pressure to make a beetle look enough
like an ant to fool a wannabe entomologist with a stereoscope! This
little critter turned up in my aspirator after catching some army
ants, along with an also-but-not-quite-as-impressive ant-mimicking
spider.

The jungle is crazy: it's crazier the longer you look, crazier the
smaller you go, crazy all the way down...

Fungus

One thing about the jungle: everything grows fungus.

Sometimes, it's fluffy white stuff growing on your glasses case.

Sometimes, it's zombie fungus that grows into your head, takes over
your brain, and forces your undead body to grab onto a leaf while it
grows a giant mushroom out of your back to infect your nestmates.

For whatever reason, this particular section of the trail had a
preponderance of the latter, including a bunch of unfortunate
Camponotus workers decorating the undersides of leaves, and one
exceedingly encrusted moth.

Fortunately, the fungi in my cabin only seem to be interested in my
inanimate belongings. At least so far...

Wasps with wax

Here's a fun little bit of natural history: these wasps have built
their paper nest underneath a big leaf, and are now building a sort of
wax floor underneath the nest. I have no idea why -- neither does the
wasp guy who's sharing our lab space! -- but it's pretty cool.

This particular plant seems to be perfect for little paper wasps, as
there are no fewer than four nests hanging under various leaves. This
can also make photographing them a challenge -- not only do I have to
worry about the wasp nest three inches from the front of my lens, I
have to worry about the nest in the leaf right next to my head!

More orthopterans

They're just so cute!