Yes, bisexual means something else in both contexts…

Well, if it works for you, great. But that doesn’t mean that it will work for anyone else.

OK got It, so mostly oregano-ish with notes of thyme :)

Looked it up because I hadn’t heard of it. Wikipedia say the following:

Common names in English include Indian borage, country borage, French thyme, Indian mint, Mexican mint, Cuban oregano, broad leaf thyme, soup mint, Spanish thyme.

What? So does it taste like a mix of borage, thyme, mint and oregano?? Sure, they are all Lamiaceae (except for borage), but they have wildly different aromas!

How is bread and sugar not plants?? Oversimplifying stuff doesn’t make it better…

Yes, that’s what I wondered, too. In ant nest parasites they usually are visually very different from the ants, but get the pheromones right. In this example here, visual clues have to be important for the beetle to have evolved such a sophisticated mimicry.

Nice, thanks!!

Oh wow, the first one sounds mean. Never heard of an isopod parasite (but I’d now guess there are many more aquatic ones?). And inducing necrosis of the tongue to be the new fish’s organ, ouch :O

And what a wild ride the second story is! Thanks for sharing :)

Lol, found an iNat guy in the wild! I immediately knew @neontetraploid because I’ve tagged them hundreds of times on iNat :)

Hm, I was intrigued and looked at the evolution of plants. This made me realize how paraphyletic gymnosperms and angiosperms really are! We just don’t know how angiosperms exactly started out and if they might be monophyletic. And in case of gymnosperms, they are consisting of many very different plant groups that evolved independently.

So gymnosperms were probably the first plants to evolve seeds and they “include conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and gnetophytes, forming the clade Gymnospermae”. That doesn’t really give an answer but that’s the best we can do?

It was previously widely accepted that the gymnosperms originated in the Late Carboniferous period, replacing the lycopsid rainforests of the tropical region, but more recent phylogenetic evidence indicates that they diverged from the ancestors of angiosperms during the Early Carboniferous.[12][13] The radiation of gymnosperms during the late Carboniferous appears to have resulted from a whole genome duplication event around 319 million years ago.[14] Early characteristics of seed plants are evident in fossil progymnosperms of the late Devonian period around 383 million years ago. It has been suggested that during the mid-Mesozoic era, pollination of some extinct groups of gymnosperms was by extinct species of scorpionflies that had specialized proboscis for feeding on pollination drops. The scorpionflies likely engaged in pollination mutualisms with gymnosperms, long before the similar and independent coevolution of nectar-feeding insects on angiosperms.[15][16] Evidence has also been found that mid-Mesozoic gymnosperms were pollinated by Kalligrammatid lacewings, a now-extinct family with members which (in an example of convergent evolution) resembled the modern butterflies that arose far later.

Wow, so there was already pollination going on before flowering plants even existed??? By scorpionflies who’s ancestors I frequently see? And there were butterfly-like insects long before real butterflies existed? Look how butterfly-like they were! This is wild!!

Yeah, you’re right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weddell_Sea?wprov=sfla1

I’m trying to understand this figure now. So, on the right in grey is the Phytoplasma bacterium that is hitting the plant with its SAP proteins. What I don’t get, if this is a fifty shades of grey analogy, then the plant must be consenting and enjoying this. But the bacterium is a parasite damaging the plant and even apparently benefitting other parasites. This doesn’t make sense!!

In some areas and times, cockchafers were served as food. A 19th-century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: “roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast”. A German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. Cockchafer larvae can also be fried or cooked over open flames, although they require some preparation by soaking in vinegar in order to purge them of soil in their digestive tracts.[14] A cockchafer stew is referred to in W. G. Sebald’s novel The Emigrants.

(Wikipedia)

TIL calling beetles by the month they appear in is a mess. In Europe, may beetles are Melolontha, june beetles are Amphimallon (or Mimela), july beetles are Anomala (at least in German). Rhizotrogus is also in the mix, but didn’t get a month assigned.

But then in North America, there are different genera for each month. Phyllophaga in may, Cotinis and Polyphylla in june, none in july…

With one data point as sample size, it could have been a baby, a huge bodybuilder or anything. Same goes for the human cow. None of this is reliable data and we shouldn’t even discuss it here.

This reminds me of an unfinished crochet project of Anomalocaris I got lying around… If anyone is interested, here is the pattern I’m using: https://www.etsy.com/de/listing/1099142450/nur-muster-anomalocaris-burgess-shale

Sure, I can agree that the NATO is considerably worse than countries. I still think that there shouldn’t be any country flags on spaces like this and that patriotism will always lead to nationalism and then to fascism.

Well, countries are also just made up and serve to divide people. Not much better than the NATO…

I’d say ‘no border no nation’ and then we’ve also solved the problem of NATO!

I’ve always been annoyed by all the country flags. I don’t think any country should be represented on there and am not sure how the Nato flag is much worse. But unfortunately many people seem to be pretty patriotic :(