botaniqueer

[botaniqueer]

ARE YOU KIDDING ME WE NOW HAVE A RELATIVE OF LONGISQUAMA

IT’S CALLED 👉👉 MIRASAURA 👈👈 AND IT REPRESENTS A THIRD TIME COMPLEX INTEGUMENT EVOLVED??? AND MAYBE THOSE CREST THINGS WERE COMMON IN DREPANOSAURS?

It’s so prettyyy *_*

[botaniqueer]

First cucamelon of the year!! Love the cronch.

[botaniqueer]

[botaniqueer]

Birds of Mount Rainier National Park July 30, 2025

[botaniqueer]

TIL the reason you don’t find much Lyme’s Disease in California is not because we don’t have Ticks, or Lyme Disease Vectors; but rather: because the Western Fence Lizard (if you live anywhere in California this is your regular Garden Variety Lizard) has adapted a passive immune response that makes their blood lethal to Lyme Disease Bacteria. Any Tick that feeds on one gets its gut cleansed of Lyme Disease as a side effect.

Fucking neat.

[botaniqueer]

Philippine sphinx moth, Elibia linigera, Sphingidae

Photos 1-4 (caterpillar) by frank-deschandol // Instagram

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

Photo 5 (adult moth) by albertkang

[botaniqueer]

ADHD-related question!: Do other ADHDers have trouble with scale and magnitude or is this something other folks have trouble with has well and this isn't necessarily tied to ADHD?

When I'm doing art and am trying to structure my drawing, I'll end up "getting lost" in the space, causing some of my lines to not be proportionate to one another, especially if I'm working up close, causing me to lose the context of what I'm doing. Also when I'm using references I'll focus on a specific part, losing a sense of scale on how it relates to the whole.

Even with objects or spaces in front of me I'll sometimes have trouble with the scale of things? My hypothesis is that it's something to do with problems with my working memory, since that requires me to remember the original context of a thing in order to do a comparison.

[botaniqueer]

UNMASKING THE BLUEBOTTLE REVEALING FOUR DISTINCT SPECIES THROUGH GLOBAL CITIZEN SCIENCE

For over two centuries, the Portuguese man o’ war (Physalia spp) was considered a single, cosmopolitan species, drifting across the world’s oceans and stinging unsuspecting swimmers. But new genomic research has overturned this long-held view, revealing that Physalia is not one species, but at least four: P. physalis, P. megalista, P. utriculus, and a newly described species, P. minuta. Researchers sequenced the genomes of 151 specimens from around the globe and found strong reproductive isolation between genetic lineages, even when their distributions overlap. This evidence aligns with historical descriptions from the 18th and 19th centuries, which proposed several species that were later dismissed due to limited data.

Crucially, the study integrated over 4,000 photographs from iNaturalist, using citizen science to match distinct morphologies with genetic lineages. These images, contributed by amateur naturalists, swimmers, and lifeguards, allowed researchers to confirm physical differences that earlier taxonomists could not consistently observe due to preservation challenges. The result is a rare success story in which modern genomics, historical records, and participatory science come together to clarify the taxonomy of one of the ocean’s most recognisable creatures.

The discovery not only rewrites the story of Physalia but also challenges assumptions about biodiversity in the open ocean, reminding us that even the most visible marine life can hold hidden complexity, and that everyone, from sailors of the past to today’s citizen scientists, has a role to play in uncovering it.

Reference: Church et al., 2025. Population genomics of a sailing siphonophore reveals genetic structure in the open ocean. Current Biology.

[botaniqueer]

I found a Merlin today!

July 19, 2025 Kirkland, WA

[botaniqueer]

Help Heliosail Reach 200 Followers!

Greetings adventurers! As Heliosail approaches its crowdfunding launch, we're looking to secure our ad funding. In order to do that, we need your help to reach our goal of 200 followers over on our Gamefound. If you're looking to support an indie project with a unique setting, you'll love Heliosail. Explore our solar system some hundreds of years into the future in a unique, vibrant solarpunk setting rife with intrigue, rich lore, swashbuckling adventures, and a totally new game system built from the ground up! Please check us out over on Gamefound and give us a follow. There's no financial requirement, and your engagement will help us secure our ad funding!

[botaniqueer]

The Reef Antlerworm of Chriirah's warmer oceans. While many habitats were destroying during the events of the Fall, certain 'weedy' reefs survived to spread along the drowned coasts.

Antlerworms thrived in the ruble, able to prey on almost anything that moved...

[botaniqueer]

New creatures from Chriirah: surf-lights; small predators of the shallow coasts.

[botaniqueer]

I love when you post a species on inat and seconds later someone called "salamandergirl" "solidagoman" or "troutlilly_identifier" swoops in to ID it. Like yeah, you know what youre about. I trust your ID of my Bombus bimaculatus, "bombusboy200"

[botaniqueer]

Bumping this again because I managed to sprain my ankle (gardening, appropriately. The concrete tiles were a little ajar?)

For people wanting to avoid GFM, my Venmo is @botaniqueer like my url here!

(Also if you’d donated before, def don’t worry about donating again! I’d rather get $5 from a bunch of people than a lot of money from a few to avoid taxing people too much!!)

Hello! As usual, I really hate asking for help yet again, especially since I already have done that before, but I've been dealing with some medical issues that are preventing me from working for the next two months, and I'm going to need some help with filling the holes that Washington's medical leave program isn't able to, since it's only a percentage of my usual restaurant worker income.

The short of it is that my chronic fatigue has gotten to the point where it hurts when I stand for more than 30 minutes at a time, which is not a good thing when you're in the service industry, so to try and figure things out with my doctor, and to prevent further damage I'm taking some time off.

Also def don't feel obligated to donate! And if you do end up helping please let me know how I can help you back! As usual I have seeds for days and can give out plants. Thank you so much for sharing as well!

[botaniqueer]

Cucamelon is also exciting because I have trouble getting the cucurbits to sync the flowers up right for pollination early in the season so it’s always good when it works out.

[botaniqueer]

SOON

(Melothria scabra, Cucamelon)

[botaniqueer]

The world’s most pathetic corn… instead of being knee high by July, it’s only a little bigger than my hand while starting to flower.

(Looks like the corn doesn’t like the clay soil either 😭)