The crypt keeper (Photo from paper by Scott P. Egan, Kelly L. Weinersmith, Sean Liu, Ryan D. Ridenbaugh, Y. Miles Zhang, Andrew A. Forbes. Creative Commons.)
Talk about a nightmare of a roommate.
Imagine yourself to be a larvae of gall wasp, the species Bassettia pallida more specifically. You are inside the gall of an oak tree, a gall that... 
Photos: Wilfredor (iguana) and Alan R Walker (mite)- Creative Commons
Pockets are pretty cool things. We put our belongings in them, warm our hands on cold days in them. Some lizards have them too, but they aren’t storing cell phones in them. Chiggers live in these pockets, although sometimes a tick finds its way in there too.
Chiggers are... 
Liming Cai is one of our 2021 Stengl-Wyer Scholars. She is a systematic biologist broadly interested in the study of phylogenetics and evolutionary genomics of plants. Her research integrates fieldwork, herbarium collections, and genomic analysis to characterize the patterns and drivers of biodiversity. As part of the Stengl Wyer Endowment, th... 
Bdallophytum americanum.
Every once in a while, we botanists discover things out in nature that, at first glance, appear to defy classification. The present photograph is a case in point. While botanizing in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, I stumbled upon weird little stout spikes up to four inches tall poking out of the ground. What wer... 
