Adrian Smith

Adrian Smith

@dradriansmith.bsky.social

Scientist on-exhibit at NC Museum of Natural Sciences & NC State. Creator of Ant Lab on YouTube

1.5K followers433 following42 posts

Adrian Smith reposted

New publication from @dradriansmith.bsky.social on media-based storytelling becoming a prominent application for natural history museum research.

🏛️ In the following article, an opportunity for media-based storytelling to become a prominent application of natural history museum research is proposed, following a field-wide survey revealing that these stories are underrepresented on institutional social media: doi.org/10.3897/nhcm.3.176227

Adrian Smith reposted

🚨 Lifer alert! 🚨 Check out this deer bot #fly that @dradriansmith.bsky.social found while we were hunting bugs - my first time getting pics of a wild adult of this family! It's a convincing bee mimic, whose babies live in the sinuses & throats of deer 😋 👀 #Oestridae: #Cephenemyia phobifer NC, USA

Adrian Smith reposted

Ants: Tiny Creatures, Big Lives is officially open at the Bruce Museum! Enter the tunnel and you will meet "Buckley", our five foot long scaled-up Dinoponera ant. Buckley is named after her creator, the great Dan Buckley. The smaller ant is my daughter, dressed as an alate queen for the opener.

Adrian Smith reposted

Still looking for horror now that Halloween's over? Fortunately/unfortunately it's all around! 💀 A parasitoid laid a few eggs in a moth egg. As the caterpillar hatched & grew, wasp embryos multiplied inside to 100s of larvae that ate the entire host, eventually killing & turning it into a husk 😳 🤢

Adrian Smith reposted

In this video, the biologist Adrian Smith @dradriansmith.bsky.social provides close-ups of a diverse array of caterpillars and shows how they support healthy ecosystems, employ a range of strategies to protect themselves from predators and transform into seemingly entirely different creatures

buff.lyClose-ups reveal how caterpillars live long enough to cocoon | Aeon VideosFrom poison spikes to fake snake eyes, caterpillars employ many clever strategies to survive to their dazzling adulthoods

in short, there is an opportunity gap for natural history museums in the US to use YouTube better! In particular, research and collections functions of natural history museums are often not featured in what they communicate via YouTube. We show this via surveying 400+ videos from 28 US museums.

Adrian Smith reposted

Adrian Smith reposted

Monkey slug? Hag moth caterpillar? Both phenomenal names. But I ❤️ the genus name most: Phobetron. Sounds like a malevolent transformer or a giant alien space television. These caterpillars have fleshy deciduous appendages (this one lost a few) & stinging hairs. Watch out! ☣️☠️ North Carolina, USA

Adrian Smith reposted

Never know what you're going to find in the NCSU Insect Collection! 🔎 This very charismatic #beetle was among many interesting specimens in unsorted drawers. 🔬 Anyone want to guess the family? #Coleoptera