Didn't read the whole article, but the whole thing reads as very anthropocentric to me. It seems that the entire discussion is around human/Native relationships to trees and whether we've grieved/learned our lesson enough. Which put humans entirely at the center of the narrative, when the narrative should primarily be around the tree's ecological relationships to all of nature. Hell, the article even mentions moth species that have gone extinct due to the downfall of the tree but fails to recognize that maybe humans shouldn't be the center or the universe in this narrative.

I haven't tested/verified this myself but I've heard that mycelium grows particularly well on millet and rye berries. Might be a couple to add into your experimenting.

Where I'm at, we're actually getting a decent amount of solar, but unfortunately the power district is building the solar fields over some remnant tallgrass prairie, probably since it's cheaper than buying agricultural or residential land. This sucks since we've destroyed 98% of all the tallgrass prairie in the US, which makes it one of the most endangered biomes in the world, which is extra sucky since tallgrass prairie is one the most effective biomes at sequestering carbon, much more than even forests/woodlands.

A major overlooked ecological value of parasites and the diseases they carry is population control. We all hate them and the off chance of getting a serious disease from them, but they do help keep populations of mammals in control. Also, some mosquitoes are pollinators.

Generally, if the question is "Should we eradicate native species?", my answer would be no regardless of species because ecology is extremely complex and we likely will never exactly understand the impact of voluntary species eradication until after we do it.

There are non-native mosquitoes and ticks though, eradication of those should be okay unless maybe if they've been naturalized for a long time. Less severe population control near urban areas is probably the most reasonable compromise between not disturbing native ecology and human comfort.

Yes, you would have to densely broadcast seed/plant plugs with native prairie species or noxious and invasive stuff will take over initially. And you would have to kill all the grass, either with a spray (which helps keep the existing invasive seed bank down), or till or sod cut or solarize or smother the grass.

If you replant relatively quickly, erosion won't be too much of a concern as the natives will establish fast enough to stabilize the soil. Long term, the natives will actually reduce erosion compared to lawn grass. You don't need to burn in an urban setting, mowing once or twice a year (once in earlier spring and maybe again in early summer to help natives out compete invasives) is gonna be enough generally.

Yes, most wasp species are good pollinators since adults are generally nectar feeders. They're not as efficient as bees since they're not as hairy, but they pollinate a lot nonetheless. Some wasps are actually specialist pollinators for certain plants (see figs and fig wasps). Wasps also serve other important roles, including population control for other arthropods since they hunt and parasitize them.
Wasps are also generally very non-aggressive. Hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps give the rest of the wasps a bad name, but a large amount of wasps can't even sting, and another very large amount can sting but are very non-aggresive (solitary hunting wasps are a good example of this). I'd say even paper wasps are really non-aggressive unless you get too close to the nest, and they just tend to make their nests close to where people often go near.

I've been trying to get a photo of this wasp for a while. Glad I finally got lucky enough for it to stay still for a bit.

Amazing. Any ideas on fungal species? Maybe Beauveria?

Insect was inside a decayed hardwood log. Unsure of insect species but IIRC tenuipes usually attacks Lepidopterans

May have triple posted this due to some issues on KBin, I tried deleting the other two.

One of the eastern North American Destroying Angel species. Found on a ridge in a hickory-oak woodland in southeast Nebraska.

We've got a vegetable garden going with tomatoes, pepper, kale, cabbage, onions, and eggplants.
Also got a new pollinator garden bed started this year with Butterfly milkweed, a few different species of aster, sunflowers, blanket flower, rattlesnake master, goldenrod, purple prairie clover, Mexican hat coneflower, and some blazing star. Also scattered some sage and prairie clover seeds in a few other spots on our property. I've been sitting out documenting the various wasps and bees that visit us. We're also planning on harvesting seeds from stuff and giving them away/starting plants from them next spring to give away.
Got some logs from our neighbors that I'll drill some holes in for the mason bees.
We've got some old furniture that we don't want anymore that I'm trying to touch up a bit before giving it away to a local charity that gives people coming out of the foster system stuff like furniture and appliances to help them land on their feet.

They probably have a wall outside the garage door.

In my experience, with both coding and natural sciences, a slightly incorrect answer that you attempt to apply, realize is wrong in some way during initial testing/analysis, then you tweak until it's correct, is very useful, especially compared to not receiving any answer or being ridiculed by internet randos.

Nothing on bugguide so far except confirming it's in Sesiidae. On my iNat record, I had a Sesiidae expert ID it as Vitacea polistiformis

That's also the taxon that I came to last night when I was trying to figure it out. Maybe! I have it up on bugguide too now.

Found it in Northeast Nebraska hanging out on a plant on the edge of a tallgrass prairie and woodland while surveying for mycorhizal fungi. Thankfully I like taking pictures of wasps since I 100% thought this was a Polistes, otherwise I might have just walked on.

If anyone has any idea on an ID, it'd be much appreciated.

Nearest tree was a spruce of some sort, with a blue spruce and a couple linden trees also relatively nearby. Thinking Hortiboletus rubellus or Boletus harrisonii, but very unsure.

It was flying around to different spots and then getting into this position for a bit, then moving to a different spot. I think it was trying to find a suitable spot to sleep.

Didn't use a tripod so I didn't get the same angle/framing. Found near some burr oaks in a hardwood woodland in eastern Nebraska. UV is 365nm wavelength

So you're looking for a word that's a descriptor for different types of social media e.g. aggregator vs video/image/audio hosting vs microblogging. The first word that comes to mind is that they might be different paradigms of social media?

Family Bombyliidae. I'm thinking Exoprosopa fascipennis but not sure. Location is eastern Nebraska.

Found crawling around on Helianthus anuus leaves. I wish I got a better pic but it was tough since it was so small and moving around a lot. If anyone knows species, please let me know. Location was eastern Nebraska

On Gaillardia pulchella bloom. I think it's H. ligatus but not sure.

Unsure of the species, but it appeared to be ovipositing between the florets on the capitullum

My path to becoming interested in native plant gardening probably started with me getting interested in mycology. I got super interested in the ecology of fungi and how they interact with the environment/ecosystem, which eventually got me thinking more about how other things like plants interact with the natural world around them, which led me to bring interested in native plants since they're integral to the local ecosystem.

tips fedora "k'bin"

(I say kaybin)

This is hypothesized as to how they began, but back then they wouldn't have used turf grass, the just cut down the trees and kept vegetation low. It was an entirely tactical use though. Then it's believed that the concept at some point started morphing more into a sign of prestige and initially would have primarily consisted of low growing vegetation like thyme. Then of course eventually turf grass was introduced and the concept migrated around to various parts of the world. It was considered a sign of prestige since it was a lot of manual work and it generally meant you had to be able to afford a groundscrew to keep it consistently maintained. There was also the fact that you were showing people you didn't need to use your own land for food production.

Then some time in the mid-1800s, rudimentary push mowers were invented and it began to become more accessible. By the mid-1900s almost every new American housing development had a lawn since the technology had become advanced and accessible enough for any middle or working class family to maintain a lawn on their own. This was also influenced by marketing and suburbanization.

So while it is believed the concept of a "lawn" started as a tactical defense mechanism, the modern concept is more closely and directly related to the rich/nobility using them as a status symbol. IMO they're clearly still used as status symbols since it's exceptionally common for people to judge others for how pristine their turf grass lawn is maintained. I've even recently had someone mention to me that they know how to tell who the trash is in the neighborhood based on their lawn. I know they're also used for recreation, but that can even be considered as part of the status symbol aspect as a poor person might not have a lawn and would have to go to the park with the other lawnless riffraff for their recreation.

Another viable option isn't to completely convert lawn but just make one or a few native plant beds . If you aren't willing to give up the lawn completely, you could still convert smaller portions of it.

Also sneks aren't that bad.

Good job at least trying to do something. My current city and previous home city have finally started doing more native plantings and my current local city's uni has started up a significant prairie restoration project right outside the city. There are also a few small prairie restorations going on inside city limits mostly in the burbs where there's space but I can't seem to find out what org is running them.

Check with your local native plant societies. They may be willing to advertise your stock to their members or let you set a booth up at events. You could try Nextdoor or Facebook as well. If you or someone you know is planning a garage/yard sale, set up a table with your plants there.

Key resource for optimizing pollinator habitats - https://www.nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants/keystone-plants-by-ecoregion. Pick your region and pick some of the keystone herbaceous perennials for bees, then find species you like that are native or near-native to your region in those genera.

Native Allium has had a lot of success for me; I've seen a variety of bumble bee, wasps, carpenter bees, and cuckoo bees on them this year. My Monardas and coneflowers are always very popular. I've seen some decent activity on my Gaillardias too. Unfortunately I haven't seen much activity on my non-cultivar sunflowers but the little activity I have seen has included some really interesting Ichneumonoid wasps.
Zone 5b northern plains

I understand that but at the same time instance admins need to take into consideration whether they're willing to deal with NSFW content in terms of moderation. Especially with NSFW content from other instances that they have no control over. When you're talking about consequences that could include legal issues, it's completely fine for admins to decide they'd prefer to not deal with it at all. Especially especially since for the end user, the way to get around defederated porn instances is to just have an account on or simply visit a NSFW instance.

The fact that it had no blood in it is a sign that it likely wasn't there long, so the odds of you obtaining a tick-borne disease are very low. A tick needs to be embedded for a decent length of time to really have any odds of spreading a disease (I've heard anywhere from 10-24 hours although this is likely affected by multiple factors), and even if embedded long enough, the odds are still pretty low.

Lyme disease is only carried by one genus of ticks that I'm aware of (Ixodes), so if you have a picture of the tick or remember what it looks like clearly enough, you can try to find out whether it was Ixodes or not. Even if it's not Ixodes, other ticks can carry other types of tick-borne disease (Rocky Mountain fever, Ehrlichiosis, etc).

The only thing to keep an eye out at this point is to see if symptoms form. The main things you're looking for are fever and/or rash/inflammation in the affected area. If you do get symptoms, it could also just be a regular infection, but nonetheless you should see a doctor and explain about the tick and when/where you might have gotten it. If there are symptoms, all that you'll have to do generally is to go through a round of anti-biotics if you catch it quickly enough (usually more severe complications don't start occuring til a couple weeks in).

I wouldn't be surprised if the large "mainstream" Lemmy and KBin instances start degenerating from the NSFW focused instances before too long.

I agree with just simple kbinner. Kbinauts and kbean are just too cutesy/gimmicky and imo are kinda cringey, especially if you start using it in regular speech ever.

I'm currently reading Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan. It's a pretty rough experience so far; I've basically been reading it extremely slowly since it's boring af about 50% of the way so far. This is definitely the peak of the "slog" so far that other people who have read Wheel of Time mention.

Yes, slime molds usually fruit once conditions are right, they generally just go unnoticed since the fruiting structures for most species are 1-5 mm in size.

I ended up with kbin.social since I liked the interface, liked the roadmap and existing integration with Mastodon, and because that instance was the one everyone was suggesting for KBin at the time. I'll most likely spin up my own instance for myself and maybe a small group of others to join.

Just a correction, 135,000 is 0.2% of 52,000,000, not .002%. If 135,000 users was .002% of Reddit's daily active users, that would mean Reddit would have over 6 billion daily active users.