A large earth bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) enjoys the Peace Linden tree 🌳🌼🐝

This green shield bug (Palomena prasina) has strayed into the stairwell... 🦸🪲

☠️ There was a risk of spiders, dehydration or drowning from the neighbor's dog's saliva.

🕸🕷🏜🐶💦

These and numerous other dangers lurk in the everyday life of this urban insect. 🚗🏡🌳

It lives in trees and bushes and sucks their sap.Actually, everyone in Germany should know it, with its bright green color and smelly secretion.

🛩🪂 It often just crashes into somewhere. Its flying abilities can certainly be described as enduring, but it lacks speed, precision and maneuverability.

☝️🔒My fingerprint has been manipulated.

Warm air and colorful summer sunsets 🥰🌄

Catching fireflies in a maize field 🌌✨️

Move your body! 💃🌿
You must have moved while watching this 😜

The thorny stick insect (Aretaon asperrimus) relies on its branch-like appearance and begins to wiggle when it's "branch" moves, which makes it blend in with the movements of the vegetation in nature.

This is an old recording from 2017.
I no longer keep them.

Chilean rose tarantula,
Grammostola rosea

Adult tarantulas molt every one to two years.
The last molt was two years ago.

1. Pumping
2. Molting
3. Hardening

The place is secured with spider webs. The spider lies on its back and pumps a molting hormone through its body. The upper shield bursts open and it frees itself from the old exoskeleton. After that, the spider is exhausted and not yet fully hardened.

Pumping:
The tarantula pumps a molting hormone (ecdysterone) from its rear end to its front end. This process takes several hours. I found it in this position at 3 p.m. At just after 8 p.m. it burst out of its upper shield. Since it is lying on its back, the upper shield is down. The video is at 200x speed.

Molting:
After the tarantula has burst out of the upper shield, it moves out of the exoskeleton with rhythmic movements, carefully pulling out its legs. This lasted two hours from about 8 to 10 p.m. The process seems well thought out as its old shell falls off perfectly. The video is at 100x speed.

Hardening:
The tarantula lies on its back, peaceful as a baby. It is still very soft and therefore very sensitive. It stretches its limbs by increasing body pressure, actively moving the limbs and then hardening the new exoskeleton. The spider web is nice and soft and not only protects against injuries, but also against intruders such as hungry insects or harmful microorganisms.

After half an hour the tarantula has gotten up again, but is not yet completely hardened. It remains in this safe place for the next few days and recovers.

Tasty thistle!😋 A female yellow-banded furrow bee (Halictus scabiosae) is having a good time near the Stierstädter Heide, a dry heath and nature reserve in Oberursel, where she finds open areas of ground that are ideal for creating her nesting holes.

🌼🪻 Currently, there are lots of thistles and false dandelions growing everywhere in the city, alongside many other flowering plants, that are popular food sources. It has been raining for weeks.

🐝🐝 They do not form colonies with a queen and workers, like the honey bee, but each female furrow bee has her own nesting hole with her own offspring. However, they often form clusters by building their nesting holes next to each other.

🐝🐝 The yellow-banded furrow bee is about the size of a honey bee, and a female could be mistaken for one at first glance. However, their markings are very different.

🙃💭 At the intersection between 'Peace Linden' and 'Wall Street'. A wall serves as a fortification and protection. It is a means of fulfilling the need for peace. But if everyone isolates themselves, there can be no exchange and mutual understanding. The needs of one party can change, and those who do not identify with others could feel justified in using their strengths to their advantage.

If I were a bumblebee... 🌸🐝

This common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum), a species of bumblebee, is looking for sweet nectar, but only finds pollen in this flower, which is also tasty. The garden lupine (Lupinus polyphyllus) does not offer nectar, but has a kind of pumping mechanism in its flowers that is triggered by the bumblebee and delivers the valuable pollen. This is transported to the nest of this social species, where it mainly serves as food for the offspring. Bumblebees fly to up to 1000 flowers every day in up to 18 hours to look for food.

🐝 What would you do if you were a bumblebee?

1. Fly from flower to flower all day
2. Rest on a sunny flower and take a nap
3. Hide in a blossom and watch people
4. Something else (please explain)

⛅️ When we look at the clouds, we rarely think about life, but dream ourselves away into our own world of imagination. Suddenly, I'm telling you about an ocean in the sky where life is spread out. What lives in the clouds? Birds? Insects? Angels? Probably not. So high up, in the harsh conditions of cold and radiation, there is only very special life. I will now open your eyes to the fantastic world of microorganisms.

🦠 One of these many microorganisms is Pseudomonas syringae, a plant pathogen. It likes to live on and in plants and has a special trick to attack them. The bacterium forms a structure on its surface that acts as an ice nucleus, causing water above the freezing point to freeze. This means that ice crystals form more quickly at low temperatures, damaging the plant tissue and making it more accessible to the bacteria.

❄️ Many microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, are transported into the upper layers of the atmosphere by atmospheric buoyancy and strong winds. Some species have adapted to survive these conditions. The ability of Pseudomonas syringae to form ice crystals even influences cloud formation and precipitation. In this way, microorganisms not only influence the weather but also reach new places, encountering new plants and new genes.

🧬 Bacteria are an important factor in horizontal gene transfer. This means the direct transfer of genes to other life forms without reproduction, for example, from bacteria to animals and plants and vice versa. In very rare cases, this even influences the germ line and thus the evolution of more complex species.

♻️ Microorganisms are often only visible to us when they cause disease. However, they play a crucial role in our ecosystem. Infected plants, for example, are made accessible to other living creatures.

🌍 In other words, countless highly complex processes take place, influenced by the dynamics between life and climate - above our heads, under our feet, and within us.