Austrian insects (I): beetles

Gastrophysa viridula

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to go to Austria to study the diurnal butterfly diversity. I spent several hours doing field work, going to meadows and grasslands, observing these winged bugs. I was focused on identify butterflies, however, I could not ignore the amount of other insects there were (some of them quite annoying, by the way). 

I would like to share with you, some of the pictures I could take to this spectacular wildlife. To avoid upload all the pictures in one post, I will split them in several posts. So, this one is the first of a series of posts about the insects I found in Austria.  First, I will show you beetles, bees, butterflies and others insects I found on the field. After that, I will upload pictures of bugs I found in my bedroom! My window was quite big, and front of it there were a few gardens and trees that pushed several insects to come to my room.

Why the Arctic is so important?

A few weeks ago, Greenpeace started a campaign to report the intentions of Shell in the Arctic Sea. We have seen them in several public actions, the last one with critical consequences for the activists involved (By the way, you can sign here to ask their release).

What they claim is the environmental catastrophe that an oil spill could cause in a such sensible place as the Arctic, specially for the biodiversity that live there. But I would dare say, that this problem is nothing in comparison to loss the ice permanently. Will have consequences to the climate, the permanent loss of the ice? How many species need the ice to live? Someone once suggested that we could move Polar Bears to Antarctica. I'm sure Penguins would be happy to have new neighbours.