{"id":3809,"date":"2016-01-18T23:43:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T22:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=3809"},"modified":"2025-10-16T14:46:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T13:46:38","slug":"its-all-for-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/?p=3809","title":{"rendered":"Doing My Bit for Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You never know where your pictures will end up! \u00a0So far people have been pretty good about asking for permission (as far as I know).<\/p>\n<p>About four years ago I was experimenting with macro photography, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tazmpictures\/albums\/72157633123130057\" target=\"_blank\">taking pictures of odd bugs I found<\/a> in our back yard in Namibia, when I came across this odd black-and-yellow bug that appeared to be feeding on one of the huge millipedes that appear there (locally called &#8220;shongololo&#8221; which is way cooler than &#8220;millipede&#8221;) certain times of the year. \u00a0I thought it was interesting because it seemed to be carrying a smaller bug on its back.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Image 20111030221258\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tazmpictures\/8604174474\/in\/album-72157633123130057\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/8604174474_8367a08fff_z.jpg?resize=640%2C419&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Image 20111030221258\" width=\"640\" height=\"419\" \/><\/a><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I uploaded it to Flickr and thought little else of it. \u00a0Maybe I put it in a blog post, no idea.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, however, this bug is an &#8220;assassin bug&#8221; &#8211; one of about 7,000 species. \u00a0All of which are of intense interest at the University of California, Riverside, where <a href=\"http:\/\/ucrtoday.ucr.edu\/24450\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Christiane Weirauch and her fellow entomologists study<\/a> these bugs to learn everything there is to know about them. \u00a0And despite my not knowing (and not tagging) \u00a0the name of this bug on Flickr they managed to track it down.<\/p>\n<p>So in the interest of science, I gave permission (the journal insisted on a signed release) so this photo could be a part of a paper called, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/srep22177\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cEvolution of the assassin\u2019s arms: insights from a phylogeny of combined transcriptomic and ribosomal DNA data (Heteroptera: Reduvioidea)\u201d<\/a>,\u00a0in a journal called Scientific Reports.\u00a0\u00a0It was published yesterday and I don&#8217;t understand a word of it but I&#8217;m glad I was able to do my bit for science.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You never know where your pictures will end up! \u00a0So far people have been pretty good about asking for permission (as far as I know). About four years ago I was experimenting with macro photography, taking pictures of odd bugs I found in our back yard in Namibia, when I came across this odd black-and-yellow [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1763,401,461,1764,1765],"class_list":["post-3809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wildlife","tag-assassin-bug","tag-entomology","tag-macro-photography","tag-publication","tag-uc-riverside"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3809"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6656,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3809\/revisions\/6656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tazmpictures.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}