The Flying Saucer At Sunset

Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds with a smooth layered appearance that form in the troposphere, usually above mountain ranges. One was spotted in Singapore recently...

Eyes Of 30,000 Honeycombs

With 30,000 individual facets, dragonflies have the most number of facets among insects. Each facet, or ommatidia, creates its own image, and the dragonfly brain has eight pairs of descending visual neurons to compile those thousands of images into one picture...

A Kaleidoscope Of Colours, Shapes And Patterns

Spectacular and innovative in design, the Flower Dome replicates the cool-dry climate of Mediterranean regions like South Africa, California and parts of Spain and Italy. Home to a collection of plants from deserts all over the world, it showcases the adaptations of plants to arid environments...

Lightning Strikes, Not Once, But Many Times

Unlike light, lightning does not travel in a straight line. Instead, it has many branches. These other branches flashed at the same time as the main strike. The branches are actually the step leaders that were connected to the leader that made it to its target...

Are You My Dinner Tonight?

A T-Rex has 24-26 teeth on its upper jaw and 24 more on its lower jaw. Juveniles have small, sharp blade-shaped teeth to cut flesh, whereas adults have huge, blunt, rounded teeth for crushing bones. Is the T-Rex a bone-crushing scavenger?

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve - A Biodiverse Spider Habitat

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Bukit Timah Nature Reserve
Central, Singapore
January 2014

Bukit Timah is located near the centre of the Singapore main island. Best known for its hill which stands at an altitude of 163.63 metres. it is the highest point in the city-state of Singapore.

A huge variety of trees and plants ensure abundance in biodiversity...

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve contains pockets of hill dipterocarp forest, not found anywhere else in Singapore. For a reserve of only 0.2% of Singapore's total area or 163 hectares, it is amazingly rich in biodiversity with about 40% of the nation's flora and fauna.

Nephila inaurata (Red-Legged Golden Orb-Web Spider) 
- a huge female many times bigger than your regular orb-webber...

Cyclosa bifida (Long-Bellied Cyclosa Spider) - See its tortoise-shell like carapace?


It slowly spins the victimized fly around...

Other orb-weavers laying in wait, including 
an Argiope Versicolor (Multi-Coloured St Andrew's Cross Spider) Male...

A gold-hued web without an owner...

Another Cyclosa bifida (Long-Bellied Cyclosa Spider) - 
One of the most photogenic orb spiders on a web...


Several Cyclosa Spiders at work...

 A restful Tanaecia pelea (Malay Viscount) Butterfly on the cemented path...

Gasteracantha hasseltii (Hasselt's Spiny Spider) - 
The spider with enough nasty-looking "thorns" to discourage would-be predators...

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Central Catchment Area - Termites vs Ants

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Central Catchment Nature Reserve
North, Singapore
August 2013

It was one of the cooler days out there when termites and ants abound in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve.

Both ants and termites live in colonies or nests where one or relatively few individuals reproduce while non-reproductive individuals cooperate to care for brood, maintain the nest, and defend the colony. These features - reproductive division of labor (only the queens lay eggs), overlapping generations (you have all ages in the nest), and cooperative brood care (all individuals care for the young, not just the queens) - are hallmarks of eusociality, a condition achieved in relatively few insects. 

These are termites. They have straight antennae that appear like a string of tiny beads. In termites the body segments are much more broadly attached.


And these are ants. They have elbowed antennae, where the first segment is much longer than the segments that follow. Ants also have a characteristically constricted "waist" while termites do not.

Busy ants swarming around...

 Ants on a tightrope and ants with food...

A spiny ant with spikes from its metasoma (abdomen)...

The most obvious difference is that termites usually avoid light, and are usually visible only before noon when the sun is still not too hot.

A worker ant balancing itself on a stalk with a dew-dropped fruit..

Elimination - The best way to get rid of termites, which probably explains why the NParks contractor was hacking this bit of termite-trailed wooden boardwalk out...

Some other interesting finds - a red-eyed fly, a slim wasp and a limping long-tailed macaque...

A tree stands tall where scores of dragonflies reside... 

An orb-weaver advances on a fly entwined in its web and injects its fangs into its struggling prey...

Nearby, a St Andrew's Cross (Argiope) and an orb weaver lay in wait...
 

 A pair of adorable Treehoppers with their distinctive spikes and beady eyes...
 

That's a pretty flower? But wait...

See that little dot on one of its petals?

It's a curious little spider - a female Phintella vittata (Banded Phintella) jumper...

On another leaf, a male Phintella versicolor (Multi-Coloured Phintella) lands on its waxy surface...

A Bronchocela cristatella (Crested Green Lizard) peeks cautiously from a bush...
(See how flexible its legs are?)

Feeling safer, it wanders out...

A very attractive little one with its pale blue markings and orange eyes... 
   
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