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.
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.
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.