I spent Summer 2011 in the southern region of Ghana in West Africa. I was there during the raining season, so there were bugs galore. But that was when I had plans for a future in global health. If I had only known I'd be taking this course, I could have had some awesome arthropods to add to my collection. Still, I managed to take some pictures of bugs I had never seen while I was there. Help me identify some of these bugs?
This I know is a tsetse fly. It landed on a fellow NGO researcher's arm. When this happened, a rural Ghanaians slapped his arm really hard! It seemed completely out of nowhere, until we saw the specimen, which landed atop his research notebook. The tsetse fly is known for causing sleeping sickness in humans.
Really cool Odonatan. Spotted randomly.
Sweet true bug (? Hemipteran?) I found climbing a wall.
THE COOLEST BUG I SAW. I have not a clue what kind of bug it might be. Some sort of Coleopteran? It's on cement here. I saw quite a lot of them.
Totally a Decapoda. They curled up when they were scared.
Now, let's go to southern Ghana so I can take you to all the places I spotted these terrestrial arthropods, and we can have some fun times identifying, studying, and collecting them. My contributing thoughts to Yale's presidential search are summed up with one question: who will sponsor exotic weekend trips to Africa for our lab? Not you? How about you? No? Next.
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