I haven’t tested/verified this myself but I’ve heard that mycelium grows particularly well on millet and rye berries. Might be a couple to add into your experimenting.

Where I’m at, we’re actually getting a decent amount of solar, but unfortunately the power district is building the solar fields over some remnant tallgrass prairie, probably since it’s cheaper than buying agricultural or residential land. This sucks since we’ve destroyed 98% of all the tallgrass prairie in the US, which makes it one of the most endangered biomes in the world, which is extra sucky since tallgrass prairie is one the most effective biomes at sequestering carbon, much more than even forests/woodlands.

A major overlooked ecological value of parasites and the diseases they carry is population control. We all hate them and the off chance of getting a serious disease from them, but they do help keep populations of mammals in control. Also, some mosquitoes are pollinators.

Generally, if the question is “Should we eradicate native species?”, my answer would be no regardless of species because ecology is extremely complex and we likely will never exactly understand the impact of voluntary species eradication until after we do it.

There are non-native mosquitoes and ticks though, eradication of those should be okay unless maybe if they’ve been naturalized for a long time. Less severe population control near urban areas is probably the most reasonable compromise between not disturbing native ecology and human comfort.

Insect was inside a decayed hardwood log. Unsure of insect species but IIRC tenuipes usually attacks Lepidopterans

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May have triple posted this due to some issues on KBin, I tried deleting the other two.

One of the eastern North American Destroying Angel species. Found on a ridge in a hickory-oak woodland in southeast Nebraska.

They probably have a wall outside the garage door.

In my experience, with both coding and natural sciences, a slightly incorrect answer that you attempt to apply, realize is wrong in some way during initial testing/analysis, then you tweak until it’s correct, is very useful, especially compared to not receiving any answer or being ridiculed by internet randos.