The close-up photographs of insects from Prof Bill Amos of the Department of Zoology have given us a wonderful view we don’t usually see of the natural world. Scroll down for the latest batch from his insect photo diary. These beasties are beautiful with fascinating stories too – from wasp mimics to mayflies to an aphid giving birth on camera.
The wasp beetle, Clytus arietis. I have never seen this species before and it is a real stunner. When you see it you do immediately think ‘wasp’, both because of its colour-pattern and because it moves in just the fast but jerky way a wasp does when foraging. I feel lucky to have found one and got close. 
The southern hawker dragonfly. This is the first ‘proper’ dragonfly I have seen this year and it chose a very cold day to emerge, so was reluctant to move, allowing me to get very close. Both larvae and adults are voracious hunters. 
A colony of aphids managing to feed despite having chosen the very hairy stem of pink campion. I include this photo because I accidentally captured one of them giving birth! 
One of my favourite hoverflies, Xylota segnis. This one does a very good impersonation of some kind of wasp and you’d have to be knowledgeable and a bit brave to pick it up! 
Another hoverfly! I think this is Criorhina berberina, one a several rather similar bumble bee mimics, but I did not get a good enough look to be sure. This one is exceptional in its trickery until it flies, when it is just a bit too fast and direct compared with the more cumbersome bees. 
One of the larger mayflies, I think this one is Ephemera danica, the green drake mayfly. Rather magnificent in its own way. Not yet out in large numbers, a few were dancing over the river while, on a very cold day, a few more were clinging to vegetation like this one. 
The large red damselfly. Over the last few days they have gone from absent to quite a lot. In one spot I could see at least six, one of which caught an unfortunate caddis fly which it then set about eating. 
The cast skin of a banded damoiselle damselfly, Calopteryx splendens. The adult was drying his wings nearby and will appear in future posts. The contrast between this strange skeletoid object and the irridescent blue-green beauty of adult that emerged could not be more striking! 
About a week ago I saw and female orange tip butterfly and, looking where she had been sitting, found an egg. Returning every couple of days, I now find what hatched, a tiny caterpillar. This one is almost invisibly small and, clinging to its hedge mustard foodplant stem I would never have spotted it unless I knew where the egg had been laid. 
An extraordinary caddis fly, one of several groups of insects whose larvae live in water. Caddis larvae are renowned for building protective tube-shaped homes made of bits of debris. This one is Mystacides azurea and looks like something out of Star Wars with its black wings, red eyes and remarkable long antennae.
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