Agriculture and Natural Resources Program

Please see attached file.

The Hawaii Biodiversity Network has placed an alert of the coconut rhinoceros beetle on its site:

See http://www.reportapest.org/pestlist/oryrhi.htm

Here's an ad by Intel which claims that a rhino beetle can carry 8 Ultrabook laptop computers on its back:

And here are some skepticle comments on the claim:

http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15825/can-the-rhinoceros-beetle-carry-100x-its-own-weight

The attached comma separated data (CSV) files contain daily insolation (solar energy) measured by a solar radiation sensor on Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station which uploads data to a Weather Underground site, KGUYIGO2, every 5 minutes. The CSV files are generated by an R script which calculates insolation using data harvested from the Weather Underground site (see attached PDF for calculation details and code listing).

Thanks to Andrew Gulac for sending me this news article about a golden orb spider ensnaring a brown treesnake in its web and killing it. A video is provided.

Here on Guam, Bjorn Lardner filmed a preying mantis attacking a brown treesnake and published a scientific note on this observation.

Local entomologist Dr. Aubrey Moore says the theory is mass amount of spiders is caused by the brown tree snakes picking off the birds. He told KUAM News ...

http://www.kuam.com/story/19755681/2012/10/06/guam-has-more-spiders-than-all-of-cnmi

This is an image of an invasive vine growing in Mongmong. The owner of the land that it is growing on is concerned because this weed is starting to spread. He contacted the Guam Department of Agriculture for advice and was referred to the University of Guam Cooperative Extension Service.

Responding to a request for identification based on the above image, Lauren Gutierrez responded:

"I believe this vine is Tinospora crispa (L.) Hook. f. & Thomson.  I have found this in the Matgue river area also.  Another Tinospora, T. cordifolia was also seen in Toto. T. cordifolia is considered a medicinal plant but where we saw it growing it was very invasive.   We have an endemic Tinospora, but the stem is smooth and is found along western coastlines in Agana thru Asan."

Lauren has a great image of Tinospora crispa forming an impenetrable thicket.

Armed with the scientific name, I was able to search for previous reports of this weed on Guam. My search turned up one of my own blog posts from December 2008:

This antmimicking spider was dropped of at my office for identification. An interesting feature of his mimick is the extremely reflective patch of white hair on the cephalothorax which makes the spider look like it has a "neck".

Specimen Label

AM20120927.001
Agat Post Office, Guam
coll. Amelia Uhria 27 SEP 2012