D. Allan Drummond

blue and black ink painting of a black hole

I was gonna show you anyway. This is most of my new body of work, called Forces of Nature, going on exhibit soon at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social #sciart

Black Hole, Ink on Yupo, 2026

A macro photo of a slender, tiny wasp atop a batch of katydid eggs. The eggs, which look like brown lima beans, are tiled along a brown grass stem. Four have roundish holes chewed through their sides, where parasitoid wasps (like the one perched on top of them) chewed their way out. The wasp is metallic-copper colored with a yellow abdomen band and large eyes.

A macro photo of a group of katydid eggs, which look like brown lima beans, tiled along a brown grass stem against a pale green background. In the upper right, a tiny wasp's face is peeking out of an escape hole it is chewing from the inside of a katydid egg it has parasitized. A second egg, lower left, has a hole in it where a wasp has already hatched and flown off.

A macro photo of a tiny, green, newly-hatched katydid nymph perched atop a fingertip, against a green and blue-green background. The fingertip and katydid are lower right, and one of the katydid's extremely long antennae stretches all the way up to the upper left corner of the frame.

From a few years ago: katydid eggs mostly parasitized by tiny wasps. When a katydid hatches, the egg opens like a clam shell; but as you can see (pic 2), if there's a parasitoid wasp inside, they chew their way out. Btw, the baby katydid on my fingertip hatched from the same egg clutch. #BugSky 🐙🌿

Female Hairy-footed Flower Bee

1st HFFB! We have seen Hairy-footed Flower bees (Anthophora plumipes) in late February before but always males, so surprised to find a female buzzing around the Pulmonarias yesterday before taking a break on a rustic leaf 🐝🙂. @brigitstrawbridge.bsky.social

Stubby nugget of a shiny blue metallic wasp, little flappy antennae. Looks like she could curl up into a perfect blue golf ball

Bright blue shiny face of the creature, with perfect tiny toothed mandibles

*clack-clack of tiny teef*

PERILAMPUS 😍 I hadn't seen one of these stunning blue nuggets in like 3+ years. Perfect, perfect creature. 💙
(they're hyperparasitoids of hyperparasitoids, and so damn cool enough on that merit, but also they can look like this)

Female Hedgehog Harvestman Nemastomella bacillifera, Billacombe, Plymouth last week - always good to see these 'punk rock' harvestmen

Mottled green and orange treehopper with a magnificent red-tipped horn, standing guard over a twig with rows of her eggs embedded in it

They're back for the coming spring 🥹

Oak treehopper moms stay and guard their eggs and growing nymphs until they're ready to disperse and I love them so much 💚
#InvertebrateParenthood

Me working on the painjob for a lifesize nile crocodile head sculpture

The completed life size nile crocodile head sculpt

Nile croc head, currently on display at Vancouver aquarium

Wide view of a cherry branch with 1 full leaf and another half eaten leaf with a green and brown caterpillar on the end. The caterpillar is camouflaged as the end of a dead leaf.

A closer view of the camouflaged caterpillar

A dead leaf? Unicorn Prominent (Coelodasys unicornis) caterpillar. Forsyth County, NC, USA

A silver background with a pile of 17 hand embroidered sardines all facing the same way - in profile facing to the right.

"Packed Like Sardines 3"
Hand embroidery thread painting artwork
Back with me after being in an exhibition and now on my website
www.emilytull.co.uk/store/p307/p...
#embroidery #WildlifeArt #fish

Mythical Flying Trilobite Fossil III. Oil on shale, pencil, some digital. “ART SHARE” text in green overtop. A dragonfly winged trilobite next o some crinoids.

18,000 followers—! Thanks everyone. Let’s do an #ArtShare!

🐡🎨

At last! 🤩

Horseshoe Crab dragon

Cambrian doodles #sciart

Skeleton shrimp: superior snackers

This amphipod in the family Caprellidae, has feather-like setae line several of their 18 appendages for collecting food — amphipod translates to “feet on all sides” in Greek.

#argentiniandeepseeps ~1200 meters

3-panel comic. (1) [Three small arthropods on ocean floor.] ARTHROPOD 1: Now that we’re multicellular, what are your plans? I’m gonna evolve little legs and swim around with them! ARTHROPOD 2: I’m gonna evolve sharp pincers and use them to crunch stuff! ARTHROPOD 3: I’m gonna evolve glands to make string from my butt and use it to construct elaborate geometric nets hundreds of times my size to catch other animals. (2) [Silence] (3) ARTHROPOD 1: *Dude.* ARTHROPOD 2: Can you *please* just be normal about this? ARTHROPOD 3: *What??!*

Early Arthropods

xkcd.com/3199/

You are right! I’d converted 7F, betraying my whole scientific community 🫠. Whole new levels of frigidity 🥶

Anything to see more bugs! 😅

Incredible Myristica mimicry, watch out or you'll get pollinated by nitidulids bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.2...

A guy in a black winter jacket and a maroon hat and scarf, hood up, only eyes showing. The hat has a University of Chicago logo. It me.

Minus 7F/minus 14C in Chicago, perfect selfie time 😜

Making the Invisible Visible: Photographing Native Bees with Krystle Hickman - Bioneers Through photography, observation, and community science, Krystle Hickman is documenting the lives of native bees that most people never notice. In this conversation, she shares her observations and in...

Great interview with Krystle Hickman, a wonderful photographer & community scientist who I'm lucky to know. She first learned about native bees as an adult and is not a trained scientist, and has since made important scientific contributions and inspired countless people (including me). 🌿🐙📷 #BugSky

Happy birthday Natee! Sending fondest wishes out through the aether. ❤️

A photograph of a tan and brown mantidfly snacking on a bug (hempitera). The matidfly's mantid-like raptorial arms, dark brown, spined, and sharp, and clenched tightly around the decapitated remains of a small true-bug. It's forebody is tilted to the right, it's large round eyes, metallic bronze, on each side of it's narrow triangular face. It has a very inquisitive air about it.

Just checking on y'all in these trying ass days we are experiencing. Have you #eaten? #Hydrated? #Stretched recently? Given #thanks to the vast #eldritch powers constantly battling demons on your behalf?

Dicromantispa interrupta and meal.

#SelfCareinTheSlowApocalypse
#MacroPhotography
#insects

Sugar Rush: Spotted Lanternfly Honeydew Attracts Variety of Fellow Insects The invasive spotted lanternfly's copious production of honeydew may rearrange local food webs, with arthropods in at least 35 taxonomic families feeding on it, per a new study.

The invasive spotted lanternfly is a prodigious producer of honeydew, a sweet, sticky substance that attracts such a variety of arthropods that it may rearrange local food webs. A new study finds arthropods in 35 families feeding on SLF honeydew, including ants, wasps, katydids, and more.

Two of these cool art renderings are based on my photos of Lamprosoma, from this post:
gilwizen.com/lamprosoma/

A golden chrysalis attached to a dried brown branch. The chrysalis has a large dark hole in it.

Spotted in the tangle of last year’s perennials, a tragic tale—swallowtail chrysalis that was discovered by something hungry during the summer. Chicago winters are tough on bug lovers…at least I have you all! 🐛🦋

Silly brown mantidfly with her grabby arms neatly folded, clutching a blade of grass, with her clear old skin still clutching that blade of grass below her

Newly emerged mantidfly with her old clothes nearby, wings dried, in my yard 🤎

Small reddish brown fuzzy Phidippus jumping spider, peering up at you from a blade of grass like she wants snacks

#EmotionalSupportSpood

Young Phidippus clarus lass with the biggest wettest begging puppy eyes you'll ever see on a real creature 🥹

A photograph of the research team who described this new dinosaur, with my illustration on a large screen behind them.

A digital illustration of Xenovenator - a dinosaur with a long snout, large eyes and a tough, bony mantle on the top of its skull. It is shown with a mix of blue/grey and peach coloured feathers.

Introducing Xenovenator espinosai, a new troodontid dinosaur with some fascinating cranial anatomy. I had the honour of being approached to create the illustration for this week’s official announcement. (1/3) #SciArt

Lumpy brown jumping spider with stubby stripy legs, on a pane of glass peering down at her own reflection looking very Small

#EmotionalSupportSpood

The first Brown Creeper I ever found, and I fell in love 🤎
(Attidops cinctipes)

🤔