I’m a maniac with a camera, anything I see gets photographed no matter where I am or what is going on.

A little about me, I was born in Pennsylvania, moved to Dubai, UAE when I was three, and moved to Missouri seven years later and have been there ever since. I first got into nature back in 2020 when my sister's friend showed me her "bugs in a box" which was just a bunch of large bugs in a shoebox, and I thought "Wow! That's neat!" Since 2020 I've been collecting and taking photos of just about every bug I come across. 2022 brought my love for birds when a flock of Cedar Waxwings landed in a tree in my front yard, I didn't know at that point that birds came in colors other than black and blurry. My interest in mollusks came about in summer 2022 when I took a trip to Sanibel Island, Florida and found so, so many shells. Shortly after I found river mussels, which were like the seashells of Missouri.

My favorite group of insects is, of course, Erotylidae, but I do have some other groups that I like and will observe a lot of whenever I can (the list is a little biased towards what gets identified on iNat). Those groups include: Hydrophilidae, Haliplidae, Nitidulidae, Tetratomidae, Staphylinidae, Curculionidae, Tenebrionidae, Chironomidae, and Cicadidae.

My favorite bird is the Turkey Vulture. I don't know why people don't like them, they're cute and friendly. Second is the Cedar Waxwing.

I mainly identify Erotylidae, with most of my knowledge in Megalodacne. I'm currently trying to work through the Megalodacne of Africa right now, so if you live in Africa and want to give me a little more to work with, go look around Ganoderma mushrooms for Megalodacne. For identification of Erotylidae, a photo of the top AND a photo of the underside of the beetle is best, and if you want to really up your chances of getting your observation to species, get some photos of the top, side, underside, pronotum (top of thorax), antennae, head, prosternum (underside of thorax), side view of prosternum, legs, and coxae (where the legs meet the abdomen). With upwards of a few thousand Erotylidae species in the world, there's a lot iNat still needs to have added, so go out there and investigate those mushrooms!

Feel free to tag me on any Erotylidae observation you want identified, I love seeing new Erotylidae observations added to iNaturalist.

I must add, I'm no expert, and am completely self-taught using resources online, so I may be wrong (I do take some risks in my IDing)

As far as my observations go, if you need any extra info or extra photos, please ask and I can usually provide.

Profile picture is a Blue Spruce from Illinois that was cut down a few years ago.

I'll use this section down here to thank some helpful identifiers who ID a lot of my stuff (If I don't include you don't feel bad, I still greatly appreciate you).

Thanks to @borisb for beetle IDs and for putting up with me needing taxa added all the time.
Thanks to @mpintar for all the aquatic insect IDs.
Thanks to @zoology123 for all the Chironomidae IDs and for including me with training the CV.
Thanks to @weecorbie for the Magicicada IDs, answering my Magicicada questions, and for correcting my incorrect Magicicada annotations.
Thanks to @sdjbrown for the Curculionidae IDs.
Thanks to @nlmurray for my Missouri locality IDs.
Thanks to @adgeorge for the bird IDs.
Thanks to @carabid_47 for the Carabidae IDs.
Thanks to @amr_mn for the Bivalvia IDs.
Thanks to @mycomarvel for the Fungi IDs.
Thanks to @beetledude and @glaucoluis for helping me with my African Erotylidae research.

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