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As the name suggests, Wasp Mantisflies look a lot like a wasp, but they have the head and front legs of a mantis.

This week, Lauren talks with physician and writer Laura Kolbe, author of Little Pharma (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), a book that uses poetry as the doctor’s tool into empathy, into the interior lives of patients and beyond the material relationships between bodies.

Rather than actively hunting or catching their prey in a web like some spiders, Goldenrod Crab Spiders are sit and wait predators, waiting for their next meal to come to them.

While out exploring during winter, you may come across an area of snow that appears to have been sprinkled with pepper. There are small black dots all over the place. If you take the time to look closely, you may notice that these dots are slowly moving — sometimes even jumping.

There are 3 species of black widows found throughout the United States — the southern, western, and northern black widows. Their appearance will vary depending on species, if it’s a male or female spider, and whether it’s an adult or juvenile.

Sometimes feet just stink. But if you’re a bumblebee, that’s actually a good thing.

As highly skilled predators, predaceous diving beetles can make easy meals of a wide variety of prey. But it’s their larvae that have the fierce reputation earning them the nickname “water tigers.”

This week Lauren chats with fiction writer Robin McLean, author of Pity the Beast, a contemporary, eco-feminist Western in which a woman escapes to the northern Rocky Mountains after a violent encounter with a number of people close to her, including her husband and her half-sister. With leanings into and outside of the contemporary American West, into and outside of morality and goodness, this novel is a deep dive into myth, landscape, and freedom.

Similar to other insects, like honey bees and some wasps, the ants store nectar during times of plenty. But instead of storing this excess food within the nest or in combs, honey pot ants employ a different strategy — overfeeding some of their nest-mates.

This week during The Write Question, Idaho-based poet and essayist Robert Wrigley talks to trees. (And to Lauren! About the difference between poetry and prose, about fatherhood, about music, and more!)