To my delight I get to host Zoology Curator Professor Barry Clarke, twice this festive season for Nature Live. No stranger to the blog, Barry's event Cool Frogs and Climate Change this Thursday is brand new and includes beautiful specimens such as this Strongylopus fasciatus (Striped stream frog) and on New Year's Eve visitors get the chance to see Incredible Frogs from the Collection, hand chosen by Barry for their adaptations, reproductive methods and sometimes startling appearance. What better way to see out 2011.

Friday March 25th sees the second of our evening events linked to the current Sexual Nature exhibition. The Science of the Sexual Spectrum has all the promise of a hearty debate on such questions as; is a person's sexuality determined by genes or environment? Is there a spectrum where we all have a fixed place? Should we even be looking for a scientific answer to such questions?

Our speakers: Peter Tatchell, Jeffrey Weeks and Qazi Rahman are excellently placed to lead the discussion with myself and Tom hosting what we envisage to be a fascinating exchange on sexual orientation.

Join the conversation - Audience is king at Nature Live so we'd love readers to contribute a burning question on the subject. Post yours here and we'll endeavour to read it out on the night. You can follow us on Twitter on the night from 18.30 @NatureLive and get stuck in yourselves #sexualnature. We're talking about sex so welcome the explicit and expect the respectful. Oh and by the way you can come too....

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/events/programs/naturelive/the_science_of_the_sexual_spectrum_-_after_hours_event.html

The Nature Live swingometer patiently waits to make its debut on the 25th. On the night, which way will the votes go? If it's between straight or gay, where on it would you be?

Phew, hot off the press, we've just released tickets for our October evening event.....Biodiversity: The Next Step

If you enjoyed the Big Nature Debate, or you're interested to know more about biodiversity, why it's important and what's being done to conserve it, then this is the event for you!

We've got some fantastic speakers and the event will be discussion based, so there'll be lots of opportunity for you to ask questions and discuss your ideas and concerns.

Details below or look on our website.

Biodiversity: The Next Step

Small maggoty larvae eating their way through the caterpillar. Yuck! But that was what happened in Nature Live last Saturday, and we caught it on camera for your..err..enjoyment?

Gavin Broad, who works in the Entomology Department, came along to open our eyes to the gruesome world of parisitoid wasps. These amazing organisms lay their eggs on or in other insects, and when the larvae emerge from the eggs they feed on their host, chomping their way through the fatty flesh of a caterpillar, or sucking away at the liquid haemolymph of a spider. And all the while they do this, the insect they are feeding on is still alive! It can get even worse for the victims of some parasitoids, as they can also release chemicals into the victim to change its behaviour. The difference between a parasite, which draws its nourishment from a host, and harms but does not kill it, is that parasitoids do eventually kill their hosts, by literally eating them alive.

They are am amazingly abundant group of organisms, and there are thousands to be found in the UK, literally in your back garden.

To show us just how abundant they are, Gavin brought along some Cabbage White caterpillars that had been munching their way through his prized cabages - one caterpillar was happily sitting on its cabbage leaf, though Gavin pointed out that it may well have little wasp larvae inside it. The second caterpillar was standing guard over a small collection of yellowish cocoons - these were the cocoons of the wasps, Gavin explained. The day before the event, the larvae had all emerged from the caterpillar, and clustered nearby, spinning themselves their protective wrappings in silk, inside which they were beginning the transformation into adult wasps. The caterpillar they came from was still alive, at least for a little while longer.

There were some brilliant questions from the audience, and no-one seemed to mind just how gory these things can be  (don't worry - there are no parasitoids of humans!) but it got even more disgusting when caterpillar number one, which had seemed okay all through the event, suddenly and all at once sprouted dozens of tiny larvae, which burrowed their way out of its side...on their way to freedom! Not so great for the caterpillar, but a great way of keeping down the numbers of them on your cabbages.

Are we half-way through the year already?  How did that happen?!

It's been pretty busy in the Nature Live office recently, hence we've been a little slack on the blogging front, apologies.  With one member of the team back in her home-land of Australia and another about to go on maternity leave, we've all been doing alot of juggling.  But it's exciting juggling!

We've just finished hosting the 5th annual student summit here at the museum and I got to interview one of my wildlife presenting hero's.....Chris Packham.  He was wearing a rather radical squirrel print skirt (for which I shall forgive him!) and we chatted about the International Year of Biodiversity and the importance of conserving biodiversity.

It gave me lots of ideas for our upcoming evening event in October, when I hope to challenge the politicians, media and public and ask whether we're doing enough to conserve biodiversity and if what we're doing is working.  Well, that's the plan at the moment anyway!  It's still in the brainstorm phase.....

Anyway, my half-year new-year's resolution is to try and blog more regularly.  So if you don't hear from me, give me a nudge at naturelive@nhm.ac.uk or @NatureLive on twitter and spur me into action! 

From the tiny Hummingbird egg, to the awesome Ostrich egg, for Easter Nature Live went a little egg-crazy.

I have to apologise in advance, its going to be impossible to get through this without making some terrible egg-related puns. So I might as well start with one.

Our egg-cellent egg curator Douglas Russell joined us from the bird group, based out at the NHM in Tring, Hertfordshire, for our eggy celebrations. Douglas looks after some really rather special collections, going back hundreds of years, and his egg-spert knowledge was put to good use as he egg-splained why he thinks eggs are 'The Most Perfect Thing in the Universe'.

Its all to do with just how perfectly they have evolved to look after the tiny, developing chick - and to show us, he cracked open a massive Ostrich egg - its much easier to see the features scaled up! From tiny pores that allow the exchange of gas through the shell, to a self-righting system inside so that the embryonic chick is always closest to the warmth from its brooding parents, all a tiny bird could need to start its life off is contained within the calcium carbonate shell. The same features are present right down to the tiniest bird eggs around - the Hummingbird egg, about the size of your little finger nail!

Although Ostriches produce the biggest egg of any bird alive today, there used to be one to beat it - the Elephant Bird, now sadly extinct, used to produce an egg even bigger!

And if you want to see for yourself, you can see a range of amazing eggs if you visit the Bird Gallery, in the Green Zone at the Museum.

Richard Sabin from our Mammal Department uses microscopes to identify whether products siezed by HM Revenue & Customs have been made from protected species such as elephant and rhino.  But scientists elsewhere use DNA to identify species - such as in this film which shows how shark fins can be tested and the species of shark identified.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHCzdQHre1U