To receive and store the spermatozoa until needed to fertilize the ova in insects.

Spermatheca is not involved in the reproduction of fungi.

Spermatheca of Earthworms(Pheretima posthuma),have two divisions namely Ampulla and diverticulum,which stores sperms and provide nutrition to them

A queen bee mates only once in her lifetime but it will usually be with anything up to about 20 drones. This takes place about a week after she emerges from the pupal cell. She stores the sperm in an organ called the spermatheca and this lasts for her entire laying life.

Earthworms use internal fertilization. During copulation, sperm is transferred from male to female through the male's specialized structures called seminal vesicles. The female then stores the sperm in her spermatheca until she is ready to fertilize her eggs.

Bumble Bee queens over-winter from the previous year. In their mating (last year) they stored some of the sperm in a special organ called a spermatheca, from which they draw sperm as needed to make male offspring. Otherwise their offspring are worker females, who can only produce female offspring.

Female moths emerge from their cocoons with all their eggs fully formed in their abdomens, and the eggs are not fertilized until they are being laid (by male gametes stored in the female's spermatheca from mating). They keep laying eggs until they die in most cases. In other words, almost any female moth you find is a "pregnant moth", which is why there is no literature on behavior of pregnant moths.

Oskar Theodor has written:

'CATALOG DIPTERA PUPIPARA (Fauna Palestina Ser. : No. 1)'

'The genitalia of Bombyliidae (Diptera)' -- subject(s): Bombyliidae, Classification, Generative organ, Generative organs, Insects

'Philippine batflies of the family Nycteribiidae (Diptera: Pupipara)' -- subject(s): Nycteribiidae, Diptera

'CATALOG DIPTERA ASILIDAE'

'On the structure of the spermathecae and aedeagus in the Asilidae and their importance in the systematics of the family' -- subject(s): Aedeagus, Anatomy, Classification, Insects, Robber flies, Spermatheca

Queens: 7 years. Drones: 4-5 weeks. Workers: 8 weeks

Honeybees have an interesting longivity measure- they live until they fly about 800 kilometers. This may take a few weeks for a foraging bee in summer, or a year or so for a winter worker bee. The drones (males) have a very short life span as they die when they finish mating with the queen bee. The queen will live for 2-3 years or until she runs out of stored sperm in the spermatheca. At this point the worker bees who take care of the young would create several new queen bees and execute the old one.

the queen leaves the hive ONCE to mate. she can fly up to a mile to find a drone (male honey bee). when they meet she does a dance and the drone injects her with sperm. once the process is complete she flies away leaving the dead drone carcass.

every 5 seconds

House flies are holometabolous insects, which means they undergo complete metamorphosis.

Starting from the beginning, adult females have mature ovaries about 5 days after eclosing from the pupa under ideal conditions (temperature and nutrition). If the female has mated, she will begin to lay eggs, which are fertilized as they are laid from sperm that is stored in the spermatheca. Within minutes the egg will contain a zygote, and within a day a maggot will hatch.

The maggot will moult two times before it becomes a pupa (like a butterfly cocoon). As a maggot, the house fly requires lots of bacteria as a food source and will continuously feed and increase in size and store fat so that it can later form a pupa. After two moults, the maggot will become a pupa, which is its dormant stage. At ideal temperatures, this can last about 3-5 days.

After the pupal stage, the adult emerges and starts the cycle all over again. Adult females can lay as many as 300 eggs over their ~20 day life span, and will often deposit them in clutches of about 30 if uninterrupted during the oviposition process.

A bee queen generally mates only once in her lifetime, during her nuptial flight where she mates with multiple male drones. This single mating supplies her with enough sperm to fertilize all the eggs she will lay for the rest of her life.

When a male bee, or drone, mates with a queen, he transfers sperm from his endophallus to her oviduct. This mating process usually occurs mid-air outside the hive or in a specific area called a drone congregation area. Once the drone mates with the queen, his endophallus is ripped off and he dies shortly after.

A drone bee usually mates with a queen bee in mid-air during flight, and this mating process typically lasts for about 10 to 20 minutes. Once a drone bee successfully mates with a queen bee, it dies shortly after due to the mating process resulting in its genitalia being ripped off.

Around five to seven days after a new queen emerges from the pupal cell she will leave the hive. Drones (males) flying in the area are attracted to her by pheromones she gives off and they will chase her as she flies higher and higher. She will mate on the wing with any drone that catches up with her and she stores the sperm in an organ called the spermetheca. When mating has finished, as the drone pulls away his genitalia are broken off and the drone dies. The queen then removes the drone's genitalia ready for the next drone.

The queen will mate with between five and 20 drones until her spermetheca is full. She then returns to the hive ready to begin egg laying. This store of sperm is for the rest of her life. She will never mate again.

As the queen lays an egg in a cell she will usually release one or two sperm with the egg, fertilizing it. A fertilized egg will result in a female (all worker bees are female), but if she chooses not to fertilize the egg it will develop into a male.

Because of this mechanism, all females (workers and new queens) are diploid (genes from both parents), and have 32 chromosomes (16 pairs) but males (drones) are haploid (genes from the mother only) with only 16 chromosmes.

Food for thought: male bees don't have a father, but they do have a grandfather...

They either jump, hop, crawl, or fly. These six legged creatures usually use their legs for movement . Ant and cockroahes lice and bedbugs crawl. grasshopper hops with the help of its ling hindleg. waterboatmen swim with the help of their legs as using them as oars. Butterfly and flies fly with the help of their weak wings manovering them with their chest muscle.

co-operative brood care, and having different castes of queens, workers, and drones. The workers are infertile females, while the drones are males. The eusocial stingless bees (Apidae, Apinae, Meliponini) comprise about 374 species. Two genera occur in Australia, with Tetragonula being one of them. Tetragonula is the largest genus of stingless bees, with T. carbonaria being one of roughly 150 species in this genus. Only minor structural differences are seen at the species level of the genus Tetragonula. T. carbonaria is nearly identical to T. hockingsi, besides a few differences in their nest architecture. Compared to other stingless bees, T. carbonaria tends to be medium-sized. However, their size can vary based on location. For instance, T. carbonaria from Queensland can be as small as T. mellipes, but in New South Wales, they can get as large as T. hockingsi. They are all predominantly black-bodied, covered in microscopic hairs. The adult workers and males are all black, with some brownish tint in certain areas such as the legs. The worker’s body length is 3.9-4.3 mm, and the wing length (including tegula) is 4.1-4.6 mm. The male drones have very similar bodies and wing lengths, but can be identified by different antenae. T. carbonaria is a very strong flier, being able to fly up to 1 km. However, the species will not fly any further than they have to, so close resources are preferred over those farther away. T. carbonaria and its closely related species have high levels of morphological similarities. Also very low genetic variation exists within T. carbonaria. T. carbonaria can be distinguished from other species of Australian Native Stingless Bees by their brood (in a distinctive spiral unique to the species), and by the entrance (these bees tend to daub resins around their entrances, where as other species, such as T. hockingsi generally keep their entrances clean. The entrance and surrounding areas of their nest are coated with a smooth, thick layer of black, red, or yellow cerumen or propolis, a material formed by mixing beeswax (a glandular secretion of worker bees) with resin (collected from plants). They lack external entrance tunnels, but do build internal entrance tunnels where guard bees patrol, looking out for any intruders (including Small Hive Beetle, Phorid Fly, and other bees). T. carbonaria builds brood cells arranged in combs or semicombs. The cells are a single layer of hexagonal combs that are built in a distinctive spiral. They are vertically elongated and in a regular vertical orientation. They are built out of brown cerumen, and house the eggs and larvae. New cells are added to the brood by the advancing front. The nest cavity may be sealed off from adjoining cavities by a hard batumen layer of cerumen or field-collected material. The brood chamber is centred in the hive, which makes T. carbonaria suitable for hive propagation. The brood chamber is also made up of multiple horizontal layers which allow for easy division of the brood comb. The nests are found in open forests and woodlands. They are usually built in tree cavities, and have small cryptic entrances, with no external entrance tube. Four or five workers are usually visible at the entrance and are expected to be guards. They tend to choose larger trees and wider cavities to produce insulation valuable for their survival in the cool regions. Some features that would favour survival in a cooler climate are a high tree height and large feeding pots. The nesting sites of T. carbonaria are located near the top tree trunks that are 1.5 m in diameter, and are predominantly found in trees that are well insulated. Members of T. carbonaria also create the largest honey and pollen pots compared to the other species of the genus Tetragonula, which may help with efficient food storage. In urban and suburban areas, T. carbonaria have been found to nest in Telstra pits as well as water meters when other habitat is not available. Colonies of T. carbonaria tend to be active all year round. The daily activity period, however, is longer in the southern hemisphere's warmer months, October to March. The intensity of these daily flights is greatest in September, and least intense in May. A temperature threshold exists on all of this activity. Flight can only occur at temperatures greater than 18 °C. This year-long period of activity is beneficial for the pollination of crops flowering at any time of the year. Each brood cell is stocked almost to the brim with honey and pollen. An egg is laid in the cell by the queen and then the cell is closed. Complete larval and pupal development occurs in the closed cell . Once the adult emerges, the cell is destroyed. Most stingless bee species are monogynous, meaning that when the colony divides, one of the daughter colonies will be queenless. T. carbonaria colonies are frequently divided by beekeepers to increase the number of colonies. They build emergency queen cells by fusing two worker-sized cells that contain eggs or young larvae.The queens cannot live alone and they are not transferred to a new nest until it has been fully prepared by workers. The new queen is the bee that makes the flight to the new nest, with the old queen remaining in the parent nest. When the old queen has died, mating swarms can occur at the established nest to replace the old queen with a young, unmated one. A study performed by Tim Heard in 1988 observed the propagation of hives in T. carbonaria. He successfully transferred colonies to boxes, and then once the available space was occupied, he would split the box by prying apart the two halves of the box. He recorded that colony weight increased much more in spring and summer compared to autumn and winter. After about 17 months, the final weight was established. The rate at which colony weight increases is dependent on the availability of nectar and pollen, not age (however, it usually takes 12 to 18 months for a hive to be ready to be propagated). A heavy hive suggests filled storage pots and a large population of workers and brood, meaning the hive is ready to be split. Division of labour exists among the workers. The young bees perform tasks within the nests, such as brood care. As they mature, they become foragers and their tasks are performed outside of the nest. T. carbonaria depends on nectar and pollen for survival. They also collect resin for use in the nest structure. Workers tend to exhibit characteristics of group-foraging behaviour called "opportunism". In short, opportunism is when many foragers search for resources independently, and once they find a highly resourceful flower, they rapidly recruit nest mates. In other words, they are optimising the feeding intake of the colony. The success in this practice is dependent on chance. If a forager encounters an area full of rich resources, then recruitment and harvesting are extremely heavy in this area until the resources are depleted. Workers look for areas with the highest sugar concentration in the nectar, as they have the ability to physiologically identify the richest sugar solutions. As more nest mates arrive to the area with rich resources, the availability of this high-concentration sugar decreases to a point where moving onto another area that might be lower in concentration is best. In T. carbonaria colonies, only some of the bees do the foraging. Workers spread out in all directions surrounding the colony, and quickly locate the best option nearest the nest. Once this area is found, they mark the food sources with a pheromone. Marking is used as a guide to make the location easier to find for their nest mates. A study used microsatellites to determine the origin of males. The resident queen was the sole mother of the males. This meant that the workers did not contribute to the production of males. Ovaries were sometimes present in the workers, but not activated. This is unusual because most stingless bee workers can produce unfertilized eggs that develop into haploid males, therefore having both the queen and the workers with potential to be the mother of the males in the colony. This is also unusual because usually some sort of kin-selected benefits towards worker reproduction exist. One possibility could be that the queens have power over their workers. The aggressive oviposition can sometimes be seen as the queen "bullying" the other party into refraining from reproduction. However, very little queen-worker agonism occurs during oviposition in T. carbonaria. Another possibility could be some sort of "evolutionary arms race" between workers and queens over which the caste has power to produce males. This could depend on some extrinsic factors such as the size of the colonies, the number of brood cells available for oviposition, and size dimorphism of queens and workers. A final possibility could be that workers have evolved to "self-restrain" from egg-laying because worker reproduction creates a significant cost to the colony. Some of these costs could be low reproductive success of worker-laid males or reduced colony productivity since the workers now have to focus on reproduction instead of colony maintenance. The workers tend to be the progeny of a singly mated queen. The colonies are predominantly haploid males which arose from queen-laid eggs. Mating frequency is a central factor in kin selection arguments. Some cases are seen of diploid males, which are generally sterile and are considered to have a very low fitness. Diploid males tend to have a cost to the colony because diploidy can result in a reduced proportion of workers able to perform their tasks, which is pivotal to the colony’s survival. In some extreme cases, workers have been reported to kill a queen producing diploid males, to help the future success of the colony. When workers do lay eggs, direct conflict tends to occur a within the colony between the queen and the workers over the source of male eggs. Queen-worker conflict is found in cell provisioning and the oviposition process of most stingless bee species. This conflict is usually very elaborate, and very apparent, but tends to not involve acts of aggression, which other species of stingless bees have been known to perform. Although worker oviposition is known to be controlled by worker policing, it can sometimes be controlled through queen dominance/policing. This is where the queen patrols the area where new brood cells are being produced, being able to have a hands-on policing which tends to be quite effective. When the colonies are attacked, nest defence relies on the ability to recognise intruders. T. carbonaria sometimes displays a behaviour known as a "fighting swarm" when a non-nest mate is encountered. Thousands of workers gather together and form a cloud. The signal to form this cloud is most likely mediated by alarm pheromones, which workers release from their mandibular glands. As one entity, they drop to the ground and wrestle the intruders, which often leads to death of both parties. This behaviour is also a common defence mechanism against large predators such as humans. T. carbonaria bees are highly sensitive to intruders, since they will even attack invaders that are carrying pollen or nectar. Even if an intruder found a way to make it past the swarm, it still would not make it through the congested entrance tunnel. One predator known to the T. carbonaria is an Australian crab spider, Diaea evanida. This organism, along with others, is able to exploit the interaction between plants and their pollinators. These nectar robbers pierce a hole in the corolla of the flower and drink the nectar without touching the pollen or stigma. A correlation seems to exist between nectar production and corolla tube length, so the crab spiders preferentially exploit the flowers with longer corolla tubes for higher nectar content. These crab spiders attract and ambush pollinators on flowers. They produce UV-reflective body colours that attract prey to the flowers they are occupying. However, Australian native bees are able to detect and avoid flowers harbouring crab spiders despite the fact that they are initially attracted to them. D. evanida spiders can generate colour contrasts for bees’ individual preferences, but T. carbonaria did not show any preference for any of the contrasts. The braconid subfamily Euphorinae has several genera, including Syntretus, known to be parasitoids of the adult stage of insects. They are a highly diverse group and tend to be very successful parasitoids worldwide. A new species of Syntretus, S. trigonaphagus, has recently been discovered as parasitizing workers of T. carbonaria. Females of S. trigonaphagus are frequently found at the entrances of T. carbonaria hives near Queensland, Australia. They approach workers that land nearby and oviposit on the host by curling their abdomens. The workers repeatedly brush their abdomens afterwards, suggesting that they were aware that an attack occurred. The overall effect of this parasitism is usually fatal. Older workers are more likely to be parasitized. Because of this, as long as the number of parasites is minimal, the overall cost to the colony is not large, since these workers have already contributed substantially to the colony’s welfare. Meliponiculture is the practice of stingless beekeeping, where beekeepers maintain, reproduce, and use stingless bee colonies for their own profit. These colonies tend to be managed through artificial hives, so that the beekeepers have the ability to propagate the colonies and produce hive products such as honey and pollen. These products are then sold to various buyers from health-food stores to gift shops. The honey of T. carbonaria possesses a peculiar smell which makes it quite the appealing product. When the first work began in 1984 on this stingless bee, the industry was practically nonexistent. Since then, the interest in stingless bees, more specifically T. carbonaria, has greatly increased. This has allowed for the establishment of conservation groups along the eastern regions of Australia. T. carbonaria is the most popular species that beekeepers tend, followed by the A. australis and then T. hockingsi. The main reason for most people to keep T. carbonaria is for enjoyment and conservation. With this, the amount of honey produced is constantly increasing at a fast pace. T. carbonaria is the main species from which beekeepers harvest honey, of the stingless bees in Australia. Beekeepers report that one of the major limiting factors in propagating colonies is the availability of queens. More research is needed on queen rearing to fix this limiting factor. Individual T. carbonaria bees demonstrate a consistency in floral choice. Individuals restrict their foraging activity to one kind of flower during a particular trip. This consistency in a single pollen type enhances the pollinator efficacy by increasing the chances of pollen being transferred to stigmata of the same plant species. This increases their importance ecologically as crop pollinators. At the level of the colony, however, the species can use many different flowering species. So although the species is polylectic, individual bees remain consistent with their flower choice. Meliponines store their honey in pots, not in combs like the honey bees. Compared to the honey of the Western honey bee A. mellifera, T. carbonaria honey had higher values in moisture, water activity, and electrical activity. The two different honeys can also be distinguished by flavor and aroma. Also, the antioxidant activity of T. carbonaria honey has nutritional and pharmaceutical potential. Dollin, Anne (December 2008). "The Mysterious Fighting Swarms" (PDF). Aussie Bee Online. Gloag, R.S.; Beekman, M.; Heard, T.A.; Oldroyd, B.P. (2008). "No worker reproduction in the Australian stingless bee Trigona carbonaria Smith (Hymenoptera, Apidae)" (PDF). Insectes Sociaux. 54 (4): 412–417. doi:10.1007/s00040-007-0961-6. S2CID 25563806. "A New Name for our Trigona Stingless Bees: Tetragonula". Aussie Bee Online. Michener, C. M. (2013). "The Meliponini". In Patricia Vit; Silvia R. M. Pedro; David Roubik (eds.). Pot-Honey: A legacy of stingless bees. New York: Springer. pp. 4–8.Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld (17 February 1821 – 17 January 1861), better known by the stage name Lola Montez (), was an Irish dancer and actress who became famous as a Spanish dancer, courtesan, and mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her Gräfin von Landsfeld (Countess of Landsfeld). At the start of the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states, she was forced to flee. She proceeded to the United States via Austria, Switzerland, France and London, returning to her work as an entertainer and lecturer. Eliza Rosanna Gilbert was born into an Anglo-Irish family, the daughter of Elizabeth ("Eliza") Oliver, who was the daughter of Charles Silver Oliver, a former High Sheriff of Cork and member of Parliament for Kilmallock in County Limerick, Ireland. Their residence was Castle Oliver. In December 1818, Eliza's parents, Ensign Edward Gilbert and Eliza Oliver, met when he arrived with the 25th Regiment. They were married on 29 April 1820, and Lola was born the following February, in the village of Grange in the north of County Sligo, refuting persistent rumours that her mother was pregnant with her at the time of the wedding. The young family made their residence at King House in Boyle, County Roscommon, until early 1823, when they journeyed to Liverpool, England, and later departed for India on 14 March.Published reports differ regarding the actual date of Eliza's birth. For many years, it was accepted that she was born in the city of Limerick, as she herself claimed, possibly on 23 June 1818; this is the year that was graven on her headstone. However, when her baptismal certificate came to light in the late 1990s, it was established that Eliza Rosanna Gilbert was actually born in Grange, County Sligo, in Connacht, Ireland, on 17 February 1821. At the time of her birth, all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was baptised at St. Peter's Church in Liverpool, England, on 16 February 1823, while her family was en route to her father's post in India.Shortly after their arrival in India, Edward Gilbert died of cholera. Her mother, who was then 19, married Lieutenant Patrick Craigie the following year. Craigie quickly came to care for the young Eliza, but her spoiled and half-wild ways concerned him greatly. Eventually, it was agreed she would be sent back to Britain to attend school, staying with Craigie's father in Montrose, Scotland. But the "queer, wayward little Indian girl" rapidly became known as a mischief-maker. On one occasion, she stuck flowers into the wig of an elderly man during a church service; on another, she ran through the streets naked.At the age of ten, Eliza was moved again – this time to Sunderland, England, where her stepfather's older sister, Catherine Rae, set up a boarding school in Monkwearmouth with her husband. Eliza continued her education there. Eliza's determination and temper were to become her trademarks. Her stay in Sunderland lasted only a year, as she was then transferred to a school in Camden Place (now Camden Crescent), Bath, for a more sophisticated education.In 1837, 16-year-old Eliza eloped with Lieutenant Thomas James, and they married. The couple separated five years later, in Calcutta, India, and she became a professional dancer under a stage name.When she had her London debut as "Lola Montez, the Spanish dancer" in June 1843, she was recognized as "Mrs. James." The resulting notoriety hampered her career in England, so she departed for the continent, where she had success in Paris and Warsaw. At this time, she was almost certainly accepting favours from a few wealthy men, and was regarded by many as a courtesan. In 1844, Eliza, now known as Lola Montez, made a personally disappointing Parisian stage debut as a dancer in Fromental Halévy's opera Le lazzarone. She met and had an affair with Franz Liszt, who introduced her to the circle of George Sand. After performing in various European capitals, she settled in Paris, where she was accepted into the city's literary Bohemia, becoming acquainted with Alexandre Dumas, with whom she was also rumoured to have had a dalliance. In Paris she would meet Alexandre Dujarier, "owner of the newspaper with the highest circulation in France, and also the newspaper's drama critic." Through their romance, Montez revitalized her career as a dancer. Later on, after the two had their first quarrel over Lola's attendance at a party, Dujarier attended the party and, in a drunken state, offended Jean-Baptiste Rosemond de Beauvallon. When Dujarier was challenged to a duel by de Beauvallon, Dujarier was shot and killed.In 1846, she arrived in Munich, where she was discovered by and became the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. There was a rumour that when they first met, Ludwig asked her in public if her breasts were real. Her response to the question was to tear off enough of her garments to prove that they were. She soon began to use her influence on the King and this, coupled with her arrogant manner and outbursts of temper, made her extremely unpopular with the Bavarian people (particularly after documents were made public showing that she was hoping to become a naturalised Bavarian subject and be elevated to nobility). Despite opposition, Ludwig made her Countess of Landsfeld on his next birthday, 25 August 1847, and along with her title, he granted her a large annuity.For more than a year, she exercised great political power, which she directed in favor of liberalism, anti-Catholicism, and in attacks against the Jesuits. Her ability to manipulate the King was so great that the Minister of State, Karl von Abel, was dismissed because he and his entire cabinet had objected to Lola being granted Bavarian nationality and the title of Countess. The students at Munich University were divided in their sympathies, and conflicts arose shortly before the outbreak of the revolutions of 1848, which led the King, at Lola's insistence, to close the university.In March 1848, under pressure from a growing revolutionary movement, the university was re-opened, Ludwig abdicated in favor of his son, King Maximilian II, and Montez fled Bavaria. Her career as a power behind the throne was permanently at an end. It seems likely that Ludwig's relationship with Montez contributed greatly to his forced abdication despite his previous popularity.After a sojourn in Switzerland, where she waited in vain for Ludwig to join her, Lola made one brief excursion to France and then removed to London in late 1848. There she met and quickly married George Trafford Heald, a young army cornet (cavalry officer) with a recent inheritance. But the terms of her divorce from Thomas James did not permit either spouse's remarriage while the other was living, and the beleaguered newly-weds were forced to flee the country to escape a bigamy action brought by Heald's scandalized maiden aunt. The Healds resided for a time in France and Spain, but within two years, the tempestuous relationship was in tatters, and George reportedly drowned in 1856. In 1851 she set off to make a new start in the United States, where she was surprisingly successful at first in rehabilitating her image. From 1851 to 1853, Lola performed as a dancer and actress in the eastern United States, one of her offerings being a play called Lola Montez in Bavaria. In May 1853, she arrived on the west coast in San Francisco where her performances created a sensation, but soon inspired a popular satire, Who's Got the Countess? She married Patrick Hull, a local newspaperman, in July and moved to Grass Valley, California, in August. Her marriage soon failed; a doctor named as co-respondent in the divorce suit brought against her was murdered shortly thereafter.Lola remained in Grass Valley at her little house for nearly two years. The restored property went on to become California Historical Landmark No. 292. Lola served as an inspiration to another aspiring young entertainer, Lotta Crabtree, whose parents ran a boarding house in Grass Valley. Lola, a neighbor, provided dancing lessons and encouraged Lotta's enthusiasm for performance. In June 1855, Lola departed the U.S. to tour Australia and resume her career by entertaining miners at the gold diggings during the gold-rush of the 1850s. She arrived in Sydney on 16 August 1855.Historian Michael Cannon claims that "in September 1855 she performed her erotic Spider Dance at the Theatre Royal in Melbourne, raising her skirts so high that the audience could see she wore no underclothing at all. Next day, the Argus thundered that her performance was 'utterly subversive to all ideas of public morality'. Respectable families ceased to attend the theatre, which began to show heavy losses."She earned further notoriety in Ballarat when, after reading a bad review of her performance in The Ballarat Times, she attacked the editor, Henry Seekamp, with a whip. Although the "Lola Montes Polka" (composed by Albert Denning) is rumoured to have been inspired by this event, the song was published in 1855 and the incident with Seekamp occurred months later in February 1856. At Castlemaine in April 1856, she was "rapturously encored" after her Spider Dance in front of 400 diggers (including members of the Municipal Council who had adjourned their meeting early to attend the performance), but drew the wrath of the audience after insulting them following some mild heckling.She departed for San Francisco on 22 May 1856. On the return voyage her manager was lost at sea after going overboard. Lola failed in her attempts at a theatrical comeback in various American cities. She arranged in 1857 to deliver a series of moral lectures in Britain and America written by Rev. Charles Chauncey Burr. She spent her last days in rescue work among women. In November 1859, the Philadelphia Press reported that Lola Montez was: living very quietly up town, and doesn't have much to do with the world's people. Some of her old friends, the Bohemians, now and then drop in to have a little chat with her, and though she talks beautifully of her present feelings and way of life, she generally, by way of parenthesis, takes out her little tobacco pouch and makes a cigarette or two for self and friend, and then falls back upon old times with decided gusto and effect. But she doesn't tell anybody what she's going to do. By 1860, Lola was showing the tertiary effects of syphilis and her body began to waste away. She died at the age of 39 on 17 January 1861. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where her tombstone states: "Mrs. Eliza Gilbert / Died 17 January 1861". Lola's life was first portrayed in the 1919 biopic Lola Montez by Leopoldine Konstantin. Lola's life was portrayed in the 1922 German film Lola Montez, the King's Dancer. Montez is played by Ellen Richter. Lola Montez has been mentioned by several writers as a possible source of inspiration for the character Irene Adler in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, "A Scandal in Bohemia." The character bears certain similarities to Montez, as a popular performer who influences national politics through her relationship with a powerful individual. Montez was portrayed by Martine Carol in the film Lola Montès (1955), based on the novel La Vie Extraordinaire de Lola Montès by Cecil Saint-Laurent, directed by Max Ophüls and co-starring Peter Ustinov and Oskar Werner. Montez was the last role played by Conchita Montenegro, in the film Lola Montes (1944), with a moralizing script, directed by Antonio Román. Montez's time in the Australian goldfields was the subject of the musical Lola Montez staged in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney in 1958 starring Mary Preston. The musical was liked by critics but did not become a commercial success. A recording of the musical was released on LP in 1958 in both mono and stereo versions. Montez also appears in Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser, where she has a brief affair with Sir Harry Flashman. She is also a character in the film of the same name (1975), in which she is played by Florinda Bolkan. A character named Lola Montez is featured in the 1948 film, Black Bart, played by Yvonne De Carlo. Montez is featured prominently in Spider Dance by Carole Nelson Douglas, the last work in her Irene Adler mystery series. Montez is rumoured to be the title character's mother. She has been portrayed by Carmen D'Antonio in Golden Girl (1951), Sheila Darcy in Wells Fargo (1937), Paula Morgan, and Rita Moreno in separate episodes of the 1950s TV show Tales of Wells Fargo. In one of J. B. Priestley's last fictional works, The Pavilion of Masks, she is unmistakably the original for Cleo Torres, Spanish dancer and mistress of a German prince. The actress Paula Morgan played Montez in the 1955 episode, "Lola Montez," of the syndicated television anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. Baynes Barron (1917-1982) was cast as Patrick Hull, a newspaperman who became Montez's third husband. Montez was allegedly the inspiration for Jennifer Wilde's historical romance novel Dare To Love (1978), whose protagonist Elena Lopez is also a British woman passing herself off as Spanish who becomes an exotic dancer. In the book, Elena has an affair with Franz Liszt, becomes friends with George Sand and has a friendship with the king of a small Germanic country obviously based on Ludwig I of Bavaria, then moves to California, all documented as having happened in Montez's life. Montez is also the inspiration for Lola Montero in Edison Marshall's novel Infinite Woman. Trestle Theatre Company created a 2008 production titled Lola about the life of Lola Montez. Montez is described in Daughter of Fortune (original Spanish title Hija de la fortuna) by the Chilean-American author Isabel Allende. Musician Joanna Newsom's title track on the album Have One on Me is about Lola Montez. Danish metal band Volbeat included a song on their album Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies about Montez. Entitled Lola Montez, the lyrics reference Montez's spider dance and the incident with Henry Seekamp. The British/Irish writer Marion Urch based her epic historical novel An Invitation to Dance (Brandon 2009) on the life of Lola Montez. The novel has been published in the US, Russia (Arabesque), and Germany (Aufbau-Verlag). Lola Montez has two lakes (an upper and lower) named after her in the Tahoe National Forest in Nevada County, California. There is also a mountain named in her honour, Mount Lola. At 9,148 feet, it is the highest point in Nevada County, California. In 2016 American composer John Adams composed a short orchestral piece called "Lola Montez Does the Spider Dance" in celebration of conductor Marin Alsop's 25 years leading the Cabrillo Festival in Santa Cruz, California. In Dickinson, on Apple TV+, Henry 'Ship' Shipley, claims to have been 'ruined' by Lola Montez and her Spider Dance. Montez, L. (1858). The Arts of Beauty, Or, Secrets of a Lady's Toilet: With Hints to Gentlemen on the Art of Fascinating. Dick & Fitzgerald. Bunbury, Turtle. (2016). '1847 – A Chronicle of Genius, Generosity & Savagery. Gill Books. ISBN 9780717168347. Burr, C. C. (1860). Autobiography and lectures of Lola Montez. Browne, Nicholas Castle Oliver & the Oliver Gascoignes Mackinlay, Leila Spider dance: A novel based upon incidents in the life of Lola Montez Pastor, Urraca, Lola Montes. Mª Dolores Rosana Y Gilbert, Condesa De Landfeld, Barcelona 1946 Saint-Laurent, Cecil La Vie Extraordinaire de Lola Montès (basis for the 1955 movie Lola Montès) Seymour, Bruce Lola Montez, a Life, Yale University Press, 1996 Trowbridge, W. R. H. Lola Montez, 1818-1861 in Seven Splendid Sinners, p. 298 Information about Castle Oliver, Lola Montez's ancestral home RTE Hidden History Summary about Eliza Gilbert Article from Australian Dictionary of Biography Bee Wilson: Boudoir Politics Review of Lola Montez: Her Life and Conquests by James Morton · Portrait, (2007) in London Review of Books Vol. 29 No. 11 dated 7 June 2007 Horace Wyndham, The Magnificent Montez: From Courtesan to Convert, New York: Hillman-Curl (1935). Project Gutenberg eBook. Texts on Wikisource: "Lola Montez". The American Cyclopædia. 1879. "Montez, Lola". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. "Montez, Lola". New International Encyclopedia. 1905. "Gilbert, Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911. "Montez, Lola". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. "Montez, Lola". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. Lola Montez at Find a GraveInsects have found uses in art, as in other aspects of culture, both symbolically and physically, from ancient times. Artforms include the direct usage of beetlewing (elytra) in paintings, textiles, and jewellery, as well as the representation of insects in fine arts such as paintings and sculpture. Insects have sometimes formed characteristic features of artforms, as in Art Nouveau jewellery. Insect groups represented in art include bees, beetles, butterflies, grasshoppers, and dragonflies. Societies across the world have from ancient to modern times used the shapes and colours of insects, and sometimes their actual bodies, in their art, whether jewellery or ceramics, body painting or textiles, paintings or sculptures. In North America, the Navajo make symbolic sandpaintings of blowflies, cicadas, corn bugs and dragonflies. The Hopi draw a variety of insects, but especially butterflies, on pottery. In other parts of the world, insects, most often honeybees, are shown in ancient rock art. Australian Aborigines often represented totemic insects in cave paintings and ritual objects. The art of cultures as widely separated as Ancient Greece, China and Japan includes bees, butterflies, crickets, cicadas and dragonflies. A recurrent theme for ancient cultures in Europe and the Near East was the sacred image of a bee or human with insect features. Often referred to as the bee "goddess", these images were found in gems and stones. An onyx gem from Knossos (ancient Crete) dating to approximately 1500 BC illustrates a Bee goddess with bull horns above her head. In this instance, the figure is surrounded by dogs with wings, most likely representing Hecate and Artemis - gods of the underworld, similar to the Egyptian gods Akeu and Anubis.In 2011, the artist Anna Collette created over 10,000 ceramic insects at Nottingham Castle for her work "Stirring the Swarm." Beetlewing art is an ancient craft technique using iridescent beetle wing cases (elytra), practised traditionally in Thailand, Myanmar, India, China and Japan, as well as Africa and South America. Beetlewing pieces are used as an adornment to paintings, textiles and jewellery. Different species of metallic wood-boring beetle wings were used depending on the region, but traditionally the most valued were the brilliant green wing cases of jewel beetles in the genus Sternocera (Buprestidae). In Thailand, beetlewings were used to decorate clothing (shawls and Sabai cloth) and jewellery in court circles.The Canadian entomologist C.H. Curran's 1945 book, Insects of the Pacific World, noted women from India and Sri Lanka, who kept 1 1/2 inch long, iridescent greenish coppery beetles of the species Chrysochroa ocellata as pets. These living jewels were worn on festive occasions, probably with a small chain attached to one leg anchored to the clothing to prevent escape. Afterwards, the insects were bathed, fed, and housed in decorative cages. Living jeweled beetles have also been worn and kept as pets in Mexico. Butterflies have long inspired humans with their life cycle, colour, and ornate patterns. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov was also a renowned butterfly expert. He published and illustrated many butterfly species, stating: "I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were games of intricate enchantment and deception." It was the aesthetic complexity of insects that led Nabokov to reject natural selection.The naturalist Ian MacRae writes of butterflies: ". . . the animal is at once awkward, flimsy, strange, bouncy in flight, yet beautiful and immensely sympathetic; it is painfully transient, albeit capable of extreme migrations and transformations. Images and phrases such as "kaleidoscopic instabilities," "oxymoron of similarities," "rebellious rainbows," "visible darkness" and "souls of stone" have much in common.They bring together the two terms of a conceptual contradiction, thereby facilitating the mixing of what should be discrete and mutually exclusive categories . . . In positing such questions, butterfly science, an inexhaustible, complex, and finely nuanced field, becomes not unlike the human imagination, or the field of literature itself. In the natural history of the animal, we begin to sense its literary and artistic possibilities." The photographer Kjell Sanded spent 25 years documenting all 26 characters of the Latin alphabet using the wing patterns of butterflies and moths as "The Butterfly Alphabet". For some Native American tribes, dragonflies represent swiftness and activity; for the Navajo, they symbolize pure water. They are a common motif in Zuni pottery; stylized as a double-barred cross, they appear in Hopi rock art and on Pueblo necklaces.Images of dragonflies are common in Art Nouveau, especially in jewellery designs. Grasshoppers are occasionally depicted in artworks, such as the Dutch Golden Age painter Balthasar van der Ast's still life oil painting, Flowers in a Vase with Shells and Insects, c. 1630, now in the National Gallery, London, though the insect may be a bush-cricket.Another grasshopper is found in Rachel Ruysch's still life Flowers in a Vase, c. 1685. The seemingly static scene is animated by a "grasshopper on the table that looks about ready to spring", according to the gallery curator Betsy Wieseman, with other invertebrates including a spider, an ant, and two caterpillars. Courtship is the period of development towards an intimate relationship wherein a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement, followed by a marriage. A courtship may be an informal and private matter between two people or may be a public affair, or a formal arrangement with family approval. Traditionally, in the case of a formal engagement, it is the role of a male to actively "court" or "woo" a female, thus encouraging her to understand him and her receptiveness to a marriage proposal. The average duration of courtship varies considerably throughout the world. Furthermore, there is vast individual variation between couples. Courtship may be completely omitted, as in cases of some arranged marriages where the couple do not meet before the wedding. In the United Kingdom, a poll of 3,000 engaged or married couples resulted in an average duration between first meeting and accepted proposal of marriage of 2 years and 11 months, with the women feeling ready to accept at an average of 2 years and 7 months. Regarding duration between proposal and wedding, the UK poll above gave an average of 2 years and 3 months. The date is fairly casual in most European-influenced cultures, but in some traditional societies, courtship is a highly structured activity, with very specific formal rules. In some societies, the parents or community propose potential partners and then allow limited dating to determine whether the parties are suited. In Japan, there is a such type of courtship called Omiai, with similar practices called "Xiangqin" (相親) in the Greater China Area. Parents will hire a matchmaker to provide pictures and résumés of potential mates, and if the couple agrees, there will be a formal meeting with the matchmaker and often parents in attendance. The matchmaker and parents will often exert pressure on the couple to decide whether they want to marry or not after a few dates. Courtship in the Philippines is one known complex form of courtship. Unlike what is regularly seen in other societies, it takes a far more subdued and indirect approach. It is complex in that it involves stages, and it is considered normal for courtship to last a year or longer. It is common to see a man showing off by sending love letters and love poems, singing romantic songs, and buying gifts for a woman. The parents are also seen as part of the courtship practice, as their approval is commonly needed before courtship may begin or before the woman gives the man an answer to his advances.In more closed societies, courtship is virtually eliminated altogether by the practice of arranged marriages in which partners are chosen for young people, typically by their parents. Forbidding experimental and serial courtship and sanctioning only arranged matches is partly a means of guarding the chastity of young people and partly a matter of furthering family interests, which, in such cultures, may be considered more important than individual romantic preferences. Throughout history, courtship has often included traditions such as exchanging valentines, written correspondence (which was facilitated by the creation of the postal service in the nineteenth century), and similar communication-based courting. Over recent decades, though, the concept of arranged marriage has changed or simply been mixed with other forms of dating, including Eastern and Indian ones; potential couples have the opportunity to meet and date each other before one decides on whether or not to continue the relationship. In the early 1800s, young adults were expected to court with the intention of finding a marriage partner, rather than for social reasons. In more traditional forms of Christianity, this concept of courtship has been retained, with John Piper defining courtship and distinguishing this concept from dating, stating that: Courtship ordinarily begins when a single man approaches a single woman by going through the woman's father, and then conducts his relationship with the woman under the authority of her father, family, or church, whichever is most appropriate. Courtship always has marriage as its direct goal...Dating, a more modern approach, begins when either the man or the woman initiates a more-than-friends relationship with the other, and then they conduct that relationship outside of any oversight or authority. Dating may or may not have marriage as its goal. Christian minister Patricia Bootsma delineates this distinction, writing that in contrast to the modern conception of dating, in "courtship, time together in groups with family or friends is encouraged, and there is oversight by and accountability to parents or mentors". She further states that with courtship, "commitment happens before intimacy".In America, in the 1820s, the phrase "date" was most closely associated with prostitution. However, by the Jazz Age of the 1920s, dating for fun was becoming a cultural expectation, and by the 1930s, it was assumed that any popular young person would have many dates. This form of dating was usually conducted in public places, before pre-marital sex became more socially acceptable after the sexual revolution in the 1960s. Courtship is used by a number of theorists to explain gendering processes and sexual identity. Scientific research into courtship began in the 1980s after which time academic researchers started to generate theories about modern dating practices and norms. Researchers have found that, contrary to popular beliefs, courtship is normally triggered and controlled by women, driven mainly by non-verbal behaviours to which men respond. This is generally supported by other theorists who specialise in the study of body language. There are some feminist scholars, however, who regard courtship as a socially constructed (and male-led) process organised to subjugate women. Farrell reports, for example, that magazines about marriage and romantic fiction continue to attract a 98% female readership. Systematic research into courtship processes inside the workplace as well two ten-year studies examining norms in different international settings continue to support a view that courtship is a social process that socialises both sexes into accepting forms of relationship that maximise the chances of successfully raising children. As technology progressed the dating world progressed as well. In a Time-line by Metro, a statistic match-making business opened in 1941, the first reality TV dating show was developed in 1965 and by the 1980s the public was introduced to video dating. Video Dating was a way for singles to sit in front of a camera and tell whomever may be watching something about themselves. The process of elimination was significant because now the viewer was able hear their voice, see their face and watch their body language to determine a physical attraction to the candidates. In online dating, individuals create profiles where they disclose personal information, photographs, hobbies, interests, religion and expectations. Then the user can search through hundreds of thousands of accounts and connect with multiple people at once which in return, gives the user more options and more opportunity to find what meets their standards. Online dating has influenced the idea of choice. In Modern Romance: An Investigation, Aziz Ansari states that one third of marriages in the United States between 2005 and 2012 met through online dating services. Today there are hundreds of sites to choose from and websites designed to fit specific needs such as Match, eHarmony, OkCupid, Zoosk, and ChristianMingle. Mobile apps, such as Grindr and Tinder allow users to upload profiles that are then judged by others on the service; one can either swipe right on a profile (indicating interest) or swipe left (which presents another possible mate). Many animal species have mate-selection rituals also referred to as "courtship" anthropomorphically. Animal courtship may involve complicated dances or touching, vocalizations, or displays of beauty or fighting prowess. Most animal courtship occurs out of sight of humans and so it is often the least documented of animal behaviors. One animal whose courtship rituals are well studied is the bower bird whose male builds a "bower" of collected objects. From the scientific point of view, courtship in the animal kingdom is the process in which the different species select their partners for reproduction purposes. Generally speaking, the male initiates the courtship and the female chooses to either mate or reject the male based on his "performance". All animals have different courtship rituals that reflect fitness, compatibility with others and ability to provide. Sea turtles court during a limited receptive time. During the courtship males will either nuzzle the females head to show affection or by gently biting the back of her neck. This may go on for long periods of time depending on if the female responds to the male. If the female does respond, by not fleeing, the male will attach himself onto the back of the female's shell using his front flippers. He will stretch his long tail under the back of the females shell to begin copulation. Courting can be competitive among males. The male that has better endurance will win the female. To a female, endurance is a great trait to be passed on to their offspring; the higher the endurance in the male, the higher the endurance will be in her offspring and the more likely they will be to survive. Female Leatherback sea turtles will also choose many different males to copulate with in order to diversify their offspring since it is known that Leatherback sea turtles have female-biased offspring. Despite being aggressive animals, the female hippopotamus is very nurturing and sensitive when caring for offspring. Mating and birth both occur in the water for hippopotamus. This is because it gives them privacy when conceiving and it helps conserve energy during birth. The female hippo normally averages around 5–6 years while males are average an age of 7–8. During mating season the male hippopotamus will find a mate out of the herd, showing interest by smelling the female's posterior end. As long as the male acts submissive during courting season the adults in the herd will not interfere. Once the male finds the female he wants to mate with, he begins provoking the female. He then will push the female into the water and mount her. In order to alert the herd or other animals that may be lurking around the male will let a loud wheezing sound. Preceding birth the female exhibits aggressive behavior leaving the herd until after the birth of the calf. Although hippopotamuses can mate anytime of the year, the mating season ranges from February to August. Because the energy cost is high, the female generally only has one offspring in a two years span. The courtship behaviour of honey bees follows through two distinct types: Apiary Vicinity Mating and Drone Assembly Mating respectively. Apiary vicinity mating usually takes place in weather that is cool and is more local to the apiary from which the queen resides. The drones are in the same apiary too but do not mean that it will lead to inbreeding. Drones assemble in a bulb of warm air close or far from the apiary. They are alert when the queen has flown out of the hive and will follow her route. This is followed by a sort of fast hum or buzz in the general bee population that follows an upward temperature gradient. The male drone mounts on the virgin queen and inserts his endophallus, ejaculating semen. The male honey bee will then pull away from the queen, but his endophallus will be ripped from his body and remain attached to the newly fertilized queen. The next male honey bee will remove the endophallus that was previously left by the other male honey bee and will eventually ejaculate and lose his own. The frequency of mating for the male honey bees is seven to 10 times during a mating flight. Most of the drones die quickly immediately after mating, and their abdomen rips open since the endophallus has been removed. The few that survive are usually ejected from their nests, as they have served their sole purpose by mating . They only attend one mating flight and the queen stores up to 100 million sperm within her oviducts during this flight, but only five to six million are stored in the spermatheca of the queen. Only a few of this sperm are used by the queen at a time to fertilize the eggs throughout her life. New queen generations will mate and produce their colonies if the queen runs out of sperm in her lifetime. The sex of the offspring is controlled by the honey bee queens as the eggs passing through the oviduct can be determined whether they are fertilized or not by the queen. Research has indicated that eggs that are fertilized develop into female workers and queens while the unfertilized eggs become drone honey bees. Female workers can lay infertile eggs but do not mate. The infertile eggs become male honey bees. The eggs of the queen are laid in oval-shaped structural cells that usually stick to the nest ceiling. Royal jelly is then filled with these cells to prevent larvae from falling. Soon-to-be workers are fed royal jelly during the first two days. The future queens are given royal jelly throughout the entire larval period. Each member colony development depends on caste. For proper growth from eggs to adult, the male honey bees need 24 days, 21 for workers and only 16 for the queens. Certain insect species also display courtship behavior in order to attract mates. For example, the species Ceratitis Capitata (also known as the medfly) exhibits these behaviors. During the courtship phase, signals are exchanged between males and females to display willingness for mating. The male begins with a series of head movements and after 1–2 seconds of movement, also begins to fan its wings and moves closer to the female. Once the male is close enough to the female, the male will leap onto the female's back and begin copulation. Another example is seen in the spider species Maratus volans, where the male will perform an elaborate fan dance. The male will open his colorful fan and begin to vibrate in order to draw the attention of the female spider. The male will begin to move closer and closer to the female until copulation. I Love Bees (also known as ilovebees or ILB for short) was an alternate reality game (ARG) that served as both a real-world experience and viral marketing campaign for the release of developer Bungie's 2004 video game Halo 2. The game was created and developed by 42 Entertainment. Many of the same personnel had previously created an ARG for the film A.I. titled The Beast. I Love Bees was commissioned by Microsoft, Halo 2's publisher and Bungie's ultimate parent company at the time. I Love Bees was first advertised by a hidden message in a Halo 2 trailer; players who investigated the titular website discovered that the pages appeared to be hacked by a mysterious intelligence. As players solved puzzles, audio logs were posted to the ilovebees.com site which gradually revealed more of the fictional back-story, involving a marooned artificial intelligence stranded on Earth and its attempts to put itself back together. 250,000 people viewed the ilovebees website when it was launched in July 2004, and more than 500,000 returned to the site every time the pages were updated. More than three million visitors viewed the site over the course of three months, and thousands of people around the world participated in the game. I Love Bees won numerous awards for its innovation and helped spawn numerous other alternate reality games for video games. Alternate reality games or ARGs are designed to involve fans of video games or other media in a form of viral marketing which CNET described as encompassing "real-life treasure hunting, interactive storytelling, video games and online [communities]". I Love Bees began when jars of honey were received in the mail by people who had previously participated in alternate reality games. The jars contained letters leading to the I Love Bees website and a countdown. At around the same time, theatrical trailers for Halo 2 concluded with the Xbox logo and a URL, Xbox.com, that quickly flashed a link to ilovebees.com, ostensibly a hacked site related to beekeeping.Both events, not connected publicly for several weeks, caused the curious to visit the website ilovebees.co. The site, which appeared to be dedicated to honey sales and beekeeping, was covered in confusing random characters and sentence fragments. Dana, the ostensible webmaster of the ilovebees site, created a weblog stating that something had gone wrong with her website, and the site itself had been hacked. Suspecting that this was a mystery that could be unraveled, Halo and ARG fans spread the link and began to work on figuring out what was going on. The gameplay of I Love Bees tasked players around the world to work together to solve problems, with little or no direction or guidance. For example, the game presented players with 210 pairs of global positioning system coordinates and time codes, with no indications to what the locations referred to. Players eventually figured out the coordinates referred to pay phones and the times to when the phones would ring; one player in Florida stayed by a phone while Hurricane Frances was minutes away in order to recite answers to prerecorded questions. Other phone calls were made by live persons known as "operators"; these calls allowed players to interact with the characters of the games in spontaneous and occasionally humorous ways. Other players treated the corrupted data on ilovebees.com as encrypted files to decipher, or used image files found on the web server to solve puzzles. After players completed certain tasks, they were rewarded with new installments to an audio drama which revealed the reasons for the ilovebees.com malfunction.Over time, the game's mechanisms for contacting players grew more complex. Players were sent messages via email, called on their cell phones, and travelled to arranged meetings between players and characters. The game culminated by inviting players of the game to visit one of four cinemas where they could get a chance to play Halo 2 before its release and collect a commemorative DVD. The game's plot begins with a military spaceship crashing to Earth in an unknown location, leaving the craft's controlling artificial intelligence or AI damaged. This AI, known as the "Operator" or "Melissa", is not alone; other AI programs share its system. In an effort to survive and contact any surviving allies, Melissa transfers herself to a San Francisco-area web server, which happens to host a bee enthusiast website known as I Love Bees Archived 2005-06-08 at the Wayback Machine. To the distress of Dana Awbrey, the website's maintainer, Melissa's attempts to send signals began to appear largely as codes, hidden in images or other text, interfering with the operation of the I Love Bees site and corrupting much of the content.Dana, attempting to regain control over the corrupted website, accidentally erases data which comprises part of Melissa's memory. Furious, Melissa lashes out at the webmaster, obtaining pictures of her using the webcam on her computer and promising to take revenge. Alarmed, Dana announces that she is removing herself from the situation and is taking a previously planned trip to China earlier than expected. All AI units contain a program called SPDR, short for System Peril Distributed Reflex. As SPDR attempts to fix Melissa, random dumps from Melissa's memory began to spill into the website, largely detailing Melissa's history and revealing the presence of a malicious Trojan-horse virus known as the "Pious Flea." The Spider tries to erase the Flea but is outwitted, as Melissa erases the Spider instead of the Flea. The Flea continues to overwrite Melissa's programming with its own mysterious goals, with it eventually being revealed that it is actually an espionage AI more properly called the Seeker, built by the Covenant. With the assistance of other characters revealed by audio chapters, the fictional protagonists break into a secure military installation and manage to deactivate a Forerunner device which is implied to begin the firing sequence of the Halo installations. However, the price paid for the deactivation is a powerful energy transmission alerting the Covenant to the location of Earth. Whole again, Melissa sees how she has been manipulated by the Pious Flea, and returns to her time. I Love Bees ends with the Covenant invading Earth, corresponding to a major plot point in Halo 2.Due to Bungie's commitment to the development of Halo 2 during I Love Bees' run, they were unable to assist 42 Entertainment with story creation, and so the ARG's story is only tangentially related to the main Halo storyline. The events of I Love Bees were, therefore, originally not considered to be Halo canon. In a 2006 interview, however, Bungie's content manager Frank O'Connor expressly confirmed that I Love Bees is part of "things that we embrace as canon." References to elements of I Love Bees have since appeared in the 2006 Halo Graphic Novel and the 2009 Halo Encyclopedia, both of which are official canon. I Love Bees' developer, 42 Entertainment, was founded by Jordan Weisman, the former creative director for Microsoft's Xbox division. 42 Entertainment had previously created the first ARG, The Beast, which had been used to promote the movie A.I.. Other members of the I Love Bees team included Sean Stewart, a World Fantasy Award-award-winning author who served as I Love Bees' writer, and Jim Stewartson, I Love Bees' technical lead who produced the first commercial 3D game delivered by the internet. Weisman stated that the goal of I Love Bees was to utilize every person who interacted with the game, and to use any electronic resource to do so: "If we could make your toaster print something we would. Anything with an electric current running through it. A single story, a single gaming experience, with no boundaries. A game that is life itself."42 Entertainment conceived I Love Bees as a radio drama, and used the pay phones as a way to excite players. Chris Di Cesare, Microsoft's director of marketing, stated that the radio drama's similarities with War of the Worlds was intentional, and that "[ILB] remains true to the radio drama tradition of Orson Welles that we were shooting for and also allowed us to tell the story in an unorthodox way." In order to prevent non-players from being scared by the sounds of gunfire from the pay phones, 42 Entertainment established passwords that had to be repeated. Stewart described writing for the game as more enjoyable than writing printed fiction, both for the money and the unique experience of ARGs as opposed to other media: The audiences that we built for those campaigns are having a different experience. They're having a collective experience in which they literally bring different pieces, one to the next, swap them back and forth, gossip about them. They have an element of cocreation and a collaborative nature that doesn't really have an analog that I've been able to think of in the arts. I Love Bees is credited with helping drive attention to Halo 2; former Electronic Gaming Monthly editor Dan Hsu stated in an interview that "I Love Bees really got existing gamers and other consumers talking about the universe of [Halo]." Billy Pidgeon, a game analyst, noted that I Love Bees achieved what it had been designed to do: "This kind of viral guerrilla marketing worked ... Everyone started instant messaging about it and checking out the site." I Love Bees not only received coverage from gaming publications, but attracted mainstream press attention as well. At its height, ilovebees received between two and three million unique visitors over the course of three months. 9,000 people also actively participated in the real-world aspects of the game. The players of I Love Bees themselves were quite varied. The target demographic for the promotion was younger males, but one player noted that even middle-aged men and women were engaged in the game.I Love Bees received several awards for its innovation. The design team was one of the recipients of the Innovation Award at the 5th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. I Love Bees was also announced as the winner of a Webby Award in the Game-Related category, presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Along with 42 Entertainment's previous ARG known as The Beast, I Love Bees is credited with bringing greater attention to the fledgling marketing form; I Love Bees not only helped assuage fears by marketers about the costs of ARG failure, but attracted interest from other game developers in using alternate reality games to promote their own products. Before I Love Bees, The Guardian stated that "ARGs were destined to join Letsbuyit.com and Barcode Battlers in the e-dustbin of nice ideas that never really caught on"; the explosion of broadband internet access and a renewed interest in codes allowed I Love Bees to become wildly successful. Bungie would later use another ARG called "Iris" to promote Halo 2's sequel, Halo 3.I Love Bees also attracted attention in the wider discussion of user-based marketing and cooperation. Author Charles Leadbeater argued that I Love Bees was an example of "We-Think" collective thinking; Leadbeater noted that after the "puppet masters" began the game, I Love Bees "displayed all the characteristics of a mass movement, propelled into existence in a matter of weeks simply by collective enthusiasm guided by a few cyberspace 'avatars'". The game proved successful with gamers, as well as attracting nontraditional players who had no experience with Halo before joining the game. . In a 2016 Bandcamp interview, artist Ramona Andra Xavier, known for pioneering the Vaporwave musical genre under the pseudonym Vektroid (among others), claimed to be acutely influenced by "I Love Bees," in its use of "hacked" websites, internet communities and IRL tasks to blur the lines between reality and fiction. "Playtest" is the second episode in the third series of the British science fiction anthology television series Black Mirror. Written by showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Dan Trachtenberg, it premiered on Netflix on 21 October 2016, with the rest of series three. The episode follows Cooper (Wyatt Russell), an American who playtests an upcoming augmented reality game in London while travelling. It is a horror game which accesses his brain and targets his fears. Hannah John-Kamen co-stars as a video game journalist Cooper meets. The episode was inspired by an idea Brooker had for an augmented reality Whac-A-Mole game which increased in speed until the subject went crazy. After considering Tokyo, the crew decided to shoot in London. A work of psychological h