Bad Karma?

Remember that one time I shared the post-lab grasshopper prank with you all?

Well, somehow, I looked in my shoe today, and this is what was there.

I've worn these shoes several times since disposing of the grasshopper parts. Luckily, I'm no longer scared of bugs (thank you, lab!), but, not going to lie, I was still a bit creeped out.

What is a Colorado Potato Beetle doing on my driveway?

Not that it would be unheard of for a Colorado Potato Beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, to arrive on my driveway in Long Island, NY. Colorado Potato Beetles, despite their misleading common name, are actually pretty heavily distributed throughout the world. This map from Geller-Grimm (2003) displays the distribution of the Colorado Potato Beetle.

So, it does not seem crazy that the Colorado Potato Beetle was on my driveway. Okay. Let's research a bit. This is what an adult Colorado Potato Beetle looks like,

Image source: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/veg/leaf/potato_beetles06.htm

And here's a picture I took of the specimen from my driveway:

Though the body shape is the same, this beetle has some red stripes distributed on the dorsal side of the abdomen, it lacks the characteristic black markings on the antenna and leg appendages, and the black spots on the head and thorax are not as thick and blotchy. I was not convinced that this was the species I thought it was, so I did some research.

Turns out that what I found is a cousin of the Colorado Potato Beetle. It is very related, in the same genus Leptinotarsa but its species name is Leptinotarsa juncta. Order Coleoptera, family Chrysomelidae. It is commonly known as the False Potato Beetle. This name is misleading, however. The False Potato Beetle sometimes feed on potatoes, but their true specialty is horse nettle. Their distribution is also less cosmopolitan, as they are primarily found in the southeastern and eastern United States. False Potato Beetles sometimes copulate with Colorado Potato Beetles, but they cannot actually cross-breed together. Now, here's a pretty picture of this guy.

Image source: http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/imgs/512x768/1111_1111/2222/2121.jpeg

Sources: 

"Colorado Potato Beetle." University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Studies. http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/veg/leaf/potato_beetles.htm. Accessed 30 September 2012.

Grasshopper Dissection

Hi everyone! I will seek to entertain as best as I can, but I can't really promise anything because this post is actually information-oriented. Yay?

When we retreated to Great Mountain Forest, Ray showed us how to do a grasshopper dissection. Obsessed with my new toy (the iPad), I took a video of the entire demonstration, and it's now on YouTube. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9xdkbPN9C4.

But, if you don't feel like watching the 6:58-long video, I will give you a step-by-step protocol to become an Olympian dissector (allegedly, the Insect Olympics are a real thing).

First, you have to choose your specimen. Most specimens will be Orthopterans (grasshoppers, crickets, katydids). There is a special method for Orthopterans because they are huge and their guts rot easily, which is not ideal for specimen preservation. For your collection, if you want your Orthopteran to bear some resemblance to the beautiful specimen you found during your hunt, it needs to be gutted.

So kill that katydid or grasshopper or cricket with your kill jar. No crushing!

Now you can dissect. Here's what you'll probably need:

NEEDS 
styrofoam; many pins; small scissors; a light source; forceps; cotton

DIRECTIONS (this sort of feels like a recipe)
1. Using pins, mount the grasshopper on the styrofoam, ventral side facing upwards.
2. Use the tips of scissors to make several small lateral cuts along the ventral midline. Begin from the posterior end and work your way up. Do not cut the thorax. The anteriormost cut should extend laterally from the tergite-sternite divide on both sides of the abdomen.
3. It should now be fairly simple to use your scissors to now make a cut along the ventral midline. Begin from the posterior end and cut anteriorly until you reach the anteriormost lateral cut from step 2.
4. Open up the two "flaps" you've created in the abdomen, and pin them to the styrofoam. This should expose the gut.
5. Now the fun part. Using forceps and scissors where necessary, gently empty out the contents of the gut. Get rid of everything and put in the trash. Have no shame! All that should remain is exoskeleton.
6. Take a small piece of cotton with your forceps. Beginning as anteriorly as you can, add cotton to the insides, moving posteriorly until there is cotton throughout. Do not put so much cotton that you are distending the Orthopteran's exoskeleton, and do not put so little that it cannot maintain its shape. Find a nice balance.
7. Remove the pins holding down the abdominal exoskeleton to the styrofoam, and put them back in their original place. As long as you didn't remove exoskeleton, the Orthopteran should look as good as new.
8. Press this button:

image source: http://drivenforward.com/upload/Blog/easy-button.png

Slugs! Moths! Slug Moths!

We spent most of a lovely last Saturday at Sleeping Giant rummaging through the rocks for Plecoptera, Ephemeroptera and Trichoptera. 

Nonetheless, while on land I wasn't able to resist my new, apparently addictive habit of scanning the undersides of leaves for 6- or 8-legged friends.

This first one is rather generic-looking, and thus far unidentified, but it had very impressively glued the leave into a little burrito before I rudely exposed its nest:

The next one was really exciting. As Kara pointed out, those bright colors and haphazard munching likely indicate status: Not For Eating. I hadn't ever seen such a funny shape, and after this reference to Prof. Dave Wagner's lesson, I decided to ask him what he thought of it. I was excited when he told me that I had correctly guessed, in identification attempts, that it is going to be a Slug Moth one day!

Slug Moths are Leps of the family Limacodidae, so named precisely because of these funny-looking caterpillars. The icing on the cake was the tiny spider that spun its web in the hole left by the very hungry caterpillar! You can just see it, above, against the white lid I'm holding to the back of the leaf.

The closest caterpillar image match that I could find was of the Yellow-Shouldered Slug Moth, Lithacodes fasciola. Likely a relative, but not the same species, that adult is pictured below.

source

*Thank-you to Rich for the first two photos!

Photo Highlights from Great Mt. Forest and Guilford

 Yale Forestry Camp at Great Mountain Forest

Litchfield County, CT

Shot taken on the morning of the second day.

Yale Forestry Camp lodge.

Setting up a malaise trap.

A storm rolling in on our second night.

Peabody Field Research Station

Guilford, CT

Collecting in farm fields.

Hiking through the woods at the research station.

 Collecting in the marshes.

 On the hunt for fiddler crabs and other arthropods.

Ray and Elizabeth walk along the old railway.

The two biggest Daddy Longlegs you will ever see...

...can be found atop the Seattle Center Armory! They're not exactly real, but they will last a really long time, I'm sure, and, if they're lucky, maybe they will get to reproduce and we will return to the Cretaceous period where arthropods were enormous. Here's to hoping.

Here's a top-down view of the roof:

Here's what you might see if you were standing on the roof:

More information about the artist and his project can be found at his personal website: http://marlinpeterson.com/ (I stole the images from his website).

But for now, I will just clarify that I am talking about the United States' daddy longlegs (family Opiliones). In Nova Scotia, the UK, Ireland, and Newfounland, the name "daddy longlegs" is commonly used to describe crane flies (family Tipulidae). Elsewhere, "daddy longlegs" is used to describe cellar spiders (family Pholcidae). So confusing! This is why we need taxonomic names!

In any case, I think I know whom to hire when I want to paint my future roof.

Happy Sunday,
Chel"needs to stop posting random things on this blog"sea

What I did with last week's hoppers from lab

My best friend upset me last Wednesday (we're not going to talk about why). She apologized sincerely, and I accepted, but I have anger management issues, and even when people apologize to me and time passes, I still manage to stay upset.

Wednesday, I discovered a solution. It's called revenge. Quick, painless revenge. With the help of bugs. :)

I left my best friend a present right outside of her dorm. It was the pair of large locusts I was playing with in lab that I was supposed to throw out after observing them. I accompanied my gift with a deliberately ambiguous text message, "There's a surprise for you." She texted me back, saying that it scared the bejeezus out of her, and that she didn't know whether or not it was real (though she had suspected that I was the culprit). She contemplated licking it to test if I'm giggling really hard now, and I'm no longer annoyed. She didn't want to accept the exotic grasshoppers as a gift, though. In any case, she learned her lesson.

Well, needless to say, I forgot about the other people living in her hallway who might also be scared. Later, someone else in her hallway posted a picture of it on Facebook (above), saying that she was "screaming bloody murder" over the "cockroaches" in her hallway. It was followed by a stream of comments by others: "this is gross," "omg that scared me when I walked by it in the hallway," and the like. I'm entertained, and decide to take some more action and change up the positioning a bit.

So, still all giggles. Then, I realize that the photo that someone else posted from Facebook is circulating on a Yale panlist that I am not even on (Is anyone in YSO? You would have received the e-mail). People are suggesting that my friend eat it, others are terrified, and yet still others are trying to determine the culprit.

And now, this is sensational. In just a few hours, I managed to scare a few dozen people with some dead bugs I was supposed to throw out in lab, but decided to keep for some “personal purposes.” I could rule the world. (And so could you, fellow lab mates).

Antics

Last weekend, I went home, and found some cool bugs. If you knew what I found roaming around my kitchen floor, you'd think that I reside 1,000 miles south of where I actually live.

Image stolen from Flickr.

The species Pseudomethocha oculata resembles a typical ant, except its body is red, it is hairy, and its last segment bears a black and yellow stripe pattern. At first glance, I thought that the insect was striking, but still an ant, and, thus, not anything special to contribute to my collection for class.

But, lo, behold! It is not an ant! Well, it has "ant" in its name but is not actually an ant. This specimen is commonly known as a velvet ant, belonging to the family Mutillidae, as opposed to the classic ant family Formicidae. Mutillidae is a family of more than 3,000 species of wasps whose wingless females resemble large, hairy ants. They are known for their extremely painful sting, said to be strong enough to kill a cow (some species within this family are commonly known as cow killers or cow ants). (Citation: Wikipedia --> JH Hunt 1999). Woah!

If I had known anything about wasp morphology when I spotted this little guy, I would have been able to easily recognize the key morphological characteristic that separated this from the classic ant family. Ants have three main body segments. Usually, between body segments 2 and 3 there is a small bump in the space between the segments called a petiole. Mutillidae females never have petioles--this is one of their distinguishing characteristics.

This particular velvet ant species is normally found in the southeastern United States. Valerie had mentioned that we normally only see these guys during our Florida trip. Any idea what might have brought this stinging creature to the floor of my kitchen in Long Island, New York? 

Wallflower

I was wandering around the D'port attic when I found this dead lacewing attached to to the wall by its abdomen. Anyone have any idea what's going on? My google search was fruitless.

Look at me using Skitch like a pro.

Snake skin

My husband identified the species of snake as being a black racer, Coluber constrictor. They shed their skin by rubbing their bodies against the rocks. the scales are smooth, they are not keeled.

Painted Lady at Marsh

I visited the Botanical Gardens intending to blog about the "butterfly bush" in front of Greenhouse #2, which is usually covered in a number of different butterflies. Unfortunately, I only saw a couple of bees and no butterflies, so I went to the annual cut-flower garden (which is behind all the new greenhouses, by the beehives). No monarchs or swallowtails this time, but I did see lots of other butterflies (and bees and flies and cool stuff--you should really visit if you want to catch bugs), including this pretty painted lady.

The dorsal and ventral sides are really different, which is pretty cool...

Apparently dorsal sides are usually used for attracting mates, while ventral sides are used for camouflage. Here's a paper about it: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1666/2369.full

And here is the website for Marsh Botanical Gardens (it has directions to get there, I think): http://marshbotanicalgarden.yale.edu/

And here is more incentive for you to go (just think of all the pollinators!):

Ladybugs mating

If this doesn't count as an arthropod "interaction," I don't know what would. I thought I had to hurry to snap the photo, but it turns out ladybugs will keep this up for a couple hours. I also wondered why they were mating at this time of year. It may be because female ladybugs can store a male's sperm for months before using it, but I'm not sure. Anyway, enjoy your voyeuristic insect photo.

Rose, Bud, Thorn

Kidding! They only look like thorns. What you're actually looking at is a colony of treehoppers, adults and nymphs, being tended by an ant.

You see, these gregarious bugs like to gather around grub, and yes, they are true bugs, that's why the ant is there. The treehoppers use their piercing mouth parts to feed off of the plant, and as they're feasting extra sap is left on the plant as honeydew. This is what the ants are after. And while they're bumming a meal off the treehoppers they're also protecting them.

The mutualistic relationship with ant colonies gives treehoppers extra protection from predation. The ants are such effective babysitters their presences can even change treehopper parenting strategies. Without an ant presence treehopper females tend to stick around their first brood, protecting the nymphs. but if the ants are dropping by for dinner female treehoppers tend to go off and start more clutches, and the nymph survival rate for that colony goes way up.

It was a cool relationship like this that I stumbled upon on the underside of a leaf at GMF. Unfortunately I didn't have my trusty iPad on hand, so credit for the photo goes to http://www.wrobelphoto.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=3269

The Amazonian "Couple's Bug"

This post comes under a set of two unfortunate circumstances.  First, Blogger seems adamant that I be identified not by my Yale email or actual name, but by an account and screenname I set up in middle school.  Second, I've been taking photos on my SLR rather than ipad camera for the past two weeks, forgetting that my only memory card reader is in Boston.  So instead of something local and recent, here are some photos of a Fulgora laternaria I found a few months ago in Ecuador.  F. laternaria is related to planthoppers and is know in most of its range as the machaca (as well as the jequitiranaboia in much of the lowland Amazon, but I'm sticking to with machaca for now).  Machacas are the source of great folklore and are rumored to have many bizarre behaviors and inter-species interactions, few of which seem to have been documented by the scientific community.  The idea that the peanut-like appendage on their head lights up like a firefly seems to really be just a rumor, but there is plenty of speculation as to what it might actually be for (one website mentioned that they knock it against trees to attract mates, and this one's did seem hollow, so....)  Others speculate that the "head" might help the machaca mimic unpalatable lizards.  It has its share of cool plant interactions- for example, it perches mostly on toxic trees, and one online source claimed this was because it absorbs toxins found in trees to make it poisonous to predators.

 Check out those eyespots!

By far the best story about this insect, though, is this:  If stung by the (rather bizarre-looking) rear appendage (shown above), the victim dies a painful death..... unless they have sex within the day.  I was surprised to learn that this is taken really serious by some.  When I brought this one back to the camp I was staying at, the staff got really anxious and irritable with me for "being so reckless".  Even though antivenoms for snakebites were available in a nearby town, they said, I would really be up the creek without a paddle if I got stung.

Other naturalists who have had similar experiences tell me that the machaca is actually harmless, but I was more than happy to let this guy go back onto his toxic tree.



-William Freedberg

Pretty picture of a dragonfly in flight at GMF

Taken with the iPad.

Treasures at Home

This afternoon, I decided I would go on an expedition to find insects in my own backyard: the JE courtyard. I thought the most logical place to start were the flower beds surrounding the courtyard. I looked in each bed systematically and found no signs of bug life. Maybe it was the time of day or maybe insects are scared of the renown of Jonathan Edwards, but I had no luck regardless. Eventually I grew weary. However, as I was leaving for lunch I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. It was a tiny spider on the gate! It had made itself an intricate web on the bottom part of the gate. Even though it was so small, the spider had a lot of energy and life to it. I sat there by the gate watching this spider, transfixed, for around twenty minutes.

It was a common house spider, or Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Though most people have seen one of these spiders in their garage or attic and haven't thought twice about it; they are quite interesting to observe and beautiful in their own intricate way. Parasteatoda tepidariorum are synanthropic which means they benefit from and live near humans and the artificial habitats humans create. This spider was in the process of catching a minuscule fly in its web, injecting it with it's paralyzing neurotoxins, and wrapping it up to prepare for a feast. This spider will need to have a lot of energy soon since she has many babies coming- the brown blob above the spider in the picture is an egg sac.  Each egg sac can contain up to 400 eggs! It is amazing what one can find in their own backyard.

Have you ever had a craving for SALAD? No? I mean, I don't blame you. They're vegetables! (But, also, it's not like we have really awesome ways of chewing our lettuce such that it shows how dangerous we are to our predators... caterpillars take the cake on that one).

But, maybe, just in this past week, you have been thirsting for something sumptuous and crunchy, and you just can't put your finger on it... and it's drawing you to salad these days but you just don't know why! And you're bewildered by this seemingly out-of-nowhere lust for an unlikely food choice in the ominous dining hall, and you are taken to salad, and you eat it, but you're left unsatisfied.

Are you bugged by how accurately I am following your thoughts right now, especially in this past week?

I think I know your what's bugging you. Remember this from last weekend?

That's it! (I still know your thoughts).

Now, I present to you the recipe of the vinaigrette you ate last weekend at the Great Mountain Forest Camp that left you hungry for more. It's not a very scientific recipe, as I'm not too into the whole precise measurement thing, but, maybe you're into that as well.

You have to put aside your distaste for the French when you make this vinaigrette, because it was their idea. The key ingredient is mustard. Mustard comes in many forms - yellow, dijon, deli, etc. The best kind to use is whatever you have, but your vinaigrette will most benefit from a texture and/or spice. Dump about 1 tablespoon in a bowl.

Then, add the following:

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
~1/2 teaspoon some kind of dried leaf - maybe you have oregano or basil
~1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper (to taste)
squeezed lemon (to taste)

Put all of these things in the same bowl. The winning oil:vinegar ratio is always about 3:1. Whisk all together, and you get something pretty as a pink catydid,and tasty.
Now you can go and deal with your mysterious food cravings as of the past week. Happy?

More serious posts to come later, I promise.

Assassins Lurk

Assassin Bug!

Sinea spinipes (a)

The lab trip to the Peabody Research Station proved to be fruitful. Fiddler crabs, dragonflies, and other great specimens had filled out bags and jars. Despite the great range of critters we collected that day, I couldn't help but feel that something was missing. Perhaps it was the fact that I had spent a good portion of the Great Mountain Forest trip searching golden rod plants in vain for the elusive Ambush Bug, or maybe it was the fact that my back had lost a one-sided battle with mosquitos, but I couldn't shake the feeling. On the return hike back to the bus, which took us through the woods and along the side of some railroad tracks, I decided to pause and take a look at the vegetation. I was standing there scratching my numerous bug bites and contemplating where I had gone wrong (in my bug spray technique), when I saw it. Well, not exactly it. My eyes first latched onto a bright orange and black beetle that was resting upon one of the lower hanging branches. When I moved in to take a closer look, I noticed a brown mass sitting closely behind the beetle. I called over Rich, who promptly identified it as a possible Assassin Bug. I had no reason to doubt Rich's identification of the assassin, especially considering that I had seen him take out a dragonfly with deadly accuracy earlier that day (and you know what they say, "takes on to know one"). I happily snatched the two insects up with my kill jar and continued my hike back to the bus, before finally returning to campus.  

In the woods at the Peabody Research Station (Guilford, CT).

This little guy's unusual body layout and camouflage made him difficult to identify at first. Luckily, I followed Rich's advice and sought out guides on Assassin Bugs. I was able to narrow down the specimen to the genus Sinea before finally taking a leap of faith and claiming this bug to be none other than Sinea spinipes, a species native to North America and often found on the edge of wooded habitats. Great, I identified the bug, but what is an Assassin Bug other than an unusual looking insect? 

An interesting specimen found on along the trail in Guilford, Ct., believed to be Sinea spinipes.

Assassin bugs belong to the insect family of Reduviidae, containing over 7000 species of assassin bugs, wheel bugs, and thread-legged bugs, making it one of the largest families in Hemiptera. These hunters use stealth and a lethal saliva to dispatch prey. As nymphs, these guys will actually cover themselves in debris or even the carcasses of other insects in order to conceal themselves. As adults, they continue using camouflage to blend into their surroundings and hunt prey. Once an assassin bug manages to snag a prey-- with the help of special hairs on their forelimbs to keep the meal in place--it will inject lethal saliva. This saliva liquifies the insides of the prey and allows the assassin bug to have a nice drink, so to speak. 

Another one bites the dust! An assassin bug catches a wasp. (b)

So next time you take a stroll through the woods, keep an eye out because an assassin may be lurking near by.

Fun Fact: The lethal saliva of some Reduviid species has been found to have antibacterial properties in humans, including e. coli! 

(a) http://bugguide.net/node/view/335882/bgimage
(b) http://www.koleopterologie.de/heteroptera/2cimi1/reduviidae-rhynocoris-erythropus-foto-zschaler.jpg

Wolf Spider and Nest

While roaming the wilds of Guilford, CT on Wednesday, I chanced upon a large brown spider on the side of the trail through the woodland habitat. As I approached with my kill jar at the ready, the spider scurried into a curled, desiccated leaf. I was able to capture it, and with the help of a wise entomologist named Ray, identified it as a wolf spider (family Lycosidae).

Wolf spiders are so named because they were once falsely believed to hunt prey in packs. They are, however, active hunters: rather than build a web and wait to entrap prey, they hunt on the move, using excellent eyesight to outpace a variety of critters. Some are even known to go fishing (and eat small fish!).

The curled leaf contained a thick silk nest, indicating that this Lycosid was probably a female who had just laid her eggs and used the leaf to wrap them in a protective silk mesh. [big time PLANT INSECT INTERACTION]. Interestingly, this behavior allows us to narrow it down to one of three genera: Alopecosa, Arctosa, or Trochosa. This is because all other wolf spiders carry their silk enmeshed eggs on their bodies.

Between the rainstorms this past weekend, I was excited to find evidence of complex plant-insect interactions within just a few hundred yards of the lodge. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the precise bush that I spotted, but the multiple protuberances on a few leaves that caught my eye were similar to the one below. (1) I brought them in for closer examination.

 Dave Wagner told me that the strategy with any sort of funny plant growth, where the tissue is being manipulated or at least affected by a foreign agent, is to look for a chamber. Chambers indicate an insect, while lack thereof decidedly says fungus. If it's a insect, he told me, Cecidomyiidae was a likely contender, as this family (in order Diptera, sub-order Nematocera) parasitizes a wide range of plants. The common name is gall midge, and their larvae are orange, red or yellow.

After cracking off the 'tentacle,' a small orange larvae similar to those above (2) was nestled at the bottom; it was indeed a Cecidomyiidae larvae! I coaxed it out with a probe into the field of view. Dave pointed out the dark beak-like mandibles at one end of the body, which are used for chewing and the only evidence of an otherwise indistinguishable head.

Evidence of endophytophagous insects can be found inducing any number of bizarre growths across especially woody host plants, such as the tree I found them on. Many hosts are of great economic importance; the Asian rice gall midge has been considered a major pest since the 1960s, while the Hessian Fly and Orange Wheat Blossom Midge attack both bread wheat and durum wheat. Although the precise mechanism is not known, virulent Cecidomyiidae larvae stimulate differentiation of plant growth above their chamber to the production of amino-acid and sugar rich nutritive tissue (this is the gall we see). The cell growth beneath them is simultaneously inhibited; both of these actions cause stress to the plant, and an antagonistic coevolution pattern has resulted in chemical plant-defense responses in many hosts.(3) 

Here is a photo of an adult laying an egg. (4)

(1) http://moremoth.blogspot.com/2011/10/nail-galls.html

(2) http://www.biolib.cz/en/image/id150000/

(3) Grasses and Gal Midges : Plant Defense and Insect Adaptation

M. O. Harris,J. J. Stuart,M. Mohan,S. Nair,R. J. Lamb,O. Rohfritsch

Annual Review of Entomology, Vol. 48: 549 -577 (Volume publication date January 2003)

(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cecidomyiidae_laying_eggs.jpg

Love is literally in the air.

On our trip to Great Mountain Forest, I saw these Pearl Crescents (Phyciodes tharos). This is one of the most common species of Nymphalidae in eastern North America. You can find them on the wing throughout the warm season (late spring through early fall), and larvae can be found eating a wide variety of aster plants. This probably explains why you will most commonly find adults in fields and weedy areas along roads and other disturbed or early successional habitats.
The mating pair that I saw in this picture was actually flying together (until I caught them in my net!). When they are coupled like this, the female is the one who powers flight, and the male is just along for the ride.