Fungal Parasites and Zombie Ants

Val shared this video in her E&EB 122 section last year.  It shows a fungus, specifically a Cordycep, that infects ants ant come into contact with it.  Once it infects an ant, it will begin to grow, and kill its host in a few days (Hughes et al 2011).  Then, a stalk will emerge from the ant's head and release new spores (as seen in the video, and also this picture).

(National Geographic)

One of the more remarkable things about fungus (or rather, these funguses, since what was thought to be one species turns out to be at least four) is that it first causes the ants to find a way to a place that is well suited for releasing the spores, such as a certain height in the rainforest canopy.  The ant then latches on to the leave, anchoring itself with a "death grip" so that it stays fixed.

This isn't rare parasite behavior.  This kind host manipulation is found in may species, including insects,  mice, snails, and many others.  It can even affect humans (serious links one and two; silly link).  What's amazing is how long this particular fungus seems to have been around: 48 million years.  It's also pretty neat how they discovered this.  Obviously, behavior can be very difficult to study from the fossil record, and fungi don't lend to good fossils either.  But the ant's death grip actually leaves a very distinctive mark on leaves, which are often preserved well.  The researchers looked at leaf fossils, and found evidence of this behavior 48 mya, making it the first known example of host behavioral manipulation...as well as something that looks like it's straight out of a science fiction movie.

Grasshoppers Change Courtship Tunes to Cope with Urban Noises

Hiiiii!

I bet you thought I would not blog this week. BUT HERE I AM!

Here's a cool article my friend found for me: "Grasshoppers Change Courtship Tunes to Cope with Urban Noises."

And here's the tl;dr (too long; didn't read) version:

Grasshoppers, like many insects, communicate with each other with sounds that they produce. But in urban environments, where the sounds of large industrial vehicles and people and all other man-made things are very loud, grasshoppers have adapted to adjust to these barriers to their effective communication. A team of researchers from the University of Bielefeld in Germany observed the bow-winged grasshoppers from roadsides as well as quieter places. The scientists analyzed more than 1,000 courtship songs that these grasshoppers produced. In a statement, the P.I. Ulrike Lampe described the results: "Bow-winged grasshoppers produce songs that include low and high frequency components. We found that grasshoppers from noisy habitats boost the volume of the lower-frequency part of their song, which makes sense since road noise can mask signals in this part of the frequency spectrum." The researchers believe this is not a "spontaneous behavioral adaptation to noise," but, rather an effect of long-term adaptation to these environmental changes. 

Really cool. I'm interested in knowing if females who are adapted to receive the mating calls can recognize grasshoppers from both noisy and quiet areas as members of the same species to reproduce with. 

If you want more reading, the article was published in Functional Ecology. Clickie here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12000/full.

Hidden Treasures of Branford Library

So I was working in the library and got distracted by looking at the books on the wall and saw this beauty:

So of course I had to procrastinate and look through it. There were some great pictures so I took pictures of the pictures to show you guys.  I found my new favorite butterfly:

(The one on the top right)

I think I'm going to have to search for that one until I find it for my collection. It's called Panacea Prola.

I took some other pictures of pretty butterflies too:

After finding this book I decided to look to see if there were any other books on insects to help me procrastinate some more. I didn't find much, but I did find a book that was about a boat named after an insect, so I took a picture of that:

I realize that that is backwards, so just to clarify, the book is about a boat named Gipsy Moth. I also found The Origin of Species, which is E&EB related so I took a picture of that for you guys too.

And that concludes the list of insect-related books found in one of the rooms in the Branford library.

Ugly Bug Ball

So, I don't know how you all are planning to spend your Thanksgiving breaks, but I'll be searching for true love....Ugly Bug Style!

More subtle childhood inspiration for Entomology:

Note: the drawing board brings us For-mic-i-dae, Hy-men-op-tera. Better known as, Ugly Bug!

Woolly Aphids

Hey everyone! I've identified an insect family for you! Woo! (Well, maybe. I have to look at it under a microscope to double check. But this could be right... maybe)!

Remember that one time in East Rock, when we saw a tree branch that seemed to be colonized by a whole bunch of fluffy white stuff? And then, after Rich's suggestion, we--the n00bs that we were--collected some of the fluffy insects, excited to get hold of a "different family." They looked sort of like this:

Image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjip_JT06hypNZvxlAwrCBuQ-Je1LBLJmaB1QZD3aAyigEKoes-1nZM2K66YKdbaxDkepJVzZJ20Jtdt94VHKL0dMHr6HFz7FEsLzgsHU6E2h1__qCLD1iCr8varndmElB4Utt_OGctsiA/s400/fagr3028.jpg

If I am not mistaken, these are probably woolly aphids from the Eriosomatinae subfamily (Order: Hemiptera, Suborder: Sternorrhyncha, Family: Aphididae). One of their common names is "fairy fly" because of the way they fly. They initially don't use their wings, allowing the wind to carry them by their waxy streaks, so they just drift in synchrony with the wind like plant seeds, until they are ready to use their wings and direct their flight. 

Woolly aphids get their fluffy appearance from a wax they produce in very long, thin streams. If you wash a woolly aphid in a wax-dissolving substance, you will see an ordinary-looking aphid underneath.  The wax protects the aphids from predators while they feed because, although it is visible, it is often mistaken for mold or fungus, which no predator wants to eat. The adults are winged and move to new locations where they lay egg masses. Up close, they can be really cute:

Image source: http://www.pbase.com/tmurray74/image/34892806

As we know, aphids are sucking insects and, as, Hemipterans, have piercing-sucking mouthparts to penetrate the thick plant matter they eat and suck up the liquid contents. Woolly aphids withdraw sap from the plant matter they pierce, which can be leaves, buds, twigs, bark, and even plant roots. From feeding on this sap, they produce a sweet, sticky substance known as honeydew, which often coats leaves, bark, and objects beneath the tree, giving them a wet, shiny appearance. But regular Aphids use their cornicles on the dorsal side of their abdomens to deposit honeydew. You will only find reduced or absent cornicle structures in Erosomatinae. 

Anyway, you should probably still look at your specimen under the microscope because I haven't yet, and at this point this is all still speculation. But at least now you know a little bit more about fluffy white stuff you find in nature.

Sources (really weak - there have to be better woolly aphid sources online)!

http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgarden/ygbriefs/e453woollyaphid.html

http://www.journal-news.net/page/content.detail/id/580213/Woolly-aphids-are-more-than-floating-seeds.html?nav=5067

One thing I try to do in my painting studio is to mix "unnamable colors," colors that can't be described as mere red or bright red. Many biological colors are unnamable. For example, human skin has so many colors other than just the "skin color:" bluish light-brown, pinkish dark-brown, orangish medium-brown, etc. So for my painting I decided to get colors from larva. I sent an email to Marta to ask whether she had some actual colored specimens that I could see, but unfortunately larva lose colors when they are preserved. So I ended up color-printing photos from Google search.

With the photos on my studio wall, I begun mixing the "larvae colors" from the colors I already had. Mixing colors is not an easy process, especially when it gets to making unnamable colors. For example,  to make the following color I had to mix: purple, primary yellow, titanium white, raw umber, dark gray, quinacridone magenta, dioxazine purple, and little bits of colors that I don't remember. After 7 hours of struggle with the larva photo, I ended up with 20 larva colors.

 

With these colors I made my painting.

It's an interesting idea that by simply mimicking the colors of larva one can recreate the physical properties of larva in an entirely different form. My next goal in painting is to use these larva colors to create a sensual feeling of "finger-poking the larval abdomen."

The bugs are out again!

In todays delightful weather, I decided not to do any studying (terrible idea) and go hike up east rock (awesome idea).

Turns out the bugs are back!  I didn't bring my net (sad day) but caught a lot using the very scientific stick your hand in its flight path and make it land method.   I found two really awesome mini coleopterans, a siricid wasp (which I unfortunately couldn't catch) some little bluish gnats, and many others.

Get out there tomorrow!  Bring nets!