About.com Insects

Friday Fact - Stink Bug Mothers

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:00:33 +0000

Did you know...

Females of some stink bug species care for their eggs.

The mother stink bug will stand guard over her eggs, protecting them from predators and parasites, until they hatch. Don't start thinking stink bug mom's deserve Mother of the Year awards, though. These caretakers have a tendency to stand guard facing in the same direction all the time, leaving the eggs near her rear vulnerable to attack.

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Friday Fact - Stink Bug Mothers originally appeared on About.com Insects on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 05:00:33.

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Wanted: Classrooms to Study Monarchs in Space

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:42:11 +0000

NASA launches the next space shuttle on November 16th, and within its payload will be three late instar monarch caterpillars. The caterpillars will be placed aboard the International Space Station inside a small rearing chamber and an incubator. Still and video images of the experiment will be available online.

Monarch butterflies are headed to the International Space Station.
Photo: Courtesy of NASA

Monarch Watch is looking for 20 classrooms to help monitor the development of the butterflies in space. To be eligible, your school must be in the U.S., east of the Rockies (sorry West Coast schools!). If you would like to participate, you must contact Monarch Watch at monarch@ku.edu no later than 5 pm on November 6th.

Monarch Watch will send a special monarch larva kit to participating schools. The monarch kit costs $17.95 and the overnight shipping will be an additional $26 for a total of $43.95. BioServe Space Technologies will send participating classrooms a kit that includes a rearing chamber (similar to the one going into space) with instructions.

For additional information, email Monarch Watch at monarch@ku.edu.

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Wanted: Classrooms to Study Monarchs in Space originally appeared on About.com Insects on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 11:42:11.

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Bug of the Week - November 4, 2009

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:11:56 +0000

I seem to be on a bit of a Diptera kick lately (there's your first hint). For those of you new to the Bug of the Week challenge, each Wednesday I post an image of a mystery insect. Your job is to uncover its identity. Post your answer here in a comment, and if you're correct, I'll give you a shout out in next week's post. I always provide a few clues in the forum, should you need a little extra help.

Last week's winners are weirdbuglady, Mobugs41, Moni, and Mike, all of whom recognized the mystery critter as a vinegaroon or whipscorpion. These arachnids are known for their defensive behavior - they flick their tails and spray acetic acid (essentially vinegar) at their attackers.

Photo: Flickr user motleypixel (CC-by-SA license)

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Bug of the Week - November 4, 2009 originally appeared on About.com Insects on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 05:11:56.

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Child Dies After Mom Misuses Bug Bombs

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:33:43 +0000

This is a truly heartbreaking story with a tragic ending. A well-intentioned mother in South Carolina and her two young sons moved into a mobile home, ready to start a new chapter in their lives. The mobile home had just one flaw - it was infested with insects. No mother would want her children to live in a bug-infested home, right? So this mom took action.

Elizabeth Whitfield purchased some bug bombs and set them off in her single-wide trailer. The bugs lived. She tried again, with the same result. Over the span of several weeks, she used a total of seven bug bombs in her small home. It's unclear whether she followed the directions on the label: cover all furniture, vacate the building for at least four hours, and open the windows before reoccupying the space. But she certainly used too many bug bombs too often for the size of her home.

On Sunday, Ms. Whitfield called 911 because her 10-month-old son was having trouble breathing. When the first responders arrived, they called a hazardous materials team to the scene because the chemical odor coming from the trailer was so overwhelming.

Baby Jacob died. Two-year-old Kevin was hospitalized and put on a respirator. The hospital staff followed decontamination procedures with the mother, because her clothes were so coated in pesticides. A definitive cause of death will not be determined for several weeks, when the coroner receives the toxicology results. But investigators could find no other possible cause for the child's death.

Please, please don't let such a tragedy happen in your own home. If you've got an insect infestation that requires treatment, call a professional. And if you insist on doing your own pest control, read and follow all directions on the product you purchase. It's the law.

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Child Dies After Mom Misuses Bug Bombs originally appeared on About.com Insects on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 20:33:43.

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Butterflies Use Wings to Listen for Feathered Predators

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:04:20 +0000

Scientists at the University of Bristol discovered unusual structures on the wings of blue morpho butterflies - ears! The research team, led by Katie Lucas, believes these structures help the tropical butterflies detect predators, especially birds.

The simple ear sits at the base of the wing and looks like a sheet of stretched rubber. This oval-shaped tympanal membrane, with an unusual dome in the middle, is attached directly to sensory organs and is responsible for converting sound waves into signals that can be picked up by nerve cells.

Close up showing the structure of the Blue Morpho butterfly's ear, which is found at the base of its wing.
Photo credit: Katie Lucas

Using a tiny laser beam, Lucas scanned the surface of the membrane while it was in action, and found that lower pitch sounds cause vibrations only in a part of the outer membrane while higher pitch sounds caused the entire membrane to vibrate.

The research suggests this butterfly ear may be capable of distinguishing between low and high pitch sounds. Sensitivity to lower pitches could help the blue morpho detect the beating of a birds' wings. The butterfly could also hear higher pitched birdsongs.

The discovery was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, which also provided funding for the study.

Learn more - How Insects Hear

Source: "Hearing on the wing: New structure discovered in butterfly ears" - press release from University of Bristol, October 21, 2009.

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Butterflies Use Wings to Listen for Feathered Predators originally appeared on About.com Insects on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 11:04:20.

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Dracula Ants Suck the Blood of Their Babies

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:39:41 +0000

In the forests of Madagascar lives a group of ants worthy of some Halloween recognition. Ants in the genus Adetomyrma have a gruesome habit of sucking the blood from their own larvae. Brian Fisher, curator of entomology at the California Academy of Sciences, made the unusual discovery in 2001 and dubbed the insects "Dracula ants" for their gory behavior.

Fisher realized his Dracula ants were significant in more ways than one. Unlike other ants, the Dracula ants have a single connection between the thorax and abdomen - a "wasp waist." This morphology suggests the Dracula ants might be the missing evolutionary link between wasps and their descendants, the ants.

And for the record, though queens and workers do drain hemolymph from their larvae to nourish themselves, this cannibalistic activity doesn't actually kill the brood.

Learn more: All Kinds of Ants

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Dracula Ants Suck the Blood of Their Babies originally appeared on About.com Insects on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 05:39:41.

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Spooky Friday Fact - Deathwatch Beetles

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:00:48 +0000

Did you know...

The tapping of deathwatch beetles is believed by some to foretell the death of someone in the house.

Deathwatch beetles burrow in the structural timber of homes. Their rather peculiar mating call involves the male banging his head against the walls of his wooden burrow. In days when people sat up through dark, quiet nights tending to family members on their sickbeds, this tapping sound was somewhat spooky. The beetle became associated with death, and earned the nickname deathwatch beetle.

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Spooky Friday Fact - Deathwatch Beetles originally appeared on About.com Insects on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 05:00:48.

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Bug of the Week - October 28, 2009

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:51:58 +0000

This week's bug of the week is a fun one! Do you recognize the critter in this photo? If you can name it, leave your answer in a comment. Next Wednesday, I'll tell you what it is. Not sure? Click over to the forum for a few clues.

Last week's challenge proved to be just that - a challenge. Both Mobugs41 and Mike knew the insects in the photo are flies. More specifically, these odd-looking insects are big-headed flies, which belong to the family Pipunculidae. They do have enormous heads, don't they?

Picasaweb user Ben (CC-by-SA license)

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Bug of the Week - October 28, 2009 originally appeared on About.com Insects on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 05:51:58.

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A Perfect Storm for Monarchs This Year?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:26:12 +0000

Several months ago, I shared my worries about the low monarch butterfly numbers being observed in my area. Many of you wrote to me, noting similarly diminished monarch populations from Missouri to Maine. It just seems like a bad year for monarch butterflies. And now, it appears, things are only going to get worse as they head to Mexico for the winter.

The first monarch butterflies, those that spent last winter in Mexico's oyumel fir forests, began their journey north in spring. Unfortunately, they flew into the Texas drought. With limited host and nectar plants available, those early migrants had modest success in laying eggs, so the next wave of migrants was already reduced.

Monarchs at their overwintering site.
Photo: � Flickr user rainasun

The few monarchs born under the scorching Texas sun made their way north, and were equally unlucky in their timing. For a time, the drought extended all the way to Minnesota and Wisconsin. And then came the rain. And the cold. For weeks, and weeks, and weeks. Much of the northeastern U.S. missed the usual spring warm-up entirely, and endured an long, chilly drenching. Anyone who knows anything about butterflies can tell you that cold and rainy is not good butterfly weather.

Summer in the northern parts of the U.S. was disturbingly cool for both the monarchs and heat-loving types like myself. The milkweed grew, the aphids came, the flowers bloomed, but only the occasional monarch visited my backyard butterfly garden. By August, when my milkweed is usually stripped of leaves by the dozens of monarch caterpillars feeding on it, I started growing concerned. Others reported similarly low caterpillar numbers, and I knew it would be a bad year for monarchs, number-wise. Cold weather returned by Labor Day in my area. I missed my goal of tagging 50 fall migrants by a whopping 49; I only managed to tag a single monarch butterfly this year.

And now, on top of all this bad news, comes word from Mexico that the precious oyumel firs, so vital to the monarchs' survival this winter, are infested with bark beetles. Mexican loggers are removing up to 9,000 beetle-infested trees, in an attempt to keep the pests from spreading to the rest of the monarch's refuge. The bark beetle population exploded this year thanks to a drought that weakened the trees' resistance to attack. Just when the Mexican authorities seemed to be gaining the upper hand against illegal loggers, who have decimated the monarch habitat for years, an insect pest forces them to further strip the forest of its trees.

The deck just seems to be stacked against the monarchs this year.

For a more detailed analysis of what went wrong for this year's migrating monarchs, check out this post at the Monarch Watch blog.

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A Perfect Storm for Monarchs This Year? originally appeared on About.com Insects on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 12:26:12.

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Life on the Ant Farm, Part 2

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:32:49 +0000

These ants are dumb. There's really no other explanation.

Last week, I wrote about my first observations of the ants in two ant farm products I'm reviewing. Though my ants weren't behaving in the orderly, purposeful way I had expected, I gave them the benefit of the doubt. It was only their first week in their new home, after all. But now I'm really starting to question their smarts.

There are NOT my ants. My ants are dumb.
Flickr user jurvetson (CC license)

The ants in the gel colony continue their attempts at escape. The lone ant that had started tunneling straight down, perhaps in search of a basement door, did manage to enlist the help of one other ant. So that makes two ants tunneling to the bottom of the farm, while all the rest repeat their doomed efforts to find a way out on the surface. Meanwhile, their members have started dropping like flies, or, um, ants. A neat and tidy pile of dead ants is accumulating in the corner of the colony, and it appears the survivors are covering their fallen comrades in bits of gel.

The old school ants, those living on the vintage ant farm, are even less organized in their efforts. They have yet to dig a single tunnel. Instead, they randomly cart bits of sand from one end of the farm to the other. They don't seem to care much about their dead, as ant corpses are strewn all over the silo, barn, and farmhouse. I think it's only a matter of days before they're all gone.

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Life on the Ant Farm, Part 2 originally appeared on About.com Insects on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at 06:32:49.

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