Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady’s “newspaper clippings” file runneth over, so here are a few articles for you to peruse.  Please note that most come from the excellent Smithsonian daily e-newsletter, which is not only free (though a donation is always appreciated), but there’s no pay wall. The newsletter includes articles about current discoveries, archaeology, history, insects, birds and mammals, oceans, etc.

THE BUGLADY KNOWS that she’s preaching to the choir, here – not to the folks who say “Fewer bugs? That’s great!” Anyone who likes to eat, who likes birds (and dragonflies!), and who appreciates our natural communities and ecosystems should be a fan of insects and other “bugs” and should be concerned about their .

IN A RELATED VEIN – ().

ALGORITHMS ARE EVERYWHERE. Recipes are algorithms (“an algorithm is a finite set of instructions carried out in a specific order to perform a particular task.” Or solve a mathematical computation). Social media relies on algorithms to feed you content. Now it turns out that even .

ONE MEASUREMENT that the BugLady has always used to gauge insect numbers is the flurry of bugs around the porch light at night. Biographies of many insects, especially of moths, note whether they are attracted to light or not. Scientists are figuring out what’s really happening (, too).

WE JUMP IN LAKE MICHIGAN on January 1 (well, some of us do) (but not the BugLady); Cordova, Alaska has an Ice Worm Festival. Whatever gets you through the winter. Supposedly, cold-blooded critters don’t do so well when temperatures get below about 40 degrees (warm-blooded animals use part of their daily energy/food budget to maintain a core heat, but cold-blooded animals are at the mercy of the ambient temperature).  have a couple of tricks up their sleeves. 

Alas – we’ve just missed this year’s , but it’s not too early to start planning for 2025.  

MONARCH WINGS –

IN THE “ALWAYS-TASTEFUL” CATEGORY: years ago, a colleague of the BugLady’s husband asked if mice pee. Her husband knew that if he said yes, the man was going to go home and empty the cupboards and sterilize everything. So he said “No, the liquid is included in the mouse poop.” Do insects pee? Many don’t, and “peeing” isn’t exactly the right name for it because they don’t have a separate exit just for liquids. Insects have structures (OK – Malpighian tubules) that collect liquid waste (uric acid and ammonia) and deposit it in the hind gut. Terrestrial insects need to conserve water, so they reabsorb usable liquids from the hind gut and the rest gets mixed with the digestive wastes and excreted (“just like mice….”) (aquatic insects are constantly excreting liquid to keep from getting waterlogged). 

But – insects that suck sap have a different challenge. Sap contains sugar in very small concentrations, so plant juice feeders have to take in a lot of liquid (about 300 times their body weight daily) in order to get enough calories, and it comes out under pressure. . How do they handle it? 

FINALLY – in the “Better Late than Never” category – the BugLady posted an episode about caddisflies last week, and today BugFan Steve sent this great .

The groundhog did not see its shadow. The way the BugLady learned it, if he sees his shadow, there are six more weeks of winter, and if he doesn’t, there’s a month and a half until spring (and insects).  

The BugLady

The post Bugs in the News XIII appeared first on Field Station.

Salutations, BugFans,

The BugLady has been busy – here’s a slightly-spruced-up version of an episode that she posted 10 years ago. The Jumping bristletail that inspired it remains the only one she’s ever seen. 

It was found by accident, as many good things are, clinging to one end of a branch that was lifted from the forest floor to get a better view of the mushrooms growing on it.

It turned out to be one seriously ancient critter. Insects probably got their beginnings 443 to 417 million years ago (mya) during the Silurian Period (for a long time it was believed that insects descended from the millipede/centipede bunch, but evidence now points to origins within the Crustacea). The oldest insect fossil (so far) is a “sort-of-silverfish” that dates back 396 million years to the Devonian Period. There are fossil springtails from that period, too, but springtails are not considered insects any more. The Carboniferous Period (354 to 290 mya) was marked by dragonflies with three-foot wingspreads and by an abundance of cockroaches. Tracks of Jumping Bristletails have been found in Permian rock (290 to 248 mya) (the upstart dinosaurs didn’t appear until the Triassic Period, some 50 million years later, plus-or-minus). 

Jumping bristletails used to be classified with the silverfish (the blameless Jumping bristletail is still lumped with silverfish on some exterminator’s websites), but now they’re in their own order. In defining an animal scientifically, the groupings move from the most general umbrella to the most specific umbrella. Kingdom (Animalia) comes first, the biggest umbrella, then Phylum (Arthropoda), then Class (Insecta), then Order, then Family, Genus, and finally Species. 

Jumping bristletails have two different order names. The newer name is Microcoryphia (“small head”), and the older appellation is Order Archaeognatha (“ancient jaw”), which refers to the way the mandible connects to the insect. Whichever order name you pick, Jumping bristletails are alone in it. That 396 million year old “silverfish” had the new-fangled double-jointed (dicondylic) mandible, but Jumping bristletails have the original equipment, a single (monocondylic), knuckle-like joint/articulation that allows its mouthparts to rotate or twist. Ancient insect jaws probably resembled those of Jumping bristletails, but most insects developed from a side branch that sprouted from the insect family tree early on. Some scientists consider the Jumping bristletail to be the least evolutionarily changed of any living insect – a chip off a very old block.

There are two Jumping bristletail families worldwide, the largest of which is Machilidae. Both families occur in North America, as do about two dozen of the 350 to 450 species of the world’s Jumping bristletails (we even have an introduced species). 

(No – the BugLady is not going to try to name a genus or species for this one, but if she was a betting woman, she’d put a little money on Pedetontus saltator.)

Back in the (Permian) day, there were many wingless insects. Today, the vast majority of insects have wings, and many of those that have wings have two pairs of them. Most of the species that are wingless derive from ancestors that once had them. Not so the Jumping bristletail and the silverfish, who are primitively/primarily wingless – their ancestors never enjoyed flight. 

As a group Jumping bristletails are drab (though a close look may reveal a variety of color patterns, and the BugLady’s bristletail is downright iridescent), scale-covered, cylindrical, hump-backed (silverfish are flat), and generally less than three-quarters of an-inch long. At one end they have sensory antennae and both simple and compound eyes (with their simple eyes, silverfish are blind to all but light and dark), and at the other end, three caudal filaments – two sensitive cerci and a central terminal filament.  Fringes of hairs on the rear filaments explain the “bristletail” part.

They have the requisite six legs, but attached to the underside of some abdominal segments are additional pairs of short, moveable appendages called “styli” (plural of stylus) that serve as sensors of their substrate and that may be vestigial legs left over from their ancestors. Jumping bristletails dehydrate easily and must absorb water from their environment through tiny, paired sacs that are located on several abdominal segments and that work like pockets turned inside out (OK – “membranous, eversible sac-like vesicles”).&�Բ�����;.

As their name suggests, they jump – six inches and more – which silverfish can’t do. This they accomplish by pushing up with their legs while contracting the muscles in their abdomen to arch their body downward. They can run fast, too. Jumping is their main defense, but like silverfish, a dense covering of scales renders them slippery and helps them escape from the clutches of their predators.

In the “Is There a Video of That?” category (and there undoubtedly is one), consider Stephen P. Yanoviak’s research that looked at Jumping bristletails for clues to the evolution of insect flight. When a Jumping bristletail leaps from tree to tree, its drop is augmented by “steering,” using the long terminal filament (“directed aerial descent”) (kind of like a flying squirrel). Yanoviak dusted Jumping bristletails with orange fluorescent powder and dropped them from branches high in rainforest trees. Results showed that the filament was vital to a successful glide and landing, and Yanoviak suggests that because these wingless, arboreal insects had “flight” under control, winged flight probably originated from terrestrial insects.

Jumping bristletails live in a wide variety of conditions, from Arctic to desert, and they especially like leaf litter, bark, rock crevices, and rocky seashores. The North Carolina State University Entomology Pages rank Jumping bristletails as “common in grassy or wooded habitats.” They are found in the nooks and crannies of the world, where they shelter during the day and from which they perambulate at night. They rarely come indoors.  

Herbivores and decomposers/recyclers, they use their mouthparts to feed on algae, fungi, lichens, mosses, and soft, decaying organic material, though a few sources said that they eat tiny invertebrates, too (one source said that they pick at their food rather than chewing it). They don’t/can’t bite people. They are eaten by birds, centipedes, spiders, mites, ants, and flies.   

Ancient mouth; ancient winglessness, ancient reproduction, and ancient metamorphosis. Males court, sometimes with elaborate dances, then leave a sperm packet for her to pick up (indirect sperm transfer). She may lay as many as 30 eggs, but to lay more, she must dance again. Some species skip the dance and reproduce by parthenogenesis – females reproduce without input from males. Young Jumping bristletails have an ametabolous development – they start as miniatures of the adults and simply grow, shedding eight times over the course of about two years before reaching adulthood. Unlike most other insects, they continue to shed as adults and may live for two additional years. Each time they molt, they must first cement themselves to the substrate – a stick, rock, etc. – using fecal material as a glue. Should the glue fail, the insect will not molt, but die. 

Interesting Jumping bristletail facts:

• Take yourself to a woodland some night and shine a flashlight on a spot in the leaf litter – Jumping bristletails are attracted by light and will appear after about 15 minutes. Their eyes will glow in the flashlight’s beam.

• According to a blog called “myrmecos” by entomologist and photographer Alex Wild, “In California these flightless insects are common around harvester ant nests. I don’t think they have any sort of specialized relationship with ants, except perhaps finding the warm microclimate of the mound surface agreeable.”

Small, yes. Old, oh yes. But not uncomplicated.

The BugLady

PS – !!!!  

The post Jumping Bristletail Retread appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

A while back, BugFan Tom sent these pictures of a Carolina leaf-roller cricket from the Deep South. Carolina leaf-roller crickets (Camptonotus carolinensis) are in the family Gryllacrididae, the Raspy crickets, a family we haven’t encountered before. And with good reason – although there are about 600 species in the family, all but one live elsewhere (with one-third of the known species, Australia is especially Raspy-cricket-rich). There’s only one genus in the family in North America, and only one species in that genus.

Raspy crickets are typically (but not always) wingless and nocturnal. They make silk with glands in their mouths (their silk is similar to that of silkworms) and use it to construct their daytime retreats in leaves or soil. The ability to make silk is pretty common among insects (think cocoon), but Raspy crickets are unusual because they can make silk as both nymphs and as adults. The “rasp” in their name refers a sound they make when they’re disturbed; the catch is that most animals that make noise have ears to hear it, and Raspy crickets don’t.

With bodies that are only about a half-inch long, Carolina leaf-roller crickets (CLRCs) are not imposing. Some come in , but most are a warm, honey color, and females have a conspicuous, up-curved ovipositor and a dark patch on their rump that one blogger thinks makes them look waspy. When it comes to antennae, though, CLRCs are overachievers – a half-inch of cricket may have three to four inches of antennae. CLRCs get around pretty fast, and although most sources say that they don’t jump, a few say that they do, and quite well. There are some and . The BugLady thinks they’re pretty cute.

The map at bugguide.net, which relies on submissions of pictures by its members, shows a , but the BugLady found additional reports of the cricket in Ontario, North Dakota, and Iowa. Within that range, they’re found in trees and shrubs in deciduous forests, and they’re easily overlooked. The crickets are nocturnal (and so is BugFan Tom).

When they’re disturbed, CLRCs make sound by inflating their abdomen, stiffening a few of their legs, and then flexing the others to do push-ups. Sound is made as raised “pegs” on the abdomen rub against the legs on the way up and down. Stridulation is a noise made by the friction of rubbing two body parts together, and this is called defensive stridulation.

The BugLady was curious about an insect that makes sounds that it can’t hear, so she did a kittle reading about sound production in Raspy crickets, mostly in papers about Australian species of Gryllacrididae. They discuss defensive stridulation, to which the cricket may add a visual intimidation display and mandible-clicking, and which may get more frenetic if the intruder doesn’t get the message. Also in the Raspy cricket arsenal are foot-stomping and sending out vibrations by drumming on the substrate during courtship – males and females may perform a drum duet.

CLRCs are opportunistic feeders that . It’s not uncommon for members of the grasshopper and cricket bunch to augment their diet of vegetables with the odd bit of protein, and many of the Gryllacrididae are omnivores and/or seed or nectar-feeders, but the BugLady didn’t find any reference to CLRCs eating plant matter. They are preyed upon by a wasp named that captures them and .

After a night of hunting, CLRCs spend the day in a . Here’s how the Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States describes the process “During the day, individuals shelter in leaf rolls made by cutting into the edge of a leaf, folding over a flap, and holding the surfaces together with silk spun from the mouth. Somehow, the long antennae are completely contained within the shelter.” Bugguide.net adds that CLRCs “Sometimes use the pods of Bladdernut, Stahpylea trifolia, as a shelter instead of a leaf.” One Australian paper on Raspy crickets said that they reuse shelters, that they find their way back to the shelters by laying down a pheromone trail and using their very-sensitive, sensory antennae to follow the trail back, and that the pheromones produced by each individual are not generic but are unique to it.

There were a few pictures online of CLRCs afflicted by a zombie fungus, a fungus that attacks arthropods, grows into and consumes their organs, and as the coup de grâce, overrides the insect’s brain and directs it to seek high ground rather than shelter. When the , its victim is up in the breezes where the spores will be distributed most effectively. .

Thanks for the pictures, Tom.

The BugLady

The post Carolina Leaf-roller Cricket – a Snowbird Special appeared first on Field Station.