Here’s a video I put together of the “maggot art” I talked about earlier this week.  Enjoy!

It’s time for Entoblitz 2012, April 27th-29th.  Be sure to check this out.  Entoblitz is a yearly collecting weekend that brings together entomology students, professors, and hobbyists from across the southern US.

This year Entoblitz is being hosted as a joint effort between Texas A&M and Oklahoma University, so we’re looking forward to lots of new faces.  The location will be right on the border between the two states, in beautiful Fobb Bottom Wildlife Management area, as well as Buncombe Creek.  Beds are available at the OU Biological Station, and there are camping and RV options as well.

It’s been a lot of fun every year!  It’s a great opportunity to visit limited-access collection sites, take photos, visit with colleagues, and generally have an excellent time entomologist-style.

Registration closes February 28th, so don’t delay!

For more information visit:

OU Entoblitz Website

A&M Entoblitz Website

Maggot art with Chrysoma rufifacies, the hairy maggot blow fly

Two new pages up today in the Techniques section.

I’ve started a collection of cool insect-related techniques as I happen across them around the internet:

Techniques from Around the Web

I also had a lot of fun doing maggot artwork at an outreach event and I put together a “how to” post on that.  Check it out!  The pics are all taken with my iPhone but they turned out great:

How to Paint with Maggots

Maggot art makes a nice item to sell or give away at events, and it also provides a fun, hands-on outreach opportunity that people of all ages can enjoy. It’s great to watch people go from “Ew!” to “Ooh!” as they see a disfavored insect make something pretty and interesting. Don’t forget to talk to people about the role of maggots in the ecosystem, the life cycle of flies, and the usefulness of maggots in cleaning wounds. The maggot artwork also makes for a nice souvenir to take home, and hopefully encourage people to talk about what they learned with even more people.

Did you know…?

…There is a family of grasshoppers that disguise themselves as sticks.

…Tent caterpillars cooperate and lay down foraging trails like ants.

…Argentina is home to hordes of  large gregarious spiders.

…Earwig moms sometimes feed themselves to their babies.

…Mantisflies pupate in spider egg sacks?

…Male garden spiders play love songs for their mates.

…There’s a reason “ladybug” is one word and “lady beetle” is two.

…Exotic dung beetles were introduced to Australia because nothing there would eat cow poop.

…Tortoise beetle larvae often make elaborate shields out of poop.

…Fire ants can virtually halt decomposition of bodies by picking off the maggots.

Now you know.

Bess beetle (Passalidae) on decaying wood.

My labmate Paul brought me a box of bess beetles (family Passalidae) left over from a live insect lab.  I love these little squeakers, so I was pretty pleased.  I am not the only one who thinks the beetles are adorable.  BugGuide attributes the common name “bess beetle” to the French word baiser, “to kiss,” apparently due to the squeaky “kiss” noise these beetles make when disturbed.  This stridulation is produced by rubbing the top of the abdomen against the hind wings.  In fact, bess beetles produce at least fourteen distinct acoustic signals (Schuster 1983), giving them a pretty complex repertoire for an insect.

Less cute story:  when I was a kid, my brothers and I caught one of these for somebody’s science class.  We put it in a jar with some acetone and had to take it out again because it sounded like it was screaming.  (Anybody seen the Fly?)  Now that I’ve shared that adorable story, let me go back to talking about my awesome new pets.

Bess beetle chewing dead wood.

Bess beetles employ a fairly elaborate vocabulary because these beetles are subsocial.  Adults excavate galleries in the dark recesses of rotting wood where they live together in family groups, cooperatively caring for their brood.  Larvae are fed pre-chewed wood by the adults.

There’s an extra twist.  Unlike termites, bess beetles don’t have endosymbionts in their guts to digest wood for them.  Instead, they process the wood and excrete it, wait for microflora to further digest the wood, and then eat it again.  (Rabbits, as ruminants, employ a similar “eat it twice” tactic.  If I have destroyed your image of bunnies, I apologize.)  Both adults and larvae starve if they are not allowed feces as part of their diet.  Yum yum!

Silverfish.

Today we have a little insect I collected in the wilds of my own bathroom.  Silverfish belong to the order Thysanura, or “fringe tail”, which takes its name from the three caudal filaments which fan out from the abdomen.  (This is distinct from members of Archaeognatha, which have three caudal filaments that extend in parallel from the abdomen.)  Silverfish enjoy cool, damp enviroments and starchy foods, making them common pests in bathrooms, basements and libraries.  Although they do not bite or sting, they may do minor damage by nibbling on paper products, the glue of book bindings and wallpaper, and the starch in cotton or rayon fabrics.  Outside of human homes they generally live in dead wood or leaf litter and eat lichens.

Head on view of a silverfish's small lateral eyes and three caudal filaments.

These little critters are impressively hardy:  When I taught the introductory entomology lab a few semester ago I found a live silverfish living in a vial in the student collection.*  The little silverfish had evidently been turned in several months before and had been surviving by devouring its own ID label.

The caudal filaments of silverfish are delicate and break easily.

*This is just one of many exciting and novel encounters I have had while overseeing student insect collections.  One collection box I graded had a live wasp in a jar.

See also: Fire ant symbiotes: Nicoletiid silverfish

This one seemed appropriate to the blog:

source: Cul-de-Sac

(This one’s not bug-related at all but it’s my favorite.)

Since I’m on the topic of mating flights and founding colonies, here’s a video of some fire ant foundress queens tending their eggs, brood, and young workers.

…I sort of really, really want to add Justin Bieber’s “Baby” as the sound track to this video.  Would that be too much?

Fire ant workers swarm defensively prior to a mating flight.

Sexual fire ants typically fly on clear, windless afternoons following a rain.  Workers open large holes in the nest, and then spread out, swarming the surrounding area to eliminate any potential threats.  Male and female alates are urged out of the nest, where they typically climb surrounding plant material before taking to the air to seek a mate.  Below are a few clips of a colony I found swarming on a sidewalk near my house.

See related:

Alates Leaving Home

A Heap of Queens

The Sad Plight of Male Ants

Queen Ants: Founding a new colony

Pyramid ant workers (Dorymyrmex) guard alates as they emerge from the nest (Argentina).

Many ants mate in nuptial flights, taking to the air to seek out a mate among swarms of their kind.  After walking through one such swarm on his way to class, my labmate Collin told me, “Help, I’m covered in queens.  Would you like any?”

These flights are often synchronized by seasonal and environmental cues to insure everybody makes it to the party at the right time.   Winged future queens and their short-lived male counterparts then emerge from underground tunnels and prepare to take to the skies.  As the alates gather, the workers mill around protectively, making sure everyone stays safe and nobody leaves until the time is just right.  Sometimes workers drag out reluctant alates–the free ride is apparently over and it’s time to kick the kids out of the house.

Most of these alates (and all of the males) won’t make it.  But some of the female alates will eventually drop their wings and become the mothers of a new generation of workers and alates.

See related:

A Heap of Queens

The Sad Plight of Male Ants

Queen Ants: Founding a new colony