Insects for Fun! (insectsforfun)

This week we are diving into the world's first genuinely domesticated insect the silkmoth Bombyx mori! This moth started the entire silk trade and is still where most of our natural silk products come from today! The cultivation of silkworms for silk is known as "sericulture". 

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Today's artists are: HM Surf, Tatami, Ghostrifter Official, Cassiio, Sátyr x Phlocalyst

This week we look at one of the world's strongest insects and go into some really interesting facts about their physical appearance, and what to do if you want one as a pet. 

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Special thanks to Lofi Girl for the chill beats!

Today's artists: HM Surf, Towerz, Cxlt, Cassiio and Sleepermane

In this week's episode, I get to talk with the Bug Chicks, well-known educators who use insects to teach! We talk about education, their experiences in Kenya, and what they are up to next! 

Website: https://thebugchicks.com/

This week we take a closer look at blue morpho butterflies, what makes their color, and why it's advantageous for them to look the way they do. 

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Special Thanks to Lofi Girl for supplying the Chill Beats.

Today's artists: møndberg, cubase, and no spirit. 

We are starting to get into the fall season on this week's episode by covering the Black Witch! This insect has varying legends and lore depending on where you live but all of them are fascinating. 

Welcome back to another episode! This week we are talking about the oldest extant insects and what you can do if you find them in your home. 

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Special Thanks to Lofi Girl for the chill beats! 

Today's artists are: HM Surf and Musikal

This week we take a look at what makes army ants so unique compared to other species, and whether or not we should run far away when they are on the move! 

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This weeks artists are: HM Surf, møndberg, PurrpleCat

This week we are looking at the incredible fungus, Orphiocorydeps unilateralis, that started an amazing horror series. The fungus is commonly referred to as the zombie ant fungus and ants have evolved to deal with it in surprisingly similar ways to the people living in the world of "The Last of Us"

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mell-ø 

Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 29 of insects for dummies! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we’ll be talking about the crazy fungus that inspired a fantastic horror series. 

If you aren’t familiar with the series “The Last of Us” it is a critically acclaimed horror video game for Playstation that got turned into an equally stunning HBO television series. The idea behind the series is that in the future there is an infectious fungus that takes over a human’s body and turns them into a mindless zombie. The greater the host is infected the more monstrous and mushroomlike the host looks. If you’re a fan of horror I highly recommend you give either the games or the television series a shot. I’ve played both games and thoroughly enjoyed them. But what if I told you the fungus this series was based around actually exists in real life or that fungi and humans aren’t that different? We’re going to get into all that and more with today’s episode. 

In the insect world, a fungus known as Orphiocordyceps can infect a host and then use its body to grow until it breaks out and releases spores. The specific species which got the attention from the creators of Last of Us is known as Orphiocorydeps unilateralis or the Zombie ant fungus. This fungus is found in Brazil, Australia, Africa, and Thailand as well as temperate forests in Japan, South Carolina, and Florida. It’s specific to Formicine ants and causes them to behave abnormally until they can’t move at all, at which point the fungus grows out of the ant's head to release its spores. The shape of the fungus is actually dependent on the geographic location leading to the further classification of subspecies. 

Here’s a breakdown of the entire process. First, an unsuspecting ant gets exposed to the fungus by walking over it or having spores land on its body from above. At this point, the fungus itself is relatively harmless until it uses an enzyme to breach the surface of the exoskeleton. Once inside the body, cells of this fungus float around in the ants hemolymph which is essentially the blood, insects don’t have real blood because they’re arthropods. 

The fungal cells now slowly begin connecting to each other using tubes to share nutrients. At this point, the fungus starts infecting and controlling muscle cells within the ant. It’s actually a misconception that the ant gets mind controlled because the brain of an infected ant remains untouched through the entire process. Think of the ant as a puppet at this point where the fungus is the puppeteer pulling all the strings from within using the ants' muscles. At this stage, infected ants will begin behaving abnormally, twitching, having strange jolted movements, and leaving the nest for seemingly no reason. Fortunately, because ants are social insects they can pick up on these cues and either kill the infected ant, preventing the virus from spreading in the colony, or leading it very far away to die (last of us quote). There are actually ant graveyards filled with ants that have succumbed to this zombie fungi and in some countries, particularly in the Indo-Australian region, a species of ant known as Colobopsis leonardi has evolved to keep their nests up in trees, and only sends a select few individuals down to forage in the forest floor which minimizes their contact with fungal spores. 

Once an infected ant no longer has any control over its body is when the fungus leads it away from the nest and makes the ant crawl up a nearby plant to reach an optimal humidity and temperature for reproduction. The ant then clamps down and remains motionless while the fungus proceeds to kill and then grow out of the body releasing its spores onto an unsuspecting ant colony or worse, ant trails. This behavior evolved with the fungi for two reasons. One, to relocate the ant before a colony member kills it or leads it too far away and the second is to get the ant in an optimal position for fungal development and spreading spores. Wind can carry the spores and has a greater chance of infecting other colonies. The goal is not to kill a colony though because then the fungus dies too! It simply needs a few more hosts to keep itself alive. 

A similar fungus known as Ophicordyceps siensis infects ghost moth caterpillars in the upper altitudes of the Tibetan plateau and the infected caterpillars share a similar fate to the ants mentioned earlier. Something different about this fungus though is that it is actually used for medicinal purposes and is very expensive. This fungus is so popular that it's actually worth 3x its weight in gold and many Tibetans rely on the harvesting of infected caterpillars for their livelihood. For example, one pound of this fungi can cost 63,000 dollars and one pound of gold is 22,000. The important must though is for the caterpillar to be intact and connected to the fungus. If the fungus breaks from the caterpillar the price takes a cut.

The fungus infects caterpillars during the summer while they’re underground feeding on root systems of host plants, and the fungus slowly grows through the caterpillar during the fall and winter months.

 In spring the caterpillar is led towards the surface and a long, brown, spore-filled stalk proceeds to grow out of the head and through the surface of the dirt. I recently saw these being used in a survival television series. They were given as a gift to the survivalist in the show by local Tibetan people. The properties of these caterpillar treats are supposed to provide an all-around boost to your health but most notably to the immune system and your energy levels.

As you’ve probably guessed by now the fungi responsible for these kinds of insect deaths cannot affect humans otherwise we wouldn’t be eating them. This is not to say there are no fungi out there which can infect a human, because we, of course, do get fungal infections, but fortunately, the vast majority of fungi are self-reliant and don’t require a host for their survival. Out of the millions of Fungi in the world there are only a few hundred which can affect a human, and much fewer are capable of infecting a healthy person. Fungi usually require much lower temperatures than the human body and they usually get killed off really fast by our immune system. Believe it or not, we actually have beneficial fungi inside that work alongside beneficial bacteria to keep us in good health. However, people who are immunocompromised are more susceptible to having this equilibrium fall out of balance and or getting infected with fungal infections that otherwise don’t have a chance of surviving. This is also possible for people receiving organ transplants because everyone has a different cocktail of bacteria and fungi, and unfortunately an internal fungi infection is not an easily treatable condition because as it turns out, fungi and people share a lot of cellular similarities. Animals and Fungi are actually sister groups and because of this, we have to be careful with how we treat fungal infections. 

In this week's episode, we talk about Cicadas! What do they do for so long in the ground? What happens in a "year of the cicada" and what do they symbolize? Let's get a closer look... 

Special Thanks as always to lofi girl for supplying some instrumental beats! 

The artists in this week are, HM Surf, Sátyr, Phlocalyst, and Mitchel Logan.

Transcript: 

Welcome back to another episode of Insects for Dummies, I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we will be talking about a bug that spends years underground as a teenage shut-in before finally reaching maturity. This of course means we are covering cicadas! The bugs tell us when we finally made it to Summer by screeching through the day and in my case, the evening with Japan’s well-known “Evening Cicada”. There are two major types of cicadas, the periodical cicada, and the annual cicadas. Periodical cicadas are the ones that spend at least a decade in the ground before coming up into the trees. The annual cicadas, despite their name, actually spend 2 to 5 years underground, but we hear them every year because the different broods overlap each other.

Cicadas as the title of this episode states are true bugs, which means they do not have a pupal or larval stage. These bugs just stay in the ground feeding off roots and other plant matter as nymphs until they’re ready to hit the stage in our trees. There are two different periodical cicadas, one is a 13 year and the other is a 17 year, which means they spend either 13 years or 17 years in the ground before coming up. You might be wondering what exactly they do for so long or why they wait so long before coming up, and though we don’t have all the answers, we do know they don’t hibernate and are actually building tunnels and feeding during this entire time. Most living things have an internal clock known as a circadian rhythm which is why some of us wake up earlier than normal when we know there is something important or why some of us just naturally wake up later than others. Everyone’s clock is slightly different and the same thing happens with cicadas. Of course, it’s not like this amount of time was arbitrarily given either.

Many scientists believe that the periodical cicadas evolved these clocks in this way to avoid predators. If you stay hiding for long enough, you’ll be forgotten about eventually. As for how they know when their time is up, that comes down to seasonal changes in trees and the soil composition as the seasons come and go. The one thing we do know relatively certain is that the cicadas will not emerge from the ground until the temperature of the soil around 8inches below surface reaches 18 degrees celsius. This is why cicadas will emerge sooner or later depending on where you live! 

Sometimes we have years of the cicada and that just means it's a year where one of the periodical cicadas is ready to surface and that usually means there are going to be a lot of them… for example in North America there are 12 broods of the 17 year cicadas and one brood can have as many as 600 bugs in it, and that, of course, isn’t including the annual cicadas. That’s a lot of bugs and a lot of noise. The buzzing chorus of a cicada reaches up to 90 decibels which is the same as a lawnmower or standing near a chainsaw.

This noise is produced from Tymbals which are exoskeletal structures that kind of act as a cymbal. The cicada has one Tymbal on each side of its abdomen and these tymbals produce sound by snapping together and pulling apart like two pieces of velcro. This snapping and unsnapping motion is repeated 300 - 400 times a second! But that’s not the only incredible thing about cicadas. They also have some very interesting wings. Interesting because they are coated with very fine tiny spikes that actually repel water, and break down soft bacteria. In recent years we’ve been able to replicate that complex surface which means we might see some nifty antibacterial surfaces in the near future. 

As you might expect, cicadas have some interesting folklore due to their unavoidable presence and we’re going to take a look at that next. 

The earliest documented cases of lore surrounding these bugs come from China, with stone statues of the bugs dating back to 1500 BCE. The Chinese regarded these insects as a symbol of rebirth because of their transformation upon breaching the surface. Cicadas were carved out of jade and placed on the tongues of those who died. This was so that after burial those people could break free of their deceased physical bodies to find eternal life much like that of the jade statue placed within them. In the Hopi native american folklore, there exists a Cicada Kachina, or spirit guide that aided people in their travels from the underworld, which is where we all originated from (apparently). The cicada Kachina would appear in early summer/late spring before the true cicadas made their appearance. 

My favorite mythology of cicadas comes from Ancient Greece where many poets and philosophers were awestruck by the insects and used them as a muse for many written works. To the ancient Greeks, cicadas symbolized death and rebirth, but they were also a symbol of love. One story in Greek mythology is of a mortal known as Tithonus. Tithonus was a handsome man who was sought after by the goddess Eos. Eos knew one day that Tithonus would die and asked Zeus to make the man immortal. Unfortunately, she failed to ask for eternal youth so the man became too old and eventually could only babble. Eos didn’t have the power to take life so she turned him into a cicada. Another story written by the philosopher Plato has a slightly different tale. The story goes that Socrates and Phaedrus were having a pleasant walk in the evening and remarking on the “Summery sweet song of the cicadas chorus” Socrates then goes on to state that he feels the cicadas were watching them, and how cicadas were once people who lived before the muses aka daughters of Zeus, but after the muses came to existence and created the first song, some of the people became too infatuated with singing and forgot to eat eventually dying. The muses noticed this and gifted the departed by turning them into cicadas where they can sing freely with no need for nourishment.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Insects for Dummies. Intro music credit goes to myself, if you wanna check out some chill music you can find my music on all streaming platforms under Mitchel Logan. If you liked this episode please leave a review on iTunes or Whatever platform you’re on and you can check out my Instagram page @Insects4Dummies. I also take listener emails so if you have a special insect you want to learn more about or a question you can drop an email at Insects4Dummies@gmail.com. I’ll see you next week. 

In this week's episode, we'll be taking a look at what exactly forensic entomology is, how it is used, and what kinds of insects you can expect to see! We will also look at a few cases over the years and see how the practice itself has evolved. 

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Today's Artists are: HM Surf, Softy, and mønberg

In this week's episode, we highlight some interesting facts about our well-known ladybug, including its name's origins and what makes them so special! 

Special Thanks to Lofi Girl for the Chill Back Beats. Today's artists are: HM Surf, Sátyr, Phlocalyst, Purple Cat, and Mitchel Logan.  

On this week's episode of Insects for Dummies we talk about what makes a Monarch Butterfly so special because it's not about the way it looks! We also learn about how they get surveyed in Mexico every year at the Monarch Butterfly Reserve! 

Special Thanks to Lofi Girl for supplying the chill background beats. 

This week's Artists: HM Surf and S N U G

This week we look at the Asian Giant Hornet previously known as the murder hornet and now formally known as the Northern Giant Hornet. This wasp gets a lot of bad publicity and we are going to dive into the facts and see whether or not this wasp really deserved the name Murder Hornet. 

Music contributions come from Lofi Girl 

Intro and Outro: "Lost" by Mitchel Logan

This week's Artists: HM Surf, Sátyr, and Phlocalyst

In this week's episode, we look at what's actually going on when you see white foam in your plants and I'll give you a quick spoiler. It's not spit! 

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Special Thanks to Lofi Girl for the chill back beats.

Today's artists are HM Surf and Softy 

This week is a special listener request episode! We take a look at how parasites are classified and some of the different kinds of parasites we have as humans! 

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Today's featured artists are Purrple Cat, Ghostrifter Offical, and Tokyo Music Walker!

This week we focus on dragonflies and the various names, myths, and unique traits that surround them! 

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Featured Artists: HM Surf, S N U G, and Megan McDuffee

In this week's episode, we talk about a bug that is notorious for being everywhere as the weather starts cooling down. The Boxelder is also known as the politician bug simply because you are bound to see one during the election season. 

Special Thanks to LofiGirl for supplying chill beats. 

Today's Artist: HM Surf 

This week we dive into a group of bugs that are vastly overlooked. Jewel bugs are beautiful and they're also quite caring! 

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Featured Artists: HM Surf, TABALxMelø, and S N U G.

This week we talk about the greater wax worm which is a caterpillar known by many in the reptile community as a feeder worm, but! This caterpillar also has a much more heroic use to environmental scientists. 

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This weeks music artists are: HM Surf, S N U G, H.1 and Ghostrifter Official

This week I am finally bringing to light a small special insect that is native to Antarctica! Midges are actually a number of different small fly families that are categorized by their small thin bodies. 

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This week we take a look at some really unique tiny insects with the ability to make their own ecosystems out of webs using their feet! 

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On this week's episode, we take a look at Woolly Bears! Learn about why they're associated with the weather, what made them famous, and why we see so many in the autumn. 

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This week we talk about a really cool butterfly that can make it through winter unharmed! 

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Today's Artist is HM Surf 

This week we're looking at the largest damselfly on the planet, its habitat, strange food preference, and interesting behaviors! 

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This week we are looking at the most deadly ant in the world! And of course, it comes from Australia! Learn about what makes these ants so deadly and why they look the way they do in today's episode! 

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Today's artists are: S N U G and Softy

The Peanut Headed Lanternfly is a crazy cool bug with a lot of legends. It also does not match its name at all aside from being peanut headed. Learn all about this whacky bug in today's episode.

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Transcript:

This is episode 39 of Insects for Fun! Time really does fly… but today we are not talking about flies at all despite the common name. 

Fulgora laternaria often called the Peanut headed lanternfly belongs to the family Fulgoridae and these bugs are very commonly referred to as lanternflies despite not being a fly at all! They don’t even light up, so how is it they got this name in the first place? Well, we will go into that later, but first let’s describe this week's featured bug. 

The peanut headed lanternfly is one of the largest lanternflies in the world reaching a length of 3 to 3.5 inches and a wingspan up to 6 inches in length. The most notable feature though is the bulbous peanut shaped extension from their heads. These alone are a little over half an inch, and this big extension also has some conspicuous eye spots on the sides which make it look like it’s capable of swallowing other smaller insects whole, but that’s just a ruse. And in case that wasn’t enough it also has some crazy looking eye spots on its wings too! 

This is another one of those bugs that warrants a good look so go on and give it a google or support the IG and FB page. Other common names for it are actually Alligator bug and snake cicada due to the head resembling that of a reptile. These crazy features are unique to the genus Fulgora and there are only a few species within this genus. 

One other defense mechanism that has been documented for these bugs would be their ability to release a foul smelling odor if heavily disturbed but this is a last resort tactic.

These bugs are indeed true bugs and can be found from Mexico down into South America and the adults can be found from June to December. Lanternflies are actually planthoppers and today’s bug does not feed on anything other than plant sap or Phloem. In fact their mouths are specifically designed for piercing plants unlike other bugs who can pierce and feed on insects too. 

The life cycle of these cool bugs starts when a male lures a female using vibrations by knocking its hollow peanut shaped head structure against a tree. It’s important to note that the peanut shaped thing is not the true head of the bug and some theories are actually that this fake head is not only used to scare away predators but also trick them into biting or attacking a false head. You might be thinking females don’t look the same but in this case they actually do so the purpose isn’t for mating.

These bugs form pairs in the summer months and the female lays a large group of eggs on to the host tree which is often a Guapinol tree scientifically known as Hymenaea courbaril. She also coats the eggs with a waxy substance to protect them from predators and harsh environmental factors. The end result looks like a big mantis egg sac. The nymphs hatch with the same peanut head the adults have but at a much smaller scale because the bugs are of course not big at all at that age. There isn't a lot of information publicly available on breeding and other behaviors so I’m not exactly sure how long it takes to reach adulthood but I do know the adults only live around 1 week despite being able to feed. I know these days we have many listeners from Columbia and Brazil so if any of you have any information regarding things you’ve seen please send me an email and I can post an update! 

In the meantime let's look at why they got the name they did and some crazy folktales surrounding these already very interesting bugs. We all know at this point where the peanut part of this whole thing is, but the lanternfly portion is truly strange.

The origins of how it got named a lanternfly start in 1705 when a german artist and naturalist named Maria wrote up a book titled metamorphosis insectorum surinamensis. This book is basically a catalog covering all the things she found while traveling in Suriname during 1699, and lantern bugs happen to be described here. The only thing is that in her description she states that these bugs light up their heads at night when both sexes are present, and the light is bright enough to read by. Now I don’t know if any of you have actually seen a lanternfly in person but uh… that’s just simply not true. Today scientists think she might have been confusing them with a big click beetle in the same area capable of lighting up its head. But being able to light up their heads is one of many strange myths these big bugs have accumulated over the years. 

There was an entire paper published looking at the folk lore and legends described by people from the village of Pedra Branca in Brazil and a couple of these myths were very popular and widespread.  

One of the most prominent beliefs is that the peanut headed lanternfly actually contains poison in its head and is capable of inflicting mortal wounds to people by flying at them and piercing them with their stingers. But this stinger is actually its mouth part referred to as a stylet, and it is purely for feeding on trees. There is no poison at all! What’s really interesting is that around 47% of the people interviewed for this study stated that the bug was a snake. You can’t really blame them though because it really does have a crazy looking reptile head. It should also be noted that this study was done in 2001 so things might be different now.

The second popular belief was that the bug kills trees it feeds from by sucking them dry. There is some small truth to the fact that these bugs feed on trees by sucking them, but the bugs are not capable of sucking a tree dry, and there aren’t enough of them to even make it a possibility.

In Costa Rica it is believed that this bug is again filled with poison, but if you get stung the only cure is to have sex within the next 24 hours. I can only imagine why and how this legend got started but what I don’t understand is how it’s managed to get so famous and actually stick! It totally reminds me of the movie “It Follows” only instead of a person you know chasing you it's a peanut headed lantern bug. 

Featured Artists: Blue Wednesday, Purrple Cat, Sátyr and Phlocalyst.

This week we look at the top 3 most used and well-known composter eaters, and how you can raise them for your own garden and compost needs.   

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This week we break down what it means to be a horseshoe crab and talk about the mechanics behind their blue blood and why it's so important. 

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Today we're going to Australia to learn about the heaviest moth on earth scientifically known as Endoxyla cinereus. 

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Music by Shingo Sekiguchi

This week we are looking at the origins and fascinating uses of insects in Medicine from an ethnic and modern approach. There are some incredibly powerful uses for insects and I think we are only getting started.

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Featured Artists: Ghostrifter Official, Purrplecat, and Tokyo Music Walker.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of Insects for Fun where every Tuesday we dive into something new and interesting in the world of Entomology. Today we’re touching upon something many of us might know very little about.. Entomotherapy… 

Okay so I think everyone here understands what therapy is, and if you add entomo into the mix then it of course must involve insects and I don’t know if you know but, using insects and insect extracts for medicinal purposes has been a long tradition for humankind, much like the practice of eating insects which we covered way back in Episode 2. 

When did it all begin? Well, according to records in Egypt the use of insects for healing was established back in 1600 BCE which is the middle of the Bronze age which is not that far from the stone age meaning civilization was incredibly simple at the time. There are also records of people in China using the Chinese silkmoth Bombyx Mori for medicinal purposes that date back at least 3,000 years. Ancient Romans and Greeks were also using insects to treat medical issues. For example, Pliny the Elder who was a roman Author and Naturalist in the first century of the common era wrote about the usage of insects for severe illness and to treat wounded soldiers in the roman empire. One such remedy was the application of honey on wool for sores and wounds. This actually makes sense because honey has antibacterial properties. 

On the other hand, there was also a mentality at the time that likes would cure likes. For example, to cure baldness you would use something that has little to no hair, like a fly for example and sure enough people had various fly remedies for someone that was bald or balding including but not limited to rubbing crushed flies on your head to rubbing the ashes of burnt flies or even flies with honey and this was supposed to be done for around 10 days… Another great example would be to use crickets for sore throats or earaches because crickets sing on repeat and must have properties to help restore someone's throat or even their ears because all that stuff is connected right?  

But aside from the old usages based on flawed logic we do have proper uses for insects in medical practices both from a traditional and modern approach so let's start taking a look at those now. 

First on our list would be the use of Honeybees. These insects have been used for thousands of years for treating various ailments (as we saw earlier in an example from pliny the elder) , and there is an entire subcategory for bee related therapies called apitherapy. 

Some of the common remedies used by bee related products include: Arthritis pain, wounds, general pain from bruises, reduce gingivitis and plaque etc. There are even some studies revealing that the chemical makeup of bee venom can actually help suppress HIV. 

That’s a lot to unpack and I’m gonna do my best to break it down for you starting with the use of Bee venom for arthritis pain. Bee venom therapy, abbreviated as BVT, has been around for a long long time, we’re talking ancient Greece kind of time, and for a good reason. Bee venom contains a very very long list of beneficial peptides, amines, enzymes and other good stuff which promote blood circulation, decrease inflammation and even reduce pain. In fact, one study found that the use of Bee Venom for arthritis pain can not only help reduce the need for other more traditional medications, but it also reduces the risk for relapse! But before you go outside and try to get stung you should know there are other methods for administration, like an FDA-approved shot from a medical professional. 

Bee venom along with its main component mellitin actually has inhibiting effects on cancer cell growth for prostate cancer as well as anti-tumor growth properties for breast cancer cells, cells in the liver, lung, melanoma, and even cancerous cells in the blood. But we still have a ways to go before we see bee venom in the treatment for cancers because these properties have yet to be harnessed for targeting specific cancer cells. 

Now let’s look at some other insects from a medical perspective. On the topic of cancer (yikes) we have another insect that actually acts like a drug dog but specifically for finding cancerous cells! This would be the Fruit fly. Yup, these tiny annoying flies can actually sense cancer cells with their antennae and they’re kind of really good at it, being able to detect cancer cells in very early onset and they’ve even been found to differentiate between 5 different types of breast cancer cells. It’s even more wild though, because as it turns out these flies are very easy to modify genetically, and people have actually engineered these flies to glow different colors upon sensing cancer cells! That’s insane. 

Moving along on the fly train let's now look at what maggots can do for us, and just so we are all on the same page, a maggot is the term used for fly larvae.

Okay, let's get into it.

Maggots have been used in the medical world for a long time, and there is actually a term specifically for this kind of treatment called maggot debridement therapy or MDT. This kind of therapy was found to be extremely beneficial during WW1 when having open wounds and rotting flesh was not uncommon on the battlefront. In fact, they are still approved for use to this day in many countries around the world and here’s why! 

Maggots feed on decaying matter, and in this case that would be necrotic skin tissue, and they have no interest in feeding on anything else when it comes to the human body. They also can eat and kill bacteria like E. coli and have other antimicrobial properties which ward off bacterial infections. They are also proven to reduce inflammation of wounds and even improve wound healing by promoting the production of special cells in our bodies called microvascular endothelial cells! Maggots actually have multiple secretions which are antibacterial and antifungal, and the use of maggots for the treatment in antibiotic-resistant wounds is making a comeback as we enter a time when people are beginning to become resistant to certain antibiotic medicines. 

Last on our list today will be ants! Similar to bees, these insects have a lot of beneficial properties and they have been used in treatments for Asthma, Cancer, Arthritis, and other infections in both modern and ethnic medicine! 

This is because ant venom is similar to bee venom, and contains a bunch of handy antimicrobial agents and peptides. 

Not all ants have what it takes to be a form of treatment or aid in the medical world, but there are many ant species out there and we are only just really starting to dive into discovering what is available to us. Many people have been using ants as treatment purely from passed down knowledge, especially in ethnopharmacology and some examples for that would be the use of leaf cutter ants in Brazil to treat sore throats, ease asthma, help tuberculosis, and help ease tendinitis. 

Other examples would be the use of giant black ants and leaf cutter ants as biodegradable and antibacterial sutures for internal surgeries in India. It’s pretty smart actually and I know wilderness explorers also use this tactic for stitching wounds when medical facilities aren’t available. This might sound archaic and questionable to some or all of you but the fact remains these ants have extraordinary healing properties and scientists and medical professionals today are now really looking into and using extracts from various ant species in the remedies for modern medical issues. 

This week we look at Harvestmen! The strange spider-like but not quite spider arthropods that roam the earth. We'll go over some fun names, myths, legends, behaviors, and defenses! 

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This week we are looking at paper wasps which was a listener request from Juliet! Paper wasps are different from regular wasps in a number of ways, like personality, behaviors, and even the way they craft their nests. 

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Music by Sea - no. 

This week we look at a really cool wasp that for the most part resembles an ant! These insects are called Velvet Ants and are considered one of the most invincible wasp species out there!

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Today's Music from Lofi Girl features: 

HM Surf, no one's perfect, Sátyr 

Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 51 of insects for fun! The podcast where every Tuesday we take a look into the crazy world of entomology. This week we are looking at a really cute and painful insect known as a cow killer or Velvet Ant. 

Intro: 

Insect names, Family, Distribution, Description 

Velvet ants are actually wasps belonging to the family mutillidae but the females don’t have any wings which is why people refer to them as ants. The reality though is that ants actually belong to the same order as wasps, and they aren’t exactly very far from each other genetically speaking. The family mutillidae is home to around 7,000 species, and they have very dense velvety hairs. In most cases this hair is a bright orange, red or even yellow color, but some species are also all black. The bright colors often displayed on these insects is referred to as aposematic coloring which is a warning to predators that they are not worth eating. 

The wasps can be found worldwide with 400 species in the southern midwest of the US alone. The United states species actually make up one of the largest networks of mullerian mimicry which is when different poisonous or venomous species copy each other's colors creating a greater defense against predators. 

Life Cycle, and food source: 

Velvet ants like all other hymenoptera go through complete metamorphosis and have to go through a larval and pupal stage before becoming a wasp, and we briefly mentioned them in last week's episode about cicada killers. Turns out the females actually seek out nests of other ground dwelling wasps like our friends the cicada killers, and then drop an egg by the larvae of that other wasp. This larva then feeds on and kills the other wasp larvae or pupae in an act called ectoparasitism. Ecto refers to the fact that this all occurs outside the body, and parasitism refers to the act of using a different insect as its food source resulting in death. 

The most famous velvet ant often called the cow killer bites a hole in the cocoon of its host and then lays its egg within which then eats the host pupa and stays protected in the cocoon until it emerges. Cow killers are scientifically known as Dasymutilla occidentalis and are the largest species known so far. They got the nickname cow killer due to their extremely painful sting which is said to be strong enough to kill a cow, but fortunately for us this is actually not possible, well from a single ant sting anyway. The pain from one of these wasps is indeed extremely painful with an afterburn lasting up to 3 hours or so. I’ve fortunately never experienced it though and I’ve actually never even seen one in the wild before either. But if you have you should totally comment about it on the IG or FB post! 

Behaviors: 

When it comes to aggression these wasps are actually nothing at all like yellow jackets or hornets. They’re solitary wasps which means they lack a defensive instinct just like our friends the cicada killers. That being said you are likely to encounter female wasps walking around during the day walking around searching for holes made by other wasps or food. The adult wasps are not carnivorous and they feed on nectar just like other solitary wasps.

The lifespan for a velvet ant ranges from months to a year or two depending on the species and location. In areas with four seasons the adults are only around for the warmer months while the pupae stay safe in the chambers made by other wasps until spring comes again. 

Defenses and Predators: 

Unlike the cicada killers these wasps actually have an impressive amount of defense mechanisms and are not easily preyed upon by other animals. In fact there is no known animal that specifically hunts for velvet ants, and even in trials testing different predators against velvet ants researchers discovered that they are almost invincible. For starters the exoskeleton on these wasps are extremely hard. Being up to 11 times stronger than that of a honey bee making them difficult to crush. They also have a habit of making squeaking noises when captured by a predator which in most cases is enough to shock the attacker into releasing them. The squeaking noises are produced by their abdomen which has a special organ that creates the sound by scraping two plates together. It’s actually pretty loud and I’ll play you some audio for it now 

Now if these two things weren’t enough the velvet ant can also produce a foul odor when disturbed, and let's not forget about the incredibly painful sting which by the way comes from one of the longest known stingers which oftentimes is up to half the length of their entire body. That being said not every velvet ant has a sting worse than that of a honey bee, and some species are actually less painful, but I think it’s still not worth messing around with one, especially if you don’t know what the species in, which in the U.S seems like it can be incredibly difficult due to so many having co-evolved to look extremely similar. 

Pet information:  

All that aside If you are brave enough to want one as a pet it is possible! They are actually highly rated as being a really fun insect pet, but of course it is a buy at your own risk situation because they cannot be de-weaponized the same way a pet skunk can. They can survive regular room temperatures but if you want them to be more active it is recommended you get a heat lamp for them, and they’ll feed on honey, sugar water, and insect jelly. 

This concludes today’s episode on Velvet ants! If you can’t get enough insects for fun or want more you can find bonus episodes over on the patreon which is where people can best support the show! Speaking of which, I have three shoutouts I need to do for this month! A special thank you to Tina, Todd, and Kirsty which are this month's current donors! If you yourself would like to support the show but maybe can’t commit to a patreon then rating and reviewing the podcast is the next best thing! 

Links to the patreon and socials will be in the show notes and as always, thanks for listening. 

This week we are looking into Bed Bugs, their history, how they become a problem, and what you can do.

Also! The Discord is now officially open :) 

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Music from Takada Fu and Toshiki Hayashi

This week we are reflecting on and talking about 6 different insects in pop culture with the two hosts from Just Bugs podcast! 

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You can find Just Bugs on all your podcast platforms as well as Instagram! 

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This week we are deep diving into a very special species of dragonfly known as the morpho dragonfly or blue-winged dragonfly which has some amazing abilities to protect itself from both the heat and predators. 

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Today's featured Artists: no one's perfect, sleeperame, and HM Surf

Transcript: 

Welcome back to episode 47 of Insects for Fun! The podcast where every Tuesday we talk about something Entomological. This week is another listener request from the Heartland for a special kind of dragonfly.

Introduction

The blue morpho dragonfly or morpho dragonfly scientifically known as Zenithoptera lanei is a beautiful dragonfly found within open marshes of Central America and the northern half of South America. They belong to the family Libellulidae which happens to be the largest family of dragonflies and are commonly referred to as skimmers. As the name suggests, the wings on these incredible creatures are a reflective blue just like the blue morpho butterflies but this is exclusively on the males. These dragonflies also have the same light diffracting properties as morpho butterflies, meaning these wings are not actually blue at all but get their intense color through light moving through a bunch of crystal like structures in the wings, which then bounce off and cancel out the new light hitting its surface. 

The undersides of their wings are also a completely different color similar to morpho butterflies except these insects have a mix of metallic red and Black underwings. For the most part I would say they’re Black which I guess technically is the absence of color, but this isn’t an art lesson or a physics lesson so we’re moving on     

Life Cycle, and food source: 

The life cycle of a morpho dragonfly begins like all other dragonflies with eggs being oviposited near water and go through a series of molts underwater as predatory nymphs/naiads. The Naiads for dragonflies in the family Libellulidae are more stout than others, and they also have half their face covered by the lower jaw or labium which is shaped like a spoon to capture smaller insects. In general most naiads in this family hunt down prey by camouflaging in with their background either by burying themselves into sediment or clinging on to plants and rocks. 

The adults feed on any small soft-bodied flying insects like moths, mayflies, midges, flies, and sometimes wasps, but in general many neotropic dragonfly species in the family Libellulidae avoid wasps and bees. 

In general dragonflies within this family prefer ovipositing their eggs in still water, but some will do it in streams or moving currents as well. This is not the case however for the morpho dragonfly which do in fact prefer still waters. 

Behaviors: 

These dragonflies operate during midday which leaves them with high exposure to UV and heat. Fortunately they were built for this, and actually have evolved some special traits to maneuver through the most daunting of days. 

The blue reflective wings actually act as heat conductors, pulling heat away from the body and diverging it through their wings. They also have another special skill which is only found in one other genus of dragonflies and that would be the ability to fold their wings vertically like a damselfly. When these dragonflies have their wings spread out it actually pulls heat away from the body, 

and once the dragonflies close their wings, they can begin heating their body up again by absorbing light into the deep red/ black undersides. This is why these dragonflies will flap their wings periodically while perched within their territory. Skimmer dragonflies in general have evolved many different methods for keeping themselves cool during the day because in general, most skimmers love perching on plants, twigs or other upright surfaces in or near water so they can focus on observing the open air for prey and threats.

Some behavioral adaptations seen in other skimmers to stay cool would be  

Take an obelisk posture, which literally comes from the word obelisk to mean a tall tapering pillar, and the stance is exactly like that with the dragonflies lifting their abdomen up vertically into the sky to limit the surface area receiving UVs. Another more simple method would be to simply skim over the water and lightly touch the surface to drop their body temperature. I’ve actually seen both of these behaviors many times with skimmer dragonflies. 

Skimmer dragonflies tend to be territorial, and today’s morpho dragon is especially so. Sometimes they’ll  go as far as to bite each other while in aerial combat. 

One behavioral trait noted by a research team was that males will always turn and face the opposing dragonfly with a flash of their open wings before taking off into aerial pursuit. It is believed that this is to throw the target off guard by blending in with the background to get closer without being noticed. The iridescent blue of their wings acts as a form of camouflage against the water's surface, which also helps them evade predators like birds which rely on sight.  In a separate study, scientists found that the blue on their wings actually dictates how aggressive other males will be when in their territory. The study was done in Brazil with wild caught dragonflies, and they were able to test aggression levels by literally tethering dragonflies to wooden stakes using a cotton string and then introducing them to another male. The male dragonflies used in this study were separated into two groups. One was a control group which had 55% of their wings artificially covered using a black marker that could not reflect UV, and the other had only 10% of their wings covered. 

The results found that dragonflies with less reflective blue in the presence of another male were far less likely to be engaged in battle as opposed to dragonflies that had a greater area of blue on their wings. This basically means that males rely on the color of their wings to identify the gender within their own species. 

Unfortunately there is not a lot of information available specifically for this species of dragonfly which is why we’re ending the episode here, but if you want more Insects for Fun don’t worry! There is currently a Youtube shorts channel which I recently started titled Insects for Fun (same logo) and I’ll put the link in the description. And! This summer I will be opening up the patreon which offers a collection of monthly bonus episodes for an entirely separate series talking about cool discoveries and noteworthy news in the world of insects among other perks.  

This week is focused on the insects that inspired Ridley Scott's "Alien"! Parasitoids have some of the craziest interactions with other insects, and this episode will feature a few among other details. 

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This week we look at a group of beetles that are well known for their abilities to produce and shoot boiling acid from their abdomen! 

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Music supported by Lofi Girl with featured artists: HM Surf, Another silent weekend, S N U G, and Sátyr

Transcription: 

Welcome to Episode 56 of Insects for Fun! The weekly podcast covering all things entomology, and creepy crawlies. Today we are taking a look into a beetle that packs some crazy firepower in the form of boiling acid. 

Bombardier beetles are a group of ground dwelling beetles in the family carabidae. There are over 500 species known and can be found on every continent except for that one dark, and cold special place… Antarctica. I had to say it this time cause I have no idea if there are new listeners on this episode. But yeah these beetles are pretty much everywhere on earth and inhabit woodlands, grasslands, and even deserts! Don’t expect them to be all over arid climates though. The fact is these guys need moisture for their eggs, and they prefer an area that can provide cover during the day and water. Many are commonly found near lakes, ponds, and rivers. 

As for their appearance, the beetles come in a variety of colors and sizes, but the body shape is relatively similar. For example I can be pretty sure a beetle is a bombardier if the head and thorax are narrow compared to the abdomen, and the shape is similar to an upside down maraca (maraca noise). The abdomens have to be larger than everything else because this is where they store their special chemicals, but we’ll get into that jazz later.

In the United States there are 40 species and these all surprisingly look pretty similar. Orange/reddish bodies with their elytra being greenish blue or navy. Elytra is the term we use for the hard shells beetles have over their wings by the way. Honestly, some of the US species are incredibly stunning and I’ll have the photos as usual on the Instagram page. The average size for these guys is quite small with many people often referring to them as the size of a fingernail given you don’t have hulk hands or something. (insert angry hulk noise) 

Bombardier beetles begin their life as an egg in the soil, and chow down on smaller insect larvae until they reach adulthood. Some bombardier beetles will actually lay their eggs in the carcass of a dead animal because it serves as protection and a food magnet for other smaller insect larvae like maggots. The beetles go through a series of molts during the summer months until fall and then emerge from the ground in spring as an adult. Most of us would never know whether or not there are bombardier larvae around because they spend all their life buried in decaying matter feeding on other ground-dwelling animals like grubs and worms or even the decaying matter itself depending on what it is. The adult beetles are also carnivorous, but they don’t actually seek out lively prey. Instead, they patrol at night looking for weakened insects for young larvae to feed on, and once the sun begins to rise they seek shelter somewhere away from the heat and away from the eyes of potential predators like frogs and toads. The beetles prefer a solitary life during the night, but what’s interesting is that during the day they’ll hide with others, and it's been found that they don’t discriminate. Bombardier beetles actively seek out places with other bombardier beetles, regardless of the species and stay huddled together during the day. 

Something else which is interesting to note is that these beetles don’t use their acid spray to hunt. It’s a defense mechanism used only when encountered with a threat like a toad or frog, and yeah it does kinda seem like the only things crazy enough to try and eat one of these are toads and frogs. They also aren’t very successful at it either with around 40% of the beetles getting thrown up and walking away after the whole ordeal. 

So how exactly do bombardier beetles manage to create such a powerful weapon, and why aren’t they getting boiled from the inside out? As I mentioned earlier these guys have a large abdomen, and the reason is because they store two separate liquid compounds which cannot come in contact with each other until the moment of release. These compounds would be Hydrogen peroxide, and Hydroquinone. When the beetle is threatened or under attack these two liquids get released through opened valves into a special chamber at the very back of their abdomen. This special chamber holds the third ingredient required for such an explosion, a special enzyme which creates the reaction allowing the bombardier beetles to shoot out near boiling acid at incredible speeds. This acid is known as benzoquinone, and upon release reaches 100 degrees C. The beetles are known to release up to 500 micro explosions in a second, and can fire their acid canons up to 20 times before depletions. Afterwards, it can take up to 24 hours to fully recharge and the beetles caught by frogs during this recharge time have no chance of escape. This is of course where they get the name Bombardier as well, because if you didn’t know a bombardier is a person who is responsible for aiming and releasing bombs from an aerial craft. And just like the people, some bombardier beetles can aim their weapons with incredible accuracy. For example one species in Africa known as Stenaptinus insignus can rotate its abdomen 270 degrees in a swivel-like motion. 

Many of you are probably wondering now what happens if we get hit by this crazy spray, and the answer is a painful and memorable experience (insert sound). You won’t be severely injured or anything like that. In fact Charles Darwin actually wrote about an experience when a bombardier beetle sprayed him in the mouth! He was in the UK collecting beetles during undergrad, and got a bit too greedy. You see Darwin already had his hands full of two different carabidae beetles when he came across an incredibly rare beetle in the UK known as Panagaeus cruxmajor. Darwin did not want to lose any of his captures so he put one of the carabidae in between his teeth to free a hand. This of course was a massive mistake which resulted in him losing all three, but as we know Darwin survived this ordeal and didn’t lose anything other than what he was trying to collect that day. I have no idea why he chose his mouth of all places, did he not have pockets? What was he even doing collecting insects without a jar? Unfortunately, we’ll never get to ask him these questions. But at least he left a written tale. 

This concludes today’s episode! As always I hope you enjoyed it and if you are enjoying the podcast it would help me and the show a huge amount if you gave it a rating and review! These really do go a long way in boosting the show's visibility. If you want more insects for fun you can support the show on Patreon.com/insects for fun where you can get bonus episodes and vlogs as well as polls for future episodes! Links to everything will be available in the episode notes. Also! I’ve been working on the merch, and I would like your input for what kinds of items you want! So far I’ve designed a T-shirt and a Hoodie which will be available in multiple colors. If you’re a Spotify listener you can directly send me a message at the bottom of this episode on your listening app. For everyone else, you can DM me on Instagram, FB, or send me an email. Links to all the socials as always are in the show notes.  

This week we are talking about Earwigs! We'll cover everything you need to know from life cycle to behaviors and urban legends including how they got their name and if there is any truth to the legends. 

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This week's featured Artists: Blue Wednesday and Purrple Cat. 

Transcipt:

Welcome to episode 46 of Insects for Fun! This week is a listener submission from my mom (gasp) wanting to learn more about earwigs! So without further ado let's get into it. 

Intro: 

Earwigs are insects in the order Dermaptera which means skin wings and refers to the leathery short forewings they have, that being said hidden underneath are a pair of beautiful wings that fold out in a spring-like fashion which is actually impossible to replicate through origami folds. I’ll add a picture to the socials so everyone can see. 

These insects are pretty common being found throughout the entire world except for the cold scary place in the southern hemisphere… There are around 2,000 species and 12 families of Earwigs and they all have a very distinct look which is the color brown or black with a smooth and relatively flat body, and of course the pincers or cerci that come out of the abdomen. I’m really hoping everyone here has seen one but if not I’ve got you covered on the socials. 

As far as these cerci/pincers go, earwigs are actually sexually dimorphic with the females having straightened ones and the males having curved ones. The reason why they have these is actually to fend off predators, help catch prey, pair with a female (in the case of males), and even compete with each other. The competing portion is also reserved for the males though, and that’s actually why they have curved cerci. Another cool fact is that males with asymmetrical cerci actually have an advantage over males with symmetrical cerci. The reason is that the asymmetry makes it easier to grip on to other things. 

Life Cycle, and food source: 

Earwigs do not have complete metamorphosis which means they go from an egg to an adult through a series of molts and have no larval stage. In general most earwigs have 5 molts before reaching their adult stage but some have 4 or 6, and their lifespan only lasts for 1 year. The time it takes for a Nymph to reach its adult stage varies on factors like food availability and temperature and of course species also play a role in this but some can go from egg to adult in a 70 day period.

Females can lay between 20 and 80 eggs, and this usually happens in mid to late winter and early spring with the pairing usually happening in Fall. 

Behaviors: 

Couple culture in earwigs starts in autumn as males and females begin searching for mates. Once paired the couple builds a small den around 1inch deep in the soil and they remain together until the female is ready to lay her eggs. The courtship begins when a male presents a female with his two cerci. The female has to do a taste and smell check to make sure he’s a good match which could take up to 10 min (Mkay) 

Female earwigs actually have maternal care despite not being a social insect, and they will watch after, protect, and care for their young until they reach their 2nd molt. These insects also make sure to feed their young with regurgitated food similar to birds. The fathers on the other hand are never in the picture, and females will actually kick them out of the nest once it's time to lay eggs. 

Once the eggs are laid the female then checks all of them to make sure everyone is accounted for, and if she finds anything that resembles an egg but is not she removes it from the nest. They even go as far as to clean all the eggs for the first three days to make sure no mold or fungi develop on them and she also will not leave this den even for food until all the eggs have hatched. 

Ecology, Defenses and Predators: 

Earwigs are nocturnal, and prefer to stay hidden under rocks and debris like logs and wood during the daytime. This also protects them from their natural predators which include birds, frogs, lizards, small mammals, and even other insects. As far as what earwigs eat, most of them are scavengers which will feed on anything they find edible from plant materials to other insects and even pollen in flowers! And some earwigs actually hitch rides on mammals and live off bodily excretions and dead skin. A couple examples of these earwigs would be earwigs in the family Hemimeridae which are blind, flightless and live on African rodents as well as earwigs in the family Arixeniidae which are also blind and flightless but these live on southeastern bats. 

In general earwigs are like antisocial insect janitors. They don’t hang out in large groups unless its to share a common space when going gets rough, like huddling together in winter under a stone or log, and they do a good job of cleaning up dead and or dying debris in your gardens and patios etc. That being said if they clean up everything or you keep things super tidy then they’ll move on to eating live plants and smaller insects like aphids etc. Their favorite fruits and vegetables are actually corn, cucumbers, strawberries, lettuce, peaches, and potatoes. 

You might also find these in your home because similar to silverfish these insects enjoy a dark and damp place like a cellar or bathroom maybe. They’re also attracted to lights. 

One more thing before we move on is that some earwig species can actually spray out a smelly liquid when threatened. I’ve never seen this, but one species that can do this is Doru taeniatum which can be found in Central and South America. 

Lore: 

Now let’s get into the good stuff and by that I mean the folklore behind earwigs including why they even have that name, and whether or not there is any weight to them entering our ears. 

So a long long time ago, like stone age time ago, earwigs got a reputation of entering human ears, laying eggs in there and boring into your brain causing insanity. You remember Pliny the Elder? One of, if not the first naturalist to publish information on everything, which I talked about last episode? Well, he’s even got a blurb in his natural history book saying that if an earwig enters your ear the best way to get it out is to have someone spit in it. I mean.. He’s not wrong but like, why not just put water down there instead? I think it's safe to say that back in the day people did in fact have the unfortunate experience of having earwigs crawl in their ears. Especially when infrastructure wasn’t nearly what it is today and people were sleeping on the ground or on beds made of hay, but I don’t think it was a common occurrence at all. In fact a separate belief is that earwigs actually got their name from an entomologist who believed the hindwings resembled ears when looked at up close, and then afterwards people started creating horror stories about the insects. 

Either way, the fact is that earwigs do not actively seek your ears and don’t even prefer your ears over anything else, and they especially will not use your ear canal as a den for their eggs. So if you’ve been told they’ll enter your ears as I’m sure many of us have at some point or other, fear not! It really is an old wives' tale that makes for a fun story. 

Speaking of fun historical stories, I came across another myth regarding these insects but this one is from Japan. Turns out back in the day some prefectures in the Kansai region of Japan would refer to earwigs as chinpo basami or Chinpo kiri which translates to penis pincher/cutter and the reason was because they could often be found near traditional Japanese squat toilets. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, traditional Japanese toilets are essentially urinals built into the floor. In fact some western-style toilets here have signs that say don’t stand and squat on these because the notion of sitting comfortably on a toilet was not always commonplace and still isn’t always guaranteed if you’re living in the boons.  

This week we're looking at the wonderful world of insects in the far eastern part of the world. Japan has a booming insect culture that's always been around. 

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This week is all about the tiger beetles the incredibly fast and ferocious Coleoptera that can't seem to stay in a taxonomic family. 

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This week we look at one of America's most venomous caterpillars and learn about some of their unique traits along with what happens if you get stung. 

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This week we are learning about a special giant silkmoth belonging to the subfamily of royal moths! These ones don't produce silken cocoons which are very uncharacteristic for a silkmoth. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to Episode 31 of Insects for Fun! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we’ll be talking about a very cool Giant Silkmoth

The regal moth also known as the royal walnut moth or the hickory horned devil is a very large and beautiful moth in my favorite family of moths known as Saturniidae or the Giant Silkmoths. I’ve personally been raising Saturniids for the better half of a decade starting in my Senior Year of High School. If people are interested I might even sell eggs and cocoons for whatever I have at some point in the future, for subscribers of this podcast. 

Anyway! Today we are looking at only one of these beautiful creatures and one that I personally have never actually seen in real life. This moth is considered common in the southeastern states of the US and has become incredibly rare in states above New Jersey. I think its current range is actually south of Jersey west to Ohio and the edge of the great plains down into Eastern Texas but historically this moth could be found in New England as well. 

Unlike the other members of the Giant Silkmoth family this moth does not produce any silk! Usually, Saturniidae moths will weave silken cocoons which protect their pupae from outside forces, but this moth along with others in the subfamily Ceratocampinae actually bury into the ground before pupation. This feature makes them and all the other royal moths very difficult to find and tricky to raise. 

Before I continue I want to share with you a visual description because the regal moth or royal walnut moth, true to the name, is a very stunning creature. The body is red with yellow bands and the wings are grey with red lines going down them. There are also a few yellow ovals in between these red lines as if someone with a paintbrush decided to just dab some contrasting colors. This moth has the largest mass of any other moth above Mexico and has a wingspan of 9.5 to 15.5cm. The females are actually larger in this species which isn’t always the case with moths in this family. 

Earlier I mentioned how Hickory Horned Devils make pupae in the soil and you might have noticed I use the word Pupae when referring to moths and Chrysalis when talking about butterflies and this is because Moths and Butterflies have separate terms. Pupa and chrysalis mean the same thing, but the reason why Butterfly pupae are always referred to as chrysalids comes from coloration. Moth pupae are almost always a type of brown and look drab in comparison to the usual shiny and metallic butterfly pupae. The word chrysalis actually originates from the word chrysos which means gold and refers to this metallic sheen but we’re getting pretty off-topic so let's take it back (rewind affect).

The caterpillar of a Hickory Horned Devil is possibly one of the coolest-looking Giant Silkmoth caterpillars I’ve ever seen and there's a good reason why it got the name Hickory Horned Devil. The final instar of this caterpillar is a bluish-green color with 4 small black spiny appendages on each body segment, except for the tail and the first three segments including the head. Replacing these black spines at the front end are four large red and black-tipped devil like horns that protrude from the two segments directly behind the head of the caterpillar. It almost looks like a rams head but with four horns instead of two. The head and last body segment are both red in color and the thorax section has two large black dots where those large devil horns come out. Its six true legs are also red in color making this thing truly fearsome. Aside from looking super intense, these guys will also sometimes raise their heads and shake them to scare you, but this caterpillar can actually do no harm. To be honest it's one of the more docile ones. You can pet all the spikes and have them crawl all over you and you’ll be fine. Similar to many other menacing-looking animals it has to look that way if it wants to survive because otherwise it's got nothing.  

Another thing is that these caterpillars also happen to be one of the world’s largest, reaching a length up to 15cm. Yes it actually out sizes the caterpillar to the world’s largest moth by at least 2cm. I will of course be showing pictures of everything on the instagram page so I recommend people to follow that or the facebook page because I forward everything there as well. 

Hickory horned devils do indeed feed on hickory as a primary host plant, but they also feed on other plants such as walnut, butternut, persimmon, sumac and sweetgum, and the caterpillars primarily feed during the night when they’re still small and vulnerable. During the day these young caterpillars curl their bodies in the shape of a J to look like bird droppings. This actually works well for them because the coloration on their early instar/molts is black with a brown smudge. As they get larger and scarier they also get more active during the day and will be munching on leaves nonstop. 

Adult moths do not feed on anything at all. In fact, all Giant Silkmoths have no functional mouths once they reach adulthood and live purely off the fat they gained as a caterpillar.

Most Giant Silkmoths also go through a stage of hibernation known as Diapause in the entomology world, and the regal silkmoth actually hibernates in the winter underground as a pupa regardless of where it's raised, but the growing season might be shifted a bit depending on which part of the country or world you are in. 

I say world because you can actually breed these in other countries like the Netherlands for example. Many people love to raise giant silkmoths and its not uncommon at all for people to get insects from outside countries to raise for fun. Certain restrictions apply of course if there is an ecological concern but that will be listed by the supplier.  

Once the moths eclose from their pupae they get ready for flight in the case of a male or they get ready to use pheromones in the case of a female. As with all Giant Silk Moths, the female moth will not fly until after she’s mated and will actually hang where she eclosed and release a pheromone trail through her scent wand. It’s called a scent wand but it is not at all like a fairy wand or some other magic controlling stick. Think of it more like the mechanics of a highlighter pen, but when the tip of the pen is exposed to air it leaves a strong scent trail. The females moths can choose when to make themselves available by exposing their scent wand and it is in fact as quick as clicking a highlighter pen. The males have huge antennae for this very reason, because males are constantly on the move hoping to pick up a scent trail that will lead him to a mate. Females have much thinner antennae but usually have heavier bodies because of the hundreds of eggs they carry and they have the all powerful scent wand. 

Now there is another species of Horned Devil which is actually called the Pine Devil and this species of Regal moths feeds exclusively on pine trees and the color of the caterpillar actually matches the branches of the trees they feed on. This makes them different shades of brown with black markings but the body shape is essentially the same as the famous hickory horned devil. The moth is the same shape as well but the coloring is much more bland. It kind of looks like the walnut moth got left in the toaster too long or something like that, but you can see the images on the instagram and facebook page. 

If you are interested in Learning how to raise hickory horned devils I Highly recommend checking out Bart Coppens youtube video. He goes in-depth about how to raise these caterpillars among many other exotic giant silkmoths. I watched it to make sure it was legit and I’m happy to report he knows what he’s doing.  

This week we look at Predacious diving beetles which are some of the largest aquatic beetles in the world and uncover their methods for staying underwater, as well as what they're diving for. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 58 of insects for fun! The weekly podcast on all things entomology hosted by me Mitchel Logan. I actually just realized recently that it’s been over a year already since starting this podcast. I genuinely can’t believe it went by that fast, but here we are! And before we get into the topic I want to thank this month's patrons Caden, Kirsty, Tina and Todd as well as all the people choosing to rate and review this podcast! 

If you’re a weekly listener and have not yet hit the star on spotify or dropped a review and rating on Apple it is one the best ways you can show your support for the show and helps the algorithm push it to more insect fans!

Okay, today we’re quite literally diving into a topic (badum chuck) sorry. But yeah let’s just jump into it! (splash)

There are quite a few different kinds of diving beetles, but today we will focus on just one family, and those would be the predaceous diving beetles in the family Dytiscidae. The family name comes from the greek word dytikos which means able to dive. With over 4000 species the diversity in this group is quite vast and they can be found in every part of the world, well, every place but one… 

At any rate, these beetles all have a relatively similar shape being oval or football shaped with long legs built for pushing water. The legs are usually all crammed close together as well which is different from terrestrial beetles. Oftentime they have very fine hairs on their legs too, specifically the hind ones which make them appear like long brushes or feathers underwater. It’s not easy to see these when they’re out of the water though, and yes they do fly! (wow) I actually found a really nice diving beetle in a closely related family while black lighting with a friend the other night. The vlog is available for viewing at Patreon.com/insects for fun. 

Predaceous diving beetles are also referred to as true diving beetles because they are indeed professionals when it comes to diving. Their body is built for it, and they can stay submerged underwater for hours at a time. It’s hard to say what their average time underwater is because each one is different. Some last 30 minutes, some last 3 hours, and apparently the longest recorded dive was 36 hours. I tried getting an exact species for this claim but was unable which makes me wonder what they actually meant by 36 hours… because the thing is these beetles store air under their elytra or outer shell, and a diving beetle can easily replenish this air by simply floating up to the surface and poking the back end of its body out. I did however find a research article stating that they can spend up to 24 hours fully submerged so who knows. 

One really incredible evolutionary mechanism for these would be the ability to use this air bubble as a crude gill. The bubble itself can actually replenish some oxygen from the water in the same way fish gills filter the oxygen. If you’re wondering how a bubble can do that it comes down to the size, the larger an air bubble is the more oxygen it can naturally pull from the environment, and some diving beetles are nearly 1.5 inches long and 1inch wide which for our metric listeners would be 4cm by  2.5cm.

So we got these beetles that are natural born divers, but what are they diving for anyway and why do we call them predacious? Beetles in the family Dytiscidae are carnivores, and they hunt anything from frogs to fish and of course other insects. They’re also scavengers which feed on sick and or dead animals at the bottom of water beds. They really are quite handy to have around! Even the larvae are predaceous and are actually referred to as water tigers! These larvae are not your traditional larvae at all and kind of look like a mix between the nymphs of other insects and ladybug larvae. They spend their days preying upon anything from tiny fish and tadpoles to other insect larvae including other water tigers. They are top predators within their niche and are known to be quite beneficial at keeping mosquito populations down! What I think is really cool about them is that they can catch prey passively by floating still near the surface and then grabbing on to anything that gets close enough. The larvae, unlike the adults, do not have elytra to store their oxygen in, and instead must rely on their elastic trachea to store the air they take in from their abdomen. 

Some species though do stay on the bottom or hunt while hiding on rocks. 

Predaceous diving beetles can live in many different bodies of water including brackish water which means its got some salt in it, but many of them prefer to stay on the edges or where water is still, because let's face it, trying to dive in a current doesn’t sound like a good time at all, and there’s no way a water tiger can passively catch anything if the currents are too fast. There is one species though which has evolved to live in faster bodies of water, and that would be deronectes aubei which has actually evolved tracheal gills on its elytra to pull oxygen from currents and can stay completely submerged for 6 weeks! This beetle doesn’t really look like a diving beetle either. It actually looks more like a terrestrial beetle that walked into a river and just kept going. 

The life of a diving beetle usually begins in the water as a female will deposit eggs either on or inside submerged plants, but sometimes eggs are laid on the surface as well. The larvae hatch and develop through the summer until they are ready to pupate, but before they do the beetles make their way to land and bury themselves in the soil. It makes sense when you think about it because as a pupa these insects have no way at all of getting the oxygen they need if they’re in the water. Even being on the water's edge is dangerous because they could be swept away. In Canada various water beetles hibernate in the winter as eggs, larvae or adults but none of them overwinter as a pupa.

Now let’s get into some odd facts regarding the use of these beetles in humans and some lore because thankfully we’ve actually got some this time around. Similar to the giant water bug, predaceous diving beetles are used as a food source in different cultures from Asia to Mexico! In fact species in the genus Cybister were used in tacos both pre settlement and even today! They’re also a source of fried food in China, and other Asian countries. This genus of diving beetles is also used for Traditional Chinese Medicine and Traditional Korean Medicine specifically to help with blood circulation and the treatment of polyuria which means you pee way more than normal. It's also used to help with bed wetting. I guess the beetles contain steroids, and if you didn’t know steroids are used to treat a lot of various conditions that aren’t related to building muscle mass. 

As for folklore, the Cherokee native americans have a story about the earth's creation that says  a water beetle came from the sky realm and when he arrived on the surface he had no place to rest because the earth was covered in water. To fix this he started bringing mud and soil up from the depths to create land. 

Now for my favorite fun fact, in parts of Asia they have an aquatic form of roulette that uses a dytiscid beetle as the ball. Your money literally wages on the whims of a diving beetle. 

If you’re left at the end of this episode thinking these beetles are really cool and wish to have one as a pet then fear not! It is absolutely possible to get yourself one of these diving beetles. Not from a pet store, but from nature or an insect vendor. In fact the University of Florida has a handy pdf dedicated to teaching you all you need to know about keeping adult diving beetles in the family dytiscidae! The TLDR is to have a tank at least 10 inches deep, de chlorinated tap water and lots of aquatic plants. You want this tank to mimic what the insects could use in nature including a large piece of wood or stone that comes out of the water for the beetle to rest on when needing to air out. Having a gravel base is highly recommended to provide more nutrients to the plants and tank. No filtration is required for these nor any specific ph parameters. They’re quite hardy animals, even more so than shrimp. They’ll happily feed on frozen blood worms which you can buy from the pet store or any wild insects you find or catch including flies etc. The tank I currently have is perfect for one of these guys, and now I’m regretting not taking home the diving beetle I found while black lighting. I would not recommend keeping fish and predaceous diving beetles together though. You never know who might kill who, and you also want a lid on your tank because as I mentioned earlier these guys can fly and this usually happens at night. 

On this week's episode, we look at grasshoppers and locusts and why they're the same but also not! We also go into some crazy history about a locust species that holds the record for the largest swarm ever recorded and their mysterious disappearance. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to Episode 30 of insects for dummies! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we are getting to the bottom of what separates a grasshopper from a locust (if there is anything) 

Okay, to start off let's first describe and define a grasshopper because some people might even be thinking of crickets or katydids. 

Grasshoppers are insects in the order Orthoptera which does indeed also house crickets and katydids, but! Grasshoppers are in a separate suborder known as caelifera which stands for chisel bearing and refers to their short ovipositors. Crickets and Katydid’s belong to the suborder Ensifera which stands for sword-bearing and as you might guess has everything to do with the length of their ovipositors because these ones really do resemble a sword. Another major difference is that grasshoppers are diurnal which simply means they are active during the day, and they sing by rubbing their legs against their wings, unlike crickets and katydids who make their songs by simply vibrating their wings together. 

Grasshoppers like all Orthoptera go through incomplete metamorphosis. They simply hatch from an egg and go through a series of molts with each one looking more and more like the adult. However! Some grasshopper species can do something incredible and this is where Locusts come in. You see, of the 11,000 some odd species of grasshoppers, 25 are able to do something truly extraordinary and that would be their ability to completely change their appearance and behavior into what we know as a locust. This Jekyll and Hyde type transformation results from a set of conditions being met with grasshoppers in the family Acrididae.

 If food becomes scarce and these grasshoppers are forced together in one area, their bodies start releasing serotonin from the extra stimulation. This release of neurotransmitters causes behavioral changes which can further escalate the change from a peaceful solitary animal to a voracious horde of flying field destroyers. This is an even more likely scenario if rains come and provide an abundance of new food to this heavily gathered area causing a further increase in the population.  Ordinarily, grasshoppers cannot fly very far, but once the genes start transcribing the code for a locust then their wings become more developed and their brain actually increases in size. This change allows them to take flight AND recognize others of the same species. Locusts have actually been clocked at flying 20 miles per hour or slightly over making them rival dragonflies for the fastest flying insect and they can maintain flight for extremely long distances. 

For example, desert locusts regularly make a nonstop trip across the red sea which is 300km. This transformation from grasshopper to locust can occur at both the adult stage or the nymph stage and can even be reversed! The color changes are incredible as well with extremely flashy primary colors like red and yellow. This coloration is a warning to predators but also a signal to other locusts which can help them band together forming even larger swarms.

These swarms are usually documented from Africa, but locusts could swarm in a variety of locations. Grasshoppers with this ability can be found in Asia, Australia, Europe, The Americas and the Caribbean. The most widely spread locust is the migratory locust known as Tocusta migratoria. This species of grasshopper/locust is found in Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and its even featured in the popular video game Animal Crossing (insert bug catch music)

Locust swarms are also referred to as locust plagues due to the fact that they are incredibly destructive and can actually displace and force populations of people to leave an area. A locust swarm is not merely thousands of individuals or even hundreds of thousands. Locust swarms are usually around 40 to 80 million ravenous insects which can eat over 300 million pounds of food in one day. Yes, that’s 300, million and no I didn’t sit on the 0 key. A swarm the size of paris can eat as much as half the population of France in one day which is why these insects are a power to be feared by many people. This is especially problematic when the countries facing these insects are already struggling with natural disaster and inner conflict. 

At this point we’re all thinking okay but how on earth are you supposed to prevent that or prepare for something like that? The reality is trying to do anything about it once it's already started is extremely difficult especially once they have begun to fly. Nowadays people have been using biopesticides that incorporate a deadly naturally occurring fungus. We also do surveillance checks by looking at weather conditions along with aerial surveys in areas where locust swarms could potentially begin. If many grasshoppers are congregated in an area then pesticides are used to reduce the population before it can get to swarming levels. 

Other tactics are to lay down large bands of pesticide on the ground from the air in front of an oncoming quote unquote hopper band, which is a large army of flightless nymphs. Once these nymphs walk over the laid down pesticide the nymphs start absorbing the fungus and cannot continue. Other current pesticides involve the usage of chemicals which interact and inhibit insects but are nontoxic to humans. It wasn’t always this way though. People used to actually eat the locusts by collecting them and cooking them. To be honest it's an extremely smart and effective treatment because these guys have so much protein for their small bodies and it's all plant derived. The only issue is that this doesn’t prevent the start of a swarm and it also became unhealthy once people started using wide scale toxic pesticides in the 80s. If you live in an area that sometimes sees these swarms of locusts then I’m sure you’re familiar with how insane they can get, and I’d even love to hear about some stories if you have any! Just send me an email and if we get enough people willing to email in any wild experiences regarding insects I might be able to start doing listener stories episodes! That could be super cool. 

If you are living in the United States and thinking thank god we don’t have to worry about that, well there was a time when we actually did. Prior to the 1930s we had a grasshopper species known as the Rocky Mountain Grasshopper or Locust, and this was an incredibly destructive species that used to span the great planes into Canada and down into Texas through Montana, Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, and Arizona, but was also as west as Washington, Oregon, and California. However, they would also move so far east as to actually cause farm damage in Vermont and Maine but these were only recorded in the mid to late 1700s. when swarms were being recorded for long after that until 1877 and the last living specimen was collected in 1903. The largest swarm ever recorded in the history of all insects happened in 1875 when the Rocky Mountain Locusts had such a large population boom that they literally eclipsed the sun, and formed a mass greater than the size of California and had over 12 trillion insects. Think about that for a second. This flying mass of hungry locusts was greater than the size of all of Japan and had over 12 trillion insects when we just calculated earlier that 80million translates to 300 million pounds of food in one day. So this literal giant dark cloud of locusts was able to eat an amount of food equal to 4.5 trillion pounds. One woman wrote about it in a children's autobiography stating that the cloud was hailing grasshoppers, the cloud was grasshoppers! Their bodies hid the sun and made darkness. The rasping whirring of their wings filled the air and they hit the ground and house with the sound of a hailstorm. 

Now, the really mysterious part of this whole thing comes from the fact that this species of locust completely vanished in the following 28 years. There were no more major swarms after the year 1880 and the last locust was collected in 1902. It’s hypothesized that the reason came from all the agricultural work that had been done through the great plains like plowing, and irrigation along with trampling from cattle. The fact is that this insect despite its immense swarms only had one small range of permanent residency in the rocky’s which also happened to be a good location for farming. At any rate, this grasshopper is no more, and the US has not seen a locust swarm since. But again, this is not the case for other countries like Africa which is now infamous for being plagued by a different species known as the desert locust. The most recent locust swarms lasted from 2019 to 2022 which started with a cyclone in 2018 that brought a lot of rain to the Arabian Peninsula. Those swarms grew and spread to various countries in the area over the span of the last 3 years, but thankfully it's finished and we currently don’t have another active swarm at the date of this recording. 

Locusts swarms have always been a bad omen in popular culture being associated with end times or extreme global disasters. It certainly predated the bible otherwise there wouldn’t be a famous biblical plague about them. Let’s just hope we don’t see more real-world applications as the weather continues to become more and more unpredictable…

Today we're taking a look at some interesting isopods that live by the ocean! Learn all about wharf roaches/sea slaters and what makes them special in today's episode! 

Be sure to check out the "Deep Dives With Sharks" podcast wherever you listen. Link below!

https://open.spotify.com/show/05ddvnV4czs9deV0gvuKmh?si=c717fcc52f8a43f5

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This week instead of focusing on a specific insect I wanted to talk about some Physiology, that is how the body works. Not all of it of course, but just some things that I personally find incredibly interesting. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to Episode 55 of insects for fun! The entomology based podcast hosted by me, your not so local entomologist. Today I will go into the topic of Insect Physiology. Basically how the bodies of insects work, and the different ways insects can hear, smell, taste and feel. 

Let’s get to the basics, an Insect has three body segments, A head, thorax, and abdomen. I believe I mentioned some of this already as well in my episode about bugs versus insects, but we’ll be going into a lot more detail today! Insects also have six legs which is where the class name Insecta comes from. Now what makes insects and all arthropods really unique is that they have an exoskeleton which simply means they wear their bones on the outside which is the complete opposite of other animals. 

Now because they wear their bones on the outside they also happen to have strange methods of hearing, tasting, and smelling. They also don’t have the same internal structure that mammals or other animals do! 

Let’s start with the inside of an insect. They have three guts, the foregut, midgut, and hindgut. Each section serves a specific function for digesting and absorbing different parts of their food. The foregut also known as the crop, is where the food gets broken down into smaller pieces. Of course some insects are fluid feeders like mosquitos for example and in those situations the foregut prepares the liquid into something easier to digest and absorb. The foregut in mosquitoes contain blood thinners which prevent their meals from getting sticky and hard. 

The midgut is the area where most of the nutrients get absorbed into the body. Enzymes are released to digest the transported food particles into absorbable nutrients for cells. The food is actually wrapped up in a special membrane which is believed to protect an insect's innards from pathogens that may be present within the food. 

Not everything gets absorbed through the midgut though. The hindgut is actually where salts, and water are absorbed from the leftover waste and is incredibly important for maintaining a balance of internal fluids. This is also the landing place for nitrogenous waste which gets evacuated from the insects “blood” through a series of small tubes. 

Insects don’t have a closed circulatory system the same way we do, which is to say they don’t have a heart that pumps blood through veins and arteries to their organs. The system of an insect is known as an open system in which the insect’s blood, referred to as hemolymph flows freely through the body, bathing all the organs. They do have something similar to a heart which is called an ostia and this is a long tube that runs from the head down to the abdomen but it actually pumps hemolymph from the back to the front. The reason is because as the hemolymph moves its way down the body it can relay messages from the head region.

Insects do have a brain, but they also have multiple bundles of neurons throughout their bodies that can send messages in response to stimuli like touch, smell and taste. The bundles of neurons are called ganglions. That being said the head does contain three very important ganglions that together form what we would think of as a brain which is again why the ostia pumps hemolymph up there to flow back down. 

So now we know that insects have a brain, bundles of neurons called ganglia, an esophagus that leads to three different guts, and an open circulatory system, but what about lungs? 

These animals do not have lungs but they have holes on the sides of their bodies which are called spiracles. These holes are controlled by muscles, and when open, allows air to freely move through them and carbon dioxide to leave. Once the air is taken into the body it moves through a series of branches trachea directly into all the cells of the body. In most cases these tracheal tubes are connected to a reinforced spiral of tissue that keeps them from collapsing. However! Some insects, like aquatic ones don’t have this and can use the tracheal tubes as air sacs to store extra reserves. 

As for other organs, well, I think we all know they have eyes and sex organs by now but what about tasting and hearing organs? 

Turns out that insects have small sensory organs all over their bodies in the form of tiny hairs, spines, nubs, etc . These organs are used for smelling, tasting, hearing, feeling and sensing pressure changes in the environment. 

Most insects have most of these on their antennae, but these can be found all over an insects body! For example butterflies can taste with their feet which is how they can determine which host plants to lay their eggs on. Crickets and Grasshoppers can taste with their ovipositors which is how they decide which soil is best to lay their eggs in. On the other hand some insects taste with their antennae like many parasitoid wasps. This is not to say they can’t taste with anything else, because in most cases they can also taste with special structures next to their mouths called maxillary palps. 

When it comes to hearing and smelling insects also have some crazy places where this takes place. For example, crickets, grasshoppers and katydids all have hearing organs located around their knees with katydid’s actually having theirs directly on the knees. Some moths have their ears on their abdomen which can detect frequencies way beyond a normal range. For example there are families of moths which have evolved to hear ultrasonic sounds in order to escape bats like moths in the families Geometridae, Pyralidae, and Thyatirinae. As for where they smell, that usually happens with their antennae, but it’s not always the case. Some insects can smell with their mouths. What’s even more amazing is that insects can hold onto memories past metamorphosis. For example caterpillars that were trained to avoid a certain smell will remember that smell even as a butterfly or moth.For example scientists trained caterpillars to avoid a smell by giving them a small shock in the presence of it. Once the caterpillars had become butterflies, they still avoided the smell they were trained with. 

To make things more crazy, insects don’t just see with their eyes. A study in Japan found that yellow swallowtail butterflies have light receptors on their genitals which they genuinely need in order to successfully mate and even to lay eggs on a plant's surface. A study found that if these receptors were blinded then success rates for mating dropped from 66% down to 28%, and the success rate of laying eggs went from 80% down to 15%. That's pretty big. 

I now want people to think about two questions. Why exactly do insects need to taste things, and what exactly are they tasting? 

Insects like us rely on taste to tell us whether something is good or bad. Oftentimes when we find something unpleasant there is a biological reason behind it, at least when it comes to those of us who don’t mind our vegetables. For example in countries with malaria it was found that people have a higher tolerance to bitter foods and cyanide. It’s actually thought that perhaps cyanide at low levels can combat malaria. In Japan many people like the taste of yuzu which is an extremely bitter citrus, but I can’t stand the stuff. Like seriously if I get a mouthful it makes me wanna vomit and maybe that’s because my ancestors came from areas where bitter plants were poisonous. 

Now let’s talk about what exactly insects are tasting. Could a grasshopper prefer buffalo wings over BBQ? Insects can differentiate salty, sweet, and bitter flavors just like us, but they prefer sweet over everything else. Perhaps some of our listeners can relate (insert clip from willy wonka or something). They’re actually pretty keen on the different concentrations of salts and sugars as well with honey bees being able to differentiate different types of sugars and their concentrations, and they aren’t a fan of splenda by the way. 

As for what insects can feel, given that they have receptors all over their bodies it's no question that insects can feel physical stimuli, but what about pain? For a very long time insects were thought to just reflex on autopilot based on different stimuli, but more and more studies now are showing convincing evidence that insects actually can feel pain, the same way other arthropods can like lobsters for example which have been adopted into the animal welfare act. In fact studies found that bees among other insects will actively avoid stimuli known to be painful, and of course you could argue that it was reflex based like when a doc tests your reflexes with that rubber hammer they always use. But it goes beyond that. When bees were faced with painful food sources that contained more or better quality food than the nonpainful sources, the bees actually chose to endure the experience for the reward. These same bees had previously avoided the same exact food source before when the prizes were the same between the painful and nonpainful food source. These kinds of interactions aren’t just found in bees either. Cockroaches and fruit flies along with wasps, and other insects had similar results. Actually, so far no insect that has been tested like this has shown complete indifference to a painful experience. 

I for one fully believe that insects feel pain because I’ve raised caterpillars for years on end handling them in various ways. They get used to touching like anything else, but I’ve pinched a couple before when trying to pull old molts off and man, they do not like that at all. They also lash out at their brothers and sisters if one of them gets bit by accident as opposed to just getting crawled over. 

This wraps up today's episode on insect physiology! I hope you enjoyed it and as always if you enjoy the show it’s super helpful to rate it so the podcast can continue to gain reputation and build more listeners. It also helps if you decide to share it with others! Now speaking of sharing, I’ve got some designs ready to go for merchandise so you’ll soon be able to rep the podcast! If you want more insects for fun you can also support the show on Patreon.com/insects for fun where I have exclusive bonus episodes and vlogs for Tier 2 and above. If you would like to reach out to me you can send me a dm on IG or an email message, and links to everything will be in the show notes. 

This week we look at the booming and lucrative business of isopods as pets! Let's dive into the different options, and prices for designer isopods, and how to build their enclosures and care for them. 

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This week we are looking at Owl Butterflies, their behaviors, and why they got the name! 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 32 of Insects for Fun! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and this week we are taking a look at one of my favorite butterflies and the largest butterfly in the Americas, the Owl Butterfly.. 

Owl butterflies are 20 some odd species within the genus Caligo, and are found from Mexico down into South America, flying in both the rainforests and secondary forests. Secondary forest means that the forest has regrown after a cutting or clearing either from a natural or manmade process. 

The butterfly as stated in the intro for this episode is indeed the largest butterfly within the Americas and its got a wingspan ranging between 6.5-20cm depending on the species. Blue morphos can also get up to this size and share a similar coloring, often making the two confusing to distinguish between for a novis butterfly watcher. And yes butterfly watching is in fact a hobby much like bird watching and on the topic of birds, Owl butterflies get their name because of the very large conspicuous eye spot seen on both their outer hindwings as well as the patterning and coloration. The under/outward-facing wings really do resemble an owl, especially a horned owl. Pictures will of course be on the instagram page along with their caterpillars.

The inner/upper facing side of the wings vary heavily by the species with some being more black and monocolored than others, but they do often have blue which does not help at all for people who already have difficulty differentiating them from blue morphos, but! If you listen to this episode and check out the instagram page then you too can be confident the next time you encounter one of these butterflies! My favorite is Caligo atreus which sports bright blue and cream orange on the inner wings, and its outer wings look like they went through a warm vintage filter. 

The caterpillars for these butterflies are pretty monstrous as well, competing in size with the Hickory horned devil which we mentioned last episode, these caterpillars can reach a length of 15cm but their appearance is very different. So different in fact that the caterpillars for these look like hairy slugs. Yes, that is an oxymoron but there seriously is no better description. The tail end of this caterpillar is slimmer than the mid section and forks into two tails that look like eye stocks on a slug and the head is also narrow and flattens into the body. Something un-sluglike would be the tufts of fur that poke out of their back. Some species have longer tufts than others which look like a row of spikes going down where a spine would be. I’ve seen them in person while at a butterfly house in Montreal Canada and they really are huge and unlike any other caterpillar I’ve seen. 

Earlier I mentioned that the genus for this group of butterflies is called Caligo and there is a good reason for this. Caligo in Latin means darkness or the dimness of light and as it turns out, these butterflies are actually crepuscular which is just a fancy word for being active at Dawn and Dusk. Next time someone asks why you look so tired during the day just hit them with the I’m crepuscular and I’m sure they won't bring it up again. But honestly its really cool to see them flying around in the evening or dawn because the last thing you expect to find mid-flight is a giant butterfly.  During the day these butterflies like to perch under large foliage and rest. It’s a smart move because predators would have no trouble finding them in flight during the day. 

The butterflies feed in the evening hours on a variety of things from rotting fruit and animal dung to flowers from heliconia, fan palms in the family Cyclanthacea (also referred to as Panama hat palms), and Bananas, but Banana trees are not native to the neotropics. The primary diet is definitely rotting fruit though which is why you find so many of them clustered around bananas, mangos and other common fruits at butterfly gardens. It’s actually quite common to see them in exhibits that offer an indoor butterfly room along with Blue Morpho butterflies probably because they are some of the largest butterflies in the world and easy to raise.

The caterpillars feed on the same plants the adults fly to making them a pest on banana and plantain farms.

 So much so that it was apparently proposed to use parasitic wasps on farms in certain countries to lower their populations. Now I tried to find records of this but I wasn’t able to and to be honest, I feel like releasing parasitic wasps in a neotropical country would require a huge amount of testing to make sure the wasp wouldn’t affect native populations of other insects. Unless of course, it is a native wasp! But moving along to the topic of predators, owl butterflies actually have a semi erratic flight pattern as seen with blue morpho butterflies to help protect them from being targeted by birds, reptiles, and other predators. These butterflies don’t fly for long durations at a time and end up frequently pausing on trees and other hard surfaces which confuses animals that are trying to lock on. 

I’ve actually experienced this firsthand in the forests of Belize while walking down a path when an owl butterfly flew into view. I had a net ready but I could not keep track of its zig-zag flight and random pauses in the brush. Suffice to say it got away and I ended up in a pile of mud, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. 

Owl butterflies also partake in a behavior known as lekking which is when male butterflies stake out a territory and then compete with each other for the attention of a female.  

These butterflies usually line up along a forest edge or along a road and sit waiting for a female to fly by. 

 The males actually scent these territories using pheromones and will even fight off other males who fly into their lekking space. If a female flies into the territory of a male he will pursue her for a short while to see if she’s interested  And if she’s not, that’s just the way it goes and he will fly back to his perch. What’s odd is that the areas males choose to lek aren’t very strategic in terms of resources. Often times these locations don’t have anything in particular that would attract an owl butterfly. They usually aren’t even in an area the butterflies would normally inhabit either. It’s like these butterflies specifically choose areas where they stand out and can really show off what they have. The funny part is that males will often be relatively close to each other but not close enough to overlap their territories. It really feels like a show hall where females fly slowly down the line to choose which male they want.  

This usually happens at dusk or dawn with many observers claiming that the phenomenon only lasts until the sun makes it over or under the horizon depending on the time of day.  

This week we are talking about the Australian Christmas beetles! What they are, what makes them special, and how their festive looks protect them from heat. 

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This week we're taking a look at Violin Beetles which are a really unique and underrated insect found exclusively in the tropics of Southeast Asia. 

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On this week's episode we are diving into the topic of "Myrmecopholi" in Butterflies. Specifically talking about the Lycaenid butterflies and how they manage to have ants tend to their every need. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome back to episode 35 of insects for fun! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we will be looking at a very interesting relationship between two unlikely species. 

In the insect world, there is a family of butterflies known as Lycaenidae which has around 6,000 species. It’s actually the second largest family next to Nymphalidae but the butterflies themselves are not so large. Commonly referred to as Gossamer wing butterflies, Lycaenids are very small with a wingspan often under 5cm. I guess gossamer in this case would mean delicate or dainty because of how small the butterflies are. 

These butterflies can be found across the globe and are divided into varying subfamilies that depend on where you are. In the United States for example we often see blues, coppers, and hairstreak lycaenids, but in more tropical places there is a greater variety. These common names refer to the appearance of their wings and I’m sure I don’t have to explain the difference between coppers and blues. Hairstreaks though get the name from the thin lines that are streaked across the underside of their wings. But I didn’t write up this episode to talk about all the small details regarding subfamilies because there is something far more interesting happening with around 70% of all the butterflies in this family, regardless of what their wings look like, and that would be their relationship with ants. 

Ants are usually predators when it comes to caterpillars and as we’ve learned in previous episodes of this podcast they can be quite formidable, especially against other insects, but the caterpillars of Lycaenid butterflies have evolved many intricate biological adaptations to bend ants wills in their favor. For example, many caterpillar for this family of butterflies have special pores on their skin called pore cupolas which are used to attract ants and tell them that the caterpillar is not prey but actually an ally. Others have nectar glands which ants can milk for honeydew. This is literally honey trapping for the gain of protective services by ants. Ants are extremely protective of their territories and resources, so much so that there are many species of ants in the rainforest that literally make a forest clearing by killing and removing all plants that could jeopardize the growth of special trees they rely on. Having these kinds of bodyguards is extremely handy when you’re a small vulnerable caterpillar. 

This ant-tending relationship between caterpillars and the ants is called myrmecophilous and translates to ant loving, and there are a few different ways in which these kinds of relations can occur. 

The first of these is known as facultative mutualism and this simply means the caterpillars don’t need the ants to survive, but they do make use of them while they’re around and form a beneficial alliance. 

The second is obligate mutualism which means the caterpillars require the help of ants in order to survive and make it to the butterfly stage. These kinds of interactions are not always mutualistic though. In fact there are quite a few species of lycaenid butterflies whose caterpillars act as a parasite and live off the ants' resources with no benefit to the ants at all and this is done in a number of ways. The one common factor between all these is that the caterpillar always tricks the ants into thinking it's one of them or even brain washing them with laced honeydew made from their bodies.  

Let’s first look at one of Great Britain's most rare butterfly species known as a Large Blue. Large blue butterflies actually did go extinct on the island and had to be reintroduced from mainland Europe. Thankfully this reintroduction has been successful and the populations are once again stable! Anyway, this butterfly’s caterpillars use both scents and sounds to trick ants into thinking that they are one of them. They don’t do this right away though! Typically speaking caterpillars within the large blue genus start out by feeding on their natural host plants until they reach their 4th instar or molt. At this point the caterpillar drops to the ground and emits a pheromone that tells ants of a specific species that it is one of them. The ants then carry this caterpillar into the nest where 1 of 2 things happens. Either the caterpillar gets fed by the ants as if it were a baby queen or the caterpillar takes a hard 180 and begins feeding on ant larvae. Survival rate is much higher as you’d expect in the species which feign being a larval queen and get fed by the ants as opposed to the caterpillars which eat the nest. 

The caterpillars which feign being a larval Queen are referred to as cuckoo caterpillars and they produce the sounds a genuine queen ant larvae would make which causes the ants to put the caterpillar in high priority and abandon genuine ants within the colony. However this tactic really is only useful for specific species. Let’s say for example one of these caterpillars gets taken in by a slightly different species. The chances of being predated by those ants highly increases simply because the mimicry isn’t perfect. Predatory caterpillars on the other hand are more versatile but have lower odds of survival when compared with a cuckoo species that made it into the correct nest. This is simply because predatory behavior is a lot more invasive in negative ways than pretending to be a Queen. What I find even more incredible about both of these caterpillars though is that even the pupae have glands which continue to tell the ant that it is one of them. Only once the butterfly ecloses does it need to hurry out of the nest because at that point the butterfly is out of the bag in this case. 

Now let's go to Australia and look at one of their rarest butterflies known as the Bathurst Copper or Purple Copper butterfly. This one, unlike the large blue, doesn't use the ants as a food source but actually has the ants protect them in exchange for special honeydew which the caterpillar excretes from a gland on its back. The caterpillar feeds on a host plant known as blackthorn and can only be found in a limited range at altitudes greater than 850m. The caterpillars are also rarely seen because the ants actually carry them into their nests during the day to protect them from predators and then at night the ants carry them out and on to their host plants where the caterpillar will resume feeding. Once the caterpillar is ready to pupate it once again returns to the ants nest where it stays dormant until it's ready to eclose months later. 

This week I'm showcasing a very rare and special family of caterpillars. Jewel Caterpillars belong to the family Dalceridae, and they have some really unique defense mechanisms that go along their incredible body.

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Transcription: 

Welcome back everyone to episode 52 of Insects for Fun! The only weekly podcast on entomology by a master in Entomology! Kind of crazy I know, but then again, Entomology isn’t exactly a super popular topic and many people in the field prefer to keep their heads glued on whatever topic of research they are currently involved with as opposed to entertaining the masses! But lucky for you I am an entertainer at heart and the show is starting now

Today I want to share with everyone some crazy caterpillars known as Jewel caterpillars. These alien-like creatures look like they belong in a glass shop. You know those small glass animals that are super colorful and clear? The ones you can purchase in just about any glass store in a touristy area? Imagine those but they’re specifically caterpillars, and they’re alive! The family is called Dalceridae, and it houses around 84 species or so divided into 11 genera. The last article I found said 84 but I’m sure there’s more. These guys are tropical, being found only in the neotropics with only one species found from Southern Arizona and Texas down into Mexico. That being said, climate change is really messing things up so this is most likely going to change. 

The caterpillars are on the smaller side with a maximum length of 1 inch or 2.5 centimeter, and have a slug like shape which also coins them the name slug caterpillars, but slug caterpillars are a larger group that extends beyond Jewel Caterpillars, and we’ll cover those on another day. 

Jewel caterpillars are the larval stage for moths and unfortunately, the moths themselves are not nearly as beautiful. Pictures will of course be available on the socials, but if you need a quick description think of the moths as fluffy muppets with super long arms. The caterpillars spend their days grazing on leaves from coffee plants and other tropical trees. The interesting thing is that the caterpillars don’t hide at all, and they rarely get preyed upon either. It would seem that most animals have become quite familiar with highly colorful insects being incredibly toxic, but that’s where they’re wrong when it comes to this incredible insect. Jewel caterpillars do not pack poison or venom, and so far scientists have been unable to identify anything toxic about them. That being said they do have a secret weapon, and that would be their sticky body. Jewel caterpillars have gooey spines on the outside of their body which when disturbed fall off, and create a very sticky mess for whoever tried to touch it. I can’t help but look at this caterpillar and think they’re just walking gummies, but I don’t think anyone should actually try eating one. Many experiments were done to look at exactly what happens when other insects actually try to take a bite and the results look quite similar to a kid who put too much taffy in their mouth. The caterpillars are also quite fast and can make an easy getaway once the attacker has been halted. 

What’s really interesting though is that this defensive adaptation is not available to the caterpillar right away. They have to work their up in size before unlocking the full potential of their gummy defense  With each new molt they have larger and more pronounced globby knobs, and they actually have none when they first hatch. 

Now speaking of hatching, Female moths contain two special glands specifically for when they lay eggs, and the purpose is to cover the eggs with a fast-drying clear liquid. We don’t know exactly what this is for but it probably has many functions. One is speculated to be keeping the eggs from drying out, while another is to protect them from ants or other small insects trying to eat or use them. Another crazy fact is that female jewel moths have rarely been seen in the wild with only 40 species out of the 84 known to have been seen. 

When it comes to predators these funny little guys don’t have many, but they do have to be careful of parasitoids, which we mentioned in the previous episode on Velvet Ants. These caterpillars specifically fall prey to a parasitoid fly in the family tachinidae. This family of flies lays their eggs in the bodies of caterpillars and other insects, and the larva develops inside until it inevitably kills it. The flies that target jewel caterpillars have evolved special bodily functions which allow them to pierce the stomach without getting very close to the caterpillar. 

If you want more insects for fun or would like to support the show there is new extra content being added on the patreon from bonus episodes covering all kinds of crazy information like how honeybees have vaccines and how insects can actually create static charges and anomalies in weather to fun videos of my expeditions and life in japan. But you can also support the show by giving it a rating on whatever platform you listen! It really helps out the show a lot, and the insects for fun community is growing everyday thanks to your help. 

This week we are showcasing large parasitoid wasps that target tarantulas for their young, and why you might not want to bother one.

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This week is a listener-request episode covering wolf spiders! We will look at the habits, special traits, behaviors, and some cool sounds of these interesting arachnids. 

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Transcription: 

Welcome to Episode 53 of Insects for Fun! The entomology podcast hosted by me, your not so local entomologist. Today we have another listener request from Jamie out in New Zealand wanting to learn more about Wolf Spiders! Now I’m no arachnologist, but I’m not about to turn away a listener request either so I did my best. 

Wolf spiders belong to the family Lycosidae of which there are 129 genera and over 2,450 species! That’s a lot of spiders! They also have a very wide distribution being found just about everywhere except for the far north and of course antarctica! 

In general wolf spiders are on the larger size, but they don’t compare with tarantulas. That being said the largest wolf spider in the world has a 12cm leg span or close to 5 inches and a thick body similar to that of a tarantula. The species is called Hogna ingens and is a critically endangered species of only 5,000 individuals or so on the Desert Grand Island off the coast of Portugal in the Madeira archipelago. You would be amazed by how many really interesting arthropods live on isolated archipelagos. In fact an entire chapter of my thesis was dedicated to parasitoid wasps found within archipelagos, but that’s another story.  

Getting back on track with wolf spiders from island systems there was one special wolf spider that Jamie wanted listeners of this show to know about, and that would be one of the 25 wolf spiders endemic to new zealand called Anoteropsis litoralis. This beautiful wolf spider inhabits beaches and coastal areas which is where the species name litoralis is derived from. In Latin litor refers to the seashore and the spiders body itself actually looks like it's made out of small beach pebbles. Unlike the previous wolf spider I mentioned, this one is very small, and the species itself is only 21 years old! It’s body has evolved to blend in with its seashore surrounding helping it catch small arthropods like the New zealand shore earwigs. 

Wolf spiders have long legs and are known for being really fast which makes them great at hunting down prey, and is one of the primary reasons they are called wolf spiders. These spiders do not use webs to catch their prey, and are active hunters just like wolves! That being said they don’t hunt in packs so it would be more accurate to call them lone wolf spiders (mmkay) they are also really fuzzy and have tiny hairs all over their bodies which they use to sense small changes in their environment as well as grip on to a variety of surfaces. 

Most of these spiders are actually on the larger side, and are brown, grey, black or tan with dark stripes. Some people mistake them for brown recluse spiders but the brown recluse is almost never seen in nature because true to its name, this spider is very reclusive. Wolf spiders on the other hand tend to be out and about more frequently, especially at night or on overcast days, and they also always have patterns on their bodies.

Another thing that’s unique about wolf spiders is their excellent eye-sight! Wolf spiders have two large eyes in the center of their face with a row of four smaller eyes underneath and two small eyes above. In general spiders tend to have pretty poor eyesight which is why so many rely on other means of catching prey, like webs for example. They need to feel the vibrations of insects and their surroundings, but again, today’s special spider is completely different! These spiders also have powerful legs with spring-like joints allowing them to store energy and then release it at once with varying degrees of power. Depending on the distance and prey they’ll apply different degrees of force. 

The diet of a wolf spider consists of ground dwelling insects like crickets, earwigs, beetles, other spiders and other small animals. For example some large wolf spider females can actually take down small amphibians and reptiles too. As a result many of them stay in areas that cater to these prey items like grasslands, rocky areas, stream edges and gravel. 

Now when it comes to where wolf spiders spend their downtime, these guys have a variety of housing opportunities. Many wolf spiders will make tunnels in the ground, but others live in trees, under rocks, basically anywhere that’s sheltered or cluttered with things to hide under. They’re actually quite skittish in the presence of larger animals and often scramble to the nearest hideaway if noticed by a human for example. 

Now even though wolf spiders are solitary there comes a time when finding a mate is necessary, and in these situations males try and attract a female using one of two tactics. They either raise and wave their front legs or they drum on the surface of whatever they’re on in hopes that the vibrations will attract a female. They will also shift the method of attraction depending on the environment. For example the species Schizocosa ocreata (which can be found throughout the eastern half of the U.S.) will use visual cues when placed on a surface that isn’t good for drumming, and when given a choice of environment they always preferred to be on leaf litter which had a much higher success rate overall. The drumming is really interesting to watch because the spiders move around on leaves and beat both their front legs in a rhythmic beat as they walk around. 

Unfortunately the mating tactics of wolf spiders don’t just attract females, a study was done at the University of Minnesota which actually trained Blue Jays to push one of two buttons when presented with different videos of spiders. One button indicated the presence of a spider and the other meant the blue jay didn’t see anything. The results show that the spiders were much more easily seen when doing their courtship dances as opposed to doing just about anything else. 

But! It doesn’t stop there… you see, mantids are not the only arthropods to partake in cannibalistic mating behavior. In fact many female spiders actually eat their mates and wolf spiders are no different. Apparently the mating signals used by male wolf spiders are actually saying “hey, this is for mating only, please don’t eat me”, and sometimes it works out well and other times it does not… 

The females aren’t evil though, they’re actually far from it and show very strong maternal instincts when caring for their young. Once a female has successfully mated she begins laying an egg sac which she will carry around on her back even after the eggs have hatched. It’s only after the spiders are a few days old when they typically leave the mother to fend on their own. It was also found that female wolf spiders if engaged by a predator can sometimes be separated from their egg sac, but when the predator is gone she immediately goes back to where they were separated and grabs the eggs to put them back on her back. Many will even pick up egg sacs that have been lost by another female and care for them as if they were their own. 

Males do not hold the same level of parental care, and in most cases flee the female as soon as possible to avoid being eaten. SOMETIMES they’ll stick around and help out for a little while but wolf spiders are not monogamous and do not form pair bonds. 

In general the lifespan of wolf spiders lasts around 1 year, but females actually live longer than males and can stay alive up to 2 years or so. As for what preys upon these… that would be a variety of other animals like birds, rodents, reptiles, amphibians etc. Wolf spiders don’t exactly have a lot of great ways for defending themselves either. There is often no protective web to save them and they aren’t poisonous either. They can bite of course, but the bite is designed for subduing prey which would be smaller insects and animals. For example if a human gets bit by one they will probably feel something similar to a bee sting. Some people might not feel much at all. It really depends on the individual. I’ve handled wolf spiders before and never got bit so I can’t say much from my own experiences on this one. I’m pretty sure getting bit by a longhorn beetle is much worse though. 

Most wolf spiders rely on running away, feigning death or making low hissing sounds! Wolf spiders can actually make sounds by rubbing their pedipalps together. Pedipalps are the small arm-like extensions next to the mouths of spiders. 

That pretty much wraps up this episode, but! I do have a quick reminder that you can get ad free episodes of this show along with bonus episodes and insect related vlogs at Patreon.com link in the show notes! And a big thank you to the new patreon member Caden! And for the listeners that are still with me and haven’t yet rated the program, that is another way to support and help me grow the podcast so maybe in the future I can devote much more time into creating content for you. 

Thanks again for listening and you’ll hear from me again next week. 

This week we are looking into the only bugs to make their home on the open ocean! How do they do it? Some things we know for sure, while others still remain a mystery... 

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This week's artists: HM Surf, Richard Smithson, and no one's perfect. 

Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 36 of Insects for Fun! This week we are looking into a group of bugs that made their home in the sea and it’s pretty interesting… 

Our journey today takes place out on the open ocean. The waters are calm and we’re miles away from any shoreline. Finally, a place where no bugs can reach me is what you think until you notice something small skating on the surface... meet the oceanic water strider known as halobates. This genus of water strider consists of around 40 species but  5 have evolved to live out on open waters completely independent from land, and these 5 can be found in approximately 50% of the open oceans around the world, but are predominately found in warmer waters within the pacific and indian ocean. There is one species found within the Atlantic but its range is limited near the equator. 

The genus halobates belongs to the insect family gerridae which are commonly referred to as (insert stupid music) water skaters, water skeeters, water scooters, water skimmers, water bugs, pond skaters, and or water skippers. Now there should be no one who doesn’t have an idea as to what I’m talking about (I hope). I’ll have a separate episode covering the freshwater variety but halobates were too interesting to pass up so easily. 

You might be asking yourself (Patrick Star: whats so great about) 

And I’m gonna tell you right now. Halobates are the only group of bugs to successfully live in the open seas away from land for the entirety of their lives. 

Water striders are true bugs which means they don’t have a larval stage, and Halobates are no exception. These bugs reproduce on the open sea and lay their eggs on floating debris. What’s interesting is that because sometimes there is so little floating debris, one piece can be used over and over by many different females with eggs literally layered on top of each other. 

In fact, an empty milk jug was found floating off the coast of Costa Rica and had around 70,000 eggs consisting of 15 layers. That’s insane! The eggs are quite small though being less than 1mm and shaped like a grain of rice. 

These bugs go through 5 molts before reaching the adult stage and have no known seasonality. They do prefer warmer waters though which speeds up their growing time. The eggs of these guys usually hatch within 10 days and then it takes another week or two for each molt until reaching adulthood.

Halobates like other bugs are fluid feeders which means they live off sucking up nutritious liquids from other marine animals including each other when the going gets tough. As for the major food sources we aren’t sure, but they have been recorded eating zooplankton, dead jellyfish, fish eggs, and other floating organic material. These oceanic bugs can also store triglycerides or waxy fat as reserves, which is not something the coastal variety does and this helps buffer them when food is scarce. The coastal halobates have a much easier time getting food because they prey upon bugs that fall into the waters from land, and these ones also lay their eggs on rocks and other natural structures that hug the water’s edge. 

Both varieties have bodies that are half the length of your traditional freshwater skaters but their legs are around the same length. This actually helps with skating across the ocean with greater speed and gives them a really good jumping height. These bugs also have very fine hairs shaped like mushrooms which trap air and act as a life vest when the bugs get pushed underwater. They can also use this trapped air as a safety reserve for breathing if they really need it. You might be picturing the bugs grabbing bubbles of air but it's important to note that bugs do not have lungs and they can simply absorb oxygen through their bodies, which makes having fine oxygen-holding hairs really convenient. Another nice adaption would be the ability to produce a waxy material that they coat all over themselves to make them even more hydrophobic. Apparently, these bugs are always grooming themselves when not moving and applying this waxy coat to their bodies which keeps them able to effortlessly skate across the open ocean. They almost hover from their hydrophobic properties with as little as 5% of their legs touching the surface of the water, and rain or waves can’t wet them down either. 

Something I found interesting about the open ocean species is that because they aren’t tethered to any form of land they’re always roaming and changing locations which makes them difficult to track on the open sea. Some days you might see thousands and the next day they’re gone. It reminds me of the mass outbreak phenomenon in Pokemon. 

The predators of these bugs seem to be sea birds, turtles, and some fish species but sea birds were definitely the main predator, especially small sea birds which feed by skimming the surface. One sea bird in particular might actually be targeting the bugs and that would be the blue-gray noddy with one bird having over 330 Halobates found within a regurgitated sample. 

Much is still left to be known about these bugs because they don’t seem to do so hot in captivity… It’s currently theorized that these bugs must need some kind of surface film that can’t be reproduced in a lab environment because they will eat fruit flies but that doesn’t seem to keep them going.

We're heading to Africa this week to look at one of their most famous beetles: the goliath. We're also going in-depth on how to raise them because they aren't like your traditional beetles. 

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Music provided by Lofi Girl with featured artist: HM Surf

This week we're looking into the weird creatures known as Skippers! These insects have been an oddity in the order of Lepidoptera and for good reasons. They just don't seem to fit the mold for either moths or butterflies. 

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Music provided by Lofi Girl with featured Artist: Blue Wednesday

Today is a bonus episode from my backlog of bonus Patreon content. You can unlock AD free episodes, bonus episodes and vlogs over at Patreon.com/insectsforfun! 

Chapters: 

(00:08) Circadian rhythm anomaly

(02:01) The relationship between blue tits and winter moths

(03:45) How one ant species throws lions off their game

(05:51) Heliconia butterflies take their mimicry to a whole new level

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This week we're exploring the lives of tiny insects that make the interior of leaves their home. These insects can be found across an array of orders and as such we are not focusing or looking into any one species but rather talking about them as a whole. 

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Music by: Yuhei Miura

Wētās are the largest crickets on earth and are all native to New Zealand! In fact, most of them are endemic which means they can't be found anywhere else. There are five different kinds of wētās: Giant wētās, Tree wētās, Cave wētās, Ground wētās, and Tusked wētās, and this episode takes a look at all of them. 

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Featured Artists: HM Surf, Soundroll, mell-ø, kidcut, and cxlt. 

Transcript:

Welcome to Episode 40 of Insects for Fun! This week we have another listener request from a listener named Jamie out in New Zealand! Jamie reached out wanting to share a special group of insects found only in New Zealand, and today we are going to dive right into all the wacky facts about insects known as Wetas. 

Weta is the common name for a group of giant flightless crickets found only in New Zealand! There are approximately 100 species of Weta and they are split between two different families. The first family is Anostomatidae and the second is Raphidophoridae. I’m not saying crickets within these families can’t be found in other parts of the world, but what I am saying is that the 100 species that are referred to as Wetas cannot with the exception of a few species that made their way to Australia.

Jamie also informed me that Weta without the macrons means filth in Te Reo Maori which is the native language of New Zealand.

There are five kinds of Weta in New Zealand and I’m going to talk about all of them! There are the Giant wētas, Tree wētas, Ground wētas, Tusked wētas and Cave wētas. 

The first and most famous wetas would be the giant wētas with the largest species known as Wetapunga or Deinacrida heteracantha. The genus Deinacrida actually means terrible grasshopper which I think is funny considering how they really don’t do anything bad, and the name wetapunga translates to god of ugly things. They really just can’t catch a break I guess. This weta can reach a length of 100mm or 4 inches and weigh up to 70 grams! This is not the average weight though, I believe on average these insects weigh around 30 grams which is still a lot! Heavier than most sparrows in fact. Fortunately, this is a gentle giant, and feeds mainly on foliage though it will sometimes feed on smaller insects as well. It’s favorite food seems to be native plants with large leaves like the karaka, karamu, mamangi, mahoe, and kohekohe. Wew feels like I’m back in Hawaii. 

There are 11 species of Giant wētas and for the most part they look like really big camel crickets, but with a less arched back. They definitely are not like your average field or house cricket but they are nocturnal and spend their mornings and afternoons hiding under fallen palm fronds, ferns, or other large plant debris. In the night these critters come out from hiding to feed in trees or scavenge the ground. 

These crickets used to be found through Northland, Auckland, and the great barrier island, but have only been able to survive on little barrier island due to habitat degradation and exotic animals hunting them. Now many of you probably don’t know exactly what it means on a map so I’m going to do my best to explain it. New Zealand is an island country off the southeast coast of Australia, but it actually has two main islands. The north island and the south island. It’s kind of similar to Japan actually in terms of Hokkaido being the north island and Honshu being the south island of New Zealand. Now on this northern island of New Zealand the very north tip is called Northland, and right below that is Auckland. To the east of Auckland in the Ocean there are two Islands. The great barrier island and the little barrier island. For a long time these giant Weta have only been living on the little barrier island, but now thanks to breeding projects in Auckland, the giant wēta is being reintroduced to the northern island of New Zealand! In 2020 Wētapunga were actually reintroduced to Northland which was the first time they had been there in 180 years!

Now that you have an idea as to their distribution let’s get into the life cycle of these chungus crickets. These wēta reach adulthood in around 2 years, they’re a very bulky and large cricket and eggs are laid sporadically for many species between October and December with their life cycles not really reliant on seasons. That being said, the eggs of Wētapunga will stay dormant through winter if laid in the fall. It’s generally agreed upon that giant weta go through at least 10 molts before reaching adulthood. 

A really cool fact is that these giant bugs actually filled the role of rodents before land mammals arrived. They have an ancient history with New Zealand that dates back 190 million years which is around 100 million years before mammals appeared here. (WOW)

Now let’s get into Tree wētas! These are in the genus Hemideina and as you might expect are mostly arboreal which simply means they live in the trees! They like to occupy holes in trees which in the insect world are referred to as galleries. You might notice a trend with that word and it's safe to say that tunnels created by or used by insects are almost always referred to as galleries. Anyway, these wēta like to hide during the day in their trees and come out at night to feed on leaves, fruits, and other smaller insects. These ones can be found throughout New Zealand except for southland and lowland Otago. 

There are 7 species of tree weta and these insects are social with males often having a harem of up to 10 females. These harems are usually hidden within a hole or crevice of a tree, and males will often fight each other to gain control of them. Male Tree wētas actually have larger heads than females with strong jaws which they use to headbutt and fight each other. You ever see two dogs trying to one up each other by opening their mouths as wide as possible and clashing heads? Well, think of it like that but instead of doggos it's big crickets. 

Tree wetas are not as large as the wētapunga, but they are still larger than your average cricket with their size ranging from 4 to 6 cm or 1.5 to 2.3 inches. They also have large spikes on their hind legs which when brushed against the spikes on their abdomen create a loud rasping noise. 

These wēta will lift their hind legs in a menacing way if threatened to make themselves appear larger, and upon lowering they create their warning calls. 

Before we move on to the next group of Wetas there is an honorable mention for the tree wetas which goes to the mountain stone weta or Hemideina maori. This tree weta no longer lives in the trees, and has actually evolved to use crevices and other rocky hideouts in their alpine habitat. These weta can be found in the southern alps of New Zealand at elevations of 1100 to 1500 meters. Now because these insects have adapted to a colder environment they can actually survive being frozen solid. They are the world's largest insect capable of this, and maybe unsurprisingly they have a very long lifespan as well, up to 8 years. Sometimes it takes 4 years just to reach sexual maturity because the climate is so rough. 

Now if you don’t like the cold and harsh alps but want to see one of these you can also find them at lower elevations on the islands of Mou Waho and Mou Tapu in Lake Wanaka, which is a very large lake in southern New Zealand. 

Next up on our list would be the Ground wētas! There are over 30 species of ground weta believed to be in New Zealand, and they are all in the genus Hemiandrus. These wēta live in holes or under rocks and moss and can be found throughout New Zealand on both Northland and Southland as well as some offshore islands and even in Australia.

These wēta do not have ears on their legs the same way other wetas do, and as a result, don’t communicate through sounds in the air. They actually drum their bellies on leaves of shrubs and ferns or other substrates which can easily transmit vibratory morse codes. These weta are usually on the smaller side when compared to others with the smallest having an adult length of 7mm and the largest being 30mm or 1 inch in length. These ones really do resemble camel crickets but without the hunched back. 

Ground wetas are omnivores which feed at night on fruits or smaller insects. The females usually have long ovipositors but some species don’t which make them difficult to differentiate from the males. This is actually where the genus name Hemiandrus comes from because Hemiandrus translates to half male. 

Cave wetas are 60 or species within the family Raphidophoridae. These wēta have very long antennae and long legs built for jumping and they can actually jump 3 meters high.

Cave wētas are nocturnal and feed on plants, but not the leaves! They also feed on fungi, dead insects, and lichens. 

The crickets are docile and are actually found most in leaf litter, logs, in between rocks, and tree holes, but there are of course species that live in caves as well. These wēta lack hearing organs similar to the ground wetas and rely on vibrations through the ground to communicate with each other.

They are also on the smaller size for a weta as well with many only being a few cm in length, but there is one very large cave wēta which has a total length from the end of its antennae to the feet of its hind legs reaching a whopping 40cm. That’s over a foot long of wēta, but the body itself is small. 

Now it’s time to talk about the Tusked wētas of which there are three known species. There are the Northland Tusked wētas scientifically known as Anisoura nicobarica, the Mercury Islands Tusked wētas or Motuweta isolata, and lastly, Motuweta riparia which can be found in the Raukumara range of the north island. These wetas are named for their large tusks which males use to fight each other, similar to how the tree weta males fight using their large mandibles. The female tusked wētas do not have these long tusks and more closely resemble a ground weta.

As far as behaviors go it seems a shared trait among these wetas are that male duels using their tusks as well as scraping the tusks together to make warning sounds. Otherwise, the species are pretty different. For example the Northland Tusked weta more closely resembles a tree weta and have similar behavior in terms of living in trees with harems, but these ones actually plug up the galleries they live in using shavings and debris mixed with their saliva as opposed to tree wetas who just leave their doors wide open. 

The Mercury island wētas are more close in behavior to ground wētas, and take refuge in the soil. These weta used to be found only on the middle island of the Mercury islands but has since either gone extinct on that island or dropped to such a low population that they can no longer be tracked. The good news though is that a breeding project was started just before they disappeared on this middle island and there are new successful populations on the other islands now after clearing the mammalian predators. 

The last species referred to as motuwēta riparia is a moderately sized weta up to 36mm in length or 3.6 cm in length. If you’re a US listener that equates to 1.3 inches or so. Now this one is unique because unlike motuwēta isolata this riparia species is found along the coast of northland new zealand in large numbers despite being a ground weta surrounded by predators. That being said, this weta has a really cool defense mechanism and that would be to dive into streams and remain underwater until the surrounding area becomes safe. 

Wetas in general are food for introduced mammals like rodents and cats, but they are also preyed upon by lizards such as the tuatara and native birds like the kiwi and weka. Fortunately, there have been great strides in the protection of these incredible insects and a lot of care is continuing to be put into their conservation. 

Now before we wrap up I have a fun story regarding wēta that Jamie gave me. Jamie’s parents used to have a cat named Tawa (Love that name btw) which would actually bring wēta to their front doorstep and leave them there as gifts. I think anyone with an outdoor cat has experienced these kinds of gifts before, but in this case Tawa was always bringing home live weta and dropping them off near their shoes. Now as we mentioned earlier weta can make warning signals with their legs when threatened, so whenever Tawa brought one home they could hear the angry warning calls of a weta. They actually had to check their shoes too to make sure none were in there!

I’ve heard of snakes and scorpions in shoes but having a wēta? That’s a new one for me. 

This is another bonus episode covering spooky tales from people on the internet as well as the news! 

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This week we are looking into a wasp that is often mistaken for an Asian Giant hornet, but the fact is that these poor creatures are everything an Asian Giant hornet is not! 

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Featured Artists: Squeeda, and mell-ø

Transcription:

It’s episode 49 time for this podcast where every Tuesday Japan Time I drop an episode on something whacky in the world of Entomology. We had no listener submissions for this week which means I got to choose! But there are polls on the Patreon where you yourself can vote on which insect you wanna hear about along with bonus episodes for an entirely separate series I’m writing and producing talking crazy cool news and discoveries in the world of insects. If that sounds cool to you or you wanna support the show you can hop on over to the Insects for Fun Patreon page. Now on to this week's episode. 

Intro: 

Cicada killers are large ground-dwelling wasps in the family Crabronidae, and most of them fall into one genus known as Sphecius. These wasps are found worldwide as you can imagine, with 21 species in the Sphecius genus but not all of them kill cicadas! That being said, the four found in the United States do. The most well known species to people in the states would be the Eastern Cicada killer scientifically Sphecius speciosus, and it got a lot of press when people had the Asian Giant Hornet scare. The reason is because the wasps are similar in size, and to someone who is freaking out, and doesn’t know how to identify wasps, they’ll just immediately think Giant wasp equals Asian giant hornet. I mean lets be honest, if you saw a massive wasp flying around and had no background in entomology you too would probably assume the worst and maybe even dial up your friends and or family for your last words. Now fortunately for listeners of this podcast I will be equipping you with the knowledge to save yourselves any such embarrassing moments. 

Cicada killers are large, they’re all large, usually 2 inches in length, with black or maroon bodies with yellow stripes, and reddish wings. They look scary for sure, but they actually want nothing to do with you. Pictures as usual will be available on the instagram and facebook page, but for the hundreds that prefer a verbal description here we go. The main differences between a cicada killer and an asian giant horn are the body shape and coloration. Cicada killers have a black abdomen or some other color with broken or non uniform bands of yellow. Asian giant hornets have many relatively even bands of black and orange/yellow. Also! The heads are vastly different. Cicada killers have small heads and their eyes take up the majority of the space, while asian giant hornets have big yellow or yellow-y orange heads and their eyes are more centered. Also most of the time you will encounter a male cicada killer which has no stinger, and has a longer, more narrowed abdomen when compared to an asian giant hornet. When in doubt, scream and shout, kidding, just don’t get super close and swat it. 

Life Cycle, and food source: 

The life cycle of a cicada killer begins when a female wasp mates with a male within his territory. She then begins building a nest for egg laying within soft and sandy soil, typically in full sun near trees to get easy food. The holes have to be big enough to fit a few cicadas inside so they aren’t small either. Once an adequate food supply is stored she lays an egg on the body of a cicada and then begins making a new side chamber to repeat the process. She will most likely make up to 15 chambers for eggs within a single hole, and as you can imagine that’s kind of a pain to anyone who cares about their lawn. 

A really cool fact about these wasps is that the females can choose the gender of the eggs they lay, which is something I’ve briefly mentioned in older episodes. The reason they do this is because it takes more females than males to create a sustainable population of these wasps, and depending on the gender more or less cicadas are required. For example female eggs need 2 cicadas in the egg chamber as opposed to male eggs which only need one. The reason is because male wasps are smaller than the females and require less to mature.

 Anyway, once the eggs are laid it takes a few days for them to hatch and begin feeding away on the food left for them. The cicadas aren’t actually dead either. They’ve simply been paralyzed and this keeps them alive and still, until the larvae can fully develop into a pupa. Just like all wasps, cicada killers have complete metamorphosis, and because all of it happens in the ground you would never see a larva or pupa unless you decided to dig up a nest. 

The larvae for a cicada killer usually takes around 10 days to fully develop and in areas with four seasons, the larvae prepare for winter by creating a cocoon underground where they will stay dormant as a pupa until the next summer.

Some blogs online might tell you the adults feed on cicadas too but this is actually not true. The adult wasps are pollinators and feed from flowers and on plant sap. 

Behaviors: 

Cicada killers are solitary which for us is a good thing because it means they live alone and don’t have a defense hive mentality seen with hornets and other wasps. The behaviors are actually similar to carpenter bees which we talked about in episode 37 with males being very territorial, but they’re all bark and no bite. Unequipped with a stinger, these wasps are harmless and only fight other males in aerial combat through tackling each other. The females have stingers in the form of a modified ovipositor which in simple terms is the egg laying tube, but they aren’t territorial like males and chances are you won’t encounter one.  They spend most of their time preparing their nests underground and when they are on the hunt, it’s only for cicadas. If you’re lucky you might find one mid flight carrying a cicada which is really cool to see. 

It’s also cool to see them digging out a nest because they can move 100s of times their own weight in soil within a few hours. The females are attracted to sandy soils or soil that is on the edges of sidewalks, concrete slabs, and building foundations. Many people spot them next to driveways or near stone wall gardens. That being said I have never encountered them in Vermont, and I had sandy soil in a portion of yard with plenty of cicadas around so I’m not sure what the deal is. I even checked a map with their sightings and known locations only to find that they avoid VT and Maine but for some reason they’re in New Hampshire? Maybe things will change with the ever changing climate. 

Before we move on there is one more interesting behavior seen specifically in female wasps. Sometimes conditions aren’t great for cicadas, and some areas might have less food available. In these situations female cicada killers actually go into dens made by other wasps and lay their eggs on those cicadas. Sometimes they’ll even try to add an extra cicada to the nest before the other female returns, with some taking so long that they actually get caught and evicted.

But in those situations the eviction is just a matter of the intruder fleeing the scene. There isn’t really a major fight or anything seriously consequential. 

Defenses and Predators: 

Now when it comes to what eats a cicada killer, it kind feels more like what doesn’t eat cicada killers. I mean everything from mice to bears, bats to birds, frogs and even other insects all snack on these large wasps. Birds will also go as far as to steal cicadas right out of their hands mid flight and the wasps don’t do anything about it! 

In another twist of irony and cruel fate, a different wasp referred to as velvet ants, which we'll talk about in a future episode, actually stalk cicada killers, and will lay eggs in their nests with velvet ant larvae feeding on the larvae and pupae of cicada killers. This type of interaction is referred to as parasitization which I talked about in the Just Bugs Collaboration episode. 

The only defenses cicada killer wasps have are their large and scary looking bodies, and a stinger, but again these wasps are not aggressive and will rarely use it which is how they get bullied by other animals so easily. 

This week we look at two different species of weevils known as Giraffe weevils, but these two species aren't closely related at all. We learn why both are referred to as giraffes and what makes them special. 

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This week we look at burying beetles in the subfamily Nicrophorinae aka Sexton Beetles, and what separates them from other beetles. Learn about their life cycles, behaviors, relationships with others, and more! 

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This week we are looking into one of the most feared centipedes and it is purely based on its looks! Another reason why we can't judge a book by its cover.. The house centipede is an amazing hunter of all things we really don't want in our homes. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 62 of insects for fun! The weekly entomology podcast covering all things insect and arthropod! Oo that’s new… yup I have now opened the floodgates for all arthropods, and today we will be looking at just one of many oddballs commonly called a house centipede. 

House centipedes are a group of arthropods in the order scutigeromorpha which happens to be one of many centipedes, but these ones don’t resemble a centipede at all, and they actually look and share more similarities with insects such as full compound eyes, and long jointed legs. Compound eyes means that they can detect movement at incredible speeds, but their vision is actually super blurry. Imagine looking at a wall of monitors and each monitor is showing the same image. It’s super easy to notice when something is moving but you can forget about having a nice big clean image. And speaking of clean images.. the house centipede is definitely not a sight for the faint of heart, especially for those who are scared of creepy crawlies. Their bodies are only between 1 and 1.5 inches in length and slender, but they have 15 pairs of legs which are long and surround the entire body making them appear much larger. The hind legs are actually longer than the forelegs so they can overlap while running without getting tangled and females have two extremely long legs at the very back of their bodies which act as secondary antennae. Honestly if you’ve seen one before you’ll never forget how it looks because they’re really wild. They also happen to be incredibly fast, reaching speeds of 0.4 meters per second or 1.3 feet which is pretty good, and they can traverse almost any surface. There are 25 genera which means there are at least 25 species, but I honestly can’t say how many there are. The most well known species is Scutigera coleoptrata with Scutigera in reference to bear a shield and the Coleoptrata part is like coleoptera which is the order for Beetles because these centipedes have a thorax that’s kind of similar. 

But where did these things even come from? And where can you find them now? Well, house centipedes actually originated in the mediterranean, but are now commonly found throughout the world, and because they live in homes and close to humans it’s pretty easy for them to travel. That being said house centipedes didn’t just randomly appear in our homes.They started out in the wild like the roaches from last episode, and these guys prefer to live in damp, cool, and dark places like under logs, tree bark, rocks etc. They’re a nocturnal group and are rarely seen in daylight. I personally almost never see them in the wild, but I have encountered them in buildings. Actually the first time I saw one was in 4th grade at school. I had no idea what it was but it was so crazy looking to me that I really wanted a closer look. These things are incredibly fast though as I mentioned, and I had no such luck. 

Another feature to house centipedes which adds to their swiftness would be tracheal lungs. With these the centipede can breathe while it’s on the run! 

Okay so now we know where they started and where they dwell in nature, but why our homes? Well! You’ll be happy to know that these critters don’t care about your food, books, or furniture etc. The house centipede is a predator and prefers live food, which it has no problem catching by the way, and because of this you usually only encounter them in your home if you’ve got another problem… like roaches, bed bugs, silverfish etc. Having these guys around in your home is actually quite helpful and they can’t hurt us at all. Think of them as a creepy roomba for arthropod pests, but with a Turbo mod. Some people fear that the creatures can bite you and are venomous to us. But have no fear! They can’t do damage to us, and honestly they don’t want to either. House centipedes are shy, and even when handled won’t be aggressive towards you. That being said they do actually contain venom which is only potent enough for small arthropods like roaches. They can’t really bite either… These centipedes have two modified forelegs called forcipules, and they’re used to slow down prey that has been captured by their other legs. One article I read states that the centipedes wrangle their prey like cowboys using their legs as lassos to corral and catch their victims. She also mentioned that she handles them all the time for her research and has never once been attacked. You know actually something funny I’ve noticed is that the majority of my listeners are women! Are you surprised? I really do think men are more afraid to be honest, and a study done in 2019 found that out of 2,000 Americans surveyed a larger percentage of men claimed to be very afraid of insects. I'm pretty sure I haven’t said that before on the show but if I did, sorry. It’s actually hard to keep track of all the small pieces of information I’ve written and said when it’s just me doing this!

Anyway, house centipedes move around the world by hiding in furniture like rugs or even couches? But please don’t go tearing into your couch looking for something because there is a very good chance you don’t even have them in your home to begin with. Now speaking of beginnings, house centipedes start their life as an egg, and go through a series of molts just like insects! They have 10 molts to be exact, and for the first 5 they grow new legs! The first instar of a house centipede only has 4 and the next molt has 6 with the other 4 molts adding two new ones each time and here’s the crazy part. They can live up to 7 years! Yeah, that’s extremely long for something that is so similar to an insect, and it takes them 3 years to reach sexual maturity. Now I saw something online stating that they prefer winter outdoors but I feel like whoever wrote that probably lived in a tropical climate where summers are unbearable. I mean even Florida to me in the summer is pretty unbearable and I’d much rather be indoors with air conditioning. If you live in a colder climate like New England then you can be sure they’re spending those winters indoors. Especially because they can’t tolerate colder temperatures. It’s a surprise at all that they made it up past Mexico, but I guess being fast and nocturnal has allowed them to stay out of harm's way in close quarters to people. Which brings me to my final point. If you do indeed have this in your home, and you see them quite frequently that means you have a much bigger problem. To remove house centipedes you need to first remove their food, and like I said if they’re around that means you have enough of an actual pest problem which lured them there, and that’s not an easy task. As always regardless of the pest insect, if it’s a lot then you’re better off getting a professional as opposed to turning your home into a home alone film against insects. 

This week we look into all the dirty details on Dung beetles including how they saved Australia! 

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Transcript: 

Welcome back to episode 48 of Insects for Fun! Technically there are 49 episodes but I didn’t count for some reason a long time ago and I’m just sticking with it, the same way today’s insect sticks itself to dung! Today is a listener request from Donna wanting to learn more about Dung beetles! 

Intro: 

It turns out there are a ton of Dung beetles, so much so that they are divided into four different categories and spread out through multiple families of beetles. They all belong to one superfamily though, called Scarabaeoidea which houses around 35,000 species of beetles with a couple hundred being added every year. And yes dung beetles are actually scarab beetles and are depicted in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs but we’ll talk more about that later.

The four types of dung beetles are: rollers, tunnelers, dwellers, and stealers, and as you can probably guess it has everything to do with how they use dung. 

Roller’s are probably the most well known out of the dung beetles and these ones are your stereotypical dung ball rolling beetles. In scientific literature many people refer to them as telecoprids which derives from the words tele as in distance, like a telephone and then coprid which comes from the genus of true dung beetles known as copris. These beetles can roll dung balls up to 50 times their own size and are willing to go the distance, to find a suitable place to bury it and use it for food or eggs. 

Tunnelers bury the dung where it was found, and are referred to as endocoprids with endo meaning within. These beetles set up camp underneath dung patties, and will pull dung from the surface down into their holes where they’ll use it as a food source and place to lay eggs. 

Dwellers don’t move the dung at all. They just live in it wherever it is found, and are referred to as paracoprids with the prefix para meaning near or alongside. These dung beetles run the highest risk of getting trampled or eaten by another animal. 

Stealers are as you can imagine the thieves in all of this, and they aren’t doing it for justice. These dung beetles are referred to as kleptocoprids with the prefix klepto meaning impulse to steal with no real reason. These beetles wait out for opportune moments to steal dung balls from other rollers, and use it for their own gain. They’re evil nature is even found in the larvae which actually kill other larvae that were already in the dung ball. 

As you can tell each type of dung beetle is not limited to a specific genera or family because all the beetles above come from the copris genus 

That being said, most dung beetles have a similar shape and that would be a very compact, round and hard looking body with a much smaller head. They come in many sizes though with some being as large as 7cm and the smallest being as small as 3.4mm. Fun fact: The strongest insect is a dung beetle scientifically called Onthophagus taurus, and can pull dung up to 1,114 times its own weight. That’s like having a person pulling 6 double decker buses… 

Life Cycle, and food source: 

The life cycle of a dung beetle begins like most beetles going through complete metamorphosis starting as an egg and then going through a larval and pupal stage before emerging as an adult. The only major difference is that dung beetles rely exclusively on Dung to do it. 

The true dung beetles within the subfamily scarabaeinae feed on dung only while other dung beetles may actually feed on other decaying matter or even fruits and mushrooms. But all dung beetles use poo for the completion of their life cycles by laying eggs in it and having their larvae develop off of it. The truth is dung beetles can get everything they need in terms of nutrients and even hydration from dung which is kind of insane to think about. This is actually why if dung gets too hard and dry it becomes unusable to beetles. In places like Africa for example the rainy season increases dung beetle populations. 

It should also be stated that not all dung is equal and certain species of dung beetles prefer veggie patties over omnivore or beef patties, and! They even go as far as to prefer dung from specific animals. For example in Australia almost all of the 500 species of native dung beetles prefer marsupial poo and won’t touch cow patties or dung produced by other mammals. This actually caused a big problem when cattle were introduced into Australia in 1788. One cow can produce up to 12 cow patties in a day, now imagine thousands of cows, millions of cows, and having their dung just sit on the ground not going anywhere. This was not only a big eyesore, but it was breeding millions and millions of bush and buffalo flies which both feed on mammals for nourishment causing sores and irritation. Eventually a Hungarian entomologist named George came to Australia and proposed introducing dung beetles from other places like Hawaii and Africa which are well versed in cleaning up cow patties. The project started in 1965 and ran until 1985 introducing hundreds of thousands of dung beetles from 4 species. Today at least two of the four species still remain active in Australia and the number of bush flies dropped by 90 percent. (wow)

There are actually 29 species of introduced dung beetles currently in Australia which are all helping keep the bush flies and buffalo flies down as well as keeping the land fertile. 

Behaviors: 

Earlier we talked about behaviors differentiating each of the four kinds of dung beetles, so now I want to go into some more specialized behaviors. For example dung rollers in Africa have evolved a behavior of sitting on their dung ball and wetting their front legs with a regurgitated liquid to cool themselves down when the sands reach temperatures over 50C. This behavior is repeated more and more with elevated temperatures. 

Another cool behavior seen in ball rollers specifically is something called an orientation dance. The beetles will often stand atop their dung balls and do a “dance” but to me it looks more like a ground survey, turning around and looking at their surrounding before hopping off and rolling their load, and turns out this is in fact what its for. They are also known to do this sort of surveying when the ground isn’t flat because bumpy roads can easily derail the direction of a ball and dung beetles like to roll their dung balls in a straight line away from the source so as to not end up in crowded areas.

Why avoid the crowds? Well, dung beetles like other beetles have a habit of fighting each other, and it's much safer to avoid other beetles than risk losing your dung ball. In fact rollers actually don’t usually have horns or any large exterior weaponry because it slows them down and makes it more difficult to get away. Rollers want to get the goods and get out as soon as possible. 

Now continuing on the topic of navigation there is one very special dung beetle in Africa which is known to use the Milky Way! This beetle scientifically known as Scarabaeus satyrus is able to navigate even on moonless nights by orienting itself along a straight path using the milky way as a guide. It doesn’t rely on other stars or even the moon, and studies have repeatedly shown that this beetle can do it under a variety of conditions. That being said, if the sky is cloudy or there is a lot of light pollution then the beetle gets lost and can’t accurately navigate at night. 

Tunnelers on the other hand don’t have any navigational problems, but they do have the struggles of one on one combat, which is often why these beetles do have horns. Even the females of some species are armed with horns because they have to fight too, but for precious resources. This arms race of who has the better horns can lead to some crafty sneak tactics. A classic case of brawn versus brain comes into play with tunneler species in the genus Onthophagus which we mentioned earlier as having the strongest insect.  Males of this genus are often horned and have to fight off invading males who want to mate with a female, but some of these males have evolved to look more like females and they can sneakily enter the females den by making a backdoor while the horned males are on guard or in a battle. It was actually found that the sneaky males have greater testes than those of the horned males, because less genetic resources were placed into making a large clumsy horn.

Rollers and Tunnelers often form pairs when it comes to breeding. Rollers will give a dung ball to a female if he sees one and if she accepts then they both will roll it away together to start a den. Tunnelers on the other hand don’t have to travel and males will search out a female's den, and either stake it as their own or sneak in through a back door. 

Defenses and Predators: 

Dung beetles are often preyed upon by other larger animals like birds, mammals, reptiles and even other insects sometimes, but they don’t usually have any special techniques for saving themselves. In general their go to defense is to run away or hide, but to be fair living in or smelling like dung is already a pretty solid defence. 

Lore: 

Now let’s get back into the whole scarab beetle thing, which is to say that dung beetles belong to the scarab beetle family, and they have been viewed with great power by ancient egyptians. In fact one species called scarabaeus sacer was viewed as a sacred beetle and is found in many paintings. The image is linked to the meaning of transformation and has strong ties to the god of the sun known as Khepri. These beetles are often depicted as carrying the sun, and were believed to spawn from nothing.  

Before we end the episode I have some quick house-keeping news. I’ve had multiple people reach out asking me about a patreon and I am happy to announce that it is now available! All money goes into growing this podcast so I can spend more time creating new and better content for you! The link will be in the episode notes or you can find it by searching insects for fun into patreon! There are currently 5 bonus episodes for an exclusive side series, as well as a poll for the next insect, and some behind the scenes content. Now if you don’t have the funds or don’t want to commit to a small monthly fee there are other ways you can show your support, like rating and reviewing the show on any platform you listen. You can also tell your friends about the podcast or share it with other insect curious folks! 

This is a special episode to celebrate Halloween! Within the episode is a collection of scary and creepy tales written by the users who experienced them and narrated by me. Hope you guys enjoy it! 

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This week we are diving into giant water bug territory! Literally and figuratively... this bug has many names like toe biter, water scorpion, water cockroach etc and you will learn all about why that is and just what kind of bug this is. 

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Featured Artists: HM Surf, Sleepermane, Sátyr and Phlocalyst

Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 41 of Insects for Fun! I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve been able to keep this up for so long but I am. Anyway, summer is officially in the air for many of us around the world and I thought what better way to ring in the season than with something crazy. So… here we are! 

This week we are talking about Giant Water Bugs, also known as water scorpions, water roaches, Toe Biters, electric light bugs, and to Floridians, Alligator ticks or Alligator fleas. We’ll get into some of the names later, but right now I want to get into some basics. 

Giant water bugs are a freshwater Hemipteran in the family Belostomatidae. In other words, they are indeed true bugs as the name suggests and include the largest true bug period. The species which holds the Guinness world record for the largest water bug and therefore largest true bug goes to a South American species known as Lethocerus maximus. This giant water bug has a maximum length of around 4.5 inches or 11.5 centimeters and can be found in Venezuela and Brazil, but to be honest I think there are larger individuals out there. Water bugs are found throughout the world minus Europe and the Poles but as it turns out, most are found in the Neotropics which explains why the largest comes from South America. 

These bugs like other bugs are hemimetabolous which means they do not have a larval stage, and they are also predators upon hatching, targeting anything they can get their raptorial arms on. In fact, waterbugs can target prey that is 50 times their size! Yes, that includes fish, frogs, snakes, small birds, turtles and even muskrats! They’re basically an aquatic mantis. 

I actually have a personal story regarding this one. When I was a kid I was collecting tadpoles one time to raise into frogs, and I had them in this big glass bowl with pond water, pond dirt as sediment and plants etc, but over time I felt like the number of tadpoles was decreasing but I knew there’s no way they would eat each other. Then one day I saw the arms of a water scorpion come up out of the pond muck and grab a tadpole! After I saw that I realized that I had to remove it fast or the rest of my frogs would be goners. Once I removed it everything was fine, so make sure to check what you collect thoroughly if you’re netting stuff from a pond! 

How these bugs feed is by piercing prey with their stylet mouth and then sedating them with poisonous saliva which turns the prey's insides into goop. They really are swamp monsters or in this case vampires… I’m very glad we don’t have anything like that capable of getting us because I don’t think I could go swimming in reservoirs again… 

Some people have had the unfortunate experience of getting bit by these from stepping on one and the bite is definitely unforgettable. I fortunately have avoided them so far so I can only speak for others, but it seems that the pain is extreme, and will cause swelling and this is where some of the names like toe biter, and alligator tick come in.

These bugs also have some crazy methods for staying underwater. One is to breathe air from a straw-like appendage on their abdomen. Think of looney tunes or something where the character is hiding underwater and breathing out of a straw, but this bug does it from its butt. (Mkay). This is actually why sometimes you’ll see them at an angle with the tip of their abdomen at the surface. That’s not their only technique though. Giant water bugs will also store air bubbles under their wings and have that oxygen slowly diffuse into their body. And yeah I did say wings! 

Which brings us to where they get the name electric light bug. 

Giant water bugs happen to be attracted to light, and because they are capable of flying, people can find them near light fixtures that you would otherwise never expect to find one at. Water bugs will actually fly in search of new ponds or water sources when spawning and this happens from spring through fall. In colder wintering places these bugs bury themselves deep into the mud to escape freezing temperatures and stay dormant until spring comes back again. 

The parental strategies for giant water bugs actually vary depending on the genus, but in both cases the males are always the one left with all the parental duties.

Female giant water bugs in the genus Belostoma lay their eggs on the backs of males, and Females in the genus Lethocerus lay eggs on aquatic plants. Females of both genera actually sabotage each other's eggs though by removing them off whatever they’re on and replacing them with their own eggs. Talk about petty behavior. Meanwhile, the males continue to do what they do best which is making sure the eggs survive and hatch. They even go as far as to fan the eggs using their legs to make sure they get adequate oxygen and water flow. 

So Giant Water Bugs might not be the cutest things to exist or the most loved, but they do have a purpose, and that is to keep freshwater ecosystems in check. These big bugs are doing hard work in ponds, and creaks by controlling populations of mosquitoes, snails, mollusks, midges and other critters that might have massive population booms if left untouched. 

They are also a relatively commonplace food source for people in Southeast Asia where they can be eaten, raw, fried, or cooked/boiled. In Thailand they’re referred to as ma-lang-da-na and they are caught using nets and light traps. It’s also apparently a lot more common to get bit or attacked by these if you’re wading in rice paddies… 

The common predators for giant water bugs are actually larger animals of their prey like birds, bass, and bullfrogs for example. One of their best defenses is their natural ability to camouflage and quickly hide in mud or plants. The body of these bugs looks like a leaf that’s been soaking in the water too long so it's not easy for us to find them either. Now if that doesn’t work their second line of defense would be to play dead, but this mostly an out of water tactic. For example, if we see one and pick it up or start messing with it then it just feigns death to get us to move on. Probably works well if a cat finds one.

This week is all about the beautiful and voracious green lacewing! We learn about their life cycle, their habits, and why people love to have them around their gardens. 

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This week we look into the brief but amazing lives of mayflies covering their behaviors, life cycles, cultural importance, and mating rituals. 

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This week we look at some cockroaches and go into some facts about why they actually aren't great to have around. AND of course, a little myth-busting as well. 

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Music provided by Lofi Girl with featured artist: Brillion, Softy, Squeeda, No one's perfect.

Transcript: 

Welcome back everyone to episode 61 of insects for fun! The weekly entomology podcast hosted by your not so local entomologist. Before we dive in, if you’re a fan of the podcast, make sure to rate it and leave a review if you can on whatever platform you listen! It’s real easy to do and the impact is incredible! We are almost at 50 ratings on Spotify and 20 ratings and reviews on apple which are the only ones I can really check to be honest, but the current goal is to get those numbers to 100! And if I’m being real, we could have done that a long time ago based on followers alone (sfx)

It’s spooky season and this week we are going to talk about roaches because why not! They’re totally spooky to many including myself, and there is a lot of information out there that most people just have no idea about. So this episode we are going to tackle all things roach and get to the bottom as to what’s scary about them and what isn’t! 

Cockroaches belong to the order Blattodea of which there are 4,600 species! Yeah, that’s a lot, and they’re all pretty different. In fact humans only really come into contact without about 30 of those and if you happen to be a US citizen it’s much less, but simply telling you this isn’t gonna change how you feel so we’re gonna move along. Now when it comes to the roaches that we most often see and deal with, those would be the German roach and the brown banded roach. These are the only two domestic roaches, which means they live exclusively in our living quarters and they’ve actually been living with us since we were living in caves. Now fortunately or unfortunately, they are also on the smaller side so they don’t really make big flashy appearances. I’ll be putting the pictures up on the instagram page so you guys can see them. 

Let’s start our episode with the german roach. This small light brown roach with dark bands on its head happens to be the most common roach and is found throughout the entire world. Its place of origin however is not Germany… You see this roach started its journey in Borneo, which is a tropical island in the south china sea. They were just doing their thing within caves for thousands of years when people started storing peppercorns for spice trades in the 1600s. I think you can probably guess what happened next.. Fast Forward to today and now we have these annoying critters everywhere, but it wasn’t just the food that was necessary for their survival. Their populations actually exploded only after plumbing got introduced around the world, and they happen to love kitchens and bathrooms. A german roach can actually last for 12 days without food and water but with access to water they can live up to 42 days without food. Of course german roaches do prefer having food and they mostly stay near it in kitchens or cupboards etc. These ones, like most indoor roaches, are active at night and early morning before sunrise. You might not see them often but one way to know you have them is if you see small pepper-like droppings around. Unfortunately German roaches are on the faster side when it comes to reproducing, and a female roach can lay up to 8 oothecas in her life with each one carrying up to 48 eggs. They actually carry these around too until right before they hatch. Now I know you want to know how to get rid of them, and I will tell you of course! But before that I want to share some information about the 2nd domestic roach. 

The brown banded roach is another small roach that honestly looks pretty similar to the german roach, at least when it comes to males. The females have a different body shape with brown bands on the abdomen, and the nymphs also have these brown bands. These roaches used to be incredibly common but these days they aren’t so much. It’s believed that air conditions have sort of ruined housing for them by making the environment too cool because these guys prefer much warmer temperatures and are actually believed to come from Africa. They are now found across the world thanks to US troops from world war 2, but again they aren’t too common. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one, but I know for a fact I’ve seen german roaches, even here in Japan. Now unlike German roaches, the brown banded ones do not spend the majority of their time near food. In fact another name for these is furniture roach because they can be found anywhere with furniture such as living rooms, bedrooms, and even behind framed pictures on walls. The brown banded roach prefers to stay at higher elevations with their oothecas being found in the upper 3rd of wall spaces. A brown banded female can lay up to 13 of these in her life, but each one only has up to 18 eggs. Also yes, ootheca is also the term used for mantis egg cases! Turns out roaches and mantids aren’t actually that different, but I’m gonna tell you about that later. 

So now I’ve mentioned the two domestic roaches and here’s why you don’t actually want them in your home. Roaches are actually a source of allergen and cause asthmatic symptoms or even asthma attacks in people who are sensitive. In fact according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, roach allergens are one of the most common! Yikes… you’d never notice them either because they just kinda sit still with dust until it gets stirred up when cleaning or moving furniture etc. What’s scarier is that 78% to 98% of urban homes within America have between 900 and 330,000 roaches. Yeah that’s a very wide spread but uh having 900 being the lower number is still terrifying! The problem with urban roaches is that they are not clean like farm raised roaches, and yes people definitely farm roaches for their pets. My younger brother has bins filled with dubia roaches which get fed fruits, vegetables and protein powder. Now I personally don’t fear those at all because I know where they came from and they aren’t disease ridden, but I wouldn’t trust any roach that comes crawling out of a drain or into your house from the streets because they’re able to live in the worst of environments. In fact roaches can carry and harbor E. coli, Strep throat bacteria, Pneumonia, Salmonella etc. But I think I’ve traumatized us all enough for the time being, so let’s look at what we can do to get rid of house roaches! 

The first and easiest thing to do if you suspect to have or have seen roaches in your home is to clean! Make sure your floors don’t have crumbs which isn’t hard if you have a dog, keep your kitchen surfaces clean, don’t leave food in your sinks, and keep everything sealed tight. It’s also recommended to keep your indoor humidity levels low but I think most people are trying to do that anyway. Next it’s time to trap and vacuum any roaches you find, but to be honest I wouldn’t count vacuuming as the end all solution unless you filled your vacuum with bleach or alcohol because roaches are crafty creatures, and if there is a way out they will find it. 

Now if you happen to have roaches in your home and you’re looking for a way to lure them out and trap them then have no fear! It’s totally possible to do so. 

The first method would be to use Diatomaceous Earth which is a dehydrating powder created from fossilized algae. You basically wanna sprinkle this in areas with known roach activity and it will dehydrate them to death. The only downside is it's kind of messy and requires you to pick up dead roaches which could really die anywhere. 

If you are more interested in knowing exactly where those roaches are then it might be a good idea to set up traps. One really good method for collecting roaches would be using boric acid or even baking soda. If you go the baking soda route you wanna take some food, like diced up onions or something else that roaches will want and cover it with baking soda. You wanna leave this out in areas where you suspect there are roaches, but this of course means you need to make sure your animals won’t try eating this either. I would keep your pets safely in another room the night you do this or place the trap in an area where your animals can’t access like under your sink in a cabinet or something. 

Using boric acid is similar but instead you’ll want a paper plate with a lure in the center like peanut butter and then sprinkle the boric acid around the lure on the plate so the insects are guaranteed to touch it. Again I don’t recommend doing this in an open area accessible to pets like dogs or cats. Boric acid targets a roaches nervous system while baking soda makes them explode from the inside… lovely I know, but hey, that’s why I’m not in the pest control business. 

Moving along to the non domestic roaches comes the most well known roach and that would be the American Cockroach. These are called peridomestic because they live around humans but don’t rely on them, but they don’t actually come from America. I don’t know who’s naming these things but they clearly don’t care about geography. American roaches actually come from Africa and were introduced into America via ships in the 1600s similar to the German Roaches. These ones usually invade our homes through pipes, or cracks in infrastructure. I’ve actually seen terrifying videos where swarms of American roaches come running out kitchen sinks. That’s definitely not normal though and it probably means there was a massive sewage break or flood nearby which was making them all flee the underground. Either way it's clearly a bad sign and you can expect something terrible. The american roaches are actually less likely to be in your home than they are in restaurants or other service industry places and the reason is simply that there is more accessible food around. When I worked at Gyu Kaku in Hawaii which is a Japanese chain for all-you-can eat meats, I would always see American roaches in the kitchen looking for scraps on the floor in dark corners or underneath storage bins while cleaning. You really can’t escape them in urban areas. That being said I should also mention that roaches in general do not like light so if you’re scared of seeing one or don’t want to risk having them near you at night you can simply leave a light on. It’s a waste of electricity but hey, it’ll give you some peace of mind I guess. Actually here’s a fun fact for you, the name cockroach comes from the spanish word for them “cucaracha” which was derived from the latin word blatta meaning insect that shuns the light!

So earlier I mentioned that roaches and mantids aren’t all that different and here’s why. The ancestors of roaches roamed the earth around 320 million years ago, placing them in the Carboniferous period. This time period is characterized by having swamps with large ferns, Fern trees, horsetail trees, fish, amphibians, and giant arthropods. The ancestor to cockroaches was actually 3 feet in length and that wasn’t anything extraordinary either. Now it just so happens that this ancestral roach also happens to be the common ancestor to Mantids and Termites as well. In fact all three of them are in the same super order Dictyoptera and mantids separated from roaches around 127 million years ago in the cretaceous period when a new proto-roach evolved with raptorial arms. Termites separated around this time as well. So yeah, you can thank cockroaches for the mantids and termites. And really, not all cockroaches are bad. There are plenty of cool ones out there as well like the madagascar hissing roaches, sky blue roaches in Guyana and Emerald roaches in Vietnam. I know for a fact that Hissing roaches and emerald roaches are sold and kept as pets with the emerald roaches fetching a high price, but I’m not sure about the sky blue ones. 

Now Let’s get into the myths and facts regarding cockroaches because I think a lot of us have heard quite a few. 

One of the most commonly spread rumors is that roaches can live without their heads, and this is actually true! To an extent, if a roach loses its head it can still walk around and breathe, but it’s not going to live a normal life. It’s going to starve to death because it now has no way of eating or drinking. 

Another big myth is that roaches will release their babies if you step on them. This is not a given scenario at all, and if you do step on a pregnant one, you can be sure those eggs are now scrambled. HOWEVER if you only crush the upper half of the roach and an ootheca comes out then those might still be viable (bleck) 

Here’s a fun one, Cockroaches can survive microwaves! And uh yeah they can! Actually cockroaches don’t go through nearly as many cell divisions as we do, and because the rate at which they do is slower, they can withstand up to 125% more radiation than other animals. Can they survive a nuclear bomb? No… but they’ll last longer than we would in the aftermath. 

Okay here’s a good one, Roaches only live in dirty homes. This is false! You can have a home that is spotless and still have roaches living in it. They’ll even resort to eating bar soap if you have nothing else available. 

This wraps up today’s topic, but we’re not quite finished! I’m going to share with you a piece of this month's bonus episode available on Patreon because it really is a different flavor from the mainline content, and I go into much broader topics. Here’s a clip. 

There’s plenty more where that came from on Patreon.com/insects for fun. As always thank you for listening, and if you enjoyed the episode please make sure to rate and review the podcast. It’s easy to do and it really helps grow the show. 

This week we're looking at some of the most famous prehistoric animals: their origins, adaptations, behaviors, and extinction. You can find pictures as usually at the Insects for Fun IG page or FB page. 

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Today we are taking a look at some crazy looking insects known as Harlequin beetles. This beetle is so unique that it doesn't share any relatives under its genus, but its uniqueness goes beyond appearance...

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Today we are talking all things millipedes including how they're different from centipedes! 

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Today's music was brought to you by Lofi Girl

This week we are literally diving into the topic of crustaceans and how they're related to insects, but that's not all. Let's also take a closer look at lobsters and learn some interesting history. 

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Music from Lofi Girl with featured artists: HM Surf, and Purrple Cat

Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 63 of Insects for fun! Only today we’re not talking about insects exclusively. This is a bridge episode which is going to link us into all further episodes relating to crustaceans because there’s a lot and I don’t want to have to keep explaining their relationship every time. SO! Here we go (underwater bubbles) 

Remember that episode I did talking about how not all insects are bugs but all bugs are insects? Well here’s a new one for ya. All insects are actually crustaceans, but not all crustaceans aren’t insects (HUH) and no, spiders, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, and horseshoe crabs are not crustaceans which means that yes, lobsters, shrimp and crabs are more closely related to insects than arachnids, and those other creepy crawly arthropods. Let’s go back in time to where it all began which would be the Cambrian period. At this time the earth did have land masses but Pangea was not a thing, and these land masses were very very bare. Almost all life was still in the ocean and it was here that Crustaceans first came into existence.

So what do Crustaceans and Insects have in common then? Well, for starters they both rely on an exoskeleton made of chitin, and they both start out as an egg and go through a series of molts to reach their adult stage. They also both have compound eyes and antennae! Yeah that’s right, even crabs have antennae, and crazier still is that crustaceans actually have two pairs of antennae unlike insects which only have one. But the similarities go deeper than this, and by that I’m referring to their insides. Both of them share the same proteins for transporting oxygen, and they’re circulatory systems are also controlled by the same peptides. I think it’s safe to say that yes. Insects are indeed crustaceans, and when we eat shrimp, crab and lobster, we’re basically just eating big ocean bugs. 

But are Lobsters really just roaches of the sea? How did that myth even start in the first place? Believe it or not there was a time when Lobsters were actually referred to as the poor man’s chicken or even cockroaches of the sea in the United States. Back in the 1600 and 1700s the full potential of a lobster's taste had yet to be unlocked and people really didn’t know how delicious they could be. As a result piles and piles of lobsters would wash up on the shores and people didn’t know what to do with them because they certainly weren’t going to eat them. But the reason lobsters began to really pique people’s interest started with the transportation system. As more and more railroads were being built, and more and more passengers were riding trains for longer periods of time; food had to be made available and what better than to offer cheap and common Lobster! More and more people began eating lobster and became curious about the methods one could cook it, and now here we are. Lobster is considered a delicacy and fetches a high price. 

So now that we have the knowledge of what a crustacean is, and the history of lobsters in the states. Let’s look at what exactly a Lobster is, and come to a conclusion as to whether they’re indeed overpriced cockroaches or not. 

Not all lobsters are the same, and many crustaceans which have lobster in the name are not true lobsters. Today we are looking specifically at clawed lobsters in the family Nephropidae of which there are around 54! Not too many which is kind of surprising, and I think there must be more as well considering they all say we know more about our solar system than we do about the oceans on earth. These clawed lobsters have 10 legs but only 8 are used for walking. The front three pairs all have claws, so yeah the big claws we crack open and eat are just one pair of 3 legs! 

Now here’s where it starts to get quite familiar… the body of a lobster contains three segments. The head, thorax, and abdomen, but with most crustaceans, the head and thorax are fused into something called a cephalothorax! Lobsters also contain large compound eyes, and get this, three pairs of antennae… yeah! The two really long ones we see are used for feeling the ground and the others are for picking up chemicals scents in the water. Some of you might be wondering what the smaller leg things are under the tail of a lobster, and those are called pleopods or swimmerets and they help with swimming!

In general clawed lobsters are on the larger side between 25 - 50cm or 10 and 20inches, I mean I’m sure many of us have seen one form of them before, but it does vary depending on where the species lives. For example deep sea lobsters will naturally be smaller in comparison to a big ol red maine lobster for example. The lobster in Japan are also on the smaller side, but I find that most things other than insects tend to be smaller over here.

And speaking of where they live… these lobsters can be found in all the oceans on sandy floors, rocky bottoms, muddy floors, as close as the shoreline to out past the continental shelf into the deep with larger lobsters being further out. Lobsters usually get around by walking along the floor but they can be pretty speedy when they need to! A lobster's escape involves flicking the tail and pushing itself backwards with a max speed recorded at 11mph. They don’t just use their legs for walking though. They actually taste with the front walking legs. They also chew with their stomach, not their mouth. They’ve got something called a gastric mill which is basically a food compactor in their stomach that grinds down everything. Now of course a lobster can’t just swallow things whole the way birds often do, and that’s where the large claws come in. These guys usually break open and rip apart their meal to get it into smaller bite size chunks before getting further crushed in the stomach. The claws can use up to 100 pounds of pressure and are the go to cracking open and eating crabs, clams, mussels and sometimes… even other lobsters. 

Now let’s take a look at the longevity of a lobster because rumors are that these creatures are insanely resilient, just like a roach, and it is also rumored that lobsters are biologically immortal! Let’s take a look at the facts. Humans and other animals are designed to degrade because as our cells divide and continue to be born again, a small piece of them doesn’t come back until eventually the cells just simply stop dividing. This small tip at the end of our cell's coding is called a telomere. If we’re to think of this in fishing terms it would be like never being able to replace the line on your rod, and you don’t have a swivel, so you need to cut your line a tiny bit every time you change lures and that line is only getting shorter until you simply can’t fish anymore. Now lobsters on the other hand do have a swivel which means they can keep swapping out lures without having to take any line away and this swivel is an enzyme called telemorase. So yeah. Lobsters are in fact biologically immortal. They actually get more fertile with age, so then why do lobsters die? Unfortunately Lobsters have to keep shedding their skin as they age and grow, and to do this they require more energy and calories, so instead of dying from old age, lobsters actually die from exhaustion. At a certain point they simply cannot get enough calories to replace their shells and that’s the end of it. So in our earlier example the  fishing rod of a lobster gets more and more thick until eventually you can’t even lift it anymore to go fishing. They can also regenerate limbs, but it’s going to take some time. For example a one pound lobster will need about 5 years to regrow one of its larger claws. And yes lobsters feel pain! I don’t care what chefs say or anyone in the food industry. They have sensitive hairs all over their body and an incredibly complex nervous system. There is so much misleading information made publicly available by people who really don’t have a clue. For example I read on a Maine Lobster Company website that insects and lobsters don’t have brains so they don’t feel pain. (dumb dumb dumb dumb) 

Earlier we got into the history of lobsters as a food source, but did you know that lobsters actually get grades? There are three grades given to a lobster upon its catch and those are either new shell, hard shell or old shell and the price for each one increases with hardness. The reason is that harder lobsters can be shipped further away, but the meat is coarser. New shell lobsters are incredibly fragile and cannot be transported far. The meat is tender and more sweet when compared with harder shelled lobsters. Here’s a fun fact, lobster shells can be used to make golf balls! They look the same, but only have 70% of the power. 

Okay it’s time for conclusions on whether lobsters are actually roaches of the sea (drum roll) It’s a no! They share similarities for sure, but they are not close enough on the family tree or even through appearance to be considered. There are definitely sea roaches though but that’s for another episode… 

That wraps up today’s topic! If you enjoyed the episode or enjoy the podcast make sure to give a rating and review if you can so more people can find the show! If you want bonus episodes on topics relating to insect news and other noteworthy discoveries you can find those along with vlogs at Patreon.com/insects for fun. If you have a listener submission you can send to me via IG at insect(number 4)fun or through a fb message OR send me an email at insectsfordummies@gmail.com. 

Thanks again for listening and you’ll hear from me next week. 

This week we are talking about the invasive and widely spread brown marmorated stink bug; why there are so many of them and why you don't want them around. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to Episode 64 of Insects for fun! The weekly podcast on all things creepy crawly with a focus on insects. Today we’re going to talk about stink bugs because my god there are tons of them right now. 

In the fall when weather is starting to cool down a very smelly bug starts to make more and more of an appearance, but today we’re focusing on a specific stink bug called that the Brown marmorated stink bug. This bug is native to China, Japan, and other Asian countries but made its way into the United States in 1998. The state of introduction was Pennsylvania but this smelly bug can now be found throughout many states both east coast and west. Coincidentally it was also introduced into Europe in 1998, but I believe this came after the American introduction. For the European listeners you guys can find these in Germany, Turkey, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and much more recently the United Kingdom (gasp). They’re going to take over the world I’m sure except for Antarctica because well… who can actually stand to tolerate that wasteland. Now where you live might also have native stink bugs, so how can you tell the difference? The brown marmorated is a marbled deep brown in color. This is actually where the term marmorated comes from, and these ones have white bands on their antennae as well as a black and white stripes along the sides of their abdomen.

And yes this is indeed a true bug like all stink bugs and belongs to the family pentatomidae which is in reference to its pentagonal shape. The marmorated stink bug doesn’t only appear in fall though its life cycle begins in spring, but it takes a little while to reach their final form. For example they go through 5 instars or molts and each one takes a week or so to complete. They aren’t anything special to look at either, making them all the more unwanted by most everyone. They’re relatively small too, only reaching about 1.7cm or a little over half an inch, but their smell is incredibly strong, and is often compared with rotting vegetables. I mean if you’ve ever made one angry then I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. But why is it that we only seem to really notice them in the fall if they’re around all summer? These little dudes do not like cold weather, and as a result are actively trying to enter places that can shield them from the cold like your house for example. Or in my case the school that I currently work at because these things are everywhere, and the best part is that my school literally leaves windows open with no screens. They’re straight up asking for stink bugs and then freak out when they enter the school. But this episode isn’t about the dumb things that happen at my school. So now we know these bugs love the indoors when it gets cold, and are really smelly when threatened or scared, but are they bad for us? 

Fortunately for you, this stink bug will not bite you, and isn’t harmful to you or your pets! Sure if your dog or cat eats one they might throw up later or get an upset stomach but the bugs are not poisonous or venomous so don’t go rushing them to the vet. Unless something is really wrong, but I haven’t heard of any deathly allergies to stink bugs. I did learn though that people who have an allergy to cockroaches will likely have adverse reactions to the brown marmorated stink bug, and these bugs can release a pheromone to let other stink bugs know they found a good place to hibernate for the winter leading to thousands of stink bugs in your home. One Maryland household had 26,000 individuals which is totally crazy!

On the bright side of things, if they do make their way into your home, garage or shed etc, they aren’t going to cause damage by eating your furniture etc. They won’t even reproduce in your home or eat your food. They really just want to get away from the cold, but of course I don’t blame anyone for not wanting them around. And generally you don’t want these bugs around. In fact New Zealand is actively trying to make sure they don’t enter the island and for good reasons! Jamie I’m counting on you (idk if he still listens to this.. Hope he does!) At any rate these stink bugs are generalists feeding on 100s of plants, and when they feed on plants they cause wilting, bruising, and even less fruit production in hardwood trees. They’ll even feed on the fruits themselves causing lots of losses for farmers! They’re an absolute pain to deal with because a single female can lay up to 500 eggs in batches of 20 to 30 under leaves of host plants. It’s also difficult to find them sometimes, especially on grape farms where they can hide in clusters of grapes. They actually affect the taste of wine too if they get poured into the mix, and this is a result of one of the chemicals they release when stressed called E-2-decenal. This compound is responsible for their stinky smell and is also found in cilantro and most of us know how controversial that plant is. 

Something else that was more recently discovered about these annoying little guys is that they leave an invisible footprint on the farms they’re found on. For example researchers at Rutgers University found that traces of brown marmorated stink bugs were in the water that farmers were using to wash their produce. One of the farms they found it in didn’t even have a visible infestation, but on the last day of their surveys a juvenile was discovered in a trap. They were wondering if finding traces of the stink bugs with no visual evidence could be a warning that an infestation is coming. 

Now if you’re in an area that has these smelly little monsters around you probably want to know how to get rid of them or prevent them from your home. You might even wanna know regardless to prepare yourself for when they do finally show up, and that part of the show starts now. 

Your best line of defense starts before you’ve even seen the enemy. Make sure your living situation doesn’t have cracks or crevices leading to the outside. They’re pretty flexible despite their looks and can fit into slits that are around 4mm in height and holes that are 8mm in diameter, and yes those were statistical findings and we can thank the people at Virginia Tech for figuring those out for us. Also try and keep your outdoor lighting to a minimum if you live in an area with stink bugs. They happen to be attracted to lights at night so you’re basically giving them a welcome home sign. Earlier I said they don’t care about your food, and this is generally the case, but if you leave fruit out in bowls then that might also be attracting them so just keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Also if you’re a household that enjoys using firewood and keeps a stack of it around outside, that could also be a prime location for stink bugs to hide. It’s recommended to keep piles of wood like that at least 20ft away from your house and that’s usually a good idea regardless because as we learned in the carpenter bee episode those make good little hotels for bees too. 

I’ve got a really weird one now for you. Fragrant Dryer sheets. Apparently stink bugs are not a fan of these so if you wipe down your windows and door screens etc with dryer sheets you can repel up to 80% of unwanted stink bugs. (That’s pretty neat!) 

But some of you might be saying “But I already have them in my home! What do I do now?” 

I’m going to share some tips and trips but first a disclaimer. I’m not a professional in pest management. If you have a lot of stink bugs or ANYTHING in your home do yourself a favor and get a professional in there. If you don’t have a serious problem and just want tips to help keep your space free of them then these tips are for you. 

1. Flick them into plastic bottles to contain their stench and pheromones 
2. Don’t squash them or use hard pesticides in your home, you’ll likely make the problem worse. 
3. Okay this one is pretty good, get yourself a shot vac and fill the canister with soapy water. Then just go ham and suck all the stink bugs up. It’s not recommended you use a regular vacuum because the smell is incredibly pungent and can stain the lining of a regular vacuum. 

We’ve talked a lot about what these stink bugs eat and how we can get rid of them but are there any animals that willingly eat these? The answer is yes! The majority of these are other arthropods though like spiders, and predatory insects, and the life stage at which these are most consumed would be eggs. Katydids, Crickets, Slugs, Ladybugs, even other stink bugs will all happily feed on marmorated stink bug eggs, but there is one predatory that takes the cake by far, and that would be the samurai wasp  Trissolcus japonicus which is native to Japan. This parasitoid wasp is responsible for over 50% of egg mortality in an egg mass, and they also prioritize the brown marmorated stink bug over other bugs. The funny part is it wasn’t introduced purposefully into the states but managed to get here anyway and now people in the U.S. are like dang, can we buy these in bulk? (I’ll take 20! Spongebob quote) It’s also now found in Europe and Chile, and it seems to follow the marmorated stink bugs wherever they go. The best part is that they even overwinter which means that they can survive colder climates! As for purchasing these, they are not widely available like other parasitoids but maybe someday they will be. 

That wraps up today’s episode! As always if you enjoy the show please rate it and review if you can as that is the number 1 way to grow our community other than word of mouth. If you want more content or just wat to support the show you can find it at Patreon.com/Insects for Fun 

If you have a listener request you can send it to Insectsfordummies@gmail.com and of course be sure to check out the instagram and or fb page for photos and possibly videos. I made a Tiktok account for this which has close to 900 followers now so I’ll probably add videos on IG reels or something as well. There is also the YT channel! 

Anyway Thanks for listening and you’ll hear from me again next week.

This week is a listener request for Antlions! We look into how sand traps are made and what unique tactics antlions use to keep their prey from getting away. 

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Music from lofi girl with featured artists: HM Surf and S N U G, 

Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 59 of Insects for fun! The entomology podcast hosted by me is your not so local entomologist, and today we have a new listener request from a listener named Joseph out in Hungary! So without further ado let’s dig into it (animal crossing shovel noise)

Antlions are a group of insects in the order Neuroptera which are net winged insects like lacewings and mantidflies and we will definitely be getting to those ones at another time. But today is all about the antlion which are a group of really interesting insects in the family myrmeleontidae of which there are around 2,000! The name antlion appears to have come from the classical era which started in the 8th century before common era, as for why they got this name the most widely believed reason is simply that they prey upon ants like a lion, at least during their larval stage. The insects can be found throughout the world but prefer living in warmer climate areas, especially dry areas like dunes, sandy pine soil barrens like the beach towns in Cape Cod, barren parking lots, basically anywhere that’s got dry or sandy soil. This is not to say they can’t tolerate rain because they can, it’s just that a very rainy area doesn’t exactly pair well with the strategies many of these guys have, and if they are in a rainy place then they choose to make their tunnels underneath cover like fallen debris, trees or or man made structures. 

Antlions like all lacewings go through complete metamorphosis, and the larvae are predatory unlike the adults, feeding on ants as well as other small insects, but unlike a lion they don’t chase down their prey. They instead wait for their food to come to them and then take advantage of the moment. Most actually build a funnel-like sand trap and lay in wait at the very bottom. You know the giant sand monster in Star Wars? The one that jabba the hutt would throw prisoners into for fun? I think its name is sarlacc, well that crazy thing is modeled after the larva of an Antlion. OR maybe you’re a star trek fan, in that case think of ceti eel which apparently made its debut in star trek 2 the wrath of khan. 

The larvae burrow into the ground butt first and use their arms to fling sand and debri up and out as they form a funnel. Once the trap is made they sit and wait for ants and other insects to walk, slip or fall into their trap. They can tell something is there by feeling the vibrations in the sand using sensory hairs on their bodies which I talked about in a recent episode. These sensory hairs are pretty good and can detect movement of nearby insects that haven’t even entered the funnel trap. Once something has entered the den, the antlion larvae begin flicking sand at the target to create a small landslide, and they are very precise about this, and know exactly how much sand to flick to push their prey to the bottom. If you see videos of these online they absolutely look like sand dune monsters from a sci-fi film. But some species don’t go this far in trap creation, and prefer to stay in premade holes of trees or rocks waiting for something to walk by. Either way these insects are opportunistic feeders, and don’t go chasing down their food. To be honest I don’t think they could even if they tried based on how crazy their bodies are. Of course waiting for your food to come walking by isn’t exactly reliable, and there may be times when little to nothing comes by at all and it's for these reasons that the antlions have very slow metabolisms. They can actually go months without food which actually prolongs their lifespan. That being said, if a location really isn’t providing then the insects will move to a new location. Joseph mentions seeing this happen at the local playground he takes his son to. What’s really interesting and funny is that the larvae move backwards! They could go forward if they wanted, but it’s much easier for them to move this way because of how their body is built. In parts of the US people actually call them doodle bugs because the paths they make in soft soil look like little doodles or drawings made by someone dragging their finger around.

Antlions spend the most time as a larva and only pupate once they’ve reached maximum size. This will of course depend on the species but many antlion larvae max out at around ½ an inch or 1.3cm for our listeners that use the metric system. They stay in this pupa for a month's time before emerging as an adult, but the adults don’t live very long. It’s for these reasons that their lives are extended when little food is present, but the goal of an antlion is not a long life. The adults usually last less than a month with 45 days being very long lived. They do have mouths though! In fact adult antlions are another pollinator, feeding on the nectar from various flowers at night keeping our world green while the butterflies and bees are sleeping. The adults resemble a damselfly, but they have long clubbed antennae and their wings have more of a patchwork pattern which is where the order gets the name, lacewings. You probably wouldn’t encounter one though unless you have lights outside your place at night or you decide to raise one from its larval stage. 

But you know who has encountered them? Our friend Joseph who has managed to also raise these in captivity. He actually has a lot of experience with rearing antlions as well as studying them as a fellow insect enthusiast. Fortunately for us he has shared a lot of his knowledge with me to give to all of you listeners! Joseph used to collect antlions by first finding their trails and funnels. He mentioned that it's pretty easy to find them in areas that are covered by shade, like under slides or other structures on playgrounds. To get them out of the sand takes some careful work on the part of us, because simply digging them out with your hands is not only difficult but it could also damage them. Joseph recommends using a filter, or a small thin twig to expose them. I’ve also read online that you can use a straw to gently blow air into the funnel which can show you exactly where they are. Afterwards simply place them in a jar filled with sand. These insects are not picky about what you place them in so long as it's roomy enough. Joseph used 700ml jars, and the cool thing is these larvae will simply go about making a new funnel once moved. They really aren’t bothered by glass walls because they’re not trying to move. As for the food, he told me that these insects will in fact eat anything they possibly can, but bulkier prey items like flies etc are more packed with nutrients and make them grow faster. You can tell the larvae have created a pupae when the sand funnel loses its clean and tidy appearance. 

The pupae are buried within their sand pits, and are protected by a cocoon made from silk and sand mixed together. If you have one in a container at this point you will need to make sure it has something to crawl on and enough space to spread its wings. Joseph mentions that the cocoons are almost perfect spheres and are super cool to look at. He actually used a separate container specifically for these, and mentioned that if you raise more than one antlion in a jar it's very important to move the pupa out if the other is still a larva, because the larva will try to eat it… 

Now speaking of eating, the mouths of antlions aren’t much of a mouth at all, they’re basically slits that can’t open and close the way we eat food, so the insect must first make their prey edible. To do this the antlions inject a digestive enzyme through their large pincers, and then drink the fluids. Yum. When they finish their food it gets tossed out of the pit, and this can result in a pile of corpses. 

Apparently it’s not uncommon for antlions to make dense near each other, and the piles of corpses from one pit might actually help a nearby antlion that hasn’t gotten so lucky because studies show that incoming ants usually don’t fall into traps with corpses and it’s not because they aren’t interested. It’s actually the opposite! Ants will come to investigate but then wander away from the crime scene as opposed to haphazardly walking right into a den. It’s kinda cool to think that in the end the life cycles of antlions could be determined by their neighbors. 

Now when it comes to predators, there are different ones depending on the lifestage. Adult antlions will get eaten by birds and bats while the larvae tend to be susceptible to parasitoids, and based on findings from researchers it would appear that 3rd instar antlions are the most at risk for parasitization. It totally makes too because the larger the host is the better. Joseph also mentioned that from wild collected antlions the rate of parasitization was pretty high, basically it comes down to how young the antlion larva is when you find it. The younger the better if you want the best chance of avoiding an unwanted wasp. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of Insects for Fun! As always if you’re enjoying the podcast it is incredibly helpful to rate it and leave a review! If you would like to further support the show, get bonus episodes and other side content be sure to check out the show on patreon.com/insects for fun. 

Links to the IG, FB and Patreon are in the episode notes, and if you would like to send me a listener submission let me know on any of the socials or at insects for dummies@gmail.com

This week we look at different disciplines within Urban Entomology along with different insects that have adapted to city life! 

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Music by Sea - no. 

This week we look at one of the strangest flying insects out there and their behaviors. There are many kinds of scorpionflies and they are all pretty different. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome back to episode 50 of Insects for Fun! The weekly podcast covering all things entomology. This week we are looking into a very interesting type of fly which is actually not a fly at all, and kinda seems more like a chimera than anything else!

Intro: 

Scorpion flies are a group of insects belonging to the order Mecoptera which means long wings, but the wings are not the most interesting thing about these insects. There is one family in particular called panorpidae, and the males in this family have an abdomen which curves upward and has a large bulb-like structure with a pointed tip at the end. This family has the most species and is the main reason why Mecoptera are often referred to as scorpionflies. That being said, those showy and intimidating tails are only for mating, and can’t harm you or anything else. Another really wacky feature for these insects would be their long mouths.The heads are actually small but the mouth itself is really big. The term for a mouth like this is called a rostrum which I mentioned in the Acorn weevil episode!

As for the wings, they are heavily veined and have a more primitive appearance as if they came from a Mayfly. I really can’t stress enough how strange these insects look, it’s like someone just took random parts from different insects and put them together into this monster we call a scorpion fly. 

The distribution for these is worldwide but the diversity is strangely separated. For example there is more variety at a species level within Africa, and the European continent, but there is greater variety in families and genera in the Americas and Australasia. 

And not all of these scorpionflies look this weird. There are 9 families within the order, and each one looks pretty different. For example one family called Bittacidae look like four winged crane flies and are often referred to as hangflies or hanging scorpions. Another family called Boreidae look more like fleas or even the flightless midge found in antarctica. 

Life Cycle, and food source etc: 

In general scorpion flies prefer more humid environments in forests and grasslands surrounded by broadleaf vegetation like oak trees or other shrubbery with flat leaves to rest on. These insects feed on everything from honeydew and nectar to dead or dying organisms. Many of them actually snatch prey out of spider webs which is really cool! 

Some though are carnivorous scavengers that prey upon smaller insects and sometimes even spiders. The hanging flies mentioned earlier are in this camp and have a really cool method for catching prey. These flies literally hang on the edges of plants with their legs dangling down and they grab insects mid flight to feed on. 

The life cycle for these insects is holometabolous which means that they have a larval and pupal stage. The larvae for scorpionflies actually resemble caterpillars and spend their time in the ground feeding on decaying matter and other small insects except for one special family found  in New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Chile and Argentina. This special family called Nannochoristidae have aquatic larvae that prey on smaller animals in riverbeds. They are also believed to be one of the only larvae that have true compound eyes, which is wild because compound eyes are known to be a special trait in adult insects (insert naruto quote) 

I can’t speak for every scorpionfly out there, but in general these have one generation a year with the pupae staying dormant during the winter months. 

Females lay their eggs in the soil, and require a certain moisture level in order for eggs to hatch in a timely manner. This is not uncommon with insects that develop in the ground, such as beetles and cicadas etc. And if the moisture levels are off it can delay the hatching of scorpionflies up to months. 

Behaviors: 

When it comes to mating, Scorpion flies have some interesting rituals, and they usually involve offering a female some kind of incentive to woo her. For example, common scorpionflies which are the crazy monster looking ones have three separate tactics for luring a mate. The first two are to offer wads of spit or a dead arthropod (super enticing I know). Though sometimes they try to mate without offering anything! (gasp) (those pigs). 

Apparently the practice of giving a female a gift is for distracting the female resulting in longer mating time. I personally think this is hilarious, and it reminds me of the safari zone tactics in pokemon games where you throw a berry or w/e to increase your catching odds and prolong the encounter. 

Hanging Flies use pheromones to lure a female, and then offer them a special hostage. But as great as some males are, there’s a lot of competition, and these flies have to get crafty sometimes. Scorpionflies are known to sometimes mimic the behaviors of a female in order to take gifts from other males, sometimes they also just show up for sloppy seconds. They literally wait around for a new female to fly into the area and then present her with whatever is left from the previous male's gift. That’s literally showing up to someone else's date after they left, taking the flowers or whatever chocolate is left and handing it to a new girl (How you doin?). The worst part is this actually works, a lot… 

Now of course each family of scorpionflies has their own quarks and gimmicks as well, for example the wingless snow scorpions in the family Boreidae which are the flea looking fellas just jump on a female and stay on them for up to 12 hours, just chillin there. Literally and figuratively these cold climate scorpion flies just go about their usual day after pairing by moving around and feeding while the females do absolutely nothing. 

Defenses and Predators: 

Scorpionflies aren’t really known for having any special defenses, and as a result I was unable to pull up anything in regards to how they protect themselves from other insects or insect eating animals, but! I was able to find something interesting in regards to their preference for dead animals. Scorpionflies are actually now used by forensic entomologists because they are one of the first responders to a decaying human body, even before the much more famous blowflies which I mentioned in my forensic entomology episode. 

This week I wanted to showcase an incredible family of moths that are known to mimic a variety of bees and wasps depending on the genera and species. It's not just their looks that are incredibly accurate though. It's the behaviors as well! 

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Transcript:

Welcome everyone to episode 57 of Insects for Fun! The weekly entomology podcast covering all kinds of interesting things in the world of entomology. Today we are doing a deep dive into clear wing moths, which are quite possibly the best wasp mimics I have ever seen. 

Let’s start with the basics, as we always do. Clearwing moths belong to the family sesiidae, of which there are around 165 genera, and over 1,525 species in the world. There are other families, but we’re just gonna focus on this one today and to be honest it has way more species than I was expecting. That being said it's time for a quick disclaimer! I just wanna quickly remind everyone that when we dive into families that are this size, it becomes increasingly difficult to say that any one characteristic can be found within each individual. So just remember, every species is gonna be a bit different! 

Alright so we have this family of moths called clearwings, but what’s so special about them? Well! These moths are daytime fliers for one, and are known for their incredible wasp mimicry. And let’s not forget those clear wings for which they’re named. You see these incredible creatures have evolved to mimic a variety of different wasp species. I'm talking about everything from yellow jackets to parasitoids, and the mimicry doesn’t stop at their looks. Even the flight and sounds they produce can resemble wasps, making them scary to many people who don’t even know they exist. This kind of mimicry is called batesian mimicry which is when animals that don’t have any special defenses of their own mimic ones that do in an effort to protect themselves. I suppose you could say that the ability to mimic something scary is a special defense although once you see through the bluff they’re in trouble. This is again one of those times when I strongly suggest you check out the instagram or fb pages because I’ll be posting images of different species, and they really are incredible. 

For starters the wings aren’t just clear but also shaped to look like wasps with most being more slender and triangular in appearance, and as I mentioned earlier there are species which evolved to sound like the wasps and bees they mimic. This is particularly known to be the case for southeast asian species of which two were tested acoustically and found to produce sounds very similar to the bees they mimic, but different from other bees. I just can’t get over how these moths have evolved to strictly mimic individual bee and wasp species as opposed to being more general. Here’s an audio clip of their buzzing: 

In 2020 Thailand a new genus and species was discovered which mimics a type of parasitoid called a braconidae. Unlike other mimics which rely on colors and body shapes, this one has marks on its wings which in flight make the body appear curved in the same way as a braconid wasp. Pretty crafty I gotta say. I’ll put a picture on the IG and FB pages. 

Now on the other side of the spectrum there is a wasp mimic moth found in central and south america which does such an insanely detailed job that it left me staring for longer than I should have. The species is called Pseudosphex laticincta and I’m gonna put the image up of this one next to the wasp it mimics as well because man or man it is incredible. 

Moving along to other incredible things, the caterpillars for sesiidae moths do not feed on the leaves of plants in the same way other caterpillars do. They don’t even look like caterpillars (huh) the moths lay their eggs on host plants but the caterpillars then burrow directly into the plants, and are never seen again… until they come out of course. But yeah seriously the caterpillars don’t have color, and barely have any legs either. Some of them honestly look like wasp larvae which again is truly wild. How can something in a separate order of insects evolve to look so similar! It’s not like these moths had a conference one day (conference noises) and said you know what? Things aren’t working out for us, but those wasps? They seem to have it good, so let’s just cosplay as those guys from now on. 

Actually in the most recent bonus episodes available on Patreon I do dive into something which could very well explain this phenomenon, and my patrons might actually know exactly what I’m talking about if they’re up to date, but enough about that, let’s see just how similar these moths take their mimicry… 

So we have these caterpillars that don’t really look like caterpillars, and they seem to feed on wood, roots, and other internal plant structures which again is not what your average caterpillar does, but this type of behavior is known within wasp and bee species so that’s another point for towards professional mimicry. As for how long it takes to complete a life cycle, that varies on the species, but most of them take 1 year to fully develop.

The larvae are actually well known pests to gardeners and people who work in landscaping, as well as forest management. The reason is simply that the larvae often damage the plants that they infest by weakening them to the point of losing branches or even death. Although any plant which has been heavily infested by clearwing caterpillars must have been weakened already by other factors because the caterpillars alone shouldn’t be enough to kill a tree. People in integrated pest management commonly abbreviated as IPM refer to these caterpillars as clearwing borers, and the standard protocols are to first make sure the problem is actually clearwing borers. Many insects will bore into trees, especially beetles, and the treatments differ depending on the insect. Common host trees include but are not limited to Alders, Poplars, Pine, Fir, Oak, Sycamore, Willow and stone fruit trees like apricot, cherry, peach and plum. Signs of borers inside a tree are gnarled or rough looking bark patches, swelling on branches, piles of dust and waste outside a tree, and pupal cases poking out of the bark. The hallmark for clearwing borers specifically would be the pupal cases. 

There are other moths with clearwings by the way which cannot be mistaken for wasps, like hummingbird moths for example, and I will definitely do an entire episode on those in the future. 

Before we wrap up the episode I want to quickly go into one particular species which got my attention and started this entire episode. That would be the hornet moth sesia apiformis which can be found across Europe and in Britain. It’s not often we find ourselves in Europe or the UK on this podcast, but that doesn’t mean I don’t notice what’s there! (notice me senpai). Anyway this large hornet looking moth can be found in parks, meadows, golf courses, marshes, basically anywhere really, and they prefer laying eggs on trees surrounded by vegetation. 

This moth is really cute despite being a mimic to the European hornet, and the females act pretty similar to a giant silkmoth meaning they’re pretty docile and won’t fly until after they’ve mated. I’ll of course post a picture of this one too. 

The larvae for these moths feed in the roots of trees unlike the others we’ve mentioned so far, and can spend up to 2 years before pupating. Our UK listeners can probably testify that the weather isn’t exactly ideal over there most of the time, with summers historically being pretty short, and as a result the larva have been known to grow slower than others. 

When the caterpillars do finally make their pupae it is within the tree and these ones are one of few within the family to create a cocoon. Inside this cocoon holds the pupa which for this species are lined with rings of small spines. The spines on these pupae cling to walls of the hole they bore in the tree’s trunk and create a grip which the pupae use to wriggle their way out in mid June or July. 

The moth was introduced into New England before 1880 and can be found in the northeastern parts of North America with detailed records around Ontario, Canada. 

And with that, this wraps up today’s episode on the clearwings moths in the family sesiidae. As always I hope you enjoyed it and learned something interesting! If you are enjoying the podcast it is highly appreciated if you drop a review and rating on whatever platform you listen. It helps me know if I’m doing a good job and is social proof to people who aren’t sure if they wanna press play or not. 

If you would like to support the show you can find it on patreon.com/insects for fun! I’m currently editing some more video footage from some nighttime expeditions.  

This week was a listener request by Ruth wanting to learn more about centipedes. Learn about some of the crazy things centipedes are capable of along with why you shouldn't play with them. 

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This week we're digging into Mole Crickets! Their behaviors, tunnels, songs, and some cool cultural significance. 

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This weeks artists: HM Surf and  Blue Wednesday 

Transcript: 

Welcome back to episode 34 of insects for fun! I’m your host as always, Mitchel Logan and today we’re talking about Mole Crickets, but before we get into that I have a quick PSA. I got messaged through the fb account asking where people can send me questions or topics they would like to learn about, and the answer is my email which is insectsfordummies@gmail.com. I really do welcome requests, and of course listener stories if you have any! Now let’s get back to the program.

Mole crickets are in the family Gryllotalpidae and there are approximately 107 species known today, but I’m sure there are more. These crickets are found all over the world and they are all well equipped for life underground. As you might expect, Mole crickets got their name because they spend a good majority of their life in a series of burrows all made for various purposes. In fact they start digging as soon as they hatch from their eggs because this is where their lives start! They don’t just act like a mole though, they are also built like a mole too with very strong forearms that are shaped like the paws of a mole. This is a great example of a biological term known as convergent evolution which simply means species from different origins have evolved similar traits because of a shared environment. In this case that environment would be life underground and as it turns out, wide forearms with short appendages make for a great digging tool! 

They don’t have legs built for jumping so you won’t see them jump much if ever. Unlike more traditional crickets, they’re whole body is built for pushing and moving through dirt, but many of them can fly and even swim which is honestly quite shocking. 

Adult mole crickets are typically between 1 and 2 inches long or 3 and 5cm. They have cylindrical bodies with an armored head and thorax which probably act like a miners hard helmet. also have two sets of wings, the forewings which are what you see immediately and the hind wings which are underneath but often are much longer than the forewings. I’ve never actually seen one fly before but I guess it usually happens with females after sunset or very early in the morning. I have seen them do short hops outside of their burrows though. These crickets are attracted to lights so if you live in an area that has them you can find them near well lit areas. They’re also pretty buoyant because they have small hairs covering their body which traps air, and they use their shovel-like forearms to paddle water.

Earlier I briefly mentioned the tunnel systems these crickets live in, but now I’m going to actually dig into that information (badum chuck). Mole crickets make a variety of tunnels depending on what it is they are doing at the time. For example, when a mole cricket is foraging for food they often make tunnels close to the surface of the soil and in softer substrates like sandy soil, you can clearly see the elevated trails left by them. 

If the males are looking to attract a female then they make a very different kind of tunnel which actually acts as a horn to amplify their songs. The entrance is much wider than a normal one and it narrows into a chamber referred to as a “bulb”. It’s kind of shaped like a bulb which is I guess why they name it that, but the function is to act as an acoustic room which amplifies its sound. Mole crickets actually don’t face the opening of their tunnels while calling for a mate, and the innermost end of the bulb is typically just a wall of dirt. If there are any additions to the structure they branch off from the mid section of the bulb. 

At least from what we know based on the European Mole Crickets. Some mole crickets even make two openings that both lead to one tunnel which is commonly seen in Tawny Mole crickets and African Mole crickets.

The tunnels these mole crickets make for singing work so well that you can actually hear mole crickets from 600 meters away. Each species of mole cricket has its own chirp but they tend to be one pitch which is then modulated at different speeds. Many mole crickets keep their song around 3khz but have different speeds for which its oscillated. I’ll play you an example now. (insert mole cricket song) these crickets actually rival cicadas for how loud they are. In my episode on Cicadas we learned that those bugs can sing at 90 decibels and it turns out they are not the only ones. A research article published about noise mechanics stated that the loudest mole cricket song in their study was recorded at 92 decibels and that was from 1m away. That’s louder than a lawnmower. If you’re near one you can actually feel the ground vibrate because of how powerful the song is. In the popular series Animal Crossing you can find mole crickets by following the song. It’s quite loud and gets louder the closer you get to it, at which point you have to dig a hole to find it.

Now depending on your beliefs or even your profession the mole cricket will have various meanings from huge pain to delicacy or even a weather forecaster. 

People who work on golf courses or outdoor sports fields in turf management think of mole crickets as a bane to their existence due to the nature of herbivorous mole crickets feeding on the root systems of turf grass. It’s not just about killing the grass, but also making the turf less flat which causes performance issues, especially on golf courses. These damages are often caused by invasive mole crickets which have managed to get around the world with the help of ships. In Florida for example there are three different invasive mole crickets that are responsible for a lot of destruction on turf grass and even the yards of residents, and one of them, called the southern mole cricket, is actually carnivorous and makes burrows in the ground to find worms, grubs, and other small critters hiding in the dirt.

If you happen to be in Thailand, Vietnam or the Philippines then you might find mole crickets to be a great source of vitamins and protein. Mole crickets make for various meals in these countries from being shallow fried or baked to stir fried. In Pampanga Philippines, mole crickets are a staple, the same way cheese is popular in Wisconsin and are used in a variety of dishes including a crispy snack to pair with beer. In the Philippines it's known as kamaru so if you see anything with that name then it's sure to have mole crickets. If you’re curious about the health benefits etc one of my first episodes on this podcast was about entomophagy and I go into all the details. 

In Latin America, mole crickets are believed to be both a sign of good luck, and a weather forecaster. If you find one in your house it’s perceived as a good omen and if you see them making many tunnels you should expect rain in the near future. I personally don’t quite understand the rain one because mole crickets will be digging regardless of the weather but who knows! What I do know is that increased moisture in the soil causes increased surface tunneling as found in a study done by North Carolina Universities department of Entomology.

This week we look at the Chinese mantis, how they got to America, what they do in the wild, and facts on how to care for one yourself! 

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Transcript:

Welcome back guys to episode 44 of Insects for Fun! This week I realized we had another listener submission that was hidden in an apple podcast review! So today we will be talking about a well known insect for a family in the Heartland! 

Intro: 

The Chinese mantis scientifically known as Tenodera sinensis is a very large mantid native to Asia, but! This one can also be found within the United States which I briefly mentioned in episode 3 of this podcast. Today we’re gonna really look at and learn all about this specific species including how it got into the US.

It all started back in 1896 when a plant nursery worker in Mt. Airy Pennsylvania accidentally released the Chinese mantids into the nursery. Now how exactly they even got the Chinese mantis I’m not sure, but it’s believed that they came in a shipment of plants from China. Some sources online say this was actually purposeful but I genuinely believe this one was not intentional because not long after the European mantis was introduced to help control pest insect populations. 

This chinese mantis is actually the largest mantis species within the US  reaching a max length up to 5 inches, but most commonly are seen around 11 cm or 4 inches. They are often a mix of brown and green, but individuals can be entirely green or light brown as well. These similar to others are sexually dimorphic with the males being incredibly slim and the females having a wider body. Some people actually confuse the males with stick insects, but you guys wouldn’t do that… right?    

Life Cycle, and food source: 

The life cycle for a chinese mantis begins like all mantises with something referred to as an ootheca. This is a large egg case which females can spend between 1 to 5 hours laying depending on the size. 

Some of you might be thinking the process is similar to chickens laying an egg, but that giant mass is not pushed out like childbirth or the eggs of birds and reptiles. This mass is produced carefully the way a skilled employee fills a cone with a soft serve ice cream machine... Did I just ruin ice cream? Moving on! 

So we now have this hardened yet soft and fluffy looking egg case called an ootheca, and yes the chinese mantis ootheca does look strangely soft and fluffy compared to other species. Once the process is complete the eggs remain safe inside this casing for the duration of winter (if you live in a place with cold winters) and the young mantises hatch in spring. If the ootheca was laid in a warmer climate than you can expect eggs to hatch in around 10 to 15 days provided the weather is warm and relatively humid. 

It usually takes a full summer for these to reach adulthood but the growth rate is dependent on temperature and food availability. In the more southern ranges of its habitat the nymphs can reach adulthood by the end of July. 

A really interesting trait that's been documented in this specific species is the ability to lay fertile eggs without breeding. I’m not sure how common this is, but I do know it's been published, and some people on Reddit have also talked about this happening with their pet Chinese mantids. I also know as long as the female is well fed she can produce up to 7 ootheca in her life, and if she does mate with a male then his contribution will last for the rest of her life.

The Chinese mantis will feed on just about anything much like other mantids, and this of course includes hummingbirds. Actually, because this mantis is the largest in North America (for now)™ they are the most capable of hunting down larger vertebrate animals like lizards and birds. 

Behaviors: 

In general these insects are docile. Some sources might tell you they are aggressive, but aggression usually occurs in the females during mating season, and they are pretty content hanging out wherever there’s food. They won’t move around much unless they have to. That being said, they will eat each other if they are overcrowded or if limited food is available, so if you keep them as pets you should not have them together in one enclosure. 

The females are also pretty notorious for eating the males during or after mating, so if you have pet Chinese mantids and want to breed them it is highly recommended you keep the female very well fed prior to pairing them, and then immediately separate the male once they finish. 

Defenses and Predators: 

Okay let’s talk about predators because of course these insects have them just like anything else, and actually the predators include some larger sized animals of their prey, like birds for example! But there is one predator I did not discuss in my first episode on mantids, and that would be the Giant Asian Hornet. Yes, in the native range for the Chinese mantis these do indeed get killed by giant hornets, and here’s how. In late summer and early fall, the giant hornets begin searching for high-protein food sources. This usually results in coordinated attacks on honey bee hives as mentioned in episode 14 of this podcast, but! The wasps will also target other large and solitary insects like the Chinese mantis, and all it takes is one giant hornet to get the job done. She stings the mantis injecting a heavy dose of toxins and then proceeds to decapitate the mantis the same way they do for honeybees. Giant hornets use the bodies of these insects as food sources for their young. There was a video in 2020 showing a mantis killing a giant asian hornet, but the hornet was actually hit with an anesthetic before filming so uh… not exactly a fair fight. 

Lore: 

And speaking of fighting,

Did you know that there are actually two different styles of martial arts dedicated to the movements of the Chinese mantis? 

They are both referred to as praying mantis kung fu but have different origins. The first is Northern originating from the Shandong province, and the second is Southern coming from the Hakka people of southern China. Since their creations, there have been many branch-off styles commonly referred to as mantis boxing.  

Pet information:  

Before we end the episode if you would like to try raising a Chinese mantis for yourself it is totally possible to purchase these from online vendors or even find them for sale at plant nurseries. These mantids are commonly used as a natural form of biocontrol to keep unwanted insects out of your gardens, but it's kind of a double-edged sword because they’ll kill off both the good and the bad. 

If you choose to keep one in your home, some good practices would be to keep the temperature around 70 to 85F or 21 to 29C, but having the temp drop to 17C or around 60F at night isn’t a big deal. It’s only if the temperature stays within the low 60s or lower throughout the day that this becomes an issue. The enclosure also needs a light misting periodically so the mantis can drink from water droplets. The enclosure ideally would be 3 times the height and 2 times the length of the mantis with a ventilated/screen top or some other form of ventilation.

This week is a special listener request for Acorn Weevils! The cute little beetles that use acorns as their safe spaces during development. The focus for today's episode is on the Northen acorn weevils scientifically known as Curculio glandium. 

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Transcript:

Welcome to episode 38 of Insects for Fun! Today’s episode was actually a listener request sent to me via IG by Dean F! Without further ado let’s start the episode. 

The acorn weevil is the first weevil to be featured on this podcast and it is possibly the cutest weevil to ever exist. If you haven’t seen it then please give it a google or check out the IG or FB page and drop a comment letting me know what you think! 

Now because this is the first time we are talking about Weevils I will now just go over the very basics. Weevils are beetles within the family curculionidae and as with other beetles, weevils go through complete metamorphosis and they can be found worldwide except for… well, you know what I’m talking about. Now what makes weevils really cool is their modified head. They all have snouts which are called rostrums and at the end of this rostrum is a functional mouth part which they use to feed on plants. These guys happen to be herbivores so there is no need to worry that they will pierce you the same way some true bugs might

 like kissing bugs for example. The females also usually have longer rostrums than males do which they use to help them prepare an egg laying site. 

Acorn weevils as the name suggests are weevils which feed on and use acorns for their young, but they are actually divided into two different genera. The first are referred to as long-snouted and belong to the genus curculio and the second are short-snouted weevils in the genus Conotrachelus. Not every species within these genera are restricted to acorns though which is why they are also often referred to as nut weevils. 

Actually, most of today’s episode will be focused around one of the 36 species within the genus Curculio because the other genus Conotrachelus has over 1000 species and there is much we don’t know. One thing we do know is that these short-snouted weevils cannot bore holes into nuts themselves, and as a result can only use acorns and other hard nuts if they’ve been previously damaged. Most of the time these weevils will lay their eggs on soft fruits and the larvae bore holes into those and feed on the flesh of the fruit until they are ready to pupate in the ground. We also know that species within this genus can be found from Canada down to Argentina! 

Curculio weevils on the other hand are found in North America and Europe but don’t have a range as far south. These ones can also actually make holes in acorns and other hard nuts using a saw-like mouth at the end of their long snouts or rostrum. This is accomplished by doing circular motions with their mouth steady on the acorn until they’ve successfully created a small hole. Once this is accomplished they can deposit one or more eggs into the acorn or other hard nut using a long ovipositor and the larva will remain feeding inside until it is ready to pupate. 

If you’ve ever noticed acorns, hazelnuts, chestnuts or pecan nuts with a small perfect looking hole then you can be sure that it once or might even still have a larva inside. The cool thing is that these kinds of weevils are particular about which host plant they like. For example, one species of weevil won’t target acorns AND chestnuts. They each have their specialty or at least that’s what the literature says.  

In North America, there are about 30 species of curculio weevils but there is one species in particular which is known as the acorn weevil in both North America and Europe. This would be Curculio glandium. 

This species of weevil is relatively small reaching an adult length of 3/8th inch but is actually larger than other acorn specific species and they also have characteristically longer rostrums when compared to other acorn weevils as well which they use when making galleries for egg laying.  

The digging behavior usually begins with a shallow hole in the acorn to see if it’s already been disturbed or used by another insect. If the acorn is fine then females begin actual drilling which involves inserting the entire rostrum into the acorn creating galleries that run along the side of the acorn but never deep into the center of an acorn. Afterwards the female will turn around to oviposit eggs within one or more galleries, but she does not place eggs in every gallery she’s made. It's actually pretty smart to not drill deeply into the acorns because it gives the acorns the opportunity to heal and re-seal the initial hole protecting the eggs and larvae from wasps and other predators. 

These weevils also start mating and creating galleries in acorns later in the season compared with other acorn Curculio species. It is believed to be a matter of difference in size which allows these species to be better adapted for larger and more mature acorns. In fact a study was done comparing acorn size preference and the females of Curculio glandium always chose to lay eggs in larger acorns when given a choice. They also preferred to lay eggs in acorns which were already damaged or cracked as opposed to spending an hour or two drilling a fresh hole into an undamaged acorn.

The females of C glandium begin mating and scavenging for acorns to lay eggs in towards the 3rd week of July and then cease drilling in the end of August when acorns are too stiff for them to pierce. These insects along with other curculio species start drilling their holes within acorns prior to their fall from the tree.

The larvae for curculio weevils are C shaped and develop within the nuts rendering the nut infertile after their development. This is actually why acorn weevils are considered a pest in Oak trees. If you want to collect acorns to use as seeds it's best to collect them just as soon as they fall, but by this time they might already be infested. If you happen to find acorns with holes that have freshly fallen you can actually soak them in water up to 120 F or 48.8 C for 20min which should kill the grubs and save the acorn. 

You can’t freeze the acorn because that actually kills it, unless you don’t need the seeds for planting in which case by all means because freezing kills the grubs too as these ones aren’t resistant. 

The acorn weevil grubs actually leave the acorns as soon as they are ready to pupate and they bury themselves into the ground and remain there for 1 or 2 years. It really depends on the location and how long the summers are compared to winters. They don’t feed in the ground or anything like that, they sleep for the first winter in preparation for their pupation which occurs the following summer, and if they don’t finish in time before the weather gets cold again then it takes another winter. 

This week we look at a very special giant silkmoth that comes from North America (Luna moths). The species is incredibly iconic, and there are many different meanings for it across various cultures. The best part is you can also raise them relatively easily as a pet! 

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Transcription: 

Welcome back to episode 60 of Insects for fun! I wonder what we should do for episode 100… I’ve also been thinking of adding other arthropods into the mix. What do y'all think? Let me know in the comments section either on IG, FB or in your podcast player. Also when this episode is released I’ll be on a flight back to Japan from the states, so I’m currently writing this weeks in advance. Recently we have had some moon viewing stuff going on in Japan, and I figure what better time than to talk about one of my favorite moths, the Luna moth. 

Lunas are in the giant silkmoth family Saturniidae and the genus is Actias. There are actually quite a few species of moon moths in this genus, but not all of them are green like the well known luna. Fortunately in Japan the two different species we have are quite similar to the luna, and I’ll be trying my hand at raising one of them next summer. 

Actias luna have large and gorgeous pastel green wings with big fluffy white bodies, and one eye mark per wing. The wingspan can reach 5 inches across and also have long tails which only further adds to their celestial appearance. The name Luna is actually in reference to the roman moon goddess Luna, but this was not always their name! The initial name for these was actually plumata caudata which translates to feather tail, and these moths were the first American giant silk moths to be documented in literature. The name was later changed by Linnaeus in 1758. There are actually quite a few giant silk moths with mythological names like Polyphemus, Prometheus and Atlas for example, but the majority of them are brown or a variation of it. The Luna moth can only be found in North America, and not even the entire continent either. These moths chose a side and thankfully for me it was the east! You can find lunas from Canada down to Florida but they stay east of the great plains, and in Canada they’re found from southern Saskatchewan to Nova Scotia. I’ll never forget the first time I saw one, and thankfully finding them doesn’t seem to be all that difficult if you know where to go. 

Luna moths are quite partial to forested areas but what kind of plants they eat is dependent on their geographical location. For example the caterpillars we have in Vermont love eating Birch, but I’ve also been successful at raising them on black walnut as well. Other common hosts include Butternut, Sumac, Sweetgum in the south, Alder, Beech, wild cherry and even persimmon. The time of year to find adult moths also varies heavily by location as well and this is because warmer weather allows them to have multiple breeding seasons unlike the northern populations. In Northern Vermont we have one generation a year and our Lunas start coming out of their cocoons in late May. In the south it’s not uncommon to have 2 or three generations in a year depending on the state. Massachusetts for example is right under VT but can have a partial 2nd generation. 

The caterpillars are also an incredible green, and they can get pretty big. The 5th and last molt reaches a size up to 3inches or 7.5 cm and has red dots sprinkled over its back. What’s unique to these compared to other giant silkmoths is that the entire caterpillar actually turns red right before it begins making a cocoon. At least that’s been my experience but I’ve also read that some of them turn brown or orange as well. But it's not the color or the ability to change colors that makes Luna moths interesting or the moths in the genus Actias. It’s actually the tails on their wings that have attracted a lot of attention. Some species in the genus actias have tails on their wings that reach 12cm in length, and that’s just the tail section! I can’t tell you these are the only moths with long tails on their wings but I can definitely say they are one of a handful, and the reason they have these tails is to protect them from bat attacks! Bat’s rely on echolocation to find their prey, and it's one of the reasons why they fly in close quarters to people fishing in the evening. The sounds bouncing off the water from lures being whipped draws them in which can be intimidating I gotta say, and the tails on moon moths disrupt the air waves in a way that confuses bats into missing the body of the moths entirely. In fact studies found that Brown bats are near 50% more successful at hunting lunas when their tails are missing. The tails on these moths are never straight either. At the very base of these tails the wing has a slight curve which catches air in a way that changes the source location of their sounds. For example a moth with no tails is essentially a flying target because the sound originates from the body, but a moth with the tails has its sound point from further below the main body. 

Some people had previously questioned whether the tails were used for attracting a mate but uh ima be real with you. These moths could not care less about what their partner looks like. Some of them are so blind that they try to mate with anything. And that brings me to my second point. The female luna moths like all saturniidae release a pheromone to lure males, and half the time aren’t even looking in the direction of where males are flying in from. The males have to initiate everything after the female starts calling, so whether or not she lays fertile eggs is dependent on the health or age of the male as well as how closely related they are. Generally speaking the moths have different times of day when they start flying based on gender which is a form of control against inbreeding. Some males won’t even recognize their siblings' pheromones. 

Now because luna moths are relatively famous as far as insects go, there are cultural and spiritual meanings tied to the moth. One super simple one is transformation and rebirth but that’s like a copout meaning given to any insect with relevance that has multiple life stages so we aren’t gonna focus on that. The other meanings though have more to do specifically with the luna moth like inner guidance and intuition. I don’t know much about chakras but I guess a soft green color is supposed to represent the heart chakra and is connected to our ability to connect to our inner wisdom, and instincts. The other meaning which I really like connected to these moths is divine femininity. Its gentle temperament and grace links to compassion and intuition often associated with a woman’s instincts. 

In some native american folklore the luna moth is associated with rebirth and spiritual guidance. Similarly in celtic mythology the luna moth is associated with the fae, and is seen as a symbol of rebirth and magic. It really does seem that throughout the world and history these moths have held a special place in the eye of those who see it. 

If you would like to raise luna moths it is totally possible to get eggs or cocoons. Especially if you live in the United States, but people can order eggs and cocoons from the US in other countries as well. You just have to be mindful of the host plants you have around. If you simply google luna moth eggs or cocoons for sale you find many different people willing to sell and ship you these insects. They’re also sometimes used in elementary schools as a fun classroom pet to showcase metamorphosis. If you want the cocoons to stay dormant during the winter it’s important that you make sure the insects came from natural conditions. The amount of light they received as a caterpillar dictates whether or not they are going to diapause or sleep during the colder months, and it’s also important that you leave the cocoons outside. They need to stay synced to the natural temperatures and humidity of their environment. Some people put them in the fridge but if you do this the container needs to be air tight because they will 100% dry out and die otherwise. They don’t require much oxygen at all while they are in this state of sleep, but if you’re concerned you can open the container and give them a slight misting before putting them back in the fridge. Too much water and they will suffocate or get moldy. Also if you live in a colder climate I definitely recommend finding a vendor who lives in a similar place. You don’t want souther cocoons coming out early on you. 

This concludes today’s episode on Luna moths! I may come to this topic again in the future when I have more time on my hands, but for now hopefully this is enough, thank you as always for listening and if you want to support the show you can rate it and leave a review! Or if you need more insects for fun content or want to further support me and the podcast you can head over to Patreon.com/insects for fun to get bonus episodes, ad free episodes, vlogs, and some new things I’ll be working on as well. 

This week we look at what makes swallowtail butterflies so special, and we go through some species highlights to get you started for butterfly watching this summer! It cannot be expressed enough how beautiful and diverse this small but iconic family of butterflies is. 

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This week we dive into some unique insects that give birth to their babies instead of laying eggs, and how they do it! 

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This week we are looking at plants that actually rely on insects and other small animals for their food. You'll learn about how and why they exist along with the different methods they use to catch prey! 

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This week we are looking into one of the most popular stick insects around the globe! The Australian spiny stick insect happens to make a great pet and teaching tool, and it's got quite a few tricks up its sleeve. 

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This week's featured artists: Mitchel Logan and Blue Wednesday.

Transcript: 

It’s Tuesday! Or Monday for some of you and that means it’s time to talk about a cool insect with me as your host. We have another listener request episode this week from Chantelle out in Australia, and with that let's begin episode 42.

Australia's spiny stick insect is scientifically known as Extatosoma tiaratum, which translates to Ecstatic-bodied tiara! Quite the dainty name for something that looks monstrous to many. This big stick insect is native to Queensland and New South Wales which are both on the east coast of Australia, but because they happen to be easy to raise, and docile, these insects have been shipped around the world and used in various museums and educational facilities. I’m not saying they can be found in the wild around the world, but escaped populations might exist in Australia’s neighboring islands like New Guinea for example. 

These insects go by many names like Australian Walking Stick, Spinies, Macleay’s Spectre after the naturalist William Macleay who described them, Spiny stick insects, and spiny leaf insects. Now you might be confused about why it goes by both leaf and stick insects and I’m gonna clear that up right now.

Stick insects and leaf insects are terms for two different body shapes of insects in the order Phasmatodea, and as such are also divided by their family name. Leaf insects in the family Phylliidae are typically very flat and look like leaves while stick insects in the family Phasmatidae are usually more twig-like. Today’s spiny stick insect is indeed a stick insect within the family Phasmatidae, BUT! The females have a pretty ambiguous body shape that makes them look as if they could be a leaf insect too. And yeah I’m specifically talking about the girls here because this insect is sexually dimorphic which means males and females are pretty different. The females for this species are longer and a bit more thicc. They also have leaf-shaped arms with very small wings. The males on the other hand are thin with very long wings, and their legs do not widen out to the same leafy extent as their counterparts. 

I think the females are actually the most commonly photographed as well, but I’ll put pictures of both sexes up on the socials. 

So as I mentioned earlier these insects are very popular as both pets and exhibit insects for museums, and as such there is a wealth of knowledge about how to raise them and what they eat. Wild populations are known to feed on Eucalyptus, but they can also eat brambles like raspberry bushes, oak, and rose bushes as well. In fact, most domestic populations are raised on rose or berry bushes, because Eucalyptus isn’t exactly easy to get outside of Australia. 

The life cycle begins as an egg 2mm in length which is like the tip of a lightly used crayon, how do I know that? Because that’s what Google sensei told me. Anyway, here's where things get crazy. The eggs look like calico brown seeds, and not just to humans. 

Female spiny stick insects actually flick their eggs on the ground so that ants from the genus Leptomyrmex will take them home and keep them safe until they hatch! It gets even wilder because the seeds actually have a small plug called a capitulum that’s edible for the ants with no consequence to the stick insect. This is mimicry to the extreme to the point where the eggs even smell like ant food. I have no idea what that would be exactly but what I do know is that the ants keep these eggs in their homes until they hatch, which is a long time by the way. Like over 6 months of time and sometimes two years. The time it takes is dependent on the conditions of its environment. For example, dry and unsuitable weather might cause the egg to remain in this state for longer as opposed to a warm and relatively humid environment. Upon hatching these first instars actually resemble red-headed spider ants which also happen to be the ants which housed them.

After the stick insects hatch they begin their ascent into trees of host plants. In most wild cases that would be Eucalyptus. These small nymphs go through 5 molts if they are males and 6 molts if they are female with each one looking very much like a stick or dried leaves. Something really cool is that if a stick insect loses a leg while it is still a nymph, that leg will actually grow back in the next molt, just not as long as the original. That being said, if it's already an adult and loses a limb then it’s gone for good. In regards to their molting, these insects actually need to hang upside down on something for the best chance of having a clean molt. Their bodies are pretty big with females reaching a length of 20cm and as a result they rely on gravity to help them slip out. 

In the wild, these insects are preyed upon by birds, but they do a pretty good job at mimicking their surroundings. They even go as far as to sway their bodies like branches or leaves in a tree. One study actually looked at whether or not wind triggers stick insect body sways, and the answer was yes it does! 

Aside from blending into their surroundings, these stick insects do have some other methods of warding off predators. Both males and females if threatened will strike a pose that mimics scorpions by curling their abdomen up and elevating it by standing only on their front four legs. Males can also flare out their wings and both are able to release a defense odor that to us has a kind of toffee smell, but to other animals is gross, unless you don't like toffee. They also cross their hind legs in a defensive position to protect their backs. These insects are all bark and no bite though which is another reason they make great pets and educational tools for learning about insects. 

If you are interested in raising some of these yourself it's really not that complicated. You simply need a large enclosure with adequate air flow, and a heating source if you live in places where it gets colder than 16C or 60 degrees F in your home during the year. When it comes to food most people will take cuttings from raspberry, blackberry, rose or other known host plants and place them in a vase or jar with water. 

You need to be careful though, just because they can eat any of these plants does not mean the insects you receive will. Just like people, they have their individual preferences, so using what the parents were raised on is a good place to start since that is what they are genetically predisposed to wanting. 

These insects have a lifespan of 1 year in the wild but up to 2 in captivity. They are also a gift that keeps on giving because the females can lay up to 1000 eggs in their lifetime and they do not need a male for fertilization. The Australian spiny stick insects are parthenogenic which means that the females can produce viable eggs that are clones of herself! This is something I went into detail on in episode 26 with the web spinners so I’m not gonna say much more other than If you take good care of your sticks then you’ll never not have any. 

Today is one of the Patreon exclusive episodes talking about discoveries and broader topics in the world of Entomology. There's much more where this came from over on Patreon.com/Insects for fun. 

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This week we look at the origin story of Sea Monkeys along with interesting facts about Brine Shrimp.

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This week we are going back in time to look at some noteworthy ancient insects, how they were different from today, and why they're now gone. 

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This week we are talking about Fireflies with Sarah Lower who is an associate professor at Bucknell University! 

Firefly Watch! - https://www.massaudubon.org/get-involved/community-science/firefly-watch

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On this week's episode we look at the animal that bridges the gap between worms and insects. Velvet worms are incredibly unique for a number of reasons and in this episode we cover everything you'd want to know about why these worms are so cool. 

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Featured Artists: Jordy Chandra, S N U G, Purrple cat

Transcript: 

Welcome back everyone to another Tuesday where we dive into something Entomological, except today is a little different (insert sound effect). We have a listener submission from Owen out in England wanting to learn more about the Velvet Worm, and after seeing them I wanted to learn more too. 

Velvet worms are in the class called udeonychophora which are worm-like and caterpillar-like animals from an ancient time that still exist today! Their appearance has changed very little over the past 500  million years, and they are considered to be a link between arthropods and annelids. For those that need a recap, annelids are worms. 

Anyway, there are about 230 known species for these fellas and those are divided by two families. Unfortunately for many of us, finding these animals is not an easy feat. because they’re only found in sporadic geographic locations. For example the family Peripatidae can be found from Central America to the bottom of Brazil, and select countries in the east like one island of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and one country in Africa, and the other family known as Peripatopsidae can only be found in New Zealand, Papa New Guinea, select parts of Australia, one location in Chile and Lesotho South Africa. If you’ve ever seen one in real life and have a cool story about it, definitely hit me up on IG or FB cause I wanna know about it. 

So these not-quite worms and not-quite arthropods are super cute, and they have some interesting features as well. So let's jump into the description but pictures of course will be available on the IG and FB page (links to those in the description). 

Velvet worms have a segmented body, but it's long and cylindrical with stubby appendages called oncopods or lobopods which they use to traverse their environment. 

Think of these worms as like a cross between a soft caterpillar and a centipede but with max cuteness. The average length for these is around 5cm or 2inch but they can be as long as 20cm or 8inch and as short as 0.5cm or 0.2 inches, and they come in a variety of crazy colors like blue, red, orange, gold, blue AND orange, I mean seriously what more could you want.  

The heads have two antennae and two simple eyes (unless a blind species), and a circular mouth that sits belly side of the head and as a result you would never know they had a mouth unless it lifts its head.

The amount of feet these worms have is dependent on the species, 

but a really unique feature for all of them would be the hard chitin claws they hide within these soft stubby feet. 

This is actually where the name Onychophora comes from because the ancient Greek means claws. Don’t worry though! These claws have one purpose only and that’s to help them stand their ground while crawling around. These claws actually have 3 layers to them and fit inside each other like Russian nesting dolls, and the outermost layer can be shed.

They also have two pairs of claw-like mandibles hidden in their mouths. One is more external and the other is further back. The external ones move purely through muscle usage but the internal ones move through hydrostatic pressure. In fact, the whole body gets its locomotion from hydrostatic pressure changes. Now for us non engineer people, hydrostatic pressure refers to the pressure a liquid creates on the outer edges of a confined space. This is where blood pressure gets its name from. 

As for why these worms are called velvet worms has to do with the soft and velvety texture of their bodies. The skin of these worms is covered in small bristles known as papillae which are sensitive to both touch and smell. We have papillae too, on our tongues, which for us are used to taste, and grip food. The papillae on velvet worms are actually covered in small scales of chitin and this is actually water-repellent as well. Despite the skin being water-repellent and very elastic it does have a problem, and that would be the inability to control when water escapes the body, and as a result, these worms need to live in areas that have high levels of moisture which explains their very sporadic geographic range. 

Now I wanna backtrack a bit about the claw-like mandible, because as it turns out these cute worms are not very cuddly. In fact, they are quite ferocious, and prey upon smaller invertebrates like spiders, woodlice, beetles, and termites. One species even hunts in a group like a pack of wolves. As for how they can even catch the prey, that comes down to their special slime glands on either side of the head. You see, kinda like spider-man, these worms can eject threads of sticky slime and they use this to trap prey and halt predators.

The worms can’t directly aim the strands of slime though, and instead rely on the fact that the speed of ejection causes the glands to inflate and rotate creating a spiral of sticky goo that can ensnare prey and predators from up to 2 feet away. It gets even crazier though because the slime itself is fast drying, and hardens causing the targets to freeze in their tracks. The entire process is also extremely fast happening under a second. 

The worms are not very well equipped at sight though and it really doesn’t do them any favors that they primarily feed at night too. Because of these reasons they rely on vibrations in the air, and once a prey item is located they actually sneak up and poke it repeatedly for extremely brief moments to try and analyze the size and whether it's worth it or not. The worms start their hunts around dusk and continue until dawn, at which point they need to retreat and find a moist shady place to hide. That being said, if its a rainy day then it is possible for them to do their thing during the day. 

Earlier I mentioned that one species hunts in packs and I wanna dive into that a bit, because the specifics on it are kinda wild. The species is called Euperipatoides rowelli and it's found in Australia! This species holds a matriarchy lead by the most dominant female. Essentially hierarchy is formed by females annoying each other by poking and prodding with their antennae. The female who can tolerate the most. This species lives together in groups up to 15 individuals, and the larger the group the faster the foraging is completed. Feeding is prioritized by rank, so the head female gets first dibs and feeds alone followed by the other females, males and the young in that order. 

When it comes to reproduction, almost all the species reproduce sexually, which means there is a need for males and females. They are also sexually dimorphic with females usually being larger than males. By far the most interesting details about their reproduction are in the methods that different genera use. For example in the genus peripatus, males will actually leave a package of sperm known as a spermatophore on the back or sides of a female and then Amoebocytes from the female's blood actually collect at that location and break down the skin wall and sperm package allowing its contents to be absorbed into the body. That’s insane! Another wacky method would be the use of head structures to deposit spermatophores into females which can be seen with Australian species. Traditional copulation doesn’t seem to be a commonality for these worms, but then again, these velvet worms are far from normal. 

When it comes to giving birth the females have three different strategies. 

The first is your standard egg laying which actually only occurs in the family Peripatopsidae and this also happens to be the more primitive family as well. 

The second and most widely used strategy is known as ovoviviparous and this refers to the process of incubating eggs within the body until they are ready to hatch! 

And last but not least some velvet worms do indeed give live birth! This occurs in both families but seems to be more restricted to areas that provide a stable climate and food source year round. 

The amount of offspring a velvet worm can produce in their lifetime caps at around 23, and they only mate once! In fact, because they only mate once for the entirety of their life, they have special organs dedicated to storing sperm, and some females can mate before sexual maturity and just store the sperm until they’re ready to reproduce. 

Now before we end today’s episode there is some hope to those of us who would like to see one in the flesh, because as it turns out these worms can be purchased as pets online or even in certain pet stores. If you wanna try your hands at keeping one of these wild worms I’d certainly recommend it as they are very cute, and easy to care for. The lifespan for these can last up to 6 years, and based on the size of the food and worm they only need food once per week or per every four weeks. 

This week we are looking at a unique solitary bee that exclusively makes its homes in wood! Carpenter bees are some of the largest bees on the planet, but that's not what makes them so unique. 

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Transcript: 

Welcome to episode 37 of Insects for Fun! Where we dive into an insect themed topic every Tuesday. This week we’ll be looking at Bear Bees. 

Carpenter bees are species of bees within the genus Xylocopa and there are around 500 of them! They often get confused with bumble bees, because both tend to be very large, but a good rule of thumb is that carpenter bees have a shiny bum and by that I mean their abdomen is not usually covered in dense hairs the way bumble bees are. Most carpenter bees are black too, but this is not always the case! Here in Japan we have a really cute carpenter bee known as a Kumabachi which literally translates to bear bee and they can be found hovering still in the air around trees of interest. The thorax on these bees are covered in dense orangey-yellow hairs with a black head and abdomen so when you see them hovering they look like they’re wearing a yellow vest.

Carpenter bees can be found worldwide and all of them make burrows in trees or other hard wood surfaces, which can be troublesome if you happen to be in the field of woodworking, but these bees are actually pretty docile and won’t attack you unless you REALLY provoke them (insert mocking cartoon sound). Another thing is that the males don’t have stingers, but this is the case for all male bees and wasps. What’s different though is that male carpenter bees like to patrol an area where a female is nesting, and they will fly up to anything moving within its territory. These bees are all bark and no bite though, so you can simply walk away and they’ll move on. The females have stingers but they’re mostly concerned with making their nesting hole, and won’t be actively chasing you or flying around the same way males are. Now I happen to have a lot of carpenter bees at the high school I teach at in Japan, and I always see the males hovering around in the public garden. I also happen to enjoy the outdoors and walk through that garden, and sometimes I do get dive bombed by male carpenter bees. They straight up stare you down and then zoom at you. I haven’t actually stood still to see if they’ll hit me or not though..

Male bees will also have aerial battles which can sometimes result in them tumbling to the ground until one of them finally gives up and flies away. 

Carpenter bees are solitary, and as a result they don’t have a hive mentality at all. In fact females oftentimes will be living alone in a small chamber carved out of wood. Sometimes female bees will live in the same shelter, but it's usually not communal. Basically if there is limited availability for housing in a location then multiple female carpenter bees will make holes near each other while still remaining separate. Think of this as like a log motel or something like that where they all have their own rooms or halls if the tree or location has multiple suitable sites. Recent research has actually shown us that sometimes female carpenter bees will work together under the rule of one female, and this head of the house female will not only provide food for her young but also to the other females that are helping her with her nest. This isn’t out of charity though, the bees are simply next in line waiting to take over the nesting site when the head of the house dies or moves on.

Now let's talk about what they use for housing along with what the inside of a nest looks like because it's not your average bee home. In the spring female carpenter bees will begin scavenging for wooden structures like benches, railings, sign posts, decks, stumps, logs, basically anything with nice soft wood. This is why the males will be guarding territories they think a female will like. Once a female has mated she begins boring a hole into whatever piece of wood she’s found acceptable. She does this using her strong mandibles, and not long after she creates a near perfect hole, but she doesn’t eat the wood. In fact she leaves the dust behind in a pile, which is how you can be sure it's a carpenter bee and not something else. Once she’s around an inch into the wood she makes a right turn and creates a tubelike gallery stretching down the length of the wood. It is in this tube that she creates walled off cells for individual eggs. Each cell is left with food known as bee bread for when the eggs hatch. This bread is essentially a combination of pollen, nectar and special secretions from the female bee. She has to work her way backwards in order to make walls that separate each individual cell and there can be up to 13 cells per gallery, with the furthest from the entrance hatching first. 

Carpenter bees take around 1 month or a little more to fully develop and eggs are typically laid in July, which means you can expect to see new Carpenter bees in August. This is at least the standard case for areas with four seasons, but warmer climates can see carpenter bees all year round. 

The adults actually hibernate in new or old homes during the winter and become active once the snow is gone and or the weather gets warm enough for flowers to bloom. Carpenter bees as mentioned earlier do not actually eat wood, and they happen to be good pollinators for shallow flowering plants like sun flowers, eggplant, tomatoes and other fruiting plants. This is due to their short proboscis, but sometimes these bees perform something known as nectar robbing. This happens when a carpenter bee cuts a hole in the side of a flower to steal its nectar without pollinating. You might think this is really bad for the flowers, but it would seem that this act doesn’t actually negatively impact pollination rates. Sometimes it actually encourages smaller bees to crawl into the flower and pollinate it much more directly. 

Now some of you might have had experience with carpenter bees, and maybe some of you think these bees will destroy your home or other wooden exteriors the same way a termite will, but the truth is the damage caused by these bees is primarily aesthetic unless you happen to be in area where few natural resources are available and many bees repeatedly use your wooden structures over the years. Wood will naturally rot faster if many holes are bored into it, but there are some things you can do to protect your home or other wooden structures. 

Now obviously the best protection happens before a hole is made and you can do this by simply painting the wood or staining it. However if you prefer a more natural look then you could also annually coat your wood with almond oil which is a natural deterrent to the bees. You can also use untreated pine or cedar lumber to lure the female bees away from other nesting sites, and this of course can be set up as simple or elaborate as you want. The bees themselves are not aggressive so if you don’t mind them around and want to support your local native bee community then this is always a nice idea.

If you’re in a position where the bees have already started making a home and it poses a threat on infrastructure then you should contact the local authority in pest management.

This week we are looking at one of my crabs! Summer is finally here and what speaks summer more than a beach trip with these little crustaceans? Today we're learning all about what it means to be a hermit crab. 

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Today we are taking a closer look at one of the most easily recognized species of butterflies in the world. The common white or cabbage white butterfly. These insects are easily overlooked, but they've got some pretty cool behaviors and adaptations beneath the surface.

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Today's artists: Shingo Sekiguchi and Kei Kawaguchi. 

This week we are looking at a common pet in aquariums called cherry shrimp! These shrimp have become incredibly famous and evolved in color and use since starting in Taiwan as simple feeder shrimp. 

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Music by Takada Fu

This week we look at my favorite group of orthoptera, tettigoniidae also known as katydids and bush crickets. Many people get these insects confused for others like grasshoppers or even cicadas (because of their songs) but they hold a special place in the insect class. Today we learn about their songs, behaviors, and much more. 

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