Nate's Bug Blog: August 2018

Hello!

As I spoiled in the last post, Gerald2 died whilst I was in El Salvador. He is now resting peacefully beside Gerald1 in my school's insect collection.
On the vein of morbidness, I also enacted a long-awaited family reunion yesterday:

The bottom specimen is Sticky. The top specimen is his mother. Together at last!

As you can see, Spiky is also doing very well--he emerged from his pupa as a full-grown male Io moth.

Shhhh--he's sleeping.

Right now, I am helping Spiky to "spread his wings" and move up in the world: on the twenty-third he should be dry enough to move to the school's collection.

Since I can't seem to escape the subject of Lepidopterans, here is a magnificent Manduca rustica (the rustic sphinx moth) that I found on some tennis courts. Its wingspan is 12 cm--the longest I've heard of in a sphinx moth.

The other day, my two-year-old niece found a bug for me. She led the way in that weird teeter-tottering run of hers, and I followed closely behind. Tiny, adept hands opened the door to the back porch and she pointed toward a chair. "There, Nate!"

She had found an adult Carolina mantis, Stagmomantis carolina. Within minutes, "Hulk" (so dubbed because of the size difference from Yoda) was in Gerald2's old cage at home. Its then-occupant, a pupating tobacco hornworm, found itself relegated to a smaller container. It was not long until I realized that my brother had botched the insect-naming game badly yet again--"Hulk" was a female. As with the "Geralds," the name stuck anyway.

Before we get into more specifics about Hulk, let me introduce to you Chris (an intentionally gender-neutral name). Chris is a very unfortunate cicada. When Chris was emerging from Chris's larval exoskeleton, Chris was attacked and brutally murdered by a party of wild, Amazonian fire ants. My brother stumbled across the gruesome sight when it was too late for poor Chris. Chris will forever be a freak of nature, frozen in a moment of pivotal time. Other insects do not understand Chris. They have never seen anything like Chris, and so they refuse to accept Chris into their society. Keep that in mind.

Chris says "Hello."

Back to Hulk. Hulk showed keen awareness in her surroundings and was very wary of the titanic figures which lumbered about across her kaleidoscopic field of vision. Hulk quickly impaled, decapitated, and devoured every insect foolish enough to cross her path. She only ever faced one insect that scared the living daylights out of her: that insect was Chris.

Poor, lonely Chris. Poor, frightened Hulk.

Hulk also was not very fond of my fingers intruding on her personal space. She flashed her eyespots and struck again and again, and finally her valiant efforts paid off and I retreated in disgrace.

Here is a slow-mo of her striking:

Yoda, however, was not about to be one-upped by anyone. Just to prove that size matters not, he absolutely demolished this poor katydid:

Yoda has even began to eat out of my hand--he is quite domesticated.

Hulk is not.

This morning, I awoke to find an empty cage. Frantically, I scanned the room: the closet, the walls, the fan, the shelves, the cage, the bed, the cage, the shelves, my desk, the cage... then I chanced to look up.

Yo.

It took some effort getting her back into the cage, but we got 'er done.

Hola!

Just got back from a missions trip to El Salvador (that's why I did not post at my regular time last week). I got to see a lot of cool bugs while delivering school supplies to children, doing street corner concerts, and visiting local churches. I will share a few of the pictures here:

JULY 28

The very first insect I saw was this leather-winged beetle, which has an impressive eyespot. It was reminiscent of the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings.

I noticed several people from the group stooping over the ground, apparently playing with some insect. Intrigued, I ambled over to check it out and asked them what it was. "A cute caterpillar!" came their response. I looked closely, and, indeed, it was a cute, fuzzy caterpillar! Fortunately, they didn't touch it with their fingers--the fuzz is made of hundreds of tiny venomous stingers--and we were able to move it out of harms way, after snapping a quick photo.

We also got to see this fuzzy friend. Looks like a tussock moth of some sort, but identifying those fuzzy caterpillars is next to impossible, unless you want to be sitting in front of a database screen scrolling through pictures for two and a half hours.

This small green beetle looks very similar to this Mississippi species of Calligrapha (below). It closely resembles C. pantherina, the sida leafbeetle, but the glare prevents a definite identification.

The first of many wasps we would see (and experience) on our trip. Fortunately, this gal was only interested in drilling holes in wood for her eggs. Others were interested in drilling holes in our skin for their venom, or so it seemed. Several people were stung throughout the remainder of the trip.

An interesting yellow moth--I would love to know what species it is. I imagine it would look cool mounted.

A baby harvestman. The volcanic garden we visited was swarming with the little boogers. Couldn't get any to walk on me, though.

A walking stick I found on the way to the restaurant we dined at. It drew quite a crowd, especially when it threw up on my hand. Back into the bushes it flew!

JULY 29

We visited a local school bearing treasures galore. The kids loved it. In addition to wrapping and taping hundreds of pencils, glue sticks, erasers, pins, and assorted school supplies, I got the chance to see a few interesting critters.

Upon stepping out of the bus, I noticed several large, black ants scurrying about. Bending over, I recognized them as one of my favorite insects, trapjaw ants. I got to see several other specimens, which I did not photograph, throughout the rest of the trip.

Organizing school supplies.

We then went out to a covered outdoor theater, where team members and locals performed songs, taught lessons, and distributed goodies to the children. While all this was going on, I began scouring the broad, concrete beams for signs of invertebrate life. My search was quickly rewarded by several jumping spiders. I am not sure of the above spider's genus and species, but I am fairly certain the second one is a Platycryptus or Menemerus spp., probably Menemerus. It had an orange band around its eyes, typical of adolescents.

JULY 30

We traveled to a hundred and seventeen year old lava flow--miles and miles of beautiful black volcanic rock. However, what most attracted my attention was not the nature grandeur of the bleak panorama--it was the occasional flowering stalk of life, emerging frailly yet boldly from deep, dark crevices. And even then it was not the plants, or weeds, themselves which attracted my attention: it was the prospect of finding creatures amidst their flimsy foliage. Dozens of brilliant butterflies skipped gaily past, seemingly oblivious to the absolute bleakness of their surroundings, focusing only on the verdant patches of life. Small plant beetles flirted to and fro, seemingly indecisive as to which pencil thin stalk was best. Unfortunately, however, the coleopteran and lepidopteran passers by proved much to quick for my flimsy iPhone camera, and I had to satisfy my thirst for photos by peeking under rocks. Sure enough, the first rock I remove reveals this beautiful huntsman spider. Notice the blue spot on it's second forward leg. Blue is one of the rarest colors in nature, especially in the insect world, so its definitely worth mentioning.

And now it's time for another hide and seek game--try to find the bug in the following image taken at the lava flow:

Here it is! Some species of tiger beetle.

We then left the lava flow and went to an archaeological site, whose walkways were crawling with spiders and moths. Here is one of the more common moths, which has an interesting, boxy look.

A Leucauge spider. These were everywhere.

A pretty, yellow jumping spider (sorry I didn't get a better picture).

And here is a lovely little ant-mimic jumping spider. It almost fooled me at first!

As we were walking along, more and more people became interested in what I was looking at. Pretty soon, several people began helping me to search. Without their sharp eyes, I would have missed out on a lot of these critters like this spiny orb weaver below.

Another orb weaver, probably a longjaw.

A Colonus spp. jumping spider.

The above insect looks like an assassin bug to me, although it could just as easily be a leaf footed bug or a stink bug or a number of other Hemipterans.

A cute, cuddly, red-and-black caterpillar! This stinging monsters were ubiquitous, crawling up and down trees, trudging determinedly toward our feet.

A bunch of minuscule social wasps that everyone seemed to be afraid of.

An interesting planthopper. We saw several of these in different locations.

A green lynx spider, either with prey or with ridiculously large pedipalps.

One of the eighty gazillion species of orbweavers that I do not know.

A honeybee!

Yet another arana saltarina.

Leaf cutter ants busily attacking a crumpled piece of tissue.

An assassin bug. I love the colors!

Saw this giant hopper up close. Maybe a lubber? It was more than two inches long, and its wing stubs make me think it is just a juvenile! Wouldn't want to be around when that thing molted!

A beautiful malachite butterfly a friend found for me.

Assumedly a trashline orbweaver.

Another fuzzy caterpillar.

A spiny orbweaver, probably Gasteracantha spp. It is mimicking bird droppings, which is probably a fairly effective tactic.

A two-legged huntsman spider, at least from this view.

One of those odd, boxy moths again.

Assassin bug nymphs, freshly hatched. Great to see they look almost exactly the same as the ones in Mississippi!

Another tiger beetle, looks like the same species as before; however, this one was in a ground layer of weeds next to a large edifice. Awesome how adaptable God made them!