Greetings,
Before we get started, I have a riddle for you: what is brown and sticky that is not a stick?
It's Sticky! As you can see from the photos above, the cute little looper caterpillar has metamorphosed into a drab, Curve-toothed Geometer moth! Within the day of his emergence, I had united him with his mother in Lepidopteran heaven. Now, as his body dries into a crisp, brittle shell of his former self, only the few weeks until school separate his physical form from that of his decaying mother.
Unlike Sticky, Yoda is doing just fine, if he is a bit deranged. In this video, he is chewing on Lego bricks in his enclosure. I had shined a black light in the area, and soon after, both Yoda and his prey, a bordered plant bug, were probing the studs with their mouth parts, partisan squabbles forgotten in the relentless pursuit of science.
Yoda has also become somewhat of a star, along with Gerald2. Both went on tour Friday at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science. Yoda awed audiences with his messy eating and curious eyes while Gerald2 mainly just ran in circles. I could tell he was stressed from the car ride and all the screaming children, but I told him to man up, and he did.
I have also acquired a new pet, who I keep on the trampoline: a trashline orbweaver. She is too small to get a good picture of, but I have tried above. I have also tried to feed her several prey items, but only two have stuck: a garden centipede and a small crab spider. A larger crab spider, an orchard orb weaver, and a cobweb spider have all managed to escape.
Earlier in the week, I traveled up to Starkville to tour Mississippi State University, and found out that they had an entomology museum. No one, not even the people in the biology department, knew where it was, which is unfortunate as it is the largest insect collection in the state of Mississippi. It houses 1.3 million specimens, including several gynandromorphs like this moth above. If you look closely, the left and right wings have slightly different patterns, and the left and right antennae look different. It is also missing its abdomen. Gynandromorphs are animals that are half male, half female in traits; the abdomen was removed to confirm it. They are very rare and valuable scientific specimens.
About the middle of the week, I found this caterpillar on a palm plant. Normally, I would dispose of such pests, but this particular specimen had a batch of yellow eggs on its back. Knowing what that entails for the caterpillar, I let it be.
I also found several assassin bugs on the trampoline this week, two of which are pictured here. Note the large, spiky forelegs of the one on the right. That would hurt!
I also took some slow-mos of a twinflagged jumping spider in action.
Sure enough, at the end of the week, I found this on the aforementioned palm plant. The eggs belonged to some sort of parasitic wasp or fly, and the larvae which hatched ate the caterpillar from the inside out, turned into adults, and left the decaying skin behind in search of new hosts. Parasitic insects like them are useful as biological pest control.
Thanks for Reading!
