The Weirdest in Mississippi

      We have so many weird and wacky insects in Mississippi that few people seem to know about! So I'll highlight a few of them in this post.

      In ascending order, here are the top eight weirdest insects in Mississippi. (In my opinion, at least; feel free to research some of your own!)

      8. Beautiful Wood-Nymph (Eudryas grata)

  Photo by Robert Aguilar, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Flickr.

     I've observed several friends as they happen upon this weird moth, and they are typically extremely surprised to see what looks like a bird dropping with fuzzy arms. I was fascinated myself the first time someone showed me one. It is also quite interesting that a bug pretending to be a bird dropping could be so eye-catching to humans. If you want to see some around your home, they are native to the eastern half of the United States and develop on ubiquitous Virginia creeper and grape vines, as well as the more attractive buttonbush.

Caterpillar of Eudryas grata. Photo by Christian Butler. Flickr

Buttonbush, Cephalanthus occidentalis. Photo by Anna Hesser. Flickr

     7. Hummingbird Clearwing (Hemaris thysbe)

Hummingbird clearwing feeding from a bee balm plant. Photo by Stan Lupo. Flickr.

     Another beautiful moth, hummingbird clearwings are hard-working, high energy insects that are wonderful for pollination and can provide hours of entertainment in a native flower bed. They can easily outperform their namesake bird in terms of beats per second, reaching up to 80 at peak activity (hummingbirds average 53 bps). To do this, they must maintain an internal temperature of 113^oF, four degrees hotter than the fatal internal temperature for humans (109^oF)--not bad for a cold-blooded creature. (Check it out!) If you want these fascinating gems hovering around your yard, plant honeysuckles, cherries, and plums for their caterpillars to eat and grow phlox and beebalm to coax the adults into hanging around.

     6. Bronze Tiger Beetle (Cicindela repanda)

Photo by Judy Gallagher. Flickr.

Elegant markings grace the maroon iridescence of this world-record-breaking beetle. Members of the tiger beetle family, Cicindelidae, are the fastest insects on earth (According to BBC, at least). But that's not what puts this critter on this list. As adults, they are ferocious hunters, routinely tackling and overpower prey many times their size and specializing in eating venomous ants, like the red imported fire ant Solenopsis invicta that has killed adults in the US. (Here's a PubMed article about that.) But, in the part of their lives we don't see, they are much more dangerous. A weird, almost mystical combination of an ant lion and a bobbit worm, it employs a devious hunting strategy.

Photo by Katja Shultz. Flickr.

       Devious Hunting Strategy à

Photo by Scott King. Flickr.

Photo by Scott King. Flickr.

     

They lie in wait in small burrows with their armor plated head sealing the entrance. As soon as something wanders by, they lunge out with their massive mandibles. They are able to subdue more powerful and larger prey items with two specially designed hooks on a hump toward the end of their abdomen. These give them the leverage to pull the prey underground--where they have the home advantage.

     5. Colobopsis mississippiensis 

Photo by SShattuck. AntWeb.org.

     This weird ant is part of an incredibly weird genus that includes the famous Colobopsis explodans, whose name is rather self-explanatory. Although voluntary evisceration has yet to be observed in this small and relatively uncommon species, they do possess a rather unique form of self-defense: their oddly shaped heads fit lock-and-key into the entrances to their nests. Only found in live twigs of white ash (Fraxinus americana,) it is the most abundant of the genus in Mississippi--hence the specific epithet "mississippiensis."

A major blocks the entrance with her head. Photo by Ross Hutchins. Mississippi State University.

An illustration of the defense mechanism by Ross Hutchins. Mississippi State University.

     4. Broad-headed Sharpshooter (Oncometopia orbona)

Above and below photos by Thomas Shahan. Flickr.

Orange marbling contrasted with awesome azures and rosy pinks makes this little leafhopper pop out in its verdant backdrop. Contrary to the implication of their common name, sharpshooters pose no threat to anything but plants. They gained their name through their messy eating habits and ridiculously quick digestion. As they stick their feeding rostrum into the stem or leaf of a plant, they reroute the xylem and phloem of the plant into their bodies. Once inside, it is run through essentially a sieve and comes out the other end the same rate as it is ingested. The beautiful bug will sit still, posing for the perfect shot, and then launch a stream of clear, sappy excrement at high velocity from its hindquarters. The shots themselves are harmless, if a little alarming the first time they are encountered. The sharpshooter relies on spring-loaded legs and good vision to evade predators, but will often simply dart sideways around the stem and put itself out of sight. They are quite entertaining to watch. Check out this cool video of a sharpshooter nymph "sharpshooting." 

     3. Southern Two-Striped Walkingstick (Anisomorpha buprestoides)

Photo by Donald Hobren. Flickr.

     Another creature that spews liquid, the Southern two-striped walkingstick is significantly more dangerous than the broad-headed sharpshooter. They are often called Devil-riders, both because of the creepy habit of the male to stick around on the female's back for days and because of their startling mechanism of self defense. They possess two glands in their thorax that produce a milky substance and can shoot said substance with considerable accuracy for a considerable distance (Read this first hand account of an unfortunate encounter with an aggressive specimen here.)

An up-close of the glands. Photo by Michael Thomas. University of Florida.

     Here is what Michael Thomas from the University of Florida has found through experimentation (quoting T. Eisner):

"Anisomorpha discharges instantly in response to mild traumatic stimulation as, for example, when individual legs are pinched with forceps, or when the body is tapped or persistently prodded . . . Marksmanship is precise: the spray invariably drenches the particular instrument used for stimulation." In another experiment, Eisner found that the walkingsticks displayed a fair amount of intelligence in deploying their attack. As they can only hold enough for five blasts, they use their toxin sparingly, only when touched, unless they see a bird, in which case they will make a preemptive strike up to almost half a meter. The spray is usually enough to deter predators. (For more information, check this out.)

     2. Green Mantidfly (Zeugmomantispa minuta)

Photo by Katja Shulz. Flickr.

      The chimera of the insect world, this delicate predator boasts the head and arms of a praying mantis and the abdomen and wings of a lacewing. As adults, they are frightening enough, striking with lightning speed with spiny, raptorial forearms. (Mantidfly vs Real Fly: Who Wins?) As with the bronze tiger beetle, though, the weirdness only truly begins when you take a look at their young. Many mantidflies are spider parasites, with this particularly pretty species attacking the egg cases of cobweb spiders (Funnily enough, they leave black widows alone). Other mantidflies parasitize jumping spiders, some even latching on to pregnant spiders like ticks, draining their hemolymph, and finishing their development by consuming the egg sac the dying spider makes. If you can find a picture of a mantidfly nymph, I'd love to see it! I haven't been able to find any on the internet.

     1. Conura amoena

Photo by USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab. Flickr.

     By far the weirdest insect on this list, the small Chalcid wasp is harder to find on the internet than it is in the wild, where it seems to be relatively common. The above photo was the only clear image that was not copyrighted in Flickr and Google, and didn't even come up in Flickr's search engine. I had to go to a Wikipedia page in another language and navigate the links to the original source (which I did so with surprisingly little difficulty, judging by my inability to navigate most cites written in English). Chalcid wasps are interesting because of their enlarged femurs, sword-like tibiae, and tiny abdomens. Their back legs almost give them the appearance of being a backward mantidfly. And its behavior seems to confirm that. Like mantidflies and many wasps, Chalcids are parasites, laying their eggs in the bodies of other organisms. Certain Chalcid females, and perhaps this one (its behavior is not well documented), actually coax antlions into attacking them. When the antlion, which is larger and has massive, venomous jaws, grabs the female wasp, she forces its jaws open with her muscular legs and deposits her eggs directly into the antlion's mouth. They soon hatch and eat the antlion from the inside out. Talk about weird!

     All of these creatures can be found in Mississippi, and many--especially the visually pleasing ones--will come right to your doorstep if you encourage them. 

Catch ya later!