Marilyn Ortt: A Mentor and a Friend

This is a different type of post than I normally write, and one that is vastly more personal. I've been trying to write it for months, but it's been difficult. Please forgive me if I ramble a bit; I feel like I need to write it all.

There's a lot of talk out there about the importance of having a mentor, for any facet of life really. I most often hear about mentoring in the context of academics, especially in grad school, which is certainly important. During the past few months, however, I've spent a lot of time thinking about having a mentor in the more general sense, and who my mentors are. For now, I'll focus on one: Marilyn Ortt.

You may know that between my time as an undergraduate and graduate student, I spent a year working as an Americorps VISTA with the Friends of the Lower Muskingum River, a watershed conservation organization in my hometown of Marietta, Ohio. It wasn't an entomology job, but I had a blast and enjoyed my year. It was a good time to reflect on what it meant to give back to my community and work with a group that made the health of the river and the community around it its main focus. I met and worked with many wonderful people during this time, and worked closely with Marilyn, who was the president of FLMR.

I knew Marilyn before I started my job, having first met her during my freshman year at Marietta College. When I was a senior, she invited me to give a talk about the wheel bug (the focus of my capstone project) for the Marietta Natural History Society. By this time, I knew her better and knew that she was involved in many of the conservation projects in Marietta. She used to be a state botanist and had a strong interest in the natural world, and I had a shy admiration for her. While working with her as a VISTA, I quickly learned that this admiration was justified.

After I finished my VISTA term, I started my graduate work at the University of Arkansas, but kept in contact with Marilyn via email, updating her on what I was doing and inquiring about the goings-on in Marietta. We were both busy, so weeks would pass between our correspondences, but it was nice to touch base every so often.

In late May, I was busy preparing for an intensive sampling project on the outskirts of Fayetteville. I was also planning my trip back to Ohio, to take place in mid-June to collect millipedes. I was hoping to see friends while I was there, including former professors and Marilyn as well, since I hadn't seen her since December.

As I was returning home after spending a few hours in the field, however, I received a phone call from a friend. Marilyn had died earlier that evening.

Marilyn had been undergoing chemotherapy for a while, which I knew about, but she preferred to keep details of her health private. She didn't want others to worry about her, which was just part of her personality. She was extremely motivated and passionate, and didn't want concerns about her to distract from whatever work was going on.

Despite knowing that she hadn't been in the best health, the news was still a shock to me. I drove home, still digesting the news, but only made it half a mile before my eyes welled up with tears. Her death affected me more than I would have thought, and I found myself crying a few more times in the following days.

My friendship with Marilyn wasn't rooted in personal knowledge of each other's lives. I'm not sure she even knew the names of my parents, for example, but we never discussed things like that. Whenever we would talk, our conversations were about nature or the surrounding community. I think our friendship was based on our shared passion for the natural world, and Marilyn was an astounding encouragement to me in that respect. She was a botanist by training, which complemented my interests as an entomologist. She didn't know insects as well as she did plants, so she would always happily listen to me talk about whatever particular group I was interested in at the time. She had an insatiable curiosity for natural history, and she used her curiosity, passion, and motivation to accomplish great things during her life.

Her obituary lists some of these accomplishments, and illustrates how much of an asset she was to her community. I spent many hours at the natural areas she helped establish, especially the Beiser Field Station east of Marietta and the Kroger Wetlands. It was in these places that I cut my teeth on natural history, finding millipedes, identifying plants, and standing in awe of hundreds of flashing fireflies. Marilyn was too modest to take much credit for establishing these areas, and would surely try to downplay her role in developing my interest in natural history. But the truth is that much of her work trickled down into my development as a scientist, in ways I wouldn't recognize until after she was gone.

I think the mark of a good mentor is that they push you to want to be a better person. Marilyn had a subtle way of doing that for me. After working closely with her for a year, I found myself with a new sense of pride in my community. As a VISTA, I led trail and river clean ups, taught children and adults about the benefits of a clean river and environment, and learned much more about local history. I hadn't previously appreciated where I came from, but getting involved in my community with FLMR changed that. It gave me a new, strong motivation to apply my knowledge and skills in entomology to highlight the neat diversity of arthropods in southeast Ohio, which still informs my work today, in both Ohio and Arkansas.

My writing can't do justice to the impact Marilyn had on me, but it's important that I try. We often focus on the well-known celebrities of various disciplines and laud their work, which is certainly well-deserved. Often, however, it's the unsung heroes of our communities who have put in their time and hard work to do what they could to improve their communities that impact us more. The people living in southeast Ohio live in a better place because of Marilyn's hard work. Her name might not be known by many outside of Ohio, but that doesn't diminish her accomplishments.

I like to think of Marilyn when I run into difficult times. I never heard her complain, and she was always pursuing goals and juggling tasks, which usually led to her being late for our lunch meetings. Her passion was unlike anyone else's, and she tapped into it to accomplish great things.

One of my favorite memories with Marilyn was planting a chinquapin oak outside FLMR's office. She had bought a young one to plant near an older tree outside the office, in the hopes of getting it to develop acorns a few years down the line. She was delighted to have it planted, thinking of how large it might grow in the future. I'm not sure if she ever heard this phrase, but I'm sure she would agree: "The best time to plant a tree is yesterday. The second best time to plant a tree is today."

I'll end this post with the following paragraph I wrote on Facebook after I heard the news of Marilyn's death. It was hard to write, but turned into a nice post of people sharing their memories of Marilyn and how she affected their lives, all for the better. Marilyn was an exceptional mentor and an even better person, and the world would be a better place if there were more people like her:

Marilyn was a wonderful person, and undoubtedly one of the most driven that I've known. I had the privilege of working with her for a year during my VISTA service, and even before then, she was always happy to listen to what I was doing with my bug stuff. Despite her battle with cancer, she never stopped doing what she cared deeply about, which was making her community a better place to live. Whether it was finding funding for the recycling program, planting trees, or making opportunities to educate the public about the environment, she poured her entire being into her work. She was an inspiration, and will be dearly missed. Marietta won't be the same without her, and it's to everyone's detriment that she's gone. She did so much good work, and it's up to the rest of us to pick up her mantle. Her obituary sums it up best: "She strongly believed that you should leave this world in a better place for future generations and she did so." Rest in peace, Marilyn.

 Marilyn surveying some land in the watershed with FLMR's former watershed coordinator, Jesse Daubert

What's out there? Compiling a biotic index.

Do you know the insect species that inhabit your backyard? What about a local park or nature preserve? How about your county? These are important questions to think about. If no one knows the animal diversity in their area, then why would they stop to think about protecting that diversity?  Some of the most interesting animals are very specialized and need certain habitats to thrive; without those habitats, they'll disappear. I think we can all agree that nature is important, and having a knowledge of your local species (of insects, mammals, birds, plants, fungi...) is empowering. You can see ecological connections and gain a new-found respect for your fellow organisms, just from being able to identify species and know what's around you.

 A Luna Moth (Actias luna) soon after emerging from the ground. Its wings aren't yet ready to fly--you can see how small they are.

With this topic in mind, I've been working for the past few months on gathering together pictures and information about arthropod species that occur at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station (BBFS) near Marietta, Ohio. As I've written about before (here and here and in an article for the Marietta Natural History Society newsletter here [PDF]), I conducted a lot of my undergraduate research at the BBFS and found many species. I never quite had the time to identify and write down all the species I found while I was an undergraduate, so I put it off for a while.

Until now.

An Ichneumon wasp, Megarhyssa macrurus, drilling into a dead tree to parasitize a wasp larva.

After months of identification, I've completed the project! (I'm looking for a good way to put this list online.) This is the first biotic index (list) of species from the BBFS, and focuses only on arthropods (it will be expanded to plants and other groups in the future). All in all, I identified 181 species including insects, arachnids, and millipedes/centipedes. This is nowhere near a complete list, but it's a start. I only included arthropods whose identifications I was sure about, so I left out a few species I was unsure of, falling just short of my 200 species goal. But that's okay--the list isn't useful unless it's accurate, after all!

A pair of Euryurus leachii millipedes under UV light. Usually found in decaying logs, these millipedes fluoresce a pretty bluish-green color.

I gained a lot of experience with local insects while working on this project and feel pretty confident about being able to identify many of the insects in Washington County. I now have a much greater knowledge base about insect taxonomy and what a "species" really means. When it comes down to it, a species is someone's hypothesis, and sometimes the hypothesis isn't accepted by everyone. It can be based on tiny characteristics that are a real pain to hash out, especially when you're trying to identify an insect in a group that's not well-studied!

What did I learn after putting together this list? Most importantly, I learned that I still enjoy taxonomy after hours and hours of (sometimes frustrating) work. I also learned that we have some astounding arthropods at the BBFS, and in the county. Throughout this post I've included pictures of arthropods I found there that I never knew about before, with life histories that are seriously interesting and unfortunately too long to include in this post. There's a diversity of life in southeast Ohio I never would have known about before undertaking the research I've done and I'm lucky to have had that opportunity. It's taught me that you don't have to go to the rainforest to find beautiful and interesting animals; sometimes the forests of southeast Ohio can beat out the rainforest!

A male Marbled Orbweaver, Araneus marmoreus. This spider has many color forms, of which the black and yellow form is especially striking.

I hope to use my experience to encourage others to take a second look at the critters in the area and to truly take pride in them. Why not say "These things are astounding!" and put these animals on a pedestal? Arthropods like the Luna Moth, the Ichneumon Wasp, our UV-fluorescent millipedes, the Locust Borers, the Wheel Bugs: these "bugs" are crazy awesome and should be celebrated!

The Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillar, Papilio troilus. This unique caterpillar changes throughout its life stages--young caterpillars look like bird poop, while older ones (like this one) mimic snakes!

In order to accomplish this goal, I'm working on completing another biotic index--this time for Washington County, with some input from surrounding counties. I want to adapt this larger biotic index into a field guide to arthropods in the area, with pictures and information about each species. It will introduce people to these bugs and save them some time in trying to identify them. Essentially, I want everyone to have the same pride in our many-legged fauna as I do.

Narceus americanus, the gentle giant. This is the largest millipede in our area and eats dead leaves. Interestingly, it sometimes scales trees.

It doesn't help anyone appreciate our arthropods if I keep my knowledge locked up in my head, so I need to spread it! I have no idea about how long this project will take, nor when it will be done, but it hopefully won't take more than a few years max. If you can help out in any way, please contact me!

Species of the Beiser Field Station

I've been busy lately, in a good way. My current project is identifying all the species of insects, spiders, millipedes, and other arthropods I've found at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station (BBFS) over the past few years as an undergraduate at Marietta College. I spent many hours at the field station and thoroughly explored much of it, taking many photos along the way. I have an article about my experiences coming up in the next issue of the Marietta Natural History Society's newsletter, which I'll link to when it comes out.

UPDATE!: You can read my article here (PDF warning). It starts on page 4, titled Beiser Browsings.

So far I've identified around 200 arthropods from BBFS. The timeline for my sightings and collections goes back to 2010 or so, when I first started going there for things like labs and work days, and the identifications have been a long time in coming. It feels great to have so many identified though, as there hasn't been a taxonomic inventory of BBFS since it was acquired in 2008.

I expect the final list of creepy crawlies to hover around 220, after accounting for duplicates. Some of them are only identified down to family, but I've identified the majority down to species, including some lesser-known groups (that is, those that lack readily-available identification resources) such as harvestmen and millipedes. I've collected many of the species, which are now in the Biology department's insect collection. I'm hoping that somewhere down the line, these collections will come in handy for future students, especially my assassin bug and millipede specimens.

I've found so many charismatic species that have blown me away at BBFS. Combined with the recently-planted patch of pawpaws at BBFS, I expect people to start flocking there in droves in the coming years.

A harvestman from BBFS, Vonones sayi. This pretty species lives under rocks and bark, and exhibits some of the diversity within the harvestmen: they're not all nondescript balls with legs!

A Calm Millipede's UV Fluorescence

Let's talk about millipedes! You may have read my entry on a millipede that fluoresces under ultraviolet light I found this past fall that grabbed my attention. I've since done some more research, and after working on a poster a few weeks ago for the Ohio Natural History Conference, I have more information and motivation to summarize what I've learned.

How did I find out about these UV fluorescing millipedes in the first place? I was on a night hike with some friends last fall and had the foresight to bring a UV flashlight along, just in case there was anything neat to look at under UV. It was a bit chilly, and we weren't finding much.

Then I turned the flashlight on.

As we passed by areas with fallen leaves, I started catching glimpses of blue-green light: millipedes were fluorescing while milling about in the leaf litter. If you haven't seen this, you owe it to yourself to grab a UV flashlight and check it out. As it turns out, the millipedes I was seeing were one species: Semionellus placidus. This millipede is in the family Xystodesmidae and is about an inch and a quarter long. Many Xystodesmid millipedes are known to fluoresce under UV, and one genus contains the only bioluminescent millipedes known to exist (note that bioluminescence, when an organism produces its own light, is different from UV fluorescence).

I was intrigued by this millipede, but didn't know anything about it at that point--not even its species. I keyed it out to family with the help of an unpublished key by Bill Shear, and posted it to BugGuide, where Rowland Shelley helped me with the species. It's in the tribe Chonaphini, which is mostly restricted to the Pacific Northwest. Breaking the mold, Semionellus placidus ranges from "Minnesota and Michigan east to New York, south in the mountains through Maryland and Virginia to Fort Benning, Georgia" (Chamberlin & Hoffman). It is also described as sporadic in its range, rather than blanketing it uniformly.

 S. placidus under low UV light.

S. placidus under normal light.

I finally had my ID for this species! I started checking the literature to find out more and discovered....there's not much published on it. Oh. To make sure I wasn't missing any hidden information anywhere, I did a thorough job of Googling my enigmatic millipede, which turned up some old publications that are a little difficult to interpret. It's that 100 year gap in English, you know? My research is also made trickier by the synonyms this species has. Here's the list:

• Chonaphe michigana 
• Leptodesmus borealis 
• Leptodesmus placidus 
• Polydesmus floridus 
• Polydesmus placidus 
• Trichomorpha placida

Millipedes don't have the same PR and research dollars behind them as a group like the butterflies (big insects, pretty colors and all that jazz), so that leaves me in the position of doing the research myself. Of course, that's exciting! I have a figure of the male gonopod hanging up on a board in the lab (see below), with the main things known about the millipede written beside it in dry erase marker as motivation for delving deeper.

Figure 1 from "Some Records and Descriptions of Diplopods Chiefly in the Collection of the Academy" by Ralph V. Chamberlin. (Currently hanging up in my lab.)

Let's take a moment to talk about the above picture, Figure 1. You'll notice that number 3 is what we're interested in: that's the gonopod of Semionellus placidus. The gonopods are a pair of modified legs the male millipede uses during mating for sperm transfer to the female. These structures can be pretty elaborate and sometimes don't look like anything that ever could have been a leg. To really get a feel for what the gonopods look like, check out the three pictures below.

Millipede flipped on its back, camera looking down at the gonopods.

 Same as before, but the millipede has been turned slightly to get a side view. The gonopod on the right was overlayed from a picture with better focus.

Side view.

I've successfully kept some of these millipedes I collected from the field station alive since October, and a few females have laid some batches of eggs in their container. The eggs fluoresce under UV as well, which is pretty neat. They're laid in a soil cavity, which the mother excavated at the bottom of her plastic container about 1.5 inches down. UV fluorescence in a life stage other than the adult hasn't been reported before, so that observation might be important in figuring out why/how the millipedes fluoresce.

Next steps:
It's time to do some research! With capstone looming ever closer on the horizon, I must devote my research time to finishing that, but I'm hoping to hit the field station during the summer with a UV light to see if this millipede is active yet. I've encountered it during September and October, but so far that's it. I'm also going to work on some type of publication based on what's known, and I'm waiting for another reference to come in. If my plans work out and I'm available during the summer, I hope to try to observe the assassin bug Rhiginia cruciata's relationship with this or any other millipede to quantify its feeding habits. (Remember: R. cruciata is an assassin bug in a subfamily known to feed on millipedes.)

A dish of millipedes under UV light. Most of the ones fluorescing in blue are Semionellus placidus, while the two fluorescing red are Pseudopolydesmus serratus. Red fluorescence under UV hasn't been reported before in arthropods, to my knowledge.

References:

Chamberlin, RV. 1920. A new leptodesmoid diplopod from Louisiana. Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, 33: 97-100. Link.
Chamberlin, RV. 1947. Some Records and Descriptions of Diplopods Chiefly in the Collection of the Academy. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 99: 21-58.
Chamberlin, R.V. & Hoffman, R.L. 1958. Checklist of the millipeds of North America. Bulletin
of the US National Museum, 212: 1–236.
Wood, HC. 1864. Descriptions of new species of North American Polydesmidae. Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad, 16: 6-10. Link.

An Unfortunate Cicada

I've been reading about cicadas and entomogenous* fungi lately, which reminded me of a picture I had from back in September when I was at the field station working on my capstone project.

*This is an awesome new word I learned today-- it means growing on or in the bodies of insects.

I found this annual cicada, still in its larval stage, before it emerged as an adult, with fungus growing from it. I was thinking that the fungus itself might have killed it, but that's tough to say for sure. The cicada could have died before the fungus came along, of course.

Still, it would be interesting if it was the fungus that killed the cicada. So many fungi associate with the roots of trees, upon which cicadas feed while they're underground. Maybe some species attack the cicadas to protect the tree. Someone should investigate that.

...but not me, currently. I'm focused on capstone for now.

Firefly Mimics - A Crafty Click Beetle

I learned two things during my Investigative Studies Project last summer concerning mimicry:

1.  Fireflies get mimicked a whole lot
2. It's super tricky to separate some of the mimics from actual fireflies, especially when you get into the soldier beetles (family Cantharidae).

A group I wasn't aware mimicked fireflies is the click beetle family, Elateridae. During my research I spotted a pretty example of one of the representatives from this family:

Unless you were to get on this click beetle's level, you would think it's a firefly. I'm quite pleased with this picture, though it could use a little more touching up later. Denticollis denticornis is this beetle's name, and it was making its way across a moss and lichen-covered log, providing a great background.

This is the only species in its genus in North America, and its mimicry of fireflies is a predator defense. I haven't found any information about whether or not the beetle itself is toxic, or if it's just getting a free ride thanks to the fireflies. A predator would see it and be all "I'm staying away from that beetle, it must be toxic!" and D. denticollis would chuckle to itself and walk away.

The Luna Moth: A Photo Essay

One of my goals for this past summer was to find as many moths in the family Saturniidae as I could. The saturniids are the moths that give moths great publicity: they're huge, they're colorful, and they make their presence known. In fact, this family includes North America's largest native moth: the Cecropia moth.

The Cecropia moth: Hyalophora cecropia. With a wingspan of up to 6 inches, it is a HUGE moth.

I was out at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station often during the summer, and on my first day there, in late May, I struck gold. As I knelt down to examine a Clubtail dragonfly (Gomphus sp.), I heard a strange rustling in the grass nearby. I took a few quick snapshots of the dragonfly and turned around to see what was causing the ruckus. I could hear it, but due to the dense, wet, matted grass, I couldn't quite find it. 

And then I saw it.

But...what was it, exactly? My eyes darted around, surveying the yellow, white, and maroon mass crawling towards me. At first, it looked like two beetles wrestling and falling through the undergrowth. Confused, I took a closer look and realized what was actually coming at me.

Trust me, that totally looked like two beetles when I first saw it.

Full of glee, I realized that I was looking at a Luna Moth (Actias luna), one of the saturniids I was searching for! However, it did not look like what the Lunesta commercials had led me to believe what a Luna moth looks like. First of all, it did not glow. Secondly, its wings were shrunken, and the abdomen looked distended.

Not yet ready for flight.

There could be only one explanation: this individual had just emerged from its pupa! That's even more exciting than finding an adult flying around! I knew then what I had to do.

 Need a hand?

To avoid accidentally stepping on it, I picked it up and placed it on a nearby maple tree.

 

That's not quite what you're used to seeing from a moth, huh? The abdomen was bulging with that green stuff, which I assume is hemolymph that it was planning to use to pump up its wings.

Notice the antennae and how plumose they are: that indicates a male. The males need huge antennae to pick up the pheromones of the females, a surefire way to find a mate!

After placing it safely upon the tree, I waited. Not wanting to waste all day watching a Luna Moth pump up its wings (it's like watching paint dry, but more beautiful), I went along to find assassin bugs and other marvelous insects, returning at times to check up on my Luna Moth.

After three minutes of being on the tree, the Luna Moth has already set to work! You can see the wings are starting to flare out and enlarge, while the abdomen has contracted a great deal. It's becoming much more plump and much less thin. 

Just nine minutes later and the wings are hanging like trendy curtains. The eye spots on the forewings give it a look akin to the face of a wrinkly old man.

15 minutes later and you can definitely see the face of an old man. The eye spots have really come out now. Speaking of which, have you ever wondered what those eye spots look like under a microscope? Or, where the term "Lepidoptera" (the name of the order that includes the moths and butterflies) is derived from? Well, thanks to Wikipedia, your questions can now be answered!

Source

This picture by Peter Znamenskiy shows what those eye spots really look like. You see, "Lepidoptera" is derived from the Ancient Greek words lepís and pterón, the words for scale and wing. Put those words together, and you get an order of insects that have scales on their wings. Those colorful structures that look like paintbrushes are the scales, and they give this moth its awe-inspiring colors.

20 minutes later, and we return to the Luna moth. The abdomen is now obscured by the wings, so we go in for a side view. Yep, that is one plump abdomen. But what's this? The hind wings look a bit wonky. You didn't forget that moths have two pairs of wings, right?

30 minutes in, and the moth seems to be imitating a butterfly: its wings are held above the body vertically, rather than horizontally. What gives? Well, he still has a second pair of wings to pump up, wouldn't it be easier to do that without the first pair holding them down?

After 35 minutes, it looks like the second pair of wings have a comma at the end. They probably need to pause before they finish their sentence.

Well how about that? At 55 minutes, the hind wings bring with them some nice streamers. The Luna moth is ending its sentence with an exclamation point, for sure!

He's still working hard at 1 hour and 15 minutes. Art takes time, after all.

After 1 hour and 40 minutes, you might be asking yourself: "What's with the streamers? Is the moth going to throw a fancy party?" The answer to that question is yes and no. Here's the reason for answering no: The hind wings also have eye spots, and combining the eye spots and the tapering ends of the wings might be just enough to confuse a predator (such as a bird) into aiming for the rear quarters of the moth, rather than its head. If the bird grabs the streamers, the moth still has a chance to get away. Now, why is the answer also yes? Well, the adult Luna moth does not eat. Therefore, it only has a lifespan of about one week. Due to this, the adult Luna moth lives its adult life like it's one big party. Its sole raison d'être is mating, and it devotes itself to this debauchery at full throttle. If it doesn't pass on its genes, it has literally failed at life, hence why the males have such big and sensitive antennae. If you pick up the female's pheromones, you win the game of life.

2 hours and 10 minutes later, the moth is still preparing for his fancy party: putting up streamers, acting chill, and making sure he looks good for the ladies.

Finally, after 3 hours, he's......still not ready for that fancy party. I, however, am famished. After about 7 hours at the field station, I must head out, eat, and rest. 

I loitered around for as long as I could, but I could not stay and watch the Luna moth finish up. It was fascinating to watch it progress from stumpy little cushions to bona fide tapering wings, and I found a new appreciation for these Moon moths. This was definitely a check on my list of saturniid moths I needed to see. 

So, as I often say, if you think Ohio's diversity of insects is nothing to praise, think again!

Summer Research 2011 - A Biological Survey of the Assassin Bugs (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station - Other Insects

This past summer, as I mentioned a few times before on this blog, I had the opportunity to carry out a field survey for assassin bugs at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station. This field station is used by the biology classes at Marietta College for lab sections, such as Zoology and Aquatic Biology.

I knew that I would have a good portion of free time during the summer, and I wanted to get a head start on my capstone project, and do some more research with insects. Out of that grew a project during which I would research the abundance, diversity, and ecology of assassin bugs (insects in the family Reduviidae). I wrote up an application for an Investigate Studies Grant for these types of student-led projects from the college, and I received one to carry it out.

It took place during six weeks in May and June, and I found a lot of different species--both assassin bugs and other insects. I focused on the assassin bugs most of the time, and presented on my findings (I'll elaborate on that in another blog post, but I found 7 different species of assassin bugs) in October. Since then, I've been focusing on all the other insects I found during the project. In order to save time and keep focused, I didn't collect every insect I found, but I did try to snap some pictures whenever I found something I hadn't seen before.

Like this, for example. A scarab beetle, the Emerald Euphoria - Euphoria fulgida.

Fast forward to this past week, and I've been focusing on identifying all the insects and other arthropods I saw. Assisting me with that has been Project Noah, an amazing website that anyone can submit their pictures of wildlife to, upload them to a map, and essentially crowdsource nature with others. (It will receive its own blog post in the future.) I just finished uploading all my pictures from my Investigative Studies Grant project, which gave me a lot of time to reflect on everything I encountered. 

It also gave me a number: 137 separate species of insects, plants, spiders, fungi, slime molds, and miscellaneous other groups of life just from those 6 weeks. 

That's not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Since it's the time of year to write reflections, I figured that now is as good a time as any to briefly highlight some of my favorite photographs and organisms I encountered. I'll limit myself to five to keep the length of this post reasonable.

This was the first insect I encountered--right on the gate leading to the field station. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would be seeing A LOT of soldier beetles (family Cantharidae). This particular one is Podabrus tomentosus, which I didn't see many of in the interior of the forest. You know what I did see a lot of? Firefly mimics. Firefly mimics EVERYWHERE. It wasn't even until I was reviewing my photos that I even figured out that most of what I thought were fireflies were actually soldier beetles in disguise. That being said, that is some amazing mimicry. (Consider that paragraph a cliff hanger, I'll cover these mimics in another post.)

Serendipity is better than skill! I got lucky on my first day at the field station and stumbled upon (literally, I almost stepped on it!) a luna moth (Actias luna) that had just emerged from its pupal stage and was crawling along in the grass. Adult luna moths only live for a week and do not only: they only live to reproduce. I had never encountered a luna moth before, so I was excited out of my mind when I found this male (notice how large the antennae are, that's how you can tell the difference between males and females). Not wanting to step on him, I picked him up and placed him on a tree so that he could pump up his wings in peace. I returned every so often over the course of three hours to watch and it was just a beautiful sight. It's a real privilege that we have such a majestic moth in Ohio.

This is the Orange-patched Smoky Moth (Pyromorpha dimidiata), a rare case in which the common name describes the organism extremely well. At first glance you might be reminded of a net-winged beetle in the family Lycidae. It's suspected that this moth is a mimic of those beetles (check out the genus Calopteron for comparison), but may also have its own chemical defenses. Due to this, the mimicry exhibited by this moth and the net-winged beetle is characterized as Müllerian mimicry. 

Since both species are toxic and have similar aposematic (fancy word for bright warning color) patterns, the mimicry works to the advantage of both organisms: predators leave them alone since they're distasteful. This is opposed to Batesian mimicry, in which a model toxic species is imitated by other non-toxic species, which obtain the same benefits without needing to be toxic themselves. It's the insect equivalent of putting your purchase on someone else's tab. For more information about this species, you can check out Ted Macrae's entry at Beetles in the Bush.

Next up is a beautiful firefly I found crawling on a decaying log.

Or is it?

Fireflies must be awesome beetles to mimic: even the click beetles (family Elateridae) are getting in on the action! Here we have Denticollis denticornis. Sorry, no common name here, but for simplicity we can refer to it as the firefly mimic click beetle. I mistook it for a firefly when I first saw it, but upon closer inspection, the flared pronotum that fails to cover the head gives it away as a click beetle. Simply a beautiful specimen, I wish I had taken the time to get some more pictures and see where it was going. Now, which mimicry would this click beetle be exhibiting: Müllerian or Batesian? For a nice discussion about mimicry's benefit to this species, check out this link to BugGuide.

Finally, we come to one of my favorite beetles: the pleasing fungus beetle Megalodacne heros. It's in the family Erotylidae and looks as if it should be coming out around Halloween. Unfortunately, this beetle is on the wrong calendar and is restricted to the summer months.

As you can guess from the common name, the beetle feeds on fungus. In this case, I found it chewing on some bracket fungus as night was falling. It's a large beetle (two centimeters long) and its elytra are quite smooth. After I captured it and took it back to the lab, I was watching it move around under the microscope. As I watched it move its leg (it had flipped itself on its back), I was awed by how smooth its movements were.

Truthfully, this beetle showed me how beautiful insects could be, just by something as simple as their movement. It was a "Eureka!" moment for me, and has ensured that this beetle will stay at the top of my list of favorite insects. 

Too often we recoil at insects and other small arthropods because they look ugly or creep us out. Casting them down in judgement is ignorant and quite offensive to how elegantly they go about their lives, however. Not until you take the time to immerse yourself in their world (that is, what life is like for organisms that are measured in inches at most) can you truly appreciate the beauty and real magic that nature exhibits.

If you're interested in seeing more of my photographs from the Beiser Field Station, you can find my collection on my userpage at Project Noah.

This Isn't Your Father's Daddy Longlegs

While on a night hike looking for fluorescent millipedes and whatever else I could find a few months ago (September 16th), I came across a most interesting arachnid. Now, it's important to note that Arachnids aren't just spiders: Arachnida is a large class that includes other organisms like scorpions, ticks, mites, solifugids, and harvestmen (or daddy longlegs, if you prefer). It's the harvestmen (Order Opiliones) that are most important to this post, and while the popular perception of harvestmen is a small-bodied organism with long, thread-like legs, this is not always the case.

There's a surprising amount of diversity in the harvestmen: it includes 6,411 described species (estimates of over 10,000 total species have been put forward!) and 45 families. After spiders and mites, it's the third largest order of Arachnids.

Which brings us to the specimen found on that cool September night:

Not exactly what you were expecting, eh?

This is probably the largest harvestmen I've encountered, and it's definitely much different from the other species I've seen. From what I can tell, this is a species in the genus Vonones, in the suborder Laniatores (we'll tackle the significance of that later) and the family Cosmetidae. I'm a fan of the colors on this one, the red, brown, and yellow blend nicely together.

Was I hesitant to pick up this harvestmen at all? Nope--harvestmen don't have venom glands! I scrambled to catch it before it could get away, as I had just lifted up a stone. I screamed, sure, but that was a scream of joy, not of fear: I had found this neat organism, AND an assassin bug as well!

  Black Corsair - Melanolestes picipes

An assassin bug along with an interesting harvestman? TOTAL SCORE! There's some interesting life hiding under stones, so I made a mental note to add that to my routine while walking through the forest. I had been checking stones before, but this was one of my first night hikes, giving me the chance to find different organisms.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find too much information about Vonones, but I'm still searching. One odd piece of information I've come across is that they fluoresce under UV light, according to this thread on Arachnoboards. I'll be checking that out next time I encounter one.

 What secrets do you hold?!

I mentioned earlier that there's a significance to Vonones being in the suborder Laniatores. It seems as though harvestmen in this suborder exhibit paternal care for eggs after they are laid--unique in the Arachnids, and restricted to this suborder. It would be interesting to investigate if this behavior holds true for Vonones, and how it affects survival. Perhaps daddy longlegs are more loving than you first thought...

References

Beccaloni, Jan. 2009. Arachnids. Berkeley: University of California; 320 p.

A Charismatic.......and Sometimes Drunk Weevil

Usually when I find weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea), they're tiny, relatively bland, or....."otherwise occupied."

Tulip Tree Weevils (Odontopus calceatus), otherwise occupied.

While researching assassin bugs this summer at the Barbara A. Beiser Field Station, however, I came across a much more charismatic weevil, the oak timberworm (Arrhenodes minutus).

Not quite on an oak, this guy was picked up during sweep netting.

If you compare the oak timberworm with the tulip tree weevils in the previous picture, you'll probably notice quite a difference in size and body shape. The oak timberworm doesn't have elbowed antennae, either. So what gives?

The oak timberworm is a species of primitive weevil (Subfamily Brentinae), which look very different from other weevils. They're characterized by their straight snouts (their family is the straight-snouted weevils, Brentidae, after all), antennae that aren't elbowed, and the tendency of their body shape to usually be flat and elongated. The only primitive weevil you're going to find north of Florida is the oak timberworm, others have a tropical distribution.

The oak timberworm can be an economic pest of oaks, as the larvae feed on the wood during their development. Despite this, it's quite a pretty beetle, mostly red with short yellow longitudinal lines on its elytra. Males and females look very different: females have elongated snouts that look almost like a straw, while the males have relatively large jaws at the end of their snouts. These jaws aren't used for hunting prey, since the adult weevils feed on sap, however. Rather, the jaws are used for catching females, helping females drill egg holes in wood, and for fighting other males.

Why would males want to use their jaws to catch females? Well, scroll up to the other weevils which were "previously occupied."

Yep.

The males prowl around looking for some fine females to mate with, and when they find them, the females don't always want to mate. So, they'll run. The males don't appreciate this, so they give chase until they can grab the female's rostrum (the elongated mouth tube). After the male grabs the female, she stops running and he will try to mate with her.

......and the female might try running again. At this point, one of two things will happen: the male will give chase and try again, or he'll give up. If the female keeps resisting, the male is likely to take the latter choice.

The males aren't always focused on mating, of course. They also defend the females and help them with their egg-laying. The males will set up a territory around the female by walking around the females in a circle, while the female works on boring holes in the wood in which to lay an egg. If another male approaches and tries to interrupt the female (with intentions to mate with her), the other male steps in and the two males throw down. Their fights can last for ten minutes or more (30 minutes or more if they're drunk, but we'll come back to that later), and the winner achieves victory by getting his jaws underneath the other male and throwing him off the wood. Size is an important factor in this game: larger males have the advantage. When one male is substantially larger than the other, things can get crazy. Sanborne (check the citation at the end of this post, his paper provides some great observations on the oak timberworm) noticed this and thought it was hilarious: the smaller male he saw fighting with a larger one was thrown 10 centimeters away, soundly defeated. This aggressive behavior by the males is quite helpful for the females, giving them time to drill their egg holes. Each hole can take up to an hour to drill, and the last thing the females want is to be constantly accosted by male suitors--they wouldn't get anything done!

I mentioned something about drunk weevils in that last paragraph, so while we're still on the topic of aggressive behavior in males, let's go back to that. As I said earlier, adult beetles feed on sap. Knowing this, Sanborne made a sap to feed his weevils on by boiling oak leaves, twigs, and bark in water, then added sugar to the mixture. He successfully kept his weevils alive on this mixture from June to September, without problems. Eventually, he noticed something interesting about his sap and the weevils' reaction to it: the higher the degree of fermentation of the sap, the more aggressive his male beetles became.

Essentially, the weevils would become drunk on the fermented sap, and proceed to get into weevil bar fights. The weevils actively searched for fights, tumbling all over the rearing cage once they found another male to fight with. The fights lasted a half hour or more. Sanborne doesn't report why, but I suspect that the weevils didn't have the coordination to get their jaws underneath the other combatant in order to throw it in the air: after all, that's tough to do when the room is already spinning! If the sap was fermented too much, the weevils would just pass out for a while before getting back up.

Sanborne could not conclusively determine if they had a weevil hangover.

When male oak timberworms aren't getting drunk or mating, they help the female drill her egg holes. When the female gets her rostrum stuck in the wood, they will position themselves to help leverage her out of the hole--described as tool use. The female then continues drilling. When their mandibles get clogged with bits of wood, they use their antennae to clean it out.---when you don't have a toothbrush, you need some way to take care of those little pieces! Once the hole is completed, one egg is laid, then the female plugs the hole with the pieces of wood trash she excavated and secretes some sticky stuff to hold it together.

When oak timberworms need to rest, they find hiding places under bark. Males defend their spots from other males, but are chivalrous and will allow females to join them.

You may have already surmised that oak timberworms are hardy: it's sort of required with all that fighting.Their exoskeleton is quite strong ("heavily chitinized" is another way to put it) and resistant. Since they feed on tree sap, they compete with other insects to obtain this food, such as ants. Despite the attempts of ants to chase them away by biting the weevils, the weevils are protected and can continue to enjoy the delicious sap, and the ants can't do anything about it.

An alcoholic weevil that likes to fight....how's that for charismatic?

References:

Sanborne M. 1983. Some Observations on the Behaviour of Arrhenodes minutus (Drury) (Coleoptera: Brentidae). The Coleopterists Bulletin. 37(2): 106-113.

Primitive Weevils of Florida - by Michael Thomas
BugGuide - Species Arrhenodes minutus - Oak TimberwormBeetles in the Bush - Different Jaws for Different Jobs