"The Billion Bug Highway You Can't See"

Mealworm & Dinner

Shirts for the enthusiasts

http://shop.themountain.me/products/Butterfly-Study.html

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!

Dermestid Beetle Colony?

Sae's day at the Field Museum for my
Scientific Illustration class with Peggy Macnamara.
Peggy brought us into the Preparation lab of the Field Museum, where all the stuffing and positioning of the species showed in the Field museum are done before they are actually on display. In the lab, there's a room entirely dedicated for the Dermestid Beetle Colony, which belong to the family Dermestidae, also called carpet beetles or larder beetles. These beetles are commonly used by museums and taxidermists to prepare skeletal material, which was why they were in the Preparation room in the Field Museum as well.

The smell of the room was not one of the most pleasant smells I've encountered in my life. But when I googled "Dermestid Beetle Colony" I interestingly came across a website that sells Dermestid Beetle Colony starter kits.

Sae

going out to field and forest....

)))))))
This week in the fields of milkweeds were some expected (red & black ) bugs hanging out:



















Of course you can also catch some in the molting of molting, and in a sense "changing clothes" between life stage...



















And then there are mysterious objects, like this praying mantis egg case:



















Expectant parents were not far away...



















And although we love 6-legged creatures, the four-legged ones can be charming too:



















AY

Ant Death Spiral

Ants are colonial insects, meaning they are very social, and function more as a group and rarely as individuals. They seem to be exceedingly loyal to their colony, and some ant species will literally run themselves to death by exhaustion. When these ants become separated from the greater swarm, they will literally follow each other in circles until they all die. This action produces a breathtaking "hurricane" of ants that continues until no ants are left standing.

Video:

Lepidopterans!

These are photos of the lepidopterans (butterflies, moths) I've been encountering recently. The top two images are the ones I saw in Kansas City on 9/10(sat). The 2nd close up butterfly was found dead in that position and its leaves seemed to be very translucent/clear. Even though it was windy and rainy, it somehow managed to stay in that position.

The last photo of a moth mimicking the ground was taken on 9/6 (Monday) near Wilmette, IL, where the Baha'i Temple is located. I ended up touching it because I couldn't tell if it was dead or alive. After I touched it few times it tweaked a little but didn't make much movement. I assumed it was asleep and left it alone :)

Sae

Jo Whaley: Butterflies and Photography

Interesting photography work by Jo Whaley
Artist's website here: http://www.jowhaley.com/index.cfm?bhcp=1

From The New Yorker:
“The Theater of Insects” (Chronicle) is a cabinet of curiosities for your pocketbook. The photographer and avid lepidopterist Jo Whaley stages beetles, butterflies, and caterpillars in hand-crafted scenes. I can imagine these teensy stages piled on a dusty bookshelf, each featuring their own performance. As the insects’ wings blend into the background—old daguerrotypes, corroded metal, bits of paper and cardboard—the plot of unlikely coincidences unfolds.

Whaley is fascinated by melanism, the way that insects, like butterflies, evolve to blend into their surroundings, which in the industrialized world are often dreary and industrial. And yet, with graphic compositions and colors that illuminate the pages, the images seem playful, containing worlds in which beetles, metals, photographs, music sheets, and more make unlikely bedfellows. Like any good Wunderkrammer, the book aims for scientific display and stops somewhere near surreal folly.

posted by Wesley

Playing Tag with Royalty (monarchs)

Right now in northern Illinois the monarch butterflies are at their peak on their journey southward towards Mexico to overwinter.

This year, the Insect World class is participating in the Monarch Watch program of tagging and releasing these travelers in hopes of gathering data about their epic migration.

This weekend out the forest preserve
we had quite some luck, seeing a greater density of monarchs than I'd personally seen in the past five years.

We caught and tagged many - sticking the tracking numbers to the underside of their bright orange/black hindwings and letting them go.

We look forward to more in the coming two weeks....

AY

The Romance of Ants

A temporary exhibit at the Field Museum all about ants by the Field Museum scientist Dr. Corrie Moreau. Talks about interesting facts about ants, and how one spends his/her time to study them. (The illustrations at the show, in comic book style, are done by one of SAIC Alumni who took Insect World when she was an Undergraduate.)
Check out the blog for the exhibit: http://romanceofants.ning.com/

Sae

Ants and Sluggards

Folk artist, pastor, and self-proclaimed "man of vision" Howard Finster made supposed over 40,000 works of art in his lifetime, starting his artistic pursuits well into adulthood.

If you can't make it to his museum / homestead in Georgia, Paradise Gardens, it is hard to see a nice collection of this work. The Chicago Cultural Center right now has a fine show of his work, Stranger in Paradise.

Walking through I noticed this ant piece done nicely and shimmering upon a mirror and quoting the Proverbs 6:6 verse: "Go to the ant though sluggard, and be wise..."

Finster has another piece along these same lines.













Of course there is almost too much to say about the role of ants as model and metaphor throughout history and across cultures... suffice to say, think twice about squashing the next one you see. It may be trying to tell you something.

AY

insect art

http://www.bburkhardt.com/

Brian Burkhardt makes some really cool sculptures that look like insects. My favorites are his insects made out of high fashion logos - butterflies out of burberry patterns, etc. (These are under the 'Fauna' part of his website). He is certainly a meticulous craftsman - up close, you can see how detailed the 'insects' were constructed.

I met him once and he told me that he used to be a commercial farmer. I imagine that that experience has influenced his use of materials and irony in his art. I think of these sculptures as a pseudo-apocalyptic taxonomy of artifice. They cleverly question ideas of 'naturalness' utopian/dystopian capitalist ideology, and our innate (?) desire for order.

-Rebecca

Bedbug updated - Cook them or fool their hearts?

An article from today's news: more updates on research on combating bedbugs - in this case via pheromones. They call this a "new method" although it is one that been utilized for other insect pests as well...

here is a video on the going method of ultra-heating living spaces up to kill them off:






AY

Unfortunately, bed bugs.

If you live in NYC, Chicago, or Cincinnati you already know that bed bugs are back. In fact they were gone so long that many weren't even aware of their blood-sucking existence.

Recently though the US press has picked up on it, with several articles appearing in big papers. This article gives a nice overview; another article warns people like me they need to be careful picking up furniture at flea markets or in alley-ways because of these lurking pests. But a recent BBC report also points out that it seems to in fact be a global resurgence (yikes!)

So read up a little - best to know the enemy and hopefully avoid - as much as we can - these pesky and gross Hemipterans. This New York Times site actually has a wonderful resource of all its articles and multimedia content on the matter of late, including how dogs are coming to the rescue!


AY

Chicago = Mosquito Heaven

___________
____
Surprisingly hot weather and heavy rainfall has resulted in Chicago having a 20 year peak in the summer mosquito population (I can personally attest to the fact: they are bad this year!).

The season has now shifted to Culex species of mosquito that carries West Nile virus, with the first human case in the region just being reported.






All this buggy and biting news makes me think of the classic comic by John Porcellino, Dairy of a Mosquito Abatement Man, which chronicles his own experiences working the mosquito-ridding beat in Chicago land back in the 1990's... If only John was in Chicago to join the fight!


AY

Cicadas..s...s...

____
On a recent visit to Shikoku, Japan I found myself bathed in cicada songs. In Japan the biodiversity of cicadas is quite something in terms of size, coloration, and indeed song. Some even sound like birds calling! Occasionally one could spot a cicada (like to the right), but it was tricky as they are usually either very well camouflaged, very high up a tree, or both.

Finding their old clothes, however, was much easier. Hanging lightly on tree bark and across the ground their molted husks from being a pupae could be easily spotted, delicate but colored like amber.

AY

Eating the Six-Legged

--
A promise is a promise, and I swore to the class last semester I'd eat the giant Thai water bugs I bought at my neighborhood grocery (discussed in originally in this post).

I can't say I was looking forward to this meal per se, but I wasn't too apprehensive either. Being a New England boy, I love shellfish, and so shell-on shrimp, lobsters, and full-bellied clams all taste good to me. How different would this be? So I went with that culinary theme and decided to go with the Deep-Fry option , having it be part of a side dish to my lunch:





















Am I feeling squeamish, or focusing with laser-like attention
on my palate? You be the judge.



I finished it off with garlic and some curry powder sprinkle to accompany my tofu and shiitake mushrooms.

I have to say, it wasn't at all what I was expecting. The texture was crunchy and a bit scaly (I anticipated that), however the flavor was odd ~ it was like an aromatic blend of banana leaves and something else I can't put my finger on - somewhat nutty, almost like a pungent jasmine, and VERY salty. All that said, I can't say that it was tasty, at least not the way I prepared it, the novice that I am.


One thing I marveled at was the meat inside the thorax, clearly these guys fly a fair bit as their flight muscles were bulky and fleshy the way you see in dragonflies, in fact, you can actually make it out by texture distinctively as meat:
























I didn't end up eating every last bit, but gave it a good "college try" as they used to say. Some parts were just a little to chitinous to manage...




















For some more entomophagy related posts from the Ecology of Food blog, go here, there, and this one!

A recent post on this blog also highlights some advanced cooking of insects Creole style in New Orleans.


AY

Hive Mind

click to> Feel the BuZZ

The web designer Baby Dinosaurs Eyes gives us some visual play as one ponders the ways of bees and their collective flying huuum.

I love the way they appear and then fade to the distance, as they age and as they forage outside. It feels like a lovely visual metaphor for the real demographics of bee colony life....

ay

Insectariums - New Orleans/Montreal

On my recent trip to the city I so wanted to go to the Audubon Insectarium, but alas, it was Monday and so it was closed... My good friend and fellow insectologist, Corrie, told me just how fabulous it is so I'l have to make a point of going.

This article on it in the Smithsonian Magazine gives a taste (and literally A TASTE, including a video bit on preparing using crickets in a cajun redfish dish!)


On the topic of insectariums and North American francophone cities, let me then make a plug for Montreal's Insectarium. An amzing place housed in the old Winter Olympics complex, it is a real pleasure.


And more locally (for me), the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago and its Butterfly Haven - one of the better butterfly houses I've seen, with a wealth of birds as well. Check out the Butterfly Haven's Blog for some nice images.

ay

factZooing

FactZoo - a little factoid page on insects with some nice (if a bit random) images and notes on insects and other creatures.


ay