New book for bug fans -- Bugwatching!

When one adult or child takes an interest in bugs, it's a good idea to have a book or two with lots of images AND text. Pictures are always interesting, even for people who are learning to read! And science books with lots to read are the kind one comes back to again and again, reading a little, finding new facts, or looking back for something remembered.

Here's a book like that for a family bookshelf! It's called Bugwatching: The Art, Joy, and Importance of Observing Insects. Written by Eric R. Eaton and illustrated by Samantha Gallagher, this book is intended to read a little at a time instead of all at once.

I think it would go well on a shelf next to a journal for writing notes and drawing sketches!

Click here for a link to read about this book on the publisher's page.

Weird and Wonderful Animals

By Claire Eamer

I am fascinated by animals that surprise me, that make me rethink my assumptions about what is and isn't possible. Maybe they do something I'm sure they can't do. Or they find a completely unexpected way to survive in their bit of the world. Or they make me rethink how I survive in the world. 

Take, for example, the American dipper or water ouzel, scientific name Cinclus mexicanus.

American dipper. Photo by Ron Knight.

I used to live in Whitehorse, on the banks of the Yukon River in northern Canada. The river is huge and fast-flowing. And it's cold. In winter, it's mostly covered in ice with only a few patches of open water kept clear by the current.

Walking along a river trail one winter day, I saw a small black bird standing on the ice at the edge of the open water. As I watched, it dove straight into the (literally) icy water and disappeared. Just when I began to think it was drowned and frozen, it popped back out of the water and hopped onto the ice, looking none the worse for what should have been a near-death experience.

It was an American dipper, a species that pushes the boundaries of bird life. Dippers can stick their heads under water to search for food and swim underwater by using a flying movement with their short, strong wings. They can even walk along the bottom of a fast-moving stream, holding on with their extra-long toes and claws. 

An American dipper searches for food. Photo by David A Mitchell.

Watching that bird in Whitehorse led me to think about other animals that push boundaries, and that led to my book Lizards in the Sky: Animals Where You Least Expect Them (Annick Press). Snakes that glide from tree to tree, tiny worms that survive on glaciers, salamanders that live in the complete darkness of deep caves: they're all there.

My most recent animal book came from another kind of rethinking -- about why we find some animals or their habits disgusting and what they are really like if you don't just say, "Gross!" and turn away.

The result of my fascination with everything disgusting in the animal world was Extremely Gross Animals: Stinky, Slimy and Strange Animal Adaptations (Kids Can Press). It's full of animals that use puke and poop and spit and other gross stuff to survive. And if you look closely and ask questions, you'll find that they use it very well indeed.

I started by researching all things slimy and smelly (and found some great information), but I think my favourite beastie in the book is now the humble dung beetle. That might be because I found some in my own back yard.

It truth, dung beetles aren't all particularly humble. There are thousands of species of beetle that use dung as food or home or nest or all these. Some, like the elephant dung beetle, are big and showy. Elephant dung beetles actually eat elephant dung (thought it was just a name, didn't you?). Actually, they form it into a ball, roll it away, and bury it to make both a nest and food source for their young. 

[Take a look at Sci/Why contributor Margriet Ruurs's column about a trip to Africa, where she saw elephant dung balls -- and a lot more!] 

The dung beetles in my back yard aren't nearly as big or as showy. They don't roll the dung into balls. Instead, they dig little dens under it and use it as both protection and a food source for themselves and their young.

Two tiny dung beetles scurry away from the author.

I should explain that my back yard includes a couple of acres of forest on one of British Columbia's Gulf Islands -- and a lot of passing deer. I was curious about whether anything dung-beetle-like was using the deer droppings, so I went in search. 

I found a small pile of deer poop, about the size of a pocket wallet. It was dry on top and probably a few days old. I turned it over (using a stick, not my hand -- Come on! Some things really are a bit gross!). 

And there they were! Dung beetles -- two of them, peeking out of two little holes in the ground, the tunnels they had dug under the dung. Before I could tell them how pleased I was to discover them, they scooted away in search of another welcoming patch of deer droppings.

But I was pleased. It was a delight to meet some of the stars of my book face to face.

NOTE: The photos by Ron Knight and David A. Mitchell are licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Woolly Bears in the Mountains

By Claire Eamer 

No! Not those bears! I'm talking caterpillars.

Woolly bears are those fluffy, hairy caterpillars that look a bit like tiny plush toys. They're common from Mexico to northern Canada. You might have seen a woolly bear trundling along a warm sidewalk in summer or climbing a plant stem to munch on leaves. Eventually, the caterpillar will pupate and emerge as a moth.

So what's so special about woolly bears in the mountains? Actually, it's one particular species -- the arctic woolly bear, Gynaephora groenlandica. Arctic woolly bears weren't supposed to be crawling around in the Yukon mountains, but that's where Isabel Barrio found them during the summer field season of 2010.

Alpine tundra in the Kluane Range, Yukon. D. Hik photo

Until then, arctic woolly bears had been found only on the tundra along the edge of the Arctic Ocean, almost entirely in Canada's Arctic Archipelago and on the shores of Greenland. They emerge from hibernation for about three weeks in June, munch mainly on Arctic willow, and go dormant again until the next June, spending much of their lives tucked away among the tundra stones, frozen solid. They spend so little time active that it takes them a seven years to develop from egg to moth -- the longest of any butterfly or moth.

There's no way a caterpillar not much bigger than a jelly bean could travel from the Arctic Ocean to the southern Yukon in that short period of activity. And yet -- there they were, arctic woolly bears, crawling around an alpine research camp in the Kluane Range, fully 900 kilometres south of where they were supposed to be.

"Caterpillars are relatively common in the alpine and I had been watching them for years," David Hik, the leader of the research group, wrote in an email, "but Isabel was the one who really started looking at them more closely."

A Yukon arctic woolly bear in search of dinner. Syd Cannings photo.

Today, Isabel Barrio is a professor at the Agricultural University of Iceland, but in 2010 she was working on her doctorate under the direction Hik, a specialist in the alpine ecosystems of the southwestern Yukon. And she had a sharp eye for caterpillars.

Hik explained that there are two arctic species of woolly bear caterpillar -- Gynaephora groenlandica and Gynaephora rossii (the larval form of Ross' tussock moth) -- and they are easy to confuse. G. rossii, however, has a wide range all around the Arctic and in the high mountains farther south, so it was logical to assume the Kluane Range caterpillars were G. rossii.

When Barrio looked closely at the older caterpillars, however, she realized they weren't G. rossii. As improbable as it seemed, they appeared to be arctic woolly bears. The research group collected 30 caterpillars that summer to confirm the identification and to learn more about them.

What's your favourite? An experiment to see what the Yukon caterpillars like to eat. D. Hik photo.

That led to another surprise. Analysis of the caterpillars' genetic code showed that the Yukon woolly bears were slightly different from other arctic woolly bears. They were, in fact, a newly discovered subspecies: Gynaephora groenlandica beringiana.

That last word is important. It refers to the fact that they were found in Beringia, the area of northwestern North America that remained ice-free during the last major glaciation. That probably explains their presence in the alpine valley. These fuzzy little beasts were likely crawling over the tough tundra vegetation of Beringia when most of Canada was buried under kilometres of ice -- and they're still there.

G. groenlandica beringiana perched on top of its supper. D. Hik photo.

Since Barrio's first identification of them, the caterpillars have been found in a few other locations in the Yukon. David Hik suspects they are widespread throughout the alpine areas of Beringia. He hopes that new research projects in the region will turn up more confirmed identifications -- and more information.

"They are very cool, and there is so much more to learn about them," he wrote.

Flesh-Eating Swarms

By Adrienne Montgomerie

The buzzing starts faintly, then grows. Around and around your head, there is buzzing. Then two buzzing things, then you are surrounded by dozens of flying yellow bodies that… go on their way. Because the meat they’re looking to feed on is not you.

You might think of a sting when you think of bees, and you most definitely think of honey. But I bet you picture their fuzzy little legs heavy with yellow pollen from flowers, not a toothy grin, ripping into flesh.

A Wide World of Bees

There are almost 20 000 types of bees, and there only five types that eat meat. Common names for these flesh-eating bees include vulture bees and carrion bees. The scientific name is for this family of bees is Tragona.

They aren’t known to go out and hunt down prey. These aren’t the killer bees of folklore. These bees don’t even have a stinger!

Vulture bees typically gnaw on carrion, like vultures do. Carrion is an animal that is already dead. The only reason these bees seem to bother with living things is to keep them away from their food.

Sharing the Meat

Vulture bees usually take the bits of meat they gnaw off a dead thing back to the hive. There they spit it up (regurgitate it) as food for baby bees (larvae). This is their only source of protein. They don’t feed on flowers or collect pollen the way that other types of bees do. Their hive still produces honey though, and it is a lot like the honey we put on toast and in tea.

Some other types of bees bring meat back to the nest, but they’re using it as a building material. Those bees don’t eat the meat.

Tracking Vulture Bees

To find a vulture bee, you could try Mexico, but you’re better off going farther south to South America.

---

Photo of Tragona by José Reynaldo da Fonseca - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=969999

Insect Mimicry; Caterpillar Predators; Baby Snapping Turtles & Bird Eggs: Jan Thornhill Blog Post Updates

by Jan Thornhill 

This week's blog post was going to be about mimicry. I'd come across an insect in Chile that  was a fabulous example of automimicry – the kind where part of an animal's body looks like a more vulnerable part. 

Here's the first view I had of this insect:

"What a character!" I thought.  Kinda cute, and kinda homely at the same time, like an old shoe. 

Then I changed my camera angle...

...and saw that what I'd thought was a face was actually the insect's rear end. 

How fabulous – it's abdomen was pretty much a replica of its head, complete with bulging red eyeballs! 

If anyone knows anything about this beetle(?), I'd love to hear from you!!

And that was it. Kind of short for a blog post. But then I realized I'd already written a post about mimicry (Spider Art and Bioluminescent “Bombs”: Extreme Animal Mimicry) – and that I should just add this guy to that post as an update. And then I remembered more updates I needed to do.

Update # 2:

It seems like a no brainer to add this find to a post about cabbage moth caterpillars I wrote a couple of years ago, Wild Helpers in the Brussels Sprouts Patch. 

I found a tiny clay urn glued to our outdoor table yesterday. I knew it was some kind of wasp nest. I also knew that the tiny pot was going to be destroyed one way or another, so instead of leaving it to be crushed by a coffee cup or plate of sliced tomatoes, I sliced it off the table with a knife so I could see what was going on inside.

Oooh! 

The urn was built by a Potter Wasp nest – someone in the genus Eumenes. 

Potter Wasp, Eumenes sp. (Wikipedia)

Potter Wasps normally won't bother you. What they will do is construct tiny, marble-sized urns out of drops of mud.

Potter wasps sometimes include an urn "neck."

They fill these little pots with paralyzed caterpillars, then lay an egg on the inside clay surface. If all goes well, the egg will hatch and the wasp larva will feed on the caterpillars until it's mature enough to chew its way out of the pot and start its adult life.  

I don't think the egg in the one I found one "took." Or maybe something happened to the builder before she could lay an egg. Too bad, since there were five different desiccated caterpillars inside, one of which, judging by its pale green colour, was surely a cabbage caterpillar. 

A feast gone to waste.

Update # 3

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about a bird egg collection I donated to the Royal Ontario Museum, I Might Be a Criminal. I sent a link of the blog to the ROM's Mark Peck, who, in response, told me about a Canadian citizen scientist nest monitoring program that anyone can join: Project NestWatch. 

It looks like a fun summer project. A little late now, but there's always next year! Go to their website to see how It works:

Step 1:  Register for Project NestWatch 

Step 2:  Learn how to find and monitor nests using the resources provided on this site

Step 3:  Search for nests around your home, school, cottage, or elsewhere

Step 4:  Monitor your nest(s) throughout the breeding season

Step 5:  Submit your data online and contribute to Canada's national nest records database!

Update # 4:

I wrote a post a few years ago about helping snapping turtles on our road, A Baby Snapping Turtle Success Story. Snappers have been nesting on and near that same bridge for years. Then the county decided to replace the bridge. But what about the eggs that had already been laid? Solution: my neighbour Tracy and her daughter gathered the eggs and took them to the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre (previously the Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre) where they were incubated. Tracy picked them up when they hatched and sent me pictures of their release. 

Photos by Tracy Dafoe

Another friend brought 50 snapper eggs to the Ontario Turtle Conservation Centre a few weeks ago. At that point, the centre was already incubating 3,000 eggs! Please consider helping them in this important work!  

The Undead of Winter

 By Jan Thornhill

Ruby LOVES to "play dead" so we can will bury her in snow!

I love early spring! And no – I’m not talking about tulips and the return of migratory birds, though I have nothing against those things. I’m talking about earlier, in the first weeks of March, when there’s still plenty of snow on the ground, when, for all intents and purposes, it’s still the dead of winter.

Except it’s not dead.

Minute snow fleas appear on warm days in late winter.

In fact, there’s a surprising amount of life in the late winter forest here in Ontario – especially when the temperature squeaks a few degrees above the freezing mark. By early March, tree sap has begun to flow. Within a few days, deciduous crowns in the distance have taken on a haze, as if someone has smeared wet watercolour across the tips of their sharp branches. Their leaf buds are plumping. Male chickadees start using their “Hey, sweetie,” song, which, I think, is self-explanatory. Skunks wake from their winter torpor and amble about briefly – possibly just to stretch their legs – before returning to their dens to wait for real spring to come. On sun-warmed snow patches at the base of trees, snow fleas congregate, sometimes by the tens of thousands (see my post about snow fleas here).

This perennial Red-belted Polypore (Fomitopsis pinicola)
will drop spores on warm winter days.

And, all over the forest—believe it or not—fungi are procreating like crazy.

Amanita frostiana has a mycorrhizal relationship
with oaks and conifers.

These are not your basic ground mushrooms with caps and stems that you see in summer and fall. Most of those are mycorrhizal, and have a mutualistic relationship with trees, trading underground water and nutrients for the sugars that trees produce. But trees shut down sugar production in the late fall, so the underground networks of mycelia of mycorrhizal fungi also shut down during the frozen months.

The Violet-toothed polypore (Trichaptum biforme) is an annual saprobe.

But there are all kinds of other fungi that have a different kind of relationship to trees. They rot them. Many of these tree decayers, or saprobes, are polypores. Polypores develop their spores inside tiny tubes instead of on gills like store-bought mushrooms. 

The Hexagonal-pored Polypore (Neofavolus alveolaris)
 has—surprise!—hexagonal pores.

The most commonly noticed polypores are shelf fungi or conks. Many are perennial – they have skeletal hyphae—tissue than can withstand freezing and thawing—and just keep growing and growing, sometimes for 70 years or more. And during that time, whenever the temperature goes above freezing for a couple of days, these fungi produce spores. 

Yearly growth layers are obvious on this Phellinus that grows
new spore-producing tubes on its underside each year. 

But, why, you might wonder would they send out spores so much earlier than the birds start doing it and the bees start doing it—when the forest is still, in effect, asleep?

The Gilled Polypore, Lenzites betulina, has elongated tubes that almost look like gills.

They do it early because polypores, like all fungi, are opportunistic. Polypores that grow on living trees usually inhabit the heartwood that runs up the core of a tree trunk. To set up shop in this deadwood, a polypore has to get past a tree’s sapwood, the living layer below the tree’s bark. In the winter, deep freezes cause fractures in tree bark. These frost cracks are perfect for catching passing spores. When spring rains moisten the crevices, and before the tree has time to seal these cracks, the spores germinate and their mycelia work their way into the core. Once past the tree's defences, the fungus sets up shop, spreading its mycelia up and down and around. A fungus can secretly live inside a tree—gradually breaking down lignin and cellulose—for many years before it gives us humans a clue of its presence—by producing reproductive organs (shelf fungi, or conks) on the tree’s exterior.

Fomes fomentarius, is commonly called the Hoof Fungus
 (its shape)  or Tinder Fungus (used to carry fire from place to place
before matches were invented; Ötzi was carrying some).

The Cinnabar Polypore (Pycnoporus cinnabarinus) is the colour of dragon's blood!

The common name for Trametes versicolor is Turkey tails—for good reason

Chicken-of-the-Woods is an excellent edible polypore
 that has the unmistakable texture of overcooked
chicken if you miss its succulent stage.

This Artist's Conk (Ganoderma applanatum) is exhibiting geotropism
— the fungus first grew while the tree was still standing, then, after the tree 
fell, added new growth with its pore surface—once again—facing down.