lightsinthedistance-modernlife

I came across a caterpillar today that was too cool to pass up sharing. You're in for a treat. I was walking to the science center on campus today and looking around the fringes of the grass, as per usual, when I spotted a caterpillar on the sidewalk. It was serendipitous because I was just thinking about how as an entomologist, I've been training myself to focus on small things and watch for movement that might be overlooked by someone who doesn't constantly look for bugs. It was an interesting moment. I noticed a small green thing that looked like a leaf, and at first thought it was. A breeze had just blown some leaves across the path, but this was a little different. It's a good thing I don't have a habit of crushing leaves, or this story would be sad. Sidewalk is not its natural habitat. A-ha! My first thought: "Definitely not a leaf." My second thought: "Sphingidae." This caterpillar has very pretty colors, like a grape popsicle shoved into ...

Invasive species: from North America to New Zealand to Antarctica , they're a problem. Invasive species, when transported to a new environment, have the capacity to overwhelm the ecosystem and throw it off the natural balance that has been reached by the indigenous organisms. This causes severe damage to the ecosystem, and can have many unforeseen consequences: among them local extinction of native organisms and even increased flooding due to increased storm water runoff. Here in Southeastern Ohio, some of the more common invasive organisms I see are Tree of Heaven ( Ailanthus altissima ), Japanese honeysuckle ( Lonicera japonica), and the dreaded Japanese knotweed ( Fallopia japonica ). From what I've seen, Japanese honeysuckle and knotweed are especially nasty invaders, and can take over forests and other areas without prejudice. In the case of Japanese knotweed, it spreads via rhizomes, making it even more difficult to eradicate. One of the major problems of invasive plants...

I came home today to the most wonderful surprise I've had in a long time: Arilus cristatus, the wheel bug, in all of its salmon-colored glory. For those of you who aren't familiar with my love of this particular insect, the wheel bug is my absolute favorite insect. Why? To list a few reasons, it's an assassin bug, it's the largest terrestrial true bug (Order Hemiptera) in North America, and it has that ridiculously interesting cogwheel protuberance on its pronotum. This bug is unique and when you see it, you know what it is and that you shouldn't test its patience. The fresh new bug on the left, with its out-of-style skin on the right. Anyway, what we're actually looking at here is the wheel bug right after it has molted out of its 5th instar. Wheel bugs go through a nymph stage of life with five separate growth periods (instars), and it sheds its skin between each period, growing as it does so. At the end of its fifth instar , it has finished its nymph stage an...

This weekend placed me in Dayton, Ohio for the Midwest Native Plants Conference. It was beyond spectacular and I was bombarded with new information everywhere I turned. The conference committee was gracious enough to award me with a scholarship to attend the conference, so I tried to squeeze all the information I could out of the three short days the conference took place. The conference was very well-planned and went smoothly, by the end of the weekend I was exhausted. Really though, I would make sure all my weekends were filled with biology like this one if I could. The conference hosted some amazing speakers, particularly Steve McKee and Jim McCormac . Steve talked about Botanical Detective Work and his adventures with searching for plants in Richland County that haven't been looked for in over 100 years, which lit a fire under me to go explore Washington County some more. It's amazing what can slip under our noses due to simply not paying attention to what's growing (o...