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I'm finding interesting insects as I go back through my collection vials and inserting the final labels. The vials include a bunch of organisms I've collected over the years, and one in particular I just processed brought back some memories. This is a pretty caterpillar called Leucostigma orgyia , more commonly known as the white-marked tussock moth. I picked it off a tree during the summer of 2010 and took it home to raise into a beautiful moth, as this was around the time my interest in insects was really starting to increase. Things didn't quite go as planned. My caterpillar friend had been parasitized! As I came to learn later, this is a pretty common occurrence, but this was the first time I had witnessed it. I cover parasitoidism in this post , but the short version is that a small wasp (in the family Braconidae) had found this caterpillar and injected some eggs into it, which later hatched and found on the insides of the caterpillar. Once the wasp larvae had their fi...

For parasitoidism being as gruesome as it is, the following video is surprisingly cute. I'll attribute that to the soundtrack. It also doesn't hurt that these wasps are parasitizing the eggs of an invasive stink bug, Halyomorpha halys , the brown marmorated stink bug.

Parasitoidism was one of the first really neat events I learned about early on in my Entomology studies that got me hooked on insects. It's the process by which an insect (such as a wasp or a fly) lays an egg on or in another organism. That egg then hatches, the larvae feast on the innards of the poor host, and then burst out of its body, killing it. The end result can be gruesome, but today's Science Video Friday showcases the (relatively) peaceful start of the process: when the parasitoid lays its egg in the victim.

When I first started to become interested in insects two summers ago, I had a lot of inspiration thanks to the Catalpa trees in my backyard. I've always loved Catalpas: their flowers bloom starting in June and are spectacularly beautiful. They also smell really great. One of the insects that can be found on Catalpa is the Catalpa Hornworm ( Ceratomia catalpae ). This caterpillar in the family Sphingidae can grow quite large (~3 inches) and goes through boom and bust cycles. During the summer of 2010, it was definitely a boom year for this caterpillar, which provided me with ample specimens. There are also ample caterpillars for parasitoids to have a field day. Braconid wasps are especially prevalent, resulting in many of the caterpillars dying as they become vessels for broods of wasps. Here you can see a Braconid wasp crawling on the cocoons. This was a common sight, so I got used to seeing it after a few days. But once I found one that looked dramatically different (even from the...

I'm currently in a scientific imaging class so that I can learn how to take better insect pictures and use Photoshop. Some of the assignments are a bit bland, so I've been trying to spice them up a bit. Yesterday's assignment was to create a flow chart of....anything. With that free reign, I decided to tackle parasitoids and the tobacco hornworm ( Manduca sexta ). After 20 minutes of a Twitter back and forth with Morgan Jackson and Crystal Ernst , I had a name for my subject: Randy. He had two paths to go down during his life--the choice was up to him.  

I recently had the amazing opportunity to visit La Selva Biological Station , operated by the Organization for Tropical Studies, on a class trip. The station was established in 1971, and is one of the most important biological stations for tropical rain forest research in the world: every year 250 scientific papers are published from research done at the station. Pretty impressive for a station only 15 square kilometers in area. It's operated by a consortium of 63 universities, and they do a great job of managing it. Unfortunately, due to the massive amount of pictures I took while there, I can only select a few to elaborate on, so I'll make those count. Let it be said, however, that there are a massive amount of interactions, plants, animals, and so many other organisms at the station, and in the rain forest as a whole. It's no wonder that so much research comes out of the place.   Bridge over Río Puerto Viejo, containing crocodiles and fruit-eating piranha. I had a lot o...

In Ohio, there's a delightfully gregarious caterpillar known as Manduca sexta , or the tobacco hornworm. It's placed within the Sphingidae family, which is composed of the hawk moths. Take a look at the Wikipedia page for the hawk moths: they're all spectacular. Some of the adult moths resemble birds or bees, they're just amazing. To get back on topic, the tobacco hornworm feeds on tobacco (obviously), as well as other plants within the family Solanaceae , which includes tomatoes. This makes them pests to gardeners, which is pretty unfair. Tobacco hornworms develop into some beautiful moths and are quite large, so they're truly a sight to see once they reach maturity. Luckily for me, they also feed on Datura wrightii , a plant within the same family as tobacco and tomato, which grows near my house. I had the fortune of finding a few of the caterpillars on the Datura plant, so I plucked them along with some leaves and placed them in a container in my room. They were...