Life of an Arthropod

Hello everyone,

As I write this, my many tarantulas and other pets wander and watch me. They are content to sit and wait, while it seems that I am always busy doing this or that. All they need is some food and water from time to time and they are content. Yet despite this existence, I can't help but notice different personalities.

People may say that insects and spiders can't have a personality because they do not have an advanced nervous system, but I disagree with this fully. Each of my pets has its own personality, as do the ones that my friends own. My red knee tarantula (Brachypelma smithi) is more than happy to sit around when I get her out, while my friend's red knee is very nervous when brought out. The difference between those two is very noticeable.

My little red knee, Illidiance

Of course the temperament can vary between species. My metallic pink toe tarantula (Avicularia metallica) tends to be a bit skittish when I get him out, but he still a very mellow little guy, content to walk around and occasionally projectile frass. 

My metallic pink toe, Arkeuthys

I am very happy to own these tarantulas, along with all the other insects and spiders as well. They are all so much fun to watch and provide me with hours of entertainment. I recommend looking into a pet insect or spider of your own to watch and learn from. It's a great experience.

Bug

Hello readers,

I have been out of touch for far too long. These past few months have been exceedingly busy, but filled with knowledge. I only have a short post for you today, but it's one I hope you enjoy and take to heart.

Insect rearing is a very rewarding hobby. In the past year, I've gotten so many awesome pets while they were young and cared for them until adulthood. It has taken patience and a lot of care, but it is very much worth it. I recommend that everyone gives it a try at some point. Whether it's the caterpillar you find in your back yard, or even an adult spider or beetle, you learn so much and it just makes you love insects even more. Information abounds about these insects around us and raising them teaches us more. Science is all about he pursuit of knowledge, but raising insects is a blending of science and hobby. There are many people out there that will raise insects for fun and then publish what they learn through trial and error on the internet or even in a book. Keep your eyes open in curiosity and watch all the insects around you.

Bug

Milwaukee Public Museum

Hello my patient readers,
Sorry it's been so long since I last posted. I've just been crazy busy with everything, but now is definitely the time to write something.

A few weeks ago, myself and a few members of Club Insecta (and a couple other random people who wanted to come with) went to the Milwaukee Public Museum. I was the only person who had been there previously, so I knew that they had a very nice insect collection and butterfly garden.

As we walked up the stairs, we were greeted with a fantastic site.

A whale skeleton, decked out for the holidays

To me, this is a fantastic way to start off the tour of the museum (though the last time I had been there, there hadn't been any lights on the whale). As you can just barely see at the top of the stairs, there are other interesting things up there as well.
Once you get to the top, there is a wonderful assortment of skeletons and taxidermied animals. There are some of the most bizarre creatures that they have in this collection. I wish it was better organized and my friend said I should work here to better organize everything (I am a bit OCD when it comes to symmetry and organization at times).

Just a handful of the animals. You can see birds in the case behind
 them, along with another very random assortment of things.

And while these things are interesting, this was Club Insecta I was with, so of course we are looking for the greatest insects we can find. I led them around to the back of this great opening display to show them a thing of disorganized beauty.

This was about a third of the entire box. There were so many amazing
specimens that had basically been randomly thrown into a box.

I am biased towards longhorn beetles. I find them fascinating,
so I couldn't pass up a shot of them.

Nice selection of Buprestids (though notice the one random Elaterid in the mix)

It was great to see these specimens, but we still had to see the butterfly house! That of course was our next stop. As we walked in, I just looked down and saw this little guy chilling on the rock right by the door. He was completely unperturbed by the people coming in.

There were butterflies flitting about everywhere! It was great to see so many different species all together in a peaceful place such as this. And as an added benefit by the museum, they played calming music as we walked through. They even had morphos laboriously floating through the air. As stunning as those were though, there was one specimen that caught my eye, not because it was big or brightly colored, but because it was green!

Such a cool little butterfly

 After some time, we were able to drag ourselves out of the magical butterfly room into the insect wing (yes, they have an insect wing). In a small room, they had many live specimens and a few more great looking pinned ones. My favorite thing in the room though was a terrarium that had two Damon diadema in it. Absolutely love those and am planning on getting one as a pet one day.

And showing another bias of mine, the giant Tanzanian tailless whip scorpion (Damon diadema)

A cool looking mantis. In a container right beside this, there
were many little mantises just like this.

Another great display of insects

Once exiting this room, there is one devoted entirely to butterflies and moths. There is display on display filled with many different beautiful species. It was great to see. There was even a video (with a song) about the butterfly life cycle depicted by puppets. It was somewhat disturbing to see, but quite educational for any kids that may come through. Despite all the butterflies and moths everywhere, there was a large mantis in the middle of the room, attacking a butterfly. This was rather odd, but made for a great photo opportunity for the club.

A few members of Club Insecta

One of the more colorful cases

Besides all the great insects that were being shown off, there were other unexplored places within the museum to see. This brought us to what was being shown as a research area. This was pretty cool because there was a huge display with so many different animals that depicted the tree of life.

The Tree of Life with my friend sitting at the control chair in the middle.
A rather frightening thought.

 From there, we moved on to some rooms showing the history of life, complete with fossils and dinosaurs. And right next to that is a whole ecosystem, the rain forest! It was very well done, but too dark for any good pictures. They had facts posted everywhere, so it was extremely informative.

After that, we realized we were running short on time, so we quickly moved through the other exhibits. They mostly depicted different indigenous people from different regions of the world. It was cool to see the tools they used and what sort of clothing they made because you could compare a group from Africa to a group from New Zealand or South America or India just by walking into another room. My camera had died by this point, so I'm sorry that I wasn't able to get any pictures of all this.

A fun thing about this museum is that it has a bunch of random little ecosystems scattered about to go with the indigenous people. They would give little bits of information about the habitat along with how people could survive it. And yet the last exhibit we saw was kind of secluded away from the rest. It was an ocean that had a small room dedicated to shells and a roundabout staircase to get you up to that room. The staircase had all these cool little portals to look through and see different sea creatures at different depths. It was cool to see, but time was of essence, so we had to move on so we could get out before the museum closed.

The Milwaukee Public Museum is an awesome place and I advise everyone to visit there at some point. It's a trip you won't forget if you're a buglover like me.

Bug





Severson Dells Forest Preserve

Hello readers,

For me, Severson Dells Forest Preserve has always been a place that I enjoyed visiting. It is up near my home in northern Illinois and has a very unique set of ecosystems that can be explored, not to mention the wide variety of organisms you can find there. As far as a park goes, it is a little on the small side, but well worth the trip and the look around. Just be sure to bring bug spray if you visit in the spring or summer!

One of my favorite places to visit when I'm there is the little pond/marshland. Usually a good area for turtles, dragonflies, and butterflies, along with the occasional bird and cussing squirrel. It's a good place to contemplate simple things and there are even a couple benches that you can sit on along with a small deck to walk out on to see a little more (though I think the deck is more for the dragonflies since they seem to love sitting and sunning on it). I have spent many hours sitting on the benches or the small deck, watching the life of the pond and mulling over many thoughts and trying to get good pictures.

One of my best pictures

There is a short trail that goes throughout the preserve and it's always a joy to walk because of the different ecosystems you can go through or be near. This multitude of different habitats means you can see a ton of different species of birds, bugs, and mammals. A huge benefit for most people is that the trails are very easy to hike because they aren't very long. The entire preserve has about three miles of trails total.

 A White-Breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis)

You truly never know what you will see there, which is what makes it so exciting. And it's always so peaceful because there generally aren't many people there even though it's right beside a well traveled road. This encourages the wildlife to emerge, especially during the spring and summer months. I wish I would have been able to visit there this fall, but being as far away as I am and not returning home often makes it difficult. Hopefully the weather will be nice over fall break and I can visit.

Don't always look for the biggest parks or natural areas you can to find natures beauty. It can be easily found in a small preserve such as Severson Dells.

Enjoy the change in season,

Bug

Changes of Fall

Hello readers,

Well fall is certainly here and I absolutely love it. Fall is my favorite season for a multitude of reasons: the leaves change color, the temp is perfect, Halloween and all that that entails is on its way, insects abound as the final days of summer wane...the list really just goes on and on.

To celebrate today (though the weather here is not very good), the two little pets I am currently keeping in my dorm room are doing well and undergoing their own seasonal changes. The first, a tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta) that I brought back with me from my genetics lab last Thursday is pupating! It's hard to believe that this was just a caterpillar a week ago.

Tobacco Hornworm caterpillar (M. sexta)

My little pupa! The brown blob you see next to it is a shed skin.

While commonly considered a pest species, this large caterpillar will turn into a large, beautiful moth come springtime.

Tobacco Hornworm Moth (M. sexta)

I can't wait for this beauty to emerge! And besides having this occurring, I also now have a sowbug killer (Dysdera crocata), also known as a woodlouse spider, that has just finished laying her eggs and is covering them with little pieces of debris that were either present in her container, or pieces that I threw in myself to observe. It has been a lot of fun to watch her pick up pieces of bark from a twig, or a larger piece of the twig itself that I broke off, and carry over and place it on the eggsac. Once the piece has been placed, the runs many strands of silk over it to hold it in place. She is doing her best to camouflage the eggsac from any predators that may come by. This also solves a mystery for me that I have been curious about for some time now. The eggsac of a woodlouse spider looks like the one in the photo below and can usually be found in the spring or summer very torn up and just a shred of what it used to be. The cool thing (and also the identifying feature!), are some strands that stick out to the sides for stability. They are difficult to see here, but if you look at the tip of her front right leg, you can see 3 or 4 sticking out.

Woodlouse Spider (D. crocata) and eggsac

Fantastic day of change for my pets and cannot wait to see where it goes from here!

Keep your eyes open for the changes of fall everyone. Not just the changes in insects and arachnids. The changes of nature.

Bug

First Day of Red Bison Work

Hello everyone,

This past Sunday I got to participate in pulling out woody plants from a prairie area somewhat near the university. It was a lot of fun and I got to learn quite a bit about the general ecology about prairies and their eventual migration to becoming forested areas. This is not something that can normally be seen, but it was obvious in the area that we were in because on one side you could see where the trees/shrubs were truly beginning to grow and usurp control from the prairie by creating shade. That is where the Red Bison comes in.

There were about a dozen of us and we took it to the trees/shrubs that were beginning to grow. The area we were working on actually belongs to the railroad company, but they have been good enough to let us use it and work on it to preserve what natural prairie we can. Armed with loppers and mild herbicides, we ventured out into the overgrown zone with determination to root out (no pun intended) as many woody plants as we could.

There were many, great and small, but we attacked them with gusto and managed to make quite the dent in the woody plant population. Now their bodies lay next to the railroad tracks as a sign that the Red Bisoneers were here and have done their work well. We fought hard to pry through the brambles and other thorny things to get to the offending trees and take them down.


These brambles were everywhere and no one was able to escape unscathed. I myself came out scratched all over and almost got a lovely, free ear piercing when I stood up after taking down a tree using a technique my old high school teacher taught me. Still left a decent hole and scratch, but not too bad overall. It will heal soon enough.

As a show of how entrenched some of these woody plants were, some had dead stumps where they had been taken down in the previous year or two, but grew new stumps up right around the dead one. Myself and two other Bisoneers spent a good 10 minutes fighting with a hawthorn tree that had gotten much too comfortable growing there. But despite its thorny defenses, we prevailed and took down the multiple stumps it had sent up and victoriously tossed them to the side where they belonged.

Besides the victory of taking down plant after plant, there were many other interesting things to be found. One girl found a praying mantis as she waded into the brambles and a small group found a large grasshopper (at least 4th instar, possibly adult) on one of the offending trees. I had the joy of finding many different insects and arachnids, including four juvenile yellow garden spiders (argiopes). I apologize to any Bisoneers that read this because I mislabeled this spider as a silver argiope on the trip.

Juvenile Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia)

Overall, a very fun trip and I am happy that I was able to bloody myself again doing something that enjoyable (and helpful!). Very much looking forward to doing it again, along with whatever plans the Red Bison club has!

Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to help. You never know what you'll see.

Bug

Musseling

Hello everyone,

I'm sorry it has been so long since I last posted. I've been busy with a summer class and then moving into along with beginning classes at the University of Illinois down in Urbana-Champaign. It's been pretty enjoyable so far, which is a good thing since this is where I'll be spending the next four years of my life, getting my Bachelor's and then Master's degree. Posts may be a little more sporadic since I will be making sure things are straight with my classes, but I will still do my best to post regularly and that may be a little bit easier since I have joined a couple clubs that will get me outside and doing things. And hopefully the occasional fun volunteering opportunity will crop up now and then and I will get to experience new things and learn so much more about this amazing world we live in.

This past Saturday, I got to take part in a state wide survey of the mussel populations of Illinois. This meant that I (along with 21 others), got to wade through Sangamon River, crouched down so the water is easily halfway up the chest, hands buried knuckle-deep in the sediment on the bottom, searching for the many species of mussels that inhabited the river. Now I know that might not sound like an ideal way to spend a Saturday, but let me assure you, it was well worth it. It was a great experience and I was very happy to have taken part in it.

Very wet and dirty work, but so much fun (photo by Steve Buck)

One of the first things I learned about musseling is there are quite a few more species than you would think there are. I thought there would be one, maybe two, different species that we would find and they would be just a drab coloration of the river bottom. But let me tell you, we found much more than that.

Quite a representation of the variation I think (photo by Steve Buck)

As a group, we ended up collecting 318 mussels from 14 different species. Overall, I thought that was a pretty good count, though our group leader said that the species number was a little low. I couldn't believe the differing sizes and colors of the mussels we pulled out.

The first area we searched involved a splitting of the group. Half of us went upriver and the other half went downriver. I had the joy of being with the upriver group because we definitely had some fun searching. We all were focused on the task at hand, but still had some fun conversation and were even joined by a surprising (though very friendly) guest.

Our new friend (photo by Steve Buck)

We never did figure out who's dog that was, but he a very friendly acquisition to the team. The only issue we really could find with him was fetching preferences were a little odd (he would chase after literally everything we threw to the side no matter what it was) and when he did go after something and grab it, he would pretty much drop it where he grabbed it. Nevertheless, we enjoyed having him around and got some chuckles later when we were sorting mussels and he flushed out a raccoon from a nearby pile of debris that had washed downriver.

Now some of you may be thinking "Boy, that seems like it would be pretty cold and dirty, disgusting work". Was the water cold? At times it was, depending on where you were in the river. The deeper water was certainly colder than the shallows, but the deeper water was where many mussels were, so it made getting water up to my shoulders while I was crouching down worth it. As for dirty...yeah. I may end up just throwing my socks away because even after washing a couple times, they are still a lovely shade of brown. There is still sand embedded in my shirt and shorts I was wearing that day and I will probably never completely get the sand out of my shoes. Sometimes the river bottom seemed a little gross because of the change in composition from sand or gravel to a clay-like sediment, but it really wasn't all that bad, so I say that it wasn't at all disgusting.

Besides the joys of wading for an hour and a half, I did pick up some other interesting ecological tidbits that broaden my view and get me to think a little bit more. But those are things I will share with you all another day.

The Musseling Group and our best specimens (photo by Steve Buck)

This was a grand experience and I hope to have the opportunity to take part in many more like it. I enjoyed musseling with this group and hope to do other random biology volunteer work with them again sometime.

Keep your eyes open for new things everyone. You never know what you may come across and what may surprise you with beauty or uniqueness.

Bug