Grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets. Oh my!

Grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets are all closely related insects in the insect order Orthoptera. It can be a little tricky to know which is which sometimes, but one easy way is to look at their antennae. Grasshopper antennae are generally shorter and even when they are very long they don't get longer than their body.

A very young grasshopper

An adult grasshopper

Katydid and cricket antennae are often longer than their bodies.

An immature katydid

An adult katydid

I don't have any good pictures of a cricket, but here is a video of one. 

Another difference between grasshoppers and katydids and crickets is that katydids and crickets rub their wings together to "sing" or chirp.  Grasshoppers rub their hind leg against their wing to "sing". If you are looking for more detailed info here is a good article by Debbie Hadley at about.com. The Orthoptera have gotten a bit of a bad rep due to the infamous nature of a few members of the group (e.g. the desert locust). However, the vast majority of grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets are not economic pests and at worst are just a nuisance. The fact is that not much is known about the behavior and feeding habits of the orthopterans that are not economic pests. They are mostly lumped into the herbivore category, but the amount of omnivory and predation that they do is probably grossly underestimated.

Daisy Drama

As I have mentioned in previous posts, bees and butterflies aren't the only insects that use flowers. Here are two insects whose life-cycles intersect on the reproductive structures of flowering plants, in this case, a daisy. 

The larger black and white bug is called a pirate bug (Hemiptera: Orius spp.). Pirate bugs are predators, but when prey is scarce they will feed on plants to supplement their diet. They us a sharp pointed straw-like mouthpart to pierce the bodies of their prey and suck out the contents (mmm, insect milk-shake).  Pirate bugs eat a variety of other insects including aphids, spider mites, and thrips. This one is probably looking for prey on this flower.  Immature thrips can often be found hidden among the flower parts of composite flowers such as daisies and other asters. 

On flowers, thrips (pictured below) feed on the flower parts and in large numbers they can do a great deal of damage.  They will also feed on other parts of the plants and thrips are serious pests in many crops, especially those grown indoors (e.g. in greenhouses). This is an adult thrips.  Immature thrips are lighter colored and much more difficult to see.

Many thrips come to flowers to find mates, and they will lay their eggs here too, so that their offspring can use the plant for food. Likewise, the pirate bug may decide to lay eggs here if there are enough thrips to provide food for her young. Thus these two insects are linked by the daisy in a life-and-death drama. Maybe not quite as exciting as cheetahs and gazelles on the African savannah, but this is happening everyday in your backyard.  Pretty cool if you think about it.

Green tomato salsa (no insects)

We found ourselves at the end of the summer with an overabundance of green tomatoes, so we decided to make green tomato salsa.

We based our recipe on this one, to make sure we had the acidity right, but we had to improvise a little here and there.

We started with green tomato puree that we made in the food processor.  We peeled the tomatoes first, then just whizzed them in the food processor and put them in the pot.

We had about 13 cups of tomato puree.
Next we took some cayenne peppers and some serrano peppers from our garden, and a handful of garlic cloves.

 We seeded the serranos and chopped the garlic.

Then, we chopped the peppers and put it all in the pot.  Then we added about this much chopped cilatntro,

 this much chopped onion,

 2 Tablespoons ground cumin (this ended up being too much cumin!),

 about a Tablespoon of oregano,

2 teaspoons of salt,

 2 teaspoons of black pepper,

and lime juice. We had to use one plastic lime-ful of lime juice from concentrate plus one and a half   real limes to get enough juice (1 cup).

Then, once it was all in the pot, we heated it to a simmer, let it simmer for about 30 minutes,

put it in our sanitized jars, lidded them, let them sit overnight to cool, and we were done!

Springtails!

Springtails (AKA: Collembola) are really tiny insects that live in the soil, leaf litter, and even on the water's surface. They are an extremely important part of the soil food-web, mainly because the help speed along the process of decomposition. We spotted this one on the underside of a shelf fungus that had fallen onto the ground. 

This is what they look like close-up. 

Of course there are many thousands of species of springtail and not all of them look like this. They got their name from their predator escape behavior.  When disturbed, springtails can release a special spring-loaded appendage on their underside that propels them into the air very quickly. 

This one might need to use its "spring" pretty soon if it gets attacked by the spider crouching nearby!

Most springtails eat microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria, or nematodes, but there is one species called the lucerne flea (Not a flea at all!) that is a pest of alfalfa and some grains. Generally though, we can classify springtails in the good bug category!

We've got galls!

Plant galls can be caused by a variety of different organisms. Insects cause a lot of them though, like this wasp.

Actually, this wasp is probably parasitizing the gall-maker inside the gall. It is injecting its egg inside of the gall-maker's larva with a needle-like ovipositor. Once the egg hatches, the wasp's larva will eat the gall-maker larva from the inside-out. Wasps that do this are called parasitoids or hyperparasitoids (parasitoid of a parasitoid). Galls often contain several species of insect larvae: the insect that caused the gall in the first place, its parasitoids, and their hyperparasitoids. Oaks are hosts to an amazing variety of gall-making organisms.  Here are some samples of galls that we saw in Hartwick Pines State Park in Michigan.

Katydon't!

I caught this katydid munching on our basil a few weeks ago.

She didn't do too much damage though. Katydids aren't usually much of a problem in the garden. Although they are closely related to grasshoppers and locusts (Order: Orthoptera), which can be serious crop pests. We still managed to make some delicious pesto from this basil plant.

Wasp Spiders? Spider Wasps?

This is a picture of a spider in the Genus Argiope. In North America they are commonly called garden spiders.  A related spider in other parts of the world is sometimes referred to as a wasp spider. They are very large conspicuous spiders with yellow stripes on their abdomens that remind some people of the stripes on some paper wasps and yellowjackets. Fortunately, these  spiders don't have a stinger, although I will admit that the projection on the end of this one's abdomen almost looks like one.  Actually, these are the spider's spinnerets, and she cannot "sting" anyone with them. Spinnerets are used to produce the silk that the spider's web is made out of. These spiders are not thought to be harmful to humans and although they can bite, the venom is relatively harmless to us. They are very large spiders though, and are perfectly capable of capturing and eating wasps, bees, and other large flying insects. This one had recently caught a honey bee in it's web.  I could tell, because the poor bee's pollen baskets were visible through the webbing.

So, this is a spider that looks like a wasp and eats wasps...a wasp spider. A spider wasp on the other hand is a wasp that eats spiders.  I don't have time to get into that one right now, but they are very cool too.

Dig this digger!

Someone brought us this wasp in a plastic cup.

Its hard to tell from the picture but the wasp is almost 2 inches long. This is a digger wasp. I can't say for sure what species it is, but it might be the great golden digger wasp (Sphex Ichneumonius). Digger wasps are in a group of solitary wasps call Sphecids (Family: Sphecidae). When most people think of wasps they are thinking of social wasps in the family Vespidae.


One easy way to tell a vespid from a sphecid is the way that they hold their wings over their backs when they're not flying.

For example, this next picture (right) shows a vespid wasp that just landed on a piece of grass.  As you can see its wings are folded lengthwise and held out to the side at an angle. Sphecid wasps don't do this, instead they hold their wings folded one on top of the other flat over their backs. Both kinds of wasps are predators of other insects and while they can be a nuisance if they sting you or build a nest near your house, they are your allies in the garden and on the farm.

Look, but don't touch!

This is a black blister beetle (Genus Epicauta).  Their larvae eat grasshopper eggs but the adults mostly hang out on flowers and eat nectar and pollen.

Blister beetles (Family: Meloidae) are pretty infamous for their ability to defend themselves with a  poisonous chemical called cantharadin. They will secrete the toxin if you try to eat them or handle them too roughly, so be careful if you see one of these!

Crinkly pizza

We invented a new style of pizza. Haven't really decided on a name yet, but the crinklecrust was the first one that came to mind. I'm not sure about the market appeal for that name though. Anyway, this is what happens when you roll out your crust to be bigger than your pizza stone and then force it to fit anyway.

The pizza tasted great by the way! Here's the crust recipe (for 2 pizzas): 3/4 cup warm water + 2 teaspoons yeast (mixed together first).  Then, add 3/4 cup warm water, 2 Tablespoons sugar, some salt, 2 Tablespoons olive oil, 4 cups flour:  mix, knead, let rise, roll out etc... Its a pretty typical dough recipe that makes a soft chewy crust, not a crispy crust, but pretty darn good if that's what you're looking for. Also, just for fun here is another crunchy segment.
I think its funny that most of these animals are shown eating foods that they probably would not choose (or at least not have access to) in nature.

Darn big dragonfly!

We saw this monster sitting on the side of our house last week.

Its a Green Darner dragonfly. They are one of the largest dragonflies around.  To give you some idea of scale, here is another picture.

 

That cement block is 8 inches tall, so the dragonfly is about 3 inches long, at least! They are called green darners because their bodies are shaped somewhat like a darning needle. I'm still trying to figure out what a darning needle is. I'll get back to you on that one.

Pollinator Power!

Last week was National Pollinator Week! Michigan State University celebrated with the First Annual Bee-Palooza.  Here is a link to a Michigan Radio story about the event.

We here at Crunchy Segments are big-time supporters of pollinators!  Go Bees! and Butterflies and Bats and Beetles and Flies and etc...!

Insect Flower Parties

Here are some pictures that I took on a recent visit to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa. Many different kinds of insects visit flowers for a variety of reasons.  They might be eating the pollen or nectar that the flower produces. They also might be eating other insects on the flower. Of course some of the insects on flowers will be feeding on the flower itself or laying eggs there so that their larvae can feed on the flower. Flowers can also be important meeting places for insects looking for potential mates. I'm not sure which of these activities are going on in the photos, but it can be fun to try to figure it out.

Compost helpers!

Found this soldier fly swarming around our compost bucket!

It might be this species, but its hard to know for sure.  They were too busy flying around and chasing each other to pose for a good photo.  As you might remember from a previous post, some soldier flies are very helpful when it comes to processing our food waste. Thanks guys!

Peek-a-boo!

This is a leaf roller larva (caterpillar) that we found on an ash tree over memorial day weekend.  It has used silk produced by specialized mouthparts to tie the leaf together.  This protects it from predators while it feeds on the leaves. I had to peel apart the leaves very carefully to take this photo. 

This is what the leaves looked like before I pulled them apart.

Buzz Pollination

Here is a video of a Bumble bee gathering pollen from a nightshade. Bumble bees are able to vibrate their wing muscles at just the right frequency to release the pollen from the special stamens on these types of flowers. They also buzz pollinate tomatoes, blueberries, and other related plants. If you listen closely on the video you should be able to hear the distinctive buzz that shakes the pollen out of the flower.

Look out David Attenborough!

We saw some ants tending aphids outside our back door the other day. The pictures that we took didn't really do it justice, so I took this video. Now, its not quite BBC quality, but I'm just happy that I figured out how to upload videos to the blog.

Invasion of the carpenter ants!

We were interrupted while making our homemade potting mix by these giant flying ants!

They were emerging from somewhere in the foreclosed house next door by the hundreds. Of course we caught as many as we could and fed them to the chickens! They are probably carpenter ants.  Ants don't usually have wings of course, but these are the new generation of queens heading out to find a mate and establish a new nest. They will lose their wings soon since they won't be needing them in the nest.

In case you are interested, our homemade potting mix consisted of:
3 parts vermicompost
3 parts vermiculite
5 parts peat moss
1 part tube sand from an old bag in the back yard

Check back later and I'll let you know how our plants did in it!

Cinco de Mayo!

For a Cinco de Mayo party, we made these delicious chocolate-chile cupcakes with avocado-lime frosting.

The cupcakes were just a basic chocolate cake recipe from this cookbook (+cayenne pepper) and the frosting was a modified version of this recipe.

Earth Day Weekend

We took some time off from hugging trees on Earth Day to harvest the vermicompost in our worm bin. Our bin uses redworms (Eisenia fetida) to turn our kitchen scraps into a nutrient and microbe rich fertilizer that we can use in our garden. Redworms are annelids, not insects, but some insects such as black soldier flies can be used for similar in-home waste processing. See the Black Soldier Fly Blog for more info.

Our cat was very curious about the worm bin, but he behaved himself...mostly.

Banana Walnut Buckwheat Pancakes on this Chilly Saturday

We can confidently say that none of our insect friends are flying on this chilly 35ºF morning. The past few days have been very cold with some of our night time temps reaching below freezing. We hope that the chilly weather doesn't detrimentally impact pollination of the lovely spring blooming trees and other flowering plants that have survived recent frost(s).

The community garden has been battling the cold weather with frost cloth. Although the greens are tolerant of cooler weather, they need a blanket to protect their delicate leaves from freezing. Water freezing within plants or plant cells can cause irreversible harm to the plants. Furthermore, after a frost or freeze, thawing that occurs too quickly can also be injurious.

Although there isn't much insect activity outside, our hive (a balmy 63ºF...) is buzzing away. We started the morning off right with some delicious banana walnut buckwheat pancakes hot off the griddle and a cup of joe - black. Next on our list: sowing peppers, tomatoes, herbs, and flowers, then a little studying for my microbial ecology exam, shopping for a last minute birthday gift for my wonderful mother, and preparing for the monthly visit (& sushi dinner) with my folks.

Tonight we are attending a party at a neighbors house. Lately, we've spent a majority of our weekends either out of town or in the hive. Spreading our wings and being social butterflies for an evening will be refreshing. I anticipate the party will be much like Dr. Brossard's description of the changing behaviors and life style of caterpillars as they morph into rock star butterflies (Insectia, Episode 6: Wicked Butterflies, ref 14:00). Enjoy!