Insect Ecology @ Au Sable - spring 2024

Adaptations: Mating and Defense in Insects Insects have had millions of years to adapt to their environment. Some do so by enhancing their defenses through stingers like wasps and bees. Others do so by increasing their chances of finding a mate by evolution through color, size, shape, and many other contributing factors. Although there are many other ways that insects have adapted to their environments in order to survive, such as mimicry and mind control, the two main examples we will be looking at is adaptive reproductive and defense strategies and how those adaptations have been able to increase the survival of the insect. Take the Bombardier beetle. It has a defense in place that allows them to spray an acid on its attacker. Most research has been done externally to the beetle, until recently when MIT decided to further their research and found out what actually happens. We know the chemicals are created and heated inside the insect’s body before they release them. The spray...

By Cassidy Herbster, Hannah Warner and Ben Book Pinterest Welcome to Insect Cooking Class 101. Today we will be making grasshopper fritters and garlic butter fried grasshoppers. First step is to catch your grasshoppers. Since it is morning, and they are so abundant all across North America, there should be no problem capturing some. After you catch them, we will put them into a freezer for one to two hours, and then start the peeling process. Here are the instructions that you can follow along with: how to cook grasshoppers . Pinterest  Is this a cooking class that you would enjoy? Surprisingly enough, there are many people that would jump at the opportunity to take an insect cooking class. Although it might not be very popular in the United States, countries such as China, Uganda and Mexico would enjoy it. There are many ways people eat grasshoppers, some include tacos, stir fry, ice cream or even just fried and served on a stick. Tumbler.co...

Parasitic Insects By Tyler Souza, Ali Bland, and Patrick Lunn A variety of invertebrates feed on or in the human skin, including flies, fleas, bedbugs, lice, mites and ticks. The main goal of these parasites is to bite, feed quickly, and then leave without you ever knowing they were there. There are, of course, some exceptions to this including larvae of a few flies, scabies mites and hard ticks. All of these skin parasites leave tell tale signs, including itchy, round, red swellings. The majority of the bites last about two weeks if left alone, which is something almost impossible to do. If scratched, as everyone does, the itchiness and swellings could last up to two months. Not to mention that human fingernails are loaded with bacteria and scratching often leads to infections which can leave scarring. Mosquito Bite When most people think about human parasites, almost immediately the mosquito buzzes into their minds. It is the one we are all most familiar with. ...

Class Camping Trip - Robbers Cave State Park  Taylor Marshall,  Cari Marota, and Jacob Grimm  On Friday, our insect class set out on an adventure. We were traveling to Robbers Carrion Beetle Cave state park, and had a long three-hour drive ahead of us to get there. The drive there went by rather quickly and we arrived around 4:30 in the afternoon. We didn’t really know what to expect right when we got there but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that our evening would just be socializing with our classmates and our professor and his family. The Hoekmans had brought food for all of us to cook around the campfire. One of our food items was, at first, very peculiar to me because I had never seen it done before. We took Pillsbury biscuits, stretched them out and wrapped them around wooden sticks to cook around the fire. It worked surprisingly well and resulted in delicious butter and cinnamon sugar covered biscuit spirals. We continued to cook a...