Insect Ecology @ Au Sable - spring 2024

Figure 1. Honey bee doing a "waggle dance." Hymenoptera is an order of insects that includes some of the most socially complex animals on earth, including wasps, ants, and bees. Bees fall into the suborder Apocrita , which includes many families and even more genuses. The honey bee ( Apis mellifera ) is one of these, which has highly developed social behaviors in the colonies it forms. One such behavior of interest has been given a somewhat humorous name, the “waggle dance.” Take a look at the inside of a beehive at work, and you might see it. It might seem silly, or perhaps even cute, but this seemingly random and simple dance turns out to be quite practical and complex when taking a closer look! For food that is close by, bees use a “round dance.” This is typically when the food is less than 50 meters away, and simply consists of the bee going around in a circle and switching directions repeatedly. At the end of this dance, she gives o...

 One important aspect of ecology is learning about symbiotic interactions. These are interactions between 2 or more organisms which have positive, neutral, and negative consequences. Mutualism, commensalism, predation, and parasitism are the main 3 interactions that are seen in nature. In mutualistic Interactions each organism benefits in some way. For example, bees and flowers both benefit from their interactions. Bees collect nectar from inside the flower and as this happens the pollen in the flower sticks to the bees (Cook 2019). The picture below illustrates this concept. The bee travels from flower to flower pollinating them as the go. In parasitic interaction one individual benefits while the other is harmed in some fashion. One example would be wasps that lay their eggs in caterpillars. There are also many different types of parasitism that I will elaborate on later. In communalistic interactions one organism is benefiting while the other experiences no benefit or harm. ...

For this week’s blog post, I decided to highlight an entire order which I am fond of, albeit a rather small one. Dermaptera, which, as of 2012, contains only 2,000 species. That’s a stark contrast to the hundreds of thousands of species in the “big four”! While small, Dermaptera is not unfamiliar- they are better known as earwigs. If you were to ask a past version of me about my feelings on earwigs, my answer would have been quite negative. While I’ve always liked most bugs, earwigs’ slithering movements and menacing-looking cerci used to repulse me. Then, a couple of years ago, I came across an extraordinary image on the internet.  Earwigs with wings folded and opened. Hans Pohl on Twitter, https://x.com/hans_pohl/status/1198909468412710913 Inside their flat little bodies, earwigs were concealing a most remarkable set of wings, shimmering with rainbow iridescence and almost shaped like seashells.  Suddenly, I couldn’t get enough. I googled “earwig wings” and was shocked to fi...

  When you mention insects to someone, you may often times find their reaction to be one of disgust and aversion. How can we make that reaction even more extreme? How about we throw feces into the mix? I want to discuss the existence of the group of beetles known as the Dung Beetles. Despite their less than appealing lifestyle, they are actually highly beneficial to the ecosystems in which they reside – and besides that, they are just kind of cool.               Dung Beetles are a group of insects that fall under the order Coleoptera (Beetles) and under the superfamily Scarabaeoidae (Scarabs). Under the Scarab superfamily comes two smaller families known as Geotrupidae (Earth-boring dung beetles) and Scarabaeidae (Scarab beetles). Under Scarabaeidae comes two subfamilies known as Scarabaeinae (True Dung Beetles) and Aphodiinae (Small dung beetles).            ...

  University of Maryland. 2023. “5 Mosquito Myths and 1 Truth That Really Bite.”  Maryland Today , July 31, 2023.  https://today.umd.edu/5-mosquito-myths-and-1-truth-that-really-bite .   The ecosystem is a complex web of biodiversity. There are many insects that we, as humans, understand their important roles in this web. However, there is also a wide variety of insects with negative reputations. One of them is the common mosquito in the order Diptera and the family Culicidae, which includes over 3,500 species. The Culicidae family is comprised of two main subfamilies: Anophelinae and Culicinae. Found almost everywhere and known as the deadliest insect on earth due to their role in disease transmission, mosquitos surprisingly contribute heavily to maintaining balance within an ecosystem by playing an essential part in the nutrient cycle. They are also acclaimed by entomologists as good indicators of the overall health of an ecosystem. This blog aims to challenge ...

Our integration day began at around seven in the morning, at which point we partook of a quick breakfast and packed our sack lunches for the day. Following our departure from the Au Sable campus, we traveled south-west for about ninety minutes, with only a brief stop at a nearby rest area. Eventually, we wound up at Pete’s Woods , a portion of the greater Arcadia Dunes Nature Preserve. It is about one h undred and forty acres in size and features a single enclosed trail loop that stretches about one and a half miles. 1 Upon arrival, we were treated to a discussion concerning the preserve’s origins, as well as its legal functionality as opposed to federal reserves. Of particular interest was the concept of a “conservation easement ,” which, according to the North American Land Trust, is “a legally binding agreement wherein a landowner donates certain development rights associated with the land to a land trust.” 2 In essence, the Arcadia Dunes Nature Preserve consists of land own...