Insects

[Dr Sardonicus]

Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts

Nature is under siege. In the last 10,000 y the human population has grown from 1 million to 7.8 billion. Much of Earth’s arable lands are already in agriculture (1), millions of acres of tropical forest are cleared each year (2, 3), atmospheric CO2 levels are at their highest concentrations in more than 3 million y (4), and climates are erratically and steadily changing from pole to pole, triggering unprecedented droughts, fires, and floods across continents. Indeed, most biologists agree that the world has entered its sixth mass extinction event, the first since the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million y ago, when more than 80% of all species, including the nonavian dinosaurs, perished.

No buzz for bees: Media coverage of pollinator decline

Abstract

Although widespread declines in insect biomass and diversity are increasing concerns within the scientific community, it remains unclear whether attention to pollinator declines has also increased within information sources serving the general public. Examining patterns of journalistic attention to the pollinator population crisis can also inform efforts to raise awareness about the importance of declines of insect species providing ecosystem services beyond pollination. We used the Global News Index developed by the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign to track news attention to pollinator topics in nearly 25 million news items published by two American national newspapers and four international wire services over the past four decades. We found vanishingly low levels of attention to pollinator population topics relative to coverage of climate change, which we use as a comparison topic. In the most recent subset of ∼10 million stories published from 2007 to 2019, 1.39% (137,086 stories) refer to climate change/global warming while only 0.02% (1,780) refer to pollinator populations in all contexts, and just 0.007% (679) refer to pollinator declines. Substantial increases in news attention were detectable only in US national newspapers. We also find that, while climate change stories appear primarily in newspaper "front sections," pollinator population stories remain largely marginalized in "science" and "back section" reports. At the same time, news reports about pollinator populations increasingly link the issue to climate change, which might ultimately help raise public awareness to effect needed policy changes.

Beetle keeps rivals off scent of food buried for offspring

Some beetles go to great - and disgusting - lengths for their children.

They scout for a dead mouse or bird, dig a hole and bury it, pluck its fur or feathers, roll its flesh into a ball and cover it in goop - all to feed their future offspring.

Now scientists think that goo might do more than just slow decay. It also appears to hide the scent of the decomposing bounty and boosts another odor that repels competitors.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Monarch butterflies down 26% in Mexico wintering grounds

MEXICO CITY (AP) - The number of monarch butterflies that showed up at their winter resting grounds in central Mexico decreased by about 26% this year, and four times as many trees were lost to illegal logging, drought and other causes, making 2020 a bad year for the butterflies.

The government commission for natural protected areas said the butterflies' population covered only 2.1 hectares (5.2 acres) in 2020, compared to 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) the previous year and about one-third of the 6.05 hectares (14.95 acres) detected in 2018.

Because the monarchs cluster so densely in pine and fir trees, it is easier to count them by area rather than by individuals.

Gloria Tavera, the regional director of Mexico's Commission for National Protected Areas, blamed the drop on "extreme climate conditions," the loss of milkweed habitat in the United States and Canada on which butterflies depend, and deforestation in the butterflies' wintering grounds in Mexico.

Illegal logging in the monarchs wintering rounds rose to almost 13.4 hectares (33 acres), a huge increase from the 0.43 hectare (1 acre) lost to logging last year.

[Dr Sardonicus]

As I was doing some gardening today (March 21, 2021), I saw a sure sign that Spring has sprung: a butterfly flew by me, right in front of my face! I couldn't identify it immediately. It was small and rusty brown, and had some black spots on its front wings. Its appearance was a bit drab. The early butterfly I am most familiar with is the Mourning Cloak, Nymphalis antiopa, but it is fairly large and the upper sides of its wings are definitely not drab.

I saw the small brown butterfly again later, and that time so did someone else who had seen a similar butterfly a few weeks ago.

Later investigation turned up a likely suspect: Polygonia comma, the Eastern comma.

[MattcAnderson]

I consider most insects as pests, except those that process poop. Even dragonfly s are spectacular to watch

Check it out
bugs-or

I remember burning an ant with a magnifying glass. We all make mistakes.

[Xyzzy]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/us/of...rnd/index.html

[Dr Sardonicus]

I've seen more butterflies since March 21. Mostly the undesirable alien Pieris rapae, the European Cabbage Butterfly, but a couple of days ago a specimen of the Painted Lady Vanessa cardui, two [I think] Red Admirals (Vanessa atalanta) having an aerial dogfight, and one quite small brown butterfly I was unable to identify.

I've also seen European Honeybees (Apis mellifera), paper wasps (genus Polistes), and Eastern Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa virginica) along with smaller bees and wasps, beetles, flies, and midges.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I've also seen some large dragonflies in the last couple of weeks.

[Dr Sardonicus]

On Monday April 12, I saw my first large butterfly of the year, a Papilio glaucus - Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, a large yellow butterfly with black stripes on its wings.

Today (Friday April 16), I saw my second large butterfly of the year. Besides being large, at the distance from which I saw it, it appeared grayish. I could not positively identify it, but I could come up with only one plausible candidate, Eurytides marcellus - the Zebra Swallowtail. It is a species I have only seen once before, and that was a long time ago.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by xilman

Insects are good eating if they are prepared properly.

On my first trip to Brno, when SWMBO and I were flown out to meet the crew, we were taken to a rather good restaurant. As chance would have it, that week they had an insect tasting-menu of 7 courses. I was the only one willing to give it a try and I knew I´d be unlikely to get the chance again.

The locust omelette was basically omelette with tasteless crunchy bits. A deep-fried larva dish was absolutely delicious. The larvae, each about 5cm long and 3mm in diameter, tasted like a cross between shrimps and hazelnuts.

When xilman talks, the EU listens...

Food of the future? EU nations put mealworms on the menu

BRUSSELS (AP) - Dried yellow mealworms could soon be hitting supermarket shelves and restaurants across Europe.

The European Union's 27 nations gave the greenlight Tuesday to a proposal to put the Tenebrio molitor beetle's larvae on the market as a "novel food."

The move came after the EU's food safety agency published a scientific opinion this year that concluded worms were safe to eat. Researchers said the worms, either eaten whole or in powdered form, are a protein-rich snack or an ingredient for other foods.
<snip>

[Dr Sardonicus]

This may affect storm5510 since he lives in Indiana...

Nature at its craziest: Trillions of cicadas about to emerge

COLUMBIA, Md. (AP) - Sifting through a shovel load of dirt in a suburban backyard, Michael Raupp and Paula Shrewsbury find their quarry: a cicada nymph.

And then another. And another. And four more.

In maybe a third of a square foot of dirt, the University of Maryland entomologists find at least seven cicadas -- a rate just shy of a million per acre. A nearby yard yielded a rate closer to 1.5 million.

And there's much more afoot. Trillions of the red-eyed black bugs are coming, scientists say.

Within days, a couple weeks at most, the cicadas of Brood X (the X is the Roman numeral for 10) will emerge after 17 years underground. There are many broods of periodic cicadas that appear on rigid schedules in different years, but this is one of the largest and most noticeable. They’ll be in 15 states from Indiana to Georgia to New York; they're coming out now in mass numbers in Tennessee and North Carolina.

When the entire brood emerges, backyards can look like undulating waves, and the bug chorus is lawnmower loud.

[S485122]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

...
after 17 years underground
...

Notice the prime number ! The result of a race between prey and predator !

Jacob

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by S485122

Notice the prime number ! The result of a race between prey and predator !

Here's a "topper." Some periodical cicadas spend 13 years underground. And 13 is another prime number! Thus,the periods are relatively prime, so a given pair of broods of 17-year and 13-year cicadas emerge simultaneously only once every 221 years!

And what is more, these two primes have a deep number-theoretic significance. The field is an example of an extension for which the Hasse Norm Theorem (for cyclic extensions) does not hold (Serre and Tate showed that 5² is a local norm everywhere, but is not a global norm.)

Those insects may know more than we think!