Local Fauna

Ohio Dragonfly Survey – Spring Training 2018

Last Thursday, MaLisa Spring, state coordinator of the Ohio Dragonfly Survey, gave the introduction to a series of talks about dragonflies and damselflies, how to identify them (Bob Glotzhober), how to photograph them (Jim McCormac) and how to report them on iNaturalist (Jim Lemon).

The audience was captivated by stories such as dragonflies being ferocious hunters, some have even been reported to prey on hummingbirds (albeit rarely).

On the other hand, watching dragonflies glide over open water on a warm summer day can be very peaceful and give us appreciation for their beauty and flying ability.

Bob Glotzhober even speculated that the origin of the shape of the Valentine’s heart can be found in the mating ritual of some dragonflies. What do you think?

So how does one identify a dragonfly?

And how do you distinguish a dragonfly from a damselfly?

But be careful, size is not the only difference and may be deceiving: in the tropics some damselflies grow to 7 inches in length!

If you want to learn more about dragonflies, visit the Ohio Dragonfly Survey website or attend the Odonata conference in June 22-24 2018 in Findlay, Ohio.

Save the date for Odo-Con-18! June 22-24, 2018

To identify dragons and damsels in the field, we recommend that you download the ODNR guide (booklet pub 320).

If you enjoy fishing, you may catch a dragonfly in its larval stage and the Atlas of the dragonfly Larvae may help you identify it.

As always, feel free to post any questions right here on our blog.

About the Author:  Angelika Nelson is the curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and the social media manager for the museum.

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Interview with the coordinator of the Ohio Dragonfly Survey

MaLisa SpringMaLisa Spring, State Coordinator for the Ohio Dragonfly Survey, sat down with us to talk about the Ohio Dragonfly Survey and its focus – dragonflies and damselflies!

Hilary: “Tell us about yourself!”

MaLisa: “I completed a Bachelor’s in Biology with a minor in Spanish at Marietta College, Ohio. While I was there I did a couple of research projects related to insects and completed my senior thesis on bee diversity. It was then that I decided that I wanted to go to grad school, and I ended up attending OSU, where I received my Master’s degree in Entomology.

I worked with native pollinators for my undergraduate, but I also did a small project on lady beetle diversity and completed an internship on insect diversity. Overall, I’m just broadly interested in entomology and so when there was a mention of a dragonfly survey coming up and that they were interested in hiring someone for the survey, I was all for it – it sounded great! I then landed the job as the state coordinator for the Ohio Dragonfly Survey in May of 2017.

Hilary: “What is the Ohio Dragonfly Survey and what is its goal?”

MaLisa: “The Ohio Dragonfly Survey is a citizen science project with the goal of getting people outside, to notice dragonflies and damselflies, and to submit their observations to the survey via iNaturalist.org. Our goal right now is to figure out where species are throughout the state and to document the status of the threatened and endangered species. Ohio has 167 species of dragonflies and damselflies and we have 23 species that are state-listed as either endangered, threatened, or a species of concern, but there could be several more species added to that list. Additionally, the Hines Emerald (Somatochlora hineana) is the only federally endangered species in our state and it hasn’t been seen since at least 1989, so it might be extirpated (locally extinct, but surviving elsewhere).”

Double-striped bluet (pond damselfly)

Double-striped bluet

Hilary: “What are some of the greatest threats to dragonflies?”

MaLisa: “There are many threats to dragonflies and damselflies. Habitat loss and degradation are two of the biggest ones. Compared to the species richness between now and say the 1950s, there’s a huge difference. For example, Ohio used to have the Great Black Swamp, a several county-large swamp up in northwestern Ohio, but it was drained and turned into agricultural fields. Reducing hectares of wetlands into ditches created a vastly different habitat for the dragonflies and damselflies of this region, resulting in a significant change in the number of species that used to live here.

Other challenges are pesticides and especially herbicide run off.  Herbicides affect plants and certain species of dragonflies and damselflies lay their eggs inside of specific plants. If those plants aren’t there for them to lay eggs in, then the species cannot survive. They also need plants at the edge of water, so if people are mowing down plants at the edge of ponds or other ideal aquatic habitats, then the dragonflies and damselflies don’t have anywhere to emerge after their larvae stage to spread their wings to dry, and so they die.”

Citrine forktail
American rubyspot on water-willow
Violet dancer

Hilary: “What is the life cycle of a dragonfly or damselfly?”

MaLisa: “Immature dragonflies and damselflies, also referred to as water nymphs (naiads) or larvae, reside in the water or aquatic systems, where they can live anywhere between 3 weeks to several years (it depends on the species). Some species are migratory, so they migrate to and from Ohio, but others overwinter in Ohio as larvae in the water systems and then emerge in either the spring or summer (again, it depends on the species) as adults, where their lifespans can range from two weeks to up to a couple of months.

Hilary: “How can you tell a dragonfly and a damselfly apart?”

MaLisa: “Dragonflies and damselflies are in the order odonata and are divided into two separate groups, Anisoptera and Zygotpera. You can differentiate the two based on the wing positioning for the most part, but not always. Dragonflies tend to hold their wings out like a biplane, whereas damselflies tend to hold their wings behind their back like a sailboat.

Eastern pondhawk, a dragonfly
Violet dancer, a damselfly

Another way to differentiate them is based on their size. Most dragonflies are larger than damselflies. But again, there’s an exception to the rule with the body of some damselflies being longer than that of some dragonflies. If you want to get into the nitty gritty to tell them apart, you can look at their eyes to see how separated they are from each other. All damselflies have their eyes well separated on their head, whereas most dragonflies (excluding the Clubtails) have their eyes at least touching.”

Hilary: “For the public to get involved in the survey, do they need to collect specimens?”

MaLisa: “For the most part, we’ve learned that the public doesn’t want to collect specimens, which is okay as photographing them instead is perfectly acceptable. However, if they are interested in collecting specimens we ask that they look on our webpage and follow our collection protocols.”

Hilary: “Will you be at the Open House for the Museum of Biological Diversity on April 7th?”

MBD Open House April 7th, 2018

MaLisa: “I will definitely be here for the Open House event, if anyone wants to ask me any dragonfly questions!”

To learn more about the Ohio Dragonfly Survey, access this link: http://u.osu.edu/ohioodonatasurvey/

Contributing to the survey is as easy as taking photos of dragonflies and damselflies and submitting them to iNaturalist.org! Learn more here.

Want to learn more about dragonflies and damselflies? Check out this page for upcoming talks, presentations, and community events. Or download a guide to dragonflies and damselflies of Ohio from the Ohio Division Wildlife.

Hilary HirtleAbout the Author: Hilary Hirtle is the Faculty Affairs Coordinator at the OSU Department of Family Medicine; her interest in natural history brings her to the museum to interview faculty and staff and use her creative writing skills to report about her experiences.

Staff spotlight – Scott Glasmeyer

We met up with Scott Glassmeyer, a student research assistant in the Fish Division, to get an inside view on his role in the Museum of Biological Diversity.

Scott Glassmeyer holding a Rock Bass (fish)Hilary: “What is your major?”

Scott: “My major is Forestry, Fisheries, and Wildlife, with a specialization in Fisheries and Aquatic Science. I’d always loved fish since I was a kid and before I got into this program, I didn’t know that you could go to college to study fish, or do anything relevant with fish in a job, besides working to commercially collect fish. So, I did research to see if there were any higher education programs that involved learning about fish and aquatics and I found that Ohio State had this program.”

Hilary: “How long have you been a student research assistant in the Fish Division?”

Scott: “Since spring of 2016, but I started as a volunteer in January of 2016 where my primary role was to take older jars containing fish specimens and place them in new ethanol, to better preserve the fish.”

several fish in ethanol in glass jar

Fish in ethanol

Hilary:  “What is the mission of the Fish Divsion?”

Scott: “To preserve historical records of species of fish for future reference and overall long-term data collection and education. It’s a way to validate that this species of fish was recorded in a particular area and a specific species was recorded in general, as fish get misidentified a lot. So it improves a lot of accuracy regarding records.”

Hilary: “What fish are housed here?”

Scott: “Mostly Ohio fish, but we have some from the entire 50 states as well. There are also some fish species from other countries, some saltwater fish, and some aquarium fish here as well.”

Hilary: “Are the specimens here largely donated?”

Scott: “A lot of the specimens are collected through the museum, as well as the Ohio EPA. The Ohio EPA has a division that monitors streams and stream quality statewide and they will collect fish in the process and send them to us.”

collecting fish with seine nets

Staff collecting fish with seine nets

 

Hilary: “How are the fish preserved?”

Scott: “The way the preservation process works is that you put the fish specimens in formaldehyde for a certain amount of time, then you place them in water for about a day, before you start adding the ethanol bit by bit, as you slowly add larger amounts of ethanol to build up the tolerance – and that’s what they stay in. It takes up to a week and a half to two weeks to put them in this preserved state.”

Hilary: “Why is it important to study these fish?”

Scott: “It’s really important to study these fish because it helps you not only understand the water quality of their habitat, but also the intrinsic value of their ecosystems. For example, if you have a stream that’s just concrete because it was filled in, this could possibly only allow for about 5 species of fish to live there, whereas before, when the stream had natural morphological features and geological shapes, there were a lot more species of fish living within in this habitat.”

“A good example of this is from about 6 or 7 years ago, when the 5th Avenue Dam along the Olentangy River near campus was removed. Trees, plants, and wetlands were added along the bank and this natural state contributed to the value of the stream, not just for people, but for the fish as well, as this improved quality increased the level of biodiversity within in and around the river.”

Scott Glassmeyer holding Giant bottlebrush crayfish

Scott Glassmeyer holding a Giant bottlebrush crayfish

Hilary: “What’s your favorite part about working in the Fish Division?”

Scott: “I love going outside, putting waders on, getting in the stream and finding fish. You can read all you want about how healthy a stream is, but when you go out there and you see the biodiversity in the water as you collect data, you can tell just how healthy the water is and it’s wonderful.”

“I also really like the people who work here with me. Everyone’s very patient here and they take the time to help you out as your learning, which is really nice as learning to identify fish for the first time involves a learning curve.”

Hilary: “What is a project that you’re working on now?”

Scott: “I’ve been editing photographs of fish taken by Brian (my colleague who is the Sampling Coordinator in the Fish Division) and getting them ready to be put into the field guide version of the Fishes of Ohio.”

book cover Fishes of Ohio by Milton B Trautman

“The Fishes of Ohio was a guide written in the ‘50s, by Trautman, and then it was revised in the ‘80s by Trautman, and so what we’re working on now would be the next revision. There’s around 190 species or so of fish in Ohio, including invasive species and extinct species, so we’ve been photographing each species listed in the field guide, oftentimes with more than one picture, as you’re taking pictures of what you use to identify them. For example, for some of the sucker species of fish, you have to show the mouth, as that helps with identification. So with these species, there’s some photographs detailing the mouth from underneath, and there’s some side photographs, so that you can see the shape of the head and the mouth from the side for identification.”

 

Hilary: “Do you photograph the fish in their habitat?”

Scott: “It depends. There was one species of fish where we went out during their spawning season and had the tank set up to photograph them. We caught them, put them in the tank, and took a picture quickly, as they can lose their colors pretty fast. If a fish we find doesn’t have a particular color, we take them, put them in a cooler with an aerator, and take them away from location to photograph them. It’s a time consuming process, with the drive to the specimen’s location, the set-up, hours of wading for fish, and then the tear-down of equipment and the drive back from the site, so taking them away to photograph them can be easier than doing it onsite.

Hilary: “You said that fish lose their colors – what does that mean?”

Scott: “Fish have pigments in their skin, underneath their scales. There’s a lot of colorful fish in Ohio, like darters and minnows, that will have breeding colors and so, during certain times of the year and certain times of the day (or even after they eat) they’ll get a lot of pigment and colors in them. And even if they’re not a colorful fish, their colors can change. For example, you can take a large mouth bass that has some pattern to it and put it into a bucket that’s really light and pull the fish out ten minutes later, and the fish will look really pale. But if you put it in a dark cooler, the fish is going to remain dark and have more color. The stress levels will impact them.”

Hilary: “Do you have a favorite fish species?”

Scott: “This question’s hard. So, my answer changes every month when I discover a new fish, but currently my favorite fish is the Common Dolphin Fish, or the Mahi-mahi. There’s a reason why I like it: So, over 50% of its diet is flying fish, and that’s pretty cool to me. Also, its maximum life span is five years. A marlin or a swordfish can live to be about 27 years of age, and a medium sized Ohio fish species can live to about 15 years. However, the Dolphin Fish lives such a short span of time compared to these fish, yet it grows extremely quickly, as they get up to 36 pounds in 8 months. And it’s really fast too, swimming speeds up to 50 miles an hour.”

Common Dolphin Fish, or Mahi-mahi

Hilary: “With all of your experience and studies, what do you hope to do in the future?”

Scott: “I’d love to work as a fisheries biologist, working for the environment. It’s challenging to get in those types of roles, as they’re very competitive, but I’m going to try.”

 

Hilary HirtleAbout the Author: Hilary Hirtle is the Faculty Affairs Coordinator at the OSU Department of Family Medicine; her interest in natural history brings her to the museum to interview faculty and staff and use her creative writing skills to report about her experiences.

Explaining Science – vermiform mites

You have heard of mites – minute arachnids that have four pairs of legs when adult, are related to the ticks and live in the soil, though some are parasitic on plants or animals. But what are vermiform mites? Maybe you have heard of vermi-compost, a composting technique that uses worms (like your earthworm in the garden) to decompose organic matter. So vermiform mites are mites with a body shape like a worm:

worm-shaped nematalycid Osperalycus

Why are they shaped like a worm, you may ask – To find out more I interviewed Samuel Bolton, former PhD student in the acarology collection at our museum, now Curator of Mites at the Florida State Collection of Arthropods. Sam’s main research interest is in mites that live on plants and in the soil, especially Endeostigmata, a very ancient group of mites that dates back around 400 million years, before there were any trees or forests. Sam’s PhD research with Dr. Hans Klompen here at OSU, was focused on a small family (only five described species) of worm-like mites, called Nematalycidae.

side note: You may have heard of Sam’s research in 2014 when he discovered a new species of mite, not in a far-away country, but across the road from his work place in the museum.

When Sam started his research it was not clear where these worm-like mites in the family Nematalycidae belong in the tree of life. To find out Sam studied several morphological characters of Nematalycidae and other mites. He focused in particular on the mouth-parts of this group. As he learned more about the mouth-parts of this family, he found evidence that they are closely related to another lineage of worm-like mites, the gall mites (Eriophyoidea). Eriophyoidea have a sheath that wraps up a large bundle of stylets. They use these stylets to pierce plant cells, inject saliva into them and suck cell sap.
Although Nematalycidae don’t have stylets, one genus has a very rudimentary type of sheath that extends around part of the pincer-like structures that have been modified into stylets in Eriophyoidea.

So what did Sam and his co-authors discover?

“.. Not only are gall mites the closest related group to Nematalycidae, but the results of our phylogenetic analysis places them within Nematalycidae. This suggests that gall mites are an unusual group of nematalycids that have adapted to feeding and living on plants. Gall mites use their worm-like body in a completely different way from Nematalycidae, which live in deep soil. But both lineages appear to use their worm-like bodies to move around in confined spaces: gall mites can live in the confined spaces in galls, under the epidermis (skin), and in between densely packed trichomes on the surface of leaves;  Nematalycidae live in the tight spaces between the densely packed mineral particles deep in the soil.”

This research potentially increases the size of Sam’s family of expertise, Nematalycidae, from 5 species to 5,000 species. We have yet to confirm this discovery, but it is highly likely that gall mites are closely related to Nematalycidae, even if they are not descended from Nematalycidae. This is interesting because it shows that the worm-like body form evolved less frequently than we thought. This discovery also provides an interesting clue about how gall mites may have originated to become parasites. They may have started out in deep soil as highly elongated mites. When they began feeding on plants, they may have used their worm-shaped bodies to live underneath the epidermis of plants. As they diversified, many of them became shorter and more compact in body shape.

I wish I could tell you now to go out and look for these oddly shaped mites yourself, but you really need a microscope. Eriophyoid mites are minute, averaging 100 to 500 μm in length. For your reference, an average human hair has a diameter of 100 microns.

eriophyoid Aceria anthocoptes

Reference:

Bolton, S. J., Chetverikov, P. E., & Klompen, H. (2017). Morphological support for a clade comprising two vermiform mite lineages: Eriophyoidea (Acariformes) and Nematalycidae (Acariformes). Systematic and Applied Acarology, 22(8), 1096-1131.

 

About the Authors: Angelika Nelson, curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics, interviewed Samuel Bolton, former PhD graduate student in the OSU Acarology lab, now Curator of Mites at the Florida State Collection of Arthropods, in the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ Division of Plant Industry.

 

Bat sounds

Bats are social mammals that use a repertoire of vocalizations to communicate with each other and to move around in the environment.

To detect obstacles and prey in their environment, bats emit a series of ultrasounds, very high-pitched sounds above 20,000 Hz, beyond our range of hearing. As a bat flies and calls, it listens to the returning echoes of its calls to build up a sonic image of its surroundings. Bats can tell how far away something is by how long it takes the sounds to return to them, how big the target is based on the strength of the returning signal, and what shape the target has based on the spectral pattern of the returning sound waves. We call this process echolocation.

Individual bat species echolocate within specific frequency ranges that suit their environment and prey types. This means that we can train ourselves to identify many bats by listening to their calls with bat detectors.

Let’s LISTEN to recordings of the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) and the big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) for comparison. – But how can we listen, if we cannot hear their calls? Let’s use a trick: When we slow down the recordings by a factor of 10, the calls are transposed to 10 times lower pitch and become audible to us.

Note: To make the sounds visible in sonograms we plotted frequency in thousands of cycles per second (kilohertz, kHz) on the vertical axis versus time in seconds on the horizontal axis. The varying intensity of colors ranging from dark blue (low intensity or quiet) to red (high intensity or loud) indicates the amplitude or loudness of each call. Amplitude is also shown in the top part of each figure with larger waves representing louder calls.

Little brown bat: Calls last from less than one millisecond (ms) to about 5 ms and sweep from 80 to 40 kHz, with most of their energy at 45 kHz.

sonogram of little brown bat Myotis lucifugus calls

Call series of a little brown bat Myotis lucifugus

 

Big brown bat: Calls last several milliseconds and sweep from about 65 to 20 kHz, and are thus lower pitched than calls of little brown bats.

bigsonogram of brown bat Eptesicus fuscus echolocating calls

Call series of a big brown bat Eptesicus fuscus

 

 

The above call series were recorded when the bat is generally surveying its environment, but what happens when it actually detects prey? Listen to this feeding buzz of a little brown bat:

sonogram of feeding calls of little brown bat

Feeding calls of a little brown bat Myotis lucifugus

 

When closing in on prey, a bat may emit 200 calls per second.

What might sound to us like the bat is getting excited – don’t you talk faster when you are excited about telling something? – this rapid series of calls actually helps the bat to pin-point the exact location of its prey, then it swoops in, and GULP – dinner is served, or not!

 

We hope you enjoyed listening to these bat sounds; if you have any questions please contact Angelika Nelson.794@osu.edu, curator of the animal sound archive at The Ohio State University.

The Ohio State University - logo

 

All recordings are archived with the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics (BLB.OSU.EDU) at The Ohio State University.

Dragonflies and Damselflies of Ohio

Dragonfly at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area.

Dragonfly at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area.

The Triplehorn Insect Collection is beginning a collaborative project to survey the dragonflies and damselflies of Ohio.

These spectacular aerial predators are surprisingly diverse: currently 164 species have been recorded in the state. Brilliant colors and striking markings make them the songbirds of the insect world. The immature stages of all species are aquatic, and these animals are found in lakes, rivers, ponds, and streams from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.  Although many dragonflies and damselflies are common, a number are listed as threatened or endangered.

This new Ohio Odonata Survey is scheduled to last 3 years. The work will be done together with the ODNR Division of Wildlife, the Ohio Odonata Society, and a network of avid volunteers and citizen scientists across the state.

MaLisa Spring, an Entomologist and recent OSU graduate, just joined us as coordinator for all of these efforts.  She will be working out of the Triplehorn Insect Collection in Columbus, and will be actively interacting with participants around the state.

Information on the project can be found in the newly created Ohio Odonata Survey website.  Project activities will also be widely advertised on social media.

Ohio naturalists are invited to contribute to the project. If you have images that can help document the distribution and seasonality of the various species of dragonflies and damselflies in our state, please check out the guidelines.

Finally, the Ohio Odonata Society will be holding its 2017 annual meeting, ODO-CON-17 on 23-25 June at the Grand River Conservation Campus in Rock Creek, OH.

Damselfly in Columbus, Ohio.
Dragonfly at Magee Marsh Wildlife Area.
Halloween pennant. Specimen from the Triplehorn Insect Collection.
Dragonfly on window screen in Columbus, Ohio.
Close-up of dragonfly on window screen in Columbus, Ohio.

Resources:

Photos by L. Musetti (dragonflies) & Huayan Chen (damselfly).

About the Author: Dr. Norman F. Johnson is an Entomologist, Professor at Ohio State University, and Director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection.

Backyard Bug Explorer

Visitors touring the Triplehorn Insect Collection are invariably drawn to the biggest, longest, most colorful creatures that we have among our four million specimens. Giant walking sticks, Goliath beetles, white witch moths, and birdwing butterflies are a sure hit with visitors of all ages.  One question that usually follows that exhilarating experience is … “Are these from Ohio?” And, unfortunately, we have to say that no, those enormous and colorful insects come from tropical forests in Africa or South America or elsewhere.

That is not to say, though, that there aren’t plenty of interesting and very striking insects in Ohio. In fact, there are plenty of cool insects right in our own backyards, many of them still poorly known or even completely unknown to science.

Here are just a few examples of the insect fauna that I found in my urban backyard in the past few weeks.

Bees & bee nests

During Spring, carpenter bees and bumble bees are very busy building their nests and collecting pollen. Well, that’s true of the female bees, anyway. The male carpenter bees are far too worried about patrolling their territory and checking out everything that comes along, all in the hope of finding a female that might be susceptible to their charms. Not to worry: the males are harmless, and you’d practically have to grab hold of a female before she would think of stinging.

 

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Under a clay pot that was left leaning against a wall, a queen bumble bee has dug a hole into the soil where she’s starting her own colony. The same sort of gardening accessories are also great places for spiders to build their webs and for insects to hide away their eggs from predators.

Clay pottery left in the backyard over the winter serves as perfect shelter for bumble bee nest
I was not fast enough to snap a photo of the bumble bee entering the nest. But trust me, she’s there!
Upside down clay pots left in the backyard over the winter now house spider webs and insect eggs

Wasp nests

A mud-nesting solitary wasp found the perfect place to build her nest among the wrinkles of a deteriorating plastic cover on an old outdoor fireplace in our yard.  This might be a mud dauber or perhaps a potter wasp nest. Either way, the mother wasp builds the nest using soft mud, then goes hunting for caterpillars or other insects.  The prey – stung into a state of suspended animation – is stuffed into the nest accompanied by a single wasp egg.  The larva that later hatches will feed on the living prey and develop into a new flying adult wasp.

Solitary wasp nest in the shape of a tube. The female wasp builds the next with soft clay.
The fragile nest broke in two when I moved the plastic.
Notice the empty cocoon.

Insect eggs (my all time favorite)

The most exciting finds for me are insect eggs. Sometimes the eggs are parasitized and produce the little wasps that are my object of study. Here on our screen door I found the eggs of an assassin bug. Each egg is like a small piece of art in itself each with a beautiful ornate crown. I’ve been watching carefully to see if assassin bug nymphs will emerge or if the eggs will produce any of my parasitic wasps.

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Ants

When I rolled over a log, I found a number of Lasius interjectus.  These bright yellow ants are commonly called “citronella ants.” If you disturb them, they respond by releasing a bouquet of repellent chemicals that smell like lemon or the citronella candles used to repel mosquitoes. These ants are farmers: they maintain underground “herds” of aphids or mealybugs. These “cows” feed on the fluids in plant roots and excrete a sweet honeydew that the ants love.

A small log resting over a bed of leaf litter holds a surprise: a colony of ants!
Citronella ants under a log in the backyard.

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Here’s a quick video of the citronella ants. They are very cute!

Beetle larvae

I love looking for insects on, in, and under dead trees. Recently I found quite a number of very slick and shiny beetle larvae beneath the bark of a large dead tree near our house. I actually don’t know what kind of beetles they are, but I am hoping my buddies who study beetles will be able to identify them. And who knows, maybe I found something entirely new?!

Small patch of trees and shrubs in our neighborhood.
Rotting log & leaf litter, perfect habitat for many insects.
Close-up of the log, with bark poke-marked by insect burrows.
Multiple beetle larvae found under the bark of a rotting log.
Close up of one of the beetle larvae found under the bark of a rotting log.
Close-up of a smaller beetle larva found under the bark of a rotting log.

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When disturbed the larvae move deeper into the soft wood.

I have more photos and videos of local insects, but I’ll stop here for now.  Yes, I know, the local bugs are not massive and showy like the amazing things that come from tropical rain forests, but pay close attention and you will find that they are just as fascinating. And best of all, they are right here in our backyard!

 Insects are everywhere. The more we learn about them the more we see how absolutely fascinating, beautiful, and important they are.

 

So take your family outside the house and go explore. Look around your backyard, watch for signs of insects, check out the flowers, the underside of tree leaves, listen to the buzz of the bees and see what they are doing.  Notice the differences between a bumble bee and a carpenter bee and other bees (get more info here.)

A final note: Monday, May 22, is the International Day for Biological Diversity. People all over the world and here in Ohio will be celebrating the day with the goal of increasing understanding and awareness about biodiversity, and to have a good time observing nature.

What a great opportunity to connect with fellow bug explorers and to promote the insect biodiversity that is right around us! Post your discoveries, photos, and musings about Ohio insects on social media. Use the hash tag #OhioBugs so we can keep in touch.

Hope to see you out there!

About the Author: Dr. Luciana Musetti is an Entomologist and the current Curator of the Triplehorn Insect Collection at The Ohio State University.

facebook.com/TriplehornInsectCollection

Follow on Tweeter or Instagram: @osuc_curator

Songsters on the move

I have been teaching a class on Ohio Birds since January during which we visit various field sites around Columbus to look for birds. One main goal is for students to be able to identify birds visually and acoustically by the end of the semester. As you may imagine the birds we have been seeing over this time period have  changed quite a bit.

Not only the species have changed but also overall diversity. Venture out in January and you can call it a good day when you see 15-20 bird species. You want to choose your birding location carefully, a variety of habitats (lake, woodlot, open field, and bird feeder) will increase your numbers. These days however 30 species are the norm, it is migration season! While most of our winter guests such as Dark-eyed Junco and American Tree Sparrow have left us and gone north to their breeding grounds in Canada, many other species that spent the winter south, some as far as Argentina, are on their way to our temperate region.

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Photo by Christopher Collins, 2017

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Photo by Christopher Collins, 2017, via www.fb.com/roguebirders

Have you seen a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher yet? Guess what this bird feeds on! Listen for their begging-like calls high in the tree tops. Their long tail and light-gray appearance are a good give-away.

Spectrogram of calls of Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

Spectrogram of calls of Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, BLB28872

 

Similarly flitting around in the tree tops are kinglets (family Regulidae). These tiny birds (even smaller than chickadees! they weigh only 10g or 2 nickels) seem to be constantly on the move. One of the two species that can be added to your Ohio list, the Golden-crowned Kinglet, even spends the winter with us. Truly an amazing feat in temperatures that can drop to zero Fahrenheit and below on occasions. A good photo of this species shows off their flashy bright yellow crest bordered by a black eyebrow stripe on each side.

Golden-crowned Kinglet. Photo by Chris Collins, via www.fb.com/roguebirders
Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Photo by Jim McCormac, 2017, via http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/

My favorite though is the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, in particular because of its song. It starts out like its close-relative the Golden-crowned with some very high-pitched tsee notes, but then truly distinguishes itself through a jumble of notes, a musical twitter, that seems incredibly loud given the small size of this songster.

Spectrogram of song of Golden-crowned Kinglet

Spectrogram of song of Golden-crowned Kinglet, BLB17541

Spectrogram of song of Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Spectrogram of song of Ruby-crowned Kinglet, BLB11487

 

But do not underestimate the small! My all-time favorite, the Winter Wren, delivers the loudest song (per unit body weight) of all birds, a beautiful cascade of bubbly notes.

Winter Wren. Photo by Christopher Collins, 2016

Winter Wren. Photo by Christopher Collins, 2016, via www.fb.com/roguebirders

While you may get lucky to hear this song in Ohio on occasion from one of the male Winter Wrens passing through, their song is commonly heard in the deciduous and evergreen forests of the north. By the way, did you know that the male hormone testosterone greatly influences bird song? As these males migrate and get ready for the breeding season, their testosterone levels increase and they start practicing their song – even though they are not setting up territories here or trying to attract females.

Spectrogram of song of Winter Wren

Spectrogram of song of Winter Wren, BLB44620

 

There are many ways to appreciate our songbirds. Since I am fascinated by their song I like to record their vocalizations and take these recordings back to our sound lab and look at them. We humans are just so visually oriented that even the song of a Winter Wren may look more beautiful to us than listening to its sound (This is of course not true if you have a musical ear or train yourself to listen carefully and pick out intricate details).

If you are interested in learning how to record bird songs, look at them at home and compare them to each other join me for a Sound Analysis workshop at the nature center at Battelle Darby Creek metro park on Saturday April 29 from 10:30-11:30 am. If you are an early riser, join us on a Bird Walk at 8 am that same day and listen to the bounty of birds singing at this time of the year.

Credits:
Sound descriptions based on the ones given by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All about Birds.

Thank you Christopher Collins and Jim McCormac for the bird photos.

All recordings are archived in the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics. More detailed information for each can be accessed online; just click on each species’ name:
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher – Golden-crowned Kinglet – Ruby-crowned Kinglet – Winter Wren

About the Author: Angelika Nelson is curator of the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics and instructor of Ohio Birds each spring.

*** Which birds are your favorites? ***

 

More than just a pretty (fish) face – Do you recognize some of these small fish from your aquarium?

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, species in the genus Anableps post the largest size (at just about a foot long) in an order of rather small fishes, the Cyprinodontiformes. Don’t let their small size fool you, it does not reflect their importance in several areas. Many are quite easy to raise, and some are cultivated for beautiful colors, particularly in their fins. Unfortunately, being popular fishes in aquaria frequently results in introductions to non-native areas from aquarium owners. In several instances exotic populations have become established. Here are some of the more enigmatic species that the OSUM Fish Division has vouchers for, arranged by family:

CYPRINODONTIDAE

Sheepshead Minnow, Cyprinodon variegatus, occur along the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts south to northern South America.  Abundant and easily cultured for the aquarium trade, also used as bait.  One introduced specimen was actually caught (back in the 1950’s) next to the Olentangy Indian Caverns in a small stream tributary to the Olentangy River.

Flagfish, Jordanella floridae, are common in the St. John’s and Ocklocknee Rivers to southern Florida. This species is listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the fish with the fewest eggs, laying only 20 over several days.

FUNDULIDAE

Members of this family are distributed across North and Central America including some of the Caribbean islands, in coastal and interior low gradient, slow moving rivers, streams, and swamps.

Male Northern Studfish; note the twisted maxilla (posterior portion of the upper jaw bone) that is characteristic of the Fundulidae, photo by Uland Thomas

Northern Studfish, Fundulus catenatus. Although reputed to be difficult to keep it is popular in the aquarium trade because of the male’s vibrant breeding coloration. This species is native in disjunct populations in several states along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, but has recently been introduced and established in small to medium streams in Ohio and West Virginia.

OSUM 104822 Fundulus catenatus

OSUM 104822 is the voucher for the first specimen found on the eastern side of Ohio, in little Pipe Creek, across the Ohio River from Graves Creek in West Virginia, where there is a well established and thriving population that is believed to have been intentionally introduced.

Golden Topminnow, Fundulus chrysotus.  Common in Florida, but can be found in low lying swamps and backwaters from North Carolina along the Atlantic seaboard and around the Gulf of Mexico to eastern Texas.

 

Female Mummichog, photo by Dave Neely

The Mummichog, Fundulus heteroclitus, frequently spawns inside mussel shells, a life history attribute that is hypothesized to be facilitated by a very long urogenital sheath.

The Diamond Killifish, Fundulus xenicus, inhabits marine, freshwater and brackish waters of the Gulf of Mexico shoreline from Florida to Mexico.

Bluefin Killifish, photo by Julie Zimmerman

Bluefin Killifish, Lucania goodei

Male Rainwater Killifish, photo by Brian Zimmerman

Rainwater Killifish, Lucania parva

GOODEIDAE

This family contains many species that are critically endangered in Mexico and Central America, due to their endemism to restricted bodies of water that are denigrated by anthropological modifications.

Tuxpan Splitfin, Alldontichthys tamazulae, is endemic to the Rio Tuxpan in the State of Jalisco, Mexico.

Butterfly Splitfin, Ameca splendens, is endemic to the State of Jalisco, Mexico, raised and sold commercially to the aquarium trade.

Redtail Splitfin, Xenotoca eiseni, are listed as endangered and declining.  The species was split as recently as 2016 to add two new species from the original distributions, where the critically endangered X. lyonsi is found in the Tuxpan and Tamazula Rivers and the critically endangered X. doadrioi in the “endorheic region of Metzatlan in the state of Jalisco, Mexico”.

POECILIIDAE

Possibly due to the ease of breeding, this family contains many popular aquarium species like guppies and swordtails.  One species, Poeciliopsis latidens, lives in marine waters, although several others are secondary freshwater species.

Sailfin Molly, Poecilia latipinna, is native to coastal lowlands from North Carolina to Vera Cruz, Mexico, but has been introduced to many countries with “adverse ecological impacts” reported.

Variable Platy, Xiphophorus varietus, is endemic to Mexico but is another popular aquarium fish that has been carelessly introduced with resultant harmful ecological impacts (for this species the impacts are primarily competition with native fishes for resources).  These and several other species in the genus Xiphophorus are listed as exotic pests by governmental agencies.

The fact that many cyprinodontiforms (and cichlids) are tolerant to higher salinities as opposed to the primarily freshwater orders of fishes has made them the subject of biogeographical studies particularly for dispersal from one stream to another along coastal areas.  It is hypothesized that their adaptability to variable habitat conditions facilitated their invasion and predominance of the Central American fish fauna as they made their way across the narrow, open waters from South America to Central America before the rise of the Panamanian isthmus.  This hypothesis, formulated by ichthyologist George S. Meyers in the mid ’60s, has been strengthened by genetic work in the current decade.

Photo Credits:
All photos of museum specimens were taken by Marc Kibbey; other photos with permission of members of the North American Native Fishes Association (NANFA.org).

Detailed information for each specimen is available through the OSU Fish Division Database.

About the Author: Marc Kibbey is Associate Curator of the Fish Division at the Museum of Biological Diversity.

 

*** Which of these fish species do you have in your aquarium at home? ***

Ticks in pictures

Some more about ticks.  No, not The Tick comic or the movie Ticks … both may be entertaining, but they feature completely inaccurate depictions of ticks.

Artwork for TICK COMIC CON EXTRAVAGANZA #1, [fair use] via Wikipedia
A poster for Ticks (film), [fair use] via Wikipedia

Let’s talk about real ticks:  Ticks are rather large mites. To demonstrate this, here is a family portrait:

family portrait of Ixodes pacificus, California Dept. of Public Health

Family portrait of Ixodes pacificus, California Dept. of Public Health [public domain]

From left to right, larva (6 legs), nymph (8 legs), male and female of Ixodes pacificus, the Western black-legged tick, from the west coast (you can see them with the naked eye, therefore they are big).

All members of the family feed on host blood using highly modified mouthparts, but only larvae, nymphs, and females engorge (feed to the point where their body truly swells up).

close-up of mouth parts of Amblyomma extraoculatum, U.S. National Tick Collection (USNMENT00956315)

Close-up of mouth parts of Amblyomma extraoculatum, U.S. National Tick Collection (USNMENT00956315)

Here are some nice examples of engorged females.  Keep in mind that while engorged ticks are easy to find, they are often difficult to identify.

engorged female tick
Amblyomma tuberculatum on a gopher tortoise

Most of the ticks we encounter in Ohio have females that feed only once.  They engorge, convert all that host blood into a single mass of hundreds to thousands of eggs, and die.

tick with eggs (c) Univ. Nebraska, Dept. Entomology

Tick with eggs, Univ. Nebraska, Dept. Entomology

Ticks in general get really bad press.  Kind of sad, because ticks are very good at quite a few things, like surviving (some can survive hours under water or years without food), or manipulating your immune system (using a dizzying array of chemicals often found only in ticks). On second thought, that may not strike most people as positive, so let me end with a few pictures of beautiful creatures. I already introduced Amblyomma americanum, which occurs in Ohio, the others are African, A. chabaudi on tortoises in Madagascar, A. variegatum usually on cattle. Amblyomma variegatum is the main vector of heartwater, a disease making cattle herding impossible in parts of Africa, but still, very pretty.

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See some more of these specimens close-up, but at a safe distance through microscopes at our Annual Open House, April 22, 2017.

 

Dr. Hans Klompen, Professor EEOBiology at OSUAbout the Author: Dr. Hans Klompen is professor in the department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology and director of the Ohio State University Acarology Collection.

*** Which of these ticks is your “favorite”? Let us know on Facebook ***