Insect Minute

Our resident entomology expert Heather Campbell brings us another Insect Minute. This week’s topic: social insects.

Our resident entomology expert Heather Campbell brings us another Insect Minute. This week’s topic: bioluminescence.

Our resident entomology expert Heather Campbell brings us another Insect Minute. This week’s topic: medical insects.

Our resident entomology expert Heather Campbell brings us another Insect Minute. This week’s topic: termites.

Our resident entomology expert Heather Campbell brings us another Insect Minute. This week’s topic: cockroaches.

If you would like to find out more about bed bugs visit the museum’s website at insectmuseum.org where you also find information about our museum and read our blog where we talk about interesting stuff going on in the world of entomology.

Tick Life Cycle from Centers for Disease Control and PreventionTicks find their hosts through detecting the breath, body odor or body heat of an animal or through questing. When a tick is questing for a host it will climb to the end of a leaf or tip of a blade of grass and hold on tightly with the last two sets of legs and stretch the fore legs out, holding this position until an animal comes by to climb on to. Once the tick is “aboard” it will begin looking for a place of attachment, preferably a location with thinner skin. Location found, they cut the skin’s surface and insert the feeding tube. Ticks maintain attachment either by having a barbed feeding tube or secreting an adhesive like substance that sticks the tick in place.The most common ticks found in NC are the American Dog tick, the brown dog tick, the Lone star tick and the black-legged or deer tick. The American dog tick and brown dog tick both carry Rocky Mountain spotted fever. The brown dog tick is entirely dark brown and the American dog tick

Cicadas are found on every continent, with the exception of Antarctica.  In fact, there are 2,600 described species in the world ranging from very large (110 mm) to relatively small (14 mm), most of which are members of the family Cicadidae. The other family of cicadas, Tettigarctidae, is a very small and relictual group that is represented by two species present only in Australia. These Australian cicadas are known as the hairy cicadas and communicate by transmitting vibrations through vegetation instead of singing like the Cicadas we are familiar with.The members of the family Cicadidae sing using organs called tymbals which are located on the abdomen of the males. The tymbal is like a drum. A complex membrane with taenidia-like striations running parallel along the surface and as the membrane vibrates and the enlarged chambers within the trachael system in the insects body act as a resonating chamber.Image from what-when-howThe males use the tymbals to attract females and have distinctive calls to ensure t

Aggggghhhh!! That is one big insect!!To answer this question we need clarification, how do you quantify “biggest”? Insects are very diverse and they come in many shapes which means that the longest is not the heaviest.  So to answer the question of what is the “biggest” completely there are two answers.The longest insect is the Chan’s Mega Stick from Borneo. Phobaeticus chani is a member of the stick-insect order Phasmatodea. Our native species, Diapheromera femorata, is 3 to 4 inches long. Phobaeticus chani is 14 inches long, if you include the legs the length extends to 22 inches!! Despite its large size very few people have seen one, in fact if you searched all the insect collections in the world you would only find that 3 have been collected. All stick insects are masters of camouflage living up to the order’s prefix which comes from the Greek, phasm, meaning phantom. It may be that the Chan’s megastick is even more elusive because they typically reside in canopy of the rainforest.Image from FoxNews.comTh

Banded woolly bear - Photo by graftendno1Never the less, there is a woolly bear caterpillar that does have a very interesting relationship with winter. It is called the Arctic woolly bear caterpillar. Although their names are similar and they superficially look alike, these two are very different. The banded woolly bear caterpillar is in the family Arctiidae and is common in all of North America. The arctic woolly bear is member of the family, Lymantriidae, and is found in the Arctic Circle.  This is where is gets really interesting, folks.The banded woolly bear has two broods in the summer, the first of which pupates and emerges in the same year, the second will pupate over winter and emerge the following spring. The life cycle is very different in the Arctic. Due to the brief growing season, the caterpillar has to feed for several summers to achieve the critical body mass it needs to pupate. As the arctic woolly bear awaits the coming summers it overwinters as a caterpillar, hiding in a hibernacula, allowin

Bees are in the order Hymenoptera which also includes wasps, ants and sawflies. Bees and wasps are commonly confused with one another or perceived as names that are interchangeable. Bees and wasps share some attributes; like a similar body plan and they are both holometabolous insects. (A much cuter explanation of metamorphosis) There is one very big thing that sets them apart, their diets! Bees are strictly vegan, preferring to forage on pollen and nectar, whereas most wasps mix other arthropods into their diets.Common Misconceptions:Bees bite: Well, not usually. Bees have mandibles but they do not typically use them in defense. The main mode of defense is the stinger, a modified egg-laying structure, found only in females. Males are largely defenseless.Bees and Wasps are the same thing: It’s true that they are related and very similar anatomically, but there are some major differences. As mentioned above, their diet. Most bees are much fuzzier than wasps, having branched hairs that help them collect pollen.