#4 :: Insects are all around
Intro music: "InsectaLoop" by Jake McCarthy.
JAKE Hello. You are listening to InsectaPod Cast, a product of the Michigan State University Dept. of Entomology. It's home on the web: www.insectapodcast.com. This is episode 5: Insects are all around.
We’ve all seen insects outdoors, and many of us have been fascinated by them. As naturalist E.O. Wilson puts it “every kid goes through a bug stage- I just never grew out of mine.” In the Fall of 2007 we spent a weekend with friends on 100 acre stretch of woods in north-central Michigan. We learned that an ordinary walk in the woods surrounds us with insect activity, and that just because people aren’t entomologists doesn’t mean they don’t find insects compelling. Today, we’ll look at three examples of the role insects play in ordinary people and activities. We speak with Todd Stonehouse about what drives his northwoods insect interest, have some fun with nighttime insect observations, and then just take an entomologically-minded walk in the woods.
I'm Jake McCarthy, the next voice you'll hear is Anna Fiedler, and this is InsectaPod Cast.
ANNA Our stories today all take place on the same chunk of land between Mt. Pleasant and Cadillac. The land and its ownership is typical of this area of Michigan. We traveled in by gravel road, then two-track for the last quarter mile. There’s a small cabin that houses hunters in November and people just trying to get away form the city the rest of the year. The place is owned by Bruce, and our friend Todd Stonehouse is a sort of impromptu caretaker. The first year we came up the cabin was surrounded by red pine, but a selective cutting means there’s more space between the hardwood trees now. When we go to cabin we sit around and talk and listen to music and go for walks in the woods. It’s something Todd’s been doing for a long time, and it’s fed his interest in the nearby wildlife, with insects no exception.
TODD yeah I like all the levels of wildlife and they are a living thing so I would include them. Its not your classicl wildlife but they are a living thing and I would lump them in with all the frogs and deer and elephants they just run the whole gamut… if I see something and wonder what it is. But like sheet experiment last night, a lot of those little bugs I don’t know what they are and I don’t know where to look them up. I have a few field guides to insects, like big ones that are shiny and colorful they interest me but just the little gnat-type bugs I don’t spend a lot of time on.
ANNA Todd’s a health care professional, not t an entomologist, but that doesn’t prohibit him from being interested in insects and aware of their role in the ecosystem. In fact, he’s recently seen insects result in a big change in the woods around the cabin. When we first visited, the land was thick with red pines and the ground covered with their needles. One year we returned to find acres and acres of stumps and cut boughs. A forestry agent had identified a pest insect eating at the pines, and the owner had decided to harvest them. As Todd tells it, the pines went in two waves, the first completed slowly and methodically by a group of Amish and the second quickly and mercilessly with heavy machinery. All because of an insect.
TODD Two reasons, number one being that bruce the owner talked to I would guess some sort of forestry type person and he told them there was some kind of borer that was eating the pine trees. And that they would die anyway, probably not in our lifetime, but eventually, from that. And two, the number of deer has gone down significantly since the 70s on this property and the same forwstry person told him that deer don’t eat pine, they don’t like pine and if you remove the pine oak and maple and things that they do eat will grow in its place. And hopefully that will increase the number of deer on the property and you can see them more readily.
ANNA The first year after the logging it seemed that something had been lost, but now, almost two years later, there are signs of plant and insect life that didn’t thrive there in the past. In addition to the deer Todd mentioned wanting to attract, there is a lush undergrowth that includes a few herbaceous flowering plants, cherry, maple and oak seedling, as well as more brackenfern, that sun couldn't reach through the pines. The potential for plant and insect diversity is greater, which in turn could boost the abundance of birds and mammals. And Todd said he’s beginning to see this potential be realized.
TODD I’ve also noticed the plant life has really changed. As you mentioned the what I call Indian toilet paper that never used to grow up here and now there’s a bunch of it and those tall plants with the cone on top that this guy mike told me one time was great for starting fire if you’re using the bow and the cedar block you need to make a tinder box and that stuff when you dry it it’s really flammable and there’s several of those around and they never used to grow here. There’s also a white flowering plant that I don’t know the name of that’s growing by the driveway that probably does attract more and different bugs.
ANNA One evening, Todd decided to find out just how many and what kinds of insects there were. He strung a white bedsheet up between two trees and spotlighted it. The bugs were powerless to resist, and we all stood in the dark woods watching them flock to the sheet.
ANNA So, we have a white sheet, I’ve learned it’s brand new, it’s a queen sized white sheet that’s hung up on jute twine,250 thread count, we’ve learned from our friend Todd. And it’s between 2 trees. Now we’ve got a daddy-long legs climbing up it, which is new. And what we have shining on it is a – how many watts is this light?
TODD A hundred fifty.
ANNA 150 watt light that’s on a tripod and so it’s shining right in the middle of the sheet. So, we’ve got insects and spiders on the front and on the back of it. And actually, we’ve been looking at it for a few minutes now and what I just noticed and what’s interesting to me is that I see lots and lots of leafhoppers on the bottom of the sheet but not on the top, and that tells me that maybe they’re just kind of jumping their way up the sheet- or maybe they won’t make it all the way up but they’re coming from the ground rather than the air. But I see caddisflies, and we’ve also been looking at green lacewings.
AMY Look what showed up. Is that the daddy long-legs?
TODD Yeah.
ANNA Does this interest you, Amy
AMY Yes. They’re better if they’re out here than inside running across your kitchen.
TODD Yeah, I started coming up here about 16 years ago, with Bruce, the guy who owns the place, and he would play a tape to call in the owls. So, the wildlife observation. I can’t wait to tell him about this and how successful it was. Raccoons come in, and squirrels, coyotes, deer, bugs, I’m hoping to see a black bear walk through some day, but.
JAKE what a bout the cougar, the old Michigan cougar?
TODD We heard some screams one night that we think was a cougar, but when we went and hunted it in the woods all we found was a bronco with a couple in it.
ANNA The day after the observation with the sheet, Jake and I went for a walk through the woods, curious to see just how much insect activity we might find. Whereas Todd focuses his interest on insects as wildlife, I’m more concerned with the relationships between insects and plants. Jake and I walked through the woods for 30 minutes or so, and as we walked, we described our sensory experience- what we saw and where we looked for it, as well as what we heard. We walked along a two-track woods through several different habitats. First we went parallel to the selectively cut area, where lots of light and flowering plants presented us with monarch butterfly, a damselfly, and a vespid wasp. Then we went into some deep hilly woods, and although the airborne insects weren’t as abundant as they had been earlier, when we turned to the soil we hit pay dirt.
JAKE No bugs around here, huh?
ANNA I’m really not seeing any. We’re in pretty deep in some trees now. There really isn’t a lot of shrubby height growth in here, either. SO there’s not- there’s brackenfern which is pretty thick on the ground floor and not a lot of other things on the ground floor where we’re walking through and then nothing until trees. And most of the trees are maybe 30-40 years old. And so there’s not a lot of places in between for insects to kind of spend time. But one thing we haven’t done yet is look in the leaf litter. Let’s try that.
(Sound of crunching leaves).
Um, so I’m moving all of the leaves and there’s a thick humus layer, the kind of organic layer of leaves that have broken down from years past. I see an ant running around on top of them. And I also, as I was digging, I saw a sowbug, and it moved quickly out of my line of sight. I also spot now a spider that’s on t he ground. It looks like it’s probably a wolf spider. It’s brown, about ¼ inch long. He’s very mobile. We’re trying to get a picture of him and he’s moving as i point to him. So I think that’s also interesting. There are lots and lots of spiders that don’t build webs like we think of like Charlotte, in Charlotte’s Web, the big orb webs. There are many that are ground- hunters and will have silk, but not a web in the same way that we think of them. Maybe sometimes funnels or different shapes.
ANNA That spider and sow bug were at the foot of a hill, and when we reached the top we found ourselves walking along an esker for about 100 yards before the trail descended into a clearing. There was abundant insect activity in the clearing, and we got another great demonstration of just how distinct darkness and lightness are in the insect world.
JAKE That dragonfly that we saw in the clearing was very deliberately avoiding shady patches, and it would fly, and once it hit shade it would turn right around and head back into the sunlight.
ANNA Yep. Also what’s striking is that dragonfly was nowhere near a body of water. We have not passed a body of water today. Same with those damselflies. There’s not one nearby that we’re aware of. There might be some water on another property a couple of, maybe ¼ mile from here. So, that’s very interesting to me how mobile, especially those dragonflies are, and also the damselflies which are really a lot smaller. But what I have enjoyed doing is exploring for insects, and exploring new ways to share what I’m seeing.
ANNA So, once we looked more closely, we discoverd that on an ordinary walk in the woods we were surrounded by insect activity. We also learned that just because people aren't entomologists doesn't mean they don't find insects fascinating- and it's no wonder. Insects live in an impressive variety of habitats, are active at different times of the year and of the day, and feed on vastly different things. To find them in the outdoors, here are several hints. First, if you want to see the maximum number of insects, search when it’s warm and sunny, in the middle of a calm day. Look for signs of insects- including leaves with holes or lumps on them, tree trunks with holes in them, and webs. Try turning over logs and rocks. Look for insects at flowering plants; many feed on nectar and pollen that plants provide- both day and night. Lastly, remember, sometimes insects are right under your nose but are so camouflaged you will have trouble spotting them until they move.
