The Horned Passalus and Its Passengers

                               I think of this as my Summer of Bugs. I've always liked bugs.


But this year, I have tools to learn more about them, and I am using those tools. My favorite is Eric Eaton's and Kenn Kaufman's Field Guide to Insects of North America. There, I learned that what I've always called a Betsy Bug is a Horned Passalus (oh wonderful name!) Odontotaenius disjunctus.  It's a pretty wonderful bug, I must say.  There are only two species of passalid in North America; it's a mostly tropical family, with over 500 species worldwide. Shiny (Patent Leather Beetle is another colloquial name), strong (just try holding one back!) and robust, it's very beautiful and strange to watch as it feels its way around with jointed antennae. Like roaches, the passalus is sensitive to air currents, and rather shy. It's usually found in rotted wood, which it eats. But unlike termites, for instance, it lacks beneficial bacteria in its gut to digest the wood. So it eats the wood, poops, and then eats the fungus that grows on its own poop. Now what is not to love about that?

But it gets better. The Horned Passalus is a social insect, and Eaton says that it is able to "talk" to its family (yes, it has a family; we'll get to that) by rubbing bits of itself together, something called stridulating. And curious entomologists have identified fourteen different sounds, or calls, that this insect can make.

See the cool little horn on its head?

I was bitten pretty good by a Betsy Bug while playing in a Virginia sandbox at the tender age of six or so. To be fair to it, I was squishing it in my hand. I didn't mean to; I thought it was a sand clump. They don't usually bite, though. They're too busy being cool. Get this:  They chew through rotted wood, making galleries where they haul around their eggs and larvae, a bit like giant ants. They live in colonies with their offspring. They pair up. And the pairs of beetles care for their larvae, feeding them chewed wood mixed with their own feces (there they go again!) They can live up to 16 months, and most of that is spent in caring for their young while the eggs hatch, larvae grow and metamorphose into pupae and then adult beetles.

I like the golden leg fringe bling. Not sure what its function may be; maybe it acts as a comb to keep wood debris off its limbs? Maybe it combs those sensitive antennae with its leg fringe? I would need to watch one for a few hours to see what it does.

My partner in discovery is my Canon G-11. (Who knows how many of these cameras I've sold? B & H Photo's link that was supposed to kick back $$ never worked for me, so heck with it. Go buy one. Tell 'em I sent you). 

This little camera shows me things I can hardly see with my own orbs. See anything interesting on the beetle's head? Yeah, me too. Mites. Little copper-colored round mites.

I noticed that this beetle (I have two individuals in these shots) was carrying mites, and it seemed to have little scooped-out areas on its head that cradled the mites just so, which got me thinking that the mites might be doing something nice for the beetle; maybe cleaning its jaws and keeping it all shiny-polished; maybe getting rid of excess food or feces; maybe singing tiny little mite songs to it as it chews away on the rotten wood. Hi ho, Hi ho, it's off to work you go! Tra la la la! Hey, if a beetle can have at least 14 different calls, mites should be able to sing.

Some of the mites found on bess bugs are found nowhere else.

So something's going on here; the mites get something from the association with the passalus that they can't get anywhere else. Who knows what the passalus gets from it? That's bugs for you. Looking closely can lead to looking more closely, and then a question mark forms over your head that is pretty much permanent, like a halo.

 

I would much rather have a question mark over my head than a halo. Much more fun.

Mighty Mites

It's been a tough year for bluebirds in Ohio. First, there was the mid-April cold spell--a ten day marathon in which many early nests were lost. It's tough to incubate eggs and feed babies, when it gets down to 20 degrees at night and barely gets above the 40's during the day. The weather settled down for awhile, and then we had the driest May and June since 1988. That hurts insect populations. Clutch sizes fell accordingly--three-egg second clutches were the norm. But mites, which are more closely related to spiders and ticks, flourish in dry weather. Man, do they flourish. This is the first year I've lost bluebirds to mite infestations, and I've been monitoring at least 20 nest boxes each year since 1982. That's a whole lot of nests peeked into, a whole lot of notes taken. Never have I seen mites like I'm seeing in 2007. Five of my boxes were heavily infested, and I've lost three young in two boxes to mites. It drives me nuts when I'm traveling a lot and can't be there to change nests. But I got to the one in the far orchard just in the nick of time. The day after we came back from Maine, I was out in the morning, checking boxes. They hadn't been checked in two weeks--an unavoidable, but unacceptably long interval. Sure enough, this nest, which had only a couple of eggs when I left, was overrun with mites. One baby had just died, and a second was dying. The third looked all right, but both remaining young had mites seething over their tender skin, and worse, stuffed into their ears. Bleccch!
I closed the box and ran back to the house, picking mites off my arms and out of my eyebrows the whole way. Eek!

I grabbed my bag of dry grass, a toothbrush, a Tupperware container, and a thermal mug full of boiling water. Reaching the box, I took the babies out of their infested nest and put them in a paper towel lined Tupperware. For some reason, when you put mite-infested babies on white paper towels, the mites swarm off them and onto the towels. I don't know why, but I'm glad they do. I removed the seething nest, carried it a good distance away and pitched it into the woods. Next, I scrubbed the box with the toothbrush, loosening the mites packed into its seams. Then, I dashed boiling water into the box, three times for good measure. Dead mites ran out with the water. Why use poisonous insecticide when hot water is so much safer and faster?
When the box had cooled, I made a new nest and stuffed it in.

While the box cooled, I used fine blades of grass to flick mites out of the nestling's ear openings. Poor little things. The weaker baby was badly dehydrated, not even able to right itself, and a sickly yellow in color. Any more, I can tell immediately when a box has mites, even before they swarm up my arms, by the anaemic yellow skin of the nestlings.
I gave this baby a 50/50 chance of survival, improved by the fact that the parents had only two to tend, and vastly improved by their now mite-free box. I closed the box and came back two days later, to find the once-dying baby all pink and plump, cuddling with its sibling in their crude hand-made nest, comfortable, hydrated, in possession of all its red blood cells, and well-fed for the first time. The chance to make a difference, even in one bird's life, is part of what keeps me going. That, and the things I see as I make the rounds...butterflyweed in full glory.
A bumblebee, navigating fields of nectar.

And an indigo bunting nest, eggs an unexpected white (why in the Sam hill would an open-cup nester have WHITE eggs? They stick out like a sore thumb! Somebody explain this to the Science Chimp, pleeeeeze. I'm staying away from this nest, though the thing I'd most like to do is stick my camera in it every day. What would be the point of photographing it if I just wound up leading a 'coon to it? Ahhh, it's torture, but I have to do what's best for the birds. The little hen bathes in my bird spa every afternoon at about the same time, and her handsome mate uses the backyard bird bath. They're my neighbors. I have to keep my big nose out of their bidness.