One Bug's Trash is Another Bug's Treasure

If you have ever heard of a green lacewing of the Chrysopidae family, you might know that its larva interestingly camouflages itself with lichen.  Every green lacewing larva I have seen has a dust lichen called Lepraria finkii adhered to its back.  It sticks the lichen to hair-like setae on its body so it can hide under a blanket of lichen. Perhaps to hide from prey that it can grab with its large mandibles.  This fall, try searching trees for these critters by walking up to the trunks and watching for little moving lichen balls.  If you touch the lichen ball, they will walk away from you.

This camouflaged lacewing larva shows mandibles sticking out on the left, legs out the bottom.  Lepraria finkii covering its back.

I have heard about a green lacewing larva that will pick up other kinds of debris and stick it to its back.  But I have never seen it before.  I've seen pictures of a lacewing larva carrying numerous land snail shells and insect body parts on its back.  It looked like a top-heavy garbage truck sneaking across the ground.

This fall, during one of our local school field classes, some 4th grade students and their teacher from West Union Elementary hit the jackpot.  The students were instructed to explore food chains within a leaf litter sample.  Each group sorted through the animals found in their leaf piles.  From this search, a little mysterious critter was found that appeared to be a moving heap of debris.  The teacher brought it to Robyn Wright-Strauss who was leading the class to identify the curious animal.  Robyn brought it back to the lab knowing this was a very unique find.  It was the debris carrying lacewing larva.

Lacewing larva carrying snail shells, insect parts and spider parts on it back.

This animal had collected pieces of other animals and stuck them to its back. I would assume the debris on the lacewing's back was found on the ground and not leftover pieces of its own prey.  Some of the exoskeleton pieces seems to be from an ants, possibly beetles, and there is a dorsal side of a cephalothorax from a spider attached as well.  Two Striatura snail shells are attached on top.  Since lacewing larva specialize in more soft bodied foods, I would think ants and spiders are not their first choices.  So it probably picks up any debris that's available, attaches it, and then blends in with whatever it has found for a disguise.    

The larger snail shell on its back is 2.5 mm and was very difficult to pull off.  Its adhesion is quite impressive.

A pile of debris makes a great place to hide.

What a nice find from our local schools.  Enjoy this short video of the lacewing larva. Now that you've seen it and know what to look for, maybe you will find one too.

 

Posted by: Mark Zloba

Five minutes under a rock

Curiosity is a funny thing and I hope I never lose it.  While walking through a field, I stopped to photograph a lichen growing on exposed dolostone rock.  Although locally common, statewide it is a very uncommon lichen called Psora pseudorussellii.  Pictured below, it is a squamulose lichen attractively colored with red apothecia (red discs which are the fruiting bodies of the fungus).  



Psora pseudorussellii

After photographing the lichen, I noticed a smaller rock nearby, a little bigger than a football.  Like a dog to a fire hydrant, I am attracted to rocks I think I can lift.  I can't seem to shake the curious question of "what is under that, and every rock"?   And of course, there is always the chance of finding something I haven't seen before, so why not take a look.



The rock.  A piece of Peebles dolostone.

So I took about five minutes to quickly look and see what animals I could find (at least visible to the naked eye).  Almost immediately, two critters disappeared into the cracks of the ground before I could get a picture.  One was a common exotic earthworm called Lumbricus rubellus.  Everyone has seen this worm before, and it is not too hard to identify if you can recognize its faint red wine color.  The second was a sowbug or wood louse (sowbugs can't roll into a ball like pilbugs, Armadillidium sp., but look similar) called Trachelipus rathkei.  T. rathkei is a fast, 2-tailed sowbug and also an exotic species.  Both of these are expected under rocks at the "Edge".

But a few animals stuck around long enough to photograph, or proof of the animals existence was there.  A female wood roach, Parcoblatta sp., stood still long enough for a pic.  A few leafhoppers showed up after I lifted the rock.  These little hoppers from the genus Erythroneura jumped into the soil under the rock, but I think were in the grasses beside the rock and not underneath.  All pictured below.





  Parcoblatta sp. of wood roach commonly found under rocks and logs on the preserve.

Erythroneura sp. leafhopper showing very attractive pattern.  Many leafhoppers are just as showy as the prettiest butterflies.........in my opinion.



Another Erythroneura  leafhopper, barely a millimeter in size

What got my attention in those few minutes of looking under that rock were the amount of micro-snails (<5mm) and/or snail shells on the rock or in the dirt underneath.  I quickly counted the species I could identify, and collected a couple of shells I knew would require a scope for identification.



If you look closely you might find snail shells under the rock

Most shells will blend in well with the soil or rock, so you need to search carefully.  Here a Catinella vermeta blends in.

Many small land snails can be found under rocks and woody debris on the ground as well as grass thatch where it meets the soil.  This particular rock had 14 individual snail shells found within this short search time.  None of them larger than 4 millimeters.  Luckily, land snails are easily identifiable by using their shell, so if the animal is dead, you can still identify it to species.  They were: the white-lipped dagger, Pupoides albilabris, 2, the armed snaggletooth, Gastrocopta armifera, 4, the minute gem, Hawaiia miniscula, 3, the suboval ambersnail, Catinella vermeta, 2, the wild hive, Euconulus chersinus, 2 and 1 small unknown Gastrocopta.  



2 snail shells.  The one on the right shows the "teeth" of the shell opening giving reason to the common name armed snaggletooth snail.

Armed snaggletooth, Gastrocopta armifera shell

 I wanted to take a closer look at the small unknown Gastrocopta. I was hoping it was the rare species Gastrocopta rogersensis, which was newly described in 2001 in Iowa, only to be found a couple years later here at the Edge by one of it's author's Jeff Nekola.  The range of this species is hundreds of miles west of the Edge, making his find a disjunct anomaly like so many other species found on this preserve.  Since his discovery of this overlooked land snail, I have found them in 2 other prairies on the preserve.  But it would be nice to extend its range within the preserve.


White-lipped dagger, Pupoides albilabris shell hiding in the mud.

Once back in the lab, and the few collected snails were placed "mouth up" under the dissecting scope, I could easily see "tooth" features in the opening of the shells.  My curiosity driving me to wonder what was under that rock has led me to an exciting find (at least to a small circle of maloco-phile folks).  I believe the mystery snail is Roger's snaggletooth (Gastrocopta rogersensis), the newly described species mentioned above.  This adds a fourth location of this snail on the preserve.



Here you can see the size difference in three of the shells. Gastrocopta rogersensis (>2mm), Hawaiia miniscula (2mm) and Pupoides albilabris (4mm).  So 4mm is a big snail under this rock.

These were just the larger animals I could see in a five minutes.  Just imagine how many creatures there really are if you could count the micro inhabitants under this rock.  I need to remember this when I am out looking under rocks and logs.  I should be a little more deliberate when putting a rock back in its place.  And maybe, hiding under the next piece of debris, an un-described species will be found, unknowingly waiting to be discovered.  Just curious.

Posted by:  Mark Zloba





Slug Life

In our search to learn all the living things on the preserve, we invite many experts that can identify the critters that most people don’t take time to look at.  This fall, Dan Dourson and his wife Judy graced this preserve with their enthusiasm about all things natural, and in particular, came to teach about land mollusks.  Now, we already had a nice collection of land snails from the preserve.  67 species of land snail have been identified on the preserve before the Dourson’s arrival. But after the class a couple species were added and a couple were eliminated from our list.  And they helped clear up some confusing species.  For example, we commonly find a  snail called the upland pillsnail, Euchemotrema fraternum,  but I had no idea there was also a lowland pillsnail, Euchemotrema leai.  Well there is a lot of them around, and there is a very subtle difference between the two.  Apparently I have been collecting lowland pillsnails for years and never knew the difference, which is a small hole under the “lip” of the snail at the umbilicus.  If this sounds confusing or foreign, see picture below or use Dan’s books clear all this up.

Notice the hole in the center of the snail under the lip of the lowland pillsnail on the left.  No hole on the upland pillsnail on the right.

 

But land snails aren’t the only land mollusk to be found.  We have been overlooking slugs, which can be found about anywhere on the preserve,  for as long as we have been identifying everything else.  So now, with the Dourson’s help, slugs shall not be overlooked from here on in.

One reason slugs are overlooked is because of the lack of resources available for identification.  And with what is available, slugs still are not an easy subject.  But lucky for us, Dan has written a few books that can be helpful to Ohio naturalists.  Kentucky’s Land Snails and Their Ecological Communities, Land Snails of West Virginia and Land Snails of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Southern Appalachians.  These books have most if not all of the snails and slugs that can be found in Ohio, especially southern Ohio.

So I wanted to try to use Dan’s Kentucky book to identify slugs that I come across.  That’s when this little creature appeared, on lettuce brought from the preserve Director’s garden.  Luckily, before   accidentally eating it, it made its way into the lab for further study.  From Dan’s book I learned that if a slug has a “saddle” on its back, it’s probably a non-native slug from Europe.  Apparently, most of the slugs we come across, especially in yards and gardens are exotic species.  This little slug had a saddle, but I found that there is one species of native slug possessing a saddle.  Unfortunately, it is virtually identical to a non-native relative.  Only dissection can determine the correct identification.  But since this slug was in a garden, near a dwelling with many exotic plants and soil brought in for gardening, it is most likely the non-native Deroceras panormitanum, the longneck field slug.  Under a dissecting scope with good light you could really see the markings and patterns of this creature.  With this view, the patterns matched up with the Deroceras species, and the size of the animal along with the position of the saddle helped separate it from other genera.



Deroceras panormitanum, the longneck fieldslug.  Notice the "saddle" on its back.

  I wanted to photograph this 22mm slug to send pictures to Dan.  I set up a piece of lichen covered bark to stage the slug about 2 feet off a table.  Watching this animal move is interesting to say the least.  The slime trail it leaves can actually be used to identify slugs, but mostly the color of its defense slime is used.  They use the slime for locomotion, defense and for antibacterial properties.  I assumed the slug would be stuck on this piece of bark for a while, seeing how slugs do not move too quickly, and it was high off the table.  But by the time I got the camera set up the slug was gone and on the table.   I was amazed to see how this slug made its getaway.  It did not crawl off the bark at all.....but it slime rappelled.  I had no idea a slug would use its slime to lower itself, like a spider on a web, to escape an uncomfortable situation. 

I put the slug on the bark a few more times, and every time I did, it tried escaping the same way.  Why waste time crawling when you can rappel to get away.  I’d never have guessed that picking up this one slug would be so educational. I guess that it produces the slime while it’s hanging in mid-air and slowly can lower itself to the bottom.  And if they can hang there for periods of time, I would imagine this could be a great retreat from predators.



Longneck fieldslug making its escape.



Slowly rappelling away.



Head first seems a bit dangerous, but that's a slug for you.

Arrived at the bottom, unfortunately for the slug it's a large table and could be re-captured.

Adding a few new species of land snail to our collection was what I was hoping for with the Dourson’s visit.  But now after collecting many different organisms over the years, I am most excited about having our first slug species added to the collection.  After all, they are everywhere.  I rarely lift a log in the woods without seeing a slug, why not know what species I am seeing.  A small start, but we now can say we definitely have at least these 4 species of slug:  Deroceras panormitanum  the longneck fieldslug, Arion subfuscus the dusky Arion, Megapallifera mutabilis the changeable mantleslug and Philomycus carolinianus the Carolina mantleslug.

If you would like to learn interesting facts about slugs like their practice of stabbing love darts into their partners while mating, their abilities to eat highly toxic mushrooms to beef up their defense mucous, slugs anti-bacterial properties that help humans or most importantly how to identify them and their snail cousins, check out Dan’s books mentioned and pictured above.   These books are not sold in stores or yet on a website.  To buy one you must reach out to him personally at theroguebiologist@gmail.com. 

Posted by: Mark Zloba