Backyard Bugs . . . Parasitized Tobacco Hornworm

Dr. J and Dudeboy found a parasitized tobacco hornworm (easily confused with the tomato hornworm. You have to count the lateral markings) on their tomato plant. The parasitic wasp cocoons are from the braconid wasp. Apparently there are 50,000 and 150,000 species of the braconid wasp. The white egg-looking things are actually the cocoons of the wasps. The eggs were laid inside the caterpillar where the larvae fed until they emerged to make their cocoons.

Follow this link to see a video of the wasps emerging from their cocoons.

Varied Carpet Beetle

Here is a Varied Carpet Beetle that Dudeboy found crawling on his hand. They are a very common household pest. The larvae can cause a bit of damage to clothing, blankets, furniture, and the like. Apparently, they wreak havoc in museums.

The little booger (and I do mean little . . . an adult only measures 1.7 to 3.5 mm in length) would not stay still, so the photos are not as crisp as I would like.

Mottled Tortoise Beetle

Dudeboy and I are starting (with this post) a backyard bug series for the blog. Dr. J found this Mottled Tortoise Beetle on a leaf of Swiss Chard. Being ignorant of all things creepy crawly, we found our guy easy enough in a field guide on insects and spiders.

Apparently, the metallic gold fades with death. One bug site states, "this color shift is achieved by introducing, or withdrawing, moisture to the surface of the exoskeleton. When hydrated, a perfect reflecting surface is produced, but in the absence of the moisture the underlying colors become visible."


Darth Vader . . .

Creepy Close-Up of the Week

Look at the photos in order to find out what the creepy close-up of this week is . . .

Anton van Leeuwenhoek

Today for our science lesson we studied Anton van Leeuwenhoek and his microscope. We looked at hairs and grains of salt with our USB microscope.

Salt at x60

Salt at x200

Dude Boy hair x200

Merkin hair x200

Creepy Close-Up of the Week . . . Snow Melt

Creepy Close-Up of the Week . . . The Snail

Creepy Close-Up of the Week . . . The Hole

Dude Boy made out like a bandit this xmas. One of the items that we will be using extensively for home schooling is a Digital Blue USB microscope that was a gift from Tracy, Ralph, Phyllis and Charlie Dog. We will use the microscope for a weekly blog entry that we will call “Creepy Close-Up of the Week.” Our first installment is The Hole.
Merkin