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Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
Ask An Entomologist
@BugQuestions
Real Entomologists, @Stylopidae, @Ms_Mars, and @SciBugs answer your questions about bugs! Shoot us a question below!
Nov 6 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
For tonight's #DeepDive, let's talk about this meme popularized by folks like Casual Geographic and Wild Green memes.

Once you dig into the biology of poisons, it begins to fall apart pretty quickly.

More importantly, it's actually dangerous to people who work with animals. Image First, we really need to get into the definitions here because 'what is a venom' has been the subject of considerable debate.

One definition from the lit:

Arbuckle, K. (2017). Evolutionary context of venom in animals. Evolution of venomous animals and their toxins, 24, 3-31. Image
Aug 22, 2021 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
Why are people poisoning themselves with horse dewormer to treat COVID-19?

Let's explore ivermectin in this week's #DeepDive Ivermectin is a medication which is perscribed to combat parasites.

It jams itself into chloride channels, permanently turning the nerves off.

It can't do that to people, so it has a pretty good safety profile if you stick to the correct doses.
May 6, 2021 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
In 1875, a series of locust swarms the size of California ripped through the Western frontier

Blotting out the sun and causing the modern equivalent of $4 billion in damages, major famines followed in their wake

In 1902, just 25 years later, the species went extinct

#DeepDive The grasshopper, the Rocky Mountian locust, was once the most numerous animal on the planet.

So numerous, that entomologists didn't bother to collect them.

The only specimens came from a glacier in Montana, which has since melted b/c global warming

formontana.net/grasshopper.ht…
May 5, 2021 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
So, I've been thinking about how to properly respond to this...and there's really no way to do that because we will never be able to take our ecosystems from Earth to other planets.

What Musk proposes here is (as @Myrmecos pointed out) simply impossible. Let's say, for funsies, that we're able to build some kind of ark.

Well, that ark will only hold the critters humans know about. Maybe the occasional weirdo hanging out on someone else, but heavy bias.
Jun 9, 2020 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
When the first white settlers arrived in Montana, the native Salish people warned them to not settle the West side of the Bitterroot River.

Ignoring these warnings, a small group of people colonized that side of the river.

Three quarters-75%-died of a mysterious disease. Image The Bitterroot river carves out a 75 mile canyon in Western Montana.

It's not deep at all, averaging only about 3 feet. Animals and humans cross it very easily, and it's not really a barrier to any kind of travel.

The Salish believed evil spirits lived in the area.
Dec 31, 2018 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
For our last #DeepDive of 2018, let's talk about a mosquito that you'll be hearing a lot about in 2019.

Aedes aegypti is one of the most important disease vectors in the world.

So...what makes it a good vector, and why is it found worldwide? Ae. aegypti is a mosquito that's originally from sub-Saharan Africa, adapted to living in the holes in trees.

This genus has a unique egg laying behavior. They lay their eggs on surfaces above water, and those eggs are dormant until the hole fills up.

flic.kr/p/8gXkQf
Dec 30, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This question, inspired by our cricket packaging thread, is another excellent question.

Even if we're not releasing mosquitoes, why do we need to breed them in captivity?

There's a few reasons... The most important is a reference strain. Lots of mosquitoes were being bred in labs before pesticides were introduced, so we *know* they're not resistant to them.

If we're curious about a modern population, we can compare and use them as a standard.
Dec 30, 2018 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
In relation to that *amazing* cricket unboxing story comes this really awesome question.

How do you get 1,000 SUPER JUMPY crickets into a box in the first place?

Turns out, that's actually a surprisingly easy thing to do.

(Thread) There is no shortage of videos/guides on how to rear crickets.

It's pretty easy, and you can generally get a few thousand in a rearing box at a time. Essentially, you rear->ship.

...but how do you move them from the rearing box to a shipping box?

Dec 25, 2018 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
For our first #DeepDive since our hiatus, let's talk about a disease that we'll be hearing *a lot* about in our near future: Huanglongbing, or Citrus Greening disease.

Specifically, how do we know the disease even exists?

flic.kr/p/gUx9AN The inspiration for this one comes from an activist group who was trying to spread the idea that Huanglongbing (HLB and/or CG from here on out) was predominantly caused by herbicide damage.

Aug 26, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Yeah, we get pictures/videos of this occasionally.

Ants don't really do 'funerals'; even the dead in their own colonies are put into a garbage dump rather unceremoniously.

There's a handful of possibilities for this behavior... 1.) They may be attempting to bury it, especially if it's on a hard surface.

Lots of ants bury large food items to protect it from scavengers, other ants, and to absorb liquid which comes out from the prey.
Aug 25, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I think this problem hits at the heart of the issue when it comes to Eckbom's, because it's often not about infestations.

This deserves it's own thread to describe how complicated this problem is, and how poorly understood it is. So...first, I believe that these people are accurately describing their perceptions of medical issues.

Urban IPM Extension people can go through samples to find insects, inspect homes for infestations (bed bugs, fleas, etc), get someone to do skin scrapings for Scabies, etc.
Aug 25, 2018 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Scientists make their living using their brains to interpret data.

So what happens when that organ breaks, and a respected researcher becomes mentally ill?

In this week's second #DeepDive, let's explore the case of Jay Traver.

CW: Mental illness Jay Traver was one of the early entomological pioneers. Her career centered mainly around aquatic insects, specifically mayflies.

Most of her work-which is still cited to this day-revolved around describing the lifecycles of mayflies.
Aug 24, 2018 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
A new meme going around FB claims the WoodLouse Spider is a "deadly new species" wrecking havoc in the Southern US

It's a completely harmless spider, but it still has a neat story to tell.

For the first of this week's two #DeepDives, let's explore the biology of Dysdera crocata So, for the first tweet in this series, let's put these rumors to rest with data.

There's a lot of verified bites from D. crocata in the medical literature-which is rare. One person allowed themselves to be purposely bitten multiple times.

No deaths; everyone was just fine.
Aug 21, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
It is with a heavy heart that we announce that one of our colleagues, Vazrick Nazari, has been arrested for possession of child pornography.

We cannot tolerate exposing our followers to this sort of person, and have blocked him from our feed.

ottawacitizen.com/news/local-new… We did consult him for help with moth IDs here on Twitter, and although there's no way we could have known he was doing this, we still feel the need to apologize for exposing our readers to-and let's just put it as bluntly as possible-an alleged child predator.
Aug 18, 2018 • 27 tweets • 7 min read
With Glyphosate being in the news due to a recent court ruling, let's take this opportunity to explore the history of pest control in this week's #DeepDive.

It's a huge and complex topic, so the best we can do is a brief overview. It's not really known when humans started using pesticides.

The first agricultural societies began about 10,000 BCE, with several independent shifts around the world from relatively nomadic lifestyles to those tending crops.
Aug 12, 2018 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
For tonight's #DeepDive, let's talk a little bit about how insects use venom *and* poison for various things.

The divisions can be weird, and there's a lot of ways that venoms and poisons can be used!

Thanks to @RosemaryMosco for comic permission!

amazon.com/Birding-My-Fav… When we think of venom or poison, we typically think about the act of eating...and for good reason.

Venom/poisons are used to either help something eat, or keep something from being eaten.

flic.kr/p/asPjzA
Aug 6, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Super late to this party (sorry about this!). This is not a 'tarantula hawk', it is a paper wasp.

Tarantula hawks tend to be very "curly", with their antennae forming loops. Paper wasps tend to spread their wings like that, and aren't as "curly".

Thread below. With respect to the replies in @chrissyteigen's thread, it's easy to see how the whole situation can be confusing. If you see a bunch of people arguing, it's hard to know who knows their stuff.

Often times, the loudest people, or the most common replies seem to be correct.
Jul 15, 2018 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
So...this is an interesting question, and answering it gives us a chance to see how scientific names are created, why they change over time, and why they change over time.

The moth named in this article is actually Resapamea stipata.

bugguide.net/node/view/2035…

#DeepDive Resapamea stipata isn't one of the big corn pests that we're used to seeing, and I actually had to do some serious digging to find any agriculture information.

It's a very rare pest of corn; only found when corn is grown alongside its host by accident.

lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewconten…
Jul 8, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So...we're planning another history of science Deep Dive in the near future, and there's an *extremely weird* side story about Robert Oppenheimer of Manhattan Project fame that I wanted to highlight.

It turns out that he was a bit of a creeper.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert… Early on in Oppenheimer's career, he planned on doing a collaboration with Linus Pauling to figure out how chemical bonds worked.

However, he soon became smitten with Ava Pauling...who was Linus Pauling's wife.
Jul 7, 2018 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
For our second #Pride2018 thread, let's delve a bit deeper into same sex bug hookups.

Same sex mating, like in the picture below, has been studied pretty intensely in bed bugs, but also in the Fruit fly Drosophila.

So let's talk a little bit about Fruitless!

#DeepDive Fruitless is an insect-specific gene which turns on the developmental pathways needed for mating behaviors to happen in insects.

There's no equivalent in humans, so there's not really a way to make comparisons.
Jun 25, 2018 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Bed bug sex is incredibly violent, and never voluntary.

The male's penis is a dagger he uses to forcibly inseminate the female, puncturing her body wall and injecting sperm directly into the bloodstream.

So how does he know when he's found a female?

He doesn't.

#DeepDive Again, before we continue...bed bug sex does not resemble anything human sex should resemble.

See disclaimer: