Saturday, March 2, 2024

Twice the Wings, Triple the Legs: Get to Know Our Multitudinous Insect Neighbors



Firefly, tentatively Common Eastern
Firefly (Photinus pyralis)
For as long as I can remember, birds have been present in my life, from my granny’s cockatiels to the first bird I identified on my own as part of a high school biology class (a Common Grackle) to the gorgeous Sandhill Cranes and other birds that frequent the wetlands and areas around the Sycamore Greenway.

They are a gateway animal that help many people connect with nature, charismatic and highly visible (not to mention audible!) reminders that we are not alone in this world. We feed them, we watch them, hopefully we garden for them and advocate for them. It’s very easy to be captured by avian magic!

But as I spend more time on the trail, I find myself drawn to those small, often overlooked lives: our insect neighbors. Like birds (only with twice as many wings, and three times the legs!), they have their charismatic ambassadors in pollinators: colorful butterflies, industrious bees…insects that are useful, or at least not harmful to our interests. Yet they are such a tiny fragment of that class Insecta.

Variegated Fritillary

A massive — and tiny — universe

For as little attention as they receive from humans in day to day life, insects are a reminder that the world is both vastly more massive and infinitely smaller than we imagine. There are 433 species of birds that can be found in Iowa. There are 300-400 species of bees and wasps alone in our state…and thousands of moths! Add ants and grasshoppers, dragonflies and damselflies, ladybugs and lightning bugs, aphids and ambush bugs, mayflies and mosquitoes and mantids…and those are just a few of the big and…charismatic? groups of insects that most people have heard of.

Blue Dasher
How many others live unnoticed in the grass and under ground, under tree bark and high in treetops? iNaturalist lists almost 4000 species of insects documented in our state on the site…but again, that number certainly omits countless small, drab, inaccessible, and otherwise not-so-obvious little lives that aren’t easy to photograph.

Beyond simply identifying the insects that share our space, what do we really know about them? What do they eat? What do their lives look like? Do they undergo complete metamorphosis like butterflies and bees, or incomplete metamorphosis like crickets and cockroaches? What do they do in winter?

Seven-spotted Lady Beetle

For many people, the answer is, “Who cares? They’re [gross/creepy/pests/scary/etc.]”. Sure, I’ll admit that some insects — or even some life phases of insects — are a little bit each of those things. But they’re also fascinating, and there is so much to explore, especially when you’re starting from a knowledge base as minuscule as most of us have.

They are so different from everything we know! The way they experience the world, through compound eyes and simple ocelli and antennae. They have so many limbs! Six legs, usually two pairs of wings; some of them have highly specialized legs for running quickly, leaping far, grasping prey, digging in dirt. Some have mouthparts for piercing and sucking like cicadas, some for chewing like grasshoppers, some for mopping up pre-digested material like flies.

The diversity of insects is fantastic, and you’ll never run out of things to learn.

The mystery bonker strikes

I had thought I understood grasshoppers, confidently declaring that they overwinter as eggs, hatching in spring and early summer as tiny nymphs, then spending a several weeks growing through a series of four to six instars until they reached adulthood.

Until one balmy February afternoon, lurking in the grass while creeping on the cranes, a hefty insect bonked off the brim of my cap and landed, clinging to a blade of dry grass nearby. I wasn’t surprised at an insect in February, as I’d been seeing small winter craneflies out and about. But when I turned my camera lens on the mystery bonker, I was in for a surprise.

I saw a familiar body shape, with strong hind legs for jumping, a heavy pronotum behind its rounded head. A grasshopper? In February? How in the world could an egg have hatched and a nymph developed into an adult so quickly when most grasshoppers aren’t noticeable until June or July?

Not even knowing the species in order to investigate its lifecycle, I turned to a few trusty resources for insect identification: BugGuide, iNaturalist, and Insects of Iowa. iNaturalist and Insects of Iowa both use AI to suggest identifications, with BugGuide going a step further and offering a probability for its suggested IDs. Both pointed in the direction of genus Tetrix, but disagrees on the species (iNaturalist preferred Tetrix arenosa, Ornate Pygmy Grasshopper, whereas Insects of Iowa recommended Awl-shaped Pygmy Grasshopper, Tetrix subulate).

The mystery bonker, Tetrix sp.


The experts at BugGuide confirmed Tetrix, and also explained that grasshoppers in this family often overwinter as nymphs or adults. They also noted another common grasshopper, the Green-striped Grasshopper, in our area also spends the winter as an adult (or near-adult) and may be seen very early as well.

All this to say...you will never run out of things to learn if you spend some time with our insect neighbors! And though it is daunting, you can ease into their world by focusing on just one small part of it this spring and summer, maybe join a citizen science program dedicated to a small group. Butterflies and bumble bees are both easy to spot and have abundant resources to help you identify them and learn more about their lifecycles. There are also programs and resources for ladybugs and fireflies.

You don’t need to identify every insect down to species. Heck, you don’t have to identify them at all to observe their activity and appreciate their unique place in our neighborhood (though it helps to have a name, at least a genus, to learn about their lifecycle). Why not have a goal this year to make five new arthropod friends?

Sources/Additional Reading:

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