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The larvae and pupae of Maculinea rebeli (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae), a threatened blue butterfly, produce a scent made by red ant larvae (Myrmica sp.) allowing them to infiltrate the nest. Researchers found that the larvae and pupae also make a ticking sound which mimics the song of a red ant queen, causing the ant workers to give the developing butterfly preferential treatment and protection (Barbero et al, 2009).

The original article (abstract only) was published in Science but you can read a summary on the New Scientist website.

Reference:

Barbero F., Thomas J.A., Bonelli S., Balletto E. and Schönrogge K. (2009) Queen Ants Make Distinctive Sounds That Are Mimicked by a Butterfly Social Parasite. Science 323: 782-785

ScienceDaily continues to be a good source of insect-related news with one particular study catching my eye earlier this week:

A recent study by Gross et al (2009) looked at the counting ability of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, by using a series of numerical patterns in branched mazes. The researchers found that bees trained with a sugar reward could tell the difference between patterns containing two or three elements by counting, rather than remembering the patterns. For a control the researchers altered the colour and layout of the elements in the patterns.

Without any further training the researchers found that the bees could differentiate between patterns containing three or four elements but could not differentiate between four and five, or four and six.

The authors also note that “this is the first report of number-based visual generalisation by an invertebrate”.

I wonder if octopuses can count…

Reference:

Gross H.J., Pahl M., Si A., Zhu H., Tautz J. and Zhang S. (2009) Number-Based Visual Generalisation in the Honeybee. PLoS ONE 4(1): e4263. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004263

One of the species I took back from the Phasmid Study Group meeting was Mnesilochus sp., originally from Mount Apo in the Philippines. I was looking for species which at privet as I no longer have access to as many food plants as I did last and was informed that Mnesilochus will eat practically anything.

Like most phasmids you can easily see sexual dimorphism: the female is much larger than the male.

Mnesilochus sp. male (left) & female (right)

The female seems especially cryptic as she has a nobbly bit on her abdomen and usually angles her thorax when resting.

Mnesilochus abdominal extrusion

They have already started laying eggs which I shall photograph when I have better light.

Entomology News: Today BBC News had a top story titled ” Liberia worms swarm ‘emergency’ “. For a moment I was really curious, thinking they were talking about annelids before realising they meant army worms, the vernacular for particularly voracious caterpillars! The swarm of caterpillars is the worst Liberia has seen in over 30 years and they are currently undertaking aerial spraying in an attempt to control the insects.

I came across a more positive story from Monash University on some research undertaken by Dr Adrian Dyer on the responses of bees to human faces. They found that the bees could ‘average’ different views of the human face (0° and 60°) to recognise a previously unseen facial angle (30°). The research team think the study may help with the construction of AI facial recognition.

Update: You can read the full research article on bee vision at the PloS ONE website.

An article on ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) joins two other (Chrysiridia rhipheus and cochineal/Dactylopius coccus) insect related featured articles on Wikipedia.

The Biology section of the featured articles is dominated by dinosaurs and things with feathers or fur and needs more insect content!

Following on from two earlier posts (first post, second post) I tried the three invertebrate snacks that I got from Selfridges and, using the correct binomial names (as two of the names were wrong on the packaging), here are my thoughts:

I was disappointed with the very mild curry taste of the thai green curry crickets (Acheta domesticus) which didn’t taste like thai green curry at all, more like mild curry powder, but had an inoffensive taste overall. This was an interesting species to try because it is commonly sold in pet shops as reptile/invertebrate food and will happily live on many things (including vegetable waste) making it a viable invertebrate to culture for human food.

Edible insect: chocolate covered scorpion

The chocolate covered scorpion (Mesobuthus martensii) was fairly pleasant; the crunchy texture of the scorpion went well with the chocolate, making it feel like a biscuit. There was a very subtle taste of something savoury but it was masked by the taste of the chocolate. I would eat these again and so would my girlfriend.

Edible insect: giant toasted ant

A number of my friends tried the giant toasted ants (Atta cephalotes) and none of them liked the taste or the smell. I was the only one that liked them but they do have a very strong and distinctive taste, so I can see why they didn’t get universal taste bud acclaim! I think the packet description is fairly accurate, “… similar to crispy bacon with an earthy taste”.

I had a good time trying these and I intend to pursue the topic of insects as a food in further posts. If you’re interested in reading a bit more about insects and food now, have a read of Bug Girl’s latest post on cochineal, an insect derived food colouring.

I shall add some photos to this post soon.

Earlier in December I wrote about a new range of snacks that Selfridges had started to sell, and during a Christmas trip to London I visited Selfridges to buy some. I (and some friends) will be eating them soon to provide you some more photos and to describe how they taste.

Tenebrio molitor lollypops: part of the Selfridges display of invertebrate snacks (Copyright Elizabeth Livermore)

All of the snacks were from edible, an alternative online food shop, and were a little cheaper to buy at Selfridges than from the edible website.

I checked the packaging and found that the species names did not follow the proper protocol for binomial nomenclature: all names were either entirely in lowercase or uppercase, and none were italicised. The class of the scorpion was listed incorrectly as ‘INSECTA’ when it should have been Arachnida.

From left to right: Giant toasted ants, £12.45; Thai green curry crickets, £2.44; and a chocolate covered scorpion, £4.64.

I also investigated the species names (Giant toasted ants: Atta cephalotes, Thai green curry crickets: Acheta domestica, and the chocolate covered scorpion: Buthus martensii) and from my brief searches, A. cephalotes seems correct but the other two are synonyms.

I checked A. domestica in the Orthoptera Species File and it is listed as an unjustified emendation of A. domesticus. I found an entry for Mesobuthus martensii on the UniProt Taxonomy database where it listed B. martensii as a synonym.

I guess edible are not quite as good biologists as you would hope.

Spore is a game that is built around creating your own content and sharing it with others. Whilst there are some aspects of the game that I wish had more depth I still have fun making creatures in the editor (and later populating worlds with them).

Today I decided to try and recreate Rhogogaster viridis, a sawfly (Hymenoptera: Tenthredinidae) which you can see in a photograph from an earlier post.

I began with a basic body shape by altering the initial randomly generated one and adding some eyes.

Creating an insect body in Spore

I then altered the colour a little to add some black before attaching some legs, mouthparts and antennae.

A Spore sawfly with legs, antennae and mouthparts.

The final body part to add were the wings which completes the Spore sawfly!

Rhogoviridis - a sawfly made in Spore

Whilst it’s not quite a perfect likeness I think it’s pretty close.

Expect to see more Spore insects.

I was checking the BWARS website for 2009 events and found a link to Hymettus, a website for the conservation of British and Irish Hymenoptera.

They have conservation information sheets for bumble bees, a grassland cuckoo bee (Nomada armata) and a saltmarsh bee (Colletes halophilus). These information sheets contain some general biology, the conservation status and global and local distribution. They also have reports which cover a range of species.

If you’re interested in insect conservation or Hymenoptera then you should have a look at the website.