The family Nepticulidae hold some of the smallest moths known, ranging from 3-8mm wing-tip to wing-tip. For a comparison I have imaged two moths above: the largest known – Coscinocera herculesthat tips the scales at nearly 9 inches, and one of the smallest (yes that tiny little speck below the Hercules moth) – Ectoedemia rubifoliella, also imaged below. The Nepticulidae are surprisingly diverse, with over 800 species described that likely represent only 10% of the actual diversity (Powell, 2009). In the United States we have only 80 species, of which 25 are known from the west. When you compare that diversity to the 100 or so species known from Great Britain, it’s clear that the US knowledge is vastly lacking. Actually, over 80% of all nepticulid diversity is known from Europe alone. A strange inversion when you consider that the neotropics are the world’s most diverse ecosystems yet have only 74 known Nepticulidae species! (Puplesis, 2000). Why is this so?
Ectoedemia rubifoliella 3.3mm
Stigmella ostryaefoliella 3.1mm
The European diversity can easily be explained away due to a high concentration of bored Lepidopterists. The Holarctic fauna is not the most diverse and it therefore has become the best understood on the planet, not to mention they have had a long history of gentleman entomologists dating back hundreds of years. But the rest of the Nepticulidae diversity remains a mystery because they are really, really small, hard to spread, and difficult to identify as adults! I have actually had little practice or success with mounting Nepticulidae, and the above specimens should be credited to Dr. Dave Wagner. The very few that I do have in my collection are simply pinned and un-spread; and even the pinning proves hard enough when a slip of the hand can obliterate the entire specimen. Apparently the best method for mounting is to knock them down in the freezer and pin them while they are still alive. Not the most humane, but the only way to keep the moth from drying before your eyes and becoming impossible to manipulate. As hard as the adults are to manage, the larvae are rather characteristic in that most are leaf miners – they feed on the material between the leaf epidermises. This lends to the common name of “leaf blotch miners” because you can see the translucent patches the moths have ‘mined’ out from inside the leaf. Not only is each species rather host-specific, but they tend to form very characteristic mine patterns within the leaf. So if you find a leaf mine and you know the species of plant, chances are you can find out the species of Nepticulid within it (however not all leaf mines are nepticulids, there are lots of other insects that do this as well). Rearing these moths are also rather simple, all you have to do is pop the leaf in a bag and wait for the moth to finish feeding. One caterpillar only needs one leaf (or tiny section of leaf) – but care has to be taken to keep the leaf green while the caterpillar feeds. If the leaf dies, so will the caterpillar. Because of this paradoxical ability to identify the mines and not the adults there is a surprising amount of ecological research done on them, especially since a few pose threats to commercial crops. The first image below clearly illustrates the caterpillar feeding within the leaf – and the trail of frass it has left behind.
If you look at the above images of mines it’s not all that difficult to imagine structures like this fossilizing. And amazingly, they have! The first image below (Labandeira et al., 1994) shows a variety of leaf mining Nepticulidae mines (and a Gracillariidae) from the mid-Cretaceous (97 million years ago). The spectacular thing about leaf mines is that you can get down to genus level and sometimes even species. The authors were able to differentiate between the nepticulid genera Stigmella and Ectoedemia based on the patterns preserved in the fossils; patterns we still use to help separate genera today. The bottom illustration is from a mine discovered in Japan that is only around 8 million years old (Kuroko, 1987).
(Labanderia, 1994)
(Kuroko, 1987)
References
Kuroko, H. (1987). A Fossil Leaf Mine of Nepticulidae (Lepidoptera) from Japan. Bulletin Sugadaira Montane Res. Cen., No.8, 119-121.
Labandeira, C. (1994). Ninety-Seven Million Years of Angiosperm-Insect Association: Paleobiological Insights into the Meaning of Coevolution Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 91 (25), 12278-12282 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.91.25.12278
PUPLESIS, R., DIŠKUS, A., ROBINSON, G., & ONORE, G. (2002). A review and checklist of the Neotropical Nepticulidae (Lepidoptera) Bulletin of The Natural History Museum. Entomology Series, 71 (01) DOI: 10.1017/S0968045402000032
Powell, J.A., Opler, P.A. (2010). Moths of Western North America – by J. A. Powell and P. A. Opler Systematic Entomology, 35 (2), 347-347 DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-3113.2010.00525.x
The early Cambrian seas (542-488 million years ago) had a plethora of strange and bizarre creatures almost unimaginable to even the best sci-fi dreamer. As possibly one of the precursors to the Arthropoda (also Onychophora and Tardigrada), the lobopodian lineages represent a strange group of “worms with legs” that once roamed the ancient sea beds. Exactly how close they are to the true arthropods is up for debate (tree below), but this newly discovered genus and species, Diania cactiformis (walking cactus), represents the most well sclerotized and arthropod-like of any known to date.
This whopping two and a half inch monster helps us understand the transition from a soft bodied worm like creature into a hard-shelled arthropod; it also gives a better impression of how diverse these lobopodian appendages may have been. It’s a fascinating question because the advantage of jointed, sclerotized, limbs was one that exploded and diversified amongst the creatures we know today. Exactly how this happened is not any closer to being resolved, but it appears as if the legs of this animal were sclerotized before the body (arthropodization vs. arthrodization). One small fossil discovered and yet another small insight into evolutionary history.
References
Liu, J., Steiner, M., Dunlop, J., Keupp, H., Shu, D., Ou, Q., Han, J., Zhang, Z., & Zhang, X. (2011). An armoured Cambrian lobopodian from China with arthropod-like appendages Nature, 470 (7335), 526-530 DOI: 10.1038/nature09704
Oops, looks like I missed my first ‘blogoversary’! Monday the 21st was the one year turning point for my blog; and I’m incredibly happy to have spent the last year sharing some of my ramblings with all of you. I’ve somewhat lost track of how many hits I’ve had since I moved everything over to The Southern Fried Science Network, but it’s more than I ever could have ever imagined as a newbie blogger twelve months ago. When I look over the last year a few posts come to mind as my favorite:
Shockingly, stunningly, amazingly; the monarchs are back (but not co-staring Julianne Moore). OK, it’s not that amazing; I pretty much predicted this would be the case last March when everyone was running around terrified because the butterflies hit an all time low (since counting started in 1993). Actually I believe I said “I will bet anything on the population making a recovery in the years to come…”. So, how about anything = beer, and who’s buying?
Perhaps I am celebrating a bit early. Maybe the news isn’t so good that I can run a victory lap quite yet, but preliminary surveys look like the overwintering populations have doubled this year. That’s a pretty good start, but we still haven’t hit the 18 year average (not an impressive statistic). But don’t misread my intentions – I’m not claiming this one year somehow has proven the decline insignificant. It may or may not be, all we can really say is that it’s just another data point. The fact is that our dataset is very weak and there are factors such as local weather that create massive margins of error. It’s also nearly impossible to extrapolate from what little data we do have. So is the monarch a very good “canary in the coal mine”?
I would say poor at best. How is one insect species that roosts in massive singular colonies a good indicator of our ecosystem? Yes, they migrate from all reaches of North America, but their recent high mortality rates have nothing to do with the lives they lived outside of Mexico. Perhaps if millions of butterflies died of some strange toxin we could heed the warning, but such was not the case. Those poor monarchs are at the mercy of winter storms that are likely to become more frequent with a warming climate. So can we say that climate change is negatively impacting these animals? Turns out we can’t, at least not yet. If this were to be so then our data is telling us that the 1996-1997 season was a really healthy one where clouds of pollution parted and nature rejoiced. Did the 2010 season then become a post apocalyptic blade-runner-esque world where acid rain melted the orange off of butterfly wings? Clearly not. Neither climate nor pollution were drastically different in those years. The monarchs just had a really good year followed by some really bad ones. Maybe we should just find a better canary if we’re trying to blow the whistle on global warming or deforestation.
As a last thought here is a video from the above story. Just as you’d expect, it’s over dramatized and a bit hilarious.
A softball for this GOP challenge. This image comes care of the Victoria Advocate (TX paper) – with a poorly written article about butterflies. This image flop is pretty easy, but for extra points who can tell me what else is incorrect in the text?
I’ve uploaded a new header as you can see – how does it look? I’m playing around with the settings, but please let me know if the moth on the right gets cropped awkwardly, and what your screen resolution is if that is the case.
If you happen to be living out in Yolo, Solano or Sacramento counties you should head out with a net. Dr. Art Shaprio has offered for the 40th year his cabbage white butterfly competition. If you are the very first person to catch a cabbage white (Pieris rapae – invasive) before Dr. Shapiro he will buy you a pitcher of beer! You have to deliver the specimen alive to the receptionist in the Department of Evolution and Ecology to confirm the identification (I assume to prove you didn’t just save last year’s dead butterfly and cheat).
Over the last 30 years the butterflies have been emerging earlier – two weeks on average now. You better hurry, the first cabbage white of 2010 was collected on January 27th.
I did, and it sounds like it was written by Sarah Palin. Actually, I came across this meta analysis of over 22,000 horoscopes over on Information is Beautiful. It’s spectacular – but I’ll run down a few points here:
From these 22,000 horoscopes came a chart of the most common words (bottom), 90% of which happen to be exactly the same regardless of your sign. David McCandless also generated a meta prediction using these most common words. It goes something like this.
“Ready? Sure? Whatever the situation or secret moment enjoy everything a lot. Feel able to absolutely care. Expect nothing else. Keep making love. Family and friends matter. The world is life, fun and energy. Maybe hard. Or easy. Taking exactly enough is best. Help and talk to others. Change your mind and a better mood comes along…“
Everyone, hopefully, should know that horoscopes and astrology have always been steaming piles. Seeing the data like this just makes it that much easier to laugh in the face of wackiness. I also love McCandless’s interpretation of star traits. I’m a “gemini” (or at least was), and the most common words for me are “party, stay, issues and listen certainly”. Interpreted as “emotionally disturbed party animal who never says no”. Love it.
You might have also heard recently about the scandalous story of wrong star assignments. As it turns out our earth wobbles slightly in orbit; meaning the stars are not exactly where they are in the night sky tonight as they were a few millennia ago when the zodiac was first derived. So if the stars mold who you are at birth then they do so based on where they are now and not 2,000 years ago. Surprise – many people should now be assigned to a new sign! Ooooh scandal! The science of astrology didn’t even come close to predicting this (it greatly pained me to even mockingly call astrology science). But that’s OK it won’t perturb them, they are well adapt at dodging hard science and spinning BS, and have been doing so for hundreds of years. Back in 1781 astronomers threw a wrench at the heads of astrologers with the discovery of Uranus – and a generation later Neptune appeared on the scene. Oh don’t worry! Astrologers fudged their own numbers, whined about different “charts and systems” and snuck in two extra star signs to agree with the world as science understood it. Oh, and never mind the rest of the billion, billion stars and planets…
Yet, I can still hear a faint cry down the street here in Berkeley – someone slaps hand to head and exclaims “oh now it makes sense, I was a Taurus all along!”
You should go explore his blog and take a closer look at the analysis. Better yet, if you have a friend who loves their astrology, you should forward this in their direction.
I have always known that in many places of the world, especially off the beaten track, caterpillars of moths and butterflies are on the menu. From Africa to Australia there are dozens of species that might taste good enough to be reasonably edible or even delicious. But here in the US insects rarely if ever make it onto our tables (at least not to our knowledge) – but occasionally into our bottles. I’m sure that many of you have seen the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle: which is actually the caterpillar of the Cossid moth Hypotpa agavis. I have even heard reports that migrant Mexican workers dig up native plants on their lunch break to snack on the large pink larvae of a related moth; probably in the genus Comadia. Despite my previous knowledge, I was a bit surprised by a recent article discussing the massive diversity of Lepidoptera used as staple food sources throughout Mexico.
For this issue of the genius of the press, who can tell me what’s wrong with this article? It’s pretty subtle, but a clear mistake, especially for LiveScience.
Ectoedemia rubifoliella 3.3mm
Stigmella ostryaefoliella 3.1mm
Stigmella aceris (link to image credit)
Stigmella paradoxa (link to image credit)
(Labanderia, 1994)
(Kuroko, 1987)
