Explore Outdoors ~ bugs on blooms

 I spent a lot of time last month taking photos of bugs - a great many of them on flowers. Here are three that I particularly enjoyed.

 

Now it's your turn -

look for bugs on flowers

where you live 

 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Milkweed visitors

 I started growing milkweed in and around my garden for the Monarch caterpillars. It turns out that lots of things love my milkweed. Over the seasons I spy skippers, honey bees, fritillaries, a variety of native bees, ants, the Monarchs (of course) and other butterflies, and even hummingbirds who hover long enough to check out the flowers. There are milkweed bugs and milkweed beetles, ladybugs, and crab spiders that hang out under the leaves waiting to snatch an unsuspecting fly.

 

And then there's this beetle - a daylight firefly that doesn't light up the sky, and who is nibbling milkweed buds.

This week choose a flower that's in bloom and watch the insects that visit it. How many different kinds of insects do you see? And do any birds drop by? Are there spiders lurking on the blossom or hiding in the leaves?

Explore Outdoors ~ Shiny bugs

 

 Metallic green tiger beetles live in and around my garden. They are Six-spotted tiger beetles, and boy do they move fast! They fly fast and once they land, they run fast - up to more than 5 miles an hour, according to the Smithsonian. That translates to 120 body-lengths per second - which if you could do would be more than 400 miles and hour!

Take a close look at this beetle. 

What do you notice about its eyes? They are big! 

What do you notice about its legs? They are skinny and made for running!

If you see one around your house, what do you notice about the way they fly?

Tiger beetles are carnivores. They hunt and eat caterpillars and other insects that can be pests in gardens and on farms. 

This week, look for shiny insects. Take pictures or, if you don't have a camera, draw a picture and describe what you see.

 

Explore Outdoors ~ a Bee Beetle

 

This beetle sorta, kinda, maybe if you aren't looking too closely, looks like a bee. The stripes and fuzzy butt do mimic a bee. Look closely at the antennae, and you see that it's a scarab beetle. I found it hanging out on Queen Anne's lace, stuffing its face with blossoms. Queen Anne's lace is a great flower for pollinator habitat - wasps and flies and bees of all types visit.

This week, look for Queen Anne's lace along the roadside, at the edges of mowed areas in parks, in your back yard, or wherever you find weedy patches. Check out the insects gathering on top - and beneath the umbel (some like the shade).

Bugs are in Danger!

One last bug book for the month!

Bugs in Danger
by Mark Kurlansky; illus. by Jia Liu
176 pages; ages 8 - 12
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2019

“If we care about the health of our planet, we can’t choose which animals’ lives we want to save,” writes author Mark Kurlansky. “We have to care about them all.” And that includes insects, because they play an important role in the earth’s ecology. But there’s a problem: populations of fireflies, bees, butterflies, and ladybugs have been declining.

Kurlansky divides his book into four parts. In part one, he introduces the insect world, shows how bugs fit in and highlights their diversity. He talks about the biggest threats to insects: habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, and climate change. Then he talks about how insects evolved with plants – not just bees, but butterflies, beetles, and flies. And he shares the secret of why it’s so hard to sneak up on a fly.

Part two focuses on bees. There are a lot of kinds of bees, he writes. About 25,000 bee species have been catalogued and scientists have discovered another 40,000 that have yet to be named. He takes a close look at bee life, focusing on honey bees – which were introduced into North America in 1622 by Europeans.  At that time there were somewhere near 5,000 native bee species. Unfortunately, Kurlansky doesn’t address the impact of introduced honey bees on native bees. This is a shame, because native bees pollinate many of the crops we eat.

In the third part, Kurlansky introduces beetles as pollinators and beneficial (pest-controlling) insects. Native ladybug populations are in decline even as gardeners and farmers seek alternatives to insecticides. Even fireflies are vanishing.

Part four is all about the leps: butterflies and moths. He highlights monarchs, introduces endangered species, and discusses efforts to save butterflies. In the final chapters he mentions more insects that are endangered: dragonflies, grasshoppers, stoneflies. Individual insects may be small, but their impact in ecological systems is profound. A decline in insect population affects entire food webs.

The biggest problem, by far, is the impact of humans on natural ecosystems. There are, fortunately, things everyone can do to keep the world a safe place for bugs:

1. stop squashing bugs when you see them!
2. grow flowers to attract pollinators.
3. if you have fireflies, turn off floodlights at night.
4. Stop Using Pesticides!
5. leave leaf litter and twigs on the ground beneath trees.

Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we'll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Welcome to Pollinator Week

This week is National Pollinator Week ~ a time to celebrate pollinators and spread the word about what you can do to protect them.

Pollination happens when pollen is moved within a flower or is carried from one flower to another of the same species. It leads to fertilization which leads to apples or tomatoes or...

Here's the stuff you need to know: pollination is necessary for healthy and productive native and agricultural ecosystems.

Did you know that:

• About 75% of all flowering plant species need the help of  animals to move their heavy pollen grains from plant to plant for fertilization.
• About 1,000 of all pollinators are vertebrates such as birds, bats, and small mammals.
• Most pollinators (about 200,000 species) are beneficial insects such as flies, beetles, wasps, ants, butterflies, moths, and bees.

You can learn all about pollinators over at the Pollinator Partnership website where you can also download this cool poster.

And download fact sheets and more.

Beetle Battles!

Beetle Battles: One Scientist's Journey of Adventure and Discovery 
by Douglas J. Emlen
176 pages; ages 8 - 12
Roaring Brook Press, 2019

Doug Emlen has been obsessed with big weapons for as long as he can remember: mastodon tusks and triceratops horns, moose antlers and all other sharp and dangerous things on display at the natural history museum. Now, a professor of biology in Montana, he continues with his passion, studying antlers, horns, tusks. It just so happens that those weapons belong to beetles – and some of the species “…so small that their weapons only become apparent with a microscope,” he writes.

In this book, Emlen takes us into the field as he determines to find a bizarre animal to study in an exotic location. And that meant searching for beetles. The cool thing about beetle weapons: they come in so many sized and shapes. Some are stubby, some long and slender, some like crowbars, some like sabers. They may look small to us, but relative to their body size, beetle weapons can be huge. For example, mammoth tusks represent 3% of the animal’s body weight; a beetle’s horns can be 30% of its body weight.

Emlen’s book begins with great hopes to study a rhinoceros beetle – but (as happens in science) he could not find a large enough population to study. So he switched to dung beetles – of which there is no dearth of supply! Emlen takes readers along on his adventure to Barro Colorado, where we learn what it takes to “do science.” His days are filled with designing experiments, collecting data, analyzing date, rethinking the experiments (when they don’t work), and doing it all again.

What I like about this book: I like the journal entries interspersed through the book, and the wonderful photos. I like his no-nonsense tips on collecting monkey dung. And I really like how he follows the logic of animal weapons to military weapons and the arms race. There’s a wonderful chapter in which he compares his “sneaky beetles” to cyberhackers.

In Which Doug Reflects on Science and Writing

A couple months ago, between zoom classes and research, Doug Emlen found some time to share his thoughts on beetles and science. Turns out that he was born and raised in the Finger Lakes region of New York, and went to Cornell University. We chuckled about the fact that he is now “out west” and I, raised in the west, am now living a few miles away from his alma mater.

Smithsonian Archive

“My goal in writing Beetle Battles is to reach people and make science fun,” Doug said. He wrote to middle graders because he figured they might be interested in digging into the tough stuff. And confessed that he learned a lot in the process. (It’s definitely not the same as writing a text book!) Along the way, he discovered his writing voice.

“When someone suggested re-writing a section, I did it,” he said, noting that he had to invest time and energy into learning how to tell a narrative story. And sure, there’s a lot of science in this book – the topic is evolution of weapons – Doug wanted to make it an adventure.

“I had fun with this project,” Doug said, admitting that he rewrote the book a few times. But each time he found what worked better. What kept him going was the desire to make his story accessible to fourth through seventh-graders. “I feel it’s important that more of us [scientists] find a way to reach this age group.” He especially feels this urgency because of the level of science denial he sees in our society.

Writers are often told to “show, not tell,” but that “showing” turned out harder to do than Doug expected. There were so many questions along the way: should he give priority to the science or to the narrative. He chose the narrative, showing what it is like to be a scientist.

“I wanted to help kids understand the day-to-day life of a scientist in the rainforest, and how the rainforest smells.” While his journey as a scientist didn’t begin until he was in college, his curiosity was whetted when he was a kid traveling with his father, also a biologist. The cool thing about science, he says: “Basic research turns out to be important in ways you don’t expect.” Who would have expected research on dung beetles to reveal a deeper understanding of the arms race?

You can find out more about Doug and his dung beetle research here – in an interview he did with NPR’s Terry Gross a few years ago.

Find out more about Doug’s childhood here.

Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we'll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Explore Outdoors ~ Beetles!

This month, Archimedes is focusing on bugs - er, insects! So put on your bug-hunting shoes and start looking. Today it's BEETLES!

 Look for Beetles in your backyard and neighborhood. Beetles are a large and diverse group - you can see different kinds here. Find beetles that are:

• round
• long
• striped
• spotted
• glow-in-the-dark
• big
• small
• red
• green
• swimming in water

Take photos of the beetles you meet, or draw pictures of them.

Leaf Litter Critters and Doodlebugs

Fun new books about bugs illustrate today's themes: insects, nature, imagination.

Leaf Litter Critters
by Leslie Bulion; illus. by Robert Meganck
48 pages; ages 8-12
Peachtree Publishers, 2018

Between soil's grains of weathered rock.
Beneath its veiny leaves in scraps,
Amid its ribs of rotting sticks,
Soil's litter critters find the gaps.

 Welcome to the brown food web - banquet table for decomposers of all classes (and orders). From bacteria to beetles these poems get down and dirty about how dead stuff gets recycled into compost.

What I like about this book: Everything, from end pages to back matter. There are cool new words scattered about to describe the work of decomposers: shredding, chewing, humus-pooing... totally fun to read out loud! Every spread has science notes (sidebars) that go into detail about such things as duff, number of nematodes in soil, how fungi eat, pseudoscorpions - I really like the pseudoscorpions! Each poem not only focuses on a different litter critter, but also highlights a different style of poetry - which is explained in detail in back matter. There are linked cinquain, traditional stanzas, free verse, tanka, and more.

I love the back matter - a glossary, poetry notes, and hands-on field explorations. And there's a fun comparison of sizes of the critters, some compared to an earthworm and others compared to the head of a pin. So one could actually determine how many tardigrades can dance on the pin-head. And I love the end pages, with roly-poly pillbugs and sowbugs that march right onto the title page. What fun!.

 Do Doodlebugs Doodle? Amazing Insect Facts
by Corinne Demas and Artemis Roehrig; illus. By Ellen Shi
32 pages; ages 4-9
Persnickety Press (CLO), 2018

Do dragonflies breathe fire?

No, but they do have a long toothed jaw that can capture prey. Written in Q & A style, this book explores some of the questions kids might ask upon hearing an insect's name.

Do horseflies gallop? Do stink bugs take baths? Do yellowjackets wear yellow jackets? The response to each question is "no" - until we get to doodlebugs. Turns out they do doodle!

What I like about this book: It's fun and funny. And there's back matter! Each insect gets a bit more up-close-and-personal attention.

Beyond the Books: 
Pick up a pencil and doodle. You know you want to!

Go on a leaf litter field trip. All you need is a place where leaves have collected over a season or two, and a few other things. Here's a great list of stuff you'll need and how to find the litter critters.

Write a haiku about one of the litter critters you find - or to the leaf litter itself. Here's how.

 Today we're joining the STEM Friday roundup - and we're also joining others over at Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review copies provided by publishers.

How to Survive as a Firefly

I thought I'd sneak in two more bug book reviews before the weather gets too chilly for bug observations. (You can find more insect book reviews and activities here)

How to Survive as a Firefly
by Kristen Foote; illus. by Erica Salcedo
36 pages; ages 5-10
Innovation Press

"Up and at 'em, larvae." The drill sergeant calls out his young troops to get them ready for life as an adult firefly. He's been in the trenches for a year and a half, and he knows a thing or two...

First, there's tricks to getting through metamorphosis.
"Met-a-more-for-what?" ask the youngsters. Oh boy. This bug's got his work cut out for him. Thing is, you've gotta get ready to change because you just can't stay a larva forever. And if you're a firefly larva, that means COMPLETE metamorphosis - turning into a pupa and....

"Can we get a snack first?"

Written in dialog, this is a fun, fun, fun introduction to insect morphology, physiology, and Photinus pyralis - fireflies for you two-leggers. There are lessons on bioluminescence, flashy facts, and lots of humor - and of course, a pop quiz at the end.

Back matter includes Frequently Asked Questions and an author's note in which Kristen promises that no actual fireflies were harmed in the creation of the book. There's even a glossary.

Bugs! (Animal Planet chapter books)
by James Buckley, Jr.
112 pages; ages 7-10
Time Inc. Books, 2017

What makes an insect an insect? Great question, and that's the first thing you'll discover as you read through this book. Factual information on body parts, where they live, how they outnumber us (10 quintilliun insects; 7 billion people - they've got us a trillion to one!), and where they live. Chapters include: insect life cycles, what they eat, how they move around, and "buggy sense". There are chapters highlighting dragonflies, mantids, beetles, mosquitoes and other flies, butterflies and moths, and ants, bees, and wasps.

I like the "Bug Bites" - double-page spreads that focus on such things as army ants, and extreme insects. "Fact Files" give readers more details about the topics, and there are plenty of fact boxes scattered throughout. Curious bugologists will appreciate the list of resources for further study, and for those who want fast facts, there's an index.

Drop by the STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. Review copies from publishers.

Wednesday Explorers Club ~ the Beetles

The other day I was sitting on the porch looking at grass and there, scuttling between the blades, was a brilliant green beetle. We've got lots of beetles; there are coppery Japanese beetles nibbling leaves and flowers in my garden, orange beetles hanging out on milkweed, ladybird beetles in a rainbow of hues from yellow and peach to bright red, as well as darker beetles in blacks, browns, and purple.

There are more than 400,000 different kinds of beetles, and they are a diverse group. Go out and look at them and you'll see what I mean.

Besides the obvious - color and size - check out their antennae (you might need a magnifying lens). Some are long and thin, like filaments or strings of beads; others have clubs at the end or look like they have fingers that can open and close.

Look in different places: in puddles, wading pools, under rocks, on plants, in the grass. Check for beetles at different times of the day; some fly by night, and lightning beetles even make their own lights.

Here's more about beetles from San Diego Zoo. And if you're still wondering what's the difference between a beetle and a bug, check this out.

So head out to hang with the beetles for a day or a week. Take your notebook and colored pencils so you can capture their beauty.

Archimedes Notebook is taking a break from book reviews for a few weeks so I can spend this summer being a curious naturalist. I'll be heading out with my notebook and camera - so you might find some new Wednesday Explorers Club adventures posted. But for the most part I plan to indulge in non-digital exploration of my world. I invite you to turn off your computer for a few hours each week so you can explore the world around you.