News Snippets: Grapes, Ginger, Beetles and Butterflies

Three snippets that I found interesting today follow: two are about food and one about butterflies. The second one also has to do with beetles. Woo, invertebrates! Could my day get any better?

• Grapes made the news again. Well, actually, resveratrol did. I have posted about this interesting compound a few times on Potspoon! and I am still waiting on the reveratrol beer. Well, besides the fact that this compound is good for its anti-aging properties, it also appears to display anti-obesity and anti-insulin resistance. You can read the article here. 

Fig 1. Yum

•  In an article published in Insect Conservation and Diversity, good news was found for the UK's incredible stag beetle and good news come in the form of a root. Ginger is useful in the kitchen, sure, but it is also useful as bait to lure stag beetles. Researchers have also devised a method using tiny microphones to hear larvae underground. This all helps determine numbers of the rare beetle and can aid in its conservation. You can read more on ScienceDaily as well.

Fig. 2 Not the right species of butterfly, but a butterfly nonetheless

• Squinting bush brown butterflies, Bicyclus anynana, seem to have a bit of role reversal in mating behaviors. This confusion only seems to occur when changes of weather happen. When it's cool, females act as the aggressors and flash their wing patterns. In this species the males and females have the same eye spots, but the UV patterns change dependent on temperature. In warm moist conditions, the males have more flashy designs while the females are dull, but when the temperature drops, new males and females are opposite. It's the females that are flashier and spend time displaying. You can read more here.

 Hope you all are having an awesome Monday!

Photos: Grapes from Google Creative Commons search and butterfly from Paraflyer's photostream. Both lisenced through Creative Commons.

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Monarch Medicine

Fantastic article on ScienceDaily about monarchs medicating their offspring. You all know how much I love butterflies. Pretty amazing that the host plants the larvae eat can actually reduce parasitic infection. Go inverts!

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An Audubon Tour

Today I had the extreme fortune of touring the Virgin Islands chapter of the Audubon Society. In case you forgot, I do work at the Butterfly Farm and part of my job is giving people "educational guided tours going through the amazing life-cycle of a butterfly."

Today's tour wasn't too different except that my group was ridiculously interested in the science, local host plants, importance, etc. My kind of tour. The best part was the applause. Ok, I admit... I like when my tours clap for me and it does happen a bit (I can be a bit of a ham) but this was special. You see, the Audubon Society knows the native flora and fauna of the area. They know how every animal plays a role and do what they can to help. These people already know a lot. It means a lot knowing that they thought I did well.

The Audubon Society has been around. They do all kinds of nifty things to get people in touch with nature. I know a few of my readers even participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count. I like the societal aspect of this. I usually explore nature on my own, but I quite like this.

Besides TAS, what organizations or groups do you belong to that help you get out there? I have helped with 4-H in the past and that was fun. Do you like societal outings, or just explore on your own?

This photo of the Owl butterfly (taken at the St. Thomas Farm by the way!) is licensed to melingo wagamama on flickr via Creative Commons. The original photo is here.

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A Slight Altercation

Work was a bit interesting yesterday. I work someplace people from all walks of life visit. If you don't remember, I work at a butterfly enclosure. It is no surprise that I have people call me a liar, a genius, a Satanist, an entertainer, and more. Why all the weird and differing responses? Well, some people do not like what I have to say. My tours tend to be a bit more sciencey than most of the other tours. I don't mean to do this, it is just a part of who I am. Most of the people I tour (a solid 98% I'm sure) applaud, tell me I did great, or tip. The other 2%?

Well, they like to argue. Interrupt. Ask religious questions. Try to stump me. These are people who think science is the downfall of civilization and really only came in to see some butterflies. Most butterfly enclosures have a few signs up, but not guided tours explaining the life cycle and other science things. You can tell the type from a mile away. They pretend they don't want to do your tour, then saunter in when explaining the ooze at the bottom of the chrysalis and start to rail you.

Yesterday, it happened to one of my co-workers instead. This co-worker is not usually one to give too much science info. Well, a certain tourist really laid into him. Proceeded to ask us (me and manager lady) questions in the gift shop after the tour to see if co-worker guy and our stories matched up. I had to try to explain the common ancestor theory used in cladistics and the like to this guy. He kept saying things like, "well, it still just a theory." Of course, I cannot keep my mouth shut and had to explain to him that everything we do in science is just a theory because the basis of the scientific method is to falsify ourselves.

We are constantly trying to prove ourselves wrong! Glad I got that off my chest...

Ok. My heart was pounding and I could feel the anxiety kicking in, big time. This is usually when things get really heated, after all. Not the first time I had to explain to someone that science is not evil. Not the first time I pointed out that science gave you polyester blend so you can keep buying cheap clothes at Conglomo-Mart. Or that science is what gives you the ability to watch TV, take a cruise, use a cell phone, walk comfortably in sneakers, sleep on a great mattress and more. I kept smiling. I regurgitated tons of info from evolutionary biology and genetics in a way everyone could understand... and he said "ok!"

I almost fainted.

This never happens. My arguments are getting stronger. He actually said I made sense. I really almost fainted. My manager was so happy she had a pseudo-biologist on board yesterday because she was ready to just write it off as another "that's just your opinion, sir" moment. She said I handled it well. I don't usually get told I "handle things well." Quite the opposite, in fact. She actually was glad I was there because she learned things!

I am pleased.

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Mini Paintings

I realized that my posts have been really formal recently and haven't let all my friends out in the blogosphere in on what has been going on down here. It turns out St. Thomas is NOT recession proof. While the number of people visiting has stayed about the same, sales all over are down and that means fewer (somehow) hours for Mimi. This is really bad because a certain male figure in the house has a commission based sales job. Mimi to the rescue, I hope! I have mentioned in passing that I do paint silliness every now and again. Surprisingly, in the middle of this economic disaster, the one thing people really want to buy is something locally made. My little side hobby of painting bags and mini canvases has had quite the surge in the past few weeks, so just to make myself feel better about the sorry state of affairs we are in now, I am going to show you some pictures of a few of the things I have done so far.


The picture quality is not that great, but they are from my cellular phone. They are little 2" x 4" canvases. No pictures of bags, sorry.

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Potspoon! Making an Emerging Cage

Click to Play

This is a quasi-instructional video teaching you how to make a simple "pupa box" using a shoebox, paper towels, glue, and pupae of course! In this episode I am hanging glorious monarch butterfly chrysalis. Make your own and save some butterflies!

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Update on Pupa

I finished the temporary emerging cage for the pupae. They are all hung and ready to go. I will hopefully post pictures as they emerge (if I am here). I am making a mini video on how to make one of your own so you can be a butterfly defender, too. It should be up tonight... I hope. I know the "other" videos I promised haven't been posted, but this is short and not really "wildlife" related, so editing was a breeze. Oh, I am SO making a butterfly defender logo/award. There are some of you that really deserve one already! Don't the pupae look happy and cozy? By the way, singular or plural is pronounced PEW-puh, although some sticklers pronounce the plural form PEW-pee but I think that sounds gross.


emerging cage by M Moya is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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Saving Pupa

Today was a quiet day at work, but after work was fantastic. I went to my favorite beach, Brewers Bay, out by the university and came across something very exciting... I was looking at all the lovely monarch caterpillars munching on milkweed and lo and behold, PUPAE. Pupa is a fancy way of saying the third stage of an insects life. In the butterfly life-cycle, this is known as the chrysalis. It is a cocoon for moths... well there are a few exceptions, but I digress. These were lovely monarch chrysalises. Being the butterfly defender that I am, I had to take them to save them from unknown fate. We are actively breeding butterflies in St. Thomas, so we try to save the pupae (plural for pupa) in case they fall off the plant, get eaten, etc. Aren't they lovely? See the beautiful gold crown? That's why they are called monarchs! I got quite the haul. Did you see how many were on one leaf? So now I will mount them since they need to hang and keep them till they emerge and release them. I am so excited!

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Sexless Insects

Since most of you may not know, I work at The Butterfly Farm. This is a 10,000 sq. ft. enclosed tropical garden PARADISE for many species of neo-tropical butterflies. The location in St. Thomas is just over a year old but we have already had a great impact on the community and have helped to start local butterfly breeding programs at various schools and educate people on backyard butterfly gardening. This will explain why I am such an avid reader of Q's Corner, Bug Girl's Blog, and My Wildlife Sanctuary. You three give me hope for butterflies the world over... and your pictures, oh my!

So since so many of you love butterflies so much, I am going to give you a very brief rundown on our caterpillar friends and why they are important even though many think they are a nuisance.... Bug Girl, you are the expert so feel free to correct me.

Parthenos sylvia, Common: Sylvia or Clipper


I have no caterpillar pictures today, as I am horrid at taking them, but I am posting some of my friends from the farm.



Caterpillar Facts:

First off, we sciencey types refer to them in this stage as "larva." I always tell people it is because caterpillar has too many letters to type!

1. Caterpillars (on average, mind you) have eight pairs of fleshy appendages that most consider legs. Really only the first 3 pairs are legs. We are trying to convince ourselves that they are insects and insects have 6 legs, like butterflies do. The other legs are "prolegs."
   
2. Caterpillars have 6 pairs of very pathetically weak eyes (ocelli) right around their mouth so all they can see is the food in front of them. This is good since they are voracious eaters. Compare this to the butterfly again and notice butterflies have 2 very complex compound eyes on either side of their head.
3. Since all they do is eat for 2 weeks, they are sexless (hence the title of this post). No need for males and females if you aren't mating!
   
4. Caterpillars can consume 20 times their weight in food a day. That is approximately half a ton for an average 7 year old.
   
5. Since they eat so much, they also "poop" a lot. We call this frass. Frass is good for your garden! It's free fertilizer. Believe you me, any of you with monarchs around know, monarchs make A LOT of frass.
   
6. Caterpillars grow approximately 2,700 times their original size in their average lifespan of 2 weeks. If we had a newborn eight pound baby that ate as much as a caterpillar, that baby would be over 20,000 pounds at the end of 2 weeks. That is 10 tons of baby fat!
   
7. MOST IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW!!!!! Caterpillars all turn into butterflies or moths. I know this seems obvious, but it bugs me (no pun intended) when people come in and tell me they hate caterpillars and kill them all the time but then the next breath mention how they don't see as many butterflies as they used to.... gee, really?!?!
   

The fact is, caterpillars will destroy certain plants, to an extent. We know what these plants are, so do yourself a favor and plant an area that is butterfly friendly... sacrificial plants, if you will. I don't mean a butterfly bush here guys. I mean host plants. You find a caterpillar on your dill, you move it to the dill in the butterfly safe zone. They can't hurt you and they will stay there since there is food. This will lead to more butterflies in your area because you will not only have flowers for them to get their alcohol (more on that later), but host plants to lay their eggs on. This, in turn helps to pollinate your garden and others the world over, increasing the overall genetic diversity of plants, making them stronger.

Butterflies are super-pollinators. Without them, we would starve to death.



















Idea leuconoe, A rare butterfly in the wild, breeds well in captivity
Common: Paper Kite, Tree Nymph, Rice Paper Butterfly







P. sylvia and I. leuconoe by M. Moya is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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