Stick Insect Amnesty

By Sarah Moore

Do you have some stick insects or walking stick bugs that you inherited from a classroom, or got as a pet, and that you don’t want any more? Did you know that Pacific Science Center has permission from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to accept any non-native stick insects?


The USDA fears that there are many non-native stick bugs that have the potential to become naturalized and harmful pests. We encourage stick bug owners to retire their colonies by bringing them to us. If they are able to escape into the outdoors, these insects are invasive and have the potential to severely harm the environment. Many species of stick insect are parthenogenic, meaning capable of reproducing without males. In other words, eggs from females are viable without being fertilized. So in addition to careful containment of the insect, all their bedding must be destroyed – ideally by freezing. (Do not compost!)

In some states, the USDA has dealt with colonies of these insects being released into new habitats and becoming established. We want to make sure that Seattle and its environs don’t have this happen. We will cheerfully accept any stick insects that are brought to us.

If you would like to bring us your stick insects, please contact us at feedback@pacsci.org. We will make arrangements for you to bring them in to the Science Center.
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Why is That Cage So Dirty??

If you look at some of the arthropod cages in the Insect Village, you might think that Animal Care is not very good at keeping the enclosures clean. Actually something else is going on that’s necessary in taking care of our animals.

Some of the terrariums, especially the ones that contain a whole colony of cockroaches, have a stripe of a grimy looking white film on them. That is a substance called Fluon®, a synthetic fluoropolymer that is used for a variety of applications. So why do we paint it on our cages? Because some insects have very sticky feet!

Fluon® acts as a slippery lubricant barrier between the insect habitat at the bottom of the cage and the lid at the top. Animals like our Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches can actually climb the smooth plexiglass walls of our cages and are only foiled by that slippery band of Fluon® that surrounds the cage.

When taking care of a colony of insects, containment is always a main concern. We want to know where our animals are at all times. And thanks to Fluon®, we can reliably know that these insects are staying at home.


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Blacklighting!

by Brianna Todd, Lead Animal Caretaker

Last week, I wrote a blog about my awesome trip to Rio Rico, Arizona for the Insects in Education and Conservation Conference. I learned and saw a lot during that trip, but there was one conspicuous story that I didn't mention at all. It was definitely the craziest thing I witnessed on the trip, and for that reason it merits its own story.



Have you ever heard of blacklighting? If you know an entomologist, mention blacklighting to them and watch their eyes light up. Like I said in my previous article, I am not a bona-fide entomologist, so I had never heard of it before I went on this trip. It was about six hours into our "afternoon excursion" that the term "blacklighting" caught my attention. It went something like this;

Serious entomologist guy: "You know, we've seen a lot of bugs today, but I feel like we saw more last year."
Trip leader: "Yeah, but wait until it gets dark. Then we can start blacklighting and the bugs will start swarming."
Me (sweaty, blistered, exhausted): "Say what? Dark? Black lights? Swarming bugs???" Fortunately I didn't say any of this out loud or I may have been banned from entomology for life.

This was the point when I realized I was in for the long haul, and that those sack dinners we had packed weren't for "just in case". When you find yourself out in the middle of the Sonoran desert, and your only ride home is a team of entomologists who couldn't be happier if it was Christmas morning, it's usually best to just go with the flow. That's what I discovered. Sure, I was tired and hot, among other things, but I was about to witness something bizarre and spectacular.


As dusk started to settle in, it was time to set up. I watched while the rest of the group set up two black light stations, each consisting of a white sheet jury-rigged across two poles, and a large black-light propped up in front of the sheet. The entomologists got their cameras and specimen jars ready, and started to stare at the sheets intently. A few bugs began to land on the sheet, mostly tiny beetles and moths. When I stated that that was kind of cool, I was interrupted with a promise, "This isn't even 10% of what we'll get." So we waited a bit longer.


Within 30 minutes or so, I started to understand what everyone was talking about. Giant beetles of all sorts of colors and sizes were flocking to the sheet, unable to resist the lure of the black light. Huge, beautiful moths showed up to the party next. I was excited to see some massive damselflies too, which I learned are the adult form of ant lions. I was told by a few blacklighting veterans that sometimes they've even witnessed tarantulas and scorpions making their way across the base of the sheet and having a field day with all of the free food we've collected for them.


Within an hour, the sheets were totally covered in bugs. A few interesting specimens were captured by entomologists for their collections, but mostly folks just took pictures. Standing next to the sheet, I felt like I was in a hailstorm of bugs as they constantly hurled themselves into my face and arms on their mission to reach the black light. Still, with the level of enthusiasm and awe exhibited by the rest of my group, it was hard not to catch their excitement. It truly was like nothing I've ever seen before. I'm glad I was forced to stay.


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I Whip My Net Back and Forth*

By Brianna Todd, Lead Animal Caretaker

Last week I was lucky to attend the 2011 Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference in Rio Rico, Arizona. Life Sciences Department Manager Sarah Moore usually attends this conference, and every year that she goes, I wonder, “Who would want to go to southern Arizona at the end of July?” I was still wondering this same question as I boarded the plane to Tucson.




It turns out this is the best time of year for seeing and catching bugs. Every summer Arizona goes through a monsoon season. Torrential downpours arrive almost every afternoon, last for about 30 minutes or so, and then disappear as the temperature creeps back up into the 100’s. These rains are vital to the Sonoran desert ecosystem, and they’re also helpful for entomologists looking for cool bugs that have been washed out of their hiding places. Although I work with bugs pretty much every day, I am not an entomologist, nor would I identify myself as a “bug geek”. So I was a little trepidatious heading into this conference, but I thought at least it would be a good learning experience.

The first evening of the conference included a welcoming reception, with a keynote address by Dr. Mark Moffett. If you have not heard of Dr. Moffett, you might recognize him by his alter ego, Dr. Bugs. He is a research associate for the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, as well as a contract photographer for National Geographic. In his career he has written over 20 articles for National Geographic and published more than 500 images in that magazine. I was lucky to see Dr. Moffett speak a couple of years ago when he was a part of the National Geographic Lecture Series. On that occasion, I saw him speak to a crowd of about 2000 people at the home of the Seattle Symphony, Benaroya Hall. I was definitely excited to see him in this much more intimate venue of about 120 people, and he didn’t disappoint.

After the reception, the conference was in full swing. Each day began with a series of paper sessions presented by conference attendees. Presentation topics ran the gamut from how to create cage labels that catch visitors’ attention, to the husbandry of Tanzanian tailless whip scorpions (Damon variegatus), to the effort to reintroduce the American Burying Beetle (Nicrophorus americanus) to portions of its former habitat. All of the presentations that I saw were excellent. They gave me plenty of new ideas for ways to improve our invertebrate cages, and they provided me with some insight into the way similar institutions operate on a day-to-day basis.


In the afternoons, we had a variety of activities to choose from depending on the day. On the first afternoon, I attended a field trip, organized by Jim Melli of the San Diego Natural History Museum. This field trip was called, “Border Bugs”, and as the name suggests, we hovered right around (but not over) the Mexican border. Rio Rico is just 10 miles from the border, directly north of Nogales. Coming from the complete opposite side of the country, it was definitely an otherworldly experience to find myself wandering about in this ecological and political environment. As we roamed the deserts and the scrubs, far out in the middle of nowhere, the Border Patrol pickups and planted water jugs gave the expedition a totally eerie vibe.

In addition to the field trip, I also attended a couple of workshops on different afternoons. In one of these workshops Wade Harrell from Phylum Studios gave us some great ideas for designing cage props out of recycled Styrofoam. This was probably one of the most useful things I learned throughout the conference and I’m excited to start making some new props for our cages here.

On the final day of the conference, I was scheduled to give my own presentation for the morning paper sessions. After a few days of observing other folks’ impeccable work, I was more than a little nervous. The topic of my presentation was our Saltwater Tide Pool. Although much of the talk at the conference centered around terrestrial invertebrates, many people were excited to hear about their marine cousins. In my presentation, I talked mainly about the Ocean Acidification Cart, which is a new interactive floor component that lets cart performers tie together some important neighboring exhibits, including the tide pool, the carbon monitoring station, and the Science on a Sphere . By learning about the processes of ocean acidification, visitors can start to understand how different components of our world rely on and affect each other. The presentation was a success and I received a lot of compliments and interest in our curriculum after it was over. I was also happy to be done with it.


After the conference, just before flying back home, I was lucky enough to see the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, and even luckier to be able to go on a behind the scenes tour. They have a ton of animals at this museum (all of them local)! I could have stayed there for hours, but I had a flight to catch (and it was 110 degrees). Although this was part of an invertebrate conference, I have to say the highlight of the museum trip for me was definitely the rattlesnakes. I have a healthy fear of these animals, but it was still very exciting to see some of these beautiful and dangerous creatures up close.


As I boarded the plane to head back to Seattle, I couldn’t help thinking about coming back next year. I am a newbie to the world of professional conferences, but this one offered plenty of good people, great animals, and beautiful scenery. I might be a bug geek after all.


*A line from the pop song (“I Whip My Hair Back And Forth”) that was parodied by a pair of rapping entomologists in a performance they made on the last night of the conference.
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Insects in Motion

Biology graduate student Andrew Mountcastle is studying the wing flexibility of insect flight at the University of Washington so it was only natural for him call up the Pacific Science Center’s Tropical Butterfly House for collaboration. Could he film some of our butterflies in flight with his high-speed color video cameras? Of course! Including his footage from our own Tropical Butterfly House, Andrew has created a series of short videos of various insects in flight. As part of his lab’s outreach program, they have allowed this video to be displayed outside the exhibit for visitors to enjoy as they wait in line.

You have to see these amazing slow motion videos to truly appreciate the mechanics of insect flight. If you can’t wait to visit the Tropical Butterfly House, go directly to Andrew’s website and view his QuickTime movies. You’ll never observe a dragonfly in fight – or a leaping frog in pursuit of a dragonfly - the same way again!

Pacific Science Center is grateful to the University of Washington Department of Biology Daniel Lab, Vision Research and Andrew Mountcastle for the production of this film.


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Stick Bug Amnesty Redux

In June, the Life Sciences Department announced that the United States Department of Agriculture is allowing us to accept any non-native stick insects as an incentive for schools, pet stores, and private citizens to retire their colonies. So far, we've had a couple of responses to our appeal.


This is a reminder that, in the wild, these insects are invasive and have the potential to severely harm the environment. Remember: Vietnamese Stick insects are parthenogenic. In other words, eggs from females are viable without being fertilized – not an uncommon occurrence in insects. In addition to being careful with containment of the insect, any bedding must be destroyed. This means incineration or freezing. (Do not compost!)

Please contact us at feedback@pacsci.org if you have any questions or would like to participate in our Stick Bug Amnesty Program.


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Bugs From Arizona

Each year Pacific Science Center sends a representative from the Life Sciences Department to the annual Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference. Last week, Life Sciences Manager, Sarah Moore attended and was able to work out a mutually beneficial maneuver with a few of her peers. Here is Sarah’s story:

Seattle was hot earlier this month, but it was even hotter in Rio Rico, Arizona. That’s where I attended the 2009 Invertebrates in Education and Conservation Conference. This annual event brings together teachers, insect hobbyists, invertebrate zookeepers and conservation workers to discuss the minutia of invertebrate behavior, ecology and husbandry, and how to make more people say “Ooh! Ah!” and fewer say “Eww! Ick!” about bugs.

It is a chance for people who care about the smallest creatures in our environment to talk with each other and be reminded that yes, small is beautiful. Little lives still matter, and preserving a habitat for beetles or teaching a child not to hurt a spider can have many beneficial impacts, including the conservation and greater knowledge of many larger life forms. It is also a chance for organizations that exhibit insects to meet and form friendships with the breeders and vendors who provide them.


One of the highlights of the gathering is getting to see what cool animals Hatari Invertebrates brought this year. This small but reputable company, specializing in Sonoran and Southwest arthropod species, always has amazing, beautiful and diverse insects, spiders and scorpions available for exhibit.

This year, while waiting in line to buy some velvet ants and grasshoppers, I caught the eye of Woodland Park Zoo’s Manager of Collections, who also happened to be attending the conference.

“Hey,” I said, “Are you adding arthropods to your collection too?”
“Yes”
“Well, I am purchasing some spiders for Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium as well as insects for our own display. Can we all ship them back together?”
“Sure. That would be ideal because the more organisms we ship, the larger and more heat-resistant container they can be transported in” (not actual words used, we don’t talk that way).

So all the regional purchases came back to Seattle in one big foam box. This not only saves on shipping costs, it is far safer for all the animals being shipped. A larger box with thicker walls is better insulated against extremes of heat. It also holds more air, which helps keep the insides of the cages from getting waterlogged or drying out.

At one time, regional organizations may have viewed each other as competition, or as having missions so different as to prevent working together. It was nice to share in this small way with our local zoos, knowing that the message of wonder these tiny animals bring is equally important to the work all three organizations do.






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Hisser Mites

Animal Caretaker Adrian Eng and Discovery Corp Summer Intern David are waging war on the tiny mites that live on our Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. This is Adrian’s first report from the front.







If you’ve ever handled a Madagascar Hissing Cockroach, you may have noticed some teeny tiny invertebrates crawling across their exoskeleton. These are mites and they call the cockroach’s body their home. Like travelers on a cruise ship, they move to and from different food sources utilizing our beloved roaches as their mode of transportation.


This mite species, Androlaelaps schaeferi, is not a cockroach parasite, as some scientists and hobbyists first believed. Instead, they perform commensalism, where one animal benefits while the other is unharmed and unaffected. A recent study from scientists at Ohio State University suggests they may even be beneficial to cockroaches, feeding on organic matter that would otherwise grow fungus. As beneficial as these mites may be, at Pacific Science Center we felt that an excess growth of mites was overly disturbing to the many staff and visitors that handle our cockroaches every day.

I teamed up with our Discovery Corp Summer Intern David and decided to wage a war with the mites. Our first goal was to reduce mite populations so that people are at least unaware of their presence. Our second goal is to figure out how to keep the mite population manageable in the long term.


We came up with a few techniques. Sweeping the mites with a soft brush seemed the most obvious choice. We also used very fine tweezers to remove mites one by one. This method was very tedious but effective. A more aggressive approach was dunking the roaches in water, which helped to loosen and dislodge the mites living on the body. This seemed uncomfortable and possibly dangerous for the roaches and the outcome was only moderately effective.


The most aggressive approach was using CO2 to incapacitate both the mites and the roaches. When they were both knocked out we were able to use an air canister to easily blow the mites off. This seemed the most effective technique but also the most invasive. Another suggested method was to dust the roaches with flour, something we will have to test the next time around.

This weekend we will begin our second round of treatment. I recently checked in on our roaches only to find that most of the mites have already returned in just a few weeks. As disappointing as this news can be, we are still determined to control the population of mites and are excited to find the best way to procure happy handlers and happy cockroaches.


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Stick Bug Amnesty

One of the thrills for visitors to Pacific Science Center's Insect Village is the opportunity to handle some of our arthropods. In the past, our United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) permit allowed us to let visitors hold the Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, African Giant Millipedes or Vietnamese Stick Insects in a controlled setting. Unfortunately, the conditions of our USDA permit have changed recently and the Vietnamese Sticks will no longer be available for public handling.

According to Life Sciences Manager, Sarah Moore this is not really bad news from a containment point of view. Vietnamese Stick insects are parthenogenic. This means eggs from females are viable without being fertilized – not an uncommon occurrence in insects. It has been a long held concern of the USDA. What if a Vietnamese Stick dropped an egg into someone’s clothing?

The USDA fears that there are many non-native stick bugs out in public schools, pet stores, and private homes that have the potential to become naturalized and harmful pests. We encourage these owners to retire their colonies. As an incentive, the USDA has given the Life Sciences Department permission to accept any stick bugs from the public. Please contact us at feedback@pacsci.org if you would like to participate in our Stick Bug Amnesty Program.

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Jeff's Cooties

Last Wednesday our Horticulturist, Jeff Leonard, received a walkie-talkie call from the reception desk. "Jeff, your cooties are here." For anyone overhearing this conversation and wondering - Jeff's "cooties" are, in fact, "beneficial insects." About once or twice a year Jeff orders "bennies" as he calls them, to keep control of aphid, scale, mealybugs and other harmful pests on the plants in the Tropical Butterfly House. This spring's shipment contained four different species. Encarsia formosa is a parasatoidal wasp that attacks aphids, white flies, and other small pests. The eggs arrive on small tags that are hung around the limbs of the infected plant. When the eggs hatch, there is a banquet waiting for them.

Lindorus lopanthae, black lady beetles are scale slayers. These bennies arrive in small vials and are carefully placed on the plants near contaminated sites. The bugs get to work immediately upon release!Cryptolaemus montrouzieri are better known as mealybug destroyers. They are similar to ladybugs but smaller - less likely to leave with visitors.

Chrysoperla rufilabris, green lacewings are probably most recognizable as adults. These beneficial insects arrive as ravenous larvae in cardboard combs which are tapped onto aphid infested plants. If you could see them close-up (which is hard to do because when they arrive they’re less than 1mm and grow to 6-8mm), you'd see the pinchers they use to suck the body fluids from their prey.

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Controlling plant pests with beneficial insects means that our horticulture staff doesn’t have to use chemical pesticides or invasive processes in our Tropical Butterfly House. The butterflies are happy, the plants are happy and the “cooties” are happy!

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Want to learn more? Check out our supplier's website and blog:

http://www.rinconvitova.com/

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