originally posted: June 25, 2003 | by chelsie

Every garden has snails and slugs that feed under the cover of night selecting plants most prized and leaving trails that glisten in the morning sun. There is no disappointment quite like finding plants, so beautiful the day before, full of holes or eaten to the ground in the morning. But slimy little herbivores have their own marauding kind. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: June 18, 2003 | by chelsie

The repetitive 'song' starts at sunset and ends at dawn, usually the night noise comes from the canopy of a tree. It is well known call over the eastern U.S. It is the stridulation of the common katydid (Pterophylla camellifolia Fabricius). The scientific name was created from the Greek, pteron, or wing, and phyllo, leaf--the leaf winged. The species epithet is almost redundant, camellia-leaf. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: June 11, 2003 | by chelsie

Red admiral butterflies (Vanessa atalanta Linnaeus) are found almost everywhere--Old World and New, they range from the tundra to the subtropics. The butterfly is as widespread as the host species for its caterpillar--nettles (Urtica species) and their closely related kin--wood nettles (Laportea spp.), false nettles (Boehmeria spp.), and pellitories (Parietaria spp.) [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: June 4, 2003 | by chelsie

Hickory horned devils (Citheronia regalis Fabricius) are seldom seen although their natural range is from the New England states to northern Florida and west to Kansas. There were never very many of the creatures; it is thought that their population is declining. The first part of their life is spent in the canopy of trees--black walnuts (Juglans nigra), hickories (Carya species), butternuts (Juglans cinerea), sometimes in sweetgums (Liquidambar styraciflua), persimmons (Diospyros virginiana), and sourwoods (Oxydendrum arboretum). [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 28, 2003 | by chelsie

Lac (Laccifer lacca Kerr) are scale insects (Homoptera, family Coccidea) native to India and Southeast Asia. The name lac comes from the Hindi lakh meaning hundred-thousand. Lac have been intentionally cultured in India for over 3,000 years. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 21, 2003 | by chelsie

They often work from trucks traveling the roads and streets at night when most people are asleep or fretting about the next days activities. Without them, road and barge crews couldn't work safely, children would not be safe on playgrounds, dinner on the patio would risk infection, spending a day fishing would bring home more than fish, swimming, hiking, jogging, gardening--any of these activities could be the last outdoor activity one had from life. Their work is not glamorous; it is long and tedious, filled with its own hazards. They battle the single most dangerous animal on Earth; they are the mosquito control officers. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 14, 2003 | by chelsie

Trombiculids (Acarina: Trombiculidae) are predatory mites related to ticks and spiders. The adults are known as harvest or scrub mites. They feed on insect eggs and small invertebrates in soil or decaying wood. Depending upon the species, it takes fifty to seventy days for the mite to develop from egg to larva to nymph to adult. Trombiculids are found in temperate and tropical areas worldwide. The larvae are parasites, commonly called chiggers. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: May 7, 2003 | by chelsie

Ch'eng-Shih Tu'an lived during the Tang Dynasty. Around 860, he completed his manuscript, Yu-Yang Tsa-Tu. The work mentions an animal called the T'u-K'u. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 30, 2003 | by chelsie

The thistle caterpillar (Vanessa cardui [Linnaeus]) preferably feeds on thistles, members of the Asteraceae. The color of the caterpillar is highly variable ranging from chartreuse green with black marbling to dark purple with a few yellow spines. The caterpillar is covered with setae (spines) which serve to deter some predators. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 23, 2003 | by chelsie

The Brazilian pepper-tree (Schinus terebinthifolius Raddi) is native to Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. It is thought the small tree was introduced to Florida in the 1840s. Most experts agree the introduction was for the ornamental nursery trade. Pepper-trees escaped cultivation and have aggressively colonized disturbed habitats. (Brazilian Pepper-tree, Schinus terebinthifolius, D.W. Hall and V.V. Vandiver, EDIS, 1991) [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 16, 2003 | by chelsie

Fireflies or lightning bugs are beetles in the family, Lampyridae. Although not all lampyrids can bioluminesce, the best known are those that court their mates by flash communication in the twilight hours of summer. Two genera, Photinus [fo tin' us] and Photuris [fo tur' is], are common in North America. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 9, 2003 | by chelsie

Fireflies are beetles belonging to the family Lampyridae [lam peer' i day]. There are an estimated one hundred fifty to one hundred eighty species in North America and up to nineteen hundred species worldwide. Not all firefly species are capable of bioluminescence. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: April 2, 2003 | by chelsie

The railroad worm (Rhagoletis pomonella Walsh) is tiny and legless. Its head is the pointed end with a pair of dark colored hooks it uses to tear at the flesh of fruit. Railroad worms are maggots, the larval stage of a fly. The larvae tunnel though apples (Malus species and hybrids), ruining the fruit and leaving a brownish stain that looks like miniature railroad tracks. [Click here to read more...]