Katydid
I really enjoy these late summer evenings and nights. But not for the warmth but rather for the sounds that fill the night air. I am not sure if you have noticed, but the sounds you can hear outside at night cannot be heard at any other time of year. The spring and summer months have a nice, pleasant sound from the few insects that are calling, but it doesn’t even come close to the soothing sounds of late summer. The sounds of late summer kind of creep up on us without us noticing. Each evening, a few more insect species join the orchestra of evening sounds. To understand why the night sounds are so loud, you need to understand the life cycle of many of our insects. In the northern states, most insects will spend the winter as an egg. With the warmth of spring, the insect eggs start to hatch. Most insects go through several different life stages as they develop into reproductive adults. For example, it may take 2 weeks for the eggs to hatch into a larva form. The larva form, or worm-like stage, can take another 4 weeks or longer. Then they go into the metamorphosis stage, where the insect rests for a week or two before emerging as the adult form of the insect. It is the adult form that is able to sexually reproduce. This often involves the males singing or calling for females, and it took most of the summer to get to this stage of life. So, what you hear outside at night are the adults calling to attract mates so they can lay eggs that will survive until next spring. And it took all spring and summer to get to this point. One of these night-time songsters is the Conehead Katydid. They are a group of large, green insects that all look and sound similar. They are easily recognized by the unique cone-shaped foreheads, extremely long antennae, and very long angular legs. The cone-shaped head really gives them a distinctive look. No one knows why the head is uniquely shaped or what function it performs. But as soon as you see one of these insects, you will notice the cone-shaped head. Most of these katydids are two to three inches long, which makes them one of the larger insects. They are bright green in color, which allows them to blend into their environment. Some species of Coneheads are brown. As you might imagine, a large, juicy insect like this would be a good meal for many other critters. In fact, the Conehead Katydids are a favorite insect for parasitic wasps. The adult wasps capture and sting the katydid to paralyze it. The wasp flies back to its underground chambers, where it leaves the helpless katydid as a fresh meal when the wasp eggs hatch and need to eat. Coneheads have large, powerful jaws that they use to eat both other insects and fruit and seeds. They are fastidious cleaners, using their mouths to clean their feet all the time. They have extremely long antennae, which are sometimes longer than the body. The females have long, straw-like appendages coming out of their abdomen. This is called the ovipositor and is used to deposit eggs into plant tissue or into the ground. They are found in weedy fields, native prairies, wetlands, and along forest edges. They can be very common in rural and suburban areas. It is the male that is the songster. In fact, this is how they received their name from the sound produced by rubbing their wings together. They rub the sharp edge of one wing over the file-like ridge on the other wing to produce a sound like “katy-did-katy-did, katy-didn’t”. Combine hundreds of these calls along with a myriad of other insects, and you have the wonderful sounds of the late summer nights. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.
Fireflies
The middle of summer is a great time to see some very cool critters. The long summer evenings bring out so many interesting insects that we don’t find any other time of year. I was thinking about this last night, just before sunset while I was looking into my backyard and watching hundreds of Fireflies or Lightning Bugs blinking in the air of the warm summer evening. The Firefly is a soft bodied beetle which possesses the remarkable ability to emit light through their body. Fireflies are found in temperate and tropical regions around the world. Although many countries no longer have fireflies. Here in America, they are found in damp forests, wet meadows and other protected areas that have leaf litter covering the ground. The Fireflies we see at this time of year are a result of adults mating and laying eggs last year. After mating, the female lays her eggs either on or just below the surface of the earth. A nice layer of dried tree leaves helps maintain the moisture needed for the eggs to survive. The eggs hatch in two to three weeks, and a small larva (tiny worm) emerges. The larva feeds until the end of summer before digging deeper into the soil to overwinter. In spring the larvae emerge, feeding heavily on snails and slugs for a couple weeks. The larva then pupates (life stage of an insect where it transforms into the adult) for one to two weeks and by the dog days of summer, and emerge as the adult beetle. There are more than 2,000 different types or kinds of light-emitting beetles in the world, and each species is slightly different in their lifecycle, light-emitting, and what the adult beetle looks like. Despite their big bright light, our Fireflies are tiny little insects, less than a half inch long. The light production is a chemical process called bioluminescence. It occurs in a specialized organ where an enzyme luciferase acts on luciferin and oxygen and produces light. The oxygen is supplied via the breathing tubes along the abdomen of the beetle’s body. The light they produce is a cold light, no heat energy is produced, making it one of the most efficient light sources. The light has no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies. The light is usually a yellowish color. Different species of Fireflies produce green or pale red colors. So why do these beetles emit light? Adult beetles emit light for mate selection. In our local Fireflies, both the male and female will blink their bright yellow light on and off. Males are flying around, blinking their light on and off, while the female is on the ground also blinking. This is how they find each other and tell the difference between males and females in the dim light of the evening. Last night when I was out, I saw a female on the ground (female are slightly larger) and a male was flying nearby. He saw the light and landed within an inch of her. They continued to blink their light on and off. He walked over to her and circled her. I can only assume he is figuring out the lay of the land. When he figured it out, he quickly mounted her, so they were both facing the same direction. This brief encounter will fertilize her eggs, and he flies off to continue blinking and looking for other females. The female goes off to lay her eggs and will die, thus completing the lifecycle of the Firefly. What I find absolutely fascinating about the Fireflies are, there are fossilized Fireflies dating back 99 million years. This is well back in the dinosaur era. So, when I look out my window and see the flashing of the Fireflies, it feels like I am looking back at ancient times and at the same time looking back at my own youth enjoying a warm summer evening. A childhood without experiencing fireflies in summer is a wasted childhood. Until next time… Stan Tekiela is an author, naturalist, and wildlife photographer who travels extensively to study and photograph wildlife. He can be followed on Instagram and Facebook. He can be contacted via his website at naturesmart.com.