Honey island Swamp and Gators!!

We woke up bright and early at 5:45 AM when the station biologist came in to get coffee. The bunkhouse that we are staying in is actually his office. Over breakfast Rebecca Hazen, our field team leader, told us all about the types of caterpillars we were going to find and how to recognize them. We learned quite a bit about their anatomy. Caterpillars are a type of insect and have the basic anatomy of an insect. Then we drove to Honey Island Swamp to begin collecting. The first thing we saw were lots!! of very large spiders on the side of the road. Their webs were beautiful. The next thing we say was an alligator in the water by a bridge. We all stopped and had a photo shoot. Hunting for the caterpillars was hard. They are not as easy to find as spiders, butterflies and lizards. I found a couple of anoles like the kind that are in Mr. Lehman’s room. We also found a very cool walking stick. After hunting along the side of the road, we went into the bottomland hardwood forest using a machete to cut the underbrush. We tied orange tape around a large water oak and created an X with each arm being 5 m. We used that to create a sample area with a diameter of 10m. We then collected every caterpillar we could find in that area. We put them into Ziploc bags with lots of leaves from their host plant. Then we had to determine the types of plants were in the area, how many leaves they had and what percentage of leaves had been chewed by caterpillars. It was very hot and tiring work and we ended up not finishing until after 3:00 PM. We then came back to the bunkhouse for lunch.
To answer one question from last week: The question was:”What is the difference between prologs and true legs?” True legs have muscles attached to them and are the legs that will become the legs of the moth or butterfly. Prolegs, don’t have any muscles and stay stiff by hydrostatic pressure. The caterpillar’s body pumps fluid into the legs to keep them hard like the true legs.
To answer one question from Monday: The question was: “Are certain trees poisonous to caterpillars?” The answer is yes! Some caterpillars can only eat the leaves of one type of tree and any others would be poisonous to it. Other caterpillars can eat many different types of trees or other plants.

Look at the new pictures for Monday. I finally got them to upload!

Now here are some questions from our morning anatomy lesson for you to answer. When you answer them please use correct spelling, not IM language.
1. What are the basic characteristics of insects and how do caterpillars show them?
2. Caterpillars have spiracles along their sides. What are they?
3. Do caterpillars have blood like us? Explain
4. Do caterpillars have skeletons like us? Explain