Climate Change and Caterpillars with Ms. DuRoss

Biology Project

2009-05-12T11:06:00.004-06:00

*You may have seen past examples of wild and crazy bird creations displayed around my room. This year, the organisms and expectations have changed........stay tuned for results. I'll post photos.

Choose Your Defense
Spines, Vomit, and Camouflage

Learning Targets:
I can identify and describe the advantages of adaptations in parasitoids and hosts and the roles adaptations play in interactions between the two
I can explain the interaction between parasitoid and host
I can outline the life phases of a parasitoid

Method:
Design and create an imaginary caterpillar and associated parasitoid, then write reports including descriptions of the caterpillar and parasitoid adaptations.

Materials:
Poster board
Pens, color pencils, markers
Computers with internet access

Procedure:
PART 1 Design your own caterpillar suited for a specific environment and/or situation. Think about designing a caterpillar for the following:

The caterpillar is on a green leafy tree with an abundance of tropical ants nearby
The caterpillar is on a branch of a tropical tree. There is a large bird flying overhead
The caterpillar is crawling across a blanket of decaying leaves on a forest floor. A rat lurks behind the nearest tree trunk.
Design your own

You may want to run through the online activity by clicking here to get a sense of some caterpillar adaptations. This site allows you to play with adjusting COLOR, SPINES, or EXTRA to match the situation described.
Draw a rough draft of your caterpillar in your biology journal (due 5/12/09)
Create a final draft in class (5/14/09) using colored pencils or markers. Include:
On the backside of your poster describe why you chose these features for this particular caterpillar and include a common name and scientific name

PART 2
Design a parasitoid that would parasitize your caterpillar. Make your parasitoid either a fly or a wasp, but you be creative in what it looks like and how it behaves! Draw a rough draft of your caterpillar in your biology journal (due 5/12/09). Final drafts will be completed in class 5/14/09.

a) Sketch and color all developmental phases (adult, egg, larva, and pupa)
b) Give your parasitoid a common and scientific name
b) On the backside of your poster write a paragraph describing its life history. Include the following:

-How is the host caterpillar found?
-where and how are the eggs laid?
-what special features does it have that allow it to be a parasitoid?
-how does the egg change to larva, pupa, and adult?
-how long does it take to go through all the life stages?

You may wish to use the internet to conduct research about real parasitoid wasps and flies before beginning your design. Keep in mind though that I would like you to be creative and create your own highly specialized parasitoid.

Helpful websites:
bugguide.net
caterpillars.org
http://www.earthwatch2.org/lff/DuRoss/

Adaptation examples
Sticky hairs: It is difficult for mouth parts of insect predators such as ants to grasp the caterpillars, but parasites may have an advantage in laying their eggs on the caterpillars

Poison spines: Poison spines can irritate the skin of larger predators making it so they often don't get farther than the first touch

Closely packed hairs: It is harder for parasitic wasps to lay their eggs on caterpillars with tightly packed hair

Long hair spines: The caterpillar is able to detect predators through vibrations felt with long hairs. This gives it early warning to get away.

Glands: Glands near the caterpillars head can emit repulsing chemicals or squirt poisonous liquids

Vomit response: Vomit can be toxic, burning the skin of the potential predator

Yellow spots: Yellow spots imply that a caterpillar may be poisonous or taste bad

Fake eyes: Fake eyes give the impression that the caterpillar is a snake, allowing it extra time to drop to the ground and get away from a predator

Red: Is a warning that the caterpillar may be poisonous or taste bad

Brown: Provides camouflage protection. Blends in with tree trunks or dead leaf matter

Bright yellow: Is a warning that the caterpillar may be poisonous or taste bad

Green: Provides camouflage when on green vegetation

White: Is a warning that the caterpillar may be poisonous or taste bad

Crescent City Cuisine

2009-04-27T13:09:00.025-06:00

I took advantage of a few opportunities to indulge my "foodie" side while in New Orleans. While at Dante's Kitchen, I savored some local grown fare, specifically their Preparation of Local Farm Vegetables (beets, rutabaga, turnips, leeks...) served with a goat cheese and caramelized onion croquette. The meal was preceded by the most amazing molasses spoon bread and accompanied by a delectable corn and crab bisque.

The fried food and copious amounts of gravy I could do without, maybe with the exception of an occasional Bignet from Cafe Du Monde. I have never seen so much powdered sugar in the air, on the floor, dusting tables and coating mouths.

Parting Stats

2009-04-27T08:19:00.005-06:00

Hello everyone! Late last night, or perhaps I should say early this morning, tallies came in from our week of field collections. During our 7 days in the field last week, we:

-collected 513 caterpillars from 13 families in plots and general collections.

-reared 19 parasitoids (and many more are likely to be on the way!...)

-completed assessments for 10 plots, which translates to estimating 2,033,790 leaves from 785 square meters of bottomland hardwood forest and Cypress-Tupelo Swamp.

I've truly enjoyed working with such a diverse, enthusiastic, dedicated and talented group of teachers and researchers.

Up to Our Elbows in Mud

2009-04-25T22:36:00.008-06:00

Those of you that traveled to Bilsa Biological Station in Ecuador with me (or with Rachel and Nate the subsequent year) know how the stronghold of mud suctioning your boots impedes ambulation. Every step becomes infinitely more difficult as the day goes on. The Louisiana mud we've encountered is every bit as fierce. Our days in the field are long and dirty and I love every bit of it. It is early to rise and late to turn out the lights and crawl into our bunks. Staying up until 12:00 or 1:00 flipping through guide books to identify all the plants, caterpillars, amphibians and reptiles of the day, uploading photos for blog postings, and sharing photos with teammates has become the norm.
.......

I still have a lot of gaps to fill in here so stay tuned for further details

The Pearl River

2009-04-25T11:11:00.017-06:00

The Pearl River Wildlife Management Area is a 35,031 acre tract of bottom-land timber nestled between the East and West Pearl rivers. The terrain is flat with poor drainage disposing the area to annual flooding. The forest cover varies from all age hardwood stands, to cypress tupelo, to intermediate type marsh. Species composition of hardwoods include water oak, nuttall oak, cow oak, obtusa oak, overcup oak, live oak, bitter pecan, hickory, beech, magnolia, sweetgum, and elm. The overstory is variable with areas that area moderately open and contrasted by those that are closed.

Flood stage of the Pearl river is 14 feet. Over the duration of our stay, water levels ranged from 14 to 19 feet. Click here to find current water levels. The elevated water prohibited surveys of Honey Island Swamp so efforts were re-directed to traversing the stretches of the West Pearl River. Daily scouting most frequently involved shuttling crew and kayaks upstream to our launching point at Davis Landing in Slidell. From Davis Landing we paddled upstream in search of suitable sites to access land and began bushwhacking to the next plot (keeping an eye out for the abundant poison ivy and thorns of Rubus). The day of field work concluded with an hour long drift/paddle back downstream to Crawford Landing, jsut outside the fence surrounding our bunkhouse.

Adjacent to the bunkhouse commercial swamp tours departed daily loaded with tourists and school children. I am quite certain we got the best tour possible traveling via kayak without paying a dime.

Caterpillar ID Challenge

2009-04-23T20:53:00.007-06:00

It's time to identify some caterpillars we found while out in the field. Your challenge is to go to caterpillars.org to see how many of them you can determine the scientific name for.

Give me pupation or give me death

2009-04-21T21:54:00.029-06:00

It was exciting to be able to web-conference with those of you in my biology class today. Thanks for all the great questions.

My morning was spent in the lab/bunkhouse doing "zoo". The work that happens in the lab is just as important as what goes on in the field. All the the caterpillars we collect are put into ziplock bags and labeled with:

1. Date
2. Family.
Remember the classification system: Kindom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species in which living organisms are divided into homogenous groups by using hierarchical categories; the upper category includes all the lower ones.) For example, the classification for the stink bug Nezara viridula that you saw earlier in my blog looks like this:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Heteroptera

Family: Pentatomidae

Genus: Nezara

Species: viridula

3. Site location (collected with GPS)
4. Genus and species of the vegetation the specimen was found on
5. Instar: this denotes the developmental stage of of larval or nymphal forms of holometabolous or hemometabolous insects. Insects complete different numbers of instars depending upon species and environmental conditions, with caterpillars reaching instar four or five before pupating.

During zoo all the bags are hung on a rack for storage, frass is removed daily and change in developmental stages (instar) is noted. Caterpillars are observed for signs of parasitoids. Data for all specimens is then entered into the computer for future analysis.

What do you think these ovoid objects are?

Collecting Data

2009-04-21T20:33:00.014-06:00

Why do you think we collect all this information about plants if we are studying caterpillars and climate change?

Today, Rebecca Hazen, pHd student and lead scientist on this project further described the purpose of gathering leaf estimates. Leaf estimates are gathered at each plot by estimating the number of leaves per individual of each species present in the plot along with percent herbivory on those leaves. Leaf estimates are used in correlation with a database containing average surface area per leaf species in order to asses caterpillar plant interactions within this tritrophic study.

Metamorphosis and Predation

2009-04-20T20:04:00.014-06:00

We observed these nymphal insects in the field. Classify them as hemimetabolists or homometabolists? Explain your decision.

nymphal lubber grasshopper in the process of molting

nymphal stinkbugs of the genus Poecilometis (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae)
adults predate upon caterpillars

Go to Archives for older posts
April
March

Camouflage

2009-04-20T15:15:00.004-06:00

Camouflage works well, as you can see from watching this video and from the photo above. I was pretty excited to find this hanging out on a tree? Look closely. What do you think it is? And for an added challenge, what is it's scientific name?

Nature encourages no looseness, pardons no errors
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Research Introduction

2009-04-20T12:13:00.010-06:00

Now that I've been here a few days, it is probably a good time to explain some of the basics of the research Dr. Dyer and his graduate students are conducting before I bring you out to join me at the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area. First to give you an idea of the geography, we are close to Slidell, Louisiana, a little north of Lake Pontchartrain, about an hour East of New Orleans. One of the places we are looking for caterpillars is called Honey Island Swamp. The habitat here is bottomland hardwood swamp. Oak, sweet gum, sycamore, maple, cypress, elm and tupelo are some of the trees found here.

Now for the specifics of the study.....
The five primary goals are to:

Document the Diversity of caterpillars (Lepidoptera) and parasitiods. Can you tell me the difference between parasites and parasitoids?
Understand how different caterpillar defenses function against different types of natural enemies
Examine chemical defenses in caterpillars and their host plants
Construct models that predict the success of biological controls based on caterpillar defenses
Examine the effects of climate on caterpillar-parasitoid interactions. Some believe that climate change will impact caterpillar populations. Will rare species of butterflies and moths will become extinct? Or will parasitism go down allowing caterpillar populations to increase exponentially, approaching or even surpassing their carrying capacities?

Check out the paper titled Climatic unpredictability and parasitism of caterpillars: Implications of global warming.

Keeping the Beat

2009-04-19T19:41:00.007-06:00

Congregating caterpillars dancing to the tune of some local musicians we saw on the street in New Orleans.

How to Dispose of Dead Bodies

2009-04-18T21:50:00.015-06:00

After a lengthy thunderstorm related delay in Dallas my plane finally left the tarmac arrived in New Orleans two hours later than planned. The rest of my team was already checked in to the guesthouse and on their way to the rendezvous point. The cab driver that picked me up had no idea how to get me where I was going. Thankfully a few calls later we were headed in the right direction. I made it on time to join the rest of the team for dinner uptown and and an adventure wandering through downtown.
Here's a question that comes from my Saturday morning tour of the Garden District. In NOLA, cemeteries look significantly different than they do in SLC. Based on your knowledge of human biology and geography of New Orleans, what can you determine about burial methods in this region. Why are the graves built this way and how do they function?
The marble plaque on the grave to the left has been warped by the elements and undergone a process known as granulation. Earth science students, briefly describe this process, considering the properties of marble that make this possible.

Caterpillar #1
This afternoon our group heads out to our bunkhouse and field-site at the Pearl River Wildlife Management Area in Slidell, LA. Here's a sample of one type of caterpillar we'll likely see more of. This buck moth caterpillar was found outside the guesthouse we were staying in. Soon the job of identifying caterpillars will be yours. For a warm-up I'd like you to find (and record in your biology journal) this caterpillar's scientific name. Try using the caterpillars.org website. Note: search within Louisiana caterpillars.

And I'm Off

2009-04-16T15:13:00.004-06:00

Tomorrow I leave for New Orleans to meet up with my fellow team members. Enjoy the rest of your Spring Break. Thanks everyone for your excitement and support!

Connections to the Classroom

2009-04-14T14:38:00.012-06:00

Last month I reveled in the opportunity to leisurely peruse the National Aquarium while in Baltimore for the Expeditionary Learning National conference.

As I was going through my photos recently, I selected these as ones that touch upon subjects we've been covering in biology and also provide a springboard for some of what "we" will be studying live from the field next week.

Later this semester we will study evolution and adaptations. An adaptation is any behavioral or physical characteristic that helps an organism (animal in this case) survive. My first challenge goes out to my biology class. I want you to list and describe at least three adaptations that caterpillars have. These can be behavioral or physical traits. Think of what a caterpillar needs to survive and then examine what structures or behaviors the caterpillars have that help them meet these needs.

That's all for now. I'm busy packing to fly out at 6 AM tomorrow. You'll have to follow along to see where this goes.

Let's Get This Started

2009-03-21T22:15:00.007-06:00

Having just savored a balmy 70 degree day of work in the backyard, I now hear escalating winds carrying an impending snowstorm - with a forecast of more of the same for days to follow. Although Spring may be on hold here in Utah, I am just a few short weeks from heading to warmer climes of Louisiana.

Preparations are underway for my trip to New Orleans, where I will participate in a research study titled Climate Change and Caterpillars, along with 6 other teachers from across the United States. I will report back "live from the field" through daily blogs, and less frequently through conference calls. I am excited to step back into the familiar role of field biologist; in an uncharted part of the country for me. As most of you know, I spent eight years as a wildlife biologist prior to becoming a teacher. Considering my previous work took place in the Western states of Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and California, I look forward to experiencing a wide variety of new organisms, adaptations, habitats, etc...

Follow my blog to read about explorations, discoveries and insights gained throughout my Earthwatch experience and expect a plethora of photo postings (within reason that is). I look forward to hearing from those of you following my expedition back at Realms of Inquiry!

Stay tuned!

test

2009-03-06T09:24:00.001-07:00

test

Climate Change and Caterpillars with Ms. DuRoss

Biology Project

Crescent City Cuisine

Parting Stats

Up to Our Elbows in Mud

The Pearl River

Caterpillar ID Challenge

Give me pupation or give me death

Collecting Data

Metamorphosis and Predation

Camouflage

Nature encourages no looseness, pardons no errors- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Research Introduction

Keeping the Beat

How to Dispose of Dead Bodies

And I'm Off

Connections to the Classroom

Let's Get This Started

test

Nature encourages no looseness, pardons no errors
- Ralph Waldo Emerson