FAQ--(YOUR QUESTIONS)--Part II

Here are more answers to your awesome questions!!!

Is the research you are doing trying to help prevent extinction?
Not specifically, but you know that when an ecosystem is out of balance, sometimes extinction events do occur.

The Six Flags park reminds us of the old factory on the edge of Lawrence. No one wants to tear the factory down because it would release harmful chemicals, so it just sits there.
You are right, that is a very good comparison!

Were there any huge spiders in the trees?
There were huge spiders everywhere. Scientist Mark even left his tent to sleep in the bunkhouse the last night, there were so many spiders in his tent (and he loves spiders!)

Are there any other places you visited in town?
Yes! I wrote about them on the blog for Sunday. I sampled way too many pralines and enjoyed seeing a real jazz wedding parade in the quarter.

How can a parasitoid affect another parasitoid? And also, how long is the caterpillar going to live? It's kind of creepy that the wasps can do that to the caterpillar, but it is very interesting.
The hyperparasitoid wasp will sometimes land on the caterpillar and use her feet to feel for vibrations of parasitoid larvae inside the caterpillar. If they are there, she will inject her eggs into the parasitoid through the skin of the caterpillar.

When a caterpillar is injected by a wasp, does the caterpillar feel any pain or feel the eggs growing inside?
We can't know for sure but we do know that insects have a more simple nervous system than we do. The parasitized caterpillars sometimes behave oddly, kind of like the crazy fungus-infected ants we watched on the Planet Earth video in class.

Wow, that is really cool. I had no idea that wasps could look like that in their egg form!
The wasps in the video are actually larvae, about to pupate. After they pupate they will emerge looking like adult wasps.

Is there any chance of the caterpillar living if the larvae on the caterpillar are removed?
Usually not. At that point the caterpillar's soft tissues have been mostly eaten away and it has a hole or several holes where the larvae emerged.

I had heard of caterpillars being infected by wasps and flies but I had never actually seen one with the signs of an infection. Cool and a little nauseating.
Yes, I agree! I was pretty excited to also discover some tachinid fly pupae yesterday when I was working zoo duty. They look like brown footballs.

Are there uber-hyperparasitoids?
I am not sure, but maybe you can become a parasitologist and find out some day!

Do all parasitoids infect all caterpillar species? Or are they selective about the host?
Wasps tend to be more species specific than flies. We saw a wasp buzzing by an aggregation of tent caterpillars when we were in the kayaks one day. The caterpillars did the "caterpillar dance" featured on the video--it is a defense mechanism!

What kind of eggs were laid on the inchworm in the video?
They were actually wasp larvae, but the only way to know what kind is to rear them out, so Rebecca will keep watching them until they emerge as adults.

When will we see you wrestling an alligator?
The only wrestling I did was with the kayak, going upriver! On the very last day the wildlife manager told us about some local kids who were messing around with gators from their boat. One boy got his arm ripped out of the socket and eaten by an alligator. Glad I heard that story on the last day and not the first!

How many eggs can a wasp lay in a caterpillar?
This is very species specific Some may just lay a few and others may lay hundreds. HUNDREDS!!!!!!

These parasites would be rather frightening if they laid their eggs on plants that humans rely for medicine and things like that.
Well there ARE plenty of creepy parasites in the world that affect plants and other animals, including humans. I highly recommend the book Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer if you want to know more about parasites. It's very entertaining, educational, and disgusting too!

I watched a video a while back about the Leucochloridium paradoxum, and it's so cool how the parasite uses the snail so that it can get to its next host, the bird.
Parasites often have complex life cycles and may require intermediate vector organisms to get to their ultimate host. Again, read Parasite Rex!

Happy Earth Day! In honor of Earth Day, we were wondering if your bunkhouse is green, as in eco-friendly?
We made it as green as possible! We all brought reusable water bottles from home so that we wouldn't be using new bottles of water each day, recycled all our cans and glass, and tried to conserve toilet and shower water. We didn't prepare any red meat during our field time, and mostly ate vegetarian (cutting back on red meat is not only healthy, it saves water and energy). The air conditioner was only run when it got too hot for the caterpillar zoo, which amounted to parts of two days.

What's the weather like?
It is beautiful, we really lucked out. There hasn't been rain, and it has been sunny and breezy, about 80 degrees each day.

We watched the video, poor caterpillar--he looked like he was in a lot of pain!
Keep in mind that this is just part of the natural food chain. The parasitoid mothers just want to provide food for their young when they lay eggs on a caterpillar. If parasitoids didn't exist, there would probably be way too many caterpillars and then plant crops would be more heavily damaged, which would affect other creatures.

It sounds like it is wet and gross and muddy there. We are glad you are having fun but missing you!
I miss you too! It certainly is wet and muddy, but luckily I have my super-duper rubber field boots with me. It can be quite fun squishing around in the mud with them on!

Melinda wants to know if you had another encounter with the wild pig. How exciting!
We sure found a lot of tracks, but never met them face to face. We were told to climb a tree if we did, and I am not sure my rubber boots were made for climbing, and most trees were covered in poison ivy, so I was OK with not seeing them in person!

Why don't the pigs sink in the deep mud?
They do leave messy wallows, but they can still get around pretty well because of the shapes of their hooves, and also because it was mostly herds of piglets in the areas where we were working.

We hope no one lost their shoes in the mud!
We had some close calls! One of the field assistants did lose his boots in a kayaking accident, they sank like rocks in the river!

Did you have to know how to kayak before the trip?
It was not a requirement, but we were all pretty adventurous teachers! Luckily, Ms. Lotton-Barker and I took students kayaking on a lake by a volcano in Costa Rica last summer, which I loved, and I had also tried sea kayaking in Baja, but the waves scared me there.

How many plants do you normally classify per plot?
All of them! Sometimes there were so many it took several hours to finish vegetation on a plot.
Sometimes the plots were very thick with blackberry brambles and it was really challenging to move around.

What does the ugliest caterpillar you have caught look like?
I think Mystery Caterpillar #5 (on Tues blog) is probably the ugliest. It was almost elegant in a way too, because it was so ugly, if that makes sense.

What is the purpose of estimating number of leaves?
Rebecca plugs all the data into a formula that takes into account the average leaf surface area for each species of plant surveyed, which allows her to get an estimate of the average surface of vegetation in each plot. We also estimated the amount of herbivory (insect damage) in percentage, and that factors into the data as well to help her understand the tritrophic relationship between the caterpillars, the plants, and the parasitoids.