Insects: It's whats for dinner

Dr. Riley Nelson, one of my academic advisers, hosted an informal potluck dinner for the the Entomology Class, the Entomology Club and assorted members of his lab. Attendees were invited to bring bug-themed foods. Most items were in the form of bugs: sandwiches pinned and labeled like bugs in a museum, foods decorated with legs, or even just labels on the food to remind you that some bugs have those shapes. Laura and I brought chips and salsa because... well... chips and salsa.

There was also one food item with plastic bugs embedded inside, but one brave girl actually fried some meal worms she'd bought at the pet store. Here in the States, mealworms are pet food. Elsewhere mealworms are sometimes people food. The little dish was passed around to everyone. With a little peer pressure more than half of the folks had a crisp treat. They tasted like a burnt chip.

After eating a couple myself, I had one more that I handed Maggie. She held it in her hand for a while. I saw her taste it a couple of times still holding it in her little fist, but by the time we got her out of the car at home she was finishing chewing up her little treat. That's when I let Laura know that Maggie was getting a little extra protein in her diet.

If you go here, you can see a few pictures and descriptions of bugs eaten around the world from Man Eating Bugs: the Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, a good book. A google search for the book has many of the pages and photos online. (The photo for this post came from Menzel and D'Aluisio's book.)

I like it

I do like cool paper. It's part of why I took a bookbinding class at the University.

I also like bugs.

I think I'm a little partial to green too.

This little guy* is pretty cool.

You can check out the story here at NPR's The Picture Show blog.

!ORAGAMI!

* Leaf Katydid, by Brian Chan

Little Things

on my way up to campus today, i stopped by the botany pond on the south end of campus. for my Wetland Ecology class we're supposed to be putting together a PowerPoint presentation on some of the terminology and concepts from the curriculum. i was looking for Daphnia (water fleas).


Daphnia are little planktonic crustaceans that feed on the bits of algae and other junk floating in the water column. these little critters aren't much longer than a milimeter (although some make it up to 2mm and others as small as 0.5mm) and they swim around in little jumps by swishing their antennae with rapid little twitches.

to catch them, i just went to the edge of the pond and dipped in a 25mL vial close to the edge where i could see these guys swimming. the vial filled up with water and only a couple of Daphnia, but the water surface tension had temporarily affixed dozens of these arthropods to my skin as my hand passed through the water. i scrapped the Daphnia into the vial to take them too their photo shoot; one more slide for my assignment.

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i also collected a leaf from a bunch of cattails in my neighborhood. who ever heard of someone growing cattails as an ornamental plant? this set of apartments thought it was a good idea, and i get to take a good picture of the lacunar spaces inside the leaf. the spaces help move oxygen down to the roots so the cattails can grow in wetland soils. Below are pictures of the torn edge of the leaf, and then i cleaned up a small section for a cross-section photo.