יומן של Entomology at OSU 1

In many parts of the country, the weather has cooled, and you may have a difficult time finding additional insects to add to your collection. If you have not yet found and photographed your 20 insect specimens (each a unique species/life stage combo) . . . 25 if you're going for extra credit . . . here are some places you may want to look:

***indoor houseplants of friends or at a local nursery/greenhouse. Ask, before collecting from someone else's plant. But, as plants move indoors, scales, whiteflies, thrips, aphids, may become more apparent in the protected confines of a house or greenhouse. Outdoors, natural enemies may have kept these herbivorous insects at bay.

**rotting logs are a great place to find Bess Beetle adults and larvae. You may also find termites, ants, or other types of beetles. You can either tear the log apart . . . or, if you have an understanding family or roommates, you can take small branches/logs that are rotting or that have lots of holes in them, and submerge them in the bathtub. Insects that are inside will emerge.

**You may still find some honey bees, virescent green bees, and bumblebees at flower heads, on a sunnier day.

**Gently look beneath leaf mulch, to find a variety of insects that have started to enter diapause (insect hibernation).

**If you know someone who maintains a hot compost pile, you can gently search the pile to find earwigs, black soldier flies, fruit flies, carabid beetles, staphalynid beetles, and more.

**Don't give up! Every new insect that you find and photograph represents an up to 6% bump in your final project grade!

A quick reminder . . . Your week 1 lab assignment asks for your iNaturalist 'INSECT' observations, and your final project should only include Insects. Several folks are photographing and uploading arthropods to our project page. However, your efforts should really be focused on finding and photographing INSECTS!

Different stages of insects are acceptable . . . nymphs or larvae, pupa, and adults. Juvenille insects are much more difficult to identify than adults. But, taking photos of caterpillars can help you build your virutal insect collection, and can also help you become more familiar with insect pests (caterpillars are often pests, even if the moths and butterflies of these same species are pollinators). A photograph of a caterpillar and adult stage of the same species counts as TWO insect observations. But, a photograph of two adults of the same species or two caterpillars (or other larval form) of the same species will only count as one observation.

You will not need to show me your insect samples, every week. I ask for your specimens in week 0.5, one, and five. You will then need to turn in the entire collection (on iNaturalist) during the final week of the term. All specimens that you want me to grade need to be added to our iNaturalist project page for consideration.

Once again, please hunt for your insect specimens early in the term, when it will be easier to find and photograph different species.

If you're having trouble adding your observation to our Project page, please note that a requirement of the project is that you note the life stage of the organism that you observed. If you do not note the life stage (under annotations), you will not be able to add your observation to our project page.

I'm really enjoying seeing everyone's observations, from all across the United States! A few tips to help you avoid some common iNaturalist pitfalls.

iNaturalist is a great platform for insect identification. But, it is also a social media community of scientists and naturalists. You may notice that you can 'earn' the designation of 'research grade ID', if two or more people agree on an ID for your specimen. This data is actually used by scientists to study biodiversity of various organisms, across the world! Keep this in mind when uploading your observations. Scientists may very well use your observation in their own research. Thus:

1) an observation that does not have date or locality information attached to it is useless to the iNaturalist community. Without this data, there is no way to make any sense of the biogeography or seasonality of the specimen. If your camera does not automatically populate this information, you MUST add it in manually.

2) iNaturalist may give you ID suggestions, all the way down to the species level. However, if you are unsure of what the species level ID is, back off your identification to the family level or to the order level. An iNaturalist community member may pop in and help you with your ID. The iNaturalist algorithm is really good at pointing you towards what your specimen might be . . . but the algorithm might sometimes lead you astray. And, if you're asked to choose among several potential species, please don't guess. It's better to have an identification that is at the broader level of Order or Family . . . that is correct . . . than to have an incorrect identifcation that is to the more specific level of species.

Welcome to the Fall 2020 term of ENT 311! Over the course of this term, we will be creating a virtual 'Insect Collection' using iNaturalist.

This week, you will set up your iNaturalist account and upload your very first digital image to our iNaturalist project page. Make sure to read the tips and tricks for taking good insect photos, on your Canvas course page before you start!