Day 302 - Beauty of the mini-beasts - Part 10 - Green Shield Bugs

Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina) second instar

So you can see how small it is - here it is on
Dad's big hairy finger!

Hi everyone, Day 302 and this is one of the smallest minibeasts I've covered for a while. I did aphids and springtails back in a Beauty of the Mini-Beasts series which I started back on Day 93 (that was a brilliant Great Diving Beetle!)  Well looking through my photo's I found these shots which were taken while I was in Norfolk but I can't remember where I saw them. I've developed quite sharp eyes I think with all my nature hunting and the smallest things catch my eye. This was very small, but very pretty and fascinating. I've done other insects since but as this one was so small I thought it out to be part of the mini-beast series!

It puzzled me for a while though trying to identify it as I couldn't find any small half green half black beetles. Took me a while to find out it wasn't a beetle but an early stage of the life cycle of a Green Shield Bug. I don't have any pictures of the adults but I found a lovely Youtube video which I've added below that shows the adults.

Well, I did my research and here's what I found:

Working its way up the plant

• They are most common England and Wales, hardly at all in Scotland, about 3 records, there has been more records in Ireland than in Scotland.

• They are found from Spring to Autumn or more specifically, from May to November, so they can still be seen now.

• They will start of as eggs, as in all bugs, and will then hatch into the first form, from what I've seen will then become a bit bigger for three stages of growth.

• They will them take their next form, which is starting to take the shape of the end bug, it then enlarges and grows a shield. It is then the Shield Bug.

Up to the top

• All of these stages, apart from egg and the adult, are called instars. I don't know why but they just are. My pictures are of the Green Shield bug in its second instar.

• They are usually about 12mm - 13.5 mm long, which is quite small and they could easily get trodden on.

• They can also be called 'Stink bugs' as they will release a smell designed to repel predators away.

• It eats plant sap, leaves of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. So, they have quite a varied diet.

Here's the lovely video of the adult bugs

Green Shield Bug Video

Here are a few links to some more information:

NatureSpot - Green Shield Bug

RSPB - Green Shield Bug

All Things Wildliy Considered Blogspot - Green Shield Bug

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

Day 97 - The Beauty of the mini-beasts part 5

Hey everyone,

Red Spider Mite (Tetranychus urticae)

Well it's day 97 and the 5th day of my trip, in fact I should be back by the time this is scheduled to go up. Just in case I'm late (or very tired) I've done a 5th day of my panto inspired Beauty of the Mini-beasts posts.

This one was quite a difficult one! Not only is the mini-beast a very small little bug it is also hard to find much on the internet that doesn't focus on how to get rid of it!

The little beastie in question is the red spider mite, and it was another find in the greenhouse with the iphone macro lens. I can't wait to try it on some slightly larger mini-beasts! I hope you can make it out in the photos here. Just in case I've linked a photo lower down from wikipedia commons.

 So what did I find out about these creatures:

• They aren't very popular, gardeners really don't want them and they can cause a lot of damage to crops when they are in large numbers.

• It is the smallest creature I've photographed, adult females are just 0.4mm long.

• It's a very adaptable insect that can feed on hundreds of different plants.

• Red spider mites feed on the contents of the plant cells, they suck out the insides of the plant cell by cell.

• If Dad was really lucky this little guy could be a Phytoseiulus, another mite that preys on the Red Spider Mite and is used as an organic control for them. They are slightly bigger at 0.5mm!

• They are only red in winter, most of the time they are a greeny-brown colour.

• They can breed without mating, unfertilised eggs can hatch into males.

• Severe infestations can defoliate (take all the leaves off) a plant!

So the smallest creature I've found seems to be the biggest pest!  The only site I found which didn't concentrate on how to get rid of them is Wikipedia if you want to know more.

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

Day 96 - The Beauty of the mini-beasts part 4

Hey everyone,

Well it'll be day 4 of my trip and I think it was scrambling that we were supposed to do today.

It's also day 4 of my panto inspired theme, Beauty of the mini beasts. Don't know if you've seen any of them but Matt Doogue takes some fantastic close up shots of insects. I love them and would like to learn how to take shots like them. I found a little Christmas present I'd almost forgotten about which was a set of clip-on lenses for an iphone, one of them was a macro lens! Trouble is most of the bugs are all tucked up for winter, so I had a look in the greenhouse to see what I could find. I did find a mini beast, and it was a very very mini beast! As you can see from the shots they aren't a patch on Matts but I was quite pleased as the Springtail in them is only two or three millimeters long!


Well I'd never seen one of these little beasts so close before so I had to do my research! Here's what I found out:

• Springtails are a group of creatures that have the name Collembola, this comes from Greek and means glue piston and it's because they have a sticky tube that helps them stick to surfaces.

• They are a very primitive and ancient group of creatures, there are fossil examples from over 400 million years ago!

• The smallest springtails are just 0.2mm long, I'm glad this one was a bit bigger or I'd have never got a photo!

• Their common name comes from a springing organ they have on their abdomen, it is like a long tough tail tucked under their bodies. They hold it there with a little catch. When they are disturbed they release the catch and spring away. It's quite impressive how much they can jump doing this.

• Their spring is known as a furca. The fastest springtails can spring their furca in 18 milliseconds!

• They aren't classed as insects, but instead are hexapods. This means they still have six legs coming from their bodies but they have internal mouth parts and insects have external mouth parts.

• They like to live in leaf litter and eat fungus and small bits of organic material.

• Collumbola are very widespread and the most common creature on the planet. Apparently in one square metre of a woodland up to 200,000 have been counted. As these little guys are very lively that must have been very hard - I'm glad I didn't have to do the counting!

So, a little look in last years tomato plant pot revealed a whole new lot of learning. I hope you enjoyed reading about Springtails and if you want to know more try these links:

• Royal Entomological Society - Springtails 

•  Natural History Museum - Springtails

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

Day 95 - The Beauty of the mini-beasts part 3

Hey everyone,

Well it's day 3 of my trip and I've probably been canoeing or scrambling today. It's day 95 of my posts and time for part 3 of my panto inspired Beauty of the Mini-Beasts.

Plaited Door Snail (Cochlodina laminata)

Today I've got a mini beast that's not an insect, its a mollusc. I'm talking about a snail, and as a group they are the most common form of mollusc and there are about 60,000 species. The species I'm looking at here is the Plaited Door Snail, or at least I think so. This one is very colourful compared to the pictures I've seen online.

I found the little guy in this picture at Rievaulx Terrace whilst walking through the woods after a pretty rainy few days. I noticed it as it was such a pretty little thing with a really unusual shaped shell.

So what have I found out about these little creatures?

• Snails are hermaphrodites, they are both male and female. They still need to mate though to be able to lay eggs.

• Snails will hibernate in winter, and sometimes in droughts in summer. They will sometimes gather together before sealing themselves in their shells with mucus to stop them drying out.

• Snails can live for quite a long time, some for around 5 years but its thought others can live for up to 25 years!

• They are very slow, moving around on a film of mucus to reduce friction. This means they are often food for other species. They survive by making sure they breed in good numbers.

• Even though they are food for many creatures they have been around in various forms for almost 500 million years!

• The Plaited Door Snail likes to live in woodlands and climbs trunks to eat algae and lichens. 

• They like to stay hidden away in the damp and don't like places where the leaf litter is disturbed. I probably only got to see this one as it had been so wet it was probably trying to escape being drowned!

• They are 15-17mm long

• The shell has a left-handed spiral which twists round 11 times.

• In Scotland and Ireland it is on biodiversity and conservation lists as it is quite rare there.

Well, I didn't know what a special little creature this was until I did my research, I just thought it was pretty and nice to have a photo of! I'll be looking out for them again when I'm next at Rievaulx.

If you want to find out a bit more about them try these links:

• The living world of molluscs - Native door snails

• Natural History Museum - Plaited Door Snail

• Snail World

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

Day 93 - The Beauty of the mini-beasts part 1

Hey everyone,

Great Diving Beetle

(Dytiscus marginalis)

Well it's Day 93 and I thought I'd start up another little theme since I enjoyed my 12 days of nature so much. I've been scratching my head wondering what to do but I took inspiration from a panto I was in last week - Beauty and the Beast. I'm away this week on an outdoor residential trip with school, my first holiday away from home (gulp!) so I've done a few posts for while I'm away on The Beauty of the mini-beasts. I hope you enjoy them.

I've scheduled the posts and a few tweets but wont have access to t'internet while I'm away so sorry I wont be able to talk with you all this week. In case I haven't got the technology right Dad's on standby, he's all right with his new nickname by the way :-)

So what's first in my theme - well it's a Great Diving Beetle I found in my garden. Here's a few facts I found about these not so little guys:

• They are a fairly common beetle found across most of the UK.

• They are one of our largest beetles and are around 3cm in length.

• They are pond predators and they eat anything from small invertebrates, through to tadpoles and even small fish which you can see in the video here.

• They have to come to the surface to replenish their air supply, they don't have gills, but store air under their wing cases.

• The wingcases are how you identify the sex, males are smooth and the females are ribbed.

• I found the one in my photo on the road. It seems they fly at night looking for new territories and can mistake glass or roads for water. 

• When they are threatened they release a nasty smelling liquid from their bottoms which puts predators off eating them.

• Females lay eggs in a hole they cut in plants and the larvae hatch after a few weeks. They have big pincers and look a bit like scorpions. they can grow to 5cm before they pupate into the adults.

Well, they're quite a fascinating insect so if you want to find out more try these sites:

• BBC - Great Diving Beetle 

• Wildlife Trusts - Great Diving Beetle

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.