Looking at the Edge of the Internet

©2019 Karen Richards

I’ve noticed since I drew an alphabet of prehistoric and extinct animals in 2017 that, sometimes, the internet isn’t the definitive source we think it is. Often, I’d research an animal only to find that scholarly papers on that creature hadn’t been uploaded, either because the writing was too old and obscure to have been scanned or, on the flip side, because it was too new and proprietary.

Incredibly, and happily to my mind, there are also some topics that have never been explored, period. There are over 350,000 species of beetle. I’m sure there haven’t been 350,000 entomologists over time to study each of them (even if each specialist chose an uncharted species). 

So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I ran up to the edge of the internet. I found a beautiful beetle yesterday (I netted it thinking it was a bee) and took several great pictures of it. Yet when I went to learn more about my new friend, I faced an abyss, a vast emptiness of information. 

All I found was its scientific name (cosmosalia chrysocoma), its common name, Yellow Velvet Longhorned Beetle, and that it was first described in 1837 by a guy named Kirby. And that was about it.* 

©2019 Karen Richards

I’ve been reading Diary of a Citizen Scientist by Sharman Apt Russell. She was inspired by Dick Vane-Wright, the Keeper of Entomology at the London Museum of Natural History, who said, “There’s so much we don’t know!… You could spend a week studying some obscure insect and you would then know more than anyone else on the planet. Our ignorance is profound.” 

I love this. I figure, I could go back out to the woods where I saw the Yellow Velvet beetle, study it for a while, and add something to the world’s knowledge. That’s an awesome thing. It gives me hope and makes me feel that every minute I spend outside being aware is full of potential, a universe of possibility. Moments like this renew in me the wonders of childhood, when we knew we didn’t know everything and therefore, even magic and fantastical things are entirely plausible. 

Action: PIONEER. You can try to find the end of the internet too! Whether you’re sitting on your deck or walking in a nature preserve, take notes or take a picture of what you notice and find interesting, and see what you can learn about it when you’re next at a computer. 

*Here are a couple of links to Yellow Velvet Long-horned Beetle pages. From the foothills of the Olympics in Washington and a blogger named Sally, who also found one on cow parsnip (where I caught mine). We might assume it bores into trees to lay eggs, like other longhorns. But that and other generalities are speculation, as far as I can see, having looked into the four available pages of internet search results.

Also, don’t confuse this innocuous insect with the velvet long-horned beetle which, apparently causes trouble as an ‘invasive species’ (I’ll comment more on that term later).

Spittlebug Season

Yesterday I noticed white foam in the crooks of some weeds growing in our back yard. The sum of my knowledge about this phenomenon was from childhood: “It’s a spittlebug,” I thought. But then, I wondered, what is a spittlebug?

Curious, I scraped away the foam to see who was there. It looked like a small green worm, probably the larva phase of some bug, which only spurred further questions: What insect does it become? Why does it make the bubbles, and how?

An internet search revealed that these are immature froghoppers, a species of true bug. They create the bubbles by sucking sap from the host plant, then mixing in expelled air as excess food is discharged. The spittle keeps the insect moist and temperature controlled, and it conceals them. As you can imagine, little nymphs who haven’t yet grown exoskeletons are easy food for all kinds of birds and predators.

The nymphs don’t generally damage their host. In other words, they don’t drink enough sap to sap the plant. 

Spittlebugs go through five instar, or intermediate, stages. From what I read, they go from orange to yellow to green, which means I missed the first stage. So I need to get out there sooner next year to see an orange one! I’ll try to go back every day or two for a while and see what happens next. They supposedly become brown toward the end, and start looking and acting more like the frogs they’re named after. They can jump farther for their size than a flea and their head is wide with wide-set eyes, like a frog. 

Action: INVESTIGATE. Find spittlebugs in your area. Wipe off the foam and see what stage they’re at. An easy thing like swiping away bubbles can give you new insight on something you’ve seen and disregarded for years.

A Tale of Two Beetles

It’s been shorts and T-shirt weather lately and there are all kinds of insects flying about. On a walk mid-day today, I noticed a blue dot zig-zagging across the street toward me. Blue??! Since the color difference was much easier to see over the pavement I was happy to be able to keep track of it as it flew over the grass and into a park. I didn’t have a lot of hope it would stop moving while it was in my sights, but then it appeared to land. I walked cautiously over to the spot and searched the square-foot area where I thought it was. There! It was a shiny blue beetle. Cool!

I got out my cell phone and crouched down. I took a picture from a few feet away and then moved closer, trying to focus the image on the beetle as I went. It was hard to see the screen in the sun, so I wasn’t sure if I’d even gotten the beetle in the frame. Since it wasn’t moving, I decided to risk attaching my macro lens. I got it out, took the case off my cell phone and clipped on the lens. But, just as I started to move in again, it flew away.

This is the best picture I got of it:

Later in the day, I went to look at my front door, where two or three black and orange / red beetles had been yesterday. Sure enough, one was still there. I came within a centimeter of the insect with my gigantic (to it) black phone and clip-on macro lens and was able to get a half dozen shots I could tell were in focus. All the beetle did was wave its antennae. 

This is the best picture I got of it:

Inside, I Googled “black orange beetle Oregon” and found out that it’s a soldier beetle. People call it a “beneficial” beetle because it eats “pest” insects like aphids, and, bonus, it pollinates some colorful flowers and plants. The Wikipedia entry on it is surprisingly short, though, considering the beetle is common all over the U.S. and people seem to like it. 

Takeaways from the day:

1. Action: SEIZE the moments. Even when you don’t get the outcome you were hoping for, chasing a big dream might be more rewarding than attaining a lesser goal → I had more fun stalking the elusive blue beetle than I did photographing the passive soldier beetle. I really want to see the blue beetle again. I may even go for a walk tonight with the purpose of finding another one, but I won’t go back to get another picture of the soldier beetle. Okay, I might. I’m curious about a front view and a side view. 

2. In the world of insects, the sheer number of species means there often isn’t a mound of scientific data on any one type. I count that as opportunity, and as hope. Think of the potential treasure hunts! There is so much on Earth that hasn’t had attention paid to it, even in your own neighborhood.