Some Serious Ecology

The CB is home to grass carrier wasps (Isodontia spp.). One of the littler Isodontia species has built a nest between the sliding glass door and the screen door, yet partly also inside the sliding glass door, which has some holes in its frame. Crumby only just found all this out even though he had observed a grass carrier wasp going in a hole in the sliding glass door. It’s like you need to connect the dots. Wasp goes in hole in door. Mass quantities of grass gets stuck between the doors. A big ball of grass falls out of doors when you move the screen door. The grass ball is full of tree crickets. Lots of tree crickets.

Oops! Sorry about that my grass-carrying wasp friends. Uh. Your crickets have fallen down. But you can just put them back once you get your nest fixed. Sorry!

Yet Crumby decided to take some pictures of the tree crickets. After all, you don’t normally see tree crickets everyday unless you happen to be a grass carrier wasp of the genus Isodontia. This cricket may be merely paralyzed. Something chewed its antennae off.

But to identify a tree cricket to species you need to look at the spots on its twain basal antennae segments, that is the basal segment and penultimate basal segment. Here’s a picture of that taken with the microscope. See! Serious ecology.