Sawflies Maybe (with an important addendum)
When Ray took Ento 101, the professor in charge, was a mite expert. But he was a humble man and admitted that there was much more to learn about mites. If each one of you was tied to this building with a 100 foot long rope, each one of you wandering as freely as your tether would allow, could easily discover a new species of mite.
Ray still enjoys that image in his mind’s eye, 80 or so presumptive entomologists, tethered to the Heep Building with ropes, collecting new species of mites. You know, many might feel like people, or Aggie entomology students, tied to buildings and required to find new species of mites is degrading. But not Ray.
Apparently, sawflies are the same difference as mites. There are just too many of them for modern science to deal with in an orderly fashion. Yet now, everyone with a digital camera and a macro lens is fixing to take pictures of sawflies with a resulting glut of unidentified sawfly pictures on Bugguide. Plus, Crumby is just as guilty as everyone else having delivered a picture of sawfly larvae on bedstraw to id request. If you grow it, you might have a better chance of identifying it. Hmm.
Doubtless the same is true of this larva which is busy eating up Red’s Rhus aromatica or trilobota. But this one is fairly interesting because apparently it somehow piles its poop, combined possibly with additional ghastly secretions, onto itself. Maybe this strategy keeps the parasites(always a problem for worm types) away.
Oops! Once again we have misled ouselves. The depicted is actually a leaf beetle larva of the genus Blepharida, probably Blepharida rhois. This is the second time we have mistaken leaf beetle larva for sawfly larva. Ugh!
Crumby and Ray are more likely to raise this one than the other one because this one actually was found at the CB, whereas the other one on the bedstraw was actually residing in Manchaca. And so far, despite having searched some, no worms have been found on the CB’s bedstraw or on any of the nearby bedstraw across the street.
Ray still enjoys that image in his mind’s eye, 80 or so presumptive entomologists, tethered to the Heep Building with ropes, collecting new species of mites. You know, many might feel like people, or Aggie entomology students, tied to buildings and required to find new species of mites is degrading. But not Ray.
Apparently, sawflies are the same difference as mites. There are just too many of them for modern science to deal with in an orderly fashion. Yet now, everyone with a digital camera and a macro lens is fixing to take pictures of sawflies with a resulting glut of unidentified sawfly pictures on Bugguide. Plus, Crumby is just as guilty as everyone else having delivered a picture of sawfly larvae on bedstraw to id request. If you grow it, you might have a better chance of identifying it. Hmm.
Doubtless the same is true of this larva which is busy eating up Red’s Rhus aromatica or trilobota. But this one is fairly interesting because apparently it somehow piles its poop, combined possibly with additional ghastly secretions, onto itself. Maybe this strategy keeps the parasites(always a problem for worm types) away. Oops! Once again we have misled ouselves. The depicted is actually a leaf beetle larva of the genus Blepharida, probably Blepharida rhois. This is the second time we have mistaken leaf beetle larva for sawfly larva. Ugh!
Crumby and Ray are more likely to raise this one than the other one because this one actually was found at the CB, whereas the other one on the bedstraw was actually residing in Manchaca. And so far, despite having searched some, no worms have been found on the CB’s bedstraw or on any of the nearby bedstraw across the street.
posted by ray pistrum at Monday, March 28, 2011
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