Flying Insects Can Drive You Buggy

Yesterday's musings just brought so many new ideas to mind that I just had to research a few connections a bit more.

About insects that fly: some beetles have lost the ability to fly. I just can't imagine for myself a creature that would simply quit doing something as gloriously free as flying because s/he had something better to do. But, I guess that must be just what happened. Not all of a sudden one day, of course; but over eons.

I commented yesterday about the similarity of insect societies and the way that people act. Of course, that got me to thinking. Some of those social ways of organizing are good for both insects and people. But what about the ants that enslave aphids for their honeydew, as we enslave honeybees for their services and honey, as man has enslaved man. That's one thing that I love about nature .... everything is connected, even to us.

Have you ever sat on a sunny day and watched ants stream in and out of their nest? Have you ever tried to count them? It's another great exercise for a naturalist, if a bit overwhelming. But counting a few ants, seeing the small space they are using, and then extrapolating to the size of the world can give you a sense of how utterly massive the total biomass of ants on earth must be. And then all of a sudden you realize that the ants seem so large and we humans seem so small.

I'm a tree nut (nyuk-nyuk) and I'm always looking for a new tree story. Many of you have probably heard me tell about the extinct Carolina Parakeet which once inhabited this area. Paroquet Springs was named after a favorite spot for the bird. They congregated there to take advantage of all the sycamore trees that grew there near the river, as well as to avail themselves of the salt and the canebrakes that may have been necessary to their mating. The fruit of the sycamore was a favorite food (according to Peattie quoting the Long expedition), just as beech nuts were a favorite food of the extinct Passenger Pigeon. Well, today I came upon a bird called the 'Sycamore Warbler'. I thought I knew something about birds, but I'd never heard about that one before, so I did a bit of checking. It turns out that the Sycamore Warbler is a bird more commonly known as the Yellow-Throated Warbler. I see by my old bird checklist that I've never seen that species before. But my Peterson's shows that it should be seen in this area in the warm months. The Sycamore Audubon Society says that the name came from the habit of the bird of nesting in sycamore trees. (Who can argue with them?)

To get started:
Beetles:
http://www.cirrusimage.com/beetles.htm
http://www.earthlife.net/insects/coleopt.html

Ants and Aphids:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/animal_magnetism/fourmis_pucerons.html
http://theantroom.blogspot.com/2007/10/ant-aphid-mutualism-gets-weirder.html

Honeybees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeybeehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey
http://www.vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm
(not my thing, but a perspective on the enslavement of bees)

Slaves at Bernheim:
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kylgs/newsletter2.htm
(portion about slave cemeteries, including Magruder)

Biomass of Ants:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=536123
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/Entomology/ythfacts/allyr/ants.htm
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E5D6103BF930A25753C1A96E958260

Carolina Parakeets:
http://www.audubon.org/bird/boa/F28_G1a.html
http://www.chattoogariver.org/index.php?quart=Sp2000&req=birds

Paroquet Springs
http://bullittcountyhistory.org/bchistory/paroquetspringsarticle1909.html
http://www.travelbullitt.org/history-paroquet.shtml

Sycamore Trees:
http://www.etsu.edu/arboretum/totw.html
http://www.hackerscreek.com/pringle.htm

Salt in Bullitt County:
http://www.bullittcounty.org/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullitt

Canebrakes:
http://www.dlia.org/atbi/grsmnp_habitats/shrubland/evergreen/CEGL003836.shtml
http://woodlandhabitat.com/articles/RiverCane.doc
(MS Word / Doc file)

Beech Trees:
http://www.kentuckyawake.org/plantsWildlife/lifeHistory.cfm?instanceID=29765
http://www.beechroad.com/beechtre2.html

Passenger Pigeons:
http://www.wbu.com/chipperwoods/photos/passpigeon.htm
http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/inhsreports/may-jun98/pigeon.html

Sycamore Warblers:
http://sycamoreaudubon.org/
http://www.birdwatchersdigest.com/blog/2007/09/that-bonk-on-window.html