Insects for Fun!

These moles can fly and swim!? (Mole Crickets)

This week we're digging into Mole Crickets! Their behaviors, tunnels, songs, and some cool cultural significance. 
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This weeks artists: HM Surf and  Blue Wednesday 
 
Transcript: 
 
Welcome back to episode 34 of insects for fun! I’m your host as always, Mitchel Logan and today we’re talking about Mole Crickets, but before we get into that I have a quick PSA. I got messaged through the fb account asking where people can send me questions or topics they would like to learn about, and the answer is my email which is insectsfordummies@gmail.com. I really do welcome requests, and of course listener stories if you have any! Now let’s get back to the program.
Mole crickets are in the family Gryllotalpidae and there are approximately 107 species known today, but I’m sure there are more. These crickets are found all over the world and they are all well equipped for life underground. As you might expect, Mole crickets got their name because they spend a good majority of their life in a series of burrows all made for various purposes. In fact they start digging as soon as they hatch from their eggs because this is where their lives start! They don’t just act like a mole though, they are also built like a mole too with very strong forearms that are shaped like the paws of a mole. This is a great example of a biological term known as convergent evolution which simply means species from different origins have evolved similar traits because of a shared environment. In this case that environment would be life underground and as it turns out, wide forearms with short appendages make for a great digging tool! 
 
They don’t have legs built for jumping so you won’t see them jump much if ever. Unlike more traditional crickets, they’re whole body is built for pushing and moving through dirt, but many of them can fly and even swim which is honestly quite shocking. 
 
Adult mole crickets are typically between 1 and 2 inches long or 3 and 5cm. They have cylindrical bodies with an armored head and thorax which probably act like a miners hard helmet. also have two sets of wings, the forewings which are what you see immediately and the hind wings which are underneath but often are much longer than the forewings. I’ve never actually seen one fly before but I guess it usually happens with females after sunset or very early in the morning. I have seen them do short hops outside of their burrows though. These crickets are attracted to lights so if you live in an area that has them you can find them near well lit areas. They’re also pretty buoyant because they have small hairs covering their body which traps air, and they use their shovel-like forearms to paddle water.
Earlier I briefly mentioned the tunnel systems these crickets live in, but now I’m going to actually dig into that information (badum chuck). Mole crickets make a variety of tunnels depending on what it is they are doing at the time. For example, when a mole cricket is foraging for food they often make tunnels close to the surface of the soil and in softer substrates like sandy soil, you can clearly see the elevated trails left by them. 
 
If the males are looking to attract a female then they make a very different kind of tunnel which actually acts as a horn to amplify their songs. The entrance is much wider than a normal one and it narrows into a chamber referred to as a “bulb”. It’s kind of shaped like a bulb which is I guess why they name it that, but the function is to act as an acoustic room which amplifies its sound. Mole crickets actually don’t face the opening of their tunnels while calling for a mate, and the innermost end of the bulb is typically just a wall of dirt. If there are any additions to the structure they branch off from the mid section of the bulb. 
 
At least from what we know based on the European Mole Crickets. Some mole crickets even make two openings that both lead to one tunnel which is commonly seen in Tawny Mole crickets and African Mole crickets.
 
The tunnels these mole crickets make for singing work so well that you can actually hear mole crickets from 600 meters away. Each species of mole cricket has its own chirp but they tend to be one pitch which is then modulated at different speeds. Many mole crickets keep their song around 3khz but have different speeds for which its oscillated. I’ll play you an example now. (insert mole cricket song) these crickets actually rival cicadas for how loud they are. In my episode on Cicadas we learned that those bugs can sing at 90 decibels and it turns out they are not the only ones. A research article published about noise mechanics stated that the loudest mole cricket song in their study was recorded at 92 decibels and that was from 1m away. That’s louder than a lawnmower. If you’re near one you can actually feel the ground vibrate because of how powerful the song is. In the popular series Animal Crossing you can find mole crickets by following the song. It’s quite loud and gets louder the closer you get to it, at which point you have to dig a hole to find it.
Now depending on your beliefs or even your profession the mole cricket will have various meanings from huge pain to delicacy or even a weather forecaster. 
 
People who work on golf courses or outdoor sports fields in turf management think of mole crickets as a bane to their existence due to the nature of herbivorous mole crickets feeding on the root systems of turf grass. It’s not just about killing the grass, but also making the turf less flat which causes performance issues, especially on golf courses. These damages are often caused by invasive mole crickets which have managed to get around the world with the help of ships. In Florida for example there are three different invasive mole crickets that are responsible for a lot of destruction on turf grass and even the yards of residents, and one of them, called the southern mole cricket, is actually carnivorous and makes burrows in the ground to find worms, grubs, and other small critters hiding in the dirt.
If you happen to be in Thailand, Vietnam or the Philippines then you might find mole crickets to be a great source of vitamins and protein. Mole crickets make for various meals in these countries from being shallow fried or baked to stir fried. In Pampanga Philippines, mole crickets are a staple, the same way cheese is popular in Wisconsin and are used in a variety of dishes including a crispy snack to pair with beer. In the Philippines it's known as kamaru so if you see anything with that name then it's sure to have mole crickets. If you’re curious about the health benefits etc one of my first episodes on this podcast was about entomophagy and I go into all the details. 
In Latin America, mole crickets are believed to be both a sign of good luck, and a weather forecaster. If you find one in your house it’s perceived as a good omen and if you see them making many tunnels you should expect rain in the near future. I personally don’t quite understand the rain one because mole crickets will be digging regardless of the weather but who knows! What I do know is that increased moisture in the soil causes increased surface tunneling as found in a study done by North Carolina Universities department of Entomology.

The Stars That Fly Among Us! (Fireflies with Guest Speaker: Sarah Lower)

This week we are talking about Fireflies with Sarah Lower who is an associate professor at Bucknell University! 
Firefly Watch! - https://www.massaudubon.org/get-involved/community-science/firefly-watch
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Music Artists: Purrple Cat, Sátyr and Phlocalyst

Special Collaboration with Just Bugs!

This week we are reflecting on and talking about 6 different insects in pop culture with the two hosts from Just Bugs podcast! 
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You can find Just Bugs on all your podcast platforms as well as Instagram! 
Link to their podcast: 
https://open.spotify.com/show/71bn95LDBMYraYqx1T3Gha?si=a114852136cd46ac
Link to their Insta: 
https://www.instagram.com/justbugspodcast/
 

That’s not an owl... right? (Owl Butterflies)

This week we are looking at Owl Butterflies, their behaviors, and why they got the name! 
 
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Email: Insectsfordummies@gmail.com
 
This weeks artists: HM Surf, mønberg, no one's perfect, and sleepermane 
 
Transcript: 
 
Welcome to episode 32 of Insects for Fun! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and this week we are taking a look at one of my favorite butterflies and the largest butterfly in the Americas, the Owl Butterfly.. 
 
Owl butterflies are 20 some odd species within the genus Caligo, and are found from Mexico down into South America, flying in both the rainforests and secondary forests. Secondary forest means that the forest has regrown after a cutting or clearing either from a natural or manmade process. 
 
The butterfly as stated in the intro for this episode is indeed the largest butterfly within the Americas and its got a wingspan ranging between 6.5-20cm depending on the species. Blue morphos can also get up to this size and share a similar coloring, often making the two confusing to distinguish between for a novis butterfly watcher. And yes butterfly watching is in fact a hobby much like bird watching and on the topic of birds, Owl butterflies get their name because of the very large conspicuous eye spot seen on both their outer hindwings as well as the patterning and coloration. The under/outward-facing wings really do resemble an owl, especially a horned owl. Pictures will of course be on the instagram page along with their caterpillars.
 
The inner/upper facing side of the wings vary heavily by the species with some being more black and monocolored than others, but they do often have blue which does not help at all for people who already have difficulty differentiating them from blue morphos, but! If you listen to this episode and check out the instagram page then you too can be confident the next time you encounter one of these butterflies! My favorite is Caligo atreus which sports bright blue and cream orange on the inner wings, and its outer wings look like they went through a warm vintage filter. 
 
The caterpillars for these butterflies are pretty monstrous as well, competing in size with the Hickory horned devil which we mentioned last episode, these caterpillars can reach a length of 15cm but their appearance is very different. So different in fact that the caterpillars for these look like hairy slugs. Yes, that is an oxymoron but there seriously is no better description. The tail end of this caterpillar is slimmer than the mid section and forks into two tails that look like eye stocks on a slug and the head is also narrow and flattens into the body. Something un-sluglike would be the tufts of fur that poke out of their back. Some species have longer tufts than others which look like a row of spikes going down where a spine would be. I’ve seen them in person while at a butterfly house in Montreal Canada and they really are huge and unlike any other caterpillar I’ve seen. 
 
Earlier I mentioned that the genus for this group of butterflies is called Caligo and there is a good reason for this. Caligo in Latin means darkness or the dimness of light and as it turns out, these butterflies are actually crepuscular which is just a fancy word for being active at Dawn and Dusk. Next time someone asks why you look so tired during the day just hit them with the I’m crepuscular and I’m sure they won't bring it up again. But honestly its really cool to see them flying around in the evening or dawn because the last thing you expect to find mid-flight is a giant butterfly.  During the day these butterflies like to perch under large foliage and rest. It’s a smart move because predators would have no trouble finding them in flight during the day. 
The butterflies feed in the evening hours on a variety of things from rotting fruit and animal dung to flowers from heliconia, fan palms in the family Cyclanthacea (also referred to as Panama hat palms), and Bananas, but Banana trees are not native to the neotropics. The primary diet is definitely rotting fruit though which is why you find so many of them clustered around bananas, mangos and other common fruits at butterfly gardens. It’s actually quite common to see them in exhibits that offer an indoor butterfly room along with Blue Morpho butterflies probably because they are some of the largest butterflies in the world and easy to raise.
 
The caterpillars feed on the same plants the adults fly to making them a pest on banana and plantain farms.
 
 So much so that it was apparently proposed to use parasitic wasps on farms in certain countries to lower their populations. Now I tried to find records of this but I wasn’t able to and to be honest, I feel like releasing parasitic wasps in a neotropical country would require a huge amount of testing to make sure the wasp wouldn’t affect native populations of other insects. Unless of course, it is a native wasp! But moving along to the topic of predators, owl butterflies actually have a semi erratic flight pattern as seen with blue morpho butterflies to help protect them from being targeted by birds, reptiles, and other predators. These butterflies don’t fly for long durations at a time and end up frequently pausing on trees and other hard surfaces which confuses animals that are trying to lock on. 
I’ve actually experienced this firsthand in the forests of Belize while walking down a path when an owl butterfly flew into view. I had a net ready but I could not keep track of its zig-zag flight and random pauses in the brush. Suffice to say it got away and I ended up in a pile of mud, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. 
 
Owl butterflies also partake in a behavior known as lekking which is when male butterflies stake out a territory and then compete with each other for the attention of a female.  
 
These butterflies usually line up along a forest edge or along a road and sit waiting for a female to fly by. 
 
 The males actually scent these territories using pheromones and will even fight off other males who fly into their lekking space. If a female flies into the territory of a male he will pursue her for a short while to see if she’s interested  And if she’s not, that’s just the way it goes and he will fly back to his perch. What’s odd is that the areas males choose to lek aren’t very strategic in terms of resources. Often times these locations don’t have anything in particular that would attract an owl butterfly. They usually aren’t even in an area the butterflies would normally inhabit either. It’s like these butterflies specifically choose areas where they stand out and can really show off what they have. The funny part is that males will often be relatively close to each other but not close enough to overlap their territories. It really feels like a show hall where females fly slowly down the line to choose which male they want.  
 
This usually happens at dusk or dawn with many observers claiming that the phenomenon only lasts until the sun makes it over or under the horizon depending on the time of day.  
 

The Hickory Horned Devil! (Citheronia regalis)

This week we are learning about a special giant silkmoth belonging to the subfamily of royal moths! These ones don't produce silken cocoons which are very uncharacteristic for a silkmoth. 
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This week's music artists: HM Surf, PurrpleCat, mell-ø, S N U G, and Sleepermane.
 
Transcript: 
 
Welcome to Episode 31 of Insects for Fun! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we’ll be talking about a very cool Giant Silkmoth
 
The regal moth also known as the royal walnut moth or the hickory horned devil is a very large and beautiful moth in my favorite family of moths known as Saturniidae or the Giant Silkmoths. I’ve personally been raising Saturniids for the better half of a decade starting in my Senior Year of High School. If people are interested I might even sell eggs and cocoons for whatever I have at some point in the future, for subscribers of this podcast. 
 
Anyway! Today we are looking at only one of these beautiful creatures and one that I personally have never actually seen in real life. This moth is considered common in the southeastern states of the US and has become incredibly rare in states above New Jersey. I think its current range is actually south of Jersey west to Ohio and the edge of the great plains down into Eastern Texas but historically this moth could be found in New England as well. 
Unlike the other members of the Giant Silkmoth family this moth does not produce any silk! Usually, Saturniidae moths will weave silken cocoons which protect their pupae from outside forces, but this moth along with others in the subfamily Ceratocampinae actually bury into the ground before pupation. This feature makes them and all the other royal moths very difficult to find and tricky to raise. 
 
Before I continue I want to share with you a visual description because the regal moth or royal walnut moth, true to the name, is a very stunning creature. The body is red with yellow bands and the wings are grey with red lines going down them. There are also a few yellow ovals in between these red lines as if someone with a paintbrush decided to just dab some contrasting colors. This moth has the largest mass of any other moth above Mexico and has a wingspan of 9.5 to 15.5cm. The females are actually larger in this species which isn’t always the case with moths in this family. 
Earlier I mentioned how Hickory Horned Devils make pupae in the soil and you might have noticed I use the word Pupae when referring to moths and Chrysalis when talking about butterflies and this is because Moths and Butterflies have separate terms. Pupa and chrysalis mean the same thing, but the reason why Butterfly pupae are always referred to as chrysalids comes from coloration. Moth pupae are almost always a type of brown and look drab in comparison to the usual shiny and metallic butterfly pupae. The word chrysalis actually originates from the word chrysos which means gold and refers to this metallic sheen but we’re getting pretty off-topic so let's take it back (rewind affect).
 
The caterpillar of a Hickory Horned Devil is possibly one of the coolest-looking Giant Silkmoth caterpillars I’ve ever seen and there's a good reason why it got the name Hickory Horned Devil. The final instar of this caterpillar is a bluish-green color with 4 small black spiny appendages on each body segment, except for the tail and the first three segments including the head. Replacing these black spines at the front end are four large red and black-tipped devil like horns that protrude from the two segments directly behind the head of the caterpillar. It almost looks like a rams head but with four horns instead of two. The head and last body segment are both red in color and the thorax section has two large black dots where those large devil horns come out. Its six true legs are also red in color making this thing truly fearsome. Aside from looking super intense, these guys will also sometimes raise their heads and shake them to scare you, but this caterpillar can actually do no harm. To be honest it's one of the more docile ones. You can pet all the spikes and have them crawl all over you and you’ll be fine. Similar to many other menacing-looking animals it has to look that way if it wants to survive because otherwise it's got nothing.  
Another thing is that these caterpillars also happen to be one of the world’s largest, reaching a length up to 15cm. Yes it actually out sizes the caterpillar to the world’s largest moth by at least 2cm. I will of course be showing pictures of everything on the instagram page so I recommend people to follow that or the facebook page because I forward everything there as well. 
Hickory horned devils do indeed feed on hickory as a primary host plant, but they also feed on other plants such as walnut, butternut, persimmon, sumac and sweetgum, and the caterpillars primarily feed during the night when they’re still small and vulnerable. During the day these young caterpillars curl their bodies in the shape of a J to look like bird droppings. This actually works well for them because the coloration on their early instar/molts is black with a brown smudge. As they get larger and scarier they also get more active during the day and will be munching on leaves nonstop. 
Adult moths do not feed on anything at all. In fact, all Giant Silkmoths have no functional mouths once they reach adulthood and live purely off the fat they gained as a caterpillar.
Most Giant Silkmoths also go through a stage of hibernation known as Diapause in the entomology world, and the regal silkmoth actually hibernates in the winter underground as a pupa regardless of where it's raised, but the growing season might be shifted a bit depending on which part of the country or world you are in. 
I say world because you can actually breed these in other countries like the Netherlands for example. Many people love to raise giant silkmoths and its not uncommon at all for people to get insects from outside countries to raise for fun. Certain restrictions apply of course if there is an ecological concern but that will be listed by the supplier.  
Once the moths eclose from their pupae they get ready for flight in the case of a male or they get ready to use pheromones in the case of a female. As with all Giant Silk Moths, the female moth will not fly until after she’s mated and will actually hang where she eclosed and release a pheromone trail through her scent wand. It’s called a scent wand but it is not at all like a fairy wand or some other magic controlling stick. Think of it more like the mechanics of a highlighter pen, but when the tip of the pen is exposed to air it leaves a strong scent trail. The females moths can choose when to make themselves available by exposing their scent wand and it is in fact as quick as clicking a highlighter pen. The males have huge antennae for this very reason, because males are constantly on the move hoping to pick up a scent trail that will lead him to a mate. Females have much thinner antennae but usually have heavier bodies because of the hundreds of eggs they carry and they have the all powerful scent wand. 
 
Now there is another species of Horned Devil which is actually called the Pine Devil and this species of Regal moths feeds exclusively on pine trees and the color of the caterpillar actually matches the branches of the trees they feed on. This makes them different shades of brown with black markings but the body shape is essentially the same as the famous hickory horned devil. The moth is the same shape as well but the coloring is much more bland. It kind of looks like the walnut moth got left in the toaster too long or something like that, but you can see the images on the instagram and facebook page. 
 
If you are interested in Learning how to raise hickory horned devils I Highly recommend checking out Bart Coppens youtube video. He goes in-depth about how to raise these caterpillars among many other exotic giant silkmoths. I watched it to make sure it was legit and I’m happy to report he knows what he’s doing.  

Locusts vs Grasshoppers and a swarm the size of Japan!?

On this week's episode, we look at grasshoppers and locusts and why they're the same but also not! We also go into some crazy history about a locust species that holds the record for the largest swarm ever recorded and their mysterious disappearance. 
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IG@ Insects4fun 
Facebook Page: Insects for Fun
Email: Insectsfordummies@gmail.com 
 
Today's artists: HM Surf, After Hours, and mell-ø 
 
Transcript: 
 
Welcome to Episode 30 of insects for dummies! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we are getting to the bottom of what separates a grasshopper from a locust (if there is anything) 
 
Okay, to start off let's first describe and define a grasshopper because some people might even be thinking of crickets or katydids. 
 
Grasshoppers are insects in the order Orthoptera which does indeed also house crickets and katydids, but! Grasshoppers are in a separate suborder known as caelifera which stands for chisel bearing and refers to their short ovipositors. Crickets and Katydid’s belong to the suborder Ensifera which stands for sword-bearing and as you might guess has everything to do with the length of their ovipositors because these ones really do resemble a sword. Another major difference is that grasshoppers are diurnal which simply means they are active during the day, and they sing by rubbing their legs against their wings, unlike crickets and katydids who make their songs by simply vibrating their wings together. 
 
Grasshoppers like all Orthoptera go through incomplete metamorphosis. They simply hatch from an egg and go through a series of molts with each one looking more and more like the adult. However! Some grasshopper species can do something incredible and this is where Locusts come in. You see, of the 11,000 some odd species of grasshoppers, 25 are able to do something truly extraordinary and that would be their ability to completely change their appearance and behavior into what we know as a locust. This Jekyll and Hyde type transformation results from a set of conditions being met with grasshoppers in the family Acrididae.
 
 If food becomes scarce and these grasshoppers are forced together in one area, their bodies start releasing serotonin from the extra stimulation. This release of neurotransmitters causes behavioral changes which can further escalate the change from a peaceful solitary animal to a voracious horde of flying field destroyers. This is an even more likely scenario if rains come and provide an abundance of new food to this heavily gathered area causing a further increase in the population.  Ordinarily, grasshoppers cannot fly very far, but once the genes start transcribing the code for a locust then their wings become more developed and their brain actually increases in size. This change allows them to take flight AND recognize others of the same species. Locusts have actually been clocked at flying 20 miles per hour or slightly over making them rival dragonflies for the fastest flying insect and they can maintain flight for extremely long distances. 
 
For example, desert locusts regularly make a nonstop trip across the red sea which is 300km. This transformation from grasshopper to locust can occur at both the adult stage or the nymph stage and can even be reversed! The color changes are incredible as well with extremely flashy primary colors like red and yellow. This coloration is a warning to predators but also a signal to other locusts which can help them band together forming even larger swarms.
 
These swarms are usually documented from Africa, but locusts could swarm in a variety of locations. Grasshoppers with this ability can be found in Asia, Australia, Europe, The Americas and the Caribbean. The most widely spread locust is the migratory locust known as Tocusta migratoria. This species of grasshopper/locust is found in Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand and its even featured in the popular video game Animal Crossing (insert bug catch music)
Locust swarms are also referred to as locust plagues due to the fact that they are incredibly destructive and can actually displace and force populations of people to leave an area. A locust swarm is not merely thousands of individuals or even hundreds of thousands. Locust swarms are usually around 40 to 80 million ravenous insects which can eat over 300 million pounds of food in one day. Yes, that’s 300, million and no I didn’t sit on the 0 key. A swarm the size of paris can eat as much as half the population of France in one day which is why these insects are a power to be feared by many people. This is especially problematic when the countries facing these insects are already struggling with natural disaster and inner conflict. 
 
At this point we’re all thinking okay but how on earth are you supposed to prevent that or prepare for something like that? The reality is trying to do anything about it once it's already started is extremely difficult especially once they have begun to fly. Nowadays people have been using biopesticides that incorporate a deadly naturally occurring fungus. We also do surveillance checks by looking at weather conditions along with aerial surveys in areas where locust swarms could potentially begin. If many grasshoppers are congregated in an area then pesticides are used to reduce the population before it can get to swarming levels. 
 
Other tactics are to lay down large bands of pesticide on the ground from the air in front of an oncoming quote unquote hopper band, which is a large army of flightless nymphs. Once these nymphs walk over the laid down pesticide the nymphs start absorbing the fungus and cannot continue. Other current pesticides involve the usage of chemicals which interact and inhibit insects but are nontoxic to humans. It wasn’t always this way though. People used to actually eat the locusts by collecting them and cooking them. To be honest it's an extremely smart and effective treatment because these guys have so much protein for their small bodies and it's all plant derived. The only issue is that this doesn’t prevent the start of a swarm and it also became unhealthy once people started using wide scale toxic pesticides in the 80s. If you live in an area that sometimes sees these swarms of locusts then I’m sure you’re familiar with how insane they can get, and I’d even love to hear about some stories if you have any! Just send me an email and if we get enough people willing to email in any wild experiences regarding insects I might be able to start doing listener stories episodes! That could be super cool. 
 
If you are living in the United States and thinking thank god we don’t have to worry about that, well there was a time when we actually did. Prior to the 1930s we had a grasshopper species known as the Rocky Mountain Grasshopper or Locust, and this was an incredibly destructive species that used to span the great planes into Canada and down into Texas through Montana, Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, and Arizona, but was also as west as Washington, Oregon, and California. However, they would also move so far east as to actually cause farm damage in Vermont and Maine but these were only recorded in the mid to late 1700s. when swarms were being recorded for long after that until 1877 and the last living specimen was collected in 1903. The largest swarm ever recorded in the history of all insects happened in 1875 when the Rocky Mountain Locusts had such a large population boom that they literally eclipsed the sun, and formed a mass greater than the size of California and had over 12 trillion insects. Think about that for a second. This flying mass of hungry locusts was greater than the size of all of Japan and had over 12 trillion insects when we just calculated earlier that 80million translates to 300 million pounds of food in one day. So this literal giant dark cloud of locusts was able to eat an amount of food equal to 4.5 trillion pounds. One woman wrote about it in a children's autobiography stating that the cloud was hailing grasshoppers, the cloud was grasshoppers! Their bodies hid the sun and made darkness. The rasping whirring of their wings filled the air and they hit the ground and house with the sound of a hailstorm. 
 
Now, the really mysterious part of this whole thing comes from the fact that this species of locust completely vanished in the following 28 years. There were no more major swarms after the year 1880 and the last locust was collected in 1902. It’s hypothesized that the reason came from all the agricultural work that had been done through the great plains like plowing, and irrigation along with trampling from cattle. The fact is that this insect despite its immense swarms only had one small range of permanent residency in the rocky’s which also happened to be a good location for farming. At any rate, this grasshopper is no more, and the US has not seen a locust swarm since. But again, this is not the case for other countries like Africa which is now infamous for being plagued by a different species known as the desert locust. The most recent locust swarms lasted from 2019 to 2022 which started with a cyclone in 2018 that brought a lot of rain to the Arabian Peninsula. Those swarms grew and spread to various countries in the area over the span of the last 3 years, but thankfully it's finished and we currently don’t have another active swarm at the date of this recording. 
 
Locusts swarms have always been a bad omen in popular culture being associated with end times or extreme global disasters. It certainly predated the bible otherwise there wouldn’t be a famous biblical plague about them. Let’s just hope we don’t see more real-world applications as the weather continues to become more and more unpredictable…

The fungus that inspired HBO’s and Naughty Dog’s “The Last of Us”

This week we are looking at the incredible fungus, Orphiocorydeps unilateralis, that started an amazing horror series. The fungus is commonly referred to as the zombie ant fungus and ants have evolved to deal with it in surprisingly similar ways to the people living in the world of "The Last of Us"
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Today's artists: no one's perfect, another silent weekend, sleepermane, and
mell-ø 
 
Transcript: 
 
Welcome to episode 29 of insects for dummies! I’m your host Mitchel Logan and today we’ll be talking about the crazy fungus that inspired a fantastic horror series. 
 
If you aren’t familiar with the series “The Last of Us” it is a critically acclaimed horror video game for Playstation that got turned into an equally stunning HBO television series. The idea behind the series is that in the future there is an infectious fungus that takes over a human’s body and turns them into a mindless zombie. The greater the host is infected the more monstrous and mushroomlike the host looks. If you’re a fan of horror I highly recommend you give either the games or the television series a shot. I’ve played both games and thoroughly enjoyed them. But what if I told you the fungus this series was based around actually exists in real life or that fungi and humans aren’t that different? We’re going to get into all that and more with today’s episode. 
 
In the insect world, a fungus known as Orphiocordyceps can infect a host and then use its body to grow until it breaks out and releases spores. The specific species which got the attention from the creators of Last of Us is known as Orphiocorydeps unilateralis or the Zombie ant fungus. This fungus is found in Brazil, Australia, Africa, and Thailand as well as temperate forests in Japan, South Carolina, and Florida. It’s specific to Formicine ants and causes them to behave abnormally until they can’t move at all, at which point the fungus grows out of the ant's head to release its spores. The shape of the fungus is actually dependent on the geographic location leading to the further classification of subspecies. 
 
Here’s a breakdown of the entire process. First, an unsuspecting ant gets exposed to the fungus by walking over it or having spores land on its body from above. At this point, the fungus itself is relatively harmless until it uses an enzyme to breach the surface of the exoskeleton. Once inside the body, cells of this fungus float around in the ants hemolymph which is essentially the blood, insects don’t have real blood because they’re arthropods. 
 
The fungal cells now slowly begin connecting to each other using tubes to share nutrients. At this point, the fungus starts infecting and controlling muscle cells within the ant. It’s actually a misconception that the ant gets mind controlled because the brain of an infected ant remains untouched through the entire process. Think of the ant as a puppet at this point where the fungus is the puppeteer pulling all the strings from within using the ants' muscles. At this stage, infected ants will begin behaving abnormally, twitching, having strange jolted movements, and leaving the nest for seemingly no reason. Fortunately, because ants are social insects they can pick up on these cues and either kill the infected ant, preventing the virus from spreading in the colony, or leading it very far away to die (last of us quote). There are actually ant graveyards filled with ants that have succumbed to this zombie fungi and in some countries, particularly in the Indo-Australian region, a species of ant known as Colobopsis leonardi has evolved to keep their nests up in trees, and only sends a select few individuals down to forage in the forest floor which minimizes their contact with fungal spores. 
 
Once an infected ant no longer has any control over its body is when the fungus leads it away from the nest and makes the ant crawl up a nearby plant to reach an optimal humidity and temperature for reproduction. The ant then clamps down and remains motionless while the fungus proceeds to kill and then grow out of the body releasing its spores onto an unsuspecting ant colony or worse, ant trails. This behavior evolved with the fungi for two reasons. One, to relocate the ant before a colony member kills it or leads it too far away and the second is to get the ant in an optimal position for fungal development and spreading spores. Wind can carry the spores and has a greater chance of infecting other colonies. The goal is not to kill a colony though because then the fungus dies too! It simply needs a few more hosts to keep itself alive. 
 
A similar fungus known as Ophicordyceps siensis infects ghost moth caterpillars in the upper altitudes of the Tibetan plateau and the infected caterpillars share a similar fate to the ants mentioned earlier. Something different about this fungus though is that it is actually used for medicinal purposes and is very expensive. This fungus is so popular that it's actually worth 3x its weight in gold and many Tibetans rely on the harvesting of infected caterpillars for their livelihood. For example, one pound of this fungi can cost 63,000 dollars and one pound of gold is 22,000. The important must though is for the caterpillar to be intact and connected to the fungus. If the fungus breaks from the caterpillar the price takes a cut.
 
The fungus infects caterpillars during the summer while they’re underground feeding on root systems of host plants, and the fungus slowly grows through the caterpillar during the fall and winter months.
 
 In spring the caterpillar is led towards the surface and a long, brown, spore-filled stalk proceeds to grow out of the head and through the surface of the dirt. I recently saw these being used in a survival television series. They were given as a gift to the survivalist in the show by local Tibetan people. The properties of these caterpillar treats are supposed to provide an all-around boost to your health but most notably to the immune system and your energy levels.
 
As you’ve probably guessed by now the fungi responsible for these kinds of insect deaths cannot affect humans otherwise we wouldn’t be eating them. This is not to say there are no fungi out there which can infect a human, because we, of course, do get fungal infections, but fortunately, the vast majority of fungi are self-reliant and don’t require a host for their survival. Out of the millions of Fungi in the world there are only a few hundred which can affect a human, and much fewer are capable of infecting a healthy person. Fungi usually require much lower temperatures than the human body and they usually get killed off really fast by our immune system. Believe it or not, we actually have beneficial fungi inside that work alongside beneficial bacteria to keep us in good health. However, people who are immunocompromised are more susceptible to having this equilibrium fall out of balance and or getting infected with fungal infections that otherwise don’t have a chance of surviving. This is also possible for people receiving organ transplants because everyone has a different cocktail of bacteria and fungi, and unfortunately an internal fungi infection is not an easily treatable condition because as it turns out, fungi and people share a lot of cellular similarities. Animals and Fungi are actually sister groups and because of this, we have to be careful with how we treat fungal infections. 
 

Not your average Bull! (Bull Ants)

This week we are looking at the most deadly ant in the world! And of course, it comes from Australia! Learn about what makes these ants so deadly and why they look the way they do in today's episode! 
 
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Today's artists are: S N U G and Softy

The Blue Winged Helicopter! (Damselfly)

This week we're looking at the largest damselfly on the planet, its habitat, strange food preference, and interesting behaviors! 
 
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This weeks music artists are: kidcut, Artifical.Music, PurrpleCat, Pecan Pie, Sebastian Kamae

Wait... insects can make webs too!? (Webspinners)

This week we take a look at some really unique tiny insects with the ability to make their own ecosystems out of webs using their feet! 
 
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Today's Music Artists: HM Surf, persist, and Purrple Cat