Tag: water bug

Bug o’the Week – Closed for June I – Scuds, encore by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Closed for June I Scuds, encore

Salutations, BugFans,

The BugLady usually closes for the month of June so that she can hit the trails, find newly-minted insects (preferably ones that she hasn’t written about yet), and start building up a stash of pictures for future episodes – by spring, her picture files are dominated by unidentified insects.  Also, having hit 700 episodes at the end of March, the BugLady feels the need for a victory lap/vacation.  Never fear – there will be something buggy in your mailbox every Tuesday in June.

We’ve spent the last five weeks celebrating American Wetlands Month, but really, every day is Wetlands Day, so here’s an encore episode from 2011 that was in the queue when we ran out of Tuesdays in May.  New words; new pictures.

SCUDS

Sit down and put your feet up, it’s a long story.

OK, the BugLady could (and will) regale you with all sorts of arcane facts about scuds (aka amphipods or sideswimmers), but the main “take-home” here is that scuds are a hoot!  And they’re pretty cute, too.  What impresses people about scuds is their locomotion – they zip around in your collecting basin, pausing under the shelter of vegetation, and then they’re off again.  In The New Field Book of Freshwater Life, Elsie B. Klots says that they walk and crawl, “skittering’ on their sides by flexing and extending their entire body, and frequently rolling up on their sides or back.”  Anne Haven Morgan, in her Field Book of Ponds and Streams, adds that “Amphipods are accomplished water acrobats and can climb, jump, swim or glide with equal ease.”  

Their pedigree: Scuds aren’t insect “bugs”, but they are located under the giant umbrella of the phylum Arthropoda, along with insects, crayfish, scorpions, spiders, sowbugs, centipedes, fairy shrimp, and more.  Arthropods (“jointed legs”) are a mighty bunch that includes more than three-quarters of all animal species!  Within the arthropods, scuds are in the subphylum Crustacea, class Malacostraca, and the order Amphipoda.  That’s a bunch of big names for a small critter, and it doesn’t stop there – common names for this often indistinguishable bunch include freshwater shrimp, scud, sideswimmer, and gammarid (Amphipoda includes a large family, Gammaridae).  The taxonomy of these critters is, of course, under review.

Most Amphipods are Marine, but there are about 150 species of freshwater scuds in North America.  They are secretive bottom-dwellers, gracing cool, well-oxygenated springs and pools that have some calcium in the water for their shells (one source linked the size of scuds to the availability of oxygen in the water).  They prefer waters that are “fish-lite,” and they may grace these waters in huge numbers, up to 10,000 per square meter.  Look for scuds in tangled vegetation or under decaying leaves.  Through these thickets, they crawl and pull themselves along, using clawed legs and bodily contortions.  

Some species of amphipods are highly specialized, living in hot springs, caves, marine estuaries, or in deep, underground springs, and others are able to survive the drying of ephemeral ponds by burrowing into the mud.  The presence of some kinds of amphipods testifies to a waterway’s purity, but many species of scuds are tolerant of varying degrees of pollution.  They can’t live in poorly-oxygenated waters, and some species have fairly limited temperature “windows.”

The BugLady read of behemoth scuds that grow as large as an inch, but most are barely half of that.  Like a flea, a scud’s body is ultra-streamlined – arched and laterally flattened (if you look at them head-on, they’re pretty slim).  The front end (cephalothorax) consists of the head and the first segment of the thorax and is home to eyes, antennae, and mouth.  That’s followed by seven segments of thorax, with each segment bearing a pair of long climbing/walking legs (the first two pairs end in claws that are used in feeding and mating).  Gills are located at the base of the thoracic legs.  The last six segments are the abdomen, with six pairs of shorter appendages/legs that aid in locomotion and also push oxygenated water toward the gills (Amphipoda means “both kinds of foot”).  Scuds come in a variety of mostly neutral to pastel colors (influenced by their diet) and are often translucent.  Telling one genus from another may require a microscope.

So, how does a scud make sense of the world?  Scuds are light-averse, preferring starlight to sunlight.  Their two pairs of antennae are sensitive to both touch and smell.  While many amphipods see through well-developed, functioning, compound eyes, species restricted to caves and underground springs may be eyeless or have only vestigial eyes (but well-developed tactile hairs).  Normally-eyed species may evolve into blindness when restricted to permanently dark environs.

And where do little scuds come from?  Males and females swim piggy-back for days, preparatory to The Act.  If she needs to molt during that period, they separate briefly and then get back together after she has shed.  Like water sowbugs, female scuds have a structure called a marsupium on the underside of their thorax.  He passes sperm to her, and it mixes with the eggs (1 to 50 of them) in her marsupium.  She will carry the eggs around for one to three weeks until they hatch, and then she’ll carry the little tykes for an additional week.  If the dissolved oxygen in the water decreases, she may “ventilate” her marsupium by moving her first three pairs of abdominal legs to create a current.  The next time she molts, her fully-developed (but microscopic) young are released.  

The young scuds shed their exoskeleton eight or nine times on their way to adulthood (the exoskeleton splits across the back between two thoracic segments; the front half of the body is pulled out of the old exoskeleton first, and then the rear half), and adults continue to shed throughout their lives (which, if they’re lucky, may span more than two years).

The BugLady encountered a bit of amphipod ambiguity about whether a female breeds more than once.  Pennak, in his venerable Fresh-Water Invertebrates of the United States, states that most species of amphipods breed only once.  Other sources say that females can have several broods (up to 10) between April and October, but they must dance the dance each time.  According to Morgan, a female that produces 22 eggs every 11 days potentially has 24,221 offspring in a year (but egg mortality is high).

What do they eat?  Scuds are listed as detritivores, which means that they eat detritus – fragments of decaying organic stuff (including their own, shed skins) – from the water around them.  This “recycling” – breaking down organic materials into ever-smaller pieces for re-use by ever-smaller critters – is an important ecosystem service.  They also graze on the thin layer of algae, fungi and bacteria that covers submerged leaves, and although only a few species are predators, scuds may nibble on dying or freshly-dead aquatic critters.  They use those first two pairs of clawed feet to hold a morsel while they chew on it.  Scuds tend to live in waters too constricted and shallow for fish, but fish can be a major predator.  In the Western lakes where scuds were introduced as trout food, they make up almost a half of the trout’s diet.

If you Google “freshwater amphipods,” most of your hits will be photos and scientific articles, but if you Google “freshwater scuds,” you’ll find fishing sites and opportunities to buy scud-like lures. Several of the fishermen’s sites point out that scuds are related to shrimp and propose that although they are small, scuds might taste good in garlic sauce (what wouldn’t??). The presence of the usual compliment of parasites in scuds suggests culinary caution.

About the humble scud, the Pond Informer website says, “Apart from being nutrient recyclers, they collectively serve as a high-quality type of food for secondary consumers. They aren’t just consumed by fish; they are also a favorable prey type for larger crustaceans, wetland birds, amphibians, semi-aquatic reptiles, and riparian mammals. Gammarids are often considered ‘keystone’ species wherever they occur because their presence helps shape and establish working patterns for the existing ecosystem.” 

When she posted this episode in 2011, the BugLady said that it wasn’t known how scuds got from one pond to another.  She received an email from BugFan Don, who wrote, “Back in the good old days when I still went duck hunting, we would get ducks like bluebills and ring necks that had lots of scuds on their feet and leg feathers.  They would still be alive when we got the ducks home. To suggest that these diving ducks carry scuds from pond to lake is not unreasonable.

Duck hunters called them shrimp. I’ve heard stories about seeing retrieving dogs covered with the things.  These tend to be stories of the past, though.  No one seems to see scuds in such abundance any more.

The minnow sellers in western Minnesota have introduced fathead minnows into a lot of the big shallow lakes that were used by the divers [diving ducks] that fed on the scuds.  Bluebills leave Minnesota in worse shape than when they entered.  It takes a really severe winter to kill the fatheads so they tend to persist and they decimate the scud populations.  The divers responded by moving their migration and resting sites further west, into South Dakota.  The minnow merchants prospered, in spite of laws that prohibit moving live fish from pond to pond.” 

John Muir was right – everything IS connected!

Fun Fact about Scuds – according to J. Reese Voshell, Jr. in A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America, “scud” comes from a Norwegian word, skudda, which means “to push.”  The word was Anglicized as scud “and came to mean to move or run swiftly.”

Another Fun Fact about Scuds – an American scud that somehow made its way to Europe is out-competing the native scuds and is considered invasive.

Every day is a Wetlands Day.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Bug o’the Week – Wetland Homage V – Water Strider by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Wetland Homage V Water Strider

Howdy, BugFans,

Rounding out American Wetlands Month, the BugLady would like to give a shout-out to our hard-working, home-grown Wisconsin Wetlands Association.  The WWA reminds us that 75% of Wisconsin wetlands are on private lands, and that effective wetland protection involves educating both landowners and policy-makers.  To learn about wetlands in Wisconsin, check the Wisconsin Wetlands Association website https://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/ (and they wouldn’t turn down a donation, either).

WATER STRIDER REVISITED   (2012)

Anyone who has watched Water striders in action has been wowed by the four-point shadow that marks their path over shallow waters.  Photographers chase them, often futilely – a literal flick of the wrist sends the wily Water strider out of focus at speeds of one meter per second.  The BugLady first wrote about Water striders in February of 2008 and decided to take a second look.  What she discovered changed the episode’s rating from “G” to “PG.”

Water striders are in the True Bug Order Hemiptera, and in the family Gerridae.  There’s also a family of half-pint Water striders called the Riffle bugs/Broad-shouldered Water striders, (Veliidae), and in some cases, it takes a microscopic internal examination to distinguish one family from the other.  Sources disagree about how many species we are graced with – estimates range from 45 to 85 species of Gerrids in North America and from 750 to 1,400 worldwide.  Most are found on quiet or slow-moving fresh waters, but about 10 percent live on salt water. 

They have lots of common/regional names – water spiders (they’re insects, but if you count more than six legs, take a nose-count, too; it might be two Water striders in tandem – more about that later), pond skaters, water scooters, magic bugs, water skeeters, and in some parts of the South, “Jesus Bugs” (because they walk on water).  Many species are long and thin; some have wings and others are wingless, and some species have both winged and wingless forms, depending on where they live.  Most measure half an inch or less, but there’s an eight-inch Vietnamese water strider that’s billed as the largest invertebrate working the water’s surface. 

Each pair of legs has a different task.  The short, hooked, front pair catches food; the second pair rows the Water strider from one place to another; and the third pair, the longest, may do a bit of rowing, but it usually steers.

How do they DO that?  The top layer of water molecules (the surface film) is “stickier” than those below because of its contact with the open air.  Water striders skate on the water’s surface film on tiny, non-wet-able hairs at the bottoms of their tarsi (the final leg segments – their feet).  According to J. Reese Voshell, Jr. in A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America, retractable claws are located above the bottoms of their feet, so the claws do not puncture the surface film as they skate.  Long, thin legs allow them to distribute their weight over a larger surface.

Their legs and bodies, too, are covered by hydrofuge hairpiles (water-repellant hairs), at a density of several thousand hairs per square millimeter!  Raindrops and splashes of water roll off without weighing the Water strider down, and if by chance they are submerged, air trapped in the hairs helps them bob to the surface and gives them something to breathe during the trip.  Water striders can hop up off of the water’s surface, and many species can fly.  When they are working the surface film, they breathe like terrestrial insects, through openings in the sides of the body. 

The folks at MIT have, of course, dissected Water strider propulsion.  The feet of Water striders create tiny dimples on the water where they sit.  When they locomote, their feet push down and back, forming a small indentation off of which they rebound, moving forward as if bouncing on a trampoline (for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – life is physics) (while they were at it, the MIT researchers built a Robostrider using an aluminum soft-drink can.  Of course.). 

What are they doing on the surface film, anyway?  A lot of eating.  They have, like other true bugs, piercing-sucking mouthparts.  Their prey are small terrestrial invertebrates that fall, or mistakenly fly, down onto the surface film and get stuck in it, sending out tiny ripples that mark their throes.  Water striders monitor the surface film with their front legs and skate toward the disturbance.  They also feed on tiny animals that float up from below, like emerging gnats and midges and mosquitoes.  Pierce, slurp, discard, repeat.   

Birds prey on Water striders, and so do some other aquatic Hemipterans, but because of a nasty secretion from their scent glands, only the hungriest fish will eat them.  If Water strider populations get dense, they may solve the problem with cannibalism.  They are sometimes infested by the red nymphs of Water mites.

Water striders practice Simple/Incomplete metamorphosis – they hatch (from eggs laid on plants and stones under the water or near its edge) looking like mini-adults.  They shed and grow over a period of about six weeks before reaching maturity, adding a few all-important adult appendages, living in the same habitat as the adults, and eating the same food.  The adults of the summer’s final brood overwinter at the bottom of the pond, in plant stems, or out of the water, sheltered along the shoreline in winter.  

Males and females defend their own territories during breeding season but abandon territories and congregate cooperatively at other times of the year, even sharing a “kill.” 

The BugLady discovered, upon revisiting the Water striders, that they have pretty gritty sex lives.  Here’s the “G-rated” version.  Water striders, especially males, do a lot of signaling in the form of ripples as they move about; they have ripple signals to communicate “repel” (when they want to be alone), “threat,” and courtship.  A male in courting mode may send out a repel signal to a passing Water strider, and if the signal is not returned, he sends out a courtship signal.  If she is receptive (female Water striders are the deciders), he may stick with her during the whole breeding period. 

And here’s the PG version: According to articles in Discover magazine in 2010 and 2012, reluctant brides of some common Water strider species may be blackmailed by males who skate up and grab hold.  If she resists his charms (by deploying a genital shield), he starts tapping rapidly on the water surface.  Researchers think this might have started off as a simple demonstration of his fitness, but the behavior evolved into something more sinister.  Another predator of animals caught in the surface film is the Backswimmer, who hunts from below, and ripples created by the male Water strider are known to attract Backswimmers to the scene.  Scientists postulate that the female, especially if she has encountered Backswimmers before, is aware of the danger (she is, after all, the one whose belly is closest to the Backswimmer – the male is shielded by her body), and she yields to the male in short order, whereupon he stops tapping.  They noted that males are aware of the Backswimmer’s presence and actually tap faster when Backswimmers are around. 

After the mating process, the male may stay on her back for up to two days, which hampers her hunting prowess. 

Evolution is at work again in the strategy developed by a small genus of Water striders.  When the male is a nymph, his antennae are only somewhat thickened, but in his final molt, the antennae develop dramatic hooks and spines that match the shape of the female’s head and eyes and allow him to grasp her more firmly (even so, seven out of eight females manage to elude him). 

Magic bug indeed!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Bug o’the Week – Wetland Homage IV – Water Scorpions by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Weeku
by Kate Redmond

Wetland Homage IV Water Scorpions

 Howdy, BugFans,

If wetlands are the transitional spongy/submerged/semi-submerged/sometimes-submerged areas between high ground and deep water, what might some wetlands look like?  Swamps are wet woodlands, while marshes are wet areas with standing water whose vegetation is mostly non-woody.  Peatlands like bogs, which have no sources of water other than precipitation and run-off, so water stalls there and becomes acidic; and fens, which are fed by springs and are often alkaline.  And then there are sedge or wet meadows, scrub/shrub thickets, and more (for more info, see https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Wetlands/types.html) and https://www.wisconsinwetlands.org/learn/about-wetlands/wetland-types/.

WATER SCORPION (2008)

The long (about 2” not including the “tail”), lean, well-camouflaged Brown Water scorpion (Ranatra fusca) is in the order Hemiptera, and thus, it can legally be called a “bug.”  It’s in the family Nepidae, which includes about 13 species in North America and 270 worldwide, including some broader-bodied species like https://bugguide.net/node/view/2205541/bgpage and https://bugguide.net/node/view/818188/bgpage that resemble the Water scorpion’s distant cousin, the Giant water bug https://bugguide.net/node/view/1657638/bgimage. 

Water scorpions have simple/incomplete metamorphosis, looking when they hatch pretty much like they will as adults, adding a few parts (the wings and the “naughty-bits”) as they molt (five times) and mature.  As is typical with insects that practice simple metamorphosis, both the adult and the immature water scorpions live in the same habitats – muddy-bottomed ponds and very slow streams with submerged vegetation – and both dine from the same menu.  What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

They hang out, usually head-down https://bugguide.net/node/view/1682158/bgimage, on aquatic vegetation and in the detritus just off-shore, gripping with their second and third pairs of feet, legs bent.  Their passage through the water is sloth-like, and swimming, also using their second and third pairs of legs, is not their forte.  In fact, in A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America, author J. Reese Voshell, Jr. says that water scorpions are so sedentary that not only do algae and micro-invertebrates form colonies on them, but other aquatic insects may deposit eggs on them!  This immobility is part of their “stealth” hunting tactic.  

They’re equipped to fly https://bugguide.net/node/view/126649/bgimage, and fly they do, but not often, and almost always at night (say most – but not all – sources), and they must emerge and spread and dry their wings before take-off.  They are known to bask in the sun.

Despite their resemblance to the terrestrial, vegetarian walking sticks https://bugguide.net/node/view/1874213/bgpage, water scorpion are carnivorous, ambushing aquatic invertebrates like daphnia, seed shrimp (ostracods), backswimmers, water boatmen (a favorite), and even tiny fish fry and tadpoles.  They spot their prey with protruding compound eyes https://bugguide.net/node/view/1679712/bgimage, “lunge” at it by straightening their legs suddenly (without letting go), nab it with mantis-like front legs, stab it with a short beak (which is capable of piercing human skin, so handle with care), and inject it with tranquilizers and tenderizers.

Two long filaments on their south end are not stingers, but they explain the “scorpion” part of the name.  These lock together to form a breathing tube, the tip of which the bugs position just at the air-water interface.  Oxygen seeps down the tube and is stored as a bubble under the fore wings, against the abdomen.  They can use that bubble of air when they want to go deeper than their “snorkels” will reach (the structure of the filaments doesn’t allow water to enter), and in well-oxygenated water, oxygen suspended in the water can diffuse into the bubble, giving the insect extra breathing time. 

According to a website called the Pond Informer, “The mating process for water scorpions typically occurs in the months of April and May. To attract a female mate, a male will perform stridulation. He will create a chirping sound that is produced when he rubs his legs against his body, similar to crickets rubbing their wings together. Once he has attracted a mate, the male water scorpion will lay diagonally across and on top of a female, and he will grab onto her thorax using his front legs. Shortly after mating has occurred, the female will deposit her eggs – she usually does this around dusk.” 

Her eggs, which are laid at or above the water’s surface in plant stems, rotting wood, or in damp spots like algae and moss near the water’s edge, have respiratory filaments that protrude from the eggs and allow them to take in oxygen https://bugguide.net/node/view/1861200/bgimage, and some sources say that the eggs can also glean oxygen from the plant stems they are inserted into.  She can lay about 30 eggs in one evening.  Newly-hatched nymphs make a dash for the water’s surface (there’s no room for breathing tubes in the egg https://bugguide.net/node/view/570259/bgimage).  

Water scorpions overwinter as adults, under the ice, equipped with a chemical defense against freezing.

Fun Fact about Water scorpions – an alarmed individual may squeak, and then it may play dead, and it may squeak if it’s scooped out of the water.  

Another Fun Fact about Water scorpions – they can sense the depth of the water they’re in by the water pressure.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Bug o’the Week – Water Mite Redux

Bug o’the Week

Water Mite Redux

Salutations, BugFans,

The BugLady visited her favorite ephemeral pond the other day.  Frogs were singing and fairy shrimp were chugging along underwater – life is good.  She’s been working on other projects recently, so here’s an episode from 2009, with some new words and new pictures added.

First-time observers of the underwater world are startled to see tiny, bright-red dots wallowing around underwater.  These critters are water mites, wee spider relatives in the Phylum Arthropoda, the Class Arachnida (spiders), the Order Trombidiformes, and in a quasi-taxonomic group called Hydrachnidia/Hydarachnidae.  There are some 1500 species of fresh-water-dwelling mites in North America (5,000 globally, but probably more, because they’re seriously under-studied), many of which tend to be habitat specialists. 

Water mites are common – abundant – denizens of shallow, quiet ponds, and a few species have adapted to life in rivers and streams.  They’re everywhere except Antarctica, in tree holes, deep lakes, bogs, hot springs, rivers, swamps, and marshes.  The word “ubiquitous” applies.

Superficially, they look like spiders, but spiders have two body parts, a cephalothorax (combined head and thorax) and an abdomen, and the spherical water mites have a fused thorax and abdomen and a tiny head (mostly mouth). 

Other physical characteristics include two double eyes (some species have an additional third eye in between, and a Vietnamese, cave-dwelling water mite has no eyes at all) and eight, short legs (most of the time). Many are startlingly red (bright red is an uncommon color in aquatic invertebrates), but species found in streams tend to be drab, and the BugLady has seen teal blue water mites.  Water mites that live in quiet waters are adorned with hairs on their legs – a light-weight way to increase the surface area for swimming; mites that live in running water have strong claws instead, so they can grab the substrate and resist the pull of the current.  Water mites can also be seen “walking” along on the pond floor and on submerged plants.  If they stop swimming, they sink.

Water mites can get all the air they need from the water they live in, absorbing dissolved oxygen through their skin, and they can live in waters that are very low in oxygen.  They’re usually found in the shallow water, but some live as deep as 100 meters and others call ephemeral/vernal ponds home, burrowing into the mud when the water dries up.  They are found in open water under the ice in winter.  Prime water mite habitat may contain as many as 2,000 mites per square meter.

The ranks of the water mites list a few scavengers, some parasitic water mites, a few species that eat plants and detritus, and a few cannibals, but, like true spiders, most adults are carnivores that grab their prey (zooplankton, worms, crustaceans, and tiny immature insects), pierce it with their fangs, suck the juices from its body (the waters seem thick with body-juice-suckers these days), and then discard the skin and roughage.  They are, in some reference books, enthusiastically consumed by fish, aquatic insects and hydras (the BugLady is confident that you recall your high school encounters with these tiny, transparent, somersaulting tree-guys).  Other sources report that water mites taste bad and that predators learn to avoid them, and that that’s why they’re red in the first place.

[N.B. – when the BugLady first wrote this, she misspoke and said that water mites develop within their host’s bodies. She misread a sentence and extrapolated the fact that some species may be internal parasites to mean that all were.  Repent at leisure.  Water mites are (mostly) meat eaters, but their feeding methods are different in different life stages. The larvae are external parasites (ectoparasites) on adult insects, and both the nymphs and the adults are predators on whatever is swimming around with them that they can tackle.] 

It is their childhood that is mind-boggling. Eggs, as many as 400, are laid on rocks or plants or on the neighbors – mussels and aquatic insects.  Eggs hatch into six-legged larvae that attach to insects that are aquatic or whose immature stages are spent in water – stoneflies, dragonflies, true bugs (like water striders), caddisflies and flies (like crane flies and mosquitoes).  Once attached, the larvae go through a parasitic phase.  They probably use their senses of sight, touch, and “smell” to find their hosts.  They attach to dragonfly and damselfly naiads when the naiads are about ready to crawl up out of the water to emerge as adults, and they act like ticks (to whom they are remotely related), living on the bodily fluids of their host.  They drop off the naiad during that final molt and then hop aboard and reattach themselves to the new (and temporarily soft) adult skin.  Female mosquitoes may not feed or lay eggs if they have too many mites, and a big load of mites lessens reproductive success in male damselflies.

In plain English, water mites start as eggs, then are larvae, then nymphs, and finally adults.  An arachnologist might say that the larva attaches to a host, and, still attached to its host, the larva becomes a protonymph, and the protonymph turns into a deutonymph within the larval skin or nymphochrysalis.  After a free-swimming, carnivorous stage, the deutonymph becomes a tritonymph within the imagochrysalis and the BugLady promises never to talk like that again. 

Along with food, the mite may benefit if, when it matures and drops off, its host has traveled to a different pond (not go good if it drops of over dry land).  Some sources viewed the mite’s hitchhiking as phoresy, but strictly defined, phoresy is the inadvertent transport of one critter by another.  There’s no parasitism in phoresy.  

In Summary: What’s not to love about a vivid, minuscule, aquatic parasite-predator spider relative who sucks out the very essence of its prey and whose life history encompasses egg, pre-larva, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, tritonymph, and adult? 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Become a Member

Take advantage of all the benefits of a Riveredge membership year round!

Learn More