Ants - Naturalists Handbook

I'll be honest, Hymenoptera give me the heebie jeebies, but ants surely have to be the most fascinating group of insects which have yet evolved. I'm naturally drawn to under-recorded groups and ants are very much neglected in VC55. With only 61 species occurring in Britain they are also a manageable size (compared to say, Ichneumons). But I must resist, I've made a deal with myself that I'll get to ants after I've sorted out aphids (but don't hold your breath!). When the day comes I won't be able to do better than Gary Skinner and Andrew Jarman's updated Ants book. In fact, I could splurge a lot of money on the Naturalists Handbooks Series ... but I must resist! 

Skinner, G.J. & Jarman, A.P. (2025) Ants (Naturalists Handbooks Vol. 24). Pelagic Publishing Ltd. ISBN 9781784273040 https://pelagicpublishing.com/collections/naturalists-handbooks/products/ants-second-edition

 

Entomology Journal - December 2024

Not a lot of entomology for me this month, I've been mostly thinking back on this year as well forward to 2025.

I've never kept a regular journal for a whole year before so this has been an interesting exercise. While it's nice to be able to recap the year easily, it hasn't been an easy process for me. I'm not a natural diarist and this journal has been rather selective. To be able to keep this up I need to make some changes, and from January I won't be writing a full journal each month, but I do want to continue on a more advanced ad hoc basis, so in future months it will be more of a digest than a diary. 

FIT Count Summary 2024 

Low carbon biological recording - and remembering sunny afternoons in the garden. 

Spider Surprise

First VC55 record for the Ray Spider, Theridiosoma gemmosum. 

My Journal, December 2024

03.xii.2024
A local trip to the Attenborough Arboretum. Not much to be found but lots of Giant Willow Aphids. After some effort I did manage to confirm a record of Mycena calvularis on a Willow trunk, a good result for my rusty mycology.

 
09.xii.2024
Weather pretty bad, so a week of microscope work catching up on the summer backlog.

 
13.xii.2024
LRES first ever online meeting on Aquatic Bugs seemed to be well received by guests. The members were possibly less keen on this format.

 
17.xii.2024
Went on a secret mission to a secret location to collect a secret species for a secret project! Sorry, but I hope to have an exciting update in 2025!

 
29.xii.2024
After two weeks of the gloomy weather I can remember, finally a pink dawn and some sunshine. With the days getting longer, a prospect of hope on the horizon for entomology in the year to come.

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FIT Count Summary 2024

The UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (UK PoMS) launched FIT Counts (Flower-Insect Timed Counts) in the UK several years ago. At the time, I decided not to bother. This year, with the moth trap in my suburban garden not justifying the electricity to run it (other than to document the disastrous local decline in flying insect numbers this year), FIT Counts seemed much more attractive. For one thing, FIT COUNTS are a very low carbon way of recording - in good weather, spend ten minutes watching flowers and insects in your garden or local park, then upload the results via a mobile phone app or the website. I'm usually disappointed by big citizen science projects, which tend towards engagement rather than useful data, but the FIT Count methodology is geared towards long term monitoring which is desperately needed. 

UK POMS has just sent all the recorders an end of year summary - short version: another record year for FIT Counts. My own effort is a sad four sessions, but I'm looking forward to the start of the FIT Count season (1st April - 30th September) and making a better effort next year. With 2024 virtually certain to be the warmest year ever and the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, this sort of data becomes ever more important, as does gathering it without getting in your car and driving off to get it. The two most important groups of pollinators, bees and flies are both vulnerable to climate change between these two major groups of pollinators, with flies seemingly being more at risk. Even 10 minutes standing watching your local insects can help. How hard can that be? 

Critical thermal maxima differ between groups of insect pollinators and their foraging times: Implications for their responses to climate change. Journal of Melittology, (122), 2024.

https://journals.ku.edu/melittology/article/view/22505

 

Spider Surprise

A cold December day, half the countryside under water - what else to do but huddle over a nice warm microscope catching up with samples from the summer bulge when it is just impossible to keep up. In this case, a streamside vacuum sample from September. It started off in a humdrum way, knee deep in Bathyphantes gracilis and Tenuiphantes tenuis, but then ... a tiny speck of a spider turned out to be the Ray Spider, Theridiosoma gemmosum. I've never seen this species before and it's the first record for VC55 as well as a considerable range expansion. Fortunately it's a pretty unmistakable species (once you look close enough), which is lucky as this was an immature male - not surprising since September is past the peak for this species. A nice surprise on a winter's afternoon.

Entomology Journal - November 2024

Winter has arrived, entomology slows down. 

Bluesky

There are social media people and non-social media people. If you're one of the latter you might want to read on - old dogs and news tricks, etc. I had a long history on the Twitter social network, including academic publications. At first I couldn't get my head around Twitter - how could something so trivial be of value? The value of course is in the conversations which happen in the network. I fell out of love with Twitter some time ago, but couldn't face leaving. In the end, I didn't leave Twitter, it left me - sometime before it became "X". I haven't missed it, solely because I now have a new and much better network. Naturalists (and other communities) have flocked to BlueSky - https://bsky.app/ - and it's already helped me with identifications, as well as simply giving a sense of belonging. I hope you will join me there and become part of my network - https://bsky.app/profile/ajcann.bsky.social  If you need any help getting started, just ask. If you would like to know more about BlueSky, there's a good article in Nature here. 

Pygmy Backswimmer, Giant Headache?

Although small, the Pygmy Backswimmer, Plea minutissima, was always an easy tick - there's nothing else like it. Well now there is. A new paper describes another species (Plea cryptica sp. nov.) found across Europe, but not so far in the UK. It's highly improbable that it's not here, so now we've got to check them all - not an easy task. Raupach, M.J., Charzinski, N., Villastrigo, A. et al. The discovery of an overseen pygmy backswimmer in Europe (Heteroptera, Nepomorpha, Pleidae). Sci Rep 14, 28139 (2024)

Also:

• Parasitic Mites on Corixids
• Olympus TG-6 Update

My Journal, November 2024

01.xi.2024

Gave the moth trap a run but only three Light Brown Apple Moths, zero bycatch. Doesn't justify the electricity so I think that's it for me now until the spring.

02.11.2024

A trip to Loddington to sieve the leaf litter. Nothing amazing found but nice to be out in spite of the drizzle.

05.xi.2024

Visited Loughborough Cemetery to check the Mistletoe. Little found sadly.

12.xi.2024

Took a trip to Bardon Hill to sift some leaf little. Arthropods were hard to find, but nice to be out.

16.xi.2024

A lovely visit to Launde Park Wood. Although bugs were in short supply I was happy to sit in the sun and drink coffee. The highlight of the trip turned out to be tiny yellow fungus cups on a dead log. I assumed these were Lemon Disco, Bisporella citrina, but one of my Bluesky friends pointed out to me that the adjacent black fruiting bodies are pyrenomycete fungi, probably Rosellinia species.  This means the yellow one is  actually Sulphur Disco (Calycina claroflava, formerly Bisporella sulfurina), which parasitises the mycelium of pyrenomycetes.  

19.xi.2024

Winter arrives, bringing snow. Bugs are huddled up.

22.xi.2024

I ventured out to Billesdon to try to find some aquatic bugs.  Plenty of snow on the ground and I had to break the 1cm thick ice on the pool. Underneath, I found lots of Notonecta viridis and also abundant Corixids happily overwintering and unbothered by the cold. Among the species I found was a specimen of Callicorixa praeusta parasitised by  the larva of a Hydrachna water mite (link above). 

26.xi.2024

A rare sunny day. The Winter Gnats are dancing. I've tried to net these in the past to check the species but they always elude my clumsy efforts. Took a trip to Brocks Hill to take advantage of the sunshine but very few invertebrates around. A single Drymus reyei under a log was a nice find.

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More Olympus TG-6 Tomfoolery

Recently I wrote about using the in-camera focus stacking on the Olympus TG-6 for macro photography, today I thought I'd push it as hard as I can to test the limits of this camera. The first idea was to create multiple inage stacks (by pressing the shutter repeatedly) and then stack them all together using Helicon Focus. This was ... partly successful. My first test subject was ... a pencil. I made 9 image stacks then fed them into Helicon. 

The problem is that no matter how hard I tried I couldn't keep the camera from moving between stacks - any movement at all degrades the final Helicon stack. The best I managed was three aligned stacks (3x15=45 images), which is the pencil you see above. 

I then moved on to wildlife. With a small spider (Diplostyla concolor), about the same size as the pencil tip in the above image, I couldn't manage to get multiple stacks without camera movement - this was the best, a single set of 15 images. 

When I tried with the bug Drymus ryei, the same thing happened, but the result still wasn't bad. So it was time for the big head to head: Olympus TG-6 versus Sony a6500 with Sony 90mm macro lens - a camera with a 12MP sensor versus a setup with a 24MP sensor costing four times as much. 

Olympus TG-6

Sony a6500

And the result was ... well the Sony is better (duuh) (click on the photos for larger images), but the TG-6 gives it a run for its money, costs a fraction of the price and fits in a shirt pocket. Good job TG-6! 

I could of course carry on with this nonsense by putting the TG-6 on a tripod and using the Olympus OI.Share app to remote trigger the camera. But that, I'm sure you agree, would just be silly...

 

Parasitic Mites on Corixids

I ventured out recently, broke the centimetre-thick ice on a local pool and underneath, found abundant Corixids happily over wintering and unbothered by the cold. Among the species I found was this specimen of Callicorixa praeusta: 

You may notice the small red object protruding from the rear end. Looking closely, this was a mite attached to the bug rather than part of the Corixid: 

Phoretic (hitchhiker) mites are not uncommon on Arachnids but a little research told me that this was in fact the larva of a Hydrachna water mite.

These larvae are actually parasitic rather than phoretic, feeding on the haemolymph of the Corixid. There is some interesting information here: http://coo.fieldofscience.com/2014/12/hunter-balls-hydracha-water-mites.html  They are not as common on Corixids as on some other Arachnids and I have no idea how much harm they inflict on the host. 

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

Augustus De Morgan 

 

 

Olympus TG-6 Update

The Olympus TG-6 is my goto camera, the one I pick up first. I'm amazed how good this camera is for macro photography, and how such a powerful package can slip into a shirt pocket. (Having said which, an iPhone beats it for landscape and portraits). I've already made a few tweaks to improve the quality of images this camera delivers but today I made a few more.

Photography is all about the lighting, macro photography even more so. I've previously written about how important the Olympus Light Guide is for macro photography, and made one tweak to improve this further. This simple (and cheap) macro diffuser for Olympus TG cameras is useful in avoiding the burnt out highlights which result from having the light source so close to the image. This is a particular problem with shiny objects such as beetles and water drops. It's cheap and it works but it's a bit limited in how it can be applied, so today I made Mark II - a circle of packaging foam crudely taped to the front of the Olympus Light Guide! This further level of diffusion on top of the Light Guide is much more flexible in how it can be used, producing less harsh images with more detail. 

The other thing I have explored today is the in-camera focus bracketing versus in-camera stacking. The TG-6 focus stacking has been my goto macro setting for any subject that's not moving. In contrast, in-camera focus bracketing produces a series of images which can be assembled into an image using third party software (in my case, Helicon Focus).  Producing such an image sequence manually with a camera as small as the TG-6 is not practical. Focus bracketing still requires a static subject, but the advantage is that you can pick and choose which images are included in the stack, plus which software such as Helicon is more sophisticated and allows more adjustments then the built in program. Stacking the images manually is an extra step but assuming you can brace the camera to avoid movement during the capture (or use a tripod and a remote shutter release, which seems a bit crazy for a camera this small), the improvement in the result is usually worthwhile. Put the diffuser and focus bracketing together and the output is great for such a small pocket camera. 

(click for larger image) 

 

Entomology Journal - October 2024

A month of variable weather and troublesome Hymenoptera...

VC55 Terrestrial Heteroptera Recording and Checklist

After a great deal of work - mostly by my colleagues with a shamingly small contribution from me - we were finally able to publish the first two parts of our documentation of VC55 Bug Recording: 

LESOPS 63: VC55 Terrestrial Heteroptera VC55 Terrestrial Heteroptera Part 1: Recorders and Recording. Sue Timms, Kate Nightingale & Alan Cann. Leicestershire & Rutland Entomological Society Occasional Publications Series 63, October 2024. ISSN 095–1019. Available at: https://www.naturespot.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-10/LESOPS63TerrestrialHeteroptera.pdf

LESOPS 64: VC55 Terrestrial Heteroptera Part 2: Provisional Checklist. Sue Timms, Kate Nightingale & Alan Cann. Leicestershire & Rutland Entomological Society Occasional Publications Series 64, October 2024. ISSN 095–1019 Available at: https://www.naturespot.org.uk/sites/default/files/2024-10/LESOPS64TerrestrialHeteropteraChecklist.pdf 

The plan is for more to follow in future, covering the other major groups. 

My Journal, October 2024

03.x.2024 

Worked on a range of Lygus specimens. I finally feel confident about these tricky bugs (as long as I can find a male!). 

04.x.2024

After the rain of the past week it was good to spend a day out at Melton Country Park. I was surprised to realise that I hadn't actually been there for nine years. I found a very good range of insects the highlights of which were Micronecta scholtzi, lots of Anthocoris limbatus and my favourite ladybird, Hippodamia variegata, the Adonis Ladybird.

05.x.2024

A friend dropped some specimens off for me to identify. The highlight was a male Anyphena numida. This is the first record of this spider for Leicestershire and Rutland. It was first identified in the UK in 2017 and is spreading rapidly from the southeast. 

10.x.2024

After much prevarication I finally cleaned the sensors on the microscope cameras. I don't like doing this because of the risk of damage but it seems to have worked well - far fewer annoying spots in the images now. 

11.x.2024

Quite a good frost, giving me hope for good autumn colour in the days to come took a trip to Cossington Meadows mostly targeting the pools with the dipnet. This produced some good records, including Corixia dentipes.

13.x.2024

Lots of fungi around but I'm very rusty on my ID skills. I'm aware that AI identification divides opinion, but it you think it's going to go away, you've lost the plot. The latest AI incarnation I've become aware of is the beta version of automated picture recognition on the Danish Fungal Atlas website. Seems pretty good to me, with the obvious limitations - https://ajcarthropoda.blogspot.com/2024/10/more-on-unstoppable-rise-of-ai.html

15.x.2024

Took a trip down to Blaby and Countesthorpe. Pond dipping produced a good range of species. 

17.x.2024

Enjoyed a very good LRES meeting at which Ray Morris discussed gall midges, even though galls and Diptera are not my area! Good to have face to face discussions. 

18.x.2024

After a misty start, took a trip to Shady Lane Arboretum on a sunny but windy afternoon before Storm Ashley hits over the weekend. 

21.x.2024

Visited a private estate at Osbaston to do some recording. In the walled garden we found the best growth of Mistletoe that I have ever seen on one of the old apple trees. Even better was the fact that it was only a few feet off the ground. Gently beating this produced a possible single specimen of Anthocoris visci, a Mistletoe-dependent species I have been looking for for two years. Unfortunately this turned out to be a female so we have been unable to confirm the species by dissection. However, a nearby Box hedge also produced Anthocoris butleri, also a good record.  Unfortunately I didn't spot a wasp nest I was standing next to (while trying not to fall in a stream) and managed to get stung on the hand by a wasp, but carried on recording after making a very swift exit, pursued by wasps. 

22.x.2024

Very pleased to have a flying visit from Jon Daws, dropping off some old record material. 

The hand which was stung by the wasp yesterday is now very swollen and painful making it difficult to do anything. I'm becoming increasingly annoyed that I didn't identify the wasp that stung me so that I could record it, and I regard an arm covered in very angry wasps as a rather poor excuse (even though running away as fast as possible was the smart thing to do under the circumstances). 

27.x.2024

Took Jon Daw's tuning fork (in D) to the Botanical Gardens to bother a few spiders in their webs. Moderately successful although there doesn't seem to be that much around at present. 

30.x.2024

A return visit to Osbaston to try to confirm the Anthocoris visci record from a week ago. Sadly we were unsuccessful. 

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