This photo doesn’t quite capture the complexity and three-dimensionality, but István and I recently had a deep discussion of wing folding in insects. It’s work he’s been refining for >4 years now, and he finally had to print out exemplars and origamize them just to understand—or at least to explain to me—what was happening in a certain, unusual tribe of Evaniidae. The exercise reminded me that you can have all the fancy technology in the world (and we do include examples in our manuscript, currently in prep), but sometimes simple, analog methods are the most effective.
A passalid by any other name…
Bessbug, bess beetle, betsy bug, horn beetle, horned passalus beetle, peg beetle, patent leather beetle, and Jerusalem beetle – believe it or not, these are all names for a single species: Odontotaenius disjunctus (family: Passalidae).
O. disjunctus is a relatively common beastie throughout the eastern US and Canada and can be found in well-rotten oak logs, tending to their young in their tunnel like galleries and feasting on decaying wood-chips and each other’s feces. Passalids are one of the few beetles that display any form of social behavior – but for a real shocker check out Austroplatypus incompertus! – in that they tend to their young, feeding them poop and wood until they mature.
The myriad of common names assigned to this species come mostly from traits that describe the beetle or its habits:
- Bessbug, bess beetle, and betsy beetle are all derived from the French baiser, meaning “to kiss”, and likely relate to the squeaky stridulations they use as a rudimentary form of communication.
- Horn beetle and horned passalus beetle refers to the hook-like horn on the frons (face) of the beetle.
- Peg beetle probably describes the appearance of the beetle sticking out of its gallery like a peg.
- Patent leather beetle comes from the color and texture of this species’ carapace, which is very much similar in appearance to black, japanned leather.
- The name Jerusalem beetle is an utter mystery to me – I honestly have no inkling where this name came from.
As you may guess, all these common names could create some confusion. I’d like to claim that the solution to this problem is the classical fix which every introductory biology teacher touts to their students as the be-all, end-all of nomenclatural mayhem – namely the latin binomen (or scientific name if you prefer). I’d like to claim this… but in this case I can’t. You see: Odontotaenius disjunctus has had some issues with holding onto its scientific name over the years (a fact evidenced by a recent cataloguing of passalids in the Frost collection).
Here’s a brief (yes, this is brief) rundown of its nomenclatural history:
In 1764, Carl Linnæus described a species of beetle and named it Scarabaeus interruptus, In 1800, the German entomologist Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger revised Linnæus’s work and assigned the species to its own genus, naming it Popilius disjunctus. The following year, all passalids were moved into the family Lucanidae and placed into the genus Passalus by Johan Christian Fabricius; Popilius disjunctus became Passalus cornutus. The same year, Fabricius’s student, Friedrich Weber, described a new species and named it Passalus distinctus, which was later realized to be distinctly the same species as Passalus cornutus. In 1815, John Henry Leech moved Passalus to its own family, Passalidae.
In 1868, Johann Jakob Kaup took a break from trying to figure out the mathematical order of nature and broke down the genus Passalus, but left Passalus cornutus as such. In 1871, Kaup revised his revision – further breaking down Passalus, resurrecting Popilius, and creating Neleus, but not including Passalus cornutus in the newly revived genus. In 1891, August Ferdinand Kuwert ran into the same issues as Weber, but in greater magnitude, and described a new species of the genus Nelus, Nelus stanleyi; the following year he added Neleus bos and Neleus dollei – all of which turned out to be the same species. In 1896, Kewert erected the genus Odonotaenius and in 1897 he, naturally, placed the species into Neleus in his monograph as Neleus bos.
In 1905, Richard Zang moved the species into Odonotaenius as O. disiunctus [sic], mentioning cornutus as a synonym and causing massive amounts of chaos and confusion. In 1918, F. H. Gravely, despite fixing many of the other problems in Passalidae, returned it to Passalus it as Passalus cornutus; and in 1920 Charles William Leng recorded Passalus cornutus in his Catalogue of the Coleoptera of America North of Mexico. In 1935, W. D. Hincks and J. R. Dibb listed the species as Popilius disjunctus and the 1939 reprint of Leng’s work notes this change.
In 1951, British entomologist W. D. Hincks published a brief note in the Coleopterists Bulletin complaining about the persistent use of the name Passalus cornutus by American entomologists; on the following page is a sharp rebuttal from the editor of the time, R. E. Blackwelder, stating that the American’s had not made this error for at least fifteen years. And finally, in 1970, Pedro Reyes-Castillo reinstated the genus Odonotaenius and gave our species its current name, Odonotaenius disjunctus.
What a mess!
I came across many of the variations as I was cataloguing the collection and organized them into a single location. Until someone publishes another paper and places this species somewhere else, we’re going to refer to this location as “the place where we put Odonotaenius disjunctus.”
And now for something completely different!
Check out the chops on this pamphiliid sawfly I found yesterday:
I’ve never run into something with non-symmetrical mandibles before!
Mystery Solved!
When I woke up to get ready for work on Wednesday, I peeked in on my Mystery Pupa and thought to myself how ready to emerge he appeared to be. I could see his individual legs and antennae dark within his wrinkled pupal case. I suppressed a row of giggles and continued with my morning. I figured I’d see him in all his scarab-y glory either when I returned in the evening, or the next day at the latest.
Twenty minutes passed, and I was going to be late for the bus- I barreled into my room to grab my keys, looked down at the Tupperware holding my beetle friend and saw…
… wriggling legs.
Then I dropped all of my stuff, conceded that I would be late, and assured myself that this was worth it and I would just work later to compensate. I gingerly opened the container and saw this:
He moved around ineffectively for quite a while on his back. His elytra were still soft and white, and he was covered in a fine fuzz. Like a peach. A peach with six legs and an exoskeleton.
I did manage to catch a later bus, but I brought my new friend along with me in his container. He was just too precious not to bring in to work.
Here he is now:
As you can imagine, I was thrilled to see his spots- Pelidnota punctata! Dreams do come true!
More glamour shots:
Heroic pose. I love his fuzzy underbelly.
Strangely, his eyes appear blue in the flash of the camera. I’ve been trying to feed him grape leaves I found on our last field expedition to Ten-Acre Pond (more like Ten-Acre Puddle), but he doesn’t seem all that interested.
He did defecate on me though during the above photo-shoot.
Awww.
Remains of the day
The wings and head of this darner (Aeshnidae) were all that remained from a recent bird feast (presumably) at 10-Acre Pond today. I found them under the power lines. I saw irony in this discovery, as several of the odonates I collected there today ended up with missing heads and wings. But these remains also got me thinking about insect ichnospecimens. Is there a huge collection of bird/bat/shrew/whatever turds, or fish guts, avian pellets, or even insect frass somewhere that would allow us to explore changes in diet over time? There must be. If not we’ll build it here at the Frost. We already have a small “insects from owl pellets” collection!
(Incidentally, my interest in insect remains—in bat guts—is what drew me into the world of systematic entomology.)
UPDATE: We’ve determined this specimen as the remains of a Spatterdock Darner (Rhionaschna mutata).
Loads of Odes: A report from Bear Meadows and notes on Odonata collecting
On Tuesday, June 4, the Frost Group went on a collecting adventure to Bear Meadows Natural Area. Collecting interests were broad, although some of us (myself included) were more odonatologically oriented. I never spent much time collecting odes (dragonflies and damselfies) before, and I must say, it was a blast! There’s nothing like standing thigh-deep in murky bogwater, with every swing of the net a threat to your tentative foothold in the mud! (not sarcasm, actually).
Collecting to mid-afternoon, we managed to net 48 specimens representing 8 of the 22 species that are reported to be denizens of Bear Meadows in early June (White et al. 1968). Our most abundant quarry proved to be Cordulia shurtleffii, the American Emerald, and Leucorrhinia hudsonica, the Hudsonian Whiteface, which together made up more than half of our ode bounty.
Some things I noticed:
- In the morning, most of our success was on the trails – odes were landing on nearby branches to soak up some rays, and didn’t have as much maneuvering room to evade swings of the net. The difficulty: having enough room to swing the net.
- In early afternoon, they seemed to move from the trails to the airspace above the water to hunt and patrol their territories. More species were seen here than on the trails.
- The tragedy that is color loss. My interest in odes started last semester when I rummaged through the impressive Beatty Odonata Collection at the Frost. Dead, discolored specimens are pretty great, but live specimens, with their vibrantly colored eyes and markings, are orders of magnitude more stunning than specimens become almost immediately after they are dispatched in acetone. (there’s has to be a better way, right?)
- Two main strategies for netting odes: the ambush and, my personal favorite, the swing-as-hard-as-you-can approach. Taking cover next to an overhanging branch or a bridge worked great, but wasn’t nearly as satisfying as out-muscling the aerial acrobats on their own turf. The bad news: I probably looked ridiculous all day.
- Their heads aren’t on too well. A few specimens, which were perfectly headed when spotted, were pulled out of the net with one tagma too few. The good news: if you are able to locate the head, it’s nothing a little glue can’t fix!
Other species captured include:
- Helocordulia uhleri, Uhler’s Sundragon
- Ladona julia, the Chalk-fronted Corporal
- Leucorrhinia intacta, the Dot-tailed Whiteface
- Libellula quadrimaculata, the Four-spotted Skimmer
- Chromagrion conditum, the Aurora Damsel
A few additional species were seen and managed to avoid capture. We’ll get ’em next time.
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