Insects & two othersMy screen name is tok-tokkie which reflects my interest and admiration for insects. They are the most abundant life form:
With over a million described species—more than half of all known living organisms—with estimates of undescribed species as high as 30 million, insects potentially represent over 90% of the differing life forms on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InsectsThey don’t weigh much each but there are so many of them that their total weight is possibly 12 times the weight of humans (
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,914285-1,00.html page 3).
Here is the first paragraph from that article where they state one of the main reasons that I admire insects so much even though they are one of our chief opponents in the struggle with life (bacteria, viruses and people are the other significant opponents we have):
The struggle between man and insects began long before the dawn of civilization, has continued without cessation to the present time, and will continue, no doubt, as long as the human race endures. We commonly think of ourselves as the lords and conquerors of nature. But insects had thoroughly mastered the world and taken full possession of it before man began the attempt. They had, consequently, all the advantage of possession of the field when the contest began, and they have disputed every step of our invasion of their original domain so persistently and successfully that we can even yet scarcely flatter ourselves that we have gained any very important advantage over them. If they want our crops, they still help themselves to them. If they wish the blood of our domestic animals, they pump it out of the veins of our cattle and our horses at their leisure and under our very eyes. If they choose to take up their abode with us, we cannot wholly keep them out of the houses we live in. We cannot even protect our very persons from their annoying and pestiferous attacks, and since the world began, we have never yet exterminated—we probably shall never exterminate—so much as a single insect species.
That quote is not entirely accurate as many species have been exterminated by man’s ‘deveIopment’ of the countryside. I just have an amateur interest in them and know very little about them but I look out for them wherever I go. Here are some I saw around Loxton.
I don’t know who this is. I don’t have any reference books on insects in the caterpillar phase of their life. To me that is a handsome creature.
That is the caterpillar (lava) stage of the lifecycle. This is the feeding phase when the insect is capturing energy from plants (who have captured the free energy available from the sun). Next follows the seemingly dormant phase when the caterpillar transforms into the pupa. This is how Wikipedia describes what happens inside the pupa:
Whilst inside the pupa, the insect will excrete digestive juices, to destroy much of the larva's body, leaving a few cells intact. The remaining cells will begin the growth of the adult, using the nutrients from the broken down larva
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetamorphosisThe amazing thing is that the original egg contained ‘stem’ cells for both the caterpillar phase & the butterfly phase. Initially the caterpillar cells develop & we get the caterpillar (the lava stage) then, after it has harvested food and stored it those cells die and the butterfly cells that were always present now develop and we get the butterfly which is a adult form of the insect
The chief function of the adult stage is mating and egg laying to complete the lifecycle. Some insects don’t even have functioning mouthparts in the adult phase. Whereas others, like Mrs Mosquito, have very effective mouthparts and cause us & our crops a lot of misery.
Cream-Striped Owl (
Cyligramma latona). This moth can hear bats so knows when they are around and avoids them. This is a very common moth apparently but it is unknown to me in Cape Town. Those big eye spots give it the name Owl. Looks more like a butterfly with those ‘eyes’ on its wings. This one is old because its wings are quite broken. I have not done much macro photography with my digital camera. This was taken at night in pretty poor lighting but it can be fixed up in photo software to look quite bright – I am a big fan of digital photography even though I don’t take a lot of trouble with it. Years ago I had a good SLR and a fine macro lens – that was so much easier as you were able to focus properly through the lens as against relying on the self focusing of my digital camera and hardly being able to see anything on the lcd display.
There were lots of these and they are family of mine. Long-legged Ground Beetle (
Stenocara dentate) one of the Tenebrionidae family which includes the tok-tokkie (
Psammaddes striatus) which lives on Signal Hill right outside my front door. There were a lot of tok-tokkies this year on Signal Hill.
I made this as my avatar for the VFR site when I had one.
These Long-Legged Ground Beetles were quite common on two farms in particular. They are pretty quick. In the Namib there is another of these (
Stenocara phalangium) which has the longest legs, for its body length, of any insect in the world.
From: ‘African Insect Life’ by Skaife new edition revised by Ledger; Struik.
This picture from the internet shows one collecting sea mist in the early morning for a drink.
Not the same one as in the first photo. Autofocus allows me to hold the beetle in one hand and take the photo with the other.
That’s a proper looking beetle. Our fox terrier is called ‘Beetle’ but it was my daughter who gave her that name.
Ants. These were quite large, could be Harvester Ant (
Messor capensis)
Here is a picture from Google earth of Harvester ant nests just west of Oudtshoorn
http://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/more-ants-from-google-earth/
It is pretty interesting to see their effect on the landscape. I have looked in Google earth and the coordinates are not quite correct. I have also looked at the area around Loxton and you certainly don’t see those harvester ant circles there.
I posted this picture in the corbelled houses post. Notice the hole in the foreground. That was dug by an aardvark going after ants. There were plenty of these holes to be seen. Celeste (the person who grew up in the area & two of her brothers farm in the area – we stayed in a house belonging to one) told us that ants make nests in the gravel roads and when an aardvark goes after them there is a serious pot hole in the road. Something to be aware of as they would be completely unexpected. Another thing she told us about is kudu are moving into the area – her sister-in-law had to collect the children from Beaufort West the week before and there was some mix up so she had to drive back at night. Celeste’s brother was very angry about that because he has hit a kudu at night & someone they know died after crashing into a kudu.
Look at these beauties.
Camponotus fulvopilosus. Common name Bal-byter & that is what it is called in ‘Field Guide to Insects of South Africa’ by Picker, Griffiths & Weaving; Struik. Couldn’t be better. When I was a schoolboy we had ‘ball-biters’ in Rondebosch but they were tiny in comparison to these their Afrikaans cousins.
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That is the nest entrance hole being guarded by these two.
This picture from Skaife (listed above) shows a closely related ant spraying formic acid at an enemy. I lived in Rhodesia for a few years in the late 60’s early 70’s. I took up rock climbing as a sport while there. The places close to Salisbury that we climbed were all huge granite outcrops similar to Paarl rock except much steeper and higher. One of the routes was called ‘Formic Face’ because when the guys were opening the route they were attacked by ants (presumably being bitten not just sprayed with acid). One of the guys said he honestly considered untying himself and jumping to his death rather than continue to endure what he was going through. I did do the route but there were no ants when we went through – thank goodness much as I admire them.
There were a lot of these eating the red berries on this common plant. I believe it is a Blister Beetle (Meloidae family) but I don’t find this particular one in my reference books. Blister Beetles secrete the poison cantharadin from the leg joints. Can blister human skin & kill you should you eat it. The vivid markings on beetles are usually a warning to be careful – but some harmless ones mimic the dangerous ones to gain protection from predators. The first stage larva of some Blister Beetles feed on locust egg pods so are somewhat beneficial to farmers. There were quite a few locust swarms while we were there (not seriously big swarms). They attracted crowds of crows which were feeding on them.
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I saw this smart lizard – a skink I believe. This is a reptile and I will be writing about them in another post in this thread. Had my camera on full zoom but the image stabilisation and auto focus make the picture acceptable (not pin sharp but this was a hand held snapshot).
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Those are merino sheep that have not been shawn in three years. Enormous with that huge ball of wool around them. Merinos were for both wool & meat. The market for wool has pretty well collapsed so merinos are being replaced by Dorpers because they are better for meat & pretty useless for wool.
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I was surprised at the lack of birds in the Great Karoo. Where we stayed there was a decent dam but only two pairs of water birds. In the veldt we saw some korhaans and many crows attracted by the locusts. A few raptors and not much else besides mossies in Loxton (mossies are now very rare in Cape Town).
