Thursday Trivia: Seal Lice

The oceans are one of the very few places in the world where insects are not a dominant fauna. But even there, insects do exist!

An entire family of lice specializes just on carnivorous pinnipeds, (seals, walrus, and sea lions).  It’s called Echinophthiriidae, and I had to memorize that name when I was in my first graduate entomology course.  And, spell it correctly to get full credit on the exam.

(Why yes, 20 years later, I am still a little bitter about that. On the other hand, at important cocktail parties, I always know how to start a conversation.)

The seal louse has the wonderful species name Echinophthirius horridus; another genus is called Antarctophthirus. Like other sucking lice, they inject a little mouthtube into their host and suck their blood.  They only feed on land; in the water they just hang on with their claws.

The lice in this family of insects have several special modifications from regular lice; their cuticle (waxy covering of the exoskeleton) is thicker, it traps seal sebum (body oils), and also forms scales which create a pocket of air under the oil and water for the insect to breathe while the seal is swimming.

How common are they? A 1972 study found about 75% of Northern Fur Seals had lice, and many had more than one species of seal louse.  Perhaps not surprisingly, I didn’t find a more recent study in which someone closely examined 75+ seals for lice.

Clearly, there is a publication out there waiting to happen.

Mormon Cricket Playlist?

An entertaining news item from the Wall Street Journal:

TUSCARORA, Nev. — The residents of this tiny town, anticipating an imminent attack, will be ready with a perimeter defense. They’ll position their best weapons at regular intervals, faced out toward the desert to repel the assault.

Then they’ll turn up the volume.

Rock music blaring from boomboxes has proved one of the best defenses against an annual invasion of Mormon crickets…the crickets don’t much fancy Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, the townspeople figured out three years ago.

There isn’t any scientific evidence I can find that this will have any effect on the crickets.  (Which, technically, are not crickets, but katydids.)  But it’s got to be pretty darn entertaining to see!

Intriguingly, a million bucks for Mormon Cricket control was widely mocked in March as “Pork Barrel” spending in the budget.  These are people who clearly haven’t seen the insects on the march as a giant swarm. It’s impressive.
When you have a 1-2 inch insect, and you measure density as >15 insects/square yard…that’s a lot of bugs.

What would you suggest for your repelling playlist?

Slim Whitman would be my obvious first choice…..

Dennis vanEngelsdorp @ TED!

Somehow I missed this–Dennis was at TED last year!  He discusses honey bees, native bees, and some of the evidence for CCD and native bee declines.  I love his slogan of “Make Meadows, Not Lawns.”

Sadly, the comments on this post seem to be people who would rather have a conspiracy (“Monsanto! Pesticides! Microwaves!”) than actual evidence.  Very sad that in 2009 people are still hanging on to ideas that have been discredited.

There is an additional TED insect talk on ants featuring Debrah Gordon.

Yay to TED connecting to nature! And thanks to apis.me for the tip!

Do Earthworms have hairs?

Hey–apparently I missed International Earthworm Day!  So–here’s something wormy for you.

A lot of people don’t realize that earthworms, like their cousins the polychaete worms, also have hairs on each segment.  Earthworms have tiny, hard to see bristles called setae. While you can’t see them easily, you can feel them–gently stroke a worm from tail to front, and you’ll quickly feel these little spiny setae.

Though earthworms have no bones, their segmented system of muscles enables them to alternate between being stubby and thick, and long and slender.  This, in conjunction with the setae, allow the worm to anchor themselves in the dirt, either holding themselves in place (if a bird is tugging), or providing an anchor to push against as they tunnel forward.

So, why are we talking about hairy worms?

In a previous post, I linked to an illustration of a worm, and asked if it might actually be a giant phallic extraterrestrial earthworm (you’ve been warned). Someone then suggested it was more properly a Polychaete. Au Contraire! Polychaetes usually have fleshy body extensions called parapodia surrounding their hairs.

So now you know.

Thanks to VisualInfo and Reefkeeping for images.

World Malaria Day, 2009

I have gone back and forth on what to write on this day.

On the one hand, this is an opportunity to reflect on the tremendous progress we’ve made so far. On the other hand…the UN set 2010 as the date for uniform malaria coverage.

There’s 614 days left until the day set as the target.  The plan is that by 2010:

• 80% of people at risk from malaria are using locally appropriate vector control methods such as long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLins), indoor residual spraying (irS) and, in some settings, other environmental and biological measures;
• 80% of malaria patients are diagnosed and treated with effective anti-malarial
• treatments;
• in areas of high transmission, 100% of pregnant women receive intermittent preventive treatment (iPT);
• the global malaria burden is reduced by 50% of the 2000 levels: ~175-250M cases annually and less than 500,000 deaths annually from malaria.

This graph from the Global Malaria Plan shows the projected effects of these interventions on different timelines.  Acting quickly will save lives.

What can we, as individuals in the US, do?

Nothing but Nets is one way to contribute.  Let major pharmaceutical corporations know you applaud (and expect!) their efforts to lower pricing on malarial drugs.  Lastly, let your legislators know you support funding for malaria research and aid.

That last one is hard–right now things are pretty tight in the US for a lot of people. Personally, I may actually have to abandon our house and let it go into foreclosure, if we can’t sell it soon.

But I’m still so, so privileged to live in a place with clean water and electricity on demand and little threat of infectious disease (relatively).  Don’t forget that even now, as financial times are hard, we still are pretty darn lucky compared to our brothers and sisters in Africa, Asia, and South America struggling with malaria.

Pretty Picture Friday

It’s actually going to be 70 degrees here in Michigan today, so I plan to be OUTSIDE enjoying the day, and not online.

While I’m gone, why not enjoy this lovely artwork from BiblioOdyssey.  It’s from a Ukiyo-e book from the late 1700′s.

There is also poetry to go with it:

The feelings of a cold-hearted lover
are like a cicada:
it cries constantly
but never shows its face
•Miwa no Sugikado•

You can look at the 50 page (!!) Insect Book in this online museum exhibit. OMG is it beautiful.

Nothing but Nets

And now…back to World Malaria Day [Week] here at the Bug Blog.  This has to be one of the most charming rap songs ever–a group of Atlanta kids do a rap song for Nothing but Nets.

I am very curious about the curriculum in which these students were introduced to malaria and Nothing but Nets. I can imagine some things you might do, but it’s a pretty complex topic. Anyone know?

Earth Day 2009

Some days it seems like we are too far down a road to ever go back.  I work on our invasive species program, and despair of ever making progress.

And then…I see this.  President Obama with the SCA (Student Conservation Association.)

The SCA is one of the least known, greatest resources for college students that want to do conservation service. They place current students and recent grads into internships at federal and state parks, as well as community programs.

Watch this video. Look at the photos of a president with mud on his hands. Share the hope.  And tell any young(ish) people you know to check out SCA!

Take Action: Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act

Just wanted to make sure everyone knows to contact their legislators about the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (H.R. 1913).

While some states have laws protecting LGBT people, there is no federal protection.  Amazingly, bullying laws have failed to pass in several states.  Two eleven-year old boys committed suicide this month over homophobic bullying.

At the link I posted above, you can send a letter to your congressperson. Please.

The Matthew Shepard Act gives the Justice Department the power to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated violence by providing the department with jurisdiction over crimes of violence where the perpetrator has selected the victim because of the person’s actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

How much hate do we have to see before we acknowledge it’s a problem?

Listen to the way in which Angie Zapata is discussed as a thing in the trial of her murderer. 10 years ago a young college student and a black man in Texas were brutally murdered–because of who they were.

Stop it.

Not all mosquitoes are the same

Welcome to the second day of World Malaria Day [week] at the Bug Blog! I’ve talked several times about the way in which different mosquitoes respond differently to pesticides for malarial control, but here’s a new twist.

In a recent study to compare different species of mosquito in their ability to be a malarial vector, there were very large differences!

As a review– a disease vector is an organism that does not cause disease itself, but transmits an infection by transporting pathogens from one host to another. The malarial parasite is alive inside the mosquito, although they don’t get malaria–but they can give it to us, the host. In this research, different mosquitoes were compared in their abilities to serve as a vector for malaria.

One of the claims frequently made by the “DDT will solve everything” crowd is that just spraying enough DDT will kill all the malarial mosquitoes.  This ignores that mosquitoes vary widely from population to population, and species to species, in their ability to resist DDT.  They aren’t all the same, and there is no one size-fits-all control method.

The research I discussed yesterday is another good example of the variability problem–predicting malaria using weather and other environmental data in different areas of Africa required different solutions.

In this experiment, you can get a sense of another layer of difficulty in controlling malaria. The experiments looked at two different strains of malarial parasite (Thai and Korean), and 3 different mosquito species.  That’s a lot of potential variation!

What did they find out?

I won’t go into the specifics–you can read the paper if you want to see technical words like “sporogony”–but basically, not all of the mosquito species were able to support the malarial parasites’ life cycle.  (BTW, this diagram is probably the single greatest cause of drinking in invertebrate zoology students. The names! The stages! Ugh!)

Infecting a mosquito with the malarial parasite isn’t enough–the parasite has to change, migrate out of the gut of the mosquito, and into its salivary glands.  Not all mosquito bodies are equally friendly to this process–there were large differences between the 3 mosquitoes tested in this experiment.

Hopefully this gives you a sense of the complex layers of difficulty surrounding malarial control–in addition to the environmental variability  from location to location discussed yesterday, and variation in pesticide resistance which I’ve discussed before, there are also large genetic differences within mosquito species, mosquito populations, and malarial parasites. It’s a spaghetti tangle of variables, many of which we have no control over.

This is why there is no easy solution to malaria, and why after centuries, we are only now beginning to make progress.

But we are making progress! Just not as fast as we’d like.

Citation:
Joshi, D., Choochote, W., Park, M., Kim, J., Kim, T., Suwonkerd, W., & Min, G. (2009). The susceptibility of Anopheles lesteri to infection with Korean strain of Plasmodium vivax Malaria Journal, 8 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1475-2875-8-42