Great Walking Leaf Card (front)

I just read today that Upper Deck, maker of baseball cards and peddlers of various sports memorabilia items, is coming out with a line of Entomology baseball cards.  The first card they’ve released for a sneak peek is the Great Walking Leaf, Phyllium giganteum.  Evidently on the backside there is a general description with some kind of distribution map.  Can’t decide yet whether or not I like these…the look is classic, which is kind of cool, but maybe a little over stylized for my tastes.

Great Walking Leaf Card (back)

————Update (3 March 2010)—————

OK, so after a little more searching I found that the Entomology cards are part of a trading card set called “Goodwin Champions.”

I must confess I have never been into collecting trading cards of any sort, so I am not well versed in the trade, but I think when you order a pack of these cards you get a random selection of the various cards that make up the set – one of which could be an Entomology card.  There are 30 Entomology cards total, picturing the following butterflies and other interesting insects and arthropods:

Mexican Silverspot, Spotted Amberwing, Blue Metalmark, Meadow Wanderer, BD Butterfly, Malay lacewing, Painted Jezabel, Sunflower Trollup, Buttercup Sulphur, Spicebush Swallowtail, Pipevine Swallowtail, Strawberry Bluff, Apricot Sulphur, Military Tiger, Cramer’s 89, Bullet Ant, Bottle-brush Longhorn, Man Face Beetle, Rusty Brown Scorpion, Baby Black Scorpion, Fiddle Beetle, Great Walking Leaf, Rosey Walking Stick, Dead-leaf Mantid, Cryptic Mantid, Red Nose Lantern-fly, Minty Walking Leaf, Blomfilds’ Beauty, Blue Brush-foot, Chinese Lantern-fly.

Here are some more sneak peeks-

As I was watching, it came upon a Cixiid (Oliarus).  I thought for a second, when it reared up (see photo above), that  I was going to witness firsthand the effects of an invasive predator on a hapless native plant feeder, but unfortunately nothing happened.  The assassin bug apparently didn’t have a hit out on the Cixiid, because it then showed no interest in it.  Shortly thereafter the Cixiid took flight – probably a smart move.

From Volume 3 of Zimmerman’s “Insects of Hawaii” (which, by the way, is now online at http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/1768 ) we read that there are 3 subfamilies of reduvids in Hawaii: Ploiariinae, Triatominae, and Harpactorinae.  I think there are two native genera in the Ploinaiinae, but the other two subfamilies are completely non-native.  There is a good chance this info is not quite up to date, since it is from the ’50s, so I wouldn’t take this as verified truth.

My little assassin bug, Zelus renardii, is in Harpactorinae.  Evidently it has quite a reputation as a predator of leafhoppers, and over the years has earned the name of “The Leafhopper Assassin Bug.”  First found in Hawaii by Perkins in 1897, it is believed to be an immigrant from Western North America.

When I got back to my room that evening, I did some surfing on the net and found many more dead fly creations by the same artist.  Here are a couple more:

Turns out the creative genius is a Swedish guy named Max Magnus Norman. You can learn more about him at his blog, http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/art-illustrated-adventures-of-swedish-artist-max-magnus-norman-a-swedish-blog , and you can find more of his dead fly photos, or flughumor (I assume this means “fly humor” in Swedish), at his Fotosidan gallery.

This is a great idea - can’t believe I didn’t think of this first!  I’ve already got some ideas brewing for similar dead insect masterpieces…

You can see the abstract for free at the Biodiversity and Conservation website, but if you want to read the entire paper, then you have to pay $34.00.  I was a little surprised they included a head shot of a dead male Jackson’s in the paper.  If there is ever any kind of a depredation program to keep these guys out of native forests, I suspect it will be met with fierce opposition by many folks who have a strong affinity for the cute little beasts.  They have kind of become a Hawaiian icon – maybe not quite like the gecko, but they do have a certain status in Hawaii.  In light of this, I would hope the Hawaii environmental and conservation community proceeds with caution and tries to exercise some good PR along the way.  I don’t think a picture of a dead chameleon sends the right message, but then again its a research paper, not a community bulletin, so it’s probably not a big deal.  I guess I am somewhat guilty of the same offense by calling them “killers” in one of my blog entries.  Anyway, gruesome picture notwithstanding, I give these guys kudos for getting the paper out.  I know both Steve and Vince fairly well and they are both really good guys and extremely good field biologists.

And now a little teaser from their paper (the last two paragraphs of the discussion):

“Much remains to be determined in terms of making an accurate assessment of the threat posed by Jackson’s chameleons in Hawaii, and further work is planned. For example, little is known about their precise range, elevation preference, reproductive season and rate, desiccation tolerance, and prey preference. Jackson’s chameleons occur in lower to mid elevationnon-native forests on Oahu, and have rarely been reported from tree snail habitat, which tends to be upper elevation dominated by native flora beginning around 600 m above sea level. The observations presented provide conclusive evidence that when chameleons are present in native forest where tree snails and other endemic invertebrates occur, they pose a threat.”

“It is possible that due to a number of factors, such as prey availability and distribution, changing climatic conditions, recent population establishment due to pet release or escape, Jackson’s chameleons are undergoing a range expansion into upper elevations. This is a concern for a variety of threatened and endangered invertebrate species, including tree snails (Achatinella spp.), pomace flies (Drosophila spp.) , rare damselflies (Megalagrion spp.), and rare amastrid and succineid land snails, all restricted to upper elevation forests such as Mt. Kaala Natural Area Reserve adjacent to the sampling locality. Prior to this discovery, as part of an ongoing collaborative study, one author (BSH) has collected several hundred chameleons, and gut contents are being examined from populations in the Round Top/Tantalus area of the Koolau Mountains, Honolulu, on eastern Oahu (Whiting et al. in prep). Endangered Oahu tree snail species have not been observed in this region in several decades. It is conceivable that predation by Jackson’s chameleons may have played a role in the local extinction of Achatinella spp. in this area.”

And here is some interesting info from Dan Polhemus and Adam Asquith’s book “Hawaiian Damselflies: A Field Identification Guide” (Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu, 1996). 

“Distribution: Originally distributed from Maine to Chile.  Introduced to the Hawaiian Islands around 1973, and now known from Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Maui, and Hawaii.  Commonly found along the margins of coastal wetlands, and around ponds at elevations up to 500 ft, but not generally a mountain species.”

“On the North American mainland two distinct female color forms are present, the orange form and a bright green form similar to the male.  The latter color form was previously recorded from Hawaii (Hilton 1989), but has not been seen during the last decade, and may have died out in the islands.”

Photo by Sharon Fullingim, published on National Geographic Your Shot

In the Nat Geo article they reference some more pics at BirdwatchersDigest.com of a mantis preying upon a hummingbird…

It always warms my heart to see insects taking down vertebrates, except for the next picture, which makes me a little uneasy…

This is a species of spider from the genus Nephila, commonly known as golden orbweavers.  The spider shown above is supposedly from Australia, but there is also a species that is relatively common in Florida, Nephila clavipes. 

By the way, a couple of Entomologists recently described a new species of Nephila, N. komaci, which is the largest known species of web spinning spider currently in existence.  The official reference for their publication is “Kuntner M, Coddington JA, 2009 Discovery of the Largest Orbweaving Spider Species: The Evolution of Gigantism in Nephila. PLoS ONE 4(10): e7516. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007516.”  According to the paper, body length of the females can get up to 4 cm long.  I didn’t see anything about legspan, but according to Nat. Geo. this can be up to 12 cm for the females.  Unfortunately, this species is very rare and has only been found in certain parts of South Africa and Madagascar.

I found this little flatid back in April (30 April 2009) when we were inpsecting a Mehamehame tree, or Flueggea neowawraea, in Lualualei Valley.  I was thinking it could be native, but I later learned there are no species of Flatidae native to Hawaii.  This particular species is Melormenis basalis, the West Indian Flatid.  Not sure how long it has been in Hawaii, but it wasn’t mentioned in “Insects of Hawaii” so it must have arrived sometime after that particular volume was written.  The other species of flatid in Hawaii is Siphanta acuta, the Green Torpedo Flatid or Torpedo Bug.  It is mentioned in “Insects of Hawaii” and arrived sometime before 1898.  These are evidently the only two species of Flatidae known to occur in Hawaii.

On a recent trip to the ridgeline of Lualualei Valley we were surprised to see a Jackson’s Chameleon, Chamaeleo jacksonii xantholophus .  One of the guys I was with happened to be looking at an Ohia tree just off the trail (at about 2,400 ft above sea level) with a pair of binoculars and by chance he spotted a big female.  You can see from the pictures that it was nicely camouflaged.  I think the white patch on its side is a shedding piece of skin.  I thought Jackson’s were found only in the Ko’olaus, so like I said, we were surprised.  The next day in the office I called Army Environmental to tell them about it and they were very interested.  It seems they have recently been finding them on the ridge to west of the location of our sighting.  They have been collecting all the Jackson’s they find and analyzing their gut contents. Unfortunately they have been finding, among other things, native insects and native snails in their stomachs.  I gave them the coordinates and description of where out sighting occurred, and amzingly enough they went back the next day a found the darn thing.  It had evidently move to a nearby christmasberry tree.  They collected it and are going to look at its stomach contents.  I really hope the day never comes when I have to start killing these guys as part of an invasive species management project.  I grew up loving them and dreamed of owning one as a pet – they rate high on the cool lizard scale.  I’ve also always wanted a green iguana…maybe one day.

Anyway, here is some interesting information from Sean Mckeown’s Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians in the Hawaiian Islands (Diamond Head Publishing, Inc., 1996)

“Hawaiian Jackson’s Chameleons have all descended from several dozen specimens.  In 1972, a Kaneohe pet shop owner, Robin Ventura, received a Hawaii State Dept. of Agriculture permit to bring in Jackson’s Chameleons for sale.  They arrived thin and dehydrated, so he released the lizards into his backyard on Kane’ohe Bay Drive, figuring they could be retrieved later, as needed.  The chameleons increased in numbers and by the late 1970’s had spread to the nearby watershed area at the base of the Ko’olau mountains.  The country of Kenya stopped exporting this species in 1981.  So, virtually every Jackson’s chameleon of this subspecies in captivity on the US mainland is of Hawaiian origing or has Hawaiian roots.  In the islands, this lizard is one of the most popular animals with young people and is widely kept as a pet. ”

“The Jackson’s chameleon is now well established in Hawai’i.  While it is most common on Oahu in areas of mid-elevation in the Ko’olau Range between Kane’ohe and Kailua, it has a wide, disjunct distributon throughout Oahu and can even be found on the much drier leeward side of the island.  Additionally, it is now also well established at mid-elevation in several areas on the Kona side of the Big Island of Hawaii and on the island of Maui.  In upcountry Maui around Makawao, these lizards are most frequently encountered in secondary disturbed forest areas, in various types of orchards and on hedges in yards.  The first reports of this species on the islands of Kauai and Lanai were in 1995.  The yellow-crested Jackson’s chameleon is native to the slopes of Mt. Kenya in the country of Kenya in East Africa where it occurs at 6,000-8,000 ft. (1830-2440 m) elevation.  It is the largest of the three Jackson’s chameleon subspecies.”

 If I remember correctly she was named Betty and as you can see in the images she was caring for a clutch of babies.  According to a powerpoint presentation  on myriapods (Inventorying Myriapod Diversity in India – A Review) by Dr. Vinod Khanna, these baby white centipedes are called “protonymphs” and in a few weeks they will start to get some color and then in a few more weeks undergo their first molt and venture out on their own.  In the office we discussed the matter of parental care by S. subspinipes at some length, even to the extent that one of my coworkers made plans to document Betty’s behavior as she reared her protonymphs.  Unfortunately, a second, larger centipede that we were keeping (also in our supervisor’s office) escaped and brought all centipede experiements in the office to a crashing halt.  The escaped centipede was never found.

One last thing about centipedes…

I happened across this article online about centipede envenomation and I found it to be very informative.  The official reference is Wilderness and Environmental Medicine Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 93–99, but you can find it online at  http://www.wemjournal.org/wmsonline/?request=get-document&issn=1080-6032&volume=012&issue=02&page=0093  .  The bottom line is you’re not going to die from the bite and the treatment is pain control and routine wound care, but one thing I didn’t know is that the application of heat at the site of the bite may alleviate some of the pain.

I sort of know one of the authors of this paper – Scott Stockwell.  He used to be an entomologist in the Army and is a well know scorpion expert.  When I was in the Army Reserves, my unit replaced his in Bagram, Afghanistan.  He had to leave prematurely due to an accident with a russian pistol – somewhere I have picture of the bullet hole in the tent where it happened.  Anyway, I guess maybe he is slightly accident prone since in this paper 3 of the 5 cases described are bites he experienced, and two of them are from the same centipede.