WW bugged by insects
Nature Boy discovers the nuances of insect IDs
By Callan Bentley
Flat Hat Variety Editor
As any student of entomology will tell you, "bugs" are not bugs. The assorted creepy-crawlies that you may encounter around this town are commonly called bugs, but the term actually has a precise scientific meaning that doesn't apply to 95% of them. "Bugs" refers to the group of insects in the suborder Heteroptera. Today, though, we'll discuss some of the animals that fall under the commonplace connotation of bugs as creepy-crawlies.
Take ticks, to start with. Ticks are parasites. They are well known as the carriers of many diseases. In fact, ticks are second only to mosquitoes as arthropod vectors of human disease. Our local deer ticks, for instance, transmit Lyme disease. Deer ticks (Ixodes scapularis) are very small, though, and you're not likely to see them even if they are crawling on you. Their maximum size is about as big as the period at the end of this sentence.
If you find a tick on you, you can get it to let go and crawl away by putting petroleum jelly or mineral oil on it. This clogs its breathing pores and the tick will soon decide that breathing is more important than eating. It will withdraw to take care of itself. You can then dispose of it by simply picking it up and tossing it out your window.
Chiggers are a familiar kind of mite to many of the campus' outdoors-oriented people. These are related to ticks and spiders and are grouped with them in the order Arachnida. The larvae bite people in tender areas where the clothing fits tightly. Perhaps you may have heard that they burrow into your skin, but this isn't true. Only one species of chigger burrows into the skin, and that one is specific to frogs. Nonetheless, chiggers are bad news to many people. Like ticks, chiggers prefer grassy areas at the margins of forests. If you can avoid these areas, you can avoid most of these animals.
Most everyone is familiar with daddy longlegs, also called harvestmen. These relatives of spiders stand on long, spindly legs. They are not actually spiders, and you have nothing to fear from them. They act as scavengers and predators. Their legs are deciduous: like the autumn leaves, they can drop off. If attacked by a predator, the daddy longlegs sheds a twitching leg or two. Their motion keeps the predator's attention occupied while the rest of the daddy longlegs can make its escape.
Turning over rocks as a kid I ran into many pillbugs, also called sowbugs, potato bugs, roly-polys, or isopods. Several of their aliases come from their habit of curling into a ball (resembling a pill) when disturbed. Not surprisingly, pillbugs are not bugs. In fact, neither are they insects, nor even arachnids. They are actually related more closely to shrimp and lobsters, and are thus grouped in the class Crustacea.
Neighbors to the pillbugs are the myriapods, which include millipedes and centipedes. Turn over most any rock on campus and you're likely to find some. They are long animals with antennae, like insects. Unlike insects, though, these arthropods have many legs. Millipedes have two pairs of legs per body segment and centipedes have one pair. Multiply that by a healthy number of body segments, and you can see why they were named (in Latin) "thousand-legs" and "hundred-legs."
Centipedes are predators and eat insects. They have a pair of front legs modified into poison-injecting structures, but most of are local centipedes are too small to do you any harm. Occasionally you may find a centipede with very long legs in your dorm room. Don't kill it, as it is working very hard to keep your cockroach population low.
Millipedes, on the other hand, are herbivores, and will not bite you. However, you have to be careful about picking them up for other reasons. Many exude toxic substances when disturbed. In general, these substances taste or smell bad in order to deter predators. In some species, though, the chemicals will turn your hands brown. Others can be even worse.
As I was discussing these animals, I came to the realization that most people don't look at centipedes and pillbugs with any degree of interest, let alone fascination. Bizarre as this may sound, some of the happiest moments of my youth were spent turning over logs searching for these "bugs." Nowadays, people give me a funny look if they see me turning over bricks on campus, or running after a butterfly. You can keep those funny looks coming if you'd like, because I'm going to continue being rapt in the face of nature's details. Alternatively, you can wander around the woods and do some poking around yourself. Anything that increases your awareness of the world around you can't be all bad.