Insect Camouflage & Coloration

Cryptic coloration, body shape, and other adaptations are often common place in the insect world.  While most of us are familiar with walking sticks looking like tree or plant stems a variety of other insects have unique strategies for survival.  One group of insects that often can have rather grisly way of camouflaging themselves are assassin bugs.  The assassin bug, Acanthaspis petax, has the perhaps one of the coolest body armors in the natural world.  What is it?  A. petax uses the dead carcasses of ant prey to cover its body.  Research completed in 2007 found this corpse filled defense helps repel spiders from preying on them (Stromberg, 2012).

                                                          Photo by Mohd Rizal Ismail

Another unique way of protecting yourself in the insect world is to resemble something big and tough, such as a snake. A number of caterpillars of moths and butterflies mimic the appearance of snakes to deter predators.  One such caterpillar is the spicebush swallowtail butterfly larva (Beiser Field Station, 2008).


Image credit: Beiser Field Station

Works Cited:
Spicebush Swallowtail. (2008, October 7). Retrieved December 9, 2014, from http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/spicebush.htm

Stromberg, J. (2012, May 8). This Insect Uses Its Victims' Carcasses As Camouflage. Retrieved December 9, 2014, from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/this-insect-uses-its-victims-carcasses-as-camouflage-83656246/?no-ist

Gut bacteria that can Degrade Plastic

Indian mealmoths (Plodia interpunctella) have recently been discovered to harbor bacteria which can degrade polyethylene.  The bacteria in question, a Bacillus and Enterobacter species, were isolated from the guts of P. interpunctella and demonstrated significant degradation of polyethylene with "tensile strength dropped by 50%, and their ability to repel water droplets fell by 30%. And after the microbes grew on the polyethylene for 60 days, the mass of the plastic films decreased by 10%, and the molecular weights of the polymer chains dropped by 13%" (Pelley, 2014). 

Other studies complete 2011 found bacteria living in shallow pits on polyethylene  plastic found in ocean waste.  Researchers indicated that, " almost 25% of the baceteria on one polyethylene surface were vibrios, bacteria from the same group as the cholera bacterium" (Zaikab, 2011).

Electron microscopy reveals the inhabitants of a plastic bag fished from the Sargasso Sea.T. Mincer/G. Proskurowski

Works Cited:

Pelley, J. (2014, December 4). Pantry Pests Harbor Plastic-Chomping Bacteria. Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pantry-pests-harbor-plastic-chomping-bacteria/

Zaikab, G. (2011, March 28). Marine microbes digest plastic. Retrieved December 5, 2014, from http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110328/full/news.2011.191.html