Forest Entomology (CREEPY CRAWLIES) with Kristen Wickert

Oh hey, it's the lady you see walking around the reservoir and you think that she keeps lapping you, and then one day you realize she's twins. She's a twin sister. They both jog at the same time, but like half a mile apart, and it shakes you to your core. Ps. This really happened to me. Ali Ward back with another spooky episode of Ologies. So this episode is technically creepy Crawleys in the Woods, but really it's about trees and caterpillars and butterflies and moths and solitude and fresh air

Of course, my name is Kristin Wicker.

And pronouns she her cool awesome. Just to you asked that, you know, I just started asking that recently because I have some listeners who are non binary and who are fans, and they're like, you know, that just helps to normalize it if you ask.

Yeah, and it feels good. It's just nice because we're all people exactly.

And so now where are you right now? Like, both geographically and situationally mentally.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think you want to mentally, No one wants to talk about that anymore. So I'm in West Virginia, the heart of Appalachia, full of Pepperoni.

Rolls and cryptic creatures such as Mothman.

Oh did they ever figure out what the deal was with Mothman? No?

No, it's a mystery. Well, he's the part moth part man, and there's a beautiful he has a very shiny button the statue, and he is supposed to come before something bad is happening. So it's not sure if he's like warning us, like get away the bridge is gonna collapse, or if he's causing the.

Bridge to collapse.

Okay, cryptic, cryptic, it is cryptic. Now. I had only very recently heard about Mothman from an episode of Expedition Unknown featuring none other than Ology's guest Philterorus of the Lepidopterology episode on moths and butterflies, not the other Philterurus from the Apocalypse episode, although that would also track. But quick overview Mothman. It's November nineteen sixty six. A handful of people digging a grave at night. What see a

We'll see him, you know, there's a big bird looking thing.

Go over top from my car.

And then just over a year later, tragedy befalls the small town as a bridge collapses into the river. So is Mothman an omen a warning, a bird, a hoax, a hallucination? I don't know, but Mothman sightings continue for decades nearby and then in other American cities. But all I can think about is, wouldn't it be fucking nuts if Mothman was once Mothboy and was like a sleeping bag with a bunch of arms and just ate so many cheeseburgers to bulk up because after a pupated adult

It sounds so silly, but when I'm in the woods, like I actually feel I don't know like I belong because like I know everything that's around me, but there's always something new to discover which.

I don't know.

And then you know that afternoon, I'll go home and fevershly figure out what it is. I'm actually one words, one talking. I'm gonna drive to the mountains and sleep on sleep in my car and work outside all day tomorrow.

This is pretty exciting.

How how long have you been into forest creatures? And when did it start for you?

You know, it's funny because I went home to see my mom this past weekend, and she lives I grew up in like Eastern PA and I have a really like it's hard for me to pinpoint when all this like love happened.

And we found some like old comics that I.

Drew when I was like eight years old, and it's like a picture of me like crying because my brother's like pouring a bunch of soda on a tree I just planted, and I was.

Like, oh, I guess I really liked plants back then.

Still, Brondo's got what plants crive, It's got electrolytes.

So I think when I was a little kid, it was very you know, serenity for me to be outside and adventures. And I read a lot of books back then when I had time, and so it was like easy for me to have a very active imagination when I was in the forest, you know, Lord of the Rings kind of stuff.

And when did you decide to do that kind of as your career. You got a PhD in woodsy foresty planty buggy things.

Yeah, yeah, so I have a PhD in plant pathology as well as a master's. And then my undergrad is kind of where all this started. My undergrad is in forest science and I went to undergrad. It's kind of a long, strange story, but it took me five and a half years to get my undergraduate degree because three years of those.

Were wasted thinking I would be like a I don't know, a business.

Woman, and then because I didn't know that you could have a job outside and right, yeah, and I ended up doing really bad in college. I was failing, like I didn't go to finals. I was like, it was like that bad. And my mom she told me to go to community college just to like stop throwing money out the window and to like try to find a

Like, WHOA.

I started getting a's and everything, and I got like an offer letter from Penn State to go there, and they said if you keep getting whatever gp A and doing well in class, like you can come here.

And I looked at their available majors and I was like, well, I want to be outside. What's outside? And the only thing I knew was a park ranger. I was like, I'm going to go to be a.

Park ranger and yeah, and they did have a degree where you could go to be a park ranger. I met a really good friend of mine, she's now a park ranger in Zion. But I went and like really liked the science part of it. Like we did a conservation biology with like genetics and stuff, and that's what led me get the forest science to be a forester degree and from there it just kind of all kind of step by step by step, you know, a lot of good luck and being in the right place I am where I am today.

M h that right place being outside I imagine.

Yeah, yeah, this can't be pent up inside. It doesn't go very well for my brain.

And so what did you now? Your your work as it is? Like what is it? What is a typical day like for you?

Oh, lots of emails, lots of plan making, and then usually around like noon.

There's action and I do a lot of outreach.

So normally, if coronavirus wasn't happening, I would be going and like teaching kids about how to look for bugs, and like kids are a great avenue to look for invasive species because they're the ones.

That are outside and they're the ones that aren't afraid.

Yet to touch things. I would do things with like master gardeners. I would do things where I would speak at seminars with like colleges and stuff like on more in depth topics. Now I do a lot of serving for invasive species, Like we do a lot of fieldwork. Now we're trying to like ALC at the time in a very appropriate way because we can't do these outreach opportunities. We're like getting our boots on the ground and like trying to like solve any problems we can because we

What is a bug in the forest that you've seen that was like a celebrity spotting for you? Was there anyone that you're like, oh, hi.

Dude, man the uh so kind of see I sounded snarky probably when I was like, oh, I know everything in the woods. But now it's like, every like couple of months, I'm like, man, I didn't know that that whole.

Like genus existed, and then they're everywhere.

It's just like this whole thing of like your eyes open up once you notice something or like learn how something exists. But like lately it's been the really huge chonky saturnid caterpillars. Oh yeah, they are just like they're huge. They're like almost the size of a hot dog.

Oh my god, So if I eat this entire that gross.

Hot like a little Jimmy Dean sausage, and they're just like hanging out underneath like the on the bottom or underside of leaves, like just hanging out in muncheon. And you know, normally as a forester, I'm like looking at like logs and stems, and then I'm looking for mushrooms on the ground and it's just like, man, you really there's so many different levels in the forest that you have to train your eyes to look for.

And right now I'm looking for Jimmy Dean hot dogs.

So Kristin has pictures on her Instagram of these Imperial Moth chunkies and they do very much look like a turkey link from a hotel breakfast maffe but with more legs. Do people ever eat them?

Oh my god, I don't know.

I don't know.

I imagine.

I mean every time I see one, actually, like the Imperial Moth has a pretty big like fill to the brim with goo caterpillar, and I always think of that scene in Lion King when your pat is like slurping down, Like every time I see I think of that.

I imagine they must taste very buttery, just cute, just or maybe like a raw tomato. I don't know. I'll get it.

I have I have eaten insects before, and they're usually pretty bland or acidy.

They're not very good on their own.

A little green field conyne.

What does a professional like woods trumper, bug hunter?

Like?

What is essential in your kit? Do you have like a butterfly net and a handlen's like a pickled jar with like a rubber band over it. Like, what's happening?

So my title is I'm a forest entomologist and forest plant pathologist. I do a lot and they there's a lot of intersections between those careers. But my jeep always has some kind of educational content. I'm trying to think of what's in it right now. I have two butterfly nets. I have something called a beat sheet. It's a maybe it's like two feet long, like it's a square.

It's a white sheet, and.

You hold it underneath the branch and you hit the branch really hard with like another stick, and then extended so it's flat and so the insects fall on it. I do see who's hanging out that you would normally ignore.

It's really good for caterpillars.

Oh my god, I've never even heard of that.

Before.

Yeah, it's really helpful to do insects surveys when it's raining because the insects use the leaves as like little umbrellas, and so you can go out there and you can see who's hiding hy kind of concentrated. It's easy to check out diversity that way.

And then what about one of those sheets with a black light.

I have one of those too. It's actually right behind me. I was debating on taking it with me tonight because I'm gonna get where I'm going at like nine point thirty, and I was like, do I really want to pull up and be like, hey, guys, let's look for buds. So my really good friend Damon, he sent me a sheet like it's actually it's literally a white shower sheet, hm. And you can like build this on your own for like thirty bucks online.

And then it has a UV lamp.

With like an external battery that you would use for like camping or hiking. It's plugged in by USB and then you just clip it to the top or the bottom and they'll fly and check it out. But I have learned that different insects, and I've learned this the hard way. The disappointing way that nothing came the one night.

A whole other science.

So I have I have a little UV lamp and I'm looking at getting a mercury one, but they don't attach to the batteries.

So I got it. If that's a puzzle for me to figure.

Out, you found that out by using one lamp and just like getting not like throwing aparty no one shows up to.

Yeah, well, actually it was my mom.

So my mom is like kind of grossed out by bugs, and like she doesn't like it when I bring things home, and like she doesn't like to eat the mushrooms I find she has. She has tried morel's. They were obvious enough that she tried it. But I was like, hey, let's go look for bugs in the backyard. I kept telling her, like, all these big things are gonna come, They're gonna beautiful, And I showed her pictures on the internet and she's like okay, I'll look for those, and then none of.

Them showed up, and it's because I had like kind of the wrong wavelength light.

So yeah, something on the to do list, get more lamps for bugs.

So disappointing Mothman ambles up. He's like, hey, what's up? Uh? Sell your light off?

Really, I really hope that you. You gotta look up the statue.

Oh, I will Mothman statue point pleasant.

I'm gonna look it up. I'm gonna I want to see it's tiny butt Okay. I was very compelled to google this statue, and I found the following video by YouTube user hoser Boo, who journeyed to West Virginia to pay the statue a visit.

Apparently, Mothman is ripped, but he's also a moth ook with a humans body and moth wings.

It has giant red, glassy eyes, and it resides in the median strip of an otherwise sleepy town, right in front of a Mothman museum. But you head around back in its firm, metallic buttocks are clenched in a position of muscular power. I mean, Mothman definitely does squats, and when you're naked on four Street, in West Virginia, just around the corner from a little Caesar's Pizza. You might as well play up your assets, especially since he has

No, No, it's a sensory I like usually I'm already covered by like thirty million spider webs, so like it's fine, throw another one on. I'm actually not very scared of a lot of things outside. Like I'm more scared.

When i'm you know, interacting with people.

I did, actually I think it was it was two years ago, like to the day to the day I had a caterpillar fall from the sky. It fell out of a tree and it laided on my hand and it caused like such a crazy reaction.

The spines, she said, have a coagulant as well as a vasoconstrictor. So what does that do?

So my veins got really tight, and then my blood got really thick, so it felt like my higher arm from it just falling on my hand, my entire arm.

Felt like I was getting a tattoo, like the entire day.

Oh okay, and if you sat down, like your thick blood wasn't going through your thin veins, so I had to like forcibly keep walking the pump it.

So I am scared of those.

What kind was it?

Oh? It was a I want to say, a flannel moth caterpillar.

Okay, yeah, I.

Don't remember the exact one.

It wasn't the hag moth, but it was a tiny, wispy, hairy little dude, but it was.

It was awful.

And so now I'm scared of them because I wasn't like messing with it or anything. Usually I respect animals unless I have to unfortunately kill them because they're an invasive species. But I you know, I was just mind of my own business looking at a flower, and uh it got me so now sometimes in fall I'm.

Like, oh, don't wear short, so don't.

There's there's the extra creepy creepy bit. There are caterpillars that you shouldn't touch.

God, that's good to know. Tiny hairy, wispy little dudes. These have also been said to look like any bitty little to pace with stubby leg nubbins, And if you like, you can call them a pus caterpillar and they won't even be mad. They're victims. Describe. The pain is similar to having a shattered bone or blunt force trauma. Sometimes also is white hot, which is why the date is probably burned into her mind. Okay, but don't be scared because very few caterpillars will make you say the F

Well, the first thing I thought about when you asked that question was to check out your local universities because they often have.

Like bug night and they'll like open up.

A lot of univer have an insect zoo, but they usually they have like the stick bugs, which are exotic, but they have we have native ones here, so that would be a good fun adventure one because they're kind of slow. When they're like easy to watch their legs moving on you. It's not really a big, jumpy, creepy thing.

Can pet them and they're soft and velvety and they kind of like it.

I think, do you have a favorite bug?

It changes all.

The time, just like I'm saying, I learned about something new and I'm like.

What you're able to do that.

But one of my favorite ones that I like think of right away just because it's like purely fascinating, is that there's this Arctic wooly bear caterpillar in Greenland. I did some entological stuff insect collection up in Greenland a couple years ago, and there's this caterpillar that like it can live up to seven years as a caterpillar.

What.

Yeah, it waits till that point that it like eats enough. So if it doesn't eat enough, you know, the first two years, it's like, oh.

I'm just gonna go on and meet this rock and take.

A nap, and it like it waits up like the crazy great greenlandic winter, and then it comes out again and it eats and maybe like that third or fourth year it'll be able to pupeate. But it can like go up to seven years as a caterpillar. It's pretty nuts.

Yeah, what are they eating up in Greenland?

So in Greenland there's not a lot of trees like what we have down here in North America, but there's like these little tiny birch trees and little tiny willow and there are some grasses and some mosses and some flowers too, but I think they mostly eat those small birch and the gray willow. Oh yeah, So they're trees, but they're like little shrubs because they're you know, very oppressed.

Have you gotten to check a lot of global forests and are you more of like a pine forest or a rainforest or like a moth, like what's your vibes?

So I've always wanted to go to like Costa Rica and see, you know, the beautiful butterflies flying around Globally, I've been a bunch of places, but I like, I might have not had like the developed scientist mind yet. But I will say last year I went to China and I was like all amped up. I was like, yes, I'm gonna go see this crazy new forest and it's gonna be really exciting with things I have no idea what they even are, and where I was, the forest

On that visit.

So yes, this tree of Heaven is so called because it grows fast as hell and it can reach up to nine stories tall. It's also the titular character in Betty Smith's nineteen forty three semi autobiographical novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and she wrote, no.

Matter where its seed falls. It makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It's the only tree that grows out of cement. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too.

Many of it. But hey, as long as we're talking tenacity. Smith's novel was rejected by several publishers before someone finally said yes, and then she ended up selling millions of copies, enough to maybe even afford a place in Brooklyn. Now, now on the topic of trees and rents reaching skyward, and I was just thinking, let's say that you walk into a forest, you walk into a trail. I imagine that there's got to be a lot of different strata, kind of like layers in the ocean, and what types

Like?

Who lives where?

So a lot of When I think about the forest floor, I think about a lot of grubs, yeah, which are usually associated with beetles. And also then you have the adult beetle, which are like predators. So they kind of are like running around a very common beetle that you'll see, I think even on the West coast are these little karrabid beetles, which are the ground beetles, and they're like

Find full of fly larvae.

Really yeah.

Yeah, So usually when I go mushroom picking, like I like peek open in the cap to see if it's all got these little holes in it. And if it does have a little holes, that's because it's like a little tunnel that a fly larvae has eaten out. Oh my god.

Yeah.

And then if you jump up, you have like, you know, you have specialists insects that are on tree trunks, you have specialist insects that are only on the grasses around.

You have a lot of like predators.

Will utilize the wide open area of a you know, a rock higher up in order to be able to see something that's really cool are the tiger beetles. They're one of the fastest animals proportionate to their size, and there are these beautiful green, shimmering insects and they'll jump on a trail which is like open. It's because for prey,

And now you work with invasive species, which I'm sure differ in different parts of the country. I know out in California we've got some pine board beetles that are really on our shit lists.

Right, Yes, so they're native, oh okay, yeah, and I'm not.

Going to go too into it because I am an East Coast specialist.

They're kind of responsible, along with other cascading effects of like climate change, for massive die back of our pine

More on those critters later in the episode, but closer to her neck of the woods, there is a scarlet winged, polka dotted little darlin. It just looks like little moth but in a fancy outfit. And I was in Philly last month and they were everywhere, including taking the top spot on local shit lists. And now you are from eastern Pennsylvania, but yeah, Pennsylvania. Damn this lantern fly, this spotted lantern fly. What I was out? I was in Philadelphia and I was like, oh, what is this cute

Right, yeah, it's I mean that is actually the scary part of your Spooptober podcast. Yeah, they've been around since like twenty fourteen. They arrived on a shipment and they kind of proliferated at a very rapid rate. They're now in more than twenty six counties in Pennsylvania and they're you know, showing up in a lot of different states. They're in Maryland, West Virginia there. They just found some in New Hampshire on a shipment.

And then what's getting on trees?

Okay, so nursery trees.

Yeah, so some greenhouse warehouse kind of places are shipping ornamental trees and that's by lantern flies are laying eggs on it, and then they get shipped to a nearby state and then someone buys it from another state. So we're really focusing on teaching people how to identify it, because if you buy a tree at a greenhouse, you say, oh, there are those eggs, you can kill them and then problem's over.

Yeah. Yeah, this, uh, this insect's really bad.

It's not just like annoying because like you saw there jumping everywhere and like the kind of fly into and they're just kind of it's kind of gross. But they have a preference for our grape vines and our orchards.

So they really like apple trees.

And their favorite tree is from their their home native range of Asia and India and Vietnam. But they like that tree so much, Tree of Heaven, and it's every here. So they're just like proliferating like crazy. And then when they're done with their main course of Tree of Heaven, they move on to like dessert, which is the grape vines.

And the apples.

Don't mind if I do.

Which the East Coast is really you know, we don't have it like Sonoma or Napa Valley or whatever, but we have Pennsylvania. Southern Pennsylvania has a lot of wine, and so does like West Virginia and Maryland.

It's a big problem.

And then what are they doing? I understand that they're just shitting sugar out. What's happening?

So yeah, that's an interesting like feeding strategy that hemipter and insects have. And I know you like bugs, so like I'm gonna use some bug words I love. Yes, So the hamipter and insects they are classified by their wings, of course, like all insects are.

But they also have a.

Mouthpart that's a lot like a straw, and so they stab this really strong straw like mouthpart into the tree and they suck out the sugar that is normally used for you know, functions within the tree. Right, it's used for making fruit, it's used for keeping the leaves alive. And so maybe if you had like one or two of these insects sucking out the sugar with their straw like mouthpart, it wouldn't be that bad. But when you have millions of them, you can really deplete the tree's

So it really has to suck.

It does suck, but it really has to suck, and that's what forces like they're like continuously like peeing out that honeydew because like they have to suck so much, and their gut actually has like a specialized feeding area or processing of that sugar, so it just rapidly goes back out because of that pressure gradient. And then fungus

First whammy, of course, being the schnaz nozzles sucking out plant juices, and the second whammy being the dark sooty mold that grows in their sugar pea and blacks out the leaves. Now, scientists in Pennsylvania are like, that is two whammys too many. And I know that there are campaigns on the East coast like if you see it, kill it, like just kill it, like trust us kill it. What are you having to do as like a force entomologist and a plant pathologist to try to control these

So I will say how important it is for outreach, Like that whole thing of the campaigns is like kind of the number one thing because me as one person, I could spend literally all day at one tree trying to kill them all. But if you all see it and try to kill it. That's awesome, right, Like there's millions of you killing millions of them.

Yeah, it's really scary murder mystery.

But what I physically go out and do is I map it, and I report it to different agencies and then like will collaboratively work together to either use like these physical traps which we call circle traps or sticky bands, and like that's a whole science in its own that we're trying to find the best to use which doesn't hurt like birds and snakes that get stuck on it. So there's these physical traps so people can put them

But they work.

And like when you have like this threshold of one hundred insects on a tree and you don't know they're laying eggs, and you can't necessarily get all of them just by reaching for them, even if you have a really long butterfly net. You have to use pesticides, and so we use what's called a systemic pesticide and it goes inside the tree.

So when they're using that straw like mouthpart, no matter where they are in the tree, they suck it out and then they die.

Ahh Yeah.

And it's also like not so dangerous then too for like little kids playing in the yard, right, because like it's not on the tree, it's like in the tree.

And what's happening from an ecological standpoint where they're feeding on the same tree of heaven. But they obviously are in check somehow in Asia, So why are they so unchecked here?

Well, it's it's interesting we kind of have like a big sister story to go off of a little bit. So the spot of lanternfly is not native to South Korea, and South Korea had like an invasive problem with this, and they kind of wonder the same thing and they you know, it goes kind of directly what you're saying.

In China.

There's pathogens, predators, and like other climac events that control them because it's coevolution, right, and so when they get out of this very narrow co evolved region that they're in, they become problematic We have seen a couple of them here in North America that have and when I say a couple, I mean like a handful that have a fungus on them which is killing them, or maybe it's

So ecology is all about how organisms work and live together, and with millions of years to evolve, the balance should have been met to keep things in check, unless, of course, you suddenly start building giant ships and railroads and are like surprise, new species. We're just mixing it up. When it comes to what you do. Also as a scientist,

Like?

How much of that was your mission in becoming a scientist, was trying to communicate things that you're like bringing out of the deep woods.

Uh, well, it didn't start that way.

I mean, it really was just me being goofy with my friends I mean, that's kind of why everybody starts on Instagram. And my Instagram is not associated with my work at all, So I mean not that I do anything crazy on there, but still, like I really enjoy distributing knowledge to the masses, and I do feel that knowledge is power, and so why should I hoard all this information in my little head?

And I should get people to care about nature because there.

Is kind of a big lapse or a separation just in our society now that nature is separate than like our daily lives, and you know it's not really It needs us to like care and love for it like a little baby, and because it has benefits to our water supply in the city or our food supply, just like the spotted lanternfly and grapes and apples. Right, if we don't care for our environment, we could potentially lose wine, which.

Is a big thing to have at steak in the middle of a pandemic.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, And I got so many questions from patrons for you specifically, who can I ask you like lightning round?

Okay, Ah, I'm just shy, like I said, Like, I mean, the whole Instagram thing, like it looks like I put myself out there all the time, but like when you ask that, I started sweating because I'm a very secretive person still, even my faces on your little rectangle of doom.

No, but it must be nice to hear back from people too that enjoy the forest more and enjoy bugs and kind of get out of their comfort zone to understand how beautiful the world is.

Right. Oh yeah, and I get mess just like that very often. I'm not trying to brag, but like, I'm so stressed out at work all the time, and I'm

And I thank everybody who's ever sent me one of those.

So I am just a normal person, though with a lot of normal people problems.

So twenty twenty, so many.

But yeah, let's hear those questions.

Okay, you ready, I'm just gonna run through them. Ooh, but before we do a few words about some things I like which make it possible for ologies to donate to a cause of the guest choice, And this week Kdobs chose Black Outside Ink, which was founded with one simple mission reconnecting Black and African American youth to the outdoors through culturally relevant programming and inspired volunteers and a passion for connecting youth to the powerful history of black

Like mum, why did they call it Scottish cheese?

It's cottage cheese, honey.

And I'm not sure.

Did dogs in other countries speak different languages?

Yeah?

I think so.

Well when we get there, well, we've got to fix the car first. But there's someone coming to help us.

Is it the man from Geneva?

Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh there's the van. Now for car insurance with breakdown rescue. It takes a Viva visit a Viva Dota eat to say fifteen percent.

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Okay, your questions, but yeah, I got so many questions again, I'm just gonna lightning around. Just fire away. Is that cool?

Yeah?

Boom boom boom Okay. Ada Schaeffer wants to know why do you think so many people are afraid of bugs?

Oh, it's because we have that like our nerve senses, right, and our skin, like the literal creeping of insects is like it makes our skin twitch.

And I think people don't like that. And I mean we.

Were also raised for so long to say, like those have diseases, and then you come yeah, so like now we're kind of realizing, because like we do have kind of this naturalist revival, that not all of them have diseases and we don't need to be scared of all of them.

Mm hmm, okay. I looked this up, and there is a word for when you feel like the creepy crawleys are upon you. It's called formication, and it comes from the Latin root for ants. So if you get the creepy crawleys, you're a formicator. Now, if you're worried about being in the forest because of that which wiggles in it, just consider that your house, the house you're sitting in right now, if you're sitting in a house, has about

That's probably the number one question I get from people on my Instagram, but like, I've never had a problem with ticks, and I just I guess I just got used to checking myself that I don't even make it a thing, but I do. I go out and if I go and do fieldwork all day, I shower. So I think just being diligent about the inspection because we can use frontline on pets, but that we can't use it on us because it's a poison. So I think diligence and physical inspection is appropriate.

We listen named to Brad Paisley and I.

Locked hit.

For more on tics and Live disease. You can check out the Acroology and Disease Ecology episodes and then just check those crevices onward. Ah, that's good to know. Aj Lichti wants to know what percentage of insect species do you think have been identified? Like how many do you not know about?

So many we don't know about. I mean now that I.

Have been going out in the woods and like really focusing on these agiatic invaders, I often see things that I don't know and I'm like, I wonder if anybody else does what that is?

Don care?

And I usually just walk away because I don't have time.

So look, I think that there's a lot of insects that we haven't identified yet, and some things we are very cryptic, right, the things that are living inside of a mushroom.

There's not many people who are gonna peel a part that mushroom.

Cap to try to find what species are rear the in fly larva to figure out what they are. But also there's so many places we can't get there's insects that can live in like really extreme temperatures or environments like that Greenlandic Arctic wooly bear.

Right, that's crazy.

Yeah, So it's just I think there's a really big unknown and also there's things we take for granted. And I'm gonna go to another topic. So lichens, right, you know what a lichen is? Yeah, So the lichen is the symbiosis between fungi and algae and they make another organism and they exchange stuff. Well, for the longest time, we thought it was one species of fungus, and not until like twenty sixteen I think they found out that there's another organism. It's either a asco my coaton or

Yeah.

So I think there's a lot of things in the forest that are like that.

Oh I had no idea.

I know. Isn't that so exciting?

Though? Yes it is. There's so much we don't know.

Just something to live for. You could study, like.

Someone out there, they're like anologist, hit me up. They've gotta be someone out there. And Okay, Rox Sande Parker wants to know could certain species help reduce the risk of wildfires, especially in California, Oregon and or Washington. Was that a good idea to introduce something or is it is that a no?

Hmmm? I mean that's a whole like several individuals PhD dissertations in one way, right, if I were to think about it, because like the main thing that's killing those are the Dendoctinis ponderosa, the bark beetles.

I mean, you.

Could introduce if you do like seven years of studying and vetting that a predator or parasitoid isn't going to kill something else.

You could do that.

But I think with that specific question, different forest management.

Practices might be a better avenue to seek.

And just a side note, I looked it up to see what kind of critter fixes are on the table. And these beetles, which can be about the size of a cooked grain of rice, thrive on trees that are already weak from drought and fire officials think that eighty to ninety percent of the recent Creek fire's fuel were beetle affected trees, and they estimate that one hundred and fifty million trees or so in California were killed by these local beetles just getting out of balance. So the

So the longhorn beetles when they are chewing, usually they're chewing the bark away a.

Little bit in order to lay an egg. I think there usually is an adult.

They're like a foliage feeder, but as they lay their egg inside the wood, because the larva actually eats like inside of the hardwood of the tree. And I'm just I'm not an expert on this either, but yeah, that's they do chew. And I have heard the soyer beetles like chewing before and gnawing on wood and order lay their eggs.

Ah okay, ps I look this up. And beetles eating decaying trees. Kind of sounds like eating a squeaky cracker, which I guess is just a rice cake. So just imagine the noise of me eating a rice cake in your ear. You're welcome. Segwiny Dana wants to know if insects sleep or if they have an equivalent Do you ever catch anyone snoozing?

No, they don't sleep like we do.

I guess you know, you can say like they rest, but they don't actually like kind of turn off like we do. A lot of it has to go with usage of oxygen. So a really good way to catch a butterfly is to keep chasing it because it needs to stop moving in order to like diffusely have air go into its body mm hm. And so a lot of insects will like stop and they'll need to rest. Insects aren't active all all the time like they are resting, But I'm not actually sure if they physically sleep like

Oh, so essentially, yes, they do rest, and during that rest phase they're much harder to arouse. They're like h on and if they don't rest enough, they'll be a

Definitely, I see that. Sometimes people are like how do you see that? And I'm like, I don't know. I just I just know what to look for now. And so getting a friend that can teach you this is where you find this, then like you won't be able.

To turn it off, and you'll be like, Okay, that's where I look for that.

And I think sometimes my like mushroom hunting friends and I will joke about this, you need to turn off all your other eyes and only have like your mushroomize on because like I have a really hard time and that.

I'll always be like, oh God, look at that flower. Look at that flower. I'm like, no, turn off your ties, look for your mushroom eyze.

And so sometimes I do that with work, where I have to like turn off all the other eyes and like know what to focus on. And so being able to be observant and focus is very good. I think also patience is a very good thing because there's a lot of these guides that will tell you, like from July to September the adult is active, but they don't really you know, those insects. I say this with everything.

A frost right.

So, like, being able to be patient and make observations of your own without only dedicating to the textbook is key for any naturalist.

Mm hm, so it might your your mileage may vary depending on what kind of year you've had.

Correct.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Jessica Jansen wants to know how they can keep mosquitoes away from their family without a bunch of toxic chemicals. Any tips for getting mosquitoes away from you? Clean your gutters, clean your cutters.

Yes, because a lot of times, you know, they have all these like fact sheets about one hundred mosquitoes can come out of like a cup of.

Like dirty dog water in a dog bowl in the yard you forgot about.

Uh huh.

So like people often have not not a lot of people, but sometimes people have tires and stuff in their yards, and like you're providing this breeding ground. And often people don't clean their gutters and they get filled up with leaves and they create kind of like perfect habitat and everyone's like, there's no tires.

In my yard. I don't know why, you know, because your gutters are dirty.

Ah.

Yeah, So don't provide them with a habitat. If you have a bird bath that you don't clean, just get rid of the bird bath.

That deal. Yeah, you know. I was doing some research on smelly feet and found that if you have very smelly feet, you are more likely to get bitten by mosquitoes h very often. But there's a lab out here in a I think they're in Riverside. They have like a really good entomology lab, but you see for Riverside and they're studying like mosquito olfaction and malaria and how washing your feet can help you get fewer mosquito bites.

So I'm gonna have to remember that.

Yeah, during my long field work days, I'll just have to wash my wash your feet.

Cycling Tiger wants to know if any forest bugs interact within the relationship between the trees and Michael Risei micro Rizzi, micro Risei, Mike Risey, Mike A Risey. Okay, so we're talking about fungus threads here. People say it different ways. I just choked, Like when you see your cousin's girlfriend and you're like, is it Jenny or Jenny? Should I just call her Jennifer? Shit, I say, Mike A Risei, Okay,

Probably.

I mean, there's probably like so much we don't know about, like their specialization, and like you really you can't personify everything because they're not humans.

They don't have like the thought process we do.

But they obviously have some kind of skill where they're able to distinguish things that they like or things that they know, or habitats that they know, right, and so I think that they have some kind of learned ability, which you also have to remember. Many insects live for more than one year. A lot of people think that an insect lives for one year and it's done, but they do have many years on Earth where they have

It'll be easy.

Yeah, someone will get a degree at which brings me to a question. Okay, pescal whose first time question asker wants to know do cicadas really spend seventeen years underground maturing? And do are they just sleeping that whole time? And Gen Squirrel Alvarez said, yes, all the cicada questions.

Oh wow, okay, so yeah, we we have the periodical cicadas here. Fun fact, there are both thirteen year and seventeen year cicadas. There's many different broods, and they're not sleeping underground.

They are eating their whole time.

Yeah.

I mean, they're just like that greenlandic caterpillar. Right, they got a threshold they have to meet a certain amount of energy consumption to meet a certain point of molting.

Oh my god.

So they eat tree roots and sometimes you can actually kind of see when high cicada populations, when they're getting ready to come out, there's like some kind of associated decline. That's what we some people think anyway. But the cicadas are really interesting. They come out and they pretty much just molt and they turn into adults. They pump up their wings and they mate and then they get eaten.

Oh and they're tasty.

I think they taste good.

How do you How have you eaten them?

Prepared some boiler mash and stick them in a stew.

No, I've put them on like cookies. I've put them so when they haven't molted, when they're still like the little creepy crawley things without wings, I've put them in like peanut oil and stir fried them and they're really good. It's I guess it's sad, but I mean it's like free food. And there's like billions of them, it's not trillions, so and like everything else is gonna eat them, so why not live a little?

Why do they take so long to have a glow up?

Is that amazing?

Yeah?

Gosh, I mean there's so many weird cycles.

That we're learning about in our Native American forests where these you know, certain oak trees they'll have mast years. So oaks don't make acorns all the time. They make them every like four years or something, depending on resources, and then all of.

Them will make it.

Yeah. The cicadas are awesome, and I just love their sounds. And we have a three different species that come up that are seventeen year cicadas, yes, and they all have different songs and they but they sing together, and then it just sounds like a spaceship.

Oo.

Ketobs says. For more on this goodness, you should check out the website cicadamania dot com. And also, I think I just have to do a whole episode on them before twenty twenty one. When brood ten, which I've been calling brood x for like sixteen and a half years, emerges right a Cicada episode, all those in favor scream like you've been in a bunker for seventeen years and

All of them?

All of them?

But if you really want to be like scientific about it, flies really, yeah, we should stop painting on flies. I was, you know, when I say I'm a part of like experiments, usually I'm doing like kind of dumb menial work like counting bugs or sorting them or weighing them. But I was part of this project for about a year where we were looking at different insect orders associated with pollination

That we see. All sorts of flies too.

They'll be like, oh my gosh, they're like hundreds of species that way identified just from like one single tree species in one one national forest in one state. So I would advocate for the flies to not be gross maggots, right, Even the word maggot is something that you would see like a marine yelling at in a movie. I know, maybe you should make it a compliment, Oh you're such a maggot to I didn't mention they're great at decomposing.

Yeah, they eat shit and they don't complain about it, just like the marines.

I know.

Well, someone had a question about hoverflies, Okay, merg Atron, first time question asker wanted to know what's up with hoverflies? Why are they creepy?

Uh?

Merg lives in the woods and they're all over the place acting really weird. Are they really government drones?

No?

No, no, they're not drones.

Hoverflies are. They're flower flies or the serverflies.

But they look like bees and they just they use it as a mimicry to be like, please leave me alone. I'm just trying to eat flowers like, not bother anybody.

So they are not tiny government drones spying on it.

You know what, I don't know. The government does whatever it wants anymore, So who knows?

This shows speaking of things that go b the in the day and the night. Adam Pallack, first time question asker, relatively established listener asks why do critters that buzz make my jammies jingle? I love all creatures, but what a bee wasp is buzzing around me? I feel the naturalists in me take off and run for cover. They terrify me. What is the reason for that? And do you have any any fixes for that your.

Little No, I don't know for that. I'm sorry. I can't answer that at all.

I have been stung by many wasps during fieldwork, and so I have that same fear.

Okay, so it's a it's normal, and that's okay.

Yes, it's probably good.

It's probably some like ancient relative, you know, protecting you by passing on that vibration.

That's a good call. Zoeg. First time question asker has heard that if you lick a banana slug, your tongue goes Nuh. Why anyone would do this is beyond me. But is this true? And who figured that out?

I have no idea.

Okay, have you ever looked a banana slug?

No? But I have tried to make them mate.

No, They're like, I'm not really feeling this one. Okay. Side note, I licked this up, and people kiss banana slugs because their slime has a numbing agent in it. But also some slug scientists aka limacologists are like, don't like slugs for the slug's sake. Can you imagine if you were naked in the woods and a tongue the size of your bed came and slimed you with falafel breath, You'd be like, move along, you hairy gool. Lennen Dory,

I don't know.

I don't know either.

I don't know if they do. I mean you have to remember that a lot.

Of different animals have different reactions to the different metabolites, right, I mean even people within the same species.

Right, you might be able to drink milk and I can m hm. So I don't know.

They might be using it as a second dairy metabolite to accumulate in their body though, to act as an anti predation technique, and we do see that with a lot of insects. I'm going to go back to my classic example, the spoty lanternfly. We think it feeds on tree of Heaven so much because it accumulates toxins in

Remember when we were wondering aloud if anyone is researching fungus and bug interactions, well they are okay. In fact, I was poking around cicadamania dot com and I found out the guy who started the website, Dan Mosguy, as well as our own Too Humble guest, Kristin Wickert, are both listed as authors on the following paper psycho Active plant and mushroom associated alkaloids from two behavior modifying cicada pathogens,

So I'm very lucky that my job is like go here.

Yeah.

So like a lot of times I'm not on a trail and I just go. But I will say that it's that desire to seek things out then sticks with me when I am on trail.

But I have been, you.

Know, working in the forestry realm for so long that I know that a place where hundreds of thousands of people go, it's really easy to see if even one person walks off trail and there's like, actually you should look this up. There's some really crazy pictures of when like the super.

Bloom happens in California.

Mm hm.

It like they track when people go off trails, like the instagrammers, and then like they're day one when the super bloom is happening, there's one designated trail and then by like day there's like fifty other side trails.

Wow.

So thanks to social media and seeing that I should be shameful.

I don't.

I don't go off trail at like public places. But with my job, I'm able to go into the wilderness.

That's part of your job.

Yeah, so, and even then, I'm trying to be respectful, and I have all the plant eyes, the bug eyes, the mushroom eyes going on, and so I'm like, I'm not gonna smash on a beautiful orchid. I am actually very aware, and I try to walk where there is nothing, and then I start thinking really deep thoughts about, you know, the microbes that I'm stepping on that don't even realize it.

Because they're so small.

Lee Peddler wants to know first time question, that's great. Is there an insect that you've always always wanted to come across in the wild but you haven't yet and that you're always on the lookout for.

Yeah, pretty much. Now it's all the saturnids.

So I want to see all of the Saturnid moths in real life because they're huge.

And the only one I've really seen is the Lunama.

Oh I've ever seen one of person. I've only seen one on that weird commercial for Lunesta Yea, which is like some sort of sleep drug. That's like you might murder someone well on Lunesta, like, that's the only that's what I assated with.

Driving or engaging in other activities while asleep without remembering it the next day have been reported. Abnormal behaviors may include aggressiveness, agitation, hallucinations, or confusion.

So to any large, beautiful sage green Luna moths, I am so sorry that Lunesta co opted your fluttery nocturnal image for this. Also, if you do need help falling asleep,

Yeah, but a lot of these things are a lot of these saturnis are only out like flying around at night and like within a small window of time of the year, and then even within that they will only come out.

Like really late at night, like midnight to two am.

Really.

Yeah, when you take out that shower curtain with the light, you'll start to get small, little, very tiny moths at first, and then like as the night progresses, you'll get bigger ones, and then depending on what the moon is doing, you'll get really big ones.

Wow.

Yeah, so all of the moths I really want to see. There's this really crazy one. It's like the oakhorn moth. It's like out right now, but I don't know. I just recently fell in love with caterpillars, So anything, that's what I want to see.

And if you're wanting to go explore the world and look at wiener pillars and creepy Crawley's and fun, guy, what's the best way to do it? Well, safety first, and in the mushroom foraging, get a book, Go with people that know what they're doing. If you're just getting into it, don't just go out alone and be like, well it's pretty icy.

No.

No, So I'm really fortunate to have like a lot of really good friends. Most of them are on the West Coast and I miss them a lot. We would do these really big mushroom parties and we did one last year around this time of year. We got a cabin and we all, you know, we do these big forays. And so if you want to get into that, you know, look at Facebook. There's like tons of groups for everything, and like just be I guess brave enough to be like.

Does anybody want to go? Yes, go like.

To park and like, because there's mushrooms and bugs everywhere, you could go to your local park. You don't have to buy a cabin or anything, and you could just like set them out on the table and learn. But yeah, with a lot of things, and even the insects too, because some of them you don't want to touch. It's good to go with.

A friend and then learn together.

I have, like when I go looking for mushrooms and I take three field guides with me. Yeah, yeah, because some are you know, old, it might be contradictory depending on the author. It's just good to like triple check yourself with something as serious as amatoxins.

Mm hmm, yeah for sure. And Okay, you're in the woods, you're looking for creepy Crawley's. You got spider webs all over you. Maybe there's a take in your butt crack and you're like, i'll get it later. But what is the worst thing? Because you're so resilient in so many ways, But what sucks when.

The person in front of you steps on ground bees?

Oh no, and like.

They don't go after them, they go after you.

So the places I go again, I'm not on trail, and it's not like these beautiful, lush places that are like Lord of the Rings beautiful forest. They're like green briar and honeysuckle and like you have to like fight to get through it with a machete. And then like you get stung by wasped or ground bees and like you magically are able to jump over them.

Oh my god.

So that's like the worst thing about being out in the field. And like I had a spider bit me one time on the Appalachian Trail and I rolled up and looked at my friend and I was like, my face feels funny, and she's like, we need to go to town. Oh, so like, yeah, they are very serious things to be aware of.

And also, this is another funny story.

I don't remember the exact species, but on the East coast there's these millipedes and I know they're not insects, but there's these millipedes. They're called Narsius americana. They're the really big long ones that like you know, could be as long as a pencil.

They're about that thick, like dark purple. They're on the trails a lot. You can pick them up and you can do stuff with them and whatever. Check them out. They're cute. But there is a very close look alike on the West coast.

So she was hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail, which side note runs over twenty six hundred miles from Mexico to Canada, which I did not know. And then I got distracted for like ten minutes on the Pacific Crest Trail website looking at gorgeous wilderness photos and reading about how trail workers will quote curse you for eternity if you go potty on the trail and leave it for them to find without bearing it seven inches anyway, hiking.

And I was hiking on the PCT and I'm like, really lucky that I got. It was like the last day that I picked up this millipede that looked a lot like the Narsius Americana. And I went to my car and the thing had thrown up on my hand. And I didn't really think about it because like the ones on the East Coast throw up on your hands.

It's not a big deal.

Sorry, but this one released like an acid and my hand I was driving in my hand, I was like, man, it really kind of hurts. And I looked at it and I had these like big stains, like big red bloody stains on my hand.

Oh.

And I like frantically pulled over and was like, what's going on? Trying to find like a scientific paper about it, uh huh, and it.

Said like you could if you touched your eyes, it could blind you. And I was thank god. So I went to a stop and wash my hands for like seven minutes.

Oh god, oh my god. Okay, Also, you've hiked so many trails. Any advice on buying boots?

Oh no god, no, no boots.

Okay, no boots what I wear when I go hiking long distance or trail runners.

Because they dry out fast. They have really good grip.

They aren't like heavy, and I don't know, I just feel like they don't give as many blisters.

That's okay, the number one bad thing.

But you know, if you're fighting fires, there's fire boots, and like if you're kicking over green brier to get into a forest plot, then I wear muck boots, but I never ever wear those like hiking boots that are on commercials.

So don't let a lack of fancy boots or a fear of creepy Crawley's hinder you, because there's so much beauty out there, I promise. What about your favorite thing about being a forest entomologist.

I love it when I get to be like all alone in the woods and like I actually feel like I'm part of something mm hmmm, because it's just like all around me and it's just so familiar. And you know, it's because it's like overpowering sometimes like the levels of like sight and sound and smell.

It's just I don't know, it's just nice. I feel like I'm part of it.

Yeah, it must really be like a happy place to get away from the world.

Yeah, I can actually like kind of get lost in my thoughts because a lot of times, man, I got like thirty things going on, and it always works out. Like literally, like before I called you, I was working like i'm and then like as soon as we hang up, I'm gonna put my backpack on and I'm gonna drive to the woods.

Yes, So like I'm.

Always thinking, and so it's nice to like kind of turn that off.

Mm hmmm. Yeah, You're gonna wake up and the birds are gonna be singing, and then it's gonna be misty down. Got so nice. This is making me want to go camping, like on my porch or something. So ask smart hiking scientists, creepy crawleyspooky questions, and you just might find yourself lasen up your whatevers to hit the trail. And I know