A repost of a fun blog.....
WHAT IS
THAT???!!?!?!
That thought has crossed my mind as I scout crops,
when I accompany my son fishing, and as I walk outside along my favorite
trail. I have received that question
from producers after I’ve been in their fields.
(And, frankly, insects have always fascinated me. I wanted to be an entomologist in grade
school when all the other girls were dreaming of being fashion designers! ha!)
There
are some very interesting looking critters out there!
I will focus on insects in soybeans because that is
where I’ve been spending the most of my time when I’m outdoors lately. Most of the time, these guys do munch on
leaves, but they aren’t at a distribution and concentration intense enough to
cause worry or warrant treatment; they are either an annoyance to tolerate or
novelty to be curious about. Once in a
while—like in 2018 with the thistle caterpillar—an unknown phenomenon creates
an unusual proliferation of a certain species, and treatment is needed before
the critter eats your livelihood.
Without further ado, let me introduce to you some
peculiar looking creatures.
Green
Cloverworm
This insect is almost neon green and has two white
“racing” stripes down its sides. The
green cloverworm is the larvae for a bland brownish moth. When you touch or bother it, the larvae
wiggles around. The soybean looper looks
similar, but has one less set of legs in the middle of its body, and it walks
in a “loop” like an inchworm.
Japanese
Beetle
This insect is a beetle with a copper colored body
and shiny green head. Its antennae are
feathered, and it has six white tufts on each side of its abdomen. When it feeds on leaves, it doesn’t eat the
veins, creating a skeletonized or lacy look.
It also likes corn silks. They
tend to hang out together, so you can find these guys in groups, climbing all
over each other. Japanese beetle larvae
are white, c-shaped grubs with orange-brown heads.
Silver
Spotted Skipper
This insect is the larvae to a brown butterfly with
a silverish-white spot on its wings, hence the “silver spotted” in its
name. It has a distinctive looking
larvae that turns many heads, with the light green body, dark brown head, and
orange “cheeks” or “eyes” that make it easy to identify.
Thistle
Caterpillar
This insect is the larvae to the painted lady
butterfly, whose wings are a decorative orange, brown, and white. This year, I’ve heard lots of comments about
people seeing these butterflies in swarms, and picking them out of the grilles
of cars in great numbers. The small
larvae are darker, almost black, with small “thistles” or spikes on them. As they grow, they use webbing to wrap
themselves in the leaves that they eat, creating a safe “home”. Here, their fuzzy brownish black heads work
quickly to eat the leaves, leaving lots of big black frass (a cool name for
poop....or a rock band.....) as they grow into more colorful, spikier caterpillars.
Gorgone
Checkerspot
Okay, I’m not completely sure about this one—I found
it south of Wahoo, Nebraska on a sunflower leaf. But the closest I could find was the larvae
to a gorgone checkerspot butterfly, who does like sunflowers and is found in
our area. He was kind of cute and was
posing so beautifully that I just had to take his photo.
Soybean
Gall Midge
This one is so tiny there is not a great chance
you’d actually see these guys in the field.
But their damage is so terrible they kill the entire plant when the larvae
burrow into the base of the stem. They’re
cool because they are a newly discovered species, and I just confirmed them in
one of my fields. So, yeah, this is my
photo, and these guys are only known to us for a couple of years now. They are the orange maggots to a striped midge
fly that’s equally as tiny as its larvae.
Thanks
for reading!
Photos all courtesy of Julie S. Paschold. May not be used or copied without permission
of author.
July 24, 2019
Julie S. Paschold