Empty Lab

It was a wonderfully serene day in the ALE lab, as everyone save Ben and I were out doing field work. Ben worked on counting pumpkin pollen grains, and I identified the first set of bee samples from our urban gardens and vacant lots. Thankfully, we used this peaceful time to our advantage, because...

Everyone came back from the field at the same time! Oh well, I will miss everyone milling about in the Fall when it will be just me.

Parasitoid ATTACK!

From the lady beetles that Bethany collected, I managed to grab a parasitoid after it emerged from the pupa and place it in a petri dish with a convergent lady beetle. It did not take long for the parasitoid to attack the lady beetle.

We are going to keep this beetle alive for a couple weeks and then freeze it for dissection so we can find out what the larvae of the parasitoid looks like.

Long-horned bees

Since all of my pumpkin sites are blooming I have started sampling for bees. I have found many Melissodes bimaculata in our bee bowls. All black, with two whitish marks on their abdomen, a light-colored face patch and shocking white leg-hairs, they are an important pollinator of sunflower plants. They are related to the squash bee, as they are both long-horned bees with long antennae and fly early in the mornings! However, while the male squash bees sleep in safe, plush pumpkin flowers that close up around them at night, male M. bimaculata just finds a plant and hangs on all night by its mandibles and legs. I'm not totally sure, but I've heard this is how Chuck Norris sleeps, too.

Today we are saying goodbye to one of our student workers, Jared Power. He is taking a much-needed break before returning for his last year of high school. Good luck, Jared!

Summer is winding down!

Another busy week is coming to a close. The summer schedule of ALE lab is beginning to wind down...about a two weeks to a month of fieldwork is remaining. Between now and then, there are quite a few more trips to be made. On the buckthorn front, we have one more soybean sampling trip slated for next week. So far we haven't come across soybean aphids. Maybe we'll be lucky next week.

Bethany Hunt's Summer Research

Bethany Hunt loves Entomology. She has been collecting, pinning and identifying insects for years and last year began working in our lab as a summer student researcher. Bethany contributes to several of the projects we have going on, including the buckeye lady beetle blitz. When volunteers send samples back to the lab, Bethany examines their sticky card and data sheet to check for errors and enters all the data. She also identifies numerous other beneficial insects on each card, in addition to the lady beetles.

This summer, Bethany also conducted a study examining parasitism rates of native and exotic lady beetles. Lady beetles are attacked by a the wasp parasitoid Dinocampus coccinellae. Bethany is examining whether parasitism rates of native lady beetles are affected by the abundance of exotic lady beetles present. She is examining this by measuring the diversity and abundance of exotic and native lady beetles in 24 grassland, soybean and alfalfa field sites across Ohio. From each site she uses a sweep net to collect lady beetles and determine their abundance. She places each lady beetle in a petri dish and monitors it for 28 days to determine if a parasitoid emerges from the beetle.

As you can see from the pictures, she has quite a collection of beetles at this point!!

First Rain Test for the Cameras!

Ben and I got rained on while packing up all the camera equipment, and I am happy to report that there doesn't seem to be any water damage to the equipment! It just might take a few days for my shoes to dry out, and the van is probably going to be a little smelly when Kojo uses it in the morning.

I have spent the first half of the week video taping egg masses in alfalfa, CRP, and soybean fields in Shelby County, and I am currently downloading all the data to our external hard drive. My next task is to get all the equipment ready to go right back into the field on Thursday!

All the video will be watched and predation on the egg masses will be documented. We better start stocking up on popcorn!

Kojo Quaye's Field Research

Kojo Quaye is a student researcher in our lab this summer. He graduated from high school this year and will be attending Princeton University in the fall, studying Chemical Engineering. This summer Kojo conducted predation studies in the Cleveland community garden and vacant lot plots we have been blogging about. He examined the activity of above ground predators by placing corn earworm eggs in two treatments (shown in picture above) an "Open" treatment where predators could consume the eggs and a "Caged" treatment that exposed the eggs to environmental conditions but excluded predators. After 48 h in the field, Kojo counted the number of eggs remaining in both treatments. He is currently analyzing this data. So far, it appears that predation increases throughout the season, particularly in gardens where very low predator activity was measured in the early summer when vegetation and the pests that attack garden plants are sparse.