| columnist
My son is about to be in seventh grade, and it doesn’t often happen that he does a project for the school that relates to what I do with Extension. This summer is a little different because it has to collect insect samples and I couldn’t be more excited. He, not so much.
Bugs are so cool. And this project is in family tradition, because my mother went to the National 4-H in Chicago with her entomology exhibition as a Master 4H’r. In my office I have my great-grandfather’s 1952 insect yearbook.
We get all kinds of insects in the office, from physical samples to digital images, and I usually enjoy figuring out what it is without too much help from our UGA entomologist specialist. My desk usually has a mason jar with what someone swears on it all year round, a murder hornet (usually a queen’s yellow jacket) or something like a pantry moth. My son Win hasn’t started catching them yet, but I’ve caught about 15 already. I am currently preparing for the main fishing season.
I was at the pool last night with my friend Coach Burn’s kids, Hamp and Warren, and we caught a few bugs and tried to identify them. Warren caught a small butterfly and was given a quick lesson on how to tell if it was a moth or a butterfly. Moth wings tend to lie flat when the insect is resting, and when the wings are vertical together it is usually a butterfly.
We caught a termite and I was able to report that there is one type of termite that the queen can lay 40,000 eggs a day. We also caught a really cool beetle the size of a cicada, and I shared that there are more species of beetles than all the plants combined. Maybe that’s why I didn’t find out what kind of beetle it was. With 91 million insect species in the US, I think Win and I will have no problem getting our quota.
Speaking of the beetles, my wife and I experienced a quiet symphony on the back porch on Sunday evening towards the evening. The fireflies began to emerge from the grass and with a backdrop of evergreen shrubs and a beautiful pink sunset the show was amazing. If I could have counted the number of lightning bolts we saw I would estimate it would have to be 200.
Lightning bugs are winged beetles. Adults are about half an inch long and have brownish-black wing-coverts that are almost entirely surrounded by a pale yellow area. The light from the lightning beetle serves a serious purpose as it is a form of communication and the cornerstone of an elaborate courtship ritual in which potential partners wave to each other.
Few other insects can be confused with lightning bugs, as it is rare to find another insect that has the light-generating structures of this beetle. There are over 136 types of lightning bugs, each with a different rate of lightning per second. The lightning bolts are generated by a chemical called luciferase, which they use to attract the opposite sex. The summer evening light shows you see are carried out by male lightning bugs. Male lightning bugs flash patterns of light on the females. The females signal in response to perches in or near the ground. Each species of this unique beetle sends different mating signals. When the male sees the female’s lightning bolt, he continues to signal and comes closer. Eventually, through a series of lightning bolts, they find each other and mate. I had friends in college who would have tried the same thing if they could have made luciferase.
Summer is in full swing and so are the beetles. When you see a bored 12 year old next to a mad man with a butterfly net and mason jar, honk and wave. We are doing homework.
Contact Campbell Vaughn, the UGA Agriculture and Natural Resources Agent for Richmond County by emailing augusta@uga.edu.
