Category Archives: Photography

Using mosquitoes’ sweet tooth to control Zika transmission

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Now that everyone wants to kill mosquitoes that transmit Zika virus, can somebody please make a transgenic plant that expresses mosquitocidal Bti (Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis) toxins? Just stick the Bti gene behind a phloem-specific promoter so that the protein gets pumped into the nectar. Then when males and female mosquitoes drink (and almost all do), they die.

White-footed woods mosquito (Psorophora ferox) nectaring on goldenrod flowers.

You could then plant acres of the modified plant nearby towns to protect people from Zika (and anything else transmitted by mosquitoes). The beauty of this method is that you could reduce populations of mosquitoes from an area without spraying, and do so for generations if you modified nectar-producing perennials. I know it’s trendy to dislike GMOs (like vaccines), but I think many people would support them under these circumstances.

And yes, apparently Bti toxins can kill adult mosquitoes (including Aedes aegypti), not just larvae. Klowden and Bulla 1984 demonstrated it, for example. And yes, Aedes aegypti drinks nectar (and probably fruit juice).

Of course, even if somebody had the incentive to make such a plant, it could take a decade to wade through the red tape involved in getting non-regulated status from governments. So if you want to do something today, leave out containers of sugar water (10%) that is laced with Bti (e.g., Mosquito Dunks, which you can buy online or at hardware stores). Maybe add something floral to attract them, too. (A review of olfactory cues suggests that imitation cherry and apple can work. If you don’t have those sitting around, I’d wager a few drops of jasmine flavoring or rose water would work, and those are easily found at local stores.) Even if the Bti doesn’t immediately kill the adult, adults sucking up a big sugar meal can transfer the bacteria to water where they lay eggs, and thus eventually cause the death of any larvae that develop. Note that bees and ants might get interested in your sugar water, but the Bti is completely harmless to them.

And if you don’t want to use Bti, there are plenty of articles on using sugar baits laced with insecticides (e.g., Qualis et al. 2013, Junilla et al. 2015). They really can work: mosquitoes absolutely love sugar and will drink up poisons in the process. These are great if you don’t want to use crop dusters to destroy all insects in the area.

If you have kids and want to entertain them, add food dyes to the sugar bait and then challenge them to find mosquitoes with bellies full of sugar water. For older kids that might be amused by actual science, use two dyes to test attractiveness of two different volatiles (or different sugars). It’s probably rare to recapture one right after a nectar meal, but when distended they reveal gut contents nicely.

FYI, white-footed woods mosquito (Psorophora ferox) doesn’t transmit Zika, but illustrates to the unbelieving that mosquitoes do drink nectar.

Distinguishing tobacco and tomato hornworm caterpillars

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I’ve always struggled to remember the difference between tobacco and tomato hornworm caterpillars so I came up with some mnemonics. Sharing in case it might help others who struggle.

Tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta) caterpillars have stripes (seven of them), so remember that by thinking of Lucky Strike cigarettes (seven is a lucky number; stripes sort of rhymes with strikes). Plus the horn on a tobacco hornworm is usually red or red-tipped, like a cigarette. Tobacco hornworms also have black shadows on their stripes, and and tobacco gives you dark teeth and lungs.

Tomato hornworms (Manduca quinquemaculata) have eight chevrons (Vs), which you can remember by thinking of V8 juice, which is primarily tomato juice.

Here’s a graphic that summarizes the above:

Photographs of tobacco and tomato hornworm caterpillars

Here’s a larger photograph of a tobacco hornworm (7 stripes, red-tipped horn) covered with Cotesia congregata pupae.

Manduca sexta

Hummingbird and snowberry clearwing moths

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Here are some photographs of the hummingbird clearwing moth (Hemaris thysbe) and the snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis). The first photograph shows Hemaris thysbe approaching wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) with its proboscis partially uncoiled, something you can’t see unless you freeze the motion with a fast shutter speed:

And here it is drinking nectar with just one leg grasping a flower for balance (it was a windy day):

And here’s the snowberry clearwing moth doing the same:

And here they are together, a pairing that took me days of work to capture:

Day-active, colorful moths are rare enough, but these take it to the next level in their uncanny mimicry of hummingbirds and bumblebees, respectively. The mimicry presumably protects them from being eaten by predators such as crab spiders, praying mantids, and birds. In addition to the obvious behavioral and morphological resemblance to hummingbirds and bumblebees, the moths also make a slight humming noise that completes the disguise. The noise could easily be an unavoidable consequence of hovering flight (approximately 30 beats/second), but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if their wings are rigged in some way to exaggerate the noise. I’d love to know the answer to that. My other burning question is why the hummingbird clearwing moth has clear wings at all … I would expect selection to favor individuals that did not lose scales, because such a mutant would more resemble a hummingbird, which has opaque wings. I’m guessing that reason is not because fully-scaled wings are too heavy — the hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) in the Old World has opaque wings and can manage 70-90 beats/second (wow). I wonder whether a fully scaled wing might damp the humming sound. All photographs were taken at Natural Lands Trust’s Hildacy Farm Preserve in Media, Pennsylvania. Oh, and happy National Moth Week.