Insect Adaptations

What are some of the best adaptations techniques that you have read/seen in insects?

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Woolly Bears! They have amazing freeze tolerance. During hibernation, they can endure the lowest temperatures by producing cryoprotectant that prevents organ and tissue damage. Always reminded me of those cryogenic chambers you see in superhero movies :)

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What are those beetles that stand on the dune ridges in the ?Kalahari and cause water to condense on their backs?

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Symbiosis between wild honeybees and pseudoscorpions: http://ujubee.com/?p=1104#comment-802

Hyperparasitism - the case where a parasitoid is attacked in turn by another parasitoid

And of course, the sneaky way some lycaenid caterpillars hijack the ants’ pheromone system to get themselves be carried by the ants into the ants’ nesting chambers, where they feast on the ant young!

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Also geckos, licking the dew from their faces.
Right now Namibia has rain rain rain - all the rivers are reaching the sea!

I reached out to brush a dead leaf off my plant, and in the last moment realised it was a well camouflaged moth. Predators won’t eat a dead leaf

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Tenebrionidae.

Boreus sp. has glycerol in blood to prevent freezing. The same substance was often used in engine cooling. Sadly still haven’t seen them.

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Welcome to the forum! Where I live, winters can be brutally cold (long spells of -20 to -30 C). The lepidoptera that really amaze me are the species that overwinter as adults or eggs. I can kind of see pupae - they are usually under the soil, so are a bit more protected, but a few butterflies - like Mourning Cloaks - spend the winter as adults. How they make it through, I do not know!

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Stinging caterpillars.

Same here. But there are many moths that survive the winter, too.
Cossus cossus, the goat moth, lays eggs inside the cracks of tree bark. The larvae crawl inside and start eating the wood. During the cold winter they hide deep inside the tree and overwinter. The larvae spent about 3-4 years of their life like this, and then when summer comes they walk out and try to find a place to pupate.
By the time they do that they’re around 10 cm in length

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You gave me “AHA” moment! That’s why the turkeys keep pecking and tossing in the leaves this time of year! Thanks!

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That dead leaf camouflage was lit!!

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Periodical cicadas spending 17 years underground before emerging as adults to throw off predators/parasites of adults is a pretty cool adaptation.

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Discovery by Tom Eisner (rest his soul) of moth larvae that have evolved the ability to feed on sticky sundew leaves (Drosera sp) which would otherwise entrap and digest any other insect that touches them

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I stop to look at small bird droppings because sometimes they are moths. 5/6/20.

Adaptation to cave-dwelling:
https://www.postojnska-jama.eu/en/wonderland-stories/irresistible-curves/

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I read, many years ago, of an insect larva that lived in rain pools in rocks, in dry parts of Africa. When the water dries up, so does the insect larva. It stays in a diapause state until the rains come again. I thought I had copied that paper, but I have never found it again. Another fascinating adaptation.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypedilum_vanderplanki

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That’s it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Trigonalid wasps. They deposit hundreds to thousands of eggs on the underside of leaves, which a caterpillar (or sawfly larvae) then eats. But then, the larvae does not consume the host! It instead must locate or wait for the larvae of a Tachinid fly (which parasitises the caterpillar) to parasitise until the fly larvae pupates, at which point the adult wasp emerges. They can overwinter and are likely bivoltine also.

Fascinatingly complex.

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