Seeing Spots

            I was recently sitting in a chair with a cat in my lap, staring at a passage in a book without actually reading it, when an Asian Beetle suddenly landed on my hand. My first instinct was to flick it away, which I did, but a second one immediately took its place (Seeing as how I was sitting next to a fluorescent lamp and the stupid bugs infiltrate old homes like mine in droves). I was about to flick that one away as well, but for some reason, I arbitrarily decided to watch it and see what it did. I’m a bug fanatic, so it was interesting, watching the way the little club antenna poke around at the ground and its jointed legs moving in perfect synchronization. I watched it like this, enthralled, while it wandered across my hand, and after about a minute, it decided to bite me. I promptly flicked the little ingrate across the room. I got an idea out of it, though.

            Why are ladybug spots always different? Granted, the species currently crawling around my house in shiny, sickly-orange mobs is not that of true ladybugs, but rather of the invasive Asian Beetle breed (Harmonia axyridis) that have been spreading across the U.S since 1992. Unfortunately for me, it’s currently late November, so my wildlife sampling scope is somewhat limited, and I had to make do.

            My first step was to collect some bugs: 

            After that, I had to photograph them. Unfortunately, my camera has only a rudimentary zoom system, so I had to create an elaborate jerry-rigged setup to hold the bugs steady whilst getting close enough to photograph them. Lighting was interesting—I had to use my desk lamp as a flashlight, and the shells of the ladybugs gave so much glare that it was impossible to photograph both sides at once. As a result, there are two pictures of each specimen.

            When I finally got all of my photographs, I uploaded them to my computer and went through them on powerpoint. What I found was this: Out of ten specimens, there wasn’t a single pair between them. Two had the same number of spots, but the size and distribution was different. Some of them, of course, had been dead when I found them, and so their carapaces were too faded to count spots, but barring those, there were no patterns.

            So the question remains: why are ladybug markings different?

            The internet has no clues for me. I was able to find why they have spots, period. It is surmised that the spots, coupled with the bright orange/red carapace, works as a warning system to predators, alerting them to the fact that ladybugs are bad-tasting and slightly poisonous. There are many other species that work this way: blue-ringed octopi, green-arrow frogs, hornets, and monarch butterflies. The method discourages predators from eating anything brightly-colored after their initial encounter with a poisonous individual, leaving everyone else in peace. Some species, like the viceroy butterflies that have developed patterns very similar to the monarchs, piggyback on this concept by imitating species that are actually poisonous.

            As to ladybugs, a possible theory as to why their spots are different is identification, though that would not explain why other beetles, which appear in every respects identical to the human eye, are capable of telling one another apart regardless. Another theory (which, in my opinion, seems more likely), is that the patterns are simply random. If I were to collect enough ladybugs, I might, in time, find two that are exactly alike. In short, I do not know the answer to my original question, though I learned a few things in the finding of this conclusion. If any of my readers do know the answer, I implore you to post the answer below in the comments section for posterity.

Thank you for reading, and happy Thanksgiving.

S.R. Koch.

Resources:

http://www.ladybug-life-cycle.com/ladybug-spots.html

With special thanks to Eric Sloane’s America, Poems of Byron Keats and Shelly, H.W Janson’s History of Art, The Webster’s Dictionary, The Poetical Works of Browning, and Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, for propping up my photography background during my haphazard picture shoot.

...And here's the photos I took of my Asian Beetle sampling (note: specimens six and three were old and faded): 

           

Dark Lords and Such

I was sitting in study hall last week, not doing my homework while staring at the back of The Fellowship of the Ring, and I happened to see the word "Dark Lord" somewhere on the description on the back. That got me thinking.
Dark Lords...they have to go to school for that, right?

Darkness, Evil, and Such

Dark Lords are, by definition, evil. They have no emotions, save for maybe greed, spite, shiftiness and a lust for power, and are known for being totally merciless and uncaring of the people they conquer.

            Sylvester was a Dark Lord. Not a very good one, mind you, but a Dark Lord nonetheless. He went to a four-year university and got his bachelor’s in World Domination, with a minor in Evil Architecture. From college, he went out into the workforce and found himself an internship under Dark Lord Moyro, who led an evil campaign against the Good elves of Glantios in an epic battle for the fate of North Glianto. Sylvester went along and took notes, got Moyro’s coffee, and occasionally played cards with the slaves Moyro employed to haul around his evil litter. Sylvester became good friends with one of them in particular, a fellow named You There.

            After finishing his internship with Moyro, Sylvester adopted the name “Sauron” and went on in an attempt to lead his own campaign of evil. He was shot down for copyright violations, and was forced to take a job as an accountant, totaling plunder for the seafaring Dark Lords near the coast of Grom. After several promotions, he managed to scrape together enough funds for another attempt at an evil campaign, and set out for the highlands to the east.

            The highlands, most historians agree, were a tactical mistake on Sylvester’s part, as they were poorly populated and didn’t provide much profit after the meager resistance was squashed, the villages ransacked and the people enslaved. Undaunted, Sylvester (now Tyrone the Great) didn’t let that discourage him. He had a Dark Castle built halfway up the tallest mountain he could find (the air at the very top was too thin), and settled down to rule his Evil Kingdom (Now Tyronia) as the resident Dark Lord.

            Tyrone the Great’s evil reign, tragically, was a complete and utter failure, and his Helpless Subjects lived happily and in peace under his tyrannical rule for forty long years. Tyrone the Great took a wife from among them, and the two of them had three beautiful children whom they groomed to inherit the Dark Kingdom after them. Though he was widely regarded as a failure at his career, Tyrone the Great was satisfied with his achievements, and would have lived on quite happily until retirement to see his son take over the Dark Lord position. His reign was cut short, however, by the arrival of the Good elves of Glantios.

            The elves brought with them a host of soldiers when they marched into the Dark Realm of Tyrone the Great, and a wide swath of pillaged villages and trampled crops was left in their wake. They assembled before the Evil Castle of the Dark Lord of Tyronia, and demanded that Tyrone the Great step down and deliver his enslaved subjects to the safety of their rule. Tyrone the Great, as was his duty, sent out his forces of Evil to meet the elves in battle, but his soldiers had become soft from years of peace and were torn apart by the armies of Good. Tyrone the Great, as was the custom, was publicly executed and his family sent into exile. As was their duty, jubilant throngs turned out at his execution, though their elated cheering for the demise of their oppressor was reported as somewhat flat and half-hearted. The formalities thus dispensed with, the Good elves settled down in place of Tyrone the Great as a ruling Council of Good, and went on to create a Kingdom of Peace and Prosperity.

            For two years after the fall of the Dark Lord, the Kingdom of Peace and Prosperity found itself rapidly declining into poverty. The ruling Council of Good became corrupt, and soon riots were breaking out across the city. Weapons were stolen from government armories, and a year later, a full-scale revolt was staged and the Council overthrown. The people of Tyronia tried to reestablish the government from before the Council of Good, but every attempt they made ended in rulers more corrupt than the last and ultimately ended in ruin. After countless government upheavals and the rise and execution of twelve separate rulers, the Kingdom of Tyronia finally fell into a rigid dictatorship, and continued living under the unbending rule of Tyrone XXI until the arrival of the silvercough plague wiped out the entire human population, two hundred years after the fall of Tyrone I.

THE END