There are around 1600 species of stoneflies in the world, 450 of which are to be found in North America, and yet I found that I knew next to nothing about them. I suspect I’m not the only one, and I hope to remedy that with this Things from the Shelf.
I recently went on a tubing trip with my dad down the Apple River. The weather cooperated, the river was clear, and we only had one spot where we had to get out and clamber over a fallen tree. The only problem I encountered was the fact that my tube had sprung a leak, so I could hear it bubbling the entire trip and I was riding about five inches deeper by the time we pulled out.
Otherwise, it was great. The Apple River that runs through my grandfather’s land is beautiful, with trees lining the riverbanks on either side and deep fish ponds where I could flail free of my inner tube and dive. There were a few close calls—I nearly got taken out by a duck house that was staked in the middle of the river—and some of the fallen trees that we passed underneath were close enough that we had to lean in order to slip under.
There’s a lot of wildlife out there on the river, secluded from human civilization as we were. My dad acquired a spider passenger after we went under a log at one point—I’m thinking it was some sort of orb weaver—and there were swarms of damselflies of all colors ranging along the banks that would alight on your arms or legs if you sat very still as you went by.
Now, as we were passing some rocks not far from the park where we pulled out, I noticed that the rock was peppered with little gray shapes. I was waiting for my dad to get through the rapids, so I anchored myself on the rock and took a closer look to pass the time, and found that they were stonefly sheds. Stoneflies, for those who don’t know, are very closely related to the cockroach. They’re long of body—from six to fifty millimeters in length—with long, veined, transparent wings that fold up crosswise over their back, hence their scientific name—‘Plecoptera’ meaning ‘twisted’ in Greek.
What I was finding was the sheds from the partially-grown naiads. Stoneflies go through what is known as incomplete metamorphosis, meaning they don’t make sudden, definite shifts from one stage in life to another like a caterpillar metamorphosing into a pupa and on into a butterfly. Instead, they develop gradually into an adult over a period of instars—growth stages between sheds—until their wings have fully developed and they can leave on their mating flight. The naiads look a lot like the adults, save without wings. They have a wide, flat head, a three-sectioned thorax, and a segmented abdomen from which branches a pair of tails (or ‘cersi’). The wings begin developing partway through their metamorphosis as little sacs on their backs, and will grow steadily until they reach their adult stage.
The adult stoneflies deposit their eggs in fast-moving rivers, so the naiads naturally must be adapted for life on the river bottom. Their bodies are flat, with the strong, anchoring legs splaying out from the sides so that they can cling to rocks in fast currents and let the water rush right over them. They’re also equipped with gills, which appear as tiny, hair-like structures growing on and around the thoracic region, mostly where the legs meet the body. They anchor themselves on rocks in the center of the current, and seem to prefer fast, cold, highly oxygenized water. If there isn’t enough oxygen for them to breathe, they’ll perform ‘push-ups’ in order to move more water over their gills.
When the adults hatch, they don’t have much for mouthparts. They will have chewing mandibles, but these tend to be nonfunctional since the adults usually don’t live long—from a few hours to a few days—though they do survive a little longer than the average mayfly. They immediately rise to mate, and afterwards the female will either lay her eggs near the surface of the water or dive beneath the surface to lay them on the bottom. The eggs have adapted just as the naiads and adults, and are equipped with either a sticky substance or some sort of anchor to fasten them to the river bottom. After eight to ten months, the eggs hatch, and the process starts all over again.
The sheds that I found ranged in size from an inch to half an inch, and I was told that they were small compared to what they would become later on during their metamorphosis. After my dad caught up, I decided that on the next cycle through, I would bring a jar and collect some of the sheds. I did that, and put it in a bag and tied it around my waist. After the beating I dealt it coming down the river the second time, I’m surprised it was still intact, and yet somehow I was able to not only keep the jar, but also find the rock where I’d seen the sheds and collect a good dozen or so for my shelf museum. A week later, I realized I still didn’t have a post ready for the weekend, so I pulled out the box of stoneflies and began researching.
For the most part, I found out everything I wanted, but unfortunately, there’s something I’m still curious about: How does the circulatory and respiratory system of the stonefly shift from breathing water through gills to breathing air through little holes (called ‘spiracles’)? So far, I’ve had no success with Google. If any of my readers can figure out the answer, I would greatly appreciate it if they would post in the comments section below, and I will be sure to share the answer on the blog for all to see.
Happy reading!
S. R. Koch
Resources:
Dung Beetles
Heliocopris dominus--better known as the Elephant Dung Beetle. A couple weeks ago, my family and I went to the Festival of Nations up in St. Paul for a weekend trip. The food was fantastic (save for the goat stew, which we were unfortunate enough to try), and there was music, dancing, and all sorts of strange things for sale in the bazaar. However, being the nerd I am, I didn't get a pretty Chinese lantern or a shirt with a cheesy logo on it as a souvenir. I bought a bug.
The Thailand booth is to blame. Along with the usual kitschy porcelain bobbleheads, gaudy jewelry and traditional clothing, they had a series of mounted…creatures…displayed on the wall. I don’t say insects because they were not limited to the class insecta. There were morpho butterflies, scorpions, and even some shriveled bats with demon eyes mounted in shadow boxes and hanging on the wall. I was sorely tempted to buy the bat for the simple sake of upholding my tradition of collecting the strangest things possible, but I settled instead for the dung beetle. Perhaps it’s for the better—the bat would be a little unnerving mounted on my wall, watching me…
Delving into research on the elephant dung beetle and the other members of the insect family Scarabaidae unearthed some interesting information. There are over thirty thousand species of scarab beetles worldwide, comprising ten percent of all known beetles and ranging from the 6.7-inch Hercules beetle to the common June/May beetle. Every continent (save Antarctica) plays host to some type or other of scarab. Many species are cultivated as beneficial insects, and others were even once worshipped as gods by ancient human civilizations.
The dung beetles are some of the more famous members of family Scarabaidae. They’re widely renowned for their peculiar habit of rolling, living in, and even eating packed balls of animal feces. Of the thirty thousand known species of scarabs, seven thousand are dung beetles, and despite their distasteful eating habits, they’ve been rightly recognized by human societies throughout the centuries as a beneficial insect. A single dung beetle is capable of burying two hundred and fifty times its own weight in the course of one night, thus sanitizing its surroundings and reducing breeding grounds for flies. Most dung beetles are capable of using any type of animal feces, though most tend to prefer herbivore waste and a certain few have very particular tastes. The elephant dung beetle, as its name suggests, has a preference for elephant feces, while a species known as Zonocopris gibbicolis feeds solely on snail waste (and will subsequently hitch rides on the backs of said snails). Dung beetles are generally separated into three separate types—dwellers, tunnelers, and rollers. The dwellers do simply that—they dwell in the piles of animal waste that they find, and use it as food for themselves and for newly-hatched grubs. The tunnelers live in dung piles as well, but they create burrows underneath the piles and drag what they can of the waste down with them for their pantries and nurseries. Rollers are the most famous—as their name suggests, they’re the ones who pack their findings into orange-sized dung balls, stand on their front legs, and roll their treasure back to burrows that they build away from the original dung pile.
Dung beetles have developed specialized physical traits to suit their various lifestyles. The rollers, when pushing their food around, tend to stand on their front legs with their back legs serving as hands. Since the beetle’s weight subsequently rests entirely on the front legs, they’ve developed thick, stubby forelegs with fluted edges to brace against the ground. Male dung beetles are also known to steal dung balls from one another, so they’ve developed plated spikes on the tops of their thoraxes designed for charging down rivals. They all tend to have flat, spade-shaped heads, perfect for burrowing and shoving aside dirt as they tunnel.
The mythology behind the dung beetle was centered mostly in ancient Egypt. It was associated with the god Khepri—one of the manifestations of the sun god Ra in his journey through the underworld—who was said to roll the sun across the sky each day after being born anew from the earth. This idea came, as one might expect, from their habit of rolling large spheres of dung across the ground for no apparent reason, and the apparent ability of their grubs to ‘create’ themselves by popping up out of their ground after pupating within their burrows. The Egyptians honored Khepri with statues, amulets, and murals in their temples and tombs, oftentimes adorned with multicolored wings. The winged scarab was given a special place in the mummification rites for which the Egyptians were so well renowned—it was depicted as an amulet, usually made from lapis lazuli or turquois and inlaid with the glasslike material known as faience, and was bound over the heart of the corpse among the wrappings as protection against the heart bearing witness against the deceased in the hall of judgment. Hence the name—“heart scarab”. More often than not, these amulets were stolen by grave robbers not long after burial, along with everything else in the tomb.
I’m fairly certain I will be accused of picking disgusting topics for the Things from the Shelf posts at some time or other, and, admittedly, that is true. That won’t stop me from writing more, though. My shelf is still plenty full of unexplored research topics, and I have every intention of taking advantage of that. If you have comments or questions to offer, feel free to leave them in the comments section below, and I encourage my readers to share to Facebook.
Happy reading!
Puffer Fish
I'm trying something new this week.
Recently, I was given the idea of writing scientific research blog posts--namely biology, geology, or anything else that happens to catch my interest--by a couple people who know me and my odd interests well. Seeing as how this is the career path I've been aiming for once I get out of high school, I've decided to start a new section of my blog, called "Things from the Shelf". The name refers to my bookshelf, which, aside from the inevitable metric ton of books it holds, also serves as a display case for my collection of, well, dead things. For the reader's sake, we'll call them "natural history exhibits".
I tend to collect strange things, like animal skulls, dried starfish, shells, fossilized sea creatures, and anything else you can think of, really. I'll admit I don't actually find most of them myself (at least, not out in the wild). I find most of them at garage sales and thrift stores, weird as that sounds. One of my prize pieces is a dried porcupine fish that I found at a second-hand store.
In my experience, people never seem to appreciate the more interesting things when it comes to thrift stores. They never put prices on the really cool items, and I always end up having to ask around for prices. This often makes me feel guilty, especially because most thrift stores seem to employ little, white-haired old ladies as cashiers. Whenever I ask for a price, they tend to go tottering off across the store in search of someone authorized to price the cursed thing, which leaves me feeling guilty and awkward with whatever it is clutched in my hands. When I bought the puffer fish, the lady gave it a long look after I placed it on the counter, squinted in a puzzled manner at me through her glasses, and said to me,
"You actually want that thing?"
She then went tottering off to look for the price.
Puffer fish, from what I've found, seem to be some of the most awkward, bumbling, and at the same time most interesting fish on the planet.
As most people know, their name comes from their tendency to inflate themselves with gulped volumes of water when startled, which swells their highly elastic stomachs and makes them look several times their normal size. Some are equipped with rows of sharp, needle-like spines (I should know, I poke myself on mine whenever I try to clean the shelf) that cover them from head to toe and can be raised to stand on end when they inflate themselves. Most puffer fish are toxic, the result of a peculiar poison secreted by their body known as tetrodotoxin.
Tetrodotoxin, it is surmised, is absorbed by the fish from their food--namely algae, shrimp, and other invertebrates. It works as a neurotoxin, blocking the transfer of nerve impulses along nerve fibers and axons and causing paralysis or even death in its victims. Other sea creatures--like the blue-ringed octopus--are also known to secrete it, and it is known to be 1,200 times more deadly than cyanide. Despite this, puffer fish is served and eaten as a delicacy in some places, particularly Japan. The dish is known as fugu, and requires attention from a very skilled and experienced chef when being prepared. If even one of the deadly poison sacs is not removed from the fish's body before being served, the unfortunate customer is likely to suffer paralysis or even death.
There are over one hundred twenty species of puffer/porcupine fish worldwide. They are from the order Tetraodontiformes (meaning 'four teeth'--referring to the four fused buckteeth that make up their beak-like mouthparts), and are of the family Tetraodontidae (puffers) or Diondontidae (porcupine fish). When they're not inflated, they have a chunky, fat-headed appearance with a tapered tail, and they swim poorly in a manner that reminds me of a half-inflated, lazily drifting balloon. Whey they do inflate, they look like a spiny beach ball, and swimming becomes even harder. In truth, I think the only reason they've survived as a species thus far is because of their inflating adaption.
Now, the main reason I started my posts with my puffer fish is because there's one thing in particular that I've been curious about. The specimen that I have is fully inflated, with its mouth gaping open and the spines sticking out every which way so that it's a real pain to pick up, and I've always wondered how on earth one does taxidermy on a puffer fish. I've always envisioned someone blowing it up like a balloon and tying it off until it has time to dry, and as it turns out, I wasn't too far off.
According to an online taxidermy question and answer site, I found that the best way to mount a puffer fish is to scoop out the meat, leaving the skull behind, and then fill the space with a balloon or Styrofoam mold. When the fish dries, pop the balloon or remove the mold, and pull it all back out through (I'm sorry, readers) the vent. Mine, I noticed, has some stitches along the dorsal side, so whoever mounted it must have used slightly different methods than the advice I read online.
In conclusion, I must say that I've enjoyed researching and writing about this topic. I now know more about puffer fish than I ever have before in my life, and the great mystery as to how to taxidermy one has been solved. Rest assured, I will continue writing short stories and fantasy/sci-fi books and posting them here, but Things from the Shelf is going to become a regular section of the blog. I encourage you to read them, and, if possible, share or comment on the posts.
Happy reading!
S. R. Koch.
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