Mosquitoes

My morning bike commute started out pretty quietly. As the sun rose higher, a few vociferous birds broke the stillness, singing their exuberant morning songs: “I’m alive! I made it through the night! This is still my territory! I love you dear! I’m alive!”

Slowly, another sound penetrated my pedaling meditation – the squeak of a dry chain. I pulled over on to the grassy shoulder of my rural town road to get out the chain lube. As my tire hit the grass, a cloud of mosquitoes rose with a hum. This sound was worse by far than the squeaking of the chain.

A leisurely maintenance stop quickly morphed into a NASCAR-style pit stop as I raced to finish. The annoying insects flew behind my sunglasses and landed on every warm surface. Almost more annoying than their bites or their humming was the soft breeze as their wings brushed against my skin. I slapped a few, their bodies crushing easily. Mary Oliver, my favorite poet, writes – The mosquito is so small; it takes almost nothing to ruin it.

Within a few seconds, I leapt back on my bike and took off like a shot, as if chased by the devil himself. I sighed in relief as my soundscape returned to the morning birdsongs, the stiff breeze in my face, and the hum of my tires on the road.

“Oh the mosquitoes, aren’t they just awful this year?” On the street and in the office, mosquitoes are the hot topic. They have almost replaced the weather as our default conversation, except that the weather often determines when the bugs are at their worst, so it cannot be ignored completely. We all have horror stories, and love to share. What’s yours?

Inevitably, someone asks, “What good are mosquitoes anyway?”

The negative aspects of mosquitoes are easy to list: they leave itchy welts, create sleep-depriving noise, and are disease vectors for malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever, to name just a few. In Alaska, mosquitoes form swarms thick enough to asphyxiate caribou. But we in the Northwoods are luckier. According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, few mosquitoes actually carry West Nile virus, and less than one percent of people infected with WNV become seriously ill.

However, of the 3,500 named species of mosquito, only a couple of hundred bite or bother humans. "Mosquitoes have been on Earth for more than 100 million years," says mosquito researcher, Jittawadee Murphy, "and they have co-evolved with so many species along the way." How many, how many, how many make up a world! writes Mary Oliver.

Mosquito adults are food for an astounding variety of birds, insects, spiders, salamanders, lizards, and frogs. From northern Canada to Russia, there is a brief annual period in which mosquitoes are extraordinarily abundant. Bruce Harrison, an entomologist at the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources estimates that the number of migratory birds that nest in the tundra could drop by more than 50% if all mosquitoes miraculously disappeared.

While we don’t have quite the mosquito or the bird population that the Arctic does, the warblers, vireos, flycatchers, swallows, and other summer birds that serenaded me to work eat a fair number of the pesky insects.

Dragonflies also do their best to reduce the number of mosquitoes for us. They are natural enemies of mosquitoes in all their stages of growth. The aquatic nymphs of dragonflies eat the aquatic larvae of mosquitoes, as do plenty of fish. Dragonfly adults swoop acrobatically, catching mosquitoes in their basket-like legs, and eating their own weight in mosquito burgers every 30 minutes. Mosquito biomass magically becomes a swarm of shimmering dragonflies. And then I think of that old idea: the singular and the eternal… (muses Mary Oliver).

If you have a hard time “becoming one” with the mosquitoes, there are a few things you can do to make yourself a less appealing blood meal. Mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide, heat, lactic acid, smells in your sweat, sweet fruity or floral scents, and dark colors. So relax quietly in light-colored clothing, don’t breathe heavily, and use unscented bath products. Unfortunately, our genetics make up about 85% of our susceptibility to mosquito bites, so you might just be doomed to itching, while your friend is unaffected.

To further deter mosquitos, keep a fan blowing on you (mosquitoes are weak fliers), cover up your scent with a natural bug repellent like citronella or lemon eucalyptus, and avoid their active periods at dawn and dusk. DEET is the longest lasting effective mosquito repellent, but it is caustic to plastic and other synthetic materials, so use it wisely.

Mosquitoes have their own chemical defenses. A female mosquito’s saliva (since only they and not males eat blood) contains compounds that deter vascular constriction, blood clotting, and platelet aggregation, and are being researched as treatments for cardiovascular disease. Perhaps that may someday absolve them in our hearts.

And, if a hungry female mosquito still manages to break through your defenses, catch up to your frantic pedaling, and suck some blood, take comfort in knowing that it connects you to the wonderful web of nature…How tiny and redeemable everything is, even you…(Mary Oliver, One)

One, by Mary Oliver

One

by Mary Oliver

The mosquito is so small
it takes almost nothing to ruin it.
Each leaf, the same.
And the black ant, hurrying.
So many lives, so many fortunes!
Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances
down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.
Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour
before the slug creeps to the feast,
before the pine needles hustle down
under the bundles of harsh, beneficent rain.

How many, how many, how many
make up a world!
And then I think of that old idea: the singular
and the eternal.
One cup, in which everything is swirled
back to the color of the sea and the sky.
Imagine it!

A shining cup, surely!
In the moment in which there is no wind
over your shoulder,
you stare down into it,
and there you are,
your own darling face, your own eyes.
And then the wind, not thinking of you, just passes by,
touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf,
and you know what else!
How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky,
how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you,
even your eyes, even your imagination.

A Kid’s Eye View

As the six kids gathered at the river landing, I saw looks of shyness, uncertainty, and excitement. The paddling lesson brought looks of concentration and some confusion, then boredom when they got it. As John Kudlas, our favorite river ecology instructor, taught about water quality, the faces of these mostly sixth and seventh graders showed focused interest. Here, with school out and a classroom without walls, I could see them learning.

This is the second annual overnight canoe trip for kids ages 12-18 down the Namekagon River. It is still a partnership between the Cable Natural History Museum, the National Park Service, and Canoes on Wheels. Just as before, we caught macroinvertebrates (the immature stages of insects that spend part of their life in the water before gaining wings and flight), and thankfully, their results still showed that the river is healthy.

As we paddled, I noticed marsh marigolds in bloom, scouring rushes starting to poke up through the water surface, and a couple dragonflies. Birds sang from every bush and tree in a cacophony of joy (and aggression, alarm, and plain chattiness).

I marveled at the bald eagle, sitting calmly in the white pine as we floated underneath. I noticed the power and grace with which the great blue heron rose from its hunting spot. I observed the many aquatic plants still just barely breaking the river’s surface, while last year, with the early spring, they had been in bloom or already gone to seed.

But what do the kids see? Sometimes I worry that in this age of television, video games, and internet, kids will lose interest in nature, and lose the ability to notice things in the unfamiliar complexity of the wild.

So I was excited when, at the campsite on our second morning, the kids took the small digital cameras I gave them and eagerly disappeared into the woods to take photos. Besides giving them an excuse to look closer, compose a frame, and enter our Living Light Photo contest this summer, it also gave me a glimpse behind their eyes.

What did they notice?  The first photos on each camera show smiling faces as the kids “labeled’ their cameras with a self-portrait. Then come the images of sparkling water and green trees, sunlight glinting off the rapids the kids were all eager to run, and the river disappearing around corner into the great unknown.

The photos show close-ups of bugs – a dragonfly and stonefly that came to visit our picnic table. This was neat, because they’d found the aquatic nymphs of each insect with John the day before. One photo even shows a backlit oak leaf, its veins and chlorophyll glowing in the morning sun.

The fascinating patterns made by leaves in patch of jewelweed must have captured the attention of one youngster who used their juicy stems to sooth mosquito bites. His observant eye also caught psychedelic reflections of light and leaves on a pool of water between three rocks.

Here we see a proud angler, pole and tackle box in hand; there we see his sister, stretched out on her belly, taking photos from an ant’s eye view. On her camera, we find that photo of the grass jungle, each delicate seed head silhouetted against the clear blue sky. Other, taller bunches of grass arch gracefully in the morning sun.

For a different view, several kids looked up into the trees, and caught the magnificence of old growth white pines reaching their gnarled braches to the sky. Then they looked down, and captured gaywings (small, hot-pink wildflowers) in ethereal morning light, and pure white starflowers against the backdrop of a fallen log.

Some photos are blurry, a few are crooked, and some include the photographer’s thumb, but overall, I’m thrilled. These kids can still see nature. They will be our next generation of scientists, conservationists, journalists, and engineers. Their ability to see nature will help make sure that it is not overlooked.

Photo by Andy

Photo by Katie

Wild and Wonderful Dads

Encouraging, teaching, hiking, rocket launching, venison stir-fry cooking, piggyback ride-giving, feeding, holding, scolding, teeth-brushing, hugging, teasing, playing, hook-baiting, fish-removing…what do these things have in common? Dads! All weekend I watched countless dads, including my own father and my older brother engaging in these activities with their kids. With Father’s Day coming up, I thought I would highlight a few all-star fathers in the wild.

Of course, not all animal fathers pay attention to their offspring. I would hazard a guess that a majority do not. In insects like ants, bees, and wasps, male “drones” are only produced once in a while when the nest is getting ready for winter, or the anthill has hit some population goal and it is ready to swarm and start new colonies. The drones mate with females, then die. The females go on to start a new hill, hive, or nest, and produce all sisters.

Duck daddy’s aren’t particularly attentive, either. How many times have you seen a female common merganser with 5-15 chicks in tow, and no male in the vicinity? White-tailed deer, black bears, and many others follow this same hands-off parenting model. I could list more but I won’t. My point was just to remind you of wild fathers who don’t stick around, so we can better appreciate the ones who do.

In contrast to ducks, male loons are the ideal new-age partner. Once researchers developed accurate ways of identifying individual loons (leg bands), they determined that males choose the nest site and females build the nest and lay the 1-3 eggs. After that, loon parents split the incubating, feeding, babysitting, and “hunter education” duties 50/50. It is such a pleasure to watch loon parents caring for their chicks. Join me on a Loon Pontoon Tour sometime so you can get a closer look, too!

Interestingly, despite this dedication to their chicks, loons do not mate for life. They are more loyal to their territory than their partner. If a new, stronger male fights and wins in a territorial battle, the resident female will stay with the new guy. Likewise, the resident male will stick around if a female intruder wins a territorial battle. In nature, good parenting does not always fit our culture’s ideals! But it must work for that species, or they wouldn’t be alive today.

Swimming with the loons in the weedy edges of the lake is another devoted father. With a name like “toe-biter,” we humans probably don’t appreciate them enough. These huge bugs (1 to 2+ inches in length) are “piercer-predators.” According to the “Bug Lady” at the UW Milwaukee Field Station, that is just “a politically correct way of saying that they grab their prey, stab it with a short, sharp beak, and inject poisonous enzymes (produced in salivary glands near the beak) that immobilize it and then liquefy its innards so the GWB [giant water bug] can slurp them out with gusto.” Giant water bugs have been known to attack a wide variety of prey, including tadpoles, frogs, fish, snakes, ducklings, woodpeckers, and yes, the occasional human toe.

Despite this bad reputation, these “true bugs,” (which to a scientist means they are in the order Hemiptera, and which we laypeople can tell by the X their wings make across their back) are very paternal.

After the insects mate, the female glues the brood of about 150 fertilized eggs onto the male’s back. The male fiercely defends the eggs for two weeks, and even strokes them gently with his hind legs. This stroking, and alternating exposure to air and water, are thought to protect them from growing mold. What a dad!

Hunting expertly in the woods is another type of father – the Super Provider. Red fox males are excellent dads. They deliver food to Mom every 4-6 hours while the kits are nursing in the den, and then continue to provide food for the kits as well (with the help of the vixen), once they are weaned. Lighthearted play becomes survival training as the foxes play “ambush” and “tag”. Then the male fox starts to reduce the amount of food he provides, in order to teach the young to hunt on their own. A fox father will even bury food near the den to teach the kits to sniff and forage.

Happy Father’s Day to all those wonderful dads out there, wild and human, who contribute so much to their offspring’s growth and development. A special thanks goes out to MY dad, Larry Stone. He is a naturalist, journalist and nature writer, and edited my high school English papers with me line-by-line, asking “What did you mean here?” and “Can you think of a clearer, shorter way to say that?” He still finds time to edit my Natural Connections articles almost every week. Thanks, Dad!

For over 45 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Come visit us in Cable, WI, at 13470 County Highway M. The current exhibit, “Deer Camp: A Natural and Cultural History of White-tailed Deer,” opened in May 2013 and will remain open until April, 2014.

Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

A delight for the senses

Springtime is a delight for the senses. Each morning when I venture outside, countless little pleasures invade my conscious and my subconscious. Pouring in through every portal come sounds, smells, sights, touches, and tastes of the season.

First, and long before the sun even thinks about rising, come the loon calls. The territorial pair in the bay near my house defends their space with maniacal yodels and distressed tremolos. As the horizon lightens to a soft pink, a hummingbird buzzes up to the feeder, the vireo starts to slur its morning greeting of “Here I am…Over here...In the trees...Where are you?” and the ovenbird shouts its “teacher Teacher TEACHER!” much too loudly for the early hour.

As I ride my bike along the county highway, birds singing in the swamps, fields, forests, and yards form a sort of sonic gauntlet. Trills, chatters, chips, warbles, whistles, and the downward spiraling, eerily flute-like calls of the Veery fill my ears from every angle. In some wetlands the spring peepers still peep loudly. Geese honk, crows caw, and even the wind has a particular sound as it meanders through the emerging leaves. What have you been listening to?

The ride home in the heat of the afternoon, with sunbeams shining hot on every surface, releases all of sorts of early summer smells. First there is the sweet smell of the apple tree on the edge of town, its snowy white flowers just humming with bees. Then there is the sulfurous smell of the swampy ditches, where plants, decomposing without oxygen all winter, have released their own particular boggy perfume.

Warm trees have their own smell, as does the river as it rushes headlong over the dam. The spray has a particular musty odor that I love. Then there is the funk of the deer repellent I spray on my cold frame garden, because the vigorous broccoli plants can no longer fit under the glass. Soon the lilacs will bloom, or maybe yours already have. What is your favorite smell of spring?

The visual beauty of spring is almost too much to describe. Just like many of you, I could fawn over each individual flower, and the beautiful patchwork of greens in the developing leaves, or the reflections on a glass-calm lake.

And what a treat to glimpse the neon-bright plumage of a scarlet tanager.  “The scarlet tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves. You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors,” wrote naturalist Henry David Thoreau. Yet believe I must, since twice recently these blindingly gorgeous birds have darted out into the road as I pass by. Other folks – more than usual it seems -- have reported seeing scarlet tanagers at their bird feeders, in their yards, and deep in the woods on birding walks. Where do your eyes feast these days?

As visual creatures, we may sometimes be biased toward just looking at the world. It is often nice to touch as well. Just this morning, I paused to rub a baby hazel leaf between my fingers, and was delighted by the delicate furriness of its crinkly surface. Even while focused on seeing a bird or a plant, my skin is at work, experiencing the world. Not even a scarlet tanager will distract me when I feel that particular tickle of a tick on my neck. Have you felt it, too?

Finally, for me, the taste of spring comes from the wild leeks that form a living carpet in the woods. Just walking through a patch fills the air with their pungent aroma. Not quite onions, not quite garlic…a wild scent all their own. One bite of a leaf will leave you with leek-breath for hours, but I still gather handfuls for my morning omelets, and blend bunches into creamy pesto. What have you been nibbling on in the woods?

Have you been using your senses fully? It’s never too late to start! The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

For over 45 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Come visit us in Cable, WI, at 13470 County Highway M. The current exhibit, “Deer Camp: A Natural and Cultural History of White-tailed Deer,” opened in May 2013 and will remain open until April, 2014.

Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

The Chemistry of Nature

Cold mist pelted my face as I biked along the narrow shoulder of the county highway. Earlier in the morning I had been overly optimistic about the forecast and the weather radar, with the end result of me bike-commuting in the rain. The chill seeped inward and my thoughts followed, so that soon I was grumbling wordlessly in my head about the soggy, gray weather.

One look upward was all it took to brighten my mood – something golden was shining through the misty swamp. No, not the sun – it was a huge patch of marsh marigolds! With large, vivid green leaves, and yellow, cup-shaped flowers, these members of the buttercup family provide lovely patches of color even in soggy wetlands. Their scientific name, Caltha palustris, means “goblet of the marsh” Suddenly, riding my bike in rain became a lot more pleasant.

While the showy flowers may beckon you to take some home, all buttercups can cause irritation and blistering of the skin if handled. Swallowing any part of the plant can cause intense burning of the mouth and digestive tract, followed by nausea and convulsions. All mammals, not just humans, seem to be affected. Luckily, a bitter taste warns of the inedibility of this common plant, and lethal poisonings are rare.

The culprit for these nasty reactions is a chemical called ranunculin, named for the Ranunculaceae family in which is it found. Ranunculin is both an “antifeedant” (a chemical agent that causes a pest to stop eating), and an insecticide. In one study, worker ants who encountered ranunculin showed a 19% increase in their mortality rate, and the authors suggested further research into the chemical for commercial pest control.

So how does a plant even begin to make a toxin like this? I’m not a chemist, but from piecing together information in a Wikipedia and Google Scholar treasure hunt, this is my explanation: The marsh marigold manufactures glucose, a type of sugar, during photosynthesis. Then, another small organic molecule is bound to the glucose, creating the glycoside called ranunculin.

Many plants store chemicals in the form of inactive glycosides like this. Glycosides are activated when enzymes break off the sugar molecule, making the other chemical available for use. In the case of ranunculin, it breaks down into protoanemonin, which is the glycoside chemical that causes the skin and bowel irritation associated with marsh marigold.

Plant glycosides are often used as medications, and marsh marigold has a long list of traditional medicinal uses. Do you need to remove a wart? Cure a cold? Ease the symptoms of anemia, convulsions, or coughing? Marsh marigold has been used to treat all of those, although there is little modern medical evidence to support its use.

With further exposure to air and water, the skin irritant protoanemonin is changed to the more benign chemical anemonin, which German scientists have found to have antispasmodic and analgesic properties. It, and not protoanemonin, may be responsible for the medicinal properties of marsh marigold. Or maybe they work together. Both medicine and nature are complicated.

This beautiful spring flower is also listed as an edible, with many cautions. Leaves and tightly-closed buds must be boiled in a few changes of water, and while the leaves can then be eaten like spinach, the buds still need to be pickled for a month to be safe. All of these techniques probably help to change the toxic protoanemonin into the less hazardous anemonin. Still, I don’t think I’d mess with it.

It’s hard to imagine all of what goes on at a chemical level in nature. Here is a common plant, growing in mucky wetlands, that uses carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and energy from the sun to make food, chemical weapons, and pharmaceuticals.

And the amazing talents of marsh marigolds go even further. Even a glimpse of their sunny blossoms brings a smile to my face, causing the release of endorphins and serotonin in my brain, and the end of my dreary wet grumblings. How wonderful is the chemistry of nature!

For over 45 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Come visit us in Cable, WI, at 13470 County Highway M. The current exhibit, “Deer Camp: A Natural and Cultural History of White-tailed Deer,” opened in May 2013 and will remain open until April, 2014.

Find us on the web at www.cablemuseum.org to learn more about our exhibits and programs. Discover us on Facebook, or at our blogspot, http://cablemuseumnaturalconnections.blogspot.com/.

Little Packets of Fatty Goodness

After you notice one, you start seeing them everywhere. Despite the chilly breeze and gray skies, my eyes never stopped scanning the dry brown leaf litter as we hiked up the trail to St. Peter’s Dome. Last year at this time, our Spring Wildflower Hike revealed a lush jungle of blooming, buzzing, growing, greening plants. The earliest bloomers, like spring beauty and Dutchman’s breeches were already past, except in chilly microclimates.

On this day, I exclaimed in delight at the tiny crimson petals thrusting out of the bud on a beaked hazelnut twig. A single leatherleaf shrub in bloom with delicate yellow flowers brought similar excitement. Then, when I noticed the first tightly furled spike of trillium leaves that had worked its way up through the dry maple leaves, I was ecstatic.

The group stopped with me to search for more, and as our eyes adjusted, our mental search images honed, and the tiny green spikes appeared everywhere. Although we could not identify the spikes, we knew from last year that these could be wood anemone, large-flowered trillium, violets, Dutchman’s breeches, and bloodroot. The fully unfurled leaves of spring beauty, just over an inch long, clustered in the shelter of a fallen log.

These spring ephemeral wildflowers have figured out that they can make use of the rich soil in the shady depths of deciduous forests, so long as they get a head start on the trees. In part because they only show up for such a short time each spring, they have captured many a heart.

In particular, many of these flowers have a close, symbiotic relationship with ants. You don’t see it now, but in a month or so, when they are done blooming and have gone to seed, a soap opera emerges. All the wildflowers I listed above attach a packet of fatty goodness, like a donut for ants, to the outside of their seeds. Called an elaiosome, this little bit of energy-rich lipids, amino acids, and other nutrients, shows that the way into an ant’s hill is through its stomach.

Ants carry the elaiosome, still attached to its seed, down into their hill. There the ants may feed it to their larva or eat it themselves. The seed, which is smooth, hard, tough to hold on to, and impossible to eat, is thrown into the ants’ midden or garbage heap. Here, in a nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich environment, among moist, decaying plant matter and the bodies of dead ants, the seed has a wonderful place to grow. It is safe from birds, other insects, and even forest fires. This type of ant-assisted seed dispersal is called myrmecochory.

Myrmecochory (mur–me-co-cory) is exhibited by more than 3,000 plant species worldwide, and is present in every major biome on all continents except Antarctica. One study determined that it has evolved at least 100 separate times in 55 different plant families.

In nature, when there is success, there is often a cheater. Hepatica, a beautiful purple or white spring ephemeral flower that emerges before its leaves, is an unassuming swindler. Instead of providing a detachable treat for the ant, hepatica just covers its seed in a non-removable elaiosome with the same chemical cues as its neighbors’ true elaiosomes.

When ants take hepatica’s seeds back to the nest, the elaiosome can’t be eaten, and the chemical cues stay intact. Instead of being stripped of its packet of fatty goodness and thrown in the trash heap, the hepatica seed stimulates each ant that passes by to pick it up by the permanent, fatty handle and carry it somewhere else. Hepatica saves energy by not making a large elaiosome, and it benefits when its seeds are distributed more widely. In return for their dispersal services, the ants get nothing. Hepatica is a parasite!

If cheaters win, though, then pretty soon everyone starts cheating. For a mutualism (a symbiotic relationship where both parties benefit) to continue, it must provide appropriate rewards. Scientists have found that seeds with true, tasty, edible elaiosomes are transported by ants much more often than the cheater seeds of Hepatica and others like it. “In this situation, cheating … establishes a background against which better mutualists can display competitive superiority, thus leading…to the reinforcement of the mutualism (Pfeiffer et al, 2009).”

Such drama, on what may seem like a small scale, impacts entire ecosystems on six continents. In this northern hardwood forest, maple leaves cushioned my knees as I crouched down to get look closer at the just-opened flowers of Dutchman’s breeches. A bit of movement caught the corner of my eye, and I shifted my focus to a patch of soft moss. A tiny black ant was scrambling its way across a jungle of leaves. As my gaze widened, I noticed another ant, and then another and another, all busy with their own lives. After you notice one, you start seeing them everywhere.