More Insect Inspiration

Over the course of several years I have managed to collect several butterfly, moth, dragonfly specimens that met their demise due to natural causes of one sort or another. And I decided to take a look at these hoping for some inspiration for the sixth in my weekly series. These are all showing their age and lack of professional preservation techniques so, as I moved one butterfly aside, its tightly curled proboscis detached. There was my image for the week: a lovely, simple spiral shape. But I had to complicate it a bit with some research that reminded me that, under an electron microscope you can clearly see that this is a hollow tube (sometimes a double tube) and that the spiral is not a neatly rounded shape but curves tightly in on itself so much so it almost knots at times. 

The proboscis comes in many lengths as well, sometimes very short, sometimes extremely long, reaching far into a flower. What an amazing little tool to have attached to one's face!

That same week I was whining about the coolness of the spring that meant few insects were out and about and so I sought to literally uncover some under last year's leaves. And there, of course, were the ubiquitous roly-poly bugs. I chose one unlucky specimen to be examined more closely and discovered, with research, that it was neither roly-poly nor a bug. 

It looked exactly like a roly-poly to my uneducated eye but it didn't seem to want to roll up as those bugs from my childhood had always done. It was instead an entirely different species that goes by the exceedingly unsexy name of woodlouse or European Sowbug (Oniscus asellus). And it is not an insect at all but one of the few crustaceans that live on land. I had already suspected something amiss in this area when my guy did not stop at the requisite three pairs of legs for insectdom and instead wiggled seven pairs at me when I turned him over.

So technically this woodlouse does not qualify for my series but, since I am making the rules and most folk think it is a bug, I created a block in its honor:

One of the aspects that intrigued me about this creature was how its shiny shell became almost translucent at the edges and so I fused shiny strips of organza over the gray that do not show up so well in a photo. I also paid homage to those seven pairs of legs, but one of the most fascinating aspects of this woodlouse is the antennae that are never still and that are jointed in two places like the legs. 

These guys, who originally came from Britain, are actually of benefit, unlike many other of the imported species.They help plant materials decompose, adding to the fertility of the soil. They do not bite, they do not spread disease and they even lay their eggs in a pouch like a kangaroo's and carry them around until they are "born"--an all around pleasant non-bug.

I am linking this to Nina's Off the Wall Friday.