Well my interest in insects is primarily in the moths and butterflies of
Britain and more specifically those of British Vice County 42 (Breconshire)
where I assist in the recording of the counties insect species.
Because of this I will concentrate on some of the more funky lepidoptera
(moths and butterflies); their life cycles and behaviours.
Leaf Miners
These are probably the smallest of the moths, the adults have wingspans of only
a few millimetres and so the larvae are so small that they cannot eat the
whole thickness of the leaf of teh foodplant. To feed, the minute caterpillars form little
mines int ehleaf structure, living between the leaf epidermis and eating
teh soft middle tissues. This allows the larva to feed and acts as
camogflauge against predators like birds.
Picture of mine
As you can see, although these animals are tiny there are also stunningly beautiful, it must be said that photographs do not show the metalic sheen which these small moths have, but under a microscope they are truely stunning.
Psychids and Coleophs
Like the Miners, the Pschids and Colephs hide their larve, however these small larvae carry their camoflage around witht hen as a case constructed if lear cuttins or detritus, the females of some of these species never emerge from their larval case but when reaching adulthood remain earth bound and wait for males to come along and mate with them. They then lay the eggs of the next generation on the larval case and die.
Picture of 2 Imago species
As you can see these moths (and indeed many moth species) can be very similar, so how can we identify them, often teh external morphology doe not allow conclusive identification. There are two main ways of identifying such species.
1. From larval food plant and morphology. The foodplant of a larva can often be enough to identify the species, and indeed there can be quite large differences in the larval morphology when the imago look almost identical.
2. Genitalia. Yep we entomologists are a perverted lot. When a conclusive identification is required and no other methods work then we have to result in disection to identify a specimen. This is quite a complex proceedure which requires the boiling of the animals genitaia in various nasty substances to produce a microscope slide. Structures in teh genitalia tend to be diagnostic of a species and so this is the universally accepted way of making an identification.
Clearwings
Mim
Life cycle
Pteraphorids
Geometers
Sphingiadae
These are tyhe hawkmoths, amoung the largest moths you get in the British Isles, very pretty little beasties.
Hawkmoths live in much the sameway as humming burds in other countires; hovering in fron of flowers to collect nectar using a very long proboscis.
Some species like the Eyed Hawk have hidden eye spots on the hindwings, when threatedned by predatiors they raise their forewing, flashing the eye spots. The impression given to the predator is a pair of eyes beloning to a large animsl, the predator takes fright and the moth escapes unharmed.
Larave picture
Deaths head squeek
Other groups
Hymenoptera
Ants
Wasps/Bees
Ichynmons
Odonata