Some questions for an entomologist

[JoceAndChris]

I'm hoping Matt Green might give us the benefit of his wisdom here.

1) Are millipedes bad for the house? I have masses of them, curled behind every laminating piece of stone, hidden in every gap and crevice. At certain times of the year the outside walls, in one place, are almost black with them.
2)Why won't chickens eat millipedes?
3) Is it wrong to feed stag beetles, and ground beetles, to chickens? Why do I have so many ground beetles?
4) Why is it that all autumn woodlice have been marching down the stone steps, under the door, into the kitchen, and curling themselves into a ball by the dresser? Why are they all picking that spot?
5) Why were there so many earwigs this year? You'd open a window, a hundred earwigs would drop down. Why?

I find the insect life here astonishing. It takes up a lot of my time though, removing all these creatures from the house and feeding to chickens.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Please dont feed stag beetles to the chickens. Keep a nice pile of rotting logs in a corner of your garden and place them near that if you have to move them.

http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/Habita...gbeetle/tabid/176/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

 

[Matt Green]

1) Are millipedes bad for the house? I have masses of them, curled behind every laminating piece of stone, hidden in every gap and crevice. At certain times of the year the outside walls, in one place, are almost black with them.
2)Why won't chickens eat millipedes?
3) Is it wrong to feed stag beetles, and ground beetles, to chickens? Why do I have so many ground beetles?
4) Why is it that all autumn woodlice have been marching down the stone steps, under the door, into the kitchen, and curling themselves into a ball by the dresser? Why are they all picking that spot?
5) Why were there so many earwigs this year? You'd open a window, a hundred earwigs would drop down. Why?

I find the insect life here astonishing. It takes up a lot of my time though, removing all these creatures from the house and feeding to chickens.

I see, when there's invertebrate questions to be answered ask the insect guy. It's a good job I'm not a purist (a rarity on here...?).

1) Myriapods, they are strange things. Millipedes prefer damp conditions, so whilst not bad for the house per se, they should perhaps make one raise an eyebrow as to why they seek refuge where they do.
2) Millipedes secrete an unpleasant, mildly caustic secretion from glands along their bodies when they are threatened.
3) Morally? I wouldn't deliberately feed a beetle to a chicken. I prefer beetles to chickens though. Most ground beetles are detritivores, so if you have a lot of leaf mulch or chippings, you are providing pleasant conditions for them.
4) "curling themselves into a ball...." They are pill millipedes, not woodlice. It's either damp there, or there is a good source of mould for them to feed on.
5) Common earwigs are omnivores, they hunt other arthropods and eat mould and decaying matter. I'm no great expert on what earwigs eat but it may be they can feed on millipedes. I'll check a textbook.


M.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks Matt. These sorts of questions keep me awake, so I'm very grateful for the answers.

I prefer beetles to chickens though.

How interesting. Why?

2) Millipedes secrete an unpleasant, mildly caustic secretion from glands along their bodies when they are threatened.

That's fascinating - my robin wouldn't eat them either. I've never seen the earwigs eating millipedes. I don't think they have any predators.

Last tree count, we had 243 trees in the garden and around 10 big logpiles so there's a lot for them to eat - plus the insects are all drawn, on the inside, to the cat food, and on the outside, to the chicken feed. The house is very damp in their favourite bit, sometimes water trickles down the walls and forms a stream in the scullery! (it's bare stone, underground)

The pill millipedes are drawn to the old pamments, which are thick with white, salty, efflorescence - it's quite tasty really. (I know because when I sweep there and lick my lips they taste like they do when you go swimming in the sea)

Please dont feed stag beetles to the chickens. Keep a nice pile of rotting logs in a corner of your garden and place them near that if you have to move them.

http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/Habita...gbeetle/tabid/176/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

OK! Thanks Nigel!

 

[Flyfisher]

Please dont feed stag beetles to the chickens.

Absolutely! We removed an old tree stump a couple of years ago and the stump-grinder man pointed out all the stag beetle grub holes in the slowly rotting trunk, which I hadn't noticed. He exposed a few holes to reveal rather large grubs, so we cut off the 18-inch stump at ground level and I moved it to a damp shady spot near a pond.

I haven't seen a stag beetle for years, though there always seemed to be at least one being passed around in a matchbox at school. Very impressive creatures.

 

[JoceAndChris]

How interesting with your stump FF!

Lots of stag beetles here, and all manner of insects I don't even recognise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pill_millipede

Yes, they really are pill millipedes - not woodlice at all. Thanks xx

 

[Juju]

I've grown Brussels sprouts for the first time this year - they are covered with earwigs (and during the summer - thousands of ladybirds!). We have to take the Brussels apart a bit as they're lurking in there - I don't want to upset my visitors on Christmas Day with earwigs in their din-dins. MInd you, I'm the vegetarian - if they're all eating turkey, they shouldn't mind a roasted earwig too!
Juju

 

[Matt Green]

I prefer beetles to chickens though.

How interesting. Why?

Heh. OFSTED should put you on an exam board Joce, I've thought more about that than most other questions put to me in years. :wink:

Beetles in other insects exist in a world that can be described mathematically in terms of concentrations of odours, pheromones and behavioural genetics. Their generation times are fast, so what you see in insect populations makes massive rational sense from the data you know about that population. Bed bugs are a good example: their prevalence and behaviour make perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view taking into account gene conservation and selection pressure. It's not a control thing: I know that I don't want to control a population of insects and I know if I tried to, they would do whatever was in their best interests to keep their genetic material expressed in the next generation insects. It's a respect for their sense of rationality: what insects do- how they conduct themselves- makes sense to me.

Birds are warm blooded reptiles with specialised scales. They chose a different path to humans to survive as long as they have. I know this is going to read like I'm a crazy geek posting on a back-water forum late at night whist under the influence of half a bottle of pinot noir, but avian behaviour makes a lot less sense to me. Birds seem to make rational yet highly emotive decisions with tiny brains, whilst insects are devoid of emotion. I know that insects will strip my cooling copse of it's flesh because I am dead and they need no further reason. I would be a lot less happy to have my body eaten by a pack of vultures. It's a strange primeval thing that birds seem alien to me. I'd feel less bad about contracting salmonellosis from a cockroach than a pigeon because there seems to be less concious thought involved in the act. Does that make any sense at all? Beetle behaviour is, to me, more logical than that of chickens? It's the difference between being beaten at chess by a computer or a human: with a human it seems more of a personal slight than a defeat at a transient recreational game.

I'm glad the answers helped and something must eat millipedes, or we'd be knee deep in them.

M.

 

[MdB]

I'm glad the answers helped and something must eat millipedes, or we'd be knee deep in them.

http://www.orkin.com/other/centipedes/what-eats-centipedes-and-millipedes

Centipedes and millipedes that make their homes outdoors are prey to shrews, toads, badgers and birds, including domestic chickens. Ground beetles and spiders may also hunt young millipedes and centipedes. Centipedes also sometimes resort to cannibalism, particularly when an injured specimen is involved. Centipedes are solitary arthropods that become defensive and violent in the company of other centipedes.

...

When attacked, millipedes curl their bodies into tight spirals in order to protect their soft undersides. In defense, a millipede can release pungent fluids from its glands, which repel potential predators.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_Animal_Eats_Millipedes

worms and bears and stuff

 

[Gareth Hughes]

I know this is going to read like I'm a crazy geek posting on a back-water forum late at night whist under the influence of half a bottle of pinot noir

It doesn't stop any of the rest of us :shock:

 

[LadyArowana]

I would be a lot less happy to have my body eaten by a pack of vultures.
M.

No Tibetan Sky Burial for you then! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Bed bugs are a good example: their prevalence and behaviour make perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view taking into account gene conservation and selection pressure. It's not a control thing: I know that I don't want to control a population of insects and I know if I tried to, they would do whatever was in their best interests to keep their genetic material expressed in the next generation insects. It's a respect for their sense of rationality: what insects do- how they conduct themselves- makes sense to me.

As a self-avowed neo-Darwinist who worships at the alter of Dawkins, the most incredible thing I think about evolution and genetics is the realisation that actually our genes are not the mechanism by which we reproduce ourselves, but actually our bodies are the shell by which our genes self-replicate themselves.

It may seem a semantic difference - but it is fundamentally different and that realisation was the most humbling event of my life. It is also the basis of my atheism.

In Matt's example above, the insects are not being rational in order to preserve their genes. DNA has an almost unique property as a complex molecule to spontaneously self-replicate if it sits in a pool of its constituent atoms. Over billions of years it has come to encode a cellular (and then multi-cellular) architecture that increases the likelihood that as a molecule it will self-replicate.

Those bugs are not demonstrating rational behaviour; they are exhibiting the incredible power of simple probability - the probability that DNA molecules with a particular composition and shape (which in turn encode genes into proteins which in turn determine behaviour at a higher level) are slightly more likely mathematically to self-replicate than similar DNA molecules with a slightly different composition.

The bugs aren't rational. The maths is. 8)

Definitely backwater late-night forum stuff. If you've never read it, then Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" is the book to read first.

I've got the biology of life sewn up I think, it's the physics and creation/Big Bang I'm working on now... I'm currently struggling through Stephen Hawkins latest book and quantum physics. I can just about get Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and relativity - but I'm really struggling with curled up space-time dimensions and Feynman multiple histories. :shock: I'm on the verge of giving up and declaring it to be a fairy story on the same proportions as religious creationism!

Anyone able to explain it in a nutshell?

 

[biffvernon]

Lots of stag beetles here,

Are you sure they are stag beetles? Look at this distribution map and you will see how rare they are in Limcolnshire:
http://www.nbn.org.uk/News-and-Events/Map-news-stories/Stag-Beetle.aspx

 

[LadyArowana]

Anyone able to explain it in a nutshell?

Here is a picture of a bunny with a pancake on its head.

 

[Jill]

I've got the biology of life sewn up I think, it's the physics and creation/Big Bang I'm working on now... Anyone able to explain it in a nutshell?

Guess you didn't see that stupid programme in the week then, some guy was trying to work out how the Big Bang would have looked by blowing up a jelly, a gateaux, then a water melon. It was all recorded in slow motion to see how the particles would disperse. The things some people will do to get on the telly. I wasn't watching it, apart from the blowy up bits.

 

[Flyfisher]

. . . and the Nobel prize for physics goes to Lady Arowana for her research into the pancake-bunny model of path integral formulation which posits a quantum amplitude replacement for Schrodinger's Cat.

Well done Milady.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

. . . and the Nobel prize for physics goes to Lady Arowana for her research into the pancake-bunny model of path integral formulation which posits a quantum amplitude replacement for Schrodinger's Cat.

Well done Milady.

yes - I think she has inside knowledge... on Another Site she posted that the loss of a GPS enableD watch was ONLY to be expected, since the device contradicted Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle...

I think she should come clean! :roll:

Alternatively, it's all a bit of Oolong!

 

[LadyArowana]

. . . and the Nobel prize for physics goes to Lady Arowana for her research into the pancake-bunny model of path integral formulation which posits a quantum amplitude replacement for Schrodinger's Cat.

Well done Milady.

yes - I think she has inside knowledge... on Another Site she posted that the loss of a GPS enableD watch was ONLY to be expected, since the device contradicted Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle...

I think she should come clean! :roll:

Alternatively, it's all a bit of Oolong!

You deserve a share of the prize too for naming the bunny! As for coming clean I cannot say more, temporal prime directive and all that. I worry that I already said too much by mentioning how people would one day curse the removal of all the beautiful old avocado bathroom suites.

 

[Flyfisher]

OK, understood Milady. Mum's the word.


However, if you could PM me with next week's lottery numbers I'd be most gratefull :wink: