What's Eating Me

I was going to write all about blood sucking arthropods this week. I'm one of those special people who attracts every kind of biting organism. Mosquitoes swarm me. No see 'ums see me. Fire ants used to make me get welts the size of a dinner plate, but now I'm used to them, so I just get the itchy bite with the nasty little pus cone (if you've been bit by them you know what I mean). If there's a tick anywhere nearby it will find me. Chiggers bit me all over just the other day when I was taking the owl/hawk/crow pictures. DEET doesn't help. Recently, we adopted a cute stray kitten. He's a good little guy, but he was infested with fleas. And now we have fleas in the house and I have bites all over my ankles. Between the mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers and fleas, I look like I've got measles. I hate the lot of them.

But I got a reminder today that it could be much, much worse.  I was out at the Natural Area Teaching Lab at the University of Florida hunting for good caterpillar and butterfly photos and saw something large and strange trundling along the top of a fence. When I went to investigate, I understood why it looked so strange. It was a Pine Sphinx Moth caterpillar, almost unrecognizable under the bulk of scores of Braconid Wasp cocoons. Fully grown, a Pine Sphinx Moth caterpillar will be the size of my pointer finger. They are pretty cool looking, with long white/yellow stripes, white speckles and large black ringed spiracles (breathing holes) along their sides. This one had been parasitized by a Brachonid Wasp. Braconids lay their eggs inside their hosts. In this case, just under the skin of the large caterpillar. The eggs hatch and the larvae eat the caterpillar from the inside but don't kill it right away. The caterpillar is dying slowly and probably doesn't know it. When the wasp larvae have matured, they bore holes through the caterpillar's skin and make a cocoon. They pupate as they ride around on the caterpillar. Then the wasps emerge as adults and the caterpillar dies soon after. Kind of a horrible way to go, I think. Gardeners and farmers use Braconid Wasps as biological pest control agents in organic gardens. Caterpillars are major crop pests--think tomato horn worms, for example. I guess it's better than pesticides, but it's no fun for the caterpillar. On the other hand, it's great for the wasps.

Pine Sphinx Moth with Brachonid Wasp Cocoons

So, for now I'll just be remind myself that itching is one thing, but being eaten from the inside by larvae is another. Of course, there is always West Nile Virus and Lyme Disease, as well as other horrible insect borne ailments, so I'll have to be work harder at my mosquito and tick bite prevention. But at least I'll never be covered with cocoons.