A Trip Well Worth Taking

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Graham Ansell

Hello faithful readers,

I’d like to start this blog post by saying how glad I am that I was able to take two trips on the BIObus. It’s been a long road, and I enjoyed every beautiful bug, landscape and duct tape filled second of it. It will nice to be home next week, but man was it great to be out. Now, on to the post!

A banana slug being compared against my hand. What a monster!

Today was our first day in Pacific Rim National Park we set up our sites in a second growth forest (a “recently” logged area), an old growth forest, and a brambly bog. It’s a beautiful park, where the mountains are in view of the beach, and everything is lush and green, but it sure is a hard place to dig in a line for pitfall cups! The site set up was one of our most grueling, but even with vegetation on every side and the least stable ground we’ve seen so far, we got everything working and started learning the entomological secrets of the park.

I would like to make special mention of my favourite invertebrate of the whole island, the banana slug, (Ariolimax columbianus). These 25cm (almost a foot!) long monsters are everywhere here, and we had to take great care not slip on them! They are the second largest species of slug in the world, with the largest reaching only five centimeters longer, at a full foot. Because of the warm winters and high humidity, these little (or big) guys can move around with relative freedom in their slimy tracks, eating almost any organic matter they can find. They are very cool, and have been on my list to see for a very long time. I was quite a happy camper when we ran into our first one in Gulf Islands, and we’ve seen dozens just today. The locals tend to think of them as pests, but they are so very cool. They have a numbing agent in their slime that, when licked, will cause your tongue to go numb. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m hoping it works as described. As with all slugs they don’t have any jaws, and instead scrape their food with their hard scratchy tongue-like radula. Imagine you couldn’t move your jaw, and had a cheese grater strapped thimble-style on your tongue and you’re halfway to being a slug! Giant slugs are so cool, and I will always remember them and their friendly, almost playful, demeanour.

Danielle, Joey, me, and Kate going on an ocean kayaking adventure on our day off. I’m going to miss living with you guys.

As I said above, this trip has been fantastic. I’ve learned so much about reptiles and birds from Joey, marine life from Danielle, and how to run a ship of four and deal with a web of contacts flawlessly from Kate. I’ve also learned how to fix almost any RV problem with duct tape and a screwdriver, among a myriad of scientific concepts. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything else, and I am so thankful that the people at BIO let me take part in this old girl’s final journey. I am still deeply excited about entomology, and being out here has brought me closer to the wild than I had ever hoped to be in a summer job. Moving on from this experience I hope to see many more fantastic sights and creepy crawlies, but I’m confident that the BIObus will forever have a special spot in my soul. Like I say when we’re preparing to drive, batten down the hatches, and let’s hit the road!

Outreach and Odonates

Posted on June 21, 2014June 24, 2014 by Graham Ansell

Hello again! Today was our second last day on Pender Island, and we spent it mostly doing outreach in various places. Our time at the park has been fantastic, and I would have to say that it is my favourite park so far. The small island community of about 3,000 people has shown itself to be friendly and trustworthy. For example, they are proud of their car stops, which as far as I have seen, are unique to this island, but may be on the others as well. A car stop is specific spot where hitchhikers or people looking for a lift without a car can wait to get picked up by the people driving around. It makes sense on an island too small for taxis, where gas is 164 cents/L, and where a lot of people come by foot on ferries. It’s quite a change from big cities on the mainland where picking up hitchhikers is illegal. They also have stalls outside their little farms selling eggs and herbs. They are open to the public and not staffed; people can take what they want and are expected to pay in a small unlocked box. It takes a pretty special place for that to work, I think. There’s also a very successful farmer’s market that takes place on Saturday morning, and that’s where we did our first round of outreach.

Kate and Joey teaching some families all about the insect world at the Pender Island farmer's market. — **Kate and Joey teaching some families all about the insect world at the Pender Island farmer’s market.**

The market was very full, with people buying produce and freshly baked bread. Some of our crew even found tiny air plants grown in pieces of driftwood! A lot of people came by of every age range; groups of fascinated children, inquisitive middle aged people, and a few groups of retirees who were very interested in our work, especially for their grandchildren. We even had someone ask us where to find the best insect larvae to eat for extreme nature survival trips. The little girls especially were happily interested in the extensible jaw of dragonfly larve. All in all it was a very successful outreach event, and we gave away a record number of bookmarks and insect pins. We were on our feet the whole time. After the market we set up shop outside the local museum, open from one in the afternoon until four, to catch the second round of tourists and interested locals.

A blue-eyed darner we caught near the museum during our outreach. Dragonflies lose their colour soon after death, so this one won't be brilliant blue for long. — **A blue-eyed darner we caught near the museum during our outreach. Dragonflies lose their colour soon after death, so this one won’t be brilliant blue for long.**

Other than the museum volunteers and one family of keenly interested locals who were a delight to teach about insects, the museum location was relatively devoid of people. During the drought of visitors, we decided to set up a hand collection event and snag some of the dragonflies that are fantastically common in the fields. Dragonflies are in the infraorder Anispotera, which when combined with Zygoptera (damselflies) makes up the order Odonata. They are the most adept fliers in the insect world, which is quite surprising considering they have a more ancestral wing set up. Where most other insects have a dependent wing system (one where opposing wings must move at the same time), Odonates have an independent system which allows movement and control of each individual wing. This wide range of control allows them to perform fantastic aerial feats, such as flying backwards (along with every other possible direction), and performing very minute lightning fast flight corrections to catch their small flying prey. This control, as well as their ability to fly up to 45 km/h and eyes that can see almost 360^o becomes very apparent when trying to catch one in a net! The drawback to independent wings is that they cannot flap nearly as fast as dependent wings, with Odonates flapping a maximum of 30 times per second and some small dependently winged flies flapping at many hundreds. This limits their size to the upper ranges of flying insect size, which is why you can easily see the smallest damselfly, but many groups of flies can be small enough to fit through screen doors.

Tomorrow we’re taking down our sites, then on our way to Pacific Rim National Park!

Graham

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