By Gretchen Baker, Ecologist, Great Basin National Park
The 2020 BioBlitz at Great Basin National Park was about true bugs — the Hemiptera. Two experts from Utah State University, Amy Springer and Cody Holthouse, made 12 videos to introduce this often-overlooked order of insects.
What makes a bug a true bug
"Not all Hemipterans are great... in fact most all of them suck," said Holthouse. He meant it literally: Hemiptera differ from other insects in having piercing, sucking mouthparts.
| Group | Meaning | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Heteroptera | "different wings" | stink bugs, squash bugs, bed bugs, chinch bugs, milkweed bugs, boxelder bugs, backswimmers, water striders, water boatmen, assassin bugs |
| Auchenorrhyncha | free-living hemipterans | froghoppers, spittlebugs, cicadas, leafhoppers, planthoppers |
| Sternorrhyncha | plant-parasitic hemipterans — some have no legs | aphids, scales, mealybugs |
A BioBlitz in a pandemic
- Online: for the first time, all the lectures were online, so viewers could watch whenever they liked.
- Daily Zoom meetings gave participants a sense of community: what they had found, and tips for finding true bugs. Ken Kingsley, once a volunteer entomologist for the park, shared insights from decades in the field and time at the park.
- Where: participants collected at and near their homes in Texas, Utah and Nevada, and in the park — in Strawberry, Lehman, Baker, Can Young, Snake and Lexington canyons.
Two favorite finds
Ants "farming" aphids on a cottonwood stem. NPS photo by Gretchen Baker.
Ants farming aphids. Ants climbing plants led Baker to aphids — tiny, legless true bugs that push their mouthparts into the plant and drink its juices. They take the protein and excrete the extra sugar as "honeydew," which the ants eat; in return, the ants protect the aphids. She found them on aspens, cottonwoods and rabbitbrush.
Cochineal on cactus. White, puffy spots on prickly pear turned out to be the protective covering of the cochineal bug — harvested in many places for its red dye. It may be in some of your food, your cosmetics or your red-dyed clothes.
What comes next
Springer and Holthouse are still identifying the Hemiptera collected, which will give the park a baseline of its true bugs.
Running a BioBlitz during Covid was a challenge, and the park thanks everyone who helped. Over 80 observations went onto iNaturalist — see them, and the videos, on the park's BioBlitz page.
Sources
Based on "Highlights of the Hemiptera BioBlitz," by Gretchen Baker, The Midden — Great Basin National Park, Vol. 20, No. 2, Winter 2020, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source's "Sternorrhnyncha," "execrete" and "honeyduew" are given here as Sternorrhyncha, excrete and honeydew. A screenshot of the video series, with the experts' portraits, is not reproduced.
In these publicationsGreat Basin National Park
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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