22 March 2026

Katydids are usually hard to find because their green color and leafy shape provide camouflage in their natural habitat. This one in Costa Rica can only be seen because his leaf is lit from below.

When scientists in Panama occasionally found a hot pink version of a normally green katydid (Arota festea) they assumed it was a mutant. Out of curiosity they kept a pink one in captivity and were amazed to discover that it slowly changed color. Within two weeks it turned green.

At every stage, from hot pink to vibrant green, its color camouflaged it among the leaves.

In the [insect] animals’ native jungle home of Suriname, Colombia, and Panama, about 36% of plants turn pink before adopting their typical mature green—a process of delayed greening sometimes called “red flushing.”

This photo from the study, Pink Cricket Club: Dramatic color change in a Neotropical leaf-masquerading katydid (Arota festae, Griffini, 1896), shows the match-up.

The katydid’s color is connected to everything else. Now we know the connection.

(Figure 1 caption) Intense hot pink morph of an adult female Arota festae. Photographed at 23:32 on 27 March 2025 on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, using a Sony A7CR camera with a LAOWA 90?mm f/2.8 lens and a Godox Speedlite TT350 flash. The final image was produced by focus stacking 4 photographs in Adobe Photoshop, with brightness increased for clarity while leaving saturation and hue unaltered. Photo credit: Zeke W. Rowe

(Figure 2 caption) Pink-to-green color change in Arota festae (Griffini, 1896) and resemblance to pink leaves in delayed plant greening. (A) Photographs of the same A. festae individual at days 0, 4, 5, and 14 following initial discovery at 23:12 on 27 March 2025 on BCI, Panama. All photographs in (A) were taken by Benito Wainwright. (B) Photographs of local plant species displaying delayed greening (from left to right: Paullinia bracteosa, Coccoloba manzinellensis, Inga ruziana, and Andira inermis). From the left, the first, second, and third photographs in (B) were taken by J. Benito Wainwright, and the fourth photograph (on the far right in B) was taken by Phyllis Coley

16 March 2026

Warm weather in Pittsburgh this month has drawn us outdoors to work in the yard, walk in the woods and explore with the dog. Many of us, especially the dogs, are encountering an unusual number of black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis). It’s already time to take precautions and spray your clothes.

Why so many ticks right now?

• In fall, black-legged ticks burrow under leaf litter to survive the winter. Bitter cold doesn’t kill them if they can hide from it.
• Snow cover acts as a giant blanket that keeps ticks warm. This winter we had -5°F but the ground was snow covered. Perfect for tick survival.

Black-legged ticks don’t need a “wild” landscape (below). Leaf litter in the garden is a perfect place for ticks to hide all winter (above).

Move the leaves or walk in them and you’ll find ticks. This month they’ll all be adults (large tick below). In May the tiny nymphs will appear.

When black-legged ticks suck our blood they can transmit a parasite into our blood stream that causes debilitating Lyme disease. Pennsylvania has the highest number of Lyme disease cases in the U.S.

This year we were caught off guard. Already there are tons of ticks!

Spray Your Clothes and Field Check for Ticks. Click here to learn more.

3 November 2025

By November adult orb weaver spiders have died and left behind overwintering egg sacs to hatch in early spring.  The zigzag webs are gone but there is new scientific research about their purpose. Why do these round, almost invisible webs of Argiope spiders have thick prominent zigzags on them?

The zigzag web decorations are called stabilimenta, a word whose Latin origin means “stabilizer.” Unproven past theories on their purpose include:

• For stability? No. The decorations are only loosely attached to the web.
• To camouflage the spider?
• To draw notice to the web so large animals don’t break it?
• To attract prey by reflecting UV light?
• To attract a male?

An October 29 study in the journal PLOS One offers yet another explanation. Instead of stabilizing the spider web’s structure, the filaments help out spiders by allowing the vibrations of a stuck animal to disperse throughout the entire web, the research found. This in turn helps the spider know exactly where its prey is on the web structure, they write.

— Smithsonian Magazine: These Mysterious ‘Decorations’ in Spiderwebs Might Help Spiders Better Locate Their Prey

To reach this conclusion, scientists created computer simulations of prey hitting Argiope bruennichi spider webs based on photographs of the stabilimenta. They concluded that when prey hit the web at a tangent the stabilimenta amplified prey vibrations throughout the web. This might help the spider find the prey.

But …”The actual impact of the stabilimenta may be limited, the researchers admit. For now, they write, the true reasons behind the spidery structures remain largely unknown, with many hypotheses still untested or lacking experimental validation.” — from Smithsonian Magazine.

Read more about the research at Smithsonian Magazine: These Mysterious ‘Decorations’ in Spiderwebs Might Help Spiders Better Locate Their Prey.

16 October 2025

Remember the brown marmorated stink bug invasion? Halyomorpha halys was first noticed in Allentown PA in 1998 and soon spread across the state. By 2010 alien stink bugs were causing record damage in Pennsylvania orchards and annoying homeowners by invading tiny cracks in our homes at the first sign of cold weather. October used to be the worst month for this.

Studies back then predicted where the stink bug was likely to invade while USDA searched for a biological control. They were looking for a predator within the brown marmorated stink bug’s native range that would not pose a threat to North American species.

Meanwhile the stink bug continued to spread. Within 20 years it was thick in the I-95 Corridor, clearly established east of the Mississippi, and had spread in the Pacific coast states.

By 2018 researchers had settled on a safe non-stinging wasp, the Samurai wasp (Trissolcus japonicus), that lays its eggs inside brown marmorated stink bug eggs; its larva eats the egg from within. The map below shows the wasp’s potential range around the world. Its outlook as a solution in the eastern U.S. was great but it was marginal to unsuitable in the West.

Approvals to import the wasp were still grinding through the bureaucratic process when the Samurai wasp showed up on its own as described in this vintage article: Stinkbug Predator Shows Up On Its Own.

As soon as that happened the wasp became available to farmers in need of stink bug control and the wasp continued to spread naturally.

By 2021 it had spread to North Carolina and surprisingly to southwestern Idaho, a place that was mapped (above) as marginal-to-unsuitable habitat for the wasp.

But the wasp doesn’t care. There are stink bugs in Idaho so the wasp flew east out of Oregon and found a new home. This USDA map on the stopbmsb.org website shows the distribution of both species, the stink bug in solid colors, the wasp as dots.

Back here in Pennsylvania I rarely see brown marmorated stink bugs anymore, thanks to the female Samurai wasp who’s a great traveler in search of stink bug eggs.

p.s. I wonder how she finds the stink bugs. Can she smell them from afar?

UPDATE: See the comments! Some people still have stink bugs at home