Summer Swarms and Bug Discoveries 🔎

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Episode 105 Description

Did you see cicadas in your neighborhood this summer? 🪲 In today's episode, we check in on the cicadas and learn about a grasshopper invasion! 🦗 Correspondent Anya Schultz introduces us to entomologist Dr. Jessica Ware. Dr. Ware shares the beauty of cockroaches, yes cockroaches. 📰 From the headlines: 🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ representation in sports and a state recognized spider in New Hampshire. ✅ Test your butterfly knowledge in today’s Trivia on the Ten! 🧐

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TRANSCRIPT:

Various Voices 0:00

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Bethany Van Delft  00:06

I'm Bethany Van Delft. And this is The Ten News where we get the lowdown on what's up in the world. It's Tuesday, July 6. In this episode, we're bugging out over well, bugs. This summer has been full of incredible insect invasions from cicadas to caterpillar explosions. So let's buzz right in...

Bethany Van Delft  00:28

Well whether it's ants devouring your picnic, grasshoppers jumping from leaf to leaf or fireflies lighting up the night, summer is the time for strange swarm sightings! The insects on Earth have been very busy so far. In the US, most of the billions of Brood X cicadas have died off now. But just because the outdoors is a little bit quieter now doesn't mean it's all over. Little cicada babies are making their way underground to stay there for another 17 years. And recently, on some beaches in Maine and New Hampshire, swimmers found that when they stepped on the sand, their feet turned black! Experts think the cause of the swimmer stained feet was swarms of kelp flies, insects that eat seaweed, and that washed up on shore. [SFX: That's gross]

Bethany Van Delft  01:32

And Montana is going through a grasshopper invasion. The bugs love warm dry weather and with a drought in full swing out West, grasshoppers are set to have a field day. Grasshoppers eat everything from young plants to fully grown crops. And there are so many hungry grasshoppers that they end up competing for food with cattle. So this year, the government is stepping in to help control them. So just like us, whether it's at the beach, in the backyard, or out on the range, bugs are gathering together this summer. [Music bumper]

Bethany Van Delft  02:11

There are about 10 quintillion insects alive on our planet. That's a 10 with 18 zeros. That's a lot of creatures to study up on. To learn more about amazing insects, our correspondent Anya Schultz to talk to a bug expert, called an entomologist to get the scoop on insect science.

Anya Schultz  02:34

Dr. Jessica Ware thinks about bugs all day long. She's an entomologist, which means her job is to study insects. [SFX: Oh gross] Dr. Ware works as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I talked to her to find out about what an entomologist does for their job.

Anya Schultz  02:56

What is a day in the life for your job?

Dr. Jessica Ware  03:00

Normally, I'm a field biologist. So a day in the life could either mean going on a plane to travel to either the Arctic or the tropics to collect insects. And on those types of days, when we're in the field, we get up very early, you know, it's usually at sunrise or before, so that we can be in the field when the insects start moving around so that we can collect them. And we're often out until very late because of course, insects don't really have a bedtime. So we often are out well into the night.

Anya Schultz  03:30

And on days when Dr. Ware isn't traveling the world looking at insects, she goes into the museum.

Dr. Jessica Ware  03:36

I spend time either in the collection of insects that we have at the museum, literally millions of specimens of insects to measure them, to look at their DNA, to take photographs of them. And then we use those data to write papers. So part of the afternoon usually is spent writing research papers on the experiments that we're doing.

Anya Schultz  03:56

Out of all the insects in the world. Dr. Ware focuses on dragonflies, damselflies, cockroaches and termites. Dragonflies and damselflies are beautiful flying creatures, but termites and cockroaches? Those get a bad rap. I asked Dr. Ware if there's anything to like about those pesky insects. She said, there's a whole world of cockroaches and termites outside of the ones that are a nuisance to our homes. 

Dr. Jessica Ware  04:24

So you know, 2% of cockroaches, Ithink are pests. The number might even be a little bit lower than that. The rest are not pests. They kind of live outside of the human condition. You know, they're in the forest or they're decomposers. They're consuming bits of rotting wood for us so that we don't have piles of non-rotted wood kind of stacked up every time a tree falls. Thanks to cockroaches, thanks to termites, they do this great service for us as kind of ecosystem engineers are decomposers. And so there's also some beauty to cockroaches. I mean, I think and termites for that matter, although termites tend to not have a variety, a super big variety in their colors. But cockroaches do I mean, there's bright green cockroaches, there's blue cockroaches, yellow cockroaches, there's red and pink colors. I mean, they can be really actually very striking, just as striking as any butterfly. So if you like things that are beautiful, you might be surprised, I would say to people, you might be surprised that cockroaches can be actually very beautiful. It's just that we know the best ones, which tend to for a variety of functional reasons, not need to be fancy and beautiful.

Anya Schultz  05:29

Dr. Ware didn't always know she wanted to be an entomologist. She told me she didn't even know that was a career when she was a kid. She just liked nature and being outside. 

Dr. Jessica Ware  05:40

I really liked swimming. And I really liked kind of snorkeling around in the lake by my Nana's house. And so that kind of made me think I might want to be a marine biologist. And so I went to university for marine biology. And then I was interested in invertebrate things without a backbone, invertebrate marine biology. And when you study invertebrate zoology at school, you basically study everything without backbone. There's cool classes in that. And it turns out, there's more insects than there is anything else.

Anya Schultz  06:10

In school, Dr. Ware found mentors who helped her become an entomologist, but it was when she went on her first field research trip that she really fell in love with her job.

Dr. Jessica Ware  06:20

If you get the opportunity to go out and collect insects in the field. I think everyone would be an entomologist if they had the chance to do that, because it's actually so fun. It's a really rewarding and fun day to spend collecting insects. I think.

Anya Schultz  06:32

Dr. Ware said she really hopes more kids decide to go into the field of entomology and have jobs like hers one day.

Dr. Jessica Ware  06:40

 Well, I would just say, you know that there's a million species of insects that have been described. But we think that there might be, you know, 5, 10, 30 million insects left to be described, which is a lot. So we don't have enough entomologists on Earth, to do all of those species descriptions to find all those insects before they go extinct. So we really need kids to you know, go into entomology and, and help us. It's kind of like the ultimate Pokemon right to find the species that are out there and describe them. There's a lot of work to do.

Anya Schultz  07:16

That sounds like important and exciting work to me!

Anya Schultz  07:20

If Earth insects are just like Pokemon, we got to catch them all! For science! Thanks for talking to The Ten Dr. Ware. 

Bethany Van Delft  07:30

Now let's check in on some headlines. 

Bethany Van Delft  07:36

In sports, two athletes recently came out publicly as members of the LGBTQ community. Carl Nassib, a defensive lineman for the Las Vegas Raiders became the first active NFL player to come out as gay. And soccer player Kumi Yokoyama, forward on the Washington Spirit announced that they are transgender. Their identity is not legally recognized in Japan, where Yokoyama is from. President Joe Biden and countless others congratulated the athletes across social media. [SFX:That's great]

Bethany Van Delft  08:10

In a shocking quote from speech, mega popstar Britney Spears spoke out against her conservatorship, a type of legal guardianship that put control of her personal life and money in the hands of someone else. Spears told the judge that she wants control of her life back after she says she was forced to work and take medication that she did not want to. Spears's statement comes after a lot of speculation from fans that she wasn't happy, which turned into a movement called Free Brittany. [SFX: Thank you so much for letting me speak to you today.]

Bethany Van Delft  08:43

Up in space, NASA has announced a new experiment to clean astronauts underwear. You heard that right. Normally, astronauts wear their dirty laundry until they can't stand it anymore. But NASA wants to change that. The test involves working with a company to develop space safe detergent and stain removal pens and wipes to keep astronauts smelling fresh. 

Bethany Van Delft  09:10

And back to bugs, New Hampshire now has a state spider thanks to some third grade arachnid fans. The students at the school who drafted the legislation chose the daring Jumping Spider, which they say represents qualities of their state -- the spider hunkers down well winter, and its colors that look like New Hampshire's trees in the fall. This might be controversial, but I don't think spiders should jump. Nope. 

Bethany Van Delft  09:41

And now for your work. [SFX: What, what's the big idea? Trivia on the Ten]

Bethany Van Delft  09:49

Summer is also the season for butterflies. Often you'll see them fluttering and feeding on flowers. But some butterflies actually eat more than just nectar. What else do they like to feast on? Is it A) lemonade, B) berries and seeds, OR C) mud and poop

Bethany Van Delft  10:15

Did you guess it? The answer is C, mud and poop. Butterflies are known for their behavior called "puddling." After it rains, groups of butterflies can be found hanging out in damp dirt and around mud puddles. [SFX: Okay] Why do they do that you ask? The butterflies are getting moisture and nutrients they need, like salt from the dirt. Some butterfly species also snack on piles of poop for the same reason. [SFX: Disgusting] Don't judge, when you're hungry you've got to snack somewhere. Maybe NASA can invent a butterfly mouthwash. 

Bethany Van Delft  10:57

Time is up! But before we go today, we have a cool podcast to tell you about.

11:07

Hey, fellow story lovers. I'm Jonathan former host of the short tales storytime podcast, a show that brings families together to laugh, learn and delight in the tale well told. Every two weeks my forest friend, Mr. Reginald t hedgehog, and I bring you slightly wacky and very geeky retellings of classic fairy tales, and untold stories about amazing hidden heroes of his story. So check us out wherever you listen to podcasts, or visit us at dog tales story.com.

Bethany Van Delft  11:48

Oh, I love a good story. Thanks for listening to The Ten News. Look out for new episodes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and extras on Saturdays. You can go deeper into today's stories by visiting TheTenNews.com. The Ten News is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts and is distributed by iHeartRadio. The Ten News creative team is so totally bugged out and includes Kate Hale, Tracey Crooks, Pete Musto, Jenna Pascua, and Sarah Olender. Anya Schultz contributed to this episode. Our Production Director is Jeremiah Tittle and our Executive Producers are Donald Albright and show creator Tracy Leeds Kaplan. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and thanks for listening to The Ten News. 

Bethany Van Delft  12:32

Okay, would you rather referee a fight between a grasshopper and a cow or watch an astronaut do laundry?