August 30, 2007
The Mystery of the Ant-Cricket
Every once in a while, I run into some entomological surprise. I have been working with insects since the early 1970s, so as years go by, the times that I run into something completely novel get rarer. On August 20, I was preparing to do some work in my darkroom, which is in the basement of my house. I looked into my long darkroom sink and saw what I thought at first was a tiny cricket nymph. First of all, it is odd to see a cricket in there, and something about the little 3mm long critter didn't seem right. Being the entomologist, I grabbed a little vial and coaxed the cricket into it and then preserved it in alcohol. As i was able to take a closer look -- I realized that it was an ant-cricket, or a member of the Myrmecophilidae! I had never seen one alive previous to this, so the fact that I immediately recognized it was quite gratifying.
There is only one species of this odd family in the eastern US, and that is Myrmecophilus pergandei Bruner. Until now, there have been no records of it from Michigan, so this is a new species for the state! A recent publication by MacGown and Hill (2006) summarizes some of the biology and distribution of this species, as the authors also reported the first records for Mississippi. Myrmecophilines inhabit ant-nests of several species, and are reported to get food from the ants by strigilating the workers. My big mystery though, is how did the cricket arrive in the darkroom, and why? Fate has it that it arrived not only into the house of an entomologist, but one that just happened to be at the easiest place to spot something unusual -- a big, white sink.
I love serendipitous finds such as this, but I know that a small publication that not only reported the presence of this species in Michigan, but also included the type of ant nest it came from, would be more valuable in the long run. Such is life.
SEPT. 20 CORRECTION!
Much to my chagrin, I found that this is actually the SECOND record for Michigan, the first record was published in the April 2007 issue of the Newsletter of the Michigan Entomological Society under the title: 2007 First Reports of State and Provincial Arthropods, by Ron Priest (which is why I missed it)V52 (1&2):17.. The first record's data is as follows: MICHIGAN: Ingham Co., East Lansing, 12 June 2006, in nest of Myrmecina americana Emery. Megan Harding, collector.
Posted by mfobrien at 02:05 PM | Comments (1)