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Index of Subjects Hi Fred and all, I have a memory of wild things which spans 80 years and, by a very wide margin (say 99.9%), the most destructive force in the natural world has been human activity. Other species simply rearrange the wreckage. So I am inclined to live and let live. Neither Cluster Flies nor Asian Lady Beetles contribute to Climate Change and that, if not taken seriously, will wipe out everything. I suspect Cluster Flies are good pollinators of early flowering plants. And when they die their bodies likely sustain some organisms. Some decades ago (about 1970 ?) we were overrun by Earwigs and they are inclined to climb. Open a door and a shower of earwigs would fall. So I looked into the feasibility of control by shocking. The Electronics guy saved any coils, transformers etc. which were functional so I asked him for the loan of a variable voltage unit and built a small ramp so designed that when they walked up this ramp, beyond a certain point, their left feet would be at a different potential than their right. Beyond a certain voltage difference there would be tiny sparks as they raised or lowered each foot. But what impressed me most was their behavior after their ordeal. By the time two had walked the ramp I had decided to quit. A liquid had seeped from many joints and they proceeded to carefully clean all of this away, by moistening a tarsus with mouth parts and then wiping down all joints in legs and antennae. So I scrapped that project because I realized that in many ways they resembled humans and should not be tortured. There are all kinds of bug zappers and the like on the market and they all contribute to death of the natural world. It is a slow way to kill Snipe, Nighthawks and likely Bats; but very effective. So the story goes, someone went to a bat cave in Europe and, without cleaning his shoes, flew to NA and went to a bat cave with European bat shit on his shoes. Sure. And with regard to the origin of Homo sapiens I once saw a man emerge from a cellar. Container ships cross the Atlantic frequently and, once bats get to sleep they are very difficult to wake up (I tried once). I expect bats cross the Atlantic on a regular basis and white nose got established here because our bats were weakened by low insect populations. Yt, DW, Kentville On 4/18/2020 1:52 PM, Fred Schueler wrote: > On 4/18/2020 12:07 PM, Donna Crossland wrote: >> Thanks to Randy for stating what I was thinking also. Don't release >> invasive Asian beetles. They vacuum up nicely, much more easily than >> cluster flies, which are also on my list. Seeing so many of these >> Asian beetles now, I do wonder what impact they are having on native >> insect diversity. There are likely many tragedies in the insect >> world caused by a litany of recently introduced invasive species to >> which we are blissfully unaware. I often wonder what life was like >> before cluster flies. > > * well, of course in Canada, back in the day, east of some mountains > in BC there were no Earthworms to serve as hosts for the Cluster > Flies. The story is told that New York selected a native Ladybird > Beetle as a State Insect, but by the time the process had been > processed, the State Insect was extinct in the state, due to crowding > out by the Asian Ladybirds. > > fred. > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad > Fragile Inheritance Natural History > 'Wildlife on Roads' - > http://doingnaturalhistory.blogspot.ca/2018/03/upcoming-book-wildlife-on-roads-handbook.html > 'Daily' Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/ > 4 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0 > on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W > (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/ > ------------------------------------------------------------ > "Feasting on Conolophus to the conclusion of consanguinity" > - > http://www.lulu.com/shop/frederick-w-schueler/feasting-on-conolophus-to-the-conclusion-of-consanguinity-a-collection-of-darwinian-verses/paperback/product-23517445.html > ------------------------------------------------------------
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