And I'm excited to say we've had about, well over 7000 people registered for this series. That includes those who want to come back and view the recordings.
We've had gardeners and naturalist professionals in the horticulture industry. Lots of folks here to learn about native plants to enhance both what we know about native plants but we can do in the garden and the links those native plants have to, to bio
diversity.
So our first presenter on the series is Dr. Mary Gardner, she's a professor here at OSU in the department of entomology, where she teaches extension grant writing, lots of ecology topics.
So, a large class load but also as a researcher out in the field. You may have heard past webinars when she's talked about her work and vacant lands in vacant properties in Cleveland, looking at weeds, and what enhancements they add to the ecosystem,
and also how adding native plants can enhance that habitat, she's also an author she's written this book, good garden bugs which lots of you have on your bookshelf, learning about those natural enemies those predators that are out there helping to to
balance our pest problems.
So Mary thanks so much for coming in this morning getting us started talking about beneficial insect biodiversity what it is and why it matters. We're so happy to be starting off with you.
Thanks Denise. Hi everyone, this is by far the largest group I've ever had an opportunity to speak to so I'm really excited that this many people care about insect biodiversity and registered for this amazing series that Denise has put together.
Her series have been extremely popular throughout the pandemic and she and her group do an excellent job so I'm sure you're all going to enjoy this full list of speakers that are going to be following me so I get to kick off the series and what I'm going
to do today is talk to you about sort of generally what is beneficial insect biodiversity, what are some of the insights that we might want around our landscape.
And then I'm going to hit on just some broad strategies that you can use to support those insects in your home environment, and then subsequent speakers will go into more detail about how to design and implement these strategies to support bio diversity
at home. So I'm really excited to be able to kick things off today. I did notice a few of you raised your hands as Denise was doing her introduction if you do have questions, use the q amp a box because there's so many of you, I can't see who's raising
their hand and things. So questions come up during my presentation just go ahead and use that q amp a box and then as Denise mentioned will go through some of those questions at the end.
So, thank you very much also give out my email. If you want to connect with me that way at the end of the presentation.
Ok so now I'm going to do the fun zoom thing of trying to share my PowerPoint and hope that that works correctly.
Right, so it should be just one more step to duplicate it. All right.
Okay, so everybody should see my title slide here on beneficial insect biodiversity What is it and why it matters.
Mary I'm not seeing it more Oh dear. Okay.
Well, no, not seen it yet, Denise.
I did the shares, let me to open it again maybe
share screen.
Are you seeing it now.
I am not seeing it now.
It's not are you a pantomime Mary. Not good, not good.
Um, I hold on a second,
share screen. That's why some people are saying they stop for a second. Oh there it is there yep I see.
That's awesome.
So are you seeing the full screen one or the one with the notes, full screen big spike Okay. Very cool. Alright great so now we can get going, um, thank you for telling me that you couldn't see it.
I just need to hide this video panel.
Okay.
Great.
So
first I want to tell you a tiny bit about myself. For those that don't know me, I am a professor in entomology department as Denise mentioned in the majority of my appointment is doing research so I get to work with a great group of graduate students,
and we study beneficial insects in residential landscapes and vacant lots so urban environments.
We're very interested in the opportunities that these landscapes can provide for conserving insect fatness. And so we think about ways to design and manage them to support those goals.
We also think about more broad residential and urban landscapes, you know, how should habitats be connected and preserve together to maintain the types of habitat insects need.
And we think about some of the struggles insects might face in cities like encountering pollution and things like this that might harm them and how we can try to mitigate those impacts.
I also do a lot of extension work. So I provide programs like this I also, when we are able to I visit groups and give live presentations. I work with Master Gardeners home gardeners for each groups, things like that I've done a lot of publications and
things along those lines and I'm also very interested in community science and have run several programs tracking native insects, over the years, and I do get to teach our grad students here at Ohio State I teach classes in ecology and grant writing and
presentation skills, and I really thought about maybe putting together a webinar about presentation skills for the general public as well so people that might want to take some of my beneficial insect content for instance and provide that to their garden
group. So, let me know if you would be interested in something like that because it's something I've been thinking about doing in the future. So I get to do all that, as well.
But today we're here to learn about beneficial insects and so that's going to be the focus of my presentation, just the broad diversity of species that we find in a residential landscape that are considered beneficial.
So, just to start at the beginning what is biodiversity, so biodiversity is the biological variety of life on Earth, and it can be measured in several ways and those include genetic diversity species diversity, or even the diversity of ecosystems that
might occur across the landscape.
So there's a lot of ways that you can define the richness of fauna that you might find or the richness of habitats that you might find and all of those contribute to our Global Diversity and insects are huge component of this biodiversity over half of
describe species are insects, and so these things are everywhere, and they were very very critical to life on Earth.
So why are insects important. Well, many reasons, these insects provide many important ecological functions that we need for a healthy environment. They cycle nutrients, as de composers, and they also are integral roles of food web.
They are pray for many animals so they provide food for wildlife.
And they also prey on many types of other animals mostly insects and other invertebrates, and in this way they act as a top down regulator of those herbivorous and other insects in the environment.
They're also pollinators and so they pollinate our plants and those plants pollinator interactions are obviously critical for the success of our many of our plant life on earth.
And in many cases and doing their jobs within ecosystems these insects benefit humans. And when those roles the insects play in an environment benefit us either economically, or culturally, or in other ways.
These are considered economic ecosystem services and examples of ecosystem services include one a predator insect happens to feed on a pest that we do not desire in our landscape.
For instance, this flower was here is seeking out grubs in the soil and she will layer egg on those drugs, which will then eat the groves killing them so when insects hunt for pests that we do not desire in a landscape.
This is called biological control and it reduces the need for other chemical inputs that someone might use to control pests like a grub.
When insects happen to pollinate plants that are our crops that benefits benefits us immensely. In fact insects pollinate 75% of crop plants and this is a bee pollinating pumpkin flower here.
Insects also build healthy soils and one of the most adorable ways they do that are these dung beetles that break down the newer piles and incorporate new we're back into the soil and I'm going to talk about each of these scenarios throughout the presentation.
So in today's top, what are we going to talk about what we're going to talk about these three main groups of insects that provide beneficial ecosystem services in our residential landscapes.
These are predators pollinators and de composers and they all are important components of that insect biodiversity. And then at the end of the presentation I'm going to talk about how to conserve these insects at home.
What are some strategies that you can use.
So first off I want to talk about deep composers. So what are the composers. These are insects that feed on dead or dying plant tissues, so this could be leaves garden waste tree limbs or what do you debris.
They're also insects that feed on other dead animals or carrion and insects that feed on excrement or maneuver of other animals. So you can see why I chose the leaf picture for this slide, but we're going to talk about each of these groups.
So first insects that feed on many soil and Woody dwelling insects feed on leaves and down woody debris like branches or dad standing or fallen trees.
And these insects and other invertebrates break down this leaf material and Woody material and they incorporate that material into the soil, and that creates the humerus layer of nutrients and the top of the soil, which has been further broken down by
micro organisms, and that releases nutrients and minerals carbon, nitrogen, into the, into the soil that is able to be taken up by plant life.
And so this nutrient cycling is absolutely critical for a healthy soil environment and healthy plant community. And there are many invertebrates that perform this critical function.
And these include things like ants fly larvae. This is a crane fly larva and the soil mites the soil has so many mites if you ever able to look at a sample of soil under a microscope, it's amazing.
And also spring tails which are absolutely adorable soil insects that breaks down leaves and other decaying plant material, some of them look like little pounds, and they're called spring tails because they have this, we're going to call the formula on
their back that allows them to dump around, soil.
They're all also many insect de composers that feed on carrion so when a dead body occurs, you know, an animal dies in a forest carrion insects respond.
And they respond in a particular order with low flies arriving first and then on several road Beatles like this die and then carrion Beatles like this one, and they break down the carcass rapidly, and again, all of that nutrients then from that animal
is being broken down added back incorporated into the soil. It's a dead animal, you know just sitting there slowly rotting away by microbes alone. This happens really rapidly, and some insects will also bury the carcass itself bearing beetles males and
females will find a small carcass, say, a dead field mouse, for instance, They will bury that carcass, and they will then make a small bit Barone your Bible, they will lay their eggs, and then both the male and female will consume the carcass and feed
it to their offspring, which incorporates the carcass into the soil and also produces the next generation of Baron beetles and this is a very beautiful feeding it's larva here.
There are some very rare species of these bearing beetles and several active programs, underway to try to save them and increase their abundance across the US,
many composers also attack.
newer piles and break them down. So, this includes things like manure flies and dung beetles.
Adults are attracted to the manure pile, they lay their eggs on the manure pile, or in the case of dung beetles they will break the manure pile apart.
Go and make a small hole and then bury the newer ball within that hole and lay their eggs on it so again breaking up and distributing them newer putting the nutrients in the newer back into the soil and incorporating it, this is a really critical function
that these insects provide. They also have preferences, so certain insects will only attack common or file for their eggs and other ones might attack horseman were so low.
So there's a lot of diversity in the types of manure that attracts a different species of these the composer's.
There are also many insects that act as predators within a environment predators are insects that actively hunt for their own pray.
Many insect creditors are generalists, that means they'll attack many different types of other insects or other pray that they might find and insects also have a lot of different hunting strategy.
For instance, a praying mantis uses visual cues quite a bit in its hunting, whereas this little larva here is a fly maggot that's completely Eilis, and it relies on vibrational stimuli to find its prey.
Here is a Jumping Spider and again you can see that it has very large eyes, and it does rely on visual cues and also vibrational cues and a Daddy Long Legs here, that is an active hunter hunts at night so it's a nocturnal predator, and will forage for
prey at night so not using visual cues in this case. So they really very in the timing of when they're looking for pray, if they're sitting wait predator like a praying mantis or active hunting species.
There's many different strategies, and by cultivating a high bio diversity of these predators, you're able to control a large number of different types of pests, you might have been a landscape because these insects are going at another invertebrates
going to look for different types of prey they're going to find different types of breed based on their flinching strategy. So I just wanted to talk about a few of the very cool groups that are very common in backyard gardens that you guys might encounter.
And one group are the true bugs, the true bugs are predators that use a piercing sucking geek to attack their prey. So these insects will pierce their prey, and then in just the content, the liquid content and will be left is sort of a shriveled carcass.
And one of the most prolific true bugs that attacked garden pest is the minute pirate bug, it's a very small but 16th of an inch black and white insect.
This is it's a mature stage both of these are predatory.
Another common one is the damsel bog it's about a quarter inch long it has these reportorial front legs and piercing the to grab its prey.
And this is the two spotted stink bug. The two spotted stink bug, many, you know, we all know the brown Mark rated stink bug is a past in the US, many parts of the world but there are some predatory stink bugs.
This particular one is Colorado potato beetles. The larvae and ends, and has a brightly colored outline so if you find this if you grow potatoes in your farm and you find these they're doing good, and they're not something to remove.
Another important verbal creditors are the lace wings, these are really beautiful net veined insects. They have a long green light swing has a long green body they're about an inch long.
This is their life cycle, they have eggs that appear on little stocks, those eggs hatch into these alligator like larvae and these larvae attack aphids and you can see this one here in this patch of aphids they use their piercing Daus to pierce the aphid
and adjust the contents lace wings are also cool because some species of a swing are naked, like the sky, and some are called debris carrying, and he's debris carrying lace swing larvae look exactly like the naked one except for they also have this ball
of fluff and dead bodies of their prey and plant material that they pile on top of themselves, so that they can conceal themselves from would be predators like a bird or larger insect.
Our next group our ground beetles if you have a grout a garden that has tilled soil that's open you have a very good chance of seeing one of these. And when the sun hits your soil if you see the shiny beetle running fast across your soil, very likely
to have seen a ground beetle. These are usually either shiny black or metallic. They're called ground beetles because they're most often found in mulch or on the soil surface but they will some species will climb plant material to you can see this hunting
species on tree bark. These eat a variety of different caterpillars many of which are passed. They also feed on snails and slugs certain species.
So a number of different prey.
Another common group of insect predators are the lady beetles, there's a number of different species of Lady beetles, that you can find in a backyard garden, they're not all red and black summer different colors as you can see here, the adults are predators
of aphids scales or white flies depending on the species, and the larvae will feed on the same way as the adults of their species, the larvae, similar to the lacing larvae look kind of like a little alligator and so sometimes it's hard to identify the
immature stages of these of these different insects so I like to try to include pictures of both.
Another important group of predators are flies so oftentimes people don't think of flies as being part of beneficial biodiversity you know everyone gets annoyed with fruit flies or house flies but there are many flies that provide important functions
in the environment and one of those are the hover surfeit flies. This is a group of flies are predatory as larvae and their pollinators as adults, so they check multiple boxes on, they often mimic bees and wasps, so you can see this guy kind of looks
like a honeybee.
And this one looks a bit like a shiny wasp, but these are both flies, you can tell they're flies because they only have two wings instead of four, and they're very large eyes.
So you can see here these big eyes connecting across the head. So sometimes you have to do a double take when you're in the garden and see if what you're looking at is really what you think you're looking at.
These are the larvae of the species, the larvae look like little slugs. If you see these little slugs within patches of aphids.
They're doing you good, they're going to be consuming the aphids.
You can see these little shriveled things on the side of this one. Those are dead aphids and Same here. So you'll notice sometimes some browning or like kind of material around them that's ones that it's already eaten so if you leave these alone in the
patch, they will continue to consume the aphids in some cases when people see these they think they might have to pass on a plant and be fit and another past wasps.
People don't often think of wasps is beneficial but they're incredibly important predators and many different kinds of insects important roles in food web.
They don't always eat insects we think of as tests, but they are doing some really cool things that we might not notice that first so it's important to know what they're doing out there.
So there are many types of wasps that are solitary that each female makes her own nest and provision it with.
So for instance, this is a mud Arbor it's making this mud nest, the mud job or vision this nest with spiders.
The spider was also attack spiders. It paralyzes the spider and then drags the paralyzed spider to its burrow takes the spider down in the borough, and then lays eggs on it and it's larvae, eat the paralyzed spider so if you don't like spiders, you might
like these flaws, even though spiders are beneficial. So some people have seen if you've ever seen a wasp dragging a spider across the sidewalk or something that's what's going on.
This is a cut worm was cut worms are really significant pest insect. And this does the same thing as a spider was but with Cutler's. This is the flower wasp I mentioned earlier this guy will find or girl will find grubs white grubs like Japanese beetle
This is the flower wasp I mentioned earlier this guy will find or girl will find grubs white grubs like Japanese beetle larvae in the soil of turf, and its larvae consume nose.
And this is the potter was it makes you super cute pots, out of mud on plant material. There's a hole just big enough for it to stuff in cup.
inch warm larvae into that pot. And then she will turn around and lay an egg in the pot before sealing off. So, I found a few of these over the years that are hard to find sometimes but they're very cool so be on the lookout for those spiders spiders
are something that a lot of people are afraid of but really there's no reason to be afraid of spiders are really not out to get you. They're trying to find prey to reproduce and to survive the season so spiders provide a huge amount of pest control and
natural environments as well as residential landscapes. There's a huge diversity of spiders and when you see them out up close, they're actually can be very pretty.
This is an example of an orb leaving spiders so many spiders will build a web that well we'll catch all kinds of break right at the spider eats and other afraid that it kind of doesn't care about like tiny little niches and things like that, it's still
taking those insects, if they're passed out of the environment like something like mosquitoes, for instance, not all spiders build web, some of them are active winters.
An example is a wolf spider wolf spiders are incredibly important predators in agricultural environments, including home gardens. They're also very common in those environments.
Will spiders can be identified by being large typically gray and black occurring on the soil, but if you find a female and she has her exec they're really easy to identify because the females carry that exec on their abdomen.
It's a type of parental care, and then that goes even further because when the spiders hatch, they ride on the mother spider until they get to a certain life stage and size, and then they disperse and this reduces other spiders and insects preying on
these very small spider links.
Usually if people can't stand spiders, I can maybe convert them with a Jumping Spider it's probably considered the cutest spider you might have seen the peacock spider on Facebook before.
These are called the Jumping Spider because they pounce on their prey. So they use their very large eyes to detect an insect pray, and then they will jump, and they attach a silk thread to the plant material they jump from so that they if they missed
or something they can climb back up.
something they can climb back up. And this particular one if I did this has these amazing jaws that have this on metallic crab spiders are also very interesting predators. You can tell where they get the name right they look like a little crab, they are
sitting wait spider predator, so they will sit on a plant with their big legs on the front held out, and when something comes close, they will grab it with the legs.
So some of these hunt and soil, some of them hunt on flowers. Some of the ones that hot on flowers can change color to match the flower. So, these fighters are doing a lot of cool things out in our backyard.
In addition of predators they're also parasitoid insects parasitoid insects, different from predators and that they don't actively hunt down their prey themselves.
So in the case of Paris the toys, the adult female will find the pray for her offspring.
And instead of being a generalist like we're most predators species will eat, maybe a few to like many different types of prey. Most peers, towards are highly specialized so that female will look for one type or a small number of types of prey.
And that is where she will lay her eggs for offspring, and a parasitoid lifestyle is most common within the wasp and fly groups of insects.
And so I wanted to give some examples of some that you might look for. So within the flies that to Canada fly family is huge. There are thousands of species of these.
And each species, as I said will find a particular type of prey.
They all look sort of different, but in general two kids tend to be kind of recently flies you can see here, you know they have these really significant bristles.
I wanted to focus on this particular one, it's really kind of a cool one and attacks, a major path. This is called the feather LED light has an orange abdomen and it has a significant setup bristles on its back leg, this insect eats the squash bug, the
squash bug is a major past of permits so if you grow things like cucumbers or squash in your garden. You really want to find this parasitoid fly.
And this drawing is an illustration of its life cycle so what happens is the adult female will look for the squash bugs. She will get on top of the squash bugs and lay her eggs on it.
Her larvae will burrow inside the squash bugs. They will kill the squash bugs, eat it. And then when they are ready to pick up they come out through the back end of the squash bugs and make a cocoon in the soil.
So within a cubit patch, all of this activity is happening.
And these are actively reducing squash bug.
Another important to Canada is this species here, that is coming out of a cucumber beetles so another big piece of squash and pumpkins and things. This one just like the squash bugs can fly will eat the inside of the cucumber beetle.
And then when it goes to make its cocoon it pops the head off the cucumber beetle and emerges and makes it a cocoon so this is actually a cocoon we took this picture in a petri dish we had this one in a dish, and that the head has been decapitated off
the cucumber.
In addition to fly Paris the toys, there are many Wharf Pearson toys flies do not have an over positive where they're able to lay an egg inside of a prey so they lay it on the prey.
But wasp pierce the toys are able to actually stay up past for other insect and lay their eggs inside of it.
If you've ever been in a garden and seen a was where you can visually see what you think is it stinger. That last cannot sting you lost that can sting you have a tiny stinger.
That You Might you would not see the actual Stinger on the end of their app and and they would have a pointy abdomen that you would see but you would not see along you know skinny thing coming out of that if you can see that it's a type of Paris.
And that Stinger that Stinger that you see really isn't a stinger. It's their Overpass.
And the point of that organ is to allow the wasp to sting it's post and put it eggs inside of a toast, and they cannot stay with us with that over cluster, which is a good thing.
When you see ones like this one, which is a large economic loss. And this entire structure is its giant over positive, and this was itself with the deposit or is more than three inches long, and you may have seen these.
They do occur in cities and in residential landscapes. This is a picture you can see this is my dad's old suburban several years ago I took this picture.
In his driveway my parents lived in a small town. This is one of their trees the tree had a bunch of soft fly larvae inside of it and what's happening here is this female has stung the tree, she's able to actually use that over positive to go inside the
tree and lay her eggs inside those soft fly larvae.
And just like I showed in the drawing of the squash bugs. The this offspring of this loss will kill those has, and then eventually emerged from that tree.
Now not all was Paris's words are huge like this in fact the majority of the honor is tiny like the size of a lake of pepper.
And this is an example of one of the tiny species. This was is attacking an aphid and all there is a lot of different species of parasitoid wasps that do attack a fun pests.
This is a drawing of the life cycle here so here's the female she's able to turn her abs and then like a sword underneath her and then sting the eighth and she lays an egg, egg develops kills the aphid.
The egg develops kills the aphid. And then the last batch she picks in the when they construct this pupil cocoon inside the dead eight the agents will turn either brown or black, and these are called even mummies, so this Ethan is dead and stuff to the
plant and the last is inside of it in this picture, and sometimes when you look at a patch of eight that's on your plant you'll see that some of them are brown and black and some of them are green and look healthy and what's happened there is that a wasp
has come through and stung some of those and some of them probably also are have been attacked but they just haven't turned into mummies yet so it's a good idea to leave that patch alone because wasps will be emerging from that patch and then attacking
other agents in the area.
wasps don't only attack aphids the attack, all kinds of different insects some that are past some that aren't past. Here's an example of a caterpillar that has cocoons on it so in some cases because this is a big caterpillar.
The Wasp was able to lay several eggs within the caterpillar. And then those eggs emerged as cocoons and made their cocoons of the larvae emergent and made their cocoons on the caterpillar.
And in tomatoes tomato horn worm caterpillars are attacked by a recounted wasp parasitoid and sometimes you can find one like this that has cocoons all over it and if you find that just leave it in the, in the garden, that's not going to be doing any
more damage to your plants and those wasps will emerge and if you have other caterpillars they will find them and tech.
So in addition to all of these creepy predators and parasitoid they're doing all kinds of stuff at our landscape. We also benefit from the work of bees and other pollinators, but I'm going to focus on briefly on some social and solitary beads today just
to show some diversity.
So, what RB is doing our embark well both males and female bees feed on Necker plant nectar, but female bees also collect pollen is food from their offspring.
So these are not out there trying to help us out by pollinating plants, they're not trying to to benefit humans, they're trying to collect food for their own survival, their offspring.
And in the process of this, they accidentally transfer large quantities of pollen between flowers and so what you're seeing here are bees, absolutely covered with pollen working to collect resource.
So there are many many species of bees are in the US in fact just in Ohio, we have 500 species of beings.
Most of those are solitary.
A few of those are social beings, but people tend to know the social bees more so for example a honeybee is a social be bumble bees are also social feeds, social bees live in colonies, and they work together to make one nest and provision it.
And there's usually one Queen, and then many female workers that construct provision and defend that nest.
And this is an example of a social Venus, this is a bumblebee nest. And you can see that there are many many workers tending the nest, you can see this great big one in the middle, that's the queen.
And she is laying eggs and the workers are caring for those offspring. These close cells are cocoons where these are developing into adults from qp, and some of these open cells on the edges are called honey pots and that's where the workers that are
going out into the environment and bringing back pollen and nectar are storing it and then they use that to feed the larvae.
So in Ohio, we have a few species of bumble bees. And of course, you know people cultivate honey bees. But we have hundreds of species as well of solitary bees which I feel like our little bit less known.
So in solitary bees instead of a bunch of individuals working together here, females construct and provision their own mass without the help of other members of the species, and this represents 90% of North America as a species.
So here, one female will make a nest for example in the soil, and she will put up the tunnel and make a nest area, put pollen and nectar ball in that nest area and lay an egg that let egg will develop into a larva, which will then pupate and emerged as
adults.
Usually this entire process takes about a year but we only see the adult usually for a short period, maybe a few weeks.
These guys nest and all sorts of different ways they can nest and cavities, like fissures and tree bark or even houses that we might put out for them.
They can nest in the soil in wood entities stem.
As this is a cut away showing a nest in wood and also in the soil.
So, how do these move around how far will they go for food well it varies.
Some species of small bees, move much, not very far away from a single yard. So what you individually might do could make it or break it for some species of bees which is really amazing to think about others can travel miles so large carpenter bees like
this guy, be able to go more than a mile medium sized these maybe 500 yards, small bees maybe 200 yards and there's a big diversity and besides so here's the head of a large fee, and then a tiny be on a title, so we're talking about a lot of variation
here as well.
So what are some common type.
Well one type that you might see in your guard our sweat bees.
What bees are soil nesting, and here is what their, their nest looks like in terms.
They're called sweat bees because they are attracted to sweat and many of them are metallic they carry their pollen on their legs. Some of them are more rusty color.
These are very common in gardens.
Other common species are the leaf cutter and mason bees mason bees make their nest in tunnels and their nest cavities are separated by mud and leaf cutter bees use leaf material to make their nest they have these large Jaws, they're able to cut pieces
of leaves, take it back to a cavity and use that to construct individual illness cells and carpenter bees. So the large carpenter bees, like this guy and this guy, they'll burrow right into wood.
And they will are, they are large, but they are very gentle creatures people are often afraid of them but they are not at all aggressive.
Sometimes they'll nest in the same area and mothers and daughters tend to go back to the same site, as, as their mothers as where they were, where they grew up.
And so, you tend if you have them you tend to have them, year after year.
There are also small carpenter bees that nest and Pippi stems. So think about like raspberry stems or some mint species where the inside is sort of loose almost like a styrofoam plant material.
These can dig that material out. um so things like blackberry elderberry Box Elder all have these to be stems.
These are often mistaken for wasps they are really small and shiny.
So what do we do to help all of these different creatures that are providing these important ecosystem functions in our landscape.
We clearly designer landscape to be beautiful at for us, which is great, but there are ways to do that. That also help the environment. And I think that's what is really important to focus on it's not an in either here or there type of situation, we can
do both with our landscape, so it can be beautiful and colorful and functional and also environmentally sound, and the ways to do that are first and foremost, avoid applying pesticides.
So whether you're thinking about helping the bees or you want to encourage insects that will reduce pass in your garden, whatever types of insects you're looking to conserve.
You don't want to apply pesticides pesticides or that you have access to big box stores and hardware stores are mostly bought broad spectrum, even if it has a picture of a spider on the label, it's probably going to kill a large number of different types
of insects. And so this is really important to avoid.
Beyond that, it's important to think about what sort of resources is my yard providing, do I have season long food for the different insects I want to support things like flowers, leaves compost.
Are there places for things to nest, are there places that are protective that things can survive the winter, and is there water.
So insects have kind of the same basic needs as many types of them.
So how do we do this well the first thing is to decide, you know, well what do I plan, you know, the good news is, is there's a million different ways that you can provide resources that are going to support insects so you can think of static Lee about
what types of plants you might like and choose within that some plants that insects will also like the most important things or to provide food and shelter across the season.
So think especially about fall and spring blooming species I know in my landscape I always have containers of salvia because it blooms in October, and it will be absolutely covered with beads in October, because there's barely anything blue.
And so I think that's a really important. Easy annual that I can add in my landscape. Same thing with New England Astre which is a native plant that was late in the season, that's covered.
So there is an example of a non native container plant and a native plant, both are important for different types of insects late in the season so think about those endpoints garden for a diversity of colors and shapes of flowers, the more you do that
the more you're likely to provide habitat and resources for a large number of different insects with different types of mouth parts things with really long for old tubes for instance can't be can't be accessed by predator insects that also feed on nectar
that have really small mouth parts.
Experiment with native plants Denise has a great lineup of speakers that are going to tell you all about the benefits of native plants.
That's an exciting option also thinking about annuals and perennials combinations can be really beneficial because animals are inexpensive and they have prolific nectar and pollen.
But do note that some species are hybrids and do not produce resources so for instance in this lovely hanging basket. this sweet Alyssa is a great plan because many predators and parasitoid will use it as an actor resource when they can't find right.
But these petunias will pretty, do not provide much of any resources, so it's good to have a combination of flowers like this because you're more likely to include some that are beneficial for insects.
I think it's really important to explore the inclusion of native perennials, even if you have a very small landscape, and any size you can include some type of pocket prairie or tiny planting of these plants.
They are incredibly attractive to be predators and parasitoid insects, they will be covered with beneficial insects. Also, many of these plants are rare, and they provide some for birds and many other benefits that dog will be talking about next time.
Their host's plans for butterflies and other insects, and as I said their food.
While.
So within the native plant realm, man. You can find a lot of different plants depending on where you live. And the best thing to do is to go to a local garden center see what they have talked to some experts.
providing a lot of diversity and really experimenting go out into your garden. See what types of insects are using your plants as habitat, who's feeding where, and then go grow your garden from there well last year you know I had a lot of BS using this
type of plan I'm going to get a second one of those this year.
I wanted to just show an example of how small this can be so even in like a small patch this is maybe three feet by five feet. I've got six or seven types of native plants here and this in the summer is absolutely covered with butterflies and bees and
predatory insects.
These in my area, our native plants are mostly prairie plants so you do have to be aware that they can get very tall and bushy, but that's the aesthetic you know it's a natural looking garden and I personally think it's really beautiful.
And you know, just don't expect everything to be like very tight little bushes because that's not how it's going to look.
But that's not how it should look right it's a prairie planting.
You can also provide a lot of benefits by including ornamental non native plants, so not everything has to be native to provide resources.
You may already have some of these plants in your landscape and certainly they can be very helpful for biodiversity.
But there's a ton of variation. So for instance, in this picture, I have two types of
my gosh I'm blanking on the name, plants, not begonias.
Um,
anyway, doesn't matter delegates. Good grief. Okay, so we have a single Dahlia and the foreground. And you can see if you look in this picture in the close up, you can see the reproductive parts of the flower.
And then I have a triple in the background.
The single is a great plant for insects, they can access the resources they can get the pollen and nectar. When plants are bred to be doubles and triples, the resources that they have diminished or or or removed, and so those are not very valuable.
Same thing with roses old varieties, where you can see the reproductive parts, great plant for insects doubles and triples really are not going to be used.
So look for those old varieties heirloom varieties is another word.
Same thing with like hollyhocks.
So, any flower that comes in doubles and triples look for that singles. Another cool thing to look for our extra floral nectarines, so some of our insects like wasps and ladybugs flies.
They need nectar to nectar is energy nectar is sugar but they can't get down into the flowers they don't have a long tongue like a bee has and extra floral nectarines are just areas of the plant where they produce nectar outside the flowers and plants
do this actually to attract these predators to their plant to protect them from pest. So you might find these nectarines on stems or at the basis of flowers or on leaves.
And what's happening here is a little lost because found this nectar at the base of this batch of flour. This is the back of a leaf in this little dark indentation is an extra floral nectarines so there are many plant families that do this on, if you
google extra floral nectarines you can get lists the plan to do this but these are just some common examples there's many types of trees and shrubs, you might include in your garden or landscape that provide these resources peonies are an example When
have you ever seen damage to a very rarely.
It's because the produce extra, extra floral nectarines and attack attract ants and those ants protect the peony from any damage.
Some plants, even go so far as to make little drinking fountains for their neck surgeries and so I just had to include this because it's so cute. Here are two insects feeding from extra floral neck three cups on plants.
We can also incorporate as I mentioned, animal plants into our landscapes, you don't have to have a big space to provide resources.
Here's an example of the salvia that I was talking about that was late into this season incorporated with some other plants. Another great plant is this land Tana really easy to grow provides resources all year long.
Other ones I've had good success with our fear in terms of easy to grow and also provide resources. When you're at the garden center and other good strategies to look for those be and butterfly signs, if it helps bees and butterflies probably a lot of
other insects will visit it.
insects will visit it. We also really need to rethink lawns as a habitat I know a lot of people will do all sorts of work to create these really nice wildlife garden beds, and then they use weed and feed on their grass on, you are adding chemicals to
your lawn, potentially harming insects that feed their or live in that soil. And also, removing what could be a very easy resource.
If you don't have a lot of funds to invest in a garden right away don't discount your ability to support beneficial insects because the clovers and other weedy plants that grow in grass are incredibly important resources for insects, especially in the
early spring when there's not a lot out there if you've heard of the low, no mo may campaign.
things are going to shelter and spend the winter. Um, if you had to live outside as an insect would this be an easy habitat to survive the winter.
No there's nowhere to go to escape the elements on a day like it is today in many parts of the US.
So what do we want to do what we want to incorporate shelters nooks and crannies cavities places for things to burrow in, and you know reproduce the next generation and spend the winter.
This can be very ornate or it can be as simple as a compost pile incorporating some rocks and stones in your garden and not removing all of the leaf material all of the sticks, all of the habitat.
I'm really thinking about how can I make my home more of a natural environment and still have the aesthetics that I want is I think a really fun goal to focus on in our landscaping
also thinking about be habitat specifically people do often add these be hotels, which can vary from tiny to very elaborate. These are used actually by bees.
So these can be a fun way, especially if you have us around the house to observe bees and action, leaving some cut cut the stems, is another way to encourage some species.
And if you do see these nesting in the soil sometimes people email me and say what should I spray you know I see something burrowing in the soil know if they've found a lot of these bees have really specific soil that they like, if you happen to be lucky
enough to have that soil. Leave that space alone. They like it the way it is more may calm and nest in that area.
Water we also sometimes forget you know insects need something to drink if they get hot just like we get hot incorporating some element of water in your landscape is really important.
It could be a small pond, it could be a fountain but it could also be really simple.
Take a water trivet from under a pot put stones inside and add a tiny bit of water every morning when you go out to water. That'll provide a great insect.
The birdbath for insects, for them to for it for water.
All right, well somehow I did that in an hour. I covered a ton of of information. I hope that it was informative for you guys. I want to thank Denise for putting together this series.
I want to thank everybody, I'm amazed and so excited about the turnout that this many people wanted to learn about inset biodiversity. After a second here I'll take questions from the chat.
And also, this is my email address at Ohio State University. If you want to get in touch with me to ask any further questions, so I'll give everybody a second to for that.
Thank you very much.
Great Mary Thank you so much, always a wonderful session I love the images and all the practical ideas to folks were right about at the top of the hour so if you have to leave your, a lot of you are doing what I was going to ask you, please put a thank
you into the chat box for Mary and all of her great information today. And if she's a, she would appreciate that. We have a lot of questions we won't get through all the questions, but I've kind of group, some together.
But Mary the kind of a the sentiment that really rose to the top is how much interest there is in your offer to do a workshop on presentation skills. So that's good.
Yeah, so you cooperate that in the future. Absolutely. You and I will put our schedules and our heads together and come up with something and open it to folks so since you were registered for this program will let everyone know when when we will pull
something together so lots and lots of thumbs up on that idea.
So married. This is your fault. We've got lots of dumb questions because you started with Doug.
And so, which I know like the least about so well you can always pass on questions from the the mundane to the bizarre.
So whose manure are these dung beetles, eating Do we know.
So there are dung beetle the all sorts of dog, there is an elephant so everyone should google elephant dung beetle.
There is a large dung beetle that eats elephant dung.
There also, we do have dung beetles in the United States, they're much smaller on but most kinds of dung have some types of beetles that will feed, either in it or they will ball it and carry a weight not all dung beetles, not all beetles are done that
feed on dung or dung beetle they don't all make the little balls and bury it, some of them actually feed within the manure pile and break it down that way.
Um, but yes there are many types and they do have preferences.
And they detect the older and the older attracts them to the dump file.
And this is important because we need you know if you if you live on a cattle farm you know how much dog can be produced, and you would not want that to just sit in the field right we want it to be decompose for the, you know, nutrients in the DOM, that's,
you know, manure that can be incorporated in the soil.
So these are very important.
So I think a related question that does not folks get you off the hook of cleaning up your yard with dog doo doo folks wanted to know which which dung beetle will come and feed on the dog waste and I'm not sure you can just leave it there and home now.
I don't First of all, I don't think that there are many.
If any that specialize in dog.
You're still going to have to pick it up, unfortunately.
Okay, that's all the done for now.
There were lots, I tried to group, some themes together so there were lots of questions about who eats fill in the blank. And so a lot of the questions were about some of our really difficult pest problems, who eat stink bugs who eats cucumber Beatles
viburnum leaf beetles Japanese beetles. Are there any kind of overarching comments or themes you can offer to dealing with some of our big pest problems.
Well, so all of those insects that are not a ton of things that you stink bug adults but there are many things that you stink bug ads.
So if you think about a single adults pretty big, very hard and smells bad, like I wouldn't want to eat it, and a lot of other things don't want to eat it, but the eggs are consumed by number of different predators and also some, there are some Paris
including some that have been released to attack the stink bug I believe that's not an area that I focus on myself. Japanese beetles. I mentioned the flower was that attacks the larval stage, the Japanese beetle larvae are white grubs was big grubs you
might dig out of the garden.
There are some things that attack those.
But many things don't eat the adults the adults are pretty large, and they're, you know, pretty hard so they're, they're harder to eat but birds will eat them some larger animals might need them.
So really depends. And, you know, with some of these invasive insects like Burnham leaf beetle and Japanese beetle it can be hard, you know, because they can be so abundant that unfortunately that their presence is so they're so abundant that you're not
getting a total control by insect predators. So it's hard sometimes to know the value of the insect predators yourself when you're still seeing so many but but these are providing a lot of pest control nonetheless.
And so sometimes we have to take other types of controls and added on for instance you know with Japanese beetles. I tend to cut and collect as many, especially as my containers and things I want to look a certain way, I'll do a lot of collections of
The Beatles on a daily basis which is very time consuming but I just can't stand them. so I do that in addition to the predators, being out there.
Several people commented about monarch butterflies and noticing some parasitoid on the larvae or eggs being eaten I wonder if you can talk a little bit about monarch.
Yeah, so, a lot of us are getting into monarch conservation which is so important. I know I have a lot of mouth lead in my yard and last year I was able to take a really cool video during flyover up like 40 monarch speeding on my New England asters that
I put in my yard to help with when they're going south.
Um, and so, I'll tell a story about my husband because I think that this relates to why we all notice all these things, so he is not an entomologist but he's gotten super into monitoring like each Caterpillar so he's out there looking at every egg and
if a caterpillar disappears he gets super upset.
If we put the same effort into watching every insect we would notice that all insects have some level of parasitism some level of predation of their larvae.
And that is part of a healthy environment, right, that we have all of these different insects feeding on one another in a balanced way. So not every Monarch caterpillars going to be eaten but some will be eaten.
So you will notice some mortality, that is normal.
If you're watching them closely.
If you're concerned about things eating the caterpillars I have heard of people actually netting areas.
I've never done this, I just kind of let them, let them live in the mouth weed and I always have a lot of cocoons that you know when I have colonization.
But if you're having like extreme difficulty there are people that specialize in monarch community science programs, I'm sure could provide you know really good guidance on that but I think a lot of it is that we're just paying a lot more attention, and
then we're seeing, you know, eggs disappearing and things that are is a normal part of a web in a backyard.
Those orange oleander aphids came up. If we're talking about monarchs and milk lead so this, you know, colorful aphid that is often on our milk lead stones, any comments on those son who might be eating them are kind of aphids in general.
I don't think a lot of things, eat those aphids because they sequester the mouth lead secondary plant chemicals, but I get a ton of questions about whether if they harm the larvae of the monarch and actually looked into this because I got a question about
about it in a previous webinar, and there was a paper that actually found the do not reduce the nutritional quality of the plant for the larvae, so I don't think they're a problem, they what I tend to do.
I like my mouth week to re sprout a few times during the season because the younger leaves are better for caterpillars consumption and tend to attract the adults to lay eggs they like to lay eggs on the newer foliage.
So I'll cut back, especially if I get a large infestation on the eighth it's all chopped mindmeld weed and it will re sprout, you know, mid season with a lot of new foliage.
And I found that that's a good way to control the eighth and so they don't get totally out of control, and also provide that new foliage.
And when you were in Michigan you were in Doug Landis's lab is that right or you work with him Yeah, um, because he has some great research about the egg predation on milk weed and we just what you said kind of cutting back and allowing it to re flush
to, to avoid some of that and prediction on eggs.
And that's actually where I learned, who I learned to cut back the mountain from so he has a lot of good extension materials about how you should manage your Melfi if people are interested.
There were questions about Lady Bird beetles and how, some are good, some are bad summer native summer not, how can we foster them any special plants that we can grow.
So that could be a whole webinar.
So, most, a lot of my research actually focuses on that so you're interested in that, feel free to contact me and we can talk ladybugs in more detail but just really briefly native and exotic lady beetles have extreme niche overlap, which means that they
feed on the same stuff they live in the same places. And so they're competing with one another. and unfortunately because of that, because we have exotic species that are less resources for native species who now have to compete with those exotic species
and as a result, many of our native species have become rare. And there's a lot of interest in conserving them.
Some of the best ways that you can start conserve them are some of the things I talked about increasing the amount of habitat is going to provide habitat for both native and non native ladybugs reducing pesticide use is going to provide more food for
them, and more. How to habitat for them. Another thing that native ladybugs need our patches a forest habitat to overwinter so conserving forest habitat and our landscape is critical for many of those species.
Okay folks, my chat ability has been taken away from me so if someone can just type in Doug Landis into the chat box someone had a question about who was doing that work in Michigan and I just couldn't type in an answer.
Don bland.
Somebody did. Cool.
Mary there were questions about this could almost be a thumbs up, thumbs down so
this thing and beneficial. So the first one is mulch.
Good for some bad for others, good for spiders brown rolling the Beatles think some bees do not like mulch so put it in some places, put it in vegetable gardens leave some spaces, open, especially if you see ground nesting bees using the site.
Okay. There were a couple questions about bt and maybe you can just kind of briefly talk about what that is but then Is that good or bad for these beneficial bt is a bacterial pesticide it's a specialist on bacterium that is used to control thumb on insects.
So, the only bt that I use in my own landscape, I use mosquito dunks and my water sources. So, mosquitoes harbor West Nile virus in my area, they're a nuisance past right.
And so I don't want to. By adding water sources for beneficial insects I want to control mosquitoes and so I add vt mosquito dunks to my water sources, those are only going to kill fly larvae within my water source their special on folk, the bacteria
is only attack those now some other types of bt might have broader spectrum for instance, there are bt is that attack leopard doctor in caterpillars. So if you apply that bt would kill you know some number of different Caterpillar insects.
Some of those caterpillars might be caterpillars that you want to have and so that bt could potentially be harmful. So it's very important just like any pesticide even though this is a natural product or an organic insecticide something in that category.
You still need to understand the target and it should say that on the label.
Okay.
You did talk about buying plants in the nursery and how sometimes they're labeled with what they're beneficial to and I'm sorry if I missed did you talk about Neo next, there were questions about nicotine noise and whether that's a concern.
Good question, um, many garden centers have stopped using the Unix and usually they will promote this on their website or you can ask, you definitely do not want a scene treated plant material to start from, especially an annual because it's only going
to be there for that season, and depending on what it was treated. It may have that pesticide and it's pollen and nectar, the beginning of its flowering or for some portion of its bloom period depending on what it was treated so you know I would definitely
avoid that. And make sure that the source that you're getting your plants from does not use that in their production.
Great and then how about herbicides in general you talked about herbicides, if they're taking out dandy lines or clover in the lawn.
But in general, in general are herbicides dangerous to insects and specifically beneficial.
So for sure any pesticide. That is an insecticide is going to be negative have a negative impact on on beneficial. Right. But we don't really think about herbicides and fungicides having impacts that some of them have been shown to negatively impact beneficial
insects directly, having negative impacts on them directly. and they also can have negative impacts on that they're taking away resources.
so they can have indirect negative impacts and directing.
Okay, great. And let's let's wrap up with where folks can go to get more information I mentioned your book already I put a link folks into the chat box.
It was a long time ago but readily available at your favorite Bookstore at Amazon the good garden bugs, but do you have other books suggestions resource suggestions for people who are maybe just getting interested in insects and want to learn more.
One of my neck stops if you're really excited after hearing the webinar want to learn more, I would go to the zoo see society website.
Um, I can, can I put stuff in the chat, you should be able to okay maybe I can just quickly link that in the chat. And I think folks on the reading tab, I'm not sure why some folks couldn't connect but on our tending nature website.
The learn with us tab I do have Xerxes link there as a resource.
Okay, I'm going to put this in the chat, there's there's the society is an amazing source of information. Plant lyst guides that you can use on how to manage your landscape information about race and sex, all sorts of different great information and it's
it's a lot of its regional so you can put in your zip code and find out you know what's good for my area. So that would be my next stop and it's all you know freely available information.
Okay thanks Marion a couple of folks had questions about honey bees and whether there are some, some issues between wild bees and honey bees and Xerxes has a really nice publication on their website that looks at a lot of the research literature on compensation
and so that's a good place to start as well. Great.