Denise Ellsworth: And you know 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.
Denise Ellsworth: 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, what we can do in the garden and the links those native plants have to to biodiversity.
Denise Ellsworth: So our first presenter on the series is Dr Mary Gardner she's a professor here at osu in the department of entomology.
Denise Ellsworth: where she teaches extension grant writing lots of ecology topics, so a large class load, but also as a researcher out in the field.
Denise Ellsworth: You may have heard past webinars when she's talked about her work and vacant lands in vacant properties and Cleveland.
Denise Ellsworth: Looking at weeds and what enhancements they add to the ecosystem and also how adding native plants can enhance that habitat.
Denise Ellsworth: she's also an author she's written this book good garden bugs which lots of you have on your bookshelves learning about those natural enemies those predators that are out there, helping to to balance our pest problems.
Denise Ellsworth: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: This full list of speakers that are going to be following me, so I get to kick off this series, and what i'm going to do today is talk to you about.
Mary Gardiner: sort of generally, what is beneficial insect biodiversity, what are some of the insects that we might want around our landscape.
Mary Gardiner: And then i'm going to hit on just some broad strategies that you can use to support those insects, in your home environment.
Mary Gardiner: And then subsequent speakers will go into more detail about how to design and implement these strategies to support biodiversity at home.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 we'll go through some of those questions at the end so.
Mary Gardiner: Thank you very much, also give out my email on 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.
Mary Gardiner: Alright, so 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.
Denise Ellsworth: Mary i'm not seeing it.
Mary Gardiner: More, oh dear okay.
Mary Gardiner: well.
Marica Carsten: No, not seen it, yet the Nice.
Mary Gardiner: I did the shares, let me just.
Mary Gardiner: Open up again making.
Mary Gardiner: Sure screen.
Mary Gardiner: Are you seeing it now.
Denise Ellsworth: I am not seeing it.
Mary Gardiner: Now it's not.
Denise Ellsworth: Are you Anna i'm Mary not good.
Mary Gardiner: Not good um I.
hold on a second.
Mary Gardiner: screen this one.
Marica Carsten: Some people are saying they stop for a second.
Denise Ellsworth: Oh there it is there yep I see.
Mary Gardiner: that's awesome.
Mary Gardiner: So, are you seeing the full screen one or the one with the notes.
Mary Gardiner: Full screen big spike okay very cool alright great, so now we can get going um, thank you for telling me.
Mary Gardiner: That you couldn't see it I just need to hide this video panel.
Mary Gardiner: Okay meeting.
Mary Gardiner: Okay.
Great.
Mary Gardiner: So.
Mary Gardiner: First, I want to tell you a tiny bit about myself.
Mary Gardiner: For those that don't know me, I am a professor in entomology to permanence Denise mentioned and the majority of my appointment is is doing research, so I get to work with a great group of graduate students.
Mary Gardiner: And we study beneficial insects in residential landscapes and vacant lot so urban environments.
Mary Gardiner: we're very interested in the opportunities that these landscapes can provide for conserving insect foreigners.
Mary Gardiner: And so we think about ways to design and manage them to support those goals, we also think about more broad.
Mary Gardiner: residential and urban landscapes, you know how should habitats be connected and preserve together to maintain the types of habitat insects need.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And I do get to teach our Grad students here at Ohio State I teach classes in ecology and grant writing and presentation skills.
Mary Gardiner: 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 so.
Mary Gardiner: um let me know if you would be interested in something like that so it's something i've been thinking about doing in the future, so I get to do all that as well.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: That are considered beneficial so just to start at the beginning, what is biodiversity so biodiversity is the biological variety of life on earth.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: So there's a lot of ways that you can define the richness of font that you might find or the richness of habitats, that you might find and all of those contribute to our global diversity.
Mary Gardiner: And Insects are a huge component of this biodiversity over half of describes species are insects and so these things are everywhere, and they were very, very critical to life on her.
Mary Gardiner: So why are insects important well many reasons, these insects provide many important ecological functions that we need for a healthy environment.
Mary Gardiner: They cycle nutrients as D, composers and they also are integral roles of food, when they are pray for many animals, so they provide food for wildlife.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Other insects in the environment they're also pollinators, and so they pollinate our plans and those plant pollinator interactions are obviously critical for the success of our many of our plant life on earth.
Mary Gardiner: And, in many cases in doing their jobs within ecosystems these insects benefit humans and when those roles that insects play in an environment benefit us either economically or culturally, or in other ways, these are considered because ecosystem services.
Mary Gardiner: And examples of ecosystem services include one a predator insect happens to feed on a pest that we do not desire in our landscape.
Mary Gardiner: For instance, this flower was here is seeking out rubs in the soil and she will layer egg on those grubs which will then eat the groves killing them so when insects hunt for pests, that we do not desire, the landscape.
Mary Gardiner: This is called biological control and it reduces the need for other chemical inputs that someone might use to control pests, like a grub.
Mary Gardiner: 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 be pollinating pumpkin flower here.
Mary Gardiner: 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 incorporating the newer back into the soil and i'm going to talk about each of these scenarios throughout the presentation.
Mary Gardiner: So in today's top, what are we going to talk about we're going to talk about these three main groups of insects that provide beneficial ecosystem services in our residential landscapes.
Mary Gardiner: These are predators pollinators and D, 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.
Mary Gardiner: So first off, I want to talk about decomposes So what are decomposes.
Mary Gardiner: These are insects that feed on dead or dying plant tissues, so this could be leaves garden ways tree limbs, or what do you debris they're also insects that feed on other dead animals or or carrion.
Mary Gardiner: And insects that feed on excrement or maneuver of other end so you can see why I chose the leaf picture for this slide.
Mary Gardiner: But we're going to talk about each of these groups so first insects that feed on.
Mary Gardiner: Many soil and woody dwelling insects feed on leaves and down, what do you debris like branches or dead standing or fallen trees.
Mary Gardiner: And these insects and other invertebrates break down this leaf material and woody material and they incorporate that material into the soil.
Mary Gardiner: And that creates the humerus layer of nutrients in the top of the soil, which has been further broken down by micro organisms and that releases nutrients and minerals.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And there are many invertebrates that perform this critical function, and these include things like ants.
Mary Gardiner: fly larvae, this is a crane fly larva in the soil mites the soil has so many myths if you ever able to look at a sample of soil under a microscope it's amazing.
Mary Gardiner: 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 towns.
Mary Gardiner: And they're called spring tales, because they have this we're going to call the curricula on their back that allows them to dump around soil.
Mary Gardiner: There are also many insect D, composers that feed on carrion so when a dead body occurs, you know, an animal dies in a forest.
Mary Gardiner: 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 carrying Beatles like this one.
Mary Gardiner: And they break down the carcass rapidly and again all of that nutrients then from that animal is being broken down added back and corporate it into the soil it's dead animal you know just sitting there slowly.
Mary Gardiner: rotting away by microbes alone this happens really rapidly.
Mary Gardiner: And some insects, will also bury the carcass itself bearing Beatles males and females will find a small carcass say a dead field mouse, for instance.
Mary Gardiner: They will bury that carcass and they will then make a small beer 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.
Mary Gardiner: which incorporates the carcass into the soil and also produces the next generation of beer and needles and this is a very needle feeding it's larva here there.
Mary Gardiner: Are some very rare species of these bearing Beatles and several active programs underway to try to save them and increase their abundance across the US.
Mary Gardiner: Many decomposes also attack on newer piles and break them down so This includes things like manure flies and dung beetles.
Mary Gardiner: Adults are attracted to the manure pile they lay their eggs on the manure pile.
Mary Gardiner: or in the case of dung beetles they will break the manure pile apart go and make a small hole and then bury them a newer.
Mary Gardiner: ball within that hole and lay their eggs on it so again breaking off and distributing them newer putting the nutrients in them newer back into the soil and incorporating it, this is a really critical function.
Mary Gardiner: That these insects provide they also have preferences so certain insects, will only attack commoner pile for their eggs and other ones might attack forced into work or so on so there's a lot of diversity in the types of manure that attracts a different species of these decomposes.
Mary Gardiner: There are also many insects that act as predators within a environment predators are insects that actively hunt for their own pray.
Mary Gardiner: Many insect creditors are generalists that means they'll attack many different types of other insects or other pray that they might find.
Mary Gardiner: An insect also have a lot of different hunting strategies, for instance, a praying mantis uses visual cues quite a bit and it's hunting.
Mary Gardiner: Whereas this little larva here is a fly maggot that's completely eilis and it relies on vibrational stimuli to find this right.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And a Daddy long legs here, that is an act of hunter hunter at night so it's a nocturnal predator, and will forage.
Mary Gardiner: For pray at night, so not using visual cues in this case, so they really very in the timing of when they're looking for prey if they're sitting wait predator, like a praying mantis or active punting species.
Mary Gardiner: there's many different strategies and by cultivating a high bio diversity of these predators.
Mary Gardiner: 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 are going to look for.
Mary Gardiner: Different types of prey they're going to find different types of grid, based on their content strategy, so I just wanted to talk about a few of the very cool groups that are very common and backyard gardens that you guys might encounter.
Mary Gardiner: And one group are the true bugs the true bugs are predators that.
Mary Gardiner: use a piercing sucking deep to attack their prey so these insects will pierce their prey and then in just the contents the liquid contents and will be left is sort of a shriveled carcass and one of the most.
Mary Gardiner: prolific true bugs that attacks garden pests, is the minute pirate bug it's a very small but 16th of an inch black and white insect this is immature stage Both of these are predatory.
Mary Gardiner: Another common one, is the damsel bog it's about a quarter inch long it has these reportorial front legs and and piercing beat to grab its prey.
Mary Gardiner: And this is the two spotted stink bug the two spotted stink bug.
Mary Gardiner: Many you know we all know, the brown marm rated stink bug is a past in the US many parts of the world, but there are some predatory stink bugs this particular one eats Colorado potato Beatles the larvae and eggs.
Mary Gardiner: And, have you brightly colored outline So if you find this you grow potatoes and your Foreign and you find these they're doing good and they're not something to remove.
Mary Gardiner: Another important for predators are the least wings, these are really beautiful in that vein insects, they have a long green lightning has a long green body they're about an inch long.
Mary Gardiner: This is their life cycle, they have eggs that appear.
Mary Gardiner: 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 ethan's they use their piercing daus to pierce the aphid and adjust the contents.
Mary Gardiner: lay swings are also cool because some species of LACE swing are naked like this guy and some are called debris carrying.
Mary Gardiner: And he's debris carrying lacing 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.
Mary Gardiner: That they pile on top of themselves so that they can conceal themselves from would be predators like a bird or larger insect.
Mary Gardiner: Our next group, our ground Beatles if you have a ground of garden has tilled soil that's open, you have a very good chance of seeing one of these.
Mary Gardiner: In 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.
Mary Gardiner: These are usually either shiny black or metallic they're called ground Beatles because they're most often found in.
Mary Gardiner: molds are on the soil surface, but they will some species will climb plant material to you can see this.
Mary Gardiner: 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 enough number of different prey.
Mary Gardiner: Another common group of insect predators are the lady Beatles there's a number of different species of Lady Beatles that you can find in a backyard garden they're not all red and black summer different colors, as you can see here.
Mary Gardiner: The adults are predators of beef is scales or white flies depending on the species.
Mary Gardiner: And the larvae will feed on the same fray as the adults of their species.
Mary Gardiner: The larvae similar to the LACE being larvae look kind of like a little alligator and so on, 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: With fruit flies or house flies, but there are many flies provide important functions in the environment and one of those are the hover or surface flies.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 odds.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: These are the larvae of these species, the larvae look like little slugs if you see these little slugs within patches of aphids.
Mary Gardiner: they're doing you good they're going to be consuming the aphids.
Mary Gardiner: You can see these little trivial things on the side of this one, those are dead aphids and same here so you'll notice sometimes some grounding.
Mary Gardiner: 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 methods in some cases when people see these they think they might have to pass on a plant and ethan and another past.
Mary Gardiner: wasps people don't often think of wasps as beneficial, but they're incredibly important predators, and many different kinds of insects.
Mary Gardiner: important roles in food web they don't always eat insects, we think of as tests, but they are doing some really cool things.
Mary Gardiner: That we might not notice that first so it's important that to know what they're doing out there, so there are many types of wasps that are solitary.
Mary Gardiner: That each female makes her own ness and provision is it with prey of some kind, and usually they pick a particular type of prey so, for instance, this is a mud dawber it's making this mud.
Mary Gardiner: The mud vision this nest with spiders the spider was also attack spiders it paralyzes the spider and then greg's the paralyzed spider to its bro.
Mary Gardiner: 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 loss, even though spiders are beneficial.
Mary Gardiner: So some people have seen if you've ever seen a wasp spray a spider across the sidewalk or something that's what's going on.
Mary Gardiner: This is a worm last couple rooms are really significant pest insect, and this does the same thing as the spider was but with cutlery.
Mary Gardiner: 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 it's larvae consume those.
Mary Gardiner: And this is the potter was that makes these super cute pots out of mud on plant material there's a whole just big enough for it to stuff in come.
Mary Gardiner: into 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.
Mary Gardiner: spiders spiders are something that a lot of people are afraid of, but really there's no reason to be afraid fighters are really not out to get you are trying to find prey.
Mary Gardiner: to reproduce and to survive the season so spiders provide a huge amount of pest control and natural environments, as well as residential landscapes.
Mary Gardiner: there's a huge diversity of spiders and when you see them up close up close are actually can be very pretty.
Mary Gardiner: This is an example of an orb weaving spider so many spiders will build a web.
Mary Gardiner: That well we'll catch all kinds of brave pray that the spider eats and other Frey 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.
Mary Gardiner: Not all spiders build webs some of them are active winters An example is a wolf spider will spiders are incredibly important predators in agricultural environments, including home gardens they're also very common in those environments.
Mary Gardiner: Will spiders can be identified by being large typically Gray and black occurring on the soil, but if you find a female and she.
Mary Gardiner: Has her exec they're really easy to identify because the females carry that egg sacs on their abdomen it's a type of parental care.
Mary Gardiner: 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 lands.
Mary Gardiner: Usually, if people can't stand spiders I can maybe convert them with the jumping spider it's probably concerned the cutest spider you might have seen the peacock spider on Facebook before.
Mary Gardiner: 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 jump and they attach a silk thread to the plant material they jump from so that they if they miss or something they can climb back up.
Mary Gardiner: And this particular one if I did this has these amazing.
Mary Gardiner: jaws that have this metallic crab spiders are also very interesting predators, you can tell where they get the name right they look like a little crab.
Mary Gardiner: They are a sit and 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 lead.
Mary Gardiner: So some of these hunt and soil, some of them have on flowers some of the ones that hunt on flowers can change color to match the flower, so these fighters are doing a lot of cool things oh in our backyard.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: So, in the case of parasitoid the adult female will find the pray for her offspring, and instead of being a generalist like we're most predator species will eat.
Mary Gardiner: Maybe a few too 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.
Mary Gardiner: And a parasitoid lifestyle is most common within the wasps and fly groups of insects.
Mary Gardiner: 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, we'll find a particular type of prey.
Mary Gardiner: They all look sort of different but in general to kids tend to be kind of recently flies So you can see here, you know they have these really significant bristles.
Mary Gardiner: 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 leg fly has an orange abdomen and has a significant set of results on its back leg.
Mary Gardiner: This insect eats the squash bugs the squash bug is a major past of robots So if you grow things like cucumbers or squash in your garden.
Mary Gardiner: You really want to find this parasitoid fly, and this drawing as an illustration of its life cycle, so what happens is the adult female will look for the squash bugs.
Mary Gardiner: She will get on top of the squash bugs and lay her eggs on her larvae will grow inside the squash bugs.
Mary Gardiner: They will kill the squash bugs and eat it and then, when they are ready to pupate they come out through the back end of the squash bugs and make a cocoon in the soil.
Mary Gardiner: So, within a Caribbean patch all of this activity is happening, and these are actively reducing squash bugs another important to Kennedy.
Mary Gardiner: Is this species here that is coming out of a cucumber beans, so another big pass of squash and pumpkins and things this one, just like the squash bugs can.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And emerges and makes its 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 coupon.
Mary Gardiner: In addition to fly pierce the toys, there are many loss parasitoid flies do not have an over positive where they're able to lay an egg inside of a prayer so they lay it on the prey.
Mary Gardiner: But wasp parasitoid are able to actually stay up past or other insects 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 was cannot sting you lost the consulting you have a tiny stinger.
Mary Gardiner: That you might you would not see the actual stinger on the end of their abdomen they would have a pointy abdomen that you would see, but you will not see along you know skinny thing coming out of that if you can see that it's a type of Paris.
Mary Gardiner: And that stinger that singer that you see really isn't a singer it's their overpass.
Mary Gardiner: And the point of that Oregon is to allow the wasp to sting it's host and put it eggs inside of it toes and they cannot stay us with that old cluster.
Mary Gardiner: Which is a good thing when you see ones like this one, which is a large new monitor loss.
Mary Gardiner: And this entire structure is its giant over positive, and this was itself with the oba pause there is more than three inches long and you may have seen these.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: On 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 this offspring of this loss will kill those has and then eventually emerged from that tree.
Mary Gardiner: Now, not all lost paris's boys are huge like this, in fact, the majority of the font is tiny like the size of a flake of pepper.
Mary Gardiner: And this is an example of one of the tiny species, this was is attacking an aphid and there is a lot of different species of parasitoid wasps that do attack eighth and pests.
Mary Gardiner: This is a drawing of the life cycle here so here's a female she's able to turn her abdomen like a sword underneath her and then sting the apron.
Mary Gardiner: She lays an egg the egg develops kills the aphid and then the was back she paints in the.
Mary Gardiner: When they construct this pupil cocoon inside the dead eighth and the agents will turn either brown or black.
Mary Gardiner: And these are called even mummies so this event is dead and stuck to the plan and the last is inside of it in this picture.
Mary Gardiner: And sometimes when you look at a patch of eight that's on your plan you'll see that some of them are Brown and black and some of them are green and look healthy.
Mary Gardiner: And what's happened there is that a loss has come through and some some of those and some of them, probably also.
Mary Gardiner: 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 loss will be emerging from that patch and then attacking other agents in the area.
Mary Gardiner: Watch don't only attack ethan's the attack all kinds of different insects some that are passed on that aren't past.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And then those eggs emerged as cocoons and made their cocoons the larvae emergent and neither cocoon on the the caterpillar.
Mary Gardiner: And in tomatoes tomato Horn Horn caterpillars are attacked by a recorded last parasitoid and sometimes you can find one.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: So in addition to all of these creepy predators and parasitoid they're doing all kinds of stuff in our landscape, we also benefit from the work of these.
Mary Gardiner: and other pollinators but i'm going to focus on briefly on some social and solitary beads today just show some diversity so.
Mary Gardiner: What are these doing our environment well both males and female bees feed on necker plant nectar but female bees also collect pollen is food from their offspring.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And in the process of this they accidentally transfer large quantities of pollen between flowers, and so what you're seeing here are be absolutely covered with pollen working to collect results.
Mary Gardiner: So there are many, many species of bees in the US, in fact, just in Ohio we have 500 species of these.
Mary Gardiner: 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 as a social be.
Mary Gardiner: bumblebees are also social social beings living colonies and they work together to make one nest and provisioning.
Mary Gardiner: And there's usually one Queen and many female workers that construct provision and defend that nest.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And she is laying eggs and the workers are caring for those offspring these clothes cells are cocoons where.
Mary Gardiner: These are developing into adults from up and some of these open South 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 see the larvae.
Mary Gardiner: So in Ohio we have a few species of bumble bees and, of course, you know people cultivate.
Mary Gardiner: honeybees, but we have hundreds of susie's as well, of solitary bees, which I feel like our little bit less known so in solitary bees, instead of a bunch of.
Mary Gardiner: Individuals working together here females construct and provision their own NASA without the help of other members of the species and this represents 90% of North America has new species.
Mary Gardiner: So here one female will make a nest, for example in the soil.
Mary Gardiner: And she will put up dig a tunnel and make a nest area put pollen and nectar ball in that nest area and an egg that let egg will develop into a larva which will then.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: These guys nest in all sorts of different ways they can nest in cavities like fissures and tree bark or even houses that we might put out for them, they can nest in the soil in wood and Pippi stem, as this is a cut away showing a nested would and also in the soil.
Mary Gardiner: So, how did these move around, how far will they go for food, well, it varies on some species of small bees move.
Mary Gardiner: 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 of bees, which is really amazing to think about.
Mary Gardiner: Others can travel miles so large carpenter bees like this Doc I.
Mary Gardiner: be able to go more than a mile medium sized these maybe 500 starts small bees, maybe 200 yards and there's a big diversity and the size so here's a he had a large fee, and then a tiny be on its eyeballs so we're talking about a lot of variation your as well.
Mary Gardiner: So what are some common type.
Mary Gardiner: One type that you might see in your yard our sweat these what these are soil nesting and here is what their their nest looks like in turn.
Mary Gardiner: they're called sweat beads 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 cells.
Mary Gardiner: And carpenter bees, so the large carpenter bees like this guy and this guy bill borough right into wood.
Mary Gardiner: 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 and sometimes they'll nest in the same area and mothers and daughters tend to go back to the same sites as.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: There are also small carpenter bees that nest and pithy stems so think about like raspberry stems are some mint species, where the inside, is sort of loose almost like a styrofoam plant material.
Mary Gardiner: These can dig that material out um so things like Blackberry elderberry box elder all have these pity stems these are often mistaken for wasps they are really small and shiny.
Mary Gardiner: So what do we do to help all of these different creatures that are providing these important ecosystem functions in our landscape.
Mary Gardiner: We clearly desire landscape, to be beautiful at for.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And the ways to do that are first and foremost avoid applying pesticides so whether you're thinking about.
Mary Gardiner: Helping the bees, or you want to encourage insects that will reduce pests in your garden whatever types of insects you're looking to conserve.
Mary Gardiner: You don't want to apply pesticides pesticides are that you have access to at.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Are there places for things to nest are there places that are protective that things can survive the winter and is there, water.
Mary Gardiner: So insects have kind of the same basic needs, as many types of him So how do we do this well, the first thing is to decide, you know well, what do I find you know.
Mary Gardiner: The good news is there's a million different ways that you can provide resources that are going to support insects, so you can think aesthetically about what types of plants, you might like.
Mary Gardiner: and choose within that some plants that insects, will also like the most important things are to provide food and shelter across the season.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And it will be absolutely covered with beads in October, because there's barely anything.
Mary Gardiner: And so I think that's a really important easy annual that I can add in my landscape same thing with New England aster, which is a native plant that was late in the season that's covered.
Mary Gardiner: So there's an example of a non native container plant and a native plants, both are important for different types of insects late in the season so think about those and.
Mary Gardiner: 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 all tubes, for instance can't be.
Mary Gardiner: can't be accessed by predator insects, have also been on nectar that have really small mouth parts.
Mary Gardiner: experiment with native plants and he has a great lineup of speakers that are going to tell you all about the benefits of native plants.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: But do note that some species are hybrids and do not produce resources so, for instance in this lovely hanging basket.
Mary Gardiner: This sweet alyssa is a great plant, because many predators and parasitoid will use it as an extra resource when they can't find pray.
Mary Gardiner: But these petunias well 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.
Mary Gardiner: I think it's really important to explore the inclusion of native perennials even if you have a very small landscape.
Mary Gardiner: and any size, you can include some type of pocket prairie are tiny of planting of these plants, they are incredibly attractive to to bees predators and.
Mary Gardiner: parasitoid insects, they will be covered with beneficial insects also many of these plants are rare on and they provide food for birds and many other benefits that dog will be talking about next time their host plants for butterflies and other insects and, as I said, their food, while.
Mary Gardiner: 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 and see what they have talked to some experts.
Mary Gardiner: Think about height shape color you know, providing a lot of diversity and really experimenting go out into your garden see what types of Insects are using your plans as habitat who's feeding where.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: I wanted to show an example of how small this can be so even in like a small patch this is maybe three feet by five feet.
Mary Gardiner: 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 and sex.
Mary Gardiner: These in my area are native plants are mostly prairie plan so you do have to be aware of that they can get very tall and bushy.
Mary Gardiner: But that's the static, you know it's a natural looking garden, and I personally think it's really beautiful.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: You can also provide a lot of benefits by including ornamental non native plants, so not everything has to be native to provide resources.
Mary Gardiner: 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 on in this picture i've two types of.
Mary Gardiner: My gosh i'm blanking on the name plants not begonias um.
Mary Gardiner: Anyway, doesn't matter values good grief Okay, so we have a single dahlia in 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: When plants are bred to be doubles and triples the resources that they have diminish or or are removed and so those are not very valuable.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: same thing with like hollyhocks I have dahlias written on the slide.
Mary Gardiner: So any flower that comes in doubles and triples look for that single.
Mary Gardiner: Another cool thing to look for our extra floral nectarines so some of our insects like wasps and Lady bugs flies.
Mary Gardiner: They need nectar to nectar is energy nectar is sugar, but they can't get down in some deep flowers they don't have a long tongue like a bee.
Mary Gardiner: And extra floral nectarines are just areas of the plant where they produce nectar outside the flowers and.
Mary Gardiner: Plants do this actually to attract these predators to their plan to protect them from pests, so you might find these nectarines on stems are at the basis of flowers or on leaves and what's happening here is a little loss because found.
Mary Gardiner: This nectar at the base of this batch of flower, this is the back of a leaf in this little dark indentation is an extra floral directory, so there are many plant families that do this.
Mary Gardiner: On if you Google extra floral directories, you can get list of plants that 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.
Mary Gardiner: peonies are an example when Have you ever seen damage to a peon very rarely it's because the produce extra extra floral nectarines and attack attract and those ants protect the penny from any damage.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: We can also incorporate, as I mentioned on annual plants into our landscapes you don't have to have a big space to provide resources.
Mary Gardiner: On here's an example of the salvia that I was talking about the late into this season incorporated with some other plans another great plans on is this land tana really easy to grow provides resources all year long.
Mary Gardiner: 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 another good strategy is to look for those bm butterfly signs if it helps bees and butterflies probably a lot of other insects will visit it.
Mary Gardiner: We also really need to rethink lawns is 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 that's a program that suggests allowing dandelions and other resources to grow in the spring, to support these.
Mary Gardiner: Beyond flowers we've got to think about where 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.
Mary Gardiner: No there's nowhere to go to escape the elements on a day like it is today in many parts of the US.
Mary Gardiner: So what do we want to do what we want to incorporate shelters nooks and crannies cavities places for things to burrow in and.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 to focus on in our landscaping.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: So these can be a fun way, especially if you have youth around the House to observe bees and action, leaving some cut pithy stem.
Mary Gardiner: 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 found.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Water we also sometimes forget, you know insects need something to drink they get hot, just like we get hot.
Mary Gardiner: Incorporating some element of water in your landscape is really important, it could be a small pond it could be a fountain, but it can also be really simple.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Bird bath for insects, for them to forward for water.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 insect biodiversity.
Mary Gardiner: After the 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 give everybody a second to or that.
Mary Gardiner: Thank you very much.
Denise Ellsworth: Great Mary Thank you so much, always a wonderful session I love the images and all the practical ideas to.
Denise Ellsworth: folks were right about at the top of the hour, so if you have to leave you 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.
Denise Ellsworth: And if she's a she'd appreciate that we have a lot of questions we won't get through all the questions but i've kind of group some together.
Denise Ellsworth: But Mary the kind of a the.
Denise Ellsworth: sentiment that really rose to the top is how much interest, there is in your offer to do a workshop on presentation skills so yeah so you.
Mary Gardiner: cooperate that in the future, absolutely you and I will put our schedules in 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.
Denise Ellsworth: will pull something together so lots and lots of thumbs up on that idea.
Denise Ellsworth: So married, this is your fault we've got lots of dumb questions because you started with done.
Mary Gardiner: And so, which I know, like the least about.
Denise Ellsworth: You can always match on on questions from the the mundane to the bizarre so who's manure, are these dung beetles eating do we know.
Mary Gardiner: So there are dung beetle to eat all sorts of dog, there is an elephant so everyone should Google elephant dung beetle there is a large dung beetle that eats elephants on.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Feed either in it, or they will ball it and carry away, not all dung beetles.
Mary Gardiner: Not all beetles are done that feed on dollar dung beetle they don't all make the little balls and various some of them actually feed within the newer pile and break it down that way.
Mary Gardiner: um but yes, there are many types and they do have preferences and they detect the older and older attracts them to the dump file.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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 dog that's you know maneuver that can be incorporated in the soil So these are very important.
Denise Ellsworth: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Now I don't first of all I don't think that there are many, if any, that specialize in dog song, however, I could be wrong, because I don't know that much about it but it's not going to happen fast enough where people are going to be satisfied.
Mary Gardiner: you're still going to have to pick it up, unfortunately.
Denise Ellsworth: 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.
Denise Ellsworth: The questions were about some of our really difficult pest problems, who eat stink bugs who eats cucumber beetles 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.
Mary Gardiner: So all those insects.
Mary Gardiner: That are not a ton of things to eat stink about adults, but there are many things that eat stink bug ends.
Mary Gardiner: So, if you think about a thing bug 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.
Mary Gardiner: predators, and also some there are some parasitoid including some that have been released to attack this thing, but I believe.
Mary Gardiner: that's not an area that I focus on myself Japanese beetles I mentioned the flower was that attacks the larval stage the.
Mary Gardiner: Japanese beetle larvae are white grubs was big grubs you might dig out of the garden, there are some things that attack those.
Mary Gardiner: But many things don't eat the adults, the adults are pretty large and there you know pretty hard so they're they're harder to eat but birds will eat them.
Mary Gardiner: Some larger animals might eat them so really depends.
Mary Gardiner: And you know, with some of these invasive insects like burnham leaf beetle and and Japanese beetle it can be hard you know because they can be so abundant that, unfortunately, that.
Mary Gardiner: Their presence is so they're so abundant that you're not getting a total control by insect predators.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: And so, sometimes we have to take other types of controls and added on, for instance, you know with Japanese beetles.
Mary Gardiner: I tend to to 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 I just can't stand them, so I do that in addition to the predators being out there.
Denise Ellsworth: Several people commented about monarch butterflies and noticing some parasitoid on the larvae or.
Denise Ellsworth: eggs being eaten, I wonder if you can talk a little bit about monarch.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: cool video during flyover of like 40 monarchs feeding on my New England asters that I put in my yard, to help with when they're going South um and so.
Mary Gardiner: i'll tell a story about my husband, because I think that this relates to why we all notice all these things.
Mary Gardiner: So he is not an entomologist but he has gotten super in some monitoring like each caterpillar so he's out there, looking at every egg and if a caterpillar disappears he gets super upset.
Mary Gardiner: If we put the same effort into watching every insect we would notice that all insects have some level parasitism some level of predation of their larvae.
Mary Gardiner: 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 caterpillar is going to be eaten, but some will be eaten.
Mary Gardiner: So, you will notice some mortality, that is normal.
Mary Gardiner: If you're watching them closely if you're concerned about things eating the caterpillars I have heard of people actually netting areas.
Mary Gardiner: 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 of you know, when I have colonization.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Denise Ellsworth: Those orange oleander aphids came up we're talking about monarchs and milk weed so this you know colorful aphid that is often on our milk lead stands any comments on those son, who might be eating them are kind of aphids in general.
Mary Gardiner: I don't think a lot of things eat those aphids because they sequester the mouth need secondary plant chemicals.
Mary Gardiner: 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 in a previous webinar and there was a paper they actually found they do not reduce the nutritional quality of the plant for the.
Mary Gardiner: larvae so I don't think they're a problem they what I tend to do.
Mary Gardiner: I, like my mouth lead to re sprout a few times during the season, because the younger leaves are better for caterpillars i'm consumption and tend to attract the adults to lay eggs, they like to lay eggs on the newer foliage.
Mary Gardiner: So i'll cut back, especially if I get a large infestation on the aphids i'll chop my note we will respond route, you know mid season, with a lot of new foliage.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Denise Ellsworth: And when you were in Michigan you were in Doug landis's lab is that right or you worked with him yeah because he had some great research.
Mary Gardiner: About he.
Denise Ellsworth: Of the egg predation on milk lead and we just what you said kind of cutting back and allowing it to re flush to to avoid some of the ant predation on eggs.
Mary Gardiner: And that's actually where I learned, who I learned to cut back the mouthy bronze and he had a lot of good extension materials about how you should manage your mouth we if people are interested.
Denise Ellsworth: Okay, there were questions about lady bird Beatles and.
Denise Ellsworth: How, some are good, some are bad, some are native some are not talking we foster them any special plants that we can grow.
Mary Gardiner: So that could be a whole webinar.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Lady bugs in more detail, but just really briefly native and exotic lady Beatles have extreme niche overlap, which means that they feed on the same stuff they live in the same places.
Mary Gardiner: And so they're competing with one another and, unfortunately, because of that, because we have exotic species.
Mary Gardiner: There 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.
Mary Gardiner: And there's a lot of interest in conserving that.
Mary Gardiner: Some of the best ways that you can serve 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.
Mary Gardiner: Reducing pesticide use is going to provide more food for them and more had a habitat for them, another thing that native lady bugs need our patches a forest habitat to overwinter so conserving forest habitat and our landscape is critical for many of those species.
Denise Ellsworth: Okay folks my chat of ability has been taken away from me, so if someone can just type in Douglas and this into the chat box someone had a question about who was doing that work in Michigan and I just couldn't type in any answer.
Mary Gardiner: don landed somebody did cool.
Denise Ellsworth: Mary there were questions about this could almost be a thumbs up thumbs down so.
Denise Ellsworth: This thing and beneficial, so the first one is mulch.
Mary Gardiner: Good for some bad for others, good for spiders ground 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 these using the site okay.
Denise Ellsworth: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Be T is a bacterial pesticide it's a specialist on bacterium that is used to control thumb on insects so.
Mary Gardiner: The only BT that I use in my own landscape, I use mosquito dunks in my water sources so mosquitoes harbor West Nile virus in my area there a nuisance past right.
Mary Gardiner: And so I don't want to by adding water sources for beneficial insects, I want to control mosquitoes, and so I add the team mosquito dunks to my water sources, those are only going to kill fly larvae within my water source their special on.
Mary Gardiner: folk the bacteria is only attack those now some other types of BT might have broader spectrum, for instance, there are bts that attack leper doctrine caterpillars.
Mary Gardiner: So if you apply that BT would kill, you know some number of different caterpillar insects.
Mary Gardiner: Some of those caterpillars might be caterpillars that you want to have and so that BT potentially harmful so it's very important, just like any pesticide, even though this is a natural product or an.
Mary Gardiner: Organic insecticide something in that category, you still need to understand the target, and it should say that on that label.
Denise Ellsworth: 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 miss did you talk about neo next there were questions about unica to noise and whether that's a concern.
Mary Gardiner: But question um many garden centers have stopped using unix and usually they will promote this on their website, or you can ask you definitely do not want a seed treated plant material to start from.
Mary Gardiner: Especially an annual because it's only going to be there for that season and depending on when it was treated.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Mary Gardiner: 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.
Denise Ellsworth: Great and then how about herbicides, in general, you talked about herbicides if they're taking out dandelions or clover in the lawn but in general in general are herbicides dangerous to insects and specifically beneficial.
Mary Gardiner: So for sure any pesticide that is an insecticide is going to be.
Mary Gardiner: Negative have a negative impact on on beneficial right but we don't really think about herbicides and fungicides having impact, but some of them have been shown to negatively impact.
Mary Gardiner: beneficial insects directly having negative impacts on them directly, and they also can have negative impacts and that they're taking away resources, so they can have indirect negative impacts and directing.
Denise Ellsworth: 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.
Denise Ellsworth: 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.
Mary Gardiner: One of my next stop if you're really excited after hearing the webinar want to learn more I would go to the mercy society website um I can, can I put stuff in the chat.
Denise Ellsworth: You should be able to.
Mary Gardiner: Okay, maybe I can just quickly link that in the chat.
Denise Ellsworth: 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.
Mary Gardiner: Okay i'm gonna put this in the chat.
Mary Gardiner: The earthy society is an amazing source of information plant list guides that you can use on how to manage your landscape information about rare in sacks.
Mary Gardiner: All sorts of different great information and 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.
Denise Ellsworth: Great thanks Mary and a couple folks had questions about honeybees and whether there are some.
Denise Ellsworth: Some issues between wild bees and honey bees and source these has a really nice publication on their website that looks at a lot of the research literature on competition and so that's a good place to start as well.
Great.
Denise Ellsworth: So Mary thanks again always love to have you on these webinars I learned so much from you and folks thanks for all the Nice comments in the chat box thanks for coming this morning and we'll see you next Friday 10am Eastern.
Mary Gardiner: Thanks Tony thanks you guys for all the comments are making my day I read.
Mary Gardiner: So thanks everybody, I hope you enjoy the rest of the series it's going to be a great one thanks.