The Backyard Arthropod Project

What’s worse that biting into an apple and finding a worm?
Biting into an apple and finding half a worm![1]

We never spray our apple trees, and so it is pretty common to have little fellas like this in the apples. This is one of the reasons I like to cut an apple into quarters to eat it, instead of just eating it whole. That way, I have a chance to see if there is a worm inside, and to separate it and its “frass”[2] from the part of the apple I want to eat.

Continue reading ‘Codling Moth Caterpillar (Worm from an Apple)’ »

One of the feral apple trees about 100 yards behind the house has very “late” apples, that stay on the tree a loooong time. As in, as of now (mid-December, with a couple of feet of snow on the ground), it still has some apples that were too high for the deer to eat. The apples were actually getting ripe in mid-October, and one of them that I picked to eat had a deep crevice in its surface[1]. Down in the bottom of the crevice was this beetle:

Continue reading ‘Lady beetle - Mulsantina picta’ »

I was picking up apples in the side yard[1], and found this grub burrowing into one.

These are commonly referred to as “wireworms”. Unlike most other insect grubs, they have a hard exoskeleton that makes them remarkably durable. They are hard to crush, hard to pull apart, and all in all have about the consistency of a piece of wire. They do have legs, which you can see above, but they barely use them and for the most part their behavior is quite wormlike.

Continue reading ‘Click Beetle’ »