ONE is a compact beetle with a hard, brightly coloured dome marked by black spots, the other is a flimsy phantom with a translucent lime-green body, orange compound eyes and four oversized diaphanous wings fit to carry a fairy skyward. The tenacious ladybird and the ephemeral lacewing have nothing in common by way of appearance, but both hibernate and both produce overwintering eggs, which hatch into horror-film larvae with a voracious appetite for the same prey. The larval stage of the rotund ladybird deservedly gets widespread credit for chomping 200 aphids a day and the adult culls a further 50 or so. The larva of the fragile lacewing, emerging from individual eggs suspended on fine hairs attached to the food plant, is equally active against the garden pest, but has never attracted the same recognition or respect. Its method of feeding is also different. No grabbing and munching for this little predator: it pierces its prey with a hollow head-mounted maxilla (or needle), injects a fluid that dissolves the aphid's innards, then sucks the soup back through the needlea process that takes a mere 90 seconds. It gets through some 100 aphids a day and the adult lacewing mops up more, using its mandibles. Little wonder that, among entomologists, the lacewing has two graphic nicknames, aphid lion and aphid wolf, whereas the ladybird enjoys a genteel identity linked to the red of the Virgin Mary's cloak in medieval paintings.
The lacewing can also claim a particular distinguishing feature-it can hear. Tympanal organs at the base of the radial vein in each forewing, the smallest known in Nature, can detect the ultrasonic signals emitted by bats, so the lacewing aloft in the evening closes its wings and drops to safety. In addition, scolopidial organs on the insect's legs pick up low-frequency sounds produced during courtship, inviting contact with a partner. By contrast, in typical beetle fashion, the ladybird is deaf.
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Denne historien er fra June 01, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766â68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artistâs first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
