‽Bros

The brilliant entomologist profiled in this previous interrobangbros post has read the post and offered some new information and corrections via email. Instead of editing the old post to reflect new information, I am quoting his own words here, so that they may receive the proper attention and credit.

The entomologist writes:

“The following are just some notes to help you remember trivial things about “The Entomologist” feature on your blog.

Write Staphylococcus beginning with a capital and ideally italicized as I have done. Another scientific approach is underlining the name.

I may have shown you a mayfly or two, but I’ve collected beaucoup crane flies and that is what you were seeing in the small scintillation vials. Note also, just info for you, when a common name, like crane fly, is referring to a true fly, that is, an insect in the order Diptera [di- two, pteron- wing] then the common name indicates this by separating the name with, in this case, flies separate from crane, but when the word fly is incorporated into a name of an insect which is NOT a true fly then we don’t separate the parts of the name and it comes out, for example, mayfly. Mayflies, order Ephemeroptera, are not true flies.

Write Jerusalem cricket with a capital for Jerusalem because it is the name of a real place. Jerusalem crickets are in the genus Stenopelmatus, family Stenopelmatidae. They go by a number of common names in addition to Jerusalem cricket: child of the earth, niña de la tierra, and potato bug to name three. Some folks refer to them as JCs, a name for the conoscenti.

The last insect in the series you illustrate is in the genus Eleodes, a very large genus of beetles, Coleoptera, and are sometimes referred to in the United States as stink bugs. There are other insects, in the order Heteroptera, that are also called stink bugs and so it can get confusing. Eleodes is in the beetle family Tenebrionidae, the darkling beetles.

The genus name of the beetle that feigns death, plays dead when something touches them, is Phloeodes and the beetle is a member of the family Zopheridae. In the past it was thought to be a member of the Tenebrionidae.

Apropos the “kissing bug,” the name of a possible vector in the U.S.A. is Triatoma protracta and the family of Heteroptera it belongs to is the Reduviidae. Now what you write in the text is true for the kissing bug in South America, but there is something special to note here and this is really important since careful study shows that what we call Triatoma protracta in this country does not seem to vector Chagas’ disease in the States. I always wondered why we didn’t see Chagas’ disease in this country when we had the kissing bug and also other vertebrate hosts, like mice and armadillos, which serve as hosts for the causal agent. Trypanosoma cruzi, to infect in addition to humans. I spoke to (name redacted) of our Department of Entomology at (name redacted) whose research involves these. (Name redacted) points out that whereas the South American species of Triatoma defecate immediately after feeding thus allowing the disease causing organisms to be scratched into the wound along with the faeces by the victim’s fingernail as a response to the itching, the North American bug defecates after feeding as well, but this act may take some 20 minutes after biting a victim. As a consequence the insect may be far from the open wound when defecation occurs. Thus, scratching does not result in introducing the causal agent of Chagas’ disease into the victim’s body since the skin at this location is unbroken. Chagas’ disease is not something to scoff at since the causal agents can infect cerebral and cardiac tissues as well as others. I’m not certain of the current status of this disease, but I believe that there may not be any good means of curing a victim of Chagas’ disease. On the infrequent occasions when the causal agents turn up in the blood of humans the medical community springs into action and tries to understand just why it has occurred.

Wow! Just get me started and I write an opus. But you may find this info useful and worthy of addition to your blog.”

And indeed I did! And the rest was history/this post.