Steve's Nature Blog: centipede

Wednesday, 3 January 2018

The Problem With Icarus

A beautiful sunny start to 2018 and I wish you all a Happy New Year. The other day I passed the back of a curious concrete structure south of Lithines and I decided to stop and walk around to the front of it. Here it is, come on I'll show you. Once upon a time these hexagons were all mirrored which would have been a spectacular sight for that buzzard up there. Despite looking like something out of a Bond movie, it was actually an early solar power experiment. Crete is no stranger to discovering the power of the sun of course. Back in the day an engineer called Daedalus was imprisoned on Crete with his son Icarus by King Minos. In an ingenious escape plan Daedalus made wings of feathers and wax for the pair of them. Icarus flew too close to the sun, the wax melted and he fell back to earth with a splat. Actually both Icarus and the story crash at this point because the higher you fly, the colder it gets. Far from melting, the wax was more in danger of icing up. The result would have been the same of course.

Many animals shun the heat of the Cretan sun by hiding under rocks and with so many of these hexagons lying around in the undergrowth I reckon we can have a flipping good day finding some of them. Lets start with a couple of myriapods and dispel a few myths about legs. As children we were taught that centipedes had a hundred legs and millipedes a thousand (and their names reflect this). Neither fact is true. Myriapods, the group to which they belong means ten thousand legs and that's wrong also. Centipedes can have anywhere between 30 and about 350 legs (this one has about 40) and even the most leggy of millipedes only has 750. Our curled up friend here has about120. In addition to this they grow to adulthood by adding segments and legs as they develop, starting with as little as three segments and six legs, so counting legs is not a good way of differentiating the two animals. The trick is to look at the arrangement: centipedes have one pair of legs per body segment, millipedes have two.

I don't know if you've noticed but there's a door in the floor over there which can only mean one of two things. It's either a portal to another dimension or a flat-pack fridge (I often wonder what IKEA do with ideas that don't quite work). Let's open it up and find out what lies within. Corrugated cardboard which seems to be of interest to hundreds and hundreds of ants. I wonder what they find so fascinating? When reading about ants one often comes across the prefix 'myrm' (people who study ants are myrmecologists, seed dispersal by ants is called myrmecochory and so on) and the words come from the Greek 'myrmex'. There is an ancient Greek myth regarding Aeacus and Aegina who grew up alone on the island of Aegina. Getting rather bored of calling out “Aegina” and getting the response “Are you talking to me or the island?” (which wasn't a very good joke in the first place but pales considerably after the hundredth repetition) Aeacus asked Zeus to provide a bit of alternative company. Never one to do things by halves Zeus turned all the ants on the island into men and women and they were known as the Myrmidons who later fought with Achilles at Troy. There is an alternative version in which the Myrmidons were supposed to have been descended from the son of Zeus and Eurymedusa whom he seduced whilst appearing in the form of an ant but that seems somewhat impractical on many levels, even for Zeus.

Moving on to this Lentisc bush for a moment we seem to have something interesting going on. The spider is our old friend Cytophora, the Tropical Tent Web Spider, going about her business of cocooning food trapped in her web. But I'm rather more interested in this little bug that she seems to be ignoring. If I just extract it and turn it over in my hand... Yes, despite the faded colours which indicates that it may have been trapped for some time, it is definitely Zelus renardii. This Assassin Bug, you may recall, is a newcomer to Europe having been discovered on mainland Greece in 2011and here on Crete by ourselves in 2014 (see Red Autumn). Now the question is, why has she not parcelled it up for later consumption? We'll have to keep our eyes out for further instances and see if this is just a one-off or a more general occurrence.

Whilst we're on the subject of dead insects I've just spotted a deceased grasshopper on the floor here. This is one of at least three types of bandwing grasshoppers with reddish wings on Crete which you normally see as just a flash of red, like a miniature firework exploding beneath your feet, as you walk through dry scrubland like this. It is only when they have passed on that you can get a chance to open up their wings and admire their exquisite tracery. The patterning also helps to identify the species. This one is the Slender Digging Grasshopper, Acrotylus patruelis.

*********************************************************************

LINKS:

Share your nature thoughts, photos and comments on Naturalists (the facebook page that accompanies this blog)

Explore the region with the #CreteNature interactive Hiking and Nature Map

Greek Butterflies and Moths

Aquaworld Aquarium

Visit Greece (National Government Tourist Office)

Wednesday, 3 December 2014

A Saunter Round The Salt Pans

I have to collect some lab results from Agios Nikolaos today so I thought I’d take you with me and together we’ll take a trip up to one of my favourite birding spots, the salt pans at Elounda. It’s usually a great place for herons and egrets.

Elounda

We’ll just stop here at Ellinika on our way through because it offers a great view of where we’re going which is just in front of the causeway that connects the mainland to the peninsula on the right. The locals call it Kolokytha (or Pumpkin Peninsula in English). You wouldn’t think it to look at it now but that area around the little bridge of Poros was once the ancient city-state of Olous some 2,200 years ago. You can still see some of the old walls if you go snorkeling but, despite the glorious sunshine this morning, I think we’ll forego that experience until next summer. Lets truckle on down and see what we can find.

Stonechat (female)

No herons or egrets at the moment but our old friend the kingfisher is darting about, low over the water like an azure torpedo with his high pitched staccato peeping call and up here on the headland we have wagtails and black redstarts merrily bobbing. We’re being watched. See that little brown job keeping a wary eye on us from the fence over there? That’s a female stonechat. Not as showy as her mate of course with his orange/red waistcoat, shiny white collar and black hat but an endearing little bird all the same.

I often find that bird watching is very much a two way thing, the trouble is the birds usually spot me before I spot them and most of them don’t hang around for their photograph to be taken like this little lady.

Oh look, a bush full of sparrows (I wonder how long it will be before that sight becomes a rarity? Their decline over the past 30 years is catastrophic, up to 90% in some areas I read recently).

Millipede and Centipede

You may also have noticed that there are a lot of largeish stones about that centuries ago probably formed the walls of grain houses and the like. This accounts for the gleam in my eye – you know I can never resist stone flipping – let’s knock on a few doors and see who’s about. Ants and snails in great abundance of course and no less than three geckos but here’s a couple of creatures we haven’t discussed yet; millipedes and centipedes. These are Myriapods (meaning countless feet) and to dispel an old myth Millipedes do not have a thousand feet as their name suggests nor do centipedes have a hundred, commonly they have between twenty and four hundred depending on the species. The Millipedes are harmless little animals going about their daily business of eating decomposing matter for the most part and helping to enrich the soil (although some are herbivorous) but centipedes are swift moving predators that inject venom into their prey. Larger ones such as this can even give us humans a nasty nip.

Marine Pill Bug

Let’s wander down to the salt pans and see what’s lurking in the water. More stone flipping but try not to disturb the sediment. Another little armoured animal. Now this is curious. My first thought is that we are looking at a sea slater but those paddle-like projections at the rear don’t look quite right. You keep spuddling about in the shallows whilst I have a quick chat with some people who know a lot more about isopods than I do. [First rule of the naturalist: never be afraid to show your ignorance – if you don’t know, ask.] The consensus of opinion is a Marine Pill Bug (family Sphaeromatidae) which, as far as I know, has only been recorded in the Adriatic and Switzerland. If anyone can shed any further light on this animal then please let me know.

Mediterranean Saltbush

We haven’t seen much in the way of flowers this morning other than a fair carpet of diminutive yellow Field Marigolds but here’s an interesting one that’s easily overlooked. It’s the Mediterranean Saltbush that grows well in saline conditions. I’m told that the leaves have been eaten since Biblical times and the seeds, when ground, can be used to thicken soups and stews. Although I haven’t tried them myself, I wouldn’t think you’d need to add any salt in the cooking. Studies on the Sand Rat (a type of gerbil) in Israel indicate that the plant may have a use in combating diabetes. I can’t help feeling that there’s a certain irony when plush new, all-inclusive, eat-as-much-as-you-want hotels are erected, the plant that invariably gets cleared out of the way may hold the cure for a disease that’s on the increase - in part from an eat-as-much-as-you-want lifestyle.

Noah's Ark

Enough of the pontificating let’s see if there are any interesting sea shells on the beach. These are nice, they’re a little bivalve mollusc called Noah’s Ark found in the Mediterranean and Adriatic (although they had a tough time of it in the Adriatic in the second half of the last century but apparently they’re making a comeback). They’re often found in association with Horsemussels and they’re somewhat susceptible to hitch-hikers (epibonts in scientific terminology) such as barnacles as the one on the right is demonstrating. I wonder why that should be… a barnacle likes to live on Noah’s Ark which likes to live around Horsemussels – or do the Horsemussels like to live with Noah’s Arks?

So many questions still to be answered, I’ve quite worked up an appetite. As it happens there’s a nice little grill house in the village that’s open at this time of year and they do a very nice souvlaki and tzatziki. Maybe we should discuss it over lunch?

***********************************************************************************

Special thanks this week to Susannah Anderson AKA Wanderin' Weeta and also Tracy Clark in the Crustaceans Group on Facebook for their help with the Marine Pill Bug.