BUGS!!!!!
Compliments of Tony Jewell, here are some photos of the invertebrate life on Bluff Hill. Fun Facts: (1) The male Harvestman arachnid is not a spider; it is from an entirely different order of arachnids called Opiliones (which comes from “opilio” meaning “shepherd”). They do not produce venom and do not have fangs with which to envenomate anything. (2) The stag beetle walks very slow and cannot fly so they are vulnerable to predation by rats so these bugs are good indicators of rat populations. (3) The Prickly Stick insect is native to NZ and there are no males in the species. They are known as the forest phantoms. They belong to the insect order Phasmatodea, which comes from the Greek work “phasm”, meaning phantom. (4) It is estimated there are over 2000 species of moths in New Zealand and NZ has a higher rate of unique moth species than anywhere else in the world. Moths have 3 important roles in nature: pollinators (adult moths), food sources for birds (adults and caterpillars), and recyclers of nutrients in soil (caterpillars).
Posted on: 28 March 2016
