Grasshopper
Classification
Phylum : Arthropoda
Class : Insecta
Subclass : Pterygota
Division :Endopterygota
Order :Orthoptra
Genus :Menanopus
Comments
Grasshopper is green in colour, with body divisible into head, thorax and
abdomen.
They have chewing mouthparts, two pairs of wings, one narrow and
tough called tegmina, the other wide, flexible and membranous, and long
hind legs for jumping.
Antennae not very long, 20-24 segments and conspicuous eyes. Cerci
(pair of appendages at end of abdomen) unjointed.
Grasshoppers are major pests of paddy crops. Due to polyphagous nature
they also feed on maize, sugarcane, bazra, etc.
Auditory organs well developed, It has stridulating organ also.
Sexes separated. Males have a single unpaired plate. at the end of
abdomen. Female has two pairs of valves (triangle shapes) at end of
abdomen used to dig in sand when egg laying.
Habit and Habitat
Most grasshoppers prefer dry open habitats with lots of grass and other
low plants, though some species live in forests or jungles.
Many of the grassland species invade farmer's fields too.
Carpenter ant
Classification
Kingdom : Animalia
Class : Insecta
Order : Hymenoptera
Family : Formicidae
Subfamily : Formicinae
Genus : Camponotus
Comments
Carpenter ants are one of the largest of all ant species. Carpenter ants
have polymorphic workers, meaning that ants within a single colony may
vary in size.
Adult carpenter ants can measure from 6 to 12 mm in length. Males, or
winged swarmers, can measure up to 18 mm, while queens grow to 20
mm in length.
A mature colony usually contains around 3,000 adult ants, but some
species have been known to contain up to 100,000 ants.
Like other ant species, carpenter ants are social insects, and their colonies
are composed of different castes.
In the United States, there are 24 pest species of carpenter ant. While they
may have similar physical characteristics, nesting habits, feeding and
destructive behaviors, their colonies contain different carpenter ant sizes.
Habits and Habitat
Carpenter ants are particularly dangerous pests when it comes to wooden
structures. Read on for a look at the habits and habitat of carpenter ants.
Carpenter ants nest in wood that is wet, moldy, or otherwise damaged.
They may spread from their nest in order to feed on dry, stable wood,
which can in turn cause major structural damage.
These ants can also enter buildings and homes through small cracks and
gaps around doors and windows.
Ant
Classification
Kingdom : Animalia
Class : Insecta
Order : Hymenoptera
Superfamily : Formicoidea
Family : Formicidae
Genus : Iridomyrmex
Species : Purpureus
Comments
There are more than 12,000 species of ants all over the world.
An ant can lift 20 times its own body weight. If a second grader was as
strong as an ant, she would be able to pick up a car!
Some queen ants can live for many years and have millions of babies!
Ants don’t have ears. Ants "hear" by feeling vibrations in the ground
through their feet.
When ants fight, it is usually to the death!
When foraging, ants leave a pheromone trail so that they know where
they’ve been.
Queen ants have wings, which they shed when they start a new nest.
Ants don’t have lungs. Oxygen enters through tiny holes all over the body
and carbon dioxide leaves through the same holes.
Habits and Habitat
Ants live in large groups called colonies. They may nest underground,
inside trees, or in the walls and voids of a house or building. Inside a
home, ants can nest behind baseboards, moldings, and countertops, as
well as inside walls.
Each ant colony is made up of different types of ants called castes. A
single colony can exist for many years with the same queen ant, but the
worker ants have a shorter life expectancy.
Ants eat many different kinds of food, and their preferences change
depending on the time of the year. In the spring, when ants are preparing
to mate and lay eggs, ants prefer a high protein diet.
Spider
Classification
Kingdom : Animalia
Phylum : Arthropoda
Subphylum : Chelicerata
Class : Arachnida
Order : Araneae
Genus : Spider
Comments
Spiders are not insects. Like insects and crustaceans, they belong to a
subgroup within the phylum arthropod, which means they are
invertebrates and have an exoskeleton.
Spiders belong to the class Arachnida. Like all arachnids, spiders have
just two body regions, a cephalothorax, and an abdomen.
In spiders, these two body regions join at a narrow waist, called a pedicel.
The abdomen is soft and unsegmented, while the cephalothorax is harder
and includes the eight legs that spiders are known for.
Most spiders have eight simple eyes, although some have less or even
none at all.
Spiders prey on other organisms, usually insects. Spiders use a wide
range of strategies to capture prey: trapping it in sticky webs, lassoing it
with sticky balls, mimicking the prey to avoid detection or running it
down.
Habits and Habitat
More than 40,000 species of spiders inhabit found worldwide on every
continent except for Antarctica and have become established in nearly
every habitat with the exceptions of air and sea colonization.
They have been found in the Arctic as well. The vast majority of spiders
are terrestrial, although a few specialized species live in fresh water.
Horse-fly
Classification
Kingdom : Animalia
Clade : Euarthropoda
Class : Insecta
Order : Diptera
Superfamily: Tabanoidea
Family : Tabanidae
Genus : Tabanus
Comments
Adult flies are brownish, hairy, robust and about 2/3-inch long,
superficially resembling honey bees except for having only one pair of
wings.
Wings of the horse bot fly have faint smoky spots on the wings. Fully-
grown larvae (maggots) are ½ to 2/3 inch long and have yellow-white to
pinkish thick, tough skin.
They are blunt at one (the back) end, and taper to the other (front) end
which bears a pair of strong, hook-like mouthparts. Each body segment is
ringed with strong spines.
Several other species of bot flies occur on horses (chin fly or throat bot
fly, Gasterophilus nasalis (Linnaeus); and, lip or nose bot fly, G.
haemorrhoidalis (Linnaeus)). They can be identified, in part, by the shape
of the eggs.
Horse flies feed by sucking blood and cause a painful and severe bite.
Habits and Habitat
Most horse flies and deer flies are found in brushy or low lying pasture
areas near creeks, streams or tanks that provide damp soils in which the
immature stages develop.
Maggots have mouth hooks that tease tissue apart in the digestive tracts;
adults do not have functional mouthparts. Horses, mules, donkeys are
primary hosts.
Adult female flies, attempting to lay eggs on host animals, cause horses
to flee and resist fly "attacks" (hovering, buzzing and striking),
occasionally resulting in injury. Larvae live in the digestive tract,
injuring the tongue, lips, stomach lining and intestine.
Red Cotton Bug
Classification
Phylum : Arthropoda
Class : Insecta
Subclass : Pterygota
Division :Exopterygota
Order : 1-lemiptera
Family : Pyrrhocoridae
Genus : Dysdercus
Species : koengii
Comments
Dysdercus is commonly known as red cotton bug or red cotton stainer.
It is major pest of cotton bLit also infests lady’s finger, maize and
hollyhock.
It possesses piercing and sucking mouth parts.
It is conspicuous on account of its red colour with prominent dark brown
black marks on the forewings and white bands on abdomen.
Female lay eggs in clusters in the cracks of the soil near the plants which
hatch out into nymphs within 7 days.
Nymphs feed often gregariously on full exposed boils and undergo five
moults to become adult.
Habits and Habitat
Like other true bugs, Red Cotton Bug sucks fluids from its host plants.
The only part of the cotton plant affected by this pest is the flower and the
seed capsule or boll.
As this develops, the insect thrusts its rostrum between the carpels and
sucks fluids from the still soft seeds inside.
Micro-organisms are admitted in the process and may make the boll
contents rot or the lint become discoloured. Meanwhile, the seeds wither,
the fibres may fail to expand and the boll may abort.
House Fly
Classification
Phylum : Arthropoda
Class : Insecta
Subclass : Pterygota
Division :Endopterygota
Order : Diptera
Genus : Musca
Comments
Musca is commonly called housefly.
Body has distinct 3 regions-bead, thorax and abdomen.
Head bears a pair of large compounded eyes, ocelli, a pair of 3-jointed
antennae and mouth parts which are of sponging type.
Thorax bears three segments-prothorax, mesothorax; mesothorax bears a
pair of transplant wings, metathoracic wings into halters; all thoracic
segments bear a pair of legs terminating into claws having pulvilli.
Habits and Habitat
Occurs in a wide range of habitats, and is often associated with human
activities tends to breed in manure and decomposing material
Houseflies feed and breed in animal feces and garbage, and also
commonly visit human foods.
Their legless maggots feed directly on the material in which the eggs
were laid.
Adult flies have sponge-sucking mouthparts that allow them to eat only
liquid foods; they eject saliva to break down solid foods.
Mosquito
Classification
Phylum : Arthropoda
Class :Insecta
Subclass : Pterygota
Division :Endopterygota
Order : Diptera
Genus :Anopheles
Comments
Culex is a very common mosquito. Its body ahs three distinct regions-
head, thorax and abdomen.
The head bears a. pair of compound eyes, no ocelli, a pair of filiform
antennae and mouth parts which are adapted for piercing and sucking.
The thorax has prothorax, mesothorax and metathorax. Mesothorax bears
a pair of membranous wings, the metathoracic wings reduced as halteres.
Each thoracic segment has a pair of very long, slender and fragile legs.
The abdomen is 10 segmented.
While resting on ground its body remains parallel to the surface.
Habits and Habitat
Mosquitoes can live in almost any environment, with the exception of
extreme cold weather.
They favor forests, marshes, tall grasses and weeds, and ground that is
wet at least part of the year.
Permanent water mosquitoes tend to lay their eggs in clumps, called rafts,
of 50 to 300 on the surface of standing water at the edges of lakes and
ponds and among the vegetation in swamps and marshes.
Dog Tick
Classification
Phylum : Arthropoda
Class : Arachnida
Order : Ixodida
Family : Ixodidae
Genus : Rhipicephalus
Species : sanguineus
Comments
The brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus Latreille, is unusual
among ticks, in that it can complete its entire life cycle indoors.
It is small, red-brown in color (called the red dog tick in other parts of the
world), and lacking any ornamentation.
Although not sufficient for formal identification, it can be recognized by
its by red-brown color, elongated body shape, nd hexagonal basis
capituli.
The hexagonal basis capituli is a particularly good identifying character,
as only one other tick species with this feature has ever been found in
Florida (Boophilus annulatus, the cattle tick).
The cattle tick was eradicated from Florida many years ago, so ticks
found in Florida now with a hexagonal basis captituli are almost certainly
R. sanguineus.
Habits and Habitat
The American dog tick is also known as the wood tick and is common
wherever domestic animals or livestock dwell.
They also thrive in locations where plants, bushes and grasses are
accessible to humans.
They are found in wooded or grassy areas and may also be referred to as
Rocky Mountain wood ticks.
Honey bee
Classification
Phylum : Arthropoda
Clas : Insecta
Subclass : Pterygota
Division : Endopterygota
Order : Hymenoptera
Family :Apidae
Genus : Apis
Comments
Honey bee is a social insect and lives in a highly organized colony.
The individuals of a colony consist of a functional female or Queen,
males or drones and sterile females or workers.
The body of honey bee has three distinct regions; head, thorax and
abdomen.
Mouth parts are chewing and lapping type.
The ovipositor of worker bee is modified into sting.
The wax glands are modified cells on the ventral surface of the last four
abdominal segments.
Habits and Habitat
Researchers believe that the original habitats of the honey bee are tropical
climates and heavily forested areas.
Honey bees can thrive in natural or domesticated environments, though
they prefer to live in gardens, woodlands, orchards, meadows and other
areas where flowering plants are abundant.
Many people believe that honey bees originated in Africa and spread to
northern Europe, eastern India, China and the Americas.
