Kia Pākiki Canterbury – Bug of the Year

In this Kia Pākiki Canterbury podcast, Science Communicator Tom Goulter and co-host Associate Professor Adrian Paterson from the Department of Pest-Management and Conservation at Lincoln University, interview Dr Morgane Merien from the Entomological Society of New Zealand.

They discuss Bug of the Year and some weird and wonderful winners and contenders from the competition.

Kia Pākiki Canterbury is a monthly podcast presented by the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Transcript

Tom Goulter

I am here with Adrian and Morgane Merien. Morgane has a PhD in biological sciences and entomology from the University of Auckland. She’s Science and Curatorial Communicator for Canterbury Museum and presenter of the TVNZ kids’ show Bug Hunter. And she’s here to talk about the Entomological Society of New Zealand’s Bug of the Year contest. Morgane, tell us about the contest.

Dr Morgane Merien

This is an annual contest. We’ve mirrored it off Bird of the Year, but we’ve decided enough of the birds, let’s look at the bugs. We’ve got an incredible diversity of invertebrates here in New Zealand and so we’d thought we’d use this competition to showcase the diversity, how amazing and cool they are. And so this is our fourth year running and we’re so pleased about it.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

And when we talk about bugs, just being a part-time entomologist, we’re not just talking about Hemiptera and sucking bugs are we? We’re talking about everything.

Dr Morgane Merien

No, yeah, absolutely. So not just the true bugs. We’ve deliberately chosen the term ‘bug’ as an umbrella term. So we know that true bugs are a specific group of insects. But with bugs, we’ve gone with it, because even though it’s not scientifically precise, it’s already in people’s minds. They kind of understand what it refers to. And it just really kind of helps us to share that love and wonder of invertebrate critters.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So it includes things like spiders and I guess nematodes and anything along those lines.

Dr Morgane Merien

Exactly. There’s just so much incredible invertebrates in New Zealand, not just the insects. And we just felt like we wanted those to also be part of the competition and to share it in the, you know, the highlight that the rest of the insects also get.

Tom Goulter

What are some previous winners from the Bug of the Year contest?

Dr Morgane Merien

The very first year that we ran it, it was a native bee, Leioproctus, that won it. And then the year after it was the kahukura, the red admiral butterfly. And then just last year, the winner was the velvet worm, the Peripatus.

Tom Goulter

That’s quite a special guy, the velvet worm. Have any of those wins surprised you?

Dr Morgane Merien

The velvet worm I was really happy for it to win ‘cause it’s kind of an underdog and not many people know about it. I would love for, as the competition goes on, for more and more kind of unheard bugs to get their light in the sun.

Tom Goulter

What are some of the standout nominees for this year’s Bug of the Year competition, which has just been announced, hasn’t it?

Dr Morgane Merien

Yeah, it has. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have some repeats from the previous year. So for example, the endangered Canterbury knobbled weevil. So that one is a repeat, but then we’ve also got lots of new ones that might kind of interest people. There’s a hellraiser mite, it looks incredible. I mean if you get the chance to, you should look at it, find a photo of it.

Tom Goulter

It looks like Pinhead. It’s got protuberances coming all out of its face and skull.

Dr Morgane Merien

Yeah, it kind of looks like a walking pin cushion. And as you’ve mentioned, looks like the character Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies. It was first described in Argentina, but now this species has also been found in New Zealand and Australia. And despite that kind of really wide distribution, there are more records of this mite here in New Zealand than anywhere else. So it’s likely to be native rather than introduced and it can be found in native forests all over Aotearoa. So just need to go out there and have a closer look at your backyard I think.

Tom Goulter

And this is fairly recently uncovered here.

Dr Morgane Merien

Yes, yes. And iNaturalist was very much a help for this. Really kind of putting it up on the map as it were. And it’s a tiny, tiny little thing. It’s, you know, less than a millimetre long. So for us to be finding it is quite a feat I think.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So where do you find it?

Dr Morgan Merien

Yeah, you’d find it in the soil litter, leaf litter in the bush. Kind of just pulling logs apart and right there. And if you see a tiny little pin cushion kind of walking along, you’ve got your hellraiser mite.

Tom Goulter

How did you come to be associated with this contest Morgane?

Dr Morgane Merien

I am the Outreach Officer for the Entomological Society of New Zealand. And so just naturally kind of got pulled into this to kind of help, mind the social media and kind of that aspect of it and just, I just thought it was really, really cool. We all kind of got together, we saw how popular Bird of the Year was and the impact that they were having and we thought surely, surely we could do something similar. And we’ve got so many more invertebrates to choose from. Every year, we’ve got different nominees, we’ve got 21 nominees and that changes. That allows us to kind of showcase the huge diversity of really cool invertebrates that we’ve got here in New Zealand.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

And it strikes me that, you know, each invertebrate that gets nominated, let’s say has some really passionate people behind it. Very, very passionate people.

Dr Morgane Merien

Absolutely, just like Bird of the Year, some people very much take up the mantle for their bug of choice and do whole campaigns for them. We’ve got community groups that will back a certain bug, museums will back a certain bug as well. So we’re really quite pleased about that. That engagement is really amazing and especially ‘cause some of these bugs, most people will have never heard of them even though they’re incredibly important to our ecosystem and they do incredible services for us, but they just, you know, are completely unheard of.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

What is the main goal from the New Zealand Entomological Society for this competition?

Dr Morgane Merien

Raising awareness. ‘Cause you can’t protect something that you don’t know about. You can’t care about something that you have no idea even exists. So that is really the main goal is bringing awareness to these invertebrates and then hopefully along the way raising money for them. That money then could be funnelled into further research. That is the main goal.

Tom Goulter

Are there any notable groups or organisations with particular bugs that they’ve championed that you can mention?

Dr Morgane Merien

Otago Museum, last year, they championed the velvet worm. I think they pretty much got all of Dunedin behind the velvet worm, which is probably why it really worked. We’ve had Forest and Bird also champion some, we’ve had Auckland Museum, but I know for example that Canterbury Museum will be championing the Canterbury knobbled weevil this year. Forest and Bird will likely get behind the avatar moth. So yeah, there’s definitely some that, you know, are there to bring people and organisations together.

Tom Goulter

So tell us about that moth.

Dr Morgane Merien

This moth was unknown until 2012 and then it was collected during a BioBlitz on the Denniston Plateau, which is very much in the news at the moment because it is currently the proposed site for an open-cast coal mine, which would not be great because, yeah, it would, you know, be harmful to a whole lot of species including this avatar moth. And yes, it is named after the Avatar movies because of the beautiful locality and habitat that looks like, you know, straight out of the Avatar movies. So this is quite a small moth. The wingspan’s around 20 millimetres across, it’s got shades of brown as well as some kind of pale orange on it. And they’re kind of seen from February to March. The caterpillar’s food plant is not known, but it’s very likely that it’s, you know, some sort of alpine marshwort. And it is currently ranked as nationally critical under the New Zealand Threat Classification System because it’s got so little available habitat. So that’s kind of the clincher with this species is, if the mine goes ahead, then we are removing even more habitat from it.

Tom Goulter

So that’s quite a political vote. If you’re voting for that bug, you’re really casting your oar in against open-cast mining.

Dr Morgane Merien

I think so, yeah. Supporting the avatar moth, not the mining.

Tom Goulter

Great.

Dr Morgane Merien

We need people to study them but we need the money for it. So this is also part of, you know, that goal is awareness to get more funding to then get more research, yeah.

Tom Goulter

And as you put it to me before we started recording, without the bugs, you don’t have the birds, so if you like the birds, you might as well get invested in the bugs.

Dr Morgane Merien

Exactly. I feel very passionate about this. You know, we’ve got a certain number of species of birds. We know most of them, we know quite a lot of information about them. They already do get a lot of support and people really care about the birds. But I think that, without these invertebrates, who underpin many of these ecosystems, we don’t get the birds, we don’t get us. And so I think more people should care about these invertebrates, about these really incredibly important bugs. Yeah, if you care about the birds then by default you should also be caring about these bugs.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So what do you think makes for a good winner?

Dr Morgane Merien

Any bug that’s kind of got some sort of cool life history, you know, weird behaviours. The ones that look kind of alien and strange always tend to do well. The velvet worm certainly had that kind of appeal of, oh, it’s just so weird. It’s incredibly old. It’s, you know, its own group and it hunts by, you know, spitting.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Shooting, spitting on you. You haven’t lived until you’ve been spat on by an Onychophor.

Dr Morgane Merien

Exactly. So I think those make some, for some very good winners. I think the first two winners were very much ones that most people were very familiar with. You know, they’d seen them in their gardens. And who doesn’t love a bee? Who doesn’t love a butterfly? But I think as we progress through the years in this competition, we should hopefully get more of the weirder critters kind of rising to the top.

Tom Goulter

Let me ask you both as you’re both bug experts, what would your picks be for the Bug of the Year, if I can ask you to influence the competition thus?

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

The only one I’ve worked on specifically is the Canterbury knobbled weevil. So that would get my vote. But it’s also one that, you know, from a Canterbury point of view, we should be voting for that one. ‘Cause it’s got the recognition. It is Canterbury specific. It’s got a really amazing story. It used to be pretty widespread but then, you know, over the, the course of the 20th century, it pretty much was removed. It was rediscovered early this century just in one little area, as you just go up into the Mackenzie Country, just over a few hectares. And that was the only population. The kind of work I was doing was, one of my students, Emily Fountain, and we were taking DNA out of pinned specimens that had been found a hundred years before and we were able to find their DNA and we could look at some of the DNA that was left in the, in the relic population and we could figure out what’s been lost. Emily was very keen on maybe at some point we could bring some of that old DNA, that variation, these genes that were lost out of the population back into the population, which would be great. And that’s possibly where conservation will go in the next few decades, but still a little bit tricky doing that. But as I said, just last year, a second distribution or point in the distribution was found a little bit further north so, which indicates that maybe they are found a little bit more widespread and just really hard to find or that there’s just these little relic populations. So they’re a cool beetle essentially. They are knobbled. They’re a reasonable size, you know, they’re a good sort of 20 millimetres long living in speargrass. So they’re in this kind of cool habitat, which really, which is probably one reason we don’t find them very often because it’s quite tricky looking in there. So that would be, that would be my pick.

Tom Goulter

Adrian making a strong pick for Waitaha pride in the knobbled weevil. What does it mean for the weevil to be knobbled?

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Their exoskeleton, if you like, just has these little kind of knobbly nodules all over it. So yeah, so when you look at it, it’s reasonably distinct from – most beetles and insects are quite smooth when you look at them, but these ones are not. They’ve kind of got this almost rippled look about them, so yeah, they, they’re quite distinct. What about you Morgane?

Dr Morgane Merien

Yeah, no, Canterbury knobbled weevil is a great one. And my other one of course is the stick insect. So this year, the stick insect’s nominee is the double-spined stick insect, Micrarchus hystriculeus, and I just love them. They’re like these, they’re one of our smallest stick insects in New Zealand. They’re about 5 centimetres long, the females. And they’ve got like a, two rows of spines all along their back. They’re incredibly beautiful and they’re just so cool. And some of them live quite high up in alpine zones and so they’ve got this kind of cold adaptation to survive the really, really harsh temperatures. Yeah, the stick insects, always close to my heart, but that is my bias.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So you did your research on stick insects? Camouflage?

Dr Morgane Merian

That’s right, yeah.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So do you want to tell us a bit about that and explain your bias?

Dr Morgane Merien

For my PhD research, I looked at camouflage and colour in our New Zealand stick insects. So very much just trying to understand why they look the way they do and what does that mean for their predators. Because humans, we see them in a very specific way and we’ve called them stick insects, but actually our visual system is not what, you know, we’re not the predators driving what they look like. So I was really interested in figuring out what do they look like to their main predators, which in New Zealand is birds historically, but now they’re also being eaten by everything and anything. And it’s really interesting, because within camouflage, there’s kind of different strategies. So you’ve got background matching where you very much just blend into your background and look like the habitat that you are in. And then you’ve got masquerade, which is slightly different, where you are mimicking an object that’s already found in your environment and being mistaken for that object. So in background matching, the predator doesn’t even register that there’s anything there. But in masquerade, the predator does see that there’s something but just misclassifies it as something innocuous and not worth their time. And so with the stick insect, you could argue, well maybe it’s both, maybe it’s the colour, they’re matching perfectly with either the bark of a tree or the leaves or they’re actually, you know, looking like a stick and behaving like a stick. And I found that, depending on the visual system that you have, that yeah, both. They’ve managed to kind of combine multiple camouflage strategies. So they’re kind of the ultimate camouflage insect.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

So do we have a high diversity of stick insects in New Zealand, given that we have –

Tom Goulter

A high diversity of sticks?

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Well, and we have a lot of birds that would hunt them and where it makes sense to hide like that?

Dr Morgane Merien

Absolutely. And that’s really interesting because, so we’ve got around 20 different species of stick insects in New Zealand, all endemic, found nowhere else. But if you look at our stick insects, most of them are very much brown or green camouflage. Their main defences are to stay still or pretend to be dead, just relying on the way that they look to to be hidden. If you go over the pond to Australia, their stick insects have got loads of other defences, including, you know, armoured kind of spines along their back. They will spit chemicals at their predators. They will fly away. They’ve got really flashy colours to try and deter would-be predators from eating them. And our ones don’t do that because our ones are just fighting against the visual predator, so as long as you can remain hidden, that’s enough. But in Australia, you know, you’ve got things that are hunting by smell, notably the mammals, which historically we didn’t have here in New Zealand. So yeah, very, very different kind of suites of characters.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

What are the spiders this year?

Dr Morgane Merien

There is the black tunnelweb spider, which is quite amazing. They’re one of our biggest spiders. Not the biggest, but they’re pretty big. You know, when people see them they’re like, ooh, OK, I didn’t know we had spiders as big as this in New Zealand.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

And what’s their distribution?

Dr Morgane Merien

I’m pretty sure they’re found everywhere, yeah. Most often seen in native bush environments from North Island all the way to Fiordland in the South Island. So yeah. And you know, they’ll be found in the bush but they have been found in, you know, gardens as well in suburban areas, so.

Tom Goulter

So there could be one near you wherever you are.

Dr Morgane Merien

Yeah, just look for little kind of holes in trees and like a bit of webbing and legs kind of sticking out. That’s your tunnelweb spiders.

Tom Goulter

How did you get to be doing this kind of work Morgane?

Dr Morgane Merien

When I was at university, I was kind of just doing biology and I just didn’t really know what kind of biology I wanted to do. I really enjoyed, you know, animal behaviour. But I do remember my high school biology teacher told me that, when he did biology at uni, he did a third-year paper where they got to make an insect collection and he said that was the highlight of his degree and I was like, sounds cool, I want to do that. That sounds great. So I waited until third year and I did the paper and it just all clicked. Like it was that moment of like, wow, this is incredible, this is so interesting. There’s still so much that we don’t know to learn. I’m actually getting good grades in this as well, which is, you know, important, and I could kind of see a future in it. It was really exciting. So yeah, that was the moment I was like, this is it, this is, I know what I’m doing now.

Tom Goulter

And so it’s been a fairly straight path from feeling that enthusiasm to channelling it for other people through this contest.

Dr Morgane Merien

There’s still so many people that find bugs, insects, critters, gross and creepy and, you know, scary. So I find it really important, especially with children, that they have a really positive experience with a bug. And a stick insect is perfect because they’re quite big. They look kind of still alieny but they won’t move that quickly. Our ones don’t fly and, you know, they don’t bite. And most kids love it. Like you can see their face just light up and for them to get to hold one, it’s just, you know, that’s a moment they’ll remember.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Not wanting to cast shade on, you know, our bug friends, but is there a group or two that probably get just a bit too much love and kind of overwhelms, you know, what could be going into some of the others?

Dr Morgane Merien

The bees and the butterflies get a lot of love. Humans are so simple sometimes, you know. If it’s pretty, then we’re into it. But I, there’s just so much more beyond just the butterflies and the bees. The bees, yes, are important. They’re pollinators, but there’s so many other insects that are really important pollinators. The bees and the butterflies, I just think if you already love those, what’s, you know, another step towards the stick insects or the wasp or the wētā or the grasshoppers? Just, just keep going.

Tom Goulter

This is actually a bit of a segue into something else we were talking about before we started recording, which is our standard question here: what’s the last thing that made you curious?

Dr Morgane Merien

That’s such a good question. I always go on like deep dives on Wikipedia, and one thing that I was really curious about is that the cacao plant is actually pollinated by only one type of insect, which is a tiny biting midge, a tiny fly. And so without this fly, there’s no chocolate.

Tom Goulter

No chocolate.

Dr Morgane Merien

No chocolate at all.

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Imagine that world.

Dr Morgane Merien

Exactly.

Tom Goulter

Well thank you very much for your time Morgane. How can people find Bug of the Year? How can people get in touch with you?

Dr Morgane Merien

They can just email me. If you Google my name, it should all come up. And then Bug of the Year. Yeah, just put in Bug of the Year. It’s all online. Voting is online. There are 21 nominees. You get three votes. Voting is open now and the voting closes on February 16th and we’ll be announcing the winner on the 18th of Feb. So look out for that.

Tom Goulter

Great. Thanks very much Morgane.

Dr Morgane Merien

Thank you.

Acknowledgements

Tom Goulter

Associate Professor Adrian Paterson

Dr Morgane Merien

Kia Pākiki Canterbury logo, © Plains Media/Royal Society Te Apārangi (Canterbury Branch)

Images of Tom Goulter and Adrian Paterson, © Royal Society Te Apārangi (Canterbury Branch)

All images of Morgane Merien, © Morgane Merien

Ngaro huruhuru | native bee (Leioproctus fulvescens), Steve Kerr, CC-BY 4.0

Kahukura | New Zealand red admiral butterfly (Vanessa gonerilla), Richard Giddins, CC-BY 2.0

Velvet worm (Peripatus juanensis), Wes Gapp, CC-BY 4.0

Canterbury knobbled weevil (Hadramphus tuberculatus), Des Helmore / Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, CC-BY 4.0

Hellraiser mite (Neotrichozetes spinulosa), Saryu Mae, CC-BY 4.0

Avatar moth (Arctesthes avatar), Brian H. Patrick, Hamish J.H. Patrick, Robert J.B. Hoare, CC-BY 4.0

Double-spined stick insect (Micrarchus hystriculeus), Jeremy Rolfe, CC-BY 4.0

Black tunnelweb spider (Porrhothele antipodiana), wild_wind, CC-BY 4.0