#phoresy

[onenicebugperday]

Slug caterpillar moth, Perola sericea, Limacodidae

Found in Central and South America

Photos 1-2 by memochipan and 3-5 (with pseudoscorpions catching a ride) by birdernaturalist

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Insectiride

Debut: Mario Party 6

Mario and friends get up to all sorts of shenanigans! Many of these are dangerous shenanigans, and I would prefer not to get involved with them. If I were to fall in lava or be hit by a barrage of hammers thrown by a turtle, I would Die! I lament this fact, but I am no scrimblo. However, some of the antics are good safe fun, and that includes the act of racing in funny bug-shaped vehicles! I wish I could do that in real life!

Though there is a snail among these insects, for the sake of simplicity, I will call all these creatures Bugs. I usually reserve that term for arthropods, but I don't feel like saying "creepy-crawlies" a bunch of times in this post like some kind of Talking Flower. So Bugs. There are some people who'd call a snail a bug without even a disclaimer! Can you imagine that?

Players begin Insectiride by choosing their vehicle out of the four unique options! I think I played this minigame once and I THINK I used the grasshopper. I think it still might be my favorite! I'm sorry to this snail, but I don't like it much. It looks like pizza, and I like pizza a lot- I regularly observe #pizzafriday- but it's just not the sort of thing I'd like a snail's skin to remind me of.

Each of these bugs has its own control scheme! The player on the ladybug must press the indicated button ten times quickly to make it crawl forward a bit. The player on the grasshopper must press a sequence of various buttons to make it hop forward a few times. The player on the stag beetle must press each indicated button that appears one at a time, each press making it push along a bit. And finally, the player on the snail must press A when its body extends fully to make it pull the shell along behind.

When playing this with humans, there is probably no one Best Bug to reliably choose, since human reaction time must be taken into account. If playing against ambitious robots, however, there is absolutely an imbalance! In tool-assisted speedruns, Grasshopper is the winner, followed by Ladybug, Stag Beetle, and poor Snail in last...

Mario Party 6 is a Koopa Kid Game! And there is official art of him riding the funny ladybug mechanism! I'm glad he got to have fun here. We all know he isn't having fun where he is now... in the Purgatory Zone... poor kid. Oh well! That's life!

Those were the only four bug vehicles present in Insectiride, but in Mario Party 3's Ridiculous Relay, there was another! Way before all the rest! Here we have a Skeeter-inspired contraption, allowing the operator to maneuver across the surface of the water! I think this would be the main mode of transportation in Wet-Dry World, for those who are not already Skeeters. Between being a mecharthropod and having a strange control scheme that must be displayed to the player, I would not at all be surprised if this was an inspiration for Insectiride!

Now don't think you're getting out of this post without some real Bug Facts! Humans, of course, are much too large to ride on a bug. To be small enough to ride a bug, you would have to be a bug yourself. And some bugs do indeed do this! This is phoresy, the interaction in which one animal will latch onto another animal for the purpose of travel. Usually, the hitchhiker will be a tiny arachnid such as a mite (including ticks), or my favorite arachnid, a pseudoscorpion!

Phoresy is EXTREMELY funny to me. A teensy little critter will just grab onto the leg of a fly or something, and away they will go! Hang on tight! This is a type of symbiosis known as commensalism, where one organism (in this case, the one hanging on) benefits, while the other (the host) is largely unaffected. Humans riding horses is another example of phoresy! A human can be like a mite sometimes. Ok, see you later! *grabs onto a hoverfly's leg and flies away*

[drhoz]

#2010 - Fam. Macrochelidae - Phoretic Dung Beetle Mites

On the dung beetle Onthophagus ferox.

Macrochelidae are fast-moving, free-living cosmopolitan predators found in habitats that are rich in decaying organic material, including manure, and carrion, including human corpses. They're probably best known for the species that hitch a lift to the next cowpat on a convinient dung beetle, and then decimate the fly population at that pat. Macrochelids feed mainly on small arthropods such as fly larvae and nematodes, and some species are particularly promising as biological control agents.

For example, Macrocheles robustulus is presently commercially available for the control of pre-pupae and pupae of thrips as well as larvae of Lyprauta sp. (Keroplatidae).

[bowelfly]

some phoretic mites demonstrating alternative methods of host attachment on Hylastes bark beetles:

- moogle pompom

- THE GRIP

[shadsasaur]

i have not been able to stop thinking about pseudoscorpion phoresy all day

[rcannon992]

Phoresy: mites hitchhiking on burying beetles

Nicrophorus vespillo Linnaeus, 1758, infested with Poecilichirus mites, Denmark (Donald Hobern, Flickr CC)

Phoresy, which is also called phoresis, is an association between two organisms, where one travels on the body of another, without being a parasite or causing it any harm. In this case, the hitchhiker is a mite, which attaches itself to a beetle, solely for the purpose of travel (above). The…

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[onenicebugperday]

@queen-bolete submitted: Hi if you don't mind could you identify this insect? The picture isn't great so I get it if you cant. I think it has babies on it, it kinda looks like it has a stinger and it's antennas are a little fuzzy looking

It's in [removed]

If you can I'd like if you'd remove the location please and thank you

I certainly can, it's a burying beetle, likely a black burying beetle, Nicrophorus nigrita. Those are not babies, they're phoretic mites, which means they use the beetle as a means of transportation. In this case, the mites want a ride to some carrion. I forget if they use the carrion as their food source or something ON the carrion, like fly eggs. Also not a stinger, they just have a pointed abdomen :)

[onenicebugperday]

Katydid with phoretic pseudoscorpion

Phoresy is a behavior seen in some species of pseudoscorpions (and other organisms) in which one animal uses another (usually larger) animal for transportation to new resources but does not harm it.

Photographed in Singapore by Nicky Bay // Website // Facebook

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!