week 3 lab 'what's in the bag?'

For this lab my partner and I worked to identify and categorize the insects that we found in a sample from two crops, alfalfa and soybeans. Both crops contained a multitude of insect diversity, but there were alot more present in the alfalfa sample.

This sample contained 6 seperate orders of insects and about 11 seperate species. We categorized them by their types of mouthparts and there were 3 types, piercing/sucking, rasping, and chewing. Not all of the insects were at the same stages in their lives and there were also some variations in sizes. For my closeup I used a stinkbug, order Hemiptera, to show the parts of a piercing sucking insect. With this type of eating habit, the stinkbug will pull it's mouthparts flat with it's abdomen, when this insect is standing prone, the mouthparts are not very visible. When feeding it will point the mouth parts down to poke into leaves and stems to pull the juices out.

In the soybean sample there were only about 5 different species of in the collection and my partner and I labeled them into 3 different orders. Each of the specimens exhibited chewing type mouthparts. I have labeled a grasshopper that was found in the sample (not the exact grasshopper in the blown up picture). Since the grasshopper has chewing mouthparts it's head is more pronounced than the stinkbug and more of the mouthparts and 'face' are visible when it is prone on the ground.