Spending time at the cottage involves spending time with creepy-crawlies, whether you love them or you hate them. Dock spiders and mosquitoes and water striders and bees…it’s a never-ending list. And those are only the ones that you actually see on a regular basis. Insects alone make up about 80 per cent of the world’s species, and they all play a huge role in the ecosystem. “Ants are often under-appreciated for all that they do,” says Bob Anderson, an entomologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature and a long-time CL source for all things buggy. “Tiny parasitoid wasps that people will never notice keep insect populations in check. Fly maggots, meanwhile, aid in decomposition of animal and plant material.” And some of the most miniscule of our cottage-country beasts—including minute spiders and almost-invisible zooplankton—are the most crucial. It was a big job, but we managed to whittle the list down to seven small VICs (Very Important Creatures) that we wanted to highlight. Sorry, maggots. You didn’t make the cut.
1) Midges
What are midges? The better question might actually be, “What aren’t midges?” Because, turns out, midges are lots of flying bugs. “The term ‘midge’ can refer to blackflies, sand flies, and numerous other small flies,” says Antonia Guidotti, a collection technician in the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. “Common names are not always helpful.” Midges in the family Chironomidae are the ones that emerge in large numbers in the spring. They’re vital to a lake’s ecosystem. Their offspring, larvae tinier than a grain of rice, live at the bottom of deep lakes where they’re food for fish or other invertebrates.
Now you see me You’ll notice midges when they swarm in a cloud—the swarms can grow to up to 50 million bugs—either at the surface of a lake or in “mating swarms.” These mating swarms can appear throughout the summer, depending on the species. Sometimes they form around people, using humans “as a marker or a reference point,” says Guidotti. They’re made up of males hoping to attract the ladies by (apparently) using you as a wingman. It’s unnerving, but they have no interest in your flesh. (The biting midges, those “no-see-ums” that can fly through screened windows and doors, belong to a different family of midges.) Many species of common, non-biting midges don’t eat anything at all as adults. Their larvae are the piggy ones, scarfing down algae, decaying organic matter, and, in some cases, larvae of other bugs. Rude! Other species of midges are pollinators in the adult phase—it only lasts for a few days—and they eat flower nectar.
Now you don’t Adults and larvae can be as small as 1 mm.
Small but mighty cool A midge can flap its wings at a speed of up to 63,000 beats per minute.
Wild Profile: Meet the midge
2) Fairy wasps
For a creature with such an adorable name, these parasitoid wasps are terrifying. Fairy wasps and their kin have offspring that develop on or inside a host insect, feeding on its innards until they’re mature and ready to get on with their lives. They’re like the chest-busting creatures in Alien. Except very tiny, and with wings. When they’re not giving you nightmares, parasitoid wasps are doing good work: “They’re very important in the biocontrol of some plant pests,” says Guidotti. Different wasps use different hosts at various life stages. But it’s always the females doing the nasty deed with their long, egg-laying ovipositors, using them like a needle delivering an injection. “Fairy wasps will lay their eggs in the eggs of other insects; other parasitoid wasps use larvae or caterpillars, pupae, or adults as hosts,” says Guidotti. One species lays its eggs on spiders. “The spider’s alive while it’s being eaten.” Keep in mind that parasitoid doesn’t mean the same as parasite. “A parasitoid feeds on another organism and eventually kills it. “Humans are targeted by parasites, but not by any parasitoids, says Guidotti. “As far as I know.” (Wait. You mean…you don’t know for sure?)
Now you see me You probably won’t. “Picture the period at the end of a sentence,” says Guidotti. Other parasitoid wasps are much larger, as big as a AAA battery. You likely have seen them, because they’re so numerous. But you might not recognize them as wasps—they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. “Parasitoid wasps might be one of the most diverse insect groups on the planet,” says Guidotti. “They’re right up there with beetles.” (Beetles make up at least a third of earth’s insects.)
Now you don’t Fairy wasps are the world’s tiniest known flying insects. The smallest species has a body length as short as 0.1 mm.
Small but mighty cool The giant ichneumon wasp (a.k.a. the stump stabber wasp) has an ovipositor more than twice the length of her body.
3) Water fleas
“People can live on a lake for decades and never understand that there’s a whole secret world down there under the water, with all these stories and subplots,” says Paul Frost, a biology professor at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., who studies freshwater ecology. And water fleas, a.k.a. Daphnia, are major characters in that ever-changing environment. Because they eat algae and excrete nutrients—nitrogen and phosphorus—the “clearwater phase” of a lake (when a lake is at its clearest, usually around the first of July) often corresponds to a peak in Daphnia numbers. Daphnia and other zooplankton can increase rapidly, and then crash rapidly, within the span of a few weeks or even days, in response to changes in the ecosystem and the food web.
How do these tiny fleas help lake water quality?
Now you see me Water fleas are, well, the size of a flea (they also move like fleas, in a jumpy, jerky motion). They’re definitely visible to the naked eye, but you wouldn’t normally see them because they spend daytime at the bottom of the lake, hiding from predators—fly larvae and minnows—and stuffing their faces. “They’re prolific grazers,” says Frost. Some predatory species also eat other zooplankton, such as rotifers (below).
Now you don’t They range from 0.2 mm to 5 mm.
Small but mighty cool Because Daphnia are transparent, experts can study their insides through a microscope. Scientists can tell, for example, if a female has a clutch of eggs inside her. Amazing. But kind of creepy.
4) Rotifers
Roti-what? These wee, multicellular creatures are among the smallest animals in the world—and to think that you only just now learned that they exist! But in every litre of lake water, there are probably hundreds to several thousand of them, says Frost. “So if you’re drinking the unfiltered water, you’re probably drinking some of them.” They age rapidly, and reproduce—asexually—by the time they’re two days old. Just like other zooplankton, the short, short life of a rotifer is non-stop action, all the better to fit into that action-packed underwater environment of your lake.
Now you see me Maybe. “They look like dots in the water,” says Frost. As with water fleas, they’re transparent. Rotifers are prey for almost anything else that’s alive in the lake. They move slowly through the water. As they swim, two rotating rings of fibres around their open mouths pull water through their bodies. This allows the “wheel animals” to feed, by filtering out and ingesting delicious protozoa and other food sources.
Now you don’t Rotifers can be as small as 1⁄10 of a mm long.
Small but mighty cool A rotifer can filter 1,000 times its own volume of water per hour.
5) Springtails
Like other tiny creatures, springtails are everywhere, but you’ll rarely notice them. They have six legs, and they look a little like very small ants, but they’re actually insect cousins. “They’re part of a subphylum called Hexapoda,” says Guidotti. “So they’re on a branch related to insects.” Springtails eat a wide variety of food, depending on the species and the soil where they live, but some are detrivores—they consume decaying organic matter and help break it down.
Now you see me On mild winter days, you might notice certain species of springtails, called snow fleas. They like to breed in shallow pools of meltwater, and their speck-like dark bodies stand out against a snowy background. But springtails don’t need a mild day to be happy. They can take the cold. Their bodies produce a natural antifreeze that allows them to survive Antarctic-level temperatures. As winter turns to spring—and the ground gets too wet—springtails are on the move, travelling, sometimes in a large group, to drier leaf litter. They can walk, sure, but they can also propel themselves, thanks to a neat trick: they have a forked tail that they can tuck under their bodies to launch themselves forward. (Spring. Tail.)
Now you don’t They can range from 0.25 mm to 6 mm.
Small but mighty cool A springtail can jump up to 10 cm; if one were the size of a human, it could probably leap tall buildings in a single bound. It couldn’t, however, fly. No wings. Or cape.
6) Dwarf spiders (and their tiny relatives)
“There are close to 1,700 known spider species in Canada and, of these, only a small proportion are usually noticed by folks,” says Robb Bennett, a spider biologist with the Royal BC Museum in Victoria. One of the teeny-tiniest among all those arachnids, dwarf spiders (also called money spiders), “occur in untold millions down in the litter and roots over a few hectares of forest.” But you’ll rarely encounter one. “They’re cryptic.” Another related group of micro-spiders are those in the sheetweb family, says Bennett. They’re slightly larger; a couple of well-known species are the filmy dome spider and the bowl-and-doily spider. (Who names these things?) Most of the spiders you pay attention to—at least, at the cottage—are the “in-your-face varieties,” says Bennett. He means you, dock spider.
Now you see me Well, you can certainly see the evidence of tiny spiders. Sheetweb spiders often build their webs—they’re usually either flat and sheet-like, or dome-shaped—in visible locations; for example, among shrubbery. And, 20 years ago, “a famous dwarf spider event” occurred near McBride, B.C., says Bennett. “A zillion or two of them decided to vacate a farmer’s hay field over the space of a few fall days, leaving the field and surrounding fencing festooned with sheets of silk. It was quite the sight.” And now that farmer has arachnophobia.
Now you don’t Dwarf spiders are about 2 mm long; the smallest species of sheetweb spiders measure less than 1 cm.
Small but mighty cool Thousands of new species of spiders are discovered every year. And now you have arachnophobia.
7) Fireflies
You’re familiar with fireflies. Because every cottager loves those guys! But you may not be aware that they’re a) beetles and b) hardcore carnivores at birth. Firefly larvae inject poison into their prey: snails, worms, slugs, or other larvae. This turns the victim’s innards into mush, which the larvae (a.k.a. glowworms) slurp out. Like a lot of adult insects, many firefly species don’t eat in that life stage. But some—the females, at least—lure, then eat other fireflies, while others feed on pollen and nectar, acting as pollinators. Unlike bees and butterflies, they do this important work during the night shift. Fireflies are nocturnal.
Fireflies are threatened—but you can help them. Here’s how
Now you see me Fireflies spend most of their days in leaf litter, moist soil, or hanging out on low vegetation, says Bob Anderson. When darkness falls, they take to the skies, flashing their lights—the colour and flash pattern varies by species—to attract or respond to mates. There’s also evidence that fireflies glow to deter predators. Seems counterintuitive (if you want to hide in the dark, don’t turn on a flashlight), but research suggests that, as with brightly coloured butterflies, the attention-grabbing looks keep predators at bay. And even if they do get caught, fireflies taste nasty. A bird that eats one will probably avoid it in the future. Scientists may understand the why of a firefly’s glow, but the how still isn’t entirely understood. What they do know? The bioluminescent energy that the beetles generate comes from a reaction within the light-producing organs in their lower abdomens, involving oxygen, a chemical called luciferin, and an enzyme called luciferase.
Now you don’t Adults, on average, are 0.5 to 2 cm. Which, in the tiny bug microverse, is actually ginormous.
Small but mighty cool Firefly larvae already glow from within their eggs.
This article was originally published in the June/July 2024 issue of Cottage Life.
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