Nature Note: Special Delivery Shipping Out!

These seven photos tell an interesting story, but in reverse. It’s a true tale of 1 girl, 2 insects, and a few decades…

1.) This is the package I shipped yesterday to the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory. Entomology is the study of insects. I shipped one just like it two summers ago. Scientists there are interested in a potential discovery I made both now and two summers ago: unique moth cocoons.

2.) This is what’s in the box: egg cartons packed in a plastic food container.

3.) & 4.) This is what’s in the egg cartons: very small moth cocoons nestled in a bed of toilet paper for comfort during shipping.

5.) There’s my niece Kelly helping me get the cocoons off my truck. She is better at delicate things than I am, so she’s using tweezers to gently remove the cocoons from where they were found both the first time (2018) and now.

6.) Here’s what I found on my truck that was so interesting: an unknown cocoon that looked unlike any I had ever seen before. I do NOT know what everything is, but I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods and when I see something NEW I notice it! When I found these originally in 2018 and again this summer, they were stuck onto my truck. I knew I had never seen them in person or in a book. So, I contacted some experts and they had never seen them before either! They are doing DNA analysis on “my” moths. This is either an undocumented species OR an undocumented type of cocoon structure— either one is “new” science that I’m very excited to have “discovered.”

7.) This is NOT a moth! This is a mole cricket! What does he have to do with this?? A LOT…

When I was a little girl, I was very surprised to find out there were still animals and plants being discovered. I decided then that I wanted to find one! Decades ago, I found a mole cricket just like this one and THOUGHT it was a new species! I took it to my teacher who not only immediately knew what it was, but also showed it to me in my own textbook. I felt so foolish!

THIS WEEK, I found this dead mole cricket in my truck. How it got in there is baffling, because they strictly stay on the ground. It reminded me of all this…and those moths I had found in 2018. Then within days, there were MORE of the moths on my truck! It’s almost as if the mole cricket was “a sign” not to give up on my dream of finding a new insect!

The Florida lab was eager to get my new samples, so off they went in that package yesterday. It’s very possible that my moths are not a new species, because computer databases are sometimes incomplete. BUT, knowing that I’m closer than ever (either new species or new type of cocoon structure never recorded) has reminded me to keep ALL of my goals active and stoked. Maybe that little girl who was wrong about the mole cricket will be right about something one day. 👧🏼🐛