Insects

... including spiders!

The three jointed parts of an insect:

Head

Thorax

Abdomen

The three stages in the life cycle of an insect:

Larva

Pupa

Imago (pl. imagines)

Larval stage of a butterfly or moth		Caterpillar
Pupal stage of a butterfly or moth		Chrysalis

The three types of adult honey bee:

Queen

Worker

Drone

Male bee whose only function is to mate with the queen		Drone
Secreted from the heads of worker bees; fed to young bees to make them queens (all young bees eat it, but queens–to–be don't eat anything else)		Royal jelly
Where does a queen bee mate?		In flight

Wings of a flea		None
Wings of a fly		2
Wings of a bee		4
Eyes of a bee, wasp or ant (typically)		5
Eyes of a spider (usually – i.e. most species)		8
Performs a waggle dance (to tell others where there is a source of nectar and pollen, or water, or a nesting site)		Bee
Cotton pest – named after the cotton seed case, on which it feeds		Boll weevil
Butterfly whose name is also an obsolete name for the chemical element sulphur		Brimstone
Known in the USA as the Mourning Cloak; British name comes from the location in London where it was first observed in 1748 – almost certainly having come on a ship from Scandinavia		Camberwell Beauty
Order of insects with the most species		Coleoptera (beetles)
Potato pest, identified in the USA in 1824, with distinctive black and yellow stripes; introduced to Europe during World War II but successfully excluded from the UK and Ireland (to date)		Colorado beetle
British butterfly with the same name as a punctuation mark		Comma
Name given to an insect's eye (made up of many independent photoreceptive units)		Compound eye
Butterfly named after a metal – from the colour of its wings		Copper
Beetles' wing covers		Elytra
Butterflies' taste buds are on their		Feet
Insect whose young are sheltered in "cuckoo spit" (a.k.a. spittle insect, spittlebug)		Froghopper
Drosophila melanogaster – used in genetic experiments – common name		Fruit fly
Sugar–rich, sticky liquid secreted by aphids and some other insects – "milked" by ants whose presence protects the aphids from predators		Honeydew
Mosquitos lay their eggs		In (stagnant) water
Larva of the cranefly (daddy–long–legs)		Leatherjacket
Acted on by an oxidising agent to produce luminosity in fireflies		Luciferin
Diet of the silkworm caterpillar		Mulberry leaves
Produced by the larva of the gall wasp		Oak apples
Used by an insect to lay its eggs		Ovipositor
Stage in insect life cycle that can be a chrysalis (butterflies) or cocoon (moths)		Pupa
The Brazilian Wandering is the most poisonous variety of		Spider
Gossamer is produced by		Spiders
Vents in the sides of an insect's body, through which it breathes		Spiracles
A decapitated cockroach will usually die of		Starvation
Venomous spider, named after an Italian city (Taranto)		Tarantula
Common name for the pupa of a mosquito, because of the action it uses when swimming – also a type of drinking glass		Tumbler
Common name for Micronecta scholtzi – named as the loudest animal on Earth relative to its body size, for the noise that the male makes by rubbing its penis against its abdomen in courtship display		Water boatman
"Superfamily" of beetles – known as "snout beetles" because of the shape of their heads		Weevils

© Haydn Thompson 2017–19