https://www.uwlax.edu/news/posts/Campus ConnectionPosts tagged with 'Bug Hartsock':2022-10-03T10:30:28.18Zhttps://www.uwlax.edu/news/posts/the-truth-about-house-centipedes/The truth about house centipedes2022-10-03T10:30:28.18Z2022-10-04T08:00:00ZYoo Mee Howardhttps://uwlax.edu/profile/yhoward/yhoward@uwlax.edu
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<p class="date"><span class="label">Posted </span><span data-part="time">8 a.m.</span><span data-part="weekday"><span> </span>Tuesday</span><span data-part="month"><span>, </span>Oct.</span><span data-part="day"><span> </span>4</span><span data-part="year"><span>, </span>2022</span></p>
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<figcaption> Bug Hartsock with their artwork "Neon Centipedes," created on an iPad.</figcaption>
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<h3 class="tagline">Biology grad student say to keep your friends close and your centipedes closer</h3>
<p><em>By UW-La Crosse Biology Graduate Student Bug Hartsock</em></p><p>I want you to picture yourself at home, cozy, maybe with a favorite book in hand or a show on. It’s late but not so late that you have to go to bed. You’re getting ready to settle in when you see it. Right across from you, behind the TV, is an enormous centipede. It’s crawling up the wall, its thirty long legs moving in tandem. It has to be at least the size of your hand and you have no idea what crack it crawled out from or where it will hide again once it’s gone. You scramble to find a shoe.</p><p>But wait!</p><p>Meet the house centipede — a terror of homes everywhere. But like many a movie monster, this small animal is a misunderstood soul. Though you aren’t required to love the house centipede, I do hope you can gain a certain appreciation. They’re an uninvited house guest you very well may have run into. But as far as roommates go, they aren’t the worst.</p><p>House centipedes are scientifically known as Scutigera coleoptrata. They originated in the Mediterranean but at this point can be found nearly anywhere there are houses. They’re incredibly fast, light brownish centipedes absolutely covered in legs. If you look closely, you’ll see three stripes running down their back and a pair of well-developed eyes looking back at you. And they’re not particularly large as far as centipedes go, though your brain might tell you otherwise.</p><p>Here is the crucial thing about house centipedes — they are predators and picky ones at that. Unlike other centipede groups, house centipedes are only happy to eat live prey. And that prey is everything you don’t want in the home. They’ll gladly chow down on bed bugs, termites, and cockroaches to name just a few. I can personally speak to the last item, as the ones I keep are fed cockroaches (which don’t last long in the enclosure with them). And they’re miniature cowboys, using their long legs to literally lasso prey. A nocturnal schedule also means you hardly see them active during the day. While you sleep soundly, they’re doing pest control work.</p><p>Now, any good roommate is also expected to clean up after themselves, and house centipedes are no exception. They’re wonderfully clean animals, grooming every leg and antenna one at a time. And like us, sometimes they need a little self-care. They exhibit this grooming behavior more often when stressed, using their forcipules to get everything perfectly clean.</p>
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<img loading="lazy" src="/contentassets/d2492d337f8a4841b98d59100cb0f8ab/the_house_centipede_zappy_white.png/Large" alt="" />
<figcaption>An illustration of a house centipede drawn by Bug Hartsock using Procreate.</figcaption>
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<p>Forcipules, however, are where people start to get worried. These paired appendages sit near the head and are modified legs with venom glands inside. Do house centipedes bite? Not technically, it’s more of a stinging grab (since the forcipules aren’t a part of the mouth). But even more comfortingly, they’re very shy to do it unless you’re a cockroach. I work with them every day, and if house centipedes are the terror of the home, I am the terror of house centipedes – picking them up barehanded, bothering them, moving them from container to container. Not once have I been stung, and I imagine you won’t be poking at the centipedes in your home nearly as much as I do. These little guys are much more inclined to run away or even drop a few limbs before stinging. And if you somehow manage to convince one to do it, it’s nothing significant in either the medical or pain department.</p><p>You’re back in your cozy chair. You still see the centipede. She’s a beautiful female with hind legs as long as can be. You close your eyes, relax, and open them to find she’s left, off to find the insects you don’t want to have around. Or at least I hope you consider this response, since you are better off with these harmless, marvelous housemates.</p>
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<span class="title">The truth about house centipedes</span>
<span class="date"><span class="label">Posted </span><span data-part="time">8 a.m.</span><span data-part="weekday"><span> </span>Tuesday</span><span data-part="month"><span>, </span>Oct.</span><span data-part="day"><span> </span>4</span><span data-part="year"><span>, </span>2022</span></span>
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Biology grad student say to keep your friends close and your centipedes closer
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</span>https://www.uwlax.edu/news/posts/call-me-bug/Call me Bug2022-05-09T09:05:23.837Z2022-05-06T11:27:00ZNhouchee Yanghttps://uwlax.edu/profile/nyang2/nyang2@uwlax.edu<style>.post-content p+p{ text-indent:4rem; line-height:2.2rem;}</style>
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<p class="date"><span class="label">Posted </span><span data-part="time">11:27 a.m.</span><span data-part="weekday"><span> </span>Friday</span><span data-part="month"><span>, </span>May</span><span data-part="day"><span> </span>6</span><span data-part="year"><span>, </span>2022</span></p>
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<figcaption>Photo: Bug Hartsock with their artwork "Neon Centipedes," created on an iPad.</figcaption>
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<h3>The smallest creatures have the largest impact</h3>
<p><em>By Bug Hartsock</em></p><p>When I was in preschool, we had a class project – keeping mealworms. They’re small, squirmy little larvae of a beetle that eats decaying leaves. My favorite was one that had a slightly lighter color than all the others. I would carefully carry that particular larva around in a plastic cup. One day, a fellow preschooler approached and asked to see. He bashed the cup out of my hand.</p><p>I wish I could tell you that was the first and last time someone hurt something to upset me. But it was one of many. Young people push boundaries, and this includes inevitable poking at the sensitivities of others. My sensitivity was obvious. I would cry at even the idea of something being killed, particularly those small arthropods we casually call “bugs.”</p><p>At five, the all too classic question of what I wanted to be when I grew up was answered with a confident “entomologist!” I knew the word because I had consumed every book about insects (and their segmented, jointed-legged relatives) in my public library. My mom even set my first email account with the password “buglover” (it isn’t anymore - please don’t try). I was obsessed. Maybe it was growing up in the Texas country, surrounded by an invasive bamboo forest and wood-boring beetles in our log pile. All I can say is for as long as I can remember, I was entranced by this miniature alien world. And I knew it was something I wanted to protect.</p><p>Growing up, I often convinced myself that raw vulnerabilities are better left unspoken if you don’t want to get hurt. And though this may be true in the short term, it isn’t an effective way to change things for the better. Once I’d re-decided I wanted to pursue entomology (after majoring in sociology), I was told that I wouldn’t be able to do science because I’m too sensitive. I was told that I’m silly for caring about animals that are “essentially robots.” In contrast, I was also told that this was of course the thing I should do – that I’d wanted it since I was a kid.</p><p>It was two years ago when I officially asked my closest friends to call me “Bug.” It was my username online, a cute nickname in childhood, but never a name. Never something official. I toyed a bit with other gender-neutral monikers, including an email that featured the name “Stevie.” But nothing ever felt like me. Except for Bug.</p><p>The greatest barrier to the legal name change was money. People, overall, were surprisingly supportive. I paid the city of La Crosse $170.26 to file the forms. And then the La Crosse Tribune $108.97 to publish the announcement (an odd bureaucratic requirement). It’s funny that something that belongs to me more than anything else was so expensive to change.</p><p>My name is Bug Hartsock. I’m decently sensitive, and I’m an entomology graduate student. I like to draw comics about bugs. I don’t take myself very seriously, and I won’t believe it’s a bad thing for a scientist to care. I think it probably makes for more ethical science if killing something makes you sad. I don’t want to be unfeeling and clinical. I want to be someone who can excitedly tell people I named myself after my favorite thing. Like insects in metamorphosis, we are all changing. Though we’re small, a tiny revolution begins when someone cares just a little bit more. And if enough people care, something new might take flight.</p>
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<span class="title">Call me Bug</span>
<span class="date"><span class="label">Posted </span><span data-part="time">11:27 a.m.</span><span data-part="weekday"><span> </span>Friday</span><span data-part="month"><span>, </span>May</span><span data-part="day"><span> </span>6</span><span data-part="year"><span>, </span>2022</span></span>
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The smallest creatures have the largest impact
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