BRN 9-2 (uncompressed) - Flipbook - Page 55
Exuvium
On 09 August 2025 I was gazing lazily out a
window feeling good about not being outside
where the temperature was 101¡ F. when I noted
something on a seedhead of grass. I looked at the
object for about Þfteen minutes, listening to a
podcast about bird migration and feeling quite
content. After some time I was able to convince
myself that it was a bug, of some type, with a long
proboscis which it had inserted into the seedhead.
Its form was ÒweirdÓ (a technical term I am lobbying
to add to the ofÞcial glossary of entomology).
At the end of the podcast my curiosity overcame my
inertia; I grabbed my camera and headed outside.
Ecdysis is the process an arthropod goes through
when it moults. When an arthropod grows too
large for its skin, the skin splits, the arthropod
emerges, and its new (larger) skin hardens. This
explanation is overly simplistic - and not the topic
of this article. The topic is that which is left behind.
In previous issues of this journal, James Von Loh
photodocumented and explained this process as it
relates to the Odonata found in the Black Range
and Do–a Ana County.
That which is left behind, the old skin, is called the
exuvium, and it was the exuvium which I was seeing
on the seedhead. In this case the exuvium of a
cricket or grasshopper (that is a thumb in the image
to the left).
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