The Life-Story of Insects Part 2

The mention of the brain suggests a few brief remarks on the changes in the internal organs during insect transformation. There are no imaginal discs for the nervous system; the brain, nerve-cords and ganglia of the b.u.t.terfly or bluebottle are the direct outcome of those of the caterpillar or maggot. More than seventy years ago, Newport (1839) traced the rapid but continuous changes, which, during the early pupal period, convert the elongate nerve-cord of the caterpillar with its relatively far-separated ganglia into the shortened, condensed nerve-cord of the Tortoise-sh.e.l.l b.u.t.terfly (_Vanessa urticae_) with several of the ganglia coalesced. In many Diptera, on the other hand, the nervous system of the larva is more concentrated than that of the imago.

The tubular heart also of a winged insect is the directly modified survival of the larval heart.

Similarly the reproductive organs undergo a gradual, continuous development throughout an insect's life-story. Their rudiments appear in the embryo, often at a very early stage; they are recognisable in the larva, and the matured structures in the imago are the result of their slow process of growth, the details of which must be reckoned beyond the scope of this book. For a full summary of the subject the reader is referred to L.F. Henneguy's work (1904) containing references to much important modern literature, which cannot be mentioned here.

On the other hand, the digestive system of insects that undergo a metamorphosis, pa.s.ses through a profound crisis of dissolution and rebuilding. This is not surprising when we remember that there is often a great difference between larva and imago in the nature of the food.

The digestive ca.n.a.l of a caterpillar runs a fairly straight course through the body and consists of a gullet, stomach (mid-gut), intestine, and r.e.c.t.u.m; it is adapted for the digestion of solid food. In the b.u.t.terfly there is one outgrowth of the gullet in the head--a pharyngeal sac adapted for sucking liquids; and another outgrowth at the hinder end of the gullet (which is much longer than in the larva)--a crop or food-reservoir lying in the abdomen. The intestine of the b.u.t.terfly also is longer than that of the larva, being coiled or twisted. Towards the end of the last larval stage, the cells of the inner coat (epithelium) lining the stomach begin to undergo degeneration, small replacing cells appearing between their bases and later giving rise to the more delicate epithelium that lines the mid-gut of the imago. The larval cells are shed into the cavity of the stomach and become completely broken down. J. Anglas (1902), describing these microscopic changes in the transformations of wasps and bees, has shown that the tiny replacing cells can be recognised in sections through the digestive ca.n.a.l of a very young larva; they may be regarded as representing imaginal buds of the adult gastric epithelium. In the transformations of two-winged flies of the bluebottle group, A.

Kowalevsky (1887) has shown that these replacing cells are aggregated in little ma.s.ses scattered at different points along the stomach and thus corresponding rather closely to the imaginal discs of the legs and wings.

The gullet, crop, and gizzard of an insect, which lie in front of the stomach, are lined by cells derived from the outer skin (ectoderm) which is pushed in to form what is called the 'fore-gut.' Similarly the intestine and r.e.c.t.u.m, behind the stomach, are lined with ectodermal cells which arise from the inpushed 'hind-gut.' The larval fore- and hind-guts are broken down at the end of larval life and their lining is replaced by fresh tissue derived from two imaginal bands which surround the cavity of the digestive tube, one at the hinder end of the fore-gut, and the other at the front end of the hind-gut. The larval salivary glands in connection with the gullet are also broken down, and fresh glands are formed for the imago.

A large part of the substance of an insect larva consists of muscular tissue, surrounding the digestive tube, and forming the great muscles that move the various parts of the body, and of fat, surrounding the organs and serving as a store of food-material. Very many of the muscle-fibres and the fat-cells also become disintegrated during the late larval and pupal stages, and the corresponding tissues of the adult are new formations derived from special groups of imaginal cells, though some muscles may persist from the larva to the adult. Similarly the complex air-tube or tracheal system of the larva is broken down and a fresh set of tubes is developed, adapted to the altered body-form of pupa and imago.

The destruction of larval tissue and the development of replacing organs from special groups of cells, derived of course from the embryo, and carrying on the continuity of cell-lineage to the adult, are among the most remarkable facts connected with the life-story of insects. The process of tissue-destruction is known as 'histolysis'; the rebuilding process is called 'histogenesis.' Considerable difference of opinion has existed as to factors causing histolysis, and for a summary of the conflicting or complementary theories, the reader is referred to the work of L.F. Henneguy (1904, pp. 677-684). In the histolysis of the two-winged flies, wandering amoeboid cells--like the white corpuscles or leucocytes of vertebrate blood--have been observed destroying the larval tissues that need to be broken down, as they destroy invading micro-organisms in the body. But students of the internal changes that accompany transformation in insects of other orders have often been unable to observe such devouring activity of these 'phagocytes,' and attribute the dissolution of the larval tissues to internal chemical changes. The fact that in all insect transformation a part, and in many a large part, of the larval organs pa.s.s over to the pupa and imago, suggests that only those structures whose work is done are broken down through the action of internally formed destructive substances, and one function of the phagocytes is to act as scavengers by devouring what has become effete and useless.

CHAPTER VI

LARVAE AND THEIR ADAPTATIONS

Among the insects that undergo a complete transformation, there is, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, an amount of inward change, of dissolution and rebuilding of tissues, that varies in its completeness in members of different orders. It is now advisable to consider the various outward forms a.s.sumed by the larvae of these insects, or rather by a few examples chosen from a vast array of well-nigh 'infinite variety.'

In comparing the transformations of endopterygote insects of different orders, it is worthy of notice that in some cases all the members of an order have larvae remarkably constant in their main structural features, while in others there is great variety of larval form within the order.

For example, the caterpillars of all Lepidoptera are fundamentally much alike, while the grubs of beetles of different families diverge widely from one another. A review of a selected series of beetle-larvae will therefore serve well to introduce this branch of the subject.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12. _a_, Carrion-beetle (_Silpha_) with its larva, _b_. Magnified, _a_ 3 times, and _b_ 4 times.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13. Larva of a Ground-beetle (_Aepus_). Magnified 6 times. After Westwood, _Modern Cla.s.sification of Insects_.]

Beetles are as a rule remarkable among insects for the firm consistency of their chitinous cuticle, the various pieces (_sclerites_) of which are fitted together with admirable precision. In some families of beetles the larva also is furnished with a complete chitinous armour, the sclerites, both dorsal and ventral, of the successive body-segments being hard and firm, while the relatively long legs possess well-defined segments and are often spiny. Such a larva is evidently far less unlike its parent beetle than a caterpillar is unlike a b.u.t.terfly. Perhaps of all beetle larvae, the woodlouse-like grub (fig. 12 _b_) of a carrion-beetle (Silpha) or of a semi-aquatic dascillid such as Helodes shows the least amount of difference from the typical adult, on account of the conspicuous jointed feelers. The larval glow-worm, however, is of the same woodlouse-like aspect, and in this case, where the female never acquires wings, but becomes mature in a form which does not differ markedly from that of the larva, the exceptional resemblance is closer still. In all beetle-grubs the legs are simplified, there being only one segment (a combined shin and foot) below the knee-joint, whereas in the adult there is a shin followed by five, four, or at least three distinct tarsal segments. The foot of an adult beetle bears two claws at its tip, while the larval foot in the great majority of families has only one claw. In one section of the order, however, the Adephaga comprising the predaceous terrestrial and aquatic beetles, the larval foot has, like that of the adult, two claws. Some adephagous larvae, notably those of the large carnivorous water-beetles (Dyticus), often destructive to tadpoles and young fish, have completely armoured bodies as well as long jointed legs. More commonly, as with most of the well-known Ground-beetles (Carabidae), the cuticle is less consistently hard, firm sclerites segmentally arranged alternating with considerable tracts of cuticle which remain feebly chitinised and flexible. Most of the adephagous larvae (fig. 13) have a pair of stiff processes on the ninth abdominal segment, and the insect, from its general likeness to a bristle-tail of the genus Campodea, is often called a _campodeiform_ larva (Brauer, 1869). From such as these, a series of forms can be traced among larvae of beetles, showing an increasing divergence from the imago. The well-known wireworms--grubs of the Click-beetles (Elateridae)--that eat the roots of farm crops, have well-armoured bodies, but their shape is elongate, cylindrical, worm-like; and their legs are relatively short, the build of the insect being adapted for rapid motion through the soil. The grubs of the Chafers (Scarabaeidae) are also root-eaters, but they are less active in their habits than the wireworms, and the cuticle of their somewhat stout bodies is, for the most part, pale and flexible; only the head and legs are hard and h.o.r.n.y.

Usually an evident correspondence can be traced between the outward form of any larva and its mode of life. For example, in the family of the Leaf-beetles (Chrysomelidae) some larvae feed openly on the foliage of trees or herbs, while others burrow into the plant tissues. The exposed larvae of the Willow-beetles (Phyllodecta, fig. 14) have their somewhat abbreviated body segments protected by numerous spine-bearing, firm tubercles. But the grub of the 'Turnip Fly' (Phyllotreta) which feeds between the upper and lower skins of a leaf, or of _Psylliodes chrysocephala_ (fig. 15), which burrows in stalks, has a pale, soft cuticle like that of a caterpillar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 14. (_a_) Willow-beetle (_Phyllodecta vulgatissima_) and its larva (_b_). Magnified 5 times. After Carpenter, _Econ. Proc. R.

Dublin Soc_. vol. I.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 15. (_a_) Cabbage-beetle (_Psylliodes chrysocephala_) magnified 5 times, and its larva (_b_) magnified 12 times.]

In the larvae of the little timber-beetles and their allies (Ptinidae), including the 'death-watches' whose tapping in old furniture is often heard, a marked shortening of the legs and reduction in the size of the head accompany the whitening and softening of the cuticle. This shortening of the legs is still more marked in the larvae of the Longhorn Beetles (Cerambycidae) burrowing in the wood of trees or felled trunks; here the legs are reduced to small vestiges.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 16. _a_, Grain Weevil (_Calandra granaria_); _b_, larva; _c_, pupa. Magnified 7 times. After Chittenden, _Yearbook U.S.

Dept. Agric._ 1894.]

Finally in the large family of the Weevils (Curculionidae, fig. 16) and the Bark-beetles (Scolytidae), the grubs, eating underground root or stem structures, mining in leaves or seeds, or tunnelling beneath the bark of trees, have no legs at all, the place of these limbs being indicated only by tiny tubercles on the thoracic segments. Such larvae as these latter are examples of the type called _eruciform_ by A.S.

Packard (1898) who as well as other writers has laid stress on the series of transitional steps from the campodeiform to the eruciform type afforded by the larvae of the Coleoptera.

A fact of much importance in the transformations of beetles as pointed out by Brauer (1869) is that in a few families, the first larval instar is campodeiform, while the subsequent instars are eruciform. We may take as an example of such 'hypermetamorphosis' the life-story of the Oil or Blister-beetles (Meloidae) as first described by J.H. Fabre (1857), and later with more elaboration by H. Beauregard (1890). From the egg of one of these beetles is hatched a minute armoured larva, with long feelers, legs, and cerci, whose task is, for example, to seize hold of a bee in order that the latter may carry it, an uninvited guest, to her nest.

Safely within the nest, the little 'triungulin' beetle-grub moults; the second instar has a soft cuticle and relatively shorter legs, which, as the larva, now living as a cuckoo-parasite, proceeds to gorge itself with honey, soon appear still further abbreviated. Later comes a stage during which legs are entirely wanting, the larva then resting and taking no food. The last larval instar again has short legs like the grub of the second period. In connection with this life-history we notice that the newly-hatched larva is not in the neighbourhood of its appropriate food. Hence the preliminary armoured and active instar is necessary in order to reach the feeding place; this journey accomplished, the eruciform condition is at once a.s.sumed.

In all cases indeed we may say that the particular larval form is adapted to the special conditions of life. A few examples from other orders of endopterygote insects will ill.u.s.trate this point. The campodeiform type is relatively unusual, but most of the Neuroptera have larvae of this kind, active, armoured creatures with long legs, though devoid of the tail-processes often a.s.sociated with similar larvae among the Coleoptera. Such are the 'Ant-lions,' larvae of the exotic lacewing flies, which hunt small insects, digging a sandy pit for their unwary steps in the case of the best-known members of the group, some of which are found as far north as Paris. In our own islands the 'Aphis-lions,'

larvae of Hemerobius and Chrysopa, prowl on plants infested with 'green-fly' which they impale on their sharp grooved mandibles, sucking out the victims' juices, and then, in some cases, using the dried cuticle to furnish a clothing for their own bodies. Among these insects, while the mouth of the imago is of the normal mandibulate type adapted for eating solid food, the larval mouth is constricted and the slender mandibles are grooved for the transmission of liquid food.

Turning to eruciform types of larva, we find the _caterpillar_ (fig. 1 _b_, _c_, _d_) distinguished by its elongate, usually cylindrical body with feeble cuticle, short thoracic legs and a variable number of pairs of abdominal pro-legs, universal among the moths and b.u.t.terflies forming the great order Lepidoptera, and usual among the saw-flies, which belong to the Hymenoptera. The vast majority of caterpillars feed on the leaves of plants and their long worm-like bodies with the series of paired pro-legs, are excellently adapted for their habit of clinging to twigs, and crawling along shoots or the edges of leaves as they go in search of food. Of great importance to a caterpillar is its power of spinning silk, consisting of fine threads solidified from the secretion of specially modified salivary glands whose ducts open in the insect's mouth at the tip of the tubular tongue which forms a spinneret.

On the same bush caterpillars of moths and of saw-flies may often be seen feeding together. The lepidopterous caterpillar, in our countries at least, has never more than five pairs of pro-legs, situated on the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and tenth abdominal segments; each of these pro-legs bears a number of minute hooklets, arranged in a circular or crescentic pattern, which a.s.sist the caterpillar in clinging to its food-plant. The saw-fly caterpillar, on the other hand, may have as many as eight pairs of pro-legs, the series beginning on the second abdominal segment; here, however, the pro-legs have no hooklets. Among the Lepidoptera, we notice a reduction in the number of pro-legs in the 'looper' caterpillars of Geometrid moths. Here only two pairs are present, those on the sixth and tenth abdominal segments. Consequently, as the caterpillar can cling only by the thorax and by the hinder region of the abdomen, the middle region of the body is first straightened out and then bent into an arch-like form, as the insect makes its progress by alternate movements of stretching and 'looping.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 17. _c_, Ruby Tiger Moth (_Phragmatobia fuliginosa_); _a_, caterpillar; _b_, coc.o.o.n. After Lugger, _Insect Life_, vol. II.]

Caterpillars, with their relatively soft bodies, feeding openly on the leaves of plants, are exposed to the attacks of many enemies, and the various ways in which they obtain protection are well worth studying. A clothing of hairs[7] or spines is often present, and it is interesting to find that many species of our native Tiger and Eggar Moths (Arctiadae and Lasiocampidae) which pa.s.s the winter in the larval stage, have caterpillars with an especially dense hairy covering (fig. 17).

Experiments have shown that hairy and spiny insects are distasteful to birds and other creatures that prey readily on smooth-skinned species, a conclusion that might well have been expected. Certain smooth caterpillars however appear to be protected by producing some nauseous secretion, which renders them unpalatable. Many of these, as the familiar cream yellow and black larva of the Magpie Moth (_Abraxas grossulariata_), are very conspicuously adorned, and furnish examples of what is known as 'warning coloration,' on the supposition that the gaudy aspect of such insects serves as an advertis.e.m.e.nt that they are not fit to eat, and that birds and other possible devourers thus learn to leave them alone. On the other hand, smooth caterpillars which are readily eaten by birds are usually 'protectively' coloured, so as to resemble their surroundings and remain hidden except to careful seekers. Many such caterpillars are green, the upper surface, which is naturally exposed to the light, being darker than the lower which is in shadow.

When the caterpillar is large, the green area is often broken up by pale lines, longitudinal as on the larvae of many Owl Moths (Noctuidae) or oblique, as on the great caterpillars of most Hawk Moths (Sphingidae).

Such an arrangement tends to make the insect less easily seen than were it to display a continuous area of the same colour. The 'looper'

caterpillars mentioned above afford remarkable examples of 'protective'

resemblance, for many of them show a marvellous likeness to the twigs of their food-plant, tubercles on the insect's body resembling closely the little outgrowths of the plant's cortex. It has been shown by E.B.

Poulton (1892) that many caterpillars are, in their early stages, directly responsive to their surroundings as regards colour. Usually green when hatched, they remain green if kept among leaves or young shoots of plants, while they turn red, brown, or blackish if placed among twigs of these respective hues. This effect appears to be due to a direct response of the subcutaneous tissue to the rays of light reflected from the surrounding objects. The sensitiveness dies away as the caterpillar grows older, since little or no change of hue in response to a change of environment could be induced after the penultimate moult.

[7] The 'hairs' of an insect are not in the least comparable to the hairs of mammals, being in truth, modified portions of the cuticle, secreted by special cells.

Among those families of the Lepidoptera which are usually regarded as low in the scale of organisation, caterpillars are very generally protected by the habit of feeding in some concealed situation. For example, the great larvae of the Goat Moth (Cossus) and the whitish caterpillars of the Clearwing Moths (Sesiidae) burrow through the wood of trees, eating the timber as they go. The little irritable caterpillars of the Bell Moths (Tortricidae) roll leaves, fastening the edges together with silk, and thus make for themselves a shelter; or they bore their way into seeds or fruits, like the larva of the Codling Moth that is the cause of 'worm-eaten' apples, too well-known to orchard-keepers. Very many small caterpillars mine between the two skins of a leaf, eating out the soft green tissue, and giving rise to a characteristic blister in form of a spreading patch or a narrow sinuous track through the leaf. The caterpillars of the Clothes-moths (Tineidae) make for themselves garments out of their own excrement, the particles fastened together by silk. In such curious cylindrical cases they wander over the wool or fur, feeding and indirectly supplying themselves with clothing at the same time.

The case-forming habit of the Clothes-moth caterpillars leads us naturally to consider the similar habit adopted by their allies the Caddis-larvae which live in the waters of ponds and streams, for the Caddis-flies (Trichoptera) have much in common with the more primitive Lepidoptera. The caddis-larva is as a rule of the eruciform type, but with well-developed thoracic legs, and with hook-like tail-appendages; by means of the latter it anchors itself to the extremity of its curious 'house.' It is of interest to note that in the earlier stages of some caddises lately described and figured by A.J. Siltala (1907), the legs are relatively very long, and the larva is quite campodeiform in aspect.

Some of these caddis-grubs retain the campodeiform condition and do not shelter permanently in cases, as their relations do. Different genera of caddises differ in their mode of building. Some fasten together fragments of water-weeds and plant refuse, others take tiny particles of stone, of which they make firmly compacted walls, others again lay hold of water-snail sh.e.l.ls, which may even contain live inhabitants, and bind these into a limy rampart behind which their bodies are in safe hiding.

The silk with which the 'caddis-worms' fasten together the materials for their houses is produced from spinning-glands which like those of the Lepidoptera open into the mouth.

The survey of the various types of beetle-larvae enumerated above (pp.

50-56) concluded with a short description of the _legless grub_, which is the young form of a weevil or a bark-beetle. This is a larva in which the head alone has its cuticle firm and hard; the rest of the body is covered with a pale, flexible cuticle, so that the grub is often described as 'fleshy.' This type of larva is by no means confined to certain families of the beetles, it is frequently met with, in more or less modified form, in two other important orders of insects, the Hymenoptera and the Diptera. Among the Hymenoptera this is indeed the predominant larval type. We have just seen that a caterpillar is the usual form of larva among the saw-flies, but in all other families of the Hymenoptera we find the legless grub. A grub of this order may usually be distinguished from the larva of a weevil or other beetle, by its relatively smaller head and smoother, less wrinkled cuticle; it strikes the observer as a feebler, more helpless creature than a beetle-grub. And it is of interest to note that this somewhat degraded type of larva is remarkably constant through a great series of families--gall-flies, ichneumon-flies, wasps, bees (fig. 18), ants--that vary widely in the details of their structure and in their habits and mode of life. Almost without exception, however, they make in some way abundant provision for their young. The feeble, helpless, larva is in every case well sheltered and well fed; it has not to make its own way in the world, as the active armoured larva of a ground-beetle or the caterpillar of a b.u.t.terfly is obliged to do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 18. Young Larva (_FL_), Full-grown Larva (_SL_) and Pupa (_N_) of Hive-bee (_Apis mellifica_). _co_, coc.o.o.n; _sp_, spiracles; _ce_, eye; _an_, feeler; _m_, mandible; _l_, labium.

Magnified 4 times. After Cheshire, _Bees_.]

Among those saw-flies whose larvae feed throughout life in a concealed situation, we find an interesting transition between the caterpillar and the legless grub. For example, the giant saw-flies (so called 'Wood-wasps') have larvae that burrow in timber, and these larvae possess relatively large heads, somewhat flattened bodies with pointed tail-end, and very greatly reduced legs. The feeble legless grub, characteristic of the remaining families of the Hymenoptera, is provided for in a well-nigh endless variety of ways. The female imago among these insects is furnished with an elaborate and beautifully formed ovipositor, and the act of egg-laying is usually in itself a provision for the offspring. Gall-flies pierce plant-tissues within which their grubs find shelter and food, the plant responding to the irritation due to the presence of the larva by forming a characteristic growth, the _gall_, pathological but often regular and shapely, in whose hollow chamber the grub lives and eats. Ichneumon-flies and their allies pierce the skin of caterpillars and other insect-larvae, laying their eggs within the victims' bodies, which their grubs proceed to devour internally. Some very small members of these families are content to lay their eggs within the eggs of larger insects, thus obtaining rich food-supply and effective protection for their tiny larvae. In Platygaster and other genera of the family Proctotrypidae, M. Ganin (1869) showed the occurrence of hypermetamorphosis somewhat like that already described as occurring among the Oil-beetles (Meloidae). The larva of Platygaster is at first rather like a small Copepod crustacean, with prominent spiny tail-processes; after a moult this form changes into the legless grub characteristic of the Hymenoptera, among which larvae even approaching the campodeiform type are very exceptional. The species of Platygaster pa.s.s their larval stages within the larvae of gall-midges.

Wasps, bees and ants, have the ovipositor of the female modified into a sting, which is often used for the purpose of providing food for the helpless grubs. Thus the digging wasps (Sphegidae and Pompilidae) hunt for caterpillars, spiders, and other creatures which they can paralyse with their stings, and bury them alongside their eggs to furnish a food-supply for the newly-hatched young. The social wasps and many ants sting and kill flies and other insects, which they break up so as to feed their grubs within the nest. It is well known that the labour of tending the larvae in these insect societies is performed for the most part not by the mother ('Queen') but by the modified infertile females or 'workers.' Other ants and the bees feed their grubs (fig. 18), also sheltered in well-constructed nests, on honey elaborated from nectar within their own digestive ca.n.a.ls. In all cases we see that the helplessness of the grub is a.s.sociated with some kind of parental care.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 19. Larva of Gall-midge (_Contarinia nasturtii_), ventral view showing anchor process (_a_), and spiracles projecting at sides. Magnified 30 times. From Carpenter, _Journ. Econ. Biol_, vol.

VI.]

From the Hymenoptera we may pa.s.s on to the Diptera or Two-winged Flies, an order of which the vast number of species and in many cases the myriads of individuals force themselves on the observer's notice. F.

Brauer (1863) divided the Diptera into two sub-orders[8]; of the first of these a Crane-fly or 'Daddy-long-legs' may be taken as typical, of the second an ordinary House-fly or Bluebottle. All the larvae of the Diptera are legless, those of the Crane-fly group have well-developed hard heads, with biting mandibles, but in the House-fly section the larva is of the degraded _vermiculiform_ type known as the _maggot_, not only legless, but without a definite head, the front end of the creature usually tapering to the mouth, where there are a pair of strong hooks, used for tearing up the food. A few examples of each of these types must suffice in the present brief survey. A few pages back (p. 66) reference was made to the production of galls on various plants, through the activity of larvae of the hymenopterous family Cynipidae. Many plant-galls are due, however, to the presence of grubs of tiny dipterous insects, the Cecidomyidae or Gall-midges. A cecid grub (fig. 19) has an elongate body with flexible, wrinkled cuticle, tapering somewhat at the two ends. The head, if rather narrow, is distinct, and beneath the prothorax is a characteristic sclerite known as the 'anchor process' or 'breast bone.' Along either side of the body is a series of paired spiracles, each usually situated at the tip of a little tubular outgrowth of the cuticle; the hindmost spiracles are often larger than the others. These little grubs live in family communities, their presence leading to some deformation of the plant that serves to shelter them. A shrivelled fruit or an arrested and swollen shoot, such as may be due respectively to the Pear-midge (_Diplosis pyrivora_) or the Osier-midge (_Rhabdophaga heterobia_), is a frequent result of the irritation set up by these little grubs. In a larva of the crane-fly family (Tipulidae, fig. 20) living underground and eating plant-roots, like the well-known 'leather-jacket' grubs of the large 'Daddy-long-legs' (Tipula) or burrowing into a rotting turnip or swollen fungus, like the more slender grub of a 'Winter Gnat' (Trichocera), the student notices a somewhat tough cuticle, a relatively small but distinct head, and frequently prominent finger-like processes on the tail-segment. Further examination shows a striking modification in the arrangement of the spiracles. Instead of a paired series on most of the body-segments, as in caterpillars and the vast majority of insects whether larval or adult, there are two large spiracles surrounded by the prominent tail-processes, and a pair of very small ones on the prothorax, the latter possibly closed up and useless. This restriction of the breathing-holes to a front and hind pair (amphipneustic condition) or to a hind pair only (metapneustic type) is highly characteristic of the larvae of Two-winged flies.

[8] Known as the Orthorrhapha and the Cyclorrhapha; these terms are derived from the manner in which the larval or pupal cuticle splits, as will be explained in the next chapter (p. 88).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 20. Crane-fly (_Tipula oleracea_), _a_, female; _b_, larva ('leather-jacket' grub). Magnified twice.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 21. Maggot of House-fly (_Musca domestica_), _a_, side-view, magnified 5 times; _b_, prothoracic spiracle; _c_, feeler; _d_, hind-region with posterior spiracles; _e_, _f_, head-region with mouth-hooks; _g_, head-region of young maggot; _h_, eggs. All magnified.

After Howard, _Entom. Bull._ 4, _U.S. Dept. Agric._]