Fedchenko's Earwig - Fedchenko's Curly Tail
Fedchenko's Earwig - Oreasobia fedtschenkoi Sauss.
The body is narrow and long; the head is well-defined, with forward-directed chewing mouthparts; the pronotum is flat, the elytra are short, leathery, and devoid of veins, the wings in a folded state protrude from under the elytra as short triangular wing plates, or the wings, and sometimes even the elytra are absent; the legs are short, running with 3-segmented tarsi; the abdomen at the end has a pair of strong, hard pincers, which are more complex in males than in females.
They live in the soil, under plant debris, under stones, under tree bark, etc. The earwig leads a hidden lifestyle, hiding during the day under stones, fallen trees, as well as under tree bark and old stumps. In such shelters, earwigs sometimes accumulate in large numbers. At night, on the contrary, they become very active; they crawl out of their daytime shelters and quickly run in search of food, which can be very diverse and depends on the characteristics of a particular location.
The activity of earwigs strongly depends on weather conditions. They show the greatest mobility on warm days when the temperature fluctuations between day and night hours are minimal. They prefer cloudy weather, but if it rains, they remain in their shelters.
Strange name, right? There is a belief that an earwig crawls into a sleeping person's ear and twists around until it breaks through the eardrum, causing the person to become deaf. Of course, this is all made up — they have no interest in our ears. In general, people fear them in vain.
In folk terms, earwigs are sometimes called two-tailed and pinchers. But these are not tails; they are pincers that serve the insects for protection against enemies. Of course, they can pinch a little if you deliberately put your finger in front of them. They also use them to hold onto their prey — small insects or some plant debris.
If we talk about eating animal food, it would be more accurate to call an earwig not a predator but a scavenger. Their diet includes spider mites, aphids, and various immobile invertebrates.
Earwigs raid beehives, consuming up to 300 milligrams of honey at a time. Additionally, earwigs eat various parts of plants, mosses, lichens, and algae. They cause significant damage to agriculture by eating the flesh of apples, peaches, pears, currants, cherries, and sweet cherries. They find it difficult to gnaw through the hard skin of fruits, so they choose cracked fruits. Furthermore, earwigs leave their droppings on the fruits. They also damage vegetables: zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and potatoes. Earwigs can settle in barns and feed on hard grain crops.
Earwigs also need their pincers to unfold and "pack" their wings. After all, they not only crawl but also fly quite well. Their wings are carefully hidden under leathery elytra, folded like a fan, and then folded twice across. However, earwigs fly somewhat unusually: their body is not in a horizontal position during flight, as is the case with insects, but almost vertical.
In autumn, the female finds a suitable depression in the ground or digs a burrow herself. She lays her eggs there and hibernates, and in spring, larvae appear. The earwig is a remarkably caring mother: she guards, licks, warms, and feeds her helpless offspring. When the female earwig becomes sexually mature, eggs form in her body during a certain period.
The earwig develops with incomplete metamorphosis. Mating occurs in late summer to early autumn and lasts for several hours. After a few days, the female lays eggs in a single common pile, in a specially prepared nest. The nest is a burrow dug in the ground, ranging from 5 to 8 cm long, and rarely up to 15 cm. Usually, the nesting burrow is made in the form of a straight tube, but sometimes it has a lateral branch. In this burrow, the female remains to hibernate with the eggs and after hibernation makes another egg-laying. Males usually do not survive winter well, and in spring, their bodies can sometimes be found lying next to live females.
The earwig is a caring mother. For the nest, she chooses various crevices in the ground, especially attracted to the burrows of earthworms, which provide excellent shelter for the eggs and future offspring.
One brood of earwigs contains an average of fifty to sixty eggs. The tender mother not only sits on them until the young emerge but also cares for them like a hen with chicks, not leaving them for several weeks.
Her larvae resemble the female in every way, only smaller and wingless. She protects her children from enemies that she can overcome, and then the female dies, and the surrounding larvae eat the dead body. Then they emerge from the burrow.
Females exhibit a peculiar care for their offspring, guarding the eggs until the larvae hatch. The female positions herself in the nest in such a way that she covers the laid pile of eggs with her head and front legs. She has to protect her offspring not only from external enemies but also from the male and other females, who sometimes relish the laid eggs. Usually, the development of the eggs lasts from 5 to 6 weeks.
The female continues to stay with her offspring for some time after the larvae hatch from the eggs, protecting them. The first-instar larvae resemble adults, differing from them in size, reduced number of antenna segments (8 instead of 13-14), absence of wings, and a number of other features. After the mother's death, the larvae lead an independent life.
Distribution: the territory of the Issyk-Kul basin, the Pre-Fergana regions of Kyrgyzstan, the Alai valley.
Insects of Kyrgyzstan
