THE SITARES

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE SITARES

CHAPTER II. THE SITARES

The high banks of sandy clay in the country round about Carpentras are the favourite haunts of a host of Bees and Wasps, those lovers of a thoroughly sunny aspect and of soils that are easy to excavate. Here, in the month of May, two Anthophoræ1 are especially abundant, gatherers of honey and, both of them, makers of subterranean cells. One, A. parietina, builds at the entrance of her dwelling an advanced fortification, an earthy cylinder, wrought in open work, like that of the Odynerus,2 and curved like it, but of the width and length of a man's finger. When the community is a populous one, we stand amazed at the rustic ornamentation formed by all these stalactites of clay hanging from the façade. The other, A. pilipes, who is very much more frequent, leaves the opening of her corridor bare. The chinks between the stones in old walls and abandoned hovels, the surfaces of excavations in soft sandstone or marl, are found suitable for her labours; but the favourite spots, those to which the greatest number of swarms resort, are vertical stretches, exposed to the south, such as are afforded by the cuttings of deeply sunken roads. Here, over areas many yards in width, the wall is drilled with a multitude of holes, which impart to the earthy mass the look of some enormous sponge. These round holes might be fashioned with an auger, so regular are they. Each is the entrance to a winding corridor, which runs to a depth of four to six inches. The cells are distributed at the far end. If we would witness the labours of the industrious Bee, we must repair to her workshop during the latter half of May. Then, but at a respectful distance, if, as novices, we are afraid of being stung, we may contemplate, in all its bewildering activity, the tumultuous, buzzing swarm, busied with the building and the provisioning of the cells.

1. Cf. The Mason-bees, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chap. viii.; and Bramble-bees and Others, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: passim.—Translator's Note.

2 Cf. The Mason-wasps, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. vi. and x.—Translator's Note.

It is most often during the months of August and September, those happy months of the summer holidays, that I have visited the banks inhabited by the Anthophora. At this period all is silent near the nests; the work has long been completed; and numbers of Spiders' webs line the crevices or plunge their silken tubes into the Bee's corridors. Let us not, however, hastily abandon the city once so populous, so full of life and bustle and now deserted. A few inches below the surface, thousands of larvæ and nymphs, imprisoned in their cells of clay, are resting until the coming spring. Might not such a succulent prey as these larvæ, paralysed and incapable of defence, tempt certain parasites who are industrious enough to attain them?

Here indeed are some Flies clad in a dismal livery, half-black, half-white, a species of Anthrax (A. sinuata),3 flying indolently from gallery to gallery, doubtless with the object of laying their eggs there; and here are others, more numerous, whose mission is fulfilled and who, having died in harness, are hanging dry and shrivelled in the Spiders' webs. Elsewhere the entire surface of a perpendicular bank is hung with the dried corpses of a Beetle (Sitaris humeralis), slung, like the Flies, in the silken meshes of the Spiders. Among these corpses some male Sitares circle, busy, amorous, heedless of death, mating with the first female that passes within reach, while the fertilized females thrust their bulky abdomens into the opening of a gallery and disappear into it backwards. It is impossible to mistake the situation: some grave interest attracts to this spot these two insects, which, within a few days, make their appearance, mate, lay their eggs and die at the very doors of the Anthophora's dwellings.

3 Cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chaps. ii. and iv.—Translator's Note.

Let us now give a few blows of the pick to the surface beneath which the singular incidents already in our mind must be occurring, beneath which similar things occurred last year; perhaps we shall find some evidence of the parasitism which we suspected. If we search the dwellings of the Anthophoræ during the early days of August, this is what we see: the cells forming the superficial layer are not like those situated at a greater depth. This difference arises from the fact that the same establishment is exploited simultaneously by the Anthophora and by an Osmia (O. tricornis)4 as is proved by an observation made at the working-period, in May. The Anthophoræ are the actual pioneers, the work of boring the galleries is wholly theirs; and their cells are situated right at the end. The Osmia profits by the galleries which have been abandoned either because of their age, or because of the completion of the cells occupying the most distant part; she builds her cells by dividing these corridors into unequal and inartistic chambers by means of rude earthen partitions. The Osmia's sole achievement in the way of masonry is confined to these partitions. This, by the way, is the ordinary building-method adopted by the various Osmiæ, who content themselves with a chink between two stones, an empty Snail-shell, or the dry and hollow stem of some plant, wherein to build their stacks of cells, at small expense, by means of light partitions of mortar.

4 Cf. Bramble-bees and Others: passim.—Translator's Note.

The cells of the Anthophora, with their faultless geometrical regularity and their perfect finish, are works of art, excavated, at a suitable depth, in the very substance of the loamy bank, without any manufactured part save the thick lid that closes the orifice. Thus protected by the prudent industry of their mother, well out of reach in their distant, solid retreats, the Anthophora's larvæ are devoid of the glandular apparatus designed for secreting silk. They therefore never spin a cocoon, but lie naked in their cells, whose inner surface has the polish of stucco.

In the Osmia's cells, on the other hand, means of defence are required, for these are situated in the surface layer of the bank; they are irregular in form, rough inside and barely protected, by their thin earthen partitions, against external enemies. The Osmia's larvæ, in fact, contrive to enclose themselves in an egg-shaped cocoon, dark brown in colour and very strong, which preserves them both from the rough contact of their shapeless cells and from the mandibles of voracious parasites, Acari,5 Cleri6 and Anthreni,7 those manifold enemies whom we find prowling in the galleries, seeking whom they may devour. It is by means of this equipoise between the mother's talents and the larva's that the Osmia and the Anthophora, in their early youth, escape some part of the dangers which threaten them. It is easy therefore, in the bank excavated by these two Bees, to recognize the property of either species by the situation and form of the cells and also by their contents, which consist, with the Anthophora, of a naked larva and, with the Osmia, of a larva enclosed in a cocoon.

5 Mites and Ticks.—Translator's Note.

6 A genus of Beetles of which certain species (Clerus apiarius and C. alvearius) pass their preparatory state in the nests of Bees, where they feed on the grubs.—Translator's Note.

7 Another genus of Beetles. The grub of A. musæorum, the Museum Beetle, is very destructive to insect-collections.—Translator's Note.

On opening a certain number of these cocoons, we end by discovering some which, in place of the Osmia's larva, contain each a curiously shaped nymph. These nymphs, at the least shock received by their dwelling, indulge in extravagant movements, lashing the walls with their abdomen till the whole house shakes and dances. And, even if we leave the cocoon intact, we are informed of their presence by a dull rustle heard inside the silken dwelling the moment after we move it.

The fore-part of this nymph is fashioned like a sort of boar's-snout armed with six strong spikes, a multiple ploughshare, eminently adapted for burrowing in the soil. A double row of hooks surmounts the dorsal ring of the four front segments of the abdomen. These are so many grappling-irons, with whose assistance the creature is enabled to progress in the narrow gallery dug by the snout. Lastly, a sheaf of sharp points forms the armour of the hinder-part. If we examine attentively the surface of the vertical wall which contains the various nests, it will not be long before we discover nymphs like those which we have been describing, with one extremity held in a gallery of their own diameter, while the fore-part projects freely into the air. But these nymphs are reduced to their cast skins, along the back and head of which runs a long slit through which the perfect insect has escaped. The purpose of the nymph's powerful weapons is thus made manifest: it is the nymph that has to rend the tough cocoon which imprisons it, to excavate the tightly-packed soil in which it is buried, to dig a gallery with its six-pointed snout and thus to bring to the light the perfect insect, which apparently is incapable of performing these strenuous tasks for itself.

And in fact these nymphs, taken in their cocoons, have in a few days' time given me a feeble Fly (Anthrax sinuata) who is quite incapable of piercing the cocoon and still more of making her exit through a soil which I cannot easily break up with my pick. Although similar facts abound in insect history, we always notice them with a lively interest. They tell us of an incomprehensible power which suddenly, at a given moment, irresistibly commands an obscure grub to abandon the retreat in which it enjoys security, in order to make its way through a thousand difficulties and to reach the light, which would be fatal to it on any other occasion, but which is necessary to the perfect insect, which could not reach it by its own efforts.

But the layer of Osmia-cells has been removed; and the pick now reaches the Anthophora's cells. Among these cells are some which contain larvæ and which result from the labours of last May; others, though of the same date, are already occupied by the perfect insect. The precocity of metamorphosis varies from one larva to another; however, a few days' difference of age is enough to explain these inequalities of development. Other cells, as numerous as the first, contain a parasitical Hymenopteron, a Melecta (M. armata), likewise in the perfect state. Lastly, there are some, indeed many, which contain a singular egg-shaped shell, divided into segments with projecting breathing-pores. This shell is extremely thin and fragile; it is amber-coloured and so transparent that one can distinguish quite plainly, through its sides, an adult Sitaris (S. humeralis), who occupies the interior and is struggling as though to set herself at liberty. This explains the presence here, the pairing and the egg-laying of the Sitares whom we but now saw roaming, in the company of the Anthrax-flies, at the entrance to the galleries of the Anthophoræ. The Osmia and the Anthophora, the joint owners of the premises, have each their parasite: the Anthrax attacks the Osmia and the Sitaris the Anthophora.

But what is this curious shell in which the Sitaris is invariably enclosed, a shell unexampled in the Beetle order? Can this be a case of parasitism in the second degree, that is, can the Sitaris be living inside the chrysalis of a first parasite, which itself exists at the cost of the Anthophora's larva or of its provisions? And, even so, how can this parasite, or these parasites, obtain access to a cell which seems to be inviolable, because of the depth at which it lies, and which, moreover, does not reveal, to the most careful examination under the magnifying-glass, any violent inroad on the enemy's part? These are the questions that presented themselves to my mind when for the first time, in 1855, I observed the facts which I have just related. Three years of assiduous observation enabled me to add one of its most astonishing chapters to the story of the formation of insects.

After collecting a fairly large number of these enigmatical shells containing adult Sitares, I had the satisfaction of observing, at leisure, the emergence of the perfect insect from the shell, the act of pairing and the laying of the eggs. The shell is easily broken; a few strokes of the mandibles, distributed at random, a few kicks are enough to deliver the perfect insect from its fragile prison.

In the glass jars in which I kept my Sitares I saw the pairing follow very closely upon the first moments of freedom. I even witnessed a fact which shows emphatically how imperious, in the perfect insect, is the need to perform, without delay, the act intended to ensure the preservation of its race. A female, with her head already cut out of the shell, is anxiously struggling to release herself entirely; a male, who has been free for a couple of hours, climbs on the shell and, tugging here and there, with his mandibles, at the fragile envelope, strives to deliver the female from her shackles. His efforts are soon crowned with success; and, though the female is still three parts swathed in her swaddling-bands, the coupling takes place immediately, lasting about a minute. During the act, the male remains motionless on the top of the shell, or on the top of the female when the latter is entirely free. I do not know whether, in ordinary circumstances, the male occasionally thus helps the female to gain her liberty; to do so he would have to penetrate into a cell containing a female, which, after all, is not beyond his powers, seeing that he has been able to escape from his own. Still, on the actual site of the cells, the coupling is generally performed at the entrance to the galleries of the Anthophoræ; and then neither of the sexes drags about with it the least shred of the shell from which it has emerged.

After mating, the two Sitares proceed to clean their legs and antennæ by drawing them between their mandibles; then each goes his own way. The male cowers in a crevice of the earthen bank, lingers for two or three days and perishes. The female also, after getting rid of her eggs, which she does without delay, dies at the entrance to the corridor in which the eggs are laid. This is the origin of all those corpses swinging in the Spiders' web with which the neighbourhood of the Anthophora's dwellings is upholstered.

Thus the Sitares in the perfect state live long enough only to mate and to lay their eggs. I have never seen one save upon the scene of their loves, which is also that of their death; I have never surprised one browsing on the plants near at hand, so that, though they are provided with a normal digestive apparatus, I have grave reasons to doubt whether they actually take any nourishment whatever. What a life is theirs! A fortnight's feasting in a storehouse of honey; a year of slumber underground; a minute of love in the sunlight; then death!

Once fertilized, restlessly the female at once proceeds to seek a favourable spot wherein to lay her eggs. It was important to note where this exact spot is. Does the female go from cell to cell, confiding an egg to the succulent flanks of each larva, whether this larva belong to the Anthophora or to a parasite of hers, as the mysterious shell whence the Sitaris emerges would incline one to believe? This method of laying the eggs, one at a time in each cell, would appear to be essential, if we are to explain the facts already ascertained. But then why do the cells usurped by the Sitares retain not the slightest trace of the forcible entry which is indispensable? And how is it that, in spite of lengthy investigations during which my perseverance has been kept up by the keenest desire to cast some light upon all these mysteries, how is it, I say, that I have never come across a single specimen of the supposed parasites to which the shell might be attributed, since this shell appears not to be a Beetle's? The reader would hardly suspect how my slight acquaintance with entomology was unsettled by this inextricable maze of contradictory facts. But patience! We may yet obtain some light.

Let us begin by observing precisely at what spot the eggs are laid. A female has just been fertilized before my eyes; she is forthwith placed in a large glass jar, into which I put, at the same time, some clods of earth containing Anthophora-cells. These cells are occupied partly by larvæ and partly by nymphs that are still quite white; some are slightly open and afford a glimpse of their contents. Lastly, in the inner surface of the cork which closes the jar I sink a cylindrical well, a blind alley, of the same diameter as the corridors of the Anthophora. In order that the insect, if it so desire, may enter this artificial corridor, I lay the bottle horizontally.

The female, painfully dragging her big abdomen, perambulates all the nooks and corners of her makeshift dwelling, exploring them with her palpi, which she passes everywhere. After half an hour of groping and careful investigation, she ends by selecting the horizontal gallery dug in the cork. She thrusts her abdomen into this cavity and, with her head hanging outside, begins her laying. Not until thirty-six hours later was the operation completed; and during this incredible lapse of time the patient creature remained absolutely motionless.

The eggs are white, oval and very small. They measure barely two-thirds of a millimetre8 in length. They stick together slightly and are piled in a shapeless heap which might be likened to a good-sized pinch of the unripe seeds of some orchid. As for their number, I will admit that it tried my patience to no purpose. I do not, however, believe that I am exaggerating when I estimate it as at least two thousand. Here are the data on which I base this figure: the laying, as I have said, lasts thirty-six hours; and my frequent visits to the female working in the cavity in the cork convinced me that there was no perceptible interruption in the successive emission of the eggs. Now less than a minute elapses between the arrival of one egg and that of the next; and the number of these eggs cannot therefore be lower than the number of minutes contained in thirty-six hours, or 2160. But the exact number is of no importance: we need only note that it is very large, which implies, for the young larvæ issuing from the eggs, very numerous chances of destruction, since so lavish a supply of germs is necessary to maintain the species in the requisite proportions.

8 .026 inch.—Translator's Note.

Enlightened by these observations and informed of the shape, the number and the arrangement of the eggs, I searched the galleries of the Anthophoræ for those which the Sitares had laid there and invariably found them gathered in a heap inside the galleries, at a distance of an inch or two from the orifice, which is always open to the outer world. Thus, contrary to what one was to some extent entitled to suppose, the eggs are not laid in the cells of the pioneer Bee; they are simply dumped in a heap inside the entrance to her dwelling. Nay more, the mother does not make any protective structure for them; she takes no pains to shield them from the rigours of winter; she does not even attempt, by stopping for a short distance, as best she can, the entrance-lobby in which she has laid them, to protect them from the thousand enemies that threaten them; for, as long as the frosts of winter have not arrived, these open galleries are trodden by Spiders, by Acari, by Anthrenus-grubs and other plunderers, to whom these eggs, or the young larvæ about to emerge from them, must be a dainty feast. In consequence of the mother's heedlessness, the number of those who escape all these voracious hunters and the inclemencies of the weather must be curiously small. This perhaps explains why she is compelled to make up by her fecundity for her deficient industry.

The hatching occurs a month later, about the end of September or the beginning of October. The season being still propitious, I was led to suppose that the young larvæ must at once make a start and disperse, in order that each might seek to gain access, through some imperceptible fissure, to an Anthophora-cell. This presumption turned out to be entirely at fault. In the boxes in which I had placed the eggs laid by my captives, the young larvæ, little black creatures at most a twenty-fifth of an inch long, did not move away, provided though they were with vigorous legs; they remained higgledy-piggledy with the white skins of the eggs whence they had emerged.

In vain I placed within their reach lumps of earth containing nests of the Anthophora, open cells, larvæ and nymphs of the Bee: nothing was able to tempt them; they persisted in forming, with the egg-skins, a powdery heap of speckled black and white. It was only by drawing the point of a needle through this pinch of living dust that I was able to provoke an active wriggling. Apart from this, all was still. If I forcibly removed a few larvæ from the common heap, they at once hurried back to it, in order to hide themselves among the rest. Perhaps they had less reason to fear the cold when thus collected and sheltered beneath the egg-skins. Whatever may be the motive that impels them to remain thus gathered in a heap, I recognized that none of the means suggested by my imagination succeeded in forcing them to abandon the little spongy mass formed by the skins of the eggs, which were slightly glued together. Lastly, to assure myself that the larvæ, in the free state, do not disperse after they are hatched, I went during the winter to Carpentras and inspected the banks inhabited by the Anthophoræ. There, as in my boxes, I found the larvæ piled into heaps, all mixed up with the skins of the eggs.

About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books.

This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre (2009). The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27868/pg27868-images.html

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.