Lisa Ames spends her workdays getting up close and personal with insects—about 500 a year.
Working in UGA’s Homeowner Insect and Weed Diagnostic Laboratory at the Griffin campus, Ames helps Cooperative Extension agents identify insect samples for Georgia homeowners.
“Most of the time, the county agents can easily identify the insects that are brought into their offices,” she said. “I get involved when the samples aren’t so easy to identify.”
Ames said if a homeowner has captured it, chances are she can and has identified it. Most of the samples Ames receives come to her in vials of alcohol.
Since 2002, she has identified more than 3,000 insect and weed samples through the laboratory, which is operated by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Although the insect samples vary from year to year, Ames says most of the samples are either ornamental insects, meaning they’re harmful to ornamental plants, “stored paper-product insects” or spiders.
“Most of the spider samples that people think are brown recluses are actually filistatids or Southern house spiders,” she said.
The “fiddle” is much larger on the brown recluse than on the Southern house spider, according to Ames.
“The fiddle, or violin, is the marking on the spider’s back that has a shape resembling the musical instrument,” she said. “It’s so small on the Southern house spider that it’s almost insignificant.”
The most common samples Ames receives are what she refers to as “stored product and paper” insects.
“These are the insects, like drugstore beetles and sawtoothed grain beetles, that are found in flour and other pantry products,” she said. “I get a lot of Indian meal moth samples because they get into dog food and bird seed.”
Ames said county agents send these common samples to her because many stored product pests are very small and require a microscope to ensure a positive identification.
“I get a lot of termites, because extension agents want to have confirmation before they give homeowners that kind of news,” she said.
Ames also identifies groups of insects that homeowners believe may be harmful.
“I often get insects that homeowners have found in groups,” she said. “When insects congregate, people usually assume they are up to no good.”
But not all of the insects Ames identifies are unfavorable.
“I get a lot of beneficial insect samples just because they bite, sting or are scary looking,” she said.
In addition to the spider, termite and stored product samples, Ames sees a fair number of centipede, giant flatheaded worm and giant resin bee samples.
The number of bugs she’s received this year has been reduced by the state’s drought conditions.
In addition to the insect samples, Ames also identifies about 50 weed samples per year, most of which are submitted in April and July.
Ames left May 19 for a three-week trip to Honduras with a group of 10 other UGA faculty, staff and students. While there, she will train students and Cooperative Extension employees on the best ways to take a photo of an insect or other arthropod and what to include to get the quickest and most accurate identification.
“This can be more complicated than it sounds as each type of insect and other arthropod has different characteristic of importance for identification,” Ames said.
