Pillbug Mass Graves

Warning: readers with bug squeamishness might find this post a bit difficult. Aw, c'mon, it's not that bad...

At my test basement experiment, I diassembled some of the walls to see how they looked after several wettings. Many of the seams were sealed with builder's adhesive tape (like packing tape, but many times sticker and stronger). Everywhere there was exposed adhesive, the pillbugs/rollie polys were stuck en masse:



A bit annoying to pull off tape and have dessicated bug bodies flying around. I wondered if I could come to some scientific conclusion based on the presence of pillbugs--e.g., do they need a certain level of humidity to thrive? Something like the way forensic entymologists use identification of insect invasion waves to estimate time of death (an excellent treatment of this subject is M. Lee Goff's A Fly for the Prosecution: How Insect Evidence Helps Solve Crimes). It included an anecdote of maggots raining down from a tree onto the investigation team.

Okay, not a terribly interesting post here, but I basically wanted an excuse to talk about giant isopods--Dave and Katie told me about them during my last visit to Ithaca (referring Wikipedia article here). They are basically deep-sea (500-7000 feet) pillbugs, that grow to 18 inches/3 pounds. Waurghahgh! My pillbug massacre made me think, "The giant isopods are coming to get me..."

FYI, the information vector for them was the webcomic Indietits by Jeph Jacques--the guy who does Questionable Content.