Translations:AY Honors/Temperate Grasslands/Answer Key/91/en

There are many interesting insect adaptations to live in grasslands, often related to what they eat or how they protect themselves. Dung Beetles eat and nest in animal dung, some rolling it into balls, others digging tunnels under dung piles, and still others just dwelling in the piles where they land. Leaf-Cutting Ants harvest grasses and plants, using them to grow fungus for food. Immature Froghoppers build protective “nests” of spit to protect themselves from predators. Honey Bees, Bumble Bees, and Carpenter Bees all feed off of the wildflowers in prairies, and have stingers as a defense mechanism. Numerous butterflies feed in the prairies. The Monarch caterpillars feed on milkweeds, leaving the butterflies toxic to predators (their bright coloration is a warning), the caterpillars of the Variegated Fritillary are one of the list picky, eating a wide variety of species, and the American Snout seems to detect when a major rainfall event may come after a drought, emerging in large numbers nearly simultaneously. Katydids and grasshoppers are able to leap (and fly), avoiding predators, while various Robber Flies use the prairies to hunt other insects.