I just got back from a long visit to Mickey or I'd have jumped in to bash BSFL sooner. BASH, I say! Kim has a few facts wrong, 'tis true, but in the main I must agree BSFL are the bain of my compost pile. I just can't believe people don't uniformly hate the buggers for their speedy destruction of a healthy compost pile. Why do I hate them, you ask? Is it because I discovered 1000+ under my wool living room rug the summer after my Christmas puppy peed everywhere? Maybe that's a factor, but By Gum I'm an open minded composter. I hate them because they quickly liquify every bit of green material in a pile, without digesting the brown even a tiny bit. My lovely, airy, hot, earthy pile, teaming with beneficial bacteria quickly sinks down to cold solid anaerobic barnyard stinking goo. I struggle to turn it every day to try and get air around, because the grasses and stems are all fully intact stringy fork clogging SOB's. I spread it all out six inches thick for days. I pile it back up. I go to Disney for eight days. I come back again to cold solid anaerobic barnyard stinking goo again. All the larvae are gone, taking exactly their weight of nitrogen with them, far away from my garden. But not far enough away for me. I have tried dry piles, turning every three days to incorporate laid eggs, brown heavy piles, running piles at 150 degrees, all to no avail. If I've got a pile moist and green enough to heat, it WILL have BSFL in it by mid June and through to the end of July. I hate them. On the bright side, on the way home I picked up several baskets of really divine tree ripe peaches from Lane orchards in GA and had a lovely day walking around the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. I listened attentively to a sweet volunteer lady explain exactly the organic regimen they use to grow the rose garden. She showed me her display of baking soda, Epsom salt, and alfalfa pellets and grinned the sweetest, elderly lady rose enthusiast grin I guess I've ever seen. I spared her my greensand lecture, since I wasn't volunteering and she was.

You may not be aware that Lumbricus rubellus is invasive and is threatening North American Forests. Quoting from: Invasive EarthwormsA Threat to North American Forests Plants & Gardens News : Volume 19, Number 1 : Spring 2004 by Niall Dunne http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/essays/2004su_worms.html "In 2002, Michael Gundale of Michigan Technological University published a report detailing how the epigeic bait and compost worm Lumbricus rubellus may be wiping out populations of the rare goblin fern, Botrychium mormo, and possibly other rare native plants too, in the Chippewa National Forest. Gundale credits the epigeic worm's destruction of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil as a reason for the goblin fern's decline. "John C. Maerz and colleagues from Cornell University have found strong evidence linking salamander decline in the hardwood forests of central New York and southeastern Pennsylvania to invasions by L. rubellus and Asian Amynthas species, among others. ..." "... With invasive earthworms wriggling amok in our forest soils, gardeners who use worms to decompose kitchen scraps and plant waste may want to take a closer look at what theyve got growing in their compost piles. Some of the traits that make worms ideal for vermicompostingsuch as high reproductive rate and adaptabilitymay also make them potentially successful invaders. "The worm predominantly sold for composting is the red wiggler or red tiger worm, Eisenia fetida. It has a rusty brown color with alternating yellow and maroon bands down the length of its body; a pigmentless membrane separates each segment. It grows up to three inches long and is highly prolific. Though the worm has established itself in the wild here, so far it has not been identified as a problem species. "Another popular compost species, the red worm, Lumbricus rubellus, is causing trouble, however, and should be avoided. It also grows up to three inches long and has a history of being confused with E. fetida. This worm is dark red to maroon, has a light yellow underside, and lacks striping between segments. "In The Earth Moved (Algonquin Books, 2004), a wonderful new book on earthworms by Amy Stewart, forest ecologist Cindy Hale advises worm composters to freeze their castings in air-tight bags for a least a week before adding them to garden soil, no matter what worms species they use. "It won't hurt the soil microbes, but it will kill all the worms."

Their purpose? To be born, to eat, mate and create the next generation. But I think you mean what is its role in the human scheme of things, lol! Here's how I look at it. All plants can tolerate a certain amount of insect activity. If I see a large population of one pest insect on a particular plant, I'll consider taking some kind of action to get it back into balance. For example, I see maybe 5 Japanese Beetles all year in my garden and I ignore them completely. But if I saw one munching on one of my bonsai, he's be tossed in the bird bath. Tortoise beetles are not usually considered a pest species, unless you have one or two on some very young seedlings. They don't travel in huge crowds, thankfully. Birds will eat them. Say, did you read that that 'scorpion' tail is actually collected beetle doo? And I guess those little spines won't sting. ;-)

They appear to be the empty shells of moth pupae. The Sphingidae family of moths, in particular, make pupak cases like that but there are others, too.