A tabletop home for the overwintering Western Conifer Seed Bug
Every fall my house welcomes a curious roommate I did not invite in. When temperatures dip below freezing, the Western Conifer Seed Bug seeks a warm and cozy place to avoid the cold. My home happens to be an oasis of pumped, unnatural heat, but for the seed bug it is also unfortunately a death sentence. They get trapped in my baseboards, dusty corners, even my dress pockets, unable to get out. Drawn as they are to our HVAC cocoons, they are not adapted to the complex structures we have inserted into their world. Our human habitats have (un)wittingly produced a cascade of design casualties - plants, animals, insects, and microbes whose natural life cycles have been disrupted. In the midst of climate change and mass biodiversity loss, I wonder if we could instead design our built environments with multi-species cohabitation in mind?
The Western Conifer Seed Bug has a predictable life cycle with seasonal behavior changes. When temperatures dip in the fall they seek out warm and safe places to overwinter. In the wild they might burrow under a rock or a tree branch. But when we live within range of pine trees they are drawn to the warmth of our homes and can enter via cracks and openings as small as 1/8”. They are essentially harmless to us and spend the winter in a state of diapause - without need for food or water they just kinda hang out. When the temperatures rise again in spring, they venture forth in search of pine trees in which to lay their eggs and drink sap. A new crop of bug nymphs starts the cycle over again in the summer.
This proposal for an indoor habitat serves both human and non-human interests, functioning both as a lamp and a kind of open-air bug terrarium. It is designed to function as a prototype to make observations on what the bugs are drawn to, and then update the design accordingly. Keeping the behavior of the Western Conifer Seed Bug in mind, this version includes crevices and places to hide, pockets for soil, rocks, or water, pine branch cuttings, light, and heat. The materials used are all sourced from the pine tree itself. The base is made of pine wood while the lamp shade is partly cast from shellac and pine resin, and includes LED grow lights for some amount of heat. These features can provide familiar smells to the bug, should that potentially be of interest to them.
