Author: Kate Redmond

Greetings, BugFans,

Forest Beach Migratory Preserve is a repurposed golf course north of Port Washington (WI), owned by the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust.  It’s mainly grassland, with woods and some brushy areas, and it was designed to serve as a stopover/refueling “bed and breakfast” for migrating birds.  Water hazards were turned into small ponds, more ponds were dug, and tall grass prairie plants were planted.  It glows with goldenrod and brown-eyed Susan these days, punctuated by New England aster and the last of the blazing star.

Creating a good place for birds has helped insects, too.

There’s a sand scrape near one pond (maybe an old sand trap) that the BugLady always checks – poor soil with horseweed (Erigeron), Queen Anne’s lace, willow sprouts and bare spots –and there she found a small drama playing out.

Communal wasps and bees get a lot of press because of their interesting behaviors and social hierarchies and because of the dangers of stumbling into one of their nests by accident.  The vast majority of wasp and bee species, though, are solitary; and in the absence of a big crew of workers to share the child care duties, most have devised a system where their larvae take care of themselves – with a little prep from Mom.  She makes a tunnel in wood or soil, often with several chambers for several young, caches each with a bunch of food (stunned invertebrates), lays an egg on/near the food, closes up the chamber, and departs.  When the egg hatches, dinner is served, and the larva exits the tunnel after pupation, as an adult.  Various species of wasp target various types of prey – caterpillars, stink bugs, cicadas, spiders, and even other wasps.

In the sand scrape, the BugLady saw a small-ish wasp hauling a banded orbweaver spider across the sand toward a hole she had dug.  It was a tough slog – the spider was bigger than the wasp was, but it had been stung and paralyzed and was not resisting.  At one point, the wasp stopped and fussed at something on the spider’s legs – an ant, just visible in the pictures, was interested in the spider.

She dragged the spider past the hole and into a stand of horseweed about 18” tall, picked a fairly bare stalk, and hoisted the spider up behind her.  She pulled it all the way to the top of the plant and carried it back down again, and part-way up a neighboring, leafier stalk, where she wedged it into the angle between a leaf and the stem.  Then she returned to the ground without it and fussed around the opening of the hole for a bit, removing a piece of dry grass stem that had blown across it.  The BugLady wondered (anthropomorphically) if the wasp was trying to hide the spider from the ants, but she found a note about a One/Two-spotted spider wasp stashing prey on plant leaves while she continued to work on a tunnel.

The wasp is a spider wasp (family Pampilidae) called Episyron biguttatus (probably), which Wikipedia calls the Two-spotted spider wasp and “Why Evolution is True” calls the One-spotted spider wasp.  Genus members are found throughout North America in sandy, easily excavated soil that they dig by biting it and then sweeping the loosened particles aside with their (combed) front legs.  Adults haunt the flower tops looking for orb-weavers and wolf spiders.

As the BugLady watched the spider, a bird swooped past her, and she turned in time to see a falcon heading for a dead tree.  It was a Merlin (the falcon formerly known as Pigeon Hawk), and it sat on a dead branch preening and watching the crazy woman photographing spiders and wasps (sorry, terrible light conditions + insufficient lens power = Hail Mary shot).

It was not surprising to see this bird.  Hawk migration is warming up, and both Merlins and their smaller relatives, the Kestrels, time their migration to coincide with that of Common Green Darners and Black Saddlebags.  Their migration is fueled by dragonflies, and the air at Forest Beach has been full of darners lately.  Merlins, whose diet also includes lots of small birds, grab darners out of the sky.

The soundtrack of the BugLady’s walk was provided by meadow katydids and tree crickets (http://songsofinsects.com/).  For more about tree crickets, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/tree-crickets/.  The voices of insects and the changing color of the leaves are a little gift from Mother Nature to make up for the upcoming quiet and monochromatic months.

Go outside – listen to bugs!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Howdy, BugFans,

Remember the clouds of little floodplain mosquitoes in September of 2018?  Floodplain mosquitoes take advantage of pools left by seasonal rain, and August 0f 2018 was soggy (the BugLady collected more than 7 inches of rain in her rain gauge that month).  Populations of most dragonflies were in their fall decline, so no help from that quarter, and outdoor events in September involved lots of swatting.

For a refresher course on mosquitoes, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/the-mighty-mosquito/.

The BugLady guessed the genus, and an entomologist confirmed that her mosquito is “consistent in appearance with Psorophora ciliata, our largest mosquito in the state, though not a commonly encountered one” (none of the other dozen-of-so members of the genus has erect “hairs” on their hind legs https://bugguide.net/node/view/813964/bgimage).  The SLG is in the fly family Culicidae.

Sadly, Shaggy-legged Gallinipper is not the officially recognized name for Psorophora ciliata (one site offered a pronunciation – sore AH fur uh    silly AHT uh).  Neither is “syringe with wings,” which is what a reporter from the North Country News called it a few years ago.  According to bugguide.net, “The word gallinipper originated as a vernacular term in the southeastern US referring to ‘a large mosquito or other insect that has a painful bite or sting’ and has appeared in folk tales, traditional minstrel songs, and a blues song referencing a large mosquito with a ‘fearsome bite.’” Gallinipper seems like the kind of name that’s whispered around campfires in the dark.

This is a whale of a mosquito (the BugLady’s first impression when she saw it on her hand was “Wow!” not “ouch”).  Males https://bugguide.net/node/view/1599206/bgimage have large, feathery antennae that allow them to detect the whine/vibrational wave pattern of her wingbeats https://bugguide.net/node/view/1599206/bgimage.  Her simple antennae are sufficient to lead her to a source of blood https://bugguide.net/node/view/1603291/bgimage, and her yellowish proboscis is tipped with black https://bugguide.net/node/view/1284682/bgimage.  For more pictures, see https://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/AQUATIC/Ps_ciliata.htm.

The SLG is found over a good chunk of the US east of the Continental Divide, though it has Southern proclivities and occurs as far south as Argentina.

It’s an uncommon mosquito that is more abundant in wet summers.  Like other floodwater or “new water” species, SLGs gamble.  Rather than using established wetlands, they lay their eggs on damp or low grassy ground that may flood in a big rain, and the eggs hatch when water covers them.  The fact that their eggs are designed to withstand long periods of desiccation improves their odds tremendously (an accumulation of years of plant seeds on the ground is called a “seed bank;” one source referred to the SLG’s reproductive strategy as an “egg bank”).  A number of the hits the BugLady found when researching the SLG chronicled their appearance in the wake of hurricanes and floods in the vein of one disaster following another.  Because their natal pools are transient, they must telescope their growth period, emerging as adults in just under a week after the eggs are inundated.  They overwinter as dormant eggs.

SLG larvae https://bugguide.net/node/view/349412/bgimage are aquatic, and they’re typically the largest mosquito larva in their neighborhood.  Immediately after hatching they feed like other mosquitoes by filtering tiny bits of organic matter.  But as they molt and grow, they become carnivorous (an uncommon habit among mosquitoes), pursuing other aquatic invertebrates, including other mosquito larvae.  For this reason, they have been studied as a possible biological control for disease-carrying mosquitoes (apparently SLGs can carry encephalitis and West Nile virus, but there’s no evidence that they transmit them), however 1) SLGs are generally too scarce to be effective; and 2) SLGs themselves bite and annoy people.  Adults feed on nectar, and Mom, of course, must have a blood meal in order to form her eggs.  By most accounts, she targets some livestock (the ruminants) and deer and a number of small mammals like raccoons, but she will also select humans.

A number of sources spoke of the aggressiveness of the SLG and of its painful bite, which the BugLady does not recall as being extraordinary.

Local maritime enthusiasts please note – a schooner by the name of the Gallinipper sank in Lake Michigan off of Manitowoc County in a white squall in 1851 (the state’s first known commercial shipwreck).  Apparently an ill-fated ship, she was originally christened the Nancy Dousman but was renamed after she sank (the first time) in the mid-1840’s.  In the run-up to her final immersion, she foundered in 1848, ran aground in the Milwaukee harbor in 1850, and sank in the Milwaukee harbor a few months before she sank for good http://www.wisconsinshipwrecks.org/Vessel/Details/230?region=ByAttractionType (you can visit her historical marker in Sheboygan).

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Howdy, BugFans,

One of the things that the BugLady looks for as she skulks around in the underbrush is interactions between ants and other insects.  These are generally food-related – either a bunch of ants is carting a dead bug home, or they are satisfying their need for honeydew, a summertime, carbohydrate-rich specialty.  Aphids are a common source of honeydew because they must ingest a huge amount of dilute plant sap in order to fuel their activities, and the excess has to go somewhere, so it exits to the rear of the aphid.  Ants will “farm” herds of the docile aphids, protecting them from ladybugs and harvesting the sweet liquid in a win-win ecological relationship called mutualism.

Another source of honeydew is treehoppers, which look kind of like lumbering bison compared to aphids.  They are “true bugs” in the treehopper family Membracidae, some of which look dragon-like as nymphs https://bugguide.net/node/view/1181705/bgimage and thorn-like as adults https://bugguide.net/node/view/23335/bgimage.  There are more than 3,000 species of treehoppers, and they live everywhere except Antarctica.

Aster treehoppers (Publilia concava) are found in the eastern half of North America.  The BugLady usually sees them on goldenrods, but they can also be found on several other species in the Aster family, and the (winged) adults may move to woody plants.  According to Wikipedia, nymphs “have an extensible anal tube that appears designed to deposit honeydew away from their bodies. The tube appears to be longer in solitary species rarely attended by ants. It is important for sap-feeding bugs to dispose of honeydew, as otherwise it can become infected with sooty moulds. Indeed, one of the evident benefits of ants for Publilia concava nymphs is that the ants remove the honeydew and reduce such fungal growth.”

Unlike many insects, Aster treehoppers overwinter as adults, not as nymphs or eggs, in leaf litter below their host plants.  Males woo their ladies in spring with (inaudible to us) courtship calls http://treehoppers.insectmuseum.org/site/treehoppers/sounds/Publilia_Cocroft.wav that they generate by sending vibrations through the substrate.  Aster treehoppers also use vibrations to tell their confreres about good feeding spots and to alert their guardian ants to the presence of predators.  Studies have shown that Aster treehoppers will signal their protectors when ladybugs show up, and the ants will respond, and that the ants get excited when recorded treehopper alarm signals are played to them.  Aster treehoppers also have alarm pheromones that they activate when predators arrive, but scientists aren’t sure if that chemical message is received by the ants or is restricted to their fellow treehoppers.

Females partially insert their eggs into the stem or into the underside of a leaf on either side of a leaf’s midrib so that newly-hatched nymphs don’t have to travel far to tap into food, and she’s more likely to lay eggs if guardian ants are around.  Females watch over their egg clusters until the eggs hatch https://bugguide.net/node/view/894075/bgimage, and then, although they may stay on the scene (this is a gregarious species), they hand off the child care to the ants https://bugguide.net/node/view/535504/bgimage and https://bugguide.net/node/view/977443/bgimage.  If Mom is present and caring for her offspring, ants are more likely to step in, but if there are no ants around, Mom only lays one clutch of eggs and stays with her young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4sUhRRVSwc.  One study showed that if ants are removed from their herd of treehopper nymphs, it can decrease nymphal survival by 20 times.

Aster treehoppers are one of the treehopper species in which Mom may leave her eggs in the egg cluster of another female and move on (brood parasitism).  The adoptive Mom cares for her foster eggs, and the “parasitic” Mom goes on to lay more clutches elsewhere.

Ants have “choices,” too – they are more likely to guard treehoppers when the quantity and quality of the honeydew meets their specifications and when the population of treehoppers is sufficiently dense and is near to their ant mound.

Ants in the genus Formica (accent on the first syllable) will take on goldenrod-defoliating Goldenrod leaf beetles – especially the beetle larvae, which the ants bite and spray with formic acid to encourage them to move on.  This benefits both their flock and the goldenrod plant (the sap-sucking treehoppers aren’t beneficial to the plant, either, but at least they don’t eat the leaves).  Ants that habitually clear the tops of their mounds to prevent shading may forgo that task if it interferes with their treehoppers.

Awesome baby https://bugguide.net/node/view/72969/bgimage!

The BugLady

Greetings, BugFans,

In mid-July, the BugLady ran into BugFan Freda at an Ozaukee Washington Land Trust property at the west end of Lake Twelve.  Lake Twelve is famous because of the presence there of not one, but two rare (in Wisconsin) damselflies – the Slender Bluet and the Lilypad Forktail.  The bluet has been on and off of our state radar since 2007; the forktail was first recorded at Lake Twelve in 2017 but has been seen intermittently in Wisconsin since 2010.  Freda introduced the BugLady to both species.

A week later, when she was chasing dragonflies at one of her familiar haunts at the north end of the Cedarburg Bog, the BugLady photographed (badly) a suspicious-looking damselfly that turned out to be a mature female Lilypad Forktail (Ischnura kellicotti).

The species, originally called Kellicott’s forktail or Kellicott’s thin-tail, was first described in Entomological News, Vol 9 (1898).  Along with the dancers, bluets and sprites, forktails are in the Narrow-winged/Pond damselfly family Coenagrionidae; “forktail” refers to projections at the tip of the male’s abdomen.

The BugLady loves common names.  Sure, if you say Ischnura kellicotti anyplace in the world, there’s only one critter you could be talking about.  But common names – bestowed by the people who experience a species where the rubber hits the road – allude to an organism’s appearance, taste, toxicity, smell, squishiness, hairiness, prickliness, all of the above, and much more.  Lilypad forktails are named for their chosen habitat.

They are tied to a single group of plants – water lilies – a habit that is uncommon among Odonates.  So attached are they to water lilies that when they perch on one – and they seldom perch anywhere else – the tip of their abdomen is usually bent down to be in contact with it.  It’s not known whether this contact allows for support or for some kind of predator detection, and several authors speculated that the damselfly uses the bent tip as a springboard when it takes off, a la springtails.  Their relatively short legs keep them close to the leaves, and their weak flight carries them low, directly from leaf to leaf or from leaf to prey.  So attached are they that the female lays eggs into the water lily leaf and the naiad lives clinging to its underside, coming topside only when it’s time to emerge as an adult.  So attached are they that people who want to see one often must take to canoes or kayaks to get out to the lily pads, or must wade or swim.  So attached are they that people who want to net one find that netting the whole lily leaf works best.

Male forktails and male bluets are often blue and black – forktails may resemble the “black-type bluets” whose front and rear are blue, but whose abdomens are mostly black.  Lilypad Forktails are small, under 1 ¼”.  Like Eastern Forktails, most females start out gloriously red-orange (some females mimic the blue and black of males), and they fade to slate-blue as they reach reproductive age due to pruinosity – the deposit of “hoary” flakes on various parts of the anatomy.  In all stages, they have oversized “eyespots” on the back of the eye.  See nice pictures of all the “plumages” here, including a dark teneral with yellow wings and a naiad, https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/viewSpecies.php?species=70.  Thanks to BugFan Freda for the face-to-face shot.

The Lilypad Forktail bears more than a passing resemblance to another damsel called the Skimming Bluet (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1401924/bgimage), which also likes lily pads (in fact, when she found the Lilypad Forktail at the Bog, the BugLady went back and checked all the pictures of male Skimming Bluets that she had ever taken to make sure they were correctly ID’d.  Then we add to the mix the (oxymononic) Orange Bluet https://bugguide.net/node/view/429646/bgimage, a lily pad-sitter that resembles orange female forktails.  And the pruinose, older female Lilypad Forktails https://bugguide.net/node/view/977359/bgimage that look a lot like pruinose, older female Eastern Forktails https://bugguide.net/node/view/1536326/bgimage (hey – if it were easy, it wouldn’t be so much fun, right?).  Lilypad Forktails are notably feisty and frequently chase Skimming and Orange Bluets.

Females of many species of odonates have an “I’m not in the mood” posture, and it often includes a down-turned abdomen.  Female Lilypad Forktails do not have or need such a signal; apparently, their habitual posture is enough and they don’t get hassled!

Lilypad Forktails have an odd range.  They are an eastern/southeastern species that, according to Paulson’s Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, is found at lakes and ponds with lots of water lilies in states bordering the Atlantic from the Canadian Maritime Provinces (first record – 2017) to Florida, and then along the Gulf Coast to Texas, with tongues extending north toward the Midwest along the Mississippi River, and with some disjunct populations inland and around the south end of Lake Michigan.

What does it looks like when a species goes on the march and expands its range?  The BugLady sure wishes that every state had a dragonfly website as lovely and searchable as the Wisconsin Odonata Survey http://wiatri.net/inventory/odonata/.  In Wisconsin (and in some of the other states that it has been recorded in), the Lilypad Forktail is a Species of Special Concern, a watch list status based on a specie’s highly limited range and small numbers of populations, as well as an assortment of threats.  In the case of the forktail, it’s not being wiped out here, its numbers are low because it’s attempting to move in from outside the state.  Probably.

According to the Odonata Survey, it was first recorded in Walworth County on our southern border in 2010; in Sauk County (south-central) in 2013; in Rock County, also on the Illinois border, in 2014; in Washington County (south-central) in 2017; Washington and Walworth Counties in 2018; and Washington and next-door Ozaukee Counties this year.  In 2011, 2012, 2015, and 2016 it was not reported.

The BugLady attempted to check the status of the Lilypad Forktail is within its given range, which took much longer than it should have.  As has been lamented in these pages before, she is “key-word challenged” – things are seldom filed away where she would put them.  Plus, state dragonfly lists can be hard to find.  And some State Natural Heritage sites (the organizations that track sensitive species) are remarkably hard to navigate (you know who you are) or have lovely interactive pages where you can search lists of sensitive species by county or plant community/region but not by species (ditto).  And a number of states that she investigated apparently either have 100% A-OK insect populations or don’t track insect populations (ditto).  One of the states in its range, a state with only one known Lilypad Forktail location, “does not currently have state threatened and endangered species legislation.”

Keeping in mind that it’s a small damselfly that looks an awful lot like another small damselfly, what did the BugLady find?  In coastal states south of Delaware, it’s not considered common (except, perhaps, for some local populations), but it’s not considered to be in trouble, either.  Away from that core range, it’s listed as “greatest conservation need” in Maine, Vermont, and Delaware, but “secure” just north of Delaware in New Jersey; “vulnerable” in Connecticut and in Oklahoma, where one site noted that owners of farm and recreational ponds in Oklahoma often consider water lilies to be a pest plant and eradicate them; “imperiled” in Pennsylvania; and “state endangered” in Ohio.  In other inland states in its range, its population levels are apparently not considered alarming enough to track.

Species advance – two steps forward here, one step forward there, fall back, regroup.  With a little help from our friends.

The BugLady

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady had a “Stop the Presses” moment as she was writing this week’s BOTW.  When she hiked down to the mailbox, she saw a fly that she had never seen before, from a family she’s never seen before, skating over the top of a leaf, and she bumped it to the head of the line.  She photographed it badly, but here’s a good image https://bugguide.net/node/view/190234/bgimage.

In last week’s episode we considered a beetle that mimics a bumblebee; this is a fly that is imitating an ichneumon wasp https://bugguide.net/node/view/435323/bgpage (and no one messes with wasps), and some of its relatives are ant-mimics https://bugguide.net/node/view/84097/bgimage.

It’s a Stilt-legged fly/Small-footed fly in the family Micropezidae, a family with only about 30 species in North America and some 600 species worldwide (they’re a different bunch than the tiny, iridescent Long-legged flies https://bugguide.net/node/view/1543910/bgimage in the family Dolichopodidae).  Stilt-legged flies are most diverse in the tropics, where their larvae are dung-dwellers.  They’re famous for raising their short, front pair of legs so that they look like antennae as the flies walk around https://bugguide.net/node/view/789265/bgimage; their actual antennae are pretty short.  They live in damp and dappled wetlands and woods.  Kaufman, in hisField Guide to Insects of North America tells us to look for them “crawling slowly about the base of trees, or on low foliage.”

Micropezids feed on decaying organic matter or in plant roots as larvae (the larva of an Australian species lives in the water of a pitcher plant and eats decaying invertebrates that it finds there).  Some adults are predaceous and others eat rotting fruits and droppings of birds or other animals.  As a group, they fly below the radar, and there are a lot of gaps in our knowledge of their natural history.

This stilt-legged fly, Rainieria antennaepes (no common name), is the only Rainieria in North America.  According to bugguide.net, antennaepes refers to the fly’s habit of passing off its legs as antennae.  It’s found east of the Rockies and into southern Canada.

Sometimes, as it walked around, the fly would bow its head down toward the leaf surface https://bugguide.net/node/view/1031146/bgimage, allowing it to suck up food with its forward-facing, “vacuum cleaner” mouthparts, which look like a tiny gas mask (see the last picture at https://sites.duke.edu/dukeinsects/insect-orders/diptera/taeniaptera-trivittata).

About its life history, the BugLady could find little – according to the website americaninsects.net, “Larvae often develop in decaying leaves or other rotting plant material. The pupa is made from the final larval skin, and so the pupa resembles the last larval instar.”

Even though parts of its life are a mystery, the BugLady found a number of videos featuring the adults.  In the first, even though the BugLady has admired The Early Birder’s great insect shots, the “semaphore” he refers to looks like grooming behavior to her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba3inwK11Ys.  Check out the video of a stilt-legged fly snacking on a bit of cheese at http://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2019/4/1/wasp-or-fly-stilt-legged-flies-mimetic-micropezidae, and this, from another of the “Bug of the Week” series out there http://blog.growingwithscience.com/tag/rainieria-antennaepes/.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Greetings, BugFans,

When the BugLady was walking in the woods at Riveredge the other day, she found some plate-sized, stocky, very aromatic, gilled mushrooms growing out of the ground – possibly one of the (glorious name) Fetid Russulagroup.  They were pushing up under last year’s leaf litter; some were partly covered, but some were discernable only as an upward swelling of oak leaves.  The cap of the Russula is concave, so water and other stuff collects in it.  A microclimate.

She saw something moving on the rim of an “over-the-hill” fungus, and she had the good grace to think “what’s a bumblebee doing in a place like this?”  The AMERICAN CARRION BEETLE is counting on that reaction, and it enhances the illusion by buzzing its wings as it flies.  No-one messes with bumblebees.

Turns out there were a bunch of American Carrion beetles on that and other mushrooms, on the cap, and deep in the flesh and gills (she also photographed a half-dozen on some carnivore scat, but she may not be able to show that shot in polite company).

Carrion beetles have a fascinating lifestyle, which was chronicled in the early days of BOTW https://uwm.edu/field-station/carrion-beetles/.  They perform ecosystem services in the form of corpse-removal, but they also feed on rotting fungus and animal droppings.

[Sidebar: Russulas can be hard to tell apart; many are considered inedible, but some are mild enough to eat, and some have a spiciness that sneaks up on you (but remember: “There are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters”).  They get their nutrients from the roots of trees.  Sometimes the mushrooms, which are the fruit of a large, underground system of mycorrhizal strands that connect with plant roots, grow in a straight line above a tree root.  Just as the fungi get their food from a tree root, the lovely, parasitic woodland flower Indian pipe (which was blooming in the woods, but not nearby) gets its nutrients from a variety of Russula hosts (for which the Indian pipes are dubbed “mycorrhizal cheaters”).  They’re not alone – beetles, slugs, some rodents and deer eat Russula mushrooms.]

When she looked at the mushrooms more closely, the BugLady discovered that there was more going on.  Along with the gang of American Carrion beetles were a few red-rimmed MARGINED CARRION BEETLES https://uwm.edu/field-station/margined-carrion-beetle/.

And, a GOLD AND BROWN ROVE BEETLE, which the BugLady swears is not luminescent, though the yellow hairs on its rear are iridescent.  Find its story here https://uwm.edu/field-station/gold-and-brown-rove-beetle/.

And, between the layers of oak leaves, an ANT NURSERY, with workers poised to rescue the eggs when, suddenly, their roof disappeared.

And a cloud of tiny flies, attracted to the mushroom by its very mushroomy odor.

And the exuvia (shed exoskeleton) of a spider that paused to molt there.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Salutations, BugFans,

The BugLady hopes that you’ve been getting out on the trail and drinking in the lushness of the summer.  If this heat and humidity are the “new normal,” we might as well get used to it.

Insect photography in summer uncovers the common themes of eating and reproducing (sometimes, in the case of ambush bugs, simultaneously).

Paper wasp –

A Northern paper wasp has a super power – she chews on plant materials, mixes the cellulose with saliva, and spits out paper that she forms into a hemispherical, “open-faced” nest (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1554212/bgimage) on plants and under eaves and porches; the large and dangerous football-shaped paper nests are made by bald-faced hornets.  Look for her on flowers, feeding on nectar and collecting small insects for the larvae.  Having collected prey, according to bugguide.net, “The wasp then malaxates, or softens the food and in doing so absorbs most of the liquid in the food. This solid portion is given to older larvae and the liquid is regurgitated to be fed to younger larvae.”  Bugguide also tells us that “P. fuscatus has unusually variable color patterns, allowing individual wasps to recognize each other’s faces.”

Planthopper nymph

Been seeing plant stalks that are a bit fuzzy these days?  It’s not your glasses – if you look closely, you’ll see that they are tiny bugs.  This one is the nymph of a planthopper, probably in the family Flatidae.  For more about them, meet the other (original) “Bug of the Week,” this one written by an actual entomologist: http://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2013/1/9/junes-snowfall-planthoppers-family-flatidae-missing-video.

Syrphid/hover/flower fly

Syrphid flies are bee mimics that can be found feeding harmlessly on nectar and/or pollen on flower tops.  The BugLady loves the exquisite patterns on their abdomens.  “Hover fly” comes from the males’ practice of hovering in the air, hoping to attract the attentions of a female.  They are great little pollinators.

Jumping spider meets syrphid fly

Jumping spiders are beautiful, bold little spiders that look you right in the eye and don’t back down (though they’re great at zipping around to the back of a leaf when they see a camera). Find out more about them at https://uwm.edu/field-station/jumping-spider/.  We all are, potentially, someone else’s lunch.

Syrphids again

When the BugLady photographed these delicate, green aphids, she did not notice the pale larva just north of them on the stem until she put the picture on the screen.  It’s the larva of a syrphid/hover/flower fly, and it eats aphids.  Death from above.

Land snail

It’s humid here by the lake – gotta’ keep moving or stuff will grow on you.  The wall-snail population is possibly a sign from the cosmos that it’s time to round up a pressure washer.  Or get more snails.

Ambush bug

The BugLady loves these small-but-mighty ambush bugs that hang out on flower tops and often take prey that’s much bigger than they are.  They grasp in firmly with their hook-like front legs and inject meat tenderizers.  Here, its catch is a sweat bee.

Rainbow Bluet

What’s a summer survey without an Odonate?  This incredible creature is about 1 ¼” long from his peachy face to the sky-blue tip of his abdomen.

Creepy aphids

First of all, this clump of aphids was being protected by some very alert ants, and when the BugLady brushed against the plant, she suddenly had about 20 ants on her hand and sleeve (she’s a wee bit ant-averse).  The ants were there for the honeydew secreted by the aphids, which is a staple in the diet of many ant species.  But then, the BugLady put the aphid picture up on the screen and saw the creepy “eyes.”  BugFan Freda pointed out that the aphids are plugged into the stem, drinking plant juices, and their eyes are facing down.  The glowy “eyes” are the twin tailpipes (cornicles) at the rear of the insect).  But still…..

Baltimore Checkerspot

Baltimore Checkerspot caterpillars feed on a late-blooming wetland plant called turtlehead.  In fall, the gregarious caterpillars make a communal web on their food plant and stay inside, inert, for the winter.  When they emerge in spring, they need to eat some more before they’re ready to form a chrysalis, but there’s no turtlehead around, so they pick alternate hosts, including white ash.

They’re spectacular with wings open https://bugguide.net/node/view/1245900/bgimage, and the caterpillars are orange and black, too https://bugguide.net/node/view/1076839/bgimage.  Orange and black were the colors of the livery worn by the servants of Lord Baltimore at the time that the early settlers were arriving in this country, and it’s his name, not the city’s, that’s attached to the oriole and the butterfly.

Thread-waisted wasp

Like the paper wasp, these wasps cruise the flower tops looking for nectar (she also finds sustenance in extra-floral nectaries – for the amazing EFN story, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/ants-in-my-plants/).  Solitary where the paper wasp is social, each thread-waisted wasp makes her own mud nursery for her offspring, and she provisions it with small insects and spiders, depending on her species.

The Black and yellow mud dauber (Sceliphron caementarium) (caementarium means “mason, or builder of walls”) is found in a big chunk of North America.  Her nest may contains about as many as 25 brood chambers (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1480753/bgimage), each cached with a few dozen spiders.

Black firefly

Fireflies (lightning beetles is a more accurate name) wow us with their nocturnal light show, blinking or streaking across the sky with a species specific signal to the females waiting below (https://uwm.edu/field-station/lightning-beetle-again/).  But, the Black firefly (Lucidota atra) is a day-flying firefly and would have to use a lot of energy to compete with the sun (males may glow briefly immediately after they emerge from their pupal case).  If he cannot glow, how does he woo?  By flying close to the ground, searching for the “perfume” of the pheromones released by the female.

EAB

The BugLady is sickened by the number of dead ash trees sticking out of wetlands and uplands, and this is the beetle that’s responsible.  The Emerald ash borer is an immigrant from northeast Asia that left its natural checks and balances at home.  Its larvae burrow in and feed on the living tissues just under the bark of an ash tree, creating squiggly tunnels called galleries.  Eventually, there are so many galleries that the tree’s “plumbing” is disrupted and it can’t move nutrients up and down the trunk.

Thanks to the EAB we have a new indoor sport during the Polar Vortex – figuring out whether it has gotten cold enough for long enough to kill the majority of the larvae.  Not yet.

Katydid nymph

With a little luck (OK – a lot of luck) this infant will grow up to be a good-sized bush katydid, probably this one https://bugguide.net/node/view/1275677/bgimage.  in the meantime, it looks like a tiny, jeweled creature.

Go outside – look for bugs!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/