Author: rbuchholz

Salutations, BugFans,

Protean Shield-backed Katydids evoke adjectives like “earthy” and “organic,” and “elemental” (along with “lunker”).  This utilitarian katydid looks like it saw the dinosaurs, and maybe it did.  Katydids (family Tettigoniidae, subfamily Tettigoniinae) are in the order Orthoptera (“straight wings”) (grasshoppers, crickets, et al), and the Orthopterans have been around for 300+ million years or so, compared to dinosaurs’ 233 million years.  Orthoperans survived the meteor strike 65 million years ago; dinosaurs did not.

As a group, Shield-backs are drab insects with very long antennae and a pronotum (a structure that covers part/all of the top of the thorax) that is flattened and flared like a shield. They make noise (stridulate) (but not very musically) by rubbing together rough areas on their wings.  If you make noise, you need to hear noise, so they have “ears” (tympana) located on the front legs, near the “knee.”  There are 123 species in North America, and they are a mostly-Western bunch, with about 10 species in the East.

Surprising Shield-back Katydid Fact #1: Besides being called Shield-backed katydids, the subfamily Tettigoniinae is also known as the Predaceous katydids!  In fact, lots of species of Orthopterans eat meat to some degree (Bambi is an omnivore, too, a story for a different day).  Shield-backs do eat plants, and some are agricultural pests, but they are also scavengers on dead insects and are active predators, including on their brethren.

Surprising Shield-backed Katydid Fact #2: The Mormon crickets that threatened to ravage the Mormons’ crops in the summer of 1848 are actually an almost-3”-long, flightless species of Shield-backed katydid.  According to Wikipedia, “Although flightless, the Mormon cricket is capable of traveling up to two kilometers a day in its swarming phase, during which it is a serious agricultural pest and traffic hazard.”  In gratitude for their delivery, which came in the form of a big flock of California Gulls, the Mormons erected the Seagull Monument (more apologies to birders, everywhere) in Salt Lake City.

Surprising Shield-backed Katydid Fact #3:  Expect to be nipped if you handle them (probably won’t break the skin). In England they are nicknamed “wart-biters.”

PROTEAN SHIELD-BACKED KATYDIDS, aka Short-legged Shield-bearers (Atlanticus testaceus) are found east of the Mississippi, from Kentucky/Virginia north around the Great Lakes and New England and into southern Canada.  They used to be lumped with the Southern Protean Shieldback (Atlanticus pachymerus), a distinct species that is now believed to replace them in the South.  They are found in open woodlands, woodland/grassland edges, fence rows, and brushy fields.  Young nymphs seem to seek the sun than adults do.

Based on their sheer bulk, it’s hard to imagine the chunky, inch-long PSBKs airborne.  In fact, because of their reduced, almost vestigial wings, the only way they get off the ground is by climbing.  Where do they go on foot?  Researchers captured, marked and released 231 of them and found that they moved as far as 550 feet (average 120 feet) over a period of a few weeks, but their peregrinations seemed random.

These are the first katydids to mature and initiate a chorus in summer, and it is suspected that they may get a jump start by overwintering as nymphs, though some sources say that it is the egg that overwinters.  They may sing from June through early fall, but their song is high-pitched and hard to pick out http://songsofinsects.com/katydids/protean-shieldback (click on the sonogram at the bottom).

Researcher S. K. Gangwere studied both the feeding habits and the circadian rhythms of PSBKs and discovered that they are “incompletely nocturnal” – that is, although they are most active from dusk until the “wee hours,” they are not completely at rest during the day.  Gangwere paints a lovely picture of PSBKs moving about their landscapes, sometimes walking, sometimes hopping, twirling their antennae, resting under leaves and debris, and enjoying late-morning snacks.  Males will gather at the base of plants and stridulate a bit in late afternoon.

At sunset, their activity level increasess, and they abandon the ground and climb into the vegetation.  Males feed and stridulate, females feed, and she may mate if a male occupies the plant she’s on.  Activity starts winding down after midnight (though, as Gangwere says, “they remain alert and their antennae continue to twirl”).  They descend and tuck in well before dawn and remain still for six or seven hours.  Elliot and Hershberger, in The Songs of Insects (a great book that comes with a CD) call shieldbacks “the linebackers of the insect world” and say that “Protean Shieldbacks are easy to approach, but their habitats are typically dense, and reaching a singer can be exceedingly difficult, unless you’re a professional contortionist.”

About feeding, Gangwere tells us that based on their mouthparts, they are adapted for a carnivorous lifestyle, but their diet probably consists more of plants, which are more readily available than animals.  He calls them “a carnivore by preference but an omnivore by necessity.”

The individual pictured is a male – if it were a female, it would have an impressive, sword-like ovipositor aft.

Alert BugFans may have noticed that one of the BugLady’s nemesis bugs is sitting on the PSBK’s head in one shot.  Thanks to Dan, an authentic entomologist, for the ID – a biting midge in the family Ceratopogonidae.  And perhaps a future BOTW.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady got a very special request from almost-5-year-old BugFan Jolene, who is curious about “ant flies” (aka flying ants).

The BugLady will try to answer her questions, keeping in mind that ants are a huge group (12,500 species ID’d so far, globally, and maybe that many more awaiting discovery; 700 species in North America, 30 of them non-native.).  There are very few “always-es” or “nevers” as far as the life styles of ants are concerned, so the BugLady may generalize a bit.  Turns out that this is a pretty timely request, considering that tennis at Wimbledon was interrupted recently by ant flies https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jul/05/flying-ants-distract-players-at-wimbledon.

It’s been a while since we visited the ants.  They’ve had supporting roles in a number of BOTWs and starred in others, beginning with Ants (101) in 2008 http://uwm.edu/field-station/ants/, then Western thatch ants http://uwm.edu/field-station/western-thatch-ant/ and then an episode about the mound building Ants of CESA http://uwm.edu/field-station/the-ants-of-cesa/.  As charter BugFans may recall, the BugLady has had her moments with ants, and she is sure that somewhere in the mind of the Collective, they remember.

A little about life in an ant colony:

Ants (family Formicidae) are social insects that live in colonies made up mostly of sterile, female workers (sometimes many thousands of them) that do different jobs that support the community.  A worker may rotate through a number of tasks in her life; she starts “inside,” doing digging/maintenance or caring for the nursery or garden or queen, but when she’s reaching the end of her life span (which could be as long as one to three years), she is more likely to be “assigned” a more dangerous “outside” job like soldier or forager.  Why?  Because, actuarially speaking, she’s considered more expendable as younger ants join the workforce.  No sentiment in an ant hill!

There is also a queen (or queens – see the thatch ant episode above), and, once a year, drones (fertile males) and virgin queens.  Royal ants are not produced until the colony reaches a certain level of maturity/stability/population density, and then they are produced (usually) annually.  In many (but not all) species, the queen is the only one who can lay eggs.  In some species, she may live for 20 or more years, but (generally) unless there are multiple queens, the colony dies when the queen dies.

Without further ado, here are Jolene’s questions:

Why do some ants get to fly but others don’t?

Most of the ants in an anthill do not have wings and will never have wings and will never leave home except to look for food nearby.  But, once a year, the nursery ants feed some of the young ants some special, extra food that lets them grow wings.  They get to fly far from home and start new anthills so there are more ants.

Do ant-flies have a special job in their family?

All the other ants in the anthill have jobs, but the ants with wings (usually) don’t work – the worker ants take care of them and feed them.  The ant flies’ special job is to be a royal ant “prince” or “princess.”

Are their classmates jealous of their wings? 

Ants know what to do without thinking – they have amazing instincts – and they can even learn from other ants (and, as BugFan Linda points out, “Every animal knows more than you do,” a Koyukon Indian proverb from northern Alaska). Ants do their jobs and don’t make a fuss about it and (probably) don’t get jealous.

Do they get to have the wings their whole life or do they have to give them back?

Royal ants just have wings from the time they come out of their cocoon in the ant hill until the time they fly into the air on Flying Ant Day (more about that in a sec).  They mate in the air and then the females start looking for a good spot to start digging their own anthill.  It’s pretty tough to tunnel into the dirt with a big set of wings dragging behind, and the wings would get shredded, and she doesn’t need them anymore, so before she starts digging, the young queen will break or chew her wings off and never have wings again.  The males die and don’t help with the new anthill.

Do all ants have ant-flies as part of their family?

The BugLady isn’t sure. There are some kinds of ants where the workers can lay eggs.  Sometimes they live in colonies that have queens, but sometimes their colonies don’t even have queens.  Maybe if there’s a queen, there are princes and princesses, but if there’s no queen, there aren’t.

Flying Ant Day:

So, what signals ants to, as one author puts it, “erupt from the ground?”  Phenology, for one thing – species fly at distinct points in the summer/fall and at different times of day; each species’ schedule separates them from other species and helps to prevent males from wasting energy chasing an unsuitable bride.  Weather, for another – many species wait for a warm, calm, humid day, preferably after rain.  They fly better in damp air, and wet soil is easier to excavate.

Females fly away from their natal hill, and they fly fast, and they don’t release their “come hither” pheromones until they’ve put some distance between themselves and home (and the princelings that they share a gene pool with).

It didn’t take much poking around on the internet to discover that “Flying Ant Day” is an internationally noted phenomenon (Googling “ant nuptial flight” will result in a fascinating list of “related searches” at the bottom of the page, too).  Find out about the UK’s National Flying Ant Day here, http://www.mirror.co.uk/science/flying-ant-day-2017-it-10742632, (cookie alert) including information and a podcast about The Royal Society of Biology’s citizen science Flying Ant Survey and a bit about drunken “seagulls” (apologies to birders everywhere) that apparently find ants delicious and are “stupefied” by the ants’ formic acid content (imagine living in a country that takes a national interest in such things).

And a little more about life in an ant colony:

When the young queen lands, she has probably mated with several males (ensuring some genetic diversity for her offspring) and she will store and use the sperm for the rest of her life, fertilizing hundreds of thousands/millions of eggs.  She digs an initial tunnel, makes a chamber, lays her first eggs, and cares for them herself.  Because she tends this first brood alone and her foraging may be limited, the workers she rears are smaller and weaker than future workers will be.  When they emerge, they take over all the chores.

The mortality rate for young queens is huge, due to predators that are attracted to the nuptial flight, weather, failure of the first brood, marauding rival ants, etc.  Several sources said that maybe a single one of the potential queens a colony produces in its lifetime might survive!

Side note – No matter how cleverly you word your Google search about ants, a myriad of exterminator sites pop up, giving you interesting details and fun facts about ants right before making their big, chemical pitch.

Also, there are some really committed groups of ant fans out there, and lots of instructions for starting your own ant farm.  Some people track Flying Ant Day in order to take home a young queen and start an ant farm.  Remember, depending on species, ant hills in the wild have populations from the hundreds to many-thousands.  And nuptial flights.

For lots more information in very readable form (though it seems to be a translation and sometimes reads like one), try: https://www.antkeepers.com/facts/ants/.

Thanks, BugFans Jolene and Caitlin.

Note – The Riveredge Nature Center Dragonfly Survey is right around the corner.  Join us on July 22 from 10 AM to 3 PM (come for all or part of the day).  No experience necessary – wear good walking shoes and bring binoculars if you have them and munchies if you need them.  Call Mary Holleback at 262-416-1224 for more info or to register.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady added a new porch light bug recently – a Northern Pearly-eye.  Butterfly.  At 11 PM.

The porch-light Pearly-eye is not the first one that the BugLady has seen after dark – she has photographed them on oranges (put out for the birds) after sunset and at 1 AM under her yard light.

On the topic of nocturnal butterflies, the internet is, understandably, largely mute (of course, the BugLady is keyword-challenged) (and there is a film by that name).  In Mariposa Road, Robert Michael Pyle says that the Northern Pearly-eye “might be the closest thing to a nocturnal butterfly in the United States,” and there was a tantalizing paper called “Nocturnal Butterflies of Panama” by Annette Aiello, who reminds us that day-flying Lepidopterans are a very small minority indeed (butterflies make up fewer than 10% of species of Lepidoptera).  She goes on to say that our knowledge of butterflies is expanding, and that a family of Lepidopterans in Panama that was once thought to be moths in the inch-worm family (Geometridae) turned out to be nocturnal butterflies!

A search for “crepuscular butterflies” (dawn and dusk) proved only minimally more successful.  Most trails lead to the Pearly-eye’s family (family Nymphalidae, the brush-footed butterflies) and to its subfamily Satyrinae, and then to members of its genus (which is either Lethe or Enodia, depending on whose book you read).

Northern Pearly-eyes are generally described as shade loving butterflies of forest glades and edges, not found on flowers in sunny meadows.  Weber, in Butterflies of the North Woods, says that they “may be active early a.m. or late p.m. when they court,” and several sources said that they may come to light at night.  Quod erat demonstrandum.

Day-flying butterflies face a variety of predators, but being afoot at night isn’t much safer; many bats would consider a Pearly-eye a tasty morsel.  Like some families of moths, butterflies in the subfamily Satyrinae have hearing organs – swollen, fluid-filled, enervated veins on the underside of their forewings.  The Pearly-eye folds its wings at rest, which exposes the “ears,” located at the base of its wings (in fact, the BugLady has never seen a Pearly-eye with its wings spread and would probably not recognize it if she did).  Day-flying butterflies may be able to detect the sound of a bird’s wings, and Pearly-eyes may be able to hear the clicking of bat echolocation.

Find a brief biography of Northern Pearly-eyes here: http://uwm.edu/field-station/wood-nymphs-part-2/.

Field note #1 – Small moths in the genus Petrophila covered flowers blooming along the river on a recent walk.  A delicately beautiful moth, it has a big secret.  See http://uwm.edu/field-station/two-lined-petrophila-moth-rerun/.

Field note #2 – When the BugLady was out on the prairie after a rain last week, she found a bunch of Blue Mud Daubers visiting the water reservoirs of cup plants (more about that in a future BOTW).  To find out why, see http://uwm.edu/field-station/black-and-yellow-mud-dauber-family-specidae/

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Salutations, BugFans,

A century ago, give or take, Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, and W. Burton Wescott founded the Technicolor (a trademarked name) Motion Picture Corporation and applied for a series of patents on the evolving processes for producing motion pictures in color (it’s pretty interesting, and far beyond the scope of any physics class the BugLady ever took – beam splitters and color filters and subtractive color prints, and smoke and mirrors, and multiple “monochrome” films in primary colors run simultaneously on special projectors to produce saturated colors in combination, and in later incarnations, films laminated together to create a final, color print).

With a lower case “t,” technicolor refers to something that is vividly colorful.

The BugLady submits that Mother Nature has had the whole thing figured out for a good long time (the dogbane leaf beetle, for instance, whose changing colors emanate from the play of light on tiny, tilted plates above its pigment layer, has something pretty sophisticated going on, and so does any bird that is blue).

Go outside – be dazzled.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Howdy, BugFans,

A lovely article about jumping spiders, though you have to wade through a few ads to read it.  It contains a juicy vocabulary word – new to the BugLady, and one that she will have difficulty injecting into a conversation unless she takes up rock climbing or spelunking (equally unlikely).  “Abseiling” (most definitions are for the noun or verb, not the adjective), from the German verb for lowering/descending vertically, in a controlled fashion, by rope, rappelling.

It’s also about the inquisitive nature of science, about Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said, “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.”

The BugLady found this jumping spider on the fertile stalk of a cinnamon fern this spring.  The “green grapes” are the spore-producing structures of the fern.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/jumping-spiders-can-see-the-moon/529329/

Kate Redmond, The BugLady]

Greetings, BugFans,

Anyone with siblings has heard/said “Mom always liked you best.”  Out of all the bugs she has seen, photographed, researched, and written about, the BugLady likes Eastern Tiger Swallowtails (Papilio glaucus) best.  The first brood of Tigers is sailing around her skyscapes, along with a good number of Giant Swallowtails (a Giant Swallowtail sitting on a candy-pink peony is just, plain over-the-top).  Breathtaking!

Some tigers are dark, designed to fool predators into thinking that they are Pipevine Swallowtails in places where the two species overlap.  Wisconsin is not one of those places.  Pipevine Swallowtails are poisonous because their food plants are poisonous.  Although the pipevine plant is not native to Wisconsin (some related plants are found in gardens here) and Pipevine Swallowtails are rare in the state, some female Tigers are the “dark morph.”

Brood I has it tough –they weather the winter and early spring as a chrysalis, hitched (stitched) to the base of a tree trunk, exposed to bitter cold by the lack of snow and chilled by long, cold, wet springs.  Many die.  And yet, here they are – looping through the air and instigating Brood II.  Brood II has it relatively easy and will emerge in time to enjoy the cup plant and Joe-Pye Weed in mid-August.  And the beat goes on.

Tiger Swallowtails are the definition of “perfect.”

The BugLady 

Salutations, BugFans,

The BugLady’s evening hours at the computer are now accompanied by the soft “thunk, thunk” of June beetles hitting the window.

If the first rule of looking for insects is “check the flowers,” then wild geraniums (Geranium maculatum) are the flower to watch right now.  Showy, rosy-pink-to-purple blossoms that stand out in a landscape dominated by white and yellow.  They line roadsides and forest edges and grow in semi-sunny woods, the dense stands originating from thick rhizomes (horizontal underground stems).  Their name comes from the Greek “geranos” (stork) and refers to the long, pointed shape of the fruits, fruits that will eventually explode and propel the seeds many feet from the parent plant.  Insects perceive UV light differently than we do, and the transparent veins that lead them across the petals to the payload at the center of the flower (they’re called “nectar guides”) are far more conspicuous to them.

The BugLady was surprised to discover that this chunky little beetle (genus Anthaxia) is in the Buprestid beetle family (Buprestidae), a.k.a. the Metallic wood boring beetles, a.k.a. Jewel beetles.  Metallic and jewel-like, it isn’t.  Adult buprestids fed on vegetation, pollen or nectar; it’s their offspring that do the wood-boring, usually in already-weakened woody plants.  Looks like this Anthaxia goes for flower petals.

Arctic skippers (Carterocephalus palaemon) are northern in distribution but their range isn’t exactly Arctic.  It’s listed in bugguide.net as “circumboreal: in North America, Alaska and coast to coast across Canada and northern US, south in the west to central California, south in the east to Pennsylvania.”  They also occur in Europe, and the British call them Chequered Skippers.  The BugLady finds them in moist, dappled, woody habitats.  Adults nectar at flowers, especially purple ones, though the BugLady has seen them on the whitish flowers of black raspberry.  Butterflies of the North Woods tells us that their courtship behavior “includes a display where males and females open and close their wings in unison.”

Looks like this bumblebee almost exceeds the weight limit for wild geranium.

Click beetles (a.k.a. jackknife, snapping, spring beetles or skipjacks), are famous for their ability to get from upside down to right side up.  They have a tongue-and-groove arrangement on the underside of the thorax that allows them to arch and then curl, snapping a spur into a groove, levitating into the air with an audible click, and landing on their feet.  The BugLady doesn’t know who this small click beetle is, but she often sees it on white trilliums in the middle days of spring; it probably eats pollen.

Flowers are a good place to eat or be eaten, and this crab spider will be happy to assist with the second.

So will this daddy long-legs.

A small, common, rust-colored beetle of spring, Anapsis rufa (probably) is in the False Flower Beetle family Scraptiidae.  Adults like a variety of flowers, but larvae are found under bark or in rotting logs.  It can be seen in woodlands and edges across the northern two-thirds of the continent.

The BugLady takes more “Hail Mary” shots of Hummingbird moths than of any other insect.  They hover, move abruptly, pause briefly, and love terrible photographic backgrounds.  This Bumblebee Hummingbird moth/Snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris diffinis) was a real treat, especially since hummingbird moths often use their long proboscis to probe for nectar in tubular, not flat, flowers.  Because they hover, they are often mistaken for tiny hummingbirds.

Mining bees are native, solitary bees (not social, like honeybees) that feed on pollen and nectar and so are responsible for a tremendous amount of pollination.  You have to work pretty hard to get stung by one.

 

Sweat bees are another family of important and abundant native pollinators – some are “bee-colored,” and others are bronze or emerald green.  Like mining bees, they are solitary-to-semi-social bees that make nests in the ground and, supply their larvae with pollen (sometimes formed into balls) and nectar.  Sweat bees get their name from the habit of some species of landing on sweaty skin and to stinging when brushed off (the BugLady’s husband was allergic to their sting, and the allergist he consulted said “what’s a sweat bee?”).

Sometimes a flower is simply a handy platform to land on. Male mosquitoes (feathery antennae) do feed on plant juices, though this one was just resting.  Females will also eat plant juices but eventually need a blood meal.

But, some insects contract other business there.  Pidonia ruficollis is a long-horned beetle (family Cerambycidae, flower longhorn subfamily) whose larvae feed in the wood of a variety of hardwoods.

Shy white-spotted sable moths (Anania funebris) dive below the flowers to avoid the camera.  Their species name, funebris, refers to their “funereal” dark color, though those white spots brighten the mood.  Because it’s a flashy, daytime flyer, it’s often mistaken for a butterfly (moths tend to fly for short distances and take cover in vegetation – butterflies don’t.  The larval food is goldenrod.

This beetle is (probably) Trichiotinus viridans, a Flower chafer in the scarab beetle family.  Members of the genus are variously called Bee-like flower scarabs and Hairy flower scarabs/Hairy flower beetles (the beetles are hairy, not the flowers).  With their buzzy flight, it’s easy to mistake them for bumblebees (the BugLady found one tantalizing note saying that unlike most beetles, which hold their elytra out to the side like mini bi-planes while flying, Trichiotinus can fly with its elytra folded.  Adults eat pollen/nectar, and larvae feed in rotting wood.

Seen but not pictured – ants, a jumping spider, a thick-headed fly, a two-spotted stinkbug, a honeybee, a curiously-immobile soldier beetle that may have been spider prey, and syrphid flies.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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Howdy, BugFans,

(First off, the BugLady should just break down and hire BugFan Tom to proofread everything before she hits “send.”  He points out that in the recent episode about Pygmy Backswimmers, she referenced the family of the more familiar backswimmers three times but only spelled it correctly once.  Should be Notonectidae.  Spell Check doesn’t care for any version of it.)

They’re back.  Some of the larger species of Hover/Flower/Syrphid flies are early feeders on pussy willow pollen, but the BugLady always looks forward to seeing their smaller relatives as the spring wildflower season gets rolling.

Syrphids are small-to-medium-sized flies that occupy flowers from spring through fall.  They’re called “flower flies” because of the places we find them, “hover flies” because they do, and syrphid flies because they’re in the family Syrphidae.  There are 800+ syrphid species in North America, and we have visited them before in the person of drone flies and of syrphid flies in the genus Temnostoma.

Some syrphids have bee-like bands or bars around/partly around their abdomens, while others, like today’s bug, the Eastern Calligrapher (Toxomerus geminatus), wear exquisitely etched patterns (the BugLady only found one source that gave this fly a common name, but isn’t it a fine one!).  There are 13 species in the genus in North America; some are quite common, and a few other genus members are pictured here.
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At 6 to 7 ½ mm long, the Eastern Calligrapher is mid-sized for its genus.  Like many syrphids – even the mosquito-sized species – it mimics bees and wasps but has no stinger.  Yellow and black are Mother Nature’s warning colors, but a quick wing-count will separate them (wasps and bees have four wings, and flies have only two). They add to the deceit by making a buzzing/droning sound.  Unlike dragonflies, whose patterns may darken on a chilly day, adult syrphid colors are “set” by the ambient temperatures during their pupal period.  According to bugguide.net, “if it was hot, the yellow/orange increases and the background becomes lighter, but if it was cold, the dark/black increases and the yellow/orange becomes darker like the background.”

Adult syrphids feed on pollen and nectar, especially on large, flat, pale flowers, and they are considered pollinators even though they don’t have specific pollen-carrying structures.  They may also sponge up aphid honeydew that has fallen on a leaf.  The BugLady found conflicting statements about the Eastern Calligrapher’s larval diet. Decaying vegetation (and sometimes, living bulbs) suffice for many syrphids, but there are a bunch of carnivores in the crowd, too, prized as biological controls of aphids (the aphid-eating larva pictured here is a different genus).  There are a couple of maverick Toxomerus members known to eat pollen – one from South America and one, Toxomerus politus, from our back yard (and there may be more; one source suggested that all larvae on the genus are pollen feeders).  Toxomerus politus, pictured here, feeds on corn pollen.

And speaking of South American syrphids, there is one that lives among sundew plants as a larva, stealing some of the prey that the sundew traps with its sticky leaves (it’s called kleptoparasitism).

Males hover in the open in hopes of attracting a female, and males of some species defend a territory.  Eggs are laid one at a time – in the case of carnivorous larvae, near flocks of aphid nymphs.  They overwinter as larvae and complete their transformation in spring.  When the BugLady was cruising the bugguide.net images of the Eastern Calligrapher, she found a picture of its puparium, and it looked like a picture she had stashed in her “x files” http://bugguide.net/node/view/321620/bgimage.  A puparium is the larva’s final skin, hardened.  The pupal case is formed inside the puparium, but not many insect groups bother to create this extra layer.  In order to exit the puparium, the flies have to inflate, by blood pressure, a small and temporary “balloon” (the ptilinum) on the front of their face to butt through it.  Adult syrphid flies are good flyers, but they tend to stay near their larval habitat.

On an unrelated (and vertebral) topic – click here for everything you ever wanted to know about bird eggs: http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek170417.html.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Someone asked the BugLady recently if she ever runs into a bug who she doesn’t know.  Short answer – all the time, but mostly her guesses are in the right ballpark (order – for sure; family – often).  In the case of the Pygmy Backswimmer, she had to switch ballparks a bit (thanks, BugFan Gretchen).

Anyway, the BugLady was out scooping and photographing pond critters recently, and she found this lovely little bug (emphasis on “little”).  Because it was moving around with its dorsal side up (in the shallow end of the plastic spoon she uses for photography, at least) and because it lacked a prominent, hairy, oar-like third set of legs, she didn’t take it for a backswimmer (philosophical question – if you spend all your time swimming around with your ventral side up, does it become your dorsal side?).  Here’s a picture of a correctly-oriented pygmy backswimmer http://bugguide.net/node/view/113408/bgpage.

First – the pedigree.  Pygmy backswimmers are true bugs (order Hemiptera) and are in the suborder Nepomorpha, the aquatic bugs, along with water boatmen, giant water bugs, backswimmers, water scorpions, and more.  It’s not in the family Noctonectidae with the more familiar backswimmers (an infant backswimmer that she photographed that day is also pictured here); it’s in the family Pleidae, a family with maybe 40 species worldwide, five of those in North America.  A number of different characteristics for separating the various species of Pleidae have been considered, adopted, and then rejected (microscopic structures on minute’ bugs), and bugguide.net notes that “the family is in need of revision.”

They occur globally except for the Poles and some distant oceanic islands, and almost all dally in clear, still, weedy waters.  One North American species has extended its range to Guam, traveling tucked away in aquarium plants.  Look for them, often in small groups, among the leaves of submerged vegetation.  Though they may inhabit ephemeral ponds and can dry out for a while when the pond does, they generally live in permanent waters.

Today’s bug is Neoplea striola, the most common Pleid in eastern North America.  It is tiny, hovering around 2mm (less than 1/8^th of an inch), oval, with a strongly domed back, big red eyes (all the better to see you with, etc.), and very short antennae that it keeps tucked close to its head.  It locomotes with its second and third sets of legs and grabs its prey with the first set.

Neoplea striola keeps body and soul together by preying on tinier aquatic stuff like mini-crustaceans and aquatic invertebrates; they’ve been known to take tiny fish and tadpoles, and they’re not above cannibalism.  They eat lots of mosquito larvae, but apparently they leave other mosquito predators alone.  They’ll also pick off, from below, springtails and other little stuff on the surface film.  They use their eyes to hunt, along with vibrations, and possibly chemical signals.  In a study published in Rotifera IX: Proceedings of the IX^th International Rotifer Symposium (2000), researchers reported that although pygmy backswimmers are not opposed to eating rotifers, predator size was less important than the predator’s food-getting style and apparati, and that “The construction of Neoplea’s forelegs provides mechanical advantages in capturing relatively large prey, but is not well-suited for capturing and subduing small, mobile prey.”  Here’s one feeding on a hydra https://www.nature.ca/rideau/b/_sidebars/pop06_b5-e.html.

Like other carnivorous Hemipterans, they insert their beak into their prey, pump in some meat tenderizer, and then slurp out the softened innards.  Despite their size, they are eaten by predatory aquatic insects, ducks, and a few amphibians.  Noctonectidae can deliver a memorable jab to the human anatomy, but Pleid beaks are just too small.

Some sources say that they swim well (they can swim with their dorsal side up, but they usually don’t), while others say that their swimming is barely adequate and they use claws on their hind tarsi to crawl among the leaves of aquatic plants.  Flight?  Not so much.  Populations include both micropterous (short-winged) and macropterous individuals, the first, essentially flightless, and the second able to disperse to nearby bodies of water.

Aquatic organisms have developed an array of methods for obtaining oxygen.  Some absorb it from the water; others must surface for it.  Pygmy backswimmers are in the “diving bell” school – they poke up through the surface film, grab some air, stash it on their body, and then use it under water (this air reservoir is referred to as a physical gill).  To this end, the ventral surface of the abdomen is covered by small, water repellant (hydrophobous) hairs, and air is captured and stored in this pelt.  This load of air is what makes Pleids see the world belly-side-up http://bugguide.net/node/view/49767 – their bellies are more buoyant than their backs.  The air-carrying mechanism is so efficient that their average dive time is 39 minutes, and they can adjust the size of their air load depending on what they’re doing and how warm the water is.

Pleids take good care of this very important interface.  A European counterpart, Plea minutissima, crawls out of the water to groom it!  It cleans microbes from its undersides using an antiseptic secretion produced by glands in the thorax – glands that in some terrestrial insects are scent/defensive glands.  It’s called “secretion grooming,” and the bug leaves the water to do it because the stuff is somewhat water soluble, so it gets more bang for its buck on land.  It leans to one side, making a tripod of the three “downhill” legs, and cleans itself with the other three.  If it fails to do this, microbes will grow in the pubescence and oxygen capacity will plummet.

Pygmy backswimmers lay their eggs in the stems of water plants using a spurred structure at the end of the abdomen to pierce the stalk.  They spend three weeks in the egg and another six to eight weeks becoming adults.  When chilling water signals the end of fall, they overwinter as adults in a state of diapause (suspended animation) and can even survive a top-to-bottom freeze of their wetland, using stored oxygen.

Like the Notonectid backswimmers, pygmy backswimmers communicate by stridulation (rubbing two body parts together), and they can hear via a sensory organ on the front of their face.  They may signal others in their group by stridulation.

It’s May.  Go outside.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady
Bug of the Week archives:
http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/

Greetings, BugFans,

Another celebration of insects that are not good enough nor bad enough nor beautiful enough nor bizarre enough to have fan clubs, or common names, or even much of a biography.

The BugLady thinks that this lovely little micromoth looks a bit skunk-ish.  It’s LANDRYIA IMPOSITELLA (no common name, and no explanation of its interesting species name).  It’s in the Flower moth/Teardrop moth family Scythrididae, a family with only 43 species in North America.  Not a lot is known about the biographies of these small, dark, moths.  Their caterpillars, described in one old text as having tufts of hair growing from small warts, tend to be miners or skeletonizers of leaves of plants in the aster, goosefoot, stonecrop, and grass families.  Adults are diurnal (day-flying).

Heart-leaved aster is the host of Landryia impositella’s caterpillar.  It creates mines/tunnels in the leaves, one caterpillar per leaf, overwinters as a caterpillar and pupates in the next spring.  Adults often nectar on yarrow flowers.  The BugLady photographed this moth in mid-July.

Landryia impositella has the dubious honor of having the lowest internet profile of any insect the BugLady can recall researching – four pages of hits, some of them faux, and most others annotated checklists.

As seasoned BugFans know, the BugLady is inordinately fond of crab spiders, a.k.a Flower spiders, family Thomisidae, and she thinks these MECAPHESA CRAB SPIDERS are beauts.  Crab spiders’ hunting style is described as “sedentary” – rather than build a trap web, they sit still, front pairs of legs poised, and wait for their unwary prey.  They are so-named because of their shape and stance and sideways movements.

Spiders in some of the crab spider genera are chunkier-looking, but the more commonly seen flower-top crab spiders, like the goldenrod crab spider, are a bit more svelte (and, of course, male crab spiders have a smaller abdomen and are “leggier” than females).  Because there is a lot of variation within species, it can be hard to tell the difference between the various genera unless you look them right in the eyes (for a great visual, see http://bugguide.net/node/view/4999).  Mecaphesas tend to look a bit translucent, and they have reddish bands on their legs, and some books say that spiders in the genus Mecaphesa are spinier (thanks, as always, to BugFan Mike for the ID).  Some of the spiders listed Misumenops in older books are now in Mecaphesa.  There are about 18 species in the genus in North America.

Mecaphesa likes to hang out in fields and grassland edges on flowers and on the tips of branches that are in bud.  They are preyed upon by some species of mud dauber wasps, who stun them and stuff them into molded mud brood cells to be food for their young.

ROVE BEETLES (family Staphylinidae) are one of those “wait – that’s a beetle??” groups.  Why? Because most beetles have a hard elytra/wing covers over the whole, or almost the whole abdomen.  Elytra are actually the front pair of wings, highly modified to protect the soft flying wings underneath.  The elytra of many (but not all) species of rove beetles are very short, and the flying wings that they protect must be unfolded when needed and then carefully refolded (like a road map) when not needed, a task that the beetle may use its abdomen and legs to accomplish.  The exposed abdomen is somewhat susceptible to drying, so rove beetles favor humid environs, mainly on the ground, under leaves, rocks, and logs.  Without full-sized elytra, the remarkably-flexible rove beetle can squeak into some pretty small spaces (without full-sized elytra, they are often mistaken for earwigs).  There’s a nice overview of the family in the University of Florida’s excellent “Featured Creatures” series at http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/beetles/rove_beetles.htm.  Rove beetles have graced these pages in the form of the Hairy and the Shore rove beetles.

The rove beetle du jour is in the genus Platydracus and the BugLady thinks it’s either P. zonatus or P. mysticus (she’s leaning toward the latter), beetles of woods and grasslands and the windrows of beaches.  Both species feed on other insects as larvae and as adults, and they may be effective biological controls of some “problem” insects.  According to one source, Platydracus mysticus may be suffering a population decline since the mid-twentieth century, possibly due to habitat change and competition with non-native rove beetles.

Spring is here – go outside – look at bugs.

The BugLady