Bug o’the Week – The 12 Bugs of Christmas

Greetings of the Season, BugFans,

‘Tis the Season for the annual Twelve Bugs of Christmas – a baker’s dozen, actually, of oddities (and wonders) that the BugLady found during the year.  Let Heaven and Nature sing!

 BEE and AMBUSH BUG – This is not exactly what it looks like (well, maybe 50%).  The bee is a peaceable soul – just there for the pollen, which she will stash on her furry legs and share with the next flower she visits and cache for her future offspring.  The ambush bug?  Definitely there for the pollinators!

SAWFLY LARVA – The BugLady wishes she had noticed what species of shrub she found this wonderful (and slightly creepy-looking) sawfly larva crawling on.  There are a number of larvae that look like this, and since sawflies can be very specific about their larval host plants, a plant ID could yield the sawfly ID.  The “wooly” coat is made of waxy filaments that are produced by the larvae, and when the larvae molt, the white filaments are shed with the old skin and have to be regrown. It’s speculated that the stuff doesn’t taste so good to predators.

MEGALOTOMUS – A lovely discovery on tawny prairie grasses in the late afternoon light.  A Lupine bug.  The BugLady keeps forgetting to lean over and take a whiff of a Megalotomus – they reputedly smell powerfully bad as nymphs and only a little less so as adults.

INSECT SCARS – When the BugLady photographed this odd pattern in the bark of a shrub at Spruce Lake Bog (a little gem of a State Natural Area in the Northern Kettle Moraine), she thought that the marks might be scars left by an ovipositing insect.  She applied her meager research skills to various searches of Google images, that wonderful, semi-sorted hodgepodge of pictures (one search for “insect ovipositing scars in bark” netted some of the BugLady’s own dragonfly, butterfly, bug, mosquito, and even water sowbug pictures; the filter is, apparently, imperfect).  Another search yielded a picture of sapsucker bark scrapings that were fairly similar but a little more random in arrangement than these (the author said that the birds make shallow depressions in the bark for the sap to flow into).  Any ideas?

BUMBLEBEE ON INDIAN PIPE – Indian pipe (a.k.a. corpse or ghost plant) is a peculiar little flowering plant in the Heath/blueberry family that, because it’s chlorophyll-free, cannot make its own food.  But, it has a subterranean association with mycorrhiza (fungal strands) that have a connection with tree roots, and trees do photosynthesize.  So the mycorrhiza get nutrients from the tree root and the Indian pipe gets nutrients from the fungal strands (mycorrhizal relationships are everywhere).  The BugLady heard an incoming bumble bee as she photographed Indian pipes one fine, September afternoon.  At first she thought that the bee might be flying home to an underground nest, but it turned out to be interested in the Indian pipe, too.

DAMSELFLY TENERAL – A newly-minted damselfly rests next to its old skin, its aquatic days behind it, almost ready to assume an aerial lifestyle.

HORSE FLY EGGS – Horse (and deer) fly larvae grow up in water or damp soil, but their mother doesn’t wet a toe delivering them to it.  Instead, she deposits glorious masses of eggs on overhanging vegetation, and the larvae drop in when they hatch.

SHADOW DARNER – Mosaic darners are a group of large dragonflies in the genus Aeschna that are so-named for the splotchy color patterns on their abdomens.  The fabulous Shadow Darner has been eluding the BugLady for years (the picture illustrates why she flushes them more often than she photographs them), but her quest is over.  She was on a mowed trail at Riveredge Nature Center when she saw a mosaic flying toward her a few feet off the ground.  She moved to the edge of the trail.  It passed her, doubled back, passed her again, and on the third go-round, settled on a leaf less than three feet from where she was standing.  Sometimes it happens that way (mostly, it doesn’t).

FEATHER-LEGGED FLY – Sharing a (backlit) moment in mid-summer.  In courtship, she flares her fringed legs at him in order to look “hippier” (and therefore more fertile), and he presents her with a protein snack to nourish her eventual egg laying.

PANDORUS SPHINX CATERPILLAR – Bugguide.net calls it “an extra-spectacular sphinx moth.”  https://bugguide.net/node/view/1380467/bgimage   https://bugguide.net/node/view/1385060/bgimage.  Caterpillars may be green or cinnamon colored (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1455239/bgimage); younger instars end with a sweet little piggy tail and older caterpillars with a little button.  They feed on the leaves of grape and Virginia creeper.

CATERPILLAR ON LICHEN – This was just supposed to be a lichen shot.

RED LADYBUG – The BugLady saw more native ladybugs this year than she normally does – surprising, considering the ubiquity of the ultra-competitive Multicolored Asian ladybugs.  Some ladybugs can be identified by the patterns on their head and thorax, and this Red ladybug wears classy, white parentheses.

And a PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE – Or, even better, a Tiger swallowtail in an apple tree, a sight that greeted the BugLady one fine day in May when she checked her mail.  Moral: always carry a camera.

May 2018 bring you health and happiness.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Spider Flight rerun

Howdy, BugFans,

This holiday rerun from 2011 was inspired by an amazing flight of spiders that the BugLady witnessed at Horicon Marsh in Central Wisconsin.

It was the kind of day that gives October a good name – 60 degrees, clear, still.  As our intrepid band walked out onto the floating boardwalk on the northwest edge of the Marsh, we were struck, both literally and figuratively, by the webs hanging from the posts and ropes that make up the boardwalk’s railing (though we had gotten a preview – we passed road signs that were draped with silk).  Soon, we were webbed, too – imagine the sensation of breaking through spider webs, but imagine it out in the open, over water.  We noticed that each of the posts was topped by a mixed bag of dozen or so tiny-to-smallish spiders and that silver streaks of web could be seen in the air at all altitudes.  It was awesome, by any meaning of the word.

A spider egg mass may hold several hundred eggs, and when it hatches, each spiderling is elbow to elbow with hungry, competitive and often cannibalistic siblings.  Best to get out of Dodge, and why walk when you can fly?  Most species of spiders have the ability to produce web, and they can deploy a number of different types of web, depending on the occasion.  Web, which starts out as a liquid, is released from spinnerets through “spigots” on the abdomen.  As the liquid hits the air, it “solidifies” into the familiar silken web.

When the weather conditions are right (warm enough for thermal updrafts but not too windy), young spiders and even adult spiders of the smaller species climb to the top of a tall object (a blade of grass is tall to them), face into the wind, stand on their tiptoes, and release one or more fine strands called gossamer.  Etymologists please note, “gossamer” is apparently a corruption of the Old English term “goose summer” and refers to the warm days in the fall of the year when (pick your favorite, but not-mutually-exclusive, bit of folk lore): geese were eaten and/or goose down is drifting in the air.  Thermal updrafts pick up the line – and the spider – for a trip that may span inches or hundreds of miles.  Though scientists call it “dynamic kiting,” the process is popularly known as “ballooning.”  Spiders have no control over when or where they land, but if it is a favorable spot, they’re set to mature to adulthood the following summer.

From an on-line site called “Journey North” comes a delightful article called “Plankton in the Sky? – Observing Aerial Plankton.”  In it, the author points out that a variety of tiny arthropods “drift through the sky in the same way that plankton drifts in the ocean” (a fact that is well known to bats, dragonflies, nighthawks, swallows, and other animals that feed on the wing).  Apparently, a large percentage of these aeroplankton are spiders.

The author goes on to say that “one entomologist, Dr. Gilbert Waldbauer, calculated that during daylight in May, a volume of air one mile square extending from 20 feet above the ground to an altitude of 500 feet contained 32 million arthropods!  He wrote that ‘This amounts to 6 arthropods per 10 cubic yards of air. Ten cubic yards is quite a small space, about the size of a small clothes closet.’”  Check out the full article at http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/spring/Aeroplankton.html (the author suggests that we put a fine net on a tall pole to sample the day-flyers, and that at night we go outside and shine a strong flashlight into the sky and appreciate the specks floating by.

Spider movements are noted by scientists, agriculturalists, and poets alike.  Farmers recognize the value of the insect-control services that spiders provide and want to know how to get them back into the fields after harvest.  During his cosmos-shaking voyage aboard the Beagle, as he collected evidence verifying the forces of natural selection, Charles Darwin marveled at the spiders that parachuted onto the deck of the ship when it was many miles from shore.  Indeed, spiders have been collected by traps on airplane wings at altitudes of 15,000 feet.

Anna Botsford Comstock, in her wonderful Handbook of Nature Study (which was first published by the Cornell University Press as a courtesy because her husband was head of its Entomology Department and is still in print a century later) likens spider ballooning to the way thistle and dandelion seeds disperse.  Scientists have studied whether forest spiders use ballooning to disperse as readily as open field species do – wind speeds get knocked down considerably inside forests, and most forest plants do not send their seeds out onto the air currents.  They discovered that forest spiders do balloon, though body size may be a limiting factor.

For years, scientists misinterpreted the physics of spider flight by using a flawed model in which the web “balloon” was rigid.  More recent experiments testify to the elasticity of the balloon, find no correlation between the length of the gossamer strands and the time or distance traveled, and quantify the ideal amount of convection/stability/cloud cover of the atmosphere relative to body size.  In one study, the scientists’ math-ridden conclusion was that they had demonstrated “for the first time that optimal conditions for ballooning distance also explain the observed patterns of spider take-off events (information that, no disrespect intended, folks, even the smallest spider comes equipped with).

Spider flight is a phenomenon that keeps inspiring study, and information about the conditions that result in the maximum dispersal of spiders will help predict the routes of airborne seeds, pollens and pathogens alike (there’s some weird stuff in the dust that blows over the Atlantic from Africa).  BugFans will be happy to hear that spiders infected with Rickettsial bacteria – typhus, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, etc – are fit to balloon but are less likely to balloon.  Apparently the bacteria don’t want to disperse (“ScienceDaily,” June 18, 2009) (no, people don’t get these diseases from spiders, and the article did not suggest that they are vectors).

Whew!

Occasionally, movements are large enough to make the newspapers, and a few years ago, some Californians were sure that the silvery material (gossamer) they saw drifting in the air came from UFOs.

For a reality check, read chapter XXII: A Warm Wind in Charlotte’s Web.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug of the Week – Bugs in the News III

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady is busy writing about shagbark hickory (for the Friends of the Cedarburg Bog) and Short-eared Owls (for the Western Great Lakes Bird and Bat Observatory), so here are some items about insects, some of which were sent to her by alert BugFans.

MIGRATORY INSECTS?   Migration is defined as a seasonal movement from one point to another – and back.  Birds migrate, but do insects?  Technically not, because, like the migratory population of the Common Green Darner, it is generally the offspring of the insects that leave in fall that return and recolonize in spring.  Except, of course, for the extraordinarily long-lived Gen(eration) 5 Monarchs, which travel to Mexico in fall, live in the mountains in winter, and then turn around in spring to make the journey back again, at least part of the way.  Here’s a list of migratory insects, some of which, like the large milkweed bug, are surprisingly small for such an undertaking http://texasento.net/migration.htm (and alas, yes, they do call the dragonflies in the family Libellulidae “Skippers” instead of “Skimmers.”).

FINDING A NEW INSECT SPECIES   By some estimates, somewhere in the neighborhood of a million known species of insects occupy the planet, but there may be at least that many more waiting to be discovered.  Are they all tucked away in tropical rain forests and on Sumatran mountainsides?  No indeed!  http://www.opb.org/television/programs/ofg/segment/oregon-state-university-osu-chris-marshall-rain-beetle/

And TAKING CARE OF FAMILIAR ONES   Here’s a news item that didn’t get nearly enough attention when it aired: http://host.madison.com/news/local/environment/wisconsin-dnr-to-restore-acres-of-monarch-habitat-along-mississippi/article_4a15b0c6-ce7d-594a-999f-5f969d75da2e.html

BUGS IN/ON THE ART WORLD   Would Vincent have been pleased?  Van Gogh said “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.”    https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/08/562852372/the-grasshopper-in-the-van-gogh.

UNSUNG HURRICANE SURVIVORS   Fire ants are aggressive, invasive ants from central South America that have changed the ecological landscape along the southern edge of the country (and are poised to spread the love) http://articles.extension.org/pages/9725/geographic-distribution-of-fire-ants.  Here’s a fire ant ready to deploy both/either of its “business ends” https://bugguide.net/node/view/1200946/bgimage.  They are a physical threat to wildlife, livestock, pets, and humans, they negatively affect biodiversity, and they’ve laughed off the chemical and mechanical deterrents we’ve thrown at them for decades.  You would think that the 40” of rain delivered by Hurricane Harvey would knock them back a bit.  You’d be wrong: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/31/547541719/what-to-do-when-facing-a-floating-ball-of-fire-ants.

UP CLOSE AND VERY PERSONAL   Who doesn’t love a good macro insect photograph?  Who doesn’t love twenty of them https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/09/a-beautiful-collection-of-insects/100590/?

GOT FLIES?   If you do nothing else with this article, do scroll down to look at the electron microscope picture of the maggot of a bluebottle fly. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/science/flies-biology.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_sc_20171114&nl=science-times&nlid=81885324&ref=headline&te=1

WHERE HAVE ALL THE INSECTS GONE?    There have been a number of articles about the worldwide decline of insects.  Here are two of them.  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone and http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/canada-is-actually-running-short-of-bugs.  A survey method based on how many bugs are hitting the windshield is the BugLady’s kind of science.

And there’s more to the discussion because, as John Muir once said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe” (Leonardo Da Vinci said it a bit earlier – “Realize that everything connects to everything else.”).  The problem?  What happens to the predators that depend on insects to feed themselves and their young? https://wglbbo.org/aerial-insectivores.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Spined Assassin Bug

Salutations, BugFans,

We have visited the Assassin bug family Reduviidae before, in the form of Masked hunters, Ambush bugs, and the lovely little Zelus.  Today’s bug is the Spined assassin bug (Sinea diadema), whose scientific name, according to bugguide.net, comes from the Hebrew for thorn bush or burning bush (Sinea), and “crown” (diadema) – an allusion to its “spiky head.”  It has a bunch of common names – Spined assassin Bug, Crowned assassin Bug, Common brown assassin bug, and Spiny assassin bug (not to be confused with another (slightly less spiny) Spiny assassin bug, Sinea spinipes, a different species).  Sinea diadema puts the spine in Spined assassin bug: https://bugguide.net/node/view/1178089/bgimage.

The Spined assassin bug is found across Canada, throughout the United States and into northern Mexico.  It hangs out in sunny grasslands and agricultural fields, where it feeds on the adults, larvae/nymphs, and eggs of a wide variety of insects – crop pests and “good bugs” alike https://bugguide.net/node/view/7252/bgimage.  Phillip Readio, in Collected Papers, Vol 1 (1922) says that “It is probable that it will accept any small insect that is not particularly repulsive.”

It feeds in the time-honored bug fashion – puncturing its prey with its sharp “beak,” injecting saliva that softens its prey’s innards (“external digestion”), and then slurping out the liquefied tissue.  It often waits vertically, head down, on flowers.  Goldenrod is a common perch in fall, and the adult that the BugLady photographed on a seedy goldenrod in October was about three inches away from a sluggish red-legged grasshopper.

Spined assassin bugs are willing to take on insects that are larger than they are (which is a little more than a half-inch), and are considered valuable biological control agents.  They are also reluctant cannibals – newly-hatched nymphs will attempt to feed on their siblings only after several days of starvation, but they seem to prefer other prey (possibly because their siblings will push back).

In studying cannibalism in the Spined assassin bug, researchers Taylor and Schmidt contemplated the “decision-making process” that goes into a predator’s choice of prey.  Just as herbivores may weigh the risk of foraging vs going hungry when there’s a predator around, so predators also make “cost-benefit analyses” about their prey.  Researchers list as a predator’s “costs” the time and energy involved in the chase, the risk of injury to the predator, and the risk of the predator itself becoming prey, and they note that the predator’s relative hunger may affect its decision-making.

When two Spined assassin bugs face off against each other, posturing and feinting escalate, resulting in retreat by one of the combatants, and according to researcher Johnathan Schmidt, “the original resident on the perch retreated in 70% of the encounters.”  He continues, “The combinations of posturing, striking, and stridulation (more about stridulation in a second) that occurred during encounters may have provided each bug with information concerning the identity and relative fitness of its opponent. If an individual is fit, it may be advantageous for it to probe the defensive capabilities of its opponent, since its own risk is low, and a less fit opponent could be killed and eaten.

Seasoned BugFans know how happy the BugLady is when she comes across the elegant scientific prose of a century ago.  In his article called “Notes on Sinea diadema,” (1923), George Barber tells us that “Eggs of this species may be readily obtained by confining the adults in salve boxes. They are deposited usually in small masses, the individual eggs upright and arranged in two rows. As thus seen under magnification they are very beautiful, the structures of the cap and the collar-like extension of the chorion, which extends outwards from the new laid egg, appearing like delicate lace.

In hatching, the insect tilts the cap [of the egg] off and emerges slowly, requiring about two minutes for the operation. The young insect appears to be folded once upon itself and the top of the thorax appears first.……  The legs, antennae, and beak are folded up together, and are extricated by repeated pulls, first on the hind legs, then the middle legs, then on the front legs and finally the antennae……  The cap of the egg frequently catches on one of the spines of the thorax and adds something to the already grotesque appearance…….  

Nymphs (https://bugguide.net/node/view/159953/bgimage) get spinier as they get older.  Barber again: The first instar nymph is a most grotesque little insect with a very large head, powerful beak and large, strong front femora provided with numerous stout, sharp spines. The armature is admirably designed for a predatory habit, the head and thorax being covered with plates of very stout, smooth, black chitin against which, we are pleased to believe, a much larger insect might struggle without effect, once it is in the grasp of powerful front femora. Young nymphs that I confined wasted no time on covering themselves with litter and soon became all but indistinguishable. Here again the insect is found superbly fitted for its habit, for on the thorax it bears four sharp, stout spines, than which no structure, perhaps, would better serve for retaining the litter with which it covers itself.”

The BugLady couldn’t find anything about Spined assassin bug courtship (but she’s reminded of the punchline of the old joke about porcupines – “Very carefully”).  Here are two males vying for the favors of a female https://bugguide.net/node/view/58096/bgimage.

How do they find out what’s going on in their world?  Scent (as registered by their antennae) is important for finding the right habitat, and sight helps them identify potential prey and dodge predators.  They can also sense vibrations, and, like many of their family members, Spined assassin bugs can communicate with each other via stridulation (making noise by rubbing one body part against another) – in the case of Spined assassin bugs, drawing their beak back and forth through a ridged groove in the prosternum (the underside of the front edge of the thorax).

Stridulation is connected with courtship in the grasshoppers and crickets, but Spined assassin bugs seem to use it when they’re startled and for intimidation in intra-species confrontations.  Males, females and nymphs can all make sound.  According to Schmidt, “Stridulating individuals retreated more often than their nonstridulating opponents, indicating that stridulation may be a startle mechanism employed by temporarily disadvantaged individuals to escape from encounters.”  Says Phillip Readio: “The writer agrees with Handlirsch that the sound is for the purpose of warning or frightening away enemies rather than for sexual attraction. The fact that nymphs are capable of making sound argues against the latter theory.  It has been observed by the writer that sometimes in the preliminaries of copulation, and sometimes in the act of copulation, the female will stridulate.  In this case, however, it seems to be a protest, and does not occur until she has been grasped by a male.”

Finally, a “related search” that often pops up when the BugLady is researching an insect – “Spined assassin bug bite.”  On this topic, the sources are split.  Some describe the stab of a spined assassin bug’s beak as painful, memorable (though not deadly), causing temporary itching and swelling.  Readio, on the other hand, notes that “The writer’s experience indicates that some species not only will not attack human beings, but cannot be made to bite by any amount of tormenting.  Sinea diadema (Fabricius) has been handled freely, and not only handled but deliberately squeezed, and a finger, the back of the hand, and the soft skin between the fingers presented to it, but it has never bitten under such circumstances.”

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Forktails Two

Salutations, BugFans,

The BugLady is thankful for damselflies.  Oh, not always for the identification part, but for the joy of seeing them flickering through their thickety habitats and for the thrill of the photographic chase (first you have to spot them, and then the light and the background are often terrible).  She wrote about the rare-in-Wisconsin Citrine Forktail a few years ago (http://uwm.edu/field-station/four-bluets-and-a-dancer-and-a-forktail/), and this summer she found uncommon Fragile Forktails at one of her haunts.

The Wisconsin Odonata Survey (http://wiatri.net/inventory/odonata/) tells us that “The name “forktail” comes from tiny projections off the tip of males’ abdomens, which help to identify the species” https://bugguide.net/node/view/472909/bgimage.  This feature isn’t obvious in the field, and so BugLady sometimes flips through her mental Rolodex of bluets before thinking of forktails.

Forktails are in the genus Ischnura, in the Narrow-winged damselfly family Coenagrionidae, a family that encompasses the majority of our damselflies.  There are 65 species listed in the genus, with 20 in the New World and the rest in the Old.  Forktails are among our smallest damselflies, hovering at around an inch.  Along with the forked tail, males (generally) have a black and green/blue striped thorax and a blue-tipped abdomen.  In both sexes, the upper halves of the eyes are much darker than the lower, and like bluets, forktails have “eyespots” – pigmented areas on the backs of their eyes.  Females of many species are polymorphic, often starting life in shades of orange (looking a bit like an Orange Bluet, only sturdier) and turning slate blue as they age, which allows males to recognize them as mature (the color change is due to pruinescence – little waxy flakes).  Rarely, females have male coloration.

With a few spectacular exceptions (like the Citrine Forktail), forktails tend to be weak-ish flyers that hang around the edges of their ponds from the time they emerge as adults (in many Odonate species, the females absent themselves from the shore until they are ready to reproduce).  They prefer quiet waters with lots of aquatic vegetation, into which the females insert eggs, one at a time and unguarded, and in the shelter of which the aquatic naiads lurk and hunt.  Dennis Paulson, in Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, writes that female forktails can probably get away with ovipositing unguarded “because the sexes are at the water together, and females have effective ways of discouraging male attention, so male contact guarding is unnecessary.”  The Odonata Central website expands on that a bit, saying that “the well-documented behavior of Eastern Forktail females flexing the abdomen ventrally and rapidly beating their wings was determined to be a successful threat display, warding off intruders.”

Many forktails have a long flight period; today’s two species are around from late spring, through the summer, and into early fall (several generations, not the same individuals).

FRAGILE FORKTAILS (Ischnura posita) are a species that Ed Lam (Damselflies of the Northeast) calls “field identifiable” (if you make sure that you look twice – more about that later).  The colored stripe on the black thorax of both males and females is broken, shaped like an exclamation point (Bob DuBois, in the BugLady’s ragged copy of Damselflies of the North Woods, says that “posita” means “positive” and alludes to that exclamation point), and the last few abdominal segments lack a blue tip.  Older females can be tough to tell from their Eastern Forktail counterparts (https://bugguide.net/node/view/230190/bgimagehttps://bugguide.net/node/view/1395318/bgpage).

Fragile Forktails are pretty common in eastern North America, but they’ve been recorded in only about a dozen Wisconsin counties, mostly in the southeastern and southwestern corners of the state (with an outlier near Lake Superior).  Although their range is listed as permanent and ephemeral waters from Newfound to Florida to the Dakotas to Texas to Guatemala, they’re a State Special Concern damselfly in Wisconsin and are even less common west of here.  Bob DuBois calls them “one of our most shade-tolerant damselflies.”

[Note: They were introduced to the Hawaiian Islands in 1936 (the BugLady couldn’t discover why) and are well-established there, one of seven species of odonates that, along with countless other exotic plants and animals, have been carried to that great Petri dish in the Pacific.  A note from the Bishop Museum says that they are more able than native damselfly naiads to withstand predation by introduced fish species.]

Females oviposit in aquatic vegetation, and the naiads are said to be pretty feisty, chasing other naiads off their underwater turf.  It’s suspected that they overwinter as naiads, ready to emerge when the water warms in spring.  Here are two of BugFan Linda’s videos of Fragile Forktail naiads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohSOJIN43GA, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SBXfCU8OA&t=2s.  Way Beyond Awesome, Linda!!!  Here are links to her whole Nature in Motion series: https://www.youtube.com/user/lbretreat, and to her playlist of Odonates, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SBXfCU8OA&list=PLzr0J2sWC1QjGkKF_-_uyxnzb9BLYl3rJ.  She’s been busy.

Fragile Forktails, especially the females, are among the damselflies that eat other damselflies, including those of their own species (https://bugguide.net/node/view/62771/bgimage), and this video – not for the faint of heart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jh4NiOOh-E&index=10&list=PLzr0J2sWC1QjGkKF_-_uyxnzb9BLYl3rJ.  They will grab small flying or perched insects and have even been known to rob spider webs.

The BugLady loves the species accounts at the Island Creek (Virginia) Elementary School’s site http://www2.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/fragile_forktail.htm.

EASTERN FORKTAILS (Ischnura verticalis) are found from the Great Plains east across southern Canada to the Atlantic, except for the Deep South.  The Odonata Central site calls them one of the most common damselflies in their range, and they’re one of the earliest and latest damselflies on the Wisconsin landscape.  It has been suggested that they are, to some degree, dispersed by wind.  Lam considers them “field identifiable,” too.

They’re a hair larger than the Fragile Forktail, and males share a similar black and green thorax, but in the Eastern Forktail, the green thoracic stripe is not broken – except when it is.  Rarely, Eastern Forktails carry an exclamation point like a Fragile Forktails (look closely at today’s pictures), but the last two segments of the male Eastern Forktail’s abdomen are powder blue on top and bottom, joined by strap-like blue rings (that’s the “look twice” part) https://bugguide.net/node/view/957429/bgimage.  Like other forktails, females are polymorphic, and a few have male coloration.

Eastern Forktails are found in similar habitats to Fragile Forktails (and indeed, the BugLady photographed them practically side-by-side).  Unusual in damselflies, the females only mate with a single male (the Citrine Forktail’s reproduction defines “unusual”).  Females oviposit in submerged vegetation, and studies have shown that good nutrition during egg-laying is vital to the health of her eggs.  Like the Fragile Forktail, she will prey on other damsels (see the photo of a female eating a male at http://wiatri.net/inventory/odonata/SpeciesAccounts/SpeciesDetail.cfm?TaxaID=53).  Naiads (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1380536/bgimage) of late-season generations overwinter under the ice.

Like the Fragile Forktail, the Eastern Forktail spends its days flying around and perching close to the ground, but both species roost at night in vegetation that’s higher off the ground.

Want to take a deep dive into damselflies?  Try this amazing (and downloadable) field guide: http://fieldguides.fieldmuseum.org/sites/default/files/rapid-color-guides-pdfs/388_0.pdf.

The BugLady

Bug o’the Week – A Honey of a Bee

Howdy, BugFans,

Somewhere in a remote corner of Southeast Asia, in the neighborhood of 34 million years ago, a small bee originated that would change the course of the world.

Today, we call them honey bees (two words, not one).  There are seven species in the genus Apis (family Apidae), and their family tree is complicated.  Our common North American honey bee is Apis mellifera, which bugguide.net calls the Western honey bee, a species that includes about 25 subspecies (and lots of hybrids).  Western honey bees are Heinz 57s, genetically.  Apis mellifera (Apis is Latin for “bee,” and mellifera means “honey-bearing”) probably evolved in eastern Africa/western Asia.

The term “bee” can be a catch-all in the vernacular, covering yellowjackets as well as a bunch of actual bees.  Honey bees (workers – the most-often seen) have in common hairy eyes, a hairy thorax and a less-hairy abdomen, pollen baskets, distinctive venation in the front wingtip, and a barbed stinger (more about that in a sec).  Workers have a number of (temporary) super powers, including brood-feeding glands on their heads, glands in the abdomen that produce wax, which oozes through the pores and is chewed and formed into honeycomb and brood cells, and two stomachs – one solely for nectar storage.

Fossil evidence suggests that honeybees got to North America millions of years before the First People did, but then they died out.  They reentered the continent with the European settlers in 1622 (natives called them “white man’s flies”), prized for their honey and wax production, an introduced pollinator of introduced agricultural crops.

Most insects lead solitary lives, but honey bees are eusocial, living in a highly organized society marked by the presence of multiple generations under one roof, brood care, the division of labor, and the loss, by individuals of one caste, of the ability to do something that another caste can do.

Some highlights of a bee’s biography:

  • Queens have a nuptial flight into a cloud of drones away from her home hive, during which she mates several times, but only on that occasion.  She is the mother of the hive, able to lay 1,000 eggs a day during her life (two to five years) and as many as 200,000 eggs in total.
  • She intentionally fertilizes her eggs – or she doesn’t.  Unfertilized eggs become males/drones; fertilized eggs will be workers or queens, depending on what they are fed in the larval cell.
  • Worker bees rotate through a variety of tasks during their brief (about six week) lives (age polyethism).  They start as nurse bees, and when they can’t produce royal jelly any more, they build comb, then receive nectar and pollen from foraging bees, then guard the hive, then become foragers themselves.  Some are even undertakers.
  • Honey bee senses are acute.  They see in color and can perceive UV light, which bounces off flowers in ways we cannot discern, and polarized light, which helps them navigate.  They communicate with and detect vibrations, and one source said that they can hear the vibrations of the waggle dances that foragers use to direct their sisters to flowers.  Each hive has its own chemical aura, and its scent/taste allows them to distinguish invaders from hive-mates.
  •  Pheromones relay messages from the queen to the hive and among bees within the hive, and when an intruder breaches the hive, pheromone signals from the sentinels mobilize a defense (honey bees may chase an intruder for hundreds of feet).  Pheromones even play a part in that unique stinger.  Because of its multiple barbs, a honey bee’s stinger stays in the sting-ee, ripping out of the bee’s abdomen and causing its death.  The stinger continues to pulse after detachment, injecting more venom, and an adjacent gland continues to pump out alarm pheromones at the sting site, inviting a crowd (allergies aside, said one reference, “it takes about 20 stings per kilogram of body weight to be life threatening”).
  • As the inhabitants of the royal cells mature, the older queen will vacate the hive in a swarm, accompanied by as many as half the hive’s workers, looking for a hospitable place to begin a new life.  Back at the hive, the virgin queen who emerges from her egg first has the advantage.  While there may be a secondary exit – an afterswarm – it’s more likely that she will execute her royal sisters in their cells or fight/sting them to death.
  • What happens in winter?  Honey bees are somewhat endothermic (“warm-blooded”) – they can warm their bodies by quivering their flight muscles.  Workers crowd around the queen in a “winter cluster” at the center of the hive, shivering to keep the core temperature at about 80 degrees, rotating in from the edges so that no-one gets too chilly, fueled by the honey they’ve stored.  Drones are considered non-essential to the hive in winter and are evicted.  During the summer, bees may flap their wings to cool the hive.

Honey is not, as a former Wisconsin Governor famously said, “Bee poop.”  But it is (technically) bee “vomit” – https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-is-honey_us_58c6a525e4b0d1078ca80e2c (be sure to watch the “How do bees make honey?” video).

Foraging bees collect carb-rich nectar and protein-rich pollen from flowers.  They dance to tell other bees where to find flowers – the round dance indicates nearby food; the waggle dance tells the distance and direction of flowers more than 150 yards away.  Watch the video and follow the bouncing blue ball: http://articles.extension.org/pages/26930/dance-language-of-the-honey-bee.

What could possibly go wrong?  Along with the usual suspects like mantises, birds, and bears, honey bees are preyed upon by some bee-specific arthropods like comb-destroying moth larvae and bee-destroying parasitic mites.  A mite called Varroa destructor, which originated in Asia but didn’t stay there, has lived up to its name with staggering results, killing whole colonies.  Honey bees are also susceptible to a variety of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoans that kill them outright or weaken them, setting them up for other afflictions.  Bee-keepers treat their hives and bees, but wild honey bee colonies in North America have been hit very hard by Varroa mites.

Enter Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a mysterious phenomenon that causes colonies to fail when most of their workers simply disappear, leaving behind an insufficient number of bees to run the hive (and no dead bodies for scientists to analyze).  CCD has been around under a variety of names for 100 years and more, but huge die-offs in America and Europe in the early 2000’s put it on the radar.  Ten years ago, between 30% and 75% of North American hives experienced significant die-offs.

Fingers have been pointed at Varroa mites, some new bee microbe, herbicides/pesticides, environmental stresses/climate change, malnutrition, and immune issues, but there has been no agreement, other than that CCD could be a syndrome in which a number of low-level antagonists turn lethal when combined.  A group of pesticides called neonicotinoids seems to make bees more susceptible to CCD.

Several reports said that CCD has been letting up a bit in the past few years.  The incidence of CCD in hives seems to have dropped from 60% a decade ago to about 33% now (remember – we counting domesticated hives).  Bumblebees, also vital pollinators, do not get CCD but their populations are threatened, too (http://uwm.edu/field-station/celebrating-bumblebees/).

KILLER BEES!!  Various species and subspecies of honey bees have different talents and environmental tolerances.  The infamous “Africanized honey bee” (Apis mellifera scutellata) was developed in the 1950’s by cross-breeding several subspecies of Apis mellifera with the intent of boosting honey production, and it was brought to Brazil in 1950 for a trial run (it escaped, of course).  The African bee turned out to be well-suited to the tropics; it’s a great forager, more nomadic than some other subspecies, and more disease-resistant, but it’s less cold-tolerant, and it turns out that tropical honey bees don’t store as much honey in combs because they’re surrounded by food 24/7.  African bees are much more aggressive in defense of their hive than their more docile cousins, and no matter how diluted the gene pool becomes with interbreeding, its aggressive proclivities remain.  Inevitably, they’re heading north (the BugLady loves animated maps – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africanized_bee#/media/File:Killerbees_ani.gif).

Have you thanked a honey bee today?  Only two species of Apis have been put to work for us (the ancient Egyptians cultivated them), but they’re the busiest bees on the planet, providing pollination services to crops worth about $200 billion a year globally.  According to the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, “one out of every three bites of food in the United States depends on honey bees and other pollinators.”  Besides their honey (someone once did the math and figured out that a quart of honey represents 48,000 frequent flyer miles for bees!), we also harvest their wax and royal jelly, and bee venom may be an effective medicine for auto-immune diseases (the BugLady knew someone who allowed himself to be stung by honeybees every few weeks – there’s some evidence that the histamine reaction is beneficial for arthritis).

How can we help bees?  Plant flowers, support pollination highways, put out pans of water or create bee-friendly spots in bird baths, and use chemicals specifically and with caution, in the morning before pollinators appear, if at all.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug o’the Week – Hobomok Skipper

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady is already yearning for dragonflies and butterflies and other flying objects that are larger than the Asian ladybugs, Western conifer seed bugs, and the few rogue mosquitoes that are presently sheltering in her house.  That she is Skipper Challenged has been discussed in these pages before – many skippers are brown and orange in varying proportions, with a sexually dimorphic variety of pale blotches on their wings.  Because she has not applied herself to them, she has a host of semi-identified pictures of skippers (the “semi” part being “skipper”).  So, she’s trying to chip away at the group.

There are about 3,500 species of skippers (family Hesperiidae) on the globe – 275-ish in North America.  Although some skippers are strongly migratory, others are not long-distance flyers, and many species occupy a narrow range.

Skippers are small, hairy, big-eyed butterflies with hooked antennae (mostly), a high wing load ratio (short wings on a plump body, like a bumblebee), and a rapid, darting, “skipping” flight.  Their caterpillars, whose heads are often adorned with odd-looking helmets or hockey masks (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1149633/bgimagehttps://bugguide.net/node/view/1274237/bgimagehttps://bugguide.net/node/view/324973/bgimagehttps://bugguide.net/node/view/278936/bgimage), are leaf folders/leaf tie-ers that construct a series of shelters – one after each molt – inside which they feed at night.  Most sources now regard skippers as butterflies, but older references may call them a transition group between butterflies and moths, label them as “butterfly-like,” or give them the benefit of the doubt because they are day-flyers.

The Hobomok Skipper (Poanes hobomok), a.k.a the Northern Golden Skipper, is a common, early-flying member of the Grass Skipper subfamily Hesperiinae, whose members perch with their wings folded together when nectaring but with their front wings open and their hind wings only partly so when resting.  The males’ front wings may bear scent glands – he uses pheromones when he courts.  Their caterpillars feed on grasses and sedges, and they overwinter as caterpillars.

According to the excellent Butterflies of Massachusetts website (150+ years of data analyzed for us!!!), Hobomok Skippers are part of a series of butterflies named by Thaddeus W. Harris and others after Native American chiefs (not after cities in New Jersey).  Hobomok was the “chief of the Wampanoag Indians, who helped the Pilgrims upon their landing in Plymouth in 1621.”

Hobomoks appear at the end of May (they overlap the Arctic Skipper, a BugLady favorite), frequenting woody edges and sunny clearings from the Great Plains to the Atlantic, except for the very far North and the very Deep South (see a range map at https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/Poanes-hobomok).  Climate change may be lengthening their flight period.

With a wingspread of about an inch, they are moderate-sized for a skipper.  Their triangular wings have orange patches in the wing that are bordered by wide, dark margins.  A pale marking on the underside of the hind wing looks like a free-form “plus” sign to the BugLady.  Females are darker than males, and there’s an uncommon, very dark-form female called a Pocahontas female.  See http://www.carolinanature.com/butterflies/hobomokskipper.html for some great pictures.

In Butterflies of Wisconsin (1970), James A. Ebner says that “the Hobomok Skipper is a handsome, bright orange Hesperid.  This species is the first of the state skippers to appear in sizable numbers each season.    From late May through mid-June, the Hobomok abounds throughout the entire area, frequenting partially wooded areas and forested trails where it often frolics in the dappled sunshine.  Adults perch upon the leaves and other foliage during quieter moments.  At times, the skipper will stray from its normal woodland habitat and visit the open clover fields for feeding.  Despite the relative abundance of the Hobomok in many parts of the country, the early stages are only imperfectly known.  The eggs are laid on grasses and the larva is said to remain concealed during the day within a crude enclosure constructed from grass blades.”

Males perch on plants (raspberry canes are a favorite, when they’re available) to watch for females and to spot rivals that need chasing.  As caterpillars and as adults, Hobomoks lead somewhat generalist lives.  Caterpillars (https://bugguide.net/node/view/335371/bgimage) feed on grasses including switch grass and bluegrass.  Adults sip nectar from the flowers of blackberries, dandelions, honeysuckle, red clover, milkweed, and vetch, and they also get minerals from bird droppings.

The Butterflies of Massachusetts site urges us to keep an eye on the Hobomok Skipper.  It has been remarkably adaptive – probably occupying forest openings in pre-settlement times, switching to more open habitats during the period of agricultural development, and returning to woodland edges in the last century.  They point out that its absence from the steamy southern coastal plain suggests that it doesn’t like warm climates.  Further, it is “single-brooded throughout its range, and third, it appears to require woodlands, although this is uncertain.  Finally, despite using a range of host grasses, Hobomok is not known for breeding in disturbed habitats….”  They conclude that “This is a northern-based species which is probably vulnerable to range contraction due to climate change.  It might well decline in the hotter parts of Massachusetts.”

A number of sources point out that the only really similar-looking skipper in the Hobomok’s range is the slightly-more-southern (but-inching-northwards) Zabulon Skipper (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1418593/bgimage) (the two were finally sorted out in Massachusetts in the 1930’s).  Ebner tells us that “It seems likely that both [observers] Hoy and Rauterberg confused this species with the common Hobomok Skipper (P. hobomok).  Each considered the Zabulon Skipper to be common or abundant [in Wisconsin].  Not a single specimen has been uncovered since those early days.”  The BugLady is including a picture of a female Zabulon Skipper (probably) that she took in New Jersey, and it does resemble a Pocahontas female Hobomok Skipper.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Bugs without Bios X

Salutations, BugFans,

Introducing three unsung (but worthy) bugs, whose definitive biographies have yet to be written.

ENTYLIA CARINATA (no common name) is a treehopper in the family Membracidae (from the Greek “membrax” meaning “a kind of cicada”) (to whom they’re distantly related).  It’s a wonderful family of tiny dragons and unicorns (Britannica calls them “insect brownies”) whose various protuberances are supposed to mimic thorns and other bits of vegetation (these bumps are extensions of the pronotum, a structure that covers the top surface of the thorax and is sometimes called a “helmet”) https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/thats-no-leaf-9-amazing-images-of-treehoppers.

Treehoppers are sap-feeders that insert their beaks and feed on both woody and herbaceous plants.  Nymphs may start out on herbaceous plants and graduate to the “softer” parts of woody plants as adults, and a few are considered minor agricultural pests.  Like many other sap-feeding bugs, they produce honeydew, which is eaten by other insects and which encourages ants to “farm” them.

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Eggs are laid in woody tissue; females of some species guard their eggs, and some species are vaguely social, with groups of nymphs being cared for by adults.

Treehoppers’ Super Power is the ability of males to quiver the muscles in their abdomen.  The resulting vibration passes down through the insect’s legs and into the stem it’s sitting on, and the sound made by these 3/8” insects can be heard/felt by insects on the same plant and even on different plants as far as a yard away!  Check this article and be sure to listen to the audio: http://www.npr.org/2015/08/27/432934935/good-vibrations-key-to-insect-communication.

Entylia carinata (carinata means “keeled”) can be found in eastern North America, south into South America, especially on plants in the Aster/Composite family.  The BugLady photographed it on a swamp thistle – there were no ants in attendance, but this species does attract them.  For a much better picture of an adult, see – https://bugguide.net/node/view/587450.  Here’s one of a bunch of eggs https://bugguide.net/node/view/957524/bgimage, and one of a nymph, https://bugguide.net/node/view/647417/bgimage, and here’s an ant tending a nymphhttps://bugguide.net/node/view/723535/bgimage.

This interesting critter with the pointy front end, NEMOTELUS KANSENSIS (no common name), lived as an “X-fly” in the “X-Files” for six years until the BugLady finally ID’d it while she was looking for something else.  It turns out to be a soldier fly (family Stratiomyidae), and she’s more familiar with the larger, sluggish, wasp-mimic soldier flies (whose striped abdomens apparently reminded some insect namer of hash marks on a soldier’s uniform).  Here’s a better picture: http://theearlybirder.com/insects/diptera/stratiomyidae/pages/Nemotelus%20kansensis%204003355.htm

As a rule, the stiff, spindle-shaped, soldier fly larvae grow up in damp situations – in piles of dung or other rich, organic stuff, under bark, in soil, in litter, and in standing water – where they may eat decaying organic matter, fungi, or their fellow invertebrates.  Pupation occurs within that armored larval skin.  Adults are often found near the larval habitat, feeding on nectar (it’s called glucophagous), although in some species, adults don’t feed at all.  The position of the wings at rest is described as “scissor-like.”

Larva

Nemotelus kansensis is sexually dimorphic – where the females have a series of white triangles on the top of their abdomens, the males’ abdomens are mostly white https://bugguide.net/node/view/1093630/bgimage.  Its larvae are aquatic.  Coincidentally or not, most of the pictures in bugguide.net show them on Composites.

What a lovely little moth – the “stitching” on the trailing edge of the hind wing is exquisite!  The BENT-LINE CARPET (Costaconvexa centrostrigaria), also called the Traveler, is in the family Geometridae (geometra means “to measure the earth”) whose caterpillars are called inch-worms.  It is the only member of its genus on this continent (it’s mostly absent from the Great Plains and Rockies), and it has been recorded in Great Britain (once), the Canaries, the Azores, and Madeira.

Bent-line Carpets have a wingspread of a bit less than an inch and come in a variety of hues: http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=7416.  Their larval food plants are members of the genus Polygonum (smartweeds and knotweeds)

Despite the plummeting temperatures, a few grasshoppers and Autumn Meadowhawks are still hanging on in the prairie.

The BugLady

Bug o’the Week – Magical Moths

Greetings, BugFans,

There are about 11,000 species of moths in North America, and many of them fit the birders’ all-purpose acronym for sparrows and other small, songbirds – “LBJ” – for “Little Brown Job.”  The moths in today’s collection are anything but anonymous in appearance, though apparently, they aren’t good enough or bad enough or charismatic enough to have been studied much, so life history details are scanty.

The RASPBERRY PYRAUSTA (Pyrausta signatalis), in the snout moth family Crambidae, was named not because it feeds on raspberries but because of its color – what a lovely creature!  It’s found in grasslands and edges from Arizona to the Carolinas, north across southern Canada, wherever its larval food plants are found (and on the BugLady’s front porch).  Its wingspread is about three-quarters of an inch.

An alternate name is the Raspberry mint Pyrausta because its main host plant in the western part of its range is horsemint, and it eats wild bergamot in the east.  Its larvae can be rosy, too: http://bugguide.net/node/view/983694/bgimage,http://bugguide.net/node/view/1402355/bgimage.

Inexplicably, it shows up (by scientific and common name) in a book called The Fauna of British India: Including Ceylon and Burma, Volume 4, Part 4 (1896).

THE MARBLED GREEN LEUCONYCTA (Leuconycta lepidula) (a.k.a. the Marbled-green Jaspida and the Dark Leuconycta) is a moderate-sized moth (wingspan about 1 ¼”) in the Owlet moth family Noctuidae.  It’s a nifty lichen mimic with lots of variation within the species – http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=9066).  It’s found in North America from the Rockies to the Atlantic in the same habitat as the Raspberry Pyrausta (and on the BugLady’s front porch).

Caterpillars http://bugguide.net/node/view/915262/bgimage feed on dock and on one of the BugLady’s favorite flowers, the dandelion.

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The BLACK-DOTTED GLYPH (Maliattha synochitis), a.k.a the Black-dotted Maliattha and the Brass-dotted Grass Moth, is also an Owlet moth, one of two species in its genus in North America.  It’s doing a pretty good imitation of a bird-dropping.

According to bugguide.net, the historical range of the Black-dotted Glyph is mostly in the US from the Great Plains, eastward (including the BugLady’s front porch), but in the past few decades it has moved into southern Canada.  Most sources list the host plants as smartweeds (genus Polygonum), but the Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America says it eats grasses, including crabgrass.  Both could be true.  There’s lots of variation in the color of the adults: http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=9049.

The BLACK-PATCHED CLEPSIS (Clepsis melaleucana) is a member of the Tortrix or Leafroller moth family Tortricidae.  It’s a huge family – about 1,400 species in North America and 10,000 globally – and the family contains some notorious fruit pests.  The Black-patched Clepsis is found in the northern two-thirds of the continent.

Caterpillars (http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=3686 and http://bugguide.net/node/view/1154843) feed on spring wildflowers like cohosh, trillium, and Solomon’s seal in deciduous woods.  They roll up a leaf and web it together from the inside, and then they crawl out of their tube and feed on neighboring leaves.  One source lists them as eating witch hazel, several alder species and meadowsweet along with the wildflowers. They may overwinter as larvae.

Wooly bear caterpillars are crossing the road, presumably with no other philosophical agenda than getting to the other side.  Read their story at http://uwm.edu/field-station/woolly-bears/.

The BugLady

Bug o’the Week – A Bundle of Beetles

Salutations, BugFans,

Here’s a selection of beetles that the BugLady found this summer.

Coreopsis beetle

A blushing beetle!  Who knew?  The COREOPSIS BEETLE (Calligrapha californica) is a species that has several subspecies and lots of variation, with beetles that are more and less blushy: http://bugguide.net/node/view/769607/bgimage,  http://bugguide.net/node/view/178241/bgimage,  http://bugguide.net/node/view/955740/bgimage,  http://bugguide.net/node/view/759053/bgimage.  Members of this often-very-decorative genus have appeared in BOTW before.

The quarter-inch coreopsis/tickweed beetle is in the large and very diverse Leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae, many of whose species are very particular about the leaves they pursue.  In this case, both the larvae and the adults eat leaves of plants in the composite/aster family, particularly beggar’s tick (Bidens), Coreopsis, and ragweed, and they’ve been known to demolish a whole plant, right down to the ground!  They’re found across the northern two-thirds of North America.

Eggs are laid in leaf litter near host plants in summer, and they hatch the following spring.  The larvae are fitted out with egg-bursting tubercles on their thorax that assist their exit.  They feed until fall and then overwinter as pupae, emerging as adults the following summer.  Their larvae resemble the shiny, black larva included here.

OPHRAELLA CONFERTA (probably) is another Chrysomelid.  Having been pregnant a few times herself, the BugLady gets a kick out seeing these ready-to-burst beetles. Alternatively, one photographer wondered if the beetle might be full of parasites, but, a good number of the pictures in bugguide.net show similarly gravid-looking beetles and are labeled “female.”

There are 14 species in the genus north of the Rio Grande; Ophraella conferta can be found east of the Rockies on goldenrod leaves.  It’s reported that they feed at night and that they can occur in large enough numbers to do significant damage to their host plants.

Females mate in late summer and overwinter as adults, storing the sperm internally.  They don’t fertilize or lay their eggs until after they wake up and have something to eat the following spring, then they oviposit every few days, laying their eggs in tidy clumps.  See http://bugguide.net/node/view/650675/bgimage for a set of pictures of egg through adult.

SCHIZOTIS CERVICOLIS has no common name (for no earthly reason that the BugLady could discern, one site calls it the “Flaming-pillow beetle,” but she’s not dignifying that one).  It’s a Fire-colored beetle, family Pyrochroidae (because many species in the family have red or orange body parts).  Male pyrochroids often have fancy antennae.  The BugLady photographed it as it bobbed up and down on a stem in a wetland on a breezy day in late spring.  Like the coreopsis beetle above, it resides across northern half of North America.

Check http://bugguide.net/node/view/45357/bgimage for some nice pictures of the beetle’s life cycle.  The larvae are found in rotting logs, where, according to Morphology and Systematics (Elateroidea, Bostrichiformia, Cucujiformia partim), 2010, [larvae of] Schizotis specialize in decaying woody sections of moss-covered logs in boreal-like areas (e.g. edges of bogs).  While both woody and fungal materials are found in the gut, fungi are thought to play a key role in larval development.  In crowded situations, larvae may sometimes become cannibalistic, but contrary to some older reports, they are not normally predaceous.”

Adult males of this genus are attracted to cantharidin, a defensive chemical produced by blister beetles.  For the story on that, see this previous BOTW about a different fire-colored beetle at http://uwm.edu/field-station/fire-colored-beetle/.

An internet search didn’t turn up much information on this species’ life history, but one of the “Related searches” was for “List of terms that start with SCHIZOT.”  More than you’d expect.

Aeolus mellilus

Most of the click beetles of her acquaintance are black or dark brown, so the BugLady was excited to find this small, red AEOLUS MELLILUS (probably) under the porch light in June. Common names are the Flat wireworm beetle and, inexplicably, the Sweet click beetle.

Click beetles’ superpower is their ability to right themselves (dramatically – and with a click) after landing on their backs (http://uwm.edu/field-station/eyed-elater-click-beetles-family-elateridae/).  Their larvae (grubs) are collectively called wireworms, and because of their diet, some are a staple on Agricultural and Extension websites.  Some species feed in the soil on dead organic matter, some on the larvae of other insects, and others on plant roots and stems.  They locate their food by following its carbon dioxide trail.

Aeolus mellilus is found in grasslands and gardens over much of North America.  The larvae dine on the roots of corn and potatoes, but they also relish wheat and other cereal crops, and some sources call them a minor crop pest.  They lop stems off at the soil surface instead of burrowing in like other wireworms and doing their damage from within.  They are also described as fierce and active predators that probably feed on the larvae of the competition.  Adults eat plants and are nocturnal.

According to the University of Alberta, Ms. Sweet click beetle, at least in populations in the Canadian prairies, is parthenogenic – she doesn’t need Mr. Sweet click beetle to produce baby Sweet click beetles.  Parthenogenesis tends to result in female offspring, and males are pretty much unknown in the Canadian studies.

Enoclerus muttkowskii

The BugLady thinks that this is ENOCLERUS MUTTKOWSKII (unless it’s the very similar Eichneumoneus), a Checkered beetle in the family Cleridae.  There’s not much information out there on its life history – its larvae are beneficial, preying on the larvae of some beetles that live under the bark of evergreens and feed on the phloem tissue (the plant’s plumbing) in eastern/northeastern North America.  Adults are generalized predators.  Some members of the genus, including this one, are considered mimics of velvet ants (which, despite their name, are flightless, female wasps that pack quite a punch).  Another Enoclerus beetle was featured in a past episode http://uwm.edu/field-station/checkered-beetle/.

The BugLady found a very cool paper by researcher Jacques Rifkind called “Enoclerus Gahan: predators of chemically protected ladybird beetles (Coleoptera: Cleridae and Coccinellidae)”.  After carefully scrutinizing many photographs posted on the internet by insect enthusiasts, Rifkind verified five species of Enoclerus feeding on various species of ladybugs.

Ladybugs tend to be chemically protected, which explains their aposematic (warning) coloration, and species have a variety of ways to deliver the bad-tasting/toxic liquids that they produce/ingest.  In order to feed on one, an Enoclerusbeetle must either be able to excrete the toxins effectively or to sequester/isolate them somewhere in its body (and according to Rifkind, Enoclerus are pretty enthusiastic feeders, dismembering and masticating their prey, so it’s a total toxin immersion).  Enoclerus is a sequesterer, and Rifkind says that “the further possibility that clerid predators acquire chemical protection through sequestration of ladybird prey’s toxic alkaloids is suggested as an important avenue of investigation.

Rifkind very significantly notes that “The data presented are primarily based on photographs taken by non-specialists, discovered through Internet search. The crowdsourcing of natural history observations can reveal aspects of animal behavior heretofore unreported and even unsuspected,” (emphasis, the BugLady), and why not – there are masses of citizen-generated birding data available electronically.  Here’s Rifkind’s article http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2018&context=insectamundi.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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