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’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 (Carterocephaluspalaemon) 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.
(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.
syrphid larva
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.
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 1/8th 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 IXth 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.
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.
male
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.
Today’s episode celebrates the Carolina Saddlebags, the third saddlebags species to grace these pages; but first, a brief commercial message.
Birders (and non-birders) are urged to tune in to the Great Wisconsin Birdathon (wibirdathon.org), which will be heating up any minute now. Teams take pledges from donors and then head out for a day of birding in May in order to raise money for bird conservation initiatives in Wisconsin. The number of teams has exploded this year, and the BugLady gets a kick out of some of the team names.
Fans of the Great Lakes should check out the Walk to Sustain our Great Lakes, in which Julia and Alyssa will, starting in August, take a little stroll from the Milwaukee harbor to Lake Superior. A number of classroom teachers have already signed on to follow their progress/interact with them when school resumes in fall. See http://www.wsogl.com/.
While you’re at it, read all about the 2017 SEWISC Garlic Mustard Pullathon at https://sewisc.org/.
We now return to our regular programming.
First of all, a little about the saddlebags genus Tramea. It’s in the skimmer family Libellulidae, a genus with seven species known from North America, four of which have been recorded in Wisconsin. They’re named for the dark patches at the base of the hind wings, conspicuous when they fly overhead (they‘re tireless flyers and can circle overhead for far longer than you and your camera feel like waiting). Striped Saddlebags http://wiatri.net/inventory/odonata/SpeciesAccounts/SpeciesDetail.cfm?TaxaID=175, the latest addition to Wisconsin’s saddlebags list, are in a subgroup called the “narrowsaddle” saddlebags, because the saddle is only about as wide as the dragonfly’s abdomen. Our other three species (Red, Black, and Carolina) are “broadsaddle” saddlebags.
They are often called “dancing gliders” because of their unusual reproductive behavior. A male patrols a territory, and when a female nears, he accosts her, using his legs to grab her and manipulate her so that he can get his claspers onto the back of her head. Saddlebags mate for about 10 minutes, perched on vegetation (she can store sperm and need only mate once), and then they fly out over the water in tandem at about knee height or lower (our knees), looking for an area with lots of emergent vegetation. When she is ready to oviposit, he releases her (http://bugguide.net/node/view/654958/bgimage, demonstrated here by Black Saddlebags) but continues to guard her from above (hover guarding). She drops to the water’s surface, tapping it gently to loosen some eggs, and then dances back up to rejoin the male, and then they do it again. Paulson, in Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, says (about Black Saddlebags) that the dance is observed from underwater, and that bass and other predatory fish have been known to follow a preoccupied couple (needless to say, saddlebags prefer fish-free ponds). Unattached males may follow, too, and take advantage of the brief uncoupling to steal the lady. She may oviposit solo, but if she does, she moves ten times faster than she does when a male is guarding her.
These are largish dragonflies, around two inches long, with broad hindwings, a slim abdomen, and a round head. And they are fast, reaching speeds of 17 mph. They may rest high in a tree or near the ground, invisible either way (the BugLady is always inadvertently kicking them up out of the grass). In hot weather, they may droop their abdomens as they perch, a reverse “obelisk” position that has the similar result of averting overheating by minimizing the amount of sun that strikes the abdomen http://bugguide.net/node/view/96096/bgimage, and they do the same thing in flight. Not surprisingly, the majority of internet hits for saddlebags are photo sites.
The books say that the genus Tramea is considered one of the most highly evolved genera of dragonflies. The BugLady saw that statement a number of times, without elaboration, in connection with the saddlebags and also with the rainpool gliders (genus Pantala). In the case of the gliders, it seemed to be associated with physiological and behavioral adaptations that allow them to fly for huge distances, feeding in the air (they even have the ability to store fat and use it for energy on long flights), and that allow their naiads to develop quickly in very temporary bodies of water. Of course, gliders are also famous for ovipositing on car windows in parking lots, thinking they are over water, so they lose a bit of credibility there.
We’re near the northern edge of saddlebags’ ranges here in Wisconsin (check species ranges at the Wisconsin Odonata Survey http://wiatri.net/inventory/odonata/SpeciesAccounts/), and have fun with the maps at the really cool national dragonfly range-finder at http://www.odonatacentral.org/index.php/MapAction.windowed (type the genus of your dragonfly into the “Taxa” box (in this case, Tramea) and select your species from the drop-down list).
Carolina Saddlebags (Tramea carolina) have been recorded in about 15 counties in Wisconsin, scatter-gunned throughout the state. These are primarily eastern/southeastern dragonflies that range from Nova Scotia to Texas, and they’re listed as a rare migrant here in God’s Country, but sightings seem to have been on an uptick in recent years (more dragonfly watchers? climate change?). Carolinas prefer shallow ponds, swamps, and lakes, and very slow streams as long as there is plenty of emergent vegetation and the water is not muddy, and they are a bit more tolerant of the presence of fish than their confreres.
They are one of two red broadsaddle saddlebags on the Wisconsin scene, but neither of the red species is as widely distributed in the state as the Black Saddlebags. How can you tell them apart? Short answer – sometimes you can’t (so maybe there are more Carolinas out here than we think).
Black saddlebags
Another name for the Carolina Saddlebags is the Violet-masked Glider. Typically, the Red Saddlebags has a lighter, redder-colored face, and the Carolina’s is described as “metallic violet” (males’ faces and abdomens are more intensely-colored than females’). Another big difference lies at the other end of the dragonfly; a Red Saddlebags has a few black marks across the top of the eighth and ninth abdominal segments, but in the Carolina, the black is much more extensive and wraps around the sides of the abdomen. And then there’s the shape of the saddle itself. Some saddlebags are remarkably cooperative and will sit still for photographs, but they often hold their wings in a way that hides the tell-tale perimeters of those red saddles. For a great comparison, see http://dragonfliesnva.com/My%20Documents/KevinPDF/pdf/identify/species/CarolinaSaddlebags-FINAL.pdf. And just for fun, some younger individuals can be almost as dark as Black Saddlebags http://bugguide.net/node/view/789608/bgimage.
Red saddlebags
The naiads (aquatic young) are green, with five, short “tails” at the end of their abdomen http://bugguide.net/node/view/224444/bgimage. They excel at mosquito control – in one test, consuming 38 in two days. When their final transformation into an adult occurs on land, they leave behind an empty shell (exuvia) as witness https://waltersanford.wordpress.com/tag/carolina-saddlebags-dragonfly/. Adults continue to feed on mosquitos, catching and consuming their prey on the wing. They feed all day, until dusk, and they may be found in smallish feeding swarms in company with others of their species.
Yes, they migrate to the North Country in small numbers in early summer. The BugLady has photographed juvenile/teneral Carolinas in Southeastern Wisconsin, so they breed here, too. They are not among the five species censused in a Citizen Science project run by the Xerces Society/Migratory Dragonfly Partnership (http://xerces.org/dragonfly-migration/migration-monitoring/) (don’t forget Dragonfly Woman at https://thedragonflywoman.com/dsp/report/). Carolina Saddlebags are less migratory than the phenomenal Black Saddlebags, but they do make up a small percent of the southward migration along the Atlantic, where they help to fuel the fall raptor migration.
At the very beginning of April, the BugLady received an email with pictures from her sister, BugFan Molly (who also mails interesting little packages containing six-legged critters). Seems that Molly spied something moving when she was out in her yard, looked closer, and then snagged her camera-wielding husband to record it. In her own words, “about 11:00 this a.m. I found this moth. It was crawling through the leaf litter in the garden. You could see only tiny buds of wings, barely visible on its back. In the time it took me to run into the house to get Steve & camera, the wings had exploded out…and kept on going… o my!”
If you’re having trouble finding it in the first shots, that’s the point of emerging as a leaf-colored moth on a leaf-covered substrate – good spotting, Molly!
It’s a Green-spotted fruitworm moth a.k.a Speckled green fruitworm moth and Speckled Green Quaker (Orthosia hibisci), a totally non-green moth that was obviously named after its caterpillar (unless it’s a Subdued Quaker Moth, Orthosia revicta, but the BugLady doesn’t think so).
Brief Aside – in recent years, the BugLady has not used abbreviations for insect names as frequently as she did in the early years, because she started checking what other meanings her abbreviations might have, lest she offend. She likes using the abbreviations, because some insect names are long and are repeated multiple times during an episode, and the BugLady, let’s face it, is a three-fingered typist. Corporate, military, geo-political, and academic acronyms are usually harmless, but, oh my, those people at the Urban Dictionary need to wash their brains out with soap! Ick!! Anyway, this one gets the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
The SGFM/GSFM/SGQ is in the Owlet moth family Noctuidae, and in the subfamily Noctuinae, some of whose caterpillars, often called cutworms and armyworms, target agricultural crops. Noctuidae is a big family with more than 2,500 species in North America and about 12,000 worldwide, one of those “pardon our dust” groups whose taxonomy is constantly under review. The SGFM (not Surface Green Function Matching) is found from coast to coast in North America, but, since it likes woods and water, is found more sparsely in the desert and Great Plains.
There are a bunch of shots of unidentified caterpillars in the BugLady’s “X-files,” and by chance, a few of them look like they might be the GSFM (not Synthesis Gas From Manure). Caterpillar colors vary http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=10495. The caterpillars are catholic eaters – you can’t be picky if you burst upon the scene this early in the year. Their menu includes trees and shrubs in the rose, willow, maple, birch, honeysuckle, ash, heath (blueberry), and buckthorn families. The caterpillar pictured here was feeding on glossy buckthorn – BugFan Jim says that eventually, insects will discover that this aggressive, invasive shrub is a vast, unused food resource and will help to keep it in check.
The caterpillars, common in woodlands early in the season, make a welcome bit of protein for returning songbirds. Caterpillars start feeding on the leaves, then move to the flowers, and then to the fruits. The GSFM (not the Government Statistics Finance Manual) is on USDA Wanted Posters, because its nibbling on young fruit causes aborted fruits or deep, scarring/malformations https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef214, https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/green-fruitworm, and because when they are present in large numbers, they cause some defoliation (though they’re such early feeders that trees have time to put out new leaves). Their numbers vary from year to year and location to location; in big years, they’ll eat anything, and when populations are low they’re not considered much of a pest.
Adults, in the early days of spring, visit birch and maple sap drips for nourishment, and then switch to nectar from maple and willow flowers. They are considered pollinators.
SGQs (not the Scottish Guitar Quartet) overwinter as pupae in minimalist cocoons in the soil http://bugguide.net/node/view/894463/bgimage , ready to go when the ground warms. Females lay eggs (100 to 300 of them) in trees as the leaves emerge; their caterpillars are on the job by the end of April and have disappeared by the end of June, tucked away under the soil until the following year. There’s only one generation per year.
Although Molly’s moth emerged in the daylight, they are nocturnal. The BugLady needs to start turning her porch light on.
The BugLady has been hanging out at the ephemeral pond again; what follows is a revision of a BOTW from 2012 (different pictures, somewhat different cast of characters). By now, many of these critters have whole BOTWs of their own at http://uwm.edu/field-station/category/bug-of-the-week/.
She celebrated Easter at the Church of the Ephemeral Pond this year – a choir of peepers, wood frogs, and leopard frogs gave witness that there were, indeed, Easter eggs, but the BugLady didn’t see any. In past years, Belted Kingfishers have gathered at the pond to enjoy the frog spectacle, too, but they’re a bit late this year, or maybe the pond is early.
Ephemeral ponds are (most years) just that – ephemeral (they’re also called vernal or spring ponds, but because some hold water in fall instead of spring, “ephemeral” is a more inclusive term). These are the here-today-gone-tomorrowponds, the gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may wetlands. The wonder of ephemeral pools is that they are populated by animals that take this annual disappearing act in stride – animals that are prepared to dry up with the pond or to get out of Dodge (timing is everything), and therein lie many tales.
An astonishing array of animals use ephemeral ponds as a place to drink, hunt, and breed, but an ephemeral pond is a challenging place to call home. The still, shallow water warms quickly (which encourages speedy metamorphoses) but contains little oxygen. As the water evaporates, its inhabitants squeeze into increasingly smaller spaces; water quality declines as waste products, including carbon dioxide, increase; and food gets harder to find. The handwriting is on the wall. The annual drought makes these ponds unsuitable for fish, which wreak havoc if they find their way in from nearby waterways in flood time. Do animals live there because they’ve developed adaptations that let them survive drought, or do they live there because the pond’s cycles give them something they need – a dry period?
Not every puddle that disappears seasonally is an ephemeral pond; the presence of certain indicator species verifies its status. Wood frogs, blue-spotted salamanders and fairy shrimp are considered obligate species (direct indicators) in Wisconsin, and finding empty caddis fly cases or encysted fairy shrimp eggs in the leaf litter of a dry depression in fall also identifies an ephemeral pond. A massive Citizen Science project to identify and census ephemeral ponds in southeastern Wisconsin is written up here: http://greentier.wisconsin.gov/topic/Wetlands/documents/reportEphemeralPondsMappingAccuracyAssessment.pdf.
Who lives there?
DRAGONFLIES – The BugLady photographed ovipositing (migrant) common green darners across a crowded pond on Easter, but they’re not the only dragonfly species that will use it, and damselflies do, too. Some young Odonates hatch and develop quickly, “goosed” by the warming water temperatures, and they emerge as adults before their pond disappears. Other dragonfly and damselfly species lay eggs in summer or fall, and their eggs go through a period of diapause (suspended animation), restarting when the pond fills again.
MOSQUITO larvae feed by filtering tiny stuff (bacteria, protozoa, algae) out of the water, and they are food for a host of carnivorous aquatic insects and for larval salamanders. The very-active larvae are called “wigglers;” the also-active pupae are called “tumblers.” The BugLady read that some species of mosquitoes lay eggs on damp mud near the pond’s edge – these enter diapause and can be dormant for years until the water rises again.
Mosquito larva
WATER TIGERS (a BugLady favorite) are the larvae of Predaceous diving beetles (family Dytiscidae), and their name is richly deserved. They grab their prey (lots of mosquito wigglers, fairy shrimp, and the odd tadpole) and inject meat-tenderizing enzymes through their sickle-shaped mandibles. Although they are aquatic as both larvae and adults, the winged adults can escape to a wetter spot when the ephemeral pond dries, but they may also overwinter in the mud and litter of the dry pool. This one shared the plastic spoon with a daphnia.
Water tiger and daphnia
GIANT WATER BUG NAIAD- The BugLady loves these bugs (the front end is very sharp – handle with care), and not just because the male is caregiver for the eggs that his lady glues onto his back. Its strategy for drought is to find permanent waters until the ephemeral pond opens up for business next spring. In the low oxygen of the ephemeral pond, he rocks his body back and forth, sloshing water on the eggs and keeping them wet and oxygenated.
Giant water bug
WATER MITES are a diverse bunch both in appearance and habit. Many nymphs (and some adults) are predators or parasites of aquatic insects, and they are commonly seen on dragonflies and damselflies. They move by scrambling through the water, and they can survive in low oxygen concentrations.
Water mite
CADDISFLIES creep around the vegetation of the pond wearing shelters made of bits of plants that they fasten together using homemade silk. Some species are herbivores that, while feeding, break down large pieces of plant material into smaller ones that smaller critters can eat. Others are carnivores – the BugLady read of one species that feeds on larval salamander embryos from un-hatched egg masses. Their eggs overwinter.
Caddis fly
PLANERIA, flatworms, are not related to leeches, which they somewhat resemble. Most scrounge bacteria, algae, and dead stuff from the pond floor, ingesting it through a ventral siphon. They get through the winter as eggs, and the adults of some species can encyst themselves. These dazzling green planeria are ephemeral pond specialists that carry around a bunch of photosynthesizing algae in their tissues. The planaria get oxygen and some sugars from the deal; the algae gets shelter and carbon dioxide.
Planeria
FAIRY SHRIMP – In the early days of the pond, females produce soft-shelled “summer” eggs (some fertile, some infertile but parthenogenic that hatch into more females). If you zoom in on the female, you can see eggs. The summer eggs hatch quickly. As the pond winds down, they form “winter eggs” that have a thick shell that protects them from desiccation and that can withstand years of drought (up to 15 years), and that must be dried and re-hydrated in order to hatch. Maybe 3/8 of an inch long, the male has claspers on his “face” and the female’s face is hammerhead shark-shaped.
Fairy shrimp female
Fairy shrimp male
These tiny guys, which are either SEED SHRIMP OR CLAM SHRIMP (the BugLady isn’t sure which) do look like seeds and clams, but they are Crustaceans, (very) distantly related to crayfish. Most are well under ¼” in length, which means they are targeted by many of the pool’s predators. The eggs of both are drought-resistant.
DAPHNIA are another BugLady favorite, partly because she can’t believe that she can actually photograph them. These tiny Crustaceans eat minute bits of algae, bacteria, and debris, and everybody eats them. Their jerky progress through the water gives them an alternate name – water flea. They overwinter as drought-resistant eggs. Daphnia eggs hatch within the female’s brood chamber and are released when she molts, and the BugLady is wondering if this shot captures a few young daphnia within the brood chamber.
Daphnia
PHANTOM MIDGE LARVA – a predaceous (sometimes omnivorous) larva that floats through the water column like a tiny dirigible, its paired air sacs fore and aft revealing its presence. Its stillness and transparency afford it camouflage; it grabs its prey with specially adapted antennae. It’s on the menu of larval salamanders and other predators.
Phantom midge larva
WATER SOWBUG – Yes, related to the guys that peer up at you when you pick up a flowerpot in the summer. They don’t swim, exactly, but they paddle-walk slowly along on the pond bottom, feeding on detritus that they find along the way. Their young hatch from eggs within the female’s pouch, and they don’t have any special adaptations to survive the drought.
Water sowbug
SCUD – these amphipods scoot around the pool (or the BugLady’s plastic spoon) on their sides, demonstrating their alternate name “sideswimmer.” In a fish-free habitat, they can be plentiful. Like water sowbugs, they are omnivore-detritivores, chewing on organic detritus while they hold onto it with their front legs. When the water dries up, they bury themselves in the mud.
Scud
The BugLady recommends the nifty booklet A Guide to the Animals of Vernal Ponds by Kenney and Burne, Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. And check out Massachusetts’ Vernal Pool Association at http://vernalpool.org/vernal_1.htm, where they describe ephemeral ponds as “wicked big puddles.” Pictures of animals can be found at http://vernalpool.org/sci_x.htm.
A common green darner was reported near La Crosse (WI) on March 24 of this year, and a few others have been seen since then (and even though the winter of 2016-17 has been “Winter Lite,” the BugLady is ready for spring and dragonflies). The BugLady wrote very brief biographies of the green darner in 2010, in BOTWs about spring dragonflies and about dragonfly swarms, but there’s much more to the common green darner story.
They are in the darner family Aeshnidae, a group of large, powerful dragonflies (“darner” because their long, darning needle-like abdomen has led to folk tales about their sewing people’s lips or ears shut).
Most of our Wisconsin darners are in the famously-confusing mosaic darner genus Aeshna. Common green darners (Anax junia) (“Lord of June”) are one of two species of Anax darners found in the state. Common green darners are, well, very common, not just here but across the country. And Central America. And Hawai’i. And Canada. And there are populations in Tahiti and the West Indies. And strong winds have blown individuals to Great Britain, China, and Russia. The other Anax, the stunning Comet darner (Anax longipes) is a rare visitor and even rarer breeder in Wisconsin.
Green darners have a 3” long body and a 3 ½” wingspan; their striking “wrap-around” compound eyes may be made up of as many as 50,000 simple eyes, apiece. They practice sexual dimorphism – both males and females have a green thorax, but males have a predominantly blue abdomen with a purple stripe, and females have a rust-colored abdomen with a darker stripe. Tenerals (newly-emerged adults) may take a week or more to solidify their adult color patterns and have female-ish coloration in the interim, and a chilly darner is a darker-colored darner. Both males and females have prominent cerci (claspers) at the abdomen’s tip. Common green darners have a characteristic bull’s-eye spot on their “forehead” that comet darners lack. They can move each wing independently, which lets them hover, and even fly backwards. They perch vertically, frequently in low vegetation, so they usually spot the BugLady before she spots them.
Male Common Green Darner
Female Common Green Darner
Newly emerged Common Green Darner terneral
The long, slim, immature green darners (naiads) are found in still or very slowly-moving, shallow waters, preferably without sunfish and bass (nice set of naiad pictures here http://bugguide.net/node/view/238726/bgimage). Adults frequent the air above those habitats but may be seen far from water.
Two populations of common green darners – one migratory, the other resident – form tag teams in the air over Wisconsin. Migrants from the south arrive early, often in late April, as their prey (small, aerial insects) start to appear. They are the offspring, or the offspring’s offspring, of the darners that flew south in the fall (no, they apparently do not return to their natal ponds). “Shivering” their wing muscles to heat up the thorax allows them to be active in cool weather, and they also bask in the sun. This is so effective that temperatures as high as 110 degrees have been measured inside the thorax (which challenges the whole definition of cold-bloodedness). The picture of the female with the battered wings was taken in early July, suggesting that she was a migratory female who was reaching the end of her trail.
The migrants mate and die by the end of June, leaving their eggs in the water, just as the naiads of the resident population emerge as adults. These residents live a month or two as adults, depositing their eggs in late summer as the migrant adults emerge. Resident naiads overwinter under the ice in a state of suspended animation called diapause and take 10 or 11 months to mature (possibly more, in the chilly waters “Up North”), while the migrant naiads need less than half that time.
Mating commences when a male clasps a female at the back of her head in mid-air (one source said that she can reject his advances), then they retire to a perch to mate. Females oviposit in the open, in woody and herbaceous plant material below the water’s surface.
The books say that these are the only darners that oviposit in tandem. The books also say that a couple flying in tandem may be strafed by rival males. The attendant male doesn’t have many options; he may flap his wings at the intruder, shake his abdomen, land in vegetation, and even bite his challenger. According to Paulson, in Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, females may curl their abdomen under and close their wings when under attack. The BugLady photographed (badly) an unattached male as he dive-bombed a second male whose abdomen was deeply submerged (presumably with an ovipositing female at the other end of it).
The BugLady once found a female stuck in an especially dense and sticky, dragonfly-eating patch of blanket algae. Did the female attempt to perch on the algae as she oviposited and get her wings stuck, only to be abandoned by her mate? Or, alternatively, did she get thirsty and then get stuck? Dragonflies “drink” by immersing their abdomen – water enters through the exoskeleton (the BugLady was able to fish her out with a stick).
The naiads are active predators that will eat anything they can grab using their foldable “lower lip” (labium) – zooplankton, other aquatic insects (including dragonfly naiads), tadpoles, larval salamanders, and fish fry are all fair game. In his wonderful write-up of the common green darner, Kurt Mead (Dragonflies of the North Woods) muses that “If dragonfly larvae were eight to sixteen inches long, as they probably were 300 million years ago, we would dare not swim in fresh water for fear of being attacked” (read the whole account at http://www.mndragonfly.org/html/behavior.html). Despite their spiny exteriors and their ability to shoot forward by expelling a spurt of water forcefully from their abdomen, they are eaten by frogs, fish, and by other aquatic insects. There’s even an “aquatic” parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in those of the green darner. Aprostocetus polynemae, apparently walks down a twig or leaf stem into the water to find dragonfly eggs.
Adults catch insects in the air and may eat them in mid-flight or on a perch. They can also pick prey from a leaf or from the ground, and they’ve been known to stake out bee hives, to the distress of the bee-keeper. At least one ambitious common green darner killed a hummingbird, and this fact is mentioned every darner write-up, though the BugLady suspects it’s pretty uncommon. Adults are preyed on by robber flies, birds, spiders, and by other dragonflies; the people who monitor the fall raptor migration tell us that the southward movement of American Kestrels synchs with that of the darners, and that kestrel migration is fueled by darners.
So, green darners migrate. Like birds, they respond to a suitable weather front – cold fronts for the southern flight and warm fronts for the far less conspicuous northern trip. The journey south may take several weeks of stop-and-start flying (averaging 7 miles a day but capable of far more, depending on the wind), and they may be accompanied by black saddlebags and variegated meadowhawk dragonflies. They migrate dramatically, sometimes in huge swarms that may take hours or days to pass a fixed point. Bluffs on the west edge of Lake Michigan are great places to catch the show at eye level. Dragonfly swarms are a late summer phenomenon, so tuck this address away for reporting swarms and contributing to Dragonfly Woman’s database: https://thedragonflywoman.com/dsp/report/.
The common green is the State Insect of Washington – so much more exciting than Wisconsin’s honeybee (and you thought the state insect was the mosquito!).
The BugLady took a walk on the first day of spring along a nearby dirt road. Automobile drivers are seldom happy with that road, but masses of millipedes, spiders, dragonflies, and butterflies enjoy its damp and dappled surface, and frogs, snakes, and other small animals cross from upland to lowland there. With Sandhill Cranes providing a sound track, the BugLady shared the road with a wolf spider, a six-spotted fishing spider and some small (but colorful) millipedes.
Millipedes, a.k.a rain worms, are fascinating critters – the BugLady wrote about them in the early days of BOTW (April, 2008) – see http://uwm.edu/field-station/millepede/ for Millipedes 101). They seem to be in need of a good PR campaign, so here are the basics. They don’t bite. They’re not slimy. Most of them are not carnivores. Most of them shun living plants and feed on rotting organic material (many practice coprophagy, though). They don’t give us diseases. They don’t want to come inside for the winter. If your home experiences a Biblical scourge of millipedes (which are humidity-seekers) it could be a First Alert that your plumbing needs a look. See – all good! Yet, many millipede hits on-line are exterminators (you don’t need one, because your house is way too dry for millipede comfort and will kill them all by itself. Caulk the cracks to keep them out).
Millipedes are under the umbrella of the great phylum Arthropoda; along with centipedes and a few others, they’re in the subphylum Myriapoda (from “myrias,” the ancient Greek word for 10,000). They’re in the class Diplopoda (for taxonomic comparisons, Insecta and Arachnida are also classes). When you say “diplopod,” you’re also speaking Greek (“diplos” means “double,” and “pous” means “foot”). Millipedes (Latin for “thousand feet”) have two legs on each sideof most segments (centipedes, also pictured here, have one on each side; for centipede info, see http://uwm.edu/field-station/house-centipede/). No actual 1000-leggers have been found, and the present record belongs to an individual with 750 legs. However many legs they have (and they have far more than any of the rest of us), those legs are short, and millipedes don’t disperse far or fast without help.
Millipede
Centipede
According to bugguide.net, there are 12,000 described species of diplopods worldwide, divided into two sub-classes, 16 orders, and 145 families, but there may be 70,000more species out there waiting to be described!! North America has just under 1,000 species in 52 families; bugguide.net illustrates members of 10 orders, including a few non-native species that have made it to our shores. They speculate that there could be hundreds of undescribed species in North America.
They’ve been around for a long time – one of the first groups of animals to adapt to life on land 400 million years ago (in the days when oxygen levels were higher than they are now and therefore arthropods grew bigger – six-foot long millipedes). Millipedes, whose exoskeleton lacks a protective, waxy cuticle, like to stay undercover where the humidity is high – in leaf litter, rotting wood, and soil. Powered by all those legs, most are good diggers, though some very large and very small species don’t tunnel.
Millipedes are, figuratively speaking, exactly what one of their common names claims they are – “thousand-legged worms.” They are cylindrical (except when they’re flat), many-legged, worm-ish critters. Most have chewing mouthparts, simple eyes, and sensory organs on their antennae that help them detect light levels and possibly humidity. An enlarged segment behind the head is called the collum. Air passes through pores near the legs on each side of the body on its way into the tracheal system, and a millipede’s heart is as long as its body. Their legs are seven-jointed, and males have longer legs than females.
An alarmed millipede tends to roll up in a tight disc, curling hard shell around soft legs. Many also make bad-smelling or irritating defensive chemicals (including cyanide) (lemurs tease millipedes into expressing those chemicals and then rub the liquid on their fur to discourage mosquitoes). Some chemical defense is less passive – a few tropical millipedes can spray chemicals about 20 inches. Wash your hands, don’t rub your eyes.
In spring, a young millipede’s fancy turns to love. For most species, courtship is minimal. He may walk along her back to get her in the mood (different strokes), he uses modified legs toward the front of his abdomen to hold her as he inserts a spermatophore (sperm packet) into the operative opening, and they often embrace for a while afterward. She lays her eggs (a few hundred to a few thousand) in an underground nest she shapes from excreted dirt, and in some species, she dies soon afterwards. The young have six legs when they hatch and add more each time they molt http://bugguide.net/node/view/168292. They grow and leave the nest, feeding on plant material and on the microorganisms their guts require to digest plant fibers. They may take a few years to mature and may live a few more years after that.
What ecosystem services do millipedes perform? As detritivores, they assist in the natural recycling process by making big pieces of organic material into smaller ones (for use by even smaller organisms). They are an important determiner of soil composition, and in areas where earthworms are scarce, they may fill the earthworm’s niche, capable of creating, according to a scientist named F. H. Colville, two tons of fertilizer per acre per year.
The BugLady has photographed a variety of millipedes in her neighborhood, but no one has ever accused her of being a Myriapodologist, so the following identities are “approximate.”
She has a color slide, but not a digital image, of Wisconsin’s largest species (up to 4”), the millipede formerly known as Spirobolus marginatus, now reclassified as part of the Narceus americanus–annularis species complex http://bugguide.net/node/view/832866/bgimage. It’s in the order Spirobolida and family Spirobolidae. She finds it around fallen logs on leafy forest floors. Interesting Narceus fact: the female lays a single egg in a cup formed from regurgitated food (bugguide.net). See http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek030522.html for some nifty pictures.
The dark, curled-up millipede is Cylindroiulus caeruleocinctus (probably), in the order Julida and family Julidae. The experts say that North American members of the family Julidae all originated in Europe.
The cute little guy semi-coiled on the leaf is a tough one. The BugLady thinks it’s in the order Julida and the family Parajulidae, and possibly in the genus Ptyoiulus, but she wouldn’t bet the farm on it. These are native millipedes and bugguide says that Parajulidae is the dominant millipede family in North America, from Canada to Guatemala. You can really see the dome-shaped collum right behind the head. Some millipedes burrow by pushing the tough collum down through the soil.
The very colorful millipede (burnished burgundy with purple bands) that shared the road with the BugLady looks like another Parajulid.
OK – the BugLady staged the shot of the millipede lying semi-curled on the green leaf with its feet up; it was on a stony parking lot and she thought it would be easier to photograph on a leaf. It’s a Flat-backed millipede in the order Polydesmida (the largest order of millipedes, all chemically defended), a Pleuroloma flavipes (“flavipes” means “yellow foot”), in the family Xystodesmidae (unless it’s Apheloria virginiensis). There are about 300 known species in the family, and a third of them live in the Appalachian Mountains (low mobility and geographic isolation make for some interesting species-rich regions). They are famous for “swarms,” which are sometimes migratory.
The small, pinkish millipede with square plates in its back is another Flat-backed millipede, but this one is a foreigner. The Greenhouse/ Hothouse/Short-flange millipede (Oxidus gracilis) hails from Asia but is well-established here. It is in the order Polydesmida and the family Paradoxosomatidae. It’s in reproductive mode all year.
Why did the millipede cross the road? More precisely, why do they congregate on the BugLady’s front porch, and in her basement and garage? They assemble and move around in response to heavy rain and to cooling temperatures (the seal on the BugLady’s garage door is not millipede-proof, and scores came in out of the cold last fall). Reportedly, train tracks can become slippery with flattened millipedes.
Interesting millipede facts:
Some of the larger species are sold as pets;
Millipedes have been used in rituals, in folk medicine to treat fevers, hemorrhoids, wounds, and earache, among others, and to make poison-tipped arrows, but they are not part of many cuisines.
