Here’s a rare glimpse into the BugLady’s “BOTW Future” file, which is packed with pictures of identified insects that she hopes have a good story to tell, with semi-identified insects, and with (mostly) her “X-Files” – the Unidentified. (The file probably reflects the state of the BugLady’s brain.) It’s what she sees as she selects the bug of the week.
Traditionally, the BugLady goes on sabbatical for the month of June, but she’s going to sneak away a bit early this year. Why? There’s an old riddle,
“Why did the glaciers retreat?”
“To get more rocks.”
The BugLady needs more pictures.
Lest your inbox grow cobwebs, she will post a tasteful rerun each Tuesday until she gets back.
FROM THE FILE:
BEE X23 (on bergamot)23-1 – a busy little bald bee.
BEETLE MILKWEED ANNULATUS HL22-2 – Not our common Red milkweed beetle (Tetraopes tetropthalmus). There are two species here that are adorned with those lovely double rings on the antennal segments – T. femoratus (which has red on its legs, unless it doesn’t), and T. annulatus, sometimes called the Ringed milkweed beetle. The BugLady would happily call this T. annulatus based on appearance and habitat (dry, sandy areas), but it was sitting on Common milkweed, which is not listed as one of annulatus’s food plants. Is the BugLady overthinking this? Probably.
TULE BLUET DAMSELFLY21-2 – with a bunch of water mite nymphs on its abdomen. The BugLady knows who this is, but she’s written biographies of a number of other bluets, and the details of their life histories don’t vary a lot. Besides, she promised that she would not march methodically through the species lists of Wisconsin dragonflies and damselflies.
So many wasps!!!
BRACONID15-22 – someday the BugLady is going to write a Braconid Wasps 101 episode (they’re a big and important family) but first she needs to figure out which of her wasp pictures are braconids, because they can look similar to Ichneumon wasps (an even bigger family). This one seems to be ovipositing in the flower.
WASP ICHNEUMON Latholestes17-10 – maybe a braconid.
X WASP17-1 – also maybe a braconid
WASP ICHNEUMON RNC22-1 – a large and handsome Ichneumon.
WASP MISTLETOE SLB24-3 – this Ichneumon (probably) was exploring the flowers of Eastern dwarf mistletoe.
WASP FBMP OOF24-2 – an odd little wasp that joined the BugLady on the Hawk Tower on a cool day in mid-November.
X MOTH20-7 – this handsome, largish moth looks like it should be in the genus Haploa but…..
FLY DEER RNC23-2 – looks like a deer fly, but cinnamon- colored?
PLANTHOPPER NYMPH13-1 – isn’t this a little cutie!
SPIDER WAUB24-1 – what a lovely, almost translucent spider!
X LONGHORNED BEETLE HL15-2 – enjoying the wild geranium one spring day.
WEEVIL EP12-1 – Isn’t this a great little weevil? The BugLady scooped it from the surface of an ephemeral pond, but she doubt’s that it’s an aquatic species – more likely it was sitting on a leaf and got dislodged.
Here are four articles about bugs from the excellent Smithsonian newsletter, which also covers archaeology, birds, current science news, creatures of the deep ocean, etc. Enjoy.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and BugFans are probably either partying or watching reruns. Today’s BOTW is a rerun of one of the BugLady’s favorites – think of it as a Holiday Movie.
When BugFan Kine sent this “what is it” picture, the BugLady’s first reaction was to raise her hand and say “Teacher, teacher! Ask me! Ask me!” She didn’t recall its name, but she knew she had seen a picture of it in Kaufman’s Field Guide to Insects of North America (it’s also in the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders). It has the look of a darkling beetle (family Tenebrionidae), but it’s in the (fairly closely-related) family Zopheridae (no common name) and the subfamily Zopherinae – the ironclad beetles. Thanks, Kine!
Not a Wisconsin beetle.
Fascinating Ironclad Beetle Fact#1: They’re called Ironclad beetles because they have a phenomenally strong exoskeleton. So strong that you can’t kill them by stepping on them (in the words of Alejandro Santillana of the University of Texas, “Step on one and it will probably just give a coleopteran shrug and walk away.”). So strong that if you are able to kill one, you can’t mount it on an insect pin without first drilling a hole in it.
One source says that Texas ironclad beetles look as though a random bunch of black paint droplets fell on them (another source suggests that they’re bird-poop mimics). Nodulosus refers to the lumps/nodes on the beetle’s back, especially on the elytra (wing covers), and this species also has four noticeable tubercles on the rear edge of the elytra.
The job of the elytra, which are the hardened, front pair of wings, is to protect the membranous flying wings that are folded beneath them, a beetle invention that allows them to crawl under logs and rocks without shredding those delicate wings. But Mother Nature has played a little trick here – beetles in this genus, indeed, in this family, often lack flying wings, and their elytra are fused together. No flying wings = no flying.
They live in east and central Texas, south into northeastern Mexico. Adults are sometimes seen on the trunks of pecan, oak, and elm trees where, despite/because of their coloration, they blend in pretty well. The larvae are found in dead trees and may eat fungi within the rotting wood, but in his blog arrantsoutdoors, Josh Arrants says that “We are sure it eats lichens, dead wood and plant material, even taking fungi…. We also believe that all stages of (Zopherus nodulosus haldemani) eat lichens on dead, or mostly dead, trees.”
There is very little biographical information about this striking, relatively-common-within-its-range, inch-long beetle! Presumably, eggs are laid in bark crevices, which, says Arrants, provides “a highly probable area for the larvae to be able to find and consume lichens.” Here’s a mating pair https://bugguide.net/node/view/1506208/bgimage.
Fascinating Ironclad Beetle Fact#2: In her article about them in the Texas Co-op Power newsletter, Sheryl Smith-Rodgers calls them “Lazarus bugs.” On several occasions, she fished “dead” beetles from the bottom of water buckets, only to have them revive and walk away. They are even hard to kill with the standard-issue insect killing jars (apparently they can hold their breath for a very long time?).
Fascinating Ironclad Beetle Fact#3: When alarmed, Ironclad beetles play dead (tonic immobility and death feigning and thanatosis are fancier names), and they can play for longer than most people have the patience to wait for their revival. They curl up their legs and tuck in their antennae to protect them https://bugguide.net/node/view/686069/bgimage.
MIND-BLOWING Ironclad Beetle Fact: Science, of course, is interested in this impenetrable insect. The composition of the layers of its exoskeleton have been parsed, and the potential applications are pretty amazing. It is being “copied” in a design for the suspension system of combat vehicles, with the hope that it can bounce back after an IED or other explosion. Even better, First Place in the 2018 NASA competition to design habitats for Mars (the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge) went to Team Zopherus (https://armoneyandpolitics.com/arkansas-architect-nasa-competition-mars/)!
When the BugLady was walking at Riveredge towards the end of September, she came to a fork in the trail and thought “if I go left, I’ll get back to the car faster, but if I go right, I’ll see something good.” So she did, and she did.
Along a 15 foot stretch of trail, she found a half-dozen Oil beetles in the grass (including one pair in flagrante delicto). She suspects that some of the motionless females may have been ovipositing. And then she looked closer.
Oil beetles, which are blister beetles (family Meloidae) in the genus Meloe, are odd-looking beetles – inky blue-black, soft, and bulbous (“bloated,” said one source; “like a black clove of garlic,” said another), with astonishing antennae. Their elytra (wing covers) are very short, because they actually have no hind wings to cover. The name “Oil beetle” comes from the oily drops of haemolymph (bug blood) (aka hemolymph, but the BugLady loves the British spelling) that ooze from their joints when they’re alarmed https://bugguide.net/node/view/408611/bgpage. Look, but don’t touch – the oil contains cantharidin, which is one of their Super Powers. We have met blister beetles in previous BOTWs – here’s Blister Beetle 101 https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/blister-beetle/.
It’s a genus that has somewhat northern proclivities, with many species present across Canada.
They are, oddly, measured from the front of the head only to the far point of the elytra, rather than to the end of the (often-distended) abdomen. Females may be as long as 1 ½” and males are smaller.
When a young Meloe beetle’s fancy turns to love, he finds a female, climbs aboard, and rubs her antennae with his, releasing a pheromone that calms her. Bugguide says, “In males of some species mid-antennal segments are modified, and the c-shaped ‘kinks’ (antennomeres V–VII) grasp female antennae during pre-mating displays.” He transfers some cantharidin to her in his sperm packet, and she coats her eggs with it to protect them from predators.
In many insect species with predatory/parasitic larvae, Mom delivers the eggs to their eventual host, but Meloe beetle larvae are on their own. When they hatch, the super-active larvae, called triungulins, climb up onto flower heads and wait for bees to come along. Each species of Meloe beetle targets a particular genus or species of solitary, ground-nesting bee, and when the right one comes along, the larva jumps on.
Some sources say that the larva targets males, riding with him until he has a liaison with a female, and then switching to her. Other sources say that it ignores males and only attaches to females. The ultimate goal is access to the female’s nest, where it acts as a kleptoparasite, eating the food cache she has put by for her young (and sometimes eating her eggs, too). After it has gained entry to its host’s nest, the rest of its larval life is sedentary.
Oil beetles are usually seen moving slowly along the ground or on low vegetation. Adults feed on plant material, including pollen, nectar, and leaves.
Despite the toxicity of cantharidin, these beetles have been used in traditional medicines in East Asia, especially China, to treat external conditions like boils, warts, bruises, and fungal skin infections, and internally for cancer, liver issues, colds, and to induce abortions.
According to the Montana Natural History Center website, “For their diverse uses and fascinating ecology, oil beetles were named the 2020 insect of the year by an entomological society in Europe.”
Bugguide.net says that there are 22 species in the genus Meloe in North America, and the BugLady isn’t quite sure which species she found. Some are primarily active in spring and others in fall, but some may be found in both seasons, depending on the phenology of their host bees. Fall candidates in Wisconsin include:
The Impressive oil beetle (Meloe impressus), about which the Minnesota Seasons website says “The first stage (triungulin) is mobile on plants. The entire hatched group climbs to the top of a plant and forms a cluster in roughly the shape of a female ground bee. It then exudes a chemical scent that mimics the pheromone of a female bee. When a male bee attempts to mate with the mass, some of the larvae attach themselves to its hairs. When the male mates with a female bee some of the larvae attach to the female. These remain on the female while she builds a nest, then detach and begin feeding on newly laid bee eggs.”
The American/Buttercup oil beetle (Meloe americanus), which lays its eggs near the base of a flower (bugguide says that females of these first two species are hard to tell apart).
The Short-winged blister beetle (Meloe campanicollis), which may persist into late fall.
And Meloe exiguus (no common name), about which the BugLady could find nothing.
And when she put her pictures up on the monitor and looked closer? Besides seeing a lot of green frass (bug poop), the BugLady saw that one female was being bothered by some exceedingly small biting midges (family Ceratopogonidae). She sent the pictures to PJ Liesch (“the Wisconsin Bug Guy”), Director of the UW Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, who shared some papers with her about a genus of biting midges (Atrichopogon) that have been associated with Meloe and other blister beetles (and shared her delight at the awesome experience). Thanks, PJ. The 16 Atrichopogon species that feed on the haemolymph of blister beetles have aptly been placed in a subgenus named Meloehelea. Atrichopogon levis, aka “the grass punky” https://bugguide.net/node/view/1151920/bgimage, is a likely suspect.
We’ve arrived at the final act in this summer’s insect drama – a drama played out over the months by an ever-changing cast of characters. Some are regulars, with successive generations appearing in multiple acts throughout the season, while others step in for only one act of the play. Here are some of the actors that appeared on stage after mid-August.
DARNER WITH SPIDER – well, the darner migration was nothing short of magical this year, and then it was over. And then it restarted – lots of Common Green Darners in the air on September 19 and 20, along with a bunch of Black Saddlebags. They’re heading south along the lakeshore, aiming for the Gulf States, but they don’t all make it. The BugLady’s guess is that this one was perched in the grass, and when it took off, it ran into the web of an orbweaver. It messed up the web, but because it wasn’t flying at full power, the spider was able to snag it. THANKS to the family that located this tableaux along the trail and pointed the BugLady at it.
TIGER SWALLOWTAIL – perfection on the wing, but far too few of them this summer.
GOLD-MARKED THREAD-WAISTED WASPS (Eremnophila) put the “thread” in the Thread-waisted wasp family (Sphecidae). They’re solitary wasps that dig single-celled egg chambers in the ground and provision them with caterpillars of sphinx or owlet moths (and the odd of skipper butterfly caterpillar). Her long legs allow her to straddle a larger caterpillar and walk it back to her nest https://bugguide.net/node/view/1408944/bgimage. She keeps her strength up by sipping carb-rich flower nectar.
RED-LEGGED GRASSHOPPERS making more Red-legged grasshoppers. ‘Tis the season.
GRAY HAIRSTREAKS are listed as the most common hairstreak in North America (because their caterpillars are “catholic” eaters that feed on about 200 different plants), but they’re not common in Wisconsin.
Fun facts about Gray Hairstreaks:
The point of the eyespot and the “tail” is to make the butterfly’s rear end look like a front end, with eye and “antenna,” thus confusing predators;
Gray hairstreak caterpillars are tended by ants in return for honeydew (produced, of course, in the caterpillar’s “honey gland”);
BIG SAND TIGER BEETLES are all about sand. Their eggs are buried in the sand; their larvae https://bugguide.net/node/view/1277687/bgimage dig long tunnels in the sand and then pop out when unwary insects and spiders wander by. At up to six feet long, the tunnel extends below the frost line and allows them to survive the winter. Adults stand “on tiptoe” (stilting) to raise themselves incrementally higher off the hot sand. Not surprisingly, Tiger beetles have fan clubs.
FIERY SKIPPER – these beautiful, inch-long, golden butterflies aren’t from around here, though they regularly visit God’s Country and beyond. Their usual range is southern and even tropical, and they move north in mid-summer and produce a brood here, but it’s too cold for them to overwinter (for now). They’ve made it to Hawaii and are unwelcome there, because their caterpillars feed on grasses.
EUROPEAN PAPER WASPS are buzzing around the hawk tower these warm, sunny days, so the BugLady has to look sharp before she puts her hands on the railings. Fortunately, they are jumpy wasps that usually spot her before she gets too close. They arrived on the East Coast 40 or 50 years ago and have spread across the northern US and Canada. They catch, masticate, and regurgitate caterpillars and other small insects for their larvae. The lovely gold legs and antennae separate them from our common Northern paper wasp.
Fun facts about European paper wasps:
1) The brighter the coloration of a female European paper wasp, the more toxic her sting is;
2) Females with more spots on their faces are dominant.
FAMILIAR BLUETS – Big and startlingly blue, Familiar Bluets are one of the last damselflies on the scene. (‘Tis the season.)
Caterpillars of VIRGINIAN TIGER MOTHS are also known as Yellow wooly bears or Yellow bear caterpillars (though they come in white, yellow, caramel, and rusty colors, and here’s a pink one https://bugguide.net/node/view/1728143/bgimage). They’re food generalists, and so are all over the place (not just in Virginia). Although some people are sensitive to their hairs, the hairs are not poisonous. Adults are spectacularly white https://bugguide.net/node/view/1984450/bgimage, but when they are alarmed, they curl their abdomen to flash a startling orange https://bugguide.net/node/view/2329153/bgimage.
NURSERYWEB SPIDERS carry their egg sac around in their jaws (wolf spiders carry theirs aft) and when the eggs are close to hatching, she creates a loose “nursery web,” installs the egg sac in it (hers was on the underside of the leaf), and then guards it until the eggs hatch and the spiderlings have molted once. No help from Dad – if she doesn’t eat him (sexual cannibalism – an important nutrient booster) (he wraps her legs with silk during courtship to try to prevent this), he leaves to pursue other relationships. He gives her a “nuptial gift” of a silk-wrapped prey item at the start of courtship so that she will think well of him, but after he has immobilized her and exchanged bodily fluids, he takes the gift with him when he goes.
CRANE FLY – the “Old Wives” really got it wrong about Crane flies. Though they’re also called “mosquito hawks,” they do not eat mosquitos (or any meat of any kind). They do not bite anything at all, but they’re reputed to be the “most venomous insects in the world.” The confusion may have come because of their resemblance to the cellar spiders, themselves getting a bad rap because their bites are practically harmless. They’re just a short-lived fly whose larvae inhabit a variety of habitats from wetlands to lawns (where they both feed on and fertilize the grass).
EASTERN TAILED-BLUES are tiny butterflies with wingspans of an inch or less, but they’re tough enough to fly well into fall (four years ago, the BugLady saw one on November 4). Like the Gray Hairstreak, the eye and tail on the hind wing are there to trick hungry birds into grabbing a wing, not an abdomen. ‘Tis the season.
The BugLady has been scouring the landscape and aiming her camera at anything that will sit still for it (and some that won’t). And (without going too overboard on dragonflies and damselflies), here are some of her bug adventures.
LEAFCUTTER BEE – ah, the one that got away. The BugLady saw a lump on a boardwalk in front of her and automatically aimed her camera at it (a long lens is a good substitute for a pair of binoculars). The lump – a leafcutter bee – flew off after one, out-of-focus shot. The bee had paused while she was cutting and collecting pieces of vegetation to line the tunnel and chambers where she’ll lay her eggs (here’s one caught in the act https://bugguide.net/node/view/2150206/bgimage).
JAPANESE BEETLE – lots of the vegetation that the BugLady sees these days is pockmarked with small holes – evidence of feeding by Japanese beetles (of course, she’s also been seeing conspicuous, beetle ménages a trois on the tops of those leaves, too). Japanese beetles made their North American debut in New Jersey in 1916, and their menu now includes more than 350 plant species. But – they are a handsome beetle!
WATER STRIDERS create art wherever they go.
APPALACHIAN BROWN BUTTERFLY (probably) (the part of the hindwing that has the squiggly line that helps distinguish the Eyed Brown from the Appalachian Brown is gone). Life in the wild isn’t all beer and skittles. The chunks missing from this butterfly’s wings suggest that a bird chased it and that most of the butterfly got away.
POWDERED DANCER – in an episode a month ago, the BugLady lamented that the river was so high and fast that Powdered Dancers couldn’t find any aquatic vegetation to oviposit in. A dryer spell revealed some weed patches, and the dancers hopped right onboard.
EASTERN PONDHAWK DRAGONFLY – this male Eastern Pondhawk was hugging the cattail stalk, a posture that’s not characteristic of this usually-horizontal species. Turns out that it had captured a Violet/Variable Dancer damselfly and was holding it closely between its body and the cattail.
CRAB SPIDER – what would a summer summary be without one of the BugLady’s favorite spiders, the Crab spider? Where’s Waldo? Bonus points if you know the name of the plant.
HONEY BEE WITH APHIDS – it’s not surprising to see yellowjackets browsing among herds of water lily aphids – adult yellowjackets are (mostly) vegetarians, but they collect, masticate, and regurgitate small insects for their larvae. Honey bees are hard-core vegans, so what’s going on here?
Aphids overeat. They have to – the plant sap they suck in has very low concentrations of sugars and proteins, so they need to process a lot of it in order to get enough calories. Sap comes out of the plant under pressure, which forces the sap through the aphid smartly, and the extra liquids (in the form of a sweet substance called honeydew), exit to the rear of the aphid (or it would explode). Honeydew drops onto the surrounding leaves and attracts other insects that harvest it. The bee is no threat to the aphids, she’s just collecting honeydew.
Fun Fact – according to Master beekeeper Rusty Burlew, writing in her blog “Honey Bee Suite, “The bees treat the substance like nectar so it is often mixed together with the nectar from flowers. As such, it is not really noticeable in the finished honey. Honey made almost exclusively from honeydew is known as honeydew honey, forest honey, bug honey, flea honey, or tree honey. Sometimes it is named after its primary component, such as pine honey, fir honey, oak honey, etc. It is generally dark, strongly flavored, less acidic, and less sweet than floral honey.”
EASTERN AMBERWING – at barely an inch long, this improbably-colored dragonfly is one of our flashiest.
MOSQUITOES – Mosquito Control 101: “get rid of standing water in your yard!” Check. But, the BugLady has a bird bath (her “vintage” childhood saucer sled) that she washes out and refills at least once a week (or so she thought). She was surprised the other day to see a whole mess of mosquito “wigglers” (larvae) in the water. Worse, they probably were the small-but-mighty Floodwater mosquitoes that can make August miserable because they emerge in Biblical numbers, and because they seem to be biting with one end even before the other end has fully landed. They develop at warp speed – a week from egg to wiggler, and another week from wiggler to adult. Get rid of standing water in your yard. Check.
SCORPIONFLIES are odd-looking insects from a whole order of odd-looking insects (Mecoptera). This guy is in the Common scorpionfly family Panorpidae and in the genus Panorpa (which is a corruption of the Greek word for “locust”). The appendage at the end of the male’s abdomen explains its name, but these are harmless insects, fore and aft. One site mentioned they are wary and hard to photograph. Amen!
Panorpa uses chewing mouthparts at the tip of its elongated rostrum/snout to eat dead and dying insects, and it may liberate insects from spider webs (and sometimes the spider, too). It is also said to eat some nectar and rotting fruits.
He courts by releasing pheromones to attract her, quivering his wings when she comes near, and then offering a gift – a dead insect, or maybe some gelatinous goo manufactured in his salivary gland. He shares bodily fluids with her as she eats.
CAROLINA LOCUST – what a lovely, chunky little nymph!
AUTUMN MEADOWHAWK – the dragonfly scene changes after mid-summer, with the early clubtails, emeralds, corporals, whitefaces, and skimmers being replaced by darners, saddlebags and a handful of meadowhawk species. This newly-minted (teneral) Autumn Meadowhawk has just left its watery nursery on its way to becoming – for the next six weeks or so – a creature of the air.
KATYDID NYMPH – the BugLady was photographing leafcutter bees that were visiting birdsfoot trefoil flowers (birdsfoot trefoil is a non-native member of the pea family that was introduced for animal fodder and erosion control and that can become invasive in grasslands. There’s probably some blooming along a road edge near you). She noticed that when the bees approached one particular flower, they reversed course and didn’t land, and when she checked she found the tiniest katydid nymph she has ever seen. This one will grow up considerably to be a 1 ½” to 2” long Fork-tailed bush katydid (or somebody else in the genus Scudderia) https://bugguide.net/node/view/2164189/bgimage. How do you find bush katydids? The “Listening to Insects” website advises us to “Watch for a leaf that moves on its own, or a leaf with antennae.” They are a favorite of Great golden digger wasps, which collect and cache them for their eventual larvae, and another website said “this is what bird food looks like.”
The BugLady found a recording of their call. They don’t say “Katy-did, Katy-didn’t;” they say “tsp” or “pffft,” and they don’t say it very loudly. Bush Katydids are busiest at night, when their long, highly sensory antennae help them to find their way around. Although adult females are equipped with a wicked-looking ovipositor, they don’t sting, but they do nip if you handle them wrong. Memorably, it’s said.
Here are some of the bugs that the BugLady found in June, which was, overall, a hot and wet month (7.97” of rain at the BugLady’s cottage).
LIZARD BEETLE – the BugLady doesn’t know why these striking beetles are called Lizard beetles, unless it’s a nod to their long, slender shapes. She usually sees them in the prairie on Indian Plantain plants. The adults eat various parts of the plant, including pollen, while their larvae feed within the plant stems (the Clover stem borer is persona non grata in commercial clover fields).
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, many species of Lizard beetles “make squeaking sounds using well-developed stridulatory organs on top of the head.”
Two (counterintuitively-named) ORANGE BLUETS, ensuring the next generation. He “contact guards” her as she oviposits in submerged vegetation, lest a rival male come along and swipe her. When the eggs hatch, the naiads can swim right out into the water.
BALTIMORE CHECKERSPOT – the BugLady has seen more of these spectacular butterflies than usual this year. The caterpillars https://bugguide.net/node/view/206383 feed in fall on a late-blooming wildflower called Turtlehead (and sometimes broad-leaved plantain); turtlehead leaves (and plantain, to a lesser extent) contain growth-enhancing chemicals called iridoid glycosides that also discourage birds. The caterpillars tuck in for the winter and emerge the next year into a landscape empty of Turtlehead.
In spring, Baltimore Checkerspot caterpillars 2.0 feed on leaves of a variety of flowers and shrubs – the BugLady has seen them on goldenrod and on wood betony – and especially on leaves of the (doomed) white ash.
CRAYFISH – the BugLady came across this crayfish and its companion when all three of us were negotiating a muddy trail (so many muddy trails this year!). It waved its pincers at her to make sure she was terrified.
DOODLEBUGS (aka antlions) got going early this year – the BugLady found more than 100 excavations (pits) at the southeast corner of her house at the end of April, and more along the path leading to the beach. They’ve had a rough go of it – it doesn’t take much rain to ruin a pit, and it takes a day or so to repair one.
Doodlebug watchers sometimes catch a glimpse of pincers at the bottom of a pit, or of a doodlebug tossing sand around. The BugLady witnessed an ant going to its final reward, and found a pit with a small beetle in it, one with a box elder bug, and one with a beetle and a small jumping spider. She will look for the adults, which look kind of like damselflies, in August.
COMMON SPRING MOTH – the BugLady loves finding bugs she’s never seen before, especially when she doesn’t have to leave home to do it!! (She does get a little bewildered, though, when the “new” insect is named the “Common something” and she’s never seen it before). The occurrence of this one should be no surprise – its caterpillars feed on Black locust leaves.
PETROPHILA MOTHS are dainty moths that are tied to water. The BugLady and BugFan Joan spotted mobs of moths on milkweed (yes, there’s a milkweed under there) on the bank of the Milwaukee River. “Petrophila” means “rock lover” – for that story, see this BOTW about a (probably) different species https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/two-banded-petrophila/.
GREEN LACEWING EGGS – the BugLady wrote about Green lacewings and their eggs a few months ago, and she recently found this amazing bunch of tiny, glistening eggs. She has always associated Green lacewings with the end of summer. Guess not.
EIGHT-SPOTTED FORESTER MOTHS are small, spiffy, day-flying moths that are often mistaken for butterflies. The one that the BugLady found recently was not as gaudy as most – most have brilliant orange leg scales https://bugguide.net/node/view/2300226/bgimage. There’s a saying among Lepidopterists – the plainer the caterpillar, the more spectacular the adult. Forester moths seem to be an exception https://bugguide.net/node/view/156406.
POWDERED DANCERS oviposit at this time of year in the slightly-submerged stems of aquatic vegetation, especially Potamogetonhttps://bugguide.net/node/view/737371/bgimage. They’ve been pictured here before. This year, the river is running high and fast – there are no mats of Potamogeton leaves with Ebony Jewelwings, American Rubyspots, Stream Bluets, and Powdered Dancers flickering above them. Do they have a Plan B?
MALEFEMALE
These two BRILLIANT JUMPING SPIDERS (aka Red & Black jumping spiders), a male and a female, were perched a respectful distance from each other on the prairie. Jumping spiders, as their name suggests, jump, and depending on species, can cover from 10 to 50 times their body length. They don’t spin trap webs, but they do spin a drag line while jumping to guard against mishaps. They hunt by day.
The great MObugs website (Missouri’s Majority) says that “By late July or August mating is on their mind. Males begin to compete with other males for the right to mate with nearby females. Larger males typically win these competitions which include loud vibrations and some unique footwork. Males choose the larger females to mate with as they produce the most eggs.” She will place her egg sac in a silken nest in a leaf shelter and guard it, dying shortly after the spiderlings emerge from the sac.
ZELUS LURIDUS (aka the Pale green assassin bug) is the BugLady’s favorite Assassin bug. They mostly wait patiently for their prey to wander by, but when it does, they reveal their super power. Glands on their legs produce a sticky resin that they smear over the hairs on their legs. When they grab their prey, it stays grabbed.
Although “lurid” now means shocking, vivid, or overly bright, it originally meant ghastly, horrifying, pale, sallow, or sickly yellow – its meaning began to change in the 1700’s.
The BugLady and her camera have been out scouring the uplands and wetlands for insects that will sit still long enough to have their portrait made. Many of today’s bugs have starred in their own BOTWs over the years, and you can find them by Googling “UWM Field Station followed by the name of the insect. Her gut continues to tell her that there simply aren’t as many insects to point her camera at as there were a decade ago.
What did she find in April and May?
WOODLAND LUCY (Lucidota atra), aka the Black firefly (atra means black). If a lightning bug doesn’t light, is it still a Lightning bug? Yup. Most lightning bugs flash their species-specific light signals at females by night, but some, like the Woodland Lucy, are day flyers (the BugLady starts seeing them in swamps in May, but she usually doesn’t see a light show by their nocturnal relatives until the very end of June). It would be a waste of energy to try to produce a light that competes with the sun, so diurnal lightning bugs communicate via pheromones (perfumes). But, all fireflies make light at some point in their lives, and always as a larva (and even the adult Woodland Lucy makes a weak light for a brief time after emerging as an adult).
Who says “lightning bug” and who says “firefly?” Lightning bug is heard most often in the South and Midwest, and firefly belongs to New England and the West (and Southeastern Wisconsin is close to the border of the two). Someone did a study and hypothesized that people who live in wildfire country prefer firefly, and people who live in thunderstorm country say lightning beetle. The BugLady likes the alternate theory – that you call them whatever your Grandmother called them.
DISONYCHA BEETLE – isn’t this a neat beetle! The BugLady photographed another member of the genus years ago when she was photographing visitors to her pussy willow shrub. It’s in the (huge) leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae, many of whose members are pretty specific about the host plants for their larvae. This one is (probably) a member of the confusing Smartweed Disonycha bunch.
GROUSE LOCUSTS are in the family Tetrigidae (the pygmy grasshoppers), and at a half-inch and less when full grown, pygmy they are! The BugLady usually sees them in wetlands, and some are actually known to swim. They feed on tiny diatoms and algae and aquatic vegetation at the water’s edge.
A CENTIPEDE works the boardwalk at Spruce Lake Bog in April.
GROUND BEETLE LARVA – Ground beetles (family Carabidae) are a bunch of mainly nocturnal, sometimes-sizeable, mostly predaceous beetles. Some of the big ones have no-nonsense names like Fiery Searcher and Caterpillar Hunter, and although they are called Ground beetles, they may climb trees to find their prey. They’re long-lived, spending a year or two as larvae and then two or three more as adults. No – the BugLady was not inclined to pick this one up.
The WHITE-STRIPED BLACK MOTH (Trichodezia albovittata) is a small (1” wingspan) day-flying moth that’s often mistaken for a butterfly. It’s found in wetlands because its caterpillar’s food is Impatiens/Jewelweed/Touch-me-not. Like other members of the moth family Geometridae, it has tympanal organs (ears) at the base of its abdomen so that it can hear the echolocation calls of bats. Since it’s diurnal, its ears are superfluous, but it can hear ultrasound (which suggests to evolutionary biologists that its day-flying habit is a recent one).
CHALK-FRONTED CORPORALS are one of our earliest dragonflies – the BugLady recalls seeing recently-emerged corporals by the hundreds over a dirt road on warm, spring days.
DADDY LONGLEGS (aka Harvestmen) are not true spiders, though they do have eight legs. The best description that the BugLady has read is that lacking a sharp division between their two body parts (cephalothorax and abdomen), they look like Rice Krispies with legs. This one is well-camouflaged on the fertile stalk of a cinnamon fern.
The BugLady may have to have this engraved on her gravestone (oh wait, she’s being scattered) – DADDY LONGLEGS DO NOT BITE PEOPLE! Also, counter to both urban and rural legend, they are NOT the most venomous animal on earth!!! The BugLady does not care what your cousin told you, or the person who claims to be allergic to their bite. They have tiny jaws, and unlike the true spiders, they do not pierce their prey and then pump in chemicals from venom glands (no venom glands) (and they have no stinging apparatus). They just sit there and chew off tiny (tiny) pieces. Got it?
The BEAUTIFUL BEE FLY (Bombylius pulchellus) truly is (pulchellos means “little beauty”)! This small fly (maybe ¼”) was photographed in a wetland in mid-May. Bee fly larvae are parasitoids of a variety of insect eggs and larvae – this one targets the sweat bees, which are among our earliest pollinators (not to worry – the system is in balance).
CRANE FLY – there are a number of families of crane flies, plus some near-relatives, and they are often collectively called daddy longlegs (though they’re not spiders) and mosquito hawks and skeeter-eaters (though they don’t catch or eat mosquitoes). What they do, is look like giant mosquitoes when they land on the other side of your window screen at night https://bugguide.net/node/view/2360312/bgimage, but they’re completely harmless. The “crane” in crane fly reflects their long, long legs – they’re somewhat awkward flyers and even more awkward landers. Like the Daddy longlegs, they’re reputedly extremely venomous (and now it’s time to introduce the third member of our “daddy longlegs trio,” the cellar spider. Crane flies are thought to be venomous because they look like cellar spiders (https://bugguide.net/node/view/2170770/bgimage), but, alas, cellar spiders only have very weak venom).
How do these things get started, anyway?
SOLDIER FLY – it’s always a little startling to come across a lime-green fly!
This VIRGINIA CTENUCHA MOTH CATERPILLAR was photographed in April, but the BugLady has found them walking around on mild winter days. The cute caterpillar will morph into a stunning moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/1036503/bgimage that looks butterfly-ish until it lands on a leaf and immediately crawls underneath. Despite its name, it’s a moth with more northerly affiliations.
The (great) Minnesota Seasons website lists three defense strategies:
Aposematism: The metallic blue color of the thorax and abdomen mimics wasps which may be noxious to predators.
Sound production: A specialized (tymbal), corrugated region on the third section of the thorax (metathorax) produces ultrasonic sounds which interfere with (“jam”) the sonar of moth-eating bats.
Pyrrolizidine alkaloid sequestration: Caterpillars acquire and retain naturally produced toxic chemicals (pyrrolizidine alkaloids) from the plants they eat.
RED-SPOTTED PURPLE CATERPILLARS are hard to distinguish from those of the very-closely-related Viceroy and White Admiral caterpillars, and their food plants overlap, too. The caterpillars overwinter in a leaf that’s still attached to the tree, rolled up and fastened with silk.
HOBOMOK SKIPPERS (once called the Northern Golden Skipper) are an early butterfly, often decorating the wild geraniums that bloom by the bushel in May. One source says that they are strong flyers that take off quickly when startled. Amen! They are a butterfly of woodland, wetland and grassland edges, where males perch in the sun and fly out to chase intruders.
“Hobomok” is a nod to an early Wampanoag chief.
CRAB SPIDER on White trillium – as we all know, the BugLady has a thing for crab spiders because of their ability to hide in plain sight. This one was photographed in early May.
YAY, it’s June! That means that the BugLady is out on the trails, walking slowly, looking at everything and photographing half of it. A probably-tasteful BOTW will be delivered to your inbox each Tuesday in June, but it won’t be a newly-minted, original episode.
It’s also June – National Invasive Species Action Month! “Alien,” “Introduced,” “Exotic,” and “Non-native” are all words we use to describe species that aren’t from around here, like alfalfa and Golden retrievers, but those words are not synonymous with the word Invasive. Having left their predators in the Old Country, invasive species achieve populations that negatively affect their habitat and native species. Not all invasive species are from another continent – Rusty crayfish, invasive in Wisconsin, hail from the southeastern part of the country.
And a picture of a really beautiful little beetle that arrived in the Detroit area from China about 20 years ago and that has changed the landscape here in Wisconsin and in much of North America east of the Great Plains – the Emerald ash borer (EAB) https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/emerald-ash-borer-redux-family-buprestidae/. When it first appeared, the DNR predicted that it would demolish 99.9% of Wisconsin’s ash trees. Their flight period is about to start.
And a Deer tick.
Not all invasive species are insects – see the Southeast Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium (SEWISC) for information about invasives near you www.sewisc.org (they’d love a donation, too).
We’re wrapping up National Wetlands Week with a beetle that you don’t even need a magnifying glass to see! This is a revision of an episode that first aired in the summer of 2009 – new words; no new pictures.
BOTW hasn’t plunged underwater for several months now, but in this episode we will get a chance to get our collective gills wet again. Water scavenger beetles are hefty beetles (some measure more than 1 ½ inches) in the family Hydrophilidae that are easily mistaken for Predaceous Diving beetles (family Dytiscidae https://bugguide.net/node/view/1415131/bgimage) of previous BOTW fame (https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/predaceous-diving-beetle/). Other than sharing their classification in the beetle Order Coleoptera, they are not closely related. North America hosts more than 250 species of Water scavenger beetles, including an introduced, non-aquatic species that makes itself at home in dung, where its larvae eat maggots (fly larvae).
Along with their beetle classification, they also share with Predaceous diving beetles the shallow waters of freshwater ponds and quiet stream edges, although Water scavenger beetles like their weedy, algae-choked habitat a bit warmer than Predaceous diving beetles do. What they do not share is a lifestyle. Adult Water scavenger beetles (depending on species) may feed on their aquatic neighbors or may be recyclers, with a food pyramid that includes algae and, as their name suggests, decaying vegetation and dead animal tissue.
The very-carnivorous Water scavenger beetle larvae (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1872987/bgimage) are described as “sluggish” and are found crawling on the pond floor or climbing on underwater vegetation. The larvae are couch-potato versions of the sleek Predaceous diving beetle larvae/water tigers (https://bugguide.net/node/view/2276347/bgimage), though they sometimes share the same “water tiger” moniker. Their feeding category is “engulfer-predator” – they use their powerful, hollow jaws https://bugguide.net/node/view/183298/bgimage to subdue and then vacuum out the juices of their prey. Their food-list includes their brethren, along with other aquatic invertebrates (they love mosquito larvae) and they also go after tadpoles, snails, and mini-fish.
According to Eaton and Kaufman, in the Field Guide to Insects of North America, some species of Water scavenger beetles can squeak by rubbing their abdomen against the underside of their wing covers. Wikipedia lists a repertoire of “stress calls, a male courtship call, a male copulating sound, and a female rejection buzz.”
Water scavenger beetles overwinter as adults, and in early summer, females lay eggs in a cocoon-like structure that’s attached to aquatic plants or left to float like a raft. In The New Field Book of Freshwater Life, Elsie Klots says that the egg case of one genus includes a vertical “mast” that extends above the water’s surface. The mast may be involved with respiration, but it may also be an escape hatch for larvae – escape being vital in a group whose young hatch from eggs within a case and immediately start chowing-down on their siblings. A case may hold 100+ eggs at the start, but cannibalism reduces the number of larvae that live to exit.
They spend a month underwater as larvae and then leave the water and create a pupal cell by scooping away soil with their mandibles. It takes them 36 to 48 hours to dig a hole that’s three inches deep. They climb in and pupate, reappearing as adults in a few weeks.
Predaceous diving beetles breathe, as many aquatic insects do (and as Water scavenger beetle larvae do), by backing their rear end up to the water’s surface and taking in air with a tube or pore (some Water scavenger beetle larvae also have exterior, branched gills https://bugguide.net/node/view/1058195/bgimage). Adult Water scavenger beetles break through the surface film with un-wet-able (“hydrophobic”) antennae that form a funnel through which air is transported. Oxygen is stored in a space under the elytra (hard wing covers), and the beetle takes that air into its body through its spiracles (breathing pores). The nickname “silver-beetle” is a nod to its secondary source of oxygen – a film of air bubbles that typically covers the beetle’s flat ventral surface, trapped there in a layer of thick hairs. Air held in these hairs can be renewed from oxygen suspended in the water, allowing the beetle to stay under longer.
It seems that Water scavenger beetles have a Super Power – at least, one Australian species does! It’s the ability to locomote on the underside of the surface film (remember – due to electrical charges, the layer of water molecules at the surface of a body of water is “tougher” than the molecules below it, which is what allows some insects to skate along its surface. This same surface tension makes it hard for small critters to break through from below). See the video here https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/beetle-can-walk-along-underside-waters-surface-180978115/. Snails and leeches can do this, too.
The air trapped on the underside of its body may help the beetle stay “belly-up” without using extra energy, giving it enough buoyancy to stroll along under the surface film without breaking through, though each footstep makes the water dimple upwards (scientists don’t know exactly how the beetle’s feet get traction). Researcher John Gould recounted seeing the phenomenon for the first time, “The beetle was casually walking along the underside of the water’s surface with ease while upside down. Every now and then, it would come to a stop, and then kept plodding along across the surface as if it was walking across any regular solid.”
How does the beetle do this? Why? Are there other beetles that do it? Scientists who collect aquatic beetles report that when they roil up the substrate with their nets, beetles often float up to the surface. But do they walk around up/under there, or do they return to their normal haunts ASAP? So many questions – stay tuned.
WATER SCAVENGER BEETLE MISCELLANIA:
J. Reese Voshell, Jr, in A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America, says that “beetle” comes from the Old English “bitula” – “to bite” – a reference to the strong jaws of adult beetles.
Shelly Cox, in her blog called “MOBUGS – Missouri’s Majority,” shares a great (but unattributed) quote about Water scavenger beetles – “This is a water beetle. It is the hardest object in the world to pick up with tweezers. The second hardest is Mount Everest.” The BugLady can’t speak to either of those.
Once upon a time, a Naturalist named Linda Bower wondered what she would see if she put a camcorder in a pond. A whole lot, as it turned out. She has expanded her gaze to include terrestrial bugs and non-insects, as you will see if you check the excellent offerings at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ2iEp9598fAgiqdMwMZX_g. Glimpses of a world that exists under our radar. For the Aquatic playlist click on “Life in and Around the Pond.”
And remember – Every Month is Wetlands Month (and every fifth living thing is a beetle)!
