Bug o’the Week – The 12 (or 13) Bugs of Christmas

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week The 12 (or 13) Bugs of Christmas

Greetings of the Season, BugFans,

(13 bugs, because once she’s got her selection down to 13, the BugLady just can’t cut one more!)

A Cheery Thought for the Holidays, the average home contains between 32 and 211 species of arthropods (with the lower numbers at higher Latitudes and higher numbers as you head south past the Mason-Dixon Line). So, while the BugLady is celebrating The 12 (or 13) Bugs of Christmas, most BugFans could rustle up at least that many under their own roofs. Whether you see them or not, all kinds of invertebrates coexist with us daily, mostly staying under our radar until we surprise each other with a quick glimpse.

Here are a baker’s dozen of the bugs that the BugLady saw in 2023.

BALTIMORE CHECKERSPOT CATERPILLAR – According to one researcher, caterpillars are “essentially bags of macerated leaves.” What kind of leaves does a Baltimore Checkerspot caterpillar macerate? The eggs are laid in the second half of summer on, historically, White turtlehead, a native wildflower, and more recently, Lance-leaved plantain has been added as a host plant. Both plants contain chemicals that make the caterpillars distasteful to birds, though the turtlehead has higher concentrations of them. The butterflies have adapted to use an introduced plant, but the caterpillars don’t do as well on it (the BugLady has also seen them on goldenrod). Half-grown caterpillars overwinter, and when they emerge to finish eating/maturing in spring, the turtlehead isn’t up yet, so they eat the leaves of White ash and a few spring wildflowers.

LEAFCUTTER BEE ON PITCHER PLANT – Bumble bees and Honey bees are listed as the main pollinators of Purple pitcher plants, along with a flesh fly called the Pitcher plant fly (Fletcherimyia fletcheri), a pitcher plant specialist that contacts the pollen when it shelters in the flowers. But it looks like this Leafcutter bee is having a go at it.

SEVEN-SPOTTED LADYBUGS had a moment this year; for a while in early summer, they were the only ladybug/lady beetle that the BugLady saw. Like the Asian multicolored lady beetle, they were introduced from Eurasia on purpose in the ‘70’s to eat aphids. But (and the BugLady is getting tired of singing this chorus) they made themselves at home beyond the agricultural fields and set about out-competing our native species.

An Aside: Lots of people buy sacks of ladybugs to use as pest control in their gardens. The BugLady did a little poking around to see which species were being sold. Some sites readily named a native species, but most did not specify. Several sites warned that unless you are buying lab-grown beetles, your purchase is probably native beetles scooped up during hibernation, thus posing another threat to their numbers

SOLDIER FLY LARVA – The BugLady is familiar with Soldier fly larvae in the form of the flattened, spindle-shaped larvae https://bugguide.net/node/view/1800040/bgimage that float at the surface of still waters, breathing through a “tailpipe” and locomoting with languid undulations. So she was pretty surprised when she saw this one trucking handily across a rock in a quiet bay along the edge of the Milwaukee River. It appears to have been crawling through/living in the mud.

COMMON WOOD NYMPH – And an out-of-focus Common Wood Nymph at that. The BugLady has a long lens, and her arms weren’t quite long enough to get the butterfly far enough away to focus this shot. And it’s really hard to change lenses with a butterfly sitting on your finger.

FALSE MILKWEED BUG – Milkweed bugs are seed bugs that live on milkweeds, but if you’ve ever seen a milkweed bug that was not on a milkweed (usually on an ox-eye sunflower), it was probably a False milkweed bug. They’re so easily mistaken for a Small milkweed bug that one bugguide.net commentator said that all of their pictures of Small milkweed bugs should be reviewed. Here’s a Small milkweed bug with a single black heart on its back bracketed by an almost-complete orange “X” https://bugguide.net/node/view/2279630/bgimage; and here’s the False milkweed bug, whose markings look (to the BugLady) like an almost complete “X” surrounding two, nesting black hearts https://bugguide.net/node/view/35141. One thoughtful blogger pointed out that although it looks like a distasteful milkweed feeder, it’s not thought to be toxic. He wondered if this is a case of mimicry, or if the bug once fed on milkweed, developed protective (aposematic) coloration, and then changed its diet?

LARGE EMPTY OAK APPLE GALL – That’s really its name, but “empty” refers to the less-than-solid interior of the gall https://bugguide.net/node/view/54459 (which was made by this tiny gall wasp https://bugguide.net/node/view/260612). Galls are formed (generically) when a chemical introduced by the female bug that lays the egg, by the egg itself, and later by the larva, causes the plant to grow extra, sometimes bizarre, tissue at that spot. The gall maker lives in/eats the inside of the gall until it emerges as an adult. Some galls are made by mites – same principle.

SYRPHID FLIES are pretty hardy. Some species appear on the pussy willows and dandelions of early spring, and others nectar on the last dandelions of late fall. This one was photographed on November 17, on a sunny and breezy day with temperatures in the low 40’s, 12 feet off the ground, resting on the BugLady’s “go-bag” (the bag of extra clothes she carries up onto the hawk tower to deal with the wind chill).

WASP WITH SPIDER – The BugLady saw a little flurry of activity near an orbweaver web on her porch one day, but she got it backward. At first she thought that the spider had snagged the wasp (a Common blue mud dauber), but it was the wasp that hopped up onto the railing with its prey, part of the spider collection she will put together for an eventual larva.

SIX-SPOTTED TIGER BEETLES grace these collections perhaps more than any other insect, because – why ever not!

JUST-EMERGED DAMSELFLY – This damselfly was so recently emerged (possibly from the shed skin nearby) that its wings are still longer than its abdomen (basic survival theory says that you put a rush on developing the parts you might need most). Will a few of the aphids on the pondweed leaves be its first meal?

This is either a GREEN IMMIGRANT LEAF WEEVIL (Polydrosus formorus https://bugguide.net/node/view/1678834/bgimage) or the slightly smaller (and equally alien) PALE GREEN WEEVIL (Polydrosus impressifrons https://bugguide.net/node/view/1813505/bgimage). Whichever it is, it’s been in North America for a little more than a century. Bugguide.net calls them “adventive” – introduced but not well established. Eggs are laid in bark crevices or in the soil, and the larvae feed on roots. Adults eat young leaves, buds, and flowers of some hardwood, fruit, and landscape trees but are not considered big pests. Their lime-green color comes from iridescent, green scales.

And a DOT-TAILED WHITEFACE in a pear tree.

Have a Wonder-full New Year,

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Midsummer Memories by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Midsummer Memories

Howdy, BugFans,

Last year the BugLady had so many midsummer stories to tell that she wrote one episode about dragonflies, and a second about “other” (because as seasoned BugFans know (well) her camera gravitates to dragons and damsels). She’s got a heap of pictures to share again this year, but she’ll mix and match the groups in a two-part summer feature.

ROSE CHAFER BEETLE – The BugLady saw a single Rose Chafer last year and wrote about it https://uwm.edu/field-station/rose-chafer-beetle/. This year, she found bunches of them – orgies of them (she’s not sure what the collective noun for Rose Chafers is, but she’s pretty sure it’s “orgy”). And she was enthralled by the leggy designs they made on the undersides of milkweed leaves.

COPPER BUTTERFLY – A highlight of the BugLady’s recent explorations of Kohler-Andrae State Park was finding two species of Copper butterflies – American Copper and Bronze Copper (she rarely finds Coppers). The Coppers are in the Gossamer-wing butterfly family Lycaenidae, along with the Harvesters, Hairstreaks, Elfins, and Blues. Their caterpillars feed on plants in the rose and buckwheat families (dock, sorrel, and knotweed).

VIOLET/VARIABLE DANCER – The BugLady was talking to a friend recently about the colors that dragonflies and damselflies come in. Black, black and yellow, green, blue – even red. But purple?

FLY ON PITCHER PLANT – This is just the way it’s supposed to work. Insects with a “sweet tooth” get lured to the lip of the pitcher plant and partake of the (slightly narcotic) nectar there. Judgment impaired, they mosey around a little, maybe venturing onto the zone of down-pointing teeth below the lip, and then onto the slick, waxy zone below that. It’s all downhill from there.

GOLDENROD CRAB SPIDER on yarrow (not all Goldenrod crab spiders have red racing stripes). Incoming insects have trouble seeing her, too. Out of all the species of crab spiders in the world (about 3,000), only a very few have the ability to change colors, and that ability is limited to the female of the species. Her color palette includes white, yellow, and pale green. She sees the background color with her eyes, and because a wardrobe change takes her between three days and three weeks she tends to stay on her chosen flower. Her base color is white, and switching involves either creating yellow pigment or reabsorbing and then sequestering or excreting it.

Why? Good question. Scientists have tested spiders on matching and non-matching flowers (which they often sit on), and they saw no boost in hunting success when the spiders matched their background (she likes prey that’s bigger than she is, like bumblebees, because she has eggs to make. She loses weight on a diet of small flies). When spiders themselves are the prey, they are not picked off more often on non-matching flowers. Maybe the color change gives her some sort of advantage when she forms her egg case, or maybe it’s a vestigial solution to a long-ago problem.

ORANGE-LEGGED DRONE FLY – This Syrphid/Flower/Hover fly is so serious about its bumble bee disguise that it makes a loud buzz when it’s flying

SEDGE SPRITE TUSSLE – the BugLady was in a bog not long ago when she saw two damselflies tussling on some leaves. At first, she thought there was some predation going on, but that didn’t make sense because they were both Sedge Sprites. He had grabbed her and was wrestling with her, and she was having none of it. He suddenly flipped her around and clasped the back of her head with the tip of his abdomen (SOP for mating dragonflies and damselflies). Rather than reaching forward and taking his sperm packet, she ultimately gave a couple of good shakes and dislodged him. One small drama.

PHANTOM CRANE FLY – Flies come in all sizes and shapes, but this magical creature in white spats is the BugLady’s favorite. It lives in dappled, brushy wetland edges where it flickers through the vegetation like a tiny wraith.

FORKTAIL AND POWDERED DANCER – Eastern Forktails are voracious hunters that go after other damselflies, even those close to their size. The mature female forktail (in blue) found a teneral (young) Powdered Dancer (in tan) that was probably not a strong flyer yet.

Go outside – look at bugs,

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Bugs at the End of Summer

Bug o’the Week

Bugs at the End of Summer

Howdy, BugFans,

The general rule of thumb is that if you want to find insects, look at flowers. Even though summer is fading, there are still flowers in bloom. Some Liatris/blazing stars linger, along with brown-eyed Susan, wild sunflowers, asters and goldenrod (more than a century ago, Asa Gray said that the 12 pages about goldenrods in his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive (aka Gray’s Manual) were the most uninteresting in the Manual). Late summer and early fall are dominated by flies, bees and wasps, and by grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets.

Most adult insects die by the first frosts, leaving behind the next generation in the form of eggs or pupae (occasionally as nymphs or larvae), so the clock is starting to tick pretty loudly. As BugFan Mary stated dispassionately many years ago, they’re dead and they don’t know it yet. Meanwhile, their activities are centered on eating and on producing the next generation.

AMBUSH BUG (pictured above) – One of the BugLady’s favorite insects is the ambush bug (she’s always had a soft spot in her heart for predators). Ambush bugs tuck themselves down into the middle of a flower and wait for pollinators. They grasp their prey with their strong front legs, inject a meat tenderizer, and slurp out the softened innards. They’re paired up these days (the BugLady has a picture of a stack of three), and she has several pictures where the female is multitasking – eating an insect while mating.

BUMBLE BEE – A bumble bee forages for nectar and pollen for the brood well into September, but the brood will not survive the winter. Only the newly-fertilized queens will see the spring and establish a new colony. Moral of the story – plant Liatris/Blazing star.

PUNCTURED TIGER BEETLES (aka Sidewalk or Backroad Tiger Beetles) are named for the rows of pits on their very-slightly-iridescent elytra (hard wing coverings). They’re common across the continent in dry, sandy, bare spots, and as one of their names suggests, they’re sometimes seen on sidewalks. Like their (much) larger namesakes, Tiger beetles chase their prey https://bugguide.net/node/view/1106590/bgimage. For more info http://www.naturenorth.com/Tiger%20Beetle/The%20Tiger%20Beetles%20of%20Manitoba.pdf.

Some Punctured tiger beetles are “plain” https://bugguide.net/node/view/1343674/bgimage, and some are “fancy” https://bugguide.net/node/view/223895, and some are green https://bugguide.net/node/view/2025474/bgimage.

FAMILIAR BLUETS signal the end of the damselfly season. Big, robust, and startlingly-blue, they’re one of the BugLady’s favorite bluets.

EASTERN COMMA – There are two generations/broods/”flights” of Commas (and Question Marks – the “anglewings”) each year. The second generation overwinters as adults, tucked up into a sheltered spot (a hibernaculum). They sometimes emerge during a January thaw, but they quickly resume their winter’s sleep. They fly briefly in spring – one of our early butterflies – and produce the summer brood.

FALL FIELD CRICKET – Poking her ovipositor into the soil and planting the next generation. Her eggs will hatch in spring, and her omnivorous offspring will eat leaves, fruits, grain, and other invertebrates.

The BugLady loves their simple songs http://songsofinsects.com/crickets/spring-and-fall-field-crickets and is happy when a cricket finds its way indoors in fall. Males form a resonating chamber by setting their wings at a certain angle; then they rub their wings together to produce sound (one wing has a scraper edge and the other has teeth). There are mathematical formulae for calculating the ambient air temperature based on cricket chirps that give you the temperature in the microclimate on the ground where the cricket is chirping (add the number of chirps by a single field cricket in 15 seconds to 40).

CANADA DARNER – Common Green Darners are robust dragonflies that fill the late summer skies with dramatic feeding and migratory swarms. There are other darners, though, primarily the non-migratory mosaic darners (like the Canada, Green-striped, Lance-tipped, and Shadow Darners) whose abdomens have blue and black, “tile-like” patterns. Identify them by the shape of the colored stripe on the thorax and by the shape of the male’s claspers (lest you think it’s too easy, females come in a number of color morphs – this is a green-form female Canada Darner).

MONARCH BUTTERFLIES were alarmingly scarce this summer – the short-lived Gen 3 and Gen 4, whose job it is to build the population in the run-up up to the migratory Gen 5, simply weren’t there. But, on one of the BugLady’s recent stints on the hawk tower, she saw 289 Monarchs heading south during a six-hour watch. Moral – Plant goldenrod (and native milkweeds).

GOLDENROD CRAB SPIDER – Like ambush bugs, crab spiders live on a diet of pollinators. They don’t build trap nets and wait for their prey to come to them, they pursue it. Sometimes they lurk on the underside of the flower, but their camouflage makes hiding unnecessary. This female looks like she’s sitting at the dinner table.

RED-LEGGED GRASSHOPPERS are very common in sunny grasslands at this time of year from coast to coast. They eat lots of different kinds of plants (including some agricultural crops, which does not endear them to farmers), but they prefer plants in the Legume/pea family and the Composite/aster family. As the air temperature increases – and when predators are around – they eat more carbs. Grasshoppers are food for spiders, many birds, and other wildlife. Moral of the story – plant wild sunflowers.

PAINTER LADY – You don’t get to be the most widespread butterfly in the world (found everywhere except Antarctica and South America) by being a picky eater. It migrates north in spring – sometimes in large numbers and sometimes in small.

THIN-LEGGED WOLF SPIDER – This Thin-legged wolf spider formed an egg sac (with about 50 eggs inside), attached it to her spinnerets and is going about her business. When the eggs hatch, her young will climb up on her abdomen and ride around piggyback for a few weeks before dismounting and going about their lives.

GREAT BLACK WASP and GREAT GOLDEN DIGGER WASP – Two impressive (1 ¼” long) wasps grace the flower tops at the end of summer. Both are good pollinators, both are solitary species that eat pollen and nectar, and both dig tunnels and provision chambers with paralyzed insects for their eventual offspring. Great Black Wasps https://uwm.edu/field-station/great-black-wasp/ select crickets and grasshoppers for their young’s’ pantry, and so do Great Golden digger wasps https://uwm.edu/field-station/great-golden-digger-wasp-family-sphecidae/. Neither is aggressive.

The moral of the story? Plant lemon horsemint.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – the Dragonflies

Bug o’the Week

Early Summer Scenes the Dragonflies

Greetings, BugFans,

Spring was long and cool, an arrangement that the BugLady usually applauds (she savors every little step into spring, and she doesn’t like it when the phenology of six weeks is squished into one or two). But this year bordered on the ridiculous. Water warms slowly and steadily (those of us that live in the air often experience dramatic daily fluctuations), so a cold spring means that dragonfly and damselfly naiads, which grow up underwater, are slow to wake up and consume those final calories before emerging as adults. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that dragonflies and damselflies have been a little late this year, but with some dedicated stalking, the BugLady found some cool things as summer neared, including many tender, young, recently-emerged odonates.

EASTERN PONDHAWK WITH MITES: When the BugLady first saw this dragonfly, she thought that for some reason his abdomen had gotten muddy, but a peek through the camera lens revealed that he was carrying a huge load of water mites. Adult water mites are (mostly) free swimming carnivores, but they go through a tick-like nymphal stage in which they attach to and feed on other aquatic invertebrates (see their story at https://uwm.edu/field-station/water-mite-redux/).

EXUVIA ON POTAMOGETON: The leaves and flower stalks of aquatic plants in the genus Potamogeton are dragon and damselfly magnets. Here, a female Violet/Variable Dancer damselfly stands on a leaf as she oviposits in an underwater stem. The empty damselfly skins (exuvia) that decorate the flower stalk show that it has been a busy place.

EASTERN FORKTAIL: A female Eastern Forktail damselfly oviposits directly into the flower stalk. The stalk will sink, and when her eggs hatch, her young will swim out into the water.

COMMON WHITETAIL: A recently-emerged female Common Whitetail dragonfly crawled out of the water, climbed 15” up the river bank, and then trekked another two feet across mown grass to find the perfect spot to stop and gather strength for her life in the air. Dragonflies may take a few days to achieve their mature coloration – here’s what she’ll look like when the spots on her wings intensify https://bugguide.net/node/view/7160, and here’s the male https://bugguide.net/node/view/27710.

RACKET-TAILED EMERALD: These very inquisitive dragonflies fly back and forth above the trail as you walk along. When the sun is at your back, the glowing eyes of an approaching emerald are a religious experience!

Slender Bluet

Marsh Bluet

SLENDER BLUET DAMSELFLY: Bluets can be a confusing bunch of damselflies. Some species are very distinct – one is neon blue at one end and yellow at the other, one is rainbow-colored, one is orange, and a few Eastern species are red. But for many of the blue and black species, scrutinizing the male’s rear appendages is the best way to identify them (the Marsh Bluet terminates in a tiny pipe wrench). You can narrow the field by eyeballing the comparative amounts of blue and black on the abdomen and putting them into the “blue-type,” “black-type,” or “intermediate-type” category. This young male, who is in what BugFan Bob calls “that embarrassing purple stage,” will be a spectacular black-type bluet when he matures https://bugguide.net/node/view/1613844/bgimage. And one of these days, the Slender Bluet will get a BOTW of its own.

DOT TAILED WHITEFACE: Not long out of the water, this Dot-tailed Whiteface clings to its shed skin (which clings to an Equisetum stalk) as it pumps up its wings.

DRAGONFLY DOW (dead on the water): Whether it was chased by a predator or just miscalculated, this dragonfly got too close to the water and adhered to its sticky surface film. Beautiful even in death, its body is returning nutrients to the pond that nurtured it.

COMMON GREEN DARNER: Common Green Darners, one of our biggest dragonflies, are with us from May through September. Wisconsin has two populations – migratory and resident. Migratory darners like these, photographed in early May, arrive from the southeastern part of the US, mate, and put their eggs into the water, and their naiads develop during the summer. About the time these early birds are wearing out (mid-June), the resident population begins to emerge, and they fill the skies until the end of summer. The migrants emerge as adults at the end of August, and fly south, leaving no eggs in the ponds, but the eggs of the resident population overwinter under the ice. A dragonfly do-si-do.

AMERICAN RUBYSPOT: Dragonflies and damselflies are fascinating, and they do some amazing things. They can be a challenge to photograph and to identify, and some are just plain beautiful!

RIVER JEWELWING: River Jewelwings are much less common where the BugLady lives than are the spectacular Ebony Jewelwings (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1840629/bgimage), so she was thrilled to get a picture of one. Jewelwings and Rubyspots are members of the Broad-winged damselfly family Calopterygidae (which means “beautiful wing”), and they’re sometimes called river damsels because of their preferred haunts.

SKIMMING BLUETS: The BugLady aimed her camera at an odd-looking configuration on a water lily leaf and saw one-and-a-half damselflies. Apparently, a male and female were flying in tandem when a hungry bird came along and bit off the female’s abdomen. When the pair landed, two Mesovelid bugs (aggressive scavengers and predators), sensed “blood in the water” and zipped in to sip her bodily fluids (hemolymph). Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water….

Go outside – look for dragonflies!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Tag: damselfly