Author: rbuchholz

Howdy, BugFans,

People often ask the BugLady what her favorite bug is, and although there’s a crowded field for second place, the Tiger Swallowtail is the hands-down winner.  Most Impressive Bug?  The Black horse fly (Tabanus atratus) (family Tabanidae) is certainly high on that list, and although she knows that it’s (probably) not going to pursue her (they generally stalk non-human mammals), just seeing one always gives her a bit of a start.  We have visited the Black horse fly in the past, but briefly, and it’s time to fill in some gaps in its biography.  This fly is not the tiny, humpbacked Black fly that lives near rivers and torments all comers.

Yes, there are larger flies in the neighborhood – some of the robber flies, for example, are bigger – but they lack the substance of this fly.  The official measurement of 20 to 28 mm (an inch-ish) just doesn’t do it justice.  As one bugguide.net correspondent put it: “This is the largest fly I have ever seen, I actually saw two of these at two different locations on the same day. I am guessing it is a horsefly of some sort. A handful of these things ought to be able to carry a horse as a ‘to-go’ meal!”

The Black horse fly is mostly found east of the Rockies.  Its larvae live in wet/damp places at the edges of wetlands, and the adults are generally found within a mile or so of the ponds they grew up in.

“Atratus” means “clothed in black,” and one of the common names for this fly is the Mourning fly.  Adults are variously dark gray/black/brownish-purple, with equally dark wings https://bugguide.net/node/view/329949/bgimage, and it’s been suggested that they’re the infamous “blue-tailed fly” from the folk song “Jimmy Crack Corn” https://bugguide.net/node/view/367846/bgimage.  They can be a challenge to photograph because their velvety, black color sucks up the light.  Males have wrap-around (holoptic) eyes that touch at the top of the head https://bugguide.net/node/view/196524/bgimage, and females’ eyes are separated (dichoptic) https://bugguide.net/node/view/458709/bgimage.

Their larvae are pale with dark bands https://bugguide.net/node/view/677968 and may be twice as long as their elders when mature.  They have pointy mouthparts that can pack quite a punch if you mishandle one.

Black horse flies lay their eggs in mounds https://bugguide.net/node/view/1014993/bgimage on sedges and other vegetation above water or wet ground, and they may deposit three or four such masses https://bugguide.net/node/view/828008/bgimage.  The newly-hatched larvae drop down and dig into the detritus or mud.

According to Werner Marchand in the Monographs of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (1920), “Walsh found his aquatic larvae, on many occasions, ‘amongst floating ‘rejectamenta.’  On one occasion, he found six or seven specimens in the interior of a floating log so soft and rotten that it could be cut like cheese.”  He goes on to say that “when handled, the larva is, according to Walsh, ‘very vigorous and restless,’ and burrows with great strength between the fingers, and even on a smooth table, walks as fast as any ordinary caterpillar, backwards or forward; when placed in a vessel of water it swims vigorously, twice the length of its body at every stroke...”

According to Marchand, the larvae can produce sound “…the crackling noise was freely produced by full-grown Tabanus atrata larvae, and … was chiefly heard when the larvae were disturbed and defending themselves with their sharp mandibles.  The coincidence of the two phenomena was so close that I am bound to assume that the sound was produced by means of the mandibles.”

They climb up onto drier ground to pupate in the soil.  Marchand says that “the pupa state lasts but a few days, and before the emergence of the fly the pupa is pushed to the surface of the ground by means of the bristles and thorns of the abdomen, with bending movements of the body.”  For more about what happens in a pupal case, see http://uwm.edu/field-station/pupal-cases/.

Much of what is written about Black horse flies concerns their food and feeding habits.  The larvae are active predators.  Marchand again: “On September 2, 1863, he found a nearly full-grown larva among floating rejectamenta, and between that date and September 23, this larva devoured ‘the mollusks of eleven univalves’ (genus Planorbus) from one-half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter; and on three separate occasions observed it work its way into the mouth of the shell.”  They eat other aquatic invertebrates, too, and small vertebrates, and even their tabanid brethren.  Jones and Anthony, in The Tabanidae (Diptera) of Florida write “medium to large-size larvae of Tabanus atrata are extremely aggressive.  When two or more are placed in the same container, only a short time usually elapses before all are dead except one.  The survivor will feed on the victim if hungry, but generally it appears that a larva kills to avoid being killed.”

Like mosquitoes, female tabanids need a blood meal in order to maximize reproduction.  Both males and females feed on nectar from flowers (he lacks her piercing mouthparts), but when she is in reproductive mode, a female will stalk livestock and other large mammals by their movement and their CO² trail.  She punctures her victim’s skin with a pretty sophisticated set of blades and is classed as a sanguivore – more specifically, she is a telmophage, because she laps up the resulting pool of blood instead of sucking it (unlike mosquitoes, who are “vessel feeders” or solenophages that employ a “syringe and pump”).

Humans are generally not targets, but a bite is, apparently, unforgettable.  When present in numbers, these flies can be a problem for livestock due to blood loss, distress, and potential disease transmission.

Several resources pointed out something that the BugLady had never really thought about before – that being a sanguivore, getting a meal by puncturing an animal that is larger and that takes exception to being punctured, is a dangerous way to make a living.  The blood is, as one researcher points out, “not freely given,” and a potential victim may simply swat its tormentor away or may eat it.  The BugLady once went on a canoe trip on the Oconto River in Wisconsin where she was accompanied by clouds of deer flies and learned to swat them without breaking stroke, and after nine hours on the water, there was a layer of dead deer flies over the bottom of the canoe (the 50 yards of whitewater just before the pull-out spot were pretty memorable, too).

Another down-side of blood-feeding is that depending on the body temperature of the “pierc-ee,” the piercer is courting temperature shock by ingesting a substance that is much warmer than it is.

The “take-home” is that sanguivores need to do their work in a hurry (solenophages tend to get in and out more quickly and quietly than telmophages), and that the nutrition received needs to be worth the energy – and risk – required to extract it.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Salutations, BugFans,

Introducing some insects that, while not totally unsung, still have a pretty low profile.

The YELLOW-HEADED CUTWORM (Apamea amputatrix) is a lovely little moth that’s named for its caterpillar, a caterpillar that has, alas, a bad reputation.  The name “cutworm” is given to caterpillars in the family Noctuidae, subfamily Noctuinae, many of which are agricultural pests.  A Yellow-headed cutworm feeds at the soil surface.  Its long list of host plants includes food crops like lettuce, cabbage, wheat, corn, and fruit tree seedlings, and horticultural plantings like grass and roses – a broad menu that allows it to exist across North America (minus the Great Plains and much of the southeastern US), well up into Canada.

And yet.  The Yellow-headed cutworm has a healthy-but-not-huge on-line presence, but it’s not the typical collection of Extension bulletins that mark a real agricultural/horticultural scourge.  It’s often lumped into accounts of more impactful relatives; apparently, it can do some damage during “epidemic outbreaks,” but the rest of the time, it’s not an important pest.

Adults vary in color http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=9348, and here’s a caterpillar http://bugguide.net/node/view/854317/bgimage.

What a dynamite oak gall!  The CLUSTERED MIDRIB GALL occurs on various white oaks and is caused by a tiny (a few millimeters long) wasp called (not surprisingly) the Clustered Midrib Gall Wasp (Andricus dimorphus) https://bugguide.net/node/view/597513/bgimage.  Galls are growths of plant tissue that are (largely) instigated by insects and mites.  Oaks host about 40% of the 2,000+ different kinds of galls found in North America, and tiny wasps in the gall wasp family Cynipidae are responsible for a lot galls on oak stems and leaves http://uwm.edu/field-station/galls-ii/.

Many gall-makers lay a single egg at a time, but the female CMGW lays her eggs in clusters, and so these lovely ¼” to ½” galls occur in clusters.  Albert Kinsey, in his Studies of Cynipidae, says that there’s a six week lapse between egg-laying and the first appearance of visible galls, and another few months before the galls are full grown.  The galls can be downright rosy in color when young, changing to tan/gray and becoming thin-walled as they age.  The adult wasp emerges the following spring to start the whole thing over again.

Tiny as these wasps are, there are wasps that parasitize them, finding their larvae even through the solid, fleshy wall of the gall.  According to the folks at Wildwood Park, in Virginia, “If you want to see an adult, your best bet is to take some galls home, put them in a jar and wait to see what comes out. But, maybe not. Although the gall is a good protection from predators, other tiny wasps parasitize the gall wasps, inserting their ovipositors (egg-laying organs) into the gall and laying an egg in the grub. The parasitic wasp egg then hatches into a grub which eats the gall wasp and emerges in its stead. On top of that, still other wasps parasitize the parasites, laying their eggs in the parasitic grub. So what comes out could be a gall wasp, a wasp that ate the gall wasp, or a wasp that ate the wasp that ate the gall wasp.”

Or, as Johnathan Swift once wrote:

“So, naturalists observe, a flea

has smaller fleas that on him prey;

and these have smaller still to bite ’em;

and so proceed ad infinitum.”

This WATERCRESS LEAF BEETLE, a.k.a Mustard beetle (Phaedon viridis) (probably), looks like a mini-version of the Dogbane leaf beetle.  It’s in the large and varied Leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae.

The BugLady couldn’t find a lot of contemporary biographical information about this shiny little beetle, but she did find Bulletin 66, printed by the US Department of Entomology in 1910 that discussed a watercress beetle called Phaedon aeruginosa, which turned out to be the same species.  According to F.H. Chittenden (Entomologist in charge of Breeding Experiments), the eggs are laid on and both the larvae and the adults feed on the undersides of leaves.  The beetles overwinter as adults.

Chittenden goes on to say that “E.A. Fitch has observed the partiality of the latter for watercress and other crucifers that grow in watery places ……… “the beetles did not swim rapidly, but steadily, and they were seemingly not discomposed by being somewhat out of their natural element.  It seems probable that they fly from plant to plant, and like most beetles undoubtedly are able to float for many hours, and perhaps even swim short distances until they reach a landing place.”

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Salutations, BugFans,

Let us usher in the New Year with dragonflies.  Two of them.

 Whiteface dragonflies are in the genus Leucorrhinia in the large (1,000+ species) and glorious Skimmer family Libellulidae.  There are about 100 Libellulid species in North America, and seven of them are whitefaces.  We visited whitefaces in 2011 in the person of the Dot-tailed Whiteface.

Whitefaces are smallish (1 ¼” to 1 ½”), dark, black-legged dragonflies that, if you get a front view, have conspicuous white faces.  They are more brightly-colored when young, developing varying degrees of pruinosity (a covering of tiny, waxy flakes); immatures and younger females have yellow spotting.  Some male whitefaces have striking, red markings (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1321454/bgimage), and of the others, the Wisconsin Odonata Survey says “Because species within this genus are similar-looking and change in appearance as they age, careful observation and considerable practice is required to correctly identify both genders of various ages of all species.”  The BugLady is still practicing.

Both species are roughly northeastern in distribution, ranging from the northern Great Plains, across the northern tier of states, well up into Canada and east to Nova Scotia, but the Belted Whiteface is found farther west than the Frosted.  Dennis Paulson, in Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, says, “well-adapted to northern latitudes, they are almost always seen perched flat on light-colored rocks, logs, and tree trunks in the morning, where their dark coloration allows quick warming in the sun.”  They like ponds, lakes and marshes with lots of emergent vegetation and boggy edges and maybe a bit of floating sphagnum thrown in for good measure.

Mating is a longish procedure, 20 to 30 minutes, and after perching for a while, the female oviposits solo (but hover-guarded by the nearby male), tapping the tip of her abdomen on the water’s surface.

Chunky, aquatic naiads https://bugguide.net/node/view/757637/bgimage (and here’s an “empty,” https://bugguide.net/node/view/596134/bgimage) feed mostly on small aquatic invertebrates (larval mosquitoes, flies, mayfly naiads, freshwater shrimp. etc.), supplemented by the odd tadpole and tiny fish; their hunting strategy consists of lurking in the submerged pondweeds and ambushing rather than actively pursuing their prey.  It’s tough/impossible to distinguish between the naiads of these two species.  Adults hunt from a low perch, flying up to catch butterflies, moths, ants, mayflies, flies, and mosquitoes.

Their flight periods overlap, with the Belted starting a little earlier (mid-May) and the Frosted finishing a bit later (early September).

The FROSTED WHITEFACE (Leucorrhinia frigida) https://bugguide.net/node/view/45701/bgimage and https://bugguide.net/node/view/1253888/bgimage, is a tad smaller and stockier than the Belted Whiteface, and some books say that it can be mistaken for a Chalk-fronted Corporal at first glance.  Males may defend a small mating/ovipositing territory (a few square yards) against intrusion from all comers, not just those of his species.  If a rival male approaches while his female is ovipositing, he will intercept the intruder and hold him until she is finished.  When she’s not ovipositing, a female lives away from the water.  Kurt Mead, in Dragonflies of the North Woods, says that “the Frosted hunts from a perch on low plants along the water’s edge.  May also pursue prey through low vegetation, zipping through the maze of stems.”

The BELTED WHITEFACE (Leucorrhinia proxima) (hopefully), was renamed in 2010, its old name being the Red-waisted Whiteface https://bugguide.net/node/view/433450/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/436131/bgimage, andhttps://bugguide.net/node/view/1243815/bgimage.  Here’s what the older males look like http://bugguide.net/node/view/18314.  According to the Wisconsin Odonata Survey, the farther east you go, the more likely it is that the males will have yellow “belts” instead of red ones, and we have both color forms here.

Males only chase other males of the same species, and they sometimes attempt to attach themselves to a mating wheel consisting of a female and another male.

Paulson notes that “Away from water, perches on ground to well up in trees. Pairs couple at water, immediately fly in wheel away from water into shrubs and trees.”  Mead adds that “The Belted may disappear when the sun dips behind a cloud; when the full sun returns, so will the Belted.  This is true for many dragonfly species, which need solar heating for optimal flight efficiency.”

They both appear in lots of on-line photo galleries.

Check out the new (3^rd) edition of Kurt Mead’s Dragonflies of the North Woods.

Thinking hard about dragonfly weather,

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Salutations, BugFans,

BugFan Marjie says that, on the bright side, she hasn’t gotten any bug bites recently.  That would be an interesting poll to take – bug bites vs below zero temperatures.  Anyway, the BugLady has been busy cooking and eating and washing dishes [repeat as needed], so here’s a slightly modified rerun from the spring of 2012.  

Among the critters that the BugLady has been seeing in the Ephemeral Pond lately have been a variety of flatworms that are generally called planarians.  The majority of members of the phylum Platyhelminthes (the flatworms – a phylum that includes the notorious tapeworms and flukes) are parasitic; planarians are labeled the only “free-living” (non-parasitic) flatworms in the bunch.  Planarians are easily overlooked, but amazing, critters.  Although they have only primitive brains, planarians can learn; some have green thumbs; and because of their super-powers, they may have a leg up on this “immortality” thing.

OK – maybe not bugs, except for BOTW purposes.

Here’s the technical bit – within the phylum Platyhelminthes is the class Turbellaria (the non-parasitic guys).  Most turbellarians are small – less than an inch long – and many are microscopic.  Class Turbellaria is broken down into several orders, some of whose members only live in salt water, but two orders of flatworms that live in fresh water are Tricladida and Rhabdocoella.  Tricladida have fancy, three-branched “guts” (gastrovascular cavities) and are referred to by those in the inner circles as triclads or planarians, while Rhabdocoela have simple “guts” and are called Rhabdocoels or, loosely, planarians.  Flatworms are not related to segmented worms like earthworms and leeches, though they are often mistaken for leeches.

Turbellarians live in all kinds of water – moving, still, ephemeral, warm, cool and downright cold – and a few hang out above the water line on damp mosses.  North America is home to about 200 species of these free-living freshwater flatworms.  Triclads prefer running water because they require high levels of dissolved oxygen; rhabdocoels can tolerate low-to-non-existent oxygen levels, which allows them to thrive in ephemeral ponds.  So the BugLady, whose flatworm identification skills are limited to “Look!  There’s a planarian!” assumes that she’s been photographing ephemeral pond rhabdocoels.

A generic flatworm is small and flat because it doesn’t have lungs or blood vessels to circulate oxygen and nutrients – when stuff simply diffuses through your body, you just can’t afford to grow very big, or thick, or complex.  It is bilaterally symmetrical – its right side matches its left side.  While some marine flatworms are pretty flashy, their freshwater cousins tend to be drab, camouflaged among the aquatic plants and the debris on the pond or stream floor.  Many species have a recognizable arrow-shaped head with pointy flaps that stick out like tiny ears, and two spots that look like crossed eyes.  The mouth is located at the tip of a small, hose-like tube (the pharynx) that tucks into the gastrovascular cavity in the middle of the flatworm’s underside.  Food enters, and wastes exit, through the same tube.  It breathes through its outer covering (epidermis).

A turbellarian’s outside, especially its underside, is covered with fine, hair-like cilia.  Moving from Point A to Point B involves producing a layer of mucous that covers the body and then using the movements of the cilia (and muscle waves in larger specimens) to glide along on underwater surfaces, like a snail.  Like a snail it can also move, belly up, on the underside of the surface film of the pond, and some species use their cilia to swim.  According to Voshell in A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America, “The scientific name Turbellaria came from the Latin word “turba” meaning confusion, crowd, bustle, or stir.  This refers to the minute currents created in the water as flatworms wave the very small hairs on the bottom of their bodies to glide across the substrate.”  Mini-currents set in motion by mini-hairs on mini-animals.

The nervous system is made up of some ganglia in the head (the “brain”) and a few pairs of branched nerves that run from tip to toe.  With their eyespots, planarians sense tiny changes in the intensity of light (which they avoid).  They seem to detect their food chemically – like sharks, they hone in on meat juices in their environment.  They are sensitive to vibration, to temperature change, to currents, to smell, and to chemicals.  Many rhabdocoels also have a few long, sensory cilia.

Most planarians are scavengers and carnivores (and cannibals).  A hungry planarian settles above its food (dying or recently dead invertebrates), extends its pharynx onto the organic material and suctions fluids/soft tissues/tiny organisms into its “gut.”  There are no digestive juices, but large (phagocytic) cells that line the gastrovascular cavity pick up nutrients which then diffuse through them into other cells in the animal.  Some species of planarians secrete a strand of mucous onto the substrate and then roll it up and eat it, along with all the tiny algae, bacteria and single-celled critters that stick to it.

Planarians produce more planarians in two ways, and most species can employ both.  Almost all planarians are hermaphroditic, with each individual having both male and female organs, but it still takes two to tango.  They can form thin-shelled summer eggs that hatch in two weeks, and thick-shelled winter eggs that don’t hatch until spring.  Young planarians emerge looking like mini-adults.  Adults generally live a few months, but some can encyst themselves and survive the drought cycle of an ephemeral pond.

But planarians are famous for their asexual exploits – they can divide their bodies on purpose and can regenerate the missing end of each section, though they’re more likely to reproduce this way in warmer water temperatures.  Many species, especially rhabdocoels, routinely form a progressively-narrowing constriction behind the pharynx which eventually separates them into two pieces, and each end then grows into a complete individual.  Rhabdocoels often duplicate their internal organs before splitting.  Scientists have demonstrated that if you chop a planarian into multiple pieces, most will regenerate (although the nearer each piece was to the head, the more successful the regeneration will be, suggesting that the chemical that drives this event is more concentrated fore than aft).  Philosophers would say that because of this talent, planarians have achieved immortality, since a tiny bit of the First Planarian is, arguably, still in circulation today.

Using light and tiny electric shocks, scientists have “taught” or conditioned planarians to run mazes.  If a trained planarian is cut in pieces, most sections “remember” the way through the maze after they’ve regenerated (but grinding up “trained” planarians and feeding them to other planarians does not transmit memory) (yes, it’s been tried).

The BugLady is completely enthralled by these small (4 or 5mm), bright green, totally astonishing ephemeral pond planarians.  She thinks that these rhabdocoels are in the genus Dalyellia, possibly Dalyellia viridis, though some other genera get green, too.  Apparently, the green color is due to algae that exist, grow, photosynthesize and reproduce within the planarian’s tissues.  Planarians may ingest the algae and/or it may be a gift from their Mom/Dad, deposited in the eggs.  Green planarians tend their gardens well – they are more sun-loving than their brown-gray-black-mottled cousins.

What’s the point?  In this symbiotic relationship (a relationship that benefits both parties), the planarian “breathes” the oxygen that is produced by its algae during photosynthesis (half the oxygen it uses may come from its algae), and it probably helps itself to some of the simple sugars the algae make, too.  (Fast Food?)  Its built-in “oxygen tank” allows it to tolerate oxygen-deprived habitats.  The algae use the CO2 and nitrogen products that the planarian gives off as a waste material, and BugFan Chris suggests that the algae also gain protection within this tiny, mobile greenhouse (planarians have few predators).  Some algae-bearing planarians stop eating “outside” food.

The spheres seen within the green planarians are eggs.

Some planarian trivia: the sperm cells of most species of planarians have two tails instead of the almost-universal single tail.

And what’s the odd background on the picture of the white planarian?  A close-up of the seat of an Aldo Leopold bench, that’s what.  Before this collecting trip, the BugLady’s ephemeral pond tool kit included nets and dishes and droppers and white plastic spoons.  When she found this little guy, she had nothing to photograph it on (now she carries a black plastic spoon, too), so she slurped it up (gently) in a dropper and squirted it out on the darkish seat of a nearby bench.

 Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Greetings of the Season, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 2018 bring you health and happiness.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Howdy, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whew!

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

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

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Howdy, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Salutations, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Salutations, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The BugLady

Howdy, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

Some highlights of a bee’s biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Redmond, The BugLady