Author: rbuchholz

Greetings, BugFans,

It has been a hot and sticky summer (and spring), but hot and sticky seems to agree with bugs.  Everywhere you look, you see adult insects, young insects, and the kinds of activity that will result in them.  Here are some sights from the BugLady’s walks in southeastern Wisconsin.

Summer belongs to BEE FLIES, large and small.  This one, Bombylius fulvibasoides (probably) is one of the little teddy bears of the bunch.  Bee flies dart and hover (they’re different from flower/hover/syrphid flies, which also dart and hover), and they suck nectar through long proboscises, and when they’re not doing that, they’re looking for the nests of solitary bees/wasps, and a few others.  Members of one genus of bee flies are nicknamed “bombers” for their habit of hovering at the entrance of the bee’s ground nest and lobbing eggs down into it, but others land and plant an egg on the soil near the entrance.  Their offspring hatch and then hike down the tunnel to feed the larvae they find within.

Three species of clear-winged Hemaris moths grace our area.  This HUMMINGBIRD or CINNAMON CLEARWING MOTH (Hemaris thysbe) was ovipositing on a high-bush cranberry.  Their caterpillars, whose main food plants are in the viburnum/honeysuckle family, are pretty awesome, too http://bugguide.net/node/view/71006 (and sometimes red http://bugguide.net/node/view/30160/bgimage).  The moths hover at tubular flowers like bergamot, but they also like thistles.

The BugLady loves naked miterwort, whose tiny flowers can be covered by the eraser on a #2 pencil.  Who, she always wonders, is the flower putting on that finery for?  (BugFan Mary says it’s a “prom dress.”)  Some sources say that fungus gnats are the pollinators, but the BugLady surprised a small CLICK BEETLE (with pollen on its antennae) whose presence seemed purposeful.

A photo essay isn’t complete without a CRAB SPIDER?  Yes, we can see you.

What a treat to come across a DOGBANE LEAF BEETLE!  Its incandescence is the result of the play of light on tiny, tilted plates that overlay its pigment layer.  Light bounces off both the pigment and the plates, and the colors change with the angle of the observer.  Since the dogbane it feeds on is poisonous, its conspicuous (aposematic) coloration presumably warns potential predators not to mess with it.

At a hair less than an inch long, EASTERN AMBERWINGS are our second-smallest dragonfly, but what a lot of bang for your buck!  The BugLady heard somewhere that cameras have trouble focusing on orange.  She doubts that it’s true, but she grabbed hold of it as an excuse for all those out-of-focus amberwing shots on the cutting room floor.

Composites and some other flowers have been decorated with caterpillars of the delicately-green WAVY-LINED EMERALD moth (http://bugguide.net/node/view/1211089/bgimage), and the caterpillars themselves have been decorated with bits of plant material.  They camouflage themselves while grazing by poking petals, ray flowers, etc. onto tiny projections on their exoskeletons, and when they molt, they have to start over.

A male BUSH KATYDID pauses its night song to groom itself below the porch light.

With the leaf ahead of it thick with aphids, this ASIAN MULTICOLORED LADYBUG looks like it’s going to start at the top and eat its way to the bottom of the milkweed leaf.  Bon appetit.

Besides invertebrates, the BugLady also stalks non-flowering plants (and flowering plants, and vertebrates, and landscapes), so this female EMERALD SPREADWING damselfly on the fertile stalk of royal fern was a “two-fer.”  Royal ferns don’t hide their spore cases on the undersides of their leaves like we learned in high school, they grow them on fertile stalks at the tips of leafy stalks.  There are nine or ten Spreadwings (genus Lestes) that appear throughout the season.

WHITE-FACED MEADOWHAWKS in a mating wheel.  He deposits bodily fluids in a receptacle (hamulus) on the underside of his second and third abdominal segments.  When he grabs a female by the back of her head, she arcs her abdomen up to retrieve it, forming a wheel.  The pair may sit for a while or even fly while thus attached, before she starts laying eggs.

Not all red milkweed beetles are Red milkweed beetles.  Look closely, and you’ll see pale rings around the antennae.  Look even more closely, and you’ll see the red femurs on this RED-FEMURED MILKWEED BEETLE.

The BugLady was photographing MULLEIN WEEVILS, those imported weevils that help to control the often-invasive imported mullein, when she noted this tableaux.  She fears that it did not end well (at least for the weevils).

This female ROBBER FLY is ovipositing in an inhospitable spot, but, no worries, her offspring will hatch and drop to the ground to live in the loose soil/surface debris/rotting wood or bark.  Though legless, they’re said to prey on worms, larvae, and eggs that they find around them, but feeding on plant materials, and/or “secretions” of fellow insects has also been postulated, as has a change in diet through the different larval stages.  Adults spot their prey from perches, and they may grab insects larger than they are (as well as other robber flies).  Some make a loud buzz in flight.

Meanwhile, tree crickets are calling in the BugLady’s field; here’s a link to the tree cricket BOTW: https://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/treecrickets.cfm.

And – here’s a nice video and article about buzz pollination:  http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/19/486501293/watch-the-secret-buzz-only-bumblebees-know-to-unlock-our-favorite-crops?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160719&utm_campaign=news&utm_term=nprnews.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Greetings, BugFans,

This BOTW started out to be about one thing – preconceived notions, wherein the BugLady thinks she knows what insect she’s approaching, only it isn’t – and it turned out to be about something way more exciting – thick-headed flies and “adaptive manipulation.”  Eventually.  Put your feet up – this tale takes some telling.

When wild geraniums are in bloom, they’re visited by early pollinators like mining bees, and the BugLady takes lots of shots of the pollen-covered bees cozying up to wild geranium stamens.  (OK, the BugLady can’t resist sharing this surreal picture of pollen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen#/media/File:Misc_pollen_colorized.jpg).  When the BugLady spotted yet another occupied flower, she almost didn’t walk over to check it.  Surprise!  This was not just another mining bee, it was a Thick-headed fly in the genus Myopa.  Imagine seeing this beauty on the other side of your lens!

Thick-headed flies were mentioned briefly in a “Bugs without Bios” episode five years ago https://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/bugs-without-bios2.cfm.  They are in the small family Conopidae (which means “cone-faced”) and they come in a variety of forms – long-skinny-leggy (http://bugguide.net/node/view/1226272/bgpage), chunky-housefly-ish (http://bugguide.net/node/view/1144515/bgpage), and waspy (http://bugguide.net/node/view/206927/bgpage).  The BugLady was amazed at the number of photo sites devoted to these flies – a whole bunch of people are finding, admiring, and photographing them.

This particular thick-headed fly looks like it’s part of what’s called the “Myopa curticornis species complex” – that is, as bugguide.net tells us, “a group of 4 species (M. curticornis, M. clausa, M. perplexa and M. rubida) separated by characters that can grade into one another, sometimes making a species ID difficult or unfeasible.”  Myopa clausa occurs from Coast to Coast, but it’s the only one of the four species that occurs east of the Rockies.

Adults nectar on flowers, but Ms. Myopa has an ulterior motive for being there – she’s looking for hosts for her offspring.  Thick-headed fly larvae are parasitoids of ants, bees, wasps, grasshoppers, crickets, and a few other groups. Myopa targets honey bees, sweat bees, and Anthophora bees http://bugguide.net/node/view/579318/bgimage, and it has a unique egg delivery system.  Think “heat-seeking missile,” but without the heat.  When she spies a potential host, she flies up, intercepts the incoming bee in flight, grabs it, and inserts a single egg between two of its abdominal segments (alternatively, the two fall to the ground and she does the deed there).  According to The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders, “Victims of thick-headed flies offer little resistance to being caught.  They are held captive during the short flight while the egg is being attached.”

Quick parasitoid review: there’s an old saying, “A good parasite doesn’t kill its host.”  A good parasitoid, however, does.  Slowly.  Keeping it alive by feeding first on the non-essential tissues, and moving on to the vital organs as the interloper approaches pupation and doesn’t need a live host anymore.  The Myopa fly overwinters as a pupa in its host’s body.

Fast forward two months, and the BugLady sighted what she thought was a solitary wasp called a potter wasp (http://bugguide.net/node/view/968790/bgimage), but which turned out to be another thick-headed fly, Physocephala tibialis(probably).  Bugguide.net calls Physocephala the most commonly seen genus of thick-headed flies.  P. tibialis occurs east of a line from Wisconsin to Texas.

The gory details: Physocephala tibialis targets the two-spotted bumblebee (Bombus bimaculatus, brown-belted bumblebee (B. grisecollis) and common Eastern bumblebee (B. impatiens) and its modus operandi is similar to that of other family members.  Typically, it’s the worker bees that get infested – the queens are active earlier and are tucked away in the nest by the time Physocephala emerges (other species of Physocephala, though, may occupy the queens of late emerging bumblebee species).  There have been a number of studies that show that the life spans of parasitized bumblebees aren’t significantly shortened, though as the parasitoid grows, the bee can’t carry home as much nectar.  Bumblebees will chill, literally, to put off the inevitable, seeking cooler spots, even sleeping outside at night to slow the growth within them.  If lots of the workers in a nest are infested, future queens may be smaller in size and may not have enough energy to get through the winter.

The fly larvae pupate in their host’s body – a simple, declarative sentence with some interesting layers.  First of all, although most fly larvae (maggots) have mouthparts that allow them to chew, their elders do not; adults mainly suck/sponge up soft-ish liquids, sometimes using their saliva to enhance the softening.

Question: Trapped within the dried husk of its former host and absent a Swiss army knife (or “teeth’) how does a newly emerged thick-headed fly effect its escape?

Answer: It uses its “ptilinum” (pronounced “ptilinum”).  In some (but not all) groups of flies, the emerging fly has an “eversible pouch” on the top of its head that it can inflate like a tiny balloon in order to push its way out of a tight spot.  Small, tactile hairs on the balloon’s surface help to guide the fly.  Conopid flies have a thicker ptilinium than most other flies, and both ptilinum and mouthparts are covered with hard scales, presumably to give an extra assist in emerging from an underground host/pupal case (Physocephala uses its legs and mouthparts to pry its way out once an exit is created).  After its “single use,” the ptilinum is reabsorbed.  (GREAT photos at: https://bugtracks.wordpress.com/2015/09/30/balloon-faced-flies-part-3/).

But wait – “emerging from an underground host/pupal case?”  What are these bee parasitoids doing underground in the first place?  “Adaptive manipulation,” that’s what.  The BugLady has written about adaptive manipulation before, in the person of insects who are steered by a parasite/virus/bacteria go against their normal behavior and do something that aids their inhabitants’ reproductive strategies – climb to the top of a plant before death, jump in the pond, stand out in the open and be picked off by the next-host, etc.

Conopid flies, it seems, program their sun-loving hosts to dig into the soil during their last moments and die there (it’s called, aptly, “grave-digging behavior”).  The bee is past help, but the interment greatly improves the fly’s chances of surviving the winter and avoiding predators.

When infestation rates among Physocephala tibialis’ three potential hosts are compared, the self-burial rates of the Brown-belted bumblebee were about one-quarter those of the other two (which are more closely related to each other).  While it is true that some hosts can resist/overcome potential hostile takeovers, it seems that the brown-belted bumblebee may simply be “less suggestable” than the other two.  So, if it can’t reliably influence the bee, the fly may be less inclined to trust it with its offspring.

(Grisly enough for you, BugFan L?)

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Hey, BugFans,

It’s National Moth Week!  Right now (July 23^rd – 31^st)!!  Celebrating the 90% of the order Lepidoptera (“scaled wings”) that are not butterflies!  Moths are diverse, successful, showy, drab, cryptic, abundant, huge (a few have wingspreads close to 12”), micro, tasty, toxic objects of our admiration, confusion, superstition and reverence.  A Nature Center near you may be hosting moth-related activities; meanwhile, check out http://nationalmothweek.org/.  And, as the folks at The Nature Conservancy say, “Don’t just sit there, do mothing!” (http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/northamerica/national-moth-week.xml).  Here is some of the local talent.

What else could you possibly name it but the WHITE-STRIPED BLACK MOTH (Trichodezia albovittata)?  It’s in the moth family Geometridae, whose caterpillars are the “earth-measuring” inchworms, and it’s found over the northern two-thirds of North America.  The BugLady usually sees this beauty around wetlands.  Why?  Because its caterpillars (http://bugguide.net/node/view/1192235/bgimage) eat Jewelweed (a.k.a. Impatiens and Touch-me-not).  Caterpillars feed at night and remain motionless on a damaged leaf during the day.

Geometrids have paired “tympanal organs” (ears) at the base of the abdomen – most are nocturnal, and the ears let them hear communiques from other moths and the squeaks of bats.  Though the day-flying White-striped black moth doesn’t encounter bats and it doesn’t produce sound, its vestigial ears allow it to hear ultrasound anyway.  There are two generations per year.

The BugLady encountered the fingernail-sized BICOLORED PYRAUSTA (Pyrausta bicoloralis) (another well-named moth) in a wetland in mid-June in daylight, and more recently added it to her list of “porch light bugs.”  It’s in the family Crambidae (Crambid snout moths), and it can be found in the eastern half of North America, and south into South America.

Bugguide.net notes that the life cycle of this widely-distributed species is “unknown,” including the caterpillar host plant(s) (which means – no caterpillar pictures) but mentions that the genus name Pyrausta comes from the Greek naturalist Pliny and means “a winged insect that was supposed to live in fire.”  And – hmmmm – it seems like the moth on the BugLady’s not-very-clean window may be finding something to eat there.

The BALTIMORE SNOUT (Hypena baltimoralis), in the family Erebidae, has several aliases – it’s also called the Baltimore Hypena, and when it was in the genus Bomolocha, it was called the Baltimore Bomolocha.  This common moth is found in damp woods and edges east of the Great Plains; there, its caterpillars feed on maples leaves, especially those of red and silver maple http://bugguide.net/node/view/932614/bgimage.  There are two generations here annually, and more to the south.

The Baltimore Snout is sexually dimorphic (not something the Supreme Court needs to rule on, that just means that there are differences between males and females – in this case, in coloration – the wings of females have a whitish sheen).  There’s some variation in pattern and color http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=8442.

According to Wagner, in Owlet Caterpillars of the Northeast, “By day caterpillars rest on the undersides of leaves…..  When disturbed, Hypena either launch themselves from their purchase or drop a belay line.”

The LABRADOR CARPET (Xanthorhoe labradorensis) is another Geometrid.  Its range is listed as Alaska to Newfoundland, south as far as Louisiana and Mississippi, but with very few exceptions, the pictures submitted to bugguide.netcame from Canada and the northern tier of states.  The caterpillars feed on a variety of different plants, both woody and herbaceous.  There’s a single generation per year, and they probably overwinter as pupae.

There are a bunch of moths called carpets – not the notorious carpet moths, just carpets – Black-banded, Dark-marbled, Fragile white, Many-lined, Somber, Unadorned – it sounds like the namers of Carpets have as much fun as the namers of Underwings.  Why “carpet?”  One explanation comes from a book called Half Hours with Insects by A.S. Packard, published in Boston in 1881 (Google it – it’s lovely and you can read it on line).  “Some geometrid moths are called carpet moths in England from the large number observed carpeting the lichen and moss-grown rocks of Scotland.”

The FALSE/HAIRY-LEGGED WAINSCOT (Leucania pseudargyria) is in the Owlet moth family Noctuidae (the BugLady thinks that this is the False Wainscot rather than the almost-as-fuzzy Ursula Wainscot).  It lives from Manitoba to the Maritimes and south to the southern Appalachians; its habitat includes grasslands, wetlands, and woodlands, and its caterpillars munch on a variety of grasses, both wild and domestic.  There’s a single generation per year; the wainscot overwinters as an almost-mature caterpillar and pupates in the spring.

The PALE BEAUTY MOTH (Campaea perlata) (“perlata” meaning “pearly” in Latin) is a Geometrid whose caterpillar (http://bugguide.net/node/view/986140/bgimage) has its own name, the Fringed looper (the BugLady is tickled by those caterpillars whose ventral fringes allow them to melt into twigs).  They’re found in woodlands and shrublands from Alaska to Nova Scotia to North Carolina to central California.

Males and females look alike, except that females are much larger (more sexual dimorphism), and the adults range in color from pearly white through pale yellow to light green (http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=6796).  Sogaard, in Moths and Caterpillars of the North Woods, says that ”The pale green adults tend to perch pressed against the undersides of living leaves, where they are largely invisible, sheltered from direct sun and rain, and more energetically costly for birds to hunt.”  Caterpillars are generalist feeders on lots of woody plants from alder and to willow.  There’s one generation per year in the north, and the caterpillars seem to tough out the winter, exposed, on the bark of trees (Party on, nuthatches) and pupate in spring.  http://www.buglifecycle.com/?page_id=3334

Go outside.  Turn on the porch light.  Find some moths.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Salutations, BugFans,

The story begins on the river, two years ago, with flat, tan, elongated exuviae clinging to rocks and vegetation at the water’s edge (the BugLady didn’t know then, but she suspected, that the large, pale tenerals that flew from the ground, straight up into the trees, were part of the story, too).

Arrow clubtail exuviae, said BugFan Bob.  Arrow clubtail?

Is the Arrow clubtail rare?  Is it new to the area?  No and no (though the BugLady was new to the park and to the species).  The hunt was on.

Arrow clubtails are in the order Odonata and the Clubtail family, Gomphidae, which includes dragonflies with grand names like dragonhunter, snaketail, spinyleg, and sanddragon.  According to Paulson, in Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, “alert and fast-flying, many of them rare, local, and with brief flight seasons, clubtails are considered the most exciting group by many dragonfly enthusiasts”  Here’s why:  http://bugguide.net/node/view/652602/bgpage,http://bugguide.net/node/view/179632/bgpage, http://bugguide.net/node/view/234318/bgpage, http://bugguide.net/node/view/397702/bgpage, http://bugguide.net/node/view/892545/bgimage, and http://bugguide.net/node/view/262939/bgimage.  Paulson goes on to say that “despite their great diversity and local abundance, their behavior is very poorly known.”

Clubtails get their name from the three, variously-flared segments that form a noticeable “club” at the end of the abdomen of many (but not all) species.  The club is more prominent in males, and they will raise the end of the abdomen to display it, even in flight.  Most clubtails are medium-sized – about 2” to 2 ½” long – with unspotted wings and with striped bodies that use the zebra’s strategy of disruptive coloration as camouflage.  What Clubtails have in common is that their eyes (usually green, blue or gray) do not touch each other on the tops of their heads like those of most other dragonflies.

There are about one hundred species north of Mexico (900 world-wide), and they generally prefer well-oxygenated, running water rather than still.  Lacking an ovipositor, the female releases eggs by tapping the tip of her abdomen on the water, unguarded by the male.  The eggs overwinter and hatch when the water warms in the next spring; depending on water temperature, they may live underwater as naiads for several years.  Stocky, young Gomphids are ambush predators, burrowing shallowly into the substrate, lurking with only their eyes exposed (the better to see you with, my dear) and the tip of their abdomen (for breathing).

[Sidebar – when the BugLady first took entomology, oh-so-long ago, the immature stage of insects that practiced Complete metamorphosis (egg to larva to pupa to adult – flies, beetles, wasps, etc.) were called larvae.  Immatures of terrestrial insects with Incomplete metamorphosis (that hatch looking like their elders and add reproductive equipment and (usually) wings as they grow – true bugs, grasshoppers, etc.) were called nymphs, and immatures of aquatic species with Incomplete metamorphosis were called naiads.  This distinction was espoused a century ago by the great Cornell entomologist John Henry Comstock (in whose Hall the BugLady studied bugs).  Convention has relaxed in recent years and young Odonates are called all three, but old habits die hard.]

There were more exuviae in the summer of 2015 and a few in the first week of July, 2016.  Then, on July 11, the BugLady saw a stubby, inch-high projection on top of a rock about six feet off shore.  An emerging Arrow clubtail!!  The BugLady’s zoom lens chose this moment to initiate a conversation about the Zen of focusing on small objects, resulting in an abundance of shots that are more “Close enough for government work” than they are “tack sharp.”  Thanks to BugFan Freda for contributing a picture.

Arrow clubtails (Stylurus spiniceps) are “fairly-common/widespread-but-not-abundant” inhabitants of the northeast quadrant of the US.  They prefer good-sized rivers with muddy/sandy bottoms and with trees along the edges.  Unlike the “Pond clubtails” that the BugLady was chasing in spring (Ashy, Dusky, Lancet, Midland, Lilypad), the Arrow clubtail is a “Hanging clubtail,” one of 11 North American species in the genus Stylurus (“hanging” because of their tendency to perch on leaves that then bend down under their weight; they don’t really hang like darners).

Arrow clubtails are spectacular, both males http://bugguide.net/node/view/17871/bgimage and females http://bugguide.net/node/view/17869/bgimage.  At 2 ½” long, they’re Wisconsin’s largest and longest Stylurus, and they’re unique in that the ninth segment of the abdomen is noticeably longer than the eighth.

Adults are strong flyers that dart out at their prey from perches and that may feed in the air.  The reason the adults are tough to find is that they fly long patrols not far above the water’s surface (with their abdomen slightly tipped up), and then they go sit high up in a tree.  Paulson describes the flight of a male patrolling his territory as interspersing a “hovering, bouncy flight that seems to have come from alternating fluttering and gliding, with extremely rapid, low, straight flight “like an arrow.”  They are more active in late afternoon until dark.

Females deposit eggs in rapids or riffles areas but the naiads find more sluggish water for their development.  When it’s time to assume an adult form, they crawl out of the water for only a short distance to do so (the BugLady found emerging Arrow clubtails after 3:00 PM; she hasn’t seen one crawl out of the water yet, but she has found several that didn’t have the strength to exit their skins).  Immature/juvenile Arrow clubtails frequent the woods (for a “lengthy period,” says Paulson) until they are ready to breed.

On July 13, the BugLady found a dozen exuviae that had not been there two days earlier.  And, she saw five emerged/emerging Arrow clubtails.  And two more on July 16.  It made her wonder if Arrow clubtail emergence might be loosely synchronized, so she moseyed through some of the literature and found some hints of synchronicity in related dragonflies, but nothing about the Arrow clubtail itself.  In a report about dragonflies of the Canadian grasslands, Robert A. Cannings writes about the Elusive clubtail (Stylurus notatus) that “Experienced observers in Manitoba seldom see a mature adult, but sometimes lucky people have come across a mass emergence or thousands of exuviae on a river bank.”  Another observer recorded an overnight appearance of 230 exuviae of a different clubtail genus on a 20 foot stretch of the New River in Virginia.

What would cause this phenomenon?  One factor might be cold/rainy weather that stalls the naiads, allowing a large number to reach the point of emergence at the same time.  Water quality and/or crowding have also been suggested.  Large numbers of mature larvae (hellgrammites) of the totally un-related Dobsonfly (order Neuroptera) will emerge to pupate when stimulated by a thunderstorm. The BugLady also wonders about how the naiad decides where to pull out and emerge.  How does it know that there will be trees nearby to shelter in (she generally finds exuviae on surfaces that are in the sun all day)?

The emerging dragonflies takes a short rest after pushing their head and “shoulders” out of their old skin, but then the abdomen slides out all at once.  A teneral spends about 30 minutes lengthening and strengthening after it emerges, and then is capable of flight.  On two occasions, the BugLady took a picture, looked down to check the image on the screen, and looked up to find the dragonfly gone.  Their maiden flight, says BugFan Freda, “is amazingly strong,” and is preceded by a quivering of the wings (to warm up the flight muscles in the thorax).  The BugLady observed one maiden voyage that ended at an altitude of about 25 feet, when the arc of the dragonfly’s trajectory intersected with that of an Eastern Phoebe.

The BugLady will keep walking the river, looking for adult arrow clubtails in their adult plumage (and enjoying the dancers, rubyspots, amberwings, whitetails and widows).

Maybe this’s what German poet Friedrich Schiller had in mind when he wrote “Ode to Joy” (Beethoven just put it to music).

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Salutations, BugFans,

The BugLady would like to introduce some sprightly damselflies called Dancers, but first, a short commercial message: The Dragonfly Count at Riveredge Nature Center (Newburg-ish, WI) is Saturday, July 23 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM.  Although (surprisingly) some do keep going after sundown, dragonflies are civilized; you don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to find them unless you want that magazine cover shot of a dew-covered dragonfly just waking up from a night’s sleep.  Come for part or all of the day, and if you want more info or to sign up, contact Mary Holleback at [email protected] or 262-375-2715.

The BugLady has seen four of the six Wisconsin dancers (a Blue-tipped, this spring, was a “lifer”); the two she hasn’t spotted yet (Springwater and Blue-ringed dancers) are uncommon and are expanding their range into the state.  See them all at the Wisconsin Odonata Survey website http://wiatri.net/inventory/odonata/.

Dancers are damselflies in the genus Argia, in the pond damsel family Coenagrionidae, in the sub-order Zygoptera (damselflies), in the order Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies – the “toothed ones”).  They’re a New World bunch, with the Neotropics being the most species-rich.  There are about 120 species so far (35 north of the Rio Grande), and maybe 20 more waiting to be described.  Their name comes from their bouncy/jerky, un-bluet-like flight.  Says Bob DuBois, in Damselflies of the North Woods, “the most likely meaning for Argia is ‘lazy,’ but no one seems to know how this applies to the group. Argia may have been intended to mean “bright,” from the Greek argos, referring to the coloration of males.”

Size-wise, dancers start where bluets leave off, ranging from about 1 ¼” to about 1 ½.”  With their typical blue and black coloration, some bear a strong resemblance to the bluets (others are spectacularly purple or royal blue http://bugguide.net/node/view/321051/bgpage or contrastingly-colored http://bugguide.net/node/view/1058398/bgpage).

Dancers can be told from other damsels because the spines that adorn their legs are twice as long as the spaces between them (those spines help them to snag small insects on the fly).  Their wings have short stalks (petioles) that, according to Paulson in Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, make them strong fliers on their aerial hunts.

Telling dancers from other dancers??  Female dancers are brown/tan, but in some species, females come in a blue color form, too.  Blue morph females may look like males; and, males and females in at least one species can switch from one color to another and back; and, dancers may turn darker in color temporarily if they’re chilly.  Females of several species can only be distinguished from each other by looking through a hand lens at cross veins in the wings just below the stigma (the colored spot at the tip of the wing).

Although some are found near ponds, dancers are generally associated with slow streams and rivers.  Their aquatic naiads http://bugguide.net/node/view/553484 are short and stout and often striped/patterned.  Like their Mothers, most are drab brown/olive, but the Varied dancer’s naiad has a purple tinge.  Their flattened shape allows them to shelter under rocks and other debris on the bottom of wetlands.  They overwinter as naiads, probably in one of their last instars.

Male Dancers may defend loose territories that change daily.  Females oviposit in all manner of submerged vegetation, from decaying logs to plant stems and leaves to algae on submerged rocks, and some go way underwater to do so.  A female may start out ovipositing with the male protecting his genetic investment by “contact guarding” her (clasping her on the back of her head), but he may detach after a while, leaving her to complete the task alone.  Communal ovipositing is not uncommon (more about that later).  Although individuals may live only a few weeks as adults, the various species of dancers are on the scene from mid-June through the end of August and beyond.

VARIABLE DANCERS (Argia fumipennis) (“fumipennis” means “smoky-winged”) include three subspecies – the Smoky-winged, the Black, and the Violet dancer.  The official name of the species is Variable dancer, but our clear-winged subspecies is often called the Violet dancer.  The Smoky-winged http://bugguide.net/node/view/24432/bgimage lives in the East and Southeast; the Black dancer in Florida http://bugguide.net/node/view/422433/bgimage), and the Violet form is found east of the Rockies.

The BugLady sees Violet dancers (Argia fumipennis violacea) more frequently around still waters than the other dancers considered here, but they also like very slow streams with plenty of submerged vegetation.  They are small, about 1 ¼,” and they often open and close their wings slowly while perched.  Females oviposit into vegetation near just under the surface and don’t submerge.

Violet dancers have an interesting Superpower – they are pretty resistant to water mites.  Immature water mites climb onto Odonate naiads while both are under water, and they act like ticks, which can affect the behavior, health, and reproductive success of their hosts.  Researchers found that adults of some species, including Variable dancers, are able to fight off mite infestations by “melanotic encapsulation” – that is, their immune system works to clog the mites’stylosome (feeding tube).

These BLUE-TIPPED DANCERS were the BugLady’s reward for being anti-social – she wandered away from a friend’s Open House in June and headed for the river (coincidentally, she had her camera).  She had never seen the species before (and they turned out to be a county record – so check your sightings at the Wisconsin Odonata Survey site).

Blue-tipped dancers (Argia tibialis) are found in most of the eastern half of the country, found along sun-dappled streams, sloughs, and rivers (occasionally in still water), but they will use urban streams as readily as those in a forest.  They are dark dancers, just under 1 ½” long, that often perch on vegetation near the ground and that also hover over the water.  The female oviposits in wet wood, sometimes above the water line – unusual for a dancer – or in floating aquatic plants, with the male in tandem.

Now it gets tricky.  Male BLUE-FRONTED DANCERS have, as their name implies, blue fronts – faces and thoraxes.  Alas – so do blue-morph female Powdered dancers, (though they lack the blue at the tip of the abdomen).  Brown form female Blue-fronted and brown form female Powdered dancers look alike.  The dark streak down the top of the abdomen and the location of the pale spots on the top and sides of the females’ 9^th (second last) abdominal segment are mentioned in field guides, but those wing veins are still the best bet.  Just to make things exciting, both males and females can change from blue to grayish-black over a period of a few days (not age or weather-related), and some individuals were clocked at eight color changes in twelve days.

Blue-fronted dancers (Argia apicalis) live east of the Rockies, into Mexico (with some records in Ontario), where they dance over shady, still water as well as streams and rivers

This is one of our better-studied dancers.  What have researchers found?  That males visited the shore on about 40% of days during their lifespan, and females on only about 20%, spending the bulk of their time in nearby woods; and that male territorial behavior involves chasing but not fisticuffs.  According to researchers George and Juanda Bick, males can recognize both the species and the gender of approaching females, and romance ensues as soon as he grabs her.

POWDERED DANCERS provided the BugLady with one of the most magical “Insect Moments” that she’s ever experienced.  She visited Waubedonia Park on the Milwaukee River two years ago and witnessed huge “oviposition aggregations.”  Floating leaves in patches of Potamogeton were bristling with tandem pairs of Powdered dancers.  Stands of arrowhead were alive with Powdered dancers.  Clumps of uprooted vegetation drifted by, bearing more Powdered dancers.  She has seen them there since (including yesterday), but not in such numbers.

Oviposition aggregations, which are found even in loosely territorial species like this one, are thought to minimize the threats to ovipositing couples due to predation and due to harassment by unattached males, and to cut down on the time/energy spent by a pair seeking out a suitable spot to oviposit.  Researchers Byers and Eason made tiny models of dancers and placed them on likely substrates and found that dancers “visited the ovipositing models first more often than expected by chance, stayed longer there, were more likely to oviposit there, and laid a greater total number of eggs there.”  Powdered dancer females may climb down as deep as two feet under water and stay under for more than a half-hour, often accompanied by the male.

Powdered dancers (Argia moesta) get their name from the chalky pruinescence (waxy cells) that develops on mature males (Paulson speculates that pruinosity may allow the Powdered dancer to tolerate the heat more effectively and be active on hot, sunny days).  The species name, “moesta,” means “sorrowful,” and may refer to the religious custom of wearing ashes to express sorrow.

All Odonates are carnivores, as naiads and adults.  Powdered dancers are among the damselflies that eat other damselflies, though they draw the line at cannibalism.

The BugLady is happiest when the temperatures are between 50 and 70 degrees, but the recent steamy weather is dragonfly weather.  Go outside.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady  

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Salutations, BugFans,

So the BugLady has a story that she’s itching to tell (and she’s itching as she tells it).  Here’s a rerun from 2010 that will explain.

Today’s “bug,” the chigger, is one with whom the BugLady has a long history that began some 45 years ago in southern Ohio and continued in sunny Texas (after a few years there, the BugLady was so sensitive to Texas chiggers that each bite caused a red spot some 3 inches across.  People stared).  Chiggers are the wee larvae of members of the mite family Trombiculidae, and they are critters whose larval stage is far better known than the adult stage.  According to Wikipedia, “The best-known species of chigger in North America is the hard-biting Trombicula alfreddugesi of the southeastern United States, the humid Midwest, and Mexico.”  Chiggers are in a different family than the lovely red velvet mites (family Trombidiidae), but are in the same order (the BugLady got that wrong in the first version of this episode).  Red velvet mite larvae only bother fellow arthropods.  Both are in the spider class Arachnida and are not insects, and chiggers are not chigoe fleas/jiggers, a subtropical sand flea.

Home on the chigger’s range:  Chiggers are said to live in dry or damp, forest or grassland, in dense or sparse vegetation, worldwide.  Their love for shade and damp is debatable, and the BugLady has most often encountered them in dry, long grass.  They don’t particularly like mountains or deserts, and in North America, they prefer the Midwest and the Southeast.  They are happiest when the ambient temperature is 77 to 86 degrees F.  A sun-warmed rock whose surface temperature exceeds 99 degrees F is too hot to harbor chiggers; conversely, they become inactive at about 60 degrees and die when it dips below 40 degrees.  Chiggers are not spread evenly over the landscape; rather, suitable habitat will have areas that are chigger-free abutting areas that are thick with them.  They were not an issue here in God’s Country when the BugLady returned to her natal turf, 40 years ago, and the BugLady blames their increasing presence on Climate Change (a small prairie near her home is famous for them).

So, what’s the problem?  They bite, that’s what’s the problem – persistent, red, itchy bites!  Although chiggers do not transmit diseases (in this country), their bites do cause intense itching that lasts for days.  There’s a potential for the bites to get secondary infections due to excessive scratching, and some unlucky people get a rash (called Trombiculidiasis, of course) on the sunlit portions of their skin due to bites in the shady parts.  Chiggers sometimes stop under a sandal strap or on the back of your knee, but the majority latch on in the snug areas where elastic meets skin, so they typically excavate in places your mama told you not to itch in public.

Chiggers – The legend:  The old theory about chigger bites, passed on from generation to generation, was that Ma Chigger bored in, deposited eggs, and died.  The larvae moved around under your skin, drinking your blood and causing the itch (the unrelated, tiny, southern jigger/chigoe flea does burrow and suck and itch, mainly on the soles of your feet – another reason to keep your shoes on down South – and according to Wikipedia, the black spot in the center of your chigoe flea bite is the tip of the flea’s abdomen and her back legs as she feeds, head first).  Applying nail polish to the bite (clear or the hue of your choice) to smother the chigger is a probably ineffective but thoroughly entrenched folk remedy.  Likewise, dabbing the bite with household/workshop chemicals/combustibles like bleach, kerosene, ammonia, alcohol, turpentine, or dry cleaning fluid won’t deter the chigger.  It is also untrue that women and children are chigger-magnets and men aren’t; men’s somewhat thicker skin makes them harder to bite.

What are they really doing in there?  Chiggers use their mouthparts to excavate in skin folds or depressions, often in pores or follicles.  After piercing the skin, they inject enzymes that start digesting cellular material.  They don’t have a long, sucking mouthpart but, ingeniously, your body makes one for them.  Your body protects itself from the chigger’s “saliva” by hardening the skin around the puncture into a tube called a stylostome (visible as a small red spot in the larger bite area).  The chigger inserts its mouthparts into the stylostome to extract its meal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylostome.  As long as the chigger keeps pumping in the enzymes (for 3 to 4 days), your body keeps forming the stylostome.  It is your reaction to the stylostome that causes the itch, and the itch goes away when the stylostome falls out or is absorbed, days after the larva itself has dropped off.

Chiggers – A year in the life:  Ms. Chigger lays her eggs in fall, and the eggs hatch in spring. The resulting parasitic larvae are, indeed, almost microscopic – according to one source a single-file queue of chiggers contains more than 100 per inch.  They are naturally reddish in color, but not from sucking blood (after a big meal, a chigger is yellowish).  The fast-moving larvae (one source times them at 15 minutes from ankle to beltline) soon head for high ground to wait for their meal-ticket.  Ironically, the chigger that bites you would have preferred a bird, small mammal or reptile; chiggers that land on humans are unlikely to complete their life cycles because they get scratched/rubbed off and can never initiate another meal.  After its big feast (its only meal as a larva), it drops off and falls into a post-feeding stupor and turns into a nymph.  Adult chiggers eat plant material and prey on tiny arthropods in the soil and don’t bother humans.

Chigger dodging – Chemical: A variety of chemicals can be applied to the lawn.  For personal use, standard insect repellents (DEET) are effective, but they must be renewed every few hours.  Repellents made with permethrin should only be applied to clothing but are potent for several days.  Yellow Sulphur powder has been available in drugstores as “Flowers of Sulphur” or sublimed Sulphur” (unless multiple government agencies are protecting us from it these days).  Texans used to make effective “Sulphur socks” by pouring Sulphur powder into the toe of an old sock and knotting (or twist-tying) the top.  Before heading out into the field, they whacked the sock against their shoes and pants cuffs.  It is a skin irritant for some, and Sulphur smells like, well, Sulphur, so you may be welcome only in the presence of other Sulphur-wearers.

Chigger dodging – Mechanical:  You can do a chigger survey by placing a saucer or some six-inch squares of black cardboard on edge in suspect territory for 10 minutes or so.  Then check out the top edge with a hand lens, looking for miniscule yellowish critters.  If you determine that you have chiggers, do some creative grounds-keeping.  Mow the grass short, remove brush, and make it unattractive to small, chigger-bearing animals.

Chigger dodging – Common sense:  If you’re outside, avoid known chigger hang-outs (see chigger survey, above) and don’t spread your beach towel on the ground in chigger country or you’ll get more than a tan.  Dress for success – loose clothing, long sleeves, pants tucked into socks or boots.

Chigger dodging –After the fact:  Scrub down in a warm, soapy shower ASAP, and launder your field clothes (hot water) before reusing (chiggers will linger on un-laundered clothes).  If you’re far from civilization, rub down briskly with a washcloth to remove most of them.

Oops – Too late: The edge can be taken off the itch by over-the-counter remedies like Calamine lotion, cortisone concoctions or Benzocaine.  Some say that the venerable nail polish treatment seals the bite off from oxygen and lessens the itch somewhat, and that the presence of the nail polish might remind you not to scratch.  Happily, chigger bites go away all by themselves in a week-ish.

Larval chiggers are tiny indeed, but the BugLady, who dabbled in photomicroscopy in college, managed to take these shots.  Or there’s this: http://bugguide.net/node/view/120650.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Greetings, BugFans,

As The Bard once said – “What’s in a name?”  Most sites that discuss the Four-spotted skimmer lead with its name, so the BugLady will, too.  “Four-spotted?  Why not Six-spotted?  Or Eight (wait – that name is already taken, and so is Twelve, which is also pictured here – you only count the dark spots because females don’t have the white spots)?  Or Ten?  Who did the counting, anyway?  Because, while the Four-spotted skimmer does indeed have four spots, it has more than that – two spots on each forewing and three on each hind wing.  Bugguide.net weighs in with “Years ago many children referred to this as the “Six-spot”, and counted the basal spots as two crossing the thorax, instead of four separate spots. The same went for the then “Ten-spot”, which most recent books have switched to calling the “Twelve-spotted Skimmer”. The “Six-spot” name doesn’t seem to appear in any books, but was likely rationalized from comparison with the “Ten-spot” that was to be found in many books. Back then, Libellula forensis [the western Eight-spotted skimmer] didn’t seem to have an established published common name yet.”  The spots are not visible in flight, and Four-spotted skimmers can be tireless flyers, so it may take a while before they land and you get to count them.

Four-spotted skimmers (Libellula quadrimaculata) appear on the scene fairly early in the dragonfly season – the BugLady usually sees them by the last week in May, and they can be found through August.  The NJodes (New Jersey Odonates) (Odonatophiles?) website is among several that describes them as “chunky and dull-colored.”  Chunky, yes; but while it is true that females are duller in color than males, and males fade some as they age, the young dragonflies glow.

They belong to the dragonfly family Libellulidae – the Skimmers – the so-called pond dragonflies – conspicuous and often colorful inhabitants of the air over (usually) still waters.  Libellulids in the genus Libellula are often referred to as the King Skimmers – powerful fliers that, besides being large (or maybe because of it), dominate the pond.  Their appearance throughout their flight period is changeable, because males develop a whitish/bluish deposit of waxy cells called “pruinescence,” especially on the abdomen, giving them a “hoary” appearance.  Identifying the females and the juvenile males of various King Skimmers can be tricky (the BugLady has to review them each spring)https://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/summer-dragonflies.cfm .  Libellulid naiads – active, fast-growing, short-and-wide, hooked-and-spined – prefer shallower, warmer water than do the naiads of other dragonfly families.

The Four-spotted skimmer’s range is “circumpolar,” so internet searches turn up hits from Asia and from European countries (where it’s called the “Four-spotted chaser,” and where one of its predators is a large darner called the Emperor dragonfly).  Its American range is listed as the northern half of North America.

These are dragonflies of marshy lakes, fens, acid bogs, plant-filled ponds, and very slow streams.  Adults are found over fields and along woody edges and they may form swarms over open water; juveniles are often seen far from water.  They like to perch on emergent vegetation but are also found near or on the ground.  Four-spotted skimmers are so common throughout our north lands that in the 1990’s, the school children of Alaska proposed them as their State Insect, and the legislature subsequently agreed.  Do you know your State Insect?  For a list of Wisconsin’s state symbols, check our excellent DNR kids’ website, “EEK!” at http://dnr.wi.gov/eek/nature/state/.

Males patrol territories, both for feeding and mating purposes (two males will often “mix it up” in territorial spats), and they have favorite perches.  According to Paulson in Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East, when populations are high, “some males adopt satellite behavior (subordinate to territorial male but [with a] chance of mating).”  After mating (very) briefly in mid-air, the female lays eggs immediately.  He does not retain a hold on her, but he does generally “hover guard” to protect her from both rival males and females.  She dips her abdomen into the water as she flies above its surface, releasing as many as 3,000 white, gel-covered eggs that sink down and then stick to plants.  The eggs soon turn brown; the BugLady found estimates of hatching times that ranged from five days to four weeks.

The naiads are also chunky, with dorsal and lateral spines near the rear of the abdomen.  A British guide says that short hairs on the naiad’s exoskeleton trap debris, camouflaging it.  The naiads are “sprawlers” that lurk on the muck, awaiting their unwary prey, and they are said (by the same British source http://online-field-guide.com/Libellulaquadrimaculata.htm) to “feign death to avoid being eaten.”  They live underwater as naiads for two summers or longer (depending on water temperature).  The British guide noted that studies done in Germany document that naiads emerged a month earlier in the 1990’s than in the 1980’s “as a response to climate warming.”

Naiads feed on aquatic invertebrates and the odd tiny fish.  Adults hunt from perches, flying out and nabbing insects in the air, and they’ll take fellow dragonflies as large as Meadowhawks.

Across The Pond, they are intermittent migrators (every 10 to 15 years), sometimes in huge numbers, a phenomenon that may be driven by an infestation of parasitic trematode worms, which they may spread to birds that eat them (for this reason, diners in regions where dragonflies are on the menu should cook them well).  This behavior is not seen in North America.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Salutations, BugFans,

Carrion and Burying beetles (family Silphidae) have graced these pages before – the BugLady wrote about two different genera seven years ago (Seven! Years!).  You can find that story at https://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/carrion-beetles.cfm, and pictures of those beetles are included here.  The first episode came with an NftFoH (Not for the Faint of Heart) warning; this one isn’t (quite) as grisly.

A word about its names.  The MARGINED CARRION BEETLE (Oiceoptoma noveboracense) is so-called because of the salmon-colored borders on its black thorax.  Silphidae is a small family, with only about 200 species worldwide (46 in North America); and the genus Oiceoptoma totals seven species – three north of the Rio Grande.  Several blogs say that its species name, “noveboracense,” (“from/pertaining to New York”) means that the beetle originated in the state of New York.  In fact, it means that the “type specimen” – the one upon which the description of the new species was based (in this case, in 1771 by Johann Reinhold Forster (incidentally, a man with a really bad temper)) – was collected in New York.

Several blogs also parrot each other in calling this sturdy, diurnal (active during the day) scavenger a “lightning beetle mimic,” because of its wide, colored thoracic shield and the somewhat protruding tip of its abdomen, but none of the more scientific sites speculated on that.  Since lightning beetles ooze toxic blood when provoked, mimicking one would be a handy knack.

Margined carrion beetles are found throughout eastern North America into the Great Plains except, says bugguide.net, in the Deep South.  They live in grasslands and, rarely, marshes, but research has shown that they have a preference for deciduous forests.  Although a few Silphid family members may be found in trees, the Margined carrion beetle stays close to the ground.

They are a bit smaller than some of their cousins, measuring a half-inch-ish.  Adults are flattened, which helps them maneuver under the corpses they do business with.  The brown larvae (http://bugguide.net/node/view/287753/bgimage) look like they just crawled out of a patch of Upper Devonian shale.

What do they eat?  The name only tells part of the story.  But first, a peek into how big Margined carrion beetles make little Margined carrion beetles.  The male stays on top of her elytra (hardened outer wings) for some time both before and after mating, at first holding on to her antennae with his mouthparts, and later, alternately stroking her pronotum (that big thoracic shield) and antennae with his antennae, which may stimulate her to lay eggs.

Ms. Margined carrion beetle lays her eggs in rotting meat or in the dirt around it (she locates a corpse by using chemoreceptors on her antennae and mouthparts to sense the by-products of decay).  She prefers larger corpses so there will be something left for her offspring after the flies are done.  She does not, as her orange and black Nicrophorus cousins do, bury the corpse, nor does she, as Nicrophorus does, carry around hitchhikers in the form of small mites, which dive in and eat the fly maggots that are competing with her young.  These the Margined carrion beetle eats herself (a form of pest control).

The larvae hatch surrounded by food (carrion) but they also feed on rotting fungi, and they may move around some during this stage.  Adults eat carrion and fly maggots and are found at sap drips on wounded trees (as both adults and larvae, “Halitosis R US!”).  In the “Exception that proves the rule” category, the larvae of a Silphid named Nicrophorus pustulatus (awesome name) appears to be parasitoids of snake eggs.

Larvae eat, pupate, and emerge as adults in the space of about 45 days, and they overwinter as adults.  There is one generation per year, and researchers notice two peaks in the population – one in spring and one after the new adults appear in late summer.  An interesting study of Silphids found in woodlands in southern Ontario found that the several species present do not breed/lay eggs at the same time, a scheme called “resource partitioning.”

Margined carrion beetles are fairly early arrivals at a corpse; consequently, their rhythms have been well-charted by forensic entomologists, and everyone has seen enough CSI shows to know what that means.  Mostly, though, carrion beetles officiate at the small, quiet deaths of the forest, and by their actions return to the system nutrients that are vital to life there.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady always enjoys encountering these big, handsome, velveteen spiders – one of them shared a fondness for her rhubarb patch recently.  She has written in the past about the admirable six-spotted fishing spider, a member of the Nursery web/Fishing spider family Pisauridae (see https://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/six-spotted-fishing-spider.cfm).  Today’s BOTW features a member of the same family who goes by the common name of nursery web spider (Pisaura mira).

Nursery web spiders get their name from the protection a female provides for her egg sac.  She carries it around in her jaws http://bugguide.net/node/view/1085602/bgimage until the eggs are near hatching (she has a back-up – a strand of web also attaches the spider’s egg sac to her spinnerets); then she hides it and spins a silken enclosure around it, roping in some vegetation.  She will defend her brood until they disperse after their first molt.

They look a lot like wolf spiders, except when you gaze into their eight eyes, which are a different size and arrangement than a wolf spider’s.  As a general rule, wolf spiders are more commonly found on the ground and nursery web spiders above it; and although wolf spiders also tote their egg sacs, they attach the egg sac to their spinnerets, at the rear.

Nursery web spiders are found in tall grass, along wooded edges, and in shrubs (and sometimes houses) from the Atlantic into the Great Plains (the species is also found in Europe), and one spider expert speculates that Pisaura miramay be one of the most common spiders in eastern North America.  They are large, with up to a three-inch leg-spread, and are variably earth-toned http://bugguide.net/node/view/1178539/bgimage, and http://bugguide.net/node/view/1162694/bgimage (plus this aberrant teal-colored individual and her young http://bugguide.net/node/view/1082361/bgimage, which look like those experiments where you put a celery stalk in water and food coloring).

Although they spin silk, Nursery web spiders do not make webs to snare insects.  Their eyes are excellent motion-detectors, and they feed on small insects that they find as they wander the landscape.

As the BugLady mentioned last week, spider courtship is a tricky dance; in the spider world, a female is as apt to eat her smaller suitor as mate with him (great throwaway line in Wikipedia, “except where the male is so much smaller that he is not worth eating”).  Some sources say that a female Pisaura mira is not generally known for that behavior, and other sources describe the species as cannibalistic.  The male takes no chances.

They mate suspended by a dragline, and before mating, in mid-air, he secures her front two pairs of legs with silk (the silk binding is called a “bridal veil” and, speculates one researcher, is possibly pheromone-laden) and then he wraps his legs around her other legs (she can shed the bridal veil easily after he leaves).  This allows him not only to deliver a webbed packet of sperm to her, but then to deliver a second, increasing his chances of fatherhood (and something she would not tolerate if she were unencumbered).  Researchers have demonstrated that male Pisaura mira that are larger and have longer legs have better breeding success (and a lower mortality rate).  Males of some species of Pisaurids first present her with a gift of a dead insect (whether to feed her or distract her is not known) and will eat it if she doesn’t.

Nursery web spiders overwinter as spiderlings and are full-grown adults in late-spring/early summer when the big orb weavers that will impress us in September are still very small.  Larry Weber, author of Spiders of the North Woods, writes that he sees Pisaura mira, occasionally, “on the surface of the snow; usually in early winter in swamps.”

As always, in her “nursery web spider” search, Google produced for the BugLady sub-searches on “nursery web spider bite” and “nursery web spider poisonous” (Google offers these topics for some pretty innocuous critters, a commentary on our apartness from nature).  Nursery web spiders are poisonous with a small “p,” with venom powerful enough to kill their prey (strong enough, in fact, to kill a smallish fish) but not strong enough to endanger to people or pets.

N.B. – the BugLady saw her first lightning beetle a few nights ago.  Let the wild rumpus begin.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

Bug of the Week archives:
http://www4.uwm.edu/fieldstation/naturalhistory/bugoftheweek/