Bug o’the Week – Two Enigmatic Insects

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Two Enigmatic Insects

Howdy, BugFans,

In her program about insect Natural History, the BugLady says to the audience “so – we’ve been studying insects for hundreds of years – we’ve got it all nailed down, right?” Sure. The BugLady has had some interesting adventures with insects this year. Even if she can identify them (a big “if” – the X-Files are bursting), not all of them lead transparent lives (“What is it?” should, after all, not be the last question we ask about an organism, it should be the first, and the answer helps open a bunch more doors). The BugLady frequently writes about bugs who are caught in a classification dust-up. Here are two poster children for “temporarily displaced” insects.

THE BRACKEN BORER MOTH (maybe)

When the BugLady photographed this beautiful moth on her back porch rail in mid-September, she knew that it was in the genus Papaipema (the borer moths) (in the Owlet moth family Noctuidae), but which species? Caterpillars of a few Papaipema species are somewhat generalist feeders, but many are highly specific about host choice, as is evidenced by names like Blazing star borer, meadow rue borer moth, pitcher plant, burdock, iron weed, hop, and rattlesnake master borer, Joe-Pye, aster, columbine, sunflower, coneflower, turtlehead, royal fern, and cinnamon fern borer, and more (there are 50 species).

It’s a genus of moths that flies and reproduces in late summer and early fall and that are generally found near their host species. The eggs overwinter and hatch in spring, and the modus operandi of their rarely-seen caterpillars https://bugguide.net/node/view/1127727 is to bore into the roots, rhizomes, and/or stems of their (non-woody) host plants, feed in seclusion, pupate in summer, and emerge in fall. Bugguide.net remarks that “Many species are rare or locally distributed. Numbers have generally declined since historical times due to loss of wetland and prairie habitat, and the resulting scarcity of particular food plants upon which some species depend (the names of various Papaipema species appear on a number of state lists of “species in greatest need of conservation”).” Wagner, et al, in Owlet Caterpillars of Eastern North America write that “the genus seems to be speciating rapidly as evidenced by the number of species that are known to be geographically localized…. As might be expected of a large genus with specialized habits, a number of species seem to be slipping toward extinction. Close to a third of Connecticut’s 30 species have not been seen in more than three decades…”

So, who was BugLady’s visitor? It looked an awful lot like the Bracken Borer moth (Papaipema pterisii) (https://bugguide.net/node/view/1443121/bgimage), whose food plant is Bracken fern (https://illinoiswildflowers.info/grasses/plants/bracken_fern.htm). The problem was that the BugLady hasn’t seen any bracken fern in her neighborhood, but she and the moth were 20 feet away from lots of Ostrich fern. Is there an Ostrich fern borer?

She found a picture of a “potential” Ostrich fern borer https://guides.nynhp.org/ostrich-fern-borer-moth/, and the plot thickened. It hasn’t really been described or named yet (it’s one of several possibly-emerging new Papaipema species), but the DNRs and Natural Heritage Departments of a number of Northeastern states refer to it as “unnamed Papaipena species #2” or call it “Papaipema sp. 2 nr. Pterisii,” and they’re keeping an eye on it. It’s described as being larger and more richly colored than, and flying a bit later in the fall than the Bracken fern borer. It feeds on Ostrich fern (first in the stem and later in the roots), and its pupae are found in the soil at the base of Ostrich fern stalks. You can’t tell the difference between it and the Bracken borer in a photograph.

But what is its status in Wisconsin, the BugLady wondered? She asked PJ, and PJ asked Les, and Les recommended sticking with Bracken borer for now – it’s not known if the Bracken borer might be using more than one host, and identifications shouldn’t be made just on the basis of host plants. It is likely not a valid species, said Les, but a publication due out in early 2025 may shed more light on it. Thanks, Gentlemen. Stay tuned.

YELLOW-FACED SWIFTWING – Version 1

How do you tell a fly from a bee? Easy – hymenopterans (bees, wasps, etc.) have four wings and flies have two. Except that, hymenopterans typically perch with their wings more-or-less stacked, and very few are cooperative enough to spread their wings so that we can count them. The BugLady recognized this bumble bee mimic as a fly because of its (wimpy) antennae and because of the large, flattened eyes https://bugguide.net/node/view/1838687/bgimage. One entomologist calls them “wanna bees.” Here’s a bumble bee for comparison https://bugguide.net/node/view/1221268/bgimage.

It’s a syrphid/hover/flower fly (family Syrphidae) in the genus Volucella (the Swiftwings), a genus that according to most internet sources has four species in North America. Probably a Yellow-faced Swiftwing (Volucella facialis) (if it’s not, it’s an Eastern Swiftwing (V. evecta). Members of the genus look a little “hippy” (no judgement) (“broad-bodied,” says one source), have triangular faces, and their “arista” (the bristle that juts off of the antenna) is plumose (feathery) https://bugguide.net/node/view/1870769/bgimage. Here’s a glamour shot https://bugguide.net/node/view/1494989/bgimage.

YELLOW-FACED SWIFTWING – Version 2

So, the BugLady had settled on the narrative above, but then she found an article from the University of California, written in 2020, that pretty much upended it. According to entomologist Andrew Young, there is only one species of Volucella fly in North America, and it’s Volucella bombylans, whose range stretches across Eurasia (it’s called the Bumblebee hover fly in England), the Near East, and North America. There was no suggestion of whether it had or had not immigrated here from someplace else. All the “other” Volucellas in this country, says Young, are simply varieties of V. bombylans, and they probably exist as a “species complex,” a group of closely-related species that look so much alike that we can’t differentiate among them and that may be able to hybridize. Hold your horses, say other biologists, there are no species complexes, it’s just that our meager observational skills don’t yet allow us to detect their differences. Scott King, in his The Flower Flies of Minnesota (2021), writes that “the Volucella bombylans species complex was only recently unraveled into three Nearctic [New World] species, two of which [V. facialis and V.evecta] live in Minnesota.”

Whatever the name, the life histories of these flies is similar – they lay their eggs in the nests of social wasps and especially of bumble bees (whose nests they have no trouble entering). When the eggs hatch, the fly larvae are detritivores, feeding on organic debris in the nest, including dead bees, and on bee larvae, too, and some eat bee and wasp pupae within the nest. They are inquilines – animals that live in another animal’s space (from the Latin word “inquilinus,” meaning tenant or lodger). Some inquilines don’t eat their hosts, but some do. The esteemed French naturalist and entomologist Henri Fabre (1823 to 1915) wondered how the larvae could survive inside a wasp nest: “What has it to make itself thus respected? Strength? Certainly not. It is a harmless creature which the Wasp could rip open with a blow of her shears, while a touch of the sting would mean lightening death.”

Adult Volucella are nectar feeders that, says Wikipedia, like to sun themselves on leaves, and it also says that the genus is strongly migratory and that males are often territorial. Syrphids are important pollinators.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Summer Sights

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Summer Sights

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady has been scouring the landscape and aiming her camera at anything that will sit still for it (and some that won’t). And (without going too overboard on dragonflies and damselflies), here are some of her bug adventures.

LEAFCUTTER BEE – ah, the one that got away. The BugLady saw a lump on a boardwalk in front of her and automatically aimed her camera at it (a long lens is a good substitute for a pair of binoculars). The lump – a leafcutter bee – flew off after one, out-of-focus shot. The bee had paused while she was cutting and collecting pieces of vegetation to line the tunnel and chambers where she’ll lay her eggs (here’s one caught in the act https://bugguide.net/node/view/2150206/bgimage).

JAPANESE BEETLE – lots of the vegetation that the BugLady sees these days is pockmarked with small holes – evidence of feeding by Japanese beetles (of course, she’s also been seeing conspicuous, beetle ménages a trois on the tops of those leaves, too). Japanese beetles made their North American debut in New Jersey in 1916, and their menu now includes more than 350 plant species. But – they are a handsome beetle!

WATER STRIDERS create art wherever they go.

APPALACHIAN BROWN BUTTERFLY (probably) (the part of the hindwing that has the squiggly line that helps distinguish the Eyed Brown from the Appalachian Brown is gone). Life in the wild isn’t all beer and skittles. The chunks missing from this butterfly’s wings suggest that a bird chased it and that most of the butterfly got away.

POWDERED DANCER – in an episode a month ago, the BugLady lamented that the river was so high and fast that Powdered Dancers couldn’t find any aquatic vegetation to oviposit in. A dryer spell revealed some weed patches, and the dancers hopped right onboard.

EASTERN PONDHAWK DRAGONFLY – this male Eastern Pondhawk was hugging the cattail stalk, a posture that’s not characteristic of this usually-horizontal species. Turns out that it had captured a Violet/Variable Dancer damselfly and was holding it closely between its body and the cattail.

CRAB SPIDER – what would a summer summary be without one of the BugLady’s favorite spiders, the Crab spider? Where’s Waldo? Bonus points if you know the name of the plant.

HONEY BEE WITH APHIDS – it’s not surprising to see yellowjackets browsing among herds of water lily aphids – adult yellowjackets are (mostly) vegetarians, but they collect, masticate, and regurgitate small insects for their larvae. Honey bees are hard-core vegans, so what’s going on here?

Aphids overeat. They have to – the plant sap they suck in has very low concentrations of sugars and proteins, so they need to process a lot of it in order to get enough calories. Sap comes out of the plant under pressure, which forces the sap through the aphid smartly, and the extra liquids (in the form of a sweet substance called honeydew), exit to the rear of the aphid (or it would explode). Honeydew drops onto the surrounding leaves and attracts other insects that harvest it. The bee is no threat to the aphids, she’s just collecting honeydew.

Fun Fact – according to Master beekeeper Rusty Burlew, writing in her blog “Honey Bee Suite, “The bees treat the substance like nectar so it is often mixed together with the nectar from flowers. As such, it is not really noticeable in the finished honey. Honey made almost exclusively from honeydew is known as honeydew honey, forest honey, bug honey, flea honey, or tree honey. Sometimes it is named after its primary component, such as pine honey, fir honey, oak honey, etc. It is generally dark, strongly flavored, less acidic, and less sweet than floral honey.”

EASTERN AMBERWING – at barely an inch long, this improbably-colored dragonfly is one of our flashiest.

MOSQUITOES – Mosquito Control 101: “get rid of standing water in your yard!” Check. But, the BugLady has a bird bath (her “vintage” childhood saucer sled) that she washes out and refills at least once a week (or so she thought). She was surprised the other day to see a whole mess of mosquito “wigglers” (larvae) in the water. Worse, they probably were the small-but-mighty Floodwater mosquitoes that can make August miserable because they emerge in Biblical numbers, and because they seem to be biting with one end even before the other end has fully landed. They develop at warp speed – a week from egg to wiggler, and another week from wiggler to adult. Get rid of standing water in your yard. Check.

SCORPIONFLIES are odd-looking insects from a whole order of odd-looking insects (Mecoptera). This guy is in the Common scorpionfly family Panorpidae and in the genus Panorpa (which is a corruption of the Greek word for “locust”). The appendage at the end of the male’s abdomen explains its name, but these are harmless insects, fore and aft. One site mentioned they are wary and hard to photograph. Amen!

Panorpa uses chewing mouthparts at the tip of its elongated rostrum/snout to eat dead and dying insects, and it may liberate insects from spider webs (and sometimes the spider, too). It is also said to eat some nectar and rotting fruits.

He courts by releasing pheromones to attract her, quivering his wings when she comes near, and then offering a gift – a dead insect, or maybe some gelatinous goo manufactured in his salivary gland. He shares bodily fluids with her as she eats.

CAROLINA LOCUST – what a lovely, chunky little nymph!

AUTUMN MEADOWHAWK – the dragonfly scene changes after mid-summer, with the early clubtails, emeralds, corporals, whitefaces, and skimmers being replaced by darners, saddlebags and a handful of meadowhawk species. This newly-minted (teneral) Autumn Meadowhawk has just left its watery nursery on its way to becoming – for the next six weeks or so – a creature of the air.

KATYDID NYMPH – the BugLady was photographing leafcutter bees that were visiting birdsfoot trefoil flowers (birdsfoot trefoil is a non-native member of the pea family that was introduced for animal fodder and erosion control and that can become invasive in grasslands. There’s probably some blooming along a road edge near you). She noticed that when the bees approached one particular flower, they reversed course and didn’t land, and when she checked she found the tiniest katydid nymph she has ever seen. This one will grow up considerably to be a 1 ½” to 2” long Fork-tailed bush katydid (or somebody else in the genus Scudderia) https://bugguide.net/node/view/2164189/bgimage. How do you find bush katydids? The “Listening to Insects” website advises us to “Watch for a leaf that moves on its own, or a leaf with antennae.” They are a favorite of Great golden digger wasps, which collect and cache them for their eventual larvae, and another website said “this is what bird food looks like.”

The BugLady found a recording of their call. They don’t say “Katy-did, Katy-didn’t;” they say “tsp” or “pffft,” and they don’t say it very loudly. Bush Katydids are busiest at night, when their long, highly sensory antennae help them to find their way around. Although adult females are equipped with a wicked-looking ovipositor, they don’t sting, but they do nip if you handle them wrong. Memorably, it’s said.

Go outside, look at bugs!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Closed for June 2 – Pollinators

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Closed for June II Pollinators

Howdy, BugFans,

We’re getting a jump on National Pollinator Week (June 17 to 23) with a few articles about pollinators, which, if you like to eat or watch birds or photograph flowers or (add your favorites here ___________) are pretty indispensable.

What does it take to be a successful pollinator? The ability to deliver pollen to multiple flowers in a short time span and the ability to transport pollen, either by general hairiness or by special pollen carrying structures. Ants, with their smooth exteriors, impeccable grooming, and pedestrian habits, are all over flowers, but they are inefficient pollinators.

Flies are all over flowers, too – are they on the list of important pollinators? Check this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-much-do-flies-help-pollination-180977177/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210308-daily-responsive&spMailingID=44581828&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=1960663514&spReportId=MTk2MDY2MzUxNAS2

How do pollinators find flowers? Flowers have developed a variety of lures to attract insects, like color, UV reflections, patterns on petals that act as nectar guides, electrostatic charges, and flower size and shape. Specialized flowers “train” their specialized visitors, with which they have evolved over millennia. Scent is important, too, especially for nocturnal visitors. What happens if an insect can’t smell its usual blossoms? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/air-pollution-makes-flowers-smell-less-appealing-to-pollinators-study-suggests-180983766/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49430515&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2641244472&spReportId=MjY0MTI0NDQ3MgS2

A lot has been written in the past decade about the crash of honey bee colonies. Honey bees are, after all, responsible for pollinating about one-third of the foods we eat, accounting for about $15 billion in crop values annually (and they make honey and beeswax, too). But, honeybees are an alien bee that was imported to pollinate alien crops, and we have many species of native bees. Do honey bees disrupt native relationships – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-41271-5?fbclid=IwAR3gFJuCvy1t3GEPCRGDW1nDzOGLjB-G0vLFiYHJtfU7TgVLTUnShMa5NJ0

Go outside – look at pollinators.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Parnassia Miner Bee – a Bee and its Flower

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Parnassia Miner Bee a Bee and its Flower

Howdy, BugFans,

A while back, BugFan Matt asked the BugLady if she had ever photographed a small bee on a Grass-of-Parnassus flower. Grass-of-Parnassus (not really a grass) is one of her favorite flowers (despite the fact that it shouts “Fall is coming!” every time she sees it). She photographs it a lot in the closing days of August, and it turned out that she had seen the bee, but she hadn’t realized how special it was.

As BugFans will recall from those six weeks of mythology in high school English, Mount Parnassus was sacred to Apollo and was home to the Muses in Greek mythology. Allegedly, cattle on Mount Parnassus grazed on the plant, and so it was promoted to honorary grass status.

Mining bees have been featured on these pages before (https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/red-tailed-mining-bee/). They are small and fuzzy and are among our earliest pollinators (the fuzz keeps them warm on chilly spring mornings). Some are catholic in their tastes (polylectic), but many species are linked to a single, small group of related plants (oligolectic), and some zero in on only a single species (monolectic). Many have no common name at all, but like the Parnassus miner bee, their scientific name may include a nod to their affiliated plant.

They emerge when their host plants emerge, make tunnels a few inches deep in the ground, scoop out, waterproof, and provision chambers within them with pollen and nectar, and then install the next generation, which will overwinter underground and repeat the cycle when their flower reappears. The various species of mining bees and their flowers span the growing season, and late summer mining bee species are most often seen on goldenrod and on members of the carrot family.

Except the PARNASSIA MINER BEES (Andrena parnassiae), which are found only where Grass-of-Parnassus lives – calcareous fens (another name for the plant is the Fen Grass-of-Parnassus) and other wet, alkaline meadows and wetlands. They’ve been recorded in Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont, and North Carolina. A journal article from the early 20^th century said that the bee’s flight period went from August 25 to September 26, and that its only known Wisconsin occurrence was on the Lake Michigan bluffs in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay, on a plant that was misidentified, due to an error in an early botany reference, as Carolina Grass of Parnassus (which is found in Florida and the Carolinas).

The hairs on their body act as pollen collectors, too, and they have pollen baskets on their back legs. Parnassia Miner Bees only glean pollen from Grass-of-Parnassus flowers (and they are important pollinators of it – more about that in a sec), but the flowers are also visited by other bee species, syrphid and other small flies, ichneumon wasps, butterflies, (and the BugLady found a lightning beetle checking it), and by spiders with a taste for pollinators.

When you (or a bee) look at the flower, what do you see? The green lines on the five petals are nectar guides, beckoning the bee to follow them to the nectar source. But the bee also notices a ring of 15 filaments at the base of the petals (actually five sterile stamens or staminoides, each divided into three prongs), each topped with what looks like a drop of nectar, resembling the (male) stamens of the flower. These are false nectaries that provide no nectar reward but serve to get the bee into the right vicinity – the real nectar lies at the base of the filaments.

There are also five true stamens, each topped with a pollen-producing anther, and in the green center of the flower, the female flower parts – stigma, style and ovary (collectively called the pistil).

[Nota Bene: the BugLady learned just enough Botany in college to make it through the Botany final, and she’s been forgetting it ever since, so she has to pull up a chart on Wikipedia every time she tries to write about flowers.]

The BugLady was wondering about the pedigree of Grass-of-Parnassus and she encountered some confusion about that. Several reputable sites reported that it was in the Saxifrage family, but another said that there was only a very distant familial connection. Others put it in the Staff tree family Celestraceae, and still others placed it in its own family Parnassiaceae (though it may be destined to rejoin the Celestraceae).

Putting it all together: It’s a sweet little flower that has worked out some complex strategies to spread pollen and to avoid self-fertilization. Consider the five true stamens. Rather than maturing all at once, only one lengthens, matures and produces pollen per day, arcing over the top of the pistil. After the first day, its anther turns brown and the filament relaxes against the ring of petals, and another stamen grows and produces pollen.

The pistil does not grow or become receptive to incoming pollen until after all five stamens have matured, making it impossible for the flower to self-pollinate. Eastman, in The Book of Swamp and Bog, says that the flowers exhibit protandry – that is, the flower, which has both male and female parts, is unisexually sequenced, the male parts completing their development before the female parts start. To put it another way, the flowers have a male phase and then a female phase.

When a bee is tempted by the beads of false nectar and orients itself to harvest some, it straddles an anther, and pollen is picked up by the hairs on its abdomen. When it visits the next flower, pollen is brushed off, hopefully onto a flower whose female parts are ready to receive it (“xenogamy” “stranger marriage” — a flower breeding not with itself but with another).

Bryan Pfeiffer, naturalist and blogger (“Chasing Nature”) and Grass-of-Parnassus watcher, has written some very nice entries about his experiences with both the flower and the bee – here are two – https://bryanpfeiffer.com/2021/09/06/being-with-flowers/ and https://chasingnature.substack.com/p/a-duplicitous-flower-and-its-rare#:~:text=Parnassia%20Miner%20gets%20that%20pollen,butterfly%20caterpillars%20eating%20only%20milkweeds (this one has a nice shot of a bee on the stamens).

Xenogamy, polylectic, oligolectic, monolectic, staminoides, protandry, stamens and pistils and anthers, oh my – it’s January, time to dust off our brains. There will be a quiz.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

As a bit of lagniappe, here’s a lovely video about butterflies (audio on): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/ten-fun-facts-about-butterflies/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49251228&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2620068856&spReportId=MjYyMDA2ODg1NgS2

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

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

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

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

Greetings of the Season, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a DOT-TAILED WHITEFACE in a pear tree.

Have a Wonder-full New Year,

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Sculptured Resin Bee

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed

Howdy, BugFans,

BugFan Freda found and photographed this awesome bee in her pollinator garden in August. It’s a distinctive bee, and it has an interesting story.

The Sculptured resin bee is sometimes called the Giant Asian resin bee, but there are resin bees that are larger, and it’s not just in Asia anymore. It’s in the family Megachilidae – the Leafcutter, Mason, Resin, Mortar, Sharptail, and Woolcarder bees.

Megachilids tend to be sturdy, medium-sized, mostly solitary bees that carry pollen in a mat of hairs called a scopa on the underside of their abdomen rather than on their legs like honey and bumble bees. They make egg chambers for their eventual young in pre-existing holes in the ground or in wood or other materials, and, depending on what group they’re in, they line the tunnels and seal the chambers with bits of leaf, plant resin, mud, or plant fibers (except for the Sharptail bees, Cuckoo leafcutter bees in the genus Coelioxys, which parasitize the nests of their Megachilid sisters). Adults eat pollen and nectar, and they provision their egg chambers with pollen. In many ways, the modus operandi of the Sculptured resin bee is similar to that of other family members.

Sculptured resin bees (Megachile sculpturalis) are big/“giant” bees (females measure about an inch and males are smaller) with elongated bodies and with big jaws that they use to collect plant resins https://bugguide.net/node/view/532857/bgimage (Megachile means “large jaws,”). Males have a yellow moustache on their face https://bugguide.net/node/view/1689549/bgimage. When they’re sitting on flowers, they hold their wings out to the sides in a “V.” According to one source, the “sculptured” part refers to the head https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/view/3314.

They’re big and they look dangerous, but males can’t sting and although females can, they’d rather flee than fight (although one source mentioned that he was bitten rather sharply when he handled one, so…..don’t).

They don’t come from here. They’re native to Japan and parts of eastern Asia, and they arrived on our shores (North Carolina), probably in wood, in 1994. They expanded their range to Alabama (1999), Canada (2002), Wisconsin (2004), Maine and Kansas (2008), and now they’re found in most states east of the Mississippi and a few that are west. They’ve also found their way to Europe. They like temperate zones, and researchers believe that they are likely to continue expanding throughout them. Ecologists list their status as “adventive” – non-native and present but not established.

The Megachilids are important pollinators, and Sculptured resin bees are no exception. Like other Megachilids, Sculptured resin bees are (Cool Science Word #1) “polylectic” – they collect pollen from a wide variety of flowers (43 species in the US).

Male Sculptured resin bees create territories and chase other males out of them. About the genus Megachile, bugguide.net says “The males of most species have enlarged light-colored front legs with a fringe of hairs and with odor glands. They use these features during mating. They partially cover the female’s eyes with the hairy legs and the odor glands are placed close to the female’s antennae” https://bugguide.net/node/view/1992972/bgimage.

Sculptured resin bees are (Cool Science Word #2) a xylophilous (wood-loving) bee. Females create brood chambers in existing holes and crevices because although her large jaws are great for collecting resin and sap, they’re not so great for excavating in wood. The cells are formed from wood particles, mud, and plant resin and filled with pollen, and when she’s satisfied with the job, she lays an egg on the pollen, seals the cell, and starts making another, often constructing 8 or 10 cells per tunnel. The outside entrance to the tunnel may be sealed with a resin or mud cover. Even though she is a solitary bee, she will tolerate other bees nesting nearby. Her larvae feed in their cells throughout winter, pupate in them the following spring, and emerge in summer.

So – is the Sculptured resin bee a good thing or a bad thing?

Initial reactions were, “Hey – neat bee; it doesn’t seem to be bothering anything,” but any alien species has, of course, the potential to impact native species, whether through competition or spreading disease. Sculptured resin bees can be hard on the flowers they visit; there are reports of the bee damaging flower petals while foraging for pollen and nectar in a way that may make it harder for native bees to pollinate them.

Yes, they are pollinators, but researchers have noted that, like many non-native pollinators, they visit native plants, but they prefer non-native plants that hail from their areas of origin (one of the plants they pollinate in the South is Kudzu).

And then there are the nest tunnels. Sculptured resin bees mostly use deserted tunnels, but not always. They’re known to evict Eastern carpenter bees from their nest tunnels rather aggressively and then to redecorate the brood chambers for their own eggs. There’s a potential for similar conflict with any bee that makes a similar-sized tunnel, and they can monopolize bee hotels (some experts recommend destroying Sculptured resin bee larvae in bee hotels). One source noted that they have been observed killing honey bees.

Time will tell.

On a Lepidopteran note, it’s Wooly Bear season. Here’s the wooly bear BOTW, and a link to this year’s wooly bear celebration in Banner Elk, NC https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/wooly-bear-caterpillar-re-do/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/groundhogs-are-old-news-in-this-tiny-town-caterpillars-predict-the-weather-180983146/

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady is already fantasizing about warm, sunny days in a wetland, photographing Swamp milkweed (and dragonflies), because she loves its color, and she loves being in wetlands, and because it’s a very busy plant, indeed!

Also called rose or red milkweed (there are a couple of species of southern milkweeds that are also called red milkweed), white Indian hemp, water nerve-root, and water silkweed, Swamp milkweed prefers damp soils and full sun near the water’s edge.

Indians, and later, the European settlers, used it medicinally (a tea made from the roots was reputed to “drive the worms from a person in one hour’s time”). It was used with caution – its sap is poisonous – and the cardiac glycosides that protect Monarchs also deter mammals from grazing on all but the very young plants. The fibers in its stem were twisted into rope and twine and were used in textiles.

Its flowers are typical milkweed flowers – a corona of five parts (hoods) with curved petals below and curved, nectar-secreting horns above. The flowers are tricky – sticky, golden, saddlebag-shaped pollinia are hidden behind what one author calls a trap door (a stigmatic slit). Insects walk around on the flower head, and when one of their feet slips through the slit by chance, a pollinium sticks to it. When the bug encounters a stigmatic slit on the next plant it visits, the pollen is inadvertently delivered. A quick-and-dirty, pick-up and delivery is what the plant had in mind; but, like the story of the raccoon (or was it a monkey) that reaches into the jar for a candy bar and then can’t pull its fist out of the small opening, sometimes the insect’s foot gets stuck to pollinia inside the trap door. Insects that can’t free themselves will die dangling from the flower, and insects that escape may be gummed up by the waxy structures. Look carefully for pollinia in the pictures.

Milkweeds support complex communities of invertebrates – their nectar attracts ants, bugs, beetles, flies, butterflies, moths, bees, and wasps, plus predators looking for a meal. Here are some of the insects that the BugLady sees on Swamp milkweed.

TWO-BANDED PETROPHILA MOTHS (Petrophila bifascialis) are delicate moths that lead a double life. By day, they sit sedately on streamside vegetation. By night, the female crawls down the side of a rock into the water – sometimes several feet down – to deposit her eggs on the stream bottom, breathing air that she brings with her, held against her ventral surface (“Petrophila” means “rock-lover”). Her larvae eventually attach themselves to a rock and spin a net to keep themselves there, feeding on diatoms and algae that they harvest from the rock’s surface with their mandibles.

MULBERRY WING SKIPPER – A small (one-inch-ish wingspan) butterfly of wetlands with an arrow or airplane-shaped marking on its rich, chestnut-brown underwings (the upper surface of its wings looks completely different https://bugguide.net/node/view/34033/bgimage. Adults fly slowly through low vegetation, where females lay their eggs on the leaves of sedges.

FLOWER LONGHORN BEETLE BRACHYLEPTURA CHAMPLAINI (no common name), on a Swamp milkweed leaf. Other than a “present” checkoff in a variety of natural area insect surveys, there’s just about nothing online about this beetle, and not much more in Evans’ book, Beetles of Eastern North America. It’s a long-horned beetle in the Flower longhorn subfamily Lepturinae, a group that feeds on pollen in the daytime. This one has pollinia on its mouthparts.

AMBUSH BUG – The dangling bee in this picture did not fall victim to the sticky pollinia (though it has plenty of them on its legs). A well-camouflaged ambush bug snagged it as it visited the flower.

SOLDIER BEETLE – These guys drive the BugLady crazy. They’re lightning beetle mimics, and they’re pretty good at it, and she always overthinks the ID. She doesn’t know why they’re imitating the closely-related lightning beetles – alarmed lightning beetles discharge poisonous blood/hemolymph from their leg joints, but alarmed soldier beetles do, too.

CRAB SPIDER –This Goldenrod crab spider tucked itself down between the milkweed flowers and ambushed an Odontomyia soldier fly https://bugguide.net/node/view/417289/bgimage.

LARGE MILKWEED BUG – What a beauty! Large milkweed bugs are seed bugs – they feed by poking their beaklike mouthparts through the shell of a milkweed pod and sucking nutrients from the seeds. They don’t harm the plant (just the seed crop), and they don’t harm monarch caterpillars, either. Like other milkweed feeders, they sport aposematic (warning) colors to inform predators of their unpalatability. Large milkweed bugs don’t like northern winters and are migratory – like monarchs, the shortening day lengths, the lowering angle of the sun, and increasingly tough milkweed leaves signal that it’s time to go, and they travel south to find fresher greens. Their descendants head north in spring.

MONARCH CATERPILLAR – Common milkweed and Swamp milkweed are Monarch butterflies’ top picks for egg laying.

GREAT-SPANGLED FRITILLARY – The other big, orange butterfly. Adults enjoy milkweeds and a variety of other wildflowers, and their caterpillars feed on violets – if they’re lucky enough to connect with some. Females lay eggs in fall, near, but not necessarily on, violets, and the caterpillars emerge soon afterward. They drink water but they don’t eat; they aestivate through winter in the leaf litter and awake in spring to look for their emerging host plants.

GIANT SWALLOWTAIL – A southern butterfly that seems to be getting a foothold in Wisconsin. The book says they are annual migrants that produce a generation here in summer and that their caterpillars can’t tolerate Wisconsin winters, but the BugLady has seen very fresh-looking Giant Swallowtails here in May that didn’t look like they had just been on a long flight. Their caterpillars are called Orange Dogs in the South, because their host plants are in the Rue/Citrus family Rutaceae. In this neck of the woods, females lay their eggs on Prickly ash, a small shrub that’s the northernmost member of that family.

CINNAMON CLEARWING MOTH – A nectar-sipper but, since it doesn’t land, not a serious pollinator.

NORTHERN PAPER WASP – Butterflies love Swamp Milkweed, and so do wasps. The Northern paper wasp is the social wasp that makes a smallish (usually fewer than 200 inhabitants) open-celled, down-facing, stemmed nest https://bugguide.net/node/view/1411890/bgimage. “Northern” is a misnomer – they’re found from Canada through Texas and from the Atlantic well into the Great Plains. Her super power is chewing on cellulose material, mixing it with saliva, and creating paper pulp. She may be on the swamp milkweed to get pollen and nectar for herself or to collect small invertebrates to feed to the colony’s larvae. Curious about Northern paper wasps? See https://bugeric.blogspot.com/2010/09/wasp-wednesday-northern-paper-wasp.html.

Also seen were ants, leafcutter bees, sweat bees, Great black wasps, Great golden digger wasps, Red soldier beetles, Fiery and Broad-winged Skipper butterflies, and Thick-headed flies.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Golden green sweat bee

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Golden green sweat bee

Howdy, BugFans,

Wisconsin is home to between 500 and 600 species of wild bees, ranging in size from today’s sweat bee to bumble bees many times larger (there are about 4,000 bee species in the US). If a small brown or green bee landed on your arm and started sipping salt while you were working/sweating outside in the summer, you’ve met a sweat bee. Typically, no one is harmed in these encounters unless you brush the bee away roughly.

The BugLady’s husband was allergic to sweat bees, but when he went to the allergist to see if desensitization shots were available, the doctor said “What’s a sweat bee?” Which didn’t bode well for any shots.

Sweat bees can be a bear to differentiate (as one site warned, “Many species won’t be identifiable from photos”), and a microscope is needed to tell some species apart. Still, this is a seriously tiny sweat bee with an unusual color. So, the BugLady finds herself back out on that taxonomic limb again, but she’s gotten comfortable out there over the years, and she’s calling this one a Golden green sweat bee.

Golden green sweat bees (Augochlorella aurata) are one of about 100 species in Wisconsin in the family Halictidae, the Sweat, Furrow, Nomiine, and Short-faced Bees. Augochlor is a Greek prefix meaning “intensified gold-green,” and “aurata” means “gilded” or “golden.” Despite their name, most Golden green sweat bees are quite green https://bugguide.net/node/view/1894237/bgimage, but some are pinkish https://bugguide.net/node/view/1272175/bgimage, some are reddish https://bugguide.net/node/view/1124880/bgimage, some are blue https://bugguide.net/node/view/1180911/bgimage, and some are bi-colored https://bugguide.net/node/view/825764/bgimage. They are about one-fifth of an inch long, with females slightly longer than males.

Here are some Extreme Macros – https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/augochlorella-aurata-f-face-md-boonsboro (also available on eBay as a headshot), https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/augochlorella-aurata-f-back-md-boonesboro, and https://www.fws.gov/media/golden-green-sweat-bee-augochlorella-aurata.

They have a patchy northern range mostly east of the Rockies, and of the seven Augochlorella species in North America, Golden green sweat bees are found the farthest north. They are common in fields in eastern North America, where they are generalist pollinators that forage on flowers in a bunch of different plant families. Along with wildflowers, they also pollinate agricultural crops like apples, strawberries, alfalfa, tomatoes, and sunflowers. They carry pollen in hairs on their back legs https://bugguide.net/node/view/1306100/bgimage.

The vast majority of bees, including many of the Halicitdae and some of the Augochlorella, are solitary rather than communal bees – single Moms who create and provision egg chambers without the help of workers. Golden green sweat bees are flexible about the idea – at higher latitudes and altitudes (areas that have shorter growing seasons), they tend to be more solitary, but when they’re in warmer climes, they are called “primitively eusocial.” Eusocial describes the most advanced social behavior – think ant hill – characterized by cooperative brood care, overlapping generations within a colony, division of labor (castes), and reproductive and non-reproductive individuals.

In favorable climates, the fertile female overwinters and starts the colony in spring, excavating a nest tunnel (here are some diagrams of A. aurata nest tunnels https://actbeekeepers.asn.au/bee-buzz-box-july-2023-the-catacomb-part-iva-the-facultative-eusocia/figure-6-nesting-behaviour-of-facultatively-eusocial-augochlorella-aurata-1/), collecting pollen and fashioning it into pollen balls for her young, and laying six to eight eggs that will produce both males and females. Newly hatched males leave the nest, but newly-hatched females become workers that care for the queen. Later in the season, she produces another small batch of males and females that will fly out and mate in fall. A fertile female will dig down into the lowest/warmest part of the nest and hunker down until May, and the beat goes on.

Nest are dug in bare ground in woods and fields and can be as deep as 10 inches. The Vermont Center for Ecostudies Vermont Atlas of Life site included a picture of a nest entrance with a turret around the opening, but the BugLady didn’t find any other references to that behavior https://val.vtecostudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/A.-auratta-nest-SPH.jpeg

Neat picture of a Golden green sweat bee with a raindrop https://bugguide.net/node/view/33594/bgimage. About the picture, entomologist Eric Eaton wrote. “It might be that the rain dissolved honeydew that had accumulated on the leaf.”

Here’s a great source of information about bees, though not all NY bees appear here in Wisconsin, and vice versa https://www.sharpeatmanguides.com/wild-bee-id-guide-new-york. Check the Wild Bee ID guide tab.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Robust Katydid-hunting Wasp
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Robust Katydid-hunting Wasp

Greetings, BugFans,

OK – it’s not a super flashy wasp when it’s heading away from you (in fact, it’s not even very wasp-like), but it’s pretty cool when it’s heading toward you – those eyes. And what an awesome name (though not quite as awesome as the related Eastern Ant-Queen Kidnapper Wasp)! Both species are in the Square-headed wasp family Crabronidae, a family that we have met in previous BOTWs. Here’s a quick reintroduction.

The family includes Square-headed (https://uwm.edu/field-station/square-headed-wasp/) and Sand wasps (https://uwm.edu/field-station/sand-wasps/) and the Organ-pipe mud daubers (https://uwm.edu/field-station/organ-pipe-mud-dauber/). It’s a large, diverse bunch (1225 species here; almost 9,000 worldwide) that was carved off of the now-much-smaller wasp family Sphecidae (the thread-waisted wasps) not too long ago (in taxonomists’ years).

What Crabronids have in common, besides some anatomical features concerning the size and/or shape of the inner margin of the compound eyes, of the pronotum (the part of the thorax right behind the head), of a lobe in the hind wing, and of the almost non-existent “wasp waist” – on such things are identities hung – is their habit of caching insect prey in underground egg chambers for their eventual larvae to eat/parasitize. A few species let other wasps do the hunting and then steal the results (kleptoparasitism). Many species are picky about both prey and nest sites, and adults feed on pollen and nectar.

Robust Katydid-hunting Wasps are one of 34 mostly-similar-looking species in the genus Tachytes in North America. Tachytes comes from a Greek word meaning “swiftness” or “speed,” and the genus is often called the Sand-loving wasps because of their preference for nesting in sandy soil types. In his bugeric blog, entomologist Eric Eaton says they should be called the Green-eyed wasps. The combination of their size, somewhat stout build, and scattering of short hairs makes some people (like the BugLady) mistake them for bees at first glance.

Females tunnel from 3 inches to almost 3 feet into the ground, creating side tunnels and scooping out cells in the walls, and she provisions these cells chronologically, deepest first (shorter tunnels may contain only a single cell). The genus specializes in grasshoppers, katydids, pygmy crickets and mole crickets. Says Eaton, the “Female paralyzes the victim with her sting, then straddles it, grasps it by the antennae with her jaws, and flies it back to her nest. There she deposits her prize in one of the cells.” Researchers Evans and Kurczewski say that “many of the larger species emit a high-pitched buzz when flying with prey…..”

While she’s provisioning a cell, a female may stash some bodies in a chamber inside the entrance temporarily.

ROBUST KATYDID-HUNTING WASPS (Tachytes crassus) are found from the Midwest through Canada and New England, plus several states in the Southeast. They measure a shade longer than a half-inch, with green eyes and mostly caramel-colored legs. Here are some glamour shots from bugguide.net: https://bugguide.net/node/view/1277906, https://bugguide.net/node/view/778850/bgimage. Heather Holm, in her magnificent Wasps: A Guide for Eastern North America says that females have three silver bands on their abdomen and males have four.

According to Eaton, male Tachytes wasps emerge before females and often are more numerous. They set up small territories near burrows where they expect females to appear, but after the females emerge, the males move their territories to nesting areas and nectar sites. In some Tachytes species, the courtship is brief – he pounces on her back and pins her wings and then waves his antennae frantically in front of her face to soften her up https://bugguide.net/node/view/1013235.

Females often dig their tunnels near those of other females. Holm writes that “Tachytes crassus usually nests in sand although Evans and Kurczeski (1966) found a nesting aggregation in clay-loam soil. Female excavates a deep, angled multicellular nest, then deposits soil around the burrow entrance, forming a tumulus. The female may or may not leave the nest open while away hunting for prey. When returning with prey to an open nest entrance, she flies directly into the nest without hesitation, clutching her prey beneath her.” Holm quotes the eminent French Naturalist Jean Henri Fabre (1921) “The Tachytes clears the entrance to the home and goes in alone. She returns, puts out her head and seizing her prey by the antennae, warehouses it by dragging backwards.” Please take the time to read some of Fabre’s lovely account of the genus https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3462/3462-h/3462-h.htm#link2HCH0007.

Holm continues, “She hunts for prey close to the ground in tall grass, meadows, or prairies where grasshoppers occur…..prey caught earlier in the growing season may be all nymphs; prey caught later in the season and later in the female’s life (cached in the upper cells) are more likely to be adults. Between five and ten prey are provisioned in each cell. A single egg is laid between the foreleg and midleg on one of the prey at the bottom of the cell.”

RKHWs are common on Swamp milkweed flowers (Asclepias incarnata). One would think that a swamp milkweed lover would also be a major swamp milkweed pollinator, but a study in 2003 by Ivey, et al, indicated that while the RKHW was a frequent visitor to the flower, it “was the poorest at removing, carrying, then subsequently transferring pollinia to other swamp milkweed flowers.” Remember, pollination is an accidental, not an intentional act, and milkweed pollinia are saddlebag-shaped and sticky (see the legs of the dangling bee caught by the almost-invisible ambush bug). Like RKHWs, Thynnid wasps (Myzinum sp.) https://bugguide.net/node/view/1958377/bgimage are frequent visitors with a similar active, random foraging style, and yet they were far more effective pollinators. What took them only six or seven flower visits to accomplish (removing and then inserting a pollinium) took some RKHWs up to 500 visits.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Bugs in the News
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bugs in the News

Howdy, BugFans,

As usual, the BugLady’s “Bugs in the News” folder runneth over, so here’s a collection of articles to chew on. Many come from the wonderful Smithsonian Daily Newsletter, which not only posts a lot of good stuff, it doesn’t put articles behind a paywall. Support your Smithsonian!