Tag: bug of the week

Bug o’the Week – And Now for Something a Little Different – A World without Cardinals??

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

And Now for Something a Little Different A World without Cardinals??

Howdy, BugFans,

Life has been busy, so here’s an article that the BugLady wrote for the newsletter of the Lake Michigan Bird Observatory.  Birders speak of their “Spark birds” – the species that got them into birding – the BugLady is willing to bet that lots of people were inspired by Cardinals!

Feeder watchers know them as avid consumers of black oil sunflower seed, both on the ground and on the feeder — birds whose heavy bills make short work of the seed’s outer shell. It’s always surprising to watch them on the peanut feeder, wiggling shelled peanuts through the gaps in quarter-inch hardware cloth with that hefty bill. Bird banders know them as the bird that uses its beak to clamp down painfully on the webbing between a bird bander’s fingers or on their cuticle as they remove a Cardinal from the mist net. Many birders credit them as the species that turned them on to birding. Some home owners recognize them as the bird that tirelessly attacks its own reflection in the picture window during the breeding season (starting at dawn). Seven states celebrate them as their State bird. Their many admirers know them variously as the cardinal, redbird, Northern Cardinal, cardinal grosbeak, and red cardinal –- both the common and scientific name (Cardinalis cardinalis) are a nod to the red garments worn by Roman Catholic Cardinals.

One thing is sure — whether you’ve been birding for five months or 50 years, the sight of a Cardinal singing in the sun at the top of a tree or sitting on a snow-covered branch never fails to take your breath away, and the sound of that rich whistle on a warm January day promises spring (eventually) and lifts your spirits.  

Cardinals have always been here, right? Well, the people who settled Wisconsin in 1848 never saw one! Like other species of brightly-colored birds that we see here, their origins lie considerably to the south. Warming climate, less snow, changing habitat, and the popularity of bird feeding have allowed them to extend their range northwards over the past century. They were first recorded along the southern border of the state in 1903, in Milwaukee County in 1920, Waukesha County in 1927, Ozaukee County in 1929, Washington County in 1956, Dane County in 1935, and Door County in 1940. It wasn’t until the 1980’s that they were seen in most counties in the state.

In 1980, a total of 3,049 were counted on the state’s Christmas Bird Counts; in 2020, 1,008 were counted in the Madison Count, alone. Sam Robbins noted in Wisconsin Birdlife (1991) that they had followed the major waterways into the state and had spread out from those footholds, but that they still occurred in low numbers in the northern half of the state. Cardinals don’t migrate.

Cardinals (officially, Northern Cardinals) are found in backyards, parks, shrubby areas, swamps, and edges in North America east of the Great Plains, across Canada, from Minnesota to Maine, and south to Guatemala. They have been introduced to Hawaii, Bermuda, southern California, and Arizona.

Their diet is mostly fruits and seeds, supplemented by a variety of spiders and small insects. They are often the last birds to visit a feeder at dusk.

A male Cardinal sings to establish a territory, and he courts by feeding seeds to the female. The pair may spend a week or more surveying potential nest sites together (carrying bits of nesting material in their beaks as they look, according to Cornell’s All About Birds website), but when they decide, the toast-colored female does most of the nest construction. She “tenderizes” twigs by biting them, and then, holding one end of the twig, turns her body so that the twig curves around her body and into the cup of the nest. Then she tamps it down with her feet. Nests are usually in forks of branches and may be close to the ground or as high as 15 feet up

A pair may produce several clutches each summer (they rarely reuse a nest); females do most of the incubating, but males bring food to them on the nest. The young are fledged within two weeks, with the male caring for the fledglings while the female incubates the next brood.

Fun Facts about Cardinals:

  • The male’s red color is related to his diet – he must eat enough foods that contain carotenoid pigments to maintain his brilliant color.
  • The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 put an end to their popular use as caged birds.
  • Unlike the females of many bird species, female Cardinals can sing as well as their mates can.

There’s a feeding hierarchy – males are first in line, females next, and young birds are last.

To enjoy their sounds – https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Cardinal/sounds

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – The End of Summer

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

The End of Summer

Howdy, BugFans,

Well, we’re into October.  The BugLady is still seeing and hearing lots of bugs as she makes her way to the hawk tower, where she counts migrating raptors from a perch 10 feet off the ground.  Most of the goldenrod is done, but tons of syrphid/hover/flower flies, paper wasps, and bumble bees are decorating the asters; tree crickets and katydids are calling from the prairie; and there are still dragonflies and butterflies in the air.  And on some of the recent, soft days, thin, horizontal spider silk has been streaming from the vegetation as spiderlings disperse.  Here are some bugs from the last half of summer:

A WHITE-FACED MEADOWHAWK perched in an “obelisk” position on a hot day.  It’s all about thermoregulation – the position minimizes the surface area of a dragonfly that’s exposed to the sun.

BLACK HORSE FLY – It’s hard to judge the size of an insect from a picture, but this Black horse fly is every bit as big as you think he is (males have huge eyes that cover most of their heads)!  Fortunately, Black horse flies target livestock rather than people (mostly).  For more information about this fly, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/black-horse-fly-redo/.

CICADA – One of our common cicadas, a Dog-day cicada in the genus Neotibicen, visited the BugLady on the tower recently. 

EASTERN PONDHAWK DRAGONFLY – the BugLady always appreciates a little help with deer fly control when she’s out on the trail, and this gorgeous female Eastern Pondhawk was willing to lend some hands.

GRASSHOPPER ON SAND – Built for the beach!

STINKHORN AND COMPANY -Stinkhorns are fascinating fungi.  A succession of these Ravenel’s Stinkhorns came up out of the wood chips during September (high quality wood chips indeed – last year they grew some interesting slime molds).  In an established “colony,” the stinkhorns emerge from clusters (“nests”) of half-buried, egg-like structures that some people call “Witches eggs” and others call “Dinosaur eggs.”  Anyway, the name “stinkhorn” is an apt one, and their caps attracted yellowjackets, blow flies, and several other kinds of smaller flies.

BUMBLE BEE IN A SQUASH FLOWER – BugFan Tom has been sharing a series of sensational shots of bumble bees deep in the throats of his squash flowers.  Wow, Tom!  And that’s why we call them pollinators!

CRAB SPIDER AND AUTUMN MEADOWHAWK – A few years ago, when the BugLady was researching the Eastern Amberwing dragonfly, one of the hits was an image on the website of a photo company.  The dragonfly was sitting on a flower, and the photo caption implied that it was a pollinator.  ‘Fraid not.  Dragonflies do perch on flowers – maybe to rest, or maybe to eat an insect they’ve just snagged, but pollinators, they are not.  Sometimes, like this Autumn Meadowhawk, they pick the wrong landing place.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER CRAB SPIDER – Goldenrod crab spiders can change color from white to yellow and back, depending on the color of the flower they’re sitting on. The change takes days.  Their default color is white, so to turn yellow, they must produce yellow pigment and secrete it into their outer cell layer.  To reverse, they excrete the pigment.  They’re out of luck on blue, purple, or pink flowers, like this thistle, but the spider is still pretty well-camouflaged.

MEADOW KATYDID ON ARROWHEAD – Several kinds of meadow katydids were enjoying the petals and flower parts of arrowheads in Black River Marsh on a fine day in mid-August.  The young lady with the impressive ovipositor is a Straight-lanced meadow katydid.

YELLOWJACKET and LILYPAD APHIDS – A yellowjacket on a mission.  Adult yellowjackets tend to be vegetarians, feeding on aphid honeydew, sap, nectar, and fruit juices.  Immature yellowjackets, however, require protein, so the adults collect and masticate small insects, compact them into “meatballs,” and feed them to the larvae (along the way, the adults swallow some of the meat juices, too).  There’s another kind of nutrition that happens with yellowjackets – “trophallaxis.”  When the larvae feed, they produce a sugary liquid that the adults, in turn, imbibe.  And your picnic?  Yellowjacket populations are peaking as the supply of flowers starts waning, so they may turn to our food and garbage cans.  

ROUGH STINK BUG – There are plenty of stink bugs that are brown that are not the invasive Brown marmorated stink bugs, and this is one of them, a Four-humped Brochymena, or rough stink bug.  Their textured surfaces camouflage them on tree bark.  Because they aren’t “pests,” no one’s really studied them much.  In fact, there are even disagreements about whether they are mostly carnivorous or mostly herbivorous.

SMARTWEED DISONYCHA – This lovely leaf beetle belongs to a decorative genus of flea beetles that includes some species that (of course) are tricky to ID.  According to bugguide.net, the Smartweed Disonycha are not actually a species, but are a “Dumping ground for images of D. pensylvanica-group in which a decision on one of the three species seems not possible.”  Of course, it might also be Disonycha uniguttata (no common name), also one of those three species in the D. pensylvania group.  

Nota Bene:  The BugLady knows how to spell Pennsylvania.  However, when this beetle was named, or soon afterwards, someone misspelled it, or that’s the way it was originally spelled, and that spelling has been enshrined in the nomenclature.  

CRANE FLY – The BugLady was standing by a pond in late August when she saw a small insect flying over the water and dipping the tip of its abdomen into it, just like an ovipositing dragonfly or damselfly.  She was pretty surprised when it landed on a water lily leaf and she saw that it was a crane fly.  She knew that the larvae https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1602094/bgimage of many species of crane flies grow up underwater, but she had never considered how they got there!

Go outside – find some bugs!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Cottonwood Leaf Beetle

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Cottonwood Leaf Beetle

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady was out taking pictures on the beach when she spied this spiffy Cottonwood leaf beetle, a member of the very large (probably 50,000 species worldwide) leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae).  It was actually a few feet away from a cottonwood tree!

Chrysomelids are vegetarians throughout their various life stages, and some species are dedicated to a single plant or group of plants (which they may be named after).  On the plus side, this means that some species of Chrysomelids act as biological controls of unwanted plants; on the minus side, there are cereal leaf beetles, mustard beetles, asparagus beetles, Colorado potato beetles, etc.

COTTONWOOD LEAF BEETLES (Chrysomela scripta) (“scripta” means “written over”) are found in much of the US and Alaska where their host plants – cottonwood, poplar, alder, and willow – grow.  Bugguide.net doesn’t have them listed from Wisconsin https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/4050/data, but there it was.  

Chrysomela is a genus that includes 17 species in North America and more elsewhere.  Identification can be tricky, and the life stories of many are sketchy.

Adults are about ¼” long, and the patterns on their elytra (wing covers) and the color of their body and of the edges of their thorax are variable https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2545511/bgimage, https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1261619/bgimage.  The elytra protect a pair of flying wings that are folded up beneath them.

Their life cycle begins in spring, when the beetles that overwintered as adults abandon their shelters under tree bark or in leaf litter/debris and find some tender, new leaves, shoots, and bark to nibble.  Boy meets girl and romance ensues.  Afterward, the female lays clusters of yellow eggs https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/499798 on the undersurface of leaves.  The eggs hatch, the larvae stay together and skeletonize leaves gregariously for a while https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1495409/bgimage, and by the time the siblings venture away from the group to seek their fortunes, a hungry larva is able to consume most of a leaf all by itself.   

After about two weeks, the mature larvae pupate, attached to the underside of leaves.  Like lady beetles, they spend their pupal stage “naked” and exposed and vulnerable to predators.    

The larvae are chemically protected (cottonwood leaves themselves are chemically protected, but Chrysomela beetles are attracted to them rather than being repelled by them, and feeding on cottonwood leaves seems to enhance the larva’s personal chemicals).  Two white scent glands on each side, at the front of the larva’s body above the legs  https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/996127/bgimage release pungently scented droplets when it’s alarmed (and reabsorb them when danger passes).  Neither the adult nor the pupa possess defensive chemicals.

Despite the chemicals, the larvae are eaten by a few stink bugs, ants, lacewings, tachinid flies, lady beetles, wasps, spiders, and assassin bugs.  Stink bugs and lady beetles prey on the pupae.

Sources agree that the larvae stay together during part of their larval stage before going their separate ways, but the BugLady also found a number of pictures of what looks like “group pupating” but could find no explanation for it https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2154303/bgimage and https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/371396/bgimage.  Here’s a larva (right) and a pupa https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/182107/bgimage, and here’s a recently-emerged adult next to its pupal skin- https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1495411/bgimage.      

There are multiple generations per year over much of their range. 

Some say that control is not needed, and others disagree.  For mature forest trees, the arrival of Cottonwood leaf beetles isn’t a huge problem (their feeding is tougher on saplings), but their presence in nurseries that grow ornamental trees (and that grow willows to make willow baskets) is most definitely unwelcome. 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Pecan Weevil

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Pecan Weevil

Howdy, BugFans,

The title of the Oklahoma Extension circular about Pecan weevils, “Pecan Weevil – Wanted DEAD, Not Alive,” says it all.

Weevils!  Those lovely beetles with clubbed, “elbowed” antennae growing from their downcurved rostrum (snout) and chewing mouthparts located at the snout’s tip.  Some have short, blunt snouts https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1031116/bgimage, https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1380860/bgimage, and some others have slim, graceful snouts that are as long as their body https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2298985/bgimage.  The Curculionidae (the snout beetles or true weevils) are a huge family (77,000 species) within a huge order Coleoptera (beetles) (400,000 species).  The Curculionidae are the largest ANIMAL FAMILY (for now – scientists aren’t finished counting the Ichneumon wasps and the Rove beetles).  Every 4th LIVING THING is a beetle.

Weevils tend to be chunky, drab, and scaly/bristly.  Most are vegetarians both as larvae and as adults.  Females use their mouthparts to excavate vegetable matter both to feed and to lay their eggs in, and their larvae grow up within the plant tissue, eating their “walls.”  Many weevils are very picky about their larvae’s host plants, and some of those host plants are important agricultural plants, like cotton, alfalfa, and pecans.  Weevils are famous for playing dead when they’re alarmed, dropping to the ground, where they’re hard to find, and playing dead. 

Along with 350 other species worldwide (30 in North America), the Pecan weevil is in the genus Curculio (the nut and acorn weevils), but not all curculios are Curculios.  The name has been co-opted by some unrelated weevils and even by some non-weevils (which is what makes common names so much fun!). 

THE PECAN WEEVIL (Curculio caryae) (aka the Hickory nut weevil) can be found throughout the East and Midwest, where its host plants – trees in the genus Carya (hickories and pecans) – grow.  It has expanded its range, with alarm bells sounding whenever it shows up in a new state (Virginia 1992, New Mexico 2016).  It’s gray/brown/rusty-colored and fuzzy, with long, spindly legs, and it measures about a half-inch, not counting the snout.  As is typical of the weevils, the female’s snout https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/844977/bgimage is longer than a male’s https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2085265/bgimage

Unlike many of the BugLady’s subjects, there is plenty of info available about Pecan weevils. 

Adults emerge from their pupal cases in the soil before the nuts ripen, often after a rainstorm, anytime from mid-summer through fall, in the market for immature nuts to feed on.  They drill through the husk/shuck and into the shell, leaving a tiny hole, and their long snouts enable them to feed on the developing nut meats inside (inserting that slim snout into a shell and pulling it out again can be tricky).  After they mate (usually right there on the nut) the female bores into it, creates some chambers just below the surface of the shell, and lays an egg in each chamber.   

The legless larvae (grubs) https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/44993/bgimage feed on the nut meats until fall.  When multiple eggs are laid in a nut, only two or three survive, and in any case, the nut meat is demolished and economically worthless https://texasinsects.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/07/IMG0091-1.jpg.  She has enough eggs to populate about 30 nuts during her one-month life. 

After about a month, the larvae make a BB-sized exit hole in the nut, drop to the ground below the tree, and burrow down as deep as ten inches below the surface to create a pupal cell.  Some emerge as adults the following year, and others remain underground for another year or even two, staying in the soil for a year as adults after they metamorphose.  It’s called “prolonged diapause” (diapause is a delay in development, or “arrested development”).

Several sources pointed out that hickory (and other) trees have “mast” years – years when they produce an exceptionally large nut/seed crop, and that pecans alternate heavy and lighter years.  Masting is thought to be the trees’ way to handle grazers.  A large crop of nuts or fruits raises the odds that at least some will germinate.  Also, a large crop of nuts one year encourages extra reproduction of grazers that year, but a normal crop the next year strands them.  One bulletin pointed to the weevils’ quixotic schedule of spending an extra year or years underground before emerging as their way to outfox the trees. 

Weevils damage the nuts both by feeding on them (weevils feeding on developing nuts may cause the nuts to drop off the tree) and by laying eggs in them.  One area of research involves tracking the adults as they emerge and head for the nut trees.  Do they walk to the tree?  Fly to the trunk and walk up it?  Fly directly into the tree’s crown?  Fly from tree to tree?  Seems like a moot point, since the outcome will be the same, but knowing this could allow growers to target pesticide applications, since the larvae and pupae are “untouchable.”.

The weevil photo came from BugFans Freda, Catie and Alon – it was a joint effort.  Thanks, guys!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Goldenrod Watch – Act III

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Goldenrod Watch – Act III

Howdy, BugFans,

The places where the BugLady walks are yellow now – goldenrods (Solidago sp.) are at their peak on the prairie (so are brown-eyed Susans, sneezeweed, and wild sunflowers).  She’s been poking around in the goldenrod, an exercise she recommends, because goldenrods support an amazing community of invertebrates.  Many visit to lay eggs and will lay them no place else; some come for nectar and pollen; and some come to eat the insects that come for nectar and pollen.  An article in Wikipedia calls goldenrod a keystone species (one that shapes its community) that “has been called the single most important plant for North American pollinator biodiversity.” It continues, “As many as 104 species of butterflies and moths use it as a host plant for their larvae, and 42 species of bees are goldenrod specialists, visiting only goldenrod for food.”

There are about 100 species of goldenrod in North America (and they readily hybridize) and the BugLady can ID seven of them – Grass-leaved, Stiff, Zigzag, Showy, Bog, and Elm-leaved (and Canada, if there’s a goldenrod ball gall on its stem).  Canada goldenrod is what a gardener friend calls a “thug,” – it loves to take over – a native plant that can become invasive.

Besides being beautiful, goldenrod has a history of medicinal use for fevers, sore throats, snake bite, toothache, wounds, and more, and it was also used to flavor medicines and as a dye.  The Ojibwe name for it means “sun medicine,” and the Mesquakie used it in combination with some other herbs to wash a baby who had not learned to talk or laugh, so that the baby “would grow up with its faculties intact.” 

The BugLady has never been stung while taking mug shots of goldenrod critters, and it doesn’t make her sneeze, either (goldenrod pollen is heavy and sticky and not airborne, while ragweed, which blooms nearby and whose small, inconspicuous, green flowers produce abundant, airborne pollen is the hidden culprit of hay fever). 

This is the third installment of the Goldenrod Watch series – about 15 species have been featured in each.  When you go out and embrace a goldenrod patch, here’s what you might see:

SYRPHID FLY (OBLIQUE STREAKTAIL, Allograpta obliqua).  Your reward for looking closely.

If the BugLady had a nickel for every syrphid/hover/flower fly she’s seen in the past week, she could buy a small island somewhere.  Syrphid flies (family Syrphidae) are harmless bee and wasp mimics that, as their name suggests, hover over flowers (and over our sweaty skin, landing to sip the salt).  Many are exquisitely patterned, and some make very convincing yellowjackets, though they do have funny-looking “noses.” https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1063410/bgimage.  The BugLady recommends the Flower Flies of Minnesota by Scott King.

SUMMER SPRING AZURE – What a dainty little butterfly.  The “Azure season” starts in May with the Spring Spring Azure and continues from July through autumn with the Summer Azure.”  What’s that all about?  See https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/small-blue-butterflies-2/.

FOUR-TOOTHED MASON WASP – Another solitary wasp, with a similar lifestyle involving making egg chambers, caching them (in this case with the caterpillars of micromoths), and then turning her back on the whole affair.  They are not aggressive, but if you insist on grabbing one, she will deliver a sting like that of a Bald-faced hornet (in other words, memorable).  The male of the species doesn’t exactly sting, but his nether regions are pointy, and he may stab the unwary, a rarity among Hymenopterans.  Here’s the rest of the story https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/four-toothed-mason-wasp/.  

HONEY BEE – The BugLady has photographed lots of honeybees, but she doesn’t recall seeing one as dark as this one.  From what she reads, bees have blackish bodies that are disguised by golden hairs, and older bees, especially those that work outside the hive, often lose the hairs on the thorax and their abdomens.  

SPOTTED CUCUMBER BEETLE – The subject of Agricultural Extension WANTED posters from sea to shining sea, and from the Gulf north into Canada.  Why?  Crop damage to the flowers, leaves, and stems (the adults), and to roots of emerging plants (the larvae/grubs) of squash, beans, corn, cotton, and more.  The very-fecund females may lay 400 eggs in a lifetime, but some overachievers lay three times that number.  And the cucumber part?  Sprawling over the tops of nearby goldenrods was a thicket of Wild cucumber vines https://www.minnesotawildflowers.info/flower/wild-cucumber.  

AMBUSH BUG – One of the BugLady’s favorites strikes again.  If you’re looking for bugs, look on flowers.  If you see a bug that’s sitting very, very still, look for an ambush bug or a crab spider.

THICK-HEADED FLY – This odd little fly has a dark side.  Mom hangs out on or near flowers, waiting for bumble bees.  When she spots one (different species of thick-headed flies target different species of bumble bees), she attacks it, sticks her ovipositor between two of its abdominal segments, and inserts an egg, and her larva feeds on the insides of its host.  When the fly larva is sufficiently well-developed, some genus members send a message (somehow) to their host telling if to bury itself (a very un-beelike behavior).  The fly pupates in the bee and emerges from underground. For more information see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/tricks-of-the-trade-thick-headed-flies/.   

BRACONID WASP – The BugLady thinks this is a braconid wasp, one of a large and complicated and important group of small wasps that, someday, she will write a BOTW about.  If it’s not a braconid, it’s an Ichneumon wasp, and the BugLady is anxiously awaiting the publication of The Big Picture Book of Ichneumon Wasps (assuming she could lift it).

MONARCH – They’re on their way south now, slowly, and will take several months to reach the oyamel fir forests in the mountains of Central Mexico.  They’ll feed on nectar from a wide variety of flowers as they go (only their caterpillars are tied to milkweeds).  An adult Monarch newly-emerged from its chrysalis in Wisconsin has about 20 grams of fat in its body, but it will arrive in Mexico with 125 grams of fat, which will see it through a winter of inactivity on the cool mountainsides.  

Here’s a Monarch update – https://wimonarchs.org/early-sept-an-exciting-time-of-year/

GREEN BOTTLE FLY – It’s a lovely, burnished bronze/green fly, but out of concern for the easily queasy, the BugLady is not going to describe the details of its life.

AILANTHUS MOTH – This spiffy little moth is often seen on goldenrod, but its caterpillar is a bit of a mystery.  It is (allegedly) a native species (the BugLady says “allegedly” because its original range was south Florida, which has been a petri dish for introduced plants and animals for a very long time).  There it fed on a few tropical trees, but it got it’s Big Chance when Ailanthus trees (Tree of Heaven) were introduced from China and started marching north, taking the moth with them (see that story here https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/ailanthus-webworm-moth/).  A mystery because although Ailanthus is supposedly the sole caterpillar host, there aren’t any Ailanthus trees where the BugLady typically sees the moth.  A few sources say that the caterpillar eats the leaves of Ailanthus “and some other deciduous trees and shrubs” but don’t name them.

INCHWORM CATERPILLAR – Food for baby birds.  Imagine how many of these it would take to raise a Robin! 

SQUARE-HEADED WASP – A small, solitary wasp that uses her strong jaws to excavate a cell for her eventual egg in the tissue of a log or plant stem.  When it’s ready, she cruises the flower tops for small flies, which she grabs, stings, and stuffs into the cell.  When she judges that the pile of flies is the right size, she lays the egg, closes the cell, and begins working on another.

EASTERN YELLOWJACKET – (AKA “garbage bee”).  She’s so pretty, sitting there in her golden bower, that it’s easy to forget what a pain yellowjackets can be.  The good news is that she is a pollinator and that some of the insects she collects and masticates for her larvae are pests, and that old nests provide winter food for skunks and raccoons.  We all know what the bad news is.  

Here are the first two installments of Goldenrod Watch https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/goldenrod-watch/ and https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/goldenrod-watch-act-ii/.   

Go outside – find some sun and some goldenrod!

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 XVII

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bugs in the News XVII

Howdy BugFans,

The BugLady is deep into putting together a newsletter she curates, so here are someone else’s words for a change.  If it’s a bit ant-heavy, well, there are a lot of ants.

INSECT ANCESTORS:

The latest chapter in the story of how insect ancestors may have started on the road from marine invertebrates to the six-legged land critters we love today: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-ancient-insect-had-24-legs-and-could-help-explain-how-the-ancestors-of-modern-day-bugs-took-over-the-land-180989420/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=20260828-daily&lctg=91269370&user_id=ad498c350b84ba2f411447e5cb7d669a90640c056267c91c033e8e88e5e0b4f9

BUTTERFLIES AND CLIMATE CHANGE:

Tiger Swallowtails, the BugLady’s favorite butterfly (favorite insect!) have been pretty scarce this summer (though heat and humidity have kept her off the trail more than usual).  She feels that the weather patterns connected with climate change – early, cool, wet springs (interspersed with mini-heat waves), very hot, dry summers, early autumns, and wet winters – are tough on the occupants of chrysalises and pupal cases, and many don’t survive getting wet and then cold.  There are two generations of Tigers each year.  The brood that overwinters has a high mortality, and if the summer brood, which has life a little easier, doesn’t pick up the slack, the numbers are low going into winter, and the cycle continues.  

Here’s a different kind of fallout:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/butterflies-around-the-world-are-moving-to-new-habitats-largely-because-of-climate-change-a-study-suggests-180989279/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=91269370&user_id=ad498c350b84ba2f411447e5cb7d669a90640c056267c91c033e8e88e5e0b4f9  

TREE CRICKETS: 

It must be autumn (meteorological autumn, at this point) because the tree crickets are singing their hearts out in the bushes and tall grasses.  Some are using megaphones.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/compete-big-guys-tiny-crickets-fashion-leafy-megaphones-blast-their-mating-calls-180976579/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20201218-daily-responsive&spMailingID=44134055&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=1901641888&spReportId=MTkwMTY0MTg4OAS2 

Here are their songs – https://songsofinsects.com/thumbnail-guide-to-species and https://www.listeningtoinsects.com/tree-cricket-introduction.

MANHATTANTS: 

There’s a new ant in town, and it’s kicking butt and taking names  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/invasive-manhattants-are-taking-over-new-york-city-and-spreading-quickly-180984917/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=50080715&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2761652941&spReportId=Mjc2MTY1Mjk0MQS2

MORE ANTS: 

And speaking of ants, there sure are a lot of them!  As Ed McMahon used to say, “How many ARE there?” 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/an-estimated-20-quadrillion-ants-live-on-earth-180980804/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20220921-daily-responsive&spMailingID=47399585&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2322215087&spReportId=MjMyMjIxNTA4NwS2

EVEN MORE ANTS:

Ants like junk foods – is that a problem? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ants-can-get-distracted-by-cookies-chips-and-other-junk-food-heres-why-that-could-be-a-problem-for-the-environment-180988962/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=91269370&user_id=ad498c350b84ba2f411447e5cb7d669a90640c056267c91c033e8e88e5e0b4f9

BUMBLE BEES: 

The Federally-endangered Rusty-patched bumblebee https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-the-endangered-rusty-patched-bumblebee-survive-180984894/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=50099331&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2762283843&spReportId=Mjc2MjI4Mzg0MwS2

AND ONE LAST ANT:

This spider catapults ants — https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-newly-discovered-spider-builds-a-unique-web-that-sends-ants-catapulting-through-the-air-180989003/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=91269370&user_id=ad498c350b84ba2f411447e5cb7d669a90640c056267c91c033e8e88e5e0b4f9

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Monarchs 101 Reprised

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Monarchs 101 Reprised

Howdy, BugFans,

2026: it has been a quiet summer, Monarch-wise, but (OMG), it’s almost September!  The BugLady once read that in September, every time they fly up in the air to search for flowers to nectar on, Monarchs will land a little south of where they took off from.  The very definition of “drifting” south.

Anyway, here’s an upgrade (new words and new pictures) of the first of maybe a half dozen BOTWs about Monarch butterflies, written in June of 2008 (about a year into a series that started as a joke in August of 2007).  You can find more by Googling “UWM Field Station Monarch.”

2008: Monarchs, famously, migrate, but they are not the only insects that do – snout and Painted Lady and Red Admiral butterflies do, a variety of large dragonflies like Common Green Darners and Black Saddlebags do, and even a few bug species do!  Watching dragonflies drift down the shore of Lake Michigan on a soft, fall day can be mind-boggling, but Monarchs are the long-distance champs.

All of the Monarchs east of the Rockies overwinter on about 15 smallish sites in central Mexico, some 1500 miles from southeastern Wisconsin.  Monarchs west of the Rockies overwinter along the coast of California, though a few overachievers do trans-Pacific jaunts to Hawaii (where they’ve established a beachhead) and even to Australia.  Southern Texas and Florida boast non-migratory populations.  There are several generations per year, but the Monarchs that emerge here at the end of summer migrate to Mexico.  When young birds migrate, it is often with adult birds that have made the trip before – not so with monarchs. 

In spring, that extra-long-lived generation (seven to eight months) that migrated south and spent the winter in a fairly dormant state, clinging to trees, stirs itself and turns back north.  They lay eggs as they go and their offspring and their offspring’s offspring follow the emerging milkweed crop and eventually return to Wisconsin.  Here, they may produce a few more generations.  These non-migratory adults live only a few weeks after they emerge – their only job is to boost the population.

Putting all one’s eggs in the same basket, population-wise, is risky.  In the winters of 1992 and 1995, there were snowstorms on the wintering grounds; some estimates were of greater than 60% mortality. As they headed north in the spring of 1996, an el Nino event brought heavy rains to the southeastern part of the US and more died, and for the next five years or more, Monarch sightings were alarmingly infrequent.

Scientists have discovered that in order to get to their destinations, Monarchs navigate by the sun, using an internal clock that allows them to correct their compasses in response to the sun’s movements across the sky. Not only that, it lets monarchs in Michigan, Maine and Montana file correct (but different) flight plans for central Mexico. 

That discovery raised as many questions as it answered, because it is only the final brood of summer that turns its compound eyes southward and embarks on The Big Trip.  Further experiments suggest that decreasing day length helps “set” the monarch’s clock; at a specific number of daylight hours, an internal clock is activated, and a generation of migrators is produced (they are the only ones that get tagged).  The changing tilt of the earth in late summer also plays a role – wherever they are, Monarchs are cued to start moving when the sun recedes to around 57 degrees above their southern horizon.  And all these calculations happen in a critter whose 3/16” long head contains a brain the size of a pinhead. 

Monarch caterpillars, like many other youngsters, are picky eaters.  Though the adults get nectar from a variety of flowers, the females lay eggs only on milkweed species.  How does she identify a milkweed without a field guide?  She spots a likely leaf by its shape and color and then descends to administer the scratch test.  She abrades the leaf’s surface with rasps on her feet, which releases plant chemicals that she “tastes” using chemoreceptors also located on her feet.  It’s a binary choice – Milkweed or Not milkweed – and she rejects the old, leathery milkweed plants in favor of those that are producing tender, new leaves. 

Because they feed only on milkweed, whose sap contains cardiac glycosides, the caterpillars are poisonous.  Insects deal with toxic chemicals in their food either by figuring out a way to segregate and store them safely internally or by figuring out a way to eliminate them quickly.  Monarch caterpillars save and concentrate glycosides – caterpillar levels are higher than leaf levels – and the pupae and the adults are poisonous, too.  A bird has to eat one to get with the program (Mother Nature is careful of the species but careless of the individual), but one is enough to encourage avoidance thereafter.  The presumably tasty (or, at least, non-poisonous) Viceroy butterfly cashes in on this avoidance by mimicking the Monarch https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1468774 (note the curved line running through the Viceroy’s hind wing, a line that a Monarch doesn’t have).  

monarch caterpillar
monarch caterpillar
monarch chrysalis
tagged monarch

Monarchs grow from egg to adult in about one month, spending around four days in the egg, ten or twelve as a caterpillar (caterpillars hang in a “J” shape right before becoming a chrysalis), and twelve as a pupa in a glorious, pale-green, translucent case that allows voyeurs to observe the transformation (here’s what’s happening inside that chrysalis https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/pupal-cases/).  

Some people – but not people of Irish persuasion, or those who love them – call this butterfly “King Billy’ because orange and black were the colors of King William of Orange. 

Go outside – wish the Monarchs bon voyage.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Chinese Mystery Snail

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Chinese Mystery Snail

Howdy, BugFans,

When the BugLady was growing up near Brown Deer, Wisconsin, close to the Milwaukee River, she heard a story of some 1930’s entrepreneurs who imported Roman or Edible snails (Helix pomatia) with an eye toward some home-grown escargot.  They housed the snails in cages on an island in the river (what could possibly go wrong?).  Savvy BugFans are already writing the ending to this script.

Yes, the river did flood, and yes, their breeding stock was swept away.  And yes, the story could be apocryphal, except for the fact that visitors to Kletzsch Park, about five miles downstream as the water flows, still report finding abundant, large snails (apparently, accidentally stepping on a big one is pretty dramatic/traumatic).

Fast forward decades to another day and another non-native snail (but the same river). 

As the BugLady looks for dragonflies along the Milwaukee River at Waubedonia Park, far upstream from Brown Deer, she sees silt-covered, lunker (up to 3”), aquatic snails in the quiet bays along the river’s shore, and she’s been wondering if they were Chinese Mystery snails.  Thanks to BugFan Jill, who sent the pictures to a snail guy who confirmed the identification.

Chinese mystery snails (Cipangopaludina chinensis – see following paragraph) are one of the largest species in the family Viviparidae, the River snails.  These are gilled, freshwater snails that give birth to live young and that have an operculum, a tough, oval-ish trap door that is located on the snail’s muscley “foot” and that, when the snail pulls the foot into its shell, covers the opening snugly.  They’re “right-handed” snails – when you hold them pointy end up, the shell’s opening is on the right side.  

Their taxonomy is messy, due to conflicting names given to specimens that may or may not be the same species, in different areas.  Says Wikipedia, “Literature cited in the USGS database regarding the Chinese mystery snail may employ the following names: Cipangopaludina chinensis, Cipangopaludina chinensis malleatus, Cipangopaludina chinensis malleata, Viviparus malleatus, Viviparus chinensis malleatus, Bellamya chinensis and Bellamya chinensis malleatus.”

They originated in the shallow waters of eastern Russia and Southeast Asia, where they are used for food, and they were imported to California in 1892 to be sold in Asian markets.  From there they started their eastward trek, arriving in Massachusetts by 1915, and branching out to Lake Erie by 1968, and Minnesota early in the 21st century.  They were also sold for the aquarium trade, and some of the Great Lakes introductions, like an aquarium release in the Niagara River in the 1930’s, were the result of people “freeing” aquarium snails.

They’re not picky about habitat.  They do love a quiet pond or a very slow-moving river with a soft muddy/silty/sandy bottom to burrow into, but they’re also found in ditches, marshes, bays, and other wetlands.  They’re very tolerant of changes in water temperatures and water levels, and of low levels of dissolved calcium in the water, even though they need calcium to build their shells.

Their food habits explain why they’re considered invasive in some areas.  Like other snails, they use hard radulae (spike-like “teeth”) to rasp algae and plankton off of underwater surfaces, but unlike other snails, they can also glean tiny tidbits out of the water by filter feeding, like a mussel.  Their filtering effectively removes the tiny bits that other animals eat; they change the water chemistry by releasing lots of snail poop; and if native aquatic animals decline, that affects their predators, all of which may threaten biodiversity.  Like the “zebra mussel effect,” the initial “Wow, look at how clear the water is!” may be followed by “Where did all that algae come from?” as sunlight penetrates deeper into the newly clear water.  Despite these potential impacts, relationships between Chinese mystery snails, their habitat, and the other aquatic organisms in that habitat haven’t been widely studied yet. 

Scroll down for a map of their range in Wisconsin – https://jvzlab.limnology.wisc.edu/ais/chinese-mystery-snail/.

Because of their tough shell and their ability to retreat into that shell and “close the door,” the larger snails don’t have many natural enemies (they coexist with the equally-alien, snail-eating Rusty crayfish).  Of course, the reason they arrived on these shores in the first place was their edibility, so they could be/are harvested for restaurant kitchens, though there are too many of them for us to eat our way out of this.  Caveat emptor: they host some parasitic worms that can kill waterfowl, and in Asia, they may transmit liver flukes to humans (but they aren’t known to do that here).

Here’s what they look like when they’re not covered with silt https://cceclinton.org/environment/invasive-nuisance-species/aquatic-invasives/chinese-mystery-snail. 

Like all good invaders, Chinese mystery snails are very fertile.  The embryonic snails develop in the female’s brood pouch, and a “newborn” Chinese mystery snail, complete with shell, may be the size of a grain of rice.  Females may live as long as five years (males, three), and they bear more young as they age (larger snails have larger brood pouches and larger broods, but the young themselves are not larger).  They reproduce from June through October and average 25 to 35 young per brood, and when they live in warmer water, they reproduce more frequently.  According to the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance web page on Chinese Mystery Snails, “The “mystery” of these snails comes from their life histories. The females …….. give birth to live, fully developed snails that “mysteriously” and abruptly appear.” 

Many of the aquatic invasives in Wisconsin have moved from lake to lake on boats, with early concentrations found around boat launches, which is why the DNR has washing stations at boat launches and encourages cleaning not only the hull, but any ropes, anchors, and other gear that may have been in the water.  Unfortunately, Mystery snails have one more survival trick up their figurative sleeves.  Most of the critters that hitchhike on boats don’t live long out of water – a few days at most – but a Chinese mystery snail, with its operculum tightly closed, can hang on for at least four weeks.

Remember, for all things Invasive in Wisconsin (and elsewhere), start with the Southeastern Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium at https://sewisc.org/.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Black Thorn-footed Mason Wasp

Bug o’the Week

Black Thorn-footed Mason Wasp

Howdy, BugFans,

Heads up – We’re venturing into the weeds taxonomically in this episode, but we’ll take it slow, and the BugLady is confident that BugFans can handle it.

The BugLady was enjoying the prairie flowers at Riveredge one day when she saw this odd little wasp that was also enjoying them (the flower is Rattlesnake master).  Turns out it was a Black Thorn-footed Mason Wasp (Zethus spinipes).  Mason wasps have appeared in these pages before (https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/bramble-mason-wasp/) – let’s review who they are.

They’re in the family Vespidae, a family of almost 5,000 species (325-ish in North America) that includes social wasps and solitary wasps and lots of different lifestyles.  Paper wasps, yellowjackets, and hornets are its better-known members, with the potter and mason wasps (subfamily Eumeninae, which used to be its own family, Eumenidae) sneaking in under the radar.  The BugLady was surprised to read that although they are relatively inconspicuous, the Eumeninae make up the vast majority of the Vespids, with 260 species here and 4,500 species worldwide.  Ants, bees, and wasps are under a big umbrella, the Order Hymenoptera. 

The Eumeninae are solitary wasps that feed on nectar but serve up the bodies of other invertebrates – mainly moth caterpillars – to their larvae.  They have a variety of nest styles – some are opportunists that use pre-made holes or cavities mostly above ground, like tunnels of other insects, nail-holes, etc. and others build egg chambers from natural materials like mud, sand, or vegetation.  The name Potter wasp comes from the (very cool) urn-shaped mud nests constructed by some species https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/439141/bgimage.  When they’re finished, the egg cells are stocked with paralyzed bodies, an egg is laid (some species suspend the egg from the ceiling with a strand of dried fluid), the chamber is closed, and a new one is started beside it.  When the eggs hatch, dinner is served. 

Eumeninae is the biggest subfamily in the Vespidae, and Zethus is the largest genus in the Eumeninae, with about 250 species worldwide (and, of course, its taxonomy is under review).  They are mostly neotropical (Brazil is a hotbed of Zethus species), with only six species in North America north of the Rio Grande.  Of those six, five are restricted to the far southern portion of this country, and one is widespread in the eastern US (in short, the BugLady is sure of her ID on this one!). 

Zethus, weighing in at ½” to 5/8”, may use bits of vegetation or wood to make nests in twigs and branches, in used insect tunnels, or underground, but they don’t make mud nests. 

We think of wasps as being, well, “wasp-waisted,” and some take it to extremes, especially in a different wasp family, Sphecidae, the Thread-waisted wasps https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2489169/bgimage.  The constricted bit – the stalk that connects the thorax with the rear of the abdomen – consists of the narrowed first (and sometimes second) abdominal segment.  This stalk is called the “petiole” (the abdomen is “petiolate,” the opposite of which is “sessile”).  Meanwhile, back in the Eumeninae, Zethus and another genus, Eumenes, have conspicuous petioles https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2556597/bgpage, but at the back of the petiole is swollen area that ends in a second, wider petiole.

At last – the BLACK THORN-FOOTED MASON WASP!  There are two subspecies, one southern (Zethus spinipes variegatus https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2397609/bgimage) and one northern (Zethus spinipes spinipes).  The northern subspecies is found in the northeastern two-thirds of the continent from the Atlantic to the Great Plains.  The wonderful, Minnesota Seasons website says that they are uncommon in that state, at the western edge of their range. 

The BugLady couldn’t find a specific explanation for the “thorn-footed” part of its name, though it does have a spine on each back leg where the tibia meets the tarsus.  Look closely https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1873689/bgimage 

Not a lot is known about the reproductive (or other) biology of the BTFMW.  Females secure caterpillars with their mandibles and then sting and immobilize them.  They use or enlarge existing cavities in rotting wood or under bark, and they partition the egg chambers with wood fibers.  She may cap the tunnel with a cut piece of leaf.  Here’s a nice series of a female caught in the act of working on an egg tunnel https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/579657/bgimage. 

It is common in the Eumeninae for males to emerge from the egg tunnel before females, sometimes by a week or more, which means that when she oviposits the female must deposit eggs that will develop into females at the far end of her tunnel, and eggs that will be males closer to the front.  Magic?  You bet!!  A fertilized egg will develop into a female, and an unfertilized egg into a male, and she can decide, as she’s about to lay an egg, whether to release sperm that will fertilize it.

Because some of the moth larvae they cache in their egg cells are agricultural pests (like the Nantucket pine tip moth), BTFMWs are listed as a beneficial species.

FUN FACT: Like those of many other Hymenopterans, Eumenid larvae can’t poop – their digestive tracts aren’t “hooked up” until they metamorphose into adults.  This is probably an adaptation to their spending their larval stage in a “locked room.”  If they could defecate, it would be an unhealthy locked room.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Mid-summer Stories

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Mid-summer Stories

Howdy, BugFans,

It’s August!!!  Or, to put it another way, it’s August – yikes!  Halfway(ish) through summer.  Here are some of the sights that the BugLady has enjoyed so far.  Many of these have already starred in a BOTW of their very own – you can look them up in the UWM archives by Googling “UWM Field Station (name of insect).”

FOUR-LINED PLANT BUGS: Most Mirid plant bugs are small and green or beige or mottled, and therefore pretty inconspicuous.  Not so the Four-lined plant bug, which is as showy as a nymph https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1670391/bgimage as it is as an adult.  These urban/suburban/grassland bugs feed on plants – wild, cultivated, and agricultural, especially the mints – by piercing the plant tissue and feeding on the sap.

TREEHOPPER EXUVIA: On a recent trip to Spruce Lake Bog the BugLady noticed a number of Buffalo treehoppers https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2014389/bgimage, and then she found this shed skin (exuvia).  Buffalo treehoppers have improbable nymphs https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1014470/bgimage that leave equally improbable skins behind when they shed.  Adult treehoppers communicate with each other and with their young by vibrating their abdomens against whatever surface they’re sitting on.

EASTERN AMBERWING:  Good things come in small packages!  At 0.90” long, the Eastern Amberwing is our second-smallest dragonfly, but one of our flashiest.

CLYTUS RURICOLA:  What a dynamite beetle!  It’s a long-horned beetle (family Cerambycidae) that is sometimes called the Round-necked long-horned beetle, and it’s disguised as a wasp (just when you thought it couldn’t get better, here are some relatives https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/128534/bgimage and https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2361925/bgimage).  Look for the adults on flowers, eating pollen.  The larvae live concealed in rotting wood, especially maple.

moth blinded sphinx female
blinded sphinx moth female
moth blinded sphinx male
blinded sphinx moth male

BLINDED SPHINX:  Back in mid-June, the BugLady threaded her way down a narrow boardwalk with tall grasses on all sides hoping to find some damselflies.  On her way back, she saw a male Blinded Sphinx moth and an egg-laden female in a state of disarray.  She hadn’t noticed them on her first pass, when she apparently brushed against them as they were sharing a “Get-a-Room” moment.  She added insult to injury by shoving a camera in their faces before she tiptoed away. 

CRAB SPIDER:  The BugLady loves trying to spot mini-crab spiders lurking on flowers.  Goldenrod crab spiders (obviously not restricted to goldenrods) can change color from white to yellow to white again, though each change takes a few days. 

BLACK AND YELLOW MUD DAUBER:  A solitary, thread-waisted wasp.  Yes, she can sting, but you’d have to work at it (bees and wasps that defend large, communal nests/hives are the most dangerous).  The mud she collects will be fashioned into a globular nest containing (usually) 6 to 15 egg cells https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/888662/bgimage that she provisions with spiders for her eventual young (she sips nectar, but her larvae are carnivores).

SCORPIONFLY:  First of all, Scorpionflies are not true flies (order Diptera), they’re found in the Order Mecoptera, along with several groups of odd-looking insects like hangingflies https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/971801/bgpage, forcepflies https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2031144/bgpage, and Snow scorpionflies https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/1651225/bgimage.  And they’re not scorpions, either, though males of one family (Panorpidae) have a bulbous, stinger-like, appendage at the tip of their abdomen https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/205845/bgimage (they don’t sting, either).  For more details about Scorpionflies, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/scorpionfly-revisited/.  In the final paragraph of that account, the BugLady says that there are more than 80 episodes in the BOTW.  Now there are more than 800. 

WASP ON WATER:  Insects that fly too close to the water risk getting trapped on the surface film – the water molecules that are exposed to air at the surface are “stickier” than those below.  What happens next?  If it’s lucky, the wasp will bump into something to climb up onto.  Otherwise……..

WATER STRIDERS…..Otherwise, it will become prey for some predator, and these water striders are likely candidates (this is a pair, indulging in a bit of hanky-panky).  They were skimming along the surface just a few feet from the wasp but were otherwise occupied.  Water striders are sometimes called Water spiders (they’re not – we need to enunciate) or Jesus bugs (because they walk on water).  Water striders monitor the water’s surface with their two front legs as they locomote with their four hind legs, and they are attracted by the mini-ripples produced by an insect struggling on the surface.  

BLACK-SIDED MEADOW KATYDID – the BugLady loves finding infant katydids, although this one didn’t want to be found – it immediately ducked in back of the nearest plant stem.  The folks at bugguide.net did a better job https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/2547384/bgimage.   They grow up to be pretty spiffy https://www.listeningtoinsects.com/black-sided-meadow-katydid, and they sing (exceedingly softly) from perches at the edges of wetlands in late afternoon and at night.

ARROW CLUBTAIL DRAGONFLY:  It takes about 45 minutes to get to this stage after the dragonfly naiad has climbed out of the water and pushed its head out of its split skin.  Its wings need a little more length and strength before this teneral (newly-minted dragonfly) can launch itself straight up into a tree.  It takes a few days before a teneral gains it’s adult coloring and the duckling turns into a swan https://www.bugguide.net/node/view/17871/bgimage.   

WASP WITH SPIDER:  A small, life-or-death struggle had already been decided when the BugLady saw them.  It was “man bites dog” – a wasp (Episyron quinquenotatus)(probably) had collected a small orb-weaver, paralyzed it, and was dragging it to a tunnel where she would stuff it into a chamber, lay an egg, and close the chamber off.  When the egg hatches, the eventual larva will feed on the spider, pupate in its chamber, and emerge the following summer.  

PHANTOM CRANE FLY:  Someone asked the BugLady recently if she believes in magic.  The obvious answer – How can you be out in Nature and not believe in magic?  Example: Phantom crane flies, flickering along in dappled sunlight at the edges of wetlands.  As Dar Williams sings, “We find magic everywhere.”

Go outside – find some magic! 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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