Tag: butterfly

Bug o’the Week – The Twelve Bugs of Christmas

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

The Twelve Bugs of Christmas

Howdy, BugFans,

It’s that time of year again – time to put our feet up, sip adult beverages by the light of the tree, hum “The Twelve Bugs Days of Christmas,” and dream of spring (the days are getting longer, you know).  Here are a Baker’s Dozen from 2025.

This glorious POLYPHEMUS MOTH CATERPILLAR, in the giant silk moth family Saturniidae (not the same family as the moths that produce silk for textiles), is huge!  How big is it?  https://bugguide.net/node/view/2500815/bgimage.  And it’s going to grow up to be a very large moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/2224393/bgimage.    

AMERICAN RUBYSPOT – One of the lovely River damsels.  Males are beautiful (https://bugguide.net/node/view/991176/bgimage) but this female is pretty spectacular in her own right.  The BugLady wishes she knew how she got that halo effect (probably a random sparkle off the Milwaukee River beyond) – she d employ it in more pictures.

AMBUSH BUG – Seasoned BugFans can attest to the BugLady’s fascination with Ambush bugs, which lay in wait on flowers until lunch arrives.  When she took this shot, the Ambush bug reminded her of another fascinating insect, the Orchid Mantis https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/unraveling-the-orchid-mantis-mystery/  (for a deeper Orchid Mantis dive, see https://www.pbs.org/video/orchid-mantis-looks-that-kill-p9mkih/.

DOGBANE LEAF BEETLES are spectacular green beetles (https://bugguide.net/node/view/6438/bgimage) – except when they aren’t.  The beetle’s color and incandescence are the result of the play of light on exceedingly small, tilted plates that overlay its pigment layer. As you walk around it, the light bouncing off both the pigment and the plates causes the colors to change with your angle (and sometimes bring up Christmas colors).  Life is Physics.  Check the bugguide.net image gallery for more https://bugguide.net/node/view/461/bgimage. 

OBLONG-WINGED KATYDID – A splendid katydid, splendidly in tune with its surroundings!

BEE FLY – This Bee fly deposits her eggs in the egg tunnels of solitary wasps that live in sandy/bare areas, though “deposit” doesn’t quite describe the process.  She hovers above the tunnel of a wasp like this one https://bugguide.net/node/view/1455229/bgimage and lobs an egg down into the opening.  But – there’s a secret sauce.  She dips her rear end into the sand in order to take up some sand grains, which she will store in a special receptacle.  As an egg emerges, it gets a gritty coating that may help camouflage it and may also make it heavier so that her” throw” will be more accurate.

BUMBLE BEE – the BugLady has pictures of a number of insects nectaring on the spiny center of Purple coneflower (Echinacea sp.), and it always looks like an iffy proposition.  The name “Echinacea” comes from the Greek word for hedgehog.

CRAB SPIDER – Crab spiders like orchids (this one is on a Small Yellow Lady’s Slipper)!  They don’t spin trap webs, and orchids give them a nice platform on which to wait for pollinators (though some might have a long wait because not all orchids are pollinated by insects).  The BugLady has a color slide of a Bog candle orchid with a white crab spider fitting neatly onto a horizontal flower.  Just as there is an orchid-mimic mantis, there’s an Orchid mimic crab spider https://www.notesfromtheroad.com/roam/flower-crab-spider.html.

TUFTED BIRD LIME/BIRD-DROPPING MOTHS look marbled to the BugLady.  Jim Sogarrd, author of Moths and Caterpillars of the North Woods, tell a story about attempting to collect a bird-dropping moth from the side of a building, only to discover that it actually was a bird dropping.

ROBBER FLY – Robber flies are carnivorous flies that come in quite a variety of sizes and shapes (https://wisconsinbutterflies.org/robberfly).  Larger species, like this green-eyed beauty https://bugguide.net/node/view/319451/bgimage, can gather bees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and even cicadas for lunch.  Others are great bumble bee mimics https://bugguide.net/node/view/2119764/bgimage, and still others, like this small  fly sitting on a daisy fleabane, capture mosquitoes and gnats.

HACKBERRY EMPEROR BUTTERFLIES – Some kinds of caterpillars feed on a variety of plants, but Hackberry Emperor caterpillars eat only one thing and so can live only where Hackberry trees grow – no hackberry; no Emperor https://bugguide.net/node/view/2116852/bgimage.  This one was posing under the roof overhang of the Barn, at Riveredge.  Adults rarely feed on flowers, preferring tree sap, rotting fruit, carrion, and dung, and they collect minerals from damp/muddy soil with their proboscis their top side is handsome, too) https://bugguide.net/node/view/1450763/bgimage.  They’re not pollinators – when they do visit flowers, they don’t touch down with their feet, and they avoid putting their antennae on the flower, only extending their proboscis into the flower. and so not picking up or spreading pollen.  

JUMPING SPIDER – even people who don’t like spiders like Jumping spiders, and some keep them as pets (this one looks like the Bold jumper, Phidippus audax).

BLUE DASHER – When the BugLady was a kid, Angie the Christmas Tree Angel (those BugFans who are old enough can hum a few bars here) used to smile benignly from the top of the tree.  That was before the BugLady knew about dragonflies.  This guy makes an excellent substitute for Angie or for the Partridge in the Pear Tree.

May your days be merry and bright,eber, they are “active hunters at night. They sometimes run with groups of carpenter ants (Camponotus species)………”  They spin their tube-shaped retreats where ants can be found. 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Autumn Adventures

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Autumn Adventures

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady spends the spring and summer combing natural areas for bugs and flowers and other stuff to photograph, but in fall, she sits on a 10-foot-tall tower, counting migrating raptors.  As a result, her meanderings have mostly been confined to Forest Beach Migratory Preserve since September 1st.  As the poet Stephen Vincent Benét once wrote (not about insects, but it could have been), “This is the last, this is the last, Hurry, hurry, this is the last,..”  With some recent chilly nights and cool days, the Bug Season is winding down, poised for the first frost, but tree crickets and grasshoppers still sing on the prairie, and the late season flies, bees, butterflies, and dragonflies are afoot.  Here are some September and early October bugs.

AUTUMN MEADOWHAWK – Were there dragonflies?  Indeed, there were!  The last of the migrating darners and saddlebags passed the tower during a spell of Florida weather in September.  Starting in early July, six species of meadowhawks occupy the second half of the dragonfly season, but they drop out, one by one until, in early October, only the White-faced and the Autumn (formerly Yellow-legged) meadowhawks remain.

STRIPED SADDLEBAGS – And there was one very special dragonfly.  Striped Saddlebags live south – way south.  About their range, bugguide says, “Normal range from Northern Argentina to northern Mexico with regular movement into Arizona and Texas and more rare movement north and east as far as MN, WI, MI in the US and NS in Canada.”  So it’s pretty exciting to find one!  

The WESTERN CONIFER SEED BUG is a large (¾”) and dapper member of the Leaf-footed bug family (Coreidae).  People mistake it for the invasive Brown marmorated stink bug https://bugguide.net/node/view/2494360/bgimage, but it’s slimmer than the chunky stink bug.  WCSBs are typically found on conifers – when they’re not gracing the BugLady’s porch rail or trying to get into the house in fall (according to the Mass Audubon website, “They can also be easily captured and returned to the outdoors—bluebirds love them! There is no need to resort to insecticides. Chemicals are dangerous—Western Conifer Seed Bugs are not.”  They don’t eat your furniture or house plants, but they do suck sap from and damage conifer cones, seeds, twigs, and sometimes needles.  Originally a resident of the Pacific Coast, they have moved east (and have been exported (accidentally) to Europe).  If your goal is natural forest regeneration, WCSBs are unwelcome guests.  They may deploy a smelly chemical when alarmed.

MONARCHS – There’s a time, as the Blazing star (Liatris) is fading and before the New England aster starts up, when the prairie is yellow, and goldenrod nectar fuels migrating Gen 5 Monarchs on their journey south.

MOURNING CLOAK – The migratory/Super generation of Monarchs lives a long time – emerging here in late August, overwintering in the mountains west of Mexico City, and getting at least part of the way back to Wisconsin in spring.  Mourning Cloaks live even longer.  A graph at the wisconsinbutterflies.com website shows that sightings start in early March and run through the start of November, but unlike other species that produce several generations to span each season, there’s only one generation of Mourning Cloaks per year. 

The Mourning Cloaks of spring have overwintered as adults, and as their caterpillar host plants (mainly willow, elm and birch) green up, they feed, breed, lay eggs, and die.  Their eggs hatch and their caterpillars feed and pupate, and the butterflies emerge around the summer solstice.  They feed for a while and then tuck themselves into a sheltered place to aestivate (become dormant) through the heat of summer.  Yes – they start flying before the parade of spring flowers has begun, and yes, the next generation sleeps through the flowers of summer, but Mourning Cloaks are mostly indifferent to flowers.  They get minerals from mud; they feed at sap drips (they’re often seen in the sugar bush in early spring, but they can become dormant again if winter revisits); they like rotting fruit, dung, and the honeydew produced by aphids, and they check the feeding holes created by Sapsuckers.  By the time they lay eggs the next spring, they’re about 11 months old.  

FIERY SKIPPER – Good things come in small packages – this dynamite little butterfly is about an inch long, with an inch-and-a-half wingspread.  Fiery Skippers are a mainly-Southern species that filters north into Wisconsin by mid-summer – a long haul on those short wings.

LARGE MILKWEED BUGS (these are nymphs) come in Large, Small, and False.  They’re in the Seed bug family Lygaeidae; they make their living by inserting their beak into the seeds within a milkweed pod, pumping saliva in to soften them, and sucking out the juices.  They’re very social and don’t mind sharing a good food source, and it’s possible that adults send out some kind of chemical signal to attract other adults.  Adult Large milkweed bugs can survive on non-milkweed seeds, but their nymphs can’t.  They aren’t considered a pest unless you’re growing milkweed for seed, and they make a spectacular splash of aposematic/warning color https://bugguide.net/node/view/2440573/bgimage.

Birds migrate, Monarchs and Common Green Darner dragonflies migrate, and so do Large milkweed bugs!  It’s too cold here in God’s Country for them to overwinter in any form, so they repopulate the state in spring, after the milkweed is up.  As with some birds, northern populations are long-distance migrants (and have longer wings to prove it) and southern populations don’t stray far from home.

A BUMBLE BEE busy collecting pollen for a brood that will not survive the winter.

The FALSE MILKWEED BUG looks like a Small milkweed bug (https://bugguide.net/node/view/2361061), and it’s even in the same genus, but it’s not sitting on milkweed.  The BugLady usually finds them excavating the seeds of Ox-eye sunflower, aka the False sunflower.  One note at bugguide.net says that if they checked their collection of Small milkweed bug pictures, they’d probably find a bunch of misidentified False milkweed bugs.  Nice video of False milkweed bugs multi-tasking at the original BOTW, here https://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2021/7/16/false-milkweed-bug-aka-false-sunflower-bug-lygaeus-turcicus.  Their doppelgangers are poisonous/distasteful due to the toxic milkweed sap they ingest.  False milkweed bugs are adorned in aposematic coloration, but as far as the BugLady knows, they are not poisonous/distasteful.  Are they cashing in on predators’ predisposition to avoid red/orange and black? 

ANT FLIGHT – A hatch of royal ants emerged from their digs in the pressure-treated wood at the edge of the hawk tower’s deck (not reassuring).  The royal dance attracted to the deck three tree frogs that usually live around the base of the tower and perch on prairie flowers.

This FORK-TAILED BUSH KATYDID joined the BugLady on the tower and lingered for a portrait.  The large curved structure, aft, is her ovipositor (the male has the “forked tail”).  She inserts her eggs into a leaf edge, between the upper and lower surface of the leaf, or lays them on twigs or leaves.  And there’s nothing out on the prairie that’s cuter than her jaunty, little nymph https://bugguide.net/node/view/693504/bgimag,  https://bugguide.net/node/view/2143463/bgimage.  The BugLady is far more likely to see a Fork-tailed bush katydid than to hear one – as this site says, “Pffftt!” That’s all it is. There can be a lengthy pause between songs” https://www.listeningtoinsects.com/fork-tailed-bush-katydid.

BLACK AND YELLOW ARGIOPES, like some of the other orbweavers, get pretty hefty by the end of summer, alarming some folks.  “Where did those huge spiders come from?” they ask.  Answer – they’ve been here all along.  They were smaller than the brightly-colored heads of push pins when they emerged from their egg sac in spring, and they’ve been eating ever since. 

This TREEHOPPER’s thorn disguise would be more effective if it were sitting in vegetation.  Just sayin’. 

BUCKEYE BUTTERFLY – Buckeye caterpillars https://bugguide.net/node/view/1737799/bgimage pick up a group of chemicals called iridoid glycosides from their foodplants.  These chemicals stimulate their appetites so they eat and grow fast, but have the opposite effect on their predators, stunting their growth. 

Buckeyes are migratory, too, moving along coastlines and rivers, flying to the Deep South with a tailwind in fall and returning to us (a few generations later) in spring, with males arriving first.

Fun Fact about Buckeyes: flowers may change in appearance after being pollinated – maybe a clue as small as a localized color change.  Researcher Martha R. Weiss did an experiment that demonstrated that a wide variety of wasp, bee, fly, and butterfly pollinators (including Buckeyes) can discriminate between “pre-change” and “post-change” flowers, and so can see which flowers will be more rewarding to visit – a win for both flowers and butterflies. 

Bonus points if you know where the Benét quote came from.

Go outside – look (and listen) for bugs!

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 – and Sounds

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Summer Sights – and Sounds

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady took to the trails this summer as much as her shiny, new knee and the oppressive heat and humidity allowed (her preferred maximum temperature is 72 degrees.  The gods didn’t cooperate).  Here are some of the bugs she found.

BLUE DASHER OVIPOSITING – A female Blue Dasher bobs up and down as she looses eggs into the water.  Blue Dashers don’t oviposit “in tandem,” with the male guarding her by maintaining his grip at the back of her head, but the male stays close, flying around her as she dips the tip of her abdomen into the water, and chasing off rival males that would carry her away.

CICADA – When the BugLady was little, the treetops sizzled with cicada calls in August (she called them “hot bugs,” because when they emerged, it was).  The only species she heard back then was the dog day cicada https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/dogday-cicada-family-cicadidae/, but for the past decade, she has heard fewer and fewer of them each year https://songsofinsects.com/cicadas/dog-day-cicada.  

This year, she has been enjoying the songs of a Linne’s cicada https://songsofinsects.com/cicadas/linnes-cicada and an dusk-calling Scissor-grinder cicada https://songsofinsects.com/cicadas/scissor-grinder-cicada, too, both of whom are southern/southeastern species that are inching north.  Welcome!

CABBAGE BUTTERFLY ON PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE – A dainty, white butterfly on a pretty, fuchsia flower.  Both are non-native (hint: the butterfly’s caterpillar is known as the European cabbage worm), and both are “naturalized,” that is, having been introduced and/or having escaped into the wild, they are doing very well on their own, thank you.  Only a very small percentage of non-native, naturalized species go on to create problems and to get a third label – “invasive.”  For a nice discussion, see https://www.hrwc.org/invasive-non-native-or-naturalized/. 

EASTERN PONDHAWK AND MEADOWHAWK – It’s a dragonfly-eat-dragonfly world out there.

MILKWEED TUSSOCK MOTH AND CRAB SPIDER – The BugLady has been receiving some queries recently from BugFans whose milkweed is looking pretty ratty.  The culprit?  The Milkweed tussock moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/72813, whose caterpillar is sometimes called the Harlequin caterpillar.  Mom lays masses of eggs, and the caterpillars feed gregariously for a while, skeletonizing leaves by eating the tender tissue between the leaf veins.  Then they go their separate ways and eat the leaves down to their midribs.  Bugguide.net says, in an understatement, that the caterpillars “May defoliate patches of milkweed.” 

Allegedly, they don’t interfere with Monarch caterpillars because they eat the old, leathery leaves that the monarchs don’t, and because they’re gearing up as the Gen 5 Monarchs are readying themselves for their trip south.

No, the BugLady did not see the crab spider, and what looks like an egg sac, when she took the picture.

PICTURE-WINGED FLY – This spiffy fly (genus Rivelli, family Platystomatidae) walks around, twitching its wings constantly, sending semaphore signals to nearby females.  For its story, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/signal-fly/ (only, the BugLady misspelled the family name).  What a treat to watch this little fly strutting his stuff!

WOOD/AMERICAN DOG TICK – Yes, they’re everywhere (they prefer grassy areas and forest edges), and yes, most people feel creepy just looking at a picture of one, feeling the phantom feet of phantom ticks tickling their skin.  Dog ticks need three different hosts to get through their life cycles, and they can spread Rocky Mountain spotted fever as well as Tularemia (but if your dog comes down with Tularemia, it may be playing with the local bunnies).  Various sources say that Wood ticks in Wisconsin don’t often carry diseases and that Rocky Mountain spotted fever (or any Spotted fever rickettsiosis) are (for now) rare here.  They don’t spread Lyme disease.

VIRGINIA CTENUCHA CATERPILLAR –Lepidopterists say that the more spectacular the caterpillar, the more homely the adult, and vice versa  The Virginia Ctenucha moth is one of the exceptions that proves the rule https://bugguide.net/node/view/1991557/bgimage.

The caterpillars are out and about early – this one was photographed in May, but they overwinter as caterpillars, and the BugLady encounters them strolling along on the warm road on a warm day in late winter or early spring.  Adults are large-ish, day-or-night-flying moths that tuck in under a leaf when alarmed.  The “C” is silent. –

WOOLLY ALDER APHIDS AND THEIR ANTS – We’ve seen it before – aphids going about their business, assisted by ants that protect them them in exchange for being able to “milk” them for honeydew, a sugary fluid that is a byproduct of the sap that flows through the aphids when they eat.  Honeydew is an important carbohydrate for the ants that farm aphids and treehoppers.  If you’ve ever seen a leaf whose upper surface looks shiny and sticky, look up under the overhead leaves – they’re probably occupied by aphids.  Bees, wasps, flies, and other insects will visit the leaf to eat honeydew.  The woolly aphid’s wool consists of waterproof, waxy filaments made in glands in the aphid’s abdomen.

EMERALD ASH BORER – They really are lovely, little beetles, with a surprise splash of crimson when their wings are spread https://bugguide.net/node/view/1522143/bgimage.  But the extensive tunnels (called galleries https://bugguide.net/node/view/687825/bgimage) that the larvae make below the bark disrupt the ash tree’s plumbing so that it can’t pump nutrients between its roots and crown. 

SEDGE SPRITES – One of the BugLady’s favorite damselflies, these little beauties are scarcely an inch long. 

WEEVILS ON PURPLE PRAIRIE CLOVER – Purple prairie clover is a lovely, native tallgrass prairie plant.  The early settlers on the Great Plains nicknamed it “Devil’s shoelaces” because this skinny, two-foot-high plant may have roots that are six feet long – roots that grew deep enough to reach through the thick prairie sod to find water.  That magnificent sod resisted the settlers attempts to plow it with their small, cast-iron plows until 1837, when John Deere invented the steel moldboard plow, which he fashioned from an old sawmill saw. 

At the top of the flower, there are two weevils, probably seed weevils in the genus Apion, making whoopie.  Here’s a BOTW about seed weevils https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/baptisia-seed-pod-weevils/.  No, the BugLady did not see the weevils when she took the picture.  

STAG BEETLE – Yes, the BugLady did see this Stag beetle as it emerged from her lawn one evening in July – the beetle looks big enough to trip over, and she moves like a tank.  Here’s her story https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/stag-beetle-lucanus-placidus/.

ROBBER FLY – Remember, bumble bees are vegetarians, so if you see a bumble bee with prey, it’s not a bumble bee.  Mimicking a bumble bee is a pretty good survival strategy – no one messes with bumble bees.  This fly is in the genus Laphria, one of the “bee-like” robber flies.  Their larvae live in rotten wood and feed on insects they find there, and the adults often prey on beetles (though the BugLady saw one make a pass at a Sulphur butterfly once).  Robber flies come in a variety of sizes and shapes – for information about Wisconsin robber flies (and butterflies and tiger beetles) see https://wisconsinbutterflies.org/butterfly.

RED-BELTED BUMBLE BEES – are found west of the great plains and across southern Canada and our northern tier of states.  They are one of the short-tongued bumble bees, which means that they prefer “flatter” flowers like clovers, thistles, goldenrods, and asters.  The BugLady doesn’t know where this one was hiking to – she saw several others on flowers in the area.  A little rusty on bumble bees?  Here’s a great bumble bee guide from the Xerces Society: https://www.xerces.org/publications/identification-monitoring-guides/bumble-bees-of-eastern-united-states

Go outside, look at bugs,Professor, Dr. Richard B. Fischer, the content of whose fantastic natural history courses she uses Every! Single! Day!  (right BugFan Mike?)  He would have enjoyed BOTW. 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Cherish the (Butterfly) Ladies Again

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Cherish the (Butterfly) Ladies Again

Howdy, BugFans,

(with apologies to the Irish Folk Band “Cherish the Ladies”)

2025:  The BugLady recently added an American Lady to her butterfly property list.  It’s a lovely butterfly that can be mistaken for the Painted Lady, in the same genus (Vanessa).  When she decided to rerun this episode (with some new pictures), the BugLady thought she should include a link to a BOTW about the Red Admiral, another genus member and world traveler https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/red-admiral-butterfly/, but she realized that she had somehow dropped the second last paragraph from the rewritten Red Admiral episode, and the final sentence makes no sense without it.  Here it is:

“One older source says that butterflies and moths void a drop of liquid (red, in some species) soon after leaving their pupal cases. They sometimes do this while airborne, and when large numbers of butterflies emerged simultaneously, the phenomenon, called “Red Rain” was in ancient times and is today the subject of wild religious fear, superstition, repentance and/or massacre.”

2016: The BugLady added the American Lady butterfly to this episode, originally posted in 2010, about Painted Lady butterflies. 

The PAINTED LADY (Vanessa cardui) is a lovely, unpredictable summer visitor here in God’s Country.  Also called the Thistle Butterfly and the Cosmopolitan, it can be seen in temperate areas on five continents and may have the biggest range of any butterfly.  Not only does it live in a lot of places, it migrates to even more.  Consequently, it is a very popular butterfly about which much is posted on-line (lots of sites about rearing them, too), and it is a butterfly with fan clubs and a research site (visit the Vanessa Migration Project at: http://vanessa.ent.iastate.edu/ and find out how your observations as a Citizen Scientist can add to our knowledge about the Vanessas). 

Painted Ladies are members of the Brush-footed butterfly family, Nymphalidae, a large group of (usually) medium-sized, often orangey butterflies.  The Nymphalids are called “Brush-foots” – their front pair of legs is so reduced in size that they only use the back four feet to walk/stand on, and the vestigial front legs are tipped with bristles/brushes instead of feet (the bristles are sensory and incorporate the senses of smell and taste).  There are about 6,000 Nymphalid species worldwide.  Here in the Lower 48, the genus Vanessa includes the Red Admiral (which has its own BOTW), the Painted Lady, and the American Lady, all of which wander, and the West Coast Lady, which pretty much doesn’t. 

Look for Painted Ladies in open, sunny areas – fields, road edges, gardens, dunes.  There the adults sip nectar, especially from thistle and clover flowers, and males defend their territories from perches.  They also extract minerals from clay using their proboscis.  Painted Ladies fly north in mid-spring and there are probably two broods per summer here.  Eggs are laid on caterpillar food plants like hollyhock, nettle, and lupine, plus thistle and many other plants in the aster family (its catholic eating habits explain its five-continent range).  The solitary caterpillars https://bugguide.net/node/view/298800/bgimage conceal themselves on their food plants in a tent of silk http://bugguide.net/node/view/298805/bgimage.  When they are ready to pupate, they hang upside-down from a leaf, using a silk fastener, and there they form a chrysalis http://bugguide.net/node/view/679838/bgimage. 

There’s a good deal of discussion about the “cold-hardiness” of the Vanessas.  It’s agreed that it’s too cold here for any of the life stages to overwinter, though American Ladies are said to hibernate in the Southern US, and the Iowa State site reports that adult Red Admirals overwinter in hibernation almost as far north as New York State.  And throw in Climate Change.  Stay tuned. 

Painted Ladies fly year-round in the southern and western US and Mexico.  They are seen in Wisconsin in small numbers every summer, but some years, when southern populations boom or the weather conditions are right, Painted Ladies head north in dramatic flights (they’re “irruptive migrants”). 

There are some interesting theories about a possible/partial correlation between el Nino weather cycles and Painted Lady migrations, both here and on the other continents where both the butterflies and the el Ninos occur.  Some populations of Painted Ladies live in very dry or in very rainy areas.  Because a series of bad/low caterpillar years could devastate such a population, spreading out to different landscapes seems like a good idea, and migration is “built-in” to the butterflies’ behavior.  Storm patterns change during el Nino years, often bringing more rain to the desert.  The desert responds with a spectacular array of flowers, Painted Ladies breed like bunnies, and the resulting caterpillars strip the vegetation.  When those caterpillars emerge as adults, the green is gone (reduced to pieces of frass) (bug poop), so they pick up and move elsewhere.  Many die, but enough find a habitable breeding area where their “food-generalist” caterpillars can thrive.

Is there comparable a southward migration by the offspring of the springtime travelers?  The scribes disagree on both the “whether” and the “why.”  One source speculated that their southward migrations simply may not be as dramatic.  Painted Ladies are permanent residents along the southern tier of states, so a southern migration isn’t necessary to maintain those populations.  One researcher questions whether, if they didn’t fly south, there would be any individuals left that retained a migratory instinct.  Since any Painted Lady north of the Mason-Dixon Line is a goner come winter, migrators, the theory goes, need to head south again so there will be more migrators to head north again.  The BugLady doesn’t know how the Migratory Instinct Theory jibes with the el Nino Plant Boom/Bust Theory and the Random Migration theory.

The AMERICAN LADY (Vanessa virginiensis) looks very similar to the Painted Lady, but the American Lady has smaller white patches in its forewings and less-fancy hind wings.  Its exquisitely-etched underside sports two large eyespots in the hind wings compared to the Painted Lady’s four small ones (see them side-by-side at http://bugguide.net/node/view/236368.  The BugLady photographed an American Lady that became fatally stuck on the water when a gust of wind or a miscalculation about the solidity of algae brought it too close to the sticky surface film.

While it’s a year-round resident of the southern US (south into South America and even the Galapagos), its summer wanderings bring it here to God’s country.  Like the Painted Lady, it likes sunny, open spaces, and like the Painted Lady, it is an early migrant from the south that re-establishes populations in the North and East annually (it was recorded in Wisconsin in the first week of May this year).  Unlike the Painted Lady, its caterpillars are tied to a smaller list of host plants, including the everlastings and pussytoes, and a few other species.  American Lady caterpillars also construct “tents,” but instead of pure silk, the American Lady sticks leaves together with silk http://bugguide.net/node/view/18013/bgimage.  They feed outside the shelter.  When disturbed, the caterpillars curl up tightly.

The American Lady has at least two broods here in the North Country, and like the Red Admiral, the summer adult is brighter in color than the winter form.  If the spring individuals look travel-worn, like they’ve flown hundreds of miles to get here, it’s because they have.

Go outside – find some butterflies!  And don’t forget to check Mike Reese’s state butterfly website https://wisconsinbutterflies.org/.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Monarch Butterfly Status Update

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Monarch Butterfly Status Update

Howdy, BugFans,

This is a Good-News-Bad News-Stay-Tuned kind of story.

But first, a little background.  Besides being large and lovely, Monarch butterflies, of course, catch our fancy because of the death-defying migrations they undertake twice a year.  Migrations – fueled by flowers – that carry some of them 3,000 miles from central Mexica into Canada.

Monarchs have a wide geographical range today, but only part of it is historic.  They’ve been introduced or have found their way to and established populations in Hawaii (there’s a white subspecies in Oahu), some Caribbean Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and more, and they are accidental migrants to other spots on the globe. 

Most of the North American Monarch population is divided between the Western Monarchs that occupy the Pacific Coast west of the Rockies and overwinter in the southern half of California, and the Eastern Monarchs that range from the Rockies to the Atlantic Coast and overwinter in the oyamel fir forests in a mountainous area west of Mexico City.  There are also pockets of Monarchs that are permanent residents in Arizona, around the Gulf Coast through Florida, and along the Eastern Seaboard as far north as Virginia.

FIRST, THE GOOD(-ISH) NEWS.  Every winter the population of Eastern Monarchs that overwinters in the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve is censused by counting how many acres/hectares of the Reserve that they occupy (one hectare equals a little less than 2.5 acres or about two football fields).  The 2024 survey found Monarchs on only 2.22 acres, one of the lowest densities since the count began in 1993, but in-2025, 4.42 acres were occupied.  Good news but not great news – the population is still very low, and some researchers say that in order to be sustainable, the population should cover about 15 acres. 

Better weather, less drought, and better protections for the fir forests against illegal logging are credited with the increase (although, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, an ongoing threat to the forests is cutting trees in order to grow avocados for American tables).

Will this year’s boost become a trend?  Monarch numbers tend to see-saw.  On the negative side, a warming climate is rendering the mountainous Reserve less habitable for the firs and is making larger swatches of the South too warm for Monarch reproduction.  And then there are the pesticides that affect both the plants and the insects themselves.  On the positive side, citizens along the butterflies’ path are getting the message about planting the milkweed needed by Monarch caterpillars and a variety of nectar plants for the adults.  For more background on Monarch populations, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/the-monarch-butterfly-problem/.

THEN THE BAD NEWS.  Western Monarchs, historically numbered in the millions and whose numbers had exceeded 200,000 in recent counts, suffered a major crash this year, with the 2024-2025 survey finding just over 9,000 butterflies.  The “break-even” number for survival of the Western Monarch may be as high as 30,000, and some scientists put them at a 99% probability of being extinct by 2080.

A recent study shows a 22% decline in butterfly numbers across multiple species over the past twenty years.

AND THE STAY-TUNED NEWS.  A few years ago, there was some momentum to list Monarchs as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  An “Endangered” designation means that a species is in danger of going extinct over all or part of its range, and a “Threatened” species is one that is likely to become Endangered within the foreseeable future over all or a significant portion of its range.  For that story, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/listing-the-monarch/.  

For various reasons, among them the fact that Monarch numbers can vary dramatically from year to year, the decision was kicked down the road.  Then, in 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) again proposed listing the Monarch.  The deadline for public comment, initially set to expire in March, was extended until May 19, with a possible decision to be announced by the end of 2025.  If accepted, the Monarch would be the “most common” Threatened species ever listed, which causes some observers to say that it’s still too early to bring them  under the ESA umbrella.   

Monarchs are already listed as Endangered in Canada and are recognized as a Species of Special Protection in Mexico.

Listing a Threatened or Endangered Species has far-reaching ripples, both monetary and regulatory (land use restrictions, for example), and requires a Solomon-like crafting of the law.  Any species added to the list must have a budget and a realistic game plan for recovery – one that, in the case of the Monarch, would attempt to turn back the clock on decades of habitat loss and degradation, pesticide use, and the effects of climate change.  Changing weather patterns have exposed spring migrants to stormy weather, and warmer falls have caused many Monarchs to linger in the north.  

Ideally, people should embrace the conservation goals of a recovery plan voluntarily, and any plan should allow for the continuation of state and local efforts by individuals, agencies, and organizations.  Too rigorous, and people will resent it and it will become a political hot-potato; not rigorous enough and the plan will fail the species.  In the case of the Monarch, both the butterfly and its remarkable migration are in peril. 

Fun Fact about Monarchs: they were the first butterfly species to have its genome sequenced.

Another Fun Fact about Monarchs:  the name “Monarch” is thought to be a reference to 17th century British King William III, also called the Prince of Orange (the British royalty/peerage also figured into the naming of the Baltimore Oriole and the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly after Lord Baltimore, whose servants sported orange and black livery). 

Yet Another Fun Fact about Monarchs: according to Wikipedia, they’re the state insect of Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia, and there were unsuccessful attempts in 1989 and 1991 to name them the National Insect of the United States.  

Final Fun Fact about Monarchs: THEY’RE COMING!   https://maps.journeynorth.org/map/?map=monarch-adult-first&year=2025.Fritillary https://bugguide.net/node/view/1990523/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/1887246/bgimage, give it a second look, just to be sure. 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Gulf Fritillary – a Snowbird Special

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Gulf Fritillary a Snowbird Special

Howdy, BugFans,

Life is busy – here’s a not-so-Golden Oldie, from the BugLady’s favorites list.

First of all, it’s a stunning butterfly https://bugguide.net/node/view/1734606/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/1926994/bgimage (the BugLady’s picture doesn’t do it justice – the original slide, taken in Texas, was fine, but the scanned slide, not so much).  Second, unlike many of BOTW’s featured bugs, there was an abundance of information about this species, some of which sent the BugLady traipsing happily down a few rabbit holes.

This is not your grandfather’s fritillary (unless your grandfather is a Southerner).  Gulf Fritillaries are in the Brush-footed butterfly family Nymphalidae, along with a whole bunch of familiar Wisconsin butterflies, and they’re with the fritillaries in the subfamily Heliconiinae (which used to be its own family).  But, unlike our familiar fritillaries https://bugguide.net/node/view/2164671/bgimage, they’re in the tribe Heliconiini, aka the Heliconians or Longwings, many of which occur in tropical climes and have long, slim, spectacular wings https://bugguide.net/node/view/1480877/bgpage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/1478862/bgpage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/309768/bgimage. 

The larvae of many Heliconians feed on parts of passion vines and leaves, and the adults eat the nectar, fruit and sap of a number of plants, and many make or save toxic chemicals for defense.  Adults often spend the night in communal roosts https://bugguide.net/node/view/6260/bgimage (a group of butterflies is called a roost or bivouac).  

The Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) (Dione vanillae in some books) is also known as the Passion butterfly because of its caterpillar host plant, and the Online Guide to the Animals of Trinidad and Tobago refers to it as the Silver Spotted Flambeau.  Carl Linnaeus gave it the species name “vanillae” based on a life cycle painting of the butterfly on a vanilla plant done by the amazing 18th century naturalist/painter Maria Sibylla Merian, but the species doesn’t use vanilla plants.  If you’re not familiar with her, here she is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Sibylla_Merian. 

Its range is described as Neotropical, which covers the ground from central Mexico and the Caribbean to southern South America.  In North America it is most common across our southern tier of states and the West Indies, and is harder to find as you travel north http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/species.php?hodges=4413.  It’s one of the most common butterflies in some parts of Florida, where it has multiple generations per year; it was introduced to Southern California in the late 1800’s and is established there; it’s also established in Hawaii; and it has been recorded in Guam.  Gulf Fritillaries fly north in spring, breeding across the Southeast, and move back south again in fall, with Florida seeing dramatic migrations in both directions.   

It has a wingspan of two-and-one-half to almost four dazzling inches; females are larger than males and may have darker markings https://bugguide.net/node/view/666672/bgimage.

Courtship is exotic.  As a male and female circle each other in the air, he calms her flight response by releasing aphrodisiac courtship pheromones from “hair pencils” on his abdomen, and after she perches, he may hover above her, dusting her with more pheromones.  He perches beside her, they shift to face each other at a 45-degree angle, and he claps his wings open and closed, enveloping her antennae with each clap, delivering more pheromones from structures on the top side of his front wings and letting her know he is the same species (butterfly eyesight isn’t that great).  For Gulf Fritillaries, it’s “Ladies’ Choice” – females actively pick the males they mate with, so he really has to sell it. 

Rabbit hole #1: If she accepts his advances, his sperm packet, delivered when they mate, includes what’s called a nuptial gift.  The BugLady has written about nuptial gifts in spiders, katydids, tree crickets, and dance flies, but she had no idea that some butterflies produce them (they’re an energy-intensive investment for the male).  The sperm packet includes nutrients that will help her form eggs.  In the case of one of the European Comma butterflies (Polygonia c-album), the spermatophores are edible, containing both food and sperm, and the female, who mates with multiple males, can rate a male by the quality of plants he ate as a caterpillar (nettle is preferred) (Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore). 

She lays her eggs, one by one, on or near a passion vine (purple passionflower has the best flower ever https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passiflora#/media/File:OQ_Passion_flower.jpg), usually on the top surface of a leaf.  When they hatch, the caterpillars eat their egg shells – and sometimes neighboring eggs – and then start in on the leaves, often feeding in small groups. 

In the far southern US, Gulf fritillaries are in the air all year long, producing multiple generations.  They are said to overwinter only as adults, but one researcher concluded that after passion vines die back in Florida in early winter, caterpillars can survive in diapause (dormancy – they halt development and resume when conditions improve).  They can also enter diapause in the chrysalis stage, though temperatures under 30 degrees are not good for them (or for most Floridians).  Here’s a nice series of a caterpillar forming a chrysalis https://bugguide.net/node/view/1589936/bgimage. 

Gulf Fritillaries are well-defended.  Adults can produce stinky fluids when alarmed.  The vegetation of many passion vine species is chock full of chemicals including glycosides that release cyanide when eaten, alkaloids, and strychnine and nicotine relatives, making their caterpillars a bad choice for predators.  And if that weren’t enough, the caterpillars are spiny https://bugguide.net/node/view/2047275/bgimage. 

Rabbit hole #2 was peripheral and was kind of like when you find out that deer eat baby birds (yes, deer eat baby birds, and so do chipmunks). 

In order to produce mating pheromones and “build” nuptial gifts, male butterflies in some species in the subfamily Danainae (the Milkweed and Glasswing butterflies) may want to boost their alkaloid load.  They can get extra alkaloids by scratching toxic leaves with claws on their tarsi (feet) and sipping the resulting sap, but researchers in the Sulawesi area of Indonesia noticed that some Danaine upped the ante by ingesting chemicals from caterpillars that had been feeding on plants in the dogbane family (which is closely related to milkweed).  Seven species were observed scratching dead or dying caterpillars and sipping the fluid (researchers don’t know if the scratching part had contributed to the dead and dying part).  They went after healthy caterpillars too (“subdued them,” said the researchers), to harvest the toxic chemicals that the caterpillars sequester from their food plants for their own protection.  In their defense, it may be that the butterflies were attracted to leaves that were already scratched and oozing, and the caterpillars were just in the neighborhood.  Scientists had to coin a new term for this unique practice – “Kleptopharmacophagy” – literally “stealing chemicals for consumption.” 

One of the researchers, Yi-Kai Tea, referred to caterpillars as “essentially bags of macerated leaves; the same leaves that contain these potent chemicals the milkweed butterflies seek out.” Fortunately, our iconic Monarch has not (yet) been implicated in this behavior, which is a good thing because the BugLady wouldn’t be able to look one in the eye.

The great Roger Tory Peterson once said that a good birder always looks twice.  In his 1970 book Butterflies of Wisconsin, Ebner dismissed some early Gulf Fritillary records as “rather dubious,” and the Wisconsinbutterflies.org website lists it as a rare stray to the state.  Gulf Fritillaries are pretty distinct, but if you glance at a large fritillary and are about to write it off as another Great Spangled Fritillary https://bugguide.net/node/view/1990523/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/1887246/bgimage, give it a second look, just to be sure. 

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 XV

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bugs in the News XV

Howdy BugFans,

Here are four articles about bugs from the excellent Smithsonian newsletter, which also covers archaeology, birds, current science news, creatures of the deep ocean, etc.  Enjoy.

Many queen BUMBLE BEES overwinter in tunnels underground, and they develop these sites into nests in spring.  What happens in wet spring?  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hibernating-bumblebee-queens-can-survive-underwater-for-up-to-a-week-study-finds-180984175/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49668960&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2682036985&spReportId=MjY4MjAzNjk4NQS2.

Although preliminary reports say that MONARCHS overwintering in Mexico were found over a larger area this year than last year, there’s alarming news about some of our favorite insect ambassadors  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/us-butterflies-are-disappearing-at-drastic-rates-with-one-in-five-gone-since-2000-180986188/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=91269370.   

One problem with current surveys of insect species – indeed, surveys of any living thing – is that the people who conduct today’s counts may have little acquaintance with yesterday’s populations (remember all the bugs that used to hit the windshield in days of yore?).  It’s called “Shifting Baseline Syndrome (SBS)” – what looks like a lot of butterflies may actually be only a fraction of what was counted 50 years ago.  Insects are particularly susceptible to SBS because few people were interested enough in, say, bumble bees, a century ago to count them in any systematic way https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/intrepid-team-bee-lovers-doing-everything-save-rare-native-species-extinction-180986181/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=91269370

When asked what his studies had taught him about the nature of his Creator, the great British biologist J.B.S. Haldane is said to have replied that “God has an inordinate fondness for beetles.”  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-do-so-many-beetle-species-exist-180984100/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49646610&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2681166215&spReportId=MjY4MTE2NjIxNQS2

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 – Cup-Plant Cosmos II

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Wildflower Watch – Cup-Plant Cosmos II

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady usually times the Wildflower Watch episodes so that BugFans can rush out and see the flower in bloom with its attendant bugs, but it’s the middle of January, and the BugLady is ready for spring.  At least the Technicolor part of it (with apologies to the Cardinals and Blue Jays at the bird feeder but not to the Mourning Doves and Juncos).

Cup-plant (Silphium perfoliatum) is one of four Silphium species (prairie dock, compass plant, rosinweed, and cup-plant) that are typically seen in our tallgrass prairies.  The size and shape and arrangement of leaves varies with the species, but all are tough and gritty leaves that are difficult for insects to chew on.  They are in the Aster family, related to sunflowers.  Our shortest Silphium, rosinweed, may grow four or five feet tall, but the flowering stalks of the other species may be well over six feet.

It gets its name from the way the clasping, opposite leaves are fused around the stalk at their bases, forming a cup.  They’re called perfoliate leaves, and the plant looks like its square stem is growing through a series of single leaves.

Cup-plant was used medicinally for colds, rheumatism, fevers, stomach ailments, and back pains, on burns, to prevent nausea, and more.  Young leaves were cooked (and were rated by one author as “acceptable greens”), and the resin was used as a chewing gum. 

In Where the Sky Began, John Madson writes about compass plants that, “[Pioneers] found that [the compass plant] produced a pretty good brand of native chewing gum. Drops of clear sap exude from the upper third of the stem and solidify with exposure.

It has an odd, pine-resin taste that’s pleasant enough, but it must be firmed up before it’s chewed. A couple of summers ago I tried some of this sap while it was still liquid. It’s surely the stickiest stuff in all creation, and I literally had to clean it from my teeth with lighter fluid.” 

[DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME]

Insects land on plants to eat them, to rest for a bit, or to hunt for other insects, but there’s a fourth reason they land on cup-plant, and that’s to drink.  After a rain, the cup contains water that attracts a variety of critters to drink and maybe to cool off.  But despite what was once written in a prominent Midwestern seed catalog, the water in the cups does not digest the plant and animal debris that lands in it, like a pitcher plant does.

Cup-plant is what a gardening friend of the BugLady’s used to call, “a thug.”  It can tolerate dry and rocky soils as well as rich, damp ones, and it “spreads vigorously” by both seeds and rhizomes (underground stems) – so much so that it’s considered an invasive in the Adirondacks and in some Northeastern states.  Some people keep it in check by removing the flower heads before the seeds disperse, but its flowers are much appreciated by pollinators (especially, says the Xerces Society, “by honey bees, bumble bees, and big, showy butterflies ….. and leafcutter bees may use the hollow stems as nest sites”), and its seeds are eaten by birds.  Because it is so easy to grow and grows so densely, it has been considered as a potential source of bio-fuel in recent years.

Cup-plants are a great place to find insects:

CUP-PLANT WATER collects after a rain and often lasts a few days before it dries out again. 

RED APHIDS come to cup-plants to eat (and be eaten).  These are probably in the genus Urleucon, many of whose species feed on members of the Aster/Composite family.  Multiple generations adorn the stalks and leaves of cup-plant, all wingless (unless, from an aphid’s point of view, things get really crowded and they need to disperse) and all are female (through the wonders of parthenogenesis – virgin birth) until they produce a winged generation with males at the end of the season.  Watch the video and see “collective twitching and kicking response”, a.k.a. “CTKR” (possibly the BugLady’s new favorite behavior), https://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2022/6/13/cup-plant-feeds-brown-ambrosia-aphid-uroleucon-ambrosiae-which-in-turn-provides-dinner-for-lynx-spiders-lady-beetles-long-legged-flies-flower-flies-and-green-lacewings.   

A SMALL BIRD-DROPPING MOTH appears to be sipping the water.

And so does the RED or POLISHED LADYBUG, which is one of the BugLady’s favorite ladybugs/lady beetles because of the wonderful pattern on its head and thorax     https://bugguide.net/node/view/1075335/bgimage.  It’s one of three species of “Spotless Ladybugs” in the genus Cycloneda.  Ladybugs are serious aphid predators both as adults and larvae https://bugguide.net/node/view/710099/bgimage.

The BROCHYMENA, or Rough stink bugs, of recent BOTW fame, are plant-eaters.  Their camouflage was designed for tree trunks, not green leaves.

Although this DADDY LONGLEGS looks like it came for the water, its camouflage will allow it to nab some unsuspecting, visiting insect. 

A LAND SNAIL takes advantage of some water and maybe rasps the cup-plant’s leaves looking for algae, fungi, and leaf-bits to eat.

A DIMORPHIC JUMPING SPIDER subdued something that had very long, slender legs.  Another daddy longlegs?

The CICADA is one of the Dog-day/Annual cicadas in the genus Neotibicen.  Unlike the fancy Periodical cicadas https://bugguide.net/node/view/1973693/bgimage with their dramatic outbreaks, these are our everyday cicadas.  They take several years to develop underground, but the generations overlap and so they are present every year (which is why they’re called “annual”).  They get their liquid by poking their strong “beaks” into twigs and drinking the watery sap, so the cup was just a perch for it. 

CANDY-STRIPED LEAFHOPPER – what a gem!

FORK-TAILED BUSH KATYDIDS are found in grasslands, woodlands, and thickets across most of North America from Mexico well north into Canada.  There are some odd color forms in the southern parts of their range https://bugguide.net/node/view/1017342/bgimage.  The BugLady loves their gem-like nymphs https://bugguide.net/node/view/789204/bgimage.  They don’t yell “Katy-did” – in fact, they don’t say much at all, and they don’t say it very loudly https://soundcloud.com/lisa-rainsong/fork-tailed-bush-katydid-recorded-in-terrarium?in=malte/sets/crickets.

The PRAYING MANTIS did not just come for the view.

TIGER SWALLOWTAIL – the BugLady’s favorite large, showy butterfly.

Not all of the cup-plant’s visitors are invertebrates – the BugLady often sees TREE FROGS cooling off in cup-plant water on hot summer days, and small birds drink water there.. 

This is the second in the Cup-plant Cosmos series (for the first installment, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/cup-plant-cosmos/).  The BugLady has also seen paper wasps, yellowjackets, a two-striped grasshopper, mirid plant bugs, a variety of flies, a land snail, and a spring peeper on its flowers and leaves. 

For Northern BugFans, those colors are Green and Yellow.  You remember them. 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – The Twelve (or so) Bugs of Christmas

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

The Twelve (or so) Bugs of Christmas

Season’s Greetings, BugFans,

It’s time to celebrate a dozen (or so) of the beautiful bugs that posed for the BugLady this year (and that have already graced their own episodes).

This GREAT SPANGLED FRITILLARY on the aptly-named butterfly weed.

EUROPEAN MANTIS – the BugLady intercepted this mantis as it was attempting to cross the road and moved it to a friendlier spot.  The tiny bulls-eye in its tiny armpit tells us that it’s a European, not a Chinese mantis.  Both are non-native, invited to God’s Country by gardeners who buy them and release them as pest control (alas, to a mantis, a honey bee looks as tasty as a cabbage worm). 

When fall freezes come, they die, leaving behind ooethecae (egg cases) that look like a dried blob of aerosol shaving cream https://bugguide.net/node/view/2248160/bgimage).  Eggs in ooethecae can survive a mild winter here but not a Polar Vortex; they hatch in spring https://bugguide.net/node/view/73199/bgimage.  Every fall, The BugLady gets asked if it’s possible to keep a pet mantis alive in a terrarium over the winter.  Short answer – No – its biological clock is ticking pretty loud.

GRAY FIELD SLUG – it was an unusually hot and muggy day, a day when the cooler air above the Lake did not quite reach inland (15 yards) to the BugLady’s front door.  She glanced out and saw a gray field slug extended at least six inches on the storm door.  For more info on gray field slugs, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/gray-field-slug-2-25-2019/.

CANDY-STRIPED LEAFHOPPER – when a spectacular insect picks an equally spectacular perch.  What a treat!

A BROWN-MARMORATED STINK BUG shared the hawk tower with the BugLady on a cool day in late October.  They’re a huge pest in the East because they eat orchard crops in summer and hole up/stink up in your house/closets/attics/coat pockets/boots in winter, and they’re becoming more numerous here.  Remember – not every brown stink bug is a BMS – look for the pale stripes on the antennae and on the legs.

ORANGE SULPHURS are very common, and they don’t put on airs, they’re just quietly beautiful.

TACHINID FLY – when the BugLady thinks about Tachinid flies, she pictures the bristly, house-fly-on-steroids species that frequent the prairie flowers in late summer, but tachinid flies also come in “tubular.”  The larvae of this one, in the genus Cylindromyia, make a living by parasitizing some moths and grasshoppers and a few species of predatory stink bugs (for which efforts they are not appreciated, because the predatory stink bugs are busy preying on plant pests).  The adults, which are considered wasp mimics, feed on nectar. 

EBONY JEWELWINGS are frequent flyers on these pages.  The spectacular males usually have a metallic, Kelly-green body, but some individuals, in some light, appear royal blue.

SHAMROCK ORBWEAVER – the BugLady loves the big Argiope and Araneus orbweavers – tiny when they hatch in spring https://bugguide.net/node/view/1141628/bgimage, they grow slowly throughout the summer until they reach a startling size.  Most go through the winter in egg cases – some hatch early but stay inside and ride out the winter in the case, eating yolk material and their siblings, and others hatch in spring.  They emerge from the egg sac, and after a few days, balloon away in the breezes.  Page through https://bugguide.net/node/view/11644/bgimage to see all the colors Shamrock orbweavers come in (and see why, like the Marbled orbweaver, they’re sometimes called Pumpkin orbweavers).  

SKIMMING BLUET – note to self – ask insects to pose on the very photogenic leaves of Arrow Arum. 

RED-VELVET MITE – the BugLady is frequently struck by the fact that the weather data we rely on was measured by instruments inside a louvered box that sits five feet above the ground, but the vast majority of animals – vertebrate and invertebrate alike – never get five feet off the ground in their lives.  The weather they experience depends on microclimates created by the vegetation and topography in the small area where they live.  Red velvet mites search for tiny animals and insect eggs to eat; their young form temporary tick-ish attachments to other invertebrates as they go through a dizzying array of life stages (OK – prelarva, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, tritonymph, adult).  Read more about them here https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/red-velvet-mite-again/.

BUSH KATYDID – what child is this?  A nymph of a bush katydid (Scudderia). 

ANTS WITH APHIDS – while shepherds watched their flocks at night……  Some kinds of ants “farm” aphids and tree hoppers, guarding them from predators, guiding them to succulent spots to feed, and “milking” them – harvesting the sweet honeydew that the aphids exude from their stern while overindulging in plant sap.

And an EASTERN PONDHAWK in a pear tree.

Whatever Holidays you celebrate, may they be merry and bright and filled with laughter.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Dogwood Scurfy Scale

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Dogwood Scurfy Scale

Howdy, BugFans,

If asked to describe a Red-osier dogwood shrub, lots of people would say “it has red bark with white lumps on it.”  It does – but it doesn’t.

Some of our most un-bug-like bugs are the scale insects.  There are lots of them worldwide – about 8,400 species in 36 families.  They’re called scales because they (the females, anyway) cling, limpet-like, to their food plant, protected under a waxy covering that looks fish-scale-ish.  They’re sexually dimorphic (“two forms”), and adult males – in the species where males exist – are often tiny and gnat-like.  If your basic definition of an insect is “six legs, some wings, and three body parts that are divided in segments” you’ll have to suspend it a bit for the scales.

Their nearest relatives are aphids, whiteflies, jumping plant lice, and phylloxera bugs.

They hatch from eggs that the female lays under her body (or they are viviparous – popped out “live”), sometimes fertilized with the help of a male and sometimes produced by parthenogenesis (“virgin birth”), and a very few species are hermaphroditic (they have dual equipment and can self-fertilize, and so a single individual can create a whole population).  Six-legged when they hatch, scales enjoy two short, mobile instars (they’re called “crawlers”), during which they disperse, but their legs are short, so they don’t go far without help (crawlers may also be blown around by the wind).  Then the tiny females settle down, attach to a host, and lose their legs, generally staying put for the rest of their lives.  The short-lived males must find females where they sit, and although he may be winged, his wings are not good for much, so he comes on foot.  There are generally several generations per year.

Scales are vegetarians, feeding on plant sap that they suck from leaves or branches.  Some are found only on specific hosts and others are more generalist feeders, and although a very few species feed on mosses, lichens, and algae, as a group, they’re fond of the woody plants.  Their predators include some ladybugs and lacewings, and a few parasitoid wasps whose larvae consume the insect (they target younger scales) or the eggs under the scale.  There are scale insects that are serious plant pests, scale insects that are used to control invasive plants, and scale insects that are “cultivated” because they’re used to produce shellacs, waxes, and red dyes. 

The two, big divisions of scale insects are “cushiony” and “armored” scales.  Cushiony scales tend to be lumpier than armored scales, and they’re permanently attached to their waxy covering.  The excess sap that they consume, released as a sweet fluid called “honeydew,” attracts other insects to feed on it, and some species of scale are cared for by ants that protect the scales from predators, harvest the honeydew, and help the crawlers find fresh twigs.  The downside of honeydew is that sooty mold grows on leaves where its sticky sweetness falls, which interferes with photosynthesis and isn’t very wholesome looking.  A species of cottony scale was featured in a BOTW years ago https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/cottony-scale-family-coccidae/

Dogwood scurfy scales are armored scales, and armored scales are in the family Diaspididae, the largest scale family (2650 species).  Armored scales feed on hosts from 180 plant families.  They’re not attached to their waxy cover, are smaller and flatter than cottony scales, and they don’t produce honeydew.  Their tough – armored- coverings may be round, elliptical, or oyster shell-shaped and may have concentric rings/ridges.  The female incorporates the shed skins from her crawler stage into her growing shell, and the wax is made and shaped by a structure called the pygidium at the rear of the abdomen.  The critter below the scale has knob-like antennae, no legs, and little distinction between head and thorax.  

Not surprisingly, with so many species of armored scales, there are many different lifestyles.  In general, she lays her eggs or live young under her scale, which has a slit at the rear that allows them to exit.  Her eggs overwinter under the shelter of her scale, though she’s no longer alive when they hatch.

The BugLady saw a paper that said that some armored scales may get around by phoresy – hitchhiking – sticking to their six-legged taxi cabs (the study identified a fly, a ladybug, and an ant) with the help of a few “suction-cup”-tipped hairs on each of their legs

FUN FACT ABOUT ANT PARTNERSHIPS

An odd relationship has evolved between a species of African ant and a species of armored scale (which, remember, have no honeydew to trade for ant favors).  The ants shelter the scales in the galleries/tunnels they live in under tree bark – the ants are so specialized that they spend their whole lives there.  The scales no longer need protection from the elements or from predators, so most of them are “naked,” though some still make wax and other scale-building materials that the ants eat along with the crawlers’ shed skins and various scale “excretions.”  The whole thing hinges on the ant queen finding a suitable host tree and rounding up crawler-aged scales during her brief nuptial flight.

As the poet Muriel Rukeyser once said, “The world is made of stories, not atoms.”

SCURFY DOGWOOD SCALE/RED-OSIER SCALE INSECT

The BugLady started nibbling around the edges of this episode at least three years ago and hit a brick wall pretty fast.  The Extension and Horticultural sites mostly said – “Yup, dogwoods get scales” but offered no names or biographies, so, the original iteration of this BOTW was something like, “These are dogwood scurfy scales – they’re everywhere, but no one’s written anything about them – thanks as always to PJ at the Insect Diagnostic Lab in Madison for pointing the BugLady toward an ID.” 

But the BugLady could never do that, so…..

In her initial search for a name, the BugLady came across the pine leaf scale (Chionaspis pinifoliae https://bugguide.net/node/view/361628/bgimage) that looked similar, but she thought it was unlikely to be her scale because, well, pine needles.  The dogwood scale suggested by PJ is Chionaspis corni; in the same genus, but when you Google Chionaspis corni, most hits are for Chionaspis pinifoliae.  Bugguide.net lists no other genus members and although the dogwood scurfy scale is common here, does not even show the genus as occurring in Wisconsin (buggide’s caveat about its range maps is “The information below is based on images submitted and identified by contributors. Range and date information may be incomplete, overinclusive, or just plain wrong”).

Just to make things interesting, the accepted spelling of the genus name (since 1868) is Chionaspis, but over the years it has officially been misspelled by later taxonomists as Chianaspis, Chiomaspis, and Chionapsis.

The BugLady checked the wonderful Illinois Wildflowers website https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/ and found the dogwood scale (along with several other species of scale including the willow scale and the Gloomy scale) mentioned in the Faunal Associations sections of the write-ups of red-osier and flowering dogwoods and several other dogwood shrubs. 

And one more thing – “scurfy” means rough or scaly or covered with scurf, and a “scurf” is a flake, scale or dandruff.

Whew!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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