Tag: caterpillar

Bug o’the Week – Slices of Spring

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Slices of Spring

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady and her camera have been out scouring the uplands and wetlands for insects that will sit still long enough to have their portrait made.  Many of today’s bugs have starred in their own BOTWs over the years, and you can find them by Googling “UWM Field Station followed by the name of the insect.  Her gut continues to tell her that there simply aren’t as many insects to point her camera at as there were a decade ago.

What did she find in April and May?

WOODLAND LUCY (Lucidota atra), aka the Black firefly (atra means black).  If a lightning bug doesn’t light, is it still a Lightning bug?  Yup.  Most lightning bugs flash their species-specific light signals at females by night, but some, like the Woodland Lucy, are day flyers (the BugLady starts seeing them in swamps in May, but she usually doesn’t see a light show by their nocturnal relatives until the very end of June).  It would be a waste of energy to try to produce a light that competes with the sun, so diurnal lightning bugs communicate via pheromones (perfumes).  But, all fireflies make light at some point in their lives, and always as a larva (and even the adult Woodland Lucy makes a weak light for a brief time after emerging as an adult).   

Who says “lightning bug” and who says “firefly?”  Lightning bug is heard most often in the South and Midwest, and firefly belongs to New England and the West (and Southeastern Wisconsin is close to the border of the two).  Someone did a study and hypothesized that people who live in wildfire country prefer firefly, and people who live in thunderstorm country say lightning beetle.  The BugLady likes the alternate theory – that you call them whatever your Grandmother called them.

DISONYCHA BEETLE – isn’t this a neat beetle!  The BugLady photographed another member of the genus years ago when she was photographing visitors to her pussy willow shrub.  It’s in the (huge) leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae, many of whose members are pretty specific about the host plants for their larvae.  This one is (probably) a member of the confusing Smartweed Disonycha bunch.  

GROUSE LOCUSTS are in the family Tetrigidae (the pygmy grasshoppers), and at a half-inch and less when full grown, pygmy they are!  The BugLady usually sees them in wetlands, and some are actually known to swim.  They feed on tiny diatoms and algae and aquatic vegetation at the water’s edge.

A CENTIPEDE works the boardwalk at Spruce Lake Bog in April.

GROUND BEETLE LARVA – Ground beetles (family Carabidae) are a bunch of mainly nocturnal, sometimes-sizeable, mostly predaceous beetles.  Some of the big ones have no-nonsense names like Fiery Searcher and Caterpillar Hunter, and although they are called Ground beetles, they may climb trees to find their prey.  They’re long-lived, spending a year or two as larvae and then two or three more as adults.  No – the BugLady was not inclined to pick this one up.   

The WHITE-STRIPED BLACK MOTH (Trichodezia albovittata) is a small (1” wingspan) day-flying moth that’s often mistaken for a butterfly.  It’s found in wetlands because its caterpillar’s food is Impatiens/Jewelweed/Touch-me-not.  Like other members of the moth family Geometridae, it has tympanal organs (ears) at the base of its abdomen so that it can hear the echolocation calls of bats.  Since it’s diurnal, its ears are superfluous, but it can hear ultrasound (which suggests to evolutionary biologists that its day-flying habit is a recent one). 

CHALK-FRONTED CORPORALS are one of our earliest dragonflies – the BugLady recalls seeing recently-emerged corporals by the hundreds over a dirt road on warm, spring days.

DADDY LONGLEGS (aka Harvestmen) are not true spiders, though they do have eight legs.  The best description that the BugLady has read is that lacking a sharp division between their two body parts (cephalothorax and abdomen), they look like Rice Krispies with legs.  This one is well-camouflaged on the fertile stalk of a cinnamon fern.

The BugLady may have to have this engraved on her gravestone (oh wait, she’s being scattered) – DADDY LONGLEGS DO NOT BITE PEOPLE!  Also, counter to both urban and rural legend, they are NOT the most venomous animal on earth!!!  The BugLady does not care what your cousin told you, or the person who claims to be allergic to their bite.  They have tiny jaws, and unlike the true spiders, they do not pierce their prey and then pump in chemicals from venom glands (no venom glands) (and they have no stinging apparatus).  They just sit there and chew off tiny (tiny) pieces.  Got it?

The BEAUTIFUL BEE FLY (Bombylius pulchellus) truly is (pulchellos means “little beauty”)!  This small fly (maybe ¼”) was photographed in a wetland in mid-May.  Bee fly larvae are parasitoids of a variety of insect eggs and larvae – this one targets the sweat bees, which are among our earliest pollinators (not to worry – the system is in balance).

CRANE FLY – there are a number of families of crane flies, plus some near-relatives, and they are often collectively called daddy longlegs (though they’re not spiders) and mosquito hawks and skeeter-eaters (though they don’t catch or eat mosquitoes).  What they do, is look like giant mosquitoes when they land on the other side of your window screen at night https://bugguide.net/node/view/2360312/bgimage, but they’re completely harmless.  The “crane” in crane fly reflects their long, long legs – they’re somewhat awkward flyers and even more awkward landers.  Like the Daddy longlegs, they’re reputedly extremely venomous (and now it’s time to introduce the third member of our “daddy longlegs trio,” the cellar spider.  Crane flies are thought to be venomous because they look like cellar spiders (https://bugguide.net/node/view/2170770/bgimage), but, alas, cellar spiders only have very weak venom). 

How do these things get started, anyway?

SOLDIER FLY – it’s always a little startling to come across a lime-green fly! 

This VIRGINIA CTENUCHA MOTH CATERPILLAR was photographed in April, but the BugLady has found them walking around on mild winter days.  The cute caterpillar will morph into a stunning moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/1036503/bgimage that looks butterfly-ish until it lands on a leaf and immediately crawls underneath.  Despite its name, it’s a moth with more northerly affiliations. 

The (great) Minnesota Seasons website lists three defense strategies:

  • Aposematism: The metallic blue color of the thorax and abdomen mimics wasps which may be noxious to predators.
  • Sound production: A specialized (tymbal), corrugated region on the third section of the thorax (metathorax) produces ultrasonic sounds which interfere with (“jam”) the sonar of moth-eating bats.
  • Pyrrolizidine alkaloid sequestration: Caterpillars acquire and retain naturally produced toxic chemicals (pyrrolizidine alkaloids) from the plants they eat.

RED-SPOTTED PURPLE CATERPILLARS are hard to distinguish from those of the very-closely-related Viceroy and White Admiral caterpillars, and their food plants overlap, too.  The caterpillars overwinter in a leaf that’s still attached to the tree, rolled up and fastened with silk. 

Red-spotted Purple?  The purple part https://bugguide.net/node/view/1791309/bgimage, and the red-spotted part https://bugguide.net/node/view/1881731/bgimage

HOBOMOK SKIPPERS (once called the Northern Golden Skipper) are an early butterfly, often decorating the wild geraniums that bloom by the bushel in May.  One source says that they are strong flyers that take off quickly when startled.  Amen!  They are a butterfly of woodland, wetland and grassland edges, where males perch in the sun and fly out to chase intruders.

“Hobomok” is a nod to an early Wampanoag chief.    

CRAB SPIDER on White trillium – as we all know, the BugLady has a thing for crab spiders because of their ability to hide in plain sight.  This one was photographed in early May. 

Go outside – Look 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 – Saddleback Caterpillar – A Snowbird Special

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Saddleback Caterpillar A Snowbird Special

Greetings, BugFans,

Today’s bug, the extraordinary-looking and aptly-named Saddle-backed caterpillar, is the 5th in our on-going Snowbird Special series about bugs you might see if you decide to tear yourself away from God’s Country in the winter.  The BugLady doesn’t know why one might consider that – except she’s posting this before dark because there’s a massive storm that’s raining all over her, accompanied by 20-plus mph north winds, and is delivering many inches of snow inland.  She suspects that the power will fail eventually.

Thanks to BugFan Tom in the Deep South for his pictures of this amazing caterpillar.

The Slug caterpillar family Limnacodidae has appeared in these pages before https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/slug-moths-tale-two-parts/.  Limnacodidae means “snail/slug-form” and refers to its caterpillars, some of which look like space aliens, while others are limpet-shaped.  They have suckers instead of abdominal prolegs https://bugguide.net/node/view/225763/bgimage (prolegs are fleshy, unjointed “legs” that act as anchors, gripping the surface while the true legs (on the thorax) and the muscles in the body work to move it along).  Slug caterpillars exude a lubricant (not slime, like snails and slugs, but a type of liquid silk) that allows them to contact the substrate more completely and to glide/undulate through life.  Some have a smooth exterior, some are bristly, and some, like the Saddleback caterpillar, have fleshy horns decorated with hollow, stinging spines and hairs that will get your attention if you encounter one (more about that in a sec). 

Slug moths tend to be dark, sturdy, and hairy, with wide wings.  They can’t hear and they don’t feed, and they generally live for little longer than a week.  They often perch with the tip of their abdomen raised, though other kinds of moths do that, too.   

The BugLady always thinks of members of this family as belonging to the Deep South (because they have more “sting-y” things down there), but the range of the Saddle-backed caterpillar extends from Massachusetts to Florida to Texas (and points south) to Kansas, and through parts of Illinois (the BugLady saw a few maps that showed the species in far southern Wisconsin).  A number of species of Limnacodids are native to Wisconsin, including:

the Spiny oak slug https://bugguide.net/node/view/2212985/bgimage,

the Crowned slug moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/1938355/bgimage,

and the less-fancy but still lovely Shagreened slug moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/1859138/bgimage, and Skiff moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/446465/bgimage.     

Without further ado, the SADDLEBACK CATERPILLAR (Acharia stimulea).  

Adults fly in June and July in the northern parts of their range and pretty much all year Down South.  The eggs – so transparent that the tiny larvae may be seen inside https://bugguide.net/node/view/2003668/bgimage – are deposited at night in clumps of 30 to 50 on the undersides of the leaves of host plants. 

It’s not hard to find a host plant, because Saddleback Caterpillars eat the leaves of a pretty wide variety of trees, shrubs, wildflowers, grasses, garden plants and horticultural plantings.  Their only stipulation is that the leaves be smooth, not pubescent (hairy) – the rough texture of hairier leaves interferes with their ability to adhere and to move.   

Like other species of slug moths, Saddle-back caterpillars are, initially, gregarious leaf skeletonizers, nibbling at the tender surface of the underside side of a leaf and eschewing the tough leaf veins https://bugguide.net/node/view/954559/bgimage.  As they grow, they take on the whole leaf and eventually become more solitary.  Caterpillars take four or five months to mature (here’s a pretty cool shot of one that just molted https://bugguide.net/node/view/1570339/bgimage). 

About the sharp bits: 

The long, hollow spines contain a “hemolytic and vesicating venom” (a red-blood-cell-destroying and blister-raising venom) and will break away from the caterpillar and embed in whatever bumped/grabbed them (removing the spines gently and immediately with tape is highly recommended, followed by an ice pack) (and maybe an adult beverage).  Are the spines effective? 

Wagner, in Caterpillars of Eastern North America, says that, due to its size and quantity of its stinging spines, “The sting of the Saddleback Caterpillar may be the most potent of any North American caterpillar.” 

One contributor to bugguide.net wrote that “I grabbed a dead looking leaf off my small incubating Rose of Sharon in the evening. After that I don’t remember much. It was horrifying being stung by this well equipped little creature from another planet.”

A Virginia Extension Agent likened it to “getting hit by a jellyfish.”

The spines, which are part of the caterpillars’ redundant defense system, give pause to most vertebrate and invertebrate predators.  The venom can trigger intense pain, hives, migraines, GI issues, asthma, and even anaphylactic shock.  Yet they are vulnerable to tiny parasitic wasps that slip in between the spines and inject eggs into the caterpillar’s body.  The wasp larvae consume the inside of the caterpillar and then crawl outside to pupate in cocoons that look like tiny swabs https://bugguide.net/node/view/79421/bgimage.  And Tom photographed one in the clutches of the awesome nymph of a Giant Strong-nosed stink bug

They spend the winter as pre-pupae, and as they’re preparing to pupate, they intentionally expel fluids and frass from their bodies and shrink by about half.  The result is that the spines are more “concentrated” on their body surface than before.  They also release calcium oxalate (that’s the stuff that makes skunk cabbage poisonous), which forms crystals in the fabric of the cocoon and hardens it.  Spines may also be woven into the silk of the cocoon, too, and scattered around it.  Despite this, there’s still predation on the pupae.   

The Bottom Line: The moth is stunning https://bugguide.net/node/view/752824/bgimage, (and almost no one is sensitive to its hairs).  The caterpillars are cute as a button when they’re kittens https://bugguide.net/node/view/2225127/bgimage and are beautiful when they’re mature (about ¾” long).  The striking pattern of older caterpillars is thought to be aposematic (warning) coloration.  Plus, older caterpillars have a startle reaction that puts their spines at the ready.  Plus, their adhesive abilities mean that if you do bump one, it won’t just drop to the ground, encounter over – it will stick to its spot.  Plus, from the rear, their markings make a scary face https://bugguide.net/node/view/693213/bgimage.  Take the hint (and maybe don’t go barefoot, and maybe don’t grab ahold of a leaf without checking its underside). 

Special Treat – a Spun glass slug https://bugguide.net/node/view/2211409/bgimage (very young), and older https://bugguide.net/node/view/1480728/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/990165/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/9412/bgimage.

Special Thanks to the awesome folks at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee who format the episodes and archive them on the Field Station website (and make them look good!).

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

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

Greetings of the Season, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a DOT-TAILED WHITEFACE in a pear tree.

Have a Wonder-full New Year,

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed

Howdy, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Bugs at the End of Summer

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Bugs at the End of Summer

Howdy, BugFans,

The Autumnal Equinox is fast upon us, alas, and even though it was a very hot one, the BugLady would like to push that Restart button and go back to the beginning of August.  Failing that, here are some of the bugs that crossed her trail in the second half of summer.

BARK LOUSE – Bark lice (order (Psocidae) are often seen in herds, both as adults and nymphs https://bugguide.net/node/view/1716157/bgimage.  This species, Cerastipsocus venosus, is known collectively as Tree cattle.  Bugguide.net says that they feed on “accumulations of fungi, algae, lichen, dead bark and other materials that occur on tree trunks and large limbs.”  And on the BugLady’s porch rails.  So, they clean up after the BugLady outside, and the silverfish take care of the inside of her cottage. 

YELLOW-HORNED FLOWER LONG-HORNED BEETLE – The YHFLHB (Strangalia luteicornis) is in the Longhorned beetle family Cerambycidae and the subfamily Lepturinae, the flower longhorns.  Flower longhorns are often found on flowers by day, feeding on the protein-rich pollen, and many (but not all) species are wedge-shaped – sometimes dramatically so.  Their larvae feed on dead and dying woody material, and certain fungi that they ingest as part of their meal then aids the grub’s ability to digest cellulose (in some species of flower longhorns, Mom inoculates the eggshell as she lays it with a yeast that becomes part of the grub’s intestinal microflora). 

AMBUSH BUG – What would summer be without the extraordinarily-well-camouflaged (and voracious) ambush bugs – one of the BugLady’s favorites? 

LEAF-FOOTED BUG – Late summer is True bug season (remember – only one insect order, the Hemiptera, can officially be called Bugs).  This particular bug is the almost-grown nymph of a leaf-footed bug called Acanthocephala terminalis (no common name).  Newly-hatched nymphs, with their spiny butts and improbable antennae, are pretty cute https://bugguide.net/node/view/933082/bgimage. 

SPIDER WEB AND PREY – All wrapped up and nowhere to go.   

BALD-FACED HORNET – The BugLady corresponded this summer with a man who was stung twice in his mouth by a Bald-faced hornet (now called Bald-faced aerial yellowjacket).  These are the gals that build the closed, football-shaped, paper nests that hang in trees, and while they are valiant/dangerous in defense of their homes, they don’t defend the flower tops where they feed.  The BugLady’s correspondent was apparently walking along blamelessly when his open mouth encountered a flying hornet.  Stings on the face, and especially in the mouth, can be dangerous because of swelling, even if you’re not allergic. 

An entomologist named Schmidt went around deliberately getting stung by the ants, hornets, bees, and wasps of the world and writing descriptions of his discomfort that are sometimes reminiscent of a wine-tasting.  He rated the Bald-faced hornet at a 2 out of 4 on his pain scale – “rich, hearty, slightly crunchy.  Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door” https://reliantpest.com/north-american-schmidt-sting-index/.  Not surprisingly, lots of exterminator companies have posted the scale because they want to sell us something.   

COMMON WOOD NYMPH – A medium/large Satyr butterfly of sunny fields, Common Wood Nymphs are not often seen nectaring on flowers, preferring fungi and rotting fruit.  They lay their eggs on grasses in late summer, but when the caterpillars hatch, they go into hibernation immediately, without feeding, to continue their development the following spring. 

CANDY-STRIPED LEAFHOPPER – what glorious things sometimes come in ¼” packages!  And, they have superpowers!  Leafhoppers suck plant juices.  Most plant sap has a sugar concentration of only a few percent, so leafhoppers have to consume a lot of it to get enough calories, and they excrete the excess (honeydew) “under pressure” with a tiny, but sometimes-audible, “pop.”  Because of this, they’re called “sharpshooters.”  And – they vocalize, but too softly for us to hear.

BROWN WASP MANTIDFLY – Yes, those poised, mantis-like front legs are used to grab smaller insects (mantidflies also sip nectar); and yes, this mantidfly does look like a paper wasp at first glance (but – no stinger).  Scroll down to see how this very flexible species has evolved to imitate different species of wasps in different parts of the country (the mantidfly is on the left) https://bugguide.net/node/view/4825. 

Their stalked eggs are attached to leaves https://bugguide.net/node/view/216544/bgimage, and when the eggs hatch, each larva waits for a passing spider, hitches a ride (feeding on the spider like a tick), and eventually infiltrates the spider’s egg sac, where it spends the rest of its larval life eating spider eggs.

WHITE-FACED MEADOWHAWK – You rarely see this species in tandem flights out over the water or ovipositing into shallow water.  They often “speculate” – bobbing up and down in damp areas by a pond’s edge, with the female lobbing her eggs onto the ground.  The plan is that spring rains will wash the eggs into the water. 

RED-SPOTTED PURPLE – What a classy butterfly!  Three Fun Facts about Red-spotted Purples: 1) the red is on the underside of the wings https://bugguide.net/node/view/557370; 2) though they are “tailless,” they are mimicking Pipe-vine Swallowtails, which are poisonous https://bugguide.net/node/view/2264557/bgimage; and 3) partly-grown caterpillars spend the winter inside a leaf that they’ve rolled into a tube and fastened to a twig, and they emerge and resume eating the following year (scroll down for a picture of a hibernaculum and for a bonus lesson about “frass spars” https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/bfly/red-spotted_purple.htm).  Within their leafy tube, they drop about 1/3 of the water weight in their body in order to avoid cell damage from freezing.

CRAB SPIDER – Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.

GREEN STINK BUG – Another common sight in late summer, along with their flashy, almost-grown nymphs https://bugguide.net/node/view/885566.  Some stink bugs are carnivores, and some are herbivores, and some of the herbivores are considered crop pests.  They aren’t chewers, they suck plant juices with mouths like drinking straws, which can deform fruits and seeds, damage twigs, and wither leaves.  Green Stink bugs (Pentatoma hilaris) (hilaris means “lively or cheerful”) feed on a large variety of plants (they’re “polyphagous”).  Newly-hatched green stinkbugs aren’t green https://bugguide.net/node/view/127137/bgimage.

TIGER SWALLOWTAIL CATERPILLAR – No – those aren’t eyes.  They’re pigment spots that are designed to fool you into thinking it’s a snake.  Young Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars start out as bird poop mimics https://bugguide.net/node/view/1883543/bgimage, but midway through their development, they go into snake mode, completing the effect by everting, when they feel threatened, a two-pronged, soft, orange, odorous projection (the osmeterium) that looks like a snake’s forked tongue https://bugguide.net/node/view/2214191/bgimage.  Tiger Swallowtails have two generations per year.  Caterpillars of the butterflies we see in June don’t spend long in the chrysalis, emerging in mid-August and getting to work on the next generation.  This caterpillar will overwinter as a chrysalis.  Don’t tell the other insects, but Tiger Swallowtails are the BugLady’s favorites.

As she visited her usual haunts this summer, the BugLady was dismayed at the lack of insects.  Sure, the goldenrods are full of flies, bees and wasps of various stripes, and the grasshoppers and tree crickets are singing their September songs.  But she saw six Tiger Swallowtails this summer.  Total.  And maybe a dozen meadowhawks.  During one mid-summer Dragonfly count years ago, the BugLady simply stopped counting meadowhawks when she got to 250 because it was distracting her from the other species.  Common Wood Nymphs used to emerge in early July by the score to filter through the grasses.  Even crab spiders and ambush bugs seemed scarce this year. 

What good are insects?  Sometimes it’s hard to drum up sympathy for a group that many people routinely swat, stomp, spray, or zap.  But insects provide food for birds and for other insects; they’re pollinators, and they provide other ecosystem services including pest control and garbage pick-up. 

(And, of course, they’re awesome.)

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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