Tag: photography

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 – Comet Darner Dragonfly

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Comet Darner Dragonfly

Greetings, BugFans,

The Holidays are hurtling toward us at an astonishing speed, so the BugLady figured that a Christmas green and red dragonfly would be fitting.  It’s one that she’s seen, all too briefly, but not photographed – thanks to Guest Photographer BugFan Freda, aka the Dragonfly Whisperer, for the pictures (the BugLady took the one of the darner in the grass).

Comet Darners (Anax longipes) are in the dragonfly family Aeshnidae, the darners, and in the genus Anax, a group of large and sometimes migratory darners (Anax comes from an Ancient Greek word meaning “lord,” “master,” or “king”).  Bugguide.net shows four other genus members in the US, a couple of them just barely here:

The Amazon Darner – https://bugguide.net/node/view/240386/bgimage;

The Giant Darner – https://bugguide.net/node/view/566371/bgimage;

The Blue-spotted Comet – https://bugguide.net/node/view/867345/bgpage; and the

Common Green Darner https://bugguide.net/node/view/2042845/bgimage.   

Comet Darners mostly live east of the Great Plains, from Florida to Ontario, though they are distributed randomly, and even though they aren’t officially considered migratory, they are strong flyers that can end up just about anywhere.  They prefer relatively shallow ponds with forested edges, lots of floating, submerged, and emergent vegetation, and few/no fish.  The water level of many of their chosen ponds fluctuates annually. 

Comet Darners are fast and impressive, and with a wingspread of up to 3 ½” (females are slightly larger than males) they are among our largest dragonflies,  And at 2 ½” long, their naiads are pretty big, too – Freda’s photograph of the empty shells of a Comet Darner (left) and Common Green Darner (right) show the size difference.  They have long, spectacular red and black legs https://bugguide.net/node/view/88077, and males have a constriction on the third abdominal segment that gives them a “narrow waisted” appearance (females are stockier).  The male’s red abdomen fairly glows as he flashes by https://bugguide.net/node/view/1865911/bgimage.  Females have pale spots on their abdomen https://bugguide.net/node/view/218411/bgimage.  They seldom perch and are hard both to catch and hard to photograph (bugguide.net has a surprisingly small collection of pictures for a dragonfly this flashy, with this large a range).  Some observers report that these darners are most active in the beginning and ending parts of the day. 

Most sources say that the only dragonfly you might mistake the uncommon Comet Darner for is the smaller Common Green Darner (which is, as its name suggests, common). The BugLady got pretty excited when she spotted the colorful darner perched in the grass, but despite the red abdomen, she could see the Cyclops eye on the top of its head when she photographed it – an especially colorful female Common Green Darner.  Comet darners lack that “bulls-eye” on the face https://bugguide.net/node/view/125199/bgimage. 

Like all Odonates, Comet Darners are carnivores, both during their aquatic youth as naiads and as aerial adults.  The naiads are big enough to tackle not only the usual aquatic invertebrates but also small vertebrates like minnows, tadpoles, and frogs, and they’re top predators in their habitats.  Adults cruise about 8 feet above the water, grabbing insects out of the air, and their super-long legs allow them to go after larger prey, including their fellow dragonflies.  On the Comet Darner page of his great “Dragonflies of Northern Virginia” website, Kevin Munroe writes “I saw one flying off to feed in the trees with two Black Saddlebags (decent-sized insects themselves), clutched tightly in those long, red, black-hooked legs. I guess he was hungry, and one dragonfly just wasn’t enough.”

Males are territorial, patrolling all around the shoreline of their pond, just above the level of the vegetation, looking for food, intruders, and mates.  Neither males nor females are monogamous.  Females slice into the stems of plants just below the water’s surface with their ovipositor and insert eggs https://bugguide.net/node/view/1835467/bgimage.  Eggs hatch within a month, but the naiad/immature stage may last for several years.

According to the Comer Darner page on the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species website, when they emerge https://bugguide.net/node/view/1321893/bgimage, “Immature dragonflies may spend a week or more feeding and maturing away from water, often some distance from the breeding site.  Comet Darners are rarely seen during this stage.  It is possible that they spend their time in the tree tops, where they are difficult to observe.  …….  When at rest, they hang from the vegetation in a vertical position, often high in the trees.”  

What’s their status in Wisconsin?  Are there unchecked ponds out there that are graced by Comet Darner flyovers every summer?  Are there Comet Darner naiads under the ice in Wisconsin right now, awaiting the warming waters of spring?

Comet Darners are listed on the Wisconsin Odonata Survey website as a “Most Wanted” species, and their story here is similar to their story in other states at/beyond the edges of their range.  

In his article called “What is the incomparable Anax longipes (Comet Darner) doing in Wisconsin?” Robert DuBois and Freda trace the history of Comet Darners in the state. Beginning with a report in 1978, Comet Darners have been recorded at just a few sites in just a few counties.  They have not been seen every year, and while most sightings are of males, ovipositing females have been seen, and an exuvia (shed skin) of an emerged naiad was found at one site, pointing to successful breeding. 

There are tantalizingly few reports here each year (a Comet Darner was recorded during the 2024 Riveredge Butterfly and Dragonfly Count), but some sites have been visited multiple times.  Sometimes, individuals are seen for a few days and then they disappear, but other Comet Darners are observed on ponds for longer stretches of time.  Data collected in Wisconsin and in Michigan suggest that, while it is possible that random wandering individuals could find the same pond several years in a row (remember, dragonflies only live a few months as adults, so they’re not revisiting a site, like migratory birds), it’s more likely that small numbers of Comet Darners are breeding in Wisconsin, at the northwest edge of their range – what Robert DuBois calls “small but persistent interacting subpopulations.”  

Fun Fact about Darners:  In his book Dragonflies of the North Woods, Kurt Mead says, “Not to scare you, but I have heard of rare, isolated reports of darners attempting to lay eggs into human skin. One scientist carefully observed eggs being injected into each cut in his skin.  Perhaps this phenomenon is the source of some old European names such as ‘eye sticker,’ ‘horse stinger,’ and ‘devil’s darning needle.’”  (to which the BugLady replies 1) of course he did; 2) that scientist doomed those eggs in service of his useless observation; and 3) the devil takes the fall for a bunch of stinging and scary-looking insects.).

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – And Now for Something a Little Different XVIII – Red-breasted Mergansers

Bug o’the Wee
by Kate Redmond

And Now for Something a Little Different XVIII Red-breasted Mergansers

Howdy BugFans,

Perched, as she is, on the rim of the Lake Michigan, the BugLady has a front row seat for the activities of the Lake and its residents (and, of course, she’s photographing the heck out of it – rainbows, sunrises, sunsets, storms, ships, and this fall, even waterspouts!).  The Lake changes daily – hourly – in minutes.  In fall, and then again in late winter, flash mobs of mergansers and gulls erupt and then disappear, following schools of small fish.  It’s hard to tell whether the mergansers locate the fish first and the gulls notice, or vice-versa.  Once, the BugLady watched as two Bald Eagles flew out to investigate the scrum.

This year, toward the end of November, she watched a raft of mergansers more than 100 yards long (she couldn’t photograph the whole line) – many thousands of ducks, plus gulls, diving for fish.

So – what are Red-breasted Mergansers?

Winter brings Red-breasted Mergansers to Lake Michigan, flying low in long strings, far offshore. Mergansers, along with about a dozen other species, belong to a group of ducks called the Sea, Marine, or Diving ducks (as opposed to the Puddle or Dabbling ducks like Mallards and Teal). Sea ducks are mostly northern species that are adapted to survive offshore in winter, and many dive deep for their food.  

Drinking salt water (or consuming it with their prey) is as bad for sea ducks and other oceanic species (petrels, shearwaters, etc.) as it is for us, but they have a salt gland located above each eye that acts like a mini-kidney, filtering salt from the water and releasing concentrated salt water through the nares (nostrils) https://travisaudubon.org/murmurations/salt-glands-in-seabirds.

Red-breasted Mergansers (Mergus serrator) are one of three species of mergansers in North America; the others are the Hooded Merganser and the Common Merganser, known in Europe as the Goosander. Of our three mergansers, the Red-breasted Merganser is found more often in salt water, and it breeds farther north and winters farther south than the other two. Red-breasted Mergansers are sometimes called “sawbills” (“serrator” comes from a Latin word meaning “sawlike”) because of the serrations on their bill that help them grip fish.   

They are native to northern Eurasia as well as North America; here, they breed on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, and across Canada and the northern tier of the US. They winter in the Great Lakes and along both coasts south to Mexico.

Like loons and the other Sea ducks, their legs are located near the rear of their body –- great for propelling them under water, but not so great for walking. Unlike Puddle ducks, which can leap into the air from the water, Sea ducks must run along its surface, flapping, in order to take off.

Red-breasted Mergansers spend about half of their waking hours looking for food. They primarily eat small fish, but their menu may also include fish eggs, crabs, aquatic insects, and tadpoles, and because they like small salmon, some have been known to “adopt” fish hatcheries. They hunt by swimming along with their faces just below the water’s surface, like a snorkeler, and by diving (they can stay underwater for about 45 seconds), and sometimes a group of mergansers will cooperate to herd a school of minnows. They typically forage in relatively shallow areas, but they’re equally at home in deep water.  

Male Red-breasted Mergansers court by dips, head shakes, and curtsies, vocalizing with a soft “yeow-yeow” sound (here are some merganser vocalizations – https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-breasted_Merganser/sounds). Females nest beside fresh or salt water, often close to the area they were hatched in, and because they are a social, non-territorial species, they are comfortable nesting near gulls or other ducks. In June, females lay their eggs in a shallow depression lined with grass and feathers, but males don’t stick around to help with the incubation. Females lead the ducklings to water within a day of hatching, and they are on their own just a few weeks later. They can fly when they’re about two months old. 

The clutch size is five to 24 eggs, but other females may contribute their eggs (conspecific brood parasitism), and nests with fifty or more eggs have been found. Mergansers that nest near other mergansers may combine their broods after hatching –- the mass of ducklings is called a “crèche” or “nursery” –- and females take shifts supervising them.

Cold weather kills about half of each year’s crop of ducklings, and predators of eggs and ducklings — ravens, gulls, jaegers, and mink — kill another quarter, but if a duckling survives to adulthood, it’s liable to live for another five or six years. Adults are eaten by foxes, Great-horned and Snowy Owls.

Like other Sea ducks, they are fast flyers; one Red-breasted Merganser was clocked at 100 mph (by the plane that was chasing it).

They are hunted by duck hunters in many areas, but because of their diet, they don’t taste very good (“inedible,” say some bloggers). Most recipes for Red-breasted Mergansers involve removing as much of the fishy-tasting fat as possible, marinating what’s left, and then cooking it at for a long time with lots of herbs.

As long as there’s not too much boat activity, the Port Washington Harbor and adjacent Coal Dock Park can be great places to watch Red-breasted Mergansers and other waterfowl in winter, along with several species of gulls.

The BugLady originally wrote this article for the newsletter of the Lake Michigan Bird Observatory. in her storage unit, and she found an earwig on her sink, but she’s pretty sure that it, like the tree frog that was in the shower, came in when she brought the geraniums inside for the winter).

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Blue Blow Fly

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Blue Blow Fly

Howdy BugFans,

It’s gotten cold here in God’s Country – abruptly – with overnight lows in the high teens/low twenties, and daytime highs below freezing.  The water in the birdbath froze solid for a few nights in a row before the BugLady dusted off her heated birdbath, and while she was installing it, several of these large flies were buzzing around on the sunny outside walls of her cottage.  This is one tough fly!

There are more than the usual number of these hefty flies inside her cottage this fall, too, and she suspects there’s a connection between their persistence and the woodchuck that shuffled off its mortal coil under her floorboards in October (on the bright side, now she can fill the hole under the house without worrying about killing the woodchuck). 

What’s a Blow fly?  Blow flies and bottle flies are members of the family Calliphoridae.  Their lifestyles can be off-putting (hint – they’re sometimes called “filth flies”) (the BugLady acknowledges that there may be a certain “ick” factor here).  Females probably use chemical and visual signals to locate the flesh, carrion, wounds, orifices, and/or mammal poop on which they oviposit; the eggs hatch quickly and the larvae (maggots) feed on/in their often-odiferous milieu.  The maggots have to compete for food with the larvae of other insect species, and they must dodge the jaws of carrion beetles, spiders, birds, and frogs.  They pupate in the ground.   

The name “Blow fly” comes from the days of Shakespeare, when a piece of meat occupied by maggots was said to be “fly blown.”

Adult flies often feed on nectar.  Some species of plants (like Pawpaws) have developed especially stinky flowers in order to attract them, and according to The Missouri Department of Conservation website’s Blow fly page, they’re attracted to “some tropical arum species you may see at a botanical garden, and cactuslike stapelia houseplants from South Africa, whose flowers look like giant open sores.” Yes, pictures are available online.

Blow flies have – literally – medical applications, both historically and in the present day.  Says Michael J. Raupp, Extension Entomologist at the University of Maryland, in his Bug of the Week blog (the original Bug of the Week!), “During the American Civil War, surgeons noticed that blow flies often infested the grievous wounds of soldiers. Physicians were surprised to see wounds of maggot-ridden soldiers healing more rapidly and with fewer complications than injuries of soldiers without maggots. Many blow fly larvae consume dead and dying tissues rather than healthy ones. Furthermore, they secrete potent chemicals that kill harmful bacteria and aid in the healing process. Using blow fly larvae to treat wounds is called maggot therapy.” 

And, as CSI fans know – forensic entomologists have charted down to the minute all the permutations in the chronologies of some blow fly species in order to estimate how long a dead body has been dead.  

Though they can spread some nasty germs (if those germs are present, which they often are not), they don’t bite, and they are vital members of Nature’s clean-up crew.  Raupp calls them “heroes of recycling.” 

BLUE BLOW FLIES (Calliohora vicina) (“calliphora” means “bearer of beauty”) can be seen in cool, shady habitats around the globe, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere, but they’re also found in scattered locations in the Southern Hemisphere.  They’ve been recorded in South Africa and uncommonly in Australia, where they’re called European blow flies.  Wikipedia says that they probably travel by the world by airplane.

Females lay eggs – as many as 300 – on a suitable substrate, and if the humidity is high enough they hatch quickly, but they crawl away to find drier conditions when it’s time to pupate.  The larval stage lasts about three days, depending on temperature, and the entire life cycle is about 20 days, most of it spent as a pupa. 

Sources say that adult Blue blow flies are considered “efficient pollinators,” especially of crops like carrots.

Despite the cold, there are still bugs out on our landscapes (and inside, too – the BugLady recently photographed a Bridge spider in her storage unit, and she found an earwig on her sink, but she’s pretty sure that it, like the tree frog that was in the shower, came in when she brought the geraniums inside for the winter).

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Organ Pipe Mud Daubers (again)

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Organ Pipe Mud Daubers (again)

Howdy, BugFans,

Here’s a Holiday Rerun with some new words added for good measure (because who can look at something they wrote 12 years ago and not tweak it?).

The BugLady had fun photographing the deconstruction of an old farmhouse recently (in a deconstruction, everything usable gets recycled, not land-filled).  On the outside walls, under the cedar shake siding, were long, skinny tubes and fist-shaped globs made by generations of mud wasps.  The mud tubes that look like part of a pipe organ were made by a wasp called, logically, the ORGAN PIPE/PIPE ORGAN MUD DAUBER (Trypoxylon politum).  There are about 30 species in the genus across North America (more elsewhere), but the OPMD is found mostly in the eastern US, and, says Eric Eaton in a comment in bugguide.net, “The “organ pipe mud dauber” (T. politum) is the only species in this genus (in NA) that fabricates nests of mud. All our other species (the “keyhole wasps”) nest in pre-existing tunnels like beetle borings, sealing the finished nest with mud.”

Organ Pipe Mud Daubers are in the wasp family Crabronidae (the Sand and Square-headed wasps and a few others), but if you have an old insect guide, you’ll find them in the family Sphecidae (the Thread-waisted wasps).  It’s a big family, with 9,000 members worldwide and 1,225 in North America.  As a group, they provision egg cells with prey for their developing larvae to eat – says buguide.net, “The type of prey varies according to species of wasp, but includes aphids, bees, beetles, bugs, butterflies & moths, cicadas, cockroaches, crickets, flies, grasshoppers, hoppers, mantids, and spiders. A few species are kleptoparasitic, providing their larvae with prey that was captured by other species of wasps.”   

These smallish wasps are patent-leather black, with purplish wings and white “ankles” on their back legs https://bugguide.net/node/view/1141473/bgimage.  At about an inch in length, the OPMD is the largest member of its genus.  Males have no stingers, and bugguide.net says that females are “non-aggressive unless molested,” so don’t. 

She picks a sheltered nest site near a supply of mud and then she plows into the damp ground, picks up mud with her mandibles, forms it into a ball, and grasps the ball with her front legs.  When she has all she can carry, she flies back to her nest, mixes the mud with her saliva, and uses her forehead to smear the mud balls out into long strips, first on one side, and then on the other.  A typical “pipe” is about six-inches long, made up of no more than six sections or cells, and there might be five to seven pipes in a cluster.  One source said that a pipe might be constructed in a day. 

She is a noisy worker and her buzzing is amplified by the tube she is working on, as though she were playing bagpipes.  Although solitary, she tolerates her sister mud daubers nearby, and aggregations of “organ pipes” can be impressive.  When she has finished the first cell in the pipe, she hunts – https://bugguide.net/node/view/603522/bgimage.   

OPMDs specialize in orb-weaving spiders, and a cell does not pass muster until it holds between five and twenty of them.  When it meets her specifications, she mates at the nest, lays an egg on the larder, caps the cell with mud, and begins building the next chamber.  Alternatively, she may evict another female from a nest, she may cooperate with another female in building and provisioning a nest, or she might remove another female’s eggs from a provisioned cell and insert her own.

Male OPMDs play an important role in the project (besides contributing genetic material).  A female who is off collecting mud or spiders is, by definition, not at the nest, and leaving a nest unguarded is perilous.  At the very least, the hard-won spiders might be snitched by other wasps, but kleptoparasites and parasites may lay their eggs in the cell – the young of the first group will hatch in the cell and eat the larval wasp’s provisions; the young of the second group will eat the OPMD larva itself. 

Male OPMDs guard the nest from predators, parasites, and from other males aggressively and vocally, night and day (she is no homebody and only visits to deliver mud or spiders).  Eaton says that the male has a hook on his abdomen https://bugguide.net/node/view/1026328/bgimage that he uses to attach himself to the nest as he guards it.  Parental involvement in eggs and young is uncommon in the insect world, and paternal involvement is rare.

In some species of Trypoxylon, he not only guards the cells, he cleans them out, stashes the food that she brings, and helps spread mud.  Wasps that collaborate like this are called “Patriarchate wasps.”  The pair bond of the OPMD lasts only through the construction of a single pipe.

Behind closed doors, an egg hatches, and the OPMD larva chows down on its cache of paralyzed spiders.  It takes about a week to finish them (except the drumsticks), then the OPMD larva spins an outer silk cocoon and makes an inner pupal case where it spends the winter as a prepupa.  Being encased in mud is not as secure as one might think, and various parasites/parasitoids take a toll on young larvae.  The OPMD emerges as an adult in early summer, first exiting the pupal case and then chewing out through the mud (nice series of adults emerging here https://bugguide.net/node/view/926493/bgimage).

A few interesting tidbits about OPMDs, gleaned from the scientific literature:

  • OPMDs reputedly have few avian predators, but a researcher in Atlanta observed a Tufted Titmouse preying on OPMD larvae one snowy morning.  The holes that the titmouse made to extract the larvae from their mud chambers looked so similar to the holes adult OPMDs make when exiting naturally that the researcher wonders how much bird predation is overlooked. 
  • The eggs that she lays in the mud cells will produce both male and female wasps; fertilized eggs become females, and males develop from unfertilized eggs (this is typical in the Hymenoptera – the ants, bees and wasps).  Researchers observed that the female stashes more spiders in cells that are destined to house fertilized eggs.  A better-nourished larva is a larger larva, and a larger larva morphs into a larger adult. Female insects need to be bigger than males because it takes extra energy to produce young. 
  • In the confusing world of kairomones (chemicals an organism produces that seem to work against it), OPMD larvae produce, during their active larval stage, protective kairomones that discourage the tiny ectoparasitic wasp Melittobia digitata from exploiting the OPMD larvae (ectoparasites feed on the outside of their host).  The OPMD larva stops producing these chemicals as it enters its prepupal stage, and the Melittobia wasp https://bugguide.net/node/view/1461533/bgimage zooms in to lay her fast-maturing eggs.  Melittobia digitata is a pretty interesting wasp itself – males are blind and flightless, feisty and passionate.  A female lays a few unfertilized eggs to produce some males, mates with one of her sons (be quiet, Sigmund), and then lays fertile (female) eggs on host insects.
  • The folks in Radiation Ecology back at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have analyzed mud nests made by the OPMD and by the Black and Yellow Mud Dauber, of previous BOTW fame.  They wanted to find the source(s) of the mud that the two species use to build their nests, side by side, on the Atomic Energy Reservation at Oak Ridge.  The BYMD will readily use radioactive mud from the site’s waste disposal pits, (maybe there’s another reason the BYMD is black and yellow) but the OPMD seldom does.

There are, of course, Exterminator sites that offer to extinguish these wasps for us, but why?  OPMDs don’t sting, bite, chew or excavate; they just hunt spiders and pollinate flowers in the process.  And their architecture is grand!

Check out http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek020401.html for an excellent article about OPMDs, with great pictures.  And Eric Eton’s bugeric blog about them https://bugeric.blogspot.com/2015/08/pipe-organ-mud-dauber-trypoxylon.html, complete with videos. 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Photo Club at Riveredge

February 25 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Photo Club at Riveredge

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February 25, 2025 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

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/

Photo Club (Virtual)

January 28 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Virtual Photo Club

The Photo Club meetings are friendly and informal, with a brief discussion of upcoming activities, a short program and conclude with the opportunity to share and discuss photos. You’re welcome as a photographer, regardless of your skill level.

Ages 18+ | No pre-registration required.

Photo club meetings are always free to attend!

Join on Zoom (New Link!)

January 28, 2025 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Bug o’the Week – Common Buckeye Butterfly rewrite

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Common Buckeye Butterfly rewrite

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady originally wrote about the Common Buckeye in January of 2009, but she thinks she might have given it short shrift (due to insufficient scholarship), so here’s a rewritten version with new words and new pictures.

The first thing to know about Common Buckeyes is that they are not Yankee butterflies – they are Southerners (from a largely tropical genus) that recolonize God’s Country in varying numbers from year to year and produce a two or three broods here, depending on whether spring and/or fall is long and mild.  But they are not very “freeze-tolerant,” and they can’t survive Wisconsin winters in any stage, so they wander back south in the fall.  Brock and Kaufman, in their Field Guide to Butterflies of North America, report that fall migrations of Common Buckeyes, especially on the Atlantic coast, can be spectacular.  The BugLady saw some out on the prairie as recently as a week ago – they always see her and her camera before she sees them (with their wings closed, they’re pretty well camouflaged), and they fly farther down the trail to wait for her.

The Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia, aka Precis coenia) (not the Ohio buckeye – that’s a tree) belongs to the Order Lepidoptera (“scaled wings”) which includes the butterflies and the moths.  Of the 12,000 species of Lepidoptera in North America north of Mexico, only about 700 are butterflies.  Along with the usual six-legs-three-body-parts insect stuff, moths and butterflies have in common four wings that are covered with easily-rubbed-off scales (the upper surface of a butterfly’s wing often has a different pattern then the lower surface does), and mouthparts in the form of a coiled tube called a proboscis that is used for feeding on liquids like nectar and sap.  Caterpillars chew; butterflies and moths sip. 

Rules of thumb for telling them apart are that (generally) butterflies sit with their wings held out to the side or folded vertically above their bodies, and moths hold their wings flat over or wrapped around their body.  Butterflies have a thickened tip/knob on the end of their antennae; moths’ antennae may be bare or feathery but are never knobbed.  Butterflies are active by day (though the BugLady had night-feeding Northern Pearly-eye butterflies who hadn’t read that part of the playbook), and moths are generally active in late afternoon and through the night.  Some moths have bright colors and patterns, but as a group, they tend to be drab – what birders call “LBJ’s” – “Little Brown Jobs.”  Because of their pigmented and/or prismatic scales, many butterflies are the definition of the word “dazzling.” 

Buckeyes belong to the “Brush-footed butterfly” family Nymphalidae, a large group of strong, colorful fliers whose front legs are noticeably hairy and are reduced in size (leading to another nickname – “four-footed butterflies”).  There are a number of brush-foots that migrate and others that, contrary to the usual insect practice, overwinter as adults.  Many Nymphalid caterpillars are nocturnal and spiny.  

The “Butterflies of Massachusetts” website says of this beautiful butterfly that “The Halloween-costumed Buckeye wears the colors of fall in New England.”  Buckeyes are named for the eyespots on their wings, which are reminiscent of the spots on buckeye nuts.  Many members of the genus Junonia have eyespots to scare away predators, and an eyespot can even be seen in the Buckeye’s pupal wing case. 

Both the caterpillar and the adult are variable in color – an adult whose underwing surface is tan is from an early summer generation, and one whose underwing is rosy is from the final brood of the year – the color change is controlled by genes and is a response to the temperatures that the caterpillar is exposed to.  There is no other butterfly species in Wisconsin that can be mistaken for them. 

Buckeyes are sun-lovers, butterflies of sunny habitats like open fields, disturbed areas, trails, edges, and grassy dunes, where they often perch on the ground.  “Butterflies of Massachusetts” speculates that this species has become more common since the European settlers cleared the great forests for agriculture, and notes that it is one of our native butterflies that has adopted a non-native “weed” (English plantain) as a food plant.  Adults sip nectar from dogbanes and from those confusing fall composites (asters and goldenrods), and they sip fluids from decaying fruit. 

Males are feisty and territorial, chasing other flying objects, both butterfly and non-butterfly alike.  He scouts for females from a perch on the ground or on low vegetation.  After mating, females oviposit on leaves and leaf buds of host plants – mostly members of the plantain (the lawn plant, not the banana relative) and snapdragon families.  Caterpillars https://bugguide.net/node/view/1939097/bgimage are solitary and non-aggressive, even when they bump into another caterpillar on the same plant.  The pupae https://bugguide.net/node/view/2214613/bgimage are said to look like bird poop (pretty fancy bird poop, indeed!). 

Caterpillar food plants often contain toxic chemicals (iridoid glycosides) that besides being very bitter, will literally stunt the growth of a predator that eats a caterpillar – chemicals that, conversely, make the caterpillars hungry.  Chemicals that, when the female senses them, will stimulate her to oviposit.  Predators seem to sense the presence of the glycosides and prefer caterpillars with low/no levels of them.  Caterpillars must be careful of getting too much of a good thing – excessive amounts of iridoid glycosides can affect their immune system negatively.

Ain’t Nature Grand!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Two Enigmatic Insects

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Two Enigmatic Insects

Howdy, BugFans,

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

THE BRACKEN BORER MOTH (maybe) 

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

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

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

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

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

YELLOW-FACED SWIFTWING – Version 1  

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

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

YELLOW-FACED SWIFTWING – Version 2   

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

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

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

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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