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!
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!
If you’d like to attend in person, please meet in the Riveredge Barn. If you’re joining virtually, please use the link below to connect on Zoom.
It’s been a while since we visited the world of galls.
According to the British Plant Gall Society, a gall is “an abnormal growth produced by a plant or other host under the influence of another organism. It ……… provides both shelter and food or nutrients for the invading organism.’ Some gall-makers are insects; others are mites, and still others are fungi, bacteria, or even nematodes (who make galls on roots), and the definition is broad enough to include the thickened tissue that forms when one tree leans on and rubs against another. Galls are sometimes called “tumors,” but most galls don’t damage the host plant.
Having hijacked some part of a plant’s tissue, gall-makers cause it to form not just a lump, but a very specifically-shaped lump. In the usual MO, the gall-maker exposes a small area of a growing stem/petiole/leaf/bud/flower to a chemical that acts like a plant growth hormone and signals the plant to grow extra tissue in that spot, either as extra cells or as extra-large cells. In some cases, the chemical is introduced by Mom when she oviposits. In the case of animal-induced galls, the extra tissue grows around the mite, nymph, or larva, providing it with a climate-controlled, relatively (but not infallibly) predator-free shelter whose walls are edible.
The lives of some gall-makers are simple, and the lives of others are more complex, and today, we have one of each. One is an aphid, and one an aphid relative called an adelgid, both in the bug order Hemiptera. There are some physical differences between aphids and adelgids, but reproductively, adelgids always lay eggs, and aphids may go many generations giving birth parthenogenetically (female aphids popping out more female aphids without eggs or the input of males) before producing a generation that includes males. No male Norway spruce gall adelgids have been observed.
The BugLady didn’t have to go far to find a NORWAY SPRUCE GALL/EASTERN SPRUCE GALL/PINEAPPLE GALL – she looked over as she was hanging a hummingbird feeder in a Norway spruce and thought – hmmm (as Isaac Asimov once said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it) but ‘That’s funny…” They’re formed by the Eastern spruce gall adelgid (Adelgesabietis), family Adelgidae https://bugguide.net/node/view/587480/bgpage.
Norway spruce gall adelgids are not native, having immigrated from Europe to Canada more than 125 years ago. They are now found throughout northeastern North America and in Appalachia as far south as Tennessee, plus a few western locations. Various species of spruce are their only hosts.
They have a one-year life cycle (most adelgids have a two-year cycle). Tiny Norway spruce gall adelgid nymphs (“sistentes”) overwinter at the base of the needles (their name when they’re overwintering is “neosistens”). In spring, these become “stem mothers” (“fudatrices”) that lay eggs on needles at bud break. In 10 days, the newly-hatched nymphs start eating the needles, and their saliva causes a gall to form that houses about a dozen nymphs, each in its own chamber https://bugguide.net/node/view/483860/bgimage.
In late summer, when the galls dry and open, the nymphs emerge and molt into winged females https://bugguide.net/node/view/587480/bgimage that disperse (but not very far – they’re pretty weak flyers), feed, and lay eggs. According to the narrative on one bugguide picture, females die after laying eggs but shelter the eggs with their bodies https://bugguide.net/node/view/587481. These eggs hatch in fall and the nymphs overwinter at the bases of buds, poised for the spring. Here are some life cycle pictures https://bugguide.net/node/view/587476/bgimage. Old, empty galls resemble pine cones.
If you have Norway spruce galls, do you need to do anything about them (other than admire them)? They don’t spread very fast (and some individual trees have a resistance to them), and they don’t prevent shoots from growing, though some exterminator sites warn that they can reduce the vitality of the tree, and the extra weight may cause branches to break. And Christmas tree farmers don’t love them.
ELM COCKSCOMB GALLS are made by Elm cockscomb gall aphids (Colopha ulmicola) https://bugguide.net/node/view/539171/bgimage, family Aphididae (ulmicola means “elm dweller”). The galls are described as tubular and “wormlike,” starting out green and turning red (like a cockscomb https://bugguide.net/node/view/1373502/bgimage) as summer progresses, and ending up brown. If Norway spruce galls are camouflaged, these elm galls sit in plain sight on the surface of a leaf, with several sometimes growing on one leaf https://bugguide.net/node/view/1936031/bgimage.
Unlike the Norway spruce gall adelgids, the aphids don’t spend their entire lives in the same place. During the summer, the aphids live underground, sucking juices from grass roots. They emerge in fall to produce a winged generation of males and females that mate, after which the females hide a single egg in elm bark (one source said that the eggs are laid between bud scales). As the new elm leaves start to grow in spring, the tiny, newly-hatched aphid nymph finds them, starts feeding, and stimulates the growth of the gall. When she (all of the aphids in this generation are females) matures, she becomes a stem mother and starts cranking out hundreds of young, sans eggs, still within the gall, all feeding and producing honeydew. In early summer this generation, which is winged, exits through a slit in the underside of the leaf and heads down to feed on grass roots.
Michael J. Raupp, Professor of Entomology, Extension Specialist at the University of Maryland Extension, writes the excellent (and original) Bug of the Week. His article about the Elm cockscomb aphids includes a video of the aphids dispersing as well as this description, “On bright autumn afternoons the air near my elm is filled with a flurry of elm cockscomb gall aphids returning to their winter home, which is a Princeton elm. Watch as a female alights on an elm branch briefly before taking off, perhaps in search of another place to lay eggs or to escape my camera lens. For a much closer look, check out the aphid through the lens of a microscope. These are pretty cool insects.” https://bugoftheweek.com/blog/2022/10/15/sunny-with-a-chance-of-aphid-flurries-elm-cockscomb-gall-aphid-colopha-ulmicola
Other than being unsightly/fascinating, they typically cause no damage to the tree.
BugFan Cheryl recently shared this picture of a lovely sphinx moth (thanks, Cheryl).
Sphinx moths (aka Hawk moths, especially across The Pond) are a group of medium-to-large moths that are sometimes drab, sometimes exquisite, sometimes nocturnal, sometimes diurnal. They are strong, fast flyers (3 to 11 mph) with narrow wings, and some can hover as they feed, making people think they’re looking at a small hummingbird. Sphinx moths can also move laterally (“swing-hovering” or “side-slipping”). Special adaptations in their antennae allow them to maintain their orientation during tight aerial maneuvers.
Sphinx moths are one of the groups in which the caterpillar and the adult may have different common names, with many of the sphinx moths named after their appearance or their host plants, and the caterpillars collectively called hornworms (some species have a long horn to the rear when they start but lose it as they age https://bugguide.net/node/view/585107). The well-known/notorious Tomato hornworm is the caterpillar of the not-so-well-known Five Spotted Hawk moth https://bugguide.net/node/view/844648/bgimage.
The name “Sphinx” apparently came from the caterpillar’s habit, when resting, of raising the front part of its body off the ground, and so resembling an Egyptian Sphinx https://bugguide.net/node/view/2304609/bgimage. Alarmed sphinx caterpillars have a habit of vomiting the gooey (and depending on what they’ve been eating, possibly toxic) contents of their foregut at predators. Caterpillars of the Walnut Sphinx https://bugguide.net/node/view/1799946/bgimage scare intruders by pushing air through their spiracles (breathing holes) to make a hiss.
Not all sphinx moths feed as adults, but those that do prefer tube-shaped flowers. They do provide pollination services, although because they hover instead of landing, the pollen rides on their proboscis rather than their body. They pollinate night-blooming flowers that bees miss. For a great story about Charles Darwin and a sphinx moth, see https://www.livescience.com/animals/wallaces-sphinx-moth-the-long-tongued-insect-predicted-by-darwin-a-century-before-it-was-discovered. Predators that catch a meaty sphinx moth have got themselves a 7-course meal.
It’s called a BLIND-EYED or BLINDED SPHINX (Paoniasexcaecata) not because it’s blind, but because the blue “eyespots” in its wings lack a black “pupil” https://bugguide.net/node/view/2378511/bgimage. Excaecata is from the Latin “excaeco,” “to blind.”
According to the range map at bugguide.net, they’re found in woodlands, clearings, gardens, and suburbs across Canada and in all but four states of the Lower 48.
They are large moths, with deeply scalloped wings and wingspans up to about 4,” and they come in shades from pale to caramel to dark. They’re active at night, and they hide in the daytime by mimicking dead leaves https://bugguide.net/node/view/1239196/bgimage.
While some Sphinx moths are food specialists, Blinded Sphinxes are more catholic eaters – their caterpillars are found on apple, basswood, birch, cherry, elm, hawthorn, Hop Hornbeam, oaks, poplar, rose, serviceberry, willow and more (and, of course, the broader your palette, the wider your range is able to be). Adult mouthparts are not developed and they don’t feed, living for just a few days on fat reserves laid down by the caterpillar.
UNRELATED INSECT ADVENTURE: the BugLady was at a small nature preserve recently that has a single, narrow track in and out. Just after she started heading out, she noticed a female American Pelecinid wasp https://bugguide.net/node/view/2081294 inside the car, trying to get outside the car. She stopped and tried unsuccessfully to get a shot of it against the driver’s side window. At that moment, of course, a pickup started down the drive toward her, so she had to pull off a bit to let it past. While she did this, she could see the wasp perched on/wrapped around the right side of the frame of her eyeglasses. She gave up on the picture, opened the window, and waved her glasses around outside, and the wasp flew away. To find out what the American Pelecinid wasp is all about, see https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/american-pelecinid-wasp/.
The BugLady was pecking away at this week’s episode when she had a “Hold the Presses” moment. BugFan Freda sent a series of pictures she had taken of a monarch caterpillar taking its first steps into the world (prefaced by the statement, “Who knew that monarchs also oviposit onto the flowers??”). So, this week, we start with a picture story, photographed and narrated by Freda (who has some serious photography skills and a lens that the BugLady can’t lift). The picture of the older caterpillar is the BugLady’s.
Said Freda, “It was amazing watching it chew its way out of the egg. It worked almost constantly and you could tell that it was putting forth major effort. Between its hand-like mouthparts and box-cutter-like forelegs, it was punching and chewing and slicing at an amazing pace for such a tiny thing.”
“It looked like it wasn’t only busy chewing on the dry, outer edge, but there was also what appeared to be gelatinous stuff on the inside that it scooped up and worked into its mouth.] Imagine slurping up a slimy spaghetti noodle the diameter of your open mouth and having to use your hands to stuff it in. There were some pauses where you could almost hear it thinking, “I’m so stuffed, but gotta keep going – or die.” It seemed like a tremendous feat!”
The gelatinous stuff was undoubtedly the last of the yolk material that nurtured it until it hatched.
“The caterpillar made it out and is resting now. : )”
“As of this morning, the ‘baby’ is 3 to 3.3 mm long. As the last photo shows, it’s been eating and pooping healthily.”
Thanks, as always, for sharing your photography, Freda.
Monarch caterpillars have one pair of filaments on the front end and another on the rear end – anterior and posterior tentacles. According to Monarch Joint Venture, these tentacles are sensory, “The caterpillar’s tentacles are sensory organs. Caterpillar’s eyesight is poor, and tentacles are tactile. They aid in navigation on the front. They may also play a role in defense/predator confusion on the rear, leading a potential predator to think that the monarch’s rear is its head.” How do you tell one end of the caterpillar from the other (if, of course, it’s not eating)? The longer tentacles are in the front. There is also a tiny pair of actual antennae near the mandibles, to pick up olfactory signals and help the caterpillar find food.
Quick review: the short-lived, early and mid-summer generations of Monarchs have one job – to goose the Monarch population. Hatch, eat, mate, lay eggs (and they’re doing a great job here this year). The final generation, sometimes referred to as Gen 5 or the Super generation, in the air from late-August on, have a different imperative – hatch, eat, metamorphose, and migrate (which is why they’re the only generation that’s tagged). How do they know what to do? The message comes in the form of old, leathery, bitter milkweed leaves (they prefer young and tender), fewer nectar plants, shorter day length, cooler nights, and the lowering angle of the sun (57 degrees above the horizon). And yes – we do see monarchs who seem not to have gotten the memo, flying in tandem at the end of the season. Apparently some of the penultimate generation may drift south, laying eggs as they go.
They set their courses for a destination they’ve never seen, orienting themselves via the sun (with a dash of magnetic compass thrown in), with calculations so intricate that monarchs in Michigan, Maine and Montana set correct (but different) flight plans for central Mexico. And they find not only Mexico, but the overwintering spots in the mountains west of Mexico City.
And now a brief sermonette from the BugLady (Freda is not planning on fostering this infant until it forms and then emerges from its chrysalis, so she is exempt from the sermon). It has become popular to try to help the yo-yo-ing Monarch population by collecting eggs and hand-raising the caterpillars. The rationale (besides the facts that it’s great fun and very sciencey) is that the caterpillars are safer in a controlled, predator-free environment.
And indeed, they are, as long as their keepers practice good caterpillar hygiene, but caterpillars raised in the garage or basement or family room are not exposed to the environmental signals that will allow them to navigate properly. Some captive-raised butterflies do muddle through and arrive at their destination, but it’s a lower percentage than their wild-reared brethren.
The bottom line, if raising Monarchs is your thing, park them in the back yard. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (https://xerces.org/) suggests that we could do a lot more for Monarchs if we would plant native milkweed for the caterpillars and native wildflower gardens that will bloom through the season for nectaring butterflies.
The BugLady has enjoyed her vacation and is ready to dive back into writing original BOTWS (until she gets another body part replaced). Here’s a small moth, to celebrate National Moth Week.
BugFan Freda sent a shot of a small chunk of water lily leaf sitting on a large chunk of water lily leaf. “What,” she asked, “is happening here?” After some general Googling, the BugLady landed on a moth called the China mark moth https://www.gardenpondskauai.com/waterlily-pest-management/, which has a similar “leaf sandwich” modus operandi. Various articles put its range all over the map (you should excuse the expression). Then Freda found a picture of a moth that had been hanging around the lily pads – the BugLady is putting two and two together here, and hoping they don’t equal five.
A number of moths in the genus Elophila share the name “Waterlily borer” (family Crambidae). It’s a small genus with some 50 species worldwide; nine in North America. They have in common larvae that eat floating-leaved or submerged aquatic vegetation and that create cases from bits of leaf to live and pupate in. The larvae don’t have gills, but breathe through their cuticles. The BugLady thinks this is Elophila gyralis, which is found in and around wetlands throughout North America, east of the Great Plains.
It’s not surprising that the life history of such a small critter has some gaps in it. Says the “Moths of North Carolina” web page: “The elliptical eggs are laid in masses of about 25-35 in the water and immediately sink to the bottom. The larvae hatch in about 12 days and begin feeding on the lower epidermis of the leaves of the hosts, which are generally white water-lilies (Nymphaea sp.). The larvae first feed on the lower leaf surfaces of the lily pads and skeletonize the epidermal tissue. They later feed from a mobile shelter that is made by cutting a patch of leaf from the edge of the leaf, or rarely from the central part of the leaf. The feeding larvae slowly move over the course of 10-14 days to the petiole. They then bore into the top of the petiole and use the petiole tissue as food. After tunneling about 2-3 cm deep, they reverse direction and rest head up at the burrow entrance where they feed at night or on cloudy days on the leaf tissue. During this time the larvae may remain covered by the patch of leaf that it brought with it, but this is often detached by wave action. The last-instar lines the cavity in the petiole with silk and caps it with coarse silk to form a pupation chamber. The plant responds to injury of the petiole by making a gall-like swelling around the site of the excavation. The adult emerges after removing the silken cap. Populations in Michigan are univoltine [one generation per year], with the half-grown larvae overwintering, then resuming growth with the spring warm-up.”
“The Vermont Center for Ecostudies” web page paints a somewhat different (but maybe not mutually exclusive) picture. “The caterpillars of the water lily borer moth feed on leaves and tunnel into the stalks of the lily pads. The adults live for just six days, but in that short time a female can lay up to 900 eggs on the surface of the lily pads. The tiny green caterpillars hatch and begin to feed on the leaves. After three weeks they’ve grown from just a few millimeters to over an inch long, turning a deep red color. Amazingly, the caterpillars swim to land using a porpoise motion with the rear third of their body. Once on land, they build a silk-lined chamber in the soil and pupate.”
Water lily leaves are subject to many kinds of deterioration throughout the summer due to tissue wear-and-tear and decay, and to gnawing insects. This moth is generally not considered a pest, but if your backyard aquatic feature contained some decorative water lilies (botanists separate the words “water” and “lily,” but apparently entomologists don’t), the surfeit of holes https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/andrei-sourakov/activities/and-thanks-for-all-the-lilies/ (top picture) wouldn’t thrill you.
Water lilies feed and offer a buoyant platform to a world of aquatic insects and other invertebrates, including snails and the microscopic rotifers (wheel animals) we all remember fondly from high school biology. The BugLady hopes to do a feature on them someday. In the meantime, here’s what the folks in Vermont have to say about their unique physiology, “Water lilies are in a quandary. Their roots need oxygen, but the muck beneath the water is anaerobic. To solve this, they pump up to two liters of air from the surface down to the roots each day during the growing season using a special gas conducting tissue running down the length of stem called the aerenchyma. Air enters tiny openings on the leaf, called stomata. While land plants have them on all surfaces of the leaf, they are only found on the upper surface of water lily leaves. When the sun heats the young leaves it creates a pressure gradient that forces air down the aerenchyma. As leaves age they lose this ability to pressurize air. The roots return carbon dioxide to the surface through these older leaves.”
2025: The BugLady has been prowling the landscape recently, both in wet areas and dry, and she’s been seeing Japanese beetles or evidence of their feeding. It used to be that their populations cycled between boom and not-boom, but the last few years all seem to deliver a fairly constant number of the beetles. This slightly revised episode has some new words and pictures.
2009: For those of us of “a certain age,” (and before the notoriety of these new-fangled aliens like kudzu, zebra mussels, fire ants, and the emerald ash borer) the Japanese beetle will always be the poster child for Invasive Species.
Their story is classic. They arrived in New Jersey from Japan in 1912 hidden in a shipment of iris bulbs, but they weren’t noticed until 1916. When Japanese beetles came to North America, they left their natural enemies at home. In their first 8 years in the Land of the Free, and despite the control methods of the time, their range expanded to an astounding 2500 square miles. They are presently well-established east of the Mississippi except Florida and are making inroads into the West via shipments of plants. Like the mutants in horror movies, they just keep coming, despite the heavy fire power we lob at them (and in the case of the Japanese beetle, that includes imported pathogens, parasites, and predators).
Like all successful invaders, they are generalists. They have been recorded as eating some 300 species of plants (sources give numbers between 200 and 400). Woody? Herbaceous? Vine? Flower? Doesn’t matter.
The Japanese beetle (Popilla janponca) is in the Scarab family, Scarabaeidae. If it weren’t the Beetle from Hell, we would admire its beauty and survival powers. It’s a chunky half inch of beetle with a shiny green thorax and burnished bronze elytra (wing covers). Five short, vertical, bright-white stripes of hair decorate the abdomen, and it sports two more white tufts like twin exhaust pipes. It is diurnal (active during the day) and likes to feed in groups.
The adults are primarily leaf skeletonizers, eating the soft tissue that lies between the tougher leaf veins, creating green lace (there are native leaf skeletonizers on the landscape, too). To the distress of gardeners, the adults’ Top 50 menu choices includes roses and members of the rose family. The larvae (grubs) feed underground on a variety of roots, especially those of horticultural and agricultural plants and turf grass (they’re a pain at golf courses). When they are working on a lawn in good numbers (1,500 grubs per square yard of sod have been recorded), the ground may feel a bit spongy underfoot.
Mom lays her eggs in sod in mid-summer. The kids hatch and spend the next 10 months as grubs. They are full-grown when winter comes, and they overwinter as grubs in the soil, burrowing farther down as the frost line reaches deeper. They pupate in spring and emerge in mid-summer (they prefer warm, sunny, calm, moderately humid days). As the first Japanese beetles emerge and start to feed, they emit a scent – a pheromone – that attracts more and more adults. Females release a different pheromone to lure males. During their two months as adults, they can wreak havoc.
Some aggregations of beetles are initiated (inadvertently) by the food plant itself. Research suggests that a female Japanese beetle chews on a leaf, and the leaf gives off signature chemicals (OK – feeding-induced plant volatiles), and that instead of repelling the beetles, the scent attracts more beetles, both male and female, to feed (and, of course, while all those guys and gals are in the same neighborhood…).
The adults are eaten by starlings (another alien), and when there are large numbers of grubs in your lawn, moles, skunks, Canada geese and raccoons may make an appearance to excavate for them. Biological controls that are being used include parasitic tachinid flies and tiphiid wasps (whose larvae go after – literally – the Japanese beetle larvae)
And now, in the Don’t-Put-Anything-in-Your-Ear-Smaller-Than-Your-Elbow category, a cautionary tale. A friend had a very Close Encounter with a Japanese beetle that flew into his ear while he was mowing the lawn (not normal behavior for Japanese beetles, as far as the BugLady knows). This one’s for you, Mike. Instead of cutting its losses and backing out (perhaps Japanese beetles don’t do “reverse”), it burrowed farther in, grabbing the inside of Mike’s ear canal with its bristly tarsi, heading for the eardrum and the gray matter beyond. Painful? Oh, you betcha! The folks in the ER (who were, initially, skeptical because the beetle was so far down the ear canal that they could not actually see it!) probably dined out on that story for months.
(with apologies to the Irish Folk Band “Cherish the Ladies”)
2025: The BugLady recently added an American Lady to her butterfly property list. It’s a lovely butterfly that can be mistaken for the Painted Lady, in the same genus (Vanessa). When she decided to rerun this episode (with some new pictures), the BugLady thought she should include a link to a BOTW about the Red Admiral, another genus member and world traveler https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/red-admiral-butterfly/, but she realized that she had somehow dropped the second last paragraph from the rewritten Red Admiral episode, and the final sentence makes no sense without it. Here it is:
“One older source says that butterflies and moths void a drop of liquid (red, in some species) soon after leaving their pupal cases. They sometimes do this while airborne, and when large numbers of butterflies emerged simultaneously, the phenomenon, called “Red Rain” was in ancient times and is today the subject of wild religious fear, superstition, repentance and/or massacre.”
2016: The BugLady added the American Lady butterfly to this episode, originally posted in 2010, about Painted Lady butterflies.
The PAINTED LADY (Vanessa cardui) is a lovely, unpredictable summer visitor here in God’s Country. Also called the Thistle Butterfly and the Cosmopolitan, it can be seen in temperate areas on five continents and may have the biggest range of any butterfly. Not only does it live in a lot of places, it migrates to even more. Consequently, it is a very popular butterfly about which much is posted on-line (lots of sites about rearing them, too), and it is a butterfly with fan clubs and a research site (visit the Vanessa Migration Project at: http://vanessa.ent.iastate.edu/ and find out how your observations as a Citizen Scientist can add to our knowledge about the Vanessas).
Painted Ladies are members of the Brush-footed butterfly family, Nymphalidae, a large group of (usually) medium-sized, often orangey butterflies. The Nymphalids are called “Brush-foots” – their front pair of legs is so reduced in size that they only use the back four feet to walk/stand on, and the vestigial front legs are tipped with bristles/brushes instead of feet (the bristles are sensory and incorporate the senses of smell and taste). There are about 6,000 Nymphalid species worldwide. Here in the Lower 48, the genus Vanessa includes the Red Admiral (which has its own BOTW), the Painted Lady, and the American Lady, all of which wander, and the West Coast Lady, which pretty much doesn’t.
Look for Painted Ladies in open, sunny areas – fields, road edges, gardens, dunes. There the adults sip nectar, especially from thistle and clover flowers, and males defend their territories from perches. They also extract minerals from clay using their proboscis. Painted Ladies fly north in mid-spring and there are probably two broods per summer here. Eggs are laid on caterpillar food plants like hollyhock, nettle, and lupine, plus thistle and many other plants in the aster family (its catholic eating habits explain its five-continent range). The solitary caterpillars https://bugguide.net/node/view/298800/bgimage conceal themselves on their food plants in a tent of silk http://bugguide.net/node/view/298805/bgimage. When they are ready to pupate, they hang upside-down from a leaf, using a silk fastener, and there they form a chrysalis http://bugguide.net/node/view/679838/bgimage.
There’s a good deal of discussion about the “cold-hardiness” of the Vanessas. It’s agreed that it’s too cold here for any of the life stages to overwinter, though American Ladies are said to hibernate in the Southern US, and the Iowa State site reports that adult Red Admirals overwinter in hibernation almost as far north as New York State. And throw in Climate Change. Stay tuned.
Painted Ladies fly year-round in the southern and western US and Mexico. They are seen in Wisconsin in small numbers every summer, but some years, when southern populations boom or the weather conditions are right, Painted Ladies head north in dramatic flights (they’re “irruptive migrants”).
There are some interesting theories about a possible/partial correlation between el Nino weather cycles and Painted Lady migrations, both here and on the other continents where both the butterflies and the el Ninos occur. Some populations of Painted Ladies live in very dry or in very rainy areas. Because a series of bad/low caterpillar years could devastate such a population, spreading out to different landscapes seems like a good idea, and migration is “built-in” to the butterflies’ behavior. Storm patterns change during el Nino years, often bringing more rain to the desert. The desert responds with a spectacular array of flowers, Painted Ladies breed like bunnies, and the resulting caterpillars strip the vegetation. When those caterpillars emerge as adults, the green is gone (reduced to pieces of frass) (bug poop), so they pick up and move elsewhere. Many die, but enough find a habitable breeding area where their “food-generalist” caterpillars can thrive.
Is there comparable a southward migration by the offspring of the springtime travelers? The scribes disagree on both the “whether” and the “why.” One source speculated that their southward migrations simply may not be as dramatic. Painted Ladies are permanent residents along the southern tier of states, so a southern migration isn’t necessary to maintain those populations. One researcher questions whether, if they didn’t fly south, there would be any individuals left that retained a migratory instinct. Since any Painted Lady north of the Mason-Dixon Line is a goner come winter, migrators, the theory goes, need to head south again so there will be more migrators to head north again. The BugLady doesn’t know how the Migratory Instinct Theory jibes with the el Nino Plant Boom/Bust Theory and the Random Migration theory.
The AMERICAN LADY (Vanessa virginiensis) looks very similar to the Painted Lady, but the American Lady has smaller white patches in its forewings and less-fancy hind wings. Its exquisitely-etched underside sports two large eyespots in the hind wings compared to the Painted Lady’s four small ones (see them side-by-side at http://bugguide.net/node/view/236368. The BugLady photographed an American Lady that became fatally stuck on the water when a gust of wind or a miscalculation about the solidity of algae brought it too close to the sticky surface film.
While it’s a year-round resident of the southern US (south into South America and even the Galapagos), its summer wanderings bring it here to God’s country. Like the Painted Lady, it likes sunny, open spaces, and like the Painted Lady, it is an early migrant from the south that re-establishes populations in the North and East annually (it was recorded in Wisconsin in the first week of May this year). Unlike the Painted Lady, its caterpillars are tied to a smaller list of host plants, including the everlastings and pussytoes, and a few other species. American Lady caterpillars also construct “tents,” but instead of pure silk, the American Lady sticks leaves together with silk http://bugguide.net/node/view/18013/bgimage. They feed outside the shelter. When disturbed, the caterpillars curl up tightly.
The American Lady has at least two broods here in the North Country, and like the Red Admiral, the summer adult is brighter in color than the winter form. If the spring individuals look travel-worn, like they’ve flown hundreds of miles to get here, it’s because they have.
Go outside – find some butterflies! And don’t forget to check Mike Reese’s state butterfly website https://wisconsinbutterflies.org/.
2025 – The BugLady has been seeing her first firefly around the 4th of July. She stands on the riprap, enjoying the fireworks shows launched by her neighbors and the more distant municipal displays while the fireflies fly around her, putting on their own, equally magical shows.
Fireflies are one of the BugLady’s “nemesis groups” – they refuse to be in focus when she photographs them. Like sowbug/roly-poly/pill bug/woodlouse, your choice of lightning beetle/bug or firefly is a regional thing.
Enjoy this rerun – a few new words (because who can resist rewriting?) and new pictures. Genus IDs are tentative.
2018 OK – this is a love story of sorts. It’s an episode that originated in 2009, and it has already been rerun once and now rewritten again. But…..the BugLady just returned from southern Ohio, where she co-led a workshop about Bugs and Wonder (Wonder – an unappreciated, sometimes suspect, and insufficiently-entertained state of mind) (and mostly we could say that about the bugs, too). We trawled the prairies and woods for bugs during the day, and at dusk and into the night, we hunted for fireflies.
Do you call them lightning bugs or fireflies? Carl Linnaeus coined the latter term in 1767. The more arid, western parts of North America are either “firefly-lite” or their fireflies are day-flying and therefore “mute,” as evidenced by the lack of names for them.
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Lightning bugs float silently (but brilliantly) over the dark fields, woods, and wetlands of June and July, inspiring poets and children of all ages. They are neither flies nor true bugs; they are members of the Order Coleoptera and the family Lampyridae and are more correctly called Lightning beetles. And yes, their ethereal light show is all about sex.
Their path to the skies starts in late summer of the previous year. Mid-summer eggs hatch into carnivorous larvae that eat insects, snails, and other small critters (the BugLady thinks that the larvae look like tiny pangolins). They like damp conditions (remember –a thatch of grasses, especially tall grasses, creates a microclimate that’s generally moister than the air five feet above it), and there are even a few species whose larvae are aquatic.
They overwinter as larvae, buried in the soil, and when spring comes, they wake up and keep on eating (the natural history of firefly larvae needs more study). They pupate in early summer, also in the earth, before emerging for their brief-but-dazzling stint as adults.
Larvae subdue their much larger prey by injecting a paralyzing fluid, and they are considered important controls on snails and slugs. According to the Field Guide to Insects of North America, the larvae of the common genus Photinus are subterranean and “may hunt earthworms in packs.” The diet of adults varies by species – there are carnivores, omnivores, and non-eaters.
Most threats to their populations tend to be man-made – wetland loss, pesticides, light pollution that dims their displays, paving, and mowing (many adults, after all, are resting in the grass, waiting for sundown and setting lawn mowers at “scalp” cuts down fireflies, too). Populations of some species are shrinking, and more eyes are needed. For some Firefly Citizen/Community Science projects, see https://www.xerces.org/endangered-species/fireflies/community-science.
Light production is an uncommon talent in insects. There are semitropical click beetles that can (some of these, called cucujos, are worn as luminous decorations by partygoers south of the border, and their eggs and larvae also glow). Luminescence is achieved by others (including some springtails) (try to imagine a springtail, glowing green except for its antennae and legs https://www.facebook.com/groups/AllBugsGoToKevin/posts/did-you-know-some-springtails-can-glow-di-was-chatting-with-some-people-in-the-c/1896815764507530/) because they harbor photogenic bacteria (here meaning that the bacteria are light-generating, not that they are picturesque, though the BugLady thinks they are both).
Firefly light is a “cold” light. An incandescent light bulb is an inefficient energy-user, wasting 90% of its energy as heat. Less than 8% (some say less than 3%) of the energy that a lightning beetle expends on light is lost as heat. Light is produced at the south end of the abdomen, in a photogenic layer that is located beneath a white, reflecting layer. Chemical energy is converted to light energy by the action of an enzyme called luciferase on a chemical called luciferin (history buffs please note: some old friction matches were called Lucifers).
Day-flying members of the Lampyridae like the Black firefly or Woodland Lucy (Lucidota atra) don’t glow – producing light would be a waste of energy for a diurnal insect. All lightning beetle larvae, some pupae, and even some eggs also glow, for reasons that are not fully understood. But lightning beetles don’t just gleam, they produce controlled flashes of light – strobes, aerial “J’s,” three-second horizontal dashes, and more. The various species of fireflies divide the landscape by altitude, habitat, light color and intensity, time of evening, and duration of flight. Each species has its own particular “Morse Code,” though male and female “codes” may be different.
lucidota
Males signal from the air, and females, which in some species are wingless, respond from on or near the ground (females and luminescent larvae are called glowworms). The signals continue until they find each other and romance ensues. Females of some species of lightning beetles resume flashing after mating, adopting the code of a different species. If she is successful in luring a male, this femme fatale will eat him (she, it seems, does eat as an adult!); this practice is called “aggressive mimicry,” but females generally do not eat males of their own species.
Lightning beetle family members have poisonous blood (they ooze toxic droplets from the base of the wing covers). Besides being an invitation to party, their light is probably also an advertisement to predators that the firefly is toxic (though apparently better-tolerated by some than by others) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auxfhO2-ABI. In Discovering Nature at Sundown, a good source of lightning beetle information, Elizabeth Lawlor relates that a frog that eats enough LBs may glow temporarily but seems otherwise unaffected.
Since this episode originally appeared, the BugLady has become increasingly aware of (and confused by) firefly look-alikes in the form of soldier beetles https://bugguide.net/node/view/478212/bgimage. Some net-winged beetles and click beetles are also mimics – BugFan Mary emailed the BugLady about a firefly on her window screen that had two lights in the front of its body – turned out to be a click beetle (https://bugguide.net/node/view/126741/bgimage), a far Southern specialty. Most lightning beetles have a shield-shaped thorax that covers most or all of their head, and a bunch of soldier beetles also have a widened and colorful thoracic shield, though a soldier beetle’s head may protrude from under the shield significantly more than a firefly’s. Every time she looks into this matter, the BugLady ends up relabeling a few pictures. For other glowy insects, see https://www.firefly.org/bioluminescent-insects.html#:~:text=It%20glows%2C%20but%20it%20isn,however%20have%20glowing%20abdominal%20segments.
Just out is a book by Lynn Frierson Faust. In Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs, she offers descriptions, ranges, photos, flash patterns, habitats, and terrific common names, names like the Woodland Lucy, Little gray, Big dipper, and Chinese lantern.
At the other end of this love story is (shameless plug) the Arc of Appalachia, the organization that ran the Wonder Workshop, an organization that has been buying and providing stewardship for chunks of prairie, gorge and rich eastern forest, with its old growth beech and maple, sycamore, tulip tree, sassafras, and gum. Find their story at http://arcofappalachia.org/.
The Lightning Beetle is a poster child for why the BugLady loves BOTW – the research begins innocently enough, and then WHAM! Cucujos! Glowing eggs! Glowing frogs! Glowing trees! Poisonous blood! Ravenous packs of LB larvae! Luciferase!
2025 – almost two decades ago, when the BugLady was working on a phenology project in the Bog, she encountered multitudes of mosquitoes and she made a deal with them – she wouldn’t bite them if they wouldn’t bite her. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes she is in the presence of someone who is far more tender and juicy than she is. She’s leading a field trip at the Bog soon, and she’ll find out if everyone remembers the deal.
And remember – bug zappers don’t kill mosquitoes. The New York Times Wirecutter section says, “Bug zappers kill bugs by the thousands. But there’s a problem: They kill the wrong bugs. They are ineffective against mosquitoes and other biting flies, and their otherwise indiscriminate killing can disrupt pollination and generally throw the environment out of balance. Plus, the force of their electrocution can spew a mist of disease-ridden bug parts out into the air.”
2014 – Who hasn’t seen the postcard (and keychain and license plate holder and t-shirt and coffee mug) that trumpets the mosquito as our state bird? It’s the insect we all love to hate (they are the very definition of the word “swarm”), but behind the legend lies a fascinating animal.
Yes, there are a lot of them – about 3,500 species worldwide, 175 in North America, and 50 in Wisconsin. Mosquitoes (mosquito is Spanish for “small fly.”) are in the Order Diptera (“two wings”) and they are in the family Culicidae. Some people think they’re kind of pretty (including the BugLady, when she’s not inhaling them).
Yes, they grow up fast. Eggs are laid on the surface of the water, on floating leaves, or in a spot just above the water line that will subsequently flood. They generally hatch in a few days, and it takes about month to morph from egg through larva (called a “wiggler”/”wriggler”) (because twitching is their mode of locomotion) through pupa (“tumbler”) (because their mode of locomotion is tumbling) to adult, but in some species, development is telescoped into 10 days. Mosquitoes don’t live very long – males for about a week and females for two or three. Depending on species and location, there can be several generations per year.
Mosquito larvaMosquito pupaMosquito mite
Some species of mosquito overwinter as fertilized females in sheltered spots (or in basements, which explains why the BugLady sees the odd mosquito flying around her house in January), and they’re raring to go when spring comes. Other species may overwinter in a state of delayed development called diapause in any of the above stages, resuming growth when the water warms in spring.
Yes, they are adaptable. Eggs develop in wetlands but also in birdbaths, puddles, pails, flower pots, old tires, and the dog’s outside water dish (if you put water in it, they will come). The first line of defense in knocking down residential mosquito populations is getting rid of these man-made sources of standing water.
Yes, they do bite. Females mate only once, but they may lay several “clutches” of eggs. Males, newly emerged females, and non-egg-laying females feed on nectar and other plant juices, but before each cluster of eggs that she lays, a female must ingest a (high-protein) blood meal (in some species, the blood-letting starts with the second batch of eggs). Some mosquitoes include humans on their list of possible donors; others restrict themselves to birds, reptiles, amphibians, or non-human mammals.
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She injects, with her saliva, small doses of anticoagulant and anesthetic to aid the process (the resulting red, itchy bump is caused by your body’s histamine reaction to the injected proteins). Then she ingests so much blood that taking off seems impossible. A mosquito’s abdomen has expandable tissue between each segment and also between the harder upper and lower surfaces of each segment, so it stretches both vertically and horizontally.
The BugLady once found a decent-sized snapping turtle digging a hole to lay her eggs in at dusk and, of course, got as close as she could to get some pictures without disturbing the process. She was AGHAST when she put the pictures up on the monitor and saw that the soft (but still armored) parts of the poor turtle were covered by tiny mosquitoes, and that they were even on her shell. And that the grass around the turtle’s head was littered with mosquitoes that were too bloated to fly!
Most mosquito wigglers eat the algae, bacteria, debris, and zooplankton that’s floating around in the water with them. Some species are predators, and a few even eat the larvae of other mosquitoes. Wigglers are important food chain “middlemen” between the tiny organisms they feed on and the fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and the other aquatic insects that prey on them. Adult mosquitoes are an essential food for bats, birds, dragonflies and damselflies.
Yes – Female mosquitoes of some species are notorious transmitters of diseases caused by various viruses, protozoans, and nematode worms (the warmer winters we’re having due to Global Climate Change are allowing some tropical diseases like dengue fever to move north again as the mosquitoes that carry them extend their range). These causative agents generally set up shop in the mosquitoes’ salivary glands, which ensures a free ride into the blood donor’s body (Remember to give your dog it’s heartworm medication).
More fun facts about mosquitoes:
That annoying hum is actually a love song. He sings alto, and she sings tenor, and when they hear each other (they sense sound with their antennae, and the male’s antennae are quite fancy) (some males have big, hairy palps -sensory adjuncts to the mouthparts – too), they vary their tone – by changing the frequency of their wing beats – until both are humming at the same pitch. Romance ensues.
Some species of mosquitoes prefer to lay their eggs in the seclusion of a small pool of water that is trapped in a plant; these reservoirs are called phytotelmata (“phyto” means plant and “telma” means pond) (the singular is phytotelma). A specialized bog species, the harmless pitcher plant mosquito (Wyeomyia smithii) grows only in the water of the purple pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea). Tropical species of Wyeomyia develop in bromeliad “tanks.” Holes in trees where rainwater collects are a common kind of phytotelma.
Wyeomyia smithii turns out to be a pretty interesting critter. Its eggs are deposited in the new leaves of pitcher plants. The larvae/wigglers are considered top predators in the community of organisms that inhabits the pitcher plant’s water reservoir. They feed on bacteria and mini-animals in the pitcher plant’s water, and while they do eat some of the bits of partly decomposed insects that were meant to nurture the pitcher plant, they feed on organisms that feed on bacteria, ensuring a diverse crop of bacteria to decompose the insects that fall into the pitcher plant’s water. They overwinter in the pitcher as larvae, frozen in its water. For a thorough biography of the PPM, see http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Wyeomyia_smithii/.
There’s even a mosquito that helps with mosquito control. Elephant/treehole mosquitoes in the genus Toxorhynchites are big, primarily tropical, mosquitoes. According to bugguide.net, one species, Toxorhynchites rutilus https://bugguide.net/node/view/2168964/bgimage, ranges from Connecticut to Florida to Texas to Kansas. Turn them loose, especially in a manmade water tank, and they will feed on the wigglers of other species (and of their own), and they do not require a blood meal. Everything one might want in a mosquito!
And yes, for reasons that are not completely clear, mosquitoes are more attracted to some people than to others. A lot of scientific experiments have been done and anecdotal explanations offered (an individual’s general “sweetness” of temperment is apparently not a factor). It may be a response to clothing color (they prefer dark), perfumes (love ‘em!), blood type (they prefer Type O), pregnancy (yes), body heat, particularly aromatic sweat, and/or distinctive carbon dioxide exhalations. Ms. Mosquito can detect CO2 in the air from 25 yards away and home in on the source.
And by the way, the BugLady would like to suggest that whoever keeps writing “Mosquitoes are crepuscular – active at dawn and dusk – and they rest during the heat of the day” has only visited God’s country in the snow.
