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.
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.
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…”
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.
When the BugLady was walking at Riveredge towards the end of September, she came to a fork in the trail and thought “if I go left, I’ll get back to the car faster, but if I go right, I’ll see something good.” So she did, and she did.
Along a 15 foot stretch of trail, she found a half-dozen Oil beetles in the grass (including one pair in flagrante delicto). She suspects that some of the motionless females may have been ovipositing. And then she looked closer.
Oil beetles, which are blister beetles (family Meloidae) in the genus Meloe, are odd-looking beetles – inky blue-black, soft, and bulbous (“bloated,” said one source; “like a black clove of garlic,” said another), with astonishing antennae. Their elytra (wing covers) are very short, because they actually have no hind wings to cover. The name “Oil beetle” comes from the oily drops of haemolymph (bug blood) (aka hemolymph, but the BugLady loves the British spelling) that ooze from their joints when they’re alarmed https://bugguide.net/node/view/408611/bgpage. Look, but don’t touch – the oil contains cantharidin, which is one of their Super Powers. We have met blister beetles in previous BOTWs – here’s Blister Beetle 101 https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/blister-beetle/.
It’s a genus that has somewhat northern proclivities, with many species present across Canada.
They are, oddly, measured from the front of the head only to the far point of the elytra, rather than to the end of the (often-distended) abdomen. Females may be as long as 1 ½” and males are smaller.
When a young Meloe beetle’s fancy turns to love, he finds a female, climbs aboard, and rubs her antennae with his, releasing a pheromone that calms her. Bugguide says, “In males of some species mid-antennal segments are modified, and the c-shaped ‘kinks’ (antennomeres V–VII) grasp female antennae during pre-mating displays.” He transfers some cantharidin to her in his sperm packet, and she coats her eggs with it to protect them from predators.
In many insect species with predatory/parasitic larvae, Mom delivers the eggs to their eventual host, but Meloe beetle larvae are on their own. When they hatch, the super-active larvae, called triungulins, climb up onto flower heads and wait for bees to come along. Each species of Meloe beetle targets a particular genus or species of solitary, ground-nesting bee, and when the right one comes along, the larva jumps on.
Some sources say that the larva targets males, riding with him until he has a liaison with a female, and then switching to her. Other sources say that it ignores males and only attaches to females. The ultimate goal is access to the female’s nest, where it acts as a kleptoparasite, eating the food cache she has put by for her young (and sometimes eating her eggs, too). After it has gained entry to its host’s nest, the rest of its larval life is sedentary.
Oil beetles are usually seen moving slowly along the ground or on low vegetation. Adults feed on plant material, including pollen, nectar, and leaves.
Despite the toxicity of cantharidin, these beetles have been used in traditional medicines in East Asia, especially China, to treat external conditions like boils, warts, bruises, and fungal skin infections, and internally for cancer, liver issues, colds, and to induce abortions.
According to the Montana Natural History Center website, “For their diverse uses and fascinating ecology, oil beetles were named the 2020 insect of the year by an entomological society in Europe.”
Bugguide.net says that there are 22 species in the genus Meloe in North America, and the BugLady isn’t quite sure which species she found. Some are primarily active in spring and others in fall, but some may be found in both seasons, depending on the phenology of their host bees. Fall candidates in Wisconsin include:
The Impressive oil beetle (Meloe impressus), about which the Minnesota Seasons website says “The first stage (triungulin) is mobile on plants. The entire hatched group climbs to the top of a plant and forms a cluster in roughly the shape of a female ground bee. It then exudes a chemical scent that mimics the pheromone of a female bee. When a male bee attempts to mate with the mass, some of the larvae attach themselves to its hairs. When the male mates with a female bee some of the larvae attach to the female. These remain on the female while she builds a nest, then detach and begin feeding on newly laid bee eggs.”
The American/Buttercup oil beetle (Meloe americanus), which lays its eggs near the base of a flower (bugguide says that females of these first two species are hard to tell apart).
The Short-winged blister beetle (Meloe campanicollis), which may persist into late fall.
And Meloe exiguus (no common name), about which the BugLady could find nothing.
And when she put her pictures up on the monitor and looked closer? Besides seeing a lot of green frass (bug poop), the BugLady saw that one female was being bothered by some exceedingly small biting midges (family Ceratopogonidae). She sent the pictures to PJ Liesch (“the Wisconsin Bug Guy”), Director of the UW Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, who shared some papers with her about a genus of biting midges (Atrichopogon) that have been associated with Meloe and other blister beetles (and shared her delight at the awesome experience). Thanks, PJ. The 16 Atrichopogon species that feed on the haemolymph of blister beetles have aptly been placed in a subgenus named Meloehelea. Atrichopogon levis, aka “the grass punky” https://bugguide.net/node/view/1151920/bgimage, is a likely suspect.
The BugLady has been doing a little dance as she walks down the trail lately, trying to avoid stepping on wooly bear caterpillars (her mission statement, after all, is “Less stepping on bugs”). She has been less successful when she drives. So, it’s time to rerun this episode that originally aired in 2009, but that she re-posts every five years or so. A few new words; some new pictures:
Wooly bear caterpillars are tiger moths in the family Erebidae and in the subfamily Arctiinae. It’s a diverse family that includes almost a thousand species of tiger, underwing, Zale, tussock moths, and more, in North America, and many more worldwide (except Antarctica). If you have an older insect guide, tiger moths are in the family Arctiidae, but everything that was once in Arctiidae has been folded into Arctiinae. Tiger moths are unusual in that they have an organ on their thorax that vibrates to produce ultrasonic sound. They “vocalize” to attract mates and to defend against predators. If you have sound-making ability, you also need “ears,” and those are on the thorax, too. Like tigers, the adults of many species are hairy and sport bold color patches, stripes or patterns.
Many tiger moth caterpillars are fuzzy, earning a group name of wooly bears or wooly worms (two “lls” or one “l” – take your pick. Two lls is more common in Britain and one l is more common here). The wooly bear du jour is the ultra-familiar rust-and-black-banded caterpillar whose grown-up name is Isabella Tiger Moth (Pyrrharctia isabella) https://bugguide.net/node/view/1937881/bgimage. The caterpillar goes by the generic Wooly Bear, and also Black-ended Bear, and the Banded Wooly Bear. Pyrrharctia is a “monotypic genus” – there’s only this single species in it, and they’re only found in North America. There is an amazing amount of information out there about wooly bear caterpillars, and much of it is contradictory, a problem that is exacerbated by the fact that there are many different kinds of caterpillars that are called wooly bears.
A mature female Isabella Tiger Moth “calls” to males by emitting pheromones (chemical signals) at night, and the males zero in on her by using their sensory antennae. Isabella Tiger Moths lay their eggs on a wide variety of plants during the warm months. While some caterpillars are known for their picky eating, wooly bears are generalists. They feed during the day, munching on handy, low-growing plants like grasses, “weeds” and wildflowers (cannibalism has also been reported). Their catholic eating habits ensure that they’re constantly surrounded by food during their autumnal wandering in search of wintering sites.
Wooly bears spend the winter as caterpillars, out of the weather under tree bark or debris, or in your garage. Do they become “bug-cicles”? Yes, indeed – they’ve even been found frozen in a chunk of ice. But, like other organisms that are dormant in the dead of winter, wooly bears produce a chemical called a cryoprotectant (antifreeze) that protects living tissue against damage from freezing and thawing. Wooly bears will stir and walk around on mild winter days and then go back into hiding when the temperatures drop again. They wake up with the warm weather, resume eating, and pupate in late spring in a fuzzy cocoon into which they incorporate their own “setae” (hairs) https://bugguide.net/node/view/2249302/bgimage. According to Wikipedia, Arctic summers are so short that wooly bears may need to live through several of them to become mature enough to pupate.
One area of disagreement among references is whether the wooly bears’ wool/setae/hairs/bristles are irritants. Having a bristly covering discourages some predators, although in the Fieldbook of Natural History, E. L. Palmer says that “skunks and a few other animals roll hairs off the caterpillars before they eat them.” Certainly, the stiff hairs make it a harder to pick a wooly bear up, and when you do pick one up and it inevitably curls into a defensive ball, it’s pretty slippery. Some sources say that the wooly bears’ setae contain a stinging/irritating/venomous chemical, and other sources specifically say they do not. Still other references say the setae may cause dermatitis mechanically – that they might break off in your skin (like one of those wretched, furry cacti); and others say that that unlike many hairy caterpillars, wooly bears are harmless. The BugLady has never suffered any ill effects from handling the familiar, rust-and-black wooly bears.
Wooly bears have been famous since Colonial times for two things: 1) their habit of crossing the roads in fall (the BugLady wonders what they crossed before the Colonists arrived and started making roads); and 2) their alleged ability to predict the weather.
The weather lore angle was initiated by those same, road-building Colonists, who needed some forecasting done in those pre-Weather Channel days so they could figure out when to plant and harvest crops. If its rust-colored middle band is wide, says the Almanac, the winter will be a mild one; if there’s lots of black, batten down the hatches (except for a few sources that say the opposite – that lots of rust means lots of cold).
A surprising number of scientists have felt obligated to leap in and deflate the weather story. To them the BugLady says “Lighten up, Party Poopers, and let a little fantasy into your lives.” They tell us that the widening middle band is a result of age, and that each time wooly bears molt, a black band becomes a rust band (except for a few who say the opposite – that rust turns to black). So, a rustier wooly bear is an older wooly bear. The BugLady has been curious about why the early fall wooly bears seemed more pessimistic than the later fall wooly bears and is happy to have that one resolved. In spring, a blacker wooly bear is one that became dormant prematurely, and may indeed be telling the weather – of the previous fall. Other research suggests that a wooly bear with lots of rust lived in dry conditions, and one source says that a wooly bear with wide black bands grew up where the habitat was wetter. Still other scientists say that there is considerable variation in color within newly-hatched individuals from a single clutch of eggs, and that the variation persists as they age.
We have Dr. Curran, a curator of insects at the American Museum of Natural History, to thank for popularizing the wooly bear. Charmed by the old weather saying, Dr. Curran drove north from New York City along the Hudson to Bear Mountain State Park each year for eight years in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s to measure the coloration of the wooly bears he found there. During those years, the rusty bands predicted mild winters. He leaked the forecasts via a friend at a NYC newspaper, and the publicity his reports generated put wooly bears on the map. But Dr. Curran’s only real hypothesis was that Scientists Just Want to Have Fun. He and his friends enjoyed the scenery, the foliage and the wooly bears on their annual fall forays and formed “The Original Society of the Friends of the Woolly Bear.” Thirty years after Dr. Curran’s outings ceased, the folks at Bear Mountain State Park resurrected the Friends organization and the wooly bear count.
Wooly bears are embraced by children and adults alike, and Annual Wooly Bear Festivals are celebrated:
in Banner Elk, NC, started in 1977, highlighting a race with more than 1,400 racing caterpillars; the winner gets to make the forecast. Because of Hurricane Helene, the 2024 fest will be held virtually https://woollyworm.com/webfest/;
Time to chip away at the BugLady’s giant collection of insect articles. Note that most of them are from various (free) on-line reports put out by the Smithsonian.
ALIEN HORNETS – Not much in the news this year about the Asian murder/Northern giant hornet – the folks in the Pacific Northwest are cautiously optimistic that they’ve found all the nests. Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water (metaphorically speaking), along comes the Yellow-legged hornet, on the opposite coast: https://extension.psu.edu/yellow-legged-hornet
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.
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.
Meet in the Riveredge Barn.
Photo club meetings are always free to attend!
Registration
Ages 18+ No pre-registration required Free | In-Person
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.
Meet in the Riveredge Barn.
Photo club meetings are always free to attend!
Registration
Ages 18+ No pre-registration required Free | In-Person
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.
Meet in the Riveredge Barn.
Photo club meetings are always free to attend!
Registration
Ages 18+ No pre-registration required Free | In-Person
