Tag: spider

Bug o’the Week – The End of Summer

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

The End of Summer

Howdy, BugFans,

We’ve arrived at the final act in this summer’s insect drama – a drama played out over the months by an ever-changing cast of characters.  Some are regulars, with successive generations appearing in multiple acts throughout the season, while others step in for only one act of the play.  Here are some of the actors that appeared on stage after mid-August.

DARNER WITH SPIDER – well, the darner migration was nothing short of magical this year, and then it was over.  And then it restarted – lots of Common Green Darners in the air on September 19 and 20, along with a bunch of Black Saddlebags.  They’re heading south along the lakeshore, aiming for the Gulf States, but they don’t all make it.  The BugLady’s guess is that this one was perched in the grass, and when it took off, it ran into the web of an orbweaver.  It messed up the web, but because it wasn’t flying at full power, the spider was able to snag it.  THANKS to the family that located this tableaux along the trail and pointed the BugLady at it.

TIGER SWALLOWTAIL – perfection on the wing, but far too few of them this summer.

GOLD-MARKED THREAD-WAISTED WASPS (Eremnophila) put the “thread” in the Thread-waisted wasp family (Sphecidae).  They’re solitary wasps that dig single-celled egg chambers in the ground and provision them with caterpillars of sphinx or owlet moths (and the odd of skipper butterfly caterpillar).  Her long legs allow her to straddle a larger caterpillar and walk it back to her nest https://bugguide.net/node/view/1408944/bgimage.  She keeps her strength up by sipping carb-rich flower nectar.

RED-LEGGED GRASSHOPPERS making more Red-legged grasshoppers.  ‘Tis the season.  

GRAY HAIRSTREAKS are listed as the most common hairstreak in North America (because their caterpillars are “catholic” eaters that feed on about 200 different plants), but they’re not common in Wisconsin.  

Fun facts about Gray Hairstreaks:

  1. The point of the eyespot and the “tail” is to make the butterfly’s rear end look like a front end, with eye and “antenna,” thus confusing predators;
  2. Gray hairstreak caterpillars are tended by ants in return for honeydew (produced, of course, in the caterpillar’s “honey gland”);
  3. Both the caterpillar and the pupa produce sound.

TREE CRICKET – the voice of the prairie in late summer and early fall.  This one is (probably) in the Oecanthus nigricornis group, maybe the Forbes tree cricket https://www.listeningtoinsects.com/tree-cricket-introduction

BIG SAND TIGER BEETLES are all about sand.  Their eggs are buried in the sand; their larvae https://bugguide.net/node/view/1277687/bgimage dig long tunnels in the sand and then pop out when unwary insects and spiders wander by.  At up to six feet long, the tunnel extends below the frost line and allows them to survive the winter.  Adults stand “on tiptoe” (stilting) to raise themselves incrementally higher off the hot sand.  Not surprisingly, Tiger beetles have fan clubs.

FIERY SKIPPER – these beautiful, inch-long, golden butterflies aren’t from around here, though they regularly visit God’s Country and beyond.  Their usual range is southern and even tropical, and they move north in mid-summer and produce a brood here, but it’s too cold for them to overwinter (for now).  They’ve made it to Hawaii and are unwelcome there, because their caterpillars feed on grasses. 

EUROPEAN PAPER WASPS are buzzing around the hawk tower these warm, sunny days, so the BugLady has to look sharp before she puts her hands on the railings.  Fortunately, they are jumpy wasps that usually spot her before she gets too close.  They arrived on the East Coast 40 or 50 years ago and have spread across the northern US and Canada.  They catch, masticate, and regurgitate caterpillars and other small insects for their larvae.  The lovely gold legs and antennae separate them from our common Northern paper wasp.

Fun facts about European paper wasps:

1)    The brighter the coloration of a female European paper wasp, the more toxic her sting is;

2)    Females with more spots on their faces are dominant.

FAMILIAR BLUETS – Big and startlingly blue, Familiar Bluets are one of the last damselflies on the scene.  (‘Tis the season.)

Caterpillars of VIRGINIAN TIGER MOTHS are also known as Yellow wooly bears or Yellow bear caterpillars (though they come in white, yellow, caramel, and rusty colors, and here’s a pink one https://bugguide.net/node/view/1728143/bgimage).  They’re food generalists, and so are all over the place (not just in Virginia).  Although some people are sensitive to their hairs, the hairs are not poisonous.  Adults are spectacularly white https://bugguide.net/node/view/1984450/bgimage, but when they are alarmed, they curl their abdomen to flash a startling orange https://bugguide.net/node/view/2329153/bgimage.   

NURSERYWEB SPIDERS carry their egg sac around in their jaws (wolf spiders carry theirs aft) and when the eggs are close to hatching, she creates a loose “nursery web,” installs the egg sac in it (hers was on the underside of the leaf), and then guards it until the eggs hatch and the spiderlings have molted once.  No help from Dad – if she doesn’t eat him (sexual cannibalism – an important nutrient booster) (he wraps her legs with silk during courtship to try to prevent this), he leaves to pursue other relationships.  He gives her a “nuptial gift” of a silk-wrapped prey item at the start of courtship so that she will think well of him, but after he has immobilized her and exchanged bodily fluids, he takes the gift with him when he goes. 

CRANE FLY – the “Old Wives” really got it wrong about Crane flies.  Though they’re also called “mosquito hawks,” they do not eat mosquitos (or any meat of any kind).  They do not bite anything at all, but they’re reputed to be the “most venomous insects in the world.”  The confusion may have come because of their resemblance to the cellar spiders, themselves getting a bad rap because their bites are practically harmless.  They’re just a short-lived fly whose larvae inhabit a variety of habitats from wetlands to lawns (where they both feed on and fertilize the grass).

EASTERN TAILED-BLUES are tiny butterflies with wingspans of an inch or less, but they’re tough enough to fly well into fall (four years ago, the BugLady saw one on November 4).  Like the Gray Hairstreak, the eye and tail on the hind wing are there to trick hungry birds into grabbing a wing, not an abdomen.  ‘Tis the season.

Go outside – there are still bugs!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Zebra Jumping Spider

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Zebra Jumping Spider

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady was moseying around her cottage, photographing doodlebug digs, when she spotted this very small (maybe ¼”) jumping spider with its prey.  It was on a sunny, south-facing wall – right where it was supposed to be!

Zebra spiders, aka Zebra jumpers (Salticus scenicus) are in the family Salticidae, the Jumping spiders.  Salticus is Latin for “dancing,” and scenicus is Greek for “theatrical” or “of a decorative place,” and refers to the spider’s flashy colors, which can look iridescent in the right light.  Thanks to BugFan Mike, as always, for the ID.  

We’re on a roll here, having recently introduced the non-native Clover weevil and the (probably) non-native American Copper butterfly.  The Zebra spider’s original range included Europe and western Asia.  It was first collected in North America (in Illinois) in 1933, and now it occupies most of the northern two-thirds of North America.  It’s an urban spider that loves the sun-warmed sides of buildings, but it’s also found away from human habitation, on bare rocks.

There’s some variation in pattern and color, and spiders that live in polluted urban areas may be all black.  Here’s a side view https://bugguide.net/node/view/1339892/bgimage.  Males have large, black jaws called chelicerae https://bugguide.net/node/view/2251820/bgimage.  Like all jumping spiders, Zebra spiders have appealing (some say cute) faces https://bugguide.net/node/view/171573/bgimage – jumping spiders have fan clubs and Facebook pages, largely because of the size and arrangement of their eyes. 

Jumping spiders have eight eyes, four facing forward and four facing upwards – they have depth perception, can judge distances, and can see in color.  Research suggests that when the lateral eyes on each side of those big median eyes pick up motion, they tell the median eyes where to look.  The four eyes on top of the head (cephalothorax) sense movement (helpful for dodging predators) and light. 

Zebra spiders don’t spin for their supper, they jump (and they can jump as far as four inches).  They stalk their prey brazenly by creeping directly at it, but if their prey is much larger than they are, they sneak up from behind.  Either way, they attach a silken drag line to the substrate as they leap, in case they miss or in case they and their prey tumble over the edge.  They bite, subdue, and eat their prey on the spot – they don’t wrap and store it because they have no web to store it in.  

What do they eat?  Various kinds of flies, including mosquitoes, are favorites https://bugguide.net/node/view/1811146/bgimage, but they go after insects that are much larger than they are https://bugguide.net/node/view/228175/bgimage and https://bugguide.net/node/view/383371/bgimage.  They find ants distasteful, but they will eat their fellow spiders https://bugguide.net/node/view/284184/bgimage.  

Females attract wandering males with pheromones, and courtship is visual – males dance, and the best dancers win.  Faint heart ne’er won fair maid.  He waves his front legs and chelicerae and displays his patterned abdomen (so that she doesn’t think he’s prey).  If she’s impressed (and scientists don’t know exactly which moves will light her fire), she’ll crouch and let him approach.  Sometimes males mistakenly display in front of other males, which results in ritualized battles that are won by the most aggressive fighter.

She produces a silken sac that holds 15 to 20 eggs and hides it under leaves or debris, and she guards it until the eggs have hatched https://bugguide.net/node/view/236348/bgimage.  The spiderlings stay with her until after their second molt, and then they disperse.  They overwinter as almost-mature spiders and may live for a year or two. 

Fun Facts about Zebra Spiders:

1)    Their jumps are driven not by muscles, but by hydraulic pressure – the spider increases the pressure of its haemolymph (blood), and that causes the 4th set of legs to straighten, which propels it off the ground.  The fact that the spines on a spider’s leg stand up as its legs straighten is considered proof of that explanation.

2)    Zebra and other jumping spiders can abseil/rappel down walls and rock faces.

3)    Cushions of hairs on the bottoms of their feet have adhesive qualities and allow them to walk on smooth, vertical surfaces. 

4)    Zebra jumpers operate during the day, and they retreat into silk shelters spun in crevices and under leaves and bark by night. 

5)    Vibrations (like buzzing wings) help Jumping spiders recognize their prey.

6)    If a Zebra spider accidentally comes inside, it might take up residence in the corner of a window.  No – it can’t bite us – not even a little bit.erved by a large jumping spider that was inside the car as she drove, alternately staring at her (jumping spiders are good at that) and then disappearing as she drove (that, too).

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – The Clover Leaf Weevil and Other Tales

Bug o’the Weeku
by Kate Redmond

The Clover Leaf Weevil and Other Tales

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady has been playing outside, and she had trouble coming in long enough to write these stories.

STORY #1 – THE CLOVER LEAF WEEVIL.  The BugLady took a few “throw-away shots” of this little (3/8” long) beetle as it crawled along a boardwalk in a wetland, and she made a few inaccurate guesses about its identity, but the sun was bright and she couldn’t really see the image on the screen, and then she and the beetle went their separate ways.  Turned out to be a completely different beetle than she thought, one that apparently took a wrong turn at the start of the boardwalk.  

It was a weevil https://bugguide.net/node/view/859710/bgimage, a weevil that has gone through more than a dozen combinations and permutations of scientific names since it was first described in 1763 (“A rose by any other name….”) and that can still be found under multiple names in the contemporary literature.  Some of the names resulted when the species was described and named by one person, but had already been described and named by another (18th century entomologists received specimens from contacts all over the world, and communication among them was slow).  Other name changes happened when the family or subfamily or genus of the weevil was revised (and some of those changes were not embraced by others in the field).  The BugLady gets the feeling that the dust has not settled on this weevil’s name. 

The Clover, or Sandy, Leaf Weevil (we’ll go with Donus zoilus) is in the Snout/Bark beetle family Curculionidae.  It’s the only member of its genus in our area, but there are a lot more genus members globally, and it’s not from around here.  It was originally found in the “Palearctic realm” – Europe and Asia between the Arctic and North Africa/India.  With a little help from its friends (us), it jumped the Big Pond and came to live in the Nearctic realm (North America between the Arctic and Mexico).  It made its North American debut in Quebec in 1853, and now it’s present over about three-quarters of the country.  . 

Here are some glamour shots: https://bugguide.net/node/view/141240/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/859709/bgimage. 

Its habitat is listed as grasslands, clearings, roadsides, and edges, and while adults may feed on a few plants that are not in the Pea family (the BugLady can recall no members of the Pea family along that boardwalk), the raison d’être for both adults and larvaeis eating agricultural clovers, especially alfalfa.  Larval host plants include alfalfa, red, white, crimson, and alsike clovers, and sweet clovers (sweet clovers (the Devil Incarnate), of which they may consume as much as they can hold). 

Both adult and larval Clover leaf weevils feed at night or on cloudy days, and shelter on/in the ground in the sunlight.  The larvae/grubs https://bugguide.net/node/view/1535920 make small holes in the leaves.  Most sources said that unless they occur in high numbers, they’re not a major crop pest (unlike the much smaller, Alfalfa leaf weevil).  The grubs are parasitized by the larvae of this lovely little ichneumon wasp https://bugguide.net/node/view/1152272.

There’s only one brood per year – females place eggs in and around the host plants in fall.  Most eggs hatch then and the larvae overwinter, feeding when it’s warm enough and resting when it’s not, then pupating https://bugguide.net/node/view/1535924 and becoming adults in spring.  Any eggs that overwinter hatch in spring.  Newly-emerged adults feed and then aestivate (suspend operations) for part of the summer, reactivating and laying eggs in fall https://bugguide.net/node/view/1655976/bgimage.  Larvae chew on plants in spring, and adults chew on plants in fall. 

STORY #2 – RECENT SPIDER ADVENTURE.  The BugLady headed to the laundromat the other day.  She got a few miles down the road and noticed (belatedly) a Cross Orbweaver on a strand of web on the inside of the driver’s side window (“along came a spider and sat down beside her…”).  She found an uninhabited side road and pulled way over to the left, so the side of the car was in grass, opened the window and nudged the spider out, hoping to move it away from the car.  When she got to the laundromat, the windblown spider was curled tight, clinging to the side of the car below the mirror.  It stayed there while the laundry went around, and then held on for the ride home.  The BugLady lifted her off with a leafy twig, and the spider recovered on the porch rail.  Spiders are tough! 

STORY #3 – AN EXUBERANCE OF DRAGONFLIES.  We experienced a wonderful, three-day dragonfly migration from August 30 into September 1, and in the run-up to that migration, the BugLady enjoyed some amazing walks through big feeding swarms, with darners cruising past, inches away.  As she went out to the hawk tower on Sunday, darners and saddlebags were in the air everywhere, with even more jumping up from the grass as she passed.  When she scanned for incoming hawks, the view through her binoculars was dragonflies as far out as she could see, in all directions.  Magic!  Abruptly, at 1:00 PM, the wind shifted a bit and it was over, and only the stragglers remained. 

Go outside, look at bugs!!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Summer Sights

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Summer Sights

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady has been scouring the landscape and aiming her camera at anything that will sit still for it (and some that won’t).  And (without going too overboard on dragonflies and damselflies), here are some of her bug adventures.

LEAFCUTTER BEE – ah, the one that got away.  The BugLady saw a lump on a boardwalk in front of her and automatically aimed her camera at it (a long lens is a good substitute for a pair of binoculars).  The lump – a leafcutter bee – flew off after one, out-of-focus shot.  The bee had paused while she was cutting and collecting pieces of vegetation to line the tunnel and chambers where she’ll lay her eggs (here’s one caught in the act https://bugguide.net/node/view/2150206/bgimage). 

JAPANESE BEETLE – lots of the vegetation that the BugLady sees these days is pockmarked with small holes – evidence of feeding by Japanese beetles (of course, she’s also been seeing conspicuous, beetle ménages a trois on the tops of those leaves, too).  Japanese beetles made their North American debut in New Jersey in 1916, and their menu now includes more than 350 plant species.  But – they are a handsome beetle!  

WATER STRIDERS create art wherever they go. 

APPALACHIAN BROWN BUTTERFLY (probably) (the part of the hindwing that has the squiggly line that helps distinguish the Eyed Brown from the Appalachian Brown is gone).  Life in the wild isn’t all beer and skittles.  The chunks missing from this butterfly’s wings suggest that a bird chased it and that most of the butterfly got away.

POWDERED DANCER – in an episode a month ago, the BugLady lamented that the river was so high and fast that Powdered Dancers couldn’t find any aquatic vegetation to oviposit in.  A dryer spell revealed some weed patches, and the dancers hopped right onboard.

EASTERN PONDHAWK DRAGONFLY – this male Eastern Pondhawk was hugging the cattail stalk, a posture that’s not characteristic of this usually-horizontal species.  Turns out that it had captured a Violet/Variable Dancer damselfly and was holding it closely between its body and the cattail. 

CRAB SPIDER – what would a summer summary be without one of the BugLady’s favorite spiders, the Crab spider?  Where’s Waldo?  Bonus points if you know the name of the plant. 

HONEY BEE WITH APHIDS – it’s not surprising to see yellowjackets browsing among herds of water lily aphids – adult yellowjackets are (mostly) vegetarians, but they collect, masticate, and regurgitate small insects for their larvae.  Honey bees are hard-core vegans, so what’s going on here? 

Aphids overeat.  They have to – the plant sap they suck in has very low concentrations of sugars and proteins, so they need to process a lot of it in order to get enough calories.  Sap comes out of the plant under pressure, which forces the sap through the aphid smartly, and the extra liquids (in the form of a sweet substance called honeydew), exit to the rear of the aphid (or it would explode).  Honeydew drops onto the surrounding leaves and attracts other insects that harvest it.  The bee is no threat to the aphids, she’s just collecting honeydew.  

Fun Fact – according to Master beekeeper Rusty Burlew, writing in her blog “Honey Bee Suite, “The bees treat the substance like nectar so it is often mixed together with the nectar from flowers. As such, it is not really noticeable in the finished honey. Honey made almost exclusively from honeydew is known as honeydew honey, forest honey, bug honey, flea honey, or tree honey. Sometimes it is named after its primary component, such as pine honey, fir honey, oak honey, etc. It is generally dark, strongly flavored, less acidic, and less sweet than floral honey.”

EASTERN AMBERWING – at barely an inch long, this improbably-colored dragonfly is one of our flashiest.

MOSQUITOES – Mosquito Control 101: “get rid of standing water in your yard!”  Check.  But, the BugLady has a bird bath (her “vintage” childhood saucer sled) that she washes out and refills at least once a week (or so she thought).  She was surprised the other day to see a whole mess of mosquito “wigglers” (larvae) in the water.  Worse, they probably were the small-but-mighty Floodwater mosquitoes that can make August miserable because they emerge in Biblical numbers, and because they seem to be biting with one end even before the other end has fully landed.  They develop at warp speed – a week from egg to wiggler, and another week from wiggler to adult.  Get rid of standing water in your yard.  Check.

SCORPIONFLIES are odd-looking insects from a whole order of odd-looking insects (Mecoptera).  This guy is in the Common scorpionfly family Panorpidae and in the genus Panorpa (which is a corruption of the Greek word for “locust”).  The appendage at the end of the male’s abdomen explains its name, but these are harmless insects, fore and aft.  One site mentioned they are wary and hard to photograph.  Amen!

Panorpa uses chewing mouthparts at the tip of its elongated rostrum/snout to eat dead and dying insects, and it may liberate insects from spider webs (and sometimes the spider, too).  It is also said to eat some nectar and rotting fruits.

He courts by releasing pheromones to attract her, quivering his wings when she comes near, and then offering a gift – a dead insect, or maybe some gelatinous goo manufactured in his salivary gland.  He shares bodily fluids with her as she eats.

CAROLINA LOCUST – what a lovely, chunky little nymph! 

AUTUMN MEADOWHAWK – the dragonfly scene changes after mid-summer, with the early clubtails, emeralds, corporals, whitefaces, and skimmers being replaced by darners, saddlebags and a handful of meadowhawk species.  This newly-minted (teneral) Autumn Meadowhawk has just left its watery nursery on its way to becoming – for the next six weeks or so – a creature of the air. 

KATYDID NYMPH – the BugLady was photographing leafcutter bees that were visiting birdsfoot trefoil flowers (birdsfoot trefoil is a non-native member of the pea family that was introduced for animal fodder and erosion control and that can become invasive in grasslands.  There’s probably some blooming along a road edge near you).  She noticed that when the bees approached one particular flower, they reversed course and didn’t land, and when she checked she found the tiniest katydid nymph she has ever seen.  This one will grow up considerably to be a 1 ½” to 2” long Fork-tailed bush katydid (or somebody else in the genus Scudderia) https://bugguide.net/node/view/2164189/bgimage.  How do you find bush katydids?  The “Listening to Insects” website advises us to “Watch for a leaf that moves on its own, or a leaf with antennae.”  They are a favorite of Great golden digger wasps, which collect and cache them for their eventual larvae, and another website said “this is what bird food looks like.” 

The BugLady found a recording of their call.  They don’t say “Katy-did, Katy-didn’t;” they say “tsp” or “pffft,” and they don’t say it very loudly.  Bush Katydids are busiest at night, when their long, highly sensory antennae help them to find their way around.  Although adult females are equipped with a wicked-looking ovipositor, they don’t sting, but they do nip if you handle them wrong.  Memorably, it’s said.   

Go outside, look at bugs!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Slices of Spring

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Slices of Spring

Howdy, BugFans,

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

What did she find in April and May?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do these things get started, anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go outside – Look for Bugs!

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Closed for June IV – A Potpourri of Invertebrates

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Closed for June IV A Potpourri of Invertebrates

Howdy, BugFans,

June is waning, and pretty soon the BugLady will have to stop eating chocolates and watching soaps and get up off the couch and start writing.  Actually, with a way warmer and wetter June than normal (more than 7” of rain at the BugLady’s house for the month), the trail hasn’t been as much fun as usual, and the bugs are slow to reappear (not surprisingly, she has gotten some nice dragonfly shots).

So – your reading list for the week includes bumble bees, butterflies, leeches, and spiders.

Jorō Spiders https://bugguide.net/node/view/1463347/bgimage are sandwich plate-sized immigrants from East Asia that are making themselves at home in parts of the eastern part of the country.  Although they are startling (to say the least), they are reportedly benign.  It will be a while before they get here to God’s Country, but here’s one of our larger spiders, a slightly-related Black and Yellow Argiope/Garden spider https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/joro-spiders-spreading-in-the-southeast-can-survive-surprisingly-well-in-cities-180983845/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49487887&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2642873766&spReportId=MjY0Mjg3Mzc2NgS2

Bumble bees play soccer https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/bees-can-learn-play-soccer-score-one-insect-intelligence-180962292/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=48539902&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2503571888&spReportId=MjUwMzU3MTg4OAS2.

And they are specialized pollinators https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-cute-fuzzy-bumblebees-precision-engineered-pollinators-180984491/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49906517&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2722758537&spReportId=MjcyMjc1ODUzNwS2.

And leeches leap https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/watch-blood-sucking-leeches-leap-from-leaves-and-soar-through-the-air-180984585/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49887473&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2722372704&spReportId=MjcyMjM3MjcwNAS2.

And Painted Lady butterflies are big-time travelers, which was determined by an analysis of their pollen https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-stunning-butterflies-flew-2600-miles-across-the-atlantic-ocean-without-stopping-180984602/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=49906517&spUserID=ODg4Mzc3MzY0MTUyS0&spJobID=2722758537&spReportId=MjcyMjc1ODUzNwS2.

Stay cool,

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Burrowing Wolf Spider

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Burrowing Wolf Spider

Greetings, BugFans,

One afternoon in late June as the BugLady was walking along the cordwalk at Kohler-Andrae State Park, she noticed a few half-inch-ish holes in the sand, holes that had more “structure” than the ones she makes with her walking stick, and larger than those made by solitary wasps.  She took a couple of throwaway shots and was very surprised when she put one up on the monitor and noticed eyes and legs!  She photographed more holes on subsequent trips, but their openings were unoccupied.  The cordwalk goes over both dunes with loose sand, and areas with low vegetation and a somewhat more organic soil.  The holes were in the loose sand.

She asked BugFan Mike if it might be a wolf spider called the Burrowing Wolf Spider (Geolycosa missouriensis).  He said that was a possibility and urged her (as always) to be conservative in her spider IDs, especially considering the quality of the picture.  Amen, Mike!

Wolf spiders (family Lycosidae) (lycosa is Greek for “wolf”) are common, hairy, nocturnal, ground-dwelling hunters with very good eyesight.  Most species of wolf spider do not spin trap webs. 

[Quick Detour: nowadays, we use the name “tarantula” to refer to a group of non-Lycosid, palm-sized, hairy, tropical spiders https://bugguide.net/node/view/289856/bgimage.  The BugLady’s 4th grade teacher told a story of being in basic training in California and digging foxholes that bisected tarantula borrows, which she thought was pretty cool (she doesn’t remember much else of 4th grade).  Anyway, the original tarantula is a southern European/Italian wolf spider.  Legend had it that if one bites you, you‘re doomed to dance a dance called the tarantella.  The BugLady assumes that when they saw the big hairy spiders, those settlers from the Old Country applied the name of a scary spider that they already knew about.  And in fact, a number of other groups of large spiders have been called tarantulas, too].

Wolf spiders in the genus Geolycosa are called the Burrowing wolf spiders (geo means “earth”).  They live in vertical burrows, and they are habitat specialists, preferring loose, sandy soil that makes digging easier.  Of the 75 species in the genus worldwide, 18 live in North America north of the Rio Grande.  They have strong legs and (short spider anatomy review, here) two strong chelicerae (jaws) that are used as pincers and that are tipped with fangs.  A pair of palps, which look like a short leg on each side of the chelicerae, are used to manipulate food https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/mites/ismite/html/a10h_Mouthparts.html. 

Burrowing wolf spiders are generally Stay-at-Homes – the spiderlings don’t scatter far from the maternal burrow.  They initiate their own lair when they’re very small, enlarging it as they grow, rarely straying more than an inch or so away from it, and retreating into it when alarmed.  Populations remain fairly restricted. 

They are tied to one spot, with fixed pools of prey and of potential mates, but the trade-off is an absence of Flying Monkeys. They can dodge predators and avoid desiccation within a relatively stable, climate-controlled tunnel.  In early fall, though, when a young spider’s fancy turn to love, he abandons that security and sets off in search of romance.  They mate in late summer, but the gravid female doesn’t make an egg sac until the next spring.  She displays maternal care – carrying around first her egg sac, and later her young https://bugguide.net/node/view/114423/bgimage (and not eating them).  Spiderlings hatch in early summer, overwinter as immature spiders in their first year, and become adults in late summer of their second year.

Gratuitous vocabulary word(s) of the day: some Geolycosa species are “turricolous” (they live in areas that have some leaf litter, and they create little turrets or lips made of debris, sand, and silk around the opening of the tunnel https://bugguide.net/node/view/912651/bgimage), and others are “aturricolous” (they don’t). 

Bracing itself within the tunnel with its legs, the spider uses its fangs to loosen the sand, and if the sand is not moist enough on its own, it uses silk to compact the sand into a pellet.  It uses its chelicerae and palps to move the pellet to the opening of the burrow, and it disposes of the pellet by flicking it away (sometimes a foot away) with its forelegs – unless it’s going to use it to build a turret.  Burrowing wolf spiders reinforce the upper section of their lair by covering the walls with a few layers of silk.  Summer burrows are less than a foot long, but winter burrows may be more than five feet deep.  Researchers who studied Geolycosa missouriensis noted that a spider excavating an average burrow removed 918 sand pellets. 

Larry Weber, in Spiders of the North Woods, says that if you stick a grass stem down an occupied Geolycosa missouriensis burrow, the spider will grab it and hang on, and you can dig out the entrance and see the spider.  Seriously, Larry?  All that work – 918 pellets – why would you?

They ambush their prey – lurking in the entryway and darting out to grab nocturnal invertebrates like crickets as they wander by.  They feed within, and the indigestible bits of prey fall to the end of the tunnel.  About the Geolycosa, the publication “The Insects and Arachnids of Canada, Part 17,” notes that when kept in captivity, “They should be individually caged because they are fierce predators, and cannibalism can soon reduce the culture to a single well-fed individual.”

So – who was in that burrow?  Here are a few possibilities.

A BURROWING WOLF SPIDER (Geolycosa missouriensis), aka the Missouri Earth Spider or the Missouri Wolf Spider, is found on sandy loam soils from Texas to Ontario and Saskatchewan https://bugguide.net/node/view/862935/bgimage.  Its leg-spread is around 1 ½”. 

The gravid female uses sand and silk to fashion a door for the tunnel in winter.  She will bring her egg case into the sun at the burrow opening on warm, spring days, and females can be found in their burrows carrying young on their back in early summer.  Sources are ambivalent about whether Geolycosa missouriensis makes turrets.  

GEOLYCOSA WRIGHTII (no common name) https://bugguide.net/node/view/1285635/bgimage.  It’s not as common, and its range is restricted to sand dunes and beaches from Indiana and Illinois north through the Western Great Lakes states and provinces.  Females protect their newly-hatched offspring by sealing themselves into the tunnel with their young for a few days, until they find their feet.  Geolycosa wrightii doesn’t make a turret. 

The BEACH WOLF SPIDER (Arctosa littoralis https://bugguide.net/node/view/771440/bgimage) also makes silk-lined tunnels, but unlike the Geolycosa, it hunts at night by chasing after prey on beaches and wetland banks, and shelters in tunnels or under driftwood in the day.  Entomologist Eric Eaton says that if you’re abroad on the beach at night, wearing a headlamp, “When the beam of the light hits a wolf spider, the animal’s eyes will glint a blueish-green shine…..and a female with young on her back looks like a diamond-studded stone.” 

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

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

Greetings of the Season, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And a DOT-TAILED WHITEFACE in a pear tree.

Have a Wonder-full New Year,

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Lined Orbweaver Spider

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Lined Orbweaver Spider

Howdy, BugFans,

When the BugLady spotted this small spider on its horizontal web (while she was officially censusing butterflies and dragonflies), she thought it might be one of the sheet-web spiders.  Fortunately, she has a Spider Guy, and he set her straight (thanks as always, BugFan Mike).

Turns out that it’s a small orbweaver called the Lined orbweaver (much has been written in BOTW about some of the larger species in the orbweaver family Araneidae).

Orbweavers, famously, spin circular/orb-shaped trap webs (the silk that makes up the radii isn’t sticky but the silk in the spiral is).  The spiders often hang from the web’s center during the day, or they hide in a nearby retreat.  They monitor the vibrations of the web, and when an insect sticks and struggles, they’re all over it.  Harmless prey is bitten, stunned, and wrapped for later consumption https://bugguide.net/node/view/1565567/bgimage, but prey that bites back or stings is wrapped and immobilized before the coup de grace is delivered.  One source said that the orbweavers are the only spiders that chew their food. 

Many orbweavers (but not this one) spin their webs at night and eat the day-old web, thereby recycling the proteins.  They have eight eyes and poor vision, and they communicate via vibration and chemicals (pheromones).  According to an article entitled “Orb-weaver spider uses web to capture sounds” on a Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences Animal Behavior website, “Orb weaver spiders are known to make large webs, creating a kind of acoustic antennae with a sound-sensitive surface area that is up to 10,000 times greater than the spider itself” (another article said that they “outsource” their hearing).  They both can and will bite (not dangerously) if mishandled, so — don’t.   

There are more than 3,100 species of orbweavers throughout the world.   

THE STABILIMENTUM RABBIT HOLE

Some orbweavers, especially those that are active in the daytime, that spin webs in the open, and that leave the webs up for a few days (like spiders in the genus Argiope), take the time and energy to produce a heavy silk and to weave it into a non-sticky, thickened area in the web called a “stabilimentum” https://bugguide.net/node/view/1125407/bgimage.  Why? Short answer – no one knows for sure, but stabilimenta might serve different purposes for the various species that deploy them.  Nocturnal spiders and those with unobtrusive webs don’t make them.

Originally, scientists believed that these structures strengthened the web (hence the name), but the silk is only loosely attached, and the web fares just fine if the stabilimentum is removed. 

In other hypotheses, the stabilimentum:

  • provides camouflage for a spider that’s sitting in the middle of the web https://bugguide.net/node/view/1585298/bgimage; 
  • fools potential predators into thinking the spider is bigger than it is https://bugguide.net/node/view/1884530/bgimage;
  • reflects UV light, like flowers do, and therefore attracts insect prey (but – the silk isn’t sticky, and an insect that flies into it won’t get stuck);
  • makes the surrounding web less noticeable by comparison;
  • attracts the male of the species when the female is receptive;
  • is part of the spider’s thermoregulatory strategy;
  • and/or, protects the web by making it more visible to birds that might blunder through it (though some spider predators have learned to search for stabilimenta).

Addenda: In experiments, some researchers have noted that webs with stabilimenta catch 30% fewer insects, presumably because they are more visible, but other equally reputable scientists say that webs with stabilimenta catch up to 41.6% more prey.  Sated spiders seem more likely to make stabilimenta.  Some species change the shape of the stabilimentum as they age.  

The BugLady thinks it’s just grand that these things haven’t been figured out yet.

THE LINED ORBWEAVER (Mangora gibberosa) is the most common of the seven members of its genus that occur north of the Rio Grande (gibberosa is from a Latin word “gibber” meaning “hump-backed” and “osa” meaning “full of” or “extremely”).  Another 180 or so genus members live in Central and South America.  Lined orbweavers are found in open areas – gardens, grasslands, roadsides and woodland edges – in the US east of the Rockies and into Canada. 

These are small spiders https://bugguide.net/node/view/712593/bgimage, with females measuring ¼” and less, and males much smaller.  Like other orbweavers, they come in a range of colors, with some with more lines, and some with more spots – https://bugguide.net/node/view/823822/bgimage, https://bugguide.net/node/view/1059263/bgimage. Good pictures here: https://www.marylandbiodiversity.com/view/8531 and here’s a nice “face-to-face” https://bugguide.net/node/view/1423274/bgimage.

The webs they build in sheltered areas in grass or brush may be horizontal or slightly angled and are sizable webs (about 12” across) for such a small spider. They have a “bull’s-eye” stabilimentum that is sometimes open and sometimes more solid https://bugguide.net/node/view/1236100/bgimage and that is often occupied by its resident during the day.  

The “Arachnids of North Carolina” website tells us that in October, it “builds web at dawn orienting its web perpendicular to the rising sun, to warm up in its web quicker.”  And, adds the usaspiders.com website, “Such orientations to sunrise would maximize the surface area of the body exposed to insolation and allow the spiders to warm quickly during the coolest part of the day.  A quick warmup in the morning may be advantageous to prey capture, particularly during the cooler months of the year.” 

Female Lined orbweavers conceal their egg sacs by folding a leaf around them and webbing it shut.  Although the eggs within the sac hatch in fall, the tiny spiderlings stay inside the sac through winter (absorbing yolk material in their abdomen) and emerge in summer. 

The tiny Lined orbweaver, of course, is up against competition from other spiders as it tries to make a living.  In a study published about 15 years ago, Richardson and Hanks looked at the division of potential prey among four species of orb-weaving spiders living in close proximity in a grassland.

As suspected, it was not a zero-sum game – the spiders survived by occupying different niches within their habitat.  The researchers noted the spiders’ sizes, the web size and height, the density of the webs’ “mesh,” and the kind of plant that the web was attached to.  They found that spider size (and therefore the size of prey they were able to subdue) allowed a variety of species to coexist.

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

Bug o’the Week – Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed

Bug o’the Week
by Kate Redmond

Bug o’the Week Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed

Howdy, BugFans,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate Redmond, The BugLady

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

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