The BugLady took to the trails this summer as much as her shiny, new knee and the oppressive heat and humidity allowed (her preferred maximum temperature is 72 degrees.��The gods didn’t cooperate).��Here are some of the bugs she found.��

BLUE DASHER OVIPOSITING – A female Blue Dasher bobs up and down as she looses eggs into the water. Blue Dashers don’t oviposit “in tandem,” with the male guarding her by maintaining his grip at the back of her head, but the male stays close, flying around her as she dips the tip of her abdomen into the water, and chasing off rival males that would carry her away.

CICADA – When the BugLady was little, the treetops sizzled with cicada calls in August (she called them “hot bugs,” because when they emerged, it was). The only species she heard back then was the dog day cicada Dogday Cicada (Family Cicadidae) – Field Station, but for the past decade, she has heard fewer and fewer of them each year .��

This year, she has been enjoying the songs of a Linne’s cicada and an dusk-calling Scissor-grinder cicada , too, both of whom are southern/southeastern species that are inching north. Welcome!

CABBAGE BUTTERFLY ON PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE – A dainty, white butterfly on a pretty, fuchsia flower.��Both are non-native (hint: the butterfly’s caterpillar is known as the European cabbage worm), and both are “naturalized,” that is, having been introduced and/or having escaped into the wild, they are doing very well on their own, thank you.��Only a very small percentage of non-native, naturalized species go on to create problems and to get a third label – “invasive.” For a nice discussion, see .��

EASTERN PONDHAWK AND MEADOWHAWK – It’s a dragonfly-eat-dragonfly world out there.

MILKWEED TUSSOCK MOTH AND CRAB SPIDER – The BugLady has been receiving some queries recently from BugFans whose milkweed is looking pretty ratty.��The culprit? The Milkweed tussock moth , whose caterpillar is sometimes called the Harlequin caterpillar.��Mom lays masses of eggs, and the caterpillars feed gregariously for a while, skeletonizing leaves by eating the tender tissue between the leaf veins.��Then they go their separate ways and eat the leaves down to their midribs.��Bugguide.net says, in an understatement, that the caterpillars “May defoliate patches of milkweed.” 

Allegedly, they don’t interfere with Monarch caterpillars because they eat the old, leathery leaves that the monarchs don’t, and because they’re gearing up as the Gen 5 Monarchs are readying themselves for their trip south.

No, the BugLady did not see the crab spider, and what looks like an egg sac, when she took the picture.

PICTURE-WINGED FLY – This spiffy fly (genus Rivelli, family Platystomatidae) walks around, twitching its wings constantly, sending semaphore signals to nearby females. For its story, see Signal Fly (Family Platystomatidae) – Field Station (only, the BugLady misspelled the family name).��What a treat to watch this little fly strutting his stuff!

WOOD/AMERICAN DOG TICK – Yes, they’re everywhere (they prefer grassy areas and forest edges), and yes, most people feel creepy just looking at a picture of one, feeling the phantom feet of phantom ticks tickling their skin. Dog ticks need three different hosts to get through their life cycles, and they can spread Rocky Mountain spotted fever as well as Tularemia (but if your dog comes down with Tularemia, it may be playing with the local bunnies). Various sources say that Wood ticks in Wisconsin don’t often carry diseases and that Rocky Mountain spotted fever (or any Spotted fever rickettsiosis) are (for now) rare here.��They don’t spread Lyme disease.

VIRGINIA CTENUCHA CATERPILLAR –Lepidopterists say that the more spectacular the caterpillar, the more homely the adult, and vice versa. The Virginia Ctenucha moth is one of the exceptions that proves the rule .

The caterpillars are out and about early – this one was photographed in May, but they overwinter as caterpillars, and the BugLady encounters them strolling along on the warm road on a warm day in late winter or early spring.��Adults are large-ish, day-or-night-flying moths that tuck in under a leaf when alarmed.��The “C” is silent. –

WOOLLY ALDER APHIDS AND THEIR ANTS – We’ve seen it before – aphids going about their business, assisted by ants that protect them them in exchange for being able to “milk” them for honeydew, a sugary fluid that is a byproduct of the sap that flows through the aphids when they eat. Honeydew is an important carbohydrate for the ants that farm aphids and treehoppers.��If you’ve ever seen a leaf whose upper surface looks shiny and sticky, look up under the overhead leaves – they’re probably occupied by aphids.��Bees, wasps, flies, and other insects will visit the leaf to eat honeydew. The woolly aphid’s wool consists of waterproof, waxy filaments made in glands in the aphid’s abdomen.

EMERALD ASH BORER – They really are lovely, little beetles, with a surprise splash of crimson when their wings are spread .��But the extensive tunnels (called galleries ) that the larvae make below the bark disrupt the ash tree’s plumbing so that it can’t pump nutrients between its roots and crown.��

SEDGE SPRITES – One of the BugLady’s favorite damselflies, these little beauties are scarcely an inch long. 

WEEVILS ON PURPLE PRAIRIE CLOVER – Purple prairie clover is a lovely, native tallgrass prairie plant. The early settlers on the Great Plains nicknamed it “Devil’s shoelaces” because this skinny, two-foot-high plant may have roots that are six feet long – roots that grew deep enough to reach through the thick prairie sod to find water. That magnificent sod resisted the settlers attempts to plow it with their small, cast-iron plows until 1837, when John Deere invented the steel moldboard plow, which he fashioned from an old sawmill saw.��

At the top of the flower, there are two weevils, probably seed weevils in the genus Apion, making whoopie.��Here’s a BOTW about seed weevils Baptisia Seed Pod Weevils (Family Curculionidae) – Field Station. No, the BugLady did not see the weevils when she took the picture.

STAG BEETLE – Yes, the BugLady���徱�� see this Stag beetle as it emerged from her lawn one evening in July – the beetle looks big enough to trip over, and she moves like a tank.��Here’s her story Stag Beetle Lucanus Placidus – Field Station.

ROBBER FLY – Remember, bumble bees are vegetarians, so if you see a bumble bee with prey, it’s not a bumble bee.��Mimicking a bumble bee is a pretty good survival strategy – no one messes with bumble bees. This fly is in the genus Laphria, one of the “bee-like” robber flies. Their larvae live in rotten wood and feed on insects they find there, and the adults often prey on beetles (though the BugLady saw one make a pass at a Sulphur butterfly once).��Robber flies come in a variety of sizes and shapes – for information about Wisconsin robber flies (and butterflies and tiger beetles) see .

RED-BELTED BUMBLE BEES – are found west of the great plains and across southern Canada and our northern tier of states.��They are one of the short-tongued bumble bees, which means that they prefer “flatter” flowers like clovers, thistles, goldenrods, and asters. The BugLady doesn’t know where this one was hiking to – she saw several others on flowers in the area. A little rusty on bumble bees? Here’s a great bumble bee guide from the Xerces Society:

Go outside, look at bugs,

The BugLady

The post Summer Sights – and Sounds appeared first on Field Station.

It’s time to celebrate a dozen (or so) of the beautiful bugs that posed for the BugLady this year (and that have already graced their own episodes). 

Click on each photo to read more.

Great Spangled Fritillary

A butterfly on the aptly-named butterfly weed.

European Mantis

The BugLady intercepted this mantis as it was attempting to cross the road and moved it to a friendlier spot.��The tiny bulls-eye in its tiny armpit tells us that it’s a European, not a Chinese mantis.��Both are non-native, invited to God’s Country by gardeners who buy them and release them as pest control. (Alas, to a mantis, a honey bee looks as tasty as a cabbage worm).��

When fall freezes come, they die, leaving behind �ǴDZ�ٳ�𳦲�����(egg cases) that .��Eggs in ooethecae can survive a mild winter here but not a Polar Vortex; . Every fall, The BugLady gets asked if it’s possible to keep a pet mantis alive in a terrarium over the winter.��Short answer—no. Its biological clock is ticking pretty loud.

Gray Field Slug

It was an unusually hot and muggy day, a day when the cooler air above the Lake did not quite reach inland (15 yards) to the BugLady’s front door.��She glanced out and saw a gray field slug extended at least six inches on the storm door. Read here for more info on gray field slugs.��     

Candy-Striped Leafhopper

When a spectacular insect picks an equally spectacular perch. What a treat!

Brown-Marmorated Stink Bug

This stink bug shared the hawk tower with the BugLady on a cool day in late October.��They’re a huge pest in the East because they eat orchard crops in summer and hole up/stink up in your house/closets/attics/coat pockets/boots in winter, and they’re becoming more numerous here.�� Remember, not every brown stink bug is a BMS. Look for the pale stripes on the antennae and on the legs.

Orange Sulfurs

They are very common, and they don’t put on airs, they’re just quietly beautiful.

Tachinid Fly

When the BugLady thinks about Tachinid flies, she pictures the bristly, house-fly-on-steroids species that frequent the prairie flowers in late summer, but tachinid flies also come in “tubular.” The larvae of this one, in the genus Cylindromyia, make a living by parasitizing some moths and grasshoppers and a few species of predatory stink bugs (for which efforts they are not appreciated, because the predatory stink bugs are busy preying on plant pests).��The adults, which are considered wasp mimics, feed on nectar.��

Ebony Jewelwings

They are frequent flyers on these pages.��The spectacular males usually have a metallic, Kelly-green body, but some individuals, in some light, appear royal blue.

Shamrock Orbweaver

The BugLady loves the big Argiope�����Ի���Araneus���ǰ����ɱ𲹱������., they grow slowly throughout the summer until they reach a startling size.��Most go through the winter in egg cases. Some hatch early but stay inside and ride out the winter in the case, eating yolk material and their siblings, while others hatch in spring.��They emerge from the egg sac, and after a few days, balloon away in the breezes. and see why, like the Marbled orbweaver, they’re sometimes called Pumpkin orbweavers.  

Skimming Bluet

Note to self: ask insects to pose on the very photogenic leaves of Arrow Arum.��

Red-Velvet Mite

The BugLady is frequently struck by the fact that the weather data we rely on was measured by instruments inside a louvered box that sits five feet above the ground, but the vast majority of animals — vertebrate and invertebrate alike — never get five feet off the ground in their lives.��The weather they experience depends on microclimates created by the vegetation and topography in the small area where they live.��Red velvet mites search for tiny animals and insect eggs to eat; their young form temporary tick-ish attachments to other invertebrates as they go through a dizzying array of life stages (OK — prelarva, larva, protonymph, deutonymph, tritonymph, adult). Read more about them here.

Bush Katydid

What child is this? A nymph of a bush katydid (Scudderia).��

Ants with Aphids

While shepherds watched their flocks at night…… Some kinds of ants “farm” aphids and tree hoppers, guarding them from predators, guiding them to succulent spots to feed, and “milking” them — harvesting the sweet honeydew that the aphids exude from their stern while overindulging in plant sap.

Eastern Pondhawk

And an pondhawk in a pear tree.

Whatever Holidays you celebrate, may they be merry and bright and filled with laughter.

The BugLady

The post The Twelve (or so) Bugs of Christmas appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady hopes that you’ve been getting out on the trail and drinking in the lushness of the summer. If this heat and humidity are the “new normal,” we might as well get used to it.

Insect photography in summer uncovers the common themes of eating and reproducing (sometimes, in the case of ambush bugs, simultaneously).

Paper wasp

A Northern paper wasp has a super power – she chews on plant materials, mixes the cellulose with saliva, and spits out paper that she forms into a on plants and under eaves and porches; the large and dangerous football-shaped paper nests are made by bald-faced hornets. Look for her on flowers, feeding on nectar and collecting small insects for the larvae. Having collected prey, according to bugguide.net,“The wasp then malaxates, or softens the food and in doing so absorbs most of the liquid in the food. This solid portion is given to older larvae and the liquid is regurgitated to be fed to younger larvae.” Bugguide also tells us that “P. fuscatus has unusually variable color patterns, allowing individual wasps to recognize each other’s faces.”

Planthopper nymph

Been seeing plant stalks that are a bit fuzzy these days? It’s not your glasses – if you look closely, you’ll see that they are tiny bugs. This one is the nymph of a planthopper, probably in the family Flatidae. For more about them, this one written by an actual entomologist.

Syrphid/hover/flower fly

Syrphid flies are bee mimics that can be found feeding harmlessly on nectar and/or pollen on flower tops. The BugLady loves the exquisite patterns on their abdomens. “Hover fly” comes from the males’ practice of hovering in the air, hoping to attract the attentions of a female. They are great little pollinators.

Jumping spider meets syrphid fly

Jumping spiders are beautiful, bold little spiders that look you right in the eye and don’t back down (though they’re great at zipping around to the back of a leaf when they see a camera). See this previous BOTW to find out more about them. We all are, potentially, someone else’s lunch.

Syrphids again

When the BugLady photographed these delicate, green aphids, she did not notice the pale larva just north of them on the stem until she put the picture on the screen. It’s the larva of a syrphid/hover/flower fly, and it eats aphids. Death from above.

Land snail

It’s humid here by the lake – gotta’ keep moving or stuff will grow on you. The wall-snail population is possibly a sign from the cosmos that it’s time to round up a pressure washer. Or get more snails.

Ambush bug

The BugLady loves these small-but-mighty ambush bugs that hang out on flower tops and often take prey that’s much bigger than they are. They grasp in firmly with their hook-like front legs and inject meat tenderizers. Here, its catch is a sweat bee.

Rainbow Bluet

What’s a summer survey without an Odonate? This incredible creature is about 1 ¼” long from his peachy face to the sky-blue tip of his abdomen.

Creepy aphids

First of all, this clump of aphids was being protected by some very alert ants, and when the BugLady brushed against the plant, she suddenly had about 20 ants on her hand and sleeve (she’s a wee bit ant-averse). The ants were there for the honeydew secreted by the aphids, which is a staple in the diet of many ant species. But then, the BugLady put the aphid picture up on the screen and saw the creepy “eyes.” BugFan Freda pointed out that the aphids are plugged into the stem, drinking plant juices, and their eyes are facing down. The glowy “eyes” are the twin tailpipes (cornicles) at the rear of the insect. But still…

Baltimore Checkerspot

Baltimore Checkerspot caterpillars feed on a late-blooming wetland plant called turtlehead. In fall, the gregarious caterpillars make a communal web on their food plant and stay inside, inert, for the winter. When they emerge in spring, they need to eat some more before they’re ready to form a chrysalis, but there’s no turtlehead around, so they pick alternate hosts, including white ash.

They’re spectacular, and are orange and black, too. Orange and black were the colors of the livery worn by the servants of Lord Baltimore at the time that the early settlers were arriving in this country, and it’s his name, not the city’s, that’s attached to the oriole and the butterfly.

Thread-waisted wasp

Like the paper wasp, these wasps cruise the flower tops looking for nectar (she also finds sustenance in extra-floral nectaries – read the amazing EFN story). Solitary where the paper wasp is social, each thread-waisted wasp makes her own mud nursery for her offspring, and she provisions it with small insects and spiders, depending on her species.

The Black and yellow mud dauber (Sceliphron caementarium) (caementarium means “mason, or builder of walls”) is found in a big chunk of North America. may contains about as many as 25 brood chambers, each cached with a few dozen spiders.

Black firefly

Fireflies (lightning beetles is a more accurate name) wow us with their nocturnal light show, blinking or streaking across the sky with a species specific signal to the females waiting below. But, the Black firefly (Lucidota atra) is a day-flying firefly and would have to use a lot of energy to compete with the sun (males may glow briefly immediately after they emerge from their pupal case). If he cannot glow, how does he woo? By flying close to the ground, searching for the “perfume” of the pheromones released by the female.

EAB

The BugLady is sickened by the number of dead ash trees sticking out of wetlands and uplands, and this is the beetle that’s responsible. The Emerald ash borer is an immigrant from northeast Asia that left its natural checks and balances at home. Its larvae burrow in and feed on the living tissues just under the bark of an ash tree, creating squiggly tunnels called galleries. Eventually, there are so many galleries that the tree’s “plumbing” is disrupted and it can’t move nutrients up and down the trunk.

Thanks to the EAB we have a new indoor sport during the Polar Vortex – figuring out whether it has gotten cold enough for long enough to kill the majority of the larvae. Not yet.

Katydid nymph

With a little luck (OK – a lot of luck) this infant will grow up to be a good-sized bush katydid, . in the meantime, it looks like a tiny, jeweled creature.

Go outside – look for bugs!

The BugLady

The post Summer Survey 2019 appeared first on Field Station.

January continues to be “Vocabulary Month.”

The BugLady likes her wetlands wet, not solid, so she’s diving into her files of aquatic/semi-aquatic organisms in order to evoke the sights and sounds and feel of a summer day. As usual, this has resulted in a few scenic side trips.

Scenic side trip #1 – what are all those fantastic aquatic organisms doing in the dead of winter, anyway? Invertebrates have three options here in God’s country – migration, diapause (suspended animation – hibernation for the cold-blooded) and termination. Most insects overwinter as eggs (ready to hit the road when the weather warms) or as pupae (ready to assume an adult form when the weather warms). A smaller number spend the winter as nymphs/larvae or as adults. Some aquatic invertebrates spend their whole lives in the water, but for others, water is a nursery that they occupy only as immatures. Both permanent and temporary residents are found under the ice or in frigid streams in winter.

Water is, at once, both a hospitable and an inhospitable place to live. It changes temperature slowly, so its inhabitants don’t experience the dramatic fluctuations felt by those of us who live in the air. Water temperatures under the ice are typically about 37 degrees F, often much warmer than the air above. But, ice overhead excludes new oxygen, and a snow cover keeps out sunlight, as well, so submerged plants don’t photosynthesize and add oxygen to the system. Streams may not ice over, which means they are more oxygenated, but colder.

Ice crystals are harmful/lethal to an organism’s cells, and cold-blooded aquatic invertebrates avoid them via both behavioral and physiological adaptations. They become inactive, some build shelters, and some drift down to the deepest, “warmest,” part of a pond. Aquatic invertebrates are freeze-resistant at the cellular level – able to be “supercooled” to about 22 degrees F without having ice crystals form in their tissues because they have eliminated small particles that would serve as the nucleus of an ice crystal. Some are even freeze-tolerant.

WATERLILY APHIDS (Rhopalosiphum nymphaeae) have an alternative plan for winter, which we’ll get to in a sec. Hint – it has something to do with their other common name, the Reddish-brown plum aphid.

The family Aphididae is a big one – about 5,000 species (1,300+ in North America), many of which are considered pests. WLAs are not from around here (their original range is northern Eurasia); they were first recorded in North America in 1890, but now they occur globally except for some really cold spots. They’re often referred to as “adventive,” a word whose definition ranges from “non-native” to “recently introduced and starting to spread” to “introduced but not really naturalized, not able to sustain their population without help.”

WLAs don’t look like they need any help. They can be seen, sometimes in spectacular numbers, on the flowers and floating leaves of both white and yellow water-lilies. Despite their name, they chow down on quite a variety of aquatic plants including duckweed, arrowhead, water milfoil, water plantain, cattail, bladderwort, Potamogeton, and rice. They are at home above the water and below it, using hairs on their bodies to trap/carry air when they submerge to feed; and they can hike along on the surface film to get to new food plants.

They are preyed on by the usual suspects, like ladybugs, syrphid flies, and some parasitoids, all of which experience population booms when large numbers of WLAs are around. While it is true that dragonflies and damselflies will hover and pick off perched insects, the BugLady isn’t sure if this Orange Bluet is taking advantage of the little bits of protein that surround him. But, she has no doubt that the wasp is collecting aphids to feed to larval wasps. WLAs are so very fruitful that some authors consider them important “shapers” of aquatic habitats.

Other than the fact that they’re semi-aquatic, the lives of WLAs hew pretty much to the general aphid game plan. They’re found on water plants during the summer, wingless females producing more wingless females by parthenogenesis (virgin birth), a system so effective that their population can double in less than a week (she’ll crank out about 50 offspring in all, popping out two to four per day). Literally “popping out” – the young are produced in eggs, but the eggs hatch internally (it’s called ovovivipary). The nymphs mature in a week or so and become mothers themselves (one researcher used the delicious term virginoparous, which refers to a wingless female aphid that was produced by and is, herself, reproducing by parthenogenesis).

As cold weather approaches, there is a winged generation that includes both males and females. They fly away from the water, boy meets girl, gene pools are shared, and females lay eggs in bark crevices on a fruit tree like a peach, plum, almond, or cherry. When they hatch in spring, the nymphs (all female) feed on petioles and fruit stalks, attended by ants (myrmecophily) – and are known as Reddish-brown plum aphids. The tree is dubbed the primary host, because the eggs are laid there, and the aquatic plants that they feed on in summer are considered secondary hosts.

Googling the WLA results in a bunch of hits that demonstrate that beauty is, indeed, in the eye of the beholder. WLAs can transmit a number of plant viruses in either stage of their life cycle, and they are considered pests on some plants but are cheered on as biological controls of problem plants like water hyacinth and duckweed.

Scenic side trip #2 – the BugLady found a number of articles with contradictory views about WLAs and a plant called Azolla, as in “Good news, there are WLA-resistant strains of Azolla!” and “Good news, you can use WLAs to control Azolla!” Azolla?? Turns out that Azolla, a.k.a. pond fern, duckweed fern, water fern, and mosquito fern is an actual, floating aquatic fern.

Because their associated cyanobacterium fixes nitrogen, needed for plant growth, mosquito ferns can spread like crazy and cover/choke the water surface. The mistaken belief that a solid blanket of Azolla prevented mosquitoes from ovipositing led to that common name, but a thick layer of Azolla probably does make it difficult for mosquito larvae (and some other insects) to get to the surface film. Because of the way it covers the water surface, it acts as floating mulch for rice crops and then as fertilizer when it sinks (and it has been used in this way for 1,500 years). Azolla is grown in some parts of the world as a nutritious livestock feed, and it has been suggested as a food for humans, but there are some questions about long-term safety (neurotoxins).

Interesting Azolla story – apparently, about 50 million years ago, give or take, the greenhouse effect was in full swing and the climate of the North Pole was tropical (think palm trees), and large areas of the Arctic Ocean (which was then more fresh than salt) were covered by Azolla. For a million years, masses of Azolla used a lot of CO^2��– half of the available CO^2��of the time, by some accounts – and when the plants died and sank, they took all that carbon along with them, which reversed the greenhouse effect and initiated an ice age. It’s called the Azolla Effect! An interesting little plant that the BugLady had never heard of. For more about Azolla, check out the Nordic Folkecenter and the article from the .

The BugLady confesses that she doesn’t specifically set out to photograph WLAs up close – usually she’s hanging off a pier by her toes aiming her camera at something bigger;  for some great close-ups. . E. O. Essig, in Aphididae of Southern California (1912) says that the “ventral surfaces of the thorax, head, antennae, and legs are covered with rather long, white flocculence. This is secreted on the lower surface of the thorax and is evidentially gathered up by the appendages coming in contact with it.”

Flocculence.

The BugLady

The post Waterlily Aphid appeared first on Field Station.

As the leaves color and fall, some interesting galls are being revealed. Quick review – a gall is an abnormal and localized tissue growth on a plant (or animal – according to Wikipedia, “In human pathology, a gall is a raised sore on the skin, usually caused by chafing or rubbing”). Plant galls can be caused by friction, fungi, bacteria, and even by viruses, but for BOTW purposes, we’ll stick to galls that are initiated by animals like insects and mites. Cecidium (the plural is cecidia) is listed as a synonym for “gall.”

Tiny Cynipid wasps and some groups of midges and moths are the main gall makers. The general modus operandi for gall formation is that the gall maker does something (like secreting a chemical) that tricks the host plant into growing extra tissue at that location. Abracadabra – the herbivorous larva is enclosed in a climate-controlled, edible shelter (all it needs to do is make sure that it can get out). Many gall makers are able to defuse their host plant’s natural “grazer-control” mechanisms, possibly by hogging the plant’s resources.

There’s nothing random about it – gall-making insects/mites make distinctly-shaped galls on specific parts of their particular host plants, and part of the host’s scientific name is often incorporated into the gall maker’s. Galls are not limited to woody plants, and they can occur on any part of a plant, including the roots. Oaks entertain more than their fair share of galls.

Galls have been used in tanning leather (many galls, not just those that grow on oaks, are tannin-rich), for prophesy, as inks and dyes, medicines and spices, and as foods for livestock and humans (one source said that galls taste like the plant they grow on).

The BugLady never cuts galls open – it would be violating her Prime Directive (she once gave a class of 5th graders the choice – open a gall and see, but doom, the inhabitant, or not. They left it intact). But, thank goodness there are people who do open them so we can see what’s happening in there!

Typically, galls are built by a single organism, for a single organism, though they may attract inquilines (boarders) or predators/parasites. But, most of the galls in today’s BOTW offer multi-unit housing. Without further ado, here are the galls du jour.

Sumac Leaf Gall

(a.k.a. Red Pouch, Pouch, Balloon, Potato, and Tomato gall)

The gall maker is Melaphis rhois, the Staghorn sumac aphid (the genus of sumac is Rhus). As a group, aphids are not into gall making; this one is in the wooly aphid subfamily (Eriosomatinae), in the family Aphididae, and it’s the only species in its genus. Like many galls, it may look funny, but it doesn’t hurt the plant, though a heavy infestation may cause the sumac’s leaves to turn color and fall a bit early.

The BugLady was happily researching and cutting and pasting information about Sumac leaf galls when she came across by BugFan Bob at the Missouri Master Naturalist Springfield Plateau Chapter’s site. Be sure to watch the video, and then mosey around their site for other good stuff.

Jewelweed Gall

This one is caused by a gall midge named Schizomyia impatientis in the fly family Cecidomyiidae (jewelweed is in the genus Impatiens). Mom lays her eggs on the flower bud, and a gall forms there instead of the normal fruit. This gall also contains . The midge larvae exit the gall in fall – by some accounts overwintering as larvae and by others as adults. Here’s a basic about gall midges.

Willow Rosette Gall

Instigated by a gall midge named Rabdophaga salicisbrassicoides (unless it’s Rabdophaga saliciscoryloides), also in the family Cecidomyiidae (willows are in the genus Salix). There are 105 species in the genus worldwide, and many of them do their work on willows. The gall occurs on a developing leaf bud, and it seems to stimulate the growth of a multitude of squished-together leaves.

Mutualism refers to an ecological relationship in which the acts of organisms of different species benefit each other – a win-win (pollination is the classic example). When researchers Savage and Peterson studied some of the relationships surrounding the willow rosette gall, they found that ants often “farm” (tend to) aphids on willow branches that have galls, and they hypothesized that the presence of ants, aphids and galls in close proximity might somehow benefit all three. They also wondered whether the actions of ants and aphids might somehow protect the gall makers from parasitism. They found that aphids often feed on the gall tissue, causing aphid populations to increase, and that when there are more aphids, there are more galls, but the presence of ants and aphids did not affect the rates of parasitism.

The BugLady recommends that BugFans take a brief detour into the wonderful world of plant volatiles – chemicals given off by plants in order to attract pollinators, to attract predators to feed on bothersome herbivores, and to signal to surrounding plants that they are under attack. Volatiles also help insects identify the right host plants to lay their eggs on (unfortunately, there’s no Cliff’s Notes version, you mostly jump right into the deep end of biochemistry, but try this article from ). Turns out that chemicals given off by the willow leaves lure both the pollinators and the gall makers.

Sunflower Stem Gall

Another gall midge – Asphondylia helianthiglobulus, family Cecidomyydae (wild sunflowers are in the genus Helianthus). are some adults emerging from a gall (the BugLady had a moment when she tried to figure out why the galls in bugguide.net pictures were fuzzy and the ones she has photographed are smooth, but she’s figured it out).

Mossy Rose Gall

(a.k.a. Robin’s Pincushion and Rose Bedequar (from an Arabic word for “wind-brought”) gall)

The gall maker is Diplolepis rosae, a 0.2” long, non-native wasp in the family Cynipidae, which lays as many as 60 eggs in a lateral or a terminal leaf bud. Reproduction is parthenogenic, and the wasps that emerge in spring are 99+% female (probably because of an endemic virus called Wolbachia) (worth another Google detour – female wasps treated with antibiotics produce normal ratios of both male and female eggs). Along with the usual edible, interior tissue that the wasp larvae feed on, the plant also grows sticky, fibrous “tentacles” on the exterior.

Birds and small mammals may excavate the ping-pong-ball-sized galls for the larvae or pupae nesting inside (), and quite a line-up of insects may co-habit the gall harmlessly or with evil intent. The survival rate is higher in galls that are larger and are located on lower branches, and the galls are said to be more common when the rose plant is stressed.

According to Margaret Fagan in , Pliny the Elder (the first-century AD Roman naturalist, not the craft beer) believed that the mossy rose gall was “among the most successful applications for the restorations of hair,” and it has enjoyed a number of other medicinal uses.

Here are links to the previous BOTWs on galls:

• Bug o’the Week – Galls I
• Bug o’the Week – Galls II
• Bug o’the Week – Galls III – Oldball Galls
• Bug o’the Week – Galls IV – Two Oaks and a Hickory

On a totally unrelated topic, the BugLady came across this account by serendipity while she was looking for something else – .

The BugLady

The post Galls V appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady keeps hearing that the summer movie season produced no blockbusters, so she’s running a second blockbuster BOTW in a row.

The goldenrods in the BugLady’s field are exuberant, with new, brilliant yellow flowers opening daily. Goldenrod blooms late, produces a bonanza of pollen (there’s not much nectar there), and is the embodiment of the insect enthusiast’s credo—“Looking for insects? Check the flowers.” Insects—especially flies, bees and wasps—are so excited about it that they’re bouncing off of each other in an effort to reach the flowers (there seems to be a rock-paper-scissors hierarchy to who bumps whom from a flower. Hint: stingers rule). The BugLady wrote about goldenrod’s insect community in 2010; to see who starred in Act I, check Bug o’the Week – Goldenrod Watch.

Visitors come to goldenrod for the pollen, to leave eggs, to ambush their prey, and sometimes just to sit a spell. The BugLady stands in the goldenrod patch looking for new additions to her goldenrod list and being thankful, once again, that she has no close neighbors to notify her family that she’s finally lost it.

Interesting goldenrod facts

1. Various goldenrod species have a long history as dye, food, and beverage plants, and they were used medicinally both internally and externally to treat problems from snake bites to sore throats to toothaches to wounds (there was only one species in Europe before 1492, and its common name was Crusader’s Wound-wort). The Ojibwe name for goldenrods means “sun medicine,” and the Mesquaki (Fox and Sac) mixed it with other herbs to make a wash for a baby who had not learned to talk or laugh so that the baby “would grow up with its faculties intact,” (and in the BugLady’s humble opinion, we could use a little more of that).
2. Thomas Edison believed that goldenrod sap contained enough latex that it would be commercially viable should our traditional sources of rubber be cut off. To this end, he selectively bred goldenrod, producing 12-foot tall plants. The idea didn’t prove to be as popular as some of his other dabbling, but Henry Ford once gave Edison a Model A Ford with tires made of goldenrod rubber.
3. There are about 100 species of goldenrod in North America (on a good day, the BugLady knows maybe a half dozen of them), and they happily hybridize.
4. And it can’t be said often enough—goldenrod has heavy, sticky pollen that is not airborne; ragweed has tiny pollen that blows all over the place. Goldenrod has bright, showy flowers; ragweed has tiny, green ones, and they bloom at the same time. Guess which is falsely accused of causing your hay fever woes?

A photography note—the BugLady’s workhorse Pentax has, alas, never met a yellow it didn’t embrace (especially when the sun is out), and stripping the excess from the pictures has been only moderately successful (lots of yellow on the cutting room floor). At least BugFans won’t have to grope around for their eclipse glasses.

What might you see if you take yourself out to a goldenrod patch?

Gangs of female APHIDS (family Aphididae) sucking plant juices and popping out little aphids parthenogenetically all summer.

BALD-FACED HORNETS (Vespula maculata) looking for nectar—and possibly for tiny insects to masticate and feed to the larvae that wait in one of those football sized/shaped colonial nests.

BEE FLIES (family Bombyliidae) that sometimes hover over the flowers as they extract pollen and nectar with a long proboscis.

A CRAB SPIDER (family Thomisidae), all tucked in, business end up.

DADDY LONGLEGS (family Phalangiidae)—not true spiders, but spider relatives that stalk their prey on foot and do not spin webs. They also do not (NOT) bite people. One source describes them as “a Rice Krispies with legs.”

A FEATHER-LEGGED FLY (Trichopoda sp.) walking across the spray of goldenrod, dipping the tip of her abdomen to touch the flowers. The eggs she deposits will hatch into larvae that will jump aboard the next stinkbug, seed bug, or squash bug that comes along and will parasitize them.

GREENBOTTLE FLIES (Lucilia sericata) that, despite the unsavory reputation of their larvae in service of the CSI folks and the medical profession, keep their feet clean (mostly), feeding on nectar and pollinating flowers (when they’re not laying eggs on something dead).

JAPANESE BEETLES (Popillia japonica), which include goldenrod on the list of more-than-300 plants that they will eat.

A female MOSQUITO (family Culicidae) taking nourishment from plant juices.

A NORTHERN CORN ROOT WORM (Diabrotica barberi). The corn in the field next door, close to nine feet tall, may be the origin of this beetle. Or it may not, since they also eat other grasses, and also members of the squash, bean, and aster families.

An ORANGE/YELLOW-COLLARED SCAPE MOTH (Cisseps fulvicollis), which graces the flowers both day and night. Smaller than the similar-looking, earlier-flying Virginia Ctenucha (the “C” is silent like the “R” in “fish.”), the adults are nectar feeders, and the caterpillars eat grasses, rushes and lichens.

SWEAT BEES – Some insects dine-in, and others come for carry-out (usually because they need pollen to provision nest chambers for their eggs). Special sacs on the legs are one way to transport pollen; other kinds of bees may carry it in bristles on their legs or abdomens.

A PINE TREE CRICKET (Oecanthus pini), here hiding in a clump of flowers on a chilly afternoon, part of the delicious chorus of tree crickets and katydids and field crickets that sings in the BugLady’s field day and night. Hear it at .

You know the drill by now – Go Outside – find some goldenrods!

The BugLady

The post Goldenrod Watch – Act II appeared first on Field Station.

This bug is so exquisite that it’s hard to remember that it’s an aphid. It’s the winged phase; non-winged individuals are, depending on the species, blob-shaped, sesame seed-shaped, or spidery-looking insects seen en masse, . Species of aphids are often associated with specific host plants.

Tree Aphids

The BugLady is going to go way out on a limb here, where taxonomists fear to tread, (she’s so far out that she can’t even see the tree trunk) and guess that this might be in the genus Euceraphis, and she’s going to pretend that the species is papyrifericola to see just how far out, note that the expert at says

Tree aphids are not my strongest area, but I have collected off Betulaceae [birch] enough to know that what I think might be Euceraphis often turns out to be Calaphis when seen mounted on slides. I have little experience with them in the field, and cannot confidently recognize the genera from photos… So, my recommendation is to not put a genus name on many of them in any confident way.

But, for the sake of argument, Euceraphis will open a door onto the tree aphids. The family Aphidae has about 4,700 species (so far), many of which are not major plant pests. Tree aphids are in the subfamily Calaphidinae (a bunch of deciduous tree feeders) and Euceraphis is in the tribe Calaphidini (mainly birch/alder-feeders, and there were birches nearby) (quick aside—Google offered to find for the BugLady some words that rhyme with Calaphidini, and the BugLady couldn’t resist, but they turned out to be words like “eeny,” “teeny,” “weany,” “meany,” and “beany”). There are lots of hits for “tree aphid,” but most sites lump them, discussing generic aphid lifestyles, symptoms of their presence, and bug control, rather than who’s who.

Generic Aphid Lifestyle

Aphids are poised to take over the world. Their reproductive strategy involves legions of females that move around on plants, popping out female young (already nymphs—they skip the egg stage) parthenogenetically (with no male “input”). These clones mature quickly and soon produce their own young. This is why naturalists joke that a female aphid who starts at the bottom of a stem is a great, great grandmother by the time she reaches the top (one species of rose aphid has been clocked at up to 15 generations per growing season). Aphids are designed to cash in quickly on the nutritious new spring growth.

Aphids are generally wingless until an overcrowded plant/deteriorating plant quality signals them to produce winged forms that can migrate to nearby vegetation. They have no “search image”—finding their host species is a matter of chance—so they often wind up on non-host plants accidentally. They are all female until, at the appointed time of the year for each species (usually fall), females will produce winged male and female nymphs. Romance ensues, and so does genetic diversity. Females subsequently lay eggs that overwinter and produce more females in spring, and the beat goes on.

Symptoms

They suck juices from leaf veins, buds, and new twigs. A healthy tree can shrug off the usual level of feeding, but a large infestation can cause brown/curled/wilted leaves and dieback of new shoots and even kill a plant, especially if aphid numbers are high for several years. Excess sap flows out the other end of the bug; it’s sugary, and other insects congregate to feed on the “honeydew” that falls on leaves. Humans are less enthusiastic about the sticky, hard-to-remove-once-it’s-dried stuff on their cars and patio furniture. And honeydew is a great growth medium for an unsightly “sooty mold” that grows on the leaves. With honeydew as a pay-off, some kinds of ants “farm” the nymphs of many kinds of aphids, but not those of Euceraphis.

This individual looks a bit fuzzy. Many adult Calaphidini are initially a lovely, pale green, but, says the Report by the State Entomologist of Minnesota to the Governor, Volume 17 (1919), “Some of the species [of Calaphidini], at least, are further characterized by wax glands on the body, legs, and antennae, which and may serve as protection against some of their enemies.”

Members of the genus Euceraphis have divvied up the birch species and do not poach, even when a tree and its aphid are relocated to a different country. Euceraphis is notable among the tree aphids because all adults, not just a dispersal generation, are winged. According to one source, Euceraphis stops reproducing in mid-summer as leaves mature, and then resumes in fall as sugars in the leaves are being broken down and sent to the roots.

Tree aphids are kept in check by birds, crab spiders, a variety of insect predators like lacewings, syrphid fly larvae, and ladybugs (both adults and larvae). Several small wasps parasitize them, and they are subject to (vocabulary word of the day) entomopathogenic (bad for insects) fungi.

And what about Euceraphis papyrifericola? Large for an aphid at just under three-eighths of an inch, it specializes in paper birch (Betula papyrifera), though it’s unusual because it may sip on gray birch and, when in Rome, on a European alder.

 
The BugLady

The post Tree Aphids (Family Aphidae) appeared first on Field Station.

We have already met the Woolly Alder Aphid (Prociphilus tessellatus) (tessellate—to form or arrange in a checkered or mosaic pattern), through the eyes of one of its predators, the carnivorous caterpillar of the Harvester butterfly, but it has its own story to tell. Woolly Alder Aphids (woolly or woolly—both spellings are correct) are not the only woolly aphids, but they are a common species that can be particularly noticeable in autumn, as leaves fall (the BugLady has also included a picture of some woolly “beech blight aphids” that she found last fall.They were doing the most astonishing alarm behavior, a behavior that has earned them the name “Boogie Woogie aphid.”). .

Wooly Aphids

Woolly aphids (family Aphididae, subfamily Eriosomatinae) are spectacular when sitting on twigs in large assemblages, and startling as individuals, flying through the air like bits of fluff or feathers. Their aerial appearance has earned them common names like fairy flies, fluff bugs, and angel bugs. They’ve also been given the slightly less flattering name “maple blight aphids.”

The “wool” on a woolly aphid is wax, produced by abdominal glands in order to make the aphid look less like a Happy Meal to its predators. The wax streamers shed water, make the aphid look like mold, and are distasteful and distracting (the Harvester caterpillar covers itself in aphid wax, too, and so does the marauding green lacewing larva). Several sources suggested that the strands also assist a woolly aphid when it’s aloft, helping it float in the breezes and disguising it as an airborne plant seed. Some, but not all adults are woolly.

Like many other WAs, a WAA’s lifestyle is complicated, involving two host plants at two different stages of its life. For much of her life, a female aphid reproduces parthenogenetically, popping out live young (clones) all over her host plant without benefit of male companionship and without eggs (no-frills reproduction). Her young can reproduce at an early age, and it’s jokingly said that a female aphid who starts at the bottom of a plant stem is a great-great-grandmother by the time she reaches the top. Someone once calculated that in optimal conditions—good food, balmy days, and no predators—an aphid could have six billion offspring by the end of the season! In times of stress—when they’ve sucked a plant dry, or frosty weather is approaching—a winged generation of both males and females is produced and bodily fluids are exchanged (and genetic diversity is boosted).

WAAs lay their eggs on Silver maple trees (Acer saccharinum) (the eggs have woolly coats, too). The eggs, all female, hatch in spring as leaves are bursting, and the aphids feed along the midrib of the maple leaves. In early summer, as maple leaves are toughening up, a winged generation flies from maple trees to alder shrubs (Alnus sp.). There, they tuck in again, imbibing alder juices.

Decreasing day length signals the alder crowd to produce winged generation (alternatively, they may start producing both males and females when they arrive on the alders, but these reproductive aphids don’t mature until signaled by the end of the growing season), and they make for the maples again. Eggs are laid (just one per female!) in crevices in the bark. Most sources state that the WWA overwinters in the egg stage, but they also mention adults overwintering on maples in fuzzy clumps. WAAs are found in North America east of the Mississippi, and maybe adults of southern populations can overwinter successfully.

Aphids are plant-juice-suckers. They stick their mouthparts in the plant of their choice and drink far more sap than a critter that size would seem to need (it comes out under pressure, too). Why? They’re after the sugars (the carbs) in the sap, but they also need nitrogen, which is present in very small quantities. Young insects, especially, need nitrogen to build proteins—protein is made up of amino acids, and nitrogen is an ingredient of amino acids. The strategy—drink LOTS AND LOTS of plant juices in order to pick up sufficient nitrogen, and jettison the unwanted carbs in the form of a sweet substance called honeydew.

Honeydew is a desirable commodity in the world of invertebrates. If left alone, aphids simply drop their honeydew on surrounding leaves, where it acts like a shiny magnet for flies, wasps, bees, and other vegetarians. But aphids, and other Homopterans like treehoppers and scales, are often seen in the company of ants. These ant guardians care for their flocks, defend them from predators, and even transport them to greener pastures. The payoff is that the ants may “milk” the aphids, harvesting the honeydew directly from the source and transporting it to their nests (some ant species have specialized “tanker ants”). Research has shown that a “farmed” aphid produces more honeydew during its life than an “unfarmed” one, and according to entomologist Debbie Hadley “Some aphid species have lost the ability to poop on their own, and now depend on their caretaker ants to milk them.” The Minnesota DNR cautions us that “while the honeydew excreted by the aphids is very sweet, it is mixed with aphid waste materials, so licking the honeydew off your car windshield is not recommended.”

For all the plant juices that are consumed by WAAs, individually and communally, most sources agree that damage is minimal and WAA control is unnecessary (a big crowd of WAAs might cause some maple leaves to shrivel, but some other species of WAs have a much greater impact on their hosts). As Iowa State University notes in one of its Iowa Insect Information Notes, “Woolly aphids are an important resource for natural biological controls such as lacewings, lady beetles, hover flies, and parasitic wasps. Tolerance of aphid presence is one way to encourage beneficial insects.” They go on to say “Flying adults are a wonderment. They are intriguing, not harmful. When adults are migrating, the feeding and honeydew production on the maples has been accomplished and no control is needed. Relax and enjoy the fascination of Nature.”

That being said, there are several “down-sides” to having WAAs, and honeydew is at the top of the list. It’s sticky, and objects that it falls on (like sidewalks, lawn furniture and cars) get sticky, too. The wasps and bees that are attracted to honeydew have stingers. Thick deposits of honeydew turn out to be the perfect culture medium to grow a “sooty mold,” a creepy looking crusty fungus that can cut off sunlight to a leaf surface.

Read about the Harvester Caterpillar.

World Wide Web note: The BugLady can never resist, when she’s doing a search for something like Prociphilus tessellatus, clicking on the inevitable “Lyrics containing the term Prociphilus tessellatus” site. Surprisingly, there weren’t any.

The BugLady

The post Woolly Alder Aphid (Family Aphididae) appeared first on Field Station.

Aphids are strange and complicated and remarkably successful little critters that carry on a variety of lifestyles worldwide. They were in the order formerly known as Homoptera, which has been folded into the more comprehensive order Hemiptera (where aphids reside in the suborder Sternorrhyncha). The family Aphididae is made up of a bunch of small, soft-bodied, pear-shaped, plant-juice-sucking insects with compound eyes at the front end and twin “tail pipes” (called cornicles) to the rear.

Aphids feed by puncturing plant stems (woody or herbaceous, depending on the species) and guzzling the juices. The phloem in a plant’s vascular system is “under pressure”, so once an aphid pierces the stem, the liquid floods into their siphons, and bacteria in their guts help them process it. Aphids secrete honeydew, a sweet substance that comes out the other end of their alimentary canal and is prized by ants, which collect it directly by “milking” the aphids, and by small bees and wasps, which eat it off of the leaves it falls on.

People don’t like aphids much. An unsightly build-up of honeydew on leaves encourages the growth of an unsightly sooty fungus; a crowd of feeding aphids may stunt, shrivel or deform plant parts; they may transmit viruses to their host plants; and discovering a congregation of aphids is not for the easily queasy.

Quick detour into “Aphids in Literature”—according to Wikipedia, honeydew is mentioned in Norse and Greek mythology (“ash tree nymphs nursed the infant Zeus”) and is a possible interpretation of the manna in the desert in the Hebrew Bible.

The Oleander Aphid

The star of today’s show is the Oleander Aphid (Aphis nerii) (nerii comes from the scientific name for the oleander shrub). It’s also called the Milkweed aphid, a common name it shares with Aphis asclepiadis (the BugLady has seen the pale yellow A. asclepiadis on the undersides of milkweed leaves). The OA’s native haunts are the Mediterranean region (so are the Oleander’s), but now it enjoys warm locations everywhere. How does a 2 ½ mm, mostly wingless animal get from Continent A to Continent B? Wind is a big factor—winged aphids (more about that in a minute) are undoubtedly ingredients in that vast collection of airborne invertebrates called aeroplankton (it has been estimated that a mile-square column of air extending from 20 to 500 feet off the ground contains 32 million arthropods, the majority of which are spiders). Their second vector of dispersal is, of course, the ever-obliging human race, with its continuous need for more and more exotic plantings.

OAs are found everywhere that their host plants grow, and within certain constraints, they are generalist feeders. Oleander, a member of the dogbane family, is found throughout the southern US, but in this neck of the woods, OAs mainly grow on milkweeds. While many species of aphids are muted in color, there’s nothing drab about OAs. They get away with it, of course, because they are feeding on milkweed. The poisons they ingest (cardenolides, or cardiac glycosides) are sequestered within their bodies, and their bright color (aposematic coloration) dares predators to “Come and get it!” And the predators do come—OAs are eaten by spiders, syrphid fly and ladybug larvae, and lacewings, and parasitic wasps deposit eggs in them, but the meal may come with an unexpected price tag.

For small, unarmored insects, OAs are not without defenses. They may simply drop off of a plant, and they have been seen kicking at parasitic wasps. Not only do they store glycosides, they can exude the chemical from their cornicles in a substance called cornicle wax. One bite of the bitter, toxic stuff makes a predator back off and wipe vigorously at its mouth. Researchers observed that larval lacewings that do feed on OAs may not mature normally, that ladybug larvae may have deformed wings as adults, and that afflicted spiders spin aberrant webs.

For most of the summer, female aphids give birth by parthenogenesis (virgin birth) to live female nymphs which give birth to more live, female nymphs, and the multiple generations, having been produced asexually, are clones of Mom. It’s a great way to build up a large population in a hurry (it’s a great way to take over the world). Many species produce male offspring in fall, and the result of the subsequent sexual reproduction is eggs that overwinter (and produce females in spring).

Selected, Short OA Subjects:

• The early generations of aphids on a plant tend to be wingless; winged aphids are produced when a plant gets overcrowded or is stressed or is dying at the end of the growing season. The winged individuals move to nearby plants.
  • Monarch butterfly and milkweed fans have issues with OAs. A frequent question on Monarch sites is “How do I get rid of OAs?” Most of the standard products designed to kill your garden-variety aphids are also bad for monarch eggs and caterpillars; the consensus seems to be that a stream of water strong enough to dislodge OAs but not strong enough to dislodge monarch eggs works best.
  • The BugLady rarely sees OAs tended by ants, though that behavior is known from more southern populations (and she’s seen the other Milkweed aphid, A. asclepiadis, with their ant guardians). Mortality rates observed for monarch caterpillars on milkweed flowers where ants tended aphid herds were seven times higher than on milkweed flowers with aphids alone.
• While genetic diversity is considered key to species vitality, OAs marry their siblings, and there is a remarkable lack of diversity across widespread populations. The BugLady read an interesting paper in which the term “superclone” was used. The superclone phenomenon begins anew at the start of each growing season when the first OA climbs the first new plant stem and pops out her first offspring (annual extinction and recolonization).

An OA Mystery: OAs in the southern U.S. can overwinter as adults (the winter of 2013-14 has surely been a challenge for them), but that’s impossible in Wisconsin, whose OA populations vary from year to year. As far as anyone knows, neither eggs nor male OAs occur in the wild (though that’s not totally impossible. Another hypothesis is that they have a second host. Or they could recolonize God’s Country each year. Or…

 
The BugLady

The post Oleander Aphid (Family Aphididae) appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady spent some very warm days among the Cup plants (Silphium perfoliatum), those jumbo prairie plants whose opposite leaves join around the stem (it’s called a perfoliate leaf) resulting in a small reservoir that often holds rain water or dew. Resource after resource says that these “arboreal puddles” are used by birds, insects and even tree frogs, so the BugLady decided to photograph the action. But it was hot, and the reservoirs were dry, and something pretty dramatic was going on elsewhere on the Cup plants, and the reservoir-users will have to wait for a future BOTW of their own. The undersurface of the tender top leaves of many Cup plants were wall-to-wall with (insert creepy adjective here) red aphids—a cast of thousands—and there were some very cool supporting actors. Life and death, playing out against a red polka-dot backdrop.

What did the BugLady find? Vegetarians first.

Red Aphids

Red aphids, probably in the genus Uroleucon, formerly called Macrosiphum. More than 4,000 species of aphids have been identified, and there is much variation within the group. Your garden-variety aphid consumes lots and lots of plant juice, and according to Eaton and Kaufman’s Field Guide to Insects of North America, “Most aphids have a symbiotic relationship with microbes that live inside them, essentially acting as a ‘sap refinery,’ turning nutrient-poor phloem fluids into essential compounds.” Many species of aphids exude a substance called honeydew , which is harvested by ants or which falls on the leaves and is eaten by visiting flies, wasps, and other insects.

Aphids reproduce by parthenogenesis (pronounced “virgin birth”). Females dominate the plant stems and leaves, popping out tiny replicas of themselves without benefit of romance (or even eggs) and producing, when a leaf or stem gets too crowded or when parasitic wasps abound, winged females that can fly away. As the end of summer nears, Mom produces a generation that includes males, courtship ensues, bodily fluids are exchanged, and eggs are laid that will overwinter, producing a crop of females (“stem mothers”) in spring. And so it goes. They live fast and they live large.

Helmeted Squash Bug

Despite its menacing-looking presence in a herd of aphids, the Helmeted squash bug nymph (Euthochtha galeator) is actually a plant feeder (its similar-looking, equally-spiny assassin bug cousins are a different story).

Dogwood Spittlebug

The BugLady found several Dogwood spittlebugs (Clastoptera proteus) on Cup plants that grew near a red osier dogwood in the prairie; they must have moseyed across the overlapping leaves. In some parts of the country, DSs are called Blueberry Spittlebugs. Oh yes—when the DS/BS walks, the stripy end goes first.

And now the carnivores:

Braconid Wasp

This looks like a Braconid wasp, great with child, and she seems very interested in the gall on the Cup plant’s leaf vein/stem, and that’s about all the BugLady knows about that. Braconid larvae are parasites of other insects; if you’ve ever seen a caterpillar with white “swab tips” on its exterior, you’ve seen Braconids at work.

Daddy Longlegs

The BugLady sometimes finds Ponometia Bird-dropping moths head-down in dry Cup plant reservoirs. She wonders if the Daddy long legs was planning on taking advantage of the “If I-can’t-see-you-then-you-can’t-see-me” pose.

Ladybug Larva

In the insect world, species with Complete metamorphosis (egg-to-larva-to-pupa-to-adult) often change mouth parts and diet when they mature. Not so the Ladybird beetles—pere, mere, fils and fille dine eagerly on aphids.

Lacewing Larva

Both the stiletto-shaped Brown lacewing larva and the chunkier larva of the Green lacewing stalk the Cup-plant leaves, nabbing anything smaller than they are. So do their winged parents.

Long-Legged Fly

These small-but-flashy predatory flies scoot around on the leaf surfaces. Their diets include aphids and mites. According to Eaton and Kaufman, their larvae are poorly known but most are probably also predators. Long-legged flies have been (one of) the BugLady’s “nemesis bugs” this summer, eluding focus.

Robber Fly

Eaton and Kaufman liken Robber flies to a group of birds called flycatchers that sit on perches and “hawk” flying insects as they pass. With their speed and their ability to hold prey with bristly legs, they are able predators.

Syrphid Fly Larva

This larva, the offspring of the small, bee-mimic Flower/Hover/Syrphid flies, starts out as a tiny orange larva on the undersides of the leaves, tackling aphids much larger than itself. There’s a Syrphid fly larva in the opening red aphid picture. Adults feed on nectar and pollen—and honeydew from aphids.

Golden Aphids of Doom

The holes in the tops of these bloated, “golden” aphids were not made when carefree, red aphids shed their stiff, old skin so they could grow into their stretchy, new skin; the exit holes were made by tiny wasps. The wasp larvae that inhabited these aphids are parasitoids; the larvae hatch in or burrow into their host and eat it alive—timing their own pupation with the death of the host. When they are all grown up, they exit through the toughened, golden exoskeleton (some people call the “empties” aphid mummies).

Eggs

Most insects pass the winter in the form of eggs or pupae, though some overwinter as nymphs and others as almost-developed larvae. A smaller number go through the winter as adults. As the red aphid cycle was waning, the BugLady found some eggs that had been left on the Cup plant. A roll of the dice for the future.

Spiders

A variety of spiders also hang out on Cup plants – what better place for a spider to ply its trade than amidst all that traffic? Wooly aphids add their feathery fringe to the stems, and leaf miners trace lines between the top and bottom surfaces of leaves. Others, like the dogwood spittlebug, are just passing through, landing briefly on a leaf before continuing their flights to elsewhere.

 
The BugLady

The post Cup Plant Cosmos appeared first on Field Station.