The BugLady is busy and offers this rerun from 4 ½ years ago. The original has been enhanced with a few new, educational tidbits.

Daddy Longlegs

Daddy longlegs, a.k.a. Harvestman, (because the first species to be described were collected during harvest time, and because they are numerous then) are in the phylum Arthropoda (jointed legs), which consists of the classes Crustacea, Insecta and Arachnida and which, according to one author, accounts for about 80% of “living creatures.” Don’t let the eight legs and the spider-like appearance fool you; Daddy longlegs are not true spiders. Under the big umbrella of the class Arachnida, they belong in the order Opiliones, not with the true spiders in the order Araneae (there are some nice Greek myths about Ariadne and Arachne, and the BugLady trusts that BugFans will look them up on their own).

DLLs have had the same basic design for the past 400 million years, give or take. They are made up of two body segments, a cephalothorax (fused head and body) and an abdomen. The DLL’s waist is broad, leading one author to say it resembles a rice krispies on legs (they can move pretty fast on those long legs). They hear via vibrations; their eyes are on short stalks that look like antennae (but arachnids don’t have antennae); and their eyesight is poor. The senses of taste, touch and smell are incorporated in the longer, second pair of their four pairs of legs. A startled DLL may wave these sensory legs in the air. When they clean themselves, which is often, they pay special attention to the second pair of legs. Males are smaller-bodied and brighter-colored. They are found in fields and meadows, both nocturnally and on bright days.

A DLL might shed a leg if a predator grabbed it or if a venomous invertebrate stung/bit it (it’s called “leg autotomy”). They’ve even developed a unique muscle attachment that minimizes bleeding when they do have to jettison an appendage. One researcher reporting in the Journal of Arachnology noted that the resulting “loss of fitness” is still preferable to “a catastrophic loss of fitness (e.g. death).” DLLs cannot regenerate missing legs, and if they lose both of the sensory legs, they’re toast. Despite their long legs, they carry their bodies close to the ground.

Eisner, in Secret Weapons, calls their ability to produce a noxious odor their second line of defense. When they’re grabbed by the body, a nasty-smelling chemical oozes out of a few dorsal glands, coats the body, and repels predators, especially ants. The odor is undetectable to humans, except those who really get up close and personal. Phalangiists claim they can distinguish species by their odor (Phalangiists. Scientists who work with daddy longlegs. In the Family Phalangiidae. OK, The BugLady may have made up that word).

While not what you’d call “social,” DLLs do gather in large numbers—of hundreds and even thousands—for a variety of reasons; when they collect in fall, it’s thought to be a warming strategy. A congregation of DLLs is a thicket of tiny knees.

Females lay as many as 40 pale green eggs underground in fall, using a long ovipositor. Head-of-a-pin-sized young hatch in spring, live one summer, mate, lay eggs and die. They produce neither web nor nest.

Harvestmen are predators, eating insect eggs, small insects like aphids and springtails and critters as large as snails, earthworms, and other DLLs. A few species scavenge dead or decaying matter. Lacking the venomous fangs of true spiders, the Harvestman hunts for soft-bodied prey which it squeezes with its pincers and then stuffs into its mouth. Please note, boys and girls – “Lacking the venomous fangs of true spiders” means that Daddy Longlegs “Do Not Bite.” They do not have fanged mouthparts and They! Do! Not! Bite!!

The BugLady sometimes sees a daddy longlegs with its body resting flat on a leaf and its legs dangling over the sides, but she has no clue why it does that. She also has a (bad) slide of a shed skin of a DLL (shedding is another time in its life when a DLL might break off a leg)—the critter simply pulled itself out of a slit on the back and walked away, leaving empty legs and an empty body, intact.

The BugLady is not sure why the pair of daddy longlegs on the window screen was “lip-locked” one night in late summer, though in some species, the male gifts the female with a “secretion” before mating. Whatever was going on, there were nine voyeuristic DLLs nearby, watching.

Relatively little is known about Harvestmen. Why? Because although they are beneficial in gardens, they are neither crop pests nor disease vectors, so when research funds are handed out, Phalangiists get bumped to the end of the line.

Jonathan Swift said “a flea hath smaller fleas that on him prey,” (the curse of a liberal arts education). The tiny, red mites found on daddy longlegs fill the same niche as a mosquito or tick does on larger organisms. The Bug Lady always wonders what she would see if she could photograph the mite’s leg.

Long-Bodied Cellar Spiders

Long-Bodies Cellar Spiders (Pholcus phalangioides, family Pholcidae) are true spiders and common household residents. Like the rest of us, they lived in caves before civilization and buildings arrived, and like the rest of us, the relative warmth provided by houses has allowed them to extend their range north. LBCSs are often mistaken for DLLs because of their long legs and similar size—in fact, a common name of these cellar spiders is “Daddy Long-legs Spiders” (another name, because of the shape of the cephalothorax, is Skull Spider).

Unlike DLLs, LBCSs do spin webs, for the purpose of hunting (and they hang upside down in their webs). This spider spun its randomly-shaped web in the BugLady’s shower; most of its confreres do live in her basement, but the BugLady’s house wears Halloween decorations year ‘round. When alarmed, LBCSs may shake or pump up and down so rapidly that both web and spider become a blur (some DLLs also bob, minus the web), confusing predators (but not, alas, the BugLady and her vacuum cleaner).

Rule of Thumb: If it’s outside, it’s a DLL; if it’s inside, it’s a LBCS (especially now that the BugLady’s had her back door replaced).

Small World Department—Wikipedia shows a picture of a DLL eating the tail of a blue-tailed skink. Skinks shed their tails when grabbed just like DLLs shed legs.

Folklore—Harvestmen point in the direction of cows. Around here, they’re right.

 
The Bug Lady

The post Daddy Longlegs Revisited (Family Phalangiidae) appeared first on Field Station.

In a recent BOTW, the BugLady concluded with a bonus picture of a bunch of Northern Pearly-eye butterflies sitting on a cut orange. Pearly-eyes, which forage until sunset, are one of several other species of butterfly that has posed on the orange; others are the Mourning Cloak, the Question Mark, and the Red-spotted Purple. The BugLady puts out oranges for the birds—orioles, house finches, catbirds, and several species of woodpeckers eat the pulp. It’s a hoot to see young Red-bellied woodpecker perched by an orange, being fed by a parent bird.

But the action doesn’t end at sunset. The BugLady often tippy-toes out to check the front and back feeders before she goes to bed (another in an on-going series of reasons why she is glad not to have nearby neighbors, who might wonder at the random flashes of light from the back yard).

There are a variety of baits employed by entomologists to attract insects for a census. They might be mixtures of beer, yeast, sugar, very ripe bananas or other fruit, and a variety of other substances, deployed in dishes, smeared on tree trunks, etc. The BugLady guesses that ants, flies and German yellowjackets and raccoons would be the first and most numerous guests at the table, but that some interesting stuff would come to the night-time table. Here are some of the BugLady’s night visitors.

Ants

Ants of several species excavate the orange. By day, some of the larger Formica-types ants share with diurnal insects. By night, small golden ants with large abdomens cover the orange-tops.

Earwigs

Earwigs, which are taking over the world and are now found in the BugLady’s house year-round, are harmless nocturnal omnivorous scavengers whose chewing mouthparts allow a diet that includes organic debris, other insects (they stalk aphids by night), and plants (they occasionally stalk milkweeds and some fruit—including oranges, apparently—and garden plants).

Underwing Moths

The Underwing moths have a secret. Beneath their very-well-camouflaged front wings lie brightly-striped (pink or orange and black) hind wings. The theory is that when they are startled by a predator, the sight of those striking wings startles the predator and throws it of its game.

The BugLady would like to thank the scientists who christened the Underwings, whose names include the Girlfriend, Inconsolable, Sweetheart, Obscure, Sordid, Sweetfern, Darling, Mother, Aholibah, Widow, and about 100 more in North America alone.

Zale Moths

The BugLady was not acquainted with the Zale bunch until she photographed the Horrid Zale on her porch earlier in the summer. She thinks this may be the Green-Dusted Zale. Not many moths besides the Zales’ have those spiffy, scalloped wing edges.

Another Zale—hanging out with a bunch of anonymous, small-ish moths. Remember—only 5 to 10 percent of Lepidoptera are butterflies.

Daddy Long-Legs

Daddy Long-Legs do not imbibe orange juice—they are predators cruising for the orange-eaters. Maybe they’ll do the BugLady a favor and eat the earwigs that are on the orange.

Fishflies

The biggest surprise of the summer was the arrival on the oranges of several large (close to 3” wingspan) and prehistoric-looking Fishflies, which the BugLady had never recorded there before. Fishflies are Neuropterans (nerve-winged insects), as are lacewings, alderflies, dobsonflies/hellgrammites, and some real oddballs like owlflies and mantidflies. The feathery antennae on the horizontal specimen mark it as a male. Their aquatic young are carnivores, and most references say that adult fishflies eat little or nothing. They’ll change their minds when they see this picture!

The BugLady has been seeing lots of Carolina Locusts hovering in the air, crepitating, hoping to attract the babes. BOTW is archived at the websites of the 51���� Field Station and Riveredge Nature Center. You can find out more about Carolina locusts in the folder marked 51 – 100 at the 51���� site.

Go outside—look and listen—at night.

 
The Bug Lady

The post Night Orange appeared first on Field Station.

It’s a good thing that the BugLady doesn’t have nearby neighbors (or a Home Owners’ Association) who might be alarmed about someone who turns on the porch light and then creeps around taking pictures of porch critters at midnight.

Let’s back up a bit—what’s up with insects and lights? There’s no simple explanation, and there’s no theory that is universally embraced by the entomological community (and some ideas are actively “pooh-poohed”). First of all, many organisms have a strong love for the light (a positive phototaxis ) or a strong avoidance of it (a negative phototaxis). It doesn’t fall out cleanly along nocturnal/diurnal lines—some daytime critters flee the light and some nighttime animals embrace it. What do scientists and the popular press say?

• The most popular theory is that nocturnal insects (most studies are done on moths) navigate by the light of the moon. Because the moon is so distant, their orientation compared to the moon is “fixed” in their navigational apparatus. According to the theory, when they see the BugLady’s porch light, it’s too close, and the light-to-eye angle changes too rapidly compared to the distance flown, confusing them and preventing them from flying in a straight line. While the moon’s rays are almost parallel as they hit the earth, the rays from the porch light beam out in all directions, causing confusion. Besides which, the porch light is brighter than the moon and may interfere with a moth’s ability to see the moon.
• An associated theory says that the eye that receives the most intense light sends a signal to the wings on one side of the body to beat harder and the moth spirals. One scientist discovered that moths fly straight toward light from a distance and adopt avoidance behavior when they get close.
• Some researchers think that nocturnal insects tell up from down by the gradations of light from night sky to shadowy ground (to a moth in danger, “up-toward-the-light” seems to be the desired escape route).
• The type of light makes a difference; insects may be sensitive to lights of certain intensity and wave length. Ultraviolet light is good, and so is white light (which explains the sale of yellow porch lights in summer). Do the wavelengths of different kinds of light cause behavioral disorientation?
• Insects are cold-blooded, and some suggest that they need the heat of the porch light to jump-start their thermostat. But, studies show that cold UV lights attract more moths than “warmer” bulbs. In the BugLady’s experience, our recent, cool nights make for an empty porch.
• Some scientists say that the lunar cycle influences insects. Researchers captured fewer insects with light traps when the moon was full and more in the dark of the moon. In another study, researchers found that mosquitoes were more active during a full moon.
• And then there’s the Evolution card. Some theorize that we’ve been putting up lights only very recently in the moths’ evolutionary timeline, and they just haven’t had time to adapt to us yet. The BugLady discounts this one because like many insects, moths have a one year life cycle, and adaptations can enter the population pretty fast.
• Another guess is that since nocturnal animals pack it in when the sun comes up, they are always on the lookout for signs that night is ending. They fly to the porch light and eventually settle down next to their own personal sun.

At any rate, the BugLady’s nocturnal excursions have yielded pictures for a number of BOTWs (and have thrilled the cats, who wait at the door for misguided moths that fly in). Here’s what’s up and about in the wee hours these days (not including the many mini-moths that the BugLady has fun stalking but cannot identify). Yes, the BugLady is aware that her porch needs washing/painting and her window screens are showing their age. Volunteers are welcome, any time.

The Horrid Zale Moth

Who can resist a moth named The Horrid Zale? John Hubner, the German entomologist who named it Zale horrida in 1818 must have been a Latin scholar—“Horrid” comes from horridus, which originally meant bristly or rough. Its caterpillars feed on viburnums, especially Nannyberry, which grows not far away in the BugLady’s field. For great images of the horrid bristles, try here on the site.

Snout Moth

Some of the Snout Moths didn’t get the memo about proper wing-folding. The BugLady suspects that this beautifully-marked little (3/4”) guy/gal is the Eastern Grass-veneer Moth, Crambus laqueatellus, one of 40 or so similar-looking species in the genus. As its name suggests, its caterpillar feeds on grasses, which the BugLady has, in abundance, close to her porch (though one maverick source says they eat mosses).

Virginia Ctenucid Moth

The Virginia Ctenucid Moth (the “C” is silent like the “r” in “fish”) is a day-flying moth that is often mistaken for a butterfly because of its bold flight (like most moths and unlike most butterflies, it lands on the underside of a leaf).

Crane Fly

The green Crane Fly comes with the fantastic name Erioptera chlorophylla. Crane fly larvae live in damp-to-wet lands ( Erioptera like organic mud) but the adults range far and wide and are often seen on window screens. The BugLady came across a 1913 account from Orono, ME which informed her that when these green beauties are dropped into boiling water, their color disappears. The BugLady can only speculate that they were mistaken for lobsters.

Daddy Long-legs

Daddy Long-Legs are common hunters on the front porch, by day and by night. If one picture is worth 1,000 words, then these two tell quite a story.

[metaslider id=4720]

Stonefly

This large Stonefly had to travel some distance to get to the BugLady’s front porch. Their young (naiads) (aka “trout food”) reside in unpolluted rivers and streams, where they breathe with gills in their “armpits” and at the base of their two tails.

Masked Hunter

The Masked Hunter, of previous BOTW fame, is an assassin bug that made its way here from across The Pond and now ranges across North America. When one of the BugLady’s dust bunnies starts walking, it’s the nymph of the masked hunter. Dust, lint and dog hair attach to their sticky exteriors, providing the perfect camouflage. Its prey here is a small ichneumon wasp.

Mosquito

Finally, a glamour shot of Wisconsin’s state bird, the Mosquito, a constant companion on the porch at night and elsewhere during the day. Female mosquitoes, famously, enjoy a blood meal in order to lay eggs, while males feed on plant juices. Male mosquitoes have fabulous antennae, which they use to tune in to the whine of a female’s wingbeats. When a guy and a gal meet, they adjust the pitch of their hum by increasing/decreasing the speed of their wing beats—until they are humming at the same pitch.

Check out a recent post by insect blogger Dragonfly Woman, on a few of the many .

 
The Bug Lady

The post The Porch at Night appeared first on Field Station.

It has been a while since we took liberties with the term “Bug” and featured a non-insect arthropod. The phylum Arthropoda (“jointed legs”) is “huge” and includes the Crustaceans (fairy shrimp. daphnia, sowbugs. crayfish, crabs and horseshoe crabs), the Arachnids (spiders, daddy long-legs, scorpions, pseudoscorpions, mites and ticks), the insects (insects), the millipedes and the centipedes. The BugLady looks forward to seeing this exquisite little bathroom-dwelling arthropod during the warmer months, and she was pleased to discover that its life is as interesting as its appearance.

Book Scorpian

The BugLady loves bug names that are substantially longer than the bugs themselves. Pseudoscorpions like today’s star, the Book Scorpion, are in the family Pseudoscorpiones in the order Chelonethida/Pseudoscorpionida. There are some 300 species of pseudoscorpions in North America (2,500 worldwide), and they come in both indoor and outdoor models; the species that live outside are found under the cover of bark, leaves and soil. They’ve been around for a while—fossil pseudoscorpions date back 380 million years. They were mentioned by Aristotle and were listed as “land crabs” by Robert Hooke in his amazing 1665 book called Micrographia (check out the Wikipedia entry on Micrographia).

The common House Pseudoscorpion/Book scorpion, Chelifer cancroides, is one of the larger models, measuring 0.2″ long (there’s a picture of one sitting cooperatively by a ruler in bugguide.net). Pseudoscorpions are flat and wedge-shaped, and their color has been described as “rich mahogany. They have 4 pairs of legs, on which they can walk backwards and sideways as well as forwards, and a set of pedipalps/pincers on long appendages that are located in front of the legs. The pincers are armed with poison to subdue their prey and are also used for fighting, for defense, and to build nests. Pseudoscorpions are roughly tick-shaped, but they’re not ticks and are harmless (and even beneficial) to humans.

With silk spun from glands on their jaws they make chambers for overwintering, for molting (a vulnerable time), and for brooding. A spider’s silk glands are at the other end. Most pseudoscorpions are eyeless, but long sensory hairs on their pincers suggest that they navigate through life by touch. They practice phoresy—that is, they hitchhike on insects in order to get from Point A to Point B (the Wikipedia entry on Pseudoscorpions has a photo). Most of the specimens that get captured and turned in for identification are adults because, according to one source, older Pseudoscorpions are less agile and more likely to slide down whatever surface they are climbing up, and they find it harder to right themselves after flipping over on their back. The BugLady can relate.

Book scorpions are predators. Whether they are hanging out on the BugLady’s bathroom walls or between the pages of a book, they are looking for critters to eat. Their menu includes flies, ants, clothes moths, carpet beetle larvae, mites, book lice, and other pseudoscorpions, and they reportedly like bedbugs. All-on-all, nice little critters to have around.

These tiny, sightless critters have developed an elaborate life cycle. It begins with a courtship dance that may last as long as an hour. Males create a mating territory 1 to 2 centimeters square, possibly using pheromones (scents) to mark its area. According to the Little Golden Guide to Spiders and their Kin by Levi and Levi, when a female enters his territory, the male waves his pincers, vibrates his abdomen or taps his legs. The couple lock pincers and pull each other back and forth; he eventually guides her to a spermatophore (sperm packet) that he has laid on the ground, and she picks it up. The female carries the fertilized eggs (about 2 dozen) in a silken sac/brood pouch attached to her abdomen; the young stay in the sac after hatching and consume a milk-like substance that she produces in her ovaries. Even after they leave the sac, the young may continue to piggy-back on Mom for a while. Young pseudoscorpions molt several times over a year or so before becoming adults. Adults may live for 3 years—quite a life span for such a small creature.

 
The BugLady

The post PseudoScorpion (Family Pseudoscorpiones) appeared first on Field Station.

Daddy Longlegs

Daddy longlegs, a.k.a. Harvestman, (because they are numerous around harvest time) are in the phylum Arthropoda (jointed legs), which consists of the Crustacean, the Insect and the Arachnid Classes and, according to one author, accounts for about 80% of living “creatures” (his word). Since beetles are arthropods and every 5th living thing is a beetle, we’re in the right ballpark. Don’t let the eight legs and the spider-like appearance fool you; Daddy longlegs are not true spiders. Under the big umbrella of class Arachnida, they belong in the order Opiliones, not with the true spiders in the order Araneae, (and there are nice, Greek myths about Ariadne and Arachne, which The Bug Lady trusts you will look up on your own).

They have two body segments, a cephalothorax (fused head and body) and an abdomen. The daddy longlegs’ waist is broad, leading one author to say it resembles a rice krispies on legs. They “hear” via vibrations. Their eyes are on short stalks that look like antennae (which arachnids don’t have); their eyesight is poor. The senses of taste, touch and smell are incorporated in the longer, second pair of their four pairs of legs. Daddy longlegs clean themselves often, paying special attention to these legs. They can shed legs to escape predators but, unlike other arthropods, cannot regenerate them, and if they lose both of the sensory legs, they’re toast. And, despite their long legs, they carry their bodies close to the ground.

Males are smaller-bodied and brighter-colored. Harvestmen may congregate in large numbers in fall, which is thought to be a warming strategy. They are found in fields and meadows, both nocturnally and on bright days. Up to 40 pale green eggs are laid underground in fall, through a long ovipositor. Head-of-a-pin-sized young hatch in spring, live one summer, mate, lay eggs and die. They produce neither web nor nest.

Harvestmen are predators, eating insect eggs, small insects like aphids and springtails and critters as large as snails and earthworms. Some scavenge dead or decaying matter. Lacking the venomous fangs of true spiders, the Harvestman hunts for soft-bodied prey which it squeezes with its pincers and then stuffs into its mouth. Please note, boys and girls—“Lacking the venomous fangs of true spiders” means that Daddy Longlegs “do not bite.” They do not have fanged mouthparts and They! Do! Not! Bite!! They do produce a noxious odor as a defense (undetectable to humans, except those who get really up close and personal). Phalangiists claim they can distinguish species by their odor (Phalangiists – Scientists who work with daddy longlegs. In the family Phalangiidae. What did you think The BugLady meant?) (OK, The BugLady may have made up that word).

The BugLady sometimes sees a daddy longlegs with its body resting flat on a leaf and its legs dangling over the sides, but she has no clue why it does that. She also has a slide of a shed skin of a daddy longlegs—the critter simply pulled itself out of a slit on the back and walked away, leaving empty legs and an empty body, intact.

The pair in of daddy longlegs on the screen were photographed, “lip-locked” one night in late summer. About nine voyeur daddy longlegs were nearby on the screen, taking in the action.

Relatively little is known about Harvestmen. Why? Because although they are beneficial in gardens, they are neither crop pests nor disease vectors, so when research funds are handed out, Phalangiists get bumped to the end of the line. Jonathan Swift said “a flea hath smaller fleas that on him prey,” (the curse of a liberal arts education). Notice the spot of red on the back leg on your right (no, the Harvestman’s back leg). It is a tiny mite, which fills the same niche as a mosquito or tick does on larger organisms. The Bug Lady always wonders what she would see if she could photograph the mite’s leg.

Long-bellied Cellar Spider

The Long-bellied Cellar spider (Pholcus phalangoides) is a true spider and common household resident that is often mistaken for a harvestman because of its long legs and similar size—in fact, a common name of these cellar spiders is “Daddy Long-legs Spiders” and its scientific name also alludes to that fact. When alarmed, they may shake or pump up and down so rapidly that both web and spider become a blur, confusing predators (but not, alas, the BugLady and her vacuum cleaner).

Folklore—Harvestmen point in the direction of cows. Around here, they’re right.

 
The BugLady

The post Daddy Longlegs appeared first on Field Station.