BugFan Dave shared these spectacular pictures of a very cool beetle that he found last summer – a ground beetle in the family Carabidae, a huge family with 40,000+ species. It’s in the subfamily Scaritinae, the “Pedunculate ground beetles,” so-named for the constriction – peduncle – between the wider thorax and abdomen. The wonderful “MOBugs” blogspot (“Missouri’s Majority”) suggests that they should be called “Scary pincher ground beetles.” It’s in the genus �����������ٱ����(skar-EYE-tees), a genus that numbers about 190 species worldwide with seven or eight (or nine) species in North America, most of them with very small, very southern ranges. 

More about the ID of this beetle in a sec. 

SCARITES – THE GENUS

Scarites beetles are often found under loose rocks and bark, boards, mulch, leaf litter, and debris, on forest floors, on or burrowing into moist, sandy soil, in gardens, in residential areas, and at the edge of agricultural fields. They’re common, though, alas, the BugLady’s never seen one – she needs to turn over more logs. Their mandibles and general air of invincibility cause some people to mistake them for stag beetles , which are in a different family.

They are shiny and black, with spiky legs and an armored-looking head. The elytra (hard wing covers) are ridged/grooved, and a couple of “creases” on the shield that covers the thorax form a “T.” Males tend to be larger and “toothier” than females, with a slightly more bulging head. Some sources describe the larvae as looking like “fast-moving millipedes with large jaws” .

Like many ground beetles, they are fierce and speedy predators that shelter during the day and hunt at night. Pedunculate ground beetles – La mère, le père et les enfants – eat a variety of surface and soil-dwelling invertebrates like earthworms, slugs and snails, caterpillars, maggots, ants, etc. It’s also reported that they eat insect eggs and that they scavenge on dead insects, including dead Scarites, and that they may eat some plant material. They’re considered beneficial around gardens and agricultural fields, though they don’t discriminate between pest and non-pest prey. At an inch-or-so long, they’re big enough so that researchers have attached transmitters to their abdomens to track their activities in agricultural fields! Some ground-foraging songbirds eat them. 

In fact, several Extension publications offered tips about attracting Scarites beetles to your garden, creating a refuge by leaving a portion of lawn bare and/or un-mowed and/or brushy (all of which benefits solitary wasps, too), and, as always, by limiting/eliminating pesticides.

The BugLady couldn’t find much about their biographies other than the fact they overwinter as both larvae or adults, and the fact that when they’re alarmed, they will fall over, pull in their antennae and legs, stiffen, and play dead. One blogger reported a strange, but not unpleasant odor when he handled a “dead” one. The mandibles appear to be Defense Option B.

There’s a video of a Scarites beetle on the “All Bugs Go to Kevin” blog , and one of a larva at the original Bug of the Week site , where Professor Raup reports seeing them in his garden, “On several occasions I have seen Scarites larvae dashing across patios and walkways as they move from one planting bed to the next.”

So – which Scarites is this?

THE LONG-JAWED PEDUNCULATE GROUND BEETLE (Probably)

The two most common, most widely-distributed genus members in North America are the Big-headed/Pedunculate ground beetle (Scarites subterraneus)�������Ի���Scarites vicinus , which most sources said has no common name but that one source called the Long-jawed pedunculate ground beetle. The two are tough to tell apart, even by experts. The BugLady is going to take her usual taxonomic leap and say that this is Scarites vicinus, based on her reading of the shape of the three antennal segments (antennomeres) – slightly elongated vs round . Scarites vicinus is also larger than Scarites subterraneus, with a broader head, and the shield on the thorax is “rounder.” All of which can be somewhat subjective – the eye of the beholder. There’s more information available about the Big-headed ground beetle than there is about the Long-jawed pedunculate ground beetle. 

They’re found in a few mid-Atlantic states, a couple of Gulf states, and some Great Lakes states – and South Dakota.

Thanks, Dave. 

The BugLady

The post Long-jawed Pedunculate Ground Beetle appeared first on Field Station.

Typically, when insects like flies, bees and wasps, beetles, butterflies and moths, and a few others – insects with Complete metamorphosis (egg, larva, pupa/resting-changing stage, adult) – mature, they not only take on a new form, but they also adopt a new menu and a new place to live. One constant in the BugLady’s firmament has been that, as the exception that proves the rule, adult lady beetles eat aphids, and immature/larval lady beetles eat aphids, too. 

Vegetarian lady beetles??? Thanks to BugFan Tom, in the Deep South, for providing both the education and the pictures. 

Disclaimer: Squash lady beetles, aka Squash beetles, are not the same as squash bugs , no matter how interchangeably the BugLady uses the terms. But, when you Google Squash beetle, you’re soon awash in hits for Squash bugs.

Squash lady beetles (Epilachna borealis) are in the Lady beetle family Coccinellidae and the Plant-eating Lady beetle subfamily Epilachninae. There are three North American species in the genus Epilachna, and a lot more elsewhere. Squash lady beetles are found in many of the states from Texas to Massachusetts, but not in Wisconsin , and they’re said to be more abundant along the Atlantic Seaboard.

Besides their diet, the other thing that startled the BugLady about them is that many of our Wisconsin lady beetles have cool patterns on their head and thorax ,, , and seeing a lady beetle with a “nude” front end  was, well, a little unsettling. 

So, what about that diet? Most lady beetles are carnivores, stalking small, soft-bodied invertebrates over the plant leaves. They (inadvertently) aid farmers by eating the things that eat the crops. Squash lady beetles feed on the crops – cucumbers, melons, zucchini, gourds, pumpkins, cantaloupe, and squash. Both the bristly, little larvae (whose spikes have spikes ) and the adults eat the tender tissue between the leaf veins (the larvae only feed on the underside of the leaves ), but they may graduate to the rind of the fruits when the fruits appear, chewing patterns that remind the BugLady of crop circles (yes – squashes and melons are considered fruits because they develop from the flower’s ovary and contain seeds). 

Squash lady beetles are featured on a whole bunch of Extension Agricultural Bulletins, and although some sources say that they don’t get numerous enough to become pests, cosmetic damage due to their feeding may make produce less sale-able. Worst possible scenario – leaves skeletonized by large numbers of larvae don’t photosynthesize as readily, plants don’t thrive, and they produce fewer fruits.

Before they tuck into a leaf or rind, the beetle chews a spiral “trench” around the feeding area, a habit that has had scientists scratching their heads. Originally, it was thought that the trench, like the small, upstream cuts made by dogbane leaf beetles, worked to minimize the plant sap in the area. Scientists speculated that the chemicals in the sap (cucurbitacin), and the sticky sap itself, hindered feeding.

The BugLady found a couple of papers about this. One researcher, writing in 1985, concluded that both adult and larval feeding on leaves triggers cucurbitacin in the injured leaf and in its neighbors, and that cucurbitacin repels the lady bug and may stunt the larva, and that the trenches serve to block the movement of the chemicals, temporarily.

A second paper in 1995 (and the author of the first paper was a co-author of the second) concluded that feeding by the Squash lady beetle did not cause a build-up of cucurbitacin, that the presence of cucurbitacin actually stimulates the beetles to feed, and, in fact, ingesting it doesn’t affect the larvae. It suggests instead that the trenches may act as dams against the plant’s sticky sap, which gums up the beetle’s mouthparts.

Squash lady beetles overwinter as adults under tree bark or under leaf litter at the edge of an agricultural field. They hike/fly back into the fields when the squash plants are leafing out, feed on the leaves for a while, find romance, and then oviposit on the leaf or vine in July, laying as many as 400 eggs, in clusters of about 45 . The larvae feed, then pupate, on the underside of the leaf, and emerge in late August. Adults feed for a few weeks before leaving the field and finding a sheltered spot for the winter. 

They have a Super Power. 

Like “regular” lady beetles, they “bleed” from their leg joints when alarmed (reflex bleeding), and that blood repels other insects. And, oily droplets on the end of the larva’s spikes repel insects. And, oily drops on hairs on the pupae deter ants. Despite the chemical protection, stink bugs and assassin bugs prey on them, tachinid flies parasitize them, and lady beetles – including other Squash lady beetles – may eat the eggs.

Here’s the aforementioned Dogbane leaf beetle’s story – Dogbane Leaf Beetle Revisited (Family Chrysomelidae) – Field Station

The BugLady

The post Squash Lady Beetle appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

It’s New Year’s Eve, and BugFans are probably either partying or watching reruns. Today’s BOTW is a rerun of one of the BugLady’s favorites. Think of it as a Holiday Movie.

When BugFan Kine sent this “What is it?” picture, the BugLady’s first reaction was to raise her hand and say “Teacher, teacher! Ask me!  Ask me!”&�Բ�����;She didn’t recall its name, but she knew she had seen a picture of it in Kaufman’s Field Guide to Insects of North America. (It’s also in the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders). It has the look of a darkling beetle (family Tenebrionidae), but it’s in the fairly closely-related family Zopheridae (no common name) and the subfamily Zopherinae — the ironclad beetles. Thanks, Kine!

Not a Wisconsin beetle.

Fascinating Ironclad Beetle Fact #1: They’re called Ironclad Beetles because they have a phenomenally strong exoskeleton. So strong that you can’t kill them by stepping on them. (In the words of Alejandro Santillana of the University of Texas, “Step on one and it will probably just give a coleopteran shrug and walk away.”) So strong that if you are able to kill one, you can’t mount it on an insect pin without first drilling a hole in it.

There are 19 species in the genus Zopherus, and they’re found from Venezuela to Texas, west to California, including Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. Ten species of Zopherus live in North America. Zopherus means “dusky” or “gloomy” in Greek (today’s beetle is the flashiest). Here are a few other species:

Kine’s beetle, the Texas or Southwestern ironclad beetle (Zopherus nodulosus haldemani) also comes in an . Its , and so is . Like other family members, its head is partly sheltered/pulled under the front edge of the thorax, making it look like it’s considering a somersault. 

One source says that Texas ironclad beetles look as though a random bunch of black paint droplets fell on them. Another source suggests that they’re bird-poop mimics. Nodulosus refers to the lumps/nodes on the beetle’s back, especially on the elytra (wing covers), and this species also has four noticeable tubercles on the rear edge of the elytra. 

The job of the elytra, which are the hardened, front pair of wings, is to protect the membranous flying wings that are folded beneath them, a beetle invention that allows them to crawl under logs and rocks without shredding those delicate wings. But Mother Nature has played a little trick here. Beetles in this genus, indeed, in this family, often lack flying wings, and their elytra are fused together. No flying wings = no flying. 

They live in east and central Texas, south into northeastern Mexico. Adults are sometimes seen on the trunks of pecan, oak, and elm trees where, despite/because of their coloration, they blend in pretty well. The larvae are found in dead trees and may eat fungi within the rotting wood, but in his blog arrantsoutdoors, Josh Arrants says that “We are sure it eats lichens, dead wood and plant material, even taking fungi…. We also believe that all stages of (Zopherus nodulosus haldemani) eat lichens on dead, or mostly dead, trees.”&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

There is very little biographical information about this striking, relatively-common-within-its-range, inch-long beetle! Presumably, eggs are laid in bark crevices, which, says Arrants, provides “a highly probable area for the larvae to be able to find and consume lichens.”&�Բ�����;. 

Fascinating Ironclad Beetle Fact #2: In her article about them in the Texas Co-op Power newsletter, Sheryl Smith-Rodgers calls them “Lazarus bugs.”&�Բ�����;On several occasions, she fished “dead” beetles from the bottom of water buckets, only to have them revive and walk away. They are even hard to kill with the standard-issue insect killing jars. (Apparently they can hold their breath for a very long time.)

Fascinating Ironclad Beetle Fact #3: When alarmed, Ironclad beetles play dead (tonic immobility and death feigning and thanatosis are fancier names), and they can play for longer than most people have the patience to wait for their revival. . 

Fascinating Ironclad Beetle Fact #4: With the help of some glue and sparkly stones, some genus members, including this species, are used as . 

MIND-BLOWING Ironclad Beetle Fact: Science, of course, is interested in this impenetrable insect. The composition of the layers of its exoskeleton have been parsed, and the potential applications are pretty amazing. It is being “copied” in a design for the suspension system of combat vehicles, with the hope that it can bounce back after an IED or other explosion. Even better, First Place in the 2018 NASA competition to design habitats for Mars (the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge) went to !

Mother Nature creates, and man imitates.

Happy New Year.

The BugLady

The post Texas Ironclad Beetle Rerun appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady has been scouring the landscape and aiming her camera at anything that will sit still (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.   

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

They 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 dry 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

These 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 — 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 1½” to 2” long Fork-tailed bush katydid… .  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.”&�Բ�����;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.”&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

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!

The BugLady

The post Summer Sights appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy BugFans,

Last fall, BugFan Joanne told the BugLady about a fabulous tiger beetle she saw in the dunes at Kohler Andrae State Park, and the BugLady was determined to find one this year. Tiger beetles are a wonderful group in the Ground beetle family Carabidae. They’re varied and beautiful (and surprisingly cryptic); they’re unapologetic predators as both larvae and adults; and they have a bunch of very cool adaptations – that allow them to live and hunt pretty much out in the open. Tiger beetles have a lot of fans. View Tiger Beetle 101.

The Big Sand Tiger Beetle (Cicindela formosa) is in the tribe Cicindelini (the “Flashy Tiger Beetles”) and in the genus Cicindela (the “Temperate Tiger Beetles”), and its species name formosa means “handsome.” Big Sand Tiger Beetles are divided up into six subspecies, most of which occupy fairly small ranges that lie to the west of us. (, and be sure to click on some of the pictures.) Alert: BugFans will note that shows only five subspecies, but Cicindela formosa gibsoni was recently split.

Big Sand Tiger Beetles (BSTBs) occupy a sizable chunk of real estate in the center of the continent. Oddly, although there’s plenty of apparently-favorable habitat from the Carolinas to Texas, BSTBs are not found there. Our local subspecies is Cicindela formosa generosa, also called the Eastern Sand Tiger Beetle (). As their name suggests, Eastern Sand Tiger Beetles (ESTBs) are found in sparsely vegetated, dry sandy areas, dunes, sandbars in rivers, pine barrens, blowouts, and roadsides in roughly the . They have little competition for these inhospitable habitats.

At about three-quarters of an inch long, they are big—the ESTB is the largest Cicindela species in the Upper Midwest. The background color can vary, as can the width of the pale, scroll-like markings on the elytra (wing covers)— and .

The BugLady couldn’t find anything about tiger beetle courtship, other than a comment that for all their excellent eyesight, males sometimes attempt to mate with other males and even with other species—not all of the cues they use to distinguish gender and species have been discovered by scientists (or indeed, by the beetles themselves), but . Female tiger beetles lay one egg at a time, each in a carefully selected spot – BSTBs bury their eggs in the sand. dig tunnels, and BSTB larvae dig the deepest tunnels of all tiger beetles – from one foot to more than six feet deep. In the Field Guide to the Tiger Beetles of the United States and Canada, Pearson, Knisley, and Kazilek, speculate that “Apparently the great depth of their burrows allows larvae to survive the winter below the frost line.”  Depending on food supply and latitude, BSTBs may live two or more years; usually a long insect life span is spent mostly in the larval stage, but BSTBs may overwinter either as larvae or as adults. Look for them in May and June and again in August and September.

They eat small insects and spiders, which the adults chase and catch, and . ESTBs are said to be particularly fond of ants (one field guide showed a picture of a tiger beetle with the detached head of an ant clamped to its antennae by the ant’s jaws), but adult ESTBs are big enough to attack insects as large as other tiger beetles.

Tiger beetle larvae in their tunnels are susceptible to the larvae of bee flies, and the BugLady did see several kinds of bee flies in the dunes. Female bee flies lob their eggs into the entrances of the tunnels that solitary bees, wasps, and tiger beetles dig to lay their eggs in, and when they hatch, the fly larvae hike down the tunnel and feed on the larvae they find there. Birds and robber flies feed on the adults, but they have to be quick.

Temperature control is critical for sand-loving species. ESTBs adapt to the hot surface of the sand partly by coloration – like many species of Tiger Beetles, that deflect heat from below. They stand “on tiptoes” (“stilting”) to get farther from the heat, and they will face the sun (they have ) to minimize the surface area exposed to its rays. They shelter in the vegetation at night, and, because of their size, it takes ESTBs longer to warm up and get out on the sand than smaller species.

FUN FACTS ABOUT ESTBs: In Tiger Beetles of Minnesota, Wisconsin & Michigan, Matthew Brust reports that “the adults are strong fliers, and perhaps due to their large size, emit an audible buzzing noise. Commonly fly 20 to 60 feet. Curiously, adults typically bounce or tumble when landing.”&�Բ�����; [Nota bene: Because they must hold their elytra out to the side when they fly in order to uncover the membranous flying wings (like a tiny bi-plane), beetles make lots of awkward landings.]

The BugLady recommends Brust’s book, not only because it is comprehensive and regional and gloriously illustrated, but because of its prose: “Males are apparently very protective of their paternity, and a behavior called contact guarding is commonly observed. In this case a male will remain coupled with a female (a male remains on the back of the female, using his mandibles to grasp her thorax) for some time after copulation so as to prevent another male from mating with that female and possibly removing his sperm. In some cases, the male may guard the female for up to an hour. It is common for females to actively hunt for prey while the male is still coupled. However, it seems the interests of the males and females are often very different.While the male is usually very concerned about protecting his paternity, the female typically seems more concerned with foraging and other routine behaviors. So while the male tries to remain coupled with the female as long as he can, the female will often use a variety of tactics to attempt to dislodge him. These female behaviors typically involve violent shaking initially, but if such tactics do not work, females will often run through dead vegetation in order to clothes-line the male. In extreme cases she may actually simply stop in a direction that points the male’s back directly at the sun, thereby cooking him off (the male will quickly overheat if he does not disengage).”

The BugLady

The post Big Sand Tiger Beetle appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

Ever since she read about beewolves years ago, the BugLady has been hoping to photograph one so she could tell its story. She finally found one in the dunes at Kohler-Andrae State Park, and no – the Rose chafer beetle in the picture has nothing to fear from it, and vice versa.

Beewolves are small, solitary, mostly black wasps in the family Crabronidae, which we have met before in the person of Square-headed and Sand wasps. Our beewolf species look a lot alike (and they resemble a lot of other small, solitary wasps, too), but the BugLady thinks that this is a Sanborn’s beewolf (Philanthus sanbornii). They’re ½” to ¾” long (females are larger than males). Here’s a .

Their common name, beewolf, describes what they do, and their genus name, Philanthus, from the Greek for “lover of flowers,” describes where they do it. They’re also called digger wasps, bee-hunters, and bee-killer wasps. There are about 140 species of beewolves spread across North America (32 species), Europe, and Northern Africa, and the European beewolf (Philanthus triangulum), a honeybee specialist, is probably the most famous/most studied.

The natural history of Sanborn’s beewolf is, with a few tweaks, similar to that of many solitary wasps – the female digs a tunnel with separate chambers for each egg. She stashes paralyzed prey in each, and when each cache meets with her approval, she lays an egg in it, seals the chamber, and closes the tunnel. The eggs hatch; the larvae eat the still-living bees left by Mom (beewolf Moms leave another gift as well – more about that in a sec), and emerge the following spring. Adults are nectar-feeders and are good pollinators.

Let’s flesh that out a little for beewolves in general and Sanborn’s beewolf in particular.

Males emerge from the nest tunnels in late spring/early summer a few days before females. They mark territories by depositing on twigs some pheromones made in their mandibular glands, and these pheromones both attract females and warn other males of the territorial boundaries. Territories are about food and generally contain attractive nectar or honeydew sources. After they mate, the female Sanborn’s beewolf digs a tunnel up to 10 inches long (she likes packed sand, which is probably why the BugLady found her in the dunes) and starts provisioning it. Here’s a nice series showing . Males dig shallow burrows to spend the night in.

About Philanthus genus members, Heather Holm, in her massive and brilliantly-illustrated book Wasps, tells us that, “Many Philanthus females excavate accessory burrows near the real nest burrow entrance. These burrows may play a role in distracting natural enemies such as bee flies (family Bombyliidae) or satellite flies (family Miltogramminae) because they remain open while the real nest burrow is closed when the female is away from the nest.” The BugLady saw a number of bee flies along the trail that day – a future BOTW if she can only ID them.

She visits a flower, and according to Holm, if she sees an appropriately-sized bee on it, she “hovers downwind to detect the prey’s scent for confirmation, then returns to the flower to capture and sting the prey.” She apparently judges the readiness of each nest chamber by bulk – packing in larger numbers of small prey and smaller numbers of large prey, and Holm says that a female makes only one nest tunnel in her lifetime.

Sanborn’s beewolves are larger than the average beewolf and so can pursue larger prey. They are generalists – almost everything is fair game as long as they can subdue and carry it, and they don’t play favorites. Menu items include more than 100 different species of bees and small wasps including honey bees, long-horned, mining, leafcutter, and sweat bees, and fellow crabonids. Beewolves deliver venomous stings, aiming for the underside of their prey’s thorax, between the legs, and they grip their prey so that if it tries to sting back, it can only reach an armored section of beewolf.

Beewolves spend a lot of down-time. The egg is laid near the top of the pile of paralyzed bees; the larva emerges from the egg by mid-summer and consumes the food cache, makes a cocoon, and goes into a prepupal stage within its cell. It doesn’t pupate until the next spring/early summer shortly before it is scheduled to emerge for its short (a little more than a month) adult life.

Now – the BugLady knows that you were told that there would be no microbiology…

Beewolves have developed a very cool way to boost the fitness/survival/success of their offspring. Along with fresh meat, the female beewolf leaves for her offspring what one source calls a bacterial birthday present. Female beewolves cultivate in the base of their antennae a white paste that contains Streptomyces. Streptomyces is a large genus of bacteria that’s used (by us) in the production of antibiotic, antifungal, anti-parasitic, and immunosuppressant drugs (think neomycin and streptomycin, among others). The bacteria associated with beewolves has been named Candidatus Streptomyces philanthi’.

What does she do with it? She leaves some in each brood cell, and the larvae find it and incorporate it into their cocoons. Brood chambers are warm and dark and moist – perfect petri dishes for a variety of soil microbes that might infect a larva or pupa. Candidatus Streptomyces philanthi’ produces at least nine different antibiotics that protect against bacterial and fungal infections (researchers Seipke, Kaltenpoth and Hutchings call it a “multi-drug therapy”). Scroll down to the great . After this phenomenon was discovered in beewolves, it was found in two species of mud dauber wasps – this may be a “tip-of-the-iceberg” moment.

Want a deep dive into the world of Streptomyces? Here’s an .

Ain’t Nature Grand!!!

(So – Bee wolf, not Beowulf) (the BugLady has been waiting so long to say that) (maybe not long enough?)

The BugLady

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Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady was surprised, as she trekked across the dunes at Kohler-Andrae State Park one steamy day in early July, to find this small, gangly beetle hanging out on some yarrow flowers. The – the beetle’s legs reminded her of the clingy legs of a June bug. It turned out to be a Rose Chafer (Macrodactylus subspinosus), which is in the Scarab beetle family (Scarabaeidae) and in the same subfamily as the June beetle. It’s called “chafer” because it chafes at the tops of petals and leaves of rose plants (among others); “Macrodactylus” means “big fingers,” a nod to the long tarsal claws.

Rose chafers can be found in grasslands, gardens, and viney edges over much of eastern North America as far west as Colorado and Montana, although distribution gets spotty the farther South you get. They especially like sandy areas (more about that in a sec). Bugguide.net considers the western records to be “iffy” because of the possibility of confusing the Rose chafer with one of the other two species in the genus Macrodactylus that live north of Mexico, but insects can find an infinite number of ways to hitchhike. (, and )

They’re about a half-inch long (females are bulkier than males), covered with yellow hairs that rub off with age (or in the case of the female, with mating), exposing the dark cuticle beneath. The official name for their antennae is “lamellate,” which means “.” The legs are spiny and the (all the better to hang on with, my dear).  Several sources said that the beetles may resemble a wasp while in flight (maybe because of the dangling legs?).

The BugLady does not garden. She puts her geraniums out on the porch in May, waters them when she thinks of it (they’re very patient), and hauls them back in at the end of October, at around midnight as the first killing frost is descending, and she wouldn’t know what to do with a rose bush if she had one. Rose chafer beetles feed on the leaves and flowers and maybe the nectar and pollen of lots of different kinds of plants. Their jaws are weak, so they eat the tender tissue between the leaf veins, skeletonizing the leaf; they make holes in petals; and they eat soft fruits like raspberries and grapes.

Some sources say that the beetle is only a slight nuisance, doing mainly cosmetic damage; others give instructions for all-out warfare. Their populations wax and wane, and when there’s a Rose chafer population boom, the beetles may consume a substantial portion of a leaf’s photosynthetic surface and may also impair pollination. Plus, they may feed in groups. Interestingly, the North Carolina State Extension write-up about Rose chafers calls them a “relatively minor pest of roses that at one time was apparently much more abundant.”

With many insect “pests,” it’s the larvae that do the most damage, but with the chafers, it’s the adults who are the problem. Rose chafer larvae feed underground on the roots of grasses and other plants, and although a bumper crop of larvae can stunt a plant, they don’t seem to be a real threat to turfgrass or ornamentals.

Rose chafers can be seen during June and July here in the North. The plants that they feed on also serve as Social Clubs where . When this was posted on bugguide.net, entomologist Eric Eaton responded “I don’t think they are ‘eating’ the milkweed. This kind of aggregation is usually associated with mating or “sleeping.” This seems to be another example of insects chewing on plants; plants releasing volatile compounds to discourage that; and those compounds, perversely, attracting a crowd. The Rose chafers use their antennae to key in on those plant “odors.”

The female oviposits in the soil, digging down as far as six inches below the surface (!!!), which is why she prefers plants that grow in sandy soil. She may lay from six to forty eggs, and when they hatch in a few weeks, the larvae locate roots to feed on. They will move up and down in the soil, depending on soil moisture and soil temperature, and they will overwinter deep in the ground, below the frost line, moving up toward the surface to pupate when the earth warms in spring.

Many of the scarabs are nocturnal, but Rose chafers are abroad during the day. They are strong fliers.

Rose Chafer Surprise: Rose chafers produce cantharidin, a caustic chemical mainly found in beetles in the blister beetle family Meloidae! Although the author of one gardening blog noted that he had been picking them off of plants for decades with no ill effects (the skin on our fingers is pretty tough), he joined the chorus of authors who stressed that the beetles are poisonous to chickens and other birds.

In his “Living with Insects” blog, entomologist Jonathan Neal explains “Their toxicity to chickens led to one of the early scientific studies of toxins in insects. In 1909, George Lamson, Jr, of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station investigated reports of a flock of chickens that died after feeding on the abundant Rose Chafers. Lamson fed Rose Chafers to chickens and determined the numbers required to kill week-old (15-20 Chafers) and 3-week-old chickens (25-45 Chafers). In the early 1900s, chickens were commonly allowed to range free and could easily consume large numbers of Rose Chafers in years with high populations. Lamson recommended that chickens be excluded from areas that contained large numbers of Rose Chafers. Lamson made an extract of Chafers and demonstrated that the extract was toxic to both chickens and rabbits. These tests proved that the deaths were due to a chemical toxin and not a physical effect from the insect spines or other physical properties. Lamson reported his findings in the Journal “Science” in 1916.”

The BugLady

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Summer has reached its half-way point, and the BugLady has been recording the changing of the guard. The adult lives of most insects are brief – four to six weeks for many, and considerably less for some. Bluet damselflies are fading, but meadowhawk dragonflies are taking the stage. Little Wood Satyr butterflies are hard to find, but Common wood nymphs now flit through the fields. You get the picture. Here are some bugs that the BugLady found in the first half of summer.

ARROW CLUBTAIL: In early July, the BugLady came across this just-emerged dragonfly sitting on a stalk in the Milwaukee River. She photographed it for half an hour as it lengthened and strengthened and spread its wings and grew its abdomen. She guarded it from marauding geese and grackles. And she watched as it took its maiden voyage, eight feet straight up and true – into the beak of a swooping Cedar Waxwing. She may have used a few bad words.

JAPANESE BEETLE: Precarious as this bundle of beetles looked, it kept its shape as it fell off and into the grasses. In order to jump-start her love life, a female Japanese beetle may use “come hither” pheromones, but this aggregation of beetles was probably initiated (inadvertently) by the plant itself. Research suggests that a female Japanese beetle chewed on a leaf, and the leaf gave off signature chemicals (OK – feeding-induced plant volatiles), and that instead of repelling the beetles, the scent attracted more beetles, both male and female, to feed. And, since all those guys and gals are in the same neighborhood…

MAYFLY MOLT: BugFan Freda sent this amazing “What-is-it?” picture recently, taken from a canoe on the Milwaukee river. Mayflies (called “lake flies” regionally) emerge from their watery cradles by the googol. Their lives are brief, averaging only three days (not coincidentally, the name of the mayfly order is Ephemeroptera).

Mayflies are the only insects that shed their skins after they reach the winged adult stage (silverfish shed as adults, too, but they’re spindle-shaped and wingless). The crawls out onto a plant or rock and sheds its final skin (exuvia), emerging as a form called a subimago (or a “dun” if you’re a fly fisherman) that is cloudy-winged, dull in color, weak-flying, and not ready to reproduce. The sub-imago rests (often overnight) and then sheds again, this time into a mature adult/imago with shiny wings (a “spinner” to fishermen). Here’s a . No – scientists do not know how this pre-adult stage benefits the mayflies – lots of insect groups apparently has a subimago stage in ancient times, and most have dropped it from their repertory.

Freda’s picture shows the exuviae of lots of sub-imagoes – it must have been an amazing sight to see! Scroll down this series of of that final shed.

DOGBANE LEAF BEETLE: Its fabulous, shimmering exterior is all done with mirrors (complex nanoarchitecture). Light is bent when it hits small, randomly-tilted plates that sit between the pigment layer and the top layer of the beetle’s cuticle, and the beetle’s color changes depending on the angle of the eye of the beholder. What good is that glow? Rather than being an aid in courtship or a warning of the beetle’s toxicity (and this particular beetle is, but not all iridescent insects are), this fiery iridescence actually camouflages it. To test the hypothesis, researchers disguised meal worms with beetle elytra (the hard outer wings) – some shiny and some not – and then hid them. Birds found and ate 85% of the “dull-winged meal worms,” but only 60% of the “iridescent meal worms,” and the scientists themselves found it difficult to locate the shiny ones.

STREAM BLUET AND MAYFLY: In order to make it to adulthood, a mayfly naiad must avoid being eaten by fish and a variety of insects during its aquatic stage, and by fish, birds, fishing spiders, frogs, and other predators as it completes both of its molts. When it takes to the air, more predators await. This mayfly became lunch for a Stream Bluet damselfly.

DOODLEBUG: The BugLady found this doodlebug on the dunes at Kohler-Andrae State Park in mid-July, plying its trade. She looked into lots of inverted, sandy cones before she found one that held prey – in this case, a small spider. The doodlebug will grow up to be an antlion . For an account of the life of a doodlebug, see this former post.

SAWFLY: Sawflies are not flies, but are primitive wasps with no stingers (as she did when she wrote her first episode about sawflies in 2009, the BugLady recommends reading the sawfly chapter in David W. Stokes’ excellent A Guide to Observing Insect Lives). Sawfly larvae look a lot like butterfly and moth caterpillars, but there’s a difference in the arrangement and types of legs. This beauty just might be the , whose pretty cute offspring, the BugLady is going to have to keep a cautious eye out for. “Sawfly” because the female uses a saw-like structure at the end of her abdomen to cut slots in vegetation to lay her eggs in.

BLACK SWALLOWTAIL CATERPILLAR: While the BugLady was photographing the sawfly, she noticed a prickly head among the Queen Anne’s lace florets, so she bent the stem sideways to see what it was. There was a cute little jumping spider under there, too, which she hoped did not have designs on the caterpillar. Black Swallowtails lay their eggs on plants in the carrot family, and most gardeners who plant dill are familiar with them (and, the BugLady hopes, are generous enough to share).

BLUE MUD DAUBERS: They are all over the Queen Anne’s lace these days. Adults cruise the flower tops, sipping nectar and looking for spiders to cache in the egg chambers of their offspring, who will grow up on protein but eschew it as adults. Sometimes the wasps pick spiders right off of their webs, and they especially like to collect (which are here in God’s Country but are rare). They grab spiders with their and paralyze them with a sting, but they don’t bite people, and you have to rough one up considerably before she’ll sting you.

EMERALD ASH BORER: The BugLady loves ash trees, but these days, the landscape is littered with their skeletons. The first Emerald ash borer was detected in Wisconsin in Ozaukee County during the summer of 2008, though the EABs had undoubtedly been around for a few years before that. The picture shows an ash that is fighting for its life, a battle that it will not win. The top of this ash is dead, because the EAB larvae’s tunnels (galleries) just below the bark interfere with the flow of nutrients between the crown of the tree and its roots. The stressed tree responds by growing a bunch of shoots (called epicormic sprouts) from dormant buds in the bark of the trunk. The leafy sprouts, which are below the EAB damage, will allow the tree to photosynthesize – for a while. Read about EABs in a previous BOTW. EABs are, undeniably, beautiful beetles: , , .

SIX-SPOTTED FISHING SPIDER: Moving from a “solid” water lily leaf to a liquid substrate is no trick at all for a Six-spotted Fishing spider (the six spots that give it its name are on its underside) – in fact, it has more moves on the water than it does on dry land. It can walk, run, sail, or skate over the surface film and can dive under it, too.

GIANT SWALLOWTAIL: If there’s anything more stunning than a couple of Giant Swallowtails dancing in the air over purple coneflowers, the BugLady doesn’t know what it is.

The BugLady

The post Mid-Summer Scenes appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady is always amazed at how masses of Coreopsis flowers paint the Riveredge prairies gold in June, and she’s equally amazed at how few of them are entertaining insects. The books say that that Coreopsis is visited by a number of small, native bees, plus some butterflies and beetles, but she rarely sees much action on the flowers (sometimes a camouflaged crab spider waiting for incoming pollinators). Which is why this Red-blue checkered beetle was a pleasant (and colorful) surprise.

 Fun fact about Coreopsis

Members of some Great Plains tribes boiled Coreopsis flowers for a few minutes to make a beverage that was red. Pregnant women in one tribe drank a tea made from Coreopsis plants to increase their chances of bearing a girl child.

Checkered beetles are in the family Cleridae. We visited the Clerids seven years ago in the form of a cute little beetle that the BugLady found on a wild sunflower – see that episode for general info about the family. There are about 300 species of Checkered beetles in North America; many are colorful, and they lead diverse lifestyles, and some are biological controls of bark beetles.

Red-blue Checkered beetles (Trichodes nuttalli) (aka Nuttall’s shaggy beetle) are found in grasslands and edges. They’re about 1/3” long, and in Beetles of Eastern North America, Evans describes them as elongate, robust, sparsely clothed in light-colored setae, metallic blue or green, antennae and mouthparts brown, and bicolored elytra.”

One of the really basic questions we can ask about an insect (or any animal) is “What does it eat?” On this subject, the reports on the RBCB are contradictory. Reputable sources say that the adults eat pollen from a variety of grassland, edge, and wetland flowers and are not predaceous – or that they feed on pollen and on small insects they find on the flower tops. Yes, the larvae are carnivores. But – do they feed only on the eggs and nymphs of the , as some scholarly publications attest? Or, as other, equally scholarly sources say, do RBCB eggs stick to foraging bees and wasps and get taken back to their nests, where they hatch and feed on the bee larvae in the nest (and maybe on cached pollen, too)? Or do the eggs hatch on the flower and the larvae grab hold and ride back to wasp and bee nests? As several authors noted – this species needs more study.

RBCBs are beetles of early summer. Eggs are laid on flowers where the adults feed (or, if you’re in the Grasshopper Camp, in crevices on the ground). The larvae may overwinter as larvae, pupae, or pre-pupae.

 Fun Facts about RBCBs

If you need a (dead) RBCB for your collection, several online stores will sell you one for about $3.00.

According to the journal Biophilately, the RBCB was one of four insects illustrated in a block of “Garden Insects” stamps issued in the Seychelles in 2014.

Author Jeff Mitton poses some interesting questions about RBCBs in in the Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine. First of all, considering its coloration [and its daytime feeding habits], it’s logical that the beetle enjoys some chemical defenses, but there’s no information Yea or Nay.

Second, this beetle a pretty much of a generalist, both in the variety of flowers the adults feed on and in the variety of hymenopterans the eggs/larvae hitchhike on. But [and Mitton is in the Bees and Wasps Camp] it’s one of a number of insects whose continued existence depends on the behavior of another insect – in this case, the bee that unwittingly carries it home. It’s a big gamble. He suggests that if its hosts became more fastidious and groomed the beetle eggs/larvae off their bodies, or if they were able to recognize the larvae in the hive and dispose of them, or if the hosts became extinct, the beetle would soon be on the road to extinction itself.

Speaking of beetles and “extinct,” here’s on ladybugs (thanks to BugFan Molly). Be sure to click on the “Ladybugs of South Dakota” poster.

The BugLady

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It’s time again to celebrate the bugs that fly under the radar – bugs that are neither famous nor infamous and that live alongside of us, about whom not much has been written. All three of these species, coincidentally, have their flight periods in the first half of the summer.

CURRANT TIP BORER

This beetle is a poster child for insects that are barely visible online, although unlike many, it has picked up a common name along the way.

The Currant tip borer (Psenocerus supernotatus) is a not-very-long-horned member of the long-horned beetle family Cerambycidae. The long-horned (long-antennaed) beetles are divided, uneasily and depending on whose book you read, into 10 subfamilies, and the Currant tip borer’s subfamily, Lamiinae, the Flat-faced Longhorns, includes about 20,000 of the 30,000 species of Cerambycid worldwide.  There are 5,000 species in the New World, but only 250 of them occur in North America.

This little beetle (about 1/3”) can be found in early summer, east of a line from Manitoba to Texas. Its larvae feed within the dead branches of a variety of woody plants, and it’s been found on oak, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, sumac, catalpa, and mulberry as well as currant and gooseberry. Considering its name, the BugLady was expecting to find a bunch of Extension Bulletins telling us how to protect our gooseberries and currants, but she found none.

Mr. R. P. Dow, writing in the Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society in 1916, recounts how he found some Currant tip borer larvae in sumac pith. First to hatch were two males that, after exploring their surroundings, began to fight by a specific spot on the twig. Two days later, a female emerged from that spot. He wrote, “It is evident that some sense organ revealed the female to the males not less than 36 hours before her emergence from the unmarked wood.”

. Hmmm – the BugLady doesn’t see it

SULPHUR-WINGED GRASSHOPPER

The BugLady automatically surveys butterflies and dragonflies as she walks – it’s like breathing. From mid-summer on, she sees Clouded Sulphurs over the grasslands (bugguide.net informs the BugLady’s spellcheck that “both spellings of “sulphur” or “sulfur” are seen frequently. The first prevalent in older works, with the second becoming more common in recent decades”). With black-bordered, lemon-yellow wings, the butterflies are almost unmistakable. (This is a remarkable shot, and not just because it shows . Sulphurs perch with their wings closed, so the black border is seldom photographed).

Almost unmistakable – the Sulphur-winged grasshopper (Arphia sulphurea) always makes her do a double-take https://bugguide.net/node/view/640715/bgimage.  Members of the genus Arphia are found across North America; they’re in the Short-horned grasshopper family Acrididae and in the Band-winged grasshopper subfamily Oedipodinae, some of which are , and .

Most of the grasshoppers that the BugLady researches have extensive rap sheets due to their fondness for plants that grow in ag-lands and pastures, but she could find no wanted posters for the Sulphur-winged grasshopper, alias the Yellow-winged/Spring yellow-winged grasshopper.

Sulphur-winged grasshoppers are found in grasslands, edges, and sometimes in open woodlands east of that Manitoba-to-Texas line, and north just into Canada. They feed primarily on grasses, with a few wildflowers thrown in for good measure, and unlike many grasshoppers, they don’t eat any animal material. Bugguide.net tells us that both males and females “crepitate” (make snapping/crackling/popping sounds with their wings) during courtship displays. Adults can be seen starting in early spring and are gone by mid-summer.

They overwinter as late-stage nymphs, and they have the best nymphs ever! and

WHITE-SPOTTED/THREE-SPOTTED HORSEFLY

In early summer, the BugLady spied this impressive male horsefly eyeing her from a lily pad (male, because its huge eyes meet in the middle – all the better to see you with…..). Horse flies and deer flies are in the family Tabanidae. For “Horse fly 101,” visit here.  Many species are also called (visit the Atlantic coast in summer to get the full Greenhead experience), and many have spectacular, Technicolor eyes that make them the darlings of macro photographers.

• (Sorry – they’re just so cool.)

They’re the flies we love to hate. In The Tabanidae of Minnesota (1930), author Cornelius B. Philip anthropomorphizes, “After feeding to satisfaction, the fly may withdraw and make new stabs, apparently for the pure love of it…….”

The Three-spotted horse fly (Tabanus trimaculatus) is one of about 100 genus members in North America, and it will not surprise southern BugFans to read that the genus is most diverse in the their neck of the US. According to bugguide.net, tabanus was “a name used by the Romans for a kind of biting fly.”

Horse flies lay , in damp areas. When the eggs hatch, the drop to the ground or into a “semiaquatic habitat” and burrow into the soft soil, where they find small invertebrates to eat. They’re eaten, in turn, by nematodes and mud-probing birds, and they’re parasitized by sand wasps, tachinid flies, and chalcid wasps. Here’s an interesting shot of a , and a shot of an .

TSHFs are fairly early-season horse flies that seem to prefer woodsy settings – researchers in the Minnesota study found that “the larvae outnumber by far any other species taken but the adults seem to have retiring habits in Minnesota.”

From what the BugLady could find, the TSHF is not a notorious scourge of man or beast. Yes, female horse flies need the protein from a blood meal in order to produce eggs, but both females and males also feed on nectar. In a study to discover which species of horse flies were most annoying to deer in Oklahoma, four species made up 95% of the horse fly attacks, and although the TSHF was abundant, it was not seen feeding on deer.

The BugLady

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