2026: The pussy willows near the BugLady’s lakeshore home are in bloom.��Here’s a BOTW about pussy willows from late March of 2012 – a few new words and pictures.

2012:��People get excited when pussy willows whisper the spring.��The BugLady loves skulking among them when they’re blooming, ogling the diversity of insects that come to visit when very few other flowers are out.��Willows are��dioecious��(separate house), bearing their male and female flowers on separate plants.��The gray, fuzzy buds are future male flowers that will morph into catkins bearing long, slender filaments (pollen-producing stamens).��The thicker, “caterpillar-like” flowers – fleshier stalks with what looks like a tiny flower at the tip, are future female catkins and seeds.��Pussy willow (Salix discolor), which is a prodigious pollen producer, is almost finished blooming, but other willow species are still in bud.

Remember that pollination is an accidental service performed by animals that visit the pussy willows for another purpose altogether – to perch, to set up housekeeping, to browse an important, early food source (the male flowers produce a little nectar and a lot of pollen, and female flowers supply nectar), or to browse the browsers.��Mining bees and syrphid flies made up the majority of the insects that the BugLady saw, with flies (blow, flesh, and house) next.��The BugLady also saw a spring azure butterfly checking out the willow flowers.��

For all their attractiveness and importance to these early pollinators, pussy willows are largely wind-pollinated.��Wind-pollinated flowers produce massive amounts of pollen because wind pollination is pretty random.

The BugLady found:

ANTS��– Ants become active when the spring sun warms the soil they nest in. If you put all of the people on the globe at one end of a teeter totter and all the ants on the other, our feet would be dangling. There are many kinds of ants with many lifestyles and many diets.��

ASCLERA RUFICOLLIS��– Adult Red-necked false blister beetles feed on early spring flowers in woods and wood edges; their larvae dwell in rotting logs.��Apparently, despite its name, a crushed false blister beetle produces highly irritating chemicals that will make a (false?) blister.

BROWN STINKBUG��– Some species of brown stinkbug are vegetarians, but the BugLady thinks that this is one of the predatory stinkbugs.��The BugLady wonders if the heavy dusting of willow pollen works as an inadvertent disguise.

CAROPHILUS BEETLE – A sap beetle – although most sap beetles are consumers of rotting fruits and vegetables and fungi, some are found on flowers.

DISONYCHA��BEETLE��– The very spiffy Striped willow leaf beetle is in the huge leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae.��Members of the small genus��Disonycha��(according to one source) mostly eat “weeds.”��This one eats willow-parts.

GREENBOTTLE FLY��– These members of the Blow fly family are listed as carrion feeders. Apparently, this fly was cleansing its palette.

CYNOMA CADAVERINA – Another member of the Blow fly family, with a decidedly un-wholesome name, stared at the BugLady from a willow branch. The BugLady moved on down the trail.

HONEYBEE��– an important – and imported – pollinator, honeybees are on the landscape starting in late winter and early spring.��Bees foraging for pollen near wetlands may warm up within the insulated comfort of a skunk cabbage spathe, which may be 30 degrees warmer than the ambient temperature.

MINING BEE��– Mining bees are a mainly solitary bunch of bees; females stock brood cells with pollen and nectar for their emerging young.��They are important early, native pollinators.��

SWEAT BEE – Sweat bees collect prodigious loads of pollen and transport it to their underground nests. Most are solitary; a few are marginally social.”

SYRPHID FLY – Syrphid/Hover/Flower flies are bee mimics that feed on nectar and pollen.

SPOOKY TACHINID��(probably) – Tachinid flies have an ulterior motive.��They lay eggs, or sometimes live young, on flowers so that their young may board another insect and become a parasitoid.��The BugLady thought this ghost-colored tachinid was a bit creepy-looking.

NOMADA WASP – The BugLady is amazed at the antennae on this Nomada wasp.

EUROPEAN PAPER WASP – Negotiating the thicket of flower parts on the male flower must be a challenge.

Go outside and watch the willows!

The BugLady

The post Pussy willow Pollinators appeared first on Field Station.

The Long-horned beetle family Cerambycidae is a large family that contains some spectacular beetles , ,��, , and .��It includes some lunkers��, and��, and some with shorter antennae that are pretty impressive, too ��(so many cool beetles……).��Bugguide.net��says that there are “1000 spp. in 300+ genera in our area(), >11,300 spp. in almost 2,000 genera in the Western Hemisphere()��and >30,000 spp. in >5000 genera worldwide.”

Thirty thousand-plus species of Long-horned beetles worldwide is a lot of species to keep track of, so it’s no surprise that, unless they are “pest species,” the biographies of many species are incomplete/barely there. In general, Cerambycids are classified as decomposers and recyclers. Some have a tendency to be a bit nippy when handled. ��

LONG-HORNED BEETLE #1��Etorofus subhamatus is a member of the Flower longhorn subfamily Lepturinae.��Lepturines are typically slim and long-legged, with a narrow thorax and wedge-shaped elytra (hard wing covers) that give some an exaggerated “big shouldered” look . Male and female Lepturines may be different colors – an unusual trait in a family where the length of the antennae is often the best way to tell males from females.��Lepturines are often found on flowers, where nectar is sweet and pollen is high in protein, and where they are considered minor pollinators.��One author said that the Flower longhorns are especially fond of plants in the carrot family.

Only one source listed a common name for��Etorofus subhamatus –��the Hemlock long-horned beetle (there are no hemlock trees where the BugLady found it but pine is an alternative food plant). They are found in mixed and coniferous woods in eastern North America where their larvae bore beneath the bark of dead and dying trees, eating wood and friendly wood fungi that help them break down the cellulose. They are not considered pests because the trees are already going or gone.

LONG-HORNED BEETLE #2,��Clytus ruricola��(also no common name), is in the subfamily Cerambycinae, the round-necked longhorns (so-named because of their rounded pronotum, the first segment of the thorax). Of the eight genus members in North America, it has the largest range, and six of the eight genus members are western. It’s about a half-inch long and is a wasp mimic (visually) that enhances its performance by making a buzzing sound with its wings when it flies.��Like some other Cerambycids, it can stridulate (make noise via friction) by rubbing the bottom surface of its head against its thorax. Says Tim Eisele in his “Backyard Arthropod Project” blog, “when I held it, I could feel it vibrating as it moved its head up and down in a nodding motion, and if I held it next to my ear I could hear a faint “eeeeee-eeeeee-eeeeee-eeeee” noise”.

The larvae of Clytus ruricola make burrows (galleries) in decaying deciduous trees (fallen or cut) – they are especially fond of maple – and the tunnels they make set the stage for decomposition by allowing water and fungal spores to get into the dead wood. 

That’s all, Folks!

The BugLady would be remiss if she didn’t mention the floodwater mosquitoes. In case you haven’t been in the field in the past week, the torrential rains of a few weeks ago have faded and the rivers are receding, but the heat-plus-rain created the perfect storm for floodwater mosquitoes. The BugLady visited a local nature preserve a few days ago.��It was OK when she was out on the prairie, but the second she passed by any woody vegetation tall enough to create shade, she was engulfed by a cloud of mosquitoes that was aimed at her face (and, of course, they have to get really close to be repelled by the insect repellant).��Here’s their story Floodwater Mosquito – an homage – Field Station.

The BugLady

The post Beetles without Bios appeared first on Field Station.

This small spider is in the Sheetweb spider family Linyphiidae, which we have met before in the form of the Splendid Dwarf spider . In some parts of the world, sheetweb spiders are called Money spiders, because if you find one on your person, you’ll have good luck/good fortune. With about 4,200 species worldwide, Linyphiidae is the second largest spider family, after the Jumping spiders. Because of their small size, many sheetweb spiders escape both detection and investigation. They prey on small arthropods like aphids, flies, springtails, and their fellow spiders and, like many spiders, are considered useful biological control agents. 

BOWL AND DOILY SPIDERS (Frontinella pyramitala) (formerly Linyphia communis) are one of only two species in their genus. There’s probably one near you – in his bugeric blog, entomologist Eric Eaton calls them “one of the most common and widespread spiders in North America.” The other species, Frontinella huachuca (pronounced “wa-chew’ ka,” like the mountains) only occurs in Arizona. They are found in grassy areas, along woody edges, and in suburbia, but they also live in piney woodlands and in black spruce/tamarack bogs, which is where the BugLady photographed these.

Females����(3 to 4 mm long with a 9 to 12 mm leg span) are larger than males , but not by much .

Full disclosure – the related Filmy dome spider (Neriene radiata)

looks very much like the Bowl and Doily spider but spins a dome web with no doily .

The name “Bowl and Doily” reflects the design of its web (one source felt the need to explain to its readers what a doily is, but the BugLady has faith in the BugFans). Neither the tangled vertical strands/trip lines of the bowl nor the horizontal silk of the doily is made of sticky silk, but debris like twigs, leaves and dust may get snagged in the web. The spider does not spin a new web, but cleans the old one. 

She hangs below the doily, belly up, both for protection and ambush (there aren’t many pictures of the dorsal side of a Bowl and Doily spider). When prey arrives, often flying into the trip lines and falling onto the doily, she can see her prey before she bites through the web to paralyze it. She pulls it through the doily to wrap or eat it. Researchers have found that if they remove prey from her web, the spider will search for it (the bigger the prey, the harder she’ll look), and that she’s not fooled by bits of previously-consumed meals.

The Bowl and Doily spider’s biography includes several other quirks besides the odd shape of its web. A web may hold, along with the web-spinning female, one or more male spiders, , independent of reproduction. Males cohabit with females, stealing prey that she catches and stores, but one source suggested that she may find it more energy efficient to leave him alone than to evict him, even though he may be harvesting up to a third of what she caches.

“Gregarious” is a word that’s rarely applied to spiders, but not only do the webs often hold more than one spider, these spiders like to spin webs in the vicinity of other Bowl and Doily spiders, which puts potential mates closer at hand. 

Bowl and Doily spiders court at the end of the spider season, in late summer and early fall. The courtship is elaborate, with pheromones released by the female and with lots of web vibrations initiated by both male and female, designed to attract her attention to the male while communicating to her that he is not prey. He determines whether she is a virgin via a signal that she can give only if she is one (she becomes less fertile after her second romance, and he’s looking for the best outcome for his genetic materials). If the answer is “yes,” the game is on. The BugLady is, once again, dancing around good old-fashioned biological terminology in deference to BugFans whose company IT filters are easily embarrassed.

Males spar over females and the longer a contest goes on, the more likely it is that one will be injured or even killed, especially if one is smaller. A paper published in the journal Animal Behavior titled“A game theoretical interpretation of male combat in the bowl and doily spider (Frontinella pyramitela)” applied Game Theory to clashes between male Bowl and Doily spiders based on a female’s perceived value to them. If they both value her equally (based on their assessments of her fertility), the fight goes on and the larger male generally wins, regardless of which male was already a resident in the web.

The female creates one or two egg sacs in fall, and the spiderlings hatch the following spring and balloon away to find a new home that has fewer of their siblings in it Spider Flight – Field Station. Larry Weber, in Spiders of the North Woods, says that the adults are “frequently found on the snow.”

Fun Facts about Bowl and Doily spiders: they may regulate their temperature by orienting themselves with the sun’s rays, and scientists suspect that this has reproductive advantages; but they’re not sure why the spiders’ circadian rhythms are 24 to 33 hours long, depending on the season. 

The BugLady

The post Speed-dating the Spiders – Bowl and Doily spider appeared first on Field Station.

2025 – The BugLady has been seeing her first firefly around the 4^th of July. She stands on the riprap, enjoying the fireworks shows launched by her neighbors and the more distant municipal displays while the fireflies fly around her, putting on their own, equally magical shows. 

Fireflies are one of the BugLady’s “nemesis groups” – they refuse to be in focus when she photographs them. Like sowbug/roly-poly/pill bug/woodlouse, your choice of lightning beetle/bug or firefly is a regional thing. 

Enjoy this rerun – a few new words (because who can resist rewriting?) and new pictures. Genus IDs are tentative.

2018  OK – this is a love story of sorts. It’s an episode that originated in 2009, and it has already been rerun once and now rewritten again. But…..the BugLady just returned from southern Ohio, where she co-led a workshop about Bugs and Wonder (Wonder – an unappreciated, sometimes suspect, and insufficiently-entertained state of mind) (and mostly we could say that about the bugs, too). We trawled the prairies and woods for bugs during the day, and at dusk and into the night, we hunted for fireflies. 

Do you call them lightning bugs or fireflies? Carl Linnaeus coined the latter term in 1767. The more arid, western parts of North America are either “firefly-lite” or their fireflies are day-flying and therefore “mute,” as evidenced by the lack of names for them.

Lightning bugs float silently (but brilliantly) over the dark fields, woods, and wetlands of June and July, inspiring poets and children of all ages. They are neither flies nor true bugs; they are members of the Order Coleoptera and the family Lampyridae and are more correctly called Lightning beetles. And yes, their ethereal light show is all about sex. 

Their path to the skies starts in late summer of the previous year. Mid-summer eggs hatch into carnivorous larvae that eat insects, snails, and other small critters (the BugLady thinks that the larvae look like tiny pangolins). They like damp conditions (remember –a thatch of grasses, especially tall grasses, creates a microclimate that’s generally moister than the air five feet above it), and there are even a few species whose larvae are aquatic. 

They overwinter as larvae, buried in the soil, and when spring comes, they wake up and keep on eating (the natural history of firefly larvae needs more study). They pupate in early summer, also in the earth, before emerging for their brief-but-dazzling stint as adults. 

Larvae subdue their much larger prey by injecting a paralyzing fluid, and they are considered important controls on snails and slugs. According to the Field Guide to Insects of North America, the larvae of the common genus Photinus are subterranean and “may hunt earthworms in packs.” The diet of adults varies by species – there are carnivores, omnivores, and non-eaters.

Most threats to their populations tend to be man-made – wetland loss, pesticides, light pollution that dims their displays, paving, and mowing (many adults, after all, are resting in the grass, waiting for sundown and setting lawn mowers at “scalp” cuts down fireflies, too). Populations of some species are shrinking, and more eyes are needed. For some Firefly Citizen/Community Science projects, see .

Light production is an uncommon talent in insects. There are semitropical click beetles that can (some of these, called cucujos, are worn as luminous decorations by partygoers south of the border, and their eggs and larvae also glow). Luminescence is achieved by others (including some springtails) (try to imagine a springtail, glowing green except for its ) because they harbor photogenic bacteria (here meaning that the bacteria are light-generating, not that they are picturesque, though the BugLady thinks they are both). 

Firefly light is a “cold” light. An incandescent light bulb is an inefficient energy-user, wasting 90% of its energy as heat. Less than 8% (some say less than 3%) of the energy that a lightning beetle expends on light is lost as heat. Light is produced at the south end of the abdomen, in a photogenic layer that is located beneath a white, reflecting layer. Chemical energy is converted to light energy by the action of an enzyme called luciferase on a chemical called luciferin (history buffs please note: some old friction matches were called Lucifers). 

Day-flying members of the Lampyridae like the Black firefly or Woodland Lucy (Lucidota atra) don’t glow – producing light would be a waste of energy for a diurnal insect. All lightning beetle larvae, some pupae, and even some eggs also glow, for reasons that are not fully understood. But lightning beetles don’t just gleam, they produce controlled flashes of light – strobes, aerial “J’s,” three-second horizontal dashes, and more. The various species of fireflies divide the landscape by altitude, habitat, light color and intensity, time of evening, and duration of flight. Each species has its own particular “Morse Code,” though male and female “codes” may be different. 

Males signal from the air, and females, which in some species are wingless, respond from on or near the ground (females and luminescent larvae are called glowworms). The signals continue until they find each other and romance ensues. Females of some species of lightning beetles resume flashing after mating, adopting the code of a different species. If she is successful in luring a male, this femme fatale will eat him (she, it seems, does eat as an adult!); this practice is called “aggressive mimicry,” but females generally do not eat males of their own species.

Lightning beetle family members have poisonous blood (they ooze toxic droplets from the base of the wing covers). Besides being an invitation to party, their light is probably also an advertisement to predators that the firefly is toxic (though apparently better-tolerated by some than by others) . In Discovering Nature at Sundown, a good source of lightning beetle information, Elizabeth Lawlor relates that a frog that eats enough LBs may glow temporarily but seems otherwise unaffected. 

Since this episode originally appeared, the BugLady has become increasingly aware of (and confused by) firefly look-alikes in the form of soldier beetles . Some net-winged beetles and click beetles are also mimics – BugFan Mary emailed the BugLady about a firefly on her window screen that had two lights in the front of its body – turned out to be a click beetle (), a far Southern specialty. Most lightning beetles have a shield-shaped thorax that covers most or all of their head, and a bunch of soldier beetles also have a widened and colorful thoracic shield, though a soldier beetle’s head may protrude from under the shield significantly more than a firefly’s. Every time she looks into this matter, the BugLady ends up relabeling a few pictures. For other glowy insects, .

Accounts abound of certain species of lightning beetles in Southeast Asia that gather by the thousands on specific trees. As dark falls, they begin to blink – first randomly, and then in complete synchronicity, illuminating the trees for hours. The cast reassembles nightly for months to produce a spectacular light show. Do you have to buy a steamer ticket to witness a similar spectacle? You do not – synchronous firefly displays occur in the Appalachians, but you’ll need to enter a lottery to see them . Here are two similar but different videos: and .

Just out is a book by Lynn Frierson Faust. In Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs, she offers descriptions, ranges, photos, flash patterns, habitats, and terrific common names, names like the Woodland Lucy, Little gray, Big dipper, and Chinese lantern.

At the other end of this love story is (shameless plug) the Arc of Appalachia, the organization that ran the Wonder Workshop, an organization that has been buying and providing stewardship for chunks of prairie, gorge and rich eastern forest, with its old growth beech and maple, sycamore, tulip tree, sassafras, and gum. Find their story at . 

The Lightning Beetle is a poster child for why the BugLady loves BOTW – the research begins innocently enough, and then WHAM! Cucujos! Glowing eggs! Glowing frogs! Glowing trees! Poisonous blood! Ravenous packs of LB larvae! Luciferase! 

Excellent!

The BugLady

The post Lightning Beetle Again and Again appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

2025: The BugLady was out in a wetland today, stalking the wily Pink Lady’s Slipper (aka the Moccasin flower), a large and lovely native orchid. After she got home, she discovered a male Wood/Dog tick on her person (dark, with pale streaks), so it seemed like an auspicious time to rerun the episode about the Deer tick.

��2014: The BugLady encountered a deer tick on her scalp last week (second week of March), a reminder that these are very hardy little critters – AND – that the uncharacteristically balmy weather is getting lots of stuff going early.��So, here’s the deer tick story as told in a BOTW from three years ago along with some��hot-off-the-presses��additional information and, of course, new pictures.����

The��DEER TICK��(Ixodes��scapularis) (not to be confused with the musical group��Deer Tick) is a critter whose escapades are well known to those of us who live here in God’s Country (at least they should be).��It’s notorious for its ability to spread Lyme (not Lymes) disease and because its sesame-seed-size makes “tick checks” a challenge ().��

Lyme disease is an initially-flu-like disease that doesn’t go away and will escalate if ignored, and it is more treatable early than late.�� The CDC has a very comprehensive website with information about tests, symptoms, treatment, and prevention at��, (there’s disagreement about Lyme disease testing and treatment, mainly from organizations whose members have spent months and years looking for a clear diagnosis and an effective cure for this frustrating disease).��Lyme disease is not “catching,” and you can’t get it from eating venison from an infected deer (but kneeling on the ground dressing out a deer puts you right down there in DT territory).��

When the BugLady moved into her rural home 39 years ago, ticks were scarce, she plucked a wood/dog tick (Dermacentor variabilis) off the dog every 5 years or so, and she never saw a deer tick.��In the past four or five years she has seen fewer wood ticks, but deer ticks (a.k.a. Black-legged ticks) have arrived in force and are showing their little heads by late April (chiggers are��way��more numerous, too).��An article in��Science Daily��(June 22, 2011) refers to the “steady march of deer ticks across the Upper Midwest” and reports that the rate of their advance through Indiana and Illinois (having successfully occupied Minnesota and Wisconsin) is two counties per year.��

Non-feeding adult DTs are very small (about 3mm long) and flat and dark (females may look blood-red when they’re empty but not when they’re full, and males are dark and vaguely speckled). They have eight black legs and a black “shield” (called a “scutum”) in back of its head.��DTs don’t have any white/light markings on the��scutum, but wood ticks do.��A feeding adult female looks like a tiny, over-filled, blue-gray balloon (“as tight as a tick”) (the BugLady is trying to avoid comparisons to grapes here, lest she put BugFans off their feed).��

DTs lead a complex, three-stage, two-year life.�� All three stages are mobile and all three require a blood meal that can take three to five days to complete.��Adult DTs are fairly impervious to frosts and can be out and about on winter days that are above freezing.�� In spring, Mom has a big meal (adult males rarely feed), mates, drops to the ground, and lays thousands of eggs.��The first post-egg stage is a minute’ six-legged larva that feeds once during mid-summer on a bird or a small mammal (it’s especially fond of white-footed mice).��The well-fed larva leaves its host and overwinters in the leaf litter.��The following spring it molts into a poppy seed-sized nymph that feeds again (another mouse, maybe, or a raccoon or squirrel) and then molts into an adult that becomes active in fall.��Adults favor large mammals like white-tailed deer.��

Ms. DT finds Mr. DT through the magic of aggregation pheromones (chemical “perfumes”) that cause DTs to gather in groups, allowing boy to meet girl.��They may mate on a host, on vegetation, or on the ground.��He dies after mating a few times; she dies after laying eggs.��

Where does a DT pick up Lyme disease?��Typically not from Mom, even if she’s carrying it.�� An uninfected larva or nymph can pick up the disease from its host; an infected larva can transmit it to its host, and once they’ve picked up the infection, ticks retain it for the rest of their lives.��The general estimate is that in high-Lyme areas, 25% of nymphal DTs and 50% of adults carry the bacterium that causes the disease, but according to the American Lyme Foundation, fewer than 5% of DTs south of Maryland are carriers.�� Dog ticks do not spread Lyme disease (but they are not totally innocent bystanders, either).��

DTs are classed as��sanguivores��(animals that ingest fresh blood).��They’re opportunistic – to find a host, they’ll often wait at the tips of vegetation in what is called the “questing position,” sensing the air, waiting for something large to brush against them (��then scroll down for a Lyme map – we no longer presume that someone who tests positive for Lyme has been “up North”).��The biggest mortality factor for ticks may be starvation, and harsh climate can also affect them.��They typically aren’t eaten by predators because they’re simply too small to see.��

Here’s the DT’s pedigree: they’re in the family Ixodidae (the hard ticks), which is in the order Ixodida (ticks), which is in the Class Arachnida (spiders and friends), which is in the Phylum Arthropoda (insects, spiders and crustaceans).��They are, potentially, found wherever their final host, the white-tailed deer, is found.�� Most .����

Along with Lyme disease, DTs can pack a number of disease-causing bacteria and parasites into that tiny body, and scientists are still finding new ones.��In the three years since the original DT post, a West Nile virus/meningitis-like disease called Powassan virus has been added to the deer ticks’ arsenal.��Tiny nymphal ticks far outnumber their elders, and because nymphal ticks are most active during the period when we’re all outside in summer, bites from nymphal ticks are presumed to be the cause of most human infections.��Pets can get Lyme disease, too; talk to your vet.��

Also new on the Wisconsin scene is a new tick species, the Lone Star tick, which carries its own set of unpleasant diseases, including one that may trigger in the “bitee” a lifelong allergy to beef, pork, and lamb. 

Scientists have discovered some intricate ways that DTs fit into the ecological jigsaw puzzle:

1. In eastern oak forests, a big load of acorns (a “mast year”) results, for the next few years, in lots of white-footed mice and deer, which means fewer gypsy moths (mice eat their pupae) and more hosts for the DTs.�� More DTs mean more Lyme disease.��Fewer acorns mean fewer mice, more gypsy moth outbreaks, and less Lyme disease.
2. The incidence of Lyme disease is linked to the presence of deer, but it also reflects the population cycles of certain small mammals.��A decrease in predators like the red fox (coyotes have taken over) results in larger populations of potential tick hosts like mice and chipmunks and more Lyme disease (remember, though deer are important in the DT’s end game, most people probably get infected by a DT nymph, which hasn’t met a deer yet).
3. DTs like white-footed mice, and white-footed mice like woodlands.��Research in Illinois shows that DTs are gaining a foothold in Illinois prairies by setting their sights on prairie voles instead.

So – stay inside until winter?��Through��winter?��Nope.��Standard precautions include wearing light-colored clothing, using repellents containing DEET, and pulling socks over your pants cuffs to make it harder for ticks to duck and hide.��According to the CDC, “In most cases, the tick must be attached for 36-48 hours or more before the Lyme disease bacterium can be transmitted,” so do thorough tick checks of your hairline and all your nooks and crannies.����

…�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ..the BugLady feels like stuff is crawling on her…�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ�Ħ..

The BugLady

The post Deer Tick again appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady has been curious about the status of Zebra and Quagga mussels since she posted an episode about them in 2016 (“A Tale of Two Mussels – the One-Two Punch”).��Here’s the original post (slightly tweaked and clarified), with a summary of her recent search of the literature at the end.��Put your feet up and grab a beverage.

Spoiler alert – although there continue to be new articles about these mussels, many are a rehash of older information, and it’s frustrating when agencies do not date their information pages (you know who you are), so it’s hard to say if they’ve been updated.

2016��– When the BugLady started researching zebra mussels, it became apparent that the story of this non-native, invasive mussel was inextricably entwined with that of an equally-alien and equally-invasive mussel, the quagga mussel.��And also that we are, as a species, appallingly slow learners.��

Zebra and quagga mussels are in the Phylum Mollusca, a diverse bunch that includes snails and slugs, limpets, clams, scallops, squid, octopi, and cuttlefish.��Within the Mollusks, they’re in the order Bivalvia, and in the family Dreissenidae.��

Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) and Quagga mussels (Dreissena bugensis) have traveled far from their native haunts, the Caspian Sea drainage of western Russia, but they have settled nicely into their new homes in America, hitchhiking through the Great Lakes and inland lakes and rivers on boats, boots, bait buckets, and on the feet of waterfowl.��Zebra mussels were first identified in the US in 1988 in Lake St. Clair, just east of Detroit, and they reached Wisconsin by 1992.��In 2010, they were found in 130 Wisconsin lakes and rivers.��

The first North American quagga mussel was found in 1989, but it wasn’t positively identified until 1991.��The two mussels are now found in 29 states, and the National Wildlife Federation website estimates that the Great Lakes alone are home to 10 trillion (with a “T”) zebra and quagga mussels.��They are similarly-marked, but the underside of a Zebra mussel shell is flattened, and a Quagga mussel’s shell is more rounded and doesn’t lie flat.��Pictures of the two may be found at: .��Here an animated map of the Zebra mussel’s spread between 1986 and 2024:����(the BugLady loves animated maps), and graphics showing the spread of both species in the Lake Michigan basin up until 2015 (scroll down to the Lake Michigan profiles)��.��

Did they hoof it over here on their own?��They did not; like most of us, they came over on the boat.��They undoubtedly arrived in the Great Lakes in the ballast water of ships that ply international waters, as have a rogue’s gallery of hardy gatecrashers (more than 180 species, so far) – a number of North American organisms have been toted to Europe in the same fashion.��

Here’s the physics of it: while they’re in their home ports, European vessels take water (plus whatever is swimming in that water) into tanks built on the inside of the ship’s hull, and this “ballast water” helps keep the ship upright.��A ship carrying a small cargo needs lots of ballast, but as it loads more cargo, it discharges (plus whatever’s swimming in it). Ocean-going ships routinely enter the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence Seaway, and equally routinely, have emptied their ballast water into the Great Lakes.��In 1993, a difficult-to-enforce law was passed that required incoming ships to replace their home-grown ballast water with ocean water��before��entering the Seaway,

In 2011, New York State, gatekeeper for the St Lawrence Seaway, proposed stiff, new regulations about ballast water management/treatment.��Three (short-sighted) Midwestern governors pushed back, citing concerns about job loss, even though some innovative alternative transport was suggested at the time.��

Zebra and quagga mussels turned out to be plenty adaptable – although they originated in salt/brackish water, they quickly adjusted to fresh.��They are bottom dwellers that live in clusters in great, huge, astronomical numbers on the floors of lakes (at one site in Arizona, quagga mussels number 35,000 per square meter).

When quagga mussels arrived, they out-competed the zebra mussels.��Although their life histories are similar, the two mussels prefer different habitats.��Zebra mussels like water depths of 6 to 30 feet, and quaggas can live as deep as 400 feet, so zebra mussels grow closer to shore, and quaggas thrive through the deep basins of the Great Lakes.��Quaggas necessarily have a much wider temperature tolerance.��Zebra mussels prefer hard surfaces to grow on, but Quaggas thrive on softer, siltier lake floors.��Both species eat all day, but quaggas continue feeding during the winter, when zebra mussels are dormant (you snooze, you lose).��The BugLady’s photos show them as most people experience them – as “empties,” cast up on the beach.��

Mussels are “filter feeders,” which means that they suck water in through a siphon and run it over their gills.��Food particles, zooplankton, phytoplankton, and nutrients (and pollutants) are strained out of the water by cilia in the gills and are moved to the mussel’s mouth, and the water is expelled through a second siphon.��Wastes are released as mucous-covered, organic packets called��pseudofeces��(vocabulary word of the day).��An inch-long zebra mussel can filter��a liter��of water a day.��One liter per day x Biblical numbers of mussels = large bodies of very clean water.��

At first, some people were thrilled – “Yay, the lake is clean again,” shouted the headlines.��Cities around Lake Erie had been battling pollution in the form of algal blooms due to excessive nutrients (fertilizer) in the water.��In short order, you could see the bottom of the lake again (it’s called “nutrient bioextraction,” and it can be a useful tool in controlled situations where the bivalves are removed when they’re finished eating and processed into animal food or, ironically, fertilizer).��

However, the water was crystal clear because there were so few nutrients left in it, and native species that depended on the food in those liters of water were out of luck.��It was an all-out attack on the base of the food web.��Zooplankton feed on phytoplankton and are fed upon by larger animals, including tiny fish, which, in turn, feed bigger fish and a variety of other vertebrates.��But nutrient theft is not the only problem with these mussels.��

• Quaggas eat algae, but they’re picky, and non-toxic algae are their favorites.��What’s left after they feed is higher concentrations of the more troublesome algae.��

• Light is able to penetrate deeper into that nice, clean water – UV rays are bad for the very young fish but great for plants, opening the door for more algal blooms.��Decaying algae, some carrying harmful bacteria, wash up on beaches or lurk just offshore.

• The clear water can allow thick growths of other aquatic plants, too, fertilized by nutrient-rich mussel poop.��Dense aquatic vegetation discourages swimming, fishing, and boating.��

• Our native shellfish are indicators of the health of their environment.��The invasive mussels turn lake beds hard and lumpy, with wall-to-wall shells, making it hard for native bivalves to find favorable habitat.��To add insult to injury, zebra mussels will piggyback on native mussels, hindering their feeding and ultimately smothering them.�� Great picture at:��.��Said one fisheries biologist, “When I’m diving in the Mississippi River, if I come up with a ball of zebra mussels, I know that when I break that open, I’m either going to have a snail or a mussel — a native clam — inside that ball of zebra mussels.”

• Old zebra and quagga mussel shells wash up on shore, often in sharp fragments, problematic for barefoot beach-goers.����

• Zebra mussels overgrow anything that stands still long enough, especially pilings and other underwater surfaces, and they clog utility water intake/cooling pipes, requiring costly fixes.��Researchers in a few northern lakes have observed an odd (and one-sided) association – zebra mussels growing on the backs of clubtail dragonfly naiads (immature clubtails may live underwater for several years, giving mussels plenty of time to gain a foothold).��Their exoskeletons are effectively glued shut by mussel filaments on the thorax, where the exoskeleton normally splits to release the adult dragonfly, so naiads crawl up on shore and die there, unable to emerge.

• As they feed, quagga and zebra mussels accumulate toxins, with some pollutants occurring in their tissues (and their pseudofeces) in concentrations measuring many thousands of times higher than in the surrounding water.��Those toxins (including��Clostridium botulinum) get passed up the food chain in a process called��biomagnification.

• A mass of pseudofeces on the lake’s floor requires oxygen in order to decompose.��

Lake Superior has��mostly��avoided this mess, probably due to a combination of its much colder temperatures, lower levels of nutrients in the water, and its water chemistry – very little calcium for growing strong shells.

Mussel reproduction is external and chancy.��Males and females release their bodily fluids into the water, nature takes its course (aided by water currents and propinquity), and fertilized eggs hatch into a life stage called��veligers.��An adult female can produce as many as a million eggs annually, and her life span is three to five years, but the attrition rate for eggs and��veligers��is huge (they’re even eaten by filter-feeding adults).��Mom and Dad may be stuck in one spot, but their offspring are, temporarily, free-swimming, and currents can carry them great distances.��Veligers swim and feed for four or five weeks before they must attach, and they mature by their first birthday.��

What slows these critters down?

• Fish, like yellow perch and redear sunfish, and waterfowl, especially diving ducks like goldeneye and scaup, have learned to love the invasive mussels (98% of a Lesser Scaup’s diet is zebra mussels).��Kudos also go to the equally alien and equally invasive quagga-eating Round goby fish. Alien species that become invasive do so because they have left their native predators behind.��In this case, the predator caught up with the mussel, but, alas, this aggressive little fish damages native fish populations, too.

• A patented bacterium called Zequanox targets these two mussel species only and has a 90% mortality rate, but it’s��far��too expensive to apply to a Great Lake.��There’s a copper-based treatment, too.

• Unusually warm water – In 2001, the water temperature in parts of the Upper Mississippi reached 89 degrees F, and masses of zebra mussels died.��

Good news-Bad news: For zebra mussels in the Great Lakes, the show is over, but they’ve simply been replaced by quaggas, and scientists doubt that the Great Lakes will ever return to their pre-alien-mussel state.  At this point, Lake Michigan (the 6^th-largest freshwater lake in the world) is essentially a man-made ecosystem that’s being managed as a fishery, because the base of the food web is so messed up.   

For those people whose attitude toward alien species is “Get over it – A species is a species!  New species = more biodiversity,” the BugLady has one word. “Seriously???”

For all your invasive species needs, remember our own Southeastern Wisconsin Invasive Species Consortium (), a wealth of information about invasive species already in the state and on the horizon.����

Be assured that the BugLady did not use any of the information presented in the article about “Zebra Muscles” (ain’t Spellcheck grand?). 

The BugLady

2025��So – what’s new?

ZEBRA MUSSELS

• They continue to spread to small, inland lakes in Wisconsin – 250 of them, , with 14% of the 13,000 untouched lakes judged to have a favorable water chemistry to support them.�� Here’s a about them.

• An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – it can be time-consuming and expensive to try to get rid of them once they’re established (and they’ve usually been around for two or three years by the time anyone notices them).��Most boat launches have signage about hosing off the trailer, boat, live wells, bilges, and motor, but the list should also include swimsuits and wetsuits – the��veligers��can live for three to five days out of water.

• Researchers in Minnesota drew a direct line from large Zebra mussel infestations in inland lakes to some staggering increases in mercury levels in game fish in those lakes (up 72% in walleyes and a whopping 157% for yellow perch!).��In the waters well-filtered by invasive mussels, walleye fry fail to thrive.

• Sheephead, pumpkin seed sunfish, and carp will eat Zebra mussels, but apparently, non-native mussels are less nutritious than the native mussels, and the fish are stunted (the BugLady is blown away that someone figures these things out).

QUAGGA MUSSELS

• The belief in Lake Superior’s resistance to Quagga and zebra mussels turned out to be wishful thinking, but the populations seem localized – Apostle Islands, Isle Royale, and a few harbors.��Water that averages 40 degrees does seem to discourage them. ��

• Here are some .

• The population of Whitefish has plummeted by 80% in some parts of the Great Lakes, due to Quagga mussels.��There are estimates of quadrillions of Quaggas in the lower Great Lakes.

• Quaggas may have completed their conquest of Lake Michigan, but their spread into our inland lakes is just starting.��They were recently found in Geneva Lake, a deep lake whose substrate is 95% sand.��In a survey they did at Geneva Lake, the DNR found that a quarter of the boats had been used on a different water body in the past five days.

The BugLady again

The post A Tale of Two Mussels – Eight Years Out appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

Here’s another episode from the BugLady’s favorites file (yeah, yeah – Mom shouldn’t have favorites).

When BugFan Mary sent “what-is-it?” pictures from Florida of this wildly handsome grasshopper nymph, the BugLady said “More, please,” sending Mary back out into the palmettos to stalk grasshoppers with her Smartphone.��Thanks, Mary!!!�� With luck, the neighbors weren’t watching.��

This is one serious grasshopper!��It’s hard to ignore a grasshopper that’s large enough to trip over and too large to fly.

Big grasshopper?�� Big story.��Put your feet up.

Lubber grasshoppers are in the family Romaleidae, a family that’s having a taxonomic “Pardon our Dust” moment because some experts suspect that a few of the genera now included may not belong there.��One reputable source lists only four species north of the Rio Grande, but Bugguide.net includes nine species in seven genera.��Even the star of today’s show can be found under two scientific names –��Romalea��microptera��and��Romalea guttata.

Quick Etymological Detour: Romaleidae comes from a New Latin word that’s based on a Greek word that means, appropriately, “strong of body.”��The word “lubber” (which rhymes with “blubber”) has negative connotations in a variety of languages – “lazy or clumsy (Old English), “plump and lazy” (Swedish), “clumsy and stupid” (other Scandinavians), “swindler and parasite” (Old French), and “bumpkin.”����Microptera��means “micro wing” and��guttata��means “spotted.”��

[“Lubber” – a deeper dive: According to��, “’Since 16c. mainly a sailors’ word for those inept or inexperienced at sea (as in ‘landlubber,’ but earliest attested use is of lazy monks (abbey-lubber). Compare also provincial English lubberwort, name of the mythical herb that produces laziness (1540s), Lubberland ‘imaginary land of plenty without work’ (1590s).”��Lubber is also a verb – “to sail clumsily; to loaf about,” 1520s, from lubber(n.).”]

Anyway, there are some pretty spiffy North American lubber grasshoppers, not all of which are super-sized and not all of which are flightless, including the, the , and the awesome ��and ��(Arizona Road Trip!).��

An eye-catching insect like this is bound to have lots of common names. Along with Eastern lubber grasshopper, it answers to Florida lubber, Southern lubber, Texas grasshopper, graveyard grasshopper, soldier boys, Georgia thumper, and devil’s horse.

It’s the only lubber in the East, and one author calls it an insect of the deep, deep South.��Look for it in the Southeastern US from East Texas around the Gulf Coast to Florida, north to North Carolina, and west to Tennessee and Missouri.��Because they’re flightless, they aren’t spread evenly within that range.��Adults prefer dryer habitats in pine woods and weedy fields, and nymphs like swamps, marshes, wet pastures, and ditches.��

.��Part of��’s description reads “Distinguished by huge size and vivid yellow/red/black coloration, with hind wings red bordered black.” There’s a lot of variation in color , and��, and , and some color schemes get established regionally (the is more common around the Gulf Coast).��Newly hatched��, and ��lubber nymphs are red, but .

There’s only one generation per year.��Guarded by a male, the female lays eggs in summer, depositing about three pods, each containing 30 to 50 eggs, an inch or two underground in easily-excavated soil (she digs a hole with the tip of her abdomen).��Each pod is plugged with a foamy cap that allows the nymphs to escape when they hatch.��The eggs overwinter and the nymphs emerge in late winter as air and soil warm.��Dramatic migrations of lubbers-on-the-hoof have been reported – some associated with overcrowded nymphs seeking food, and others associated with adults seeking romance.

Sources are divided about whether lubbers are a big agricultural pest or not.��They feed on about 100 different herbaceous and woody plants in 38 plant families, and unfortunately, their menu includes some thick-leaved ornamentals like amaryllis, a few fruit trees (including citrus), and some vegetable crops (they like peas, beans, kale, and cabbage but not eggplant, tomato, pepper celery, or sweet corn).��There’s evidence that they can locate food plants by detecting their odors on the wind.��Though flightless, lubbers are good climbers; their usual MO is to chew holes in leaves and move on, but the nymphs are gregarious, and a dedicated .��

Nymphs also eat emergent aquatic vegetation in ditches, including some unwanted weeds, before they move into farm fields, and adults eat less than you’d think an insect of that size would eat.��On the plus side, an ingredient in a lubber’s saliva stimulates plant growth and can make a plant that’s rebounding from grasshopper foraging bushier and more desirable to four-legged-grazers (“compensatory plant growth”).������

Not much preys on Eastern lubbers.��Their bright (aposematic/warning) colors signal to predators that eating them would be a bad idea, and when something does try to make a meal of them, they launch a three-pronged attack – structural, behavioral, and chemical.��Seems like overkill, but remember, these guys are heavy and slow and flightless, and they don’t even hop well.����

An alarmed lubber first , a strategy that’s especially effective with birds. If that doesn’t work, it releases toxins.��Lubbers sequester some poisonous chemicals from the leaves they eat, and they synthesize others, and these chemicals come out of the spiracles (breathing tubes) of the thorax, first (with a hiss) as a noxious spray that can carry as far as 6 inches, and then as a foam that bubbles out (scroll down��).��Like other grasshoppers, it may also vomit “tobacco juice” – a fluid that’s made of recently eaten plant material and that may be repellent in itself (especially to ants) if the grasshopper has been dining on toxic plants.��

The array of plants that lubbers eat allows them to stockpile different chemicals at different times, and their predators can’t get acclimated to the poisons because the ingredients are always changing.��The chemicals deter invertebrates and vertebrates alike – frogs, lizards and most birds vomit strenuously and may even die after eating one, and even opossums can’t stomach them.��

The bubbly broth is stored in a gland within the thorax.��In an article called “Large size as an antipredator defense,” researchers Whitman and Vincent write that “As such, this unique defense gland serves as a toxic waste dump for potentially harmful, plant secondary compounds. When ejected, these low-weight substances quickly volatize, enveloping the grasshopper in a noxious chemical cloud, deterrent to many vertebrate predators,” and they add that “It appears that lubbers have evolved to occupy a relatively predator-free ecological space: they are too large to be attacked by most invertebrate predators and too toxic for most vertebrate predators.”��

They have legs that are heavily armed with spines that are sharp enough to pierce human skin, and the chitonous plates that make up their exoskeletons are extra-tough – these guys are armored tanks. They are harmless to humans, but they have strong jaws, and one����correspondent reported being nipped smartly by a nymph that was scaling his leg.��

Fun Facts about Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers

• Most people’s first (and only) contact with them comes when they dissect one in a biology class. The BugLady did so back in the ‘60’s, and she still remembers how stinky it was – a result of the synergy of the formalin preservative and the grasshopper’s special essence.
• According to a Natural History Writings entry at Loyola University’s Institute of Environmental Communication, “A popular Louisiana childhood pastime before computer games was to harness lubbers to a matchbox and pretend they were horses pulling wagons.”
• The only hungry bird that’s figured out a “work-around” is the Loggerhead Shrike, which impales a grasshopper on a thorn or barbed wire fence and then leaves. After a few days, the toxic substances have neutralized, and the bird gets a sizeable meal.

This is really a spectacular insect, and lots of people like taking pictures of it (and it poses so nicely!). Here are some gratuitous pictures from��:

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The BugLady

The post Eastern Lubber Grasshopper – a Snowbird Special rerun appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady confesses that she has a list of favorites among the 766 BOTWs to date. This is one of them. Lots of fun to research and write, it was originally posted after the 2014 Treasures of Oz celebration/Ecotour. No new words; a few different pictures. 

A few years ago, BugFan Marjie had a fantastic idea. She wanted to get people out on the trails of the natural areas here in Ozaukee County (Wisconsin). The plan – to staff different sites each year with interpreters, send people on their way with passports to be stamped at each destination, and finish the day with a big party at the MotherShip – Forest Beach Migratory Preserve. The event –��Treasures of Oz. Over the past five years, many thousands of people have made the acquaintance of county nature preserves that were not on their radar before.

This year, Marjie asked the BugLady to be part of the team at the Cedarburg Environmental Study Area (CESA), a property owned by the excellent Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, which sponsors Treasures of Oz (find descriptions and trail maps of all their preserves at ). The CESA site hosts some phenomenal, six-feet-wide ant mounds, and the ant story needed to be told. The BugLady was dubious – the general population, she has noticed, isn’t that inspired by bugs, and besides, due to a misspent youth, the BugLady is a tiny bit ant-averse. 

First off, what kind of ants are they? BugFan Tom rounded up an ant guy in Mississippi who, of course, requested some ants. The BugLady figured that she would place an old film canister (younger BugFans might have to Google “film canister”) on the top of a pretty active mound, and maybe some ants would climb in. What could go wrong?  As soon as the canister landed on the mound, ants came pouring out, covering the top of the mound and covering the film canister, inside and out. Now what? The BugLady fished it off with a stick, managed to cap it, and rolled it around a bit to loosen the exterior ants. 

The ants were dispatched to Mississippi; the postal worker who asked if the parcel contained “anything liquid, fragile, perishable, etc.” didn’t ask specifically about ants. Joe, the ant guy, made short work of the ID – the ants are Formica montana, in the wood/thatch/field/mound ant family Formicidae. The genus Formica includes a bunch of mound-building ants that use different construction strategies in varying habitats. Besides mounds, they are famous for defending themselves by spraying formic acid and by biting (often employing a one-two punch – “bite-first-then-spray-the-irritating-chemical-into-the-wound”). 

Formica montana, a.k.a. the Prairie Mound Ant, is a pretty neat ant. While they are important in prairie ecosystems, they are also wetland specialists, and the ground in much of the CESA site is damp. PMAs build mounds in peaty, wetland soils, and their lives are governed by the water table. While their prairie relatives may tunnel five feet into the earth, nests in wetlands are shallower, and ants must be prepared to move up above ground level, into the mound, if the water rises. Considering all the rain we’ve been having, they’ve probably been spending lots of time “upstairs.” 

Mounds are formed when ants tunnel into the soil and bring particles to the surface to dispose of them; ants move more dirt than earthworms and are valuable soil mixers and turners. Young mounds are steep-sided and about 12 to 15 inches tall, and they often have vegetation on top. As the population increases, the ants build out because, in wetlands, they can’t build down. One source said that a large mound might have 6,000 ants in it, but the BugLady thinks that number is way low for some of the mega-mounds at CESA. The tops of PMA mounds may have fifty or more entrances, and the mounds themselves consist of a honeycomb of tunnels and chambers for food and young and for workers to rest in, and the tunnels also affect oxygen exchange. The average mound takes about six years to build and lasts for about 12 years, but some have been clocked as old as 30 years.  A colony may get larger by “budding’ – forming a smaller colony nearby and then growing toward it, and PMAs may construct small, seasonal feeding mounds. Mounds are often found growing near red-osier dogwood shrubs; this sun-loving shrub of early succession tolerates the same kinds of soil as the ants – soggy, but not permanently soggy. The dogwood is also a portent of future shade trees – bad news for the ants. 

The mounds are solar collectors. Some Formica ants cover the tops of their mounds with bits of vegetation, and other ants actually plant grass there. PMA mounds are built in the open or on woody edges, and the tops are kept clear of anything that generates shade. The ants actively clip any plant that tries to grow. The domed shape makes mounds more efficient at catching the sun’s rays at the start and end of the day. PMAs like it warm and humid (100% humidity is just fine with them), and they move their larvae and pupae around to nurseries with the optimal climate.

What do all those ants eat? Protein, in the form of insect larvae and pillbugs. Lots of carbs. Their main carbohydrate is honeydew, sugar water that they harvest from aphids and treehoppers that they “farm.” In close proximity to one mound at CESA were dense herds of ant-tended aphids on dogwood flower/fruit heads, and smaller bunches of ant-tended treehoppers (and their astounding nymphs) on goldenrod stems. In return for the ants’ protection, the bugs allow ants to “milk” them; stroking the bugs’ abdomen induces them to exude drops of honeydew. Workers find their way to distant food sources by following “trail pheromones” left by other workers. The BugLady saw the protein-rich, spore-bearing head of a horsetail/equisetum plant by one nest entrance and guesses that the ants might feed on that, too. 

PMAs are very territorial, both with PMAs from different mounds and with other species. They generally out-compete non-PMAs, and they carve up the habitat neatly so that multiple PMA colonies can live side-by-side without using up the food supply. 

Ant mounds have generated a new art form.�� .��If you Google “Ant Mound Art” or “Cast aluminum ant tunnels,” or some such, you can see lots of examples.��The ants don’t survive the artistic process (animal lovers have protested), but many of the mounds so treated have been fire ant mounds.��

In the end, 120 people visited CESA during the recent Treasures of Oz event, and many left thinking more highly about ants than when they arrived (except for the jerk who walked along poking a hole in each mound he saw with his walking stick).��Nest repair is what ants train for, but it takes time and energy, and recent pounding rains have given them plenty of work.��If BugFans decide to visit the ants of CESA (right now, there is a Bluet Bonus – gazillions of marsh bluet damselflies dripping from the vegetation and making more bluets), they should remember that in addition to the mound-top itself, there’s a zone of activity at least a foot wide around the base of the mounds, and tunnels that extend outward from the base, under the soil), and active trails to outlying “herds.”��BugFans who stand in awe at the edge of a mound will soon find themselves doing the “ant dance.”��

Bravo, Joe, at the Mississippi Entomological Museum, for the ID and the super-macro pictures, and thanks, Southern BugFan Tom. It does, indeed, take a village. If you’re ever in town……

Bravo, Yankee BugFan Tom, for putting in a day of ant-education.

Bravo, Marjie and OWLT. 

Bravo, ants!

The BugLady

The post The Ants of CESA Rerun appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

This striking little moth was mentioned briefly a few years ago among an array of visitors to water hemlock flowers. Here’s the rest of the story. 

It belongs in the Clear-winged moth family Sesiidae, but it’s not related to the Clear-winged/Hummingbird moths (Sphinx moths in the genus Hemaris) that play peek-a-boo with the BugLady each summer around the wild bergamot, hovering prettily next to a flower and . It’s not uncommon for common names to be shared – in this case, shared because both groups have scaleless – clear – areas on their wings. There are more than 1500 species in the family Sesiidae worldwide, mostly in the tropics, and we have visited the family once before.     

The Peachtree borer moth is a member of a colorful genus 

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, in a colorful family

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of waspy-looking, day-flying moths (some species fly for only a few specific hours of each day).�� They have long, waspy legs and they can hover like wasps, too.��It’s called Batesian mimicry – a harmless species is protected by its resemblance to a harmful one – in the case of the Sesiids, adopting the aposematic (warning color) signals of a wasp.��

Some adult Sesiids feed on nectar, and the larvae of most species bore into vines or into the branches, trunks, bark, or roots of woody plants. Some species are big pests of orchard crops and landscaping shrubs and trees.

Females send out chemical signals (pheromones) to attract males. They “call” daily, and these calls may be sensed by males a half-mile away. They lay eggs on various parts of their host plants; the newly-hatched larvae dig in and feed, and many eventually pupate within their plant, but not before excavating an exit and concealing it with silk. Some species are larvae for two seasons or even longer, but adults live only for a few weeks – some for much less. Adult Peachtree borer moths live less than a week and do not eat. 

PEACHTREE/GREATER PEACHTREE BORER MOTHS (Synanthedon exitisoa) can be found in much of North America excepting parts of the Great Plains and desert Southwest and a few Eastern states (there’s also a Lesser Peachtree borer moth that’s mostly Eastern).

Their host plants are peach trees and other members of the genus Prunus, all sun-loving members of the rose family, and they’re considered the most destructive of the clear-winged borers – persona non grata wherever they’re found. In the wild, they use wild cherry, wild plum, and shadbush (Amelanchier sp.). 

As one website said, “I can’t believe they’re not wasps!” They are sexually dimorphic (two forms), and although , the . Their wingspans are 1 ¼”-ish (females are larger than males), and . Although they’re not aggressive, spider wasp stings can pack quite a wallop, but the moths, of course, don’t sting.  

The natural history of Peachtree borers is pretty-well documented. Adults emerge from their pupal cases between 8:00 AM and 1:00 PM and mating commences immediately – females lay more than half of their eggs on their first day as an adult. Eggs are deposited in cracks and crevices in the bark near the base of the tree or on the ground nearby, and her fertility is her Super Power – of the 400 to 900 (or more) eggs she lays, 97% to 100% will hatch! 

The larvae tunnel in and feed on the cambium (growth layer) of the roots and trunk just below ground level (a zone called the “root crown”), and the tunnels they leave behind intersect the plumbing of the tree, disrupting the flow of nutrients up and down the trunk and causing twigs and branches to die. They leave piles of frass (bug poop) at the entrances of their tunnel, and they may cause a thick, gooey sap to ooze from their holes in the trunk. While the tree damage is mechanical, the larval tunneling may introduce fungi and bacteria.

The larvae overwinter within the tree and resume eating in spring, doing more damage because they’re larger. They pupate within inches of the base of the host tree in a . After the adults emerge, . 

A PEACH OF A RABBIT HOLE

So – before peaches, Peachtree borers, a native species, hummed along in harmony with their universe, eating wild Prunus species. When, exactly, did they encounter their first peach? 

According to the lore of some Puebloan tribes, there have always been peaches in the Southwest – the Anasazi, who walked away in the early 1300’s AD, were said to enjoy them. 

Others say that they originated in China 2.6 million years ago and have been under cultivation there for 6,000 to 8,000 years. Peaches were grown in Persia (Iran) 2000 years ago (which explains the scientific name, Prunus persica), were spread west into Europe by Alexander the Great, and were brought by French/Spanish explorers/conquistadores to Mexico/Florida in the first half of the 1500’s (but there’s always a chance that they came over with Columbus, too). It’s likely that the peach wasn’t embraced by the Indians until a decade or so after its introduction, when the missionaries that followed the explorers arrived to set up shop. Once adopted, though, it spread like wildfire along native trading routes and became an important food. Indians who were forced to travel the Trail of Tears from the Southeast to Oklahoma (1830 to 1850) carried peach pits with them. Fifty years earlier, Washington had ordered his troops to destroy massive, mixed fruit orchards in Upstate New York in order to crush the Indians there.

Not only did they embrace it and incorporate it into their agricultural and land management systems, those consummate Indigenous plant geneticists developed many varieties that were quite different from European peaches. In the right soil and with lots of sunlight, peaches grow easily and can plant themselves, but it takes human intervention – pruning – to develop good fruit. Peaches grew so readily that several sources called them, along with the hogs that were also introduced by the Spanish, the first American weeds.

The bottom line – the Europeans who arrived to settle the Atlantic Coast in the 1600’s reported peaches among the bounty that the New World offered and assumed that the peaches were native. “Here are also Peaches, and very good, and in great quantities, not an Indian Plantation without them … one may have them by Bushels for little; they make a pleasant Drink and I think not inferior to any Peach you have in England…….” said William Penn in 1683. A few years later, early Naturalist John Banister wrote “…for the Indians have, and ever had greater variety and finer sorts of them than we… I have seen those they call the yellow plum-peach that have been 12 or 13 inches in girth.”   

A team of researchers located what they believe to be the earliest North American peaches at an archaeological dig between Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia, when they dated to 1520 to 1550 AD some peach pits that were found at the bottom of post holes (blowing out of the water the notion that peaches were introduced by the Spanish to St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 or to Mexico in 1562).  

Peachtree borers responded to the massive increase of host plants with a population boom of their own and were recognized as pests by the early 1800’s.

Yeah, yeah – the BugLady is a history geek, too.

The BugLady

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Greetings, BugFans,

The Holidays are hurtling toward us at an astonishing speed, so the BugLady figured that a Christmas green and red dragonfly would be fitting. It’s one that she’s seen, all too briefly, but not photographed – thanks to Guest Photographer BugFan Freda, aka the Dragonfly Whisperer, for the pictures (the BugLady took the one of the darner in the grass).

Comet Darners (Anax longipes) are in the dragonfly family Aeshnidae, the darners, and in the genus Anax, a group of large and sometimes migratory darners (Anax comes from an Ancient Greek word meaning “lord,” “master,” or “king”). Bugguide.net shows four other genus members in the US, a couple of them just barely here:

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Comet Darners mostly live east of the Great Plains, from Florida to Ontario, though they are distributed randomly, and even though they aren’t officially considered migratory, they are strong flyers that can end up just about anywhere. They prefer relatively shallow ponds with forested edges, lots of floating, submerged, and emergent vegetation, and few/no fish. The water level of many of their chosen ponds fluctuates annually. 

Comet Darners are fast and impressive, and with a wingspread of up to 3 ½” (females are slightly larger than males) they are among our largest dragonflies, And at 2 ½” long, their naiads are pretty big, too – Freda’s photograph of the empty shells of a Comet Darner (left) and Common Green Darner (right) show the size difference. They have , and males have a constriction on the third abdominal segment that gives them a “narrow waisted” appearance (females are stockier). The as he flashes by. Females have . They seldom perch and are hard both to catch and hard to photograph. ( has a surprisingly small collection of pictures for a dragonfly this flashy, with this large a range.) Some observers report that these darners are most active in the beginning and ending parts of the day. 

Most sources say that the only dragonfly you might mistake the uncommon Comet Darner for is the smaller Common Green Darner (which is, as its name suggests, common). The BugLady got pretty excited when she spotted the colorful darner perched in the grass, but despite the red abdomen, she could see the Cyclops eye on the top of its head when she photographed it – an especially colorful female Common Green Darner. Comet darners lack that . 

Like all Odonates, Comet Darners are carnivores, both during their aquatic youth as naiads and as aerial adults. The naiads are big enough to tackle not only the usual aquatic invertebrates but also small vertebrates like minnows, tadpoles, and frogs, and they’re top predators in their habitats. Adults cruise about 8 feet above the water, grabbing insects out of the air, and their super-long legs allow them to go after larger prey, including their fellow dragonflies. On the Comet Darner page of his great “Dragonflies of Northern Virginia” website, Kevin Munroe writes “I saw one flying off to feed in the trees with two Black Saddlebags (decent-sized insects themselves), clutched tightly in those long, red, black-hooked legs. I guess he was hungry, and one dragonfly just wasn’t enough.”

Males are territorial, patrolling all around the shoreline of their pond, just above the level of the vegetation, looking for food, intruders, and mates. Neither males nor females are monogamous. Females slice into the stems of plants just below the . Eggs hatch within a month, but the naiad/immature stage may last for several years.

According to the Comer Darner page on the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species website, , “Immature dragonflies may spend a week or more feeding and maturing away from water, often some distance from the breeding site. Comet Darners are rarely seen during this stage. It is possible that they spend their time in the tree tops, where they are difficult to observe.  …….  When at rest, they hang from the vegetation in a vertical position, often high in the trees.”&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

What’s their status in Wisconsin? Are there unchecked ponds out there that are graced by Comet Darner flyovers every summer?  Are there Comet Darner naiads under the ice in Wisconsin right now, awaiting the warming waters of spring?

Comet Darners are listed on the Wisconsin Odonata Survey website as a “Most Wanted” species, and their story here is similar to their story in other states at/beyond the edges of their range.  

In his article called “What is the incomparable Anax longipes (Comet Darner) doing in Wisconsin?” Robert DuBois and Freda trace the history of Comet Darners in the state. Beginning with a report in 1978, Comet Darners have been recorded at just a few sites in just a few counties. They have not been seen every year, and while most sightings are of males, ovipositing females have been seen, and an exuvia (shed skin) of an emerged naiad was found at one site, pointing to successful breeding. 

There are tantalizingly few reports here each year (a Comet Darner was recorded during the 2024 Riveredge Butterfly and Dragonfly Count), but some sites have been visited multiple times. Sometimes, individuals are seen for a few days and then they disappear, but other Comet Darners are observed on ponds for longer stretches of time. Data collected in Wisconsin and in Michigan suggest that, while it is possible that random wandering individuals could find the same pond several years in a row (remember, dragonflies only live a few months as adults, so they’re not revisiting a site, like migratory birds), it’s more likely that small numbers of Comet Darners are breeding in Wisconsin, at the northwest edge of their range – what Robert DuBois calls “small but persistent interacting subpopulations.”  

Fun Fact about Darners:  In his book Dragonflies of the North Woods, Kurt Mead says, “Not to scare you, but I have heard of rare, isolated reports of darners attempting to lay eggs into human skin. One scientist carefully observed eggs being injected into each cut in his skin.  Perhaps this phenomenon is the source of some old European names such as ‘eye sticker,’ ‘horse stinger,’ and ‘devil’s darning needle.’” (to which the BugLady replies 1) of course he did; 2) that scientist doomed those eggs in service of his useless observation; and 3) the devil takes the fall for a bunch of stinging and scary-looking insects.).

The BugLady

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