THEY’RE COMING!!!

It’s barely spring, officially – way too early to be thinking about butterflies, right?��Nope.��The first butterflies of the year have already been reported on the Wisconsin Butterflies website () (which also serves your Tiger beetle and Robber fly needs).��

Our first butterflies are usually the anglewings (commas and Question Marks Anglewings (Family Nymphalidae) – Field Station) and the Mourning Cloaks Mourning Cloak Revisited – Field Station.��Why?��Because they go through the winter as adults, tucked up into a sheltered spot (called a hibernaculum).��These are the species that are seen by people tapping maple trees in the Sugarbush during the warm days of late winter.��When the cold returns – and it always does, except in the bizarre spring of 2012 – they seek shelter again.��They are able to be abroad in early spring, before the wildflowers bloom, because they feed on sap from sap drips, juice from rotting fruits, and minerals from animal droppings.

The other early butterflies are species that overwintered as a chrysalis and emerged in spring – Cabbage Butterflies Cabbage Whites and Sulphurs Redux – Field Station and a couple of “blue” butterflies, the Eastern Tailed-Blue and the “Spring” Spring Azure Small Blue Butterflies – Field Station.��In very warm years, early individuals of these species have been recorded in late March.��Our first Monarch sightings usually come in May.

Back to the Monarchs. A year ago, winter censuses of the eastern and western populations, Monarch Butterfly showed that numbers were down The Monarch Butterfly Problem – Field Station. This year’s census found eastern Monarchs occupying 64% more territory in Mexico’s oyamel fir forests than last year.��Not a home run, but reason for optimism .

Monarchs are on the way! Check the Journey North interactive map –��.��For more information, see .��

Mike Reese has built a wonderful community of butterfly-lovers who make reports to the Wisconsin Butterflies website; and while it is more anonymous, the Wisconsin Odonata Survey website () contains a treasure trove of information.��Where do all those reports come from?��Us – they are two examples of Citizen/Community Science projects here in Wisconsin!��Register with the site, keep track of the butterflies and/or dragonflies/damselflies you see on your walks or in your back yard (you need to take a nose count of the butterflies but not of the dragonflies), and then log on to record what you’ve seen.�� Both sites accept pictures. ��

The Journey North organization offers another Community Science project called the monarch larva monitoring project��.

Go outside – look for butterflies!

The BugLady

The post Monarch Butterflies – Spring, 2026 appeared first on Field Station.

This is a Good-News-Bad News-Stay-Tuned kind of story. 

But first, a little background.��Besides being large and lovely, Monarch butterflies, of course, catch our fancy because of the death-defying migrations they undertake twice a year.��Migrations – fueled by flowers – that carry some of them 3,000 miles from Canada into central Mexico.��

Monarchs have a wide geographical range today, but only part of it is historic. They’ve been introduced or have found their way to and established populations in Hawaii (there’s a white subspecies in Oahu), some Caribbean Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and more, and they are accidental migrants to other spots on the globe. 

Most of the North American Monarch population is divided between the Western Monarchs that occupy the Pacific Coast west of the Rockies and overwinter in the southern half of California, and the Eastern Monarchs that range from the Rockies to the Atlantic Coast and overwinter in the oyamel fir forests in a mountainous area west of Mexico City. There are also pockets of Monarchs that are permanent residents in Arizona, around the Gulf Coast through Florida, and along the Eastern Seaboard as far north as Virginia.

FIRST, THE GOOD(-ISH) NEWS.  Every winter the population of Eastern Monarchs that overwinters in the Mariposa Monarca Biosphere Reserve is censused by counting how many acres/hectares of the Reserve that they occupy (one hectare equals a little less than 2.5 acres or about two football fields). The 2024 survey found Monarchs on only 2.22 acres, one of the lowest densities since the count began in 1993, but in-2025, 4.42 acres were occupied. Good news but not great news – the population is still very low, and some researchers say that in order to be sustainable, the population should cover about 15 acres. 

Better weather, less drought, and better protections for the fir forests against illegal logging are credited with the increase (although, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, an ongoing threat to the forests is cutting trees in order to grow avocados for American tables).

Will this year’s boost become a trend? Monarch numbers tend to see-saw. On the negative side, a warming climate is rendering the mountainous Reserve less habitable for the firs and is making larger swatches of the South too warm for Monarch reproduction.  And then there are the pesticides that affect both the plants and the insects themselves. On the positive side, citizens along the butterflies’ path are getting the message about planting the milkweed needed by Monarch caterpillars and a variety of nectar plants for the adults. For more background on Monarch populations, see here.

THEN THE BAD NEWS. Western Monarchs, historically numbered in the millions and whose numbers had exceeded 200,000 in recent counts, suffered a major crash this year, with the 2024-2025 survey finding just over 9,000 butterflies. The “break-even” number for survival of the Western Monarch may be as high as 30,000, and some scientists put them at a 99% probability of being extinct by 2080.

A recent study shows a 22% decline in butterfly numbers across multiple species over the past twenty years.

AND THE STAY-TUNED NEWS. A few years ago, there was some momentum to list Monarchs as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). An “Endangered” designation means that a species is in danger of going extinct over all or part of its range, and a “Threatened” species is one that is likely to become Endangered within the foreseeable future over all or a significant portion of its range. For that story, see here.

For various reasons, among them the fact that Monarch numbers can vary dramatically from year to year, the decision was kicked down the road. Then, in 2024, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) again proposed listing the Monarch. The deadline for public comment, initially set to expire in March, was extended until May 19, with a possible decision to be announced by the end of 2025. If accepted, the Monarch would be the “most common” Threatened species ever listed, which causes some observers to say that it’s still too early to bring them under the ESA umbrella.   

Monarchs are already listed as Endangered in Canada and are recognized as a Species of Special Protection in Mexico.

Listing a Threatened or Endangered Species has far-reaching ripples, both monetary and regulatory (land use restrictions, for example), and requires a Solomon-like crafting of the law. Any species added to the list must have a budget and a realistic game plan for recovery – one that, in the case of the Monarch, would attempt to turn back the clock on decades of habitat loss and degradation, pesticide use, and the effects of climate change. Changing weather patterns have exposed spring migrants to stormy weather, and warmer falls have caused many Monarchs to linger in the north.  

Ideally, people should embrace the conservation goals of a recovery plan voluntarily, and any plan should allow for the continuation of state and local efforts by individuals, agencies, and organizations. Too rigorous, and people will resent it and it will become a political hot-potato; not rigorous enough and the plan will fail the species.  In the case of the Monarch, both the butterfly and its remarkable migration are in peril. 

Fun Fact about Monarchs: they were the first butterfly species to have its genome sequenced.

Another Fun Fact about Monarchs:  the name “Monarch” is thought to be a reference to 17^th century British King William III, also called the Prince of Orange (the British royalty/peerage also figured into the naming of the Baltimore Oriole and the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly after Lord Baltimore, whose servants sported orange and black livery). 

Yet Another Fun Fact about Monarchs: according to Wikipedia, they’re the state insect of Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia, and there were unsuccessful attempts in 1989 and 1991 to name them the National Insect of the United States.  

Final Fun Fact about Monarchs: THEY’RE COMING! .

The BugLady

The post Monarch Butterfly Status Update appeared first on Field Station.

Life is busy – here’s a not-so-Golden Oldie, from the BugLady’s favorites list.

First of all, it’s .��(The BugLady’s picture doesn’t do it justice – the original slide, taken in Texas, was fine, but the scanned slide, not so much)��Second, unlike many of BOTW’s featured bugs, there was an abundance of information about this species, some of which sent the BugLady traipsing happily down a few rabbit holes.��

[The BugLady apologizes in advance to the fine folks at 51����, who do such a dynamite job of formatting BOTW for the archives.��There are an excessive number of links in this episode.��You guys are awesome!]

This is not your grandfather’s fritillary (unless your grandfather is a Southerner). Gulf Fritillaries are in the Brush-footed butterfly family Nymphalidae, along with a whole bunch of familiar Wisconsin butterflies, and they’re with the fritillaries in the subfamily Heliconiinae (which used to be its own family).�� But, unlike our , they’re in the tribe Heliconiini, aka the Heliconians or Longwings, many of which occur in tropical climes and have long, slim, spectacular wings:

The larvae of many Heliconians feed on parts of passion vines and leaves, and the adults eat the nectar, fruit and sap of a number of plants, and many make or save toxic chemicals for defense.����(a group of butterflies is called a roost or bivouac).����

The Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis��vanillae) (Dione vanillae��in some books) is also known as the Passion butterfly because of its caterpillar host plant, and the��Online Guide to the Animals of Trinidad and Tobago��refers to it as the Silver Spotted Flambeau.��Carl Linnaeus gave it the species name “vanillae” based on a life cycle painting of the butterfly on a vanilla plant done by the amazing 18^th��century naturalist/painter Maria Sibylla Merian, but the species doesn’t use vanilla plants. If you’re not familiar with her, .��

Its range is described as Neotropical, which covers the ground from central Mexico and the Caribbean to southern South America.��In North America it is most common across our southern tier of states and the West Indies, and is . It’s one of the most common butterflies in some parts of Florida, where it has multiple generations per year; it was introduced to Southern California in the late 1800’s and is established there; it’s also established in Hawaii; and it has been recorded in Guam.��Gulf Fritillaries fly north in spring, breeding across the Southeast, and move back south again in fall, with Florida seeing dramatic migrations in both directions.������

It has a wingspan of two-and-one-half to almost four dazzling inches; .

Courtship is exotic.��As a male and female circle each other in the air, he calms her flight response by releasing aphrodisiac courtship pheromones from “hair pencils” on his abdomen, and after she perches, he may hover above her, dusting her with more pheromones.��He perches beside her, they shift to face each other at a 45-degree angle, and he claps his wings open and closed, enveloping her antennae with each clap, delivering more pheromones from structures on the top side of his front wings and letting her know he is the same species (butterfly eyesight isn’t that great).�� For Gulf Fritillaries, it’s “Ladies’ Choice” – females actively pick the males they mate with, so he really has to sell it.��

Rabbit hole #1: If she accepts his advances, his sperm packet, delivered when they mate, includes what’s called a nuptial gift.��The BugLady has written about nuptial gifts in spiders, katydids, tree crickets, and dance flies, but she had no idea that some butterflies produce them (they’re an energy-intensive investment for the male).��The sperm packet includes nutrients that will help her form eggs. In the case of one of the European Comma butterflies (Polygonia c-album), the spermatophores are edible, containing both food and sperm, and the female, who mates with multiple males, can rate a male by the quality of plants he ate as a caterpillar (nettle is preferred) (Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore).��

She lays her eggs, one by one, on or near a passion vine (, usually on the top surface of a leaf.��When they hatch, the caterpillars eat their egg shells – and sometimes neighboring eggs – and then start in on the leaves, often feeding in small groups.��

In the far southern US, Gulf fritillaries are in the air all year long, producing multiple generations.��They are said to overwinter only as adults, but one researcher concluded that after passion vines die back in Florida in early winter, caterpillars can survive in diapause (dormancy – they halt development and resume when conditions improve).��They can also enter diapause in the chrysalis stage, though temperatures under 30 degrees are not good for them (or for most Floridians). Here’s .��

Gulf Fritillaries are well-defended.��Adults can produce stinky fluids when alarmed.��The vegetation of many passion vine species is chock full of chemicals including glycosides that release cyanide when eaten, alkaloids, and strychnine and nicotine relatives, making their caterpillars a bad choice for predators.��And if that weren’t enough, .��

Rabbit hole #2 was peripheral and was kind of like when you find out that deer eat baby birds (yes, deer eat baby birds, and so do chipmunks). 

In order to produce mating pheromones and “build” nuptial gifts, male butterflies in some species in the subfamily Danainae (the Milkweed and Glasswing butterflies) may want to boost their alkaloid load.��They can get extra alkaloids by scratching toxic leaves with claws on their tarsi (feet) and sipping the resulting sap, but researchers in the Sulawesi area of Indonesia noticed that some Danaine upped the ante by ingesting chemicals from caterpillars that had been feeding on plants in the dogbane family (which is closely related to milkweed).��Seven species were observed scratching dead or dying caterpillars and sipping the fluid (researchers don’t know if the scratching part had contributed to the dead and dying part). They went after healthy caterpillars too (“subdued them,” said the researchers), to harvest the toxic chemicals that the caterpillars sequester from their food plants for their own protection.��In their defense, it may be that the butterflies were attracted to leaves that were already scratched and oozing, and the caterpillars were just in the neighborhood.��Scientists had to coin a new term for this unique practice – “Kleptopharmacophagy” – literally “stealing chemicals for consumption.”��

One of the researchers, Yi-Kai Tea, referred to caterpillars as “essentially bags of macerated leaves; the same leaves that contain these potent chemicals the milkweed butterflies seek out.” Fortunately, our iconic Monarch has not (yet) been implicated in this behavior, which is a good thing because the BugLady wouldn’t be able to look one in the eye.

The great Roger Tory Peterson once said that a good birder always looks twice. In his 1970 book��Butterflies of Wisconsin, Ebner dismissed some early Gulf Fritillary records as “rather dubious,” and the Wisconsinbutterflies.org website lists it as a rare stray to the state.��Gulf Fritillaries are pretty distinct, but if you glance at a large fritillary and are about to write it off as another , give it a second look, just to be sure.��

The BugLady

The post Gulf Fritillary – a Snowbird Special appeared first on Field Station.

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

Click on each photo to read more.

Great Spangled Fritillary

A butterfly on the aptly-named butterfly weed.

European Mantis

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

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

Gray Field Slug

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

Candy-Striped Leafhopper

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

Brown-Marmorated Stink Bug

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

Orange Sulfurs

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

Tachinid Fly

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

Ebony Jewelwings

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

Shamrock Orbweaver

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

Skimming Bluet

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

Red-Velvet Mite

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

Bush Katydid

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

Ants with Aphids

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

Eastern Pondhawk

And an pondhawk in a pear tree.

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

The BugLady

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

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.” 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,

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

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

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

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

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

MULBERRY WING SKIPPER – A small (one-inch-ish wingspan) butterfly of wetlands with an arrow or airplane-shaped marking on its rich, chestnut-brown underwings ().��Adults fly slowly through low vegetation, where females lay their eggs on the leaves of sedges.��

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

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

The BugLady

The post Wildflower Watch – Swamp Milkweed appeared first on Field Station.

Last July, the BugLady made a couple of visits to a local wetland where she enjoyed an abundance of Broad-winged Skippers on swamp milkweed.

A brief introduction—broad-winged Skippers are in the family Hesperiidae (the Skippers). Most skippers are smallish butterflies with chunky bodies whose , and while there are some colorful species out there, many are brown and orange (or orange and brown), just orange, or just brown.

They’re in the subfamily Hesperiinae, the Grass or Banded skippers—“Grass skippers” because the caterpillar host plants of many species are grasses and sedges. Adults are strong, if bouncy, flyers that nectar on flowers, and although they can fold their wings, many perch in a “jet plane” position, with the front pair of wings open in a “V,” and the . Grass skipper caterpillars feed at night in nests they make in the grasses. They later . There are about 140 species of Grass skippers in North America.

With wingspreads between 1-¼” and 2-¼,” Broad-winged Skippers (Poanes viator) are a large-ish skipper. Males and females look somewhat different (), ().

According to the , the Broad-winged Skipper is “a beautiful insect with a long and venerable native history.” Its historical host plant in Massachusetts was wild rice (Zizania sp.). It turns out that there’s an Eastern/Gulf/lower Mississippi River coastal plain subspecies (Poanes viator zizaniae) and an inland subspecies that (Poanes viator viator). We now know that they can be distinguished by size and hindwing pattern, but early observers weren’t always discriminating about how they recorded them. The skipper is found in marshes and other wetlands, saltwater and fresh; the post glacial warming period allowed the species (and its food plant) to move back north from wherever it took refuge during the last glacier.

Today, though, another common name for the Broad-winged Skipper is “Phragmites Skipper” (or as one source called it “the butterfly you don’t want to see”). Here’s where it gets a little tricky—more subspecies. (And here’s where the BugLady disappeared down a botanical rabbit hole).

THE RABBIT HOLE: The genus Phragmites, a genus with just four species of perennial grasses, is considered one of the most widespread plant genera in the world, and Phragmites australis (formerly Phragmites communis), aka Reed grass or Common reed, is a major pest in wetlands across this continent. Of course, it’s not that simple—cue the subspecies! American reed, the subspecies Phragmites australis americanus (which is being considered for full species status) is native to North America, where it grows in bogs, fens, and along rivers, and where it has been used by Indians for millennia as food, beverage, twine, woven mats, arrows, cigarette “papers,” insulation, flutes, pipes, etc.

Sometime in the early 19th century (even earlier, say some sources), the very aggressive European subspecies Phragmites australis australis was introduced to North America, possibly in ballast water, and it has become a huge problem. Back in the Old Country, it was used for pen nibs, livestock food, and porridge, for thatching roofs, and, in the Netherlands, for reclamation of lands at the ocean’s edge. Most of the Phragmites we see today in the dense, brackish marshes along the Atlantic coast, researchers are hoping to find a “phrag-buster”—a plant that can out-compete it. Colonies of eight-foot-plus grasses, tipped with plumes of purplish seeds growing in our roadside ditches, are the European subspecies. It hasn’t been until relatively recently that people have felt confident about differentiating the two, and, undoubtedly, native colonies have taken a hit in the name of Phragmites control. Bottom line, Phragmites australis australis looks a little different than the native and it behaves differently too. The two don’t hybridize, except in laboratories.

BACK TO THE BUTTERFLIES—The coastal subspecies of the Broad-winged Skipper once fed on wild rice but has mostly switched to Phragmites, along with a little Marsh Millet (Zizaniopsis miliacea). You would think that latching onto an abundant food source like Phragmites would mean a population boom, and it’s true that there are more reports of Broad-winged Skippers in Massachusetts today, but its status there is still listed as “uncommon.”  A note in “Butterflies of Massachusetts” points out that “There may be more Broad-wings than these [census] measures suggest, because larger concentrations may not be easily accessible, and may not have been fully counted. As Cassie pointed out in his Atlas account, ‘Broad-winged Skippers are found in greatest numbers within the Phragmites stands. A sizable population, slowly meandering through the reed stalks and keeping within the sanctuary of the reed bed, may be virtually invisible to the casual observer.’”

The host plant of our inland subspecies of Broad-winged Skipper is mostly Hairy sedge (Carex lacustris), and although its path may cross with wild rice and with Phragmites in the Great Lakes area, the caterpillar (supposedly) does not use them (Mike Reese, on his Wisconsin Butterflies website, says “Although this species is said to use Carex sedges as host plants in the Midwest, it does use Phragmites the east, and whether or not it uses this species here in Wisconsin, I have found it much more abundant where Phragmites does occur.”). The plot thickens.

Adults nectar on a variety of wetland plants, especially Swamp milkweed.

Who Were those Guys IX – William Henry Edwards

“Who Were Those Guys?” is a series that’s dedicated to the pioneering naturalists and entomologists who discovered new species when our country was young.

The Broad-winged Skipper was described and named by William Henry (W. H.) Edwards in 1865. Few of the entomologists of the 18th and 19th centuries entered the field of entomology through the front door—a common approach to natural history was often via the study of medicine (one dragonfly guy was a banker). W. H. Edwards (March 15, 1822 – April 2, 1909) was a businessman. He grew up on a huge family estate in upstate New York where his family ran a tannery, and it was there that his love of nature began.

He went to Williams College in Massachusetts because of its strong Natural History curriculum (though he chafed against the religious atmosphere of the school), and he went on to study law, but never practiced. In the decades before the Civil War, he ran one of the first large-scale coal mining businesses in the Kanawha Valley in West Virginia. In 1856, when he was in his 30’s, he started collecting butterflies, and he was soon corresponding with noted scientists of his time. Curiously, one correspondent was an English actor and entomologist named Henry Edwards.

By 1865, he had begun his magnum opus, the three-volume Butterflies of North America. The books took three decades to complete, and they feature 152 of what many consider the . The cost of producing and hand-coloring the illustrations at a time when cheaper methods like lithography and photography were becoming available far exceeded his budget, and he had to sell his butterfly collection to the Carnegie Museum in order to complete the work. A first edition set of Butterflies of North America is worth over $10,000 today.

Along the way Edwards also wrote 265 scientific papers and proposed names for 356 species of butterflies plus a few Sphinx and Underwing moths. When he was 75 and Butterflies of North America was complete, he abandoned butterflies and turned his attention to Shakespeare and genealogy, but just before his 80th birthday, he penned his “Entomological Reminiscences.”

The BugLady

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Howdy, BugFans,

Hairstreaks (and Blues and Coppers and Harvesters) are members of the Gossamer-winged butterfly family Lycaenidae (“Gossamer-winged” being a nod to the iridescent sheen on the wings of many family members). Numbering nearly 5,000 mostly tropical species worldwide – 30% of butterfly species – Lycaenidae is the second-largest butterfly family (the Brush-foots outnumber them). The BugLady associates hairstreak butterflies with butterfly weed and hot, sunny prairie days.

Family members share characteristics like indented eyes, striped antennae, a narrow face, reduced forelegs (males more than females), bright colors, and (frequently) hair-like “tails” on the edge of the hind wing. The tails are often located near a blue-pigmented “eyespot” on the wing – hairstreaks often land head-down, and the eyes and antenna-like tails are said to present a predator with a “false head.” The tails are fragile and can be worn off or may be bitten off by a misdirected predator (better to lose a chunk of a wing than your actual head).

With the exception of the carnivorous Harvester larvae, the slug-like Lycaenid caterpillars are herbivores; adult Lycaenids feed at flowers and also get nutrients from damp mud, decaying fruit, and carrion. Caterpillars of many species of Gossamer-wings are myrmecophiles – they have friendly relationships with ants, trading food for protection. Caterpillars of some species are able to communicate with or summon their ants by producing vibrations that travel through the substrate.

CORAL HAIRSTREAKS (Satyrium titus) aren’t gaudy, but they’re still pretty spiffy little butterflies. They are hairstreaks without hairstreaks, and they , either (compare it to the similar , which has both). Coral Hairstreaks close their wings immediately upon landing, so the BugLady couldn’t find any picture of the dorsal side of their wings other than this . They have a wingspread of 1” to 1 ½”, and males and females look alike except that the male’s wings are somewhat more triangular in shape. Here are .

Coral Hairstreaks are found across much of . They need two habitats, with adults visiting (and pollinating) flowers, especially butterfly weed, in open areas like grasslands, roadsides, clearings, pastures, and gardens; and caterpillars feeding on the new leaves, flowers, and even the new fruit of Black cherry and a few of its close relatives in young woods and around woodland edges. Some hairstreak species are woodland-dwellers, but maturing woodlands become less attractive to Coral Hairstreaks, and land use practices affect their numbers.

Aggressive males perch on vegetation and chase females and other insect intruders, and they court using pheromones (smells) and visual displays. Females lay eggs on twigs, at the base of a host tree or in nearby leaf litter, leaving a scent mark to indicate to other females that the spot has been taken. The overwinter, hatching in spring as the new vegetation erupts. There’s one generation per year.

Although Coral Hairstreaks fly fast and erratically, most don’t disperse very far away from where they hatched. On cool mornings, they warm up by sitting with wings closed, at right angles to the sun (lateral basking).

According to the great University of Michigan website, lacewings and ladybug beetles eat hairstreak eggs; ants, wasps, and the larvae of parasitic flies eat the caterpillars; mice and shrews feed on the pupae; and mantises, spiders, birds, frogs, and toads stalk the adults. If they can, the caterpillars will be protected by them in return for allowing the ants to harvest drops of honeydew that caterpillars produce in a “honey gland” (dorsal nectary organ). Caterpillars feed at night, attended by ants, and rest in the leaf litter below the cherry tree by day.

Data from the marvelous website, where they have crunched the numbers for 150 years’ worth of butterfly sightings, suggest that warming temperatures due to climate change are causing Coral Hairstreaks there to begin their flight period two weeks ahead of the historical dates – at the beginning of July rather than the middle of July (and this is undoubtedly happening elsewhere).

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.

Greetings, BugFans,

This butterfly needs a better name!  (More about that, later)

The BugLady found this beauty in the woods on a cool April day. Like the Mourning Cloak, of recent BOTW fame, it’s in the Brush-footed butterfly family Nymphalidae.  The Brush-footed butterflies have parlayed a six-legged lifestyle into a four-legged lifestyle – their front pair of legs is reduced and fuzzy, and is .

It’s a large (2 ½” to 3” wingspread), beautiful butterfly with a powerful flight. Like many Nymphalids, it’s patterned in orange, brown, and black (which accounts for the “tortoiseshell” part of its name) – perfect coloration for a butterfly that likes to sit on the ground.  When it folds its wings, it looks like tree bark. Because its wing edges are angled and notched, with short tails, and because it has a slim white slash on the underside of the hindwing (), it’s sometimes mistaken for a , also in the Nymphalidae but in a different genus.

There are differences in the richness of the colors on the upper surface of the wings, due in part on the butterfly’s age  and , and there’s quite a lot of variation in the :

• ,
• ,
• , and
• .

Although Compton Tortoiseshells have been found south of the Mason-Dixon Line (a few individuals have even made it to Florida), this is whose range also includes the temperate areas of Eurasia (it’s native to both continents). Look for it in open woodlands and edges and along trails.

Weber, in Butterflies of the North Woods, says that it is “subject to cyclical population explosions and possibly migration.” Commenting on its abundance in Massachusetts in the last two centuries, the excellent Butterflies of Massachusetts website says that “Collectors in the 19th and early 20th centuries were enamored of this large, colorful and unpredictable species, and the resulting numbers of museum specimens may give a misleading impression of its actual abundance during those years.” They also say that Compton Tortoiseshells “can migrate south in either spring or fall.” ()

It’s a mistake to think that all butterflies will welcome the warmer days and longer seasons being ushered in by climate change. In the “Outlook” section of its write-up about the Compton Tortoiseshell, Butterflies of Massachusetts speculates that “The chief threat to Compton Tortoiseshell in Massachusetts is warming climate, since temperature apparently restricts its ability to reproduce successfully. More research is needed to determine the species’ climate tolerances and responses. Compton Tortoiseshell is … among those species likely to decline in Massachusetts if climate warms significantly.”

The Compton Tortoiseshell’s biography is similar to that of the Mourning Cloak.  There’s a single generation each year. Adults overwinter under eaves, in out-buildings, under bark, in tree holes and wood piles, etc. (even mailboxes!) – and a gang of tortoiseshells may go into winter diapause/hibernation together.

They mate in spring. Males watch for females from perches on trees. Females lay eggs in clumps on the newly-emerged leaves of willow, birch, and poplar. The hatch, spin a web and feed together inside it before .  Fresh, newly-minted adults fly in mid-summer, but then they may take a siesta until fall, when they appear again. By the next spring they are an amazing 10 months old and are looking tattered (but are game to produce the next generation).

How do they deal with the cool temperatures of fall and early spring? First of all, they’re pretty hairy, and second, they are “dorsal baskers” – they turn their back to the sun and open their wings, letting the sun’s energy heat their thorax, which warms the muscles used in flight. In winter, of course, a generous dose of home-made antifreeze protects their cells.

Like other early-emerging butterflies, they get nutrients from sap drips (including sapsucker holes), dung, damp soil, and rotten fruit. Adults also feed on willow nectar (the BugLady thanks pussy willows annually for their early and abundant flowers).

And now the nit-picking part of this narrative: This butterfly needs a better name!  The Compton Tortoiseshell was given its common name by an English naturalist who studied it while living in Compton, Quebec. The BugLady also found it referred to as the False Comma and the White J Butterfly. Some people add an “s” – Compton’s Tortoiseshell (your mind really wants that “s”), and the group is variously called the Tortoiseshells, Tortoise-shells, and Tortoise Shells.

And then there’s the scientific name – it’s listed in some references as Nymphalis l-album and in others as Nymphalis vau-album or vaualbum (vau is Latin for “V,” and album means white”). Apparently, when Austrian Ignaz Schiffermuller described and named the European branch of the species Nymphalis vau-album in 1775, he failed to dot all the scientific “i’s”, so the name is not considered legitimate by some – science can be cut-throat. And then you get into subspecies – the subspecies seen in eastern North America is named Nymphalis vau-album j-album, and The Butterflies of Canada says that “The western records have been treated as subspecies watsoni, but the differences are minute and this subspecies is not currently recognized.”

While the BugLady was researching this butterfly she found this website. If you know what Wisconsin butterfly you’re looking at, this website will show you the caterpillar.

(And, on another note, it’s National Amphibian Week and Teacher Appreciation Week, and it’s the start of American Wetlands Month. Celebrate accordingly.)

The BugLady

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