The BugLady loves crab spiders, so she’s been thrilled to find two, new (to her) species in the last few years.��One, the Whitebanded crab spider, is in the family Thomisidae, a family of, well, crab-shaped spiders, many of whom make their living on flower tops, and many of whom, in the genera��Misumena, Misumenoides, and Misumenops��(Mecaphesa), can be tricky to ID. We’ll meet the other one next week.��

Whitebanded crab spiders (Misumenoides formosipes) (formosipes��is from the Latin for “beautiful leg/foot”) are named for a white band that crosses their face, right below the level of the eyes (depending, of course, on whether the spider is right-side-up or up-side-down). But there’s a catch.��Like the very common Goldenrod crab spider (Misumena viata), female WBCSs can change colors depending on where they’re sitting – from white to yellow and back – by secreting or excreting yellow pigment from their normally-white outer cell layer (cuticle).��Turning yellow takes longer – up to three weeks – than does reverting to white.��In its yellow form, it could be called the Yellow-banded crab spider .��Other common names include Red banded crab spider and Ridge-faced flower spider.

They’re widespread, found in Ontario and much of the US, excepting the Northwest quadrant.��

WBCSs have eight eyes – four are arranged in a straight line, two are above that, and the other two are around the edges.��As is common in spiders, females are much larger than males, and they have dark markings on their legs, which separates them from some of the other genera of flower crab spiders.��Females come in a variety of colors , , and .��Males typically have a red/orange/gold abdomen, and their four front legs are dark , but they can’t switch colors.

WBCSs don’t make trap webs; they’re ambush predators that hang out on flowers and attempt to grab any visitor to the flower that looks toothsome, even if it’s slightly larger than they are.��They are frequently collected by various mud dauber wasps – stung, paralyzed, and used to provision the wasp’s egg chambers – food for eventual wasp larvae. Spider eggs and spiderlings provide food for lots of predators.��

Males, especially when they are actively hunting for a mate, are nectivores, feeding on pollen and nectar, especially on Queen Anne’s lace.��Searching for a mate takes up a good deal of a male’s time, so he employs a “Bird in the Hand” strategy.��He locates a female before she becomes fully mature (unmated penultimate female), and he guards her until she is old enough to reproduce.��He lives on her inflorescence and takes on rival males, but despite his devotion – and energy investment – whichever male is closest after she undergoes her final molt will likely be the lucky spider, although the resident male does have the home-field advantage.��

Female WBCSs like Black-eyed Susans, and males search for likely flowers by their smells.��His small size and light weight allow him to jump from one flower head to another or to loose a line of web into the wind and to tightrope across it after it sticks to the next flower.

Females create silk sacs holding 80 to 180 eggs, attach them to leaves, and guard them until she eventually freezes.��The spiderlings exit the egg sac in spring.��

Yes – they do eat pollinators, and everyone loves pollinators.��But these are native spiders feeding on native pollinators, and they worked all that out a long time ago – their food habits don’t upset the Balance of Nature, and they supply protein for larger critters. Some apologists point to the fact that the presence of predators improves the defenses of prey species over time.��

Go outside, look for bugs!��The BugLady visited a wetland on a warm day recently and saw some Common Green Darners messing around in a stand of last year’s cattails.

The BugLady

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Howdy, BugFans,

Crab spiders need no introduction to these pages – several genera of delicate, flower crab spiders

,

,

have appeared in previous episodes.����

Well, maybe a quick review: 

They are in the family Thomisidae, which has about 130 species in nine genera in North America (14 genera worldwide). The coolest genus that the BugLady has seen is the genus Tmarus, which can .  

Crab spiders do not spin trap webs; they are ambush hunters that lurk on flowers, leaves, or bark, or in leaf litter, waiting for their prey – insects and other spiders – to appear. They get their name from their ability to walk sideways and backwards using just their four back legs and, of course, from their two pairs of long, thick front legs (the name “crab spider” is shared with several unrelated, crab-like spiders). , and in some species, the eyes are on tubercles. Their wide, flat bodies are generally less than a half-inch long, and some species can (slowly) change color from white to yellow and back.   

Although they don’t spin trap webs, they do spin silk for reproductive purposes and as drag lines when they launch themselves at prey on a flower top. 

There are sixty-seven species of GROUND CRAB SPIDERS, genus Xysticus, in North America. Most come in earth tones, and many have a disruptive pattern on their abdomen that helps to camouflage them. Contrary to the name “Ground crab spider,” they can be found on leaves, stems, and flowers as well as on the ground, on rocks, and on rotting logs. 

The BugLady has a file of Xysticus-like spiders, but (alas), there are several similar genera like Bassaniana (the Bark crab spiders) and Ozyptila (sometimes called the Leaf litter crab spiders), that, along with the Ground crab spiders are more, well, muscular-looking, and that can be tricky to tell apart without looking at the “naughty-bits. Xysticus also has three or four pairs of macrosetae (large, hairlike projections) on its front legs and a more domed carapace (the covering of the front portion of the spider – the cephalothorax).

They don’t make trap webs, and they don’t wrap their prey before eating it, either. They station themselves where there’s a lot of “traffic,” grab small invertebrates that get too close, subdue them by wrapping their long, front legs around them, and then kill them with a venomous bite and consume the innards. They’re eaten by birds, reptiles, and small mammals that forage on tree trunks or on the ground. 

Not many sources took a deep dive into their natural history, and the accounts were a bit contradictory. Some lumped them in the generalized Crab spider pattern of eggs/spiderlings staying in the egg sac all winter, emerging in spring, and maturing in summer. Other sources said that the young overwinter as almost-mature spiderlings and that Xysticus spiders have been seen trekking across snow on warm days in winter. Boy meets girl in summer and he immobilizes her with silk to ensure her cooperation. He is small and she is large, and she has no trouble slipping her bonds when he leaves. She will continue to create egg sacs, sometimes , until she dies in fall’s first freezes.  The total life span is about a year in northern climes.

Like many kinds of spiders, male Ground crab spiders are smaller and more angular than females, with noticeably slimmer abdomens (sexual dimorphism), and they have large pedipalps (the segmented, sensory mouthpart-like appendages) that . Larger females can catch larger prey, and so consume the extra nutrients needed to make eggs. There are several hypotheses about the size difference. First, females may be larger because they produce eggs, and larger females tend to produce more and healthier offspring, but large size is not an advantage for the males. Another idea called “male dwarfism” says that smaller males can get around more easily and have a better chance of finding a female. Still another hypothesis says that the size difference was a chance development and there’s no particular advantage to being either large or small.

Thanks, as always, to BugFan Mike for his spider advice. 

The BugLady

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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.

The Autumnal Equinox is fast upon us, alas, and even though it was a very hot one, the BugLady would like to push that Restart button and go back to the beginning of August. Failing that, here are some of the bugs that crossed her trail in the second half of summer. 

BARK LOUSE – Bark lice (order (Psocidae) are often seen in , both as adults and nymphs. This species, Cerastipsocus venosus, is known collectively as Tree cattle. Bugguide.net says that they feed on “accumulations of fungi, algae, lichen, dead bark and other materials that occur on tree trunks and large limbs.” And on the BugLady’s porch rails. So, they clean up after the BugLady outside, and the silverfish take care of the inside of her cottage. 

YELLOW-HORNED FLOWER LONG-HORNED BEETLE – The YHFLHB (Strangalia luteicornis) is in the Longhorned beetle family Cerambycidae and the subfamily Lepturinae, the flower longhorns.  Flower longhorns are often found on flowers by day, feeding on the protein-rich pollen, and many (but not all) species are wedge-shaped – sometimes dramatically so. Their larvae feed on dead and dying woody material, and certain fungi that they ingest as part of their meal then aids the grub’s ability to digest cellulose (in some species of flower longhorns, Mom inoculates the eggshell as she lays it with a yeast that becomes part of the grub’s intestinal microflora). 

AMBUSH BUG – What would summer be without the extraordinarily-well-camouflaged (and voracious) ambush bugs – one of the BugLady’s favorites? 

LEAF-FOOTED BUG – Late summer is True bug season (remember – only one insect order, the Hemiptera, can officially be called Bugs). This particular bug is the almost-grown nymph of a leaf-footed bug called Acanthocephala terminalis (no common name). Newly-hatched nymphs, with their spiny butts and improbable antennae, are . 

SPIDER WEB AND PREY – All wrapped up and nowhere to go.   

BALD-FACED HORNET – The BugLady corresponded this summer with a man who was stung twice in his mouth by a Bald-faced hornet (now called Bald-faced aerial yellowjacket). These are the gals that build the closed, football-shaped, paper nests that hang in trees, and while they are valiant/dangerous in defense of their homes, they don’t defend the flower tops where they feed. The BugLady’s correspondent was apparently walking along blamelessly when his open mouth encountered a flying hornet. Stings on the face, and especially in the mouth, can be dangerous because of swelling, even if you’re not allergic. 

An entomologist named Schmidt went around deliberately getting stung by the ants, hornets, bees, and wasps of the world and writing descriptions of his discomfort that are sometimes reminiscent of a wine-tasting. He rated the Bald-faced hornet at a 2 out of 4 on his pain scale – “.” Not surprisingly, lots of exterminator companies have posted the scale because they want to sell us something.   

COMMON WOOD NYMPH – A medium/large Satyr butterfly of sunny fields, Common Wood Nymphs are not often seen to nectare on flowers, preferring fungi and rotting fruit. They lay their eggs on grasses in late summer, but when the caterpillars hatch, they go into hibernation immediately, without feeding, to continue their development the following spring. 

CANDY-STRIPED LEAFHOPPER – what glorious things sometimes come in ¼” packages!  And, they have superpowers!  Leafhoppers suck plant juices. Most plant sap has a sugar concentration of only a few percent, so leafhoppers have to consume a lot of it to get enough calories, and they excrete the excess (honeydew) “under pressure” with a tiny, but sometimes-audible, “pop.” Because of this, they’re called “sharpshooters.” And – they vocalize, but too softly for us to hear.

BROWN WASP MANTIDFLY – Yes, those poised, mantis-like front legs are used to grab smaller insects (mantidflies also sip nectar); and yes, this mantidfly does look like a paper wasp at first glance (but – no stinger).  (the mantidfly is on the left). 

Their stalked , and when the eggs hatch, each larva waits for a passing spider, hitches a ride (feeding on the spider like a tick), and eventually infiltrates the spider’s egg sac, where it spends the rest of its larval life eating spider eggs.

WHITE-FACED MEADOWHAWK – You rarely see this species in tandem flights out over the water or ovipositing into shallow water. They often “speculate” – bobbing up and down in damp areas by a pond’s edge, with the female lobbing her eggs onto the ground. The plan is that spring rains will wash the eggs into the water. 

RED-SPOTTED PURPLE – What a classy butterfly! Three Fun Facts about Red-spotted Purples: 1) ; 2) ; and 3) partly-grown caterpillars spend the winter inside a leaf that they’ve rolled into a tube and fastened to a twig, and they emerge and resume eating the following year (). Within their leafy tube, they drop about 1/3 of the water weight in their body in order to avoid cell damage from freezing.

CRAB SPIDER – Nothing to see here, folks, just move along.

GREEN STINK BUG – Another common sight in late summer, along with their flashy, almost-grown . Some stink bugs are carnivores, and some are herbivores, and some of the herbivores are considered crop pests. They aren’t chewers, they suck plant juices with mouths like drinking straws, which can deform fruits and seeds, damage twigs, and wither leaves. Green Stink bugs (Pentatoma hilaris) (hilaris means “lively or cheerful”) feed on a large variety of plants (they’re “polyphagous”). .

TIGER SWALLOWTAIL CATERPILLAR – No – those aren’t eyes. They’re pigment spots that are designed to fool you into thinking it’s a snake.  start out as bird poop mimics, but midway through their development, they go into snake mode, completing the effect by everting, when they feel threatened, a two-pronged, soft, orange, odorous projection (the osmeterium) that looks like a . Tiger Swallowtails have two generations per year. Caterpillars of the butterflies we see in June don’t spend long in the chrysalis, emerging in mid-August and getting to work on the next generation. This caterpillar will overwinter as a chrysalis. Don’t tell the other insects, but Tiger Swallowtails are the BugLady’s favorites.

As she visited her usual haunts this summer, the BugLady was dismayed at the lack of insects. Sure, the goldenrods are full of flies, bees and wasps of various stripes, and the grasshoppers and tree crickets are singing their September songs. But she saw six Tiger Swallowtails this summer. Total. And maybe a dozen meadowhawks. During one mid-summer Dragonfly count years ago, the BugLady simply stopped counting meadowhawks when she got to 250 because it was distracting her from the other species. Common Wood Nymphs used to emerge in early July by the score to filter through the grasses. Even crab spiders and ambush bugs seemed scarce this year. 

What good are insects? Sometimes it’s hard to drum up sympathy for a group that many people routinely swat, stomp, spray, or zap. But insects provide food for birds and for other insects; they’re pollinators, and they provide other ecosystem services including pest control and garbage pick-up. 

(And, of course, they’re awesome.)

The BugLady

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