Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady’s “newspaper clippings” file runneth over, so here are a few articles for you to peruse.�� Please note that most come from the excellent Smithsonian daily e-newsletter, which is not only free (though a donation is always appreciated), but there’s no pay wall. The newsletter includes articles about current discoveries, archaeology, history, insects, birds and mammals, oceans, etc.

THE BUGLADY KNOWS that she’s preaching to the choir, here – not to the folks who say “Fewer bugs?��That’s great!”��Anyone who likes to eat, who likes birds (and dragonflies!), and who appreciates our natural communities and ecosystems should be a fan of insects and other “bugs” and should be concerned about their .

IN A RELATED VEIN –��().

ALGORITHMS ARE EVERYWHERE.��Recipes are algorithms��(“an algorithm is a finite set of instructions carried out in a specific order to perform a particular task.”��Or solve a mathematical computation). Social media relies on algorithms to feed you content. Now it turns out that even .

ONE MEASUREMENT that the BugLady has always used to gauge insect numbers is the flurry of bugs around the porch light at night. Biographies of many insects, especially of moths, note whether they are attracted to light or not.��Scientists are figuring out what’s really happening (, too).

WE JUMP IN LAKE MICHIGAN on January 1 (well, some of us do) (but not the BugLady); Cordova, Alaska has an Ice Worm Festival. Whatever gets you through the winter. Supposedly, cold-blooded critters don’t do so well when temperatures get below about 40 degrees (warm-blooded animals use part of their daily energy/food budget to maintain a core heat, but cold-blooded animals are at the mercy of the ambient temperature).�� have a couple of tricks up their sleeves.��

Alas – we’ve��just��missed this year’s , but it’s not too early to start planning for 2025. ��

MONARCH WINGS –

IN THE “ALWAYS-TASTEFUL” CATEGORY: years ago, a colleague of the BugLady’s husband asked if mice pee.��Her husband knew that if he said yes, the man was going to go home and empty the cupboards and sterilize everything. So he said “No, the liquid is included in the mouse poop.” Do insects pee?��Many don’t, and “peeing” isn’t exactly the right name for it because they don’t have a separate exit just for liquids. Insects have structures (OK – Malpighian tubules) that collect liquid waste (uric acid and ammonia) and deposit it in the hind gut.��Terrestrial insects need to conserve water, so they reabsorb usable liquids from the hind gut and the rest gets mixed with the digestive wastes and excreted (“just like mice….”) (aquatic insects are constantly excreting liquid to keep from getting waterlogged).��

But – insects that suck sap have a different challenge.��Sap contains sugar in��very��small concentrations, so plant juice feeders have to take in a lot of liquid (about 300 times their body weight daily) in order to get enough calories, and it comes out under pressure.��. How do they handle it?��

FINALLY – in the “Better Late than Never” category – the BugLady posted an episode about caddisflies last week, and today BugFan Steve sent this great .

The groundhog did not see its shadow.��The way the BugLady learned it, if he sees his shadow, there are six more weeks of winter, and if he doesn’t, there’s a month and a half until spring (and insects). ��

The BugLady

The post Bugs in the News XIII appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

The general rule of thumb is that if you want to find insects, look at flowers. Even though summer is fading, there are still flowers in bloom. Some Liatris/blazing stars linger, along with brown-eyed Susan, wild sunflowers, asters and goldenrod (more than a century ago, Asa Gray said that the 12 pages about goldenrods in his Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive (aka Gray’s Manual) were the most uninteresting in the Manual). Late summer and early fall are dominated by flies, bees and wasps, and by grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets.

Most adult insects die by the first frosts, leaving behind the next generation in the form of eggs or pupae (occasionally as nymphs or larvae), so the clock is starting to tick pretty loudly. As BugFan Mary stated dispassionately many years ago, they’re dead and they don’t know it yet. Meanwhile, their activities are centered on eating and on producing the next generation.

AMBUSH BUG – One of the BugLady’s favorite insects is the ambush bug (she’s always had a soft spot in her heart for predators). Ambush bugs tuck themselves down into the middle of a flower and wait for pollinators. They grasp their prey with their strong front legs, inject a meat tenderizer, and slurp out the softened innards. They’re paired up these days (the BugLady has a picture of a stack of three), and she has several pictures where the female is multitasking – eating an insect while mating.

BUMBLE BEE – A bumble bee forages for nectar and pollen for the brood well into September, but the brood will not survive the winter. Only the newly-fertilized queens will see the spring and establish a new colony. Moral of the story – plant Liatris/Blazing star.

PUNCTURED TIGER BEETLES (aka Sidewalk or Backroad Tiger Beetles) are named for the rows of pits on their very-slightly-iridescent elytra (hard wing coverings). They’re common across the continent in dry, sandy, bare spots, and as one of their names suggests, they’re sometimes seen on sidewalks. Like their (much) larger namesakes, Tiger beetles . Find more information about it .

Some Punctured tiger beetles are “,” and some are “,” and some are .

FAMILIAR BLUETS signal the end of the damselfly season. Big, robust, and startlingly-blue, they’re one of the BugLady’s favorite bluets.

EASTERN COMMA – There are two generations/broods/”flights” of Commas (and Question Marks – the “anglewings”) each year. The second generation overwinters as adults, tucked up into a sheltered spot (a hibernaculum). They sometimes emerge during a January thaw, but they quickly resume their winter’s sleep. They fly briefly in spring – one of our early butterflies – and produce the summer brood.

FALL FIELD CRICKET – Poking her ovipositor into the soil and planting the next generation. Her eggs will hatch in spring, and her omnivorous offspring will eat leaves, fruits, grain, and other invertebrates.

The BugLady loves their ��and is happy when a cricket finds its way indoors in fall. Males form a resonating chamber by setting their wings at a certain angle; then they rub their wings together to produce sound (one wing has a scraper edge and the other has teeth). There are mathematical formulae for calculating the ambient air temperature based on cricket chirps that give you the temperature in the microclimate on the ground where the cricket is chirping (add the number of chirps by a single field cricket in 15 seconds to 40).

CANADA DARNER – Common Green Darners are robust dragonflies that fill the late summer skies with dramatic feeding and migratory swarms. There are other darners, though, primarily the non-migratory mosaic darners (like the Canada, Green-striped, Lance-tipped, and Shadow Darners) whose abdomens have blue and black, “tile-like” patterns. Identify them by the shape of the colored stripe on the thorax and by the shape of the male’s claspers (lest you think it’s too easy, females come in a number of color morphs – this is a green-form female Canada Darner).

MONARCH BUTTERFLIES were alarmingly scarce this summer – the short-lived Gen 3 and Gen 4, whose job it is to build the population in the run-up up to the migratory Gen 5, simply weren’t there. But, on one of the BugLady’s recent stints on the hawk tower, she saw 289 Monarchs heading south during a six-hour watch. Moral – Plant goldenrod (and native milkweeds).

GOLDENROD CRAB SPIDER – Like ambush bugs, crab spiders live on a diet of pollinators. They don’t build trap nets and wait for their prey to come to them, they pursue it. Sometimes they lurk on the underside of the flower, but their camouflage makes hiding unnecessary. This female looks like she’s sitting at the dinner table.

RED-LEGGED GRASSHOPPERS are very common in sunny grasslands at this time of year from coast to coast. They eat lots of different kinds of plants (including some agricultural crops, which does not endear them to farmers), but they prefer plants in the Legume/pea family and the Composite/aster family. As the air temperature increases – and when predators are around – they eat more carbs. Grasshoppers are food for spiders, many birds, and other wildlife. Moral of the story – plant wild sunflowers.

PAINTED LADY – You don’t get to be the most widespread butterfly in the world (found everywhere except Antarctica and South America) by being a picky eater. It migrates north in spring – sometimes in large numbers and sometimes in small.

THIN-LEGGED WOLF SPIDER – This Thin-legged wolf spider formed an egg sac (with about 50 eggs inside), attached it to her spinnerets and is going about her business. When the eggs hatch, her young will climb up on her abdomen and ride around piggyback for a few weeks before dismounting and going about their lives.

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GREAT BLACK WASP and GREAT GOLDEN DIGGER WASP – Two impressive (1 ¼” long) wasps grace the flower tops at the end of summer. Both are good pollinators, both are solitary species that eat pollen and nectar, and both dig tunnels and provision chambers with paralyzed insects for their eventual offspring. Great Black Wasps��select crickets and grasshoppers for their young’s’ pantry, and so do Great Golden digger wasps. Neither is aggressive.

The moral of the story? Plant lemon horsemint.

The BugLady

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