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.

Leaf miners have been mentioned in these pages before – even the Aspen leaf miner (Phyllocnistis populiella) has appeared briefly.��When she did a little more research, the BugLady was ecstatic to discover that Aspen leaf miners have an association with EFNs, one of the coolest things she’s ever found out about in her 16 years of writing BOTW (more about that in a sec).��Here’s its story.

First of all, a quick and dirty leaf miner review.��They are (primarily) the tiny larvae of a variety of species of fly, beetle, moth, or sawfly (Hymenoptera), and they are everywhere.��They mostly feed on sap or tissue that they encounter as they chew their way around inside a leaf, between its top and bottom layers, some feed in fruit, and some can process plant tissues that are toxic.��Leaf miners are found on plants in most plant families (as J. R. Lowell once said,��“There’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean to be some happy creature’s palace.”), and some are extreme specialists, using only one or just a few plant hosts.��They are often active in mid-to-late summer, and they transform plant energy into animal energy for the birds and insects that know their secret hiding places. ��

They create distinctive patterns that, along with the identity of the plant, help us to name them.��Mines are roughly divided into three categories – serpentine, blotch, and tentiform.��Most mines and their miners do not cause significant damage to their host – as J. G. Needham said in “Leaf-mining Insects” (1928),��Not only does their minute size partially excuse them, but in feeding habits most are very precise and economical of tissues.��They take just enough to sustain and mature their own lives, and they injure little tissue save that that they ingest.”

Leaf miner is more a culinary and lifestyle grouping than a scientific/taxonomic classification.��For more background on leaf miners, see here.

There are a dozen members of the genus��Phyllocnistis��(from the Greek meaning “leaf scraper”) in North America. They’re in the family Gracillariidae, the Leaf Blotch Miner Moths, and they are small and fringed, with wingspreads under ½,” (“micromoths” – another not-quite-scientific designation).��Their larvae, flattened and rudimentary, spend their first three instars chewing serpentine trails in the leaf tissue, guzzling sap, and leaving behind a trail that’s punctuated by a line of frass (bug poop) (an “instar” is the active, feeding stage between molts). The larva doesn’t feed in its fourth and final instar; it gets itself to the margin of the leaf, where it spins a cocoon and pupates in a spined pupal case (some kinds of leaf miners drop to the ground to pupate, but not this bunch).�� ��

The Aspen leaf miner stars in a number of Extension horticultural bulletins, but its impact, other than cosmetic, tends to be minimal.�� If there’s a black sheep in the genus, it’s the .

COMMON ASPEN LEAF MINERS, aka Aspen serpentine leaf miners, are found across southern Canada and the northern half of the US, wherever quaking aspen grows.��Some sources said that poplar and cottonwood are also used as hosts, and some said that the main host is aspen, and some said that mines found on cottonwood and poplar are made by a different species.��The tiny moths have pale, narrow wings and long-ish antennae, and they often perch slanted, with the front half of their body “”. ��

For a small, relatively harmless insect, there’s a surprising amount of biographical information available.��They overwinter as adults, avoiding freezing through careful selection of a winter shelter and because of their ability to supercool themselves, dropping their freezing point.��Counterintuitively, they prefer to overwinter under spruce trees rather than aspens, because the deeper snow cover below the aspens translates to wetter conditions as the air warms, and ice in a late freeze.

Romance blossoms in spring, and females lay their eggs on the edges of emerging leaves, near the tip, usually only one egg per leaf, and then they fold the edge of the leaf over to protect the egg until it hatches.��When it does, , chews through the floor of the egg, directly into the leaf, where it will live until it emerges from its pupa as an adult in fall. ��

Larvae eat the sap that they generate while tunneling.��A research team tracked the mining habit and found that:

1. A single caterpillar may , but only part of a large leaf until it has consumed enough calories to pupate;
2. When the larva gets to the midrib, it turns toward the leaf’s base, and when it gets there, it turns again and follows the leaf margin for a while before heading for the midrib again; ��
3. Sometimes more than one egg is laid on a leaf.�� A larva may not know that it has company in the leaf, but if two larvae discover each other, they generally feed and pupate on opposite sides of the midrib;
4. They don’t re-mine an already-mined trail;
5. Larvae pupate at the edge of the leaf.

Heavy feeding on the epidermis of a small leaf can interrupt its photosynthesis, causing leaves to dry, turn brown, and fall prematurely, but aspens have lots of leaves, and the Common aspen leaf miner larvae, as Needham said, don’t eat much. 

����ܱ��ٲ��� that they find in extrafloral nectaries (EFNs) at the base of the leaves (between one-third and three-fourths of aspen leaves have them).��Here’s a BOTW about EFNs.��

And here’s “Leaf-mining Insects” by J. G. Needham, et al,

The BugLady saw a Common Green Darner last week – let the Wild Rumpus begin!!

It’s Earth Day/Week – remember, there’s no Planet B.

The BugLady

The post Common Aspen Leaf Miner appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

These lovely, fragile-looking insects have fluttered around the edges of several BOTWs over the past 17-plus years, and it’s time for them to have an episode of their own. 

A bit about their pedigree: they are in the oddball order Neuroptera (“nerve-wing”), an order that’s undergone a fair amount of tinkering.��Presently, it’s home to the doodlebugs/antlions, the owlflies, and a whole bunch of different varieties of lacewings; and it’s the former home of the snake, alder, fish, and Dobsonflies (hellgrammites).��Neuropterans are soft-bodied insects with four, similarly-sized, conspicuously-veined wings, and chewing mouthparts, and they practice complete metamorphosis (going through egg, larva, pupa, and adult stages).��Their larvae are predators.

A note about Green lacewing taxonomy – members of the genus��Chrysoperla��are frequently encountered across North America, as are members of the genus��Chrysopa.��They look a lot alike, their photographs can be confusing, and various species have been swapped back and forth between the two genera for a long time (and at one point, many species were lumped as a single species).��When the BugLady looks at the Green lacewing shots she’s taken over the years, a number of different species seem to be represented – pale dorsal stripes on some, small thoracic spots on others, no definitive markings at all on still others – so she will keep this general.��

Green lacewings are in the suborder��Hemerobiiformia, which includes the��Dusty, Pleasing, Beaded, Brown, Giant and Moth, Mantid, Spoon-Winged, and Spongilla lacewing families as well as the Green lacewing family Chrysopidae (from the ancient Greek words for “gold” and “face”).��They are also called Golden-eyed lacewings and “stinkflies” (because members of several genera release bad-smells when handled), and their larvae are known as aphid lions or aphid wolves.��

The “alligator-like” larvae live up to their nicknames, grabbing insects – including eggs, pupae, and caterpillars����but especially aphids – with their sickle-shaped jaws, injecting them with a paralyzing venom, and ��(which, in the case of an aphid, takes about 90 seconds). They often hold their prey aloft as they’re draining it.��Some sources report that the larvae wave their abdomens back and forth as they roam the leaf tops, and others say that they swing their heads back and forth, seizing prey when they bump into it (their sense of touch is well-developed).��

It’s also said that some species can account for 100 to 200 aphids a week, and if they can’t find their normal quota of prey, they have no qualms about eating other lacewing larvae.��Depending on the species, adults may be predators, or they may be vegetarians that feed on nectar, pollen, and honeydew (the sugar water exuded by some bugs).��

Lots of insects and spiders eat lacewings. Adults are nocturnal and are poor flyers, but they can hear the echolocation calls of bats and avoid them by folding their wings (presenting a smaller target) and dropping to the ground.��Some parasitic wasps search out lacewing cocoons and lay their eggs on them, and their larvae eat the cocoon’s contents.

Green lacewings court by “singing.”��Males vibrate their abdomen and send a signal out through the substrate, and females hear/feel his song through their legs and respond with their own, identical song, the pair singing part duet/part call-and-response.��Even though we may not be able to tell species apart visually, their songs differentiate them.��

Females make stalks by touching the underside of a leaf or twig with their abdomen and then pulling back, extracting a thread (manufactured in her reproductive system) that hardens immediately, and they ��(and some create a cool, ). Eggs are laid where there are aphids nearby.��It’s theorized that suspending the eggs protects them from predators, including their newly-hatched, immediately-hungry siblings. About three weeks after hatching, , and adults emerge about five days later.��There are several broods per year, and they overwinter as adults or as pupae.��

Some species of Green lacewings have hairy/spiny, “trash-carrying” larvae – larvae that stick debris – and sometimes bits of dead prey – to their backs, creating a shield that they present to aggressors.�� Does the disguise help them avoid aphid-farming ants?��Hide them from predators?��. ����

Because of their dining habits, lacewing larvae are sold as a biological control of aphids, the Catch 22 being that when they’ve finished eating the aphids or mature as adults, they may move on. 

A Note from the Pulpit: Because of their nocturnal habits, adult lacewings are often attracted to and killed by bug zappers. The vast (vast) majority of insects killed by bug zappers (about 95% in one study and more than 99% in another) are NOT target species like mosquitoes and other biting flies (which are not attracted to the zapper’s UV light).��The vast (vast) majority are pollinators like moths, or predators like lacewings, or just innocent passers-by.��At a time when insect numbers are going down globally, and we recognize all the “ecosystem services” they provide (including feeding the birds), the idea of this degree of collateral damage is repugnant.

Fun Lacewing Facts (from the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences).

• For many years, biologists thought their eggs were the fruiting bodies of a fungus they called Ascophora ovalis. The true nature of these eggs was first discovered in 1737 by Rene Reaumur, a French physicist, biologist and inventor.

• As larvae, lacewings and antlions do not have a complete digestive system: the midgut ends in a dead end. Waste materials accumulate in the midgut throughout larval development and are finally expelled only after a connection is made with the anus near the end of the pupal stage. The accumulated fecal material is called a meconium.��

CICADA ADDENDA

Last week’s cicada story is the gift that keeps on giving.

ERRATUM – the quote about cicadas mistaking people for trees, mistakenly attributed to the EPA, was actually from��Cicada Mania. The BugLady thought it sounded a bit un-EPA-ish, but she had just been on their site, and her brain hiccoughed.

AND – Thanks, BugFan Bob.

AND SUPER POWERS (Oh My!) – the wings of cicadas and a number of other groups like honey bees, butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies have what one scientists calls “anti-biofouling and antimicrobial” properties!��Not chemically antimicrobial but structurally antimicrobial. How does that work? The surface of the wings is covered with “nanopillars” – columnar structures with a diameter of about 100 nanometers (one-one thousandth the diameter of a human hair), with “spikey” tips.��Bacteria that land on them literally get impaled, tearing their cell walls, which kills them.��The nanopillars are (somehow) self-cleaning, getting rid of the debris that might serve as a medium for more bacteria to grow.��. Stay tuned.

The BugLady

The post Green Lacewings appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

Bugs without bios – those humble (but worthy) bugs about whom little information is readily available.��Today’s bugs check those boxes as species, but they have something in common – their lifestyles are similar to those of close relatives who have already starred in their own BOTW.��

The BugLady found this PREDACEOUS DIVING BEETLE (Hydacticus aruspex) (probably) in shallow water that was so plant-choked that the beetle had trouble submerging.��Diving beetles are competent swimmers, tucking their two front pairs of legs close to their body and stroking with powerful back legs.��When they submerge, they carry a film of air with them to breathe, stored under the hard, outer wing covers (elytra). They can fly, too, though they mostly take to the air at night.

As both larvae and adults, Predaceous diving beetles are aquatic and carnivorous, dining on fellow aquatic invertebrates.��Larvae (called water tigers) grab their meals with curved mouthparts and inject digestive juices that soften the innards, making them easy to sip out ().��They eat lots of mosquito larvae. Adults grab their prey and tear pieces off. Not for the faint of heart.�� ��

Hydacticus aruspex��(no common name) is one of five genus members in North America and is found across the continent.��It comes in both a striped and a form. It overwinters as an adult, under the ice, and romance blossoms in spring. More information about Predaceous diving beetles.��

These spectacular OBLIQUE-WINGED KATYDIDS (probably) were climbing around on Arrow Arum in a wetland that the BugLady frequents.��Katydids are famous singers whose ventriloquistic calls may be heard day and night (though older ears may strain to hear them – ). They “sing” via “stridulation” – friction – in their case, by rubbing��the rigid edge of one forewing against a comb-like “file” on the other (the soft, second set of wings is only for flying, and they do that well).��They hear with slit-like tympana on their front legs.��Most Katydids are vegetarians, but a few species are predaceous.

Oblong-winged Katydids (Amblycorypha oblongifolia) are “False katydids” (here’s a ) in the Round-headed katydid genus. They are found in woods, shrubs, and edges throughout the eastern US, often in “damp-lands,” often on brambles, roses, and goldenrods.��The dark, mottled triangle on the top of the male’s thorax is called the “stridulatory field” – a rough area that is rubbed to produce sound.��Oblong-winged katydids have a large stridulatory field.��

Katydids, both in color and in texture, are remarkably camouflaged – except when they’re not. .��

More information about the large katydids (including the origin of their name).

The BugLady came across this cute little MOTH FLY (Clytocerus americanus) (probably) on a day that she couldn’t take an in-focus shot on a bet!��Fortunately,����contributors did better [ , ]. Despite their name, Moth flies are moths, not flies or weird hybrids. They are tiny (maybe 1/8”) and hairy, and are weak fliers, and until she saw this one, the only Moth flies she had ever seen were indoors, in the bathroom (where they earn another of their names – “drain flies”).��Species that live outside are, like this one was, often found near wetlands.��

There are only one or two species in the genus��Clytocerus��in North America, and they have strongly-patterned wings and very hairy antennae.��Not much is known about their habits.��According to Wikipedia, adult��Clytocerus americanus��feed on “fungal mycelia and various organisms which inhabit wet to moist environments. Larvae are assumed to be detritivores.”

Find out more about moth flies here.��

MASON WASP – This is what happens when the BugLady buys garden stakes!��After various small, solitary wasps populate the empty interiors with eggs, the BugLady can’t possibly stick them into the ground!��

As their name suggests, female Mason wasps use mud to construct chambers in preexisting holes to house both their eggs and the cache of small invertebrates that their their eventual larvae will eat. 

The Canadian Mason Wasp (Symmorphus canadensis) suspends an egg from the chamber roof or wall by a thread and then adds 20 or more moth or leaf mining beetle larvae before partitioning it off with a .��She leaves a “vestibule” at the end of the tunnel/plant stake between the final chamber and the door plug.��

Heather Holm, in her sensational��Wasps: Their Biology, Diversity, and Role and Beneficial Insects and Pollinators of Native Plants, discusses the hunting strategy of genus members: “Symmorphus wasps hunt leaf beetle larvae (Chrysomela); these beetles have glands in their abdominal segments and thorax that emit pungent defensive compounds.��These compounds are derived from the plants that the larvae consume… In addition to using visual cues to find their prey, it is likely that Symmorphus wasps use olfactory means to find the beetle larvae.��Symmorphus males have been observed lunging at Chrysomela larvae, mistaking the larvae for adult females��[female mason wasps]��that, after capturing and handling prey, smell of the offensive compounds.

Here are two previous BOTWs about mason wasps, each a different genus than the Canadian Mason wasp [ one , two ].

The BugLady

The post Bugs without Bios XIX appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady is suffering from the February Doldrums in January – this is a massaged version of a BOTW that was originally posted in 2009, with some new words and new pictures.

“What’s in a name?��A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” What indeed?��The BugLady will get back to that.��

Caddisflies, in the Order Trichoptera (“hairy wings”), are famous for the cases built for protection by their soft-bodied larvae (the only natural “armor” they possess is located on their head, thorax and legs) and for the larvae’s ability to produce silk thread via a silk gland in their lower lip. They use silk to “glue” materials together to construct the case, to net some food, and to modify the case before they pupate.��

Caddisfly larvae live in both running and still water; in fact, according to Elsie Klots in��The New Fieldbook of Freshwater Life, they are one of four orders of insects that “have become almost wholly aquatic during their immature life.”��The larvae of one European species live in wet moss, and the larvae of another, called the Land Caddisfly (Enoicyla pusilla), are terrestrial, but they still make cases out of materials they find in the leaf litter where they live.��Female Land Caddisflies are wingless.

Many of the pond dwellers cut and assemble small bits of vegetation into portable homes. Some “homes” are thin tubes, some get glued together “the long way,” and some resemble Lincoln-log-like chimneys made of mini-twigs, sedges or cattails custom-trimmed by the larva. In streams or rivers, where staying in one place is a challenge, the larvae use heavier building materials like tiny pieces of gravel, or they spin a net that they glue onto a rock or into a crevice.��Unlike turtles, whose shell and body are joined, caddisflies can leave their case of sticks or stones.��Naked – deprived of their homes – they look like little wet caterpillars (to whom they are not-so-distantly related).��

Cases are open at both ends, to facilitate oxygen circulation, and in very still water, the larvae must be more active in order to make up for the lack of a current. Caddisfly larvae are so specific about their choices of building materials that they can be classified down to family and sometimes genus, by the structure of their shelter.

The caddisflies, also called sedge-flies and rail-flies��(and “fish food”), are a big order, with more than 15,000 species worldwide.��North America boasts around 1,500 species of Tri-cops (as they are known familiarly), and not surprisingly for such a large group, their larvae indulge in a wide variety of feeding methods. There are predators and scavengers. There are “shredders” that perform the valuable service of turning big pieces of vegetation into little ones, thereby setting the table for even smaller organisms.��Some net-spinners are “collectors” that let the current deliver their meals (bits of organic material) “carry-out” (some net-spinners can produce a sound by rubbing a front leg against the underside of their head).��Finally, there are “scrapers,” grazing on algae and other tiny organic particles stuck to underwater surfaces. As adults, with mouthparts that are described as “sponge like,” they ingest only liquids, and many species don’t feed as adults.

Adult caddisflies resemble slim, very long-antennaed moths; they tent their wings above their abdomens (making them look triangular from the rear), and their wings are covered with tiny hairs.��Females of some species actually climb under water to lay their eggs, protected from getting soaked by a thin layer of air trapped in that dense covering of hairs. According to Eaton and Kaufman in the��Field Guide to Insects of North America,��fly-tiers (or tie-flyers) work hard to replicate caddisflies with their lures. Exceptionally sensitive to pollution, the presence of caddisflies signals good water quality.�� And, with a little luck, trout.��

Once, when the BugLady gave a presentation about Pond Life to third graders, a child asked where the caddisfly got its name.��The BugLady did not know, but she loves to research the etymology of entomology, so she promised to find out, and here is what she discovered.��Back in the days of the��first��Queen Elizabeth (when Romeo and Juliet were obsessing about names) (and in the midst of the Little Ice Age – fascinating – look it up), itinerant peddlers roamed the world.��Those who sold ribbons, threads and yarns were called “Cadice-men” after “cadaz/caddis/caddice” – words that had come to refer to worsted yarn.��Cadice-men displayed their wares by attaching samples of threads and yarns to their coats.��In his wonderful��A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America,��J. Reese Voshell, Jr. says that the larva’s ability to glue pieces of material together to make its case was reminiscent of how a Cadice-man covered his jacket with pieces of textile.��Alternatively, it may refer to the fringe on the adults’ wings.��Was the person who named caddisflies, like the BugLady, a bug-loving history-geek?

If you search online, you can find jewelry made out of caddisfly cases – entrepreneurs supply caddisfly larvae with a variety of bling, and the larvae incorporate it into their cases. 

The Bug Lady

The post Caddisfly revisited appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

Isn’t this a pretty bee!!!

When you aim your camera at a bumble bee, which the BugLady does frequently, you expect to see black and yellow in varying proportions (the vaguaries of wind plus the bees’ perpetual motion results in lots of bumble bee shots on the cutting room floor). Four Wisconsin species – the , the , the , and the have slightly different color schemes.

Bumble bees are in the diverse family Apidae, which also includes the Cuckoo, Carpenter, Digger, and Honey bees. According to , there are 47 species in the genus Bombus (15 in Wisconsin). The most recent bumble bee species to be described, Bombus kluanensis, was split from a known species (the “Active bumble bee,” Bombus neoboreus) in 2016 based on DNA analysis and is found only in the Yukon Territory and Denali National Park.

The BugLady photographed this bee on the prairie at Forest Beach Migratory Preserve. Her name is Bombus rufocinctus – the Red-belted bumble bee – and she’s a bee with somewhat northern inclinations plus a few disjunct eastern locations and minus the . RBBBs are bees of open spaces like grasslands, and they also like parks, gardens, barrens, and quarries. They are widespread but not common across their range (they make up about 10% of Wisconsin bumble bee records), and they’re found here mainly in the southern half of the state, though historical data suggest that they once occupied all of it.

The BugLady generally struggles with bumble bee identification, despite being able to photograph them and put them up on the monitor and agonize over them at leisure. RBBBs, with their short, round faces (one source says that they have a “cute, soft gestalt”), are noted for their many (many) color variations – up to 30 of them. “Can be confused with many species,” says the Bumble Bees of the Eastern United States. Here are a few RBBBs with varying amounts of red , , and��one with .

Bumble bees are divided physiologically into short, medium, and long-tongued species. RBBBs are in the short-tongued group, which means that they feed on flowers whose nectar reward is not buried deep in tubular flowers. They’re generalists that are found on members of the aster, milkweed, geranium, rose, heath, and pea families, and more. They are good and in some areas are one of the native bee species that are vital pollinators of commercial blueberry crops.

Unlike honey bee nests, the shelf-life of bumble bee nests is less than a year. RBBBs have their nuptial flights in early August, when the colony’s population peaks; males claim territories around nectar sources and watch for queens, chasing intruders that fly past, bumble bee or not. Fertilized RBBB queens create hibernacula for themselves in the soil in fall and are the only bees from the nest that survive the winter.

They emerge from diapause (the term that’s used for invertebrate hibernation) in spring and look for a nest site. Many bumble bees nest underground in abandoned rodent burrows, but RBBBs often nest on and even above the ground, under bark or siding. The queen lays a dozen or so eggs and cares for them herself, and when these workers emerge, they take over the chores inside and outside the nest, and she is restricted to the nursery.

Her eggs are laid in wax cells that are not as tidy as those of honey bees. Workers feed protein (pollen) and carbs (nectar) to the larvae (nice series of ) as successive generations of workers take to the air.

RBBB nests may contain some “ringers.” Cuckoo bumble bees (formerly in the genus Psithyrus and now included in Bombus) take advantage of the labor of the worker bees by invading a bumble bee nest, killing the queen, and laying their own eggs in the nest. A few dominoes must be in place in order for the Cuckoo bumble bees to be successful brood parasites. In an article in Entomology Today titled “Cuckoo Bumble Bees: What We Can Learn From Their Cheating Ways (If They Don’t Go Extinct First)” author Meredith Swett Walker explains: “… cuckoo bumble bees are “obligate brood parasites”—in other words, they cannot reproduce without their hosts. They cannot produce their own workers, they lack pollen baskets on their legs and so cannot collect pollen to feed their own offspring, and they cannot produce enough wax to build their own nest.

Instead, cuckoo bumble bees must find a host colony of another bumble bee species, and it has to be just the right size. Too large, and there will be too many workers defending the nest and the cuckoo will be killed. Too small and there will be too few workers to raise the cuckoo’s offspring. So, cuckoo bumblebees must be selective. They also have to be tough fighters to defend themselves from attacking workers as they infiltrate the nest and kill the host queen. Thus, cuckoo bumble bees are heavily armored with larger and stronger mandibles, a hardened abdomen, and a thicker, more powerful sting.

After it infiltrates a nest, the invading cuckoo must defuse the battle and integrate into the host colony. Some cuckoo bumble bees do this by mimicking the chemical cues used by their host species. Other cuckoos produce few recognition chemicals of their own and then take on the “scent” of the colony via contact with nest materials and workers.

Finally, once hatched, cuckoo larvae must trick the host workers into feeding them. How this works is largely unknown. Previous research by Lhomme suggests that colonies taken over by cuckoo bumble bee queens may lose their ability to recognize outsiders in general and so be more accepting of cuckoo larvae when they hatch.”

Each species of Cuckoo bumble bee targets a few particular species of bumble bees and is similarly colored, and along with the “dominoes” mentioned in Walker’s article, their flight period must sync with that of their potential host species. RBBBs are parasitized by the Indiscriminate Cuckoo bumble bee (B. insularis) and the Fernald/Flavid Cuckoo bumble bee (B. fernaldi/B. flavidus). The first is rare in Wisconsin and the second has been seen here only a few times in 50 years.

Yes, bumble bees can sting, and yes, they will sting, but unlike a honey bee’s barbed stinger that is pulled out when it stings (fatally, for the bee), bumble bees can sting multiple times to protect hearth and home (but not when you poke a camera in their face when they’re on a flower).

The BugLady loves this and even has a paper copy.

Still some bumble bees out there.

The BugLady

The post Red-belted Bumble Bee appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady sat on the hawk tower today, watching the start of the fall migration. She was surrounded by the start of the dragonfly migration – there was a big emergence of the migratory population of Common Green Darners yesterday, and both darners and Black Saddlebags were drifting south along the lakeshore. It doesn’t get any better than this.

A friend of the BugLady’s found one of these spiffy moths recently and wanted information about it. Here’s a rerun from 10 years ago.

Lichen moths have it all!! Toxins, aposematism, attitude, thoracic tympana and ultrasonic emanations, sensory setae, fecal flicking, mimicry, and even cannibalism! What an insect!!

Taxonomic Lumpers and Splitters have been working on the moths again. Lichen moths (Hypoprepia sp) are in the Tiger moth family Arctiidae – or in the family Erebidae – depending on whose book you read. Apparently, a bunch of moths in the Owlet moth family plus all of the members of the tussock moth and tiger moth families, plus a bunch of small families have been assigned to the family Erebidae, but Moth People are not 100% onboard with that yet, so stay tuned. And, according to Wagner in Caterpillars of Eastern North America, “Adults of eastern Hypoprepia vary considerably in different parts of the Southeast, so much so that some lepidopterists feel additional species will eventually be recognized.”

Lichen moth eat lichens and blue-green algae that they find growing on tree trunks. As BugFans will recall from high school biology, lichens are a plant partnership – two plants growing symbiotically as one. Structure, roots, and water are provided by a fungus “body,” and photosynthesis is carried out by algae that live within the fungus (or, as we Naturalists say – too often – “a lichen is a fungus and an alga that have taken a likin’ to each other.”). Along with lichens, caterpillars have been reported to eat their smaller brethren and even LM pupae.

Toxins from their veggies may make LM caterpillars poisonous to predators. The hairy caterpillars don’t come in startling warning (aposematic) colors (they look a bit like gypsy moth ), but the bright colors of the adults probably signal a non-tasty morsel within.

Like the caterpillars of the Silver-spotted skipper butterfly (of previous BOTW fame), caterpillars in the genus Hypoprepia are able to fire their frass (bug poop) up to 30 body lengths away from themselves. It’s called “fecal flicking.” Why do it? Some parasitic and predatory wasps track down potential prey by the scent of its frass, so the LM distances itself from its by-products. Anal combs trap frass that’s coming down the pipeline and hold it until the “blood pressure” at the caterpillar’s tip becomes too great and the frass rifles out (the BugLady couldn’t make this up).

LMs have some interesting sensory abilities, both as caterpillars and as adults. Like typical adult tiger moths, LMs have “ears” located on their thorax. They also make a variety of ultrasonic noises with organs on their thorax – this is an insect that can hear bats coming and, confident in its toxicity, sass them back, warning them against feeding on unwholesome LMs. They also “vocalize” during courtship, and females have a pair of glands on the top of their thorax that crank out pheromones – chemical “scents” that lure males to them. According to Sogaard, in Moths of the North Woods, caterpillars in the family are “typically densely hairy. Some (perhaps all) caterpillars are sensitive to low-frequency sound through setae” (hairs).

LMs overwinter as caterpillars, and adult LMs in this neck of the woods probably do not eat, though their tropical brethren do.

The BugLady has been going happily bug-eyed trying to decide whether these are

SCARLET/SCARLET-WINGED LICHEN MOTHS or PAINTED LICHEN MOTHS or both (she suspects both). are supposed to be very red and to have a yellowish cast, but she’s seen official pictures of each that stray into the other’s tint. One reference suggests that SLMs have red heads and PLMs have yellow/gray heads (or maybe not). At any rate, their lifestyles, ranges, and habitats (woodlands, east of the Rockies) are very similar, and these are two of only four species in the genus in North America. Right now.

It has been suggested that adult PAINTED LICHEN MOTHS (Hypoprepia fucosa) mimic lightning beetles, which have toxic blood.

SCARLET LICHEN MOTHS (Hypoprepia miniata) are partial to lichens that grow on the trunks of red pine, and therefore gravitate to more coniferous woodlands (though they will nosh on lichens elsewhere if red pines aren’t available). Miniata comes from the Latin word miniatus, which references lead-based vermillion or red paint.

Oh – and they have beauty!

The BugLady

The post Lichen Moths appeared first on Field Station.