The BugLady has been playing outside, and she had trouble coming in long enough to write these stories.

Story #1 – The Clover Leaf Weevil.��The BugLady took a few “throw-away shots” of this little (3/8” long) beetle as it crawled along a boardwalk in a wetland, and she made a few inaccurate guesses about its identity, but the sun was bright and she couldn’t really see the image on the screen, and then she and the beetle went their separate ways.��Turned out to be a completely different beetle than she thought, one that apparently took a wrong turn at the start of the boardwalk. ��

It was a , a weevil that has gone through more than a dozen combinations and permutations of scientific names since it was first described in 1763 (“A rose by any other name….”) and that can still be found under multiple names in the contemporary literature.�� Some of the names resulted when the species was described and named by one person, but had already been described and named by another (18^th��century entomologists received specimens from contacts all over the world, and communication among them was slow). Other name changes happened when the family or subfamily or genus of the weevil was revised (and some of those changes were not embraced by others in the field).��The BugLady gets the feeling that the dust has not settled on this weevil’s name.��

The Clover, or Sandy, Leaf Weevil (we’ll go with��Donus zoilus) is in the Snout/Bark beetle family Curculionidae.��It’s the only member of its genus in our area, but there are a lot more genus members globally, and it’s not from around here.��It was originally found in the “Palearctic realm” – Europe and Asia between the Arctic and North Africa/India.��With a little help from its friends (us), it jumped the Big Pond and came to live in the Nearctic realm (North America between the Arctic and Mexico). It made its North American debut in Quebec in 1853, and now it’s present over about three-quarters of the country.��

View some glamour shots [,��.��

Its habitat is listed as grasslands, clearings, roadsides, and edges, and while adults may feed on a few plants that are not in the Pea family (the BugLady can recall no members of the Pea family along that boardwalk), the��raison d’être��for both adults and larvaeis eating agricultural clovers, especially alfalfa.��Larval host plants include alfalfa, red, white, crimson, and alsike clovers, and sweet clovers (sweet clovers (the Devil Incarnate), of which they may consume as much as they can hold).��

Both adult and larval Clover leaf weevils feed at night or on cloudy days, and shelter on/in the ground in the sunlight. The ��make small holes in the leaves.��Most sources said that unless they occur in high numbers, they’re not a major crop pest (unlike the much smaller, Alfalfa leaf weevil).��The grubs are parasitized by the larvae of this lovely little .

There’s only one brood per year – females place eggs in and around the host plants in fall. Most eggs hatch then and the larvae overwinter, feeding when it’s warm enough and resting when it’s not, then ��and becoming adults in spring.��Any eggs that overwinter hatch in spring. Newly-emerged adults feed and then aestivate (suspend operations) for part of the summer, in fall. Larvae chew on plants in spring, and adults chew on plants in fall.��

Story #2 – Recent Spider Adventure.��The BugLady headed to the laundromat the other day.�� She got a few miles down the road and noticed (belatedly) a Cross Orbweaver on a strand of web on the inside of the driver’s side window (“along came a spider and sat down beside her…”).��She found an uninhabited side road and pulled way over to the left, so the side of the car was in grass, opened the window and nudged the spider out, hoping to move it away from the car.��When she got to the laundromat, the windblown spider was curled tight, clinging to the side of the car below the mirror.��It stayed there while the laundry went around, and then held on for the ride home.��The BugLady lifted her off with a leafy twig, and the spider recovered on the porch rail. Spiders are tough!��

Story #3 – An Exuberance of Dragonflies. We experienced a wonderful, three-day dragonfly migration from August 30 into September 1, and in the run-up to that migration, the BugLady enjoyed some amazing walks through big feeding swarms, with darners cruising past, inches away.��As she went out to the hawk tower on Sunday, darners and saddlebags were in the air everywhere, with even more jumping up from the grass as she passed.��When she scanned for incoming hawks, the view through her binoculars was dragonflies as far out as she could see, in all directions.��Magic!��Abruptly, at 1:00 PM, the wind shifted a bit and it was over, and only the stragglers remained.��

Go outside, look at bugs!

The BugLady

The post The Clover Leaf Weevil and Other Tales appeared first on Field Station.

The BugLady and her camera have been out scouring the uplands and wetlands for insects that will sit still long enough to have their portrait made.��Many of today’s bugs have starred in their own BOTWs over the years, and you can find them by Googling “51���� Field Station followed by the name of the insect. Her gut continues to tell her that there simply aren’t as many insects to point her camera at as there were a decade ago.��

What did she find in April and May?

Woodland Lucy (Lucidota atra), aka the Black firefly (atra��means black).��If a lightning bug doesn’t light, is it still a Lightning bug? Yup.��Most lightning bugs flash their species-specific light signals at females by night, but some, like the Woodland Lucy, are day flyers (the BugLady starts seeing them in swamps in May, but she usually doesn’t see a light show by their nocturnal relatives until the very end of June).��It would be a waste of energy to try to produce a light that competes with the sun, so diurnal lightning bugs communicate via pheromones (perfumes).��But, all fireflies make light at some point in their lives, and always as a larva (and even the adult Woodland Lucy makes a weak light for a brief time after emerging as an adult).�� ��

Who says “lightning bug” and who says “firefly?”��Lightning bug is heard most often in the South and Midwest, and firefly belongs to New England and the West (and Southeastern Wisconsin is close to the border of the two).��Someone did a study and hypothesized that people who live in wildfire country prefer firefly, and people who live in thunderstorm country say lightning beetle. The BugLady likes the alternate theory – that you call them whatever your Grandmother called them.

Disonycha Beetle – isn’t this a neat beetle! The BugLady photographed another member of the genus years ago when she was photographing visitors to her pussy willow shrub. It’s in the (huge) leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae, many of whose members are pretty specific about the host plants for their larvae. This one is (probably) a member of the confusing Smartweed��Disonycha��bunch. ��

Grouse Locusts are in the family Tetrigidae (the pygmy grasshoppers), and at a half-inch and less when full grown, pygmy they are!��The BugLady usually sees them in wetlands, and some are actually known to swim. They feed on tiny diatoms and algae and aquatic vegetation at the water’s edge.

A Centipede works the boardwalk at Spruce Lake Bog in April.

Ground Beetle Larva – Ground beetles (family Carabidae) are a bunch of mainly nocturnal, sometimes-sizeable, mostly predaceous beetles.��Some of the big ones have no-nonsense names like Fiery Searcher and Caterpillar Hunter, and although they are called Ground beetles, they may climb trees to find their prey.��They’re long-lived, spending a year or two as larvae and then two or three more as adults.��No – the BugLady was not inclined to pick this one up.�� ��

The White-Striped Black Moth (Trichodezia albovittata) is a small (1” wingspan) day-flying moth that’s often mistaken for a butterfly.��It’s found in wetlands because its caterpillar’s food is Impatiens/Jewelweed/Touch-me-not.��Like other members of the moth family Geometridae, it has tympanal organs (ears) at the base of its abdomen so that it can hear the echolocation calls of bats.�� Since it’s diurnal, its ears are superfluous, but it��can��hear ultrasound (which suggests to evolutionary biologists that its day-flying habit is a recent one).��

Chalk-Fronted Corpals are one of our earliest dragonflies – the BugLady recalls seeing recently-emerged corporals by the hundreds over a dirt road on warm, spring days.

Daddy Longlegs (aka Harvestmen) are not true spiders, though they do have eight legs.��The best description that the BugLady has read is that lacking a sharp division between their two body parts (cephalothorax and abdomen), they look like Rice Krispies with legs.��This one is well-camouflaged on the fertile stalk of a cinnamon fern.

The BugLady may have to have this engraved on her gravestone (oh wait, she’s being scattered) – Daddy Longlegs Do No Bite People! Also, counter to both urban and rural legend, they are NOT the most venomous animal on earth!!!��The BugLady does not care what your cousin told you, or the person who claims to be allergic to their bite. They have tiny jaws, and unlike the true spiders, they do not pierce their prey and then pump in chemicals from venom glands (no venom glands) (and they have no stinging apparatus).��They just sit there and chew off tiny (tiny) pieces. Got it?

The Beautify Bee Fly (Bombylius pulchellus) truly is (pulchellos��means “little beauty”)!��This small fly (maybe ¼”) was photographed in a wetland in mid-May.��Bee fly larvae are parasitoids of a variety of insect eggs and larvae – this one targets the sweat bees, which are among our earliest pollinators (not to worry – the system is in balance).

Crane Fly – there are a number of families of crane flies, plus some near-relatives, and they are often collectively called daddy longlegs (though they’re not spiders) and mosquito hawks and skeeter-eaters (though they don’t catch or eat mosquitoes).��What they do, is when they land on the other side of your window screen at night, but they’re completely harmless.��The “crane” in crane fly reflects their long, long legs – they’re somewhat awkward flyers and even more awkward landers. Like the Daddy longlegs, they’re reputedly extremely venomous (and now it’s time to introduce the third member of our “daddy longlegs trio,” the cellar spider. , but, alas, cellar spiders only have very weak venom).��

How do these things get started, anyway?

Soldier Fly – it’s always a little startling to come across a lime-green fly!��

This Virginia Ctenucha Moth Caterpillar was photographed in April, but the BugLady has found them walking around on mild winter days.��The cute caterpillar will morph into a ��that looks butterfly-ish until it lands on a leaf and immediately crawls underneath.��Despite its name, it’s a moth with more northerly affiliations.��

The (great) Minnesota Seasons website lists three defense strategies:

• Aposematism: The metallic blue color of the thorax and abdomen mimics wasps which may be noxious to predators.
• Sound production: A specialized (tymbal), corrugated region on the third section of the thorax (metathorax) produces ultrasonic sounds which interfere with (“jam”) the sonar of moth-eating bats.
• Pyrrolizidine alkaloid sequestration: Caterpillars acquire and retain naturally produced toxic chemicals (pyrrolizidine alkaloids) from the plants they eat.

Red-Spotted Purple Caterpillars are hard to distinguish from those of the very-closely-related Viceroy and White Admiral caterpillars, and their food plants overlap, too.��The caterpillars overwinter in a leaf that’s still attached to the tree, rolled up and fastened with silk.��

Red-spotted Purple? The , and the .

Hobomok Skippers (once called the Northern Golden Skipper) are an early butterfly, often decorating the wild geraniums that bloom by the bushel in May. One source says that they are strong flyers that take off quickly when startled. Amen!��They are a butterfly of woodland, wetland and grassland edges, where males perch in the sun and fly out to chase intruders.

“Hobomok” is a nod to an early Wampanoag chief.    

Crab Spider on White trillium – as we all know, the BugLady has a thing for crab spiders because of their ability to hide in plain sight.�� This one was photographed in early May.��

Go outside – Look for Bugs!

The BugLady

The post Slices of Spring appeared first on Field Station.

Salutations, BugFans,

We’re wrapping up National Wetlands Week with a beetle that you don’t even need a magnifying glass to see!��This is a revision of an episode that first aired in the summer of 2009 – new words; no new pictures.��

BOTW hasn’t plunged underwater for several months now, but in this episode we will get a chance to get our collective gills wet again. Water scavenger beetles are hefty beetles (some measure more than 1 ½ inches) in the family Hydrophilidae that are easily mistaken for Predaceous Diving beetles (family ) of previous BOTW fame.��Other than sharing their classification in the beetle Order Coleoptera, they are not closely related.��North America hosts more than 250 species of Water scavenger beetles, including an introduced, non-aquatic species that makes itself at home in dung, where its larvae eat maggots (fly larvae).

The usually-black, dome-shaped ��look a little less streamlined than the usually-black Predaceous diving beetles, and their flat, ventral surfaces often sport a keel. In contrast to the , the Water scavenger beetles’ swimming involves alternate left-right-left-right strokes of their flattened, hairy, second and third pairs of legs [ ]. Their swimming may be clumsy by comparison, but scavengers don’t need the speed and maneuverability of predators.��They are ��that may leave their watery homes and fly to lights at night (just scoop them up in a paper cup and return them to the water).��

Along with their beetle classification, they also share with Predaceous diving beetles the shallow waters of freshwater ponds and quiet stream edges, although Water scavenger beetles like their weedy, algae-choked habitat a bit warmer than Predaceous diving beetles do.��What they do not share is a lifestyle.��Adult Water scavenger beetles (depending on species) may feed on their aquatic neighbors or may be recyclers, with a food pyramid that includes algae and, as their name suggests, decaying vegetation and dead animal tissue.�� ����

The very-carnivorous are described as “sluggish” and are found crawling on the pond floor or climbing on underwater vegetation.��The larvae are couch-potato versions of the sleek Predaceous , though they sometimes share the same “water tiger” moniker.��Their feeding category is “engulfer-predator” – they use their powerful, ��to subdue and then vacuum out the juices of their prey. Their food-list includes their brethren, along with other aquatic invertebrates (they love mosquito larvae) and they also go after tadpoles, snails, and mini-fish.��

According to Eaton and Kaufman, in��the Field Guide to Insects of North America, some species of Water scavenger beetles can squeak by rubbing their abdomen against the underside of their wing covers.��Wikipedia lists a repertoire of “stress calls, a male courtship call, a male copulating sound, and a female rejection buzz.”

Water scavenger beetles overwinter as adults, and in early summer, females lay eggs in a cocoon-like structure that’s attached to aquatic plants or left to float like a raft. In��The New Field Book of Freshwater Life, Elsie Klots says that the egg case of one genus includes a vertical “mast” that extends above the water’s surface.��The mast may be involved with respiration, but it may also be an escape hatch for larvae – escape being vital in a group whose young hatch from eggs within a case and immediately start chowing-down on their siblings.��A case may hold 100+ eggs at the start, but cannibalism reduces the number of larvae that live to exit.��

They spend a month underwater as larvae and then leave the water and create a pupal cell by scooping away soil with their mandibles. It takes them 36 to 48 hours to dig a hole that’s three inches deep.��They climb in and pupate, reappearing as adults in a few weeks.

Predaceous diving beetles breathe, as many aquatic insects do (and as Water scavenger beetle��larvae��do), by backing their rear end up to the water’s surface and taking in air with a tube or pore (). Adult Water scavenger beetles break through the surface film with un-wet-able (“hydrophobic”) antennae that form a funnel through which air is transported.��Oxygen is stored in a space under the elytra (hard wing covers), and the beetle takes that air into its body through its spiracles (breathing pores).��The nickname “silver-beetle” is a nod to its secondary source of oxygen – a film of air bubbles that typically covers the beetle’s flat ventral surface, trapped there in a layer of thick hairs.��Air held in these hairs can be renewed from oxygen suspended in the water, allowing the beetle to stay under longer.�� ����

It seems that Water scavenger beetles have a Super Power – at least, one Australian species does!��It’s the ability to locomote on the underside of the surface film (remember – due to electrical charges, the layer of water molecules at the surface of a body of water is “tougher” than the molecules below it, which is what allows some insects to skate along its surface. This same surface tension makes it hard for small critters to break through from below).��.��Snails and leeches can do this, too.

The air trapped on the underside of its body may help the beetle stay “belly-up” without using extra energy, giving it enough buoyancy to stroll along under the surface film without breaking through, though each footstep makes the water dimple upwards (scientists don’t know exactly how the beetle’s feet get traction).��Researcher John Gould recounted seeing the phenomenon for the first time, “The beetle was casually walking along the underside of the water’s surface with ease while upside down. Every now and then, it would come to a stop, and then kept plodding along across the surface as if it was walking across any regular solid.”��

How does the beetle do this?��Why? Are there other beetles that do it? Scientists who collect aquatic beetles report that when they roil up the substrate with their nets, beetles often float up to the surface.��But do they walk around up/under there, or do they return to their normal haunts ASAP?��So many questions – stay tuned.

WATER SCAVENGER BEETLE MISCELLANIA:

J. Reese Voshell, Jr, in A Guide to Common Freshwater Invertebrates of North America, says that “beetle” comes from the Old English “bitula” – “to bite” – a reference to the strong jaws of adult beetles. 

Shelly Cox, in her blog called “MOBUGS – Missouri’s Majority,” shares a great (but unattributed) quote about Water scavenger beetles – “This is a water beetle. It is the hardest object in the world to pick up with tweezers. The second hardest is Mount Everest.” The BugLady can’t speak to either of those.

Once upon a time, a Naturalist named Linda Bower wondered what she would see if she put a camcorder in a pond.��A whole lot, as it turned out.��She has expanded her gaze to include terrestrial bugs and non-insects, as you will see if you . Glimpses of a world that exists under our radar.��For the Aquatic playlist click on “Life in and Around the Pond.”����

And remember – Every Month is Wetlands Month (and every fifth living thing is a beetle)!  

The BugLady

The post Wetlands Month IV – Water Scavenger Beetle Revised appeared first on Field Station.

May is National Wetlands Month, and the BugLady is celebrating by re-posting episodes about aquatic critters from deep in the BOTW archives (this one is from 2012, with some new words added).

The BugLady heard an interesting interview on the radio a while back in which the guest said that non-scientists are intimidated by the feeling that they must know the exact names of the plants and animals on their landscapes in order to discuss them, and that the belief that those names belong only to scientists causes people to become estranged from the natural world.��Yes and no.��While it is true that each organism has a scientific name that belongs to it alone and is universally recognized, the amazing world of common names is up for grabs. Common names are the names bestowed by people, often regionally, who experience an organism where the rubber meets the road. The more abundant or beloved or notorious or scary an organism is, the more common names it’s likely to have collected.��

So – what to name a small, yellowish, spotted, aquatic beetle that scrambles through the water, head down, in perpetual motion?��That, rather than “rowing” its legs in synchrony like a water boatman, “dog-paddles,” moving its legs alternately, appearing to crawl through the water. OK – Crawling water beetle it is.

There are almost 70 species of Crawling Water Beetles (family Haliplidae) in North America, divided up among four genera (this beetle belongs to the most common genus,��Haliplus) (probably) –��Haliplus, because the other common genus,��Peltodytes, has two spots on the thorax, just north of the elytra (wing covers).��Identification to species can be tricky and gets very up close and personal.�� A Crawling water beetle that’s ¼” long is a big Crawling water beetle.��Haliplids favor still, shallow water and the pool areas of streams and rivers everywhere (except Antarctica) (they favor temperate regions), and the BugLady read about an endangered Irish species that lives in tidal salt marshes. Three of Wisconsin’s Crawling water beetle species are listed as rare.

Crawling water beetles that live in ponds and lake edges can be found scrambling through the water column or feeding in mats of aquatic plants, especially algae.��Where there is a current, look for them in crevices between rocks.��Unlike many of their aquatic brethren, Crawling water beetles are bulky (one source said “barrel-shaped”), mediocre swimmers that are not streamlined, and other than some long hairs on their back four feet, their legs are not adapted for swimming (they are weak fliers, too, on wings that are rolled – not folded – under the elytra when not in use).��

Their two hind legs��are��modified – but they’re modified for breathing.��The sections at the base of each hind leg (closest to the body) are greatly flattened to form “coxal plates” that meet under the beetle.��Together, the coxal plates cover part of the thorax and abdomen and create a second space to carry oxygen. When it needs oxygen, a Crawling water beetle backs up to the surface film, takes in air, and stores it in an area on its back, above its abdomen and beneath its elytra.��A reserve supply is cached between the coxal plates and the lower surface of the abdomen, and it is in communion with the air under the elytra.��Insects take in air through breathing pores called spiracles, and there are spiracles located under the coxal plates.��

A bubble of air peeking out from under the elytra helps Crawling water beetle float to the water’s surface (a Crawling water beetle that’s low on air loses buoyancy and must clamber back up the vegetation).��The long, skinny ��simply breathe through their skin and don’t develop spiracles until they are almost ready to pupate.�� ��

Crawling water beetles lay their eggs on submerged aquatic plants, especially filamentous algae.�� Some excavate small holes in the plant tissue and lay their eggs inside.��The short-legged, hook-footed larvae creep about on algae mats, where they are well-camouflaged, playing dead when alarmed (alarmed adults make for the bottom of the pond and cling to plant stems there), feeding on their algal substrate with mouthparts that are adapted for grabbing algae, piercing its walls, and sucking out its juices.��Larvae that are too tiny to puncture the tough cell walls feed on the fungi and bacteria on the algae’s exterior.��Adults continue to feed on algae, but they add protein to their diet in the form of tiny invertebrates like worms, daphnia, and midge eggs.��They are eaten by fish, salamanders, and larger aquatic insects.

Crawling water beetle larvae pupate on the shore, in a cell they prepare under a rock or log near the water’s edge.��Their new-found spiracles allow them to breathe out of water.��Some species spend the winter as pupae; others emerge to spend the winter in the water as adults.��

Adults can be found in the water all year round, moving slowly under the ice in winter and congregating in deep spots where the photosynthesis of aquatic plants provides oxygen.��Larvae are seen in spring.��

Haliplids are among the many shy, retiring insects who live their lives off our radar, simply because their lives don’t impact ours in any economic way (“man is the measure of all things,” said the BugLady’s high school English teacher).

The BugLady photographs aquatic invertebrates as they swim around in a white, plastic spoon.�� Crawling water beetles do not stop and pose.��.

Go outside.��Name stuff!

The BugLady

The post Wetlands Month I – Crawling Water Beetle appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady photographed this handsome moth on her back porch rail last summer, and she was temporarily mystified when she identified it as a Tobacco budworm moth, because the nearest tobacco farm is probably more than 100 miles west of her.��Then she found an alternative common name – the Geranium budworm – and since she is the Geranium Queen, it made more sense (and it explained the frass on the bookshelves).

There are lots of moths that aren’t big enough or bad enough or beautiful enough to have been studied enough. This isn’t one of them. It gets University Extension Agents riled up throughout tobacco and cotton-growing areas in the southern half of its range.��

Tobacco budworms (Chloridea virescens) (before 2013 they were��Heliothis virescens) are native moths in the Owlet moth family Noctuidae.��They’re considered an eastern and southwestern species, but they’ve been spotted in Canada, across the vast majority of the lower 48 plus the Caribbean, and sporadically south of the Rio Grande. They produce five or six broods annually in the South, but generally just one or two in the North, and they are too tender to overwinter here.��Moths seen in the northern parts of the US in the second half of summer may have overwintered in a greenhouse or a sheltered patio or in a potted plant that was brought inside in fall, or they may have drifted north from the southern part of their range.��

Adults have a wingspread of about one-to one-and-a-half inches and are somewhat variable in color.����means “being or becoming green” and while some are , many Tobacco budworm moths are .��The caterpillars’ and, as David Wagner says in��Caterpillars of Eastern North America, “Somehow the larvae end up matching the color of their foodplant.��The caterpillars found on red geraniums are , those on ground cherry yellow, and so on.”��(). ����

The first generation of larvae��chew deeply into buds () and the later broods feed on the flowers and seeds.��They prefer the reproductive tissues, but they’ll also eat leaves, leaf petioles and even stems, and the later generations cause the most damage to plants.��No picky eaters here – these are generalist feeders!��They especially like tobacco and cotton, but they eat other agricultural crops like soybeans, flax, squash, tomato, peanuts, peppers, lettuce, and alfalfa and other clovers,.��Garden flowers like roses, geraniums, morning glory, petunias, nicotiana, chrysanthemums, marigolds, snapdragons, zinnias, and verbenas are on the menu, and, as the bulletins say, so are “weeds” like beardtongue, cranesbill/wild geranium, dock, lupine, passion flower, ground cherry, and more (“weeds” – so judgy).��They’re not considered a pest here in God’s Country.������ ��

They are eaten by a variety of insects and spiders, but where some of their predators are concerned, the caterpillars seem to have Super Powers. According to Wikipedia, if a parasitic wasp named��Cardiochiles nigripes��approaches a caterpillar with the intention of laying an egg on it, a fluid oozes from the caterpillar’s pores “that causes C. nigriceps to become agitated and groom themselves, allowing the budworm to escape. C. nigriceps also avoid budworms painted with this exudate. It is hypothesized that this exudate may function by overloading the wasp’s sensory receptors.” The tachinid fly��Winthemia rufopicta��may be successful at laying eggs on the exterior of a tobacco budworm caterpillar, “but upon hatching and trying to penetrate its host,��the caterpillars��react by biting, crushing, puncturing, or trying to eat the parasitoid eggs.��This kills off many of the maggots” (Wikipedia). Plus (says Wagner) “My colleague Scott Smedley and his students recently discovered that the caterpillars manage to transfer the glandular defensive secretions of their foodplants onto their own setae��[hairs],��and in doing so accrue chemical protection from ants and other natural enemies.”

They court with pheromones – she releases chemicals (perfumes) into the air, but she will not produce them unless she has been in contact with a potential host plant, and a place to lay her eggs is assured.��He reads her signals with receptors on his antennae and responds, and when she picks up his signal, she stops producing hers.��Males court with pheromones produced by glands in structures called hair pencils, which pop out of their abdomen.��The chemicals he produces are “twofers” – they send a “back-off” message to other males, and a “come hither” message to females. If she approves of his scent, it’s “game on.”��The odor has both a stimulating and tranquilizing effect on her.��

She ��(usually 300 to 500 of them, but as many as 1,500) on buds, blossoms and leaves in the upper parts of plants. Research suggests that she picks as a host the same species of plant that she grew up on.��The larvae hatch and, if they’re not already there, head for the tips of the plant. Larvae grow faster at warmer temperatures, and when they are mature, they .��

Two big photo references – one to , and the other a giant collection of caterpillar pictures by wildlife photographer (Wisconsin shares many moth species with New York).

The BugLady

The post Tobacco Budworm appeared first on Field Station.