Salutations, BugFans,

Week 2 of National Wetlands Month features an upgrade of an episode that first appeared in March of 2014. 

Water lilies are important plants in aquatic ecosystems.ĚýAt the very least, they provide a dry spot for insects (and frogs and others) to perch on – at most, they are hearth and home.ĚýVarious parts of the plants are eaten by organisms ranging from snails to moose, and the broad leaves modify/shade/cool the aquatic habitat below (the BugLady was tickled to see a few fish hiding under a lily leaf on a very hot day).Ěý

A water lily’s leaf and flower stay on the water’s surface instead of being dragged under by the weight of its long stem because the flexible, hollow stalk is divided into a series of air bladders that buoy it up.  

A few insect species are serious water lily specialists, living out their days on the plants. Like Lilypad Forktail damselflies, rarely seen away from them, whose connection is so strong that as they sit on a leaf, the tip of their abdomen is bent down touch it.ĚýAnd like Donacia beetles, whose eggs are laid at the base of the lily leaf and whose larvae attach themselves to the underwater parts of the plant, from which they get both food and oxygen, pupating in a silken cocoon that is dry inside because the air bubbles that leaked from the chewed stem and provided oxygen to the larva have blown the water from the cocoon.Ěý

The rhizome of yellow water lily was an important medicine and food of Native Americans (they ate the seeds like popcorn, too), but white water lily was used more for medicine. Henry David Thoreau (that silver-tongued romantic) associated the white water lily with young men picking its flowers on their way to church in Concord, and also said that the flower “reminds me of a young country maiden…wholesome as the odor of a cow.” He reported smoking a stem once and said that it was the “most noxious thing I ever smoked.” 

The water lily community has many stories to tell, and the BugLady has already written a few of them.ĚýHere’s a tale about some awesome little bugs that she met for the first time at Riveredge Nature Center toward the end of July, 2013 (at the time, BugFan Joanne said, “I’m in wetlands all the time, and I’ve never seen these before!”  Ditto!).ĚýSome of the water lily leaves hosted masses of the planthoppers for a few weeks, but then they disappeared.ĚýDespite searching for them every summer since then, it wasn’t until the summer of 2023 that the BugLady finally found another one (one!).  

COMMON WATER LILY/POND LILY PLANTHOPPERS (Megamelus davisi), known in more rarefied circles as the Davis’s Megamelus, are in the bug family Delphacidae, the Delphacid Planthoppers.ĚýAt first, the BugLady thought they were nymphs, because of their short wing pads, but they were adults.ĚýAdult CWLPs come in either reduced-winged (brachypterous) or , and the brachypterous form is more numerous.Ěý

CWLPs are found in the eastern half of the US, but the species has made a surprise appearance in Hawaii.ĚýThey like ponds and extremely slow streams where white water lilies (genus Nymphaea) grow, and they are also found on the unrelated broad-leaved pondweed (Potamogeton natans).ĚýMost of their relatives feed on grasses, but CWLPs eat any part of the water lilies or pondweeds that sticks up above the water line. They’re considered pests if you’re trying to propagate young water lilies, but they don’t damage older, established plants.ĚýAnother species of Megamelus is welcomed as a biological control of water hyacinth in Florida.Ěý

Their nymphs are meals for ravenous water treaders (); they’re attacked by a big-headed fly called Pipunculus varius, and their eggs are parasitized by an exceedingly tiny fairy wasp with the lovely name of , whose range exactly matches that of the CWLP because it has been introduced to Hawaii to hassle them there.ĚýWhen a fairy wasp lays her egg on a planthopper egg, she “marks” it with her ovipositor so other females will leave it alone, because there isn’t enough food in the egg for two wasp larvae to share.ĚýCWLPs are also noted in a website dedicated to “Fly Fishing Entomology,” although duplicating a fish food that is less than a quarter-inch long would take dedication, indeed.Ěý  

Females puncture water lily leaves, stems, and midribs to insert single eggs, and the plant obligingly produces tissue that covers the hole (the nymph’s eventual exit does leave a lasting scar, though).ĚýThere are three generations each year, and the fall generation, which outlasts the disintegrating water lily leaves, overwinters as almost mature nymphs in the leaf litter of shoreline plants. When they become active again in late spring, they move out over the water and recolonize the lily leaves.Ěý

So, what’s this little critter famous for? 

First, members of the family Delphacidae are outfitted with spurs (calcars) of various sizes and shapes on their hind tibias (“shins”), but CWLPs are overachievers – their spurs are described as “large,” “moveable,” and even .ĚýThere are any number of guesses about what these flaps do for the CWLP. Are they oars that help CWLPs move across the water to new plants? Are they skates? According to a note in the 1923 “Bulletin of the State Geological and Natural History Survey of Connecticut,” “its large spurs undoubtedly support it when, by a mischance, it lands on the water.” Or, queried the “Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences” (Vol. 5, 1886–97), “Is not the large, foliaceous spur in this species an adaptation of Nature to enable these insects to leap more readily from the surface of the water, about which they make their home?”  [This theory seems to be the current front-runner.]   

Second, in the “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe” category, consider the planthopper-frog connection that has been documented in New York State. Northern cricket frogs (Acris crepitans) love to eat CWLPs during the summer (they also like aquatic springtails). CWLPs are the primary food of cricket frogs as the frogs prepare for their own fall migrations to wintering sites, too.ĚýAccording to the (terrific) New York State Conservationist magazine, “a single cricket frog might spend several hours on one lily pad, devouring planthoppers as they move by the thousands over a lily pad.” 

In a paper called “Species decline in an outwardly healthy habitat,” forensic ecologist Jay Westerveld describes the crash of Northern cricket frog populations over much of New York State.ĚýIt seems that aerial spraying for Gypsy moths (now renamed Spongy moths) in the 1970’s wiped out entire populations of CWLPs.ĚýWhen cricket frog numbers plummeted, investigators noted that they could find no CWLPs where they had once been plentiful.ĚýSince spraying isn’t done over public water supply areas, pockets of cricket frogs remain in some wetlands adjacent to reservoirs.ĚýWestervelt makes the point that the CWLP is a habitat specialist, and the Northern cricket frog is a food specialist.ĚýBecause the majority of CWLPs are wingless, natural recolonization by the species is painfully slow, and the bugs may need to be reintroduced in order for the frog to rebound.Ěý

Forensic ecologist – the BugLady is ready for the TV series. 

And – PERIODICAL CICADAS – .Ěý  

The BugLady

The post Wetlands Month II – Common Water lily Planthopper revised appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

The dragonfly season is starting – migrant Common Green Darners and  are filtering into the state, and visions of sugarplums (in the form of Chalk-fronted Corporals, Baskettails, and Eastern Forktails) are dancing in our heads! June will see the first of the Emeralds (family Corduliidae).Ěý

Also called Green-eyed Skimmers (though the name Skimmer belongs more properly to a different family, Libellulidae), the Emerald family is a large and varied one (about 50 species in North America and 400 worldwide) that includes the bog haunters, emeralds, baskettails, sundragons, and shadowdragons.ĚýCorduliids are found worldwide, and as a group, their ranges tend to be northerly.Ěý

They are medium to large (1 ½” to 3” long) dragonflies, and although they may be dark in coloration, many have metallic markings on their thorax and . Many species have a pale ring between the second and third abdominal segments. When they perch (which is not often enough for dragonfly photographers), they tend to perch vertically, hanging from vegetation at a 45 degree angle.Ěý

Every spring, the BugLady takes lots of pictures of the very spiffy , a species found commonly in the northeast quadrant of the continent.ĚýShe doesn’t see the larger, American Emerald (Cordulia shurtleffii) nearly as often – it’s more common near bogs, sedge marshes, forested lakes and ponds, and fens “Up North” and across much of Canada and the northern US.ĚýSome American Emeralds have (slightly) flared abdomens, like the Racket-tailed Emerald does, but the yellow band at the top of the Racket-tail’s abdomen is thick and uneven compared to the .Ěý may resemble and overlap in size with some of the Striped Emeralds in the genus Somatochlora.  

Adults eat soft-bodied insects that they grab out of the air, from mosquitoes to butterflies to mayflies to royal ants to recently-emerged dragonflies and damselflies. They forage in woodland openings and edges and sometimes, early in the season, mingle with swarms of baskettails.ĚýPaulson (Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East) reports that the American Emerald “sometimes hovers among plants in an effort to flush prey, often successful.” As befits a northern species, they are more active in cooler temperatures.Ěý

Kurt Mead, in Dragonflies of the North Woods, tells us to “Look for the males’ ‘dart and hover,’ ‘dart and hover’ behavior as they patrol their shifting territories along boggy edges of small lakes and ponds.”  After , a longish process carried out partially in flight, Mead says that “the female taps the surface of the water with her abdomen when laying eggs, often among sedges and other emergent vegetation.”  

The sturdy, hairy, aquatic naiads are “sprawlers,” hiding in the mud and under the debris trapped in their hairs, and ambushing their prey – scuds (freshwater shrimp), mosquito and midge larvae, mayfly nymphs, and the occasional tiny fish and tadpole – as it passes by.ĚýThey can tolerate pretty cold water, but in cold water they need more than one summer to mature.ĚýThey .ĚýHere’s a teneral – a recently emerged adult – that has the .

The BugLady was curious about the American Emerald’s species name shurtleffii (ah – the etymology of entomology!), so she did a little digging.ĚýThe species was described by the renowned entomologist Samuel Scudder in 1866. Scudder named it after a young physician named Carleton Atwood Shurtleff (1840 to 1864), a polymath whose interests included botany (native orchids) and entomology (he studied insect wing venation).ĚýShurtleff’s parents sent his collections and papers to the Boston Society of Natural History after his death in 1864 “from a disease contracted at the siege of Vicksburg.” Scudder read a paper by Shurtleff posthumously at a Society meeting and praised his achievements, and later immortalized him in a dragonfly’s name.Ěý   

Carpe diem (or as the BugLady’s t-shirt says, “Carpe Insectum.”)

The BugLady

The post American Emerald Dragonfly appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings BugFans,

The insect world is gearing up to stage an event that is the entomological equivalent of the recent total solar eclipse. The buzz (if you’ll pardon the term) began a few months ago with articles in the New York Times and the Smithsonian newsletter. The event: the emergence of billions (with a “b”) of Periodical cicadas over a large chunk of the country south and east of Wisconsin. What one entomologist calls a “spectacular, macabre Mardi Gras” and another calls “a David Attenborough show in your backyard.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;

Part 1: Setting The Stage

Young cicadas – nymphs – live underground, using their piercing-sucking mouthparts to feed on the fluid that’s getting pumped up into the tree from the roots. The length of their subterranean stay is determined by their species (though sometimes over-enthusiastic individuals may jump the gun, and climate change may be affecting their internal chronometers). 

Most of Wisconsin’s cicada species are green and black, bullet-shaped Annual cicadas in the genus Neotibicen, the , who spend just a year or two underground as nymphs and then tunnel to the surface, climb something vertical, and emerge from their nymphal skin into adulthood (). If you’ve seen a nymph trekking across the lawn or climbing a post, you’ve been privileged to see something that looks, and is, prehistoric – they’ve been around for 200 million years.

Cicadas practice what the BugLady calls the “Normandy Beach” strategy of reproduction – throw enough soldiers on the beach and some will get through (real scientists call it “predator satiation”). Cicadas emerge in large numbers into the waiting jaws, bills, claws, and skillets of a myriad of predators.ĚýAnother hypothesis involves predator avoidance.ĚýThe year after the cicadas are numerous, their predators’ populations peak, because they had all that food last year to feed to all those young, and survival rates were high.ĚýThe next year, prey is scarce, and predator numbers adjust themselves (a 13- or 17-year lag seems overly cautious, but there are Prime number variants of this theory that the BugLady is not equipped to explain).ĚýOr it could be that cicadas developed this method to avoid hybridization.Ěý  

Part 2: Periodical Cicadas (Magicicada sp.), aka 13 and 17 Year Locusts.. 

First off, they’re not locusts – locusts are in the Grasshopper order Orthoptera, and cicadas are in the Bug order Hemiptera. Second, although most cicadas have relatively predictable nymphal periods, the genus Magicicada owns the name “Periodical cicada.” North America has three species of 17-year cicadas and four species of 13-year cicadas (and of course, some cicada experts think that those seven Magicicada species might only be three species. Stay tuned). The ranges of the 17-year species are a bit more northern, and the 13-year species are a bit more southern. Third, they’re pretty awesome-looking insects. Many thanks to BugFan Tom for his wonderful pictures.

˛Ń˛š˛ľžąłŚžąłŚ˛šťĺ˛šĚýis divided into 15 groups called Broods, each designated by a different Roman numeral. Broods are defined not by species but by the synchronicity of their internal clocks, and .

Masses of male Periodical cicadas gather in the treetops and “sing” by vibrating an internal membrane (tymbal) that’s stretched between the thorax and the abdomen. It vibrates hundreds of times per second and can, depending on the species, produce sounds of nearly 100 decibels (louder than a vacuum cleaner, leaf-blower, blender, or garbage disposal). Between choruses, males make short flights away from the group looking for mates. (She flicks her wings at him if she’s in the mood.ĚýFemale cicadas are silent, but even if she could make sound, he might not hear her in the din.) Females lay eggs by drilling into twigs, and when the egg hatches, the nymph (and often the tip of the twig) drops to the ground.Ěý

Magicicada nymphs spend their lives about two feet underground, molting five times, and some researchers suggest that they note the passing years by registering that the tree sap is richer in amino acids when the tree blooms in spring (but they don’t know how cicadas “count”).ĚýThey are transient — starting to emerge at night, in late April, when soil temperature reaches 64 degrees F, and disappearing by mid-July. By then, the nymphs have aerated the soil, the decomposing shells and adults are enriching the soil, and the birds are well-fed.

Conventional wisdom long held that adult cicadas lived briefly and didn’t eat, which wisdom the BugLady imparted to her offspring.ĚýShe got a phone call one day from one of her daughters, who was out on the trail with a class.ĚýShe had picked up a cicada to show them, and it had stabbed her in the finger (cicadas, the folks at Cicada Mania say, “sometimes mistake us for trees,” and they advise us to “Just remove the cicada from your person, and go about your business”).ĚýAdult cicadas feed on plant juices — in fact, they sip 300 times their body weight in plant sap daily.Ěý

What goes in must come out, and along that vein, some recent articles have noted that because they must ingest so much nutrient-poor plant sap in order to get enough calories, cicadas are prodigious (and powerful) pee-ers and that no one has studied the impact of all that urine on the landscape (as we say in the Nature business — don’t look up with your mouth open).

Cicada nymphs are eaten by moles, and the adults provide a buffet for snakes, lizards, skunks, rodents, possums, birds of all sizes (the BugLady once heard a truncated cicada buzz and looked out the window to see a (smug) Brown Thrasher leaving the scene with a beakful of cicada), and they are collected and cached by . A few sources said that when birds concentrate on cicadas in big years, they ignore caterpillars, allowing caterpillar populations to increase. Historically, American Indians fried or roasted cicadas, and today, the emergence of large broods spawns cook-offs among entomophagists.    

Part 3: Periodical Cicadas Are Around All The Time — What’s The Big Deal About 2024?

Billions of cicadas, that’s what!  Enough cicadas to stretch to the moon and back 33 times – more than 15 million miles of cicadas, nose to tail. As many as 1.5 million cicadas per acre, with 20 to 25 exit holes in a square foot of soil. The simultaneous appearance over a 16 state area of two geographically adjacent broods, Brood XIII (the Northern Illinois Brood) and the periodical cicadas with the widest range, Brood XIX (the Great Southern Brood). The simultaneous emergence of two broods – a 13-year species and a 17-year species – that last emerged together when Thomas Jefferson was president and that won’t appear together for another 221 years (by comparison, the – OK, 2044 if you insist on staying in North America).    

How far will Wisconsin eco tourists will have to travel? Just to our .

As always, the question is “Can you get high on Periodical cicadas (beyond the sheer joy of witnessing the exuberance of Nature, of course)? Well —- maybe. 

About 5% of Magicicada nymphs may become infected with a fungus called Massospora (a so-called Zombie fungus) that produces both the psychedelic chemical psilocybin (think “magic mushrooms”) and an amphetamine/stimulant called cathinone. The nymphs are exposed when they enter the soil after hatching, or while they’re living underground, or even as they tunnel up to emerge as adults.  When the adult matures, its butt falls off and is “replaced” by a  â€“ “what entomologists affectionately call ‘flying salt shakers of death,’” says the National Audubon Society website. With the fungus calling the shots, behaviorally, infected adults initiate a lot of romantic encounters, and they often walk along the ground, dragging their nether portions and thereby depositing spores on the soil.

Part 4: Cicada Miscellania

Cicadas aren’t known to carry diseases, but after a Brood XIII emergence in 2007, lots of suburban Chicagoans had nasty, itchy rashes. Turns out that a tiny mite called the Oak gall mite (aka the “itch mite”) eats cicada eggs when it’s not eating Oak leaf gall midges. More cicada eggs = more mites = more human-mite encounters. 

During the Brood X emergence a few years ago, a disease was seen in birds in the same geographical area. It was suspected that there was a link to the cicadas that suddenly dominated their diet (biological magnification), but it was not determined whether the problem was the extra load of cicada “meat” itself, chemicals that the nymphs or adults may have been exposed to, or soil bacteria or fungi that came to the surface with the nymphs. The disease eased as the cicadas died off.

History geeks please note the History section of the Wikipedia write-up on Periodical cicadas, .  

And speaking of biological exuberance, our skies are suddenly filled with Red Admiral butterflies (and some Painted Ladies, too) migrating up from the South and Southwest. Early butterflies don’t rely on flowers; they feed on sap dripping from trees.

The BugLady

The post The Cicadas are Coming – a Tale in Four Parts appeared first on Field Station.

Salutations, BugFans,

It’s the trough between Christmas and New Year’s – nothing but reruns. This one, from 2009, has a few new words and pictures. Party on! 

Occasionally, one of the BugLady’s wee dust bunnies becomes a little more animated than the rest of them – a situation that is startling, momentarily, until she remembers the Masked Hunter (Reduvius personatus), an alien bug from Europe and Africa that is now found throughout the US. The adult is a striking, shiny, black bug about ¾” long. The pale immature (nymph) has a sticky exterior that attracts lint and dust, earning it the nickname “dustbug,” and camouflaging or “masking” it from its predators. One correspondent on  submitted a photo of a blue nymph that was living in a blue shag carpet; another referred to them as having a “tempura-like” coating. .

Masked Hunters, in the Order Hemiptera (True Bugs), are in the Assassin bug family Reduvidae (and subfamily Reduviinae), a group of active and ambitious hunters that stalk primarily insect prey and will go after critters that are larger than they are. They dispatch their prey by stabbing it with their short beak (rostrum) and injecting it with potent chemicals that both paralyze their catch and soften its innards so they may be slurped out. 

A different subfamily of Assassin bugs (not the Masked Hunter’s) includes bugs called “”  – the ultimate in image ambiguity. They feed on the blood of mammals, including humans, and a few are notorious disease vectors; their nickname derives from their targeting the thin skin on their victim’s face, especially the lips, often while said victim is asleep. The debilitating and potentially fatal Chagas disease of Central and South America is spread by these Kissing bugs, which bear a family resemblance to the Masked Hunter. There are a number of species of kissing bugs – mostly tropical, but one that gets into southern Illinois – and there are several kissing bug look-alikes on our landscape, but kissing bugs have not been recorded in Wisconsin. 

The good news is that Masked Hunters are insect-feeders, untiring consumers of bedbugs, pests that are staging a comeback in big cities everywhere thanks to the ease of world travel. The bad news is that they are untiring and, according to some references, nearly exclusive consumers of bedbugs, and these authors suggest that if you have the predator, perhaps you should check for the prey! Masked Hunters also live in nest colonies of Swallows, dining on small bedbug-relatives called “Swallow bugs.” The BugLady sees Masked Hunters on early summer nights on her front porch, to which they and hundreds of other insects are attracted by the porch light, and she has read that sowbugs, lacewings, flies, carpet and grain beetles, and earwigs show up on their dinner plates, too. 

HANDLE WITH CARE (or preferably not at all)!!! Masked Hunters and their relatives are not aggressive toward humans (and most do not spread disease), but they can defend themselves effectively if manhandled. The same beak that is so lethal to their prey can deliver a poke that is described by Eaton and Kaufman in their Field Guide to Insects of North America as “excruciating” and by other references as “like a snakebite,” and “painful enough to cause immediate faintness and vomiting” and as resulting in longer-term swelling, blood blisters and irritation. The “Kissing Bug Scare of 1899” (True story! Google it!) was apparently caused when these guys (or their relatives, the , sources disagree) experienced a population boom in the northeast, entered houses in large numbers, and inflicted bites as people brushed them away from their faces. 

When they’re not feeding, assassin bugs bend their heads slightly downward, resting the beak/rostrum in a short, ridged grove between their forelegs. They can produce sound by rubbing the beak-tip across these ridges. Stridulation.

The BugLady

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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.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;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 – “.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;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.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;Because of this, they’re called “sharpshooters.”&˛Ô˛ú˛őąč;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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