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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The BugLady

The post Whitebanded Crab Spider appeared first on Field Station.

It’s almost time for Snowbirds to head back north to rejoin us here in God’s Country for the final days/weeks/months of winter. The BugLady read recently that the number of days below freezing in March here in God’s Country has��drastically��decreased in the past 25 years, and March is increasingly considered a spring month rather than a winter month (but when the BugLady was a kid……..). The temperature may be moderating, but March still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and most of them involve snow.

BugFan Tom supplied the pictures of this big, beautiful spider that inhabits the South from Virginia to Texas (and beyond, to Argentina and Peru).��Thanks, Tom.��

The brightly-patterned females may be more than two inches long with a five-inch leg span, (males are much smaller ). A spider this big (probably our largest orb weaver) that makes big webs necessarily gets noticed and collects lots of names, like Banana Spider, Golden Orb Weaver, Calico Spider, Golden Silk Spider, and Giant golden Orbweaver, and people who walk into the webs while hiking probably have other names for them.��MUCH has been written about their golden silk ��– more about that later.

The Golden silk orb weaver (Trichonephila��clavipes) was formerly known as��Nephila clavipes. Nephila��means “fond of spinning” and��clavipes��means “club-footed,” possibly a reference by Linnaeus to the dark tufts of hair on six of the female’s legs.��Recently, it and a dozen other genus members were moved to the genus��Trichonephila��– the Golden orb weavers.��Historically, GSOWs were the only member of that genus in North America, but in 2014, an East Asian species called the Joro spider found its way to Georgia, and it’s been spreading out through the Southeast .������

Look for GSOWs in open areas in woods or edges, preferably near wetlands or coastal areas. 

Male GSOWs spin trap webs until they reach maturity, but then they set off to find a mate.��When they find a female’s web, they quietly move onto its periphery and feed on some of the prey she catches, and a female’s web may host a number of males.��Dewdrop spiders Dewdrop Spider – Field Station and Spiney-backed orb weavers Spinybacked Orbweaver– A Spider for Snowbirds – Field Station also live on the web’s outskirts and share in the bounty.��An amorous male will approach the female while she is distracted by a meal, and he signals by vibrating both the web and his abdomen (he’s cautious, but there’s not a lot of sexual cannibalism in this species).��Males don’t produce much sperm, and they replace it slowly, so they favor newly-molted females who have not mated yet.��After he mates/attempts to mate, a male may move on to a new web.��

Females place two or more egg sacs, each containing a few hundred eggs, on surfaces near their web .��Hatching may be triggered by environmental cues in their damp habitats. The spiderlings stick together for about a week after hatching , and then they disperse.��By late summer, the tiny spiderlings of spring have reached full size and are making conspicuous webs.

This is a big spider that builds a big, strong web (up to six feet in diameter) that is capable of snagging some big prey, like moths, fast-flying horse flies, dragonflies (which are both GSOW eaters and eat-ees), butterflies , beetles (this one is June-beetle-size) , cicadas, and grasshoppers.��Though they trap both small and large prey, they prefer to eat the bigger insects.��

The webs are sturdy enough to capture birds. Daniel M. Brooks, in an article titled “Birds Caught in Spider Webs: A Synthesis of Patterns” published in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology (2012), wrote that a review of international literature and list servers found 69 accounts of birds trapped in webs.��Nephila��species, especially GSOWs, accounted for half of the reports of mostly hummingbird-sized birds (though a small dove was reported, and the author personally observed a Swainson’s thrush tangled in a web), and while some were able to free themselves, a significant number had been killed and wrapped by the spider.

The asymmetrical, orb-type web is usually located between two and eight feet off the ground (but may be at treetop height). When prey is abundant, GSOWs may cache as many as 15 wrapped insects in a “barrier web” – a debris-strewn area along one side that serves to warn/block predators and help keep the web clean.��One source said that the organic waste held in the barrier web may attract insect prey by its odor.��

GSOWs’ main predators are wasps that collect them to provision their egg chambers, and birds. 

Unlike many species of orb weavers that replace their webs daily, eating the old web to harvest its protein, GSOWs repair damaged webs.��Researchers believe that the yellow tint, the intensity of which the spiders can control, may attract bees, and it may also help to camouflage a web in the shade.��A number of females may make webs close to each other .

This is some serious silk!!!��Nephila/Trichonephila��silk has a high thermal conductivity, is stronger, by weight, than steel (it’s being studied with hopes of replicating its extreme strength), and it has some interesting medical applications.��Wikipedia reports that it may be beneficial in surgeries involving the nervous system because it may guide and encourage neuronal regeneration.��

Wikipedia also reports that hunters in New Guinea make fishing nets from the silk.

Finally, enterprising folks have experimented with it as a textile, creating garments (thanks to the labors of millions of spiders) .��

FUN FACT ABOUT SPIDERS: the tips of the legs of spiders that wander around and don’t make trap webs point outwards, and the tips of the legs of trap-web-spinners point inwards.

FUN FACT ABOUT NEPHILA/TRICHONEPHILA SPIDERS: The genus Nephila is not only the oldest-known surviving spider genus (165 million years), but it includes the largest-known fossil spider.

The BugLady

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One of the BugLady’s inquilines is an Eastern parson spider. An inquiline (from the Latin��inquilinus��meaning “lodger” or “tenant”) is an animal that lives in the dwelling of another animal.��Like the Tree frog that overwintered with the BugLady last year, the Parson spider is finding enough to eat.��

Some definitions of inquiline allow for the possibility that the “roomer” might morph into an eater or an eat-ee of the host, but that would nudge it into a different ecological category.��The relationship of the host to its inquiline guest is defined as a “commensal” one – positive for the guest; neutral for the host(ess).

Eastern parson spiders (Herpyllus��ecclesiasticus) (great scientific name!) get their name from the white markings on the top of the abdomen that are reminiscent of the white cravats of 19^th��century preachers.�� They’re in the ground spider family Gnaphosidae.��There are a dozen species in the genus��Herpyllus��in North America, and most can’t be identified to species with photos.��The Western parson spider (H. propinquus��— another great name) is nearly identical to the Eastern parson spider, mostly separated by range.�� Eastern parson spiders occur mainly east of the Rockies, from Canada into Mexico.��(An aside: The BugLady’s Dad used to introduce juicy vocabulary words when she was a kid, and “propinquity” was one of them, along with “prestidigitation,” “prevarication,” and, of course, “procrastination”)

These small, hairy spiders live on the ground under rocks, logs, and other forest debris, and on tree trunks, but it’s not uncommon for them to get into mailboxes, where they might be collected with the day’s mail, or to come indoors in fall, where adults may overwinter. (They don’t breed indoors.)��

Females are about 3/8” long, and males are about 1/4”. They are speedy spiders that often run in a zigzag line, so the BugLady photographed her spider at the bottom of her “Invertebrate-Catch-and-Release Jar,” a repurposed parmesan cheese shaker.��Contributors to����have done better — ��and��.����

Eastern parson spiders don’t spin trap webs, they’re active, nocturnal/crepuscular hunters that search for their prey — small invertebrates, including other spiders — on foot.�� that was bigger than it was. They do use silk for other purposes. They rest in silk retreats under boards, bark, rocks, etc. in the daytime, young spiders that stay outside during winter make a silk cocoon under loose tree bark, and females enclose their eggs in a silken sac in summer before hiding it (and they stay around to protect it).��Not a lot is known about their natural history, but the fact that adult parson spiders can be found in any season suggests that they may have a two-year life cycle.�� ��

Along with the usual “Scare sites” that pop up when you Google animals (“Eastern parson spider bite”/“Eastern parson spider poisonous”), there is some discussion about whether the Parson spider’s bite is problematic for humans, beyond the rare individual who might be allergic. The conclusion seems to be that the bite is painful and may produce some temporary inflammation, but it’s not a medical emergency, and the odds are good that you’ll never be bitten by one because spiders would rather flee than fight.��As one author points out, spider bites are very rare occurrences and misinformation is rampant.��

The BugLady

The post Eastern Parson Spider appeared first on Field Station.

It’s that time of year again—time to put our feet up, sip adult beverages by the light of the tree, hum “The Twelve��Bugs��Days of Christmas,” and dream of spring. (The days are getting longer, you know.) Here are a Baker’s Dozen from 2025.

Polyphemus Moth Caterpillar

This glorious polyphemus moth caterpillar, in the giant silk moth family Saturniidae (not the same family as the moths that produce silk for textiles), is huge! And it’s going to grow up to be . ������

American Rubyspot

One of the lovely River damsels.��, but this female is pretty spectacular in her own right. (The BugLady wishes she knew how she got that halo effect—probably a random sparkle off the Milwaukee River beyond—she’d employ it in more pictures.)

Ambush Bug

Seasoned BugFans can attest to the BugLady’s fascination with Ambush bugs, which lay in wait on flowers until lunch arrives.��When she took this shot, the Ambush bug reminded her of another fascinating insect, . Read here for .

Dogbane Leaf Beetles

They are – except when they aren’t.��The beetle’s color and incandescence are the result of the play of light on exceedingly small, tilted plates that overlay its pigment layer. As you walk around it, the light bouncing off both the pigment and the plates causes the colors to change with your angle (and sometimes bring up Christmas colors).��Life is physics. .��

Oblong-Winged Katydid

A splendid katydid, splendidly in tune with its surroundings!

Bee Fly

This Bee fly deposits her eggs in the egg tunnels of solitary wasps that live in sandy/bare areas, though “deposit” doesn’t quite describe the process.��She ��and lobs an egg down into the opening.��But, there’s a secret sauce.��She dips her rear end into the sand in order to take up some sand grains which she will store in a special receptacle. As an egg emerges, it gets a gritty coating that may help camouflage it and may also make it heavier so that her” throw” will be more accurate.

Bumble Bee

The BugLady has pictures of a number of insects nectaring on the spiny center of Purple coneflower (Echinacea sp.), and it always looks like an iffy proposition.��The name “Echinacea” comes from the Greek word for hedgehog.

Crab Spider

Crab spiders like orchids. This one is on a Small Yellow Lady’s Slipper!��They don’t spin trap webs, and orchids give them a nice platform on which to wait for pollinators, though some might have a long wait because not all orchids are pollinated by insects.��The BugLady has a color slide of a Bog candle orchid with a white crab spider fitting neatly onto a horizontal flower.��Just as there is an orchid-mimic mantis, .

Tufted Bird Lime/Bird-Dropping Moths

Tufted Bird Lime/Bird-Dropping Moths look marbled to the BugLady.��Jim Sogarrd, author of��Moths and Caterpillars of the North Woods, tells a story about attempting to collect a bird-dropping moth from the side of a building, only to discover that it actually was a bird dropping.

Robber Fly

Robber flies are carnivorous flies that come in quite .��Larger species, , can gather bees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and even cicadas for lunch.��Others are great , and still others, like this small fly sitting on a daisy fleabane, capture mosquitoes and gnats.

Hackberry Emperor Butterflies

Some kinds of caterpillars feed on a variety of plants, but Hackberry Emperor caterpillars eat only one thing and so can live only where Hackberry trees grow—.��This one was posing under the roof overhang of the Barn, at Riveredge.��Adults rarely feed on flowers, preferring tree sap, rotting fruit, carrion, and dung, and they collect minerals from damp/muddy soil with their proboscis. . They’re not pollinators. When they do visit flowers, they don’t touch down with their feet, and they avoid putting their antennae on the flower. They only extend their proboscis into the flower, and so do not pick up nor spread pollen. ��

Jumping Spider

Even people who don’t like spiders like Jumping spiders, and some keep them as pets. This one looks like the Bold jumper,��Phidippus audax.

Blue Dasher

When the BugLady was a kid, Angie the Christmas Tree Angel (BugFans who are old enough can hum a few bars here) used to smile benignly from the top of the tree.��That was before the BugLady knew about dragonflies.��This guy makes an excellent substitute for Angie or for the Partridge in the Pear Tree.

May your days be merry and bright,

The BugLady

The post The Twelve Bugs of Christmas appeared first on Field Station.

In honor of Halloween, we’re ending the month with a spider. A very cool little spider with a big story.

The Dewdrop spider Argyrodes elevatus (Argyrodes means “silver-like), in the Cobweb/Comb-footed/Tangle-web spider family Theridiidae, doesn’t live around here, though other genera of Dewdrop spiders do, like  and the awesome lizard spider . Theridiids are found in North America, indoors and out, in an almost infinite variety of habitats, from border to border and from sea to shining sea (and around the world). Thanks, as always, to BugFan Tom for sharing his pictures. 

Argyrodes��spiders are also called Robber spiders (more about that in a sec), and there are three genus members in the US, and more elsewhere. Argyrodes elevatus��is found in California and in much of a swath of Southern/mid-Southern states from Texas to Ohio to Delaware, the Carolinas, and Florida. Their silvery abdomens give them their “dewdrop” name, and they’re seriously small – females are a shade smaller than ¼ inch, and males are smaller still.��

Dewdrop spiders are inquilines – animals that exploit the living space of other animals (sometimes passively and sometimes impactfully). These tiny spiders can and do spin their own silk, but they prefer to live at the outskirts of larger spiders’ webs. A host’s web may contain a lot of them – so small that she may not even notice them. For scale, here’s one in a web with another spider and a partly-wrapped, inch-long green June beetle .

When a male goes a’courtin,’ possibly attracted by a female’s pheromones, he arrives bearing a gift – prey wrapped in silk – and he doesn’t approach closely until she has accepted it. Giving nuptial gifts is uncommon in spiders. He also vibrates the web to identify himself, spider love being a chancy thing. A day after she mates (an act that, contrary to the brief encounters of other spiders, may take two to eight hours, during which she’ll eat his gift), the female will tuck one or two egg sacs onto threads at the periphery of her host’s web. Although she continues to live on the web, her egg sacs are on their own. 

The big story about Dewdrop spiders is how they get their food. They’re “kleptoparasites” (triple word score) – animals that rob food from other animals. They eat wrapped prey that the host spider has stored in the web (and they can tackle wrapped prey that’s quite a bit larger than they are if the host spider has already injected tenderizing enzymes), freshly caught prey that the host hasn’t detected yet, the host spider’s egg sacs, the host’s protein-rich silk web (especially when prey is scarce), and sometimes, the host spider herself, if there are a large number of “guests” to gang up on her (Tom has observed Dewdrop spiders feeding on Gastracantha spiders  in his yard). Theridiids aren’t the only spider family that has food robbers, but they are the family with the most kleptoparasitic species.

They stay hidden, and they may alter parts of their host’s web so they can remove prey without causing the telltale vibrations that might alert the bigger spider. They’re very good at it – one study assigned them a 67% success rate – and they can liberate a bit of their host’s food in as little as 12 seconds.

To support their lifestyle, Dewdrop spidershave developed some interesting behaviors. Here are some highlights from a paper called “Notes on the behavior of the kleptoparasitic spider Argyrodes Elevatus (Yheridiidae, Araneae)” by Marco Cesar Silveira and Hilton F. Japyassú ().

• A Dewdrop spider will take advantage when the host’s attention is diverted, grabbing a wrapped insect while she’s busy subduing a new prey item.

• Sometimes, briefly, a Dewdrop spider and its host may share a meal, until the host chases it away. If the host is distracted, the Dewdrop spider will make off with the partially-eaten prey. 

• A Dewdrop spider alters the host’s web by replacing parts of the original web with finer threads so that the host can’t detect its vibrations, but it can detect the host’s movements. It also minimizes the signals it sends by moving very slowly.

• During a heist, the Dewdrop spider spins silk that secures the prey to itself, cuts the bits of the host’s web that are attached to the prey, and then escapes to the edge of the web along a dragline that it laid down.

• Host spiders may catch on and search for missing prey – and may chase the thief. The Dewdrop spider uses a dragline to get away. 

• When the host spider is active, the Dewdrop spider stays still, and vice versa. If the host spider is diurnal, the Dewdrop spider becomes nocturnal.

• When a Dewdrop spider returns to the edge of the web after a successful raid, it will spin a mini “web within the web,” attaching the prey preparatory to eating it. Before it digs in, it tests the waters by shaking the web to make sure the larger spider can’t detect it. 

• In his bugeric blog, entomologist Eric Eaton writes that a study of Nephila spiders showed that host spiders don’t gain as much weight as those whose webs have no Dewdrop spiders, and that they relocate their webs more frequently.

Ain’t Nature Grand!

No BOTW next week – the BugLady is taking time off to get yet another body part replaced. 

The BugLady

The post Dewdrop Spider appeared first on Field Station.

Back in 2020, the BugLady wrote about a Southern spider called the Spinybacked orbweaver Spinybacked Orbweaver– A Spider for Snowbirds – Field Station. We have spiny spiders here in God’s Country, too – this summer, BugFan Danielle sent a picture of a northern spinyback species.

The genus Micrathena (the spiny orbweavers) includes about 100 species of woodland spiders, mostly of the New World tropics. Females spin classic, vertical, disc-shaped trap webs and rest on them. The closely-placed (“tightly coiled”) strands of their webs tell us that they are after small prey like tiny moths, gnats, and mosquitoes. One source calls them “tiny, ornate exterminators.” The female consumes the (protein-rich) circular portion of her web at the end of each day and rebuilds on the original framework the next morning. One author postulates that the genus name comes from the fact that the goddess Athena was skilled at spinning and weaving.

There are four species of Micrathena north of the Rio Grande, all of them pointy, which is thought to be a defense against predators. One author described feeling a “deer fly” on his neck and slapping it – hard. It turned out to be a Spined Micrathena, and the force of the swat caused the spines to puncture his skin.

The SPINED/SPINY MICRATHENA/CASTLEBACK ORBWEAVER/SPINY-BELLIED ORBWEAVER (Micrathena gracilis) is found from the Atlantic to the Great Plains, including southern Canada and into Central America. They live in woods, especially oak-hickory woods, and most especially woods near water. They spin webs in open places in those woods and are famous for throwing a long dragline (escape line) from their webs across trails, to the annoyance of hikers. 

Females are less than a half-inch long and are about twice the size as males. Females have five pairs of spines on the abdomen and come in several different color combinations, , , . Here are three glamour shots – . Males are long and flattened, and many have no spines . 

The spiders are small, and so are their webs – they range from three to almost eight inches in diameter and are suspended four to seven feet above the ground in the shade . Webs are generally vertical but could be tilted by 45 degrees. Despite the fact that she will reuse the old framework when she spins her daily web, these spiders are known to wander and will move to a different site every six or seven days.

Females hang “belly up” from the center of the web, camouflaged from both above and below (predators from above see the dark ventral side against the ground, and predators from below see the lighter dorsal side against a dappled sky), monitoring the vibrations of the strands. The Arkansas Arthropod Museum’s article on the Spined Micrathena describes her actions as “slow and clumsy” when an insect hits the web and says that many insects escape. Most orbweavers wrap and incapacitate their prey before biting them and injecting the meat tenderizer, but Micrathenas will bite first and then wrap .

Males spin webs as young spiders, but not after they mature – then they hang out near a female’s web, waiting to make their move. Males spin “courting threads” and woo her from there, treading carefully to avoid being eaten in the process (but if they are, their protein will contribute to the development of their eggs). Females create a fluffy egg sac and attach it to nearby vegetation before they die, and the spiderlings exit the egg sac in spring.

There’s a spider called the Labyrinth/Colonial orbweaver (Metepeira incrassata) that lives in multigenerational colonies with its own kin (hundreds and even thousands of individuals) and tolerates other species of spiders on their communal webs. The Spined Micrathena is one of the species that coexists on the borders.

FUN FACT ABOUT THE SPINED MICRATHENA: Do spiders make noise? Not many spiders do, but the Spined Micrathena is one of them! Spiders have respiration organs called book lungs, and the covers of the book lungs are located on the spider’s undercarriage, just south of where the spider’s front section (the cephalothorax) meets its abdomen. When it’s disturbed, a Spined Micrathena can flick its cephalothorax up and down rapidly, which causes the base of the femur to rub on files on the book lung covers, and presto – stridulation (sound made by friction) (like grasshoppers)! The resulting buzz/hiss can be heard by humans up to about two feet away and is thought to be a defensive sound. 

The BugLady

The post Spined Micrathena Spider appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, BugFans,

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

,

,

have appeared in previous episodes.����

Well, maybe a quick review: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The BugLady

The post Ground Crab Spiders appeared first on Field Station.

Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady has been scouring the landscape and aiming her camera at anything that will sit still (and some that won’t). And without going too overboard on dragonflies and damselflies, here are some of her bug adventures.  

Leafcutter Bee

Ah, the one that got away.  The BugLady saw a lump on a boardwalk in front of her and automatically aimed her camera at it (a long lens is a good substitute for a pair of binoculars). The lump – a leafcutter bee – flew off after one, out-of-focus shot. The bee had paused while she was cutting and collecting pieces of vegetation to line the tunnel and chambers where she’ll lay her eggs.   

Japanese Beetle

Lots of the vegetation that the BugLady sees these days is pockmarked with small holes — evidence of feeding by Japanese beetles. (Of course, she’s also been seeing conspicuous, beetle ménages a trois on the tops of those leaves, too.) Japanese beetles made their North American debut in New Jersey in 1916, and their menu now includes more than 350 plant species. But, they are a handsome beetle!   

Water Striders

They create art wherever they go.  

Appalachian Brown Butterfly (probably)

The part of the hindwing that has the squiggly line that helps distinguish the Eyed Brown from the Appalachian Brown is gone. Life in the wild isn’t all beer and skittles. The chunks missing from this butterfly’s wings suggest that a bird chased it and that most of the butterfly got away.

Powdered Dancer

In an episode a month ago, the BugLady lamented that the river was so high and fast that Powdered Dancers couldn’t find any aquatic vegetation to oviposit in.�� A dry spell revealed some weed patches, and the dancers hopped right onboard.��

Eastern Pondhawk Dragonfly

This male Eastern Pondhawk was hugging the cattail stalk, a posture that’s not characteristic of this usually-horizontal species. Turns out that it had captured a Violet/Variable Dancer damselfly and was holding it closely between its body and the cattail.  

Crab Spider

What would a summer summary be without one of the BugLady’s favorite spiders, the Crab spider? Where’s Waldo? Bonus points if you know the name of the plant.  

Honey Bee with Aphids

It’s not surprising to see yellowjackets browsing among herds of water lily aphids. Adult yellowjackets are (mostly) vegetarians, but they collect, masticate, and regurgitate small insects for their larvae. Honey bees are hard-core vegans, so what’s going on here?  

Aphids overeat — they have to. The plant sap they suck in has very low concentrations of sugars and proteins, so they need to process a lot of it in order to get enough calories. Sap comes out of the plant under pressure, which forces the sap through the aphid smartly, and the extra liquids (in the form of a sweet substance called honeydew), exit to the rear of the aphid (or it would explode). Honeydew drops onto the surrounding leaves and attracts other insects that harvest it. The bee is no threat to the aphids, she’s just collecting honeydew.  

Fun Fact: According to Master beekeeper Rusty Burlew, writing in her blog “Honey Bee Suite,” The bees treat the substance like nectar so it is often mixed together with the nectar from flowers. As such, it is not really noticeable in the finished honey. Honey made almost exclusively from honeydew is known as honeydew honey, forest honey, bug honey, flea honey, or tree honey. Sometimes it is named after its primary component, such as pine honey, fir honey, oak honey, etc. It is generally dark, strongly flavored, less acidic, and less sweet than floral honey.

Eastern Amberwing

At barely an inch long, this improbably-colored dragonfly is one of our flashiest. 

Mosquitoes

Mosquito Control 101: “Get rid of standing water in your yard!” Check. But, the BugLady has a bird bath (her “vintage” childhood saucer sled) that she washes out and refills at least once a week… or so she thought. She was surprised the other day to see a whole mess of mosquito “wigglers” (larvae) in the water.  Worse, they probably were the small-but-mighty Floodwater mosquitoes that can make August miserable because they emerge in Biblical numbers and because they seem to be biting with one end even before the other end has fully landed. They develop at warp speed — a week from egg to wiggler, and another week from wiggler to adult. Get rid of standing water in your yard. Check. 

Scorpionflies

These are odd-looking insects from a whole order of odd-looking insects (Mecoptera). This guy is in the Common scorpionfly family Panorpidae and in the genus Panorpa — a corruption of the Greek word for locust. The appendage at the end of the male’s abdomen explains its name, but these are harmless insects, fore and aft. One site mentioned they are wary and hard to photograph. Amen! 

Panorpa uses chewing mouthparts at the tip of its elongated rostrum/snout to eat dead and dying insects, and it may liberate insects from spider webs (and sometimes the spider, too). It is also said to eat some nectar and rotting fruits. 

He courts by releasing pheromones to attract her, quivering his wings when she comes near, and then offering a gift — a dead insect, or maybe some gelatinous goo manufactured in his salivary gland. He shares bodily fluids with her as she eats.

Carolina Locust

What a lovely, chunky little nymph!  

Autumn Meadowhawk

The dragonfly scene changes after mid-summer, with the early clubtails, emeralds, corporals, whitefaces, and skimmers being replaced by darners, saddlebags, and a handful of meadowhawk species. This newly-minted (teneral) Autumn Meadowhawk has just left its watery nursery on its way to becoming — for the next six weeks or so — a creature of the air.  

Katydid Nymph

The BugLady was photographing leafcutter bees that were visiting birdsfoot trefoil flowers. (Birdsfoot trefoil is a non-native member of the pea family that was introduced for animal fodder and erosion control and that can become invasive in grasslands. There’s probably some blooming along a road edge near you). She noticed that when the bees approached one particular flower, they reversed course and didn’t land, and when she checked, she found the tiniest katydid nymph she has ever seen. This one will grow up considerably to be a 1½” to 2” long Fork-tailed bush katydid… .  How do you find bush katydids? The “Listening to Insects” website advises us to “Watch for a leaf that moves on its own, or a leaf with antennae.” They are a favorite of Great golden digger wasps, which collect and cache them for their eventual larvae, and another website said “This is what bird food looks like.”&�Բ�����;&�Բ�����;

The BugLady found a recording of their call. They don’t say “Katy-did, Katy-didn’t” they say “tsp” or “pffft,” and they don’t say it very loudly. Bush Katydids are busiest at night, when their long, highly sensory antennae help them to find their way around. Although adult females are equipped with a wicked-looking ovipositor, they don’t sting, but they do nip if you handle them wrong. Memorably, it’s said.   

Go outside, look at bugs!

The BugLady

The post Summer Sights appeared first on Field Station.

Summer has reached its half-way point, and the BugLady has been recording the changing of the guard. The adult lives of most insects are brief – four to six weeks for many, and considerably less for some. Bluet damselflies are fading, but meadowhawk dragonflies are taking the stage. Little Wood Satyr butterflies are hard to find, but Common wood nymphs now flit through the fields. You get the picture. Here are some bugs that the BugLady found in the first half of summer.

ARROW CLUBTAIL: In early July, the BugLady came across this just-emerged dragonfly sitting on a stalk in the Milwaukee River. She photographed it for half an hour as it lengthened and strengthened and spread its wings and grew its abdomen. She guarded it from marauding geese and grackles. And she watched as it took its maiden voyage, eight feet straight up and true – into the beak of a swooping Cedar Waxwing. She may have used a few bad words.

JAPANESE BEETLE: Precarious as this bundle of beetles looked, it kept its shape as it fell off and into the grasses. In order to jump-start her love life, a female Japanese beetle may use “come hither” pheromones, but this aggregation of beetles was probably initiated (inadvertently) by the plant itself. Research suggests that a female Japanese beetle chewed on a leaf, and the leaf gave off signature chemicals (OK – feeding-induced plant volatiles), and that instead of repelling the beetles, the scent attracted more beetles, both male and female, to feed. And, since all those guys and gals are in the same neighborhood…

MAYFLY MOLT: BugFan Freda sent this amazing “What-is-it?” picture recently, taken from a canoe on the Milwaukee river. Mayflies (called “lake flies” regionally) emerge from their watery cradles by the googol. Their lives are brief, averaging only three days (not coincidentally, the name of the mayfly order is Ephemeroptera).

Mayflies are the only insects that shed their skins after they reach the winged adult stage (silverfish shed as adults, too, but they’re spindle-shaped and wingless). The crawls out onto a plant or rock and sheds its final skin (exuvia), emerging as a form called a subimago (or a “dun” if you’re a fly fisherman) that is cloudy-winged, dull in color, weak-flying, and not ready to reproduce. The sub-imago rests (often overnight) and then sheds again, this time into a mature adult/imago with shiny wings (a “spinner” to fishermen). Here’s a . No – scientists do not know how this pre-adult stage benefits the mayflies – lots of insect groups apparently has a subimago stage in ancient times, and most have dropped it from their repertory.

Freda’s picture shows the exuviae of lots of sub-imagoes – it must have been an amazing sight to see! Scroll down this series of of that final shed.

DOGBANE LEAF BEETLE: Its fabulous, shimmering exterior is all done with mirrors (complex nanoarchitecture). Light is bent when it hits small, randomly-tilted plates that sit between the pigment layer and the top layer of the beetle’s cuticle, and the beetle’s color changes depending on the angle of the eye of the beholder. What good is that glow? Rather than being an aid in courtship or a warning of the beetle’s toxicity (and this particular beetle is, but not all iridescent insects are), this fiery iridescence actually camouflages it. To test the hypothesis, researchers disguised meal worms with beetle elytra (the hard outer wings) – some shiny and some not – and then hid them. Birds found and ate 85% of the “dull-winged meal worms,” but only 60% of the “iridescent meal worms,” and the scientists themselves found it difficult to locate the shiny ones.

STREAM BLUET AND MAYFLY: In order to make it to adulthood, a mayfly naiad must avoid being eaten by fish and a variety of insects during its aquatic stage, and by fish, birds, fishing spiders, frogs, and other predators as it completes both of its molts. When it takes to the air, more predators await. This mayfly became lunch for a Stream Bluet damselfly.

DOODLEBUG: The BugLady found this doodlebug on the dunes at Kohler-Andrae State Park in mid-July, plying its trade. She looked into lots of inverted, sandy cones before she found one that held prey – in this case, a small spider. The doodlebug will grow up to be an antlion . For an account of the life of a doodlebug, see this former post.

SAWFLY: Sawflies are not flies, but are primitive wasps with no stingers (as she did when she wrote her first episode about sawflies in 2009, the BugLady recommends reading the sawfly chapter in David W. Stokes’ excellent��A Guide to Observing Insect Lives). Sawfly larvae look a lot like butterfly and moth caterpillars, but there’s a difference in the arrangement and types of legs. This beauty just might be the , whose pretty cute offspring, the BugLady is going to have to keep a cautious eye out for. “Sawfly” because the female uses a saw-like structure at the end of her abdomen to cut slots in vegetation to lay her eggs in.

BLACK SWALLOWTAIL CATERPILLAR: While the BugLady was photographing the sawfly, she noticed a prickly head among the Queen Anne’s lace florets, so she bent the stem sideways to see what it was. There was a cute little jumping spider under there, too, which she hoped did not have designs on the caterpillar. Black Swallowtails lay their eggs on plants in the carrot family, and most gardeners who plant dill are familiar with them (and, the BugLady hopes, are generous enough to share).

BLUE MUD DAUBERS: They are all over the Queen Anne’s lace these days. Adults cruise the flower tops, sipping nectar and looking for spiders to cache in the egg chambers of their offspring, who will grow up on protein but eschew it as adults. Sometimes the wasps pick spiders right off of their webs, and they especially like to collect (which are here in God’s Country but are rare). They grab spiders with their and paralyze them with a sting, but they don’t bite people, and you have to rough one up considerably before she’ll sting you.

EMERALD ASH BORER: The BugLady loves ash trees, but these days, the landscape is littered with their skeletons. The first Emerald ash borer was detected in Wisconsin in Ozaukee County during the summer of 2008, though the EABs had undoubtedly been around for a few years before that. The picture shows an ash that is fighting for its life, a battle that it will not win. The top of this ash is dead, because the EAB larvae’s tunnels (galleries) just below the bark interfere with the flow of nutrients between the crown of the tree and its roots. The stressed tree responds by growing a bunch of shoots (called epicormic sprouts) from dormant buds in the bark of the trunk. The leafy sprouts, which are below the EAB damage, will allow the tree to photosynthesize – for a while. Read about EABs in a previous BOTW. EABs are, undeniably, beautiful beetles: , , .

SIX-SPOTTED FISHING SPIDER: Moving from a “solid” water lily leaf to a liquid substrate is no trick at all for a Six-spotted Fishing spider (the six spots that give it its name are on its underside) – in fact, it has more moves on the water than it does on dry land. It can walk, run, sail, or skate over the surface film and can dive under it, too.

GIANT SWALLOWTAIL: If there’s anything more stunning than a couple of Giant Swallowtails dancing in the air over purple coneflowers, the BugLady doesn’t know what it is.

The BugLady

The post Mid-Summer Scenes appeared first on Field Station.

It’s High Summer, and a lot has been going on out there. Many species have already peaked and disappeared from the scene, assuming, until next year, whatever form they spend the majority of their lives in. Others are coming into their own. Here are some of the sights the BugLady has seen in local prairies and wetlands.

ANTS are everywhere, foraging for proteins and carbs, including milkweed nectar to take home to their families. Some species of ants have workers that are essentially tanker trucks.�� Ants are no great shakes as pollinators, due to their slippery little bodies and fastidious grooming habits, and besides that, they’re pedestrians, so the pollen doesn’t travel far. (Family Formicidae)

BLUE MUD DAUBER WASP – Cup plants have “perfoliate” leaves that look like two “conjoined leaves” but are actually a single leaf whose base is joined around the stem, making it look like the stem is piercing it. For a few days after a rain, reservoirs made by the cup plant’s leaves hold water that’s appreciated by all sorts of small animals. The wasp uses mud to construct chambers for her eggs, but she doesn’t carry water to dirt, spit on it, and stir. She may just be thirsty. (Family Sphecidae)

STRIPED HAIRSTREAK – The BugLady found this small butterfly of dappled woods and edges while she was surveying water hemlock plants for an up-coming episode. Adults nectar on available flowers, and Butterflies of the Great Lakes Region��tells us that “Early in the morning, they will sip dew from leaves as they bask.” They’re not-very-common – “scattered lightly over our landscape,” says “The Butterflies of Massachusetts” website, “widely distributed although nowhere abundant.” The theory is that the eyespots on the hind wing confuse predators. (Family Lycaenidae)

HORSEFLY – Just a glamour shot of a horse fly, that’s all. (Family Tabanidae)

PARASITIZED – This dangling caterpillar was discovered in its infancy by a small, parasitic wasp that laid an egg in it. The wasp larva hatched, and then it ate and grew within the caterpillar, which was trying to do the same, but whose existence had been repurposed. When it was ready to pupate, the wasp dealt the coup de grace to its unfortunate host, exited, and spun a cocoon on the outside. As Darwin once said of parasitoids,��“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.”

AMERICAN CARRION BEETLE – The BugLady has seen a number of adult carrion beetles flying around –black and yellow and big and buzzy – trying to convince her that they’re bumble bees, but she rarely sees the larvae. Adults lay their eggs on dead animals, and then stick around on the carcass doing “pest control” (eating the competition) before their well-armored larvae hatch and for a while afterward.�� The larvae will also eat other larvae they find on “their” carrion. (Family Silphidae)

EASTERN AMBERWING – The BugLady’s favorite insect is the Tiger Swallowtail, but the Eastern Amberwing is on her long list of second-favorites. This feisty 0.9” dragonfly has an attitude way bigger than its size. (Family Libellulidae)

A JUMPING SPIDER in the genus��Pelegrina (thanks as always for the ID, BugFan Mike) is another critter with attitude. You can see why jumping spiders have fan clubs. (Family Salticidae)

COMMON BUCKEYE – The BugLady has way more shots of this beautiful butterfly sitting on the ground than on flowers (when it sits on flowers, it prefers composites); it typically flits along 6’ ahead of her on mowed paths. It’s a Southern migrant to God’s Country, arriving in early summer, but the migrants produce a brood once they’re here. The and theare different – if you’re lucky enough to see one with its wings closed. If the Striped Hairstreak’s eyespots are meant to confuse, the Buckeye’s are meant to intimidate. (Family Nymphalidae)

CINNAMON CLEARWING MOTH – So cool!�� So speedy! Clearwing moths are in the Sphinx moth family Sphingidae; we have two species around here, and the BugLady has plenty of out-of-focus shots of each. Like chasing sprites.

ROBBER FLY – Some robber flies are small and shy, but��Promachus vertebratus is neither. At about an inch long, it was almost the same size as the Halloween Pennant dragonflies the BugLady was photographing at the same time. It makes “annoyed” sounds when you kick it up in the fields (attitude again). These flies prey on anything they can catch – the BugLady has a shot of one holding a Clouded Sulphur butterfly. (Family Asilidae)

WHITEFACE AND BLUET – The BugLady was stalking dragonflies at Spruce Lake Bog when a Dot-tailed Whiteface dragonfly grabbed a Marsh Bluet damselfly and sat down beside her. Something buzzed the duo loudly – maybe a robber fly – and the startled dragonfly released its prey. As the whiteface moved to a different perch, the damselfly shook it off and flew away. No damselflies were harmed to make this picture. (Families Libellulidae and Coenagrionidae)

Go outside – look at bugs!

The BugLady

The post Summer Scenes appeared first on Field Station.