Greetings, BugFans,

The BugLady loves finding an insect she’s never seen before. When she saw it walking along a cordwalk (boardwalk on sand) in the dunes at Kohler-Andrae State Park, she knew that this guy/gal was in the stink bug family (Pentatomidae), but it’s more and lacks the “shoulder pads” of a generic stink bug (younger BugFans may have to Google “shoulder pads”). 

It turned out to be a stink bug in the large subfamily Pentatominae and in the very small tribe Aeliini, which has only 37 species worldwide. There are 8 species in the tribe in North America (in two genera), and this is the only species in its genus here. The BugLady borrowed the name “Cereal bug” from one of the European species because she couldn’t find a common name for it.

Cereal bugs (Aelia americana) have an odd, (based on pictures submitted by bugguide members) that lies mostly west of the Mississippi – from British Columbia to Arizona to Alabama to Michigan, and within their range, they’re not very common.   

They feed by day on the ripening seeds of grasses, including agricultural crops like . The BugLady found some brief write-ups about them from grain-producing areas of the upper Great Plains into Canada, but they’re not common enough to be a nuisance here. Like other Hemipterans, they insert their beak into the plant, pump in some digestive juices, and suck out the softened tissue.     

Eggs are laid in late spring and early summer, and the nymphs reach maturity by fall and overwinter as adults.

[In the “Eternal Job Security” category that is insect taxonomy, the BugLady found a paper titled “Opening Pandora’s box: molecular phylogeny of the stink bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Pentatomidae) reveals great incongruences in the current classification.”  It reminded her of a quote she found years ago when she was writing about a moth, “The genus Haploa&�Բ�����;…… has furnished a great deal of amusement to classificationists.”  Presumably, the Hemiptera taxonomists are similarly amused.]  

Along with grasses, they have been collected from apple trees in orchards, and according to a paper published by the Michigan Entomological Society, adults have been found overwintering in grass clumps and under mullein leaves. 

Some genus members are considered pests in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean, though, and the BugLady found a lot more information about a closely-related-and-very-similar-looking European species called (wonderfully) the Bishop’s mitre (Aelia acuminata) than she did about our domestic species, but she suspects that the two are up to some of the same tricks. 

The Bishop’s mitre (a mitre/miter is a bishop’s peaked, ceremonial hat) is found feeding on grasses in dry meadows and damaging cereal crops across Europe, North Africa, and northern Asia, and the  website added that they may be found in sand dunes, too. One British site said that the bugs resemble a . They winter in grain fields, in leaf litter and other sheltered spots, and they migrate to wheat fields in spring when the wheat shoots appear (they’re good flyers). Before the seeds are formed, they feed on juices from the stems of young plants. After harvest, they move to wild grasses.    

Studies have shown that they enter diapause/dormancy/developmental arrest when the weather gets too hot in summer and go into hibernation when the weather gets too cold in fall. The increasing day lengths of spring stimulate egg-laying, but if there’s a cold snap, females will stop ovipositing. 

Aelia americana was named by a British entomologist named William Sweetland (W.S.) Dallas (1824 – 1890). He published a book in 1857 called Elements of Entomology: An Outline of the Natural History and Classification of British Insects which is still in print today and about which the folks at Amazon say “This book is an essential resource for amateur and professional entomologists alike. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.” 

The BugLady

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Greetings of the Season, BugFans,

Wow! The 10th annual installment of The Twelve (or Thirteen) Bugs of Christmas! The Bugs of Christmas features shots, taken throughout the year, of insects and spiders who have already had their own BOTW, but who posed nicely.

The next two paragraphs were borrowed from Christmas 2016, because the BugLady is still amazed by the history of this ubiquitous Holiday Classic.

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is an English carol that was probably borrowed from the French and that was originally an acapella chant/call-and-response/children’s memory game. There’s an alternative explanation about the various lords, rings, etc. being Christian code words for catechism during a time of religious repression (which seems a bit like playing Beatles songs backwards). It first appeared in writing in 1780, and there were (and still are) many variations of it, though the words were more-or-less standardized when an official melody was finally written for it in 1909 (and the insect verse was, alas, dropped. “Thirteen Bugs a’ buzzing”).

See so you can hold your own in Holiday Trivia at parties (I’ll take Christmas Songs for $300, Alex). With apologies to all those Lords a’ Leaping, it’s time once again to celebrate a year of bugs with this baker’s dozen collection of the beautiful, the odd, and the mysterious. Gifts. Right under our noses. All the time.

POTTER WASP – Throughout this BOTW series, we have noted the many places where insects deposit their eggs – in plant stems, in underwater vegetation, in dead trees, in flower buds, in mushrooms, in the BugLady’s wind chimes, in carcasses, in holes and tunnels underground, in other insects, in cells made of wax or paper, in egg sacs. The BugLady’s favorite is the small, mud pot attached to a twig or leaf by a potter wasp.

SEDGE SPRITE – The BugLady is a tall person, and Sedge Sprites (her favorite damselflies) are tiny damselflies, barely an inch long, that mostly fly at altitudes lower than her knees. Photographing one involves tracking an insect the size of a sewing needle through sedges and other boggy vegetation. What a beauty!

BUMBLE BEE – The plant is called Common Hound’s-tongue (Cynoglossum officinale) (aka houndstooth, dog’s tongue, Gypsy flower, and Rats and Mice (because it’s said to smell like them). Lots of small flowers on a plant that may grow 4 feet tall. It’s from Europe; it probably came over in the 19th century in a bag of agricultural seed, and it’s considered a noxious weed in parts of North America (but it’s rare in Ireland). It contains chemicals (alkaloids) that are toxic to livestock, its bristly seeds are not wholesome to ingest, and they irritate the skin, too. Historically, it was used as a cure for madness and to treat inflammatory diseases, lung issues, and “it heals all manner of wounds and punctures, and those foul ulcers that arise by the French pox’” (Culpeper’s Complete Herbal).

The bumble bee doesn’t know any of that, and doesn’t care.

LADYBUG and SHINING FLOWER BEETLE – Multicolored Asian Ladybird Beetles come in a variety of shades of red and orange with spots ranging from zero to many, but you can tell them by the “W” or “M” on the thorax (depending on whether they’re walking toward you or away from you). Adults eat aphids and scale insects, and their larvae eat even more aphids and scale insects, and some eggs of butterflies and moths. The BugLady couldn’t find anything that suggested that they might chow down on a small beetle like this Shining flower beetle, but the ladybug sure was interested in it and followed it all around the surface of the leaf.

GIANT ICHNEUMON WASPS are among the BugLady’s favorite insects. There are two species of around here, plus . This is a male Black Giant Ichneumonid Wasp.

SPIDER WEB – an abandoned trap web, toward the end of summer.

DARNER EXUVIA – In today’s usage, the empty, shed skin of an insect or spider is (mostly-but-not-always) called an exuvia (Pl. exuviae), from the Latin for “things stripped, drawn, or pulled from the body”. The BugLady, who likes etymology as well as entomology, wanted to find out more about the word, so down the rabbit hole she went. She discovered that even her two favorite dragonfly and damselfly books don’t agree with each other.

The British use “exuvium” for the singular and “exuvia” or “exuviums” for the plural. When she did a bit more delving into “exuvium,” the BugLady found this awesome excerpt from a letter written by Sir Thomas Browne to his son Thomas, dated May 29, 1679: “I have sent you, by Mrs. Peirce, a skinne of the palme of a woemans hand, cast of at the end of a fever, or in the declination thereof; I called it exuvium palmæ muliebris, the Latin word being exuvia in the plurall, butt I named it exuvium, or exuvia in the singular number. It is neat and is worthy to be showne when you speake of the skinne. …. A palmister might read a lecture on it.”

A post in a discussion further muddies the waters by stating that the cast-off skin of an insect should be referred to in the plural (exuviae) because “a single cast skin is a collection of insect parts and is thus an exuviae.”

There’s no logical equivalent in Classical Latin, but Scientific Latin takes liberties with the Classical. The entomology community tacitly agrees that it’s a “we-know-it’s-not-correct-but-we’re doing-it-anyway” situation.

The snail had nothing to do with the emerging dragonfly and, the BugLady guesses, is passing by.

BUMBLE FLOWER BEETLES – When the BugLady found some of these and wrote about them one fall, BugFan Chris told her that they’re also around in the spring. Sure enough – she spotted this one in mid-May.

MOURNING CLOAKS aren’t splashy, and they eschew wildflowers in favor of dripping sap, but they’re pretty spiffy nonetheless, and they’ve got a cool life story. In a group (the order Lepidoptera) where the adult portion of a lifespan is usually measured in a few, short months, these are long-lived and complicated butterflies. They overwinter as adults, mate, and lay eggs in spring. Their offspring feed on willow leaves, form chrysalises, and emerge as adults in late spring or early summer. After feeding for a while, they go into a state of aestivation (summer dormancy) to avoid wear and tear. They wake in fall, feed some more, and then overwinter as adults in a state of suspended animation called diapause, which is similar to hibernation, tucked up in a cloistered spot called a hibernaculum that shelters them from the elements, and protected from the effects of freezing by glycerol (antifreeze) in their bodies. They may fly during a January thaw or on mild days in late winter, but they can reenter diapause when the temperature drops. When they emerge and mate in spring, they’re about 10 months old.

This pretty CLICK BEETLE by the name of Ampedus sanguinipennis (sanguinipennis means “blood wing”) is found in wooded areas – its larvae develop in, feed on, and then pupate in very rotten wood, emerging as adults by fall, but hunkering down within the pupal cell for the winter. Adults are pollen feeders that shelter under loose bark. Somewhere in its travels, this beetle encountered some mites, which hitched a ride. The harmless transporting of other organisms is called phoresy. .

If you’re a CRAB SPIDER and you don’t spin trap webs, you need a different strategy for finding dinner. Crab spiders employ camouflage and ambush. The flower is a tallgrass prairie plant called leadplant.

COMMON GREEN STINKBUGS (Chinavia hilaris) are considered persona non grata in agricultural fields and orchards because both the nymphs and the adults feed on fruit and developing seeds. And yet. Hilaris means “lively” and “cheerful,” and that’s the vibe this stink bug was sending on a sunny day.

And an EASTERN AMBERWING Dragonfly in a pear tree.

The BugLady

The post The Twelve Bugs of Christmas 2022 appeared first on Field Station.

Howdy, Bug Fans,

The BugLady thinks , and she loves finding species she hasn’t seen before. This year, she saw two new ones – the first one in a sand dune, and the second in a bog – but she suspects that habitat is secondary in the stink bugs’ game plan to the availability of food.

They’re called “stink bugs” because they have glands in the thorax that produce, as Eric Eaton says in the Field Guide to Insects of North America, “volatile aromatic compounds sure to repel all but the most desperate predators.”  One author adds that “Stink bugs can smell pretty bad. Even my hens turn up their beaks when one crawls by….”

Some stink bugs are predaceous, but most are plant-eaters, and many, including today’s pair, aren’t picky about the plant species they feed on. They are “true bugs” in the order Hemiptera (,” which refers to wings that are leathery at the near end and membranous at the far end), and they’re in the family Pentatomidae.

Like other Hemipterans, they feed by puncturing their food with their, injecting enzymes that soften the tissues, and then sucking out the contents. If they’re feeding on, say, a peach, the puncture may inadvertently inoculate the immediate area with bacteria, causing rot, and soft fruits develop “dimples” called cat-facing, both of which make the fruit less attractive in your grocery store.

Both of today’s species are divided up into several subspecies, and the BugLady was surprised to see that there were differences within each species not only in color, but also in the spiny-ness of their “shoulders,” depending on their geography and even season.

RED-SHOULDERED STINK BUGS (Thyanta custator) occur across North America from Canada to Guatemala, and from sea to shining sea; the BugLady found this lovely, pastel stink bug in the dunes. There are three subspecies, the most common of which is Thyanta custator accera.

At about ½” long, Red-shouldered stink bugs (Thyanta custator) are fairly large, as stink bugs go.  They come in varying shades of green and tan, and the red on their shoulders can be very or , , .

.

Young stink bugs (nymphs) are often , https://bugguide.net/node/view/768528/bgimage.

Females lay clusters of , and the nymphs feed on young leaves, buds, flowers, and developing seeds of their natal plants. When they mature (in about a month) and have functional wings, they spread out to neighboring plants. The RSSB has been found on many species of plants in more than a dozen plant families, some of them agricultural crops like wheat, beans, alfalfa, some fruits, and hemp, but they’re not on USDA Wanted Posters because they mainly damage seed production.

They overwinter as adults in leaf litter, but like other stink bugs, they will happily spend the colder months in a warm house. In spring, they awake and spread out to find vegetation – .

The second species was the nymph of (probably) a DUSKY STINK BUG (Euschistus tristigmus luridus). Of the two forms/subspecies in North America, Euschistus tristigmus luridus) occurs the farthest north.  The subspecies that’s found in the South and into Central America, Euschistus tristigmus tristigmus, is smaller, and the . Dusky stink bugs are found in grasslands, woodlands, and riparian edges (and, apparently, bogs).

�ϳܾ�������Euschistus tristigmus luridus Dictionary Side Trip: Five hundred years ago, “lurid” meant “pale (so pale that you glow in the darkness), sickly, the color of bruises, ghastly, or yellowish.” By the 1700s, its meaning was shifting and the word was used to describe the faint red glow of a fire shrouded by smoke. In about 1850, its meaning changed again, to something like today’s common usage – “sensational, shocking, horrifying, or bright, intense, and vivid.”

Here are the three spots suggested by “tristigmus,” though .

The broad strokes of the Dusky stink bug’s natural history are similar to those of the RSSB, with adults overwintering and laying eggs as vegetation starts growing in spring. It uses a different set of food plants than the RSSB, including some wildflowers like clover, goldenrod, and Black-eyed Susan, some ash and oak species, fruits like blackberries and red delicious apples, and some field crops (and bugguide.net says that it is “occasionally predaceous”).The BugLady sees nymphs of other bugs, like leaf-footed bugs, near bird droppings; they get minerals from them, and she wonders if stink bugs do, too. Like the RSSB, it has little to no economic impact (and it sure is cute).

The BugLady gives thanks for dragonflies (and she would like to know where the mosquito that she photographed in her house on November 11 has been for the past month).

The BugLady

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