Let’s take some time off from the relentless, 24-hour news cycle and enjoy a few bug stories. 

MOSQUITOES – The BugLady always snickers at the obligatory TV news spot in mid-spring in which someone earnestly tries to predict what kind of mosquito season is on the horizon (“Well, Pete, if we get a lot of rain, we could have a lot of mosquitoes this year…”). Whatever the summer brings, how do mosquitoes find you, and do they find you delectable? .

(The BugLady also snickers at the weather folks who report that visibility is limited to only five miles or two miles instead of ten. Most people don’t live where they can actually see five miles, and most of us aren’t flying an airplane. All we need is enough visibility – maybe a quarter mile in each direction – to be able to pull through an intersection safely. But that’s a different soapbox).

INSECT SPECIES – There are about 100,000 species of insects in the US, and almost one-fifth of those species can be found in Wisconsin! Most live out their whole lives without producing a single blip on our collective radars, and formal insect surveys are a recent phenomenon, so it’s hard to say what the population trends are for many species. .

SPIDERS: – Spiders would appreciate a little peace and quiet .

LADY GAGA TREEHOPPER – Ever wonder how newly described insects get their names

WALKING STICK – Our Northern walking sticks max out at about 3” long (counting their antennae, maybe 5”) (and what cute nymphs they have ). They’re dwarfed by this newly-discovered Australian stick insect .

BUMBLE BEES – Turns out that extreme heat can have an unexpected impact on bumble bees .

EXTRAFLORAL NECTARIES – Some insects protect the plants they live on, and the plants reward them for it . BOTW explored EFNs a while back Ants in My Plants Rerun – Field Station.

INVASIVE SPECIES ALERT – be on the lookout for a new alien species, the Elm zigzag sawfly – .  Here’s some info from the Wisconsin DNR .

The BugLady saw a fly sitting on the outside of her cottage the other morning. 

The BugLady

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One of the things that the BugLady looks for as she skulks around in the underbrush is interactions between ants and other insects. These are generally food-related – either a bunch of ants is carting a dead bug home, or they are satisfying their need for honeydew, a summertime, carbohydrate-rich specialty. Aphids are a common source of honeydew because they must ingest a huge amount of dilute plant sap in order to fuel their activities, and the excess has to go somewhere, so it exits to the rear of the aphid. Ants will “farm” herds of the docile aphids, protecting them from ladybugs and harvesting the sweet liquid in a win-win ecological relationship called mutualism.

Another source of honeydew is treehoppers, which look kind of like lumbering bison compared to aphids. They are “true bugs” in the treehopper family Membracidae, some of which look and . There are more than 3,000 species of treehoppers, and they live everywhere except Antarctica.

Aster treehoppers (Publilia concava) are found in the eastern half of North America. The BugLady usually sees them on goldenrods, but they can also be found on several other species in the Aster family, and the (winged) adults may move to woody plants. According to Wikipedia, nymphs:

have an extensible anal tube that appears designed to deposit honeydew away from their bodies. The tube appears to be longer in solitary species rarely attended by ants. It is important for sap-feeding bugs to dispose of honeydew, as otherwise it can become infected with sooty moulds. Indeed, one of the evident benefits of ants for Publilia concava nymphs is that the ants remove the honeydew and reduce such fungal growth.

Unlike many insects, Aster treehoppers overwinter as adults, not as nymphs or eggs, in leaf litter below their host plants. Males woo their ladies in spring with (inaudible to us) that they generate by sending vibrations through the substrate. Aster treehoppers also use vibrations to tell their confreres about good feeding spots and to alert their guardian ants to the presence of predators. Studies have shown that Aster treehoppers will signal their protectors when ladybugs show up, and the ants will respond, and that the ants get excited when recorded treehopper alarm signals are played to them. Aster treehoppers also have alarm pheromones that they activate when predators arrive, but scientists aren’t sure if that chemical message is received by the ants or is restricted to their fellow treehoppers.

Females partially insert their eggs into the stem or into the underside of a leaf on either side of a leaf’s midrib so that newly-hatched nymphs don’t have to travel far to tap into food, and she’s more likely to lay eggs if guardian ants are around. Females until the eggs hatch, and then, although they may stay on the scene (this is a gregarious species), they to . If Mom is present and caring for her offspring, ants are more likely to step in, but if there are no ants around, Mom only lays one clutch of eggs and . One study showed that if ants are removed from their herd of treehopper nymphs, it can decrease nymphal survival by 20 times.

Aster treehoppers are one of the treehopper species in which Mom may leave her eggs in the egg cluster of another female and move on (brood parasitism). The adoptive Mom cares for her foster eggs, and the “parasitic” Mom goes on to lay more clutches elsewhere.

Ants have “choices,” too – they are more likely to guard treehoppers when the quantity and quality of the honeydew meets their specifications and when the population of treehoppers is sufficiently dense and is near to their ant mound.

Ants in the genus Formica (accent on the first syllable) will take on goldenrod-defoliating Goldenrod leaf beetles – especially the beetle larvae, which the ants bite and spray with formic acid to encourage them to move on. This benefits both their flock and the goldenrod plant (the sap-sucking treehoppers aren’t beneficial to the plant, either, but at least they don’t eat the leaves). Ants that habitually clear the tops of their mounds to prevent shading may forgo that task if it interferes with their treehoppers.

 
The BugLady

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Even though she’s never exactly sure which species she’s looking at, the BugLady is always tickled when she finds one of these pointy little bugs. Here’s what you need to know about the improbable-looking Buffalo Treehopper – that it can fly and hop as well as walk, and that in Germany it’s called the “��ü�ڴڱ�������첹���” (“buffalo cicada”). The rest is lagniappe.

We’ll get the taxonomic confusion out of the way first: Buffalo treehoppers are in the treehopper family Membracidae and in the much-worked-over genus Ceresa/Stictocephala. A bugguide.net expert contrasts the current species placement in their guide pages with “the [former] fragmented classification, whereby our Ceresas got scattered among as many as four genera (Hadrophallus, Spissistilus, Stictocephala, Tortistilus).” Ceresa and Stictocephala seem to be synonymous in many species; and number of species have gone through several complete name changes – Ceresa alta is also known as Stictocephala alta and in the past has been called S. bisona, S. bizonia, S. bubalus, and C. bubalus. The BugLady has (maybe) pictures of Stictocephala/Ceresa alta and Stictocephala/Ceresa taurina here, but as biologist William Keeton once said, man is the only species that worries about the fine points of classification; the rest of the organisms know who they are.

Adult treehoppers have an enlarged area behind their head that looks like a shield over the head, thorax, and first part of their abdomen. , while another species with a far simpler blueprint, , is known to inflict harm on people who walk on it barefoot. Some species of treehoppers are colorful and gregarious and are protected by ants in exchange for the honeydew they excrete; others, like buffalo treehoppers, are solitary and well-camouflaged.

Treehoppers have been around for a very long time – fossil treehoppers found in amber have been dated to 40 million years old.

Buffalo treehoppers measure less than a half-inch long and are humpbacked and variously horned, supposedly reminiscent of their much larger namesakes ().. And their excellent, spiny nymphs . Buffalo treehoppers are mostly a New World, tropical bunch, and they’re widespread across North America, but a few species have stowed away and spread to parts of Europe, North Africa, and Asia, where they are unappreciated.

In their adult and immature stages, buffalo treehoppers feed on plant sap that they get by puncturing the stems of woody and non-woody plants with their strong “beaks” (and they can do minor damage to both in the process). They may begin their lives on woody plants, . When the eggs hatch, the nymphs find their way to more succulent, herbaceous vegetation (Ceresa taurina moves from apple to aster, and Ceresa alta, from elm and apple to sweet clover).

In summer, when love is in the air, males attract females by emitting a sound that is inaudible to the human ear due both to its volume and to its frequency.

Writing in the “Thirtieth Annual Report of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University and the Agricultural Experiment Station” (1917), W.D. Funkhauser tells us that “Eggs are laid in the bark of stems two or three years old. Egg slits are peculiar, being curved and parallel and so close together that the wound between them does not heal and thus considerable injury may be done to the twig. … six or eight eggs are laid in the slit. The eggs winter over and hatch in May.”

The slits can cause twigs to look rough and scaly, and multiple slits can weaken them; Funkhauser tells us that “Not only are the egg slits large enough to cause material mechanical damage, but the puncture allows the easy ingress of fungi and of other insects.” Buffalo treehoppers are also suspected vectors of some plant viruses.

They don’t have a lot of enemies – the eggs are parasitized by a few small wasps. The BugLady’s picture of a Buffalo treehopper on some leaves was taken when she startled a damselfly that had grabbed the treehopper, wrestled it to the ground, and then ended up dropping it (for which the BugLady apologized) (but she couldn’t quite picture how a damselfly would approach the treehopper’s hard and slippery exterior.).

Treehoppers were featured a few years ago in a BOTW about Two-marked treehoppers (with a bonus picture of a buffalo treehopper).

 
The BugLady

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Introducing three unsung (but worthy) bugs, whose definitive biographies have yet to be written.

ENTYLIA CARINATA (no common name) is a treehopper in the family Membracidae (from the Greek membrax meaning “a kind of cicada”) (to whom they’re distantly related). It’s a wonderful family of tiny dragons and unicorns (Britannica calls them “insect brownies”) whose various protuberances are supposed to mimic thorns and other bits of vegetation (these bumps are extensions of the pronotum, a structure that covers the top surface of the thorax and is sometimes called a “helmet”). .

Treehoppers are sap-feeders that insert their beaks and feed on both woody and herbaceous plants. Nymphs may start out on herbaceous plants and graduate to the “softer” parts of woody plants as adults, and a few are considered minor agricultural pests. Like many other sap-feeding bugs, they produce honeydew, which is eaten by other insects and which encourages ants to “farm” them.

Eggs are laid in woody tissue; females of some species guard their eggs, and some species are vaguely social, with groups of nymphs being cared for by adults.

Treehoppers’ Super Power is the ability of males to quiver the muscles in their abdomen. The resulting vibration passes down through the insect’s legs and into the stem it’s sitting on, and the sound made by these 3/8” insects can be heard/felt by insects on the same plant and even on different plants as far as a yard away! .

Entylia carinata (carinata means “keeled”) can be found in eastern North America, south into South America, especially on plants in the Aster/Composite family. The BugLady photographed it on a swamp thistle – there were no ants in attendance, but this species does attract them. For a much better picture of an adult, . Here’s and , and here’s .

This interesting critter with the pointy front end, NEMOTELUS KANSENSIS (no common name), lived as an “X-fly” in the “X-Files” for six years until the BugLady finally ID’d it while she was looking for something else. It turns out to be a soldier fly (family Stratiomyidae), and she’s more familiar with the larger, sluggish, wasp-mimic soldier flies (whose striped abdomens apparently reminded some insect namer of hash marks on a soldier’s uniform).

As a rule, the stiff, spindle-shaped, soldier fly larvae grow up in damp situations – in piles of dung or other rich, organic stuff, under bark, in soil, in litter, and in standing water – where they may eat decaying organic matter, fungi, or their fellow invertebrates. Pupation occurs within that armored larval skin. Adults are often found near the larval habitat, feeding on nectar (it’s called glucophagous), although in some species, adults don’t feed at all. The position of the wings at rest is described as “scissor-like.”

Nemotelus kansensis is sexually dimorphic – where the females have a series of white triangles on the top of their abdomens, the males’ abdomens are mostly white . Its larvae are aquatic. Coincidentally or not, most of the pictures in show them on Composites.

What a lovely little moth – the “stitching” on the trailing edge of the hind wing is exquisite! The BENT-LINE CARPET (Costaconvexa centrostrigaria), also called the Traveler, is in the family Geometridae (geometra means “to measure the earth”) whose caterpillars are called inch-worms. It is the only member of its genus on this continent (it’s mostly absent from the Great Plains and Rockies), and it has been recorded in Great Britain (once), the Canaries, the Azores, and Madeira.

Bent-line Carpets have a wingspread of a bit less than an inch and come in a variety of hues: . Their larval food plants are members of the genus Polygonum (smartweeds and knotweeds)

Despite the plummeting temperatures, a few grasshoppers and Autumn Meadowhawks are still hanging on in the prairie.

The BugLady

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Treehoppers

The BugLady gets a kick out of these thorn-mimicking Two-marked treehoppers (Enchenopa binotata) (“two spots”); there’s something both dignified and comical about the cut of their jib. Treehoppers are in the family Membracidae; the Greek word membrax meaning a kind of cicada. Taxonomically, they are not far removed from cicadas; behaviorally—in the “how-in-the-world-did-the-early-namers-know-that?” category, treehoppers communicate with their prospective mates vocally, making what is described as a “cicada-like whine” that is inaudible to our naked ear. Tree hopper? The odd source does mention that they hop (the closely-related leafhoppers sure do), and adults can fly.

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There are about 3,200 species of Membracids, a.k.a Thorn bugs, in the world, and more are being discovered every day in the secluded canopies of rainforest trees. They’re a tropical-temperate bunch, with zero species on Antarctica, only three more than that in Europe (one of which is the accidentally-imported American buffalo treehopper), and 266 species in North America. They’ve have been around for at least 40 million years.

Treehoppers have a pronotum (the top part of the first segment of the thorax) called a helmet that is enlarged and can be pretty fancy …

• especially in the tropics

Their first two pairs of legs are flattened, and their eyes are lovely, and you generally can’t tell males from females at a casual glance. A two-marked leafhopper is about one-fourth of an inch long.

Both nymphal and adult Membracids tap into the stems of woody and herbaceous plants with their beaks and feed on the sap, and treehopper species are often closely associated with a single food source. Some species gather in groups as adults or nymphs. Some have mutualistic relationships with ants (mutualistic means that everybody’s happy), which protect them in exchange for sweet honeydew (the two-marked treehopper seems not to be tended by ants). Maternal care of eggs and even nymphs is seen in some species. Most American species fly under the Exterminator’s radar, except for a few species that do minor damage to trees during egg-laying, when the female saws into a stem or bud in order to deposit an egg, and a few more dine on agricultural crops. Tropical treehoppers can impact cacao and coffee crops, among others, and may be vectors of plant diseases. One species is so spiny that going barefoot in its vicinity is not recommended.

Two-marked treehoppers

The 2-marked treehopper, famously (among taxonomists, anyway), is a species complex (more about that in a sec). 2-MTs hew to the basic family plan, feeding on sap of specific plants. They slit the bark of their host plant to deposit eggs within, covering the eggs with a secretion called “egg froth” that provides protection from desiccation in winter, may shield the eggs from predators, and that contains an attractant pheromone that brings other ovipositing females to the spot (where, like cows, they may line up, all facing the same direction). The eggs hatch in spring when they are re-hydrated by the rising sap of the host plant as its buds open and its shoots start to grow. . There is one generation in Wisconsin.

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And here’s where things get interesting.

The 2-MTs are a well-studied species complex, kind of a continuum of eleven (or more) very closely related species that look alike and yet don’t interbreed. Some species complexes occur geographically, with species replacing each other from east to west or north to south. In the case of 2-MTs, several species can exist in the same geographical area, never meeting up with each other because they have different host plants. They all have the same scientific name, followed by their host name. This is Enchenopa binotata Viburnum (it likes Nannyberry). If a male is forced to court from a non-host plant, he will sing his typical song, but he will signal less and the signals will be shorter. If a female is forced to oviposit on a non-host plant (a host shift), she will lay fewer eggs, and both the hatching success and the nymph survival will be lower, but they will respond to the phenology of the new host (and a new species may be in the works). 2-MTs are evolving before our eyes, and with DNA analysis, our ability to separate them correctly is also evolving.

Adults can fly, and they do end up on non-host plants, staring at similar-but-different 2-MTs. One study by Cocroft, Rodriguez and Hunt demonstrated that although more than 40% of courtships were initiated between different species of 2-MT, only 6% of the matings were between heterospecifics (members of another species). Why? Behavioral isolation (signals that don’t match) trumps (and reinforces) ecological isolation (host plant/host plant phenology).

How does that work? Boy and girl 2-MTs get together via a duet that he initiates. According to Cocroft, et al., a male advertises his species via his song, producing a whining sound followed by pulsing that is transmitted through the substrate—through the stems and petioles of the plant he sits on. He may sing sitting still or moving around or he may join a male chorus. If she likes what she hears, a female will insert her own voice, allowing him to find her. There is some individual variation in the sounds produced by males of her species, but the female trains males to stay with a range that she recognizes; different species on different host plants don’t interest her. It gets even better—almost a quarter of the variability of his signal results from slight differences within the genotype of his host plant species.

Cocroft, Rodriguez and Hunt also wondered if the bugs’ vibrations carried differently on host vs non-host plants, and it turns out that a species’ vibrations transmit best on its ancestral host plant and are filtered differently by non-host plants. 2-MTs also use their voices to signal alarm.

About the blunt-horned treehopper (X). The BugLady found several in close proximity to the adults on viburnum. When she tried to match the image to one at the bugguide.net site, she found the following note from an expert: “I also took a specimen like this – but in Nova Scotia. There is a slight possibility that this is an undescribed species, but a greater probability that it represents an abnormal reduction of the ‘horn.’ Please try to find the host, and watch for others.” Exciting times!

Odd treehopper factoid—various treehoppers form mutualistic relationships with a variety of other animals, including ants, to whom they signal, via vibrations. In Madagascar, some species of treehopper exchange signals with/enjoy a relationship with a few species of geckos, which are also allowed to harvest honeydew.

 
The Bug Lady

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The BugLady is amazed at the diversity in size and shape within the order Homoptera (same wing, a reference to the fact that the front wing is similar in texture throughout its length; the True Bugs, Hemiptera, have front wings whose tip/distal half is membranous and near/proximal half is leathery). But, more about the Great Hemiptera/Homoptera Debate in a later episode. The Order encompasses a huge variety of life forms and life styles, from the inconspicuous scales, leaf and treehoppers through the very visible (and audible) cicadas. This episode, “Homopterans on Parade,” is about four groups of small plant-juice-suckers that grace (and sometimes damage) our vegetation.

Pop-bug

When the BugLady was a naiad, roaming the fields surrounding her house, she called the little critters that sat on her jeans “Pop-bugs” because they leapt away when touched; it’s a name she still favors even though she now knows that they are called leafhoppers. In practice, they often do sit with their hind legs flexed—“pop-ready.” According to Kaufman in his super Field Guide to Insects of North America, some leafhoppers can leap 40 times their own (admittedly short) body lengths, making them the champion jumpers of the animal world! Immature leafhoppers will run sideways when startled.

Although leafhoppers all have a basic hatchback body-type, they are diversely colored; some are two-toned, with multi-hued horizontal racing stripes or with stripes saddled across their backs, others come in solid colors. The spines along the outer edge of the hind tibia (BugSpeak for shin) distinguish the leafhopper family Cicadellidae from similar-looking families (in his biology textbook, Keeton opines that the only beings who care about the minutiae of classification are humans; the rest of the critters already know who they are).

A leafhopper that is attached to and feeding from a plant often ingests way more than it needs. Drops of excess sap, mixed with bodily wastes encountered in the gut, are expelled “under pressure” from the leafhopper’s posterior, and this habit has earned them the nick-name “sharpshooter.”

Treehoppers

The family Membracidae contains a pretty spiffy bunch of bugs that mimic plant parts. Some look like bits of leaf or twig, but the BugLady’s favorites are the thorn mimics. Their camouflage is achieved by sometimes-bizarre modifications of the exoskeleton covering the thorax. In the interests of full disclosure, some treehoppers feed on herbaceous, not woody plants, and although they sometimes “hop” and even fly a bit, their usual gait is a sedate crawl. The treehoppers that feed on woody plants are found on thin-barked new growth.

Some female thorn mimics protect their eggs and nymphs. Like the aphids, of previous BOTW fame (also Homopterans), thorn mimics may be herded and protected by ants, which, in turn, harvest the honeydew produced by the thorn mimic. Some are picky eaters: locust treehoppers concentrate on locust trees, alfalfa treehoppers on alfalfa, etc. They communicate by vibrating their abdomens against the plants! (Kaufman, again).

Wooly Aphids

Some folks experience them first as tiny “flying feathers” or as dense masses of cottony stuff stuck to stems and trunks, especially of alders and apples. Neither manifestation immediately suggests “insect.” The white covering, which both discourages small predators and keeps the insect from getting dehydrated, is made from tiny filaments of wax secreted from projections on their backs. As Donald W. Stokes says in his excellent A Guide to Observing Insect Lives, individual wooly aphids look like mini-hand grenades.

Their life cycles are complicated; some wooly aphids stick to a single host plant and others alternate between two different but specific host plants during specific portions of their life cycle (maple is the wooly alder aphid’s alternate host plant), there may be both asexual and bisexual generations, and a number of wooly aphids are also gall-makers. Ironically, the carnivorous caterpillar of the Harvester Butterfly preys on wooly aphids but the sweet drops of excess “honeydew” secreted by the aphids are eaten by adult Harvesters.

Scale Insects

Recently, the BugLady took a glamour shot of a rose hip, and when she edited it, she discovered the scale insects she had overlooked in real life. The dark and lumpy bits on the rose hip stalk are insects. While the male remains mobile, the female nymph, as she matures, becomes immobile and, according to Keaton, may absorb both her eyes and her legs, at the same time secreting a waxy covering. Scales come in shell, bead and limpet-shapes and a variety of colors, but all are small, and they tend to be somewhat communal. The free-roving, would-be dad has to come to the suction-cup mom, though the females of some species reproduce/clone via parthenogenesis (virgin birth). The eggs overwinter beneath the scale.

Scale insects have been chewed like gum by some Native people (some 90 species of birds eat them). Cochineal scales, gathered from a variety of cacti, are a historic source of a red dye, and shellac is based on a substance obtained from scales.

 
The BugLady

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