Slime molds are strange and wonderful life forms that can exist as tiny, single cells, but can also form a mass of cells that acts like an organism – and moves! They may be so small that they live their whole lives under our radar, moving slowly through the soil; or they may aggregate to form bright yellow or white, spongy blobs on the forest floor, or pink spheres on decaying wood, or tiny, brown cattail shapes on branches.
The BugLady loves these fancy little flies and their habitat preferences, for the damp and the dappled are similar to hers. Dance flies are abroad in June and are one of the BugLady’s “nemesis bugs.”
Continuing with June’s BOTW Lite, we have tales of plenty and of scarcity. In the first, insects are so plentiful that they show up on radar. First ladybugs, and then there’s a mayfly hatch along the Mississippi.
As long-time BugFans know, the BugLady gets a kick out of weevils. She found these cute little Iris weevils recently, scampering around on flowers at the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust’s Cedarburg Environmental Study Area site.
Well, the air is warm(er) and the BugLady’s photo files are getting thin, and the trails are beckoning. She will hit the restart button in July, but will post assorted short subjects during June. Please enjoy this story of an African park that is being rejuvenated. The slide show pictures some strange and wonderful creatures, and there’s a great time-lapse video of dung beetles, of recent BOTW fame.
The BugLady’s favorite insect is the Tiger Swallowtail (Mom likes me best), but in the crowded field for second place, the Luna Moth is pretty close to the top. Luna moths (Actias luna) are in the Giant Silkworm/Royal Moth family Saturnidae (of previous BOTW fame), whose family members have ringed eyespots reminiscent of Saturn.
Life is busy, and besides, May is National Wetland Month, so here’s a rerun from ten years ago. A few new words and pictures. The BugLady will visit these guys together because even though they are, in a sense, photo-negatives of each other, they are often mistaken for one another.
The poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” The BugLady sees lots of tableaux unfolding as she ambles across the landscape. Because she was taught, at an impressionable age, by a professor who said “Don’t just tell them what it is, tell them ‘what about it,’” she tries to read the stories and understand the “what-about-its”
The BugLady always enjoys photographing these large, handsome grasshoppers as they ricochet off the prairie plants in late summer. She has danced around them in several episodes – in a generalized discussion of their genus, Melanoplus and as eye-candy in several summer insect picture collections – but they deserve their own biography.
Leaves are coming. Promise! And soon after they emerge, we’ll see leaves that are folded, rolled, or otherwise harnessed by a variety of insects, for a variety of reasons. The architects are mostly small moths- but there are also some skipper butterflies, beetles, sawflies, and spiders in the bunch, plus this cute little Carolina leaf roller cricket.
