They’re big, they’re beautiful, and they’re back! The BugLady has been out on the trail and has been enjoying the first butterflies and dragonflies of the season. Anyway, this episode started out nine years ago as “Spring Dragonflies,” continued six years later as “Three Spring Dragonflies plus One,” and reappears today as “Three Spring Dragonflies plus Two.”
Gray Hairstreaks are the most widely distributed American hairstreak, and they spill over into Canada, Central America, and the northern edge of South America. They’ve been seen in more than half of Wisconsin counties. Why “hairstreak?” These small butterflies have one or two slim (hair-like) tails on the lower “corner” of each hindwing.
The BugLady admits that she is ambivalent about moths. So many of them are small and gray/tan and the BugLady, with apologies, hasn’t developed the patience to hunker down and learn them. On the other hand, there are striking moths like the Haploas. The genus name Haploa used to be Callimorpha, which means “beautiful form.” The Haploas are sometimes called Crusader moths, because of their shield-like wing shape and markings.
The Dark Fishing Spider is one BugLady’s favorite spiders (even though it isn’t even a crab spider). First of all, it’s beautiful. Second, it’s big, one of the biggest in North America – the leg-span of a large female can approach four inches! Third, it’s a challenge to sneak up on and photograph.
“Dung beetle” refers to beetles whose lives are intertwined with dung, but the term is not exclusively a taxonomic one. True, most of its practitioners belong to the beetle family Scarabaeidae and the subfamily Scarabaeinae, but the name is also applied loosely to any beetle that makes its living in dung. Researching the dung beetle is like researching a rock star. There are True Facts, YouTube videos, Facebook, kids’ pages, and even a graphic novel or two! Because they have Super Powers.
Multicolored Asian ladybugs need no introduction – they’ve been around for a century, and we know them by many names – Southern, Japanese, Harlequin, Halloween, and Pumpkin beetles, plus Aziatisch lieveheersbeestje (Holland), Asiatischer Marienkafer (Germany), and in Britain, jokingly, the Many-named ladybug.
The BugLady’s “Bugs in the News” file is overflowing again, so it’s time to share. Thanks, as always, to those who send links to interesting stuff.
The BugLady has a wooden pier across the top of the dune that protects her from Lake Michigan. One day, at the end of June, she looked down and had an “Oh, Duh!!!” moment when it finally registered that the little pits in the sand at the top of the dune were the handiwork of a fascinating insect called a doodlebug or antlion.
It has been almost 11 years since we last considered slugs (time flies!). The Gray Field/Garden Slug, one of about a dozen slug species in Wisconsin, is a European slug that’s described as a “synanthrope” – a species of plant or animal that lives in habitats modified by humans and that benefits from human association. It likes gardens, agricultural fields, roadsides, parks, and greenhouses.
Another celebration of (regrettably) anonymous bugs. There are in the neighborhood of 100,000 insect species in North America, but not everyone has a biographer. In this episode, we will cover Heraeraeus Plebejus, Zenodosus Sanguineus, and the Ironweed Borer Moth.
