Howdy, BugFans, This episode has been adapted from the Spring, 2010 issue of the BogHaunter, the newsletter of the Friends of the Cedarburg Bog; it was written by the BugLady, wearing a different hat. Woodcocks were a big part of …
Back in 2011, the BugLady wrote about a spectacular arthropod called the Horseshoe crab that pre-dates insects by maybe 100,000,000 years. Despite the fact that they occur by the millions, horseshoe crabs are facing dire threats to their populations, and the BugLady wondered if anything had changed since the original episode. New text, old text, and pictures of a 1 ½” long, translucent, infant horseshoe crab that washed up on Sanibel long ago, that the BugLady happened to have in her collection. Put your feet up – this takes some telling.
As veteran BugFans can attest, the BugLady is intrigued by galls. How many kinds are there? To quote from the first BOTW on galls (October, 2009) “Lawlor, in Discovering Nature Close to Home, states that North American plants support more than 2,000 kinds of galls – 800 different kinds form on oaks alone, about 125 kinds on roses, and more than 50 kinds on goldenrods (genus Solidago).”
The BugLady is inching through her skipper butterfly pictures, staring at the ones she’s simply labeled “skipper” and trying to attach names to them. Early results suggest that she does not know the secret handshake yet.
\Someday, the BugLady will write a book about trying to pry information about this wasp from the ether (once she figured out that it isn’t a Sphex or a Podalonia); it will be subtitled (with apologies to Judith Viorst) “Google has a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” (and possibly sub-sub-titled “Net Neutrality and Entomological Research? Really??”). Anyway – different pulpit.
Today, the BugLady explores three different epiblemas; the Goldenrod Gall Moth, Bidens Borer, and the Epiblema Boxcana. Epiblemas are micromoths, which is a handy but unscientific grouping that has members across several families (and it’s a genus name that is shared with an Australian orchid called “babe-in-a-cradle”).
The BugLady likes her wetlands wet, not solid, so she’s diving into her files of aquatic/semi-aquatic organisms in order to evoke the sights and sounds and feel of a summer day. As usual, this has resulted in a few scenic side trips.
People often ask the BugLady what her favorite bug is, and although there’s a crowded field for second place, the Tiger Swallowtail is the hands-down winner. Most Impressive Bug? The Black horse fly (Tabanus atratus) (family Tabanidae) is certainly high on that list, and although she knows that it’s (probably) not going to pursue her (they generally stalk non-human mammals), just seeing one always gives her a bit of a start.
This week, The BugLady introduces some insects that, while not totally unsung, still have a pretty low profile.
Let us usher in the New Year with dragonflies. Two of them.
Whiteface dragonflies are in the genus Leucorrhinia in the large (1,000+ species) and glorious Skimmer family Libellulidae. There are about 100 Libellulid species in North America, and seven of them are whitefaces. We visited whitefaces in 2011 in the person of the Dot-tailed Whiteface.