The range of the Blue Dasher stretches across North America from British Columbia to Ontario, south (except for the Rockies and Dakotas) to California and Florida, with scenic side-trips into Mexico, the Bahamas, and Belize. According to the Wisconsin Odonata Survey, Blue dashers may have been extending their range north in the state in recent years.
Fungus gnats are so-named because the offspring in some (but not all) of the families feast on fungi. Some groups are pests in gardens, agriculture, nurseries, and (overly wet) flowerpots, which generates bad PR for the whole group
Springtails are found on all seven continents, in moist places with leaf litter or soil (a few species have adapted to deserts, others to forest canopies, and still others prefer caves). They probably evolved in cooler climes, which explains their fondness for spring and fall, and they will migrate to damper microhabitats if theirs loses humidity.
Deer Ticks lead a complex, three-stage, two-year life. All three stages are mobile and all three require a blood meal that can take three to five days to complete. Adult DTs are fairly impervious to frosts and can be out and about on winter days that are above freezing.
It turns out that spiders aren’t the only animals that make silk. The ability to make silk is found in most of the 26 (or so) insect orders. Larvae of many of the species of insects that have complete metamorphosis (egg-larva-pupa-adult)—like ants, wasps, bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, and flies—can make silk. Young fleas, lacewings, mayflies, thrips, some leafhoppers do it. Silverfish, and a family called “raspy crickets,” and a primitive little tropical order called Embioptera (web spinners) make silk as adults.
Spiders carry a gel called “unspun silk dope” in their silk glands, and when the liquid is released, it travels through projections called spinnerets located on the underside of the abdomen’s tip and becomes solid when it hits the air. Spinnerets are the external extension of the silk glands; most spiders have between two and eight spinnerets, tipped by “spigots” that control the diameter of the emerging thread.
The BugLady saw this great story and had to share. It’s got everything—a truly impressive bug, an exotic location, extinction and resurrection, invasive predators, and a great video that shows the level of fitness needed simply to hatch out of an egg.
There are about 410 species of blister beetles in North America north of Mexico and about 4,000 worldwide, and various species have starred in these pages before. Eastern blister beetles are sedately (yet elegantly) colored, but in the Southwest, where the family is most diverse, there are some beautiful species.
Syrphid flies are a large and widespread fly family whose members range from small-and-delicate to large-and-clunky honeybee mimics called drone flies. Adults feed on nectar and pollen, mostly from yellow or white flowers, and on aphid “honeydew,” and they’re considered important pollinators despite the fact that they’re not designed to carry as much pollen as either wild bees or honeybees can.
Ichneumon wasps are in the family Ichneumonidae, a group whose larvae are parasitic on a variety of other invertebrates. The 5,000 known species in North America could be joined by an additional 3,000, and the “estimated 60,000” worldwide might actually total 100,000.