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.
Sawflies are often described as “primitive wasps,” and, in fact, an ancient line within the Symphyta seems to be the ancestor group for the non-sawfly Hymenopterans (the ants, bees, and wasps). Sawfly comes from the shape of the female’s ovipositor, which, according to one source, she carries folded up but can flip open like a jackknife, and which she uses to saw open a hole in plant tissue so she can oviposit (she can’t sting, so resembling a wasp is to her advantage).
Sphinx moth caterpillars are frequently associated with one, or a small group of host plants, for which they are often named (tobacco and tomato hornworms, big poplar, wild cherry, huckleberry, catalpa sphinx, etc.). Some are pests of agricultural or horticultural plantings, and they may have different names than their adults (when it grows up, a tomato hornworm becomes a Five-lined sphinx).
Meadow grasshoppers (Chorthippus curtipennis) are the only members of their genus in the Nearctic ecozone (North and South America). Their habitat is listed as “tall grass in damp areas” from Alaska and Canada, and throughout most of the Lower 48 except for the far Southeastern states. They reside in periaquatic environments, damp edge situations that transition readily from aquatic to terrestrial and back,
Shadow Darners (Aeshna umbrosa) live throughout most of North America (except the very southern edges of the U.S. and a few Rocky Mountain states), and their range stretches well north into the boreal forests of Canada. They’re found in a variety of wetlands, from the still waters of bogs, pools, and ditches, to slow streams.
The fourth Annual chorus of “The Twelve Bugs of Christmas,” the BugLady offers a Bakers’ Dozen of Bug Portraits that were taken this year but are unlikely to appear in future BOTWs because their stories have been told in past BOTWs (hence, the links, for BugFans who want to know “The Rest of the Story”).