It’s a large family, with more than 20,000 species worldwide and 1,200 species north of the Rio Grande, and it’s divided into eight subfamilies. Many LongHorns are economically important because their larvae bore into dead/dying/cut wood, lowering its value as timber (but aiding in the recycling of the forest).
The Bald-faced Hornet is famous for the football-shaped paper nest that it suspends, between two and forty feet off the ground, from a man-made or natural support. The nest is initiated by the queen, a fertile female that mated last fall and holed up over the winter while the workers, drones, and old queen died. She starts the new nest in spring by fashioning a spherical structure that’s open at the bottom. After she raises her first brood, her daughters take over, enlarging and guarding the nest, foraging for food for the larvae and their queen.
The Diamesa Midge Diamesa nivoriunda (snow-born midge—probably), one of the two species on the sumac, is in a subfamily called the snow midges, and they fly from September into April. Clouds of midges are an often misunderstood and distinctly non-vampire-ish assembly.
There are lots of generic Springtails leaping around—more than 8,200 species worldwide (700+ in North America). Most kinds of springtail are found on land, leading invisible lives in leaf litter and soil, anyplace that has a little moisture, even Antarctica.
Water treaders are found on floating vegetation growing in the shallow waters of pools, where the clumps of sedge spread their slender stems upon the water. They eat insects and other small invertebrates; their hunting method is to run along the surface of algae and duckweed, and even along the surface of the water, until they have run down their prey.
Most Crickets are vegetarians, although there are forays into carnivorous, omnivorous, and cannibalistic lifestyles. They develop via simple/incomplete metamorphosis, in which the young hatch out looking like mini-adults and don’t have a resting/changing/pupa stage. Eggs are generally laid in the ground, plant stems, piles of bat guano, etc. in the fall; they hatch in spring and take 2 to 3 months to mature.
There are a lot of mosquitoes—about 3,500 species worldwide, 150 in North America, and 50 in Wisconsin. Their eggs develop in wetlands but also in birdbaths, puddles, pails, flower pots, old tires, and the dog’s outside water dish. Some mosquitoes include humans on their list of possible donors; others restrict themselves to birds, reptiles, amphibians, or non-human mammals.
This episode is a little chewier than usual—we’re going to plunge deep into science, but we’ll bob back up to the surface again in no time at all. And yes, there will be a quiz.
The Spotted Nomad Bee belongs to an overlapping continuum of species named the Nomada ruficornis species group. The Nomada (nomad/roaming bees), one of the largest genera in the Nomadinae subfamily, are a confusing bunch taxonomically. There are about 300 species in North America and 700 species worldwide.
Mimicry is about being a copycat; imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but this is about survival. In mimicry, the predator sees something that it misidentifies. An organism copies the appearance of another organism, and maybe its behavior, sound or smell, as well.