Thrips

Thrips belong in the insect order Thysanoptera, which means “fringed wings.” North America boasts some 700 of the 5,000 to 6,000 species of Thrips described thus far, and about 100 species inhabit the Great Lakes area. Thrips enter the fossil record in Permian times (about 250 million years ago), but it took them another 100 million years to become abundant.

Green Moths

The Bad Wing, Green Leuconycta, and Green-patched Looper are three admirable moths that are outfitted in emerald.

Ladybugs Three (Family Coccinellidae)

Ladybugs are not bugs in the Order Hemiptera. A more appropriate name is lady beetle or ladybird beetle. It seems that back in the Middle Ages, the European grape crop was threatened by a horde of aphids. Adult ladybugs eat aphids, and larval ladybugs eat aphids, and lady beetles rode to the rescue. A female may lay as many as 1,000 eggs over a few weeks, usually near aphid herds. Some of the eggs are fertile and some are not. If aphids are scarce, the sterile eggs serve as food for the larvae.

Bog Copper Butterfly (Family Lycaenidae)

Bog Coppers, also called Cranberry-bog Coppers, are with hairstreaks, coppers, and blues in the Gossamer-wing family Lycaenidae. They occur in a band across North America on either side of the Canadian border, as far south as northern Ohio/Pennsylvania/New Jersey, and Maryland, and never far from cranberry plants. They are extreme food specialists, the caterpillars eat only cranberry leaves.

Daphnia

Daphnia are oval-ish, shape-shifting, widely-distributed, exhaustively-studied planktonic, freshwater crustaceans. They are found in all sorts of aquatic habitats, including ephemeral ponds but not including fast-moving or polluted waters. A large, compound eye rotates constantly, sensing changes in light intensity. They don’t like light much, and many species move from a pond’s surface to its floor several times during a 24 hour period.

Strawberry Root Weevil (Family Curculionidae)

Strawberry Root Weevils are often described as pear-shaped or light bulb-shaped, with noticeable snouts and with antennae situated partway down the snout. SRWs love to overwinter in houses (sometimes in large numbers), where they are harmless. They are herbivores as both larvae and adults, with the larvae feeding mainly on roots in the soil and the adults feeding on foliage or bark

Signal Fly (Family Platystomatidae)

Signal Flies are usually seen in fields and edges. SFs are small—these guys/gals are about 6mm long, with patterns on their wings and often on their faces and with metallic colors elsewhere. SFs have protruding mouthparts that resemble a gas mask.

Stink Bugs Revisited (Family Pentatomidae)

Stink Bugs use their piercing-sucking mouthparts to inject a “saliva” that pre-digests their food, and the mouthparts are tucked “under their chin” when not in use. It’s not a huge family—maybe 250 species in North America and 5,000 worldwide.

Barklice (Family Psocidae)

Barklice are small, chunky, big-headed, bug-eyed, long-antennaed insects, many of which have four wings. The front set of wings is longer than the rear set, and the wings are held tent-like over the body at rest. They are relatively common in the eastern half of the country and are often found on the trunks of smooth-barked trees. Because many BLs live in leaf litter or under loose tree bark, they generally pass their days unnoticed, as they have done since the Permian Era, some 250 million years ago.

Wall Watching

The BugLady has been stalking invertebrates that hang out on the east wall of the Field Station lab. The wall is painted cinderblock that warms up in the morning and probably keeps some heat as it gets shaded in the afternoon. Grass grows right up to the edge of the building. The BugLady hypothesizes that bugs can enjoy the residual warmth without getting fried by the sun, because she sees some small critters on the north wall but very few on the bright south wall. She found some familiar faces and some new ones—plant-eaters and an array of carnivores that come to collect the herbivores.