The Green Lynx Spider occupies grasslands, scrub, edges, gardens, and other open spaces south of a line from Maryland to California and well into Central America. Like other Oxyopids, GLSs have long, bristly legs, each ending with three claws, a tapering abdomen, and a flat face with eight eyes. GLSs young and old are carnivores, enjoying a buffet of wasps, bees, moths, flies, bugs, and beetles that they encounter on vegetation.
The Northern Paper Wasp and the European Paper Wasp are in the widespread genus Polistes in the family Vespidae. They’re called paper wasps because they chew on bits of paper, wood, bark, etc, mix it with saliva, and form the resulting pulp into a nest typical of their species. Paper wasps target many caterpillars that gardeners consider pests, and in a nod to their pest-control value, people put up nest boxes for them.
The Cyclops is an aquatic non-insect whose name is taken from a character in classical Greek mythology. These pear-shaped critters are related to fairy shrimp, daphnia, scuds, sowbugs, and water sowbugs—all of previous BOTW fame. As crustaceans, they number shrimp, crayfish and lobsters among their distant relatives, too.
Prasocuris vitatta habitat needs often involve sunny wetland edges in the eastern half of North America where members of the buttercup family grow, and they’re also found on the introduced Common/meadow/tall buttercup that grows along roadsides and woodland edges.
The Common Baskettail and Spiny Baskettail are among the early dragonflies of spring, their flight periods usually completed by mid-summer. They are described as agile and acrobatic flyers that often form feeding swarms in clearings away from water and that can consume their prey while in flight.
Black-legged Meadow Katydid are residents of grasslands and gardens, preferably damp ones. BlMKs overwinter as eggs that are laid in the soil or in plant stems and that hatch in late spring. It’s identified by the face and eyes, plus a bluish-green body, wings longer than its abdomen, and colorful legs—with yellow on its front four and black on its hind two.
The BugLady received lots of feedback to the Citizen Science BOTW, mostly along the line of “Here’s another one!” The BugLady’s main omission seems to have been that her initial offerings were invertebrate orientated (go figure!), and BugFan Tom (a herp guy), among others, mourned the lack of projects involving “bug-eaters.”
There are many exciting Citizen Science opportunities for people who enjoy being up to their elbows in Nature. Here are some of the projects that rely on data collected by us—the non-scientist volunteers. If none of these is your cup of tea, check with your local Nature Center, Land Trust, Extension office, DNR, and Natural Resources Foundation,
Imported Willow Leaf Beetles are northern European natives that reached our shores in 1915; they’re common in the eastern half of the U.S. and north into Canada. Adults overwinter in bark crevices or on the ground in leaf litter, and they leap into action when trees begin to leaf out.
Thread-waisted wasps mostly nest in the ground or build free-standing nests from mud. Although the female is primarily a vegetarian that sips nectar from flowers as she hunts, she provides protein for her young. Most target the caterpillars of moths and a few skipper butterflies and the larvae of their distant sawfly relatives.