Bug of the Week

Predaceous Diving Beetle (Family Dytiscidae)

Predaceous Diving Beetles (PDB) are in the largest family of aquatic beetles. Typically, they live in the shallow, still waters of lakes and ponds or in the pool areas of streams. Although some are pretty small, our typical PDBs are an inch to an inch-and-a-half long, oval, with slender antennae and with dark with buffy/green edging on the elytra. Eggs are laid on/in plants above the waterline in early spring. When they hatch, the larvae drop into the water. Mature larvae crawl out of the water to pupate in damp chambers on the shoreline. They emerge as adults to reenter the water

Carrion Beetles (Family Silphidae)

Carrion Beetles and Burying beetles are scavengers. Medium to largish in size, they are good flyers with strong legs that are tipped with spines and adapted for digging. And dig they do. CBs bury small carcasses so that their larvae (grubs) can feed on them

Caddisfly

Caddisflies are famous for the cases built for protection by their soft-bodied larvae (the only natural “armor” they possess is located on their head, thorax and legs) and for the larvae’s ability to produce silk thread via a silk gland in their lower lip. They use silk to “glue” materials together to construct the case, to net some food, and to modify the case before they pupate.

Water Boatmen, Backswimmers

Backswimmers are piercer-predators that kill and suck the bodily fluids out of any prey they can subdue—invertebrate and vertebrate—including tiny fish fry and tadpoles. In their choice of food, they compete with small fish. Water Boatmen swim head down along the bottom in search of food. Lacking the standard piercing beak issued to other aquatic true bugs, they ingest living material—diatoms, algae, protozoa, and nematodes.

Flower Longhorn, Spotted Flower Buprestid Beetles

This episode features two beetles, the Flower Longhorns and the Spotted Flower Buprestid, that are found on flowers. Though noticeably different in shape, both have the yellow and black coloration of wasp/bee mimics, and both have larvae that love wood. Other than being fellow beetles in the order Coleoptera, they are not related.

Baltimore Butterfly (Family Nymphalidae)

Baltimore/Baltimore Checkerspots are found in damp, open situations where their chief food plant, turtlehead, grows, but they are found in dryer habitats farther south. Young Baltimore caterpillars feed communally. After hatching, a cohort of caterpillars will spin themselves inside a web on their chosen plant and feed on it. In spring they emerge, still caterpillars, hungry and much less picky. They feed alone on whatever plants they can find, form a chrysalis and, 10 days later, emerge as adults into the sunlight of early summer; there is only one generation per year.

Katydids (Family Tettigoniidae)

Katydids are large, beautiful, green (brown and pink morphs also exist), insects of grasslands, open woods and edges whose often ventriloquistic calls can be heard both day and night. In order to belong to be a katydid, your antennae have to be as long as or longer than your body. Male bush katydids are hard to tell apart, and the even-more-difficult-to-identify females are known by the company they keep.

Water Mite

Water Mites look like spiders, but spiders have two body parts, a cephalothorax (combined head and thorax) and an abdomen, and the one-piece water mites are further fused and are unsegmented. Physical characteristics include two double eyes (some species have an additional third eye in between) and eight legs (most of the time). They’re usually found in the shallows of lakes, ponds, marshes, swamps and bogs, but some live as deep as 100 meters and others call ephemeral/vernal ponds home, burrowing into the mud when the water dries up.

Giant Water Bug (Family Belostomatidae)

Giant Water Bugs are true bugs. They are large, brownish, flat, roughly oval insects with impressive front legs. GWBs are “climber-swimmers” that live in quiet, shallow waters with plenty of vegetation. Like most other aquatic true bugs are classified as “piercer-predators.” They grab their prey, stab it with a short, sharp beak, and inject poisonous enzymes (produced in salivary glands near the beak) that immobilize it and then liquefy its innards

Buckeye Butterfly (Family Nymphalidae)

Buckeyes belong to a large group of strong fliers whose front legs are noticeably hairy and are reduced in size. Buckeyes are sun-lovers, butterflies of the open fields, where they sip nectar from those confusing fall composites. Males are feisty, chasing other flying objects, both butterfly and non-butterfly alike, out of their territories.