Bug of the Week

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.

Masked Hunter (Family Reduviidae)

The adult Masked Hunter is a striking, shiny, black bug about 3/4” long. The immature (nymph) has a sticky “finish” that attracts lint and dust; in short, stuff sticks to Junior, earning it the nickname “dustbug.” MHs are insect-feeders, untiring consumers of bedbugs, a pest that is staging a comeback in big cities everywhere thanks to the ease of world travel. If you have the predator, perhaps you should check for the prey.

A Few More Flies

Flies have two wings and although there are a few wingless fly species, there are no four-winged flies (and the majority of non-fly insects that do have wings have four of them). Flies practice Complete Metamorphosis, morphing from egg to larva (a legless, cylindrical “maggot”) (maggot—such a prejudicial term) to pupa to adult.

Earthworms

Earthworms live in u-shaped tunnels in the soil. They stay indoors during the day because sunlight’s UV rays immobilize them and ultimately dry out the moist skin through which they breathe. They live in the dark. Eyeless, they sense light with their skin, and earless, they are very sensitive to vibration. Their senses of taste and touch are well developed.

Water Scorpion (Family Nepidae)

The well-camouflaged Brown Water Scorpion (Ranatra fusca [probably]) is in the Order Hemiptera, and thus can legally be called a “bug.” Hemipterans have simple/incomplete metamorphosis, looking when they hatch pretty much like they will as adults. Both immature and adult water scorpions live in the same habitats in ponds and streams.

Earwigs (Family Forficulidae)

Earwigs are harmless nocturnal omnivorous scavengers whose chewing mouthparts allow a diet that includes organic debris, other insects (they stalk aphids by night), and plants. They metamorphose simply, shedding, growing wings and adding segments on their antennae until maturity.