Bug of the Week

American Pelecinid Wasp (Family Pelecinidae)

American Pelecinid Wasps are relatively common from Argentina through Canada, in woodlands, grasslands and gardens, from mid-summer to early fall. APWs are whip-thin, shiny, and black, with extra long antennae. A female may measure almost 2 ½ inches long, and her abdomen is five times the length of the rest of her body; males are only about an inch long. The diet of adult APWs is nectar, perhaps supplemented by some pollen and water. Their larvae follow the parasitoid path.

Metallic Casebearer Moth (Family Coleophoridae)

Casebearer Moths are small, but their genus is large, with around 1,000 species known worldwide—maybe 100 in North America. Many Coleophora larvae start out life as leaf-miners—eating and ambulating in the tissue between the top and bottom layers of a leaf. Soon, they make a life-style change, eschewing the innards of the leaf for its outside. They fashion a portable case by gluing together with silk some tiny pieces of their food plant plus poop. These they tote about, snail fashion.

Sawfly

Sawflies are considered “primitive” wasps. The adults, which eat little or nothing, are typically seen in late spring or early summer. In general, sawflies overwinter as larvae, in cocoons they make on pine needles, under bark, in stems, on twigs or on the ground. They pupate as the weather warms, chew their way out of their pupal case, and emerge in spring to mate and lay eggs. The larvae resemble caterpillars, and eat a wide variety of plants, but most species limit themselves to just a few food sources.

Clay-colored Leaf Beetle ( Family Chrysomelidae)

Clay-colored Leaf Beetles (CCLBs) have a broad crimson stripe, which may refer to some portion of the CCLB’s anatomy. As a group, they come in a variety of shapes and colors and they are vegetarians in both their larval and adult stages. Adults feed in the open on leaves, stems, flowers and/or pollen; many target a specific plant or group of plants for food.

Sweat Bee (Family Halictidae)

Sweat Bees are found on flowers, feeding on nectar throughout the growing season. Sometimes they camp out near aphid colonies and feed on the honeydew that is an aphid by-product. Like bumblebees, they can collect pollen using a process called “buzz pollination” (sonication). Depending on their species, sweat bees are labeled solitary to semi-social; the offspring of some kinds of sweat bees stay with their mother, helping care for the nest and young.

Pennsylvania Leatherwing (Family Cantharidae)

Pennsylvania Leatherwings also called Goldenrod Soldier Beetles are among the most common members of the Soldier Beetles in the Midwest. Adults are found in mind-boggling numbers on the flowers of roadsides and old fields in late summer and throughout fall. References seem divided about the food habits of adult PLWs. Some put them squarely in the vegetarian column eating pollen and nectar, while others put them in the carnivore (small insects) or the omnivore (pollen, nectar and small insects) category.

Water Penny (Family Psephenidae)

Water pennies are the larvae of riffle beetles. Water pennies live underwater on rocks in rapid currents—an unusual habitat for a beetle, but one that offers some protection from predators. Adult riffle beetles can be found in the water or basking on rocks and logs just above the water line. The adults are hairy, ¼inch beetles; the larvae, called water pennies for their shape and color, look like well-camouflaged, tiny, suction cups.

Galls II – A Date with History

This week’s BOTW features a few oak galls and a grape gall. Remember, of the 2,000-plus kinds of galls found on North American plants, 800 different kinds form on oaks. Cynipid wasps, which mainly target stems and leaves, are very big players in the oak gall game. The galls caused by some Cynipid wasps are very high in tannin/gallotannin, giving them the bitter taste that gave rise to their name, gall.

Galls I

Galls are defined as abnormal growths on plants (and animals). They can be caused by friction, as when two plants rub against each other for a long period of time, but they are also precipitated by a variety of biological agents including viruses, mites, nematodes, and fungi (which cause witch’s broom). The vast majority of galls in the U.S. are made by insects in just a few groups of flies (gall midge larvae), and wasps (1/3 of galls are caused by tiny Cynipid wasps).

Cuckoo Wasp (Family Chrysididae)

Cuckoo Wasps are found worldwide except in Antarctica. There are about 230 species north of the Rio Grande, and California is especially cuckoo-wasp-rich. The name refers to their habit of depositing their eggs in other insects’ nests; a strategy practiced by birds like the Old World Cuckoos. The larvae of some species of cuckoo wasps feed on the larvae of the nest-builder, usually another wasp, a bee, a silk moth or a walking stick.