Red-spotted Purples (RSP) are found in semi-sunny situations like stream and forest edges, woodland paths, and forest openings. In those habitats, adult RSPs feed on sap, rotting fruit, animal dung, and carrion, but they rarely visit flowers. They are seen from around the start of June through the middle of August. Males are very territorial, and they sit sentinel on vegetation, awaiting the appearance of females.
Fleas are very small and are laterally flattened. A flea’s life cycle is also brilliantly fine-tuned for survival. Flea larvae are tiny, blind, legless, wormlike scavengers that develop in dark, humid places like cracks on the floor, animal nests, bedding, etc. There they eat organic matter including dead insects, dandruff, exfoliated skin, shed insect skins, plant material, and flea feces. After a week or two as larvae, they spin silken pupal cases. Fleas spend a week or two as pupae. They may hatch immediately, or they may remain dormant in their pupal cases until they sense the approach of a host
Pseudoscorpions like today’s star, the Book Scorpion, come in both indoor and outdoor models; the species that live outside are found under the cover of bark, leaves and soil. The common House Pseudoscorpion/Book Scorpion is one of the larger models, measuring 0.2″ long. Pseudoscorpions are flat and wedge-shaped, and their color has been described as “rich mahogany. They have 4 pairs of legs, on which they can walk backwards and sideways as well as forwards.
Meal moths tend to be small (maybe ½”), drab, ragged-looking moths. They can be seen flying across the kitchen during any season of the year. Successful? A typical female may lay 350 eggs that will hatch in 4 days into larvae that will feed for 7 to 10 days and then pupate for a week. Their larvae eat stored plant materials including grains, cornmeal, and bird seed. Basically, if humans store it, some Pyralid eats it.
These lovely Tiphiid wasps sipping nectar on goldenrods and other prairie wildflowers and doing a bit of pollinating on the side. Some species of tiphiids have been imported to combat Japanese beetles and other pest scarabs. The female doesn’t bring food to her egg; she brings her egg to food. When the female wasp locates a grub in the ground, she lays an egg on/near it. Some smaller tiphiids actually crawl underground to accomplish this. Although the adults are vegetarians, their offspring are confirmed carnivores.
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.
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.
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 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 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.