The Japanese Beetle is a chunky half inch of beetle with a shiny green thorax and burnished bronze elytra (wing covers). The adults are primarily leaf skeletonizers, eating the soft tissue that lies between the tougher leaf veins, creating green lace. The larvae (grubs) feed underground on a variety of roots, especially those of horticultural and agricultural plants and turf grass.
This week’s BOTW is another of those retreads from the olden days when BOTW was brand new. If you are a Charter BugFan, you’ll note that exciting new species, pictures and information have been added.
Greenbottle flies are darlings of the CSI folks. Most blow flies eat and breed on decaying matter, and a carcass draws a crowd. Eggs are laid on carrion or garbage; the larvae (maggots) mature in two to ten days and pupate in the soil. Drone flies are found on flowers of meadow and field, especially composites, eating nectar and pollen. Hairy and yellow-and-brown-striped, the adults are mimics of male honey bees.
Meadowhawks are common, colorful, a shade less than 1 ½ inches long, with red/yellow-orange abdomens and reddish/chestnut/rusty brown eyes. A few species are sexually dimorphic—the males and females are different colors. They like a variety of wetlands, though they are often found far from water. Meadowhawks tend to perch horizontally, often on the ground or on low vegetation, but some queue up in good numbers on telephone lines.
German Yellowjackets (GYJs) are European wasps that arrived in the northeastern U.S. in the early 1970’s and in Wisconsin a few years later and are clearly marked by nature’s warning colors, yellow and black. Their nests are started in spring by a queen who has spent the winter sheltered in a crevice, leaf pile, or building. She chews plant material, mixes this cellulose with saliva, forms it into nest and nursery, and starts laying eggs. When the first workers emerge, they enlarge the nest, care for the larvae and queen.
Water Scavenger Beetles and their offspring prey on their smaller aquatic neighbors, the adults also scavenge, resulting in a food pyramid that includes decaying vegetation and dead animal tissue. They are, in turn, eaten by fish and targeted by many parasites.
Today’s episode is a rerun/rewrite of Crab Spiders from the early days of BOTW. The BugLady is not on vacation, but she wishes she were.
The present range of Hine’s Emerald (HEs) is limited to specialized habitats in Michigan, Missouri, Illinois and Wisconsin, but historically the species also flew in Indiana and Ohio. The UWM Field Station sits roughly midway between the northern Illinois and Door County, WI populations. HEs continue to show up near the Bog, sometimes, regrettably, as road kills. They are listed as a Federally Endangered species.
Short-horned Grasshoppers are found on poor soils, sand prairies, weedy roadsides and forest edges in a range that stretches through the Great Plains and southern Canada from north Texas to Idaho, east through the Great Lakes states and New England. Their populations tend to be “local”—found in small pockets of large areas—and both their numbers and their range may be increasing with recent droughts.
Dance flies get their name from the habit of males of some species to gather in large groups and dance up and down in the air in the hopes of attracting females. They can also be found hunting for small insects on and under vegetation in shady areas and on front porches at night.