The Goldenrod Leaf Miner is listed as “common” over most of the U.S. and into southern Canada (the BugLady has apparently been overlooking it all this time). The GLM is a small, rugged-looking beetle with pitted thorax and elytra and flashy red-orange racing stripes. They are found on goldenrods, often nestled in the dense vegetation of the goldenrod bunch galls at the top of the stem.
Prasocuris vitatta habitat needs often involve sunny wetland edges in the eastern half of North America where members of the buttercup family grow, and they’re also found on the introduced Common/meadow/tall buttercup that grows along roadsides and woodland edges.
Imported Willow Leaf Beetles are northern European natives that reached our shores in 1915; they’re common in the eastern half of the U.S. and north into Canada. Adults overwinter in bark crevices or on the ground in leaf litter, and they leap into action when trees begin to leaf out.
The BugLady dedicates Bugs without Bios episodes to insects about whom, despite all the words that are floating around out there, she can discover only a little information.
The Colorado Potato Beetle (aka the Potato bug) is among the 10 insects that everyone should know. Gardeners from California to Florida to Nova Scotia to British Columbia certainly know it. CPB adults and larvae feed on the leaves of plants in the Potato family, which includes potatoes as well as tomatoes, nightshade, peppers, eggplant and other secondary targets.
Adult Red Milkweed Beetles eat milkweed leaves, buds, and flowers and they can get away with being red and black in a green world because milkweeds are toxic, and so, therefore, are RMBs, and red and black are aposematic (warning) colors. Apparently, there are some “primitive” species of Tetraopes that are not “locked into” toxic host plants and that have less a conspicuous coloration.
In lieu of the usual bug biography, the BugLady presents The Twelve Bugs of Christmas—a tribute to a dozen insects (a Baker’s Dozen, really) that were photographed this year but not featured in a BOTW. Let the singing commence.
Members of the leaf beetle family Chrysomelidae (more than 1,700 species north of Mexico) are often named after the plants they specialize on. The Swamp Milkweed Leaf Beetles prefer Swamp milkweed, but they’re found on other milkweeds as well. Multiple eggs are laid under milkweed leaves; multiple larvae hatch out and feed together on milkweed leaves for a while before going their separate ways. Adults also feed on milkweed, enjoying both the leaves and the flowers.
Blister Beetles belong in the beetle family Meloidae, a family that contains about 400 species in North America and 3,000 species worldwide. Here in the Eastern side of the country, these mostly diurnal, medium-sized, wide-headed, long-legged, cylindrical beetles are often striped, spotted or drab in color. Their soft elytra (wing covers) are curved around the length of the abdomen but may not extend to its tip.
Long-horned Beetles are a bunch of often-brightly-colored beetles of all sizes that may sport astonishingly-long antennae (horns). There are more than 10,000 (maybe more than 20,000) species of long-horned beetles worldwide, and about 1,000 of those occur in North America. The larvae of some species get into mischief by boring in trees, whether living or lumber.