As veteran BugFans will recall, there are a multitude of bugs out there that are pretty cute but that simply don’t have much information attached to them. In fact, there are around 100,000 species of insects in North America, and a lot of them don’t even have a common name.
Today’s two beetles are biters. There’s oodles of information about one of them, the sap beetle because its path intersects with ours regularly; the other is one of a legion of anonymous, gray, long-horned beetles.
The BugLady has been a fan of predators since she was old enough to lisp out the word. She likes the cuts of their collective jibs and their matter-of-fact fierceness. To her, the “eat-ers” are far more interesting than the “eat-ees.”
The BugLady had a professor years (decades) ago who used to say “Don’t just tell them what it is, tell them ‘What about it?’” Here is the second installment of miscellaneous bugs with brief biographies—insects about whom the BugLady can’t find many “What about it’s.”
Turns out that “cucumber beetle” is kind of a generic name for beetles (of several genera) that wander around on plants in the squash/melon/cucumber group. Today’s star, the Spotted Cucumber Beetle. Simply dining on plants is enough to attract exterminators, but SCBs pack a one-two punch. They also carry and spread bacteria that cause a “wilt” disease and a virus that causes a mosaic disease, either of which is worse for the plant than simply being chewed on.
The BugLady has many pictures of bugs about whom she is having trouble finding much information beyond their basic taxonomy, despite the glories of her home library and all the resources on the World-wide Web. Here is a batch of “Bugs without Bios.”
The Pole Borer can be found during warm months—even marginally warm ones—in/near woodlands in the eastern half of North America. It has the distinction of having been exported to Europe, arriving in Germany during WWI or possibly earlier. A female pole borer excavates clusters of holes in wood, probably using both ends, her mandibles and her ovipositor. She deposits a single egg per hole. The larvae start at ¼ inch and grow to 1 inch, chewing tunnels called galleries into crossties, telephone poles and structural wood and into trees that are already wounded and starting to decompose.
The BugLady’s advice for the day is: Find yourselves a big clump of goldenrod and start looking. Bring your camera. Bring a lawn chair. What will you see?
Dogbane Leaf Beetles are oval-ish, mostly measure less than a half an inch, come in bright colors, have un-spectacular antennae, smallish heads often shielded by a large-ish prothorax (first segment of the thorax), short legs, and domed elytra. The DLB’s incandescence is the result of the play of light on exceedingly small, tilted plates that overlay its pigment layer. Light bounces off both the pigment and the plates, and the colors change with the angle of the observer.
Hairy Rove Beetles are found during temperate months in woods east of the Mississippi and also across The Pond. There they mostly hide out under stuff—dead bark, rocks, leaf litter, dung and carrion. Most rove beetles are carnivores or scavengers as both adults and larvae, but a few species eat mushrooms and plant materials. The HRB is counted among the insect tools of Forensic Entomologists who determine post-mortem intervals.