{"id":4860,"date":"2011-03-15T11:17:16","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T16:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=4860"},"modified":"2017-05-29T21:14:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T02:14:53","slug":"bugs-without-bios-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/bugs-without-bios-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Bugs Without Bios II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Greetings, BugFans,<\/p>\n<p>The BugLady had a professor years (decades) ago who used to say \u201cDon\u2019t just tell them what it is, tell them \u2018What about it?\u2019\u201d Here is the second installment of miscellaneous bugs with brief biographies&mdash;insects about whom the BugLady can\u2019t find many \u201cWhat about it\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3>Flower Scarab<\/h3>\n<p>A beetle with a bunch of names&mdash;Flower scarab, Hairy Flower scarab\/beetle\/chafer, Bee-Like Flower Scarab. It\u2019s a scarab beetle in the small (8 species) genus <em>Trichiotinus<\/em>, and the BugLady thinks it\u2019s probably <em>T. piger<\/em>. <em>Trichos<\/em> means hairy in Greek, and <em>piger<\/em> means lazy. Bonus points to any BugFan who can figure out from the photo why this beetle wasn\u2019t moving very fast.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/500x500-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/500x500-1.jpg\" alt=\"500x500\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4861\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/500x500-1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/500x500-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/500x500-1-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This chunky, hirsute, diurnal beetle (SAT vocabulary review) lives east of the Great Plains. Like the Japanese beetle (also a scarab), its <em>elytra<\/em> (wing covers) are shorter than its abdomen, which makes it look like its slip is showing. Its flight is said to mimic bees, and its bumblebee-ish appearance on a flower protects it from some predators.<\/p>\n<p>Adults feed on leaves and on the nectar and pollen of flowers and trees, which they simultaneously pollinate. According to some references, their larvae (grubs) eat plant roots, moving from plant to plant underground until they are ready to pupate (which could take several years), and they can be pests on grains and nursery stock. Other sources say that the grubs feed on\/live in decaying wood (which would explain the habitat choice of their elders, in grasslands near woodlands).<\/p>\n<h3><em>Ichneumon ambulatorius<\/em><\/h3>\n<p>The BugLady was unable to scare up any common name for this lovely striped ichneumon; which was identified for her as <em>Ichneumon ambulatorius<\/em> (thanks, Chris). Females of this species have monochromatic legs, and males\u2019 legs are tri-colored. Ichneumons are a large and confusing conglomerate of families and subfamilies; the 90,000 (plus or minus) species of insects living north of the Rio Grande include more than 3,000 species of Ichneumons. <em>I. ambulatorius<\/em> appears on insect lists in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Ireland and Great Britain. It is often listed as a pollinater of cowbane, wild parsnip, and other parsnips.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/357x500-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/357x500-1.jpg\" alt=\"357x500\" width=\"500\" height=\"357\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4862\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/357x500-1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/357x500-1-300x214.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In general, the adult ichneumons are nectar-atarians and their larvae are parasites that feed on the innards or out-ards of the hapless insect on which their egg was laid. Ichneumons tend to be generalists&mdash;not picky about the insects they pick as hosts for their young. They are biological controls on other insects and some spiders; <em>I. ambulatorius<\/em> often lays its eggs on pest caterpillars.<\/p>\n<h3>Thick-headed Fly<\/h3>\n<p>The BugLady is far-sighted, and she loves editing pictures and finding insects that she didn\u2019t see when she took the shot. In this case, she was going for a flower portrait, from about a yard away, and later found this dynamite thick-headed fly (THF) (<em>Stylogaster neglecta<\/em> (probably). <em>Stylogaster<\/em> means needle tail; it\u2019s a small, select genus with only two species north of Mexico. Thanks for the ID, Mike; it does take a village. Check out Bugguide for a picture of a <a href=\"http:\/\/bugguide.net\/node\/view\/428115\">thick-headed fly<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/700x500.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/700x500.jpg\" alt=\"700x500\" width=\"500\" height=\"700\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4863\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/700x500.jpg 500w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/380\/2016\/12\/700x500-214x300.jpg 214w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>THFs are in the fly family Conopidae. Many are wasp-mimics. They use their long proboscis to feed on nectar, but their young are parasites on other insects like solitary bees, wasps, cockroaches, katydids, grasshoppers and crickets. A female THF intercepts her target in mid-air, holds it, grounds it, and jabs a barb-tipped egg between its abdominal segments. One source compared the female\u2019s ovipositor to a spear gun. There are reports of sub-tropical THFs following marauding bunches of army ants and grabbing insects that the ants flush into the air; researchers speculate that there would be a high egg mortality for this behavior since many of the parasitized insects would subsequently be eaten by the ants.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<em>The BugLady<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The BugLady had a professor years (decades) ago who used to say \u201cDon\u2019t just tell them what it is, tell them \u2018What about it?\u2019\u201d Here is the second installment of miscellaneous bugs with brief biographies&mdash;insects about whom the BugLady can\u2019t find many \u201cWhat about it\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[30,80,91],"class_list":["post-4860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week","tag-beetles","tag-flies","tag-wasps"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.4 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - 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