Do beetles get hangovers?

David Brady, over at Insect Picture of the Day has recently been looking at a carpet beetle, (here and here) and we've been wondering about the mouthparts.

I was (am still) interested in getting a clear picture of the face, so I've been searching for a new, live beetle. Dead ones don't work; they curl their faces inwards when they retract their legs; I can't even see the eyes.

If I have an infestation, it's not much of one. I even vaccuumed and went through the dust bag looking for a beetle, with no luck. But they may be coming in from outside; at least, I found a pair finally, by the back door.

They weren't a very cooperative couple; they seemed more interested in trundling around than in having their photo taken. When I put them on ice, they immediately, before I could even grab the camera again, retracted legs and face into slots and played dead.

Yesterday, with only one left alive (they don't do well under the heat of the lamp), I tried slowing him down with a drop of water. It worked, for a couple of minutes.

Ahhhh! I was so thirsty!

But as soon as he'd drunk his fill, he went to roaming around with renewed energy.

I gave him a few sugar crystals; he liked those.

What's this?

Mmmm. Tastes good!

Chomp, chomp, chomp. Lick, lick, lick. I like this!

This one's good, too.

I could see, under the lens, his little mouthparts working away. When I shook the lid he was in (by mistake) and the crystals rolled, he went with one, clutching it tightly, and went back to his feeding as soon as they landed.

Mine! All mine!

Now, the morning after, he's very lethargic. I think he overindulged.
.

Quiet morning, with plenty of company

Bug Season:
The weather has warmed up a bit in the last couple of days. We got some work done outside; pruned some bushes, pulled a few handfuls of weeds, moved a plant or two. The birds and bugs have been mostly quiet until now, but with the slight warmth they have come out of hiding. The chickadees have been at the feeder all day today, and mosquitoes are out for blood. Ripping up invading stems of dead nettle, I disturbed a nest of harvestmen (daddy long-legs); they took off running in all directions.

And a big cross spider, Araneus diadematus (I think), ousted Chica from her protected spot and guarded his own web there for two days. Last night, he moved; he started a large web anchored on Laurie's bike, the top of the garden wall and the screen door. When I stepped out in the morning, I walked right through it.

Spider web on my face. I hate that.

The central part of the web was intact; I exacted my revenge by setting up the tripod a couple of inches away and clicking at him. Finally, I removed the anchors from the bike and he scooted off, winding up the remains of his web in a ball as he went.

He's probably out there now, rebuilding.

While I had the camera and close-up lens outside, I went prowling. See what I found!

On the wall beside my bedroom window, a tiny brown moth, Scoparia biplagialis.

In a rolled up hydrangea leaf, a shy earwig:

Look at that jar-opener tail end!

Among the spores on a common "weed" fern, a leaf-hopper, so tiny that I didn't even notice it until I had the camera focussed. I think it's a privet leafhopper, Fiebriella. Around its feet, miniature orange bugs wandered here and there. I could barely see them with the naked eye. You can see one here, just a blurred spot of orange a bit to the rear of the leafhopper.

On another frond, I found a smaller hopper, whether a nymph of the same species or a different one, I don't know. And I think that's its cast-off molt beside it.

And finally, near Chica's new home high on the wall, a happy couple of lauxaniid flies:

I keep checking. No spiderlings yet in Fat Momma's web. How long is the incubation period? Anybody know? It's been three weeks already.

Rainbow Colours

Backyard Bugging:


First, in the daylight.

My hostas are blooming. They don't make much of a show; only one flower opens at a time, on each of a few stalks, while yesterday's droop and tomorrow's are still in bud. I grow them mainly for the leaves. Still, that one small flower is worth photographing.


Zooming in, I discovered that it is playing hostess to a party of ants.

I wonder: they don't seem to be going anywhere near the pollen. Do they have any role to play in the fertilization process? Or are they just opportunistic feeders?

On the wall, I discover another visitor; a tiny yellow fly, about the size of a fruit fly. From the rear, his abdomen looks like a miniature lemon.

And at night:

I was out checking on the American house spiders, and discovered this beastie on my patio doors. The photos were taken with a desk lamp (so the camera could find something to focus on) and the flash, looking from outside in.

First, just the plain bug. I'm not sure what it is yet; a green and red bug, with wings, about 1/4 inch long. Strong, defined markings, big black eyes, outlining on the head. Some kind of "toothed" edge to the body or wings at the bottom, barely visible in this photo, more evident in the next, if you click on it to get the full size.

Here he is, with his reflection in 2 double-glassed panels. Too bright in the flesh, progressively paler with each reflection. (And it looks like I need to be washing those windows again!)


And sometimes there's an advantage to the "El Cheapo" brand of digital camera; look what it did with a bit of conflicting light in the distance! Again, click on this to get the full effect.

I still don't know what this is, but for now, I'm calling it my "fire bug".

*Update: It is a rhododendron leafhopper, Graphocephala fennahi, the only graphocephala in the west. Thanks to Lynne, of Hasty Brook.

Silver wings, golden pouches

Boundary Park, Surrey: A small extension of the Watershed which we hadn't visited before. A tiny "lake" and a long stretch of semi-wooded green space between housing developments, mowed in lieu of paving a walk-way. The neighbours on each side mostly keep their backyards open to the space, and fill them with flowers. Beautiful!

Dragonflies by the lake.

White duck. Escapee?

Rabbit. White "cotton" tail, unusual markings.

And this from Crescent Beach, yesterday: a bumblebee with pouches of nectar.

Morning visitor

Found wanting out this morning:
A crane fly, Tipulidae, species unknown, male. (The females are thicker through the abdomen and have a pointy end for laying eggs underground; the males have assorted "grapplers" at the end of the tail. At least that's what they look like to me.

Instead of a second pair of wings, these flies have a pair of halteres, or knobs on short sticks, which help with steering in flight.

And no, they don't bite. I used to think of them as giant mosquitoes, and was slightly afraid of them. But they rarely eat at all as adults, and then only a bit of nectar. This guy was quite tame, and sat quietly unless I brought the camera too close; then he would shiver all over and squirm delicately an inch or so off to the side.
I love the sheen on those wings!

More pieces of the green bug puzzle

Hugh Griffith, of the Lulu Island Blog, left a comment on my last post, Aphid in Sheep's Clothing, suggesting that the woolly green bugs I have been trying to identify may be flatid pale green planthoppers.

The bug, in the nude, as I saw it on Wednesday.

Off I went, to research immature planthoppers. And some of the nymphs are woolly, just like woolly aphids. They have those funny little winglets. Some are even green. But none were quite like what I had.

I had put the tray of leaves and bugs outside on the patio. After I had looked at too many jpegs of planthoppers, I went out to look over the real thing again, and incidentally, to see if they had survived my manipulations. They had. But one looked different, even to the naked eye; the little brown winglets now looked larger, and white.

I brought it inside to the light and grabbed the camera right away. Which was fortunate, or I would have missed this:

First photo; about 2 minutes after I had discovered the change. The white wings are already larger. Note, on the left, the exoskeleton, with wool, that he had just vacated; I had caught him in the final moments of molting. His eyes and antennae are white, he's lost his goggles, that black tail end is gone, and now he has some sort of pale brown tubing at the rear.
A minute later; the wings are longer already. Having trouble with the lighting.


Barely another minute: now the wings are well beyond the tail structure.Wings straightening up. He now seems much larger than the little shell he came out of, just minutes before.
Total time, from first glimpse to final photo, about 5 minutes. After this, he just sat there. I went to look over the photos. When I came back, much later, after supper, etc., he hadn't changed much, except that the antennae were no longer transparent.


There is no trace of his previous eye and tail markings, although the body shape is similar, and he is still that brilliant green. The eyes, depending on the light, are now brownish or white.

I looked again, at photos of treehoppers. Most of them seem to have solid-colour wings, but there are a few similar to mine. He looks something like a whitebacked planthopper, which is present here in BC, but much greener. He resembles, in some ways, the Ormenaria rufifascia, from Florida, but without the orange head striping, and with paler, silvery wings.

So, I think I am dropping the idea of a woolly aphid, and running with an indetermined species of planthopper.*

And I am still left with the questions: why? What function, if any, does that woolly, waxy blanket serve? And does the planthopper exude honeydew, like the aphid? Because those leaves definitely became sticky; or is that due to the wax?

The more I learn, the more mysteries I find.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Update: The big guns have spoken.

Dr. Hamilton identified my photos on Bug Guide as Psyllidae, otherwise known as plantlice. So the breakdown goes: Insects (Insecta) » Winged Insects (Pterygota) » True Bugs, Cicadas, Hoppers, Aphids and Allies (Hemiptera) » Plant-parasitic Hemipterans (Sternorrhyncha) » Psylloidea » Psyllidae.

These insects (one of the planthoppers) are very "host specific" (Wikipedia); they feed on one species or a small group only. So it was important to note that I found these on alder. Googling Psyllidae and alder, and looking at another series of photos, both of nymphs and adults, I come up with Psylla alni as the closest match. Still not exactly the same, but near enough to know I am on the right track. Finally.

Phew!

And look at this stunning photo of a nymph of Psylla alni, under its coating of fiber! (Copyrighted.)

Aphid in Sheep's Clothing

I will never grow up. I am still asking small-child questions: "What is this?" "What does it do?" "Why?"

The green bugs Laurie brought me the other day have been keeping me busy. Google was little help, this time; I had nothing to go on, other than "green bug, alder, cottonwood". I posted my photos, such as they were, on Bug Guide; the next morning, a commenter said they looked like "woolly aphids". Back to Google, to research woolly aphids on alder.
First, I discovered that woolly aphids produce their own "blanket"; it is not cottonwood fiber, even though it looks similar, and is also coating leaves in the vicinity. Instead, it is a waxy substance that they exude from the anus, as other aphids exude honeydew.

I compared a cottonwood twig, with seeds and fiber, with the fiber from the bugs. The cottonwood was not quite as white, silkier to the touch and more "feathery". Fiber from the suspected aphids was sticky; cottonwood fiber was sticky only when it had already come into contact with the leaves where the bugs were. So that checked out.

But then I ran into problems. The woolly alder aphid is common in BC, is covered with a white, sticky fibrous blanket, migrates from maple to alder in early summer, and eventually covers the leaves with a sticky nectar which leads to the growth of a blackish mold. Check, check, check, check and check. Except that all the photos of woolly alder aphids without the coating were nothing like mine. Wrong colour, wrong eyes, wrong shape.
A close-up of my bug, shorn of its "wool". Note the little wings or wing covers; he beat those winglets, but never managed to fly with them. Also note the absense of visible mouth parts or pincers. And the "goggles"; black circles around the eyes, as though written on with a felt pen. The tail is black, but in two sections, with the rear-ward one being slightly greyer. You can see where the wool is produced; a small bit still sticks there. (Ignore that red fiber: it's a piece of my carpet.)

I looked at hundreds of photos of woolly aphids, of all sorts; none of the denuded bugs were anything like mine.

Could something else mimic these? Something that, under the disguising blanket, turn out to be another beast? A predator? A "wolf in sheep's clothing," in miniature?

In the New Westminster Library, I searched the indexes of insect books for "woolly aphid". Mostly, it wasn't there, or referred to one or two lines of text. But there was a new (to the library; it's from 2003) book: For Love of Insects, by Thomas Eisner. And it has 20 pages on woolly aphids, a mimic, and its interactions with the aphids and the ants that "farm" them.

The green lacewing larvae prey on woolly aphids. Some of these are known as "trash bugs"; they purposefully coat themselves with bits of debris, including food leftovers. Eisner discovered some of these that took the waxy fibers from the woolly aphids, and covered themselves with them, until they could pass for a large aphid themselves.

He pulled the covering off some of these, the same way I had with my bugs, and watched. They immediately set about covering themselves again, grabbing pieces and twisting around to place them on their spiked backs until they were completely disguised again. (I went back and looked at the bugs I had stripped the day before; they were also back to normal, sheep ready for the shearing.)

Ants are well known for their talents as aphid farmers. They will stand guard over their herd of aphids, protecting them from wasps and other invaders, including humans, and "milking" the aphids for honeydew by stroking them with their antennae. The woolly aphids also produce this honeydew, along with the wool, and are shepherded by ants for this purpose.

The green lacewing larvae escape the notice of the ants by stealing the waxy fibers from the aphids they will be preying on. Eisner and his staff stripped the larvae and placed them back in the colony of aphids; ants attacked them right away. Some they killed outright, others they carried away and threw off the branch. A few were eaten. But an ant that bit a larva coated with fiber got a mouthful, and retreated to clean himself off. After a few attempts, they ignored the larvae.

So: were my bugs lacewings? If so, it was odd that I hadn't seen any lacewing eggs anywhere; these are noticeable, because they lay them one at a time on top of a 1/2 inch stalk. To me, they would look at first glance like one variety of slime mold, which I keep a lookout for.

And none of the lacewing larvae looked anything like my bugs, either.

Besides, all the lacewing larvae that I could find, and all the descriptions, mention the large mouthparts , the "powerful jaws" "like ice tongs". My bugs have no visible mouthparts at all, no matter what position I prodded them into. And smooth bodies, with no spikes.

So, what are they? I still don't know. For now, I'm going with "woolly aphid". But not the woolly alder aphid, nor either of the two invasive woolly aphids here in BC, the woolly balsam aphid and the woolly hemlock aphid.

A "normal", non-woolly aphid, on another leaf from the same tree, for comparison purposes.

Weekly Five, and an update on the green bug

First, the bug.

I planned to send my photos to What's that Bug?, but when I went to the site, I found this announcement:

We're Swamped!!!!!!!

We've Returned
(05/29/2007) We were in Ohio between May 20 and May 29 and we returned to over 700 emails. Sadly, we can only answer a few.

There is such a thing as being too useful, I guess.

I loaded my photos, instead, on Bug Guide. Hopefully, someone will help with their identification. The real difficulty is that some of these creatures go through several different shapes and habits in the course of their life cycle. So that a nymph, which I'm thinking this guy is, may not look anything like his adult form, nor even live in the same environment.

Next: science links, the weekly five.

1. May as well give you Bug Guide's home page. Well worth just wandering around.
2. Astronomy picture of the day. Yesterday's was amazing; I was going to link to that. But today's is wonderful, too. I'm going to go back and browse the archives.
3. Sharks do too get cancer! On Junkfood Science.
4. Arctic ice caps reach tipping points. Scary, but a bit premature.
5. And GrrrlScientist passes on a report on Body Bugs. Denialism blog explains this in a more credible, less credulous fashion, in Folie a news. (Not to say that GrrrlScientist is credulous, but the producers of the report certainly were.)

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to look at those astronomy pics. G'night!

I'm stumped; what is this?

Laurie brought me home a treat, yesterday; the tip of a branch covered in bugs.

(Romantic, isn't it?) (It is, really; he knows what I like.)

The branch was from one of the "weed" trees along the street; an alder. And the tip was covered in tiny white fibers. At first glance, I said, "cottonwood". Disappointedly, because the cottonwood is spreading its "snow" everywhere this week; this was nothing new.

But, on principle, I checked it out with my hand lens. Cottonwood seeds and fibers. As I thought. But as I looked, one of those clumps of fiber started walking.
I looked more carefully and found three or four tiny green bugs, well camouflaged with cottonwood. I used the hook from a microscope set to remove the fibers one by one, which took quite some time, what with the fibers being sticky and the bugs walking away every time I touched them.

But I got one more or less cleaned off. Here he is, upside down and struggling, and then right side up.A weird little beetle, of some sort. 6 legs, long antennae, and stubby wing-like appendages on the sides. Pinkish eyes, and a black tail end.

What is this? I have never seen anything similar, especially with those stubby wings, which certainly wouldn't help him to fly underneath that cottonwood blanket.

These weren't the only residents on that branch; I found several aphids, large and small, a tiny pale fly, quite a few round eggs or egg cases too small to photograph, or even to see clearly. And a pretty green inchworm:
A tiny, tiny spider, very cute:For comparison, a paper clip:
That's the green bug and the spider. The paper clip is the standard office size.

The whole kit and kaboodle is outside again. I'm sure the green bug has gotten himself a new blanket by this time. And tomorrow, I'll write What's That Bug?

No time for a walk today, but ...

Looking up from my desk, I see:

Rhododendrons and bees.
Butterflies. A Swallow-tail, Papilo rutulus.
Just the butterfly. Who flew away when I took one step closer.
Rainbows, double.
And back to work.