Now you see me ...

Wednesday had been such a bright, summery day, and we'd spent it in traffic and malls. But we got home with maybe half an hour before the sun set and the chill returned, so I dashed across the street to the vacant lot, to get at least a taste of wildness into the day.

It had been raining off and on for days, so the ground was soggy and puddly. The plants, except for a dandelion and two fading daisies, were all dry stems and crumbled brown leaves. Only the goldenrods held some shape. I picked a handful and headed home; the sun had already dropped behind the evergreens to the west, and the wind was cold.

When I spread out the goldenrods at home, two spiders and a black stick that wriggled dropped out.

I posted the tiny jumping spider yesterday; here is the second:

Hunting spider, blending in to the shapes and colours of the goldenrod.

I tried to photograph the spider on the table; she wasn't interested, so I caught her and replaced her on the plants. Then I spent a good part of the evening looking for her. She was so perfectly camouflaged that I could look straight at her and not see her until she moved.

She's somewhere in here, but I can't see her. A few seconds after I took the photo, there she was, in plain sight.

Goldenrod flowerhead, now fluff, and seed with parachute.

The tiny stick that wriggled was about the size and colour of the seeds. Worse; it was clinging to a bit of the fluff, which made it look even more like a seed. But it was moving, slowly. I brought out the lens.

Bagworm moth larva, 5mm long, with only head showing.

It's a bagworm, the second I've seen. (Dahlica triquetrella, on a wall.) This one doesn't look like the same species, however; the body pattern is different, and instead of sand, it has chosen bits of the goldenrod to make its case.

Head end.

Bagworm moths live all or almost all their lives in these cases. Some species are parthenogenic; there are no males, and the females lay their eggs without needing fertilization. These females never leave their cases. Males of other species do, but only to find a female and mate; then they die.

Larvae hatch from eggs inside the mother's case, leave and immediately start building their own case, using materials and patterns specific to their species. The case has two openings; the head end, where the larva stretches out to walk about and to eat, and the tail, which allows the worm to excrete waste materials.

Some cling to walls or stone, where they eat lichen. Some hang from evergreen trees and eat the needles; a large infestation can seriously damage the tree. This one probably eats goldenrod leaves, and it seemed, watching it, that it was also eating the fluffy parachutes of the seeds. The leaves are dry and brown by now, anyhow. When it has eaten enough, it will pupate and wait out the winter in that state.

Making the case out of local material, in this case goldenrod fiber, helps to protect the moth by making it blend in to the background. Once I had replaced the bagworm on top of the goldenrod, and looked to see how it was managing, I couldn't see it at all.

I shook out a lot of the fluff and examined it, shaking it and blowing it about for a while, until I found a second larva.

4mm. Much more timid; by the time I'd brushed the seeds away from it, it had retreated into the case and refused to come out.

One last critter showed up in the pile of sorted fluff; a small ladybug, the eleven-spotted lady beetle, seemingly dormant. When I moistened the cloth she stood on, she woke, took a drink, groomed herself, struggled past the clinging seeds, and flew away.

Coccinella unidecimpuntata, 5 mm. long. Not camouflaged at all.

Angry larva

It's been a long, long time since I saw carpet beetles around home. Maybe they were just hiding out; I shampooed the carpets a couple of days ago, and this afternoon, I found a larva heading up the wall. I collected him, of course, and put him in a container with a pill of wool from my sweater for food. He should have been grateful.

He wasn't. He led me a merry dance tonight, when I tried to take his photo. See:

Carpet beetle larva, tail end.

He kept running away, even though I tempted him with a nice dead amphipod to eat. He wouldn't slow down, so I flipped him over with a paintbrush.

Belly up, and squirming.

He was fast; I had time for at the most one shot only each time I flipped him. Then he was up and running again.

I noticed something I'd never seen before; the larva was getting annoyed. Every time I put the paintbrush in front of his nose, he lifted up a bunch of tufts on his tail for a second or two, as a threat gesture. So I annoyed him even more, trying to get a photo of that. The best I could do was very blurred.

Angry larva, still running.

Now he's sulking in his jar; won't even touch his wool and yummy amphipod. Ungrateful wretch! I could have squashed him, couldn't I?

Spider-hunting wasp

I've said it before, and probably will again; this why I love blogging! On the first of my Rock Flipping Day posts, I showed a photo of a "fly" that I found underneath a rock. And a second photo that I captioned, "What made this?"

This morning, there was a comment on the post: "Your fly is a wasp. ...  Pompilidae, or spider-hunting wasps."

Of course, I looked up the Pompilidae. I found them on BugGuide, and studied the description. Among other characteristics I couldn't verify from my photos, there was this,

... the Pompilidae have the pronotum extending back to the tegulae, the pronotum thus appearing triangular when viewed from the side and horseshoe-shaped when viewed from above.

And sure enough, in my three-quarters view I could see the triangle. In the other, the horseshoe shape. I went on to read the section on food:

Larvae feed on spiders. In some groups the females sting and paralyze their prey and then transport it to a specially constructed nest before laying an egg; in others, leave the paralyzed spider in its nest and lay an egg upon it.

So this was why I found the wasp under a rock inhabited by two large spiders; it's either a new-hatched wasp, or a female looking for a spider to lay an egg in. (And the ones that needed to escape were the spiders, not the wasp, as I had supposed.)

There's more! I browsed through BugGuide's image pages, looking for this particular wasp; spider wasp with orange abdomen, black antennae. I found several, in Texas and Florida, probably not the same species as this one. And then, after a dozen or so pages, I started running into photos of clay or mud cases, the "nest" where a wasp would lay one egg, with a paralyzed spider for larva food.

They look like this one.

I found what appears to be the same species as mine, Priocnemis oregona, from Oregon to our south, and a match from Port Alberni, on Vancouver Island, northwest of here, classified as simply Prioncemis. There are no samples of egg cases for this species in the BugGuide pages, but these, from Tennessee are typical, although bigger than most. Some are closed, some open;, one even has a larva inside it.

So there we have it; a correction leads to the solution of a mystery.

Oh, and here's the spider that's potentially the next batch of larva food:

A bit bigger than the wasp, but stealth, speed and venom may best size.

Thanks, James!

Eyes and not-eyes: macros

I'm still experimenting with that new microscope. Such fun!

Optex 200x Digital Magnifier

This is the 'scope. There's more info in the London Drugs flyer. I found that it is very unsteady, tending to tip over from its own weight. The focus knob is in the middle of the barrel; when I remove my hand once the focus is right, the whole thing shakes and the focus is lost. I made a wood base for it and attached it firmly. That helps a lot, but the clamp on the barrel doesn't stay put, so I'll have to figure something out to fix that.

If the object is positioned right, and small enough, I can get up to 200x magnification. For larger objects, the distance has to be increased, and so far, I've only managed to focus up to 40 or 60x.

The lighting system works fine, except that at 40x or so, if the target is reflective, I get flare-outs around the edge.

Otherwise, I'm still trying to get the right settings for exposure and colour balance, etc. I'll get there, eventually.

These are a couple of today's test subjects:

A few days ago, on a fallen leaf, I found a tiny green leafhopper.

It was barely 4 mm. long (about 3/8 inch), including that extra length of wings. It was alive, but barely. Under the hand microscope (40x), the eyes were a beautiful, shimmery pale blue. I left it in a bottle to warm up, but it died soon after.

With the new microscope (200x), I looked at the eyes again. The pale blue light is gone. The eyes are deep blue-green now.

And I've put it back in its bottle. I'll try it again, later; maybe I can get a better shot.

The hopper lies still, at least. I put the little maggot from last week on the slide. It's still very much alive and busy; what a job it was to get a head shot!

The black lines are internal mouth parts. They are in continual movement, even when the maggot is otherwise still.

And here's a silly grin:

"Hi, there!"

No, I did not highlight these with blue marker. They are not eyes; this is the tail end of the maggot, and the circles are the spiracles, breathing holes.

More tomorrow.

Marine rescue, in miniature

What to do on another rainy day? Stay in, putter around, water the plants, cut Laurie's hair, look out at the rain and wonder if it will ever stop. I decided to clean out the aquarium; rain suggests watery tasks.

I found this larva on the sea lettuce.

Looks a bit worried, don't you think?

Something wasn't right; it looks like a maggot, not a marine organism. It didn't belong in the aquarium. It seemed a little lost, too; not swimming, but not holding on to the seaweed very carefully, either. I fished it out and looked it over.

As far as I can tell, it's some kind of fly larva, possibly house fly. Those "eyes" are at the tail end; they're spiracles, breathing holes. The front end is pointed, with dark mouth parts (throat structure and mouth hooks) visible through the flesh. It's about 1 cm. long, stretched out.

On the move.

Compare it to the larva of the Indian Meal moth I captured a couple of weeks ago:

Indian Meal moth larva

Same general shape and size, but the fly larva has those tweezer-like mouth parts. I checked the moth larva again; it's gone into the pupal stage in my little bottle.

Moth pupa, under webbing.

Even in this stage, it's bigger than the maggot.

I gave my rescued critter a choice; salt water, fresh water (in a paper towel), damp paper, or dry land. It chose the damp paper towel; it's wandering about on it now, nibbling here and there.

I don't know how it got in the aquarium, through the lid. It eventually would have drowned and been eaten by the hermit crabs. As it is, if it pupates and hatches out as a house fly, it will feed a spider, instead. I'm not very good with house flies.

Metamorphosis

It all started with the tulip trees.

It was a hot day, with the sun blasting down from a cloudless sky, so we were walking on the shady side of the street. On the grass under the trees.

Under the tulip trees, the grass was covered with leaves. And the leaves were covered top and bottom with a sticky liquid. They stuck to our shoes; they stuck to my fingers when I picked them up.


And every sticky surface was covered with aphids and small flies.

Section of the underside of a leaf.

On one of the fallen leaves, I found a ladybug pupa. I carried it home, leaf and all. (Some of the aphids left the leaf and crawled up my arm. They tickled.)

Asian Multicoloured Ladybug Beetle pupa. With aphid.

A ladybug larva was crawling on a fence post where I stopped to change the battery in my camera. I popped it in the empty battery bag and brought it home, too.

Hallowe'en colours.

I photographed both my catches quickly, then put the sticky leaf with the pupa outside. The larva worried me, though; it was hunching itself up in an odd position; I thought the heat from the lamp was bothering it, and set it aside to rest in a pill bottle with a damp rose leaf and an aphid or two for food.


I found out later, from BugGuide, that this is the normal pre-pupating posture. And sure enough, this morning, the rose leaf held a bright orange pupa where the larva had been.


If I had known, I would have watched it all night, if need be. Next time.

Funny how the colours morph; where the larva had orange, the pupa is black. Where the larva was black the pupa is orange.

This pupa was quite different than the previous one; smaller markings, a paler orange. This afternoon Laurie and I were comparing them; the time was just before 3:00 P.M.

I looked at them again at 5:30, and this is what I saw on the tulip leaf:


Now there's a pale, lemon-yellow dome, still wet-looking and almost transparent, on the side of the pupa casing. The adult ladybug is out!


Click on this to see it full size: you can see the split where the ladybug emerged. I don't know how it got that big dome out the small crack. The adult is not entirely free, yet; the pupa is still twitching, faintly, at the top where the split is. I can't see a head.

The elytra (the wing covers) look like a regulation hard hat. Or from the side, like a semi-transparent half-grapefruit.

Nothing much happened for ten minutes. Occasionally, a leg unfolded, then tucked itself away again. But then, the "hard hat" shifted sideways, and two wide eyes stared out at me.


More resting, with occasional small changes in position. Another 15 minutes went by. The movement in the pupa stopped. Then, the ladybug drew itself up to full height, away from the pupa, ...


... and marched down the leaf and away. 6:00 P.M.

Wow! What a big world!

It has the usual markings of an Asian Multicoloured: the W, however sketchy, on the pronotum. But I'd never seen a yellow one before, much less a yellow ladybug with no spots. Very pretty.

The pupal casing remained, standing straight up on the leaf. It is there now, although it is wrinkly and black by this time.


And the second pupa (the ex-larva) is still on the rose leaf, still that light orange. I wonder; the darker, more heavily marked pupa produced this marvel of delicate lemon custard; what will the next one be like?
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Handy-dandy larva ID guide

In the comments on my last post, about a mystery larva, Christopher Taylor contributed a handy rule of thumb that merits bookmarking. So I've given it a post of its own. Here he is:

"Quick (and not universally reliable) guide to identifying insect larvae: fly (Diptera) and Hymenoptera larvae both lack legs, but Hymenoptera larvae are generally confined to a nest and aren't out and about like fly larvae. Beetle and Lepidoptera (caterpillars) larvae both have six legs, but caterpillars have prolegs (leg-like stumps) in the back while beetle larvae don't. Lacewing larvae (such as antlions) have six legs and no prolegs like beetles, but can be distinguished from beetles by their enormous mandibles. The head of antlions also attaches to the first segment of the thorax very low down, which gives them something of a "flip-top head" appearance."

Thanks, Christopher!

I don't know where to start ...

... to identify this.


I was sitting at my daughter's computer, staring at the wall, when I saw movement. A spot of cream, barely lighter than the wall, that's all it was. But it was crawling.

I got out the camera and took a few quick photos first. Then I reached for the desk lamp to turn it around to shine on the wall. When I looked back, my spot of cream had left. I couldn't find it again.


These are the two photos that turned out, blown up to their maximum size. The bug would be barely a millimetre or two long, I think.

I think it's a larva of some kind, but what kind? Where do I start looking?

Help!
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Blanket on a stick

Every so often, I disover that I've been looking at something for a long time, but never really seeing it. Cattails, for example. They're those tall fluffy stalks in the swamp that the redwing blackbirds perch on just until I get the camera focused. And that denote a place too wet to walk without boots. That's it.

Blind as a bat.

Six weeks ago, on The Marvelous in Nature, Seabrooke wrote about Shy Cosmet moth larvae that spend the winter cosily snuggled inside a cattail head. She had brought a couple home and shredded them into a tub. Sure enough, she found a larva.

According to BugGuide, the Shy Cosmet doesn't live here on the West Coast, but the moths are smart; cattail fluff does make wonderful insulation. I promised myself to see if anything was taking advantage of it in our marshes.

Pillows of fluff.

I brought home a cattail head the next time I found one I could reach. Seabrooke (and Gerry Wykes) write that these larvae make a net of fine threads around the head, so that when it blows open, the seeds and fluff stay put, making a lumpy "cotton candy" blob. I forgot all that, and picked a nice, neat head that wouldn't fall apart in the car.

At home, I propped it in a bottle on the table and left it for later. I glanced that way after a while, and saw a head poke out, briefly. Aha! It's alive!

I put the cattail in a Tupperware dish and cracked it open, gingerly. Nothing but packed fluff. I pinched a bit and pulled.

Mistake. The fluff exploded. Fine, baby-hair-fine, downy fibers flew all over my desk, over my keyboard, in the air around my head, in my hair, in my nose. I sneezed. I had to clean out the air intake on the computer, and dust off the screen.

Fluff. With tiny seeds; that's what the larvae eat.

I went at the rest more cautiously, holding the bowl inside a large plastic bag, which was soon filled with fluff. When I took my hands out, more fluff came with it. I pulled out the bowl, carefully, sealed the bag and left that for later.

With a sheet of glass over the bowl, I could look for larvae safely. And there were dozens, all very active, about 3 or 4 mm. long.


These look very much like the one Seabrooke found. And like Gerry's handful. Maybe the Shy Cosmet has found its way out here, after all.

I didn't know what to do with the larvae after I'd looked at them. I put most of them back in the fluff, but kept a few to look at later; they went outside, with a tight lid on the container. Life got busy around then, and I forgot about the bugs.

All that fluff; what to do with it? Maybe the birds would like it for insulating nests. An old, broken-down birdhouse hangs on the wall; the juncos used to use it as a perch and feeder until the snowstorm a year ago turned it upside-down, but since then, it has been empty. It would be dry and accessible. I stuffed it full of fluff, packing it in through the door.

This last Friday, a bushtit was collecting cattail fluff. For a baby blanket, I hope.

Fuzzy photo; I was rushing to get it before she left.

I went out tonight and brought in the dish of left-over fluff and larvae. Three of them are still there, very much alive. There aren't too many seeds left, though; tomorrow I'll give them a pinch of stuff from the bird house.

Come to think of it, the bird house is probably packed tight with larvae.
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Detective turns up a blank

It all started when Laurie's favourite potted yew turned brown. We had already lost a couple of small evergreens to borer beetles, so I searched the plant for insect life. In the detritus on top of the soil, I found a small grub, no bigger than a rice grain.

It wasn't a borer beetle, but what was it? I stashed it in a plastic box, photographed it, and went browsing through BugGuide.

The closest thing I could find was the larva of a syrphid fly, an aphid eater. A good bug to have around. But I couldn't really be sure; there were no syrphid larvae with the markings of mine.

A foggy photo, but it shows the elegant markings on the top and sides. The end towards the tip of the leaf is the head.

To confirm that it was, indeed, an aphid eater, I collected a good handful of assorted leaves from my garden, making sure that I had included several aphids. These went in the box with the grub.

I kept checking, but never saw it eating. 5 days later, I found that it had pupated.


This confirmed, to me, that it was some sort of fly. The pupa has the same two "periscopes" towards the tail that a fruit fly pupa has. I waited and watched.

10 days later, after a day when I had been too busy to check, I opened the box. The fly had hatched, unfortunately at the wrong time. It was barely alive; I gave it air and a droplet of water, to no avail. Within the hour, it was dead.

It looked like a wasp. Skinny abdomen, black with yellow stripes. I labeled my photos "mini wasp". But it was still barely the size of a grain of rice.


I went on a long detour, searching through all BugGuide's wasps. Nothing like this guy.

I went back to look at their syrphid larvae, and there was a photo of an adult fly; big eyes, a black skinny abdomen with yellow, wasp-like stripes.

So there it is; a hover fly, a syrphid, Platycheirus. And I can tell Laurie that I don't know what's bothering his yew.

Great help I am!