Home Bug Garden: Austral Version

Toothed White Banded Moth

There is a land far, far away, where the summers are as long as an Alberta winter and the winters as mild as an Alberta summer. Once, long ago, I inhabited such a dreamland. I was content with the land, if not the job, but the Home Bug Gardener's other half was content with neither and longed for the cold, dark whiteness of the North. White is a funny shade: it reflects all light and so seems to dominate the mind. For example, the large Toothed White Banded Moth Donuca orbigera (Guenée, 1852) above is more brown than white, but is not known as the 'brown-banded white moth'. It is related to the Alberta Underwing Moths (Noctuidae: Catocalinae) and the Fruit-piercing Moths that are such pests here. Larval hosts for the caterpillars of this moth are apparently unknown, but may possibly be trees in the genus Acacia.

Glasswing or Little Greasy Butterfly

Sometimes white can fade away to nothing but a smear (or a mess, as in the Alberta thaw) as with the Glasswing or Little Greasy Acraea andromacha (Fabricius, 1775). For some reason, the scales are shed from the front wings of this Nymphalidae butterfly (related to the Monarch, Painted Ladies, Satyrs - but in a different subfamily - Acraeinae). Caterpillars feed on the leaves of Passionfruit vines (Passiflora) and Spade Flower (Hybanthus spp.). Believe it or not, Spade Flowers were once put in the genus Viola and are still retained in the Violet family.

A Spade Flower, possibly Hybanthus enneaspermus 

Not all Queensland butterflies are white or greasy (although some Papilionidae also have transparent front wings). Most are quite spectacular, for example the Common Eggfly  Hypolimnas bolina (Linnaeus, 1758).

Male Eggfly showing eggs in wings

This is another Nymphalidae and in the nominate subfamily. It is a large butterfly and the males patrol territories about 30m long on gravel roads and trails in the hereabouts (near Miva, Queensland). The upper surfaces are brilliantly iridescent purple in the sun.

A female Eggfly, Sunshine Coast Hinterlands version

In contrast, the female is spectacular too, but looks nothing like the male. Here in the Sunshine Coast Hinterlands, she may be trying to look like a cross between a Lesser Wanderer and an Orchard Swallowtail. I don't know, but the female morph varies geographically and tends to look like distasteful crows (Euploea - another genus of Nymphalidae).

Love Flower  Pseuderanthemum variabile

In Queensland, the Eggflies use a plant with a vaguely violet-like flower as their primary host - the Love Flower Pseuderanthemum variabile. Although these plants look a bit like violets and grow on the forest floor, they actually belong to the family Acanthaceae. You can watch the females seemingly ovipositing in the ground near the plants. Or, perhaps, they are just practicing. In Australia, one must always test one's assumptions.

A Dainty, Dingy or Small Citrus Swallowtail

For example, consider the butterfly family Papilionidae, better known as Swallowtails. Above is a female of Papilio anactus Macleay, 1826. This butterfly goes by a number of nome de plumes, but I prefer 'Dainty'. But 'swallowtail' wherefore art thou? Clearly this 'swallowtail' is laying eggs on the orange tree out back, but swallowtail seems to be stretching a point. In Australia, it is always a good idea to leave your preconceptions behind, if visiting from a more northern locale.

Tuesday Flutterby: a Mourning Cloak for BugGirl

Portrait of a Mourning Cloak Nymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758)

The Home Bug Garden sputtered to a start on Monday 13 April 2009 for a number of reasons, mostly omphaloskeptic, but also with some inspiration from my friend Adrian who had a host of blogs and, in particular, his now defunct Gardening Zone 3b. I originally wanted to call my blog "Bug Gardeners for Bush", but Adrian convinced me that any point I might be trying to make was now moot (and definitely strange). So, I settled for a name that, if not deluded with hope and change, was at least to the point and I've tried to maintain a skeptical but positive view of the value of bugs in the home garden ever since. 

My least crappy picture of a Mourning Cloak

Preaching to one's belly button about the wonders of insect life in the garden is not that easy, especially when you discover a bit of lint in the form of prized plants turning into bugs, but it hasn't been just navel-gazing that has kept me going. It seems I share a love of insects with a large community of bloggers, many of whom are listed in the sidebar For the Bugs. Foremost among those in their influence on me have been Myrmecos and BugGirl, sort of the alpha and omega of bug blog nerdery. Even though I still don't have a decent picture of a Mourning Cloak Butterfly, thanks to the inspiration of Myrmecos' unfailingly fine images, Thrify Thursday, and the Compound Eye I sometimes take a point-and-shoot that is more than just a poor record of a bug. Thanks to BugGirl, I rarely rant, for who wants to be a second-class bug-ranter?

Mourning Cloak chrysalis - not art, but slightly more than a record

I still remember the day I first stumbled across BugGirl's Blog - a wonderful rant about green potatoes. Not just an entertaining rant, but chock-full of good information and with bug poop for dessert. I've been back several times a week ever since. Alas, after 8 years of developing probably the best known of all bug blogs, BugGirl has now gone into diapause. Bugger! Where am I going to go for bug-rants now? Well, at least diapause is a pause and not necessarily an ending. Sometimes even crap can be an element of a successful diapause. So, I'll end on a hopeful note and an image that, while it would probably make Myrmecos shudder, BugGirl might enjoy: a Mourning Cloak taking what comes along and using it with every intention of surviving until next spring.

This picture sucks as an image (but has some good natural history information)

Thursday Flutterby: Willows, dead leaves & hail

Migrating Yellow Warbler playing peekaboo in willow

The first sign of the coming Fall in the Home Bug Garden is usually some yellow in the trees. Around the middle of August, year after year, small yellow warblers start to flit around the willow, apple, and lilac growing around the pond and bird bath. Mostly these are Yellow Warblers (Setophaga petechia). At our place in the country, where water and willows abound, Yellow Warblers are present throughout the summer. At the city-mired Home Bug Garden, though, we only see them in transit, the first of the wave of southbound migrants and a reminder of yellow leaves to come.

Green Comma Polygonia faunus - a harbinger of dead leaves to come

Another willow aficionado also showed in mid-August this year: the Green Comma (aka Faun Anglewing) Polygonia faunus. The 'green' seems to refer to the narrow lichen-green marks near the margin of the underside of the hind wing (barely visible in the picture above). I think this is  male and perhaps hopeful that a agreeable female may also find the willow attractive. But if so, he will have a long wait - until next spring. In a month or so, he will have to find a place to hibernate amongst the fallen leaves. Meanwhile he enjoys the sun, when it shines, and whatever tasty bits of ooze he can find (these butterflies are not much interested in flowers).

The upper, much more lively side of the Green Comma

I'm pretty sure this butterfly is a Green Comma, that is I have talked myself into the identification and don't expect to be embarrassed by a real lepidopterist. But the Commas (from the silvery smile on the underside of the back wing) or Anglewings (from the jagged wing edges) are a difficult group with a number of very similar species in Alberta. For example, the Satyr Comma below.

Satyr Comma Polygonia satyrus near a nettle patch in the country.

The differences between the two species are subtle, but I have great confidence in this identification because specialists who actually work on the Satyr Comma agree with me. Its dead-leaf costume mixes into the gravel much better than on a green willow,  but shows its close relationship to the green Comma, as does its slurping up ooze

Satyr Comma with prominent comma and no green flecks

Although they may look alike, and act alike, these two butterflies function very differently as larvae. Caterpillars of the Green Comma feed on trees, especially birch, alder, and willow. The Home Bug Garden has birch and willow. The Satyr Comma's larvae, however, feed mostly on Stinging Nettle.  We tried nettle, but it is too painful for a home garden; however, they are supposed to also like hops, of which we have a bit. The hops is looking a little seedy after this afternoon's hailstorm, but perhaps next year a Satyr Comma will give it a go.

Hail storm - a spring, summer, fall aspect of the Home Bug Garden

I just want to bee ... a butterfly

Point-and-shoot dramatized Mourning Cloak chrysalis

This is just a quick post to point out the Update for the identifications for last weekend's backlight trapped moths and a chance to put another nail in the 'I just want to bee ...' series. Here's two examples of a chrysalis of the Mourning Cloak butterfly Nymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758), also snapped last weekend. The top one is from my point-and-shoot Lumix DMC FZ28 with its OK macro and terrible flash. I was trying to follow Alex Wild's maxim and make the best of its limited features. I think I did okay, but the viewer will be the judge.

Chrysalis of Nymphalis antiopa (Linnaeus, 1758) Mourning Cloak

The second shot is my wife's Nikon D70 in action. Both shots were difficult and involved lying on the ground and shooting up under the runners of a cabin, but the latter is the better image for documentation, especially in its full size (cropped to the essentials) 11.2 mb vs the Lumix 2.84 mb. However, to-date, neither camera nor photographer has been able to capture a decent image of the too flighty adult Mourning Cloak.

The Colour of Nightmares: Goldenrod Triptych

An unhinged triptych of trophic interactions

Goldenrod (Solidago spp.) in bloom, a cornucopia for the Home Bug Garden arthropods, always makes me feel a little sad but less sodden: the floods and hail of summer will soon be sliding into the green tomatoes and frosts of September. Still, it is cheering to see a dozen or more different species feeding on and at the goldenrod on a sunny summer afternoon. Pollen and nectar are the major attractions, but the Goldenrod Crab Spider Misumena vatia (Clerck, 1757) is there to feast on visitors like the unfortunate Striped Hairstreak Satyrium liparops (Le Conte, 1833) above.

Striped Hairstreak in happier times looking a bit brown

I suppose, technically, the Striped Hairstreak is a pest - its larvae will feed on cherry leaves, buds, and young fruit. But it is never very common and a few cherries are a small price to pay for such a pretty little butterfly.

Same hairstreak looking more lilac

This hairstreak seems to vary in colour from moment to moment from rather brownish underneath to a more purplish hue, depending on how the light is reflected from the scales on its wings. But its nemesis is the real colour artist, changing its pigment chemistry when it chooses a yellow flower as a lair.

Goldenrod Crab Spider in its natural hue

The yellow colour change of the Goldenrod Crab Spider takes several days to accomplish, so it probably started on a nearby Heliopsis helianthoides that began blooming a week ago.

Male Goldenrod Crab Spider

Males of the crab spider are smaller, darker, and don't seem to indulge in colour change. Possibly this is because a peripatetic lifestyle, wandering from flower to flower in search of females, precludes spending much time on any one flower.

Phalangium opilio Linnaeus, 1758

The third member of our unhinged triptych is a well-travelled harvestman. Although some people seem to find these daddy-long-legs creepy, they are harmless to butterflies and to people. They feed on small insects, pollen, and dead things. I suppose the one at the top may be dreaming of cold butterfly corpse for dinner, a fitting end to our food web.

References:

Defrize J, Théry M, Casas J. 2010. Background colour matching by a crab spider in the field: a community sensory ecology perspective. Journal of Experimental Biology 213: 1425-1435.

Defrize J, Lazzari CR, Warrant E, Casas J. 2011. Spectral sensitivity of a colourchanging spider. Journal of Insect Physiology 57: 508-513.

Insausti TC, Defrize J, Lazzari CR Casas J. 2012. Visual fields and eye morphology support color vision in a color-changing crab-spider. Arthropod Structure & Development 41: 155-163.

Riou M, Christidès J-P. 2010. Cryptic Color Change in a Crab Spider (Misumena vatia): Identification and Quantification of Precursors and Ommochrome Pigments by HPLC. Journal of Chemical Ecology 36:412–423.

Of Sloughs and Sogginess

Weather 1, Home Bug Garden 0

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you may have noticed that I tend to complain about the weather. Well, the weather, House Sparrows, and noisy neighbours, in about that order. Last night we had really noisy weather and neighbours: first the thunder, lightning, and deluge (3rd of the last week) and then car alarms blaring from 3 am until I dragged myself up to go to work at 5. When I realized I would need hip waders to get to the train, and that the cars bobbing around in the street were the source of the unending alarms, I stopped feeling angry at the neighbours and went and looked at my basement.

What does a 6-legged basement spider do in a flood?

What I saw was water and a sad spider, missing half its legs on one side, clinging to the basement wall above the wet. Not being able to claim I was missing a quarter of my limbs, it was time to start bailing and mopping. After Mrs HBG explained to the TV crew that we live in what used to be a slough, she put on her gum boots and slogged off in search of a train. I bailed and mopped and moped and then curled up on the dry spot on the bed (did I mention that the cat peed on the bed last night?) and dreamt I was in Queensland (where much worse floods occurred last year).

A pair of Perplexing Half-Black Bumble Bees ignoring the rain

And when I awoke, if not refreshed, at least dry, rather than continue to mope, I learned two new bugs from before the deluge. The first, Bombus perplexus, is a tentatively welcome addition to the Home Bug Garden. They do have a bit of a reputation for being aggressive, but so far they haven't bothered me. Unfortunately, they are very similar to the Half-black Bumble Bee Bombus vagans, so a bit of an id challenge.

Red Turnip Beetle Entomoscelis americana

The second is very colourful, but a pest, but not the pest I feared: the Lily Beetle. The HBG sports a number of lilies including a native, but mostly aliens raised from seed, donated by friends, or on found sale at a nursery. I never thought I'd become a lily lover, but they do have their charm.

Lily raised from seed awaits the deluge

Instead of a Lily Beetle, the HBG sported a Red Turnip Beetle. These eat crucifers such as cabbage and canola, and given how yellow with canola the countryside is at the moment, it is surprising that we haven't encountered them before. I suppose I will need to keep watch over my kohlrabi, but I know the worms of the Cabbage White will get them first, so why worry.

Bad, bad broccoli worm

Thursday Blue Butterfly

Puddling Silvery Blue

It's always nice when an insect lives up to its name and the small blue butterflies now common around fields with Wild Vetch and Creamy Pea Vine are called Silvery Blues Glaucopsyche lygdamus (Doubleday, 1841). The males are more silvery and, perhaps, more likely to be seen, since they patrol the areas around the plants that their caterpillars would like to eat.

Silvery Blue exposed

The reason that butterflies, and especially male butterflies, may be found sipping mud rather than flowers (a behaviour called: puddling) is a bit obscure, but seems to be somewhat similar to taking vitamin pills in humans. Essential nutrients and salts not overabundant in the larval food, mostly plants, may be present in wet soil or less savory (to us) wet organic substrates. Males have a hard life flying back and forth, chasing away other males, and chasing females, so a puddle of mud may be a pleasant and invigorating break.

Silvery Blues are grey and spotted underneath

The reason for the often striking differences between the upper and lower wing surfaces of many butterflies is a bit obscure too, but one reason is most likely obscurity. It is easier to blend into a background when not boldly coloured, especially if the colour can suddenly disappear with the fold of the wings. Flashing the upper colours may also be useful to startle enemies, tell other males to get lost, and advertise one's beauty to the opposite sex.

Nectering is good for the vetch, but leaving behind eggs, maybe not so good

Energy for all the fluttering activity comes mostly from nectar and the butterflies may pay the plants back for their sugary rewards by transferring pollen. However, this Wild Vetch might much rather be pollinated by one of the bumble bees or carpenter bees that also were visiting, because the larvae of the Silvery Blue feed on assorted wild legumes such as this vetch. As the caterpillars feed they secrete a sugary substance that is very attractive to ants. The ants become addicted to their tasty reward and vigorously defend the larvae against other insects, including parasitoids. That seems a pretty exceptional life history, but if you look closely enough at any insect and you are likely to find equally unexpected and fascinating stories.

Lament for a lost Spring

A pair of difficult genera

Winter descended on Edmonton again last week and is still sticking around. I admit Spring was mostly illusion, but nice while it lasted. The jackrabbits, spring bulbs, trees, and bugs weren't fooled, but I gladly deluded myself. Well, no winter bugs this week, so time to reminisce. Here's a pair of tough bugs. Well, clearly a butterfly and a damselfly, and clearly the butterfly is a Crescent and I think the battered old female from last August is a Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos (Drury, 1773)). But as noted before, telling a Pearl from a Northern Crescent is no easy job, and in fact they may be the same species.

Putative Northern Bluet eating midge

The damselfly is a male and a Bluet and probably a Northern Bluet Enallagma cyathicerum (Charpentier, 1840). Unfortunately, colour patterns of Boreal and Northern Bluets are very similar including the large blue post ocular spots. Both occur in ponds and lakes in central Alberta and fly from spring into August. Only a good view of the male claspers can differentiate them with certainty.

Male and female Northern or Boreal Bluets

2 for 1: Wednesday Wild Flower + Pollinator of the Week

Two for the price of one: Purple Peavine & Greenish Blue

Purple Peavine, aka Purple Vetchling, Veiny Pea (Lathyrus venous), stretches across North America to just barely make it into central Alberta, but I'm glad it does. A relative of the domesticated Sweet Pea (Lathyrus odorous), but without the selection for large and fragrant flowers, it still makes a fine wildflower.  Disjunct populations also occur on the West Coast; so perhaps, some earlier inhabitants of Alberta also liked these peas and took them with them on their wanderings.

Greenish Blue Plebejus saepiolus from above

The Greenish Blue (Plebejus saepiolus) is just one of the bewildering diversity of tiny 'Blues' that occur in Alberta including the Spring Azure, Western Tailed-Blue, Silvery Blue, Arctic Blue, Rustic Blue, Northern Blue, Acmon Blue, and so on. Every now and then we see enough characters to be reasonably sure of identity, but not often.

Mystery Blue

The caterpillars of the Greenish Blue feed on clovers (Trifolium spp.). Since Alberta has no native species of clover (the closest 'native' species occur in Montana and British Columbia), I suppose that means we owe our Greenish Blues to introduced, 'weedy' clovers. Most true clovers aren't really very weedy, but several are important crops and all a good source of nectar and pollen for bees and other pollinators. So, I prefer to think of clovers as nascent Albertans.

Red Clover - not a 'native'

Wednesday Wild Flower: It rhymes with hurtica

Urtica dioica

The very first 'wildflower' transplanted to the Home Bug Garden was a bit of root that fell out of a soil core. Rather than let the unknown root die, my wife brought it back and stuck it in a new bed along the walkway in the side yard. Next spring some interesting looking leaves sprouted and we anxiously awaited flowers so we'd have some idea of what we had. However, while weeding the bed, I was able to identify the new plant by the unpleasant stinging sensation in my hands.

Yes, nettle has flowers

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) isn't an unattractive plant, but it's flowers don't seem to inspire the lyrical joy of many other wildflowers. After brushing against our rapidly going bundle of nematocysts one too many times I donned the leather gloves and grubbed it out.

Milbert's Tortoiseshell caterpillars feed on Nettle

If I'd planted it in the back of the garden rather than next to a sidewalk, I may have let it thrive. Actually, I'm a bit sorry I didn't move it to the back of the garden. After all, it is an important food for many caterpillars that turn into attractive butterflies. The young shoots are edible, and reputedly make a tasty pot herb. Also, a friend of ours made wine from the flowers - and the taste was interesting (although after a couple of tastes, the rest went into a stew). Well, maybe some day we will try a patch.

Hornworm or what a hummingbird moth looks like before its metamorphosis

Back in 2005, the year after the Home Bug Garden got its first major additions of expensive perennials (and the year after most were striped half bare of leaves by the hail from the two '1 in 200 year storms'), our new flowers were visited by several Hummingbird Clearwing Moths (Hemaris thysbe Fabricius, 1775). The moths proved too fast for our cameras, but other photographers at BugGuide have posted several excellent pictures. The day-flying moths look more like giant bumblebees to me than hummingbirds, but they can hover very well and are the right size for hummers.

A few weeks later, we were aghast when we noticed two inch-long green horned-devils stripping our struggling highbush cranberry and nannyberry bushes. Urr, arghh - the first real challenge to our pretense of gardening for bugs. We decided on a compromise in this first skirmish and deported half the caterpillars to outside the yard to fend for themselves and let the other half feed away to pupation. It turns out we need not have worried so much about our highbush cranberries - all but one scraggly survivor have been destroyed by another day-flying moth, Synanthedon fatifera, the viburnum crown borer. The adults appear to be mimicking a spider wasp in this case. The caterpillars bored in the crowns of our highbush cranberries killing a third to a half of the canes each year until I had to grub out what rotten bits of persistent crown were left.

Fortunately, the borers don't seem to be interested in our nannyberry (now nearly 3 m tall), nor did the hummingbird moth. But when a friend on AlbertaBugs pointed out that he had the caterpillars on his viburna, we checked and lo and behold we have them again. This time we will let them eat all they want - there are lots of leaves and only a handful of hornworms - and just be happy they are still around.

As well as welcoming back an interesting bug, this posting was designed to follow-up on what I learned at a post at Alex Wild's new blog at Scientific American, The Compound Eye. Among other things, Alex boldly states that to post an image to its best effect "Every blogger should know their column width, in pixels. " I don't seem to be clever or persistent enough to find this information on my blog, but a little experimenting indicates that a 600 pixel wide image as above is not auto-crunched by Blogger. I highly recommend The Compound Eye to anyone interested in getting the most out of their insect photography.

Australian of the Week: Net-casting Spider

 Winter has somewhat relaxed its grip these last two weeks, enough so that at least one blue-bottle fly. probably Protophormia terraenovae Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830, has been on the wing. After work I’ve been sitting in a lawn chair in a spot of sun in a puddle of snowmelt determined to generate the first Vitamin-D of 2011 and the bluebottle stops by to see if I’m winter kill or not. You’d think from the species name, that the fly (aka Northern Blowfly) would be restricted to the New World, but it is holarctic in distribution and relatively well known for its forensic uses and myiasis problems in livestock and wildlife.

 The fly is too wary for me to get close enough for a good shot with my point and shoot camera, but is familiar enough to induce daydreams about what might happen to the fly if it were in my former backyard in Brisbane, where a striking diversity of spiders were in residence year-round. One of my favourites was the Net-casting Spider, a species of Deinopis, probably Deinopis subrufa L. Koch, 1879. These are ambush predators that dangle from a scaffold web by their back two pairs of legs while holding a densely woven net in the front two pairs. Any insect that wanders or flies too close is snared and eaten. This behaviour has also earned them the name Retarius Spider from the Roman gladiators who fought with a net, trident, and dagger. Another name is Ogre-faced Spider – because of the very large median eyes that no doubt help coordinate the net-casting. We don’t seem to have a good frontal picture, but Robert Whyte has posted a striking portrait on flicker.

  April 5^th marked the first observation of a Milbert’s Tortoiseshell Butterfly (Aglais milberti) in the backyard with its bright colours and intriguing white tips to its antennae. A lone Ring-billed Gull showed up on 31 March and a Robin yesterday (9 April), so in spite of the deep snow pack and cooler than normal temperatures, spring does seem to be in the air. In my records (which only go back to 2005), the Ring-billed Gulls always show up in the last week of March – and since they are large and loud, they are hard to miss. The tortoiseshell sightings are more variable (5-17 April), but these depend on the happy coincidence of a sunny day and time for me to enjoy it. The Robin, and a couple of Honkers that showed up on April Fool’s Day, are both within the two week window in my records, so at least the animals around here think spring is coming at more or less the normal time. Time to set up a couple of blue bird houses at the Moose Pasture and then start shoveling the snow away from the house foundations. The water level is already getting close to the top of the holes in the basement floor.