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| Evening on the Prairie - James Trager |
The 2019 Missouri Prairie Foundation Prairie Bioblitz was held on Dr. Wayne Morton's unplowed prairie outside of Cole Camp on June 1-2. He manages it with a variety of recommended practices such as limited grazing and burning patches at varying intervals. Here are a few of our personal highlights.
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| Hover flies - Toxomerus marginatus |
When hearing the word "pollinator" most people think of butterflies and Monarchs get all the glory. Looking carefully on the prairie we saw lots of insects on flowers harvesting pollen or dragging it around in their pursuit of nectar. These hover flies are
Toxomerus marginatus females
, gathering energy for their future nuptials. Sexing them (not sex
ting them -note the missing "t") is not my strength so James Trager id them as female for me. As discussed in a
previous blog, the males have larger eyes. "
The better to find you with my dear!"
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| Harmostes sp. scentless plant bug |
There were lots of other nondescript insects on the flowers as well.
These scentless plant bugs,
Harmostes sp, were common. They are a member of the large Rhopalidae family which resemble their relative Coreid bugs but lack their well developed scent glands. They live on flower petals, moving on to another one when the petals begin to fade.
This shiny beauty is most likely a green metallic
sweat bee,
Augochloropsis metallica. There are over 140
Augochloropsis species, mostly in the tropics. They vary from solitary to social and collect pollen from a wide variety of flowers. We hear a lot about "colony collapse" with the European honey bees we have grown dependent upon, but our native bees have a broader spectrum of plants and behaviors that make them less vulnerable to a single disease.
This
Hemaris sp. caterpillar was deep into a patch of Japanese honeysuckle, far from anything else. It is in the clear wing moth family (think hummingbird or snowberry moths). They eat leaves of a variety of species including honeysuckles, unfortunately the cats don't do enough damage to the invasive
Japanese honeysuckle,
Lonicera japonica, to halt their spread.
We took the caterpillar home and raided our neighbor's endangered Japanese honeysuckle (at risk when Barb attacks it some dark night). It munched on the honeysuckle leaves for two weeks before it formed a pupa. We are raising it to identify the species before sending it off. Meanwhile I made
this video of its dance moves when I annoyed it with a ballpoint pen.
Lots of spiders were hanging around blossoms, waiting for an insect lunch. This little crab spider blended in with the flower. A young girl spotted it for me to photograph. Kids on the prairie have an advantage over us in being energetic, sharp eyed and built lower to the ground. Many of the spiders I found dropped to the ground at the sight of my camera.
Dr. Morton's highlight was when Mike Leahy found a small patch of
Mead's Milkweed which hadn't been identified on his land before. Historically it ranged throughout much of Missouri but the plow, row crops and fragmentation have led to its listing as endangered by the Missouri Department of Conservation and as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Crawling around it I found a single Monarch egg, proving that we weren't the first species to find this cluster, just the biggest.
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| Rosin weed and Shae's Sunflower- click to enlarge |
Finally, here is a trick we learned from Brett Budach at last year's Bioblitz. When faced with the leaves of two species of plants that look almost identical, hold them up to the sun to see through them. The rosin weed and ashy sunflower leaves were identical to our untrained eyes until the sun showed subtle differences in their veins and structure.
We took the caterpillar home and raided our neighbor's endangered Japanese honeysuckle (at risk when Barb attacks it some dark night). It munched on the honeysuckle leaves for two weeks before it formed a pupa. We are raising it to identify the species before sending it off. Meanwhile I made this video of its dance moves when I annoyed it with a ballpoint pen.
This shiny beauty is most likely a green metallic sweat bee, Augochloropsis metallica. There are over 140 Augochloropsis species, mostly in the tropics. They vary from solitary to social and collect pollen from a wide variety of flowers. We hear a lot about "colony collapse" with the European honey bees we have grown dependent upon, but our native bees have a broader spectrum of plants and behaviors that make them less vulnerable to a single disease.
Lots of spiders were hanging around blossoms, waiting for an insect lunch. This little crab spider blended in with the flower. A young girl spotted it for me to photograph. Kids on the prairie have an advantage over us in being energetic, sharp eyed and built lower to the ground. Many of the spiders I found dropped to the ground at the sight of my camera.
Dr. Morton's highlight was when Mike Leahy found a small patch of Mead's Milkweed which hadn't been identified on his land before. Historically it ranged throughout much of Missouri but the plow, row crops and fragmentation have led to its listing as endangered by the Missouri Department of Conservation and as threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Crawling around it I found a single Monarch egg, proving that we weren't the first species to find this cluster, just the biggest.
