Spiderlings

Inspiration for a blog occasionally drifts in as a distraction.  In this case I was working on my laptop in the living room and occasionally noticed a pale floater across the screen.  Blinking didn't move it and I realized that it was truly a "floater" but one outside my eyeball.  A spiderling was swinging from an invisible silk strand hanging down from the ceiling 10 feet above.

Once in a bug box, I could measure it at 2 mm body length and it posed ferociously for pictures.  What little I can see of the eyes suggests it might be a wolf or fishing spider but we will never know as it is now back out in nature where the hunting is better.

Orb weavers in the woods

I was already planning on writing about spiderlings.  Walking in the oak-hickory forest last week I noticed a small speck of bright orange under a sassafras.  It was the size of my finger tip but once disturbed it was full of life.  Based on its location, I suspect it is this year's class of orb weavers, scheduled to hit me in the face again while hiking next month.  You can see the action in the nest in this video.

Spider nest in a folded leaf

Opened leaf nest

Many spiders will create their silk egg sack in a protected space such as a folded up leaf.  I have even found egg cases in old hollow oak apple galls.

Black widow spiderlings

This black widow spider was tending her egg case when we lifted up the ground cover.   She seemed to charge at my camera in this video but that was probably just coincidence.  I took the egg case home and filmed their coming out party.

More details on the life cycle of spiders are at this link.

Pure Green Sweat Bee

Last week I was seeing these little bees on our woollen breeches, Hydrophyllum appendiculatum, along the old road at Bull Mills.  Its distinctive marking and color made it easy to identify as a pure green sweat bee, Augochlora pura, AP for short.  It is in the Halictidae family of sweat bees, named because of their habit of landing on our skin, presumably for salt. They are commonly seen in forested areas and in one study accounted for 92% of the bees collected.  They are able to sting defensively but I have never been stung except when there was one that I didn't notice on the lid of a soda I was drinking. Even then the lip pain lasted only a few seconds.

For a little bee measuring 1/3 inch there is an incredible amount of information on its life cycle.  Females mate in August and September but remain in ovarian diapause over winter before creating new nests and having offspring the next year.  All the males die in winter, their only purpose achieved, but during mating they are very aggressive.

"Males fly in swarms and hover over flowers. They fly from flower to flower and feed, and land on any similarly sized insect on a flower. In fact, they even pounce on black dots on paper.^[11] When a male finds a receptive female, he mates with her for from three seconds through two minutes. Instead of pursuing females in the air, A. pura males wait for them to land on flowers.  Males have been observed to stack themselves on top of a copulating male, attempting to mate with that one female. Augochlora pura males have been observed to stroke the female's head with their antennae before and during copulation."  Wikipedia

Nest cell with food and larva - Wikipedia

The female builds its nest in downed wood, creating solitary cells under the bark which she provisions with nectar before sealing it up.  From then on, the offspring are on their own although she will aggressively defend the nest from intruders.

Although AP has been observed feeding on over 40 species including a few exotics ignored by other bees, my observations have all been on great waterleaf, aka woolen breeches which we discussed in a blog last week.

Flower Fly on Zizia

We are getting a lot of these little pollinators on our Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) but they are easy to miss.  They land on the flower head and walk across the blossom but don't appear to collect any pollen on their bodies.  I use the term flower head because the actual parts are a lot more confusing to a guy just chasing insects.  The technical description below of the blossoms, "umbel and the umbellets" sounds more like a rock band in the 70's.

"Each compound umbel is about 2-3" across, and consists of about 12 umbellets. There are about 21 flowers in each umbellet. Each flower is about 1/8" (3 mm.) across; it has 5 incurved yellow petals."
Illiinoiswildflowers  In other words, its complicated.

Golden Alexander is a member of the carrot family.  What could be more pleasant and nutritious?  It turns out this is a family with some deadly relatives.  It contains everything from the food to the lethal carrot, Poison Hemlock that spreads over our roadsides.

Golden Alexander

Our pollinator doesn't seem to care about those details.  This is the Eastern Calligrapher (EC) Toxomerus geminatus.  It is a Syrphid fly because it is in the family Syrphidae, a large group with over 800 species in North America alone.  They’re also called “flower flies” because of the places we find them, and “hover flies” because that is what they do.  EC is very common around here and is patient enough that although it is only a quarter inch long, I can get up close to identify it with a hand lens as it continues to hover or feed.

This EC is a male, identifiable by the large eyes.  "The males have bigger eyes - they have to find the females who are hanging out in a flower bar, just waiting to be picked up.  The guys have to be able to tell the difference in sexes to avoid wasted time and embarrassing encounters."  It has yellow and black aposematic colors that say "stay away, I can hurt you" but it is all a bluff as it has no stinger.  If a predator could count it would realize this is a fly with two wings, not a bee or wasp with four.

Toxomeris politus larva - Bug Lady

EC Larva - MJ Hatfield

EC adults feeds on nectar and pollen and even honeydew if it finds aphids.  There is a debate on what the larva eat but some sources suggest that they eat aphids attacking plants.  Finding Syrphid larva and raising them for identification is a very specialized sport as they come in a lot of different shapes.  My favorite was the T. politus above which I extracted from my favorite insect blogger, the Bug Lady who writes an entertaining description of EC in this blog.

Slimy Salamander

Mark Bower sent me these pictures in an email.  "I turned over this piece of wood, looking for slime molds. Instead, there was this slimy salamander. On the under-surface of the wood were these white things, which I assume are salamander eggs?"

Home of a slimy

Now it is perfectly normal for a naturalist to roll over logs looking for salamanders but what kind of man would be looking for a slime mold?  My mother in the 1950s used to say, "There is no accounting for taste, said the woman as she kissed her cow." 

Slimy salamanders (Plethodon albagula) breed annually, depositing about 6-36 eggs under logs or soil in the summer or early fall so it is possible that these are its eggs.  They get their name from.....you guessed it, slime.  I can attest to the following statement from the MDC Field Guide.  "This species secretes a thick, very sticky substance that adheres to skin like glue. It causes dust, dirt or bits of dead leaves to stick to one’s hands and is difficult to remove."

I once asked Chris Barnhart this same question about removing tenacious slug slime and he said, "I usually just turn to a colleague and rub his shoulders while giving him a pat on the back."  It has worked for me when out hiking with Mark. 

Slime mold in a rotting log - REK

Back to slime molds, why would Mark look for them?  The answer... why go to an art museum?  Look at Mark's gallery of slime molds and decide for yourself.

Ruth Grant sent this fascinating article on Slime Molds Remember — but Do They Learn?

Hickory Leaf Stem Gall

Holly Welch

We are getting into gall season and Holly Welch sent the picture on the right for identification just as I was writing on one of my favorites, the hickory leaf-stem gall.  They start as smooth swellings along the leaf petiole and occasionally on new shoots.  Initially pale, they later may develop some redness as seen here.  Aside from homeowner concerns, they don't cause any significant damage to the tree.  I find them commonly on young trees where the affected leaves are at eye level.

They are caused by aphids called Phylloxera caryaecaulis and they have a very interesting lifecycle.

Cut open with tiny aphids

"Eggs hatch as new buds open and grow in the early spring. Young aphids crawl to newly expanding foliage where they feed on the new growth by piercing the epidermis and sucking cell sap. The feeding causes the tissue to grow galls which enclose the aphids. Several generations of aphids develop within the galls during May, June, and into July.  If the thought of a hollow gall filled with wiggling little aphid-like creatures grosses you out, you may want to skip this closeup video of the cut open gall above.

Escape opening on the underside of the leaf.

In late July, the galls split open, turn black and jagged in appearance, and the aphids emerge. At this time most of the affected leaves fall prematurely. There are several generations of aphids per year. Eggs are laid in late summer or fall in cracks and crevices of the bark and in old stem galls. Aphids overwinter as eggs in the gall and bark crevices" https://wiki.bugwood.org/Phylloxera_caryaecaulis

Freshly opened gall

I found this newly opened gall that was full of winged aphids.  After filming the inside of the gall I put it in a bug box and returned home.   When I checked the clear plastic box an hour later there were 50+ crawling all over the walls.  When I lifted the lid they all climbed to the top edge, began warming up their wings and then took flight as seen in this video.

Hickory gall "aphid"

You can file this under TMI but although they look like an aphid and walk like an aphid, they technically are not aphids although that term was used in most references.  Aphids are in the superfamily Aphidoidea while our "aphids" are in the Phylloxeroidea superfamily.  Looking at them under magnification they lack the twin tail pipes (cornicles) of an aphid.

Finally, there is an interesting Missouri connection to a closely related species, Phylloxera vitifolia.  It damages European grape vines and came close to wiping out the French wine industry in the 1860's, only to be saved by Missouri grape vine root stock.  Hermann Jaeger was one hero in the story and he influenced a 10 year old named George Washington Carver.

Black Bean Aphids

Black mass on goat's beard - Ben Caruthers

Ben Caruthers captured this dramatic scene while photographing goat's beard, Tragopogon dubius.

"I had tried to catch the flowers open for photos for a couple days, but they close when it is cloudy or when the sun is low in the sky. I just noticed the black on the stalks and noticed the ants crawling gently around the black areas. It was only when I took a macro photo that I was able to see what was happening."

A. fabae - from Wikipedia

Tonya identified the mound of bodies as black bean aphids, Aphis fabae.  According to Aphidnet it is found in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere and in cooler regions of South America, Africa, and the Middle East.  It also has one of the widest appetites and has been reported on almost 120 plant families.  It breeds profusely by live birth and the large numbers attract a large number of predators.  Like many aphids, they produce abundant honeydew. They are commonly farmed by ants which lap up the sweet secretions and protect the aphids from predators.

F. subsericea - Ben Caruthers

The ant is a black mound ant - Formica subsericea, identified for me by James Trager who has written about them in this Antwiki link.  They are known to be enslaved on occasion by several other Formica sp. of ants.  The condition is a form of parasitism called dulosis and in a few cases the slaver ant species is completely helpless without their slaves.



F. subsericea has been studied for its unusual ability to travel across water, at times walking on top and other times swimming by using their front legs for propulsion while steering with their hind legs.  (Gripshover)

Every native plant has a story.  You just have to be curious like Ben and look closer.

Waxwings Flock to Serviceberries

Backyard serviceberry

Thirty years ago Barb had me cut down a Bradford pear that had a major branch broken off.  This is what she remembers about the event.

"This was when Bradford's had a bad reputation only for weak limbs but were known to be sterile and only stayed in places they were planted.  I replaced it with a serviceberry because it was small, wouldn't grow into the power lines, and I enjoyed seeing their blossoms in wooded areas each spring before the dogwoods flowered. The nursery discouraged me by saying it would never survive outside of a forest setting, but by then I really had bonded with the idea."

It has beautiful small white blossoms in the spring, much more refined than the gaudy Bradford/Callery blossoms that are taking over our countryside and even growing out of a neighbor's cedar tree!!  It is also a convenient landing spot for the mockingbirds and other species.



This time of year is when it really earns its keep.  We have flocks of cedar waxwings descending on it, thirty at a time.  The branches will flutter like a big wind storm and the birds gorge on the ripening berries.  Occasionally they will go out on a limb and hang upside down while picking the red ripe juicy fruit.




It is hard to photograph the ripe berry, technically a "pome" but way to technical for me.  By the time the sun is on the tree, so are the waxwings.  They will feast for a while, then suddenly all take off and fly to the very top of a neighboring oak, a spectacular mass exodus.  Now it is safe for the robins and mockingbirds to come back.

"Cedar waxwings like to feast in groups, and they are not alone in loving serviceberries – at least 35 species of birds eat the fruit, including: mockingbirds, robins, catbirds, Baltimore orioles, grosbeaks, thrushes and others."  Ecobeneficial.com

Unripe berries

The unripe seeds have a subtle flower-like beauty of their own.  The red "petals" are actually withered sepals of the former flower.  When ripe the pomes are red and soft.  Our tree produces fruit with a subtle sweetness and 3-7 tiny soft seeds.  It makes a wonderful Juneberry Jam.

Did someone say desert?

=======
Here is much more detailed information on the downy serviceberry
(Amelanchier arborea)  and cedar waxwings.