Life in a Socket Set

I found these sets of small socket wrench heads on a shelf in our garage/workshop at Bull Mills.  They had been undisturbed for over a year and now some were sealed off with a firm cap deposited by insects.  The white material was chalk-like and firm but pulling each one out of the rubber holder revealed a variety of insect life both alive and now dead.

Removing a socket head from the rubber holder I was immediately faced with a larva coming out of its silken womb.  I found a different one, darker and larger in another wrench head.  They were very much alive and wanting to get away.  I chased both around on our kitchen counter top, (I married the right woman!) filming it with a handheld microscope while trying to keep it in focus on the computer screen.  You can see the chase in this video.

 

Next I opened several of the sealed chambers and found a variety of insects, all small.  There were more larvae in their pupal cases, fighting for freedom.  Other socket heads contained dead spiders with bodies less than a quarter inch long.  I couldn't tell if they were all the same species.

The best preserved spider shown here had a little life left, shown by an occasional twitch of a leg.  INaturalist couldn't venture a reasonable guess and it will remain a mystery.  

Finally there was a totally different spider in the last socket head I opened.  I lifted it onto my hand with a fine paint brush and its legs spread out in a natural pose.  You can see its size in comparison to my finger print.

 

 

 

The point of this is that there is a lot more life out there than we can ever know.  In the words of the philosopher Forest Gump in this clip, "Life is like a box of chocolates......you never know what you are going to get."

Snake Month at Bull Mills

This has been snake month at our Bull Creek cabin.  We were having dinner there when we suddenly heard three loud "snaps" in 5 seconds.  Back in the closet with the water heater and well pump where pipes come up through the floor, we have frequent rodent visitors.  In this case though it was a 5 foot black rat snake that got caught in three rat traps.  Here it posed for pictures before moving to the barn where it will be hunting from now on.

Our next guests called us from across the creek reporting a snake with "Hershey Kisses" on the walk.   They had stepped  off the porch headed to the ATV but were stopped by the 24" copperhead curled up on the walk.  Ordinarily I would use my snake grabber to transplant it but in this case if I missed it would crawl back under the porch steps and our guests probably wouldn't come out the door from a week.  I was forced to execute it with a hoe.

After cleaning it

Not wanting it to die in vain, I cleaned it and prepared the skin for tanning.  The hoe had damaged the skin but the remaining hide will demonstrate the appearance for future visitors.  We tell the WOLF students about the "Hershey Kisses" you can see on their sides.  We also explain that "if you look down and see the "hour glass" you know that it is a copperhead and you are way too close!  We will see a lot more in the late summer when the cicadas emerge.  These look like an M&M to a copperhead as we discussed in this blog.

 

We get to see lots of other snakes each year.  Pygmy rattlesnakes are cute if you don't try to pet them.  This one was curled up on a rock crossing in the middle of the road and earned a free ride several hundred feet away in the woods.  We also have timber rattlesnakes like one that staked out the center of our driveway and defied me until I transplanted it a quarter mile away in the woods.  You can see it warning me here.

 

One of my favorites are the northern watersnakes.  We have had a lot of sightings this year including four gathered at one sitting on a downed sycamore.  They congregate in our swimming hole, frequently sunning themselves on the bank.  We have even found one on our deck 15 feet above the creek.  Our biggest one was over 5 feet long and was killed by a visitor who thought it was a cottonmouth, a species none of us have found on Bull Creek.  I saw the one below just starting to dine on a perch.  By the time I got back with a camera it was almost down the hatch.

Finally, it is important to know your snakes as one of our guests learned a few years ago.  After watching the watersnake swimming around with its head above water, he decided to catch it, not recognizing the whole body was on top of the water and it had little kisses on its side.  You can see the whole episode recorded by his friends who encouraged him to "go ahead, pick it up!" Watch it here in this 2 minute video.  It ended with $25,000 of antivenom and two days in the ICU.  The final lessons we tell the WOLF students:

• Know your snakes
• Don't let buddies get you to do dumb things.

Flying Ghost

 

Sitting on the deck above Bull Creek while staring into space I saw a tiny white thing slowly "flying" past.  I grabbed it by the tail and studied it for several minutes before I determined that it was lifeless and had been drifting in the still air.  Holding the tail with forceps, it seemed to sway in spite of the absence of wind like a little ghost.  

I took a lot of pictures and sent them to my insect guru, Chris Barnhart.  He identified it as a stonefly exuvium.  An exuvium is the cast off outer covering (exoskeleton) of an animal after moulting (think of a snake skin).  The body and the tail each measured 7 mm long.   

Stoneflies are in the order Plecoptera.  They live underwater as larvae for up to two years before crawling out of water and moulting into the winged adult.  As with many winged adult species of insects, this is the beginning of the end as they mate, lay eggs and die in a final burst of glory after fulfilling their biological imperative.

So how did this cast off skin manage to drift by me as I sat 15 feet above the bank where it would have emerged?  Although there was no discernible breeze, there must have been just enough air moving to carry it up and drift in by my face.

Stonefly nymph - Wikimedia

Here you can see an example of a stonefly nymph.  In its final stage it will develop the wings which will expand after its final molt just like a butterfly does.  You can see the brown skin on the exuvia that covered the nascent wings which wait patiently to expand as they come into the air.

After having achieved this moment of fame, I released it out on the deck and it drifted away, a silent traveler on a windless morning.  It like all life will be recycled, returning to the soil to feed the cycle of life like all species do eventually.

 

 

You can learn more about our Missouri stoneflies by Googling "stonefly MDC" - a trick that works for most of our plant and animal species.  (Or simply click on this link.)

Tiny Bison?

Two-marked treehopper - Wikimedia

While looking for leaf galls I noticed a small 5mm white speck on the under surface of a tree leaf, apparently dried up and dead.  Under magnification it resembled a tiny white bison, frozen in time.  With a plunge into INaturalist and Google I came up with an answer.  This is the final nymph of a twomarked treehopper, Enchenopa binotata (EB).  EB is a species complex made up of multiple species, often identified by their host plants.  The adult is only 7-9 mm long.  As usual, a deep dive into the tiny critter's life reveals interesting quirks.

Like many tiny insects that we overlook, EB is mainly discussed as a minor pest.  Most websites focus on the minor cosmetic damage they cause to a tree in our yard.  

"Twomarked treehoppers cause damage to hop tree or wafer ash, Ptelea trifoliata, black walnut, butternut, black locust, viburnum, redbud and bittersweet."  A more broadminded nature site says "This insect rarely causes enough damage to warrant control, even though the insect itself is abundant."

The nymphs sucking up the sap go through 5 instars before reaching the "white bison" stage if found.  The feeding results in honeydew which allows the fungus sooty mold (mycelium is black) to grow and turn the plant blackish. This in turn draws ants and other insects that lap up the sweet honeydew, all part of the food web.  Egg laying may cause minor slits in the bark.

 

The University of Illinois Urbana describes its life cycle.

Nymph stages

"The twomarked treehopper will overwinter as an egg under bark. Newly hatched nymphs move to the tips of the new shoots where they extract plant sap in mass. The nymphs are brown to dark gray. After a little more than a month, the twomarked treehopper becomes an adult. 

As adults, they often line up in a row on the new shoot. Females lay eggs until August. However once egg laying starts, it will continue till the adult is frost killed. The female treehopper has a saw like ovipositor. She uses this to make a small cut in the twig. The eggs are forced through the narrow cut so that they are left under the bark. Once the egg laying for the individual cut is completed, the adult female seals the cut."

Males hookup with females by seismic communication, "substrate-borne vibrations on the stems, petioles, and leaves of their host plants that travel throughout the plant."  It is hard to imagine this tiny creature shaking a stem to make a sound but you can here it in this Wikipedia link. 

Before and after - Linda Williams MN

For more on our Missouri treehoppers, check out this MDC link.

At Home in the Dung

On the Missouri Prairie Foundation Bioblitz, "Bug Eric" Eaton was leading an insect identification session when I found this 6mm firm lump on a leaf.  Eric identified it as a beetle egg protected by material the female beetle deposited over it. 

I cornered Doug LeDoux of the Missouri Department of Agriculture who was leading the leaf beetle walk and he gave me more information.

"It is some sort of a Chlamisine beetle in the Chrysomelidae, possibly Neochlamisus. They refer to this group as the case-bearing case makers. The case is actually poop that is deposited around the developing larva to protect it from predation and to hide it while it feeds and develops. I see these fairly often when sampling."

This may sound like child abuse but remember it is a bug eat bug world they live in.  Looking like nothing edible has survival value.  Imagine how this delicious naked larva would look to any predator.....delicious!

Neochalmisus sp - Beatriz Moisset

Now the larva lives and eats inside the case, using its own excrement to enlarge the case as it grows.  Here is how Wikipedia describes it.

"The larvae remain on the natal host plant and add to and enlarge their fecal cases as they grow. Case enlargement in Neochlamisus is an elaborate process that larvae perform regularly until the case is sealed to the substrate prior to pupation. During this stage of the life cycle, beetles are immobile and are particularly vulnerable to predation."

Neochlamisus - Wikimedia

 This is just one example of a Neochlamisus.sp. in Wikipedia.  There is a whole tribe, if not subfamily, of casebearing leaf beetles. The warty beetles are pretty tiny compared to the larval case we found. It isn't just another pretty face, but before you make judgements about its appearance, take into account its rough childhood.

This is just one of the many fascinating finds from the annual Missouri Prairie Foundation bioblitz.  You can follow MPF and join up for the fun at https://moprairie.org/.

Cute Little Fungus

While searching the woods for plant galls I came across these beauties on the leaves and petioles of Clematis virginiana.  On the petioles they curled into various shapes and it was obvious they weren't galls.  Measuring less than half an inch long, it required magnification to appreciate the tiny orange cups that covers the surface.  Tiny round ones were on the underside of the leaves and the vines didn't seem damaged otherwise.

 

The knobs under the leaves were just miniature versions of the petiole growths and with magnification they too were covered with the little cups.  Some sources refer to them as pustules but that seems to be a harsh judgement to me.  Another term is a rust fungus, not much kinder name.

I think this is Puccinia recondita also refered to a wheat leaf rust, a fungal disease that is a major problem for farmers.  

Gardeners consider it a disease on clematis but to me it is just another interesting small feature of nature, a mushroom on a leaf.  In the words of Bill Bryson, "Life just wants to be, but it doesn't want to be much."

Flying Lint

Woolly aphid - Mark Bower

The last few days we have been seeing tiny white fluff drifting through the air.  Watching closely you can see it gradually change altitude or direction.  These are woolly aphids, members of the Eriosomatinae subfamily.  In flight they have been likened to "flying mice" and are given nicknames like "angel flies," "fluff bugs,""fairy flies,"and "ash bugs."  My favorite is "flying lint."

Woolly aphids on a log - Mark Bower

Ready for take-off - Mark Bower

Mark Bower introduced me to them years ago when he found a log with clusters of tiny 2 mm light blue winged insects.  Looking closely they even appeared to be covered in powder.  He nailed the diagnosis of woolly aphids before I could even get back to my computer.

Woolly aphids (WA) are members of
Eriosomatinae subfamily, a branch of the aphid family, Aphididae.  According to Wikipedia:

"Woolly aphids are sucking insects that live on plant sap and produce a filamentous waxy white covering which resembles cotton or wool. The adults are winged and move to new locations where they lay egg masses. The nymphs often form large cottony masses on twigs, for protection from predators."

Naked WA - REK

I caught this one by hand and by the time I transferred it to a bug box, its wax had rubbed off and it couldn't take off, making it willing to pose.  This one was also 2mm long although it looked larger when it had all its wax.  You can see a video here of another one under the microscope as I wiped off some of its wax.

Some WA specialize on one variety of plants while others may lay eggs for their larvae on a different species than the ones adults feed upon.

Insect trash talk - Mark Bower

The woolly apple aphid is a major economic pest in orchards.  Like the cedar apple rust galls that depend on cedar and apple trees in close proximity to support their two year life cycle, the apple aphid requires elm trees for the egg and larval feeding phase while the adults attack apple trees.  Woolly aphids have a needle-like stylet mouth which they use to penetrate buds, bark, leaves and roots to suck up sap.  Many produce a sticky honeydew which then can support the growth of a sooty mold on the fruit.

Many woolly aphid species are accidentally introduced invasive species.  An example is the hackberry wooly aphid, Shivaphis celti, which was found in the south in the 1990's and is now also a problem in California.  Although it doesn't damage the tree significantly, it is a pest because its copious honeydew excretions create a sticky mess which in turn feeds a blackish sooty mold on leaves and anything under infested trees.. 

Woolly aphids- Courtney Reece

The reproductive cycle of these woolly aphids which use two host plant species is complex, as explained by this Bugtracks article.  Most species emerge as all females in the spring and reproduce by parthenogenesis (without mating between the male and female).  They give live birth (no eggs) several times in the spring and summer on the primary host plant.  Winged forms then fly to the secondary host plant, reproduce again and eventually give birth to winged males and females which fly off to a primary host plant and mate, starting the whole process.  If you think this confuses you, imagine being the aphid figuring out your family history.

Not all woolly aphids are warm fuzzy creatures.  The larvae of the woolly beach blight aphids gather together when disturbed and poke their posteriors in the air, an aphid version of "mooning."  It looks like dancing as seen in this video.  This is no hollow threat as they are shown under the microscope to stab predators with their stylet mouth parts that are usually reserved for penetrating wood to sip sap.  I guess if you usually drill into beach trees with your mouth, penetrating a predatory moth larva is a piece of cake.

The very complete source of information on aphids is aphidsonworldsplants.