Bugfolks

We spent a few weeks in Eastern Canada in late September and early October.  Not many insects - it was cool and breezy much of the time.  But I did see a few nice ones.

This is a Beach Wolf Spider (Arctosa littoralis) that I found on a beach along Lake Superior, in the upper peninsula of Michigan.  (Not an insect, but close enough.)  It was quite large - the body was more than an inch long.

I found it by following some odd tracks in the sand.

There were tracks like this all over the beach, but no indication of what made them.  I dug in the sand at the end of several of the tracks, but didn't find anything.  At the end of this one, I found a pile of damp, stringy sand - it looked like it was held together with spider webbing - with the spider in the middle.  This is the damp sand after the spider got out.

I looked hard for more spiders, but couldn't find any.  So I'm still not sure what made the tracks.

This is another spider from northern New Brunswick.  (It was a very dark rainy day - we had just spent the day hiding out from Hurricane Kyle, which had been heading toward Nova Scotia - so the photo isn't very good.)  I think it's another species of Wolf Spider, but I don't know for sure.

Here are a few butterflies from Bic, Quebec.

Mourning Cloak(Nymphalis antiopa)

Clouded Sulphur (Colias philodice)

The only other butterfly I saw was a Cabbage White.

It was late enough into the fall that there weren't many flowers blooming.  When I did see flowers, they were covered with nectaring insects.  This clump of daisies was in Bic, Quebec.

Marcie

Finding Wild Silk Moth Cocoons

Ian Miller

Every fall/ winter im very active with hunting and fishing.  I usually end up getting bored and searching for cocoons while im walking through the woods or along lake/river banks.  I have found wild cocoons or larva from every species of wisconsin saturniidae but the columbia silk moth( likley because i dont look on larch which is there primary source of food)  So far this year i have found 3 wild promethea cocoons, 2 wild cecropia cocoons, 3 wild polyphemus cocoons, one wild io larva that cocooned, and i recieve some overwintering wild luna cocoons from down south.  Typically when im searching for cocoons i start by looking on the shrubs that i rear the larva on ( birch, cherry, willow are the three main plants i always look over). 

Cecropias tend to cocoon near the base of the trees where they will be covered with snow to insulate them over the course of the winter but some individuals will spin up at eye level length wise on braches. Since cecropias have such a tendancy to wander away from there host plant its hard to judge what they are eating by what plant you find them on.  Here they show a preference for cherries but i have found them on ( Red Maple, White Ash, Choke Cherry, Speckled Alder, Box Elder, river Birch, paper birch, Liliac, Dog wood, Elm, and honesuckle)  Cecropias are a highly suseptible species to disease and parasitization.  Last year i found over 30 cocoons that were all containing dead larva my suspision lead me to believe that it was NPHv.

Left: Sleeve reared cecropia Right: Wild Cecropia

Polyphemus cocoons can either A. be securley fastened to a branch or B.  spun up around the leafs near the base of their host plant.  I usually find polyphemus on birch and willow and occasionally in dogwoods and wild black cherry.  I start by examining the braches to see if any were generous enough to spin where they are easy to find then i will sift through the leafs and grass at the bases of the trees themselves.  Polyphemus are the most common wild silk moth in eau claire county i have reported over 100 seperate males in one night at scenting females.

Some collected male polyphemus! All were released after photo.

Promethea moths are a highly parasitized species. Finding their cocoons is very easy i always start by searching wild black cherries that are scattered throughout feilds and open areas.  Moths usually preffer open areas with trees of shrubs that are spread out.  Promethea cocoons hang like ornaments from host trees and are one of the easiest to find.  I have found them on dog wood, hazelnut, and maple but almost always are found on cherries.  ( i have reared the species on maple before but they do not get nearly as large as they do on cherry)

Promethea larva on cherry.

Luna moths are among one of the most difficult cocoons to find along with the io moth.  They both rarley ever fasten their cocoons to a branch and always spin up in leaf matter at the base of host plants.  I dont ever target looking for their cocoons but i have come across them on a few occasions looking for polyphemus moth cocoons.  Lunas show a preference towards paperbirch and black walnut here in eau claire and ios will almost eat anything.  Ios tend to crawl several feet away from their original host plant before they spin up in dead leafs.

Male Luna

For anyone who has larch on their property it may be wirth searching for columbia silk moths.  Their cocoons are very well camoflauged to look exactly like the bark.  I myself have never found a wild columbia larva or cocoon but we dont really have much for larch and tammarack around here. They are reproted futher north than eau claire and are probably much less numerous than any of the other moths.

(Io, Luna, Polyphemus, Promethea, Cecropia)

Note: Its amazing how much darker wild cecropia cocoons are from sleeve reared ones. Also the size of wild cocoons can't compare to cage or sleeve reared speciemens.

We’ve had several hard frosts now, so most of the summer insects and most of the flowers are gone.

I’ve been taking photos of some of the late blooming flowers, and I’ve discovered that most of them have at least one insect – trying to get a last taste of nectar, or a last capture of a nectaring insect. So many miniature dramas!

This is the most complicated one I found – I don’t completely understand what’s going on. I think it’s two Ambush Bugs (maybe mating?), and the lower one is eating a fly. (Here’s a link to a photo of mating Ambush Bugs on bugguide – it looks similar to my photo.) What do you think?

This is a fly – also on New England Aster. The wind was blowing hard, so it’s not in focus, but it’s an interesting fly.

Here’s another view of the same fly.

Another New England Aster with a bee and two beetles

And a Sweat Bee (family Halictidae) on a Brown Eyed Susan

Ids anyone? 

Since we were going to be gone so long, I had to find a way to feed my caterpillars. I tried putting them in cloth bags tied over branches of their food plants. It worked very well – the bags were easy to make and use, and most of the caterpillars survived.

I made the bags from tulle – the gauzy material that you can buy in the bridal section of the fabric store. They’re about 24 inches long and 20 inches wide.

I put the Monkey Slug Caterpillar, and all my Giant Swallowtail caterpillars in bags on their respective food plants – one or two caterpillars in each bag.

The Monkey Slug Caterpillar made a cocoon.

Two of the Giant Swallowtail caterpillars made chrysalises.

I still have 6 Giant Swallowtail caterpillars left, at various instars.

Here are two. An earlier instar

And a later one

I put them back in bags to see if they can make chrysalises before they freeze, or before the leaves all fall off the Prickly Ash bushes.

Marcie - at the farm

We’ve been on a trip for the last few weeks, but I still have a few photos left over from before we left. So these are from about September 20^th.

I found my very own Butternut Woolyworm (Eriocampa juglandis) ! It’s a sawfly larva – not a caterpillar. MJ had sent me a photo of one a few weeks before and I was envious, so it was great to see one here at the farm. According to the accounts I’ve read, you can gently brush off the white wooly things and see the white worm underneath. I didn’t do that – I just took a photo and let it continue on its way.

This is a Compton Tortoiseshell butterfly (Nymphalis antiopa). I’ve never gotten such a good look – or such a good photo – of the underside of the wings.

This is a photo (from April of 2005) of the upper wing surfaces.

Compton Tortoiseshells are anglewing butterflies – they spend the winter as adults – hibernating in wood piles or under bark. If the weather gets warm – even in the middle of winter – they’ll come out and fly around in protected sunny spots.

This is a Big Sand Tiger Beetle (Cicindela Formosa) from our Knife Edge Point – a very steep sandy place. This one was digging a hole. I watched it digging furiously, pushing the sand out of the hole behind it.

This is a Holomelina moth (Holomelina sp.)– I’m not sure of the species. It’s very common in our prairies.

It's very small, and I usually only notice it when it flies.  It looks very bright for a moment, but blends in with the dry grasses when it lands.

Marcie (back home at the farm)

This fall, for the first time, I've had some of my Giant Silk Moth cocoons hatch early.  Three Lunas and one Polyphemus moth hatched in the last week of August and first week of September.

Here's one of the Lunas

And the Polyphemus

I kept the Luna and Polyphemus females for a few days, hoping they would find a mates, but eventually let them go.  Even if they had found mates, there isn't enough time for a new generation of caterpillars to grow up.

Several other people who had Polyphemus and Luna caterpillars had the same problem.

Some information that Kelley found on the internet said that hatching is triggered by the amount of daylight they get during their last caterpillar instar.  Since mine live on our porch, with only natural light, I don't think that was the problem with these moths.

Farther south, Lunas have two generations a summer.  Ian says he often has some Lunas hatch toward the end of the summer.  It may be a good evolutionary strategy to have a few moths hatch early just in case it's possible to complete another cycle.

I'm also wondering if nightime temperatures could have some effect.  Only one of my Polyphemus moths hatched - but it's colder at night here at the farm.  Other people had more of them hatch, and they live in the city where the night temperatures are much higher.

Mike and I found a beautiful big caterpillar crawling across the driveway a few days ago.  It's a Giant Leopard Moth caterpillar (Ecpantheria scribonia).

It's very striking - about 2 1/2 inches long, with shiny black bristles and bright red bands and spiracles.

It rolls up into a tight circle when I disturb it.

It will spend the winter as an almost grown caterpillar, and make its cocoon in the spring.  I kept it in a cage for a few days and it happily ate lilac leaves.  But I decided I didn't want to risk trying to keep over the winter, so I released it.

One of my slug caterpillars made a cocoon.  It's either the Jeweled Tailed Slug caterpillar, or the Yellow Shouldered Slug caterpillar.  When I looked through the leaves where they were hanging out, they had both disappeared, and I found one cocoon.  It's quite small - about 1/2 an inch long.  Hopefully I'll be able to watch it next spring and see what comes out.

My Giant Swallowtail caterpillars are continuing to grow.  It's a race to see if they can finish their caterpillar stages before the leaves of the prickly ash drop off.

This is one of the bigger ones - it's about 2 inches long.

I've got them in separate cages now - ice cream buckets with lids cut open and lined with plastic screening.

I thought I would show you what my caterpillar raising set up looks like.  This is on our screened porch, so they're exposed to outside temperatures.

The small cages on the shelves are for smaller caterpillars, the large ones on the floor are mostly Giant Silk Moths - Lunas, Polyphemus and Cecropias. I'd love to see other people's set ups.  I'm outgrowing my space, and I'd like to get some other ideas.

Marcie

I’ve included one non-bug – a snail. I don’t know anything about snails, and this is the first one I’ve found on our property. MJ thinks it's in the Succineidae - Amber Snails, because of the amber color of many of their shells. She thinks it's probably Succinea sp. I found it in a wet area under some Alder shrubs, crawling on a leaf of Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara).

In the same area I found a bright colored Katydid.  Mike Reese identified it as a Black-sided Meadow Katydid (Conocephalus nigropleurum).

I found several bright blue beetles on our willow trees. I found out that it’s an introduced pest on willow trees called an Imported Willow Leaf Beetle. (Plagiodera versicolora) They eat both willow and poplar leaves, but don’t seem to be causing too many problems in the Midwest because they’re sensitive to our cold winters, and because there’s an imported pupal parasite that helps to keep them in check.

Here’s a Tussock Moth caterpillar on willow. MJ identified this as a Banded Tussock Moth Caterpillar (Halysidota tessellaris).  They eat many different kinds of tree leaves, and are quite common.  I think it's the same species as the one I found a few weeks ago eating lilac leaves.

I’ve been seeing lots of wooly bear caterpillars in the last few weeks. Wooly Bear Caterpillars are the larvae of Isabella Tiger Moths but I’ve never seen one of the adults. The late instar caterpillars overwinter under leaf litter and logs. They emerge from their hiding places on warm winter days, and I find them crawling across the snow along the driveway.

Wagner says that Wooly Bear caterpillars will eat almost anything, and I’ve seen several on Blazing Star (Liatris aspera). This one was chewing away on the flowers.

This is another one eating Blazing Star flowers – the little pink hairs on the caterpillar are the pappus bristles from the flowers.

The flowers that weren’t being eaten were being visited by some Green Metallic Bees.  I think they're Agapostemon sp.  They're in the subfamily Halictinae, the bees that are called sweat bees.

Here’s a bumble bee on New England Aster - covered with pollen.

I took a picture of this Stink Bug and realized later that it had just molted, and was sitting next to its old skin.

This is a Baltimore Checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton) caterpillar nest on Turtlehead (Chelone glabra), with a few caterpillars crawling around the outside. The caterpillars will spend the winter together in their nest, and then wander off in the spring to feed independently on a much wider range of foods.

Here’s one of my Cecropia caterpillars - the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It looks ready to make it’s cocoon any second.

Marcie

I found three more interesting caterpillars right after I finished my last post.

One is the strangest caterpillar I've ever seen.  It's called a Monkey Slug Caterpillar (Phobetron pithecium).  The adult is called a Hag Moth.  Wagner says that the female adult moths resemble a bee, and the male adults resemble a wasp.  He also speculates that the caterpillar mimics the look of a tarantula.  So this one moth mimics three different species!

This is the caterpillar.

It's about 15mm long, and it's eating oak leaves.  The left side is the head (the only way I can tell is to watch the way it moves).  Here's a photo of the underside, while it's eating.  (The head is at the top - it's nibbling on the top part of the leaf, right at the big vein.)

Its body is transparent, and when I look between the hairy projections on the top, I can see down into the inside of its body.  What an amazing creature!

The other two caterpillars are Eastern Tiger Swallowtails (Papilio glaucus), and they're eating lilac.  I've never found Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars before, and I never knew they ate lilac leaves.  (James Scott's book does list it as a food plant.)  These two were on some of the lilac branches that I brought in to feed my cecropias.  They're an early instar - they still look like bird droppings.

I also found three small fuzzy bumps on oak leaves, that I think are wasp galls.  (I decided that wasps and caterpillars don't mix well, so I didn't keep them to see the wasps hatch.)  I think they must be three different species.

(All of these creatures are very small - I'm learning to take photos through my dissecting microscope.)

Marcie - from the farm

I followed David Wagner's suggestion (in his book, Caterpillars of Eastern North America) to go out looking for caterpillars at night, with a flashlight.  It was great fun, and found two species that I had never seen before.  They are both "Slug Caterpillars", in the family Limacodidae.  I think I've identified them - they look exactly like photos in his book.

Jeweled Tailed Slug Caterpillar  (Packardia geminata)  This one is about 12mm long.  It's eating cherry leaves.  It moves slowly and smoothly, and methodically eats its way across the leaf.

Yellow-shouldered Slug Caterpillar - (Lithacodes fasciola) This one is 8mm long.  It's eating Box Elder leaves and likes to be on the underside of the leaf.  When I turned the leaf over to take its photo, it moved very quickly to get to the underside again.

I also found a Hermit Sphinx (Sphinx eremitus)caterpillar yesterday, crawling quickly across the driveway in the sun. I think this must be the last instar, and it was looking for a place to pupate.

I walked up through the woods yesterday, and saw lots of violet leaves with very distinctive insect damage.

This is one of the leaves

After searching under and around several leaves, I finally found the culprit.  It's a tiny brown caterpillar called "The Beggar" (Eubaphe mendica)  It's in one of the largest moth families - the Geometridae - often called "inchworms".

The Beggar is in the sub-family Larentiinae, whose members are called Carpets.  The adult moth is yellowish cream with gray spots.  I'd like to see if I can raise it to the adult stage.  I've got it in a container with violet leaves, and it's happily eating more holes in them.

I've seen two species of tussock caterpillars this week - in the family Lymantriidae.  One is the Milkweed Tussock Moth caterpillar (Euchaetes egle).  These guys are gregarious in early instars, and there were 6 or 8 of them clustered on one leaf on this common milkweed plant.

This is the other tussock moth caterpillar - it came in on the lilac leaves that I had picked to feed my cecropias.  I haven't been able to identify it.

The most common skipper I saw this week was the Leonard's Skipper (Hesperia leonardus).  This one was nectaring on Field Thistle (a native thistle) in one of our remnant prairies.  Field Thistle is a favorite nectaring plant for late summer insects including the beetles that were sharing this flower.

Giant Swallowtails (Papilio cresphontes) were also nectaring on the thistle flowers.

Marcie - from the farm

In looking at information about Giant Swallowtails in Wisconsin, no one seems to be sure whether they overwinter this far north, or repopulate this area from farther south each spring.

These are the dates of my first Giant Swallowtail sightings for 3 of the last 4 years.

2005 – August 10

2006 – May 29

2008 – May 23

It would be interesting to know if these were immigrants, or newly hatched butterflies from nearby.

This is a link to someone’s account of a Giant Swallowtail chrysalis surviving the winter in northern Illinois – so it seems that they do overwinter there.

Giant Swallowtails, like other swallowtails, spend the winter as a pupa (chrysalis). I watched a female lay an egg a few days ago, and thought it would be interesting to raise it and see if it survives the winter. I spent this morning checking out Prickly Ash bushes, and I found 4 more eggs and 7 early instar caterpillars.

I’ll try raising them all and see what happens.

I raise my caterpillars on our porch, which is protected from snow and rain, but not from winter temperatures. Since the pupae need moisture, I usually spray them with water when it rains, or throw some snow on them every week or so all winter.

I just read about someone who has raised Giant Swallowtails, and she says the caterpillars sometimes eat each other if they’re kept together. I usually raise caterpillars in large screened cages, so I’m going to have to adapt my system a little to keep the caterpillars separate.

To start with, I’ve done it like this.

Each caterpillar is on a branch of Prickly Ash, stuck into a florist tube, and stuck in the side of one of my large screened cages.

I’m hoping that they’ll stay on their own branches for now - they're very small and don't seem to move around much. As they get bigger, I’ll figure out a new system.

Here’s an egg.

A first instar caterpillar – it’s about 5 mm long.

I think this is a second instar caterpillar. It’s longer – 12 mm – its skin has gotten shiny, it’s lost its hairs, and its head is wider.

Marcie