My Kind of Fourth of July

While most folks enjoy fireworks spectacles and flag-waving on Independence Day here in the United States, I would rather turn on our backyard blacklight and see what comes to visit. The neighbors did have some surprisingly professional-looking explosions, albeit they are illegal here in the city of Colorado Springs. I did my best to tune-out the loud noise.

Ruddy-winged Dart, Euxoa mimallonis

The U.S. was founded by immigrants, and has prospered from ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity, though we seem to frown on "minorities" in our present political climate. Here under my ultraviolet light, I see plenty of biological diversity, a melting-pot of insects that makes the ecosystem run even more efficiently than capitalism fuels our economy. One cannot help but observe the similarities, though the niches in ecosystems are filled by a variety of species while niches in the economy are occupied by only one: Homo sapiens.

White miller caddisfly, Nectopsyche sp.

Nature does not recognize villains or criminals or classes or any other structure relevant to our human societies. Every species is equal, adapting as it is able to constantly-changing conditions of climate, habitat, and competition from other species. Yes, some immigrant insects do compete with native species for the same "job" in the ecosystem, that much is obvious.

Damsel bug, Nabis sp., with leafhopper prey

While some insects do come to the blacklight to prey on other insects, most coexist peacefully under the purple glow. Occasionally one will blunder into another, causing both animals to run erratically or fly abruptly, only to quickly settle again without armed conflict or undue protest. Still other insects make a brief appearance, flirting with my desire to take their picture. Sometimes I get the shot, often I do not.

Crambid moth, Pyrausta insequalis

Every color of the rainbow has arrived. White is among the rarest. There is green, red, yellow, orange, black, brown....There are plain, monochrome bugs, and those with patterns too intricate to imagine. The moths often lose their colors as the night wears on, the scales on their wings lost with each wingbeat, each collision with the abrasive netting protecting the blacklight, each collision with another insect. It does not hamper their flight in the least.

Ant-mimicking plant bug, Pilophorus sp.

This one night, our celebration of America's birthday, may also be an insect's final fling, its days as an adult all too brief, just long enough to find a mate and reproduce. Some moths flourish for only a week at most, sometimes even more briefly. They have spent the bulk of their lives as caterpillars, larvae that are feeding-and-growing machines. At the end of that worm-like stage they transform into the pupa. Apparently inert on the outside, the pupa is a frenzy of internal reorganization as cells are re-purposed, some genes are turned off, and other genes turned on. It is a microcosm of a rapidly-changing economy with employees re-trained, whole new industries born, with all the promise of positive change each would suggest.

Delphacid planthopper, Bostaera nasuta

Has my blacklight beacon derailed the destinies of these insects? Some will surely be diverted from their procreative goals, from their foraging missions if they feed as adults. I make a point of turning the light off before I, myself, turn in, to give the insects a chance to resume their lives without distraction, though in a city full of lights they may well end up concentrated at the neighbor's porch light, or a streetlight up the boulevard. It is a hazard of urban living for those insects that reside in cities.

Green lacewing, family Chrysopidae

At last the auditory noise has abated, and the attractiveness of the blacklight has reached a point of diminishing returns. I must sleep, and it will only be four or five hours until the sun peeks over the eastern horizon to put an end to the nocturnal adventures of these tiny arthropods. The summer days are long, the nights brief, and insects must make the most of that narrow window of darkness. The day shift will begin, and niches will transfer ownership accordingly. There is no timecard to punch, but there are no holidays, either, no middle management, just life, pulsing as it will.