I am trying something new for this blog post. The last few weeks I have been paying close attention to yucca plants, especially the flowers, and taking many photos of the various insects (and spiders). We have a trio of plants in our front yard in Leavenworth, Kansas, USA, but I also examined plants in Okawville, Illinois, and one wild plant in eastern Missouri.
I created an album in my Flickr account here, with captions explaining most interactions and behaviors that I observed and documented. I am hereby directing you there to peruse the photos. I plan to keep adding photos to it, as I have many from last year that I have not yet uploaded even to my computer. Plus, there are a few more from Colorado. I thought I wrote an extensive blog post about yucca moths several years ago, but I can't find it if so.
Please let me know if this redirect is acceptable to you. There are other such communities of insects that might be easier to document this way, but if I receive negative feedback I won't repeat this experiment. Enjoy your summer!
Erik, admirable exercise, observing, photographing, and recording all insects on a given plant or a given plant species. Last year, I spent about 8 hours a day for a number of days at our Buttonbush plant because it was drawing so many insects. Why wander about looking for insects when they will come to you (well, actually, they were coming to the same diner I was at). One alternative is to consider posting the observations on iNaturalist and use the Field, "Interaction -> visited flower of, then list the plant name. Then others could query the data for that specific plant. Either way, thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed seeing the pictures. I didn't find it difficult to follow the link. I have some yucca blooming in my yard. I want to go see what critters I can find.
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