Grand Finale

Versute Sharpshooter (leafhopper), Graphocephala versuta

Every bugwatcher knows it’s coming in the late fall, and both delights in it, and mourns for the lost spring and summer, quickly fading from memory. That encore of insect abundance, from heavy, arthritic grasshoppers lumbering up wooden fences, to sun-seeking lady beetles, eager to find snug crevices to pack themselves into for the approaching winter.

Differential Grasshopper, Melanoplus differentialis, male.

Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles, Harmonia axyridis, nestle in bark furrows on a tree.

This year, here in Leavenworth, Kansas, the Indigenous Summer has been long, hot, and hopelessly dry. It seems to matter little to most of the insects, but birds stopped visiting our feeders. We saw dozens of gulls passing over for a couple of days, though, bright white against an azure sky, the wind speeding them along.

Juvenile Tuftlegged Orbweaver, Mangora placida

The air is thick with the exuberance of the minute, now that the larger butterflies are scarce, no longer competing for our attention. Dreamcatcher spider orbs snag the micro-confetti of aphids, leafhoppers, and gnats that are on the wing, or that get torn from their perches by the stiff, incessant wind.

Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae, female.

Falling leaves jerk my eyes in their direction, on the off chance that they are butterflies after all, like Eastern Comma or Question Mark, or the less common Goatweed Leafwings. Leaves that rocket from the ground skyward are grasshoppers sporting autumn yellow, orange, or black hind wings. The largest ones, with clear wings, that land in trees, are bird grasshoppers.

American Bird Grasshopper, Schistocerca americana.

Political campaign signs in our front yard are sometimes briefly occupied by insects or spiders. The spiders try to balloon off, or seek shelter in the little tunnels of the corrugated plastic. I like to think that they are all signaling their approval, but they are actually endorsing the more natural state of our property, our decision to not use chemical treatments of any kind, and otherwise steward the place through benign neglect.

Microleafhopper, Erythroneura calycula

Microleafhopper, Hymetta anthisma

Microleafhopper, Erythridula sp.

Microleafhopper, Balclutha sp.

Microleafhopper, Erythroneura elegans

Leafhopper, Pediopsoides distinctus

Walking the fence line in our back yard, I stir a myriad of tiny leafhoppers that alight briefly on the weathered, algae-stained boards. Despite their size, they are riotously colorful, with streaks and bands across their slender wings. Fireworks come in both bright and muted colors that echo the changing foliage.

A male Fork-tailed Bush Katydid, Scudderia furcata.

Earlier in the season, katydids and lacewings were vivid green. Now, they are dull brown, maybe reddish, with bursts of purple or pink. Little orange skipper butterflies pop as I stroll by the tiny lavender asters that grow low enough to dodge the mower blade, along the very edge of the curb by the busy four-lane. Yellows in the form of Cloudless Sulphurs, on a partly cloudy day, flitting from one cryptic flower to another in someone’s front yard.

A little worn, a Fiery Skipper sips nectar from an aster.

Flowers, too, bloom again. The goldenrod, and taller white asters reboot themselves for one more round of Can I Get a Pollinator?. They do, in flies and bees mostly. Wild Carrot never gave up to begin with, still looking fresh as a daisy, courting potential pollinators. They succeed, in the form of two metallic flies. The flies depart when a lone ant appears to steal nectar.

A flower fly, Helophilus fasciatus, and a Spotted Cucumber Beetle, Diabrotica undecimpunctata, enjoy goldenrod nectar.

Another October surprise….no, wait, today is November the second already….is an immature Carolina Mantis, sitting stock still among our backyard goldenrod. It is probably one molt away from adulthood, but I can’t decide if it is male or female. I wonder if there are any larger insects left to feed it, get it over the hump, or if it will die young, perishing as the teenage equivalent of its kind.

Immature Carolina Mantis, Stagmomantis carolina

There has finally been rain lately, including today, so perhaps there will be yet another burst of activity in its wake. There will still be ground beetles crossing the sidewalks, and grasshoppers basking on the pavement on warm days, to be sure. Fall Cankerworm has yet to even take the stage, but they don’t always, not every year, and I might not see them if the timing isn’t right.

Leaf-footed bug, Leptoglossus oppositus.

There is no metaphor here. This is just how nature works. It varies, it adapts, takes chances, weighing risks at a molecular level. Emerge now, or snooze another calendar year. We are slower to act, built to react instead of evolving to be proactive, and to accept whatever weather befalls us. The warm, sunny days seem to encourage our lazy nature, while nature bustles around us, unnoticed by most.

Aphid, Drepanaphis sp.

A Winter Click Beetle?

I can't make this stuff up. Here I am just walking my neighborhood for exercise yesterday, as I try to do on a daily basis, and limping across the sidewalk comes a little (6-7 mm) click beetle. I put it in a vial, bring it home, and take a couple of pictures. Because I am curious, and I know that "bug folks" on Facebook are starved for stimuli during the winter, I post the images in a beetle group. How should I know that would be genuinely exciting?

My first stop online was the "Friends of Coleoptera [beetles] at the Natural History Museum" group on Facebook. The group is hosted by curators at the Natural History Museum in London, England, but beetle experts from all over the world are members of the group and always willing to help with identifications.

As luck would have it, one of my mentors from back when I was a teenager, and then at Oregon State University, is an expert on click beetles (family Elateridae). I knew this, and I knew he was in the Facebook group, but I had no idea when he would be online next, let alone looking at posts in the group. In a matter of minutes, he had put up a comment on my post that exceeded my wildest expectations:

"Anthracopteryx hiemalis. Super-nice find! This is a native winter-active species in a monobasic genus. It is endemic from Laramie south to Westcliffe in the Front Ranges. Never collected it myself."

Translation: This beetle is the only species in that genus, and it has a very restricted geographical range. You could have knocked me over with a feather. What I haven't told my friend yet is that this is actually the second specimen I have found, in the same stretch of sidewalk, under pretty much the same exact conditions. I didn't get around to imaging that first specimen until it was just about to expire, unfortunately, but here you go....

I certainly did not expect to get a species identification, but I took that and went over to Bugguide.net, the foremost online repository of images of North American insects, spiders, and other arthropods, to add my two images. Well, there weren't any others. There was not a species page to put them on. There was not even a page for the genus. Fortunately, I have volunteer editorial privileges, and so I was able to erect the appropriate pages and then put the pictures up. That kind of thing does not happen very often any more. Bugguide is damn comprehensive.

The lesson I learned, and should have learned long ago, actually, is that when it comes to entomology, you can never assume anything. You can never figure that what you observe and record has no significance. Sure, most of the time it won't be earth-shaking in any way. Then, one day when you don't bother making something public, you will be depriving the scientific community of something truly remarkable.

If anyone ever chastises you for sharing an observation of some "common" critter that you personally were unfamiliar with, then the shame is on them. We can all recall learning about a given organism for the first time, and how exciting that was. Scientists have no right to insult anyone for making an effort to learn, contribute, and otherwise share. Thankfully, there are few scholars that arrogant and disrespectful.

So, get out there on warm winter days and start looking for stuff! There are, no doubt, whole communities of winter-active organisms that we are overlooking.

Last Hurrah or New Normal?

Dateline: Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA, November 16, 2016. The temperature today reached a high of 77° F, quite abnormal for this time of year. Walking for a couple of hours along the Rock Island Trail, a concrete bike path through the rural-suburban interface, produced a variety of insects that I might find, on average, no later than say early to mid-October, if that late.

Dainty Sulphur butterfly

Weather trends are not looking good. There might actually be something to the whole global warming, climate change thing. It last rained here twenty-one (21) days ago, and that was but a trace. Last year we had snow by now, and concurrent cold temperatures, obviously. What our local climate now lacks in predictability it makes up for in extremes.

Adult female Red-legged Grasshopper

We are not alone, of course. One of my colleagues, Mathew Brust, in Nebraska, recently posted to Facebook that he has been observing certain grasshopper species that are farther ahead in their metamorphosis than they should be at this time of year. He expressed fears that we might have lower insect diversity and abundance come next spring as a result of the extended summer/fall:

"Wait, latest update, I have seen 13 grasshopper species in two days (8 as adults, 5 as nymphs). What really scares me is that many of the nymphs are already 5th instars (last stage before adulthood), which I have never seen in fall, not even on warm days in January. I am seeing many late butterflies, and I suspect most will be dead-ends as their offspring will not survive. These are likely individuals that should have normally emerged next spring. I have to wonder how many butterfly species are going to see a serious drop in numbers next year because of the messed up weather this fall. Pretty screwed up stuff! Ah, but I guess global warming is just a hoax, so it must be due to something else entirely."

Mathew is obviously being tongue-in-cheek with his last comment, but it is important that each of us document what we are seeing. I, for one, am highly skeptical that the incoming federal administration is going to make major strides, if any at all, toward a better understanding of climate change, so it us up to citizen scientists to contribute what we can.

Velvet-striped Grasshopper nymph

I found three species of grasshoppers as adults (and heard another one species crepitating in a field), and one as a nymph, yesterday.

Western Yellowjacket worker

I even found a worker Western Yellowjacket on the trail that had probably collided with a cyclist a few minutes earlier. It spun around aimlessly on the concrete in a dizzy, disoriented kind of way, but eventually flew off. Vehicular traffic of all kinds takes its toll on insects and spiders, but that can be the subject of a future blog post. What is surprising is that there are any yellowjackets still present. Queens should have entered into hibernation by now, and workers and males should have perished back in October.

Western Pygmy Blue butterfly

I spotted a shockingly fresh-looking Western Pygmy Blue butterfly, too, and perhaps even more surprisingly discovered it was taking nectar from tiny, blooming flowers. What plant in its right mind is blooming now? There are still roadside sunflowers looking as bright and healthy as the majority looked at their peak in August. I even see a few asters still clinging to life, and wild alfalfa flowers, too.

Adult seed bug, Melacoryphus nigrinervis

The other part of this story is that I, myself, am usually hunkered down for the winter, devoting my time and energy to editing images from the spring, summer, and fall, plotting stories to approach editors with, and otherwise confining myself mostly to the indoors. My brain is telling me that is what I should be doing, but my eyes and temperature sensors are kicking me out the door to continue exploring. My own biological compass is spinning wildly out of control.

Elm Leaf Beetle

What are you observing and experiencing right now in your corner of the world? Anecdotal information is critical for a better understanding of trends in climate and weather, so I hope you will consider recording your observations on i-Naturalist, and your "spottings" to Project Noah, and any other relevant databases and resources. I'll be talking about another such resource soon, pertinent to personal and community gardens, and local agriculture. Changes in insect abundance and diversity will, obviously, have a profound impact on how we feed ourselves and each other. Stay tuned.

Wolf spider

Missing Sector Orbweaver, Zygiella x-notata

During my stay in Oregon during December and the first week of January, I was surprised to see how many spiders were still active in the relative cold and damp. The most conspicuous of those arachnids were the Missing Sector Orbweavers, Zygiella x-notata, which seemed to occupy the corner of every window frame, outdoor light, or other manmade structure.

This species is easy to identify, simply from the web alone. It looks as if the spider forgot to finish it. A substantial wedge of the sticky spiral is missing from the top half of the web, the central radius in the sector running to a tubular retreat on the periphery where the spider usually resides. The web spans anywhere between 6-14 centimeters in diameter.

Zygiella web, spider in upper right corner

The spiders will come out to sit in the hub (center) of the snare at night, or even on overcast days; and young spiders are more apt to station themselves at the center than older spiders. Adult females measure 7.4-8.7 millimeters in body length, males 6-6.5 millimeters. The color and pattern is pretty consistent across all specimens, as shown in the images here.

Male specimen

Zygiella x-notata is not native to North America, having been introduced here from Europe who knows how long ago. It is well-established here now, from the California coast through western Oregon and Washington, and also along the Atlantic coast, from New England to Virginia. Another adventive species, Z. atrica, is known from northwestern Washington and southern British Columbia. Z. nearctica is boreal, occurring coast to coast in Canada, plus Alaska, New England, the Rocky Mountains to Colorado, and the Appalachians to North Carolina.

Two native species formerly placed in Zygiella have been reclassified into the genus Parazygiella: P. carpenteri with a disjunct occurrence in the Sierra Nevada mountains, California coast, and also southeastern Washington; and P. dispar from southern British Columbia to the vicinity of Monterey, California (though this is a holarctic species also found in Europe). P. carpenteri usually spins a complete orb web.

Spider in tubular retreat with egg sac

Back to Z. x-notata. It is also known under the aliases of "Winter Spider," "Opensector Orbweaver," and "Silver-sided Sector Spider." I recall this species being most abundant along the waterfront of the Columbia River when I was a child, but it is now among the most abundant of spiders even up in the hills of southwest Portland. It certainly associates itself with buildings, bridges, docks, and other structures.

What would these spiders feed on during the winter months? Many moth species fly throughout the colder months in the Pacific Northwest, plus winter crane flies, other dipterans, and some beetles. Orbweavers often crowd their snares around outdoor lights to further improve their odds of catching a meal.

Female with egg sac

Keep exploring during the winter months, even if it is only around the exterior of your home, office, or other building. You might well encounter one of these spiders, or any number of other organisms.

Sources: Adams, R.J. 2014. Field Guide to the Spiders of California and the Pacific Coast States. Berkeley: University of California Press. 303 pp.
Bradley, Richard A. 2013. Common Spiders of North America. Berkeley: University of California Press. 271 pp.
Sollfors, Stephan. 2010. "Zygiella x-notata," EuroSpiders.com
"Zygiella x-notata," NatureSpot.org.uk
"Summary for Zygiella x-notata (Araneae)," British Arachnological Society.

Underside of spider

Winter Crane Flies

Few insects habitually appear in adult form during the winter months, but members of the family Trichoceridae, better known as "winter crane flies," are among them. I found a few attracted to the porch light at my late mother's apartment in Portland, Oregon the evening of December 10, 2014.

Distinguishing winter crane flies from other crane flies is not easy, because the characters needed to tell them apart are not readily visible in the field, or even in images. They are relatively small, averaging 6 millimeters in body length. Winter crane flies have three "simple eyes," called ocelli, which other crane flies lack. The ocelli are on the crown of the head between the compound eyes. The wing venation helps to separate trichocerids from other families of crane flies, too; and even helps identify the three North American genera.

Males can be seen flying in swarms on sunny days, but these flies seem to be associated mostly with dark, sheltered situations like the mouths of caves and mine shafts, hollow trees, and cellars. This might reflect the larval affinity for decaying organic matter.

Winter crane fly maggots have been found in decomposing leaves and vegetables, as well as in fungi, manure, decaying tubers in root cellars, and in rodent burrows where they probably scavenge on feces.

Most North American trichocerids are in the genus Trichocera, which accounts for 27 species. There is one species each in the genera Paracladura (western North America) and Diazosma (transcontinental).

Since these flies are of no economic importance, we don't know as much about them as we do other insects. Still, I find it delightful that I can find a flying insect in the dead of winter. It is a testament to the durability and diversity of insect life no matter the weather or the environment.

Sources: Clark, Patterson. 2011. 'Snow Swarms: Winter Crane Flies," The Washington Post.
Eisele, Tim. 2013. "Winter Crane Flies," The Backyard Arthropod Project
Fetzner, James W., Jr. 2007. "Trichoceridae," The Crane Flies of Pennsylvania. Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Leckie, Seabrooke. 2010. "Tay Meadows Tidbit - Winter Crane Fly."
McAlpine, J.F., et al. 1981. Manual of Nearctic Diptera, vol.1. Ottawa: Agriculture Canada. Monograph No. 27. 674 pp.

ArachNovember?

Last month we celebrated "Arachtober" over on the Flickr photo-sharing website, but with the unseasonably warm weather we have had here at home along the Front Range in Colorado, we're still seeing plenty of spiders this first week of November. Ok, we also cheated a little and took a trip into the heart of New Mexico, but it all goes to reveal how surprisingly long-lived some arachnids can be, and their different strategies for surviving the winter.

Male platform spider, Microlinyphia sp.

Fall is the time when the males of many a spider species go wandering in search of mates. So, it was not surprising to find a male "platform spider," genus Microlinyphia, in a restroom on the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico last Monday. I found out that the genus is easily recognized by the circular filament seen in the image above that issues from the male's pedipalp. This hair-like structure is called the "embolus," and it is the channel through which sperm travels during mating.

another view of the Microlinyphia platform spider

Female and immature male platform spiders live on flat, sheet-like webs built close to the ground amid grasses and low plants. The spider clings upside down to the underside of the web. Morning dew can make the webs much more obvious than they normally are.

Once mated, a female spider usually produces one or more egg sacs, as this labyrinth spider, Metepeira sp., has done. She has two egg sacs behind her in the image below, inside the tubular retreat she is at the mouth of. We found her near the platform spider, but outside along a railing around the "Flight Deck" at the refuge. Labyrinth spiders build a combination orb web and tangled snare.

Labyrinth spider with egg sacs behind her

The egg stage is a great way for an embryo or spiderling to spend the cold months, insulated within layers of silk spun by their mother. The eggs often hatch within the package, the spiderlings biding their time until the weather becomes favorable for their emergence.

Ghost spider female

At the bed-and-breakfast inn where we stayed in New Mexico, I found what must be a very pregnant female ghost spider, family Anyphaenidae, prowling the exterior of the house at night. Back home in Colorado Springs, before we left on vacation, I spotted a similarly bloated female jumping spider, Phidippus asotus on the downspout right outside our townhouse.

Female Phidippus asotus jumping spider

Inside the bed-and-breakfast, a pair of male cellar spiders in the genus Physocyclus were hanging around the web of a female in a corner of the ceiling. Below is one of the males approaching the female. Physocyclus seems to replace the Long-bodied Cellar Spider (Pholcus phalangioides) as the usual "indoor" cellar spider in the southwest U.S.

Male (left) and female cellar spiders, Physocyclus sp.

It is not only spiders that are out and about, but also harvestmen, appropriately-named arachnids for their season of abundance. You may know them as "daddy long-legs," but that name is widely applied to cellar spiders, even crane flies (in England at least). The one shown below is likely Phalangium opilio, a much-studied species native to Europe but now found all over the globe. They can survive the winter as eggs, adults, or immature specimens.

Harvestman: not a spider but still an arachnid

Fall is apparently also a time when young spiders disperse through "ballooning." I will eventually devote an entire post to this phenomenon, but it involves the spiders climbing up vertical objects. Consequently, you can reliably find spiders atop fence posts, mailboxes, utility boxes (for cables, electrical, phone), as they try and catch the wind and literally fly off to greener pastures. Crab spiders and wolf spiders in particular seem to be doing this right now. The little wolf spider below parachuted onto our car at Bosque del Apache in New Mexico.

Little wolf spider on our car roof

Just the other day (Friday), I found a young running crab spider, Thanatus sp., on a utility box here in Colorado Springs.....

Running crab spider, Thanatus sp.

followed by a ground crab spider, Xysticus sp., on top of a "stucco" mailbox post. Both seemed intent on ballooning, especially the Xysticus, which stood on tiptoe (tip-tarsus?) every time a slight breeze came up.

Xysticus crab spider

Finally, inside our very townhouse, Heidi discovered a female funnelweb weaver, Hololena sp., in her web atop our fireplace mantle.

Funnelweb weaver, Hololena sp.

We welcome our arachnid friends, even indoors, to help dispatch pesky flies and other insects that we don't appreciate nearly as much. We hope that your own holiday spirit of friendliness likewise extends to spiders, harvestmen, and related critters, even if it means you gently "relocate" them back outdoors.