Last week I went on the first collecting trip of the 2023 season, which was actually the second phase of a study initiated last year to evaluate the efficacy of “jug traps” and baits for trapping longhorned beetles (family Cerambycidae). In the first year of the study, I set out 24 traps at 12 locations across southern Illinois and Missouri—one trap at each location baited with “pure” (99.5%) ethanol (EtOH), and the other baited with a 50:50 mixture of ethanol and sweet red table wine (SRW). The traps proved to be highly effective at trapping not only a diversity of Cerambycidae, but also Cetoniidae and Elateridae. Additionally, and in what was a bit of a surprise, the 50:50 mixture (EtOH/SRW) proved to be much more efficacious than EtOH alone. The reasons for this are not clear—-perhaps SRW contains other volatiles besides EtOH that are also attractive to the beetles, or possibly the sugars in SRW permit additional fermentation and, thus, extended volatilization of EtOH. Either way, the ability to substitute at least a portion of relatively expensive EtOH with cheap SRW without negatively impacting trap efficacy (actually improving it) allows cost savings and begs the question: how effective are traps baited with SRW alone?
To answer that question, I decided to conduct a second season of trapping, this time comparing three possible baits: SRW alone, 50:50 SRW/EtOH, and EtOH alone. I also wanted to conduct the study in a different area where a different longhorned beetle fauna might be expected to increase the diversity of species shown to be attracted to the traps, and for that I could not think of a better place than northwestern Oklahoma. The insect fauna of the area is decidedly more “western” than southern Missouri, and in fact I have collected several species of beetles in the area that represent new records for the state—most of which are more typically found further southwest in New Mexico and/or Arizona (manuscripts containing these records are currently in progress). Most importantly, I can reach the area from my home near St. Louis, Missouri in less than a day of driving, allowing me to make the repeated visits over the course of the season that will be necessary to service the traps and collect the data. Since three traps will be deployed at each location (instead of two as in 2022), fewer locations (six) were chosen, resulting in 18 total traps. The traps were set out May 16–18, during which time my good friend and collecting buddy Rich Thoma joined me, and I will return every five weeks to check the traps until early October, when they will be taken down.
Note: all field identifications are preliminary pending confirmation.
Day 1—Gloss Mountain State Park (Major Co.) This is one of my favorite spots in northwestern Oklahoma, though not quite west enough to be considered part of the “panhandle.” The gypsum-capped mesas atop red clay soils have a decidedly “New Mexican” look, and I have collected several beetles here that represent new state records for Oklahoma, including Plionoma suturalis, Chrysobothris octocola, C. quadrillineata, and Paratyndaris prospopis. I decided to set two set of jug traps here because of the two distinctly different habitat types: one on/near the top of the mesa in copses of gum bumelia, netleaf hackberry, soapberry, and/or eastern red-cedar, and another in the mesquite chaparral along south border in isolated mesquite trees.
Ethanol-baited “jug trap” hanging in honey mesquite tree in mesquite chaparral.
Things were still a bit early in the season, and I did not spend anytime beating the newly leafed out trees, but I did find one Phyllophaga cribrosa on the ground and several Plionoma suturalis (gave a mating pair to Rich), one Trichodes bibalteatus, and one Monophylla terminalis on living Neltuma glandulosa [= Prosopis glandulosa].
Plionoma suturalis (family Cerambycidae) mating pair on Neltuma glandulosa [= Prosopis glandulosa] (honey mesquite) in mesquite chaparral.
Other sightings of interest were an eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris) at the edge of the mesa and a Manduca quinquemaculata (five-spotted hawkmoth) getting an early start on its evening pollination rounds on still unopened Oenethera macrocarpa (Missouri primrose) blooms.
Manduca quinquemaculata (five-spotted hawkmoth, family Sphingidae) nectaring in flight at flower of Oenethera macrocarpa (Missouri primrose) in mesquite chaparral.
Day 2—Alabaster Caverns State Park (Woodward Co.) There is no camping at Gloss Mountain State Park, and we were hungry as well, so we drove to Woodward to grab some dinner and backtracked up to Alabaster Caverns State Park. Arriving at the campsite after sunset and setting up a new, never-before-erected tent in the dark was an interesting experience; however, the tent went up quickly enough that Rich and I were able to relax and enjoy a beer and conversation before turning in for the night. In the morning, after getting a good look at the canyon forest, I decided this might be a good spot to hang one of my Lindgren funnel traps before hanging the jug traps further up in Cedar Canyon. There are many very large gum bumelia trees in addition to hackberries and red-cedars—surprising to me given the riparian nature of the forest, and I found a nice secluded spot to hang the trap, which was baited with 50:50 SRW/EtOH, before breaking camp and heading to Raptorroost Trail to access the upper reaches of Cedar Canyon.
Morning sun over Cedar Canyon.
Cedar Canyon represents a collapsed cave system, now appearing as a jagged, forested gash cutting deeply into the gently rolling gypsum landscape. The area first came to my attention in 2009, when I “discovered” a healthy population of Cylindera celeripes (swift tiger beetle)—then considered one of North America’s rarest tiger beetles—living in the sparsely-vegetated gypsum exposures above the canyon. Checking in with the park office to show them our permit, we were surprised to learn that I should have also contacted them ahead of time to apply for a “separate, park-specific” permit, which after a bit of wrangling and cajoling we were able to convince them to grant on the spot (the vagaries of state park permits, where “some” park managers have a tendency to want to demonstrate the fact that they have ultimate authority over their piece of the earth). While we waited, we enjoyed looking at the Saurophaganax maximus skull found somewhere in northwestern Oklahoma and on display in the park office. A relative of the smaller but better-known Allosaurus, S. maximus lived during the late Jurassic (150 mya) and was, at that time, the largest meat-eating dinosaur in North America.
Saurophaganax maximus was the largest meat-eating dinosaur in North America during the late Jurassic (150 mya). This skull was found somewhere in northwestern Oklahoma.
After receiving our “re-permit,” we headed for Cedar Canyon to hang three jug traps in the canyon forest. This was eventually done, with traps hung at three points in the forest of mostly red-cedar, hackberry, and gum bumelia. Hanging the traps in the canyon was quite difficult—the trail into and out of the canyon was steep and technical, and finding places to hang the traps where they were unlikely to be seen and disturbed by park visitors while still being accessible to me was even harder. Before accessing the canyon via Raptorsroost Trail and hanging the traps, however, we quickly became distracted by goings on in the gypsum/red clay shortgrass prairie above the canyon. We first noted Moneilema armatum (cactus beetles) on Opuntia macrorhiza (prairie pricklypear cactus), collecting about a dozen individuals.
Moneilema armatum (family Cerambycidae) on pad of Opuntia macrorhiza (prairie pricklypear cactus) in gypsum/red clay shortgrass prairie.
As we searched the cactus and the morning sun warmed things up, I also began noticing adults of Acmaeodera tubulus coming to the flowers in bloom, mostly Tradescantia occidentalis (western spiderwort) but also Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus (smallflower desert-chicory) and a yellow-flowered Oenethera sp. (primrose). I was rather surprised to see this eastern U.S. species occurring this far west in such a decidedly “western” habitat—surely this must be near the western limit of distribution for the species!
Acmaeodera tubulus (family Buprestidae) on flower of Tradescantia occidentalis (western spidorwort) in gypsum/red clay shortgrass prairie.
At any rate, hanging the traps and indulging our distractions burned about three hours (and finding/photographing a beautiful female collared lizard [Crotaphytus collaris] and a few other interesting things burned even more time), so we went back down to our previous night’s campsite, ate a quick lunch, and then headed towards our next stop.
Beaver Dunes City Park (Beaver Co.) Beaver Dunes is a former state park, now a city park managed by the nearby city of Beaver primarily for ORVs. Despite the impacts on the dunes, there remain vast areas of the dunes that are closed to traffic and, thus, not impacted by ORV traffic and boasting a unique dune flora and fauna. Bordering the dunes on the east is a riparian zone boasting large Populus deltoides (eastern cottonwood) trees and smaller Celtis reticulata (netleaf hackberry) and Robinia pseudoacacia (black locust) trees. Notably, some years ago I collected a nice series of Poecilonota cyanipes (family Buprestidae) off the stunted cottonwoods in and around the tent campground—the only time I have collected this species other than a single individual up in Michigan even more years ago. We first drove through the tent campground and then the picnic area to scope out a camping spot and decide exactly where I wanted to hang the traps. Ultimately, I decided neither location was suitable for the traps as the wooded areas were adjacent to either dunes or prairie with little woody vegetation and where prevailing winds were likely to carry most of the scent emanating from the traps. Instead, I decided to hang them in a strip of woodland stretching north off the RV campground (Pioneer Campground).
Afterwards we explored the dunes, immediately finding several Batyle ignicollis apparently bedded down on the inflorescence of Styllingia sylvatica (Queen’s delight). I have seen this species doing the same thing on a previous visit some years ago, and in that case many individuals were found on many plants. In this case, however, beyond the three individuals seen on this first plant (two of which escaped as I tried to photograph them!), only one more individual on one other plant was seen.
Batyle ignicollis (family Cerambycidae) on inflorescence of Styllingia sylvatica in sand dune.
A couple of tenebrionids crossing the road were picked up before working our way to the picnic area and exploring the dunes in their vicinity. There was surprisingly little in bloom—primarily S. sylvatica and just a few sparsely blooming Penstemon fendleri (Fendler’s penstemon). We checked the former, finding only a few Euphoria kernii (all three color forms), one E. sepulchralis, and the one additional B. ignicollis on the former and nothing on the latter. The only other insects seen, or at least collected, were a large(ish) weevil on a grass stem and a Cicindela formosa (big sand tiger beetle). After exploring for a while and not seeing much activity, it seemed that further searching was “beating a dead horse,” so we started back towards the car. Along the way, I decided to beat once again the Celtis reticulata (netleaf hackberry) trees dotting the roadside and, unlike my earlier (limited) attempts, was immediately rewarded with a couple of Chrysobothris purpureovittata (family Buprestidae). Further beating continued to produce additional specimens as well as a few Agrilus lecontei and/or A. paracelti, and by the time I finished beating the last tree I had collected perhaps 12–15 C. purpureovittata and 6–8 Agrilus spp. I felt this was a happy note on which to end the day’s collecting, and we decided to run into town to look for dinner (we ended up bringing carry-out pizza back to the campground and enjoying it with a beer!).
Day 3—Beaver Dunes City Park (cont.) Overnight it rained heavily (which I did not hear, despite being in a tent), so before heading off to the Black Mesa area we checked out the dunes to see if we could find fresh tracks. We found a few deer tracks, a nice long stretch of wild turkey tracks, and some small tracks that most likely belong to red fox.
Morning sun over the dunes.
Fresh tracks in the sand—possibly red fox.
Black Mesa State Park (Cimarron Co.) Black Mesa State Park and Preserve are tucked into the extreme corner of northwestern Oklahoma, and it is here where “east” truly turns to “west.” Miles of shortgrass prairie suddenly give way, shortly before the park, to chaparral dotted with Cylindropuntia imbricata (cholla) and Juniperus monosperma (one-seed juniper). Arriving in the park after our 3½-hour drive straight west, we checked in at the office to show our permit (no hassle or “extra” permit needed), reserved our spot in the tent campground, and ate a quick lunch before heading to the Scenic Overlook where I’d planned to hang a set of traps in the hackberry/soapberry wooded ravine below the overlook. This was eventually done, but again we were distracted right off the bat when we noticed plants abundantly in flower around the parking lot. I quickly found a few Acmaeodera that I could not immediately identify—obviously members of the A. mixta/pulchella/immaculata group, but they are tiny, much smaller than any of those species! Most were on flowers of Tetraneuris acaulis (stemless four-nerve daisy), a few were on flowers of Melampodium leucanthum (blackfoot daisy), and one was on flower of Xanthisma spinulosum (spiny goldenweed). I’ll be anxious to get a better look at them once I return home. Traps successfully hung, we then headed to the next spot a short drive north of the state park.
A species in the Acmaeodera mixta/pulchella/immaculata group (family Buprestidae), but tiny! On flower of Tetraneuris acaulis (stemless four-nerve daisy) in shortgrass prairie.
1.6 mi E Kenton on Hwy 325 (Cimarron Co.) I’ve visited this sandstone outcropping colonized by an interesting oak identified on iNaturalist as Quercus × undulata (wavyleaf oak)—a naturally occurring hybrid between Q. gambelii and Q. turbinella and that occurs more typically in Utah and the Intermountain West. This seems to be the easternmost occurrence of this hybrid, and while I’m in no position to vouch for the veracity of the identification, I do think there could be some interesting beetles associated with it. The outcropping is also colonized by two other decidedly western trees—Pinus edulis (Colorado pinyon) and Juniperus monosperma (one-seed juniper), both of which seem to be at their eastern natural limit here and which could host some interesting western insects as well. Unfortunately, my previous visits (early May through mid-June) all seemed to be at the wrong season (too dry), although on my last visit (early June last year) I did manage to collect a nice number and variety of Acmaeodera, including a new state record (A. quadrivittatoides)! Once again, there seemed to be little going on—just a few Nemognatha blister beetles and some tiny flies on the various yellow composite flowers found in bloom—despite the series of Acmaeodera collected down the road within the state park. Perhaps it was more due to the thick cloud cover with distant rain showers that had moved into the area than the time of season, but the oaks very recently leafed out and just now flowering still suggests it is early in the season here. Nevertheless, I hung the last set of traps in the oak/pine/juniper woodland atop the outcropping and look forward to seeing what might turn up in them later this season.
View from atop sandstone outcrop.
Nemognatha nigripennis? (family Meloidae) on flower Xanthisma spinulosum (spiny goldenweed) in shortgrass prairie.
Dinosaur Tracks (Cimarron Co.) Hanging traps at the state park and the sandstone outcropping just north of the park took a few hours but still left us with some time to explore the area and I wanted to show Rich the famous dinosaur tracks found just across the road from Black Mesa Preserve. There is no signage, and 10 years having passed since the last time I saw them, so I wasn’t sure I would be able to find them. Fortunately, a little Google sleuthing paid off and we came right to the spot. The tracks—apparently made by a theropod (one of the carnivorous groups)—were discovered in the early 1980s and are on private land but are open to the public during daylight hours. We were fortunate that it had rained the previous night, which filled the tracks with water and made them especially visible in the sandstone rock at the bottom of the creek in which they were exposed. The largest, deepest, and best-preserved of the dozen or so tracks that are still visible (many are covered by mud) measure approximately 16” across and clearly show the 3-toed footprint typical of theropod dinosaurs. Given their size, perhaps they were made by Saurophaganax maximus!
Dinosaur tracks (likely a therapod) in creek bed near Black Mesa Preserve.
Black Mesa Preserve (Cimarron Co.) I had considered hanging a set of traps adjacent to this location, but I saw little suitable habitat in the area, save possibly for the ribbon of large cottonwoods lining nearby Carrizo Creek. Regardless, since I had already placed two other sets at the nearby sandstone outcropping and a bit further south at the state park, I felt my coverage of the area was sufficient. To pass the remaining time, Rich and I hiked through the juniper chaparral on the north side of the mesa. The area still had an “early spring” feel to it, with yucca and cholla barely beginning to throw up or develop their flower stalks/buds and the whole area looking like it needed a good rain. Correspondingly, there was almost no insect activity to speak of—we found lone individuals of Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Colorado potato beetle) and Eleodes sp. (clown beetle) crawling on the trail, and I collected a single Omorgus sp. (skin beetle). Whatever thoughts we had of ascending the mesa and hiking to the High Point Monument were dashed when our legs—already tired from the day’s previous hikes—began to protest and cried “Enough!” Turning around before the kiosk leading to the mesa top turned out fortuitous, as suddenly plummeting temperatures and the threat of rain caused us to make our way back to the car with some sense of urgency. It began raining as soon as we reached the car, and we were ecstatic to find “The Merc” open and serving up dinner in nearby Kenton (the only Oklahoma City in the Mountain Time Zone!).
Juniper chaparral below Black Mesa.
Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Colorado potato beetle, family Chrysomelidae) in juniper chaparral.
Dinner at Mercantile Cafe (“The Merc”) in Kenton—the only city in Oklahoma in the Mountain Time Zone.
After dinner, we returned to the campground and enjoyed what turned out to be only a brief respite from the rain—long enough to enjoy a beer—before getting chased into the tent as it picked back up again. It would rain most of the night and all the next day as we made the long drive back to St. Louis, but with 18 traps hung in six distinct habitats and some interesting beetles in the bottles it was hard to be disappointed. Stay tuned for updates as I begin checking the traps next month.
Welcome to the 11th “Collecting Trip iReport”; this one covering a very short (4 days) trip to northwestern Oklahoma on May 3–7, 2022. My collecting partner for this trip was long-time friend and hymenopterist Mike Arduser. Mike is one of the best natural historians that I know and, like me, has a special love for the often overlooked beauty of western Oklahoma and its fascinating insect fauna. It had been 13 years, however—too long, in my opinion, since our last joint field trip when we sampled the bee (Mike) and beetle (me) fauna at The Nature Conservancy’s Four Canyon Preserve in Ellis Co. Thus, I was happy for the chance to once again spend some time in the field with such a knowledgeable naturalist in an area we that both know and love.
Day 1 – Gloss Mountain State Park (Major Co.) It took most of the day to get here—Tulsa threw us a couple of obstacles in the form of a construction-mediated wrong turn and a motorcycle engulfed in flames. I’ve been to Gloss Mountain a number of times, but never this early in the season. Skies were sunny (unlike St. Louis when we left this morning), but temps didn’t get much above 60°F and even dropped down into the upper 50s before we finished up at sunset.
Gloss Mountain State Park – early evening view from atop the mesa.
Surprisingly, despite the earliness of the season and cool temps, beating was quite productive. Working the low areas around the parking lot, I beat a fair number and diversity of beetles and hemipterans—mostly chrysomelids—but only a single Agrilus sp. off of Prosopis glandulosa.
This must be Oenothera macrocarpa (bigfruit evening primrose, Ozark sundrop, Missouri evening primrose), though it looks very different from populations south of St. Louis.
I knew there were other trees, principally Celtis reticulata (net-veined hackberry) and Sapindus drummondii (soapberry), on top of the mesa and wanted to see if anything was on them. Bingo! Even before reaching the top, I beat a few Agrilus (several spp.) from the Celtis, and up on top I beat quite a few more off the same. There were also additional mesquite trees up top, off which I again beat a single Agrilus sp. along with a few other things, notably a series of ceresine treehoppers. The Sapindus was just starting to leaf out, and I found nothing by beating them other than a single ceresine. A notable find was the pile of larval frass of Plinthocoelium suaveolens (bumelia borer) at the base of a living Sideroxylon lanuginosum (gum bumelia) tree—a sure sign of active infestation by a beetle I have yet to formally record from this place.
Frass at the base of a small Sideroxylon lanuginosum (gum bumelia)—evidence of an active larval infestation by Plinthocoelium suaveolens (bumelia borer).
On the way back down from the top, we hit the sunset perfectly as it “touched” a peak in the foreground! Despite my success here this evening, Mike saw no bees of interest on the few flowers that were found due to the cold temps and chilling winds, so tomorrow we will continue west hoping for warmer conditions on the western edge of Oklahoma.
Dramatic sunset “landing” on a small foreground peak.
The opportunity lasted for only a minute!
Back in town, we searched for an open sit-down restaurant—fruitlessly because of the late hour—and ended up with a mediocre breakfast burrito from a fast food shop I’ve never been to before. The local Buick dealership, however, with its 1950s neon lights shining brightly in the night sky, was a taste of Americana that makes these trips so enjoyable. Life on the road!
Jensen’s Buick, Fairview, Oklahoma.
Day 2 – Black Mesa State Park (Cimmaron Co.) Welp! We awoke this morning to cold temps (low 60s), thick fog, and low hanging clouds, and the forecast for the area showed essentially no improvement through at least the day. Our plan had been to hit a spot about an hour southwest before heading back north to Beaver Dunes State Park, but the forecast for both those areas also was cold and wet. It was not until we looked at the forecast for Black Mesa—our last planned stop of the trip and a 4½-hour-drive to the west—that the forecast seemed to be in our favor, so we decided to blast on out there. We figured we would get there at about 2:00 pm and could spend the rest of the day there collecting, camp there tonight, and start heading back east tomorrow (assuming the forecast improved for the areas we missed).
Pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana).
Wrong! When we got there, it was not only cloudy and cold, but dry as a bone! Even if it had been sunny with warmer temps, there still would not have been any insect activity to speak of. The leaves of oaks and hackberries in the area were just barely starting to break bud, and the only flowers we saw at the park were a large willow in full bloom—but not a single insect visiting them. Knowing that there was no other place where conditions were better that we could drive to within the next couple of hours and collect for at least a short time, we instead decided to make it a hiking day and hike the High Point Trail at nearby Black Mesa Nature Preserve.
Black Mesa Nature Preserve (Cimmaron Co.) When we arrived and looked at the signage, we learned that the hike to the oracle at the official high point would be a more than 8-mile hike! Just reaching the top of the mesa itself would be a more than 3-mile-hike, with the high point another mile on top. Not knowing if we had the appetite for such a distance (or time to do it before sunset) and with the wind cold and biting, we started out anyway and gave ourselves permission to turn around at any point if we felt like it.
View along High Point Trail.
View along High Point Trail.
Berlandiera lyrata (lyreleaf greeneyes).
Nevertheless, we persevered. We checked the cholla (Cylindropuntia imbricata) along the way hoping to see Coenopoeus palmeri (one of the cactus longhorns, which I’m not sure has been recorded from Oklahoma) or at least one of the more widespread Moneilema species, but none were seen (nor really expected). The trail up the side of the mesa was steep and spectacular, and the trail atop the mesa was surreal—especially given the cold winds and low-hanging clouds. Eventually, we made it to the official high point and enjoyed the fun facts carved into each side of the granite obolisk marking the spot.
View along High Point Trail about halfway up the climb.
Juniperus monosperma (one-seed juniper).
Oklahoma High Point obolisk.
Oklahoma High Point marker.
Mike (right) and me at Oklahoma High Point.
Coming back down was not much easier than going up, the steepness of the trail jamming my toes into the toe box of my new hiking boots (which performed admirably!), but I did find an insect—a largish black weevil torpidly crawling on the trail. Even on the relatively level lower portion of the trail once we got there was difficult, our legs really starting to feel the miles now. As we hiked the last mile back to the car, the temperature continued to plummet as it started to sprinkle, turning to rain soon after we reached the car and then heavy rain as we headed down the highway back to the east. The irony of the situation—rain coming to a parched landscape just when we are ready to leave—did not escape us. We’ll spend the night in Boise City and hope for a better forecast tomorrow!
Descending the upper slope on the High Point Trail.
Day 3 – Beaver Dunes State Park (Beaver Co.) Temps were down in the mid-40s when we awoke this morning, but skies were sunny and we were heartened by a promising forecast of continued sun and highs in the low to mid-60s. Our first destination—Beaver Dunes—was a relatively short 2-hour drive further east, and when we arrived sunny skies still prevailed. Unfortunately, temps still hovered in the mid-50s with a biting wind that made using the beating sheet difficult to impossible.
Dunes at Beaver Dunes State Park.
That said, I managed to beat a fair series of Agrilus spp. (probably mostly one species) and a few other beetles off living Celtis reticulata (net-veined hackberry) dotting the roadside along the entrance to the Picnic Area. Under the main group of hackberries I noticed new growth of Cucurbita foetedissima (buffalo gourd) along with last year’s dead stems. I’ve never collected Dorcasta cinerea (a longhorn beetle that utilizes buffalo gourd as a larval host), so I began splitting open the old stems to see if I could find unemerged adults. I didn’t, but what I did note inside the stems was evidence of boring by some insects and, eventually, the tiniest little scolytine bark beetles that I’ve ever seen. They were always found right at the node, usually in pairs (perhaps male and female?), and I ended up collecting a series of about a dozen specimens from two different stems.
Tradescantia occidentalis (prairie spiderwort, western spiderwort).
Also in the main group of hackberries, I noticed a dead branch hanging from the tree, which had fallen but gotten snagged on a lower branch to remain off the ground. The branch was obviously infested and showed a few emergence holes indicative of both buprestids and cerambycids, and when I broke into it I found two unemerged adult Agrilus (different species), which caused me to cut and bundle the branch to being back for rearing. At the entrance, I went to examine the stand of yellow flowers that greeted our arrival, determining them to be Pyrrhopappus pauciflorus (smallflower desert-chicory, Texas false dandelion). While I was on the ground photographing the flowers, I noticed a red and black hister beetle that proved to be Margarinotus bipustulatus—aptly named considering the two red maculations on the elytra. I also noticed a couple of tiger beetle larval burrows in the hard-packed sandy soil and found a long, thin plant stem to “fish” the larvae out. I managed to snag the larva in one of the burrows, which I believe is Tetracha carolina (Carolina metallic tiger beetle) by virtue of the thin white margin around the prothorax and the open habitat in which the larval burrow occurred. If this is true, then it is a second instar because it is slightly smaller than a typical Cicindela sp. third-instar larva.
Afterwards, I went over to the dunes to see if Mike had found anything, but temps were still too cold to see anything flying. He did, however, show me an interesting stand of Penstemon that he’d found and that we determined to be P. fendleri (Fendler’s penstemon). The plants were all on the north side of the dune in apparently protected spots, and I noted that on iNaturalist our observation was the northernmost record for the species (save one suspicious, disjunct Colorado record).
Penstemon fendleri (Fendler’s penstemon).
Penstemon fendleri (Fendler’s penstemon).
On the way back to the car, I beat a few more beetles off living Celtis reticulata. By now, we’d seen all we needed to see here and decided to head southeast to one of the Brachys barberi locations (that were the reason for this trip in the first place).
5 mi E of Harmon (Ellis Co.) This
Recently, another coleopterist collected Brachys barberi—more typically a southwestern species—on Quercus harvardii (shinnery oak) at this spot. I’ve not managed to find the species myself yet, and as it was collected on May 3rd last year I hoped the timing would be right. Quercus havardii dominated the landscape at this spot, mostly as thick stands of low-growing shrubs but also as a copse of small trees.
At first, I swept the lowest-growing plants, collecting a variety of mostly chrysomelids and curculionids and even one Agrilus sp., before moving to beating along the sunny edges of the patches of taller shrubs and collecting similar species (but no Agrilus sp.). Just to the north, I noticed a stand of individuals tall enough to be considered trees (presumably a clonal stand) and began beating them. Immediately I began collecting not only the chrysomelids and curculionds that I was collecting before, but also several Agrilus spp. and what must be Agrilaxia texana—a species represented in my cabinet by just two specimens that I collected in northeastern Texas way back in 1984.
I worked nearly the full perimeter of the copse, noticing that most of the beetles were being collected only on the south-facing sunny (and leeward) side. When I was just about ready to call it quits, a much larger black and yellow beetle landed on the sheet. For an instant I thought it was a lycid, but it moved characteristically like a longhorned beetle, and I quickly realized that I had collected Elytroleptus floridanus—a quite rare southeastern U.S. species that I have only seen once before when I reared a single individual from dead oak that I collected in the Missouri bootheel (and representing a new state record). I wasn’t sure the species had ever been recorded from Oklahoma, so I found Gryzmala’s revision of the genus online and saw that it had been previously recorded from the state—but all the way over on the east side near the border of Arkansas. All records from Texas as well are from the eastern side of the state, so today’s capture appears to represent a significant northwestern extension of the species’ known geographic range by about 300 miles!
Sadly, I never saw Brachys barberi, but collecting Elytroleptus floridanus (in Oklahoma!) was a pretty good consolation prize.😊
Day 4 – Prologue (“Good to Go” coffee shop) We awoke to bright sunny skies, and though a tad chilly it was still warmer than the previous mornings and with a good forecast to boot! It would take about an hour to drive to the day’s collecting spot—the one and only Gloss Mountain State Park (where we visited briefly a few days ago to start the trip), but not until after an unexpected and hilariously bizarre experience at a coffee shop in town called “Good to Go”.
“Good to Go” coffee shop lounge.
Mike was the first to notice the velociraptor in the lounge—saddled up for a ride! Okay, that’s cute. Then he noticed the sign on the outdoor display that read “Stegosaurs roamed the Earth about 5,000 years ago.” At first I thought, okay, they’re a little confused on the timeline, but what they’re trying to say is that dinosaurs lived a long time ago.
“Stegosaurs roamed the Earth about 5,000 years ago.”
Then I noticed a granite plaque in the background that clearly read “The Holy Bible”, and it dawned on me that we had entered a creationist’s den! Had we not already ordered our coffee, I might have surreptitiously tiptoed my long-haired hippy butt out of there before somebody pointed at me and began slowly chanting “Lucifer!”
Apparently this is overwhelming evidence that humans saw living dinosaurs.
Once we were outside the shop, our coffee secured and the need for hushed tones no longer muffling our reactions, we took a quick walk with the dinosaurs to admire their seeming scientific accuracy. I was impressed with the T. rex in particular, it’s body axis realistically horizontal with the tail straight and strong—not the lumbering, upright, tail-dragging version that I learned about as a kid. At least they were accepting some of the current body of scientific evidence on dinosaurs and ignoring only that dealing with their age—or so I thought…
A remarkably scientifically accurate rendition of T. rex with the more recently advocated horizontal posture.
The stegosaur as well appeared to be fairly accurately rendered, its tail also straight and strong and a youngster trailing closely behind, until I noticed something atop the adult—an angel riding it! ‘God’s creatures big and small’, I guess.
Note the angel riding the stegosaur!
The coup de grace was the information plaque behind the stegosaur. Rather than providing information on dinosaurs, I was instead treated to a barrage of hilariously unsupported claims advocating the idea that humans and dinosaurs once lived together. Each “factoid” on the plaque was more bizarre and quotable than the one before. Did you know that the adult stegosaur probably died 4,000 years ago in the Great Flood, but that the baby—happily—likely survived by getting a ride on the Ark with Noah! And all that scientific evidence that pinpoints the Cretaceous extinction to 65 million years ago? Apparently it has merely been fabricated as part of a global conspiracy because scientists just don’t want to agree with the Bible. I just about lost it, however, when I reached “It is uncertain if humans ever rode Dinosaurs, but there is overwhelming evidence that humans saw living dinosaurs.” I mean—What?!
I don’t even know where to begin!
Our unplanned morning entertainment now done, we hit the road for our next—and final—collecting spot for the trip.
Gloss Mountain State Park (Major Co.) We arrived at about 10 am with a plan to spend the rest of the day there—whether the collecting was good or bad, this would be our final stand. We hiked up to the mesa, stopping at an accessible spot about halfway up to work the trees (me) or set out pan traps (Mike). Beating the Celtis reticulata (net-veined hackberry) yielded a similar assortment of beetles as last time—a couple of Agrilus spp. along with the occasional chrysomelid or curculionoid and a few other beetles, and the same was true with Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite), with the exception that I did not find any Agrilus this time.
Gloss Mountain State Park – view west from atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Atop the mesa, I decided to do an entire perimeter hike—something I’ve always wanted to do but never actually accomplished. The idea was to beat all of the C. reticulata, P. glandulosa, and Sapindus drummondii (soapberry) that I could find in an effort to “leave no stone unturned” in my quest for beetles. Soon after starting out, I saw a nice Pasimachus elongatus ground beetle running across the mesa top and “forced” it to cooperate for photos by pinning a hind tarsus to the ground with my finger tip (barely visible in the upper left side of the photo). I collected it, as well as another that I saw a short distance away, and then proceeded with the beatings! Beating the C. reticulata was quite productive, with perhaps three Agrilus spp. and numerous other beetles being collected off of nearly every tree that I beat. Beating P. glandulosa also was productive for various beetles, though again no Agrilus were encountered. The biggest surprise came when I started beating S. drummondii, most of which were still in the earliest stages of leafing out. I got nothing from most of the trees (the majority of which were clustered in a small copse near the front of the mesa), but in the back part of the cluster were a couple of trees with noticeably more foliage—beating them yielded perhaps a dozen Agrilus limpiae, a soapberry specialist that I haven’t seen in numbers since 1986 when I collected a series on soapberry in south-central Kansas.
Gloss Mountain State Park – view west from atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Pasimachus elongatus (family Carabidae) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
I rarely get anything beating Sideroxylon lanuginosum (gum bumelia), but I beat most of the trees that I saw anyway and collected one cryptocephaline chrysomelid and two curculionoids. A single Eleodes hispilabris (apparently on its last leg) was seen near the north end of the mesa, which I photographed and collected, and on the way back I encountered a small patch of Sphaeralcea coccinea (scarlet globemallow) in bloom, from the flowers of which I collected a few small melyrid-type beetles and a small halictid bee for Mike. Also on the north part of the mesa I saw a young eastern collared lizard (Crotaphytus collaris), who posed just long enough for me to get off a shot before blasting away from my approaching lens.
Eleodes hispilabris (family Tenebrioindae) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Sphaeralcea coccinea (scarlet globemallow) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Crotaphytus collaris (eastern collared lizard) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Throughout the hike atop the mesa I kept my eye out for “new-to-me” plants (of which there are many), finding for the first time Toxicodendron rydbergii (western poison ivy) and blooming individuals of Chaetopappa ericoides (rose heath). Physaria gordonii (Gordon’s bladderpod)—a relative of the federally threatened P. filiformis (Missouri bladderpod)—was blooming abundantly atop the mesa. At this point, Mike and I rejoined and relayed to each other our more notable findings. For Mike’s part, he had seen a couple of cacti that I had missed—Escobaria missouriensis (Missouri foxtail cactus) and Echinocereus reichenbachii perbellus (black lace cactus)—and took me to the spots where he had seen them. While retracing our steps, we also found Gaillardia suavis (pincushion daisy, perfumeballs) and the strikingly beautiful Penstemon cobaea (cobaea beardtongue, prairie beardtongue, foxglove penstemon).
Toxicodendron rydbergii (western poison ivy) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Chaetopappa ericoides (rose heath) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Physaria gordonii (Gordon’s bladderpod) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Escobaria missouriensis (Missouri foxtail cactus) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Escobaria missouriensis (Missouri foxtail cactus) atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
By this time, I had been on the mesa top for five hours, and even though temperatures were mild (mid-70s) I desperately needed food and water. Mike, for his part, had also had a wildly successful day with bees, capturing many at the flowers and many more in the various pan traps (both in top and halfway up the slope). I descended the steep slope with its mixture of metal steps, cut rock, and wooden planks and enjoyed a quick feast of sardines and Triscuits (a decades-long bug-collecting-trip staple) washed down with Gatorade before getting back to work on the mesquite around the parking lot. I was committed to trying to find Agrilus on the plants—a single individual of which I’d beaten from the plants three days earlier, and after beating several plants and seeing none (but collecting a great number of clytrine and cryptocephaline chrysomelids along with other insects) I finally found one! I continued to work the trees and collect primarily chrysomelids, but no more Agrilus were seen. I am hopeful that it will be a southwestern species not currently known from Oklahoma—a situation I have found with several other Prosopis-associated beetles in this part of northwestern Oklahoma.
Gloss Mountain State Park – view north from atop gypsum-capped red clay mesa.
Gloss Mountain State Park – history of the name.
I hadn’t intended to work any additional Prosopis beyond the road into the parking lot, but there were a few particularly large trees along the front of the park next to the highway rest stop. The first one I beat yielded a very large cryptocephaline that I had not seen on any of the other Prosopis, so I continued beating them and collected a nice series along with a few other clytrines, pachybrachines, and curculionoids. At the furthest point west, I recalled having seen during a previous visit a western diamondback rattlesnake a bit further to the west, so I continued to the spot hoping to see another. No such luck, so I tiptoed through the tall grass back to safety and made my way back to the car to wrap up seven and a half hours of collecting on a spectacular day—sadly, the last of the trip!
Epilogue This trip was just a warm-up. In just over one week, I will head out again—this time to western Texas and southern Arizona for sure, and maybe elsewhere depending on how things go. At three weeks, it will be the longest collecting trip I’ve done since I went to South Africa in 1999 and Ecuador 10 years before that. I’m also looking forward to meeting up with a number of other coleopterists at various points during the trip—Jason Hansen, Joshua Basham, and Tyler Hedlund in Texas, and Norm Woodley and Steve Lingafelter in Arizona. If there is time, I may stop off at a place or two in northeastern New Mexico and at Black Mesa on the way back. Look for an iReport on that trip sometime in early-mid June!
This is the 10th “Collecting Trip iReport”; this one covering 13 days of collecting in western Texas, southern New Mexico, and southeastern Arizona July 19–31, 2021. This trip was a “two-parter”—the first week with frequent field mate Jeff Huether (our seventh joint collecting trip) as we made our way from western Texas through southern New Mexico and into southeastern Arizona on our way to a memorial celebration for Jim Wappes at the home of Steve Lingafelter and Norm Woodley (for which I took the day off from collecting), and the second week visiting various locations in the “Sky Islands” of southeastern Arizona with several other entomologists.
Day 1 – Monahans State Park, Texas This was my first stop on the previous trip back in late April and early May, and what a difference a couple of months with good rains makes—dry as a bone then but bursting with a great variety of wildflowers now. Like last time we stopped at the Shin Oak Picnic Area first, and almost immediately Jeff got an Acmaeodera gibbula on living Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite). I started beating the trees and got a good series of that species along with a good series of an Actenodes sp. (prob. A. mendax). There were also some mesquites that had been killed (apparently by herbicide), and when I started beating them I got several more A. gibbula and one Paratyndaris sp. It went from blazing hot when we arrived to raining about an hour later, and for a while after the rain moved through it stayed cloudy and quite comfortable. Eventually we decided to look for another spot with more mesquite to beat.
Monahans Sandhills State Park with rain moving in!
Poecilanthrax effrenus (family Bombyliidae) on flower of Thelosperma megapotamicum (rayless greenthread).
Acanthochalcis nigricans (family Chalicididae) female looking to oviposit on dead Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite).
Palafoxia sphacelata (othake).
Palafoxia sphacelata (othake).
Asclepias arenaria (sand milkweed).
Asclepias arenaria (sand milkweed).
Penstemon ambiguus (gilia beardtongue).
We found an area closer to the entrance (Equestrian Area) with lots of mesquite and also sunflowers, which Jeff was interested in looking at to search for meloids (blister beetles). Before I even reached the first mesquite I saw an Acmaeodera sp. (maybe A. obtusa) sitting on the flower of Thelosperma megapotamicum (rayless greenthread) and later found another plus one A. immaculata. Off the mesquite I beat just one Actenodes sp. prob. mendax and a few treehoppers, while another and a Chrysobothris sp. got away (it was by now quite hot and they bolted!). I continued beating mesquite but just wasn’t seeing anything, so we decided to take a look at the area around the main dunes and another picnic area.
Helianthus petiolaris (prairie sunflower).
At the Pump Jack Picnic Area, we saw a lot of Thelosperma megapotamicum (rayless greenthread) in bloom and decided to check the flowers for Acmaeodera. We each got a nice series of what appear to be A. obtusa and A. immaculata. Also, I finally found a single Acmaeodera immaculata on the flower of Hymenoppapus flavescens (collegeflower), which I’d been looking at all day thinking it must be a good Acmaeodera flower host. On the way back to the vehicle, I scared up a cicada that had been singing on a nearby plant—I’d been hearing them all day but assumed they were grasshoppers or katydids. I listened for another and saw it perched on the stem of Mentzelia nuda (bractless blazingstar), and netted it—a fine male, smallish and with a very white venter. I wanted to find one more—catching another A. gibbula in flight, and saw one singing in a mesquite tree. This time I took some photos of it (working carefully not to alarm it) and then hand-caught it (later identified as Diceroprocta texana). A nice end to the visit.
Male Diceroprocta texana singing on Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite).
Mentzelia nuda (bractless blazingstar).
Mentzelia nuda (bractless blazingstar).
After dinner, we returned to Shin Oak Picnic Area for night collecting. I setup my new Mercury-vapor (MV) station (first time using the gas-powered generator and tripod—slick setup) and my two ultraviolet (UV) stations. Jeff set out three prionic acid lures. Large numbers of Polyphylla monahanensis (which came mostly to the UV stations) and P.pottsorum (which came mostly to the MV station), but otherwise few beetles showed up and not a single longhorn. Other insects were also limited mostly to large numbers of ground-nesting bees and several big grasshoppers. No Prionus came to the lures—not surprising since we are in the tail end of the season for P. arenarius (April to July) and too early for P. spinipennis (mostly August). I’ve only gotten a few P. monahanensis and P. pottsorum before now, so it’s nice to have good series of each, but I would have preferred to collect some longhorns.
Blacklights humming as dusk settles over the dunes.
Polyphyllapottsorum at the MV sheet.
Day 2 – Toyahvale, Texas We’re on our way to the Davis Mountains, and along the way I decided to stop at the “Agrilus cochisei” spot we found (on a tip from Jason) back during the April trip. I swept the roadsides—not just the host plant (Artemisia occidentalis, western ragweed) but a variety of other plants in bloom but did not find any A. cochisei. I did collect a few meloids (which were on Solanum eleagnifolium) and Zygogramma leaf beetles but nothing else.
Proboscidea parviflora (family Martyniaceae)—doubleclaw or red devil’s-claw.
A bit further down the road from the last stop, we noticed this memorial to the many horses that have been transported along this highway on their way to slaughter.
Davis Mountains, Ft. Davis, Texas Another roadside stop for one of the places where I collected during last April’s trip. I was hoping we would not be too late for Acmaeodera—there were plenty of plants in bloom but we did not see any. Senegalia greggii (formerly Acacia greggii, commonly called cat-claw acacia) and Vachellia constricta (formerly Acacia constricta, commonly called whitethorn acacia) were both in bloom, and off the former I got the obligatory Stenaspis solitaria male/female pair as well as a Lampetis drummondii, but I collected nothing off the latter. Tried for a couple of cicadas and missed ‘em both!
Stenaspis solitaria male on flowering Senegalia greggii (cat-claw acacia).
Lampetis drummundii captured on flowering Senegalia greggii (cat-claw acacia).
Eurema nicippe (sleepy oranges) on yellow asteraceous flower.
Davis Mountains,Boy Scout Rd, Texas This looked like a good spot, with water in the creek and lots of butterflies flying around. Beating, however, yielded nothing but lots of lep larvae. It seems we are in the mid-summer lull—too late for spring things, but too early for late summer-fall species. I think we’ll try some higher elevations and see what it is like.
Argemone aenea (golden prickly poppy).
Argemone aenea (golden prickly poppy).
Argemone albiflora (white prickly poppy).
Argemone albiflora (white prickly poppy).
We were headed back towards the highway when I spotted a stand of Thelosperma megapotamicum along the road. We got out so I could take a look at them and immediately encountered this Texas horned lizard who seems to be saying “WTF?!” I swept through the Thelosperma and picked up two Batyle sp., one Enocleris sp., and a couple of species of meloids. There were lots of other plants in bloom, too, including several that are typically attractive to beetles such as Sphaeralcea and Ratibida. However, nothing was seen on them, further reinforcing our desire to go to higher elevations to see if that would improve the collecting.
Phrynosoma cornutum (Texas horned lizard).
Davis Mountains, Madera Canyon, Texas We wanted to get up to higher elevation to see if that might improve the insect collecting. It is strange—the Davis Mountains are greener than I’ve ever seen them, yet there are almost no insects, no flowers. Jeff and I were wondering if the deep freeze Texas experienced this past winter might have knocked out insect populations. We beat along the way but just we’re not seeing anything on the beating sheets. We hiked our way up to the overlook, and up there I ran into a few species of tenebrionids running along the trail and doing their famous “headstands” when we disturbed them. On the way back down I saw a few large, red and black clytrine chrysomelids on what I take to be a fall-flowering helianthoid aster (old flowering stalks were 5–6 feet tall), so I picked up a few for Shawn (my scope of insects that I’ll collect expands greatly when I’m not finding anything in the groups that I study). I think we’ve had it with the Davis Mountains, and tomorrow we’ll travel further west and try our luck around Fabens.
Lower part of the Madera Canyon Trail.
The trail at upper elevations.
A small Eleodes sp. doing the headstand.
The larger Eleodes carbonaria doing the headstand.
Same individual as in the previous photo.
Day 3 – Van Horn, Texas Just a quick stop along the highway when we saw a variety of plants in bloom. Things are different at these lowers elevations compared to the Davis Mountains. Sweeping yielded a number of Agrilus sp. (vittate) and two Agaeocera gentilis—I suspect they were on the Sphaeralcea angustifolia (narrow-leaved globemallow), along with an Acmaeodera sp. and assorted other beetles. On a much taller globemallow I found two Tylosis jiminezi (male/female) perched on the foliage—a first for me! I did a little more sweeping further to the south but came up with only a few melyrids and a blister beetle (Epicauta segmenta). Nice stop!
Tylosis jiminezi on Sphaeralcea angustifolia (narrowleaf globemallow).
San Felipe Park, El Paso Co., Texas When we first arrived, we were not at all optimistic—it looked like it hadn’t rained in years. However, the Larrea tridentata (creosote) and Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite) were both in full bloom, so we began looking about. Almost immediately I saw Stenaspis solitaria in the mesquites, which in itself is not exciting, but two of the first three I saw were the form that has the distinctly reddish-brown pronotum, which I’ve never seen before. I saw a couple more and tried to get photographs, but they were too skittish. As I searched for them, I caught one Aethecerinus latecinctus (a second got away), one Plionoma sp. (not sure if it’s suturalis or rubens), one Chrysobothris sp. (prob. C. octocola) and one Acmaeodera gibbula. The real fun began, though, when I walked by a creosote and saw a Gyascutus planicosta (should be subsp. obliteratus in this area) take flight. I tracked it to see where it landed, caught it, and then put most of my effort into getting a decent series of individuals. I succeeded, but it took more than four hours with the heat maxing out at 96°F! In addition to the Gyascutus, Jeff was quite excited to see the bright green and orange blister beetle Eupompha fissiceps abundant on the creosote in mating pairs and feeding on the petals of the flowers. I finished off the blister beetle fun by finding Cysteodemus wislizeni (black bladder-bodied meloid) crawling in the sand, which, despite the common name, was decidedly bluish.
The author looks out over the vast creosote/mesquite scrub.
Eupompha fissiceps on Larrea tridentata (creosote).
Eupompha fissiceps feeds on Larrea tridentata (creosote) as “Mr. Meloid” (Jeff Huether) looks on.
After going into town to restock on supplies and catch some dinner, we returned to the park to do some lighting and night collecting. The moon is almost full, which generally puts the kibosh on longhorns coming to the lights, but we decided to try anyway because of the high amount of activity during the day in a rarely-visited location. I set up the Mercury-vapor (MV) light only and skipped going through the trouble to put up the ultraviolet lights also. I also wanted to beat the mesquite since I didn’t have much chance during the day, spending most of my time hunting Gyascutus with an aerial net, and once I got the MV setup going I started whacking the mesquite. Almost immediately, I got three Aethecerinus latecinctus, which came off the first two plants I beat. This motivated me further and caused me to commit to beating for the next hour or so—never even getting a single beetle of any kind! By then the lights had been going for awhile, and I was pleased to see several Derobrachus hovorei (palo verde root borer) crawling on the sand near the light. Even though it is a common species, I’ve not seen many myself, so I was happy to have a nice series to take up beaucoup room in one of my prionid drawers. Otherwise, very few beetles came to the lights, or most other insects as well—the sheet being covered primarily by dozens of white-lined Sphinx moths and lots of wasp/bee-type things. We did enjoy the evening, however, as we sat in our chairs and drank a cold brew between checkings of the light.
Mercury-vapor light setup at dusk.
Mercury-vapor light just turned on at sunset.
Mercury-vapor light going strong as darkened settles.
Derobrachus hovorei (palo verde root borer).
Day 4 – Chaparral, New Mexico We had planned to take NM-213 north to White Sands, but public access was blocked at Ft. Bliss. While backtracking, I spotted Sphaeralcea angustifolia (narrow-leaved globemallow) growing along the roadside and stopped to check it out. There was nothing on any of the plants, despite good growth and appearing to be coming into flowering. I did a little beating on Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite) as well—again very little going on, just a few treehoppers, tiny blister beetles, and one weevil. Larrea tridentata (creosote) was in full bloom, just like at Fabens, and here too there were many Eupompha fissiceps on the flowers and in mating pairs. I couldn’t resist collecting just a few and even made a short video of a mating pair engaged in some interesting behavior. I did see one Gyascutus planicosta as it flew by, but I could not track it to see where it landed. Otherwise all I picked up was another Cysteodemus wislizeni (black bladder-bodied meloid)—along with a photo, and a male cicada (maybe Diceroprocta texana) singing on a dry yucca stalk (hand-collected!).
Eupompha fissiceps mating pair engaged in some interesting behavior.
Point of Sands, New Mexico Jeff wanted to stop here to look for Pleurospasta mirabilis, a really cool-looking blister beetle that looks unlike anything else. He found just one by disturbing the host plant (small purple blooms), and I found none—seems we are right at the tail end of their activity period. I looked around for other things also, but there was not much out. I did catch a couple more cicadas (males singing), and near an Ephedra sp. bush I found a mostly-intact carcass of Sphaerobothris ulkei. The most interesting find, however, was a couple of apparently lost pitfall traps—the barriers had fallen over, and the cops were filled with sand and the carcasses of numerous tenebrionids that had fallen into the traps and never been retrieved. I pulled up the cups and filled in the holes to prevent further loss, finding a few live tenebrionids and trogids and one Pasimachus sp. ground beetle that had not yet succumbed in the process.
Point of Sands, New Mexico.
“Lost” pitfall trap.
Hatch, New Mexico While passing through the town of Hatch, I couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to stop and photograph some interesting town characters.
An interesting take on the Sinclair dinosaur.
Chili Pepper Man!
Cast of characters.
Deming, New Mexico Another roadside stop in an area that was green with flowers and also had Yucca (to look for Tragidion) and Ephedra (to look for Sphaerobothris). Neither of those insects were found, and no buprestids or cerambycids were seen on or swept from any of the many composite flowers about including Thelosperma megapotamicum. I did find a couple of the meloid Lytta biguttata, one on flowers of Cirsium sp. and another on an unidentified yellow composite flower, and Jeff found a huge aggregation of another meloid, Epicauta costata, on herbicide-treated Kali tragus (prickly Russian thistle). I finished off the stop by finding a spectacular ridged tenebrionid beetle walking about after the sinking sun went behind some clouds.
Lytta biguttata on yellow composite flower.
Epicauta costata on herbicide-treated Kali tragus (prickly Russian thistle).
Epicauta costata on herbicide-treated Kali tragus (prickly Russian thistle).
Day 5 – Sunshine, New Mexico We saw a nice stand of what proved to be Picradeniopsis absinthifolia (formerly Bahiaabsinthifolia, hairyseed bahia) and stopped to check them for buprestids/meloids. None were seen, just a few bees and lots of bee flies (genus Geron?). We did find a fair number of Cysteodemus wislizeni (black bladder-bodied meloid) crawling on the roadsides in a patch of Solanum elaeagnifolium (silverleaf nightshade).
Geron? sp. (family Bombyliidae) on flower of Picradeniopsis absinthifolia (hairyseed bahia).
Geron? sp. (family Bombyliidae) on flower of Picradeniopsis absinthifolia (hairyseed bahia).
Columbus, New Mexico We found a moist drainage along the roadside with plants blooming in abundance, including Isocoma tenuisecta (burroweed) and Sphaeralcea angustifolia (narrow-leaved globemallow); however, insects were very scarce. I didn’t see any buprestids or cerambycids at all on any of the plants, only picking up one Lytta biguttata and one Cotinis mutabilis on the Isocoma and sweeping single examples of a small black/red Cleridae from the latter and a yellow-flowered composite.
Pepsis thisbe (Thisbe’s tarantula-hawk wasp) on flowers of Isocoma tenuisecta (burroweed).
Animas, New Mexico We drove a fair distance west hoping to get into a different rainfall system in hope that insects would be present and saw a roadside in good bloom with the surrounding creosote scrub also green and blooming. As soon as we got out of the car we saw big beetles flying overhead and tracked them back to several creosote bushes very near the car with an aggregation of yet another blister beetle, Pyrota postica, which were mating and feeding on the flowers and leaves. After taking a few photos (and collecting my small series), I started sweeping through the variety of plants in bloom along the roadsides. I did not see anything on the flowers themselves (including Baileya multiradiata, pretty good buprestid flower) but collected a series of clytrine chrysomelids and one Dectes sp. While sweeping through Sphaeralcea hastulata (spear globemallow), I got one Agaeocera gentilis, and sweeping though a mix of S. hastulata and S. angustifolia (narrow-leaved globemallow) I got three Agrilus sp. (perhaps the same as I collected south of Van Horn, Texas). Finally, on the latter, I found one more A. gentilis perched on the leaf.
Pyrota postica female on flowering Larrea tridentata (creosote).Pyrota postica female feeding on the flowers of Larrea tridentata (creosote).
Sphaeralcea hastulata (spear globemallow).
Portal, Arizona Finally made it to Arizona, and for the first stop I wanted to try a spot below Portal where I’ve had limited success finding Sphaerobothris ulkei on Ephedra. Last time I was I here I found a few, but not until after being distracted by Gyascutus caelatus and Hippomelas sphenicus in the acacias and mesquites. I vowed not to let that happen this time and weaved a zigzag pattern looking at every Ephedra I could find. While I was doing that. I did see one G. caelatus take flight and then caught another that I saw sitting on Vachellia constricta (white-thorn acacia) but remained focused on looking at the Ephedra. Eventually, after not seeing any S. ulkei, I started looking for other buprestids. The acacias were just beginning to flower—only a few plants had open flowers, and Jeff noticed the tiny silhouette of an insect in flight approaching the flowers. He netted it and showed it to me, and to my surprise it was one of the species in the A. stigmata group (black with two red apical spots)—none of which I have ever collected before but which I believe could be A. davidsoni. We spent the next hour watching for and netting the silhouettes on the few trees we could find with flowers, and then I got the beating sheet out and beat more off of the trees (whether in flower or not) to end up with a nice little series. I’ll be anxious to confirm whether these are A. davidsoni.
Mozena arizonensis on Vachellia constricta (white-thorn acacia).
Vachellia constricta (white-thorn acacia).
South of Willcox, Arizona We got to Willcox around dusk, and the cool, breezy conditions told my gut that it would be pointless to set up the lights. Still, I couldn’t let myself not try, and without much opportunity to look for a good place to set up I just went down Blu Sky Rd to E Moonlight Rd and hoped for the best. My optimism waned rapidly, as conditions continued getting colder and breezier, and not a single insect came to the light—I should’ve listened to my gut!
Moonrise. A twilight zone moment occurred when I realized that I had taken this photo on Moonlight Rd!😮
Day 6 – Jim Wappes Celebration, Hereford, Arizona Fun day with lots of fellow coleopterists at the home of Steven Lingafelter and Norm Woodley in memory of Jim Wappes. We got there in the early afternoon and enjoyed eats, conversation, and war stories from the field.
Min, Sangmi Lee, Lisa Lee, Candy Kuckartz, the author, Margarethe Brummermann, Jason Botz, & Andrew Johnston (photo by Steven Lingafelter).
The author, Andrew Johnston, Norm Woodley, & Ed Riley (photo by Margarethe Brummermann).
It was a good day for a party, as rain made insect collecting a no-go. As dusk settled, I admired the incredible view from Steve’s and Norm’s back patio!
Low clouds hang over the Huachuca Mountains.
The fun extended well into the evening hours. My thanks to Steve and Norm for hosting the celebration—what fun to see and talk to so many entomologists in one place.
Steve Lingafelter, Gino Nearns, “Kira Brummermann,” & the author (photo by Margarethe Brummermann).
Bill Warner, Norm Woodley, Paul Skelley, Jeff Huether, Steve Lingafelter, Andrew Johnston, & the author (photo by Margarethe Brummermann)
Day 7 – Superstition Mountains, Weaver’s Needle Vista Viewpoint, Arizona We awoke to rain yesterday morning in Willcox, and it has stayed with us since—first on our way to Hereford for the Wappes Celebration, then up to Phoenix this morning—our efforts to escape the rain by coming north thus proving futile. I came to this spot on a tip that I might find Agrilus cavifrons on Celtis pallida (spiny hackberry) (although maybe a bit early), and I’d hoped despite the light rain I would still be able to find it. I did not—though I found the plants, but I did get a Chrysobothris sp. that I don’t recognize while beating Senegalia greggii (formerly Acacia greggii, cat-claw acacia). Of course, it was on the first plant that I beat, so I ended up beating for another hour with nothing to show for it! While walking the short paved trail, I found Cercidium sp. (palo verde) tree that had been cut up and showed evidence of buprestid infestation in one of the larger branches, so I retrieved and cut it up for rearing.
Lost Dutchman State Park, Arizona We made a quick stop here to admire its incredible scenery before heading back south.
Superstition Mountains as seen from Lost Dutchman State Park.
Stands of Cylindropuntia fulgida (chain-fruit cholla) frame this view of the Superstition Mountains from Lost Dutchman State Park.
Carnegiea gigantea (saguaro) in front of the Superstition Mountains.
Carnegiea gigantea (saguaro).
Upper Tanque Verde Falls Trailhead, Tucson, Arizona The rain finally moved out and it was sunny for the drive back to Tucson, but with still-cool temps we weren’t sure if lighting would be worthwhile. We decided to try this spot—not too high (based on a tip by Bill Warner), and I setup the lights using a technique recommended by Roy Morris that involved placing one ultraviolet (UV) light on each side of the sheet, extending the Mercury-vapor lamp above to the top of the sheet, and periodically shutting off the latter to allow the UV lights the pull in the “shyer” insects before turning it back on. While I waited for the lights to started pulling things in, I did some beating around the area. I only collected one specimen, but it was a Cleridae that I don’t recognize, which was beaten off of Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite). Temps ended up in the lower 70s to upper 60s, but at the lights we still got a few longhorned beetles (Aneflomorpha sp.), a few melolonthine scarabs, and a nice series of two species of Pachybrachis (that I will send to Bob Barney).
Jeff looks for beetles at the light sheet.
Lethocerus medius at ultraviolet/mercury-vapor light in mesquite/acacia scrub.
Day 8 – Atascosa Mountains, Ruby Rd near Atascosa Lookout Trailhead, Arizona The primary quarry here was Acmaeodera chuckbellamyi, a species I described in 2014 from a single specimen collected by my friend and hymenopterist, Mike Arduser, at this location on flowers of Aloysia sp. Several people have tried to find it since—without success, and in June 2011 the area was severely burned by the 27,550-hectare Murphy Fire. I was hoping enough time has passed to allow the area (and beetle population) to recover in this, my first attempt, at finding the species myself. I knew it was a long-shot, and long sorry short I did not find either the beetle or it’s Aloysia host flowers. I did collect a number of other beetles, however, including Lycus lorises, a few longhorned beetles and pachybrachine leaf beetles, and one Acmaeodera quadrivittatoides on flowers of Eysenhardtia orthocarpa (desert kidneywood), several Aneflomorpha sp. and a few pachybrachines on Quercus oblongifolia (Mexican blue oak), and more pachybrachines on Senegalia greggii (catclaw acacia), Mimosa dysocarpa (velvetpod mimosa)—the latter also yielding a few tiny Chrysobothris spp. (one looking like C. lucanus), and Propopis glandulosa (mesquite). Jeff also collected and gave to me a couple of Acmaeodera parkeri on flowers of Talinum aurantiacum (orange flameflower). I hiked 0.7 mi E on Ruby Rd to a spot where I swept a few beetles from low vegetation, and on the underside of a large, fallen branch of Q. oblingifolium I found a large female Polycesta arizonica. Finally, about halfway back to the trailhead I encountered a few tiger beetles on the road near standing puddles of water from the recent rains.
View from Ruby Rd looking south toward Mexico.
View from Ruby Rd looking southwest toward Mexico.
Lycus loripes on flowers of Eysenhardtia orthocarpa (desert kidneywood).
Lycus loripes on flowers of Eysenhardtia orthocarpa (desert kidneywood).
Talinum aurantiacum (orange flameflower).
Atascosa Mountains, Peña Blanca Lake, Arizona We came here to look for Deltaspis tumacacorii, which like many rare beetles the odds are against finding it despite it having been taken in the area on several occasions. Again, this would not be one of those occasions, but I was happy to find a tiny tiger beetle (Cylindera viridisticta arizonensis) along the creek and even happier to beat a series of two species of Paratyndaris, one large Lampetis webbii (only my fifth specimen). and one Aneflomorpha sp. from mostly dead Senegalia greggii (catclaw acacia).
Leptinotarsa lineata on Ambrosia monogyra (cheeseweed burrobrush)—adult.
Leptinotarsa lineata on Ambrosia monogyra (cheeseweed burrobrush)—larvae.
Huachuca Mountains, lower Carr Canyon, Arizona After dropping Jeff off at his hotel in Tucson (he flies home in the morning), I high-tailed it down to Carr Canyon to do some light collecting. It has been a long time since I’ve seen my sheet covered so quickly and thoroughly with insects! My quarry was longhorned beetles—of which I got a nice variety, but who can resist also the variety of scarabs, ground beetles, tenebrionids, blister beetles, and even planthoppers that flock to the lights in the mountains of southeastern Arizona? I’ll have to control myself a little better in the coming nights! Walking about along the roadsides (hoping to see Amblycheila giant tiger beetles), I encountered a gorgeous male Aphonopelma chalcodes (Arizona blonde tarantula).
Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light setup.
Enaphalodes cortiphagus at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Parabyrsopolis chihuahuae at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Phileurus truncatus (triceratops beetle) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Chrysina beyeri (Beyer’s jewel scarab) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Chrysina gloriosa (glorious jewel scarab) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Pachysphinx occidentalis (western poplar sphinx) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Manduca florestan (Florestan sphinx) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Aphonopelma chalcodes (Arizona blonde tarantula) on ground in in oak/juniper woodland.
Aphonopelma chalcodes (Arizona blonde tarantula) on ground in in oak/juniper woodland.
Aphonopelma chalcodes (Arizona blonde tarantula) on ground in in oak/juniper woodland.
Day 9 – Huachuca Mountains, Copper Canyon, Arizona I met Steve Lingafelter and Norm Woodley at their house, and together we drove to the famed Copper Canyon on the south side of the Huachucas. On the way I got a nice primer about the species that have been collected there and the plants they have been collected on. Steve and I started out walking the trail up the canyon while Norm swept the area down below. I pretty much beat every oak along the way, for a while only getting a smattering of beetles—Agrilaxia sp. on Quercus emoryi (Emory oak) and also on Q. arizonica (Arizona white oak) along with Sternidius decorus?. About a half-mile up the trail I beat dead branches of Q. hypoleucoides (silverleaf oak) and, not seeing anything at first, said “I’m going back; I’m literally not getting anything.” Right then, a small black beetle on the sheet caught my eye. I looked at it closely and realized it was a Mastogenius (prob. M. robustus)! I popped it in the bottle and beat more dead branches from the same tree and got not only another Mastogenius but also Tigrinestola tigrina. Freshly motivated, I spent the next half-hour working all the oaks in the area—and, as often happens, did not see another beetle! Nevertheless, it was hard not to be happy with the beetles that I’d gotten.
An unidentified treehopper nymph, likely something in the subfamily Smiliinae, tribe Telamonini, on twig of Quercus arizonicus (Arizona white oak).
I walked back down the trail and met Norm, who was just starting up. He filled me in on the results from below, which included sweeping a few Agrilaxia hespenheidei—one of my target species—and an Agrilus sp. on Bouvardia ternifolia (firecrackerbush). I decided to work the slope under the road, reasoning that Norm had likely already worked the flat ground below. On the first B. ternifolia I approached, I saw an A. hespenheidei on the flower, gave the plant a sweep, and caught not only the A. hespenheidei but also an Agrilus sp. (maybe A. latifrons). Over the next hour I would sweep a nice series of A. hespenheidei from B. ternifolia (but not another Agrilus sp.). While I was doing that, I also swept the numerous stands of Acaciella angustissima (formerly Acacia angustissima, prairie acacia) looking for the large, spectacular Agrilus cavatus. I would find two, and considering that I swept perhaps 50 or more stands they were well earned. Also, in the meantime, I noticed Acmaeodera parkeri on small blue flowers that I eventually identified as Evolvulus arizonicus (Arizona blue-eyes). The flowers were few in number and the beetles difficult to catch, so I only ended up with two specimens. Further down the slope the flowers much more abundant, but there was not a beetle to be found on them. In the waning moments of my visit, I encountered two Trichodes peninsularis horni on flowers of Lasianthaea podocephala (San Pedro daisy).
Bouvardia ternifolia (firecrackerbush), flower host for Agrilaxia hespenheidei.
Acaciella angustissima (prairie acacia), host for Agrilus cavatus.
Evolvulus arizonicus (Arizona blue-eyes), flower host for Acmaeodera parkeri.
Lasianthaea podocephala, flower host for Trichodes peninsularis horni.
Eventually we all met up at the car, compared our catches (not surprisingly, Norm did very well with buprestids and Steve did very well with cerambycids), and I did okay in both counts. We headed back over Montezuma Pass and were greeted with stunning views looking down into the Coronado National Monument!
Coronado National Monument from near Montezuma Pass.
Huachuca Mountains, Miller Canyon, Arizona After dropping Steve off, Norm and I went to nearby Miller Canyon to look at a spot where he has collected three species of Taphrocerus (I’ve only collected two, but only once way back in 1987 at a spot in the lower canyon). We thought it might be too late in the season, but it was at least worth a shot. The sedges were lush and green, but the “sedgy wedgies” were absent. Looks like I’ll have to just come back out in April or May!
After striking out with Taphrocerus, I went back down to the lower elevations of the canyon to look for Tragidion on the stand of Baccharis sarothroides (desert broom) that occurs there. Once again, I was likely too late to find them, but as with Taphrocerus it was certainly worth a shot, and again I would not find any despite looking and most of the large plants in the area. I did find a few Euphoria leucographa feeding on the sap flows and a very large red/black clytrine, so it wasn’t all for naught. Just another reason to come out earlier in the season.
Euphoria leucographa feeding on a sap flow on stem of Baccharis sarothroides (desert broom).
Day 10 – Santa Rita Mountains, upper Box Canyon, Arizona After getting reports of buprestid activity near Madera Canyon, I decided to head to the Santa Rita Mountains today instead of continuing in the Huachucas. The shortest route to this most famous of canyons in the Santa Ritas goes down Box Canyon, a less-well-known but still-fantastic canyon in its own right and where I’ve had good luck collecting the two previous times I’ve been there (August 2018 w/ Art Evans, Steve Lingafelter, and Norm Woodley; and September 2019 w/ Jeff Huether). I stopped at the “dry falls” and worked my way back up the road to a point where I’ve collected the majority of my insects there. Along the way, I beat the flowering Eysenhardtiaorthocarpa (desert kidneywood)—insects were not numerous on the plants, but over the course of the trips up and back I got Acmaeodera gibbula, A. cazieri, two Aneflomorpha sp., and a few Lycus sp. I also swept the just-beginning-to-flower Mimosa dysocarpa (velvetpod mimosa) but got just a single Sphaenothecus bivittatus. When I reached the top of the canyon, I looked for a small patch of Allionia incarnata (creeping four-o’clock) in the steep road bank, off the flowers of which I have previously collected Acmaeodera cazieri, A. parkeri, and A. yuccavora. I found the patch, but the plants were not yet in flower. What was in flower on the flats above the bank, however, was Talinum aurantiacum (orange flameflower), off which I collected all three species (A. cazieri being the most abundant and only a single A. cazieri). As at previous stops this week, it seems that insect activity is beginning but is still a bit shy of coming into full peak.
Larva of Euscirrhopterus gloveri (purslane moth), which was present in outbreak numbers on a portulacaceous plant growing amongst Talinum aurantiacum.
While I was collecting, a caravan of cars came by. They turned out to be filled with entomologists attending the Invertebrates in Education Conference, one of whom I knew—Tad Yankoski of the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in my hometown of St. Louis. He handed me a vial containing a large, live individual of Polycesta aruensis. I was excited to see this, especially when he told me he found it and saw many more in the flats below Madera Canyon, where I had planned to go next!
Santa Rita Mountains, flats below Madera Canyon, Arizona It was a frustrating afternoon on several fronts. Starting off, I had trouble finding the Polycesta aruensis locality, and when I finally did find it there was nary a Polycesta to be seen. Perhaps they sleep during the heat of the day.🤷 After that, there was little time to go anywhere but Madera Canyon, where I spent a half-hour beating Quercus oblongifolia (Mexican blue oak) hoping to see Chrysobothris chalcophoroides (I didn’t) and another two hours checking out Baccharis sarothroides (desert broom) in the area where I collected Stenaspis verticalis and Tragidion deceptus two years ago (also fruitless). Of course, the dreadfully common Stenaspis solitaria was everywhere, but all I ended up collecting was a tenebrionid on the 2-track, a clytrine beaten from Cercidium aculeata (retama), and one Euphoria leucographa along with a nondescript cerambycid (Heaperophanini maybe) on B. sarothroides. On the way back to the vehicle, I encountered a dead, mostly skeletonized deer, and while I rarely collect from carcasses, I noticed a little green beetle crawling on the jaw bone. I figured it must be the cosmopolitan clerid, Necrobia rufipes—something I’d not seen before, so I collected it and tried to collect but missed another one.
Rain clouds gather over Madera Canyon.
Another view of the mouth of Madera Canyon.
Magusa sp. (one of the narrow-wings) caterpillar feeding on Sarcomphalus obtusifolius (lotebush).
Santa Rita Mountains, lower Florida Canyon,Arizona I suppose I can credit my frustrating afternoon for one of my best nights of lighting ever. I stumbled upon this spot at the bottom of Florida Canyon during this afternoon’s Polycesta wild-goose chase and immediately thought, “Wow, what a perfect spot to set up a light!” A nice place to pull off the road with a small, level clearing embedded within low-elevation oak woodland. There was even a babbling creek in the background! It was close to dark by the time I returned and set up the lights (would’ve been even later if I’d gone into town for a “real” dinner). Ironically, there were neither the diversity nor quantity of beetles as two nights ago in lower Carr Canyon. But the cerambycids brought it… and kept bringing it! It seemed like every time I got up to check the sheet there were another 4–5 individuals. I ended up leaving the sheet up for four full hours and collected perhaps 40–50 specimens representing a dozen or more species. A few I don’t recognize, and most of those that I do recognize have resided in my cabinet in precious few numbers until now. It’s been years literally since I’ve had a night like this, and it’s a nice shot of motivation leading into the last few days of what is starting to feel like a long trip.
Sometimes circumstances dictate an unusual dinner.
Enaphalodes niveitectus at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Tigrinestola tigrinus at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Coenopoeus palmeri at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Syssphinx hubbardi (Hubbard’s silk moth) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Eacles oslari (Oslar’s imperial moth) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Day 11 – Madera Canyon Rd, Continental, Arizona I came back to the spot where Tad Yankoski had seen Polycesta aruensis so abundantly yesterday morning but which was completely absent by the time I got there in the afternoon. I did not see any adults on the trees this morning either and was about to give up when I spotted a few partially dead trees with very large, apparently fresh emergence holes in the main trunks that were the perfect size for P. aruensis—good thing I brought my chainsaw! I cut a trunk with its branches and segregated the cut up wood into age (fresh dead versus older) and size (twigs, medium branches, and main trunk) classes. While I was doing this, a Polycesta adult dropped off one of the fresh-dead, medium-sized branches! I beat the remaining branches on the tree and on nearby trees but did not see any more, so whatever Tad witnessed yesterday morning must have been an ephemeral event, perhaps related to synchronized emergence from the very trees among which I collected the wood. NOTE: don’t let anyone tell you that cutting up wood for rearing beetles is anything but a sweaty, exhausting endeavor, even with temps still in the mid-80s and decent cloud cover!
This camouflaged tanker marks the spot—trees on the W side of the tanker.
Job half-done—wood cut up.
Job complete—wood segregated and bundled.
Santa Rita Mountains, lower Florida Canyon, Arizona I had such good night collecting here last night that I thought I’d come back and see what I could find during the day in this ribbon of riparian oak/hackberry woodland. Almost immediately I beat a Paratyndaris sp. off of dead Celtis reticulata (netleaf hackberry). The tree was very dead, but I knew Paratyndaris spp. like old, dead wood, so I split open some of the branches and found larvae inside and also a dead and unemerged but perfectly intact adult of a very tiny Chrysobothris sp. inside one of the smaller branches. Beating on other plants in the area was, in general, fruitless, but occasionally (and just often enough) I encountered something of interest that motivated me to continue working: Paratyndaris sp. and Agrilus sp. on Quercus oblongifolia (Arizona white oak), a small red/brown elaterid on Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite), and Acmaeoderopsis sp., Paratyndaris sp., and a few clytrines on Senegalia greggii (cat-claw acacia).
Lower Florida Canyon.
Celtis reticulata (netleaf hackberry).
Santa Rita Mountains, Gardner Canyon, Arizona Last night, I got a message from fellow buprestophile Robert Velten, who told me that he would be in Gardner Canyon the next day, so after finishing at Florida Canyon I drove over to Gardner Canyon to meet up with him. Despite being longtime correspondents, Rob and I had never actually met face-to-face, so I was thrilled to have the chance to do so and spend some time with him in the field. Joining him were his mothing buddies Steve McElfresh and Paul Tuskes, and a little later our mutual friend and Arizona coleopterist-extraordinaire, Margarethe Brummermann, also joined us for a night of lighting. It was great to spend time at the lights with so many like-minded folks! There were three light stations between us, but the weather was less than cooperative—a persistent cool breeze accompanied constant lighting and thunder in the mountains above. Eventually, the threat was realized when the skies opened up, prompting a hasty dismantling and storage of all my lighting equipment safely inside the vehicle. Nevertheless, in the time that I was able to collect, I got a small number of longhorned beetles (half of which came to my light in the moments I was taking it down—longhorns typically become very active right before a storm) along with a variety of showy scarabs and clerids. The rain ended as quickly as it began, so the socializing continued. The entire evening I was continuously taunted, however, by a large prionid sitting inside its emergence hole on the trunk of a large Quercus emoryi (Emory oak). It only showed its jaws and antennae, and if I even touched the tree to boost myself up for a closer look it withdrew deep into the hole. I’m convinced it was Nothopleura madericus—a species I’ve never collected. I can still hear it laughing at me! My attempt to find one out and about by scanning the trunks and branches of of the other oaks in the area with my headlight was not successful, although I did collect another elaphidiine longhorn in such manner.
Polyphylla decemlineata (or perhaps a new species) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Lucanus mazama (cottonwood stag beetle) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Xyloryctes thestalus (western rhinoceros beetle) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Hemiphileurus illatus at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Cymatodera horni at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Manduca rustica (rustic sphinx) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Day 12 – Santa Rita Mountains, Gardner Canyon, Arizona Rob had noticed a stand of Anisacanthus thurberi (desert honeysuckle)—a host for Spectralia cuprescens—along the road into Gardner Canyon, so together (after morning coffee!) we checked the spot on the way out. The plants were in the early stages of leafing out, and after visually inspecting them for a while and not seeing anything I decided to get out the beating sheet to sample the stand more thoroughly. My eyes did not deceive me—neither one of us found any. Too early? Low population? Who knows! I did beat one clytrine off the plants and collected a few weevils by beating Prosopis glandulosa (mesquite) before finding Acmaeodera parkeri and A. cazieri on the flowers of Allionia incarnata (creeping four o’clock). The flowers were common in the area around the road, but no Acmaeodera were seen until I started scaling the steep hillside nearby—a similar situation in which I’ve found these species on this flower in Box Canyon.
Rob Velten and the author enjoying morning coffee (photo by Margarethe Brummermann).
Dense stand of Anisacanthus thurberi (desert honeysuckle) in Gardner Canyon.
Gardner Creek running full after last night’s rain.
Yours truly with buprestophile extraordinaire Rob Velten.
Huachuca Mountains, upper Carr Canyon, Reef Township Campground, Arizona I’ve been wanting to explore the higher reaches of Carr Canyon ever since I arrived in Arizona a full week ago. It is the only high canyon in the Huachucas that has a road leading all the way into its upper reaches. At these high elevations the forest is Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine) and Quercus hypoleucoides (silverleaf oak). There are many species of woodboring beetles at these high elevations that simply aren’t found down below. Another reason is the recent discovery up here of one of the rarest and most enigmatic of North American longhorned beetles, Placoschema dimorpha. Not even know to science until it was described from Mexico in 2007, it has since popped up here and a few other places in southeast Arizona—some of which have been heavily studied by coleopterists or many decades. Now, I didn’t actually <u>expect</u> to find such a rare thing, but maybe I could get lucky or at least find some other unusual species. The specimen at this location was photographed on a burned pine tree; however, I do not think that is the host (as far as I am aware, no species in the tribe utilizes gymnosperms as larval hosts). I think the host must be oak, as is the case for many trachderines. So, while I kept an eye out for burned pine trees, I also looked for oak, and especially recently dead oaks showing signs of woodboring beetle infestation. I did some of beating on Q. hypoleucoides and had collected just a clerid (Enoclerus bimaculatus) when I came upon a recently fallen Q. hypoleucoides that showed a few buprestid(ish) emergence holes and looked to be “the right age.” Cutting away the bark of the trunk revealed galleries, and chopping into sapwood revealed buprestid larvae in their galleries. I tagged it for retrieval, eventually cutting it up and segregating the trunk sections from the branches. Very nearby, I found another dead Q. hypoleucoides, this one much smaller and apparently cut rather than fallen. Unlike the previous one, however, this one showed the round holes with ejecting frass that indicated infestation by cerambycid rather than buprestid larvae. Cutting into the wood confirmed the presence of such, and so this one also was later cut up and bundled for bringing back. I saw no beetles on the trunks of any of the many fire-scarred pines lofting overhead, but at one point I spotted in the distance the telltale brown flagging of a recently died pine up the slope. Hiking up to it took some effort, but when I reached it the first thing I saw was a giant click beetle—Chalcolepidius apacheanus (Apache click beetle)—nestled against the ground at the base of the trunk (apparently ovipositing?). Inspecting the trunk of the tree itself, I noted just a few buprestid emergence holes that seemed fresh. Once again, chopping away the bark revealed the frass-packed galleries, and chopping into the heartwood revealed a large pre-pupal buprestid larvae. This was put into a vial, and I noted the location so I could return with the chainsaw and “bring ‘er down.” As I was cutting up the oaks, I found some small, recently cut pine branches near where I had parked the car. I found (and accidentally killed) a woodboring beetle larva of some type (I mangled it pretty good, but I think it was a buprestid) in one of them, so that was good enough to earn a spot in the rearing tubs. Unfortunately, I was not able to retrieve the dead pine tree—cutting up the oaks took a fair bit of time, during which darkening clouds gathered over the nearby peaks. Eventually cracks of thunder began piercing the air. It was all I could do to get the oaks into the car and all of the equipment put away before heavy rain drops began pelting the car. I had no idea what the storm would bring, but the last thing I wanted to be was stranded on the top of a mountain on my last full day of field collecting. As it turned out, the storm was more bark than bite (although the sharp drop in temperatures would kill lighting later in the evening). Perhaps I’ll be able to get back up the mountain in the morning and retrieve the pine tree.
Chalcolepidius apacheanus (Apache click beetle) on trunk base of dead Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine).
Huachuca Mountains, lower Carr Canyon, Arizona It seems like forever ago that I began this trip, and now the last night of collecting has arrived. I decided to come back to this spot where I’d had such good luck earlier this week, but I wasn’t optimistic given how rain chased me out of the canyon earlier. My pessimism was warranted, and while I did picked up a variety of things, it included only two longhorns—both rather pedestrian species. No, the real charm of the night came not from collecting insects, but after the lights were down and my mind was free to wander as I leaned back in my chair and gazed into the crisp, dark, starry Arizona sky—its perimeter along the horizon bound by a craggy silhouette of nearby oak trees and distant peaks; from listening to the sounds of the night, alternately focusing on the individual cricket or distant coyote versus the chorus as a whole. Only to the north could I see the faint glow of city lights—the only sign that anything beyond me and this moment exist. These moments happen only once on a trip (maybe twice), and they are to be savored; indelibly stamped into the memory banks for future enjoyment; one of those experiences that, when recalled, is guaranteed to trigger euphoric recall.
Campground set for a final night of lighting.
Manduca sexta (Carolina sphinx) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Sphinx dollii (Doll’s sphinx) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Sphinx dollii (Doll’s sphinx) at Mercury-vapor/ultraviolet light in oak/juniper woodland.
Day 13 – Huachuca Mountains, upper Carr Canyon, Reef Township Campground, Arizona I went back up to the top of Carr Canyon to retrieve the dead Pinus ponderosa that I found yesterday. Good thing I did, as I also found my favorite hatchet (which I’d inadvertently left behind yesterday). The 9” diameter trunk was almost too big a job for my Stihl MiniBoss chainsaw, but I kept at it and finally felled the the 25’ tall tree. It took three trips up and down the steep slope—each round trip almost a half-mile—to haul out the upper 10 ft of trunk and associated branches, which I segregated into three batches for rearing: trunk, 1–2” día. branches, and <1” dia. twigs. Now let’s hope the effort was worth it and I get some good species out of the wood.
Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine) dominates the high elevations in the Huachuca Mountains.
Huachuca Mountains, near Carr Canyon, Waterfall, Arizona One last stop to take in the terrifyingly magnificent views from atop Carr Canyon! You can see the road that I traveled up this morning snaking back down the right side of the mountain. The massif to the left is the highest point that you can see from the valley below, but there are much higher peaks behind me.
Terrifyingly steep, magnificently endless drop!
Carr Canyon Rd snakes up the right side of the mountain.
This massif is the highest point visible from the mouth of the canyon.
Epilogue Sadly, I could squeeze no more stops into the trip—I’d allowed myself two days to make the 24-hour drive back to St. Louis, and it was already almost noon on the first of the two days. I left, however, with a rack full of vials filled with insects and a renewed love for Arizona and the desert southwest that first captured my heart some 37 years ago!
This is the fifth in a series of Collecting Trip “iReports”—so named because I’ve illustrated them exclusively with iPhone photographs (see previous articles for 2013 Oklahoma, 2013 Great Basin, 2014 Great Plains, and 2015 Texas). Note that I continue to use my “big” camera for specific insect targets—and these will be featured from time to time on this site. However, I use my iPhone camera much more during these trips for general photography to document habitats, landscapes, and miscellaneous subjects because it is so small and handy and because it is also capable of capturing reasonably good photographs (see this post for tips on making the most of the iPhone camera’s capabilities). This allows me to spend more time looking for and collecting insects—usually my primary objective on these trips! Collectively, these iPhone photos and the short narratives accompanying them form a nice trip synopsis when assembled into a single post.
This report covers a collecting trip I made with Jeff Huether from June 2–9, 2018 to southeastern New Mexico and west Texas. I’ve dabbled in this area before, primarily just a quick stop at Mescalero Sand Dunes many years ago, but not specifically targeted this area for any systematic collecting. Thus, most of the locations that we visited were new to me, which automatically means that I would find at least a few things of interest—and more probably a lot (as long as the insects are active). We had great success at many localities, having found areas where sufficient rain had occurred to trigger insect emergence despite the drought that was plaguing much of the area. Highlights were the areas along Hwy 380 between San Antonio and Bingham, the Mescalero Sand Dunes, and the dunes near Kermit, Texas. I haven’t yet tallied the number of species collected, as much of the material is still waiting to be mounted and identified. However, I estimate that it is in the neighborhood of about three dozen buprestids and maybe half that many cerambycids, including some quite charismatic species that I’d not collected previously (e.g., Prionus arenarius and Tragidion armatum).
Stay tuned, because I made a second insect collecting trip during 2018, this one with Art Evans to southeast Arizona during late July and early August.
Day 1 – Sandia Mountains, New Mexico We flew into Albuquerque this afternoon and, after getting the car, supplies, and something to eat we came up to Sandia Crest Recreation Area looking for Cicindela longilabris (long-lipped tiger beetle). This was the first place I stopped on the first day of the trip for the first species I wanted to look for, and I found it in the first five minutes I was here!
View from near the summit of Sandia Mountain.
We stopped at the Capulin Picnic Ground on the way down the mountain. There were some oaks with fresh-looking foliage that I beat – no Buprestidae but a nice series of a treehopper (Telamonthe?) and a few odds and ends. There was also Robinia off which I beat a series of what is surely Agrilus egenus.
Penstemon sp. ID by George Yatskievych.
Day 2 – Walking Sands Rest Area, New Mexico Quick stop to check the lights – later in the season Jeff has collected Prionus palparis here, but this time we saw nothing. Also checked the nearby vegetation, there was Dalea in bloom but no beetles on the flowers.
Hwy 380 between San Antonio & Bingham, New Mexico We saw a few things in bloom at the Rio Grande bridge crossing so decided to stop. I took a fair series of what must be Acmaeodera mixta off of the Thelesperma flowers (along with a few mordellids for Enrico and one meloid for Jeff). Otherwise not much activity at the spot.
Bone dry Rio Grande!
There were some cool looking red sand dunes on Hwy 380 east of San Antonio, so we stopped to see if there might be any tiger beetles. There weren’t any, but I found yucca stems infested with cerambycid larvae, likely Tragidion. I collected 6–8 stems to bring back and try to rear out the adults. Jeff also found a single Chrysobothris sp. on sage, otherwise we saw few beetles.
Going east on Hwy 380 we went into an area of higher elevation with junipers. We stopped to check the Thelosperma flowers, but there were no bups on them. I collected a few noisy cicadas and some Acmaeodera quadrivittatoides on Opuntia flowers. I then started beating the junipers, however, and got a fair series of a small green Gyascutus plus two tiny Chrysobothris. They were extremely difficult to collect – winds were very stiff and the beetles were very active. I probably lost as many as I collected. To finish off I found a mating pair of Moneilema sp. on cholla.
Acmaeodera quadrivittatoides in a flower of Opuntia sp.
Yours truly standing next to a cholla (Opuntia imbricata).
In addition the the Tragidion larvae that I collected two stops back, Jeff saw one adult at the previous stop. So, when we saw thick stands of yucca along the roadsides just a few miles down the road we stopped to take a look. They were out and not uncommon on the flower stalks and down in the basal rosettes. I collected about a dozen of them and also another Gyascutus.
A Tragidion female on a yucca flower stalk.Tragidion sp. mating pair on yucca flower stalk.
Tarantula hawk (family Pompilidae) on yucca flower stalk. This must be a mimicry model for Tragidion.
I believe this is a cactus dodger cicada (Cacama sp.).
At the last stop we noticed a lot of emergency vehicles rushing to the east. Just a couple of miles down the road we ran into an accident blockade. Since we were stopped I was tempted to look at the rock shop, but then I started looking at the cholla and found several Moneilema sp. adults on the plants.
Walking Sands Rest Area, New Mexico We came back up to the rest stop because of the dunes – there are Prionus spp. that live in the dunes, so we put out some pheromone to see if we could attract the males which fly at dusk and early nighttime. In the meantime we walked around looking for nocturnally active beetles – found a few skin beetles (Omorgus sp.) feeding in dried dog poop and a huge tenebrionid (Eleodes sp.) strangely perched up in a bush. Also photographed a cool little sun spider (Solifugida). When we went back to check the pheromone there was one male Prionus arenarius running around under the lure!
Skin beetle (Omorgus nodosus) feeding on dried dog poop at night. ID by Bill Warner.
A sun spider (Solifugida) pauses briefly from its frantic search for prey.
Day 3 – Valley of Fire National Recreation Area, New Mexico We came over the hill and saw a huge black area in the valley below. I thought it was just an area of thick woody vegetation, but it was actually a lava field! Very cool. There were tons of cicadas, I think also cactus dodgers (Cacama spp.) but look different from the one we saw yesterday. I beat a lot of Celtis and only got one Chrysobothris sp. (looks like analis), and there was nothing on the junipers. We also didn’t see any Moneilema on the abundant cholla. I did catch two Acmaeodera mixta on an unidentified white flower. I think yesterday’s rains must have missed this area!
Malpais Lava Beds.
A tarantula hawk (family Pompilidae) on flowers of milkweed (Asclepias sp.).
I believe this is another species of cactus dodger cicada (Cacama sp.).
Malpais Lava Beds.
Lead-footed bugs (family Coreidae) on cholla cactus (Opuntia imbricata).
Malpais Lava Beds. Cactus dodger cicada (Cacama sp.)? Male cactus dodger (Cacama sp.) on cholla cactus in mid-song.
We drove a couple miles down the road and made just a quick stop to check flowers along the roadsides. No beetles seen – seems to be super dry, but I did photograph one of the tiniest butterflies (something in the family Lycaenidae) I’ve ever seen.
Western pygmy blue (Brephidium exilis). ID by Doug Taron.
Sierra Blanca Mountains, New Mexico
Jeff wanted to look for an Epicauta up here, but the whole drive up the mountain we could only comment on how dry it was and how extensively the area had burned. I only found two wood borers – an Anthaxia (Melanthaxia) and a lepturine cerambycid, both on iris flowers. We did find the Epicauta though, also on iris flowers.
Atop the Sierra Blanca.
Perhaps Erysimum capitatum (Brassicaceae). ID suggested by Erik Emanuelsson.
Flower longhorn (subfamily Lepturinae) on flower of iris.
Vicinity Sunset, New Mexico There were some mallow in bloom along the roadsides, so we stopped to see if there were any Acmaeodera on them. There weren’t, just a few meloids that Jeff was interested in. I found a a single Euphoria kerni on a flower of Acacia greggii and, of course, large numbers of them on thistle flowers. The area seems to have gotten some rain, but not much activity to speak of yet.
Euphoria kernii in their typical “buried-butt-upwards” post on a thistle flowerhead.
Mescalero Sand Dunes, New Mexico This area got rain last night, so we suspected there would be a lot of insect activity, and we were right! The place was alive when we got here at ~6 pm. I walked the area while we waited for dusk to set out pheromone. I collected a series of Enoclerus zonatus off of yucca blooms, beat an Actenodes sp. (something new for me), a Chrysobothris octocola, and a nice series of treehoppers off of mesquite, and found three Batyle suturalisssp. on an unidentified yellow comp.
Mescalero Sands Recreation Area.
A skin beetle (Omorgus nodosus) makes tracks in the sand.
Enoclerus spinolae on yucca.
Another Enoclerus spinolae individual on yucca. Note the larger spots on this one compared to the other, an example of intraspecific variation.
As the sun began to sink lower in the sky, I hiked around to the backside of the dunes and then bushwhacked across them to get the perfect perspective for photographs when the sun hit the horizon – spectacular sunset!
Sunset on the dune.
What a sunset!
I’m happier than I look!
By the time I got back to the car, Jeff had already placed three lures out, so we started making the rounds and found at least one or two Prionus arenarius males running frantically in circles under each one. At the second lure, I started searching the area nearby and found a female walking on the ground! (Females are very rarely encountered, and it seems a little more than coincidental to me that for each species of Prionus, whenever we have collected good numbers of males with lures we have also found at least one or a few females in the same area – maybe cheaters [in the ecological sense]?).
As we made the rounds we picked up an amazing diversity of tenebrionids and a few carabids walking in the sand, and we finished off by picking up Jeff’s light trap, which had attracted one more Prionus male and a very light-colored Polyphylla sp. male.
Incredible huge blue spider on the dune at night.
Day 4—Mescalero Sand Dunes, New Mexico
We noticed a stand of soapberry (Sapindus drumondii) along the sides of the road just west of the entrance to Mescalero Sands Recreation Area last night, and I immediately thought of Agrilus sapindi, so this morning on our our way to the dunes we stopped by. I started beating the flowering branches of the larger soapberry trees but wasn’t really getting anything. Then I noticed an A. sapindi flying to a low non-flowering plant, so I caught it and resumed beating – now with more gusto knowing they were here. I still wasn’t getting anything and, again, saw another adult fly and land on a low non-flowering plant. Lesson learned – I started sweeping the low plants and started getting them. I worked all five stands in the area and got about 3 dozen adults, plus a few A. ornatulus, one A. limpiae, and spectacular Neoclytus.
After finishing with the soapberry, Jeff had noticed some tiny Acmaeodera on an unidentified white-flowered composite. We started searching in earnest and collected several dozen adults. I’m not sure what they are, but they are tiny and vittate (maybe A. quadrivittatoides). We also did a lot of sweeping of the short shrubby oak also and came up with a couple of Brachys. Overall a great morning/early afternoon in the field!
The only thing cooler than this abandoned homestead was the squawking ravens hanging out on it!
Soapberry (Sapindus drummondii) stands along Hwy 380 – host for Agrilus sapindi.
Host for unidentified Acmaeodera sp.
We next went into the Recreation Area proper to each lunch, after which we explored the rest of the area accessible by vehicle and saw a stand of cottonwood back in the dunes. We got out to see if there might be any Buprestidae on them (e.g., Poecilonota), but they were devoid of insects. The midday heat on the dunes was extreme! I did find, however, a single Prionus elytron lying on the sand beneath the cottonwoods, so we know they are further back in the dunes as well.
Mescalero Sands Recreation Area.
Mescalero Sands Recreation Area.
We worked the variety of blooming plants in the vicinity of the entrance. I collected ~22 of the small Acmaeodera that were on the white-flowered plant at the soapberry spot on two blossoms of a single yellow-flowered pad Opuntia sp., a couple of Acmaeodera spp. on Gaillardia sp. flowers, a few more Acmaeodera spp. on Prosopis, and several Acmaeodera mixta on another as-yet-unidentified white flower. It was hotter than bejesus we later learned 103°F!) – I had wanted to check out one more stand of soapberry at the entrance, but we were exhausted and dehydrated and had to quit!
Some kind of wasp on some kind of flower.
There are four separate bird nests in the cholla plant – a veritable avian apartment!
Cholla (Opuntia imbricata) blossom.
Vicinity Hobbs, New Mexico
We got a hotel in Hobbs and grabbed a sandwich for dinner, then went out west of town to see if we could find some good habitat for evening collecting. We found a spot of open rangeland about 8–9 miles west of town, set out the pheromone lures, and began beating the mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa). We had high hopes because there was still standing water, meaning that the area had gotten good rains on Sunday night. Boy were we correct! Beating the mesquite was amazing. For buprestids I got 10 individuals of an Actenodes sp., 4 individuals of a Paratyndaris sp., 4 Chrysobothris spp., 4 Acmaeodera spp., and 1 Agrilus sp. I also got several tiny cicadas, a couple treehopper species, and a few clerids and other odds and ends. We setup a blacklight and the scarabs were quite diverse, but the only thing I took was a tiger beetle (Cylindera lemniscata). I also picked up a Phyllophaga cribrosa and a tenebrionid walking on the ground at night. No Prionus came to the lures, any my searches of the ground at night turned up no Amblycheila.
Tiny scarab beetles in the genus Diplotaxis congregate on low plants to “catch” pheromone trails in search of mates.
Giant millipedes (genus Orthoporus) were common at night, a sure sign of recent rains. ID by Derek Hennen.
Ted of Arabia and Jeff.
Day 5—Sand Dunes near Kermit, Texas
We stopped just outside the Kermit Sand Dunes to beat the mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) to see what might be out. I collected 8 species of Buprestidae: nice series of an Acmaeoderopsis (hoping A. prosopis), 1 sp. Actenodes, 2 spp. Chrysobothris, 1 sp. Paratyndaris, 1 sp. Agrilus, and 2 Acmaeodera spp. We eventually gave up – the heat had not only wilted us, but the Acmaeoderopsis were flying away immediately upon hitting the sheet.
Updated field pic (the last one was taken in 1999!).
We drove a little further towards the heart of the dunes and found a spot where there were some blowouts and classic sand flora. Immediately upon starting out we noticed Acmaeodera mixta adults flying around commonly, so I swept through the vegetation a bit and collected a representative series. On Oenethera sp. flowers I found a single A. immaculata and later several A. mixta and a very small Acmaeodera (looked like the one we collected yesterday at Mescalero). In one spot I found a few plants of an unidentified yellow composite with a few more A. mixta, and on Baccharis I found one A. obtusa(?) along with A. mixta. Coming back to the car Jeff and I noticed huge numbers of A. immaculata flying to an unidentified shrub, from which we each swept a nice series. Eventually the heat (103°F) again overwhelmed us, and we had to get in the car, eat, and cool down for a bit on the way to another spot.
The dunes are part of an extensive series of dunes stretching from West Texas through southeastern New Mexico.
Acmaeodera mixta on flower of an unidentified yellow composite.
We returned to an area with stands of soapberry (Sapindus drummondii) that we had seen when we first arrived in the area. I swept all of the small plants on the east side of the highway and got a single Agrilus sapindi – not nearly as abundant as we had seen at Mescalero Sands.
On the west side of the highway there were some larger mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa). I found one Chrysobothris octocola on the trunk, then Jeff and I noticed Acmaeoderopsis flying to the tips of the high branches. I got my aerial net and just started betting them as they flew in while we stood and watched. I caught them from several trees, but a majority from a single tree. That worked much better than beating this morning – I probably lost as many as I collected because they flew so quickly upon hitting the sheet.
Underneath one large mesquite I found several prionid elytra – couldn’t tell if they were Prionus or Derobrachus, but then I noticed burrows in the ground very similar to those we saw for Prionus integer in Colorado (see photo). We dug a few out but found nothing. Something to keep in mind.
The high plains of west Texas.
Burrows like this one look suspiciously like those of Prionus integer in Colorado – did another Prionus make this one?
We returned to the dunes for some evening collecting. I beat the two large mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) trees by the parking area and got an Actenodes and a few Chrysobothris octocola – no Acmaeoderopsis, I guess they hide elsewhere for the night. Once dusk fell we began checking the pheromones and light – only a single male Prionus arenarius came to the pheromone, but we got several individuals of two Polyphylla spp. (P. monahansensis – larger, and P. pottsorum – smaller) at the light. Walking around the dunes at night there were significantly fewer tenebrionids and other insects walking around, but I did pick up two cool “concave” tenebs and a Pasimachus ground beetle.
I’ve never seen a mourning dove make a nest in the ground before. I always thought these oil pumps looked like dinosaurs bobbing up and down.
Bull nettle (Cnidoscolus texanus)—something tells me I should not touch this plant!
A very small (<1.5” in length) scorpion visits the light looking for a meal.
Face-to-face with a scorpion!
Day 6—I-10 Rest Area at mile marker 162, Texas
Just a quick stop to use the facilities, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to photograph these three Reakirts blues all on one flower (a fourth flew away before I could snap).
Reakirts blue (Echinargus isola). ID by Doug Taron.
San Felipe Park, near Fabens, Texas We took a chance on going further west to the dunes near Fabens, since we’ve had such good luck with rains in the area. However, when we got here and started looking around it was apparent that nothing was happening here – dry, dry, dry with temps just over 100°F. I saw a few insects but only a single buprestid – Acmaeodera quadrivittatoides, and I missed it! We decided to cut bait and head back east and north towards Carlsbad – we should be able to get to the area in time for some late afternoon and evening collecting. You can’t win ‘em all!
This roadrunner was rather annoyed with us for intruding in his spot of shade under a Siberian elm.
A broad-nosed weevil.
A mating pair of walkingsticks. Note the great size difference between the male (smaller) and female (larger).
I think I found our retirement home!
Vicinity Carlsbad, New Mexico After getting lost in the Fabens Sand Dunes and then a whole lot of driving back east into New Mexico, we arrived in Carlsbad with just enough time to grab a sandwich and head out to some promising habitat we’d noticed on the way in for some evening/night collecting.
The area contained a ribbon of woodland with mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), black acacia (Acacia rigida), and catclaw acacia (A. greggii). I beat only one tiny Chrysobothris sp. off the mesquite, but off the black acacia I beat three individuals (four actually, one got away) of a large, chunky Chrysobothris sp. that I do not recognize, plus an undetermined cerambycid and a few clytrines. Actually, before I collected the Chrysobothris I had given up on the lack acacia until I was walking by one plant and saw the first one sitting on a branch. I popped it in the vial and started beating the other plants in the area with renewed enthusiasm the find the other two (three!).
We setup the lights and the pheromones, but not much came to the former and nothing to the latter (expected, since there was no sand habitat nearby). The sunset beforehand, however, was magnificent, and I did find a couple of miscellaneous beetles walking around at night.
Day 7—vicinity Loco Hills, New Mexico
We saw an area with stands of soapberry (Sapindus drummondii) alongside the road so stopped to sample it for Buprestidae. I got 3 Agrilus limpiae on trees right around the car but nothing on all the rest of the three stands nearest the car on either side of the road. I hope the south area of Mescalero Sands is not as dry as it still appears around here.
Soapberry (Sapindus drummondii).
Mescalero Sand Dunes, New Mexico
We found the central dunes of the southern area and immediately found several Acmaeodera mixta adults on mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) flowers. I started beating the mesquite and picked up a nice series of Acmaeoderopsis, one Actenodes, and a few other miscellaneous Acmaeodera off the larger trees. There was some soapberry (Sapindus drummondii) in bloom around the dunes, but beating it produced no Buprestidae.
A lone windswept soapberry tree hangs on precariously to life in the dunes.
Acmaeodera mixta on flowers of mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa).
We stopped at a spot outside the dunes because it looked pretty green with a number of plants in bloom suggesting recent rain. I saw but did not take Acmaeodera mixta on white flowers of undetermined composite. I did collect a small series of bright red and black clerids on a small blue-green euphorbiaceous plant. Also saw a little horned lizard, who cooperated just enough to get a few snaps!
A young Texas horned lizard (Phrynosoma cornutum) tries to make himself look big!
White-flowered composite blooming in the desert.
Vicinity Carrizozo, New Mexico
We stopped at a thick stand of yucca that we’d noted on the way past here earlier in the week, the hope being that we would find Tragidion armatum on the stems. Sadly we did not see any, nor did we see more than just a couple of the pompilid wasps that the beetles mimic. Surely this is a result of the lack of rain in the area, which the hotel clerk confirmed during our earlier check in. Cicadas, on the other hand, were everywhere!
The low sun illuminates the yuccas, while the higher clouds shade the mountains behind.
The low sun illuminates the yuccas, while the higher clouds shade the mountains behind.
How many cicadas do you see on this single yucca stem?
Promising clouds tease a thirsty landscape.
For the final stop for the day we returned to Valley of Fire Recreation Area – not really to collect insects, but to look about this fascinating landscape. The Lava Beds are thought to be 5,000 years old, having formed over a 30-year period when lava poured from Black Peak to the north (not a volcano, but a volcanic vent) at a rate that would fill 15 bathtubs every second! It was a serene and otherworldly walk in the falling darkness – nice way to cap off an evening.
Towering clouds try to squeeze out some moisture.
Lots of virga, little rain.
A 400-year old juniper watches another sunset.
Day 8—vicinity Bingham, New Mexico and west on Hwy 380
We stopped at another yucca stand very near where we’d found the Tragidion armatum last weekend – no problem finding them here either. I got plenty of photographs of the beetles (despite having to go ‘au natural’ with the lighting – my flash unit had died!), as well as of cicadas, wasps, and other insects on the yucca stems and pods. Otherwise I only collected two Acmaeodera (looks like A. immaculata) on flowers of Sphaeralcea sp., what looks to be A. disjuncta/paradisjuncta on Ephedra sp., and a single Moneilema sp. on Opuntia imbricata. Nice stop!
Variety of wasps on yucca.
We then stopped by “the juniper spot” again to see if I could get a better series of the Gyascutus (G. carolinensis?) that we found on the junipers (Juniperus monosperma). Boy, did I ever! I collected about 30 specimens this time, made easier by the fact that it was cooler and not nearly as windy! I also again collected two small Chrysobothris sp. on the juniper, a single Moneilema sp. on cholla (Opuntia imbricata), and a single Acmaeoderopsis sp. beating mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa).
One of the more exciting finds of the trip – a jewel beetle in the genus Gyascutus on Juniperus monosperma (I believe this is G. carolinensis). The greenish waxy bloom that covers the body must help the beetle blend into the foliage on which they perch.
A cactus beetle in the genus Moneilema on its host, cholla (Opuntia imbricata).
A multi-tool comes in very handy for collecting cactus beetles!
We stopped at another spot further west on Hwy 380, where last weekend when we were here we saw few beetles but I did collect yucca stems infested with Tragidion armatum larvae. It rained here later that day, so we stopped by again on our way back to see if the rains had prompted more insect activity. It didn’t seem to, but I did find a Tragidionarmatum adult feeding on a yucca flower and photographed a big-as-heck katydid.
Tragidion armatum adult female feeding on a yucca flower.
Big katydid. You can tell this is a brachypterous adult because the anterior wings are on top and their costal margins oriented outside (in nymphs the posterior wings are on top and their costal margins oriented inside).
Perfect camouflage!
“The Box”, vicinity Socorro, New Mexico
Last stop of the trip – we just wanted to find some habitat to beat around in before finding a hotel in Socorro for the night. I beat a couple of small Chrysobothris sp. from the Juniperus monosperma – no Gyascutus – and a couple of treehoppers from Prosopis glandulosa – no Acmaeoderopsis, then turned my attention to the cholla (Opuntia imbricata), in what must have been the thickest stand of this plant I’ve ever seen. There were two species of cactus beetles on them – Moneilema sp. and Coenopoeus palmeri, the latter a first for the trip. After hiking up to the canyon overlook, I realized that the collecting and fun were finally over (until Arizona in August!).
“The Box.”
Cactus beetle (Moneilema sp,) on a cholla (Opuntia imbricata) skeleton.
The “other” cactus beetle (Coenopoeus palmeri).
How many cactus beetles can you count?
Last selfie of the trip. That wry smile is the satisfaction of knowing that the trip was success, I collected lots of great beetles, and I learned a ton!
Those who have read this blog for any length of time know that single-mindedness is not one of my shortcomings. I call myself a coleopterist and even go on trips dedicated specifically towards their study, yet find it impossible to ignore the diversity of non-beetle insects that one finds on such trips. It doesn’t stop there—insect diversity is supported by plants, interesting in and of themselves but even more so in the ways they mix and match to form distinct natural communities. And, of course, natural communities are themselves a product of the landscape—soil and terrain, moisture and its timing, elevation and latitude and longitude. Field trips for me are a constant struggle between the inner specialist—wanting to know everything about my chosen niche (beetles)—and outer generalist—wanting to know something about everything else. But wait—that was a decidedly spineless perspective. There are also animals with spines out there. Not nearly as many as those without, mind you, but that just makes them special—more of a treat to be relished when seen, and among the spined it is the reptiles that get me most excited.
Holbrookia maculata (lesser earless lizard), female(?) | Union Co., New Mexico.
This post presents a trio of reptiles that distracted my attentions one day during last year’s Great Plains Collecting Trip. We were looking for promising habitat for Prionus longhorned beetles in northwestern New Mexico (Union Co.), where two species (P. fissicornis and P. emarginatus) had been collected recently in the area’s vast shortgrass prairie. Remembering our experience the previous day finding another species (P. integer) and its burrows, we were on the lookout for anything that looked remotely like a “burrow” but found nothing. The stark grassland landscape offered little woody vegetation that made the chances of finding any other woodboring beetles remote, and eventually I became distracted by lizards darting amongst the vegetation around us. The first was one I’d never seen before—the lesser earless lizard (Holbrookia maculata), rather small lizards that were extremely wary, difficult to approach, and quick to dash behind the nearest grass clump. I managed one fairly adequate iPhone photo, but I wanted better photos and had grown weary of finding no beetles so broke out the big camera.
Holbrookia maculata (lesser earless lizard), male(?) | Union Co., New Mexico.
I presume the first photo (two above) is a female while the second photo (immediately above) is a male based on the paler coloration and less distinct black markings of the former. The preferred habitat of “relatively level terrain with sparse, low-lying vegetative cover and loose, friable soils” (Degenhardt et al. 2005) describes perfectly the habitat in which we found them. They were extremely difficult to photograph due to their proclivity to hide behind vegetation, and the two photos shown here were about as far in the open as I could get them while trying to approach with the camera.
Crotaphytus collaris (common collared lizard) | Union Co., New Mexico.
I have loved collared lizards ever since I first photographed a nice, big, colorful male Crotaphytus collaris (eastern collared lizard) in western Oklahoma back in 2009. When I saw this still striking but much less colorful individual, I didn’t know what species it was, but I didn’t think it was the eastern species that I had already encountered not only in Oklahoma but also several times on igneous glades in my home state of Missouri. To my surprise, however, the eastern species is the only one inhabiting New Mexico (Degenhardt et al. 2005)—other species distributed further to the west or south. I had better luck photographing this individual, for even though it occasionally ducked into the vegetation (allowing one charming shot of it peering above the “grass” line—see third photo below) it was also content to stay out in the open along the gently sloped road bank where I had found it and dart from spot to spot between suspicious glares. This particular individual was smaller than the big males I have seen, so I suspect it is either a female or a juvenile.
Not shy about remaining fully exposed, it clambered atop a rack to watch more carefully.
Degenhardt et al. (2005) mention an interesting factoid about collared lizards regarding the fact that they, unlike many other lizards, do not readily lose their tails (autotomy). Collared lizards are fast runners, often rearing up on their two hing legs, for which an intact tail would be an important organ for maintaining balance. In the case of these lizards, the advantages of rapid locomotion probably outweigh benefits from tail autotomy.
Peering charmingly above the “grass” line.
While two reptile species at one stop might seem doubly lucky, little did I know a hat-trick still awaited me. We still had no solid evidence to suggest that Prionus beetles were active in the area, but we set out two traps anyway because the soil exposures seemed similar to those we saw the day before and then moved just down the road to where the soils turned redder and seemed to have higher sand content to set one more trap. As Jeff set the trap, my distraction with saurian subjects continued when I ran into a marvelously camouflaged western hognose snake (Heterodon nasicus).
Heterodon nasicus (western hognose snake) | Union Co., New Mexico.
Western hognose snakes are typically found in grassland habitats with sandy soils (Degenhardt et al. 2005), so the occurrence of this individual at this spot was no surprise. What was a surprise was how strikingly marked this individual looked compared to the other two individuals I’d seen to this point—the first a more subtly marked individual in a rare sand prairie in southeastern Missouri, and the second a more uniformly mottled individual in northwestern Oklahoma’s Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge. This could be a result of subspecific differences—Missouri populations are assigned to the subspecies H. nasicus gloydi (dusty hognose snake), but I am unsure of the subspecific assignment of the Oklahoma individual. According to Degenhardt et al. (2005) only the nominate subspecies occurs in northern New Mexico (subspecies H. n. kennerlyi can be found in the southwestern part of the state, while intergrades with subspecies H. n. gloydi are said to occur in the extreme southeastern part of the state).
The strongly upturned rostral (snout) is one character distinguishing the western from the eastern hognose snake.
All species of hognose snakes are famous for their well-choreographed sequence of defensive displays. While they are said to rear up cobra-like and strike out with their mouth open while hissing, I have never seen this behavior by any of the western or eastern hognose snakes that I’ve encountered. The first western individual I saw (in Missouri) insisted on continually trying to burrow into the deep, loose sand and made no other defensive display, while the eastern individual referenced above simply tried to run, although it did eventually barf up a half-digested frog! The individual shown here seemed reticent to do much of anything, remaining coiled up and watching and coiling even tighter as my molestations continued. At last, this one performed some theatrics by writhing in mock agony and then rolling over on its back and playing dead (a behavior called thanatosis). The Oklahoma snake also did this, adding further dramatic value by opening its mouth wide, allowing the tongue to protrude, and ejecting blood from the lacrymal glands while emitting musk from the cloaca. This one didn’t do too much with its mouth, but it did so much more with its cloaca (defecating!). If the idea of eating a snake isn’t revolting enough to begin with, then surely eating a snake covered in crap is!
The ultimate in thanatotic displays—not only dead, but covered in crap!
In addition to the strongly upturned rostral (snout), best seen in the second photo above (the rostral is only moderately upturned in the eastern species), the black-checkered ventral coloration seen in the third photo confirms this as the western hognose species. The eastern hognose snake is distributed further east and does not occur in New Mexico (Degenhardt et al. 2005).
In an amusing twist to the search for Prionus at this site, while photographing the animal I happened to look down to my side and saw a male Prionus beetle crawling through the vegetation! I recognized the species immediately as P. fissicornis—represented in my cabinet by only a single specimen, and although Jeff and I would find no more after a through search of the area, our traps yielded a “bucket loads” of the beetles the next morning.
REFERENCE:
Degenhardt, W. G., C. W. Painter & A. H. Price. 2005.Amphibians and Reptiles of New Mexico. University of New Mexico Press, 507 pp. [Google Books].
During the past year or so I’ve followed up my longer (one week or more) insect collecting trips with a synoptic “iReport”—so named because they are illustrated exclusively with iPhone photographs. It may come as a surprise to some, but iPhones actually take pretty good pictures (especially if you pay attention to their strengths and weaknesses), and their small, compact size makes it easy to take lots of photos while trying to use time in the field wisely. I find the iPhone to be a great tool for documenting the general flavor of a trip and for taking quick photos of subjects before getting out the big rig. I will, of course, feature photographs taken with the ‘real’ camera in future posts.
For this trip, I teamed up with Jeff Huether for the third time since 2012. Our quarry for this trip was longhorned beetles (family Cerambycidae) in the genus Prionus. Larvae of these beetles are subterranean, with some species feeding on roots of woody plants and others on roots of grasses and other herbaceous plants. Among the latter are an array of species occurring in the Great Plains, many of which have been very uncommonly collected. However, in recent years lures have been produced that are impregnated with prionic acid—the principal component of sex pheromones emitted by females in the genus. Originally produced for use in commercial orchards (which are sometimes attacked by P. laticollis in the east and P. californicus in the west), these lures are proving themselves to be useful for us taxonomist-types who wish to augment the limited amount of available material of other, non-economic species in the genus. While Prionus was our main goal, rest assured that I did not pass on the opportunity to find and photograph other beetles of interest.
I began the trip by driving from St. Louis to Wichita, Kansas to meet up with Jeff, who had flown there from his home in upstate New York. Our plan was to visit sites in southeastern Colorado and northeastern New Mexico, where several of the Prionus spp. that we were looking for were known to occur. Before doing this, however, we stopped in Hardtner, Kansas to see “Beetle Bill” Smith and tour his amazing natural history tribute, Bill and Janet’s Nature Museum.
“Beetle Bill” Smith, founder of Bill & Janet’s Nature Museum, Hardtner, Kansas.
After the tour (and a delicious lunch at his house of fried crappie prepared by his wife Janet), we headed west of town and then south just across the state line into Oklahoma to a spot where Bill had found a blister beetle (family Meloidae) that Jeff was interested in finding. During lunch I mentioned a jewel beetle (family Buprestidae) that I had looked for in the area several times, but which had so far eluded me—Buprestis confluenta. Emerald green with a dense splattering of bright yellow flecks on the elytra, it is one of North America’s most striking jewel beetles and is known to breed in the trunks of dead cottonwoods (Populus deltoides). Bill mentioned that he had collected this species at the very spot where we were going, and when we arrived I was enticed by the sight of a cottonwood grove containing several large, dead standing trunks—perfect for B. confluenta.
Buprestis spp. love large, dead, barkless cottonwood trunks.
I searched for more than one hour without seeing the species, though I did find a few individuals of the related (and equally striking) B. rufipes on the trunks of the large, dead trees. Once that amount of time passes I’m no longer really expecting to see what I’m looking for, but suddenly there it was in all of its unmistakable glory! It would be the only individual seen despite another hour of searching, but it still felt good for the first beetle of the trip to be one I’d been looking for more than 30 years!
Buprestisconfluenta, on the trunk of a large, dead cottonwood (Populus deltoides) | Woods Col., Oklahoma| USA: Oklahoma
I usually wait until near the end of a collecting trip to take the requisite selfie, but on this trip I was sporting new headgear and anxious to document its maiden voyage. My previous headgear of choice, a vintage Mambosok (impossible to get now), finally disintegrated after 20 years of field use, and on the way out-of-town I picked up a genuine Buff® do-rag. I know many collectors prefer a brim, but I don’t like they way brims limit my field of vision or get in the way when I’m using a camera. Besides, I’m usually looking down on the ground or on vegetation, so sun on my face is not a big issue. And do I be stylin’ or wut?
A “selfie” makes the trip official.
We made it to our first locality in southeast Colorado by noon the next day—the vast, dry grasslands north of Las Animas. Jeff had collected a blister beetle of interest here on an earlier trip, but as I looked out across the desolate landscape I wondered what on Earth I could find here that would be even remotely interesting to me.
Shortgrass prairie habitat for Prionus integer.
Letting Jeff have some time to look for his blister beetle, I started down the roadside and after a short time found a live female Prionus sp. (later determined to represent P. integer). The only female Prionus I had ever collected before was P. heroicus, a giant species out in Arizona, and that was almost 30 years ago, so I wasn’t immediately sure what it was. Eventually I decided it must be Prionus, and a quick stop to kick the dirt while Jeff looked for his beetle turned into an intense search for more Prionus that surely were there. I did find two male carcasses shortly thereafter, and then nothing more was seen for the next hour or so.
Prionus integer male (found dead) | Bent Co., Colorado
During the time that I was searching, however, I started noticing strange burrows in the ground. I excavated a few—they were shallow but contained nothing. Nevertheless, they matched the size of the beetles perfectly—surely there was a connection?
Prionus integer adult burrow.
I wondered if Jeff knew about the beetles occurring here, but when I showed him what I had found the surprised look on his face told me this was not the case. I showed him the burrows, and we both agreed they had to be connected. I got the shovel out of the truck and walked back to the area where I had seen the live female, then sunk the shovel deep into the ground next to one of the burrows and pried up a chuck of the soil containing the burrow in its entirety. As we broke apart the soil another female was revealed, and we immediately decided to set out some traps baited with prionic acid lures. We expected the beetles to become active during dusk, so we went into town to get something to eat and then check out another nearby locality before returning to the site at dusk. While we were gone it rained heavily at the site, so we weren’t sure if or how this would affect beetle activity and their possible attraction to the traps. However, as we approached the site (slipping and sliding on the muddy 2-track), we could actually see beetles crawling on the road from afar. What we found when we got out of the car was nothing short of mind-blowing—the beetles were everywhere, crawling on the road, crawling through the grass, and overflowing in the flooded traps! The vast majority were males, as expected, but we also found a fair number of the much more rarely collected females. This was significant, as the chance to observe mating and oviposition behavior made the encounter far more informative than if we had only found and collected the much more numerous males.
Prionus integer mating pair.
The following day we headed south into northeastern New Mexico to look at some shortgrass prairie sites near Gladstone (Union Co.) where two species of Prionus had been collected in recent years: P. fissicornis (the lone member of the subgenus Antennalia) and P. emarginatus (one of eight species in the poorly known subgenus Homaesthesis, found primarily in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains). Fresh off of our experience the previous day, we were on the lookout for any suspicious looking “burrows” as we checked the roadsides at several spots in the area but found nothing, and while a few blister beetles piqued the interest of Jeff at one site, the complete absence of woody vegetation or flowering plants in general in the stark grassland landscape made the chances of me finding any other woodboring beetles remote. Eventually I became distracted by the lizards that darted through the vegetation around us, including this lesser earless lizard (Holbrookia maculata) and a collared lizard (better photos of both forthcoming).
Holbrookia maculata (lesser earless lizard) | Union Co., New Mexico.
Despite no clues to suggest that Prionus beetles were active in the area, we set out some traps at two sites with soil exposures that seemed similar to those seen the day before. As Jeff set the last pair of traps in place, my distraction with saurian subjects continued with a dusty hognose snake (Heterodon nasicus gloydi). While photographing the animal I looked down to my side, and what did I see but a male Prionus fissicornis crawling through the vegetation! I called out to Jeff, and for the next half an hour or so we scoured the surrounding area in a failed attempt to find more. We would not be back until the next morning to check the traps, so our curiosity about how abundant the beetles might be would have to wait another 18 hours. We cast an eye towards the north and watched late afternoon thunderstorms roll across the expansive landscape and decided to check out the habitat in nearby Mills Rim.
Thunderstorms over shortgrass prairie.
The rocky terrain with oak/pine/juniper woodlands at Mills Rim was a dramatic contrast to the gently rolling grasslands of the surrounding areas. We came here mostly out of curiosity, without any specific goal, but almost immediately after getting out of the car a huge Prionus male flew up to us—almost surely attracted by the scent of the lures we were carrying. Within a few minutes another male flew in, and then another. Because of their huge size and occurrence within oak woodland habitat, we concluded they must represent P. heroicus, more commonly encountered in the “Sky Islands” of southeastern Arizona. We stuck around to collect a few more, but as dusk approached we returned to the surrounding grasslands to set out some lures to see if we could attract other Prionus species. The frontal system that had waved across the landscape during the afternoon had left in its wake textured layers of clouds, producing spectacular colors as the sun sank inexorably below the horizon.
Sunset over shortgrass prairie.
This attempt to collect grassland Prionus beetles would not be successful, and as dusk progressed we became distracted collecting cactus beetles (Moneilema sp., family Cerambycidae) from prickly pear cactus plants (Opuntia sp.) before darkness ended our day’s efforts. This did not mean, however, that all of our efforts were done—there are still night active insects, and in the Great Plains what better nocturnal insect to look for than North America’s largest tiger beetle, the Great Plains giant tiger beetle (Amblycheila cylindriformis, family Cicindelidae—or subfamily Cicindelinae—or supertribe Cicindelitae, depending on who you talk to)?! We kept our eyes on the headlamp illuminated 2-track as we drove back to the highway and then turned down another road that led into promising looking habitat. Within a half-mile of the highway we saw one, so I got out to pick it up and then started walking. I walked another half-mile or so on the road but didn’t see anything except a few Eleodes darkling beetles (family Tenebrionidae), then turned around and walked the habitat alongside the road on the way back. As I walked, tiny little rodents—looking like a cross between a mouse and a vole—flashed in and out of my headlight beam as they hopped and scurried through the vegetation in front of me. Most fled frantically in response to my attempted approach, but one, for some reason, froze long enough under my lamp to allow me this one photo. When I posted the photo on my Facebook page, opinions on its identity ranged from kangaroo rat (Dipodomys sp.) silky pocket mouse (Perognathus flavus) to jumping mouse (Zapus sp.). Beats me.
Kangaroo rat? Silky pocket mouse? Jumping mouse? | Union Co., New Mexico.
Almost as if by command, it rained during the early evening hours where we had set the traps, and the following morning we were rewarded with traps brimming with Prionus fissicornis males. Not only were the traps full, but males were still running around in the vicinity, and we even found a few females, one of which was in the act of ovipositing into the soil at the base of a plant.
Prionus fissicornis male | Harding Co., New Mexico.
Prionus fissicornis oviposition hole.
Eventually P. fissicornis activity subsided, and we decided to go back to the area around Mills Rim to see what beetles we might find in the woodland habitats. We also still were not sure about the Prionus beetles we had collected there the previous day and whether they truly represented P. heroicus. The scrubby oaks and conifers screamed “Beat me!”, and doing so proved extraordinarily productive, with at least a half-dozen species of jewel beetles collected—including a nice series of a rather large Chrysobothris sp. from the oaks that I do not recognize and a single specimen of the uncommonly collected Phaenops piniedulis off of the pines.
Oak/juniper woodland at Mills Canyon, habitat for Prionus heroicus.
Not only is the scenery at Mills Rim Campground beyond spectacular, it also boasts some of the most adoringly cute reptiles known to man—such as this delightfully spiky horned lizard (I prefer the more colloquial name “horny toad”!). I’m probably going to regret not having photographed this fine specimen with the big camera.
Phrynosoma cornutum (Texas horned lizard) | Harding Co., New Mexico.
Fresh diggings beside a rock always invite a peek inside. You never know who might be peeking out.
Who’s home?
Peek-a-boo!
The trip having reached the halfway point, we debated whether to continue further south to the sand dunes of southern New Mexico (with its consequential solid two-day drive back to Wichita) or turn back north and have the ability to collect our way back. We chose the latter, primarily because we had not yet had a chance to explore the area around Vogel Canyon south of Las Animas, Colorado. We had actually planned to visit this area on the day we encountered P. integer in the shortgrass prairie north of town, and a quick visit before going back to check the traps that evening showed that the area had apparently experienced good rains as shown by the cholla cactus (Cylindropuntia imbricata) in full bloom.
Cylindropuntia imbricata | Otero Co., Colorado.
Whenever I see cholla plants I can’t help myself—I have to look for cactus beetles (Moneilema spp.). It had rained even more since our previous visit a few days ago, and accordingly insects were much more abundant. Several Moneilema adults were seen on the cholla, one of which I spent a good bit of time photographing. The iPhone photo below is just a preview of the photos I got with the big camera (which also included some very impressive-sized cicadas—both singing males and ovipositing females). The cactus spines impaled in the camera’s flash control unit serve as a fitting testament to the hazards of photographing cactus insects!
Moneilema sp. on Cylindropuntia imbracata } Otero Co., Colorado.
The hazards of photographing cactus beetles.
Later in the afternoon we hiked down into the canyon itself, and while insects were active we didn’t find much out of the ordinary. We did observe some petroglyphs on the sandstone walls of the canyon dating from the 1200s to the 1700s—all, sadly, defaced by vandals. Despite the rather uninspiring collecting, we stayed in the area for two reasons: 1) Jeff wanted to setup blacklights at the canyon head in hopes of collecting a blister beetle that had been caught there on an earlier trip, and 2) I had noted numerous Amblycheila larval burrows in the area (and even fished out a very large larva from one of them) and wanted to search the area at night to see if I could find adults. Jeff was not successful in his goal, and for a time I thought I would also not succeed in mine until we closed up shop and started driving the road out of the canyon. By then it was after 11 p.m. and we managed to find about a half-dozen A. cylindriformis adults. This was now the third time that I’ve found adults of this species, and interestingly all three times I’ve not seen any beetles despite intense searching until after 11 p.m and up until around midnight.
Lithographs on canyon wall | Mills Canyon, Colorado.
The next morning we found ourselves with two days left in the trip but several hundred miles west of Wichita, where I needed to drop Jeff off for his flight back home before I continued on home to St. Louis. I had hoped we could make it to the Glass Mountains just east of the Oklahoma panhandle to see what Prionus species might be living in the shortgrass prairies there (and also to show Jeff this remarkable place where I’ve found severalnewstaterecords over the past few years). As we headed in that direction, I realized our path would take us near Black Mesa at the western tip of the Oklahoma pandhandle, and having been skunked on my first visit to the area last year due to dry conditions but nevertheless intrigued by its very un-Oklahoma terrain and habitat I suggested we stop by the area and have a look around before continuing on to the Glass Mountains. We arrived in the area mid-afternoon and headed straight for a rock outcropping colonized by scrub oak (Quercus sp.) and pinyon pine (Pinus sp.)—very unusual for western Oklahoma—that I had found during my previous trip.
The area around Black Mesa couldn’t be more unlike the perception that most people have of Oklahoma.
I wanted to beat the oaks for buprestids—surely there would be a state record or two just sitting there waiting for me to find them, but as I started walking from the car towards the oaks the approach of a loud buzz caught my attention. I turned around to see—would you believe—a large Prionus beetle circling the air around me and was fortunate to net it despite its fast and agile flight. I hurried back to the car to show Jeff what I had found; we looked at each other and said, “Let’s collect here for a while.” The beetle had apparently been attracted to the lures in the car, so we got them out, set them up with some traps, and went about beating the oaks and watching for beetles to fly to the lure. Sadly, no jewel beetles were collected on the oaks, although I did find evidence of their larval workings in some dead branches (which were promptly collected for rearing). Every once in a while, however, a Prionus beetle would fly in, apparently attracted to the lure but, curiously, never flying directly to it and falling into the trap. Many times they would land nearby and crawl through the vegetation as if searching but never actually find the trap. However, just as often they would approach the trap in flight and not land, but rather continue circling around in the air for a short time and before suddenly turning and flying away (forcing me to watch forlornly as they disappeared in the distance). Based on their very large size, blackish coloration and broad pronotum, we surmised (and later confirmed) these must also be P. heroicus, despite thinking (and later confirming) that the species was not known as far east as Oklahoma. Not only had we found a new state record, but we had also recorded a significant eastern range extension for the species. And to think that we only came to Black Mesa because I wanted to beat the oaks!
Prionus heroicus male
Proof that Prionus heroicus males can bite hard enough to draw blood!
We each collected a nice series of the beetles, and despite never witnessing the beetles actually going to the traps a few more were found in the traps the next morning after spending the night in a local bed & breakfast. I also found a dove’s nest with two eggs hidden in the vegetation, and as we were arranging for our room at the bed & breakfast a fellow drove up and dropped off a freshly quarried dinosaur footprint (the sandstone, mudstone, and shale deposits around Black Mesa are the same dinosaur fossil bearing deposits made more famous at places like Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument).
Dove’s nest w/ eggs.
Freshly quarried dinosaur fossil footprint
By the way, if you ever visit the area, the Hitching Post at Black Mesa is a great place to stay. A longhorn skull on the barn above an authentic 1882 stagecoach give a hint at the ambiance, and breakfast was almost as good as what my wife Lynne can do (almost! 🙂 ).
Longhorn skull on barn at our Bead and Breakfast.
132-year-old stagecoach – model!
After breakfast we contemplated the long drive that lay between us and our arrival in Wichita that evening—our longer than expected stay in the area had virtually eliminated the possibility to collect in the Glass Mountains. Nevertheless, there was one more thing that I wanted to see before we left—the dinosaur footprints laying in a trackway along Carrizo Creek north of the mesa. I only knew they were in the area based on a note on a map, but as there were no signs our attempt to find them the previous day was not successful. Armed with detailed directions from the B&B owners, however, we decided to give it one more shot. Again, even after we found the site I didn’t see them immediately, I suppose because I was expecting to see distinct depressions in dry, solid rock. Only after the reflections of light from an alternating series of small puddles—each measuring a good 10–12″ in diameter—did I realize we had found them. Recent rains had left the normally dry creek bed filled with mud, with the footprints themselves still filled with water.
Dinosaur tracks | vic. Black Mesa, Oklahoma.
It is not surprising that I would be so excited to find the tracks, but what did surprise me was the effect they had on me. Seeing the actual signs of near mythical beasts that lived an incomprehensible 100 million years ago invites contemplation and reminds us that our time here on Earth has, indeed, been short!
Dinosaur tracks | vic. Black Mesa, Oklahoma.
By this time, we had no choice but to succumb to the long drive ahead. We did manage to carve out a short stop at the very first locality of the trip in an effort to find more Buprestis confluens (finding only a few more B. rufipes), but otherwise the day was spent adhering to our goal of reaching Wichita before nightfall. Jeff was home and sipping tea before lunchtime the next day, while I endured one more solid day of driving before making it back to St. Louis in time for dinner with the family. At that point, the trip already could have been considered a success, but how successful it ultimately ends up being depends on what beetles emerge during the next season or two from these batches of infested wood that I collected at the various spots we visited.
Wood collected for rearing wood-boring beetles.
If you like this Collecting Trip iReport, you might also like the iReports that I posted for my 2013 Oklahoma and 2013 Great Basin collecting trips as well.
During the last week of August, I teamed up with fellow longhorned beetle enthusiast Jeff Huether to look for species in the genus Crossidius. This exclusively North American genus contains a number of colorful species in the tribe Trachyderini that are associated with woody composites in the genera Ericameria and Chrysothamnus (rabbitbrush) and Gutierrezia (snakeweed). While centered in the vast Great Basin in the western U.S., many species occur further east into the Great Plains, west to the Great Central Valley and deserts of southern California, north into southwestern Canada, and south into mainland Mexico and Baja California.¹ Adults of most species emerge during late summer or fall to coincide with the profusion of yellow blooms that appear on their host plants and upon which the adults can be found feeding, mating, and resting. A conspicuous feature of most species in the genus is extreme polytopism—a consequence of discontinuous host plant distributions across the basin and range topography that has resulted in more or less insular local populations. Not surprisingly, the taxonomic history of the genus is complex, but many of the Great Basin taxa are now regarded as subspecies of two widely ranging species—C. coralinus and C. hirtipes (the latter being, perhaps, the most highly polytopic species of Cerambycidae in all of North America).²
¹ Morris & Wappes (2013) recently described and assigned to this genus a species apparently restricted to relict sand formations in southern Georgia. Its highly disjunct distribution, however, along with significant differences in morphology, habits and biology compared to other species of Crossidius suggest that it might more properly be regarded as a distinct genus.
² Not all longhorned beetle enthusiasts accept the current taxonomy, arguing that species such as C. coralinus and C. hiripes merely reflect clinal patterns of variability. I concede the genus needs further work, as did Linsley & Chemsak (1961), whose generic revision forms the basis for current species/subspecies concepts. I will note, however, that the aforementioned authors examined more than 12,000 specimens during the course of their study, and wholesale dismissal of the subspecies they recognized might be premature until a significantly larger amount of material, preferably supplemented with series of specimens from lesser known geographies as well as molecular data from across their ranges, can be examined.
We flew into Reno and spent the first several days in western Nevada. Jeff arrived the night before I did and, thus, had the chance to scope out Davis Creek Park south of Reno during the morning of my arrival. It must have been to his liking, as after he picked me up at the airport we went straight back to the park and found good numbers of what we consider to be C. hirtipes immaculatus on the stands of rabbitbrush at the park. There were at least two types of rabbitbrush present, with the beetles showing a distinct preference for one over the other (vouchers of both plant species were collected for ID confirmation). Thick haze from the ongoing Rim Fire to the south in the Sierra Nevada had settled over the area, greatly limiting visibility and reducing adjacent Mt. Rose to a faint silhouette but allowing some rather spectacular sunset photos of one of my favorite western jewel beetle species, Agrilus walsinghami, which we found in small numbers on both types of rabbitbrush.
Haze from the Rim Fire settles over Davis Creek Park | Washoe Co., Nevada
The following day we drove to several areas further east near Fallon (Churchill Co.) and along Coal Canyon Road near Lovelock (Pershing Co.), where we found good numbers of C. coralinus temprans on gray rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa). In most spots only a few individuals were found—mostly males, but in one spot south of Fallon we encountered good numbers of the beetles (and the heaviest numbers of mosquitoes from nearby Carson Lake that I have ever experienced!). We were skunked in our attempt to find C. h. bechteli, which has been collected at a few spots across northern Nevada, but we knew it would be a long shot since known records of the subspecies are from mid- to late September. Our visit to the area, however, was not for naught, as the sinking sun in the still smoke-filled sky presented a short window of opportunity for more stunning photos of insects at sunset.
Using the “left wrist” technique for Crossidius coralinus temprans on Ericameria nauseosa | Pershing Co., Nevada
Day 3 was spent dropping south along US-95A in western Nevada towards Yearington and Wellington (Lyon Co.). We made a number of stops and encountered C. c. temprans at most of the rabbitbrush habitats we sampled, but our real quarry was several named subspecies of C. hirtipes—C. h. rubrescens, and in adjacent Douglas Co., C. h. immaculipennis and C. h. macswainei. For much of the day it looked as though we might not find any of the C. hirtipes subspecies, but finally as we approached Yearington we found what we consider to be C. h. rubrescens hiding among the flowers of yellow rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus). (In fact, we were actually walking back to the car to leave the spot when we finally spotted a mating pair on a flower. It turns out that we were focusing on the larger Ericameria plants preferred by C. coralinus, rather than the smaller Chrysothamnus plants preferred by C. hirtipes.) Considerable effort was required to collect a decent series and obtain field photographs before the setting sun caused the beetles to retreat and become too difficult to find. It would also be my last opportunity to take dramatic sunset photos, this time with C. hirtipes.
Sage grasslands with established stands of rabbitbrush is perfect Crossidius habitat | Lyon Co., Nevada
Preparing to photograph a mating pair of Crossidius coralinus temprans | Lyon Co., Nevada
We continued our hunt for the other two C. hirtipes subspecies mentioned above on Day 4 in the area around Wellington in Lyon Co. and adjacent Douglas Co. Those of you who think Nevada is desolate and monotonous desert should take the drive south of Yearington through Walker Canyon and then south of Wellington through Toiyabe National Forest to Sweetwater Summit. I guarantee this will be some of the most spectacular countryside you have ever seen. As with C. h. rubrescens the previous day, it took some effort and trying several spots before we found a population in Douglas Co. west of Wellington that we consider to represent C. h. immaculipennis. They were co-occurring with almost equal numbers of C. ater, a widespread, all-black species that shows no appreciable variation across its range but which has been implicated in providing melanism to several C. hirtipes subspecies through introgressive hybridization (Linsley & Chemsak 1961). Eventually we decided we had sufficient material of C. h. immaculipennis and drove back through Wellington and south towards Sweetwater Summit, stopping at several spots along the way but finding nothing on either the Ericameria or Chrysothamnus. Finally, at the summit we found a single individual of C. h. macswainei, which I photographed later that evening. At the time we thought it was the only individual of this subspecies that we had collected on the trip, but closer examination of the material collected north of Yearington since returning home suggests that it may actually be a mixture of C. h. rubrescens and C. h. macswainei. [Clearly the taxonomy needs to be adjusted if this is the case; either the two taxa are not valid subspecies (in which case intermediates should also be found), or they actually represent two closely related but nevertheless distinct and partially sympatric species.]
Toiyabe National Forest, Nevada—what people think…
Toiyabe National Forest, Nevada—the real thing (made even more dramatic by the setting sun)!
On Day 5 we continued our southward march, crossing over the Nevada-California border along US-95 and dropping south along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada—first into Mono Basin and then into Owens Valley. For me it was a return to one of my favorite places on earth, which I last visited way back in 1995 while living in California. We stopped briefly at Topaz Lake and found a few Cicindela o. oregona that proved to be extremely wary (white box photography alert), but our real target was C. h. flavescens, known only from the area around Kennedy Meadow in Inyo Co. Unfortunately, we didn’t pay attention to the county and went instead to Kennedy Meadows in Tuolomne Co.! Needless to say, while we did find some stands of Ericameria we did not find any Crossidius beetles, and it would not be until after the trip was over that we discovered our error. Nevertheless, the drive up the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada, over Sonora Pass, and partway down the western flank to Kennedy Meadows allowed us to “clean up” on C. ater and offered spectacular scenery despite the continued cloaking of haze from the now much nearer Rim Fire. Jeff also managed to find the only specimen of C. punctatus that we would see on the trip.
Sonora Pass | Mono/Tuolomne Co., California
Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta murrayana) cadaver at Sonora Pass
We continued south along US-95 into Mono Basin towards a locality near Mammoth Lakes to look for the spectacular orange subspecies C. c. monoensis. Of course, one cannot drive right through the Mono Lake area without stopping and every Vista Point and at the lake itself to admire its strange, almost moonscape-like tufa towers. It was getting late in the day, so I found myself in a bit of a race to photograph the towers before they were covered by the advancing shadows from the Sierra Nevada to the west. I did not succeed completely, but the resulting photos with contrasting “black and white” towers made for nevertheless interesting photos.
Mono Lake Vista Point along US-395 | Mono Co., California
Great Basin fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis longipes) at Mono Lake Vista Point
Tufa towers at Mono Lake | Mono Co., California
Late afternoon shadows create an interesting “black/white” contrast between shaded and sunlit tufa.
Eventually we resumed our southward trek and, with daylight waning rapidly, arrived at a spot near Mammoth Lakes where Jeff had taken C. c. monoensis in the past. We were rewarded with a few males and females, and I was able to take some rather spectacular field photographs of each. Until now, all of the C. coralinus I had seen were deep red and black, but these were bright orange with only a little bit of black—gorgeous! After failing in our attempt to find C. h. flavescens, finding this subspecies rescued the day as a success, and we were able to complete our drive into Bishop and spend the next day focusing on additional subspecies in Owens Valley and the White Mountains.
The eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada rise dramatically in the distance | Mono Co., California
Mono Basin near Mammoth Lakes (7000 ft)—locality for Crossidius coralinus monoensis | Mono Co., California
Our first stop on Day 6 was just a short 2.5 drive north from our hotel in Bishop, where we found a very nice population of C. c. caeruleipennis. If you think C. c. monoensis is spectacular, wait until you see this subspecies bearing the same bright orange coloration as C. c. monoensis but larger and even less maculated with black—the males are almost pure orange! I presume we were on the early side of things (as with most of the populations we found), as the plants were just on the early side of blooming and the majority of individuals encountered were males (which tend to emerge earlier than females). The occasional E.nauseosa plant in full bloom often had several individuals on it, including mating pairs.
Owens Valley near Bishop (4000 ft)—locality for Crossidius coralinus caeruleipennis | Inyo Co., California
With success already in hand, we continued south into the White Mountains to the area around Westgard Pass where a particularly dark subspecies—C. h. nubilus is known to occur. As we experienced earlier in the week, success did not come until we stopped searching the larger, more conspicuous Ericameria plants and focused on the much smaller and less conspicuous C. viscidiflorus plants. While I did manage to take some field photographs, the beetles were not numerous and I held some alive for photographs in the hotel room later than night. The beetles also seemed to be curiously patchy in their occurrence, with large stretches of seemingly good plants hosting none and the majority found in two small, localized spots in the area west of the pass.
Pinyon-juniper zone near Westgard Pass—locality for Crossidius hirtipes nubilus | Inyo Co., California
Under normal circumstances, I would have been content to close out the day looking for additional beetles to strengthen my series in the hopes of getting a good representation of the variation present in the population, but these were not normal circumstances—we were only a short drive from Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Despite living in California for five years back in the 1990s, I never took the opportunity to visit this place and explore its incredible stands of Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva). The oldest non-clonal tree in the world, dated to nearly 5000 years old, occurs in this area, and many of the trees in the forest range from 1000–2000 years old. Indescribable is the only adjective that I can offer for one’s first sight of these trees, many gnarled and grotesquely twisted by age and wind, the older ones often with nothing but a narrow strip of living wood connecting the roots to a small group of live branches on an otherwise dead tree.
Great Basin bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) | Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, Inyo Co., California
Sitting next to an ancient cadaver—who knows how old it is?
Spectacular vistas around every bend at Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.
Female cones bear longish, incurved bristles on the tips of their scales.
Great Basin bristlecone pines are restricted to high elevations in California, Nevada, and Utah.
On Day 7 we left Bishop and headed back north to Mono Basin to take another shot at C. c. monoensis and also look for C. h. rhodopus, the latter being a particularly reddish subspecies known only from Mono Basin. We had not seen the latter in our cursory look at Mono Basin habitats two days ago, and it continued to elude us at several stops in areas supporting the C. viscidiflorus host plants on which we expected it to occur (although we did manage to find a few more C. c. monoensis at the locality near Mammoth Lakes). I had collected C. h. rhodopus almost 20 years ago—my last trip to the Mono Basin—at a spot in the Benton Range at the south end of the Mono Basin (which also happens to be the type locality for the jewel beetle Nanularia monoensis, described by my late friend Chuck Bellamy in his 1987 revision of the genus). As a remembrance of Chuck I thought it would be nice to find and photograph N. monoensis as well, so we headed towards the Benton Range as our last stop in California before heading east through the Great Basin to look for additional C. hirtipes and C. coralinus subspecies. As we drove, we saw robust stands of C. viscidiflorus in Adobe Valley stretching south of Mono Lake towards the northern terminus of the White Mountains and decided to stop on the chance we might find C. h. rhodopus there. It’s a good thing we did, as the beetles were out in force. I tried photographing some individuals in the field, and while I did get some decent shots the beetles were generally too flighty and active to justify the effort. I was also anxious to look for N. monoensis, so I put a live male and female in a vial with a piece of host for photography later that evening and we continued towards the Benton Range.
Adobe Valley near the White Mountains—locality for Crossidius hirtipes rhodopus | Mono Co., California
Despite its close proximity to the comparatively lush Adobe Valley, conditions in the Benton Range were exceedingly dry. We searched around a bit, but it was apparent by the lack of any herbaceous plants or fresh growth on perennial plants that the area had not received rain for an extended period of time. In fact, I could not even find a single buckwheat (Eriogonum kearneyi var. monoensis) plant on which to search for jewel beetles. The only beetles seen were an aggregation of ~15 C. ater and C. h. rhodopus adults on a single E. nauseosa plant that, unlike the other plants in the area, somehow managed to achieve full bloom. Nevertheless, it was great to visit the locality and rekindle memories after so many years absence. Once we convinced ourselves that there were truly no more beetles to be had, we began the first leg of our long, 2-day drive across the southern Great Basin for the final phase of the trip.
The Benton Range is the type locality of Nanularia monoensis | Mono Co., California
The White Mountains form a dramatic backdrop behind the Benton Range | Mono Co., California
The author takes a “pensive” selfie | Benton Range, Mono Co., California
We spent the night in Tonapah, Nevada and began Day 8 by driving east along US-6, stopping along the roadsides periodically whenever particularly promising-looking stands of Ericameria/Chrysothamnus were seen. We had expected to begin finding populations assignable to subspecies C. h. brunneipennis as soon as we left Tonapah, but for the most part searching during the morning hours was fruitless. We did find single male and female examples from south-central Nevada of what seems to best fit C. coralinus coccineus (known mostly from southwestern Utah), but it was not until late morning when we were within about 30 miles of Ely in east-central Nevada that we began finding adults of C. hirtipes brunneipennis. At first they were scarce and difficult to find, ensconced as they were within the flowers of their C. viscidiflorus hosts, but shortly they began to appear in great numbers and offered opportunity for field photographs and good series. We had observed on several days of the trip that C. hirtipes began ‘disappearing’ during late afternoon, in contrast to C. coralinus which tended to settle down within the flowers of their host plant where they could be found even at dusk (and perhaps all night had we searched for them at that time). I now believe that C. hirtipes tends to crawl down to the base of the host plant to spend the night and requires some period of warming temperatures before they come back up to the flowers the following morning, and that this is the reason why we did not succeed in finding populations further to the west in the areas we searched after leaving Tonapah in the morning. In contrast, we rarely failed to succeed in finding C. coralinus in the locations where they occur during early morning or early evening hours.
A short drive further east to Ely got us within range of the darkened subspecies C. h. cerarius, and at the first stop south of town sporting a good stand of C. viscidiflorus we found this one also in good numbers. Another short drive further east to near the Utah border brought us within the western limit of the final C. hirtipes subspecies that we were targeting—C. h. wickhami. Unlike the previous subspecies, which has an extremely limited distribution in east-central Nevada, C. h. wickhami is widespread from east-central Nevada across western Utah and northern Arizona. We waited until we crossed the Utah border, stopped at the first stand of C. viscidiflorus that we saw, and found decent numbers of this subspecies distinguished by its light coloration and distinct sutural stripe.
We needed to make it to Moab, Utah in the evening, so we began the long trek across southern Utah. There is another C. coralinus subspecies known from southwestern Utah that we could have targeted—C. c. coccineus, but we had both already collected examples of this subspecies in Cedar City, Utah during a tour of the Great Western Sand Dunes two years ago. Finding a male and a female of what seem to be this subspecies fulfilled my desire for photography subjects, and there were additional C. coralinus subspecies to be had further east that I had not yet collected. As I first learned two years ago, and which was again confirmed on this trip, southern Utah has some of the most dramatic scenery in all of the western U.S. Period! The photos below are but two examples of the many spectacular sights that I saw, and more now than ever I hope to return to this area in the future for serious exploration.
A thunderstorm settles over the Cricket Mountains behind Sevier Lake | Millard Co., Utah
A late afternoon rainbow dissipates over Devil’s Canyon | Emery Co., Utah
The last field day of a trip is always a bit melancholic—I’m never happier than when I’m in the field, and when I’m having particularly good luck it makes the end of the trip even harder to think about. The best cure for melancholy, however, is more success in the field, and Day 9 started off with a bang. We had driven less than 40 miles south of Moab when we saw good looking stands of E. nauseosa and C. viscidiflorus, and on the very first plant we checked sat a spectacular female representing the robust, bright red and heavily marked nominotypical C. coralinus. Only a few more were found during the ensuing search until I found a “mother lode” plant hosting two mating pairs and three singletons. As it was still fairly early in the morning, the beetles were quite calm and I was able to fill my photographic quota of the subspecies with nice field shots of both sexes. We stopped at several more spots as we approached and crossed into Colorado, including Cortez where we found nice numbers of super-sized individuals. Mindful of the time, we tore ourselves away and continued east to the area around Fort Garland in south-central Colorado, where Jeff had previously seen C. c. jocosus—similar to C. c. coralinus but unusually diminutive in comparison. Anticipation, however, got the better of us before we made it to Fort Garland, for after passing through the San Juan Mountains we stopped at a few spots around Monte Vista on the western side of the San Luis Valley (Fort Garland lies further east on the opposite side of the valley). Good fortune awaited us, as we found a handful of individuals at two sites that appeared to represent C. c. jocosus, reducing the importance of getting to Fort Garland and finding them there. The sites where we found these beetles might represent the western limit of distribution for the subspecies, which would seem to be isolated from C. c. coralinus by the intervening San Juan Mountains. It’s a good thing we stopped at those sites, as further east near Fort Garland nearly all of the plants were past peak bloom and no beetles were seen. Only a last ditch stop at a stand of plants just east of Fort Garland produced a single male and single female to add to those we had collected earlier, but it was enough to put a smile on the face and make it easier to accept that a long, successful trip had finally come to an end. We recounted our successes during the 3-hour drive to Denver: 14 of 16 targeted taxa successfully located, plus an additional three taxa not targeted for a total count of 17 named taxa.
Photographing insects on Ericameria nauseosa | San Juan Co., Utah
In closing this report, I should note a few caveats:
Identifications are preliminary and based primarily on expected geographical occurrence along with cursory comparison to descriptions and diagnoses published in Linsley & Chemsak (1961). Some modifications to these identifications might occur after collected material has been examined more closely (e.g., the possible co-occurrence of C. h. rubrescens and C. h. macswainei at a locality just north of Yearington, Nevada). This also applies to host plant identifications; however, voucher samples were collected from almost every location and will be submitted to specialists for ID confirmation.
All of the photos in this post were taken with my iPhone. This does not mean that I have no photos taken with my ‘real’ camera to share—these will be forthcoming in future posts that examine many of the above mentioned subjects in more detail (as well as a few additional subjects not mentioned above). This also does not mean that these photos are ‘straight from the phone’—they have been post-processed in much the same way I process photos taken with the digital SLR to emphasize their good qualities and minimize their bad ones. I choose to include only iPhone photos in this post since the iPhone is what I mostly use to document a general ‘flavor’ of the trip, saving the digital SLR for true macro-photography or subjects requiring the highest possible quality. Aw heck, here’s a ‘real’ photo of one of the insects I found on the trip to whet your appetite for posts to come:
Crossidius coralinus temprans (female) on stem of Ericameria nauseosa | Churchill Co., Nevada
REFERENCES:
Bellamy, C. L. 1987. Revision of the genera Nanularia Casey and Ampheremus Fall (Coleoptera, Buprestidae, Chalcophorinae). Contributions in Science, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History 387:1–20.
Linsley, E. G. & J. A. Chemsak. 1961. A distributional and taxonomic study of the genus Crossidius (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae). Miscellaneous Publications of the Entomological Society of America 3(2):25–64 + 3 color plates.
Morris, R. F., III & J. E. Wappes. 2013. Description of a new Crossidius LeConte (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Cerambycinae: Trachyderini) from southern Georgia with comments on its biology and unusual distribution. Insecta Mundi 0304:1–7.
Yesterday my girls (wife Lynne and daughters Mollie and Madison) took me and my father to the Missouri Botanical Garden for Fathers Day. Although I’m an entomologist, I also have a strong botanical bent, and although my wife and father are not scientists like me, they nevertheless find a day at the Missouri Botanical Garden as enjoyable as I do. The girls, on the other hand, will never admit that they like it the way the rest of us do, but I think deep inside they enjoy it very much and, in later years, will look upon these visits as some of their fondest Mothers and Fathers Day memories.
Me and daughters Mollie and Madison.
My father and I have been back together for 20 years now. With my wife and daughters, he has become one of the most important persons in my life. I wrote an essay about my father four years ago that explains how he made me whole—it still rings true today.
Me and Pop.
I have been to the Missouri Botanical Garden many, many times over the years, but one sight have have still never seen is a corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum). I learned earlier this week that one of their plants is about ready to bloom, so I eagerly looked for this plant as we wound our way through the Climatron. As we came near the end and I still hadn’t seen it, I wondered if somehow I had missed it along the path. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of the giant 3′ tall flower bud near the end of the footpath, and I knew instantly that I had found what I was looking for.
Corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) getting ready to bloom.
I will be keeping track of the progress of this flower over the next couple of weeks on the Missouri Botanical Garden Facebook page in hopes that I can see it again when the flower opens fully—a rare botanical treat that few people ever get the chance to experience!
Corpse flower explained.
In my younger years when I had a bit more free time on my hands I was a hobbyist orchid grower. I didn’t have a greenhouse but nevertheless managed to keep a steady supply of plants in bloom by growing them outdoors under shade cloth with heavy watering and fertilizing during the summer and moving them indoors under fluorescent lights and in bright windows during the winter. I don’t have nearly the time for such pursuits these days, but I still enjoy looking at their exquisite and infinitely diverse blooms whenever I have the chance, and the Climatron never fails to disappoint.
One of many epiphytic orchids blooming in the Climatron.
While walking through the Climatron, I noticed a very exotic looking lizard on the trunk of one of the trees. I watched it licking exudate from the trunk and thought such behavior seemed rather odd. I later learned that this was the Standing’s day gecko (Phelsuma standingi), and that it might have an important role in pollinating the double coconut palm (Loidiocea maldivica). Both are endemic to the Seychelles Islands north of Madagascar, with the latter bearing the largest seed of any plant in the world (up to 45 lbs. in weight). The photo below was taken of another individual through the glass of its terrarium and, thus, lacks some clarity, but it shows the vivid colors and markings that distinguish these diurnal geckos from the other more typically nocturnal members of the gecko infraorder.
Standing’s day gecko (Phelsuma standingi).
While not gracing this post in a photo, many thanks to my loving wife, Lynne, who is the best mother my daughters could ask for and who helped make yesterday the special day for me and my father that it was!
I believe this is another species of cactus dodger cicada (Cacama sp.).
Beetles In The Bush 