Missouri

Digger wasps in action

/ Ted C. MacRae / 11 Comments
Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus

Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus digging a burrow | Stoddard Co., Missouri

Here is an animated gif that I made from a series of photographs of the digger wasp, Bicyrtes quadrifasciatus (ID courtesy of Doug Yanega), digging a burrow in a sand bank in extreme southeastern Missouri (it’s amazing what you can do with an iPhone and a free internet app!). A large number of these wasps had colonized the sand bank, and as I photographed this one individual busily digging its burrow, others repeatedly flew up and investigated. The digging individual would disappear briefly down into the burrow, and each time it returned to the surface with a fresh load of sand another wasp would fly up to it and investigate. The digging individual never seemed to pay much attention to the investigating wasp, so I’m not sure if these other wasps were looking for a potential mate or perhaps even trying to usurp the burrow.

The cumulative noise from all of the flying wasps was really quite remarkable—indeed, the noise is what drew my attention to the sand bank in the first place. A video of the colony with my commentary can be seen here. I did see one wasp that had returned to its burrow carrying prey (apparently a stink bug in the family Pentatomidae). I touched the wasp thinking that it would drop the prey and fly away, as another digger wasp, Cerceris fumipennis, does with its buprestid prey when disturbed. This would have given me a chance to confirm the prey identity. Unfortunately, the wasp kept hold of the prey and flew off with it.

© Ted C. MacRae 2014

Pretty, little, no-name spider

/ Ted C. MacRae / 12 Comments

I don’t like posting photographs of unidentified “bugs” (insects, spiders, etc.). There are times, however, when my best efforts are thwarted and I’m left with the choice to admit defeat or relegate the photos indefinitely to the “archives”. In this case, the subject in the photos is just cute to hide. I found this bright red spider on the blossom of a flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) this past spring while hiking the North Fork Section of the Ozark Trail near Blue Hole Hollow in Howell Co., Missouri. While I am fairly certain that it belongs to the family Linyphiidae (dwarf and sheetweb spiders), I cannot decide if it is the former or the latter. Among the dwarf spiders (subfamily Erigoninae), it resembles some members of the genus Ceraticelus, while among the sheetweb spiders (subfamily Linyphiidae) it seems a good match for the genus Florinda (as suggested by Bug Eric). Whatever its identity, it is one of the prettiest and most brightly colored little spiders I have seen. (Photographed on 4 May 2014 with a Canon MP-E 65 mm 1-5X lens.)

Edit 8/22/14, 12:20 p.m.—I now believe this to be an orb weaver (family Araneidae), albeit a very small one (only ~8 mm in length); specifically something in the genus Hypsosinga. Take a look at this photo of H. rubens, which seems to be a near perfect match for the individual in these photos.

Ceraticelus minutus?Ceraticelus minutus? Ceraticelus minutus? Ceraticelus minutus? Ceraticelus minutus?

© Ted C. MacRae 2014

A time of reckoning

/ Ted C. MacRae / 11 Comments

The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.

A "super moon" watches over a parasitized hornworm caterpillar.

A “super moon” watches over a parasitized hornworm caterpillar.

I’m not normally one to quote Bible passages, but this line from Acts 2:20 seems appropriately ominous for the predicament of this poor hornworm caterpillar. The white objects on its back are the cocoons of tiny parasitic wasps in the family Braconidae who spent their entire lives inside the body of the growing caterpillar slowly eating away the inner tissues of the caterpillar, eventually consuming all but the most essential of its internal organs before exiting the skin and spinning their tiny, silken cocoons. Inside the cocoons the tiny grubs transformed into adult wasps, chewed their way out through the tip of the cocoon, and flew off to mate and find more hornworm caterpillars to parasitize. Its unwelcome guests now gone, this poor caterpillar has nothing to do but to sit and await its inevitable demise (which I suspect the caterpillar will not regard as such a “great and magnificent day”).

I found this caterpillar resting on a vine climbing a tree along the Mississippi River in southeast Missouri after setting up an ultraviolet light nearby and noticing the softly glowing cocoons. I was going to photograph it in situ, but I’ve learned that choice of background can have a dramatic effect on insect photographs, and the jumble of weeds and tree bark that would have comprised the background had I photographed the caterpillar where it sat seemed decidedly boring. I looked up and saw the blood red moon (a so called “super moon”) rising above the river in the eastern sky and decided to give it a try. The above photograph is actually a composite of two photographs—one of the caterpillar taken with flash and fairly normal camera settings, and another of the moon itself with aperture, shutter speed, and ISO all adjusted for very low light conditions (at least to the extent possible without a tripod). While this may not qualify in some people’s minds as a “real” photograph, it is nevertheless a true representation of what I actually saw, as I also made a number of attempts to capture both the insect and the moon in a single exposure. Since it is impossible to have both the insect (very close) and the moon (very far) in focus at the same time, the resulting photograph has a different, though still striking, effect, as shown in the photograph below:

IMG_6919_enh_1080x720

A more surrealistic version of the above photograph, with both caterpillar and moon captured in a single exposure.

This second photograph is actually much harder to take, as the moon does not appear in the viewfinder as the small, discrete, fuzzy-edged object resulting in the image, but rather as a large, blinding light that is difficult to place within the composition and know exactly where it will end up (at least, without a lot of trial and error). Add to that the fact that my camera image and histogram display panel is, at the moment, not functional, forcing me to “guess” if I had the right settings (in a situation where I’m well outside of my ‘normal’ settings for flash macrophotography). I’m a little surprised that I ended up with any usable photographs at all!

I’ve tried this type of photography with the sun as well—those interested to see how those photographs turned can find them at Sunset for another great collecting trip and Under Blood Red Skies.

© Ted C. MacRae 2014

One-shot Wednesday: Mallodon dasystomus

/ Ted C. MacRae / 2 Comments
Mallodon dasystomus | southeast Missouri (Mississippi Co.)

Mallodon dasystomus | southeast Missouri (Mississippi Co.)

Today’s (slightly belated) edition of “One-shot Wednesday” features a beetle that I saw just about this time last year while blacklighting along the Mississippi River in the southeastern lowlands of Missouri. Mallodon dasystomus¹ is a prionid longhorned beetle (family Cerambycidae, subfamily Prioninae) that is sometimes called the “hardwood stump borer”. It is perhaps one of the most widely distributed members of its group, occurring across the southern tier of the U.S. down through Mexico and Central America as far as northern South America.

¹ Until recently the specific epithet was consistently misspelled in most of the literature as “dasytomus“. A closer look at the Greek root words dasus (δασύς), meaning “hairy”, and stoma (στόμα), meaning “mouth”, shows the misspelling to be nonsensical. I, myself, am guilty of using the wrong spelling in my checklist of Missouri longhorned beetles (MacRae 1994), although I can claim to have been “going with the flow”.

Despite the beetle’s wide geographical range, I searched for it both eagerly and unsuccessfully during the 1980s as I was gathering data for my checklist of Missouri longhorned beetles (MacRae 1994). I eventually published that checklist and included the species on the basis of a few specimens seen in other collections, but I never encountered it for myself until some years later during a visit to Cave Creek Canyon in southeast Arizona. As noted by Linsley et al. (1961), this species is common there and is associated with large, partially dead Arizona sycamores (Platanus wrightii). Although nearly 20 years ago, I still recall seeing the large beetles crawling high up on the trunks and sitting in their emergence holes with only their massively-mandibled heads protruding as they tantalizingly waved their antennae about.

That experience would directly lead to my eventually finding this species for myself in Missouri. Shortly after returning to the state in the mid-90s, I was driving along a road in the state’s southeastern lowlands when I passed a very large, half-dead American sycamore (Platanus occidentalis). Even at a speed of 40 mph I could see the large emergence holes that immediately reminded me of what I had seen in Arizona, so I hit the brakes, made a quick U-turn, and came back to look at the tree a little more closely. I was convinced the holes were made by this species, and my hunch was proven when I eventually found several beetle carcasses on the ground around the base of the tree. I returned the following weekend with a chainsaw, cut several one-cubic-foot sections of wood from the dead portion of the massive tree’s trunk (with landowner permission), and eventually reared a nice series of adults from the wood. Having uncovered the association of this species with sycamore in the state, I was able to find the species also in several other locations in southeastern Missouri, but I have not managed to find the species in any areas north of the southeastern lowlands in Missouri despite the common occurrence of the host tree.

The beetle in the above photograph landed on the foliage of a large silver maple (Acer saccharinum) next to the ultraviolet light I had setup in wet bottomland forest along the Mississippi River, and wanting to ensure that I got at least one in situ photo of the beetle that is where I shot it. I did try to move it to the trunk of a large, dead sycamore nearby for a more realistically representative photo of how these beetles are usually encountered, but the beetle became quite agitated when I moved it and my considerable patience was never rewarded. I popped it into a vial in hopes of photographs the next morning, but conditions were not to the beetle’s liking and it expired before I had another chance to photograph it. Just the other night I setup a blacklight in a spot not too far from where I saw this beetle in hopes of getting another chance to photograph it. That effort was not successful, but I did find a longhorned beetle species that I had not seen in nearly 30 years! I was successful in photographing that species but (please excuse the teaser) will save those photos for a future post.

REFERENCES:

Linsley, E. G., J. N. Knull & M. Statham. 1961. A List of Cerambycidae from the Chiricahua Mountain Area, Cochise County, Arizona (Coleoptera). American Museum Novitates 2050:1–34 [full text, pdf].

MacRae, T. C. 1994. Annotated checklist of the longhorned beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae and Disteniidae) known to occur in Missouri. Insecta Mundi 7(4) (1993):223–252 [pdf].

© Ted C. MacRae 2014

Mrs. Monday Jumper

/ Ted C. MacRae / 4 Comments
Phidippus princeps female | Howell Co., Missouri

Phidippus princeps female | Howell Co., Missouri

In my previous post, Monday Jumper, I featured a photo of a strikingly colored jumping spider (family Salticidae) that apparently represents an adult male Phidippus princeps. Far too skittish to attempt photographing in the field, I placed him in a vial and photographed him later in the hotel room but still only got one photo that was good enough to post. Shortly after gathering him up, I came across another jumping spider that proved far more cooperative for field shots. This was no doubt due in large part to the fact that she had just captured a fat, juicy caterpillar. I find predaceous insects to be far less skittish when they are involved in the act of consuming prey. This not only makes them easier to approach and photograph, but also adds a desirable natural history element to photos that is sometimes missing in “portrait-only” photographs.

Somber coloration, large abdomen, and small carapace contrast distinctly with the male

Somber coloration, large abdomen, and small carapace contrast distinctly with the male

I say “she” because of the classic female characters exhibited—relatively large and rounded abdomen (males tend to have a smaller and more tapered abdomen), smaller carapace, somber coloration, and absence of a “boxing glove” aspect to the pedipalps. Like the male I had just collected, she was on the foliage of an oak sapling, and as I began taking photographs I noticed in the preview screen the brilliant, metallic blue chelicerae that are a hallmark of the large salticid genus Phidippus. I had also presumed the male I had just collected belonged to this same genus based on gestalt, but I could have never imagined that the two individuals actually represented male and female of the very same species. Such appears to be the case, however, as a thorough perusal of the salticid galleries at BugGuide leads me to believe that the individual featured here is the adult female of Phidippus princeps.

Check out those metallic blue chelicerae!

Check out those metallic blue chelicerae!

These photos still may not approach the technical and aesthetic perfection exhibited by master salticid portraitist Thomas Shahan, but I think they do represent an improvement over my first attempt at photographing a feeding female. The first two photos are fine, but the third suffers from the focus being a little too “deep”, which seems to be my most frequent macrophotography mistake on higher mag shots. If you have any tips on how to overcome this particular problem I am all ears!

© Ted C. MacRae 2014

Monday Jumper

/ Ted C. MacRae / 1 Comment
Phidippus pinceps, adult male | Howell Co., Missouri (studio shot).

Phidippus princeps, adult male | Howell Co., Missouri (studio shot).

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after my friend Rich and I began hiking a 9-mile stretch of the North Fork Section of the Ozark Trail in the far southern reaches of Missouri, we encountered this colorful jumping spider (family Salticidae) on the foliage of an oak sapling. He was not at all in the mood to be photographed—dashing persistently from one side of the leaf to the other and finally dropping to the ground as I tried to close in for some shots. So active was the little guy, that even had I managed to get him within the camera’s field of view it would have been nearly impossible to get him properly focused, much less achieve a nice composition. Hoping he would be a little easier to work with in the confines of a hotel “studio”, we coaxed him into a vial with a sprig of foliage and then got him out and placed him on a branch of dogwood flowers (Cornus florida) that evening once we were in our room. Yes—he was easier to work with, but only by the fact that being in a hotel room made it more difficult for him to escape! He was just as active as in the field, darting from flower to flower in his persistent efforts to elude the large glass eye that kept trying to look at him. For many subjects, I would have given up rather than spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get photographs that likely would not turn out to be what I wanted. But this spider was just so attractive—red and black and white with flashy blue chelicerae! I persisted in my efforts, got about two dozen shots off before he finally did escape, then promptly deleted all but five immediately after seeing them on the computer. The photo shown here is the only “keeper” that I can actually bring myself to post—the focus is a bit too deep, but not so much that it detracts greatly from what is otherwise a fairly decent composition. The more I shoot jumping spiders, the more I am amazed at the portraits that Thomas Shahan achieves with these delightful little arachnids.

After browsing through the salticid galleries at BugGuide, I am inclined to believe this is the species Phidippus princeps, with the coloration and white-stripes on the pedipalps suggesting it is an adult male. ID correction welcome.

© Ted C. MacRae 2014

One-shot Wednesday: pale green assassin bug

/ Ted C. MacRae / 2 Comments
Zelus luridus (pale green assassin bug) | Howell Co., Missouri.

Zelus luridus (pale green assassin bug) | Howell Co., Missouri.

As my friend Rich and I set out a week ago Sunday on the final stretch in our quest to hike the 350-mile Ozark Trail in its entirety, I saw this slender, green assassin bug (family Reduviidae) sitting on a tender young leaf of an oak sapling. I already had my camera out but had outfitted with the 65-mm, 1–5× macro lens in anticipation of small beetles that I wanted to photograph on dogwood flowers. Nevertheless, it was still a bit on the cool side, making me think I might yet succeed in getting off some super-closeup shots of this delicate predator. I managed to carefully snip the leaf from the sapling and move the bug up close to the camera for a nice, blue-sky background shot, but one shot is all I got—as soon as the shutter clicked the bug took flight and left me with this single photo. As I have observed to usually be the case, the body of this individual is thickly covered with debris, which I take to be pollen from the abundant oaks at the height of their flowering period.

I’ve seen this species regularly over the years during my springtime forays in upland, oak-hickory Ozark forests. I presume the species is Zelus luridus, based on an online synopsis of the genus Zelus in eastern North America. As true bugs go, assassin bugs are undeniably cool—sometimes large, often colorful, and pure predators! Interestingly, these bugs have adopted a rather diverse array of strategies to assist their predaceous habits, mostly involving modifications of the front legs. Some involve a more typical raptorial design (similar to mantids) with chelate surfaces or even spines on the femora and tibiae, while others have developed flexible, cushion-like structures on the tips of the tibiae to aid in prey handling (Weirauch 2006). Gross morphological modifications, however, are not the only strategy employed by assassin bugs—some groups use secretions either to paralyze or immobilize their prey. Species in the genus Zelus employ the latter strategy—essentially using their front legs as “sticky traps”. The sticky substance is derived from glands on the front legs and is used to coat numerous, microscopically branched setae on the legs called “sundew setae” in reference to the similarity of appearance and function with insectivorous sundew plants. Interestingly, sundew setae have also been found on other parts of the body, at least in first-instar Z. luridus nymphs, leading to speculation that they may also serve some other function besides prey capture. Perhaps these setae explain why most individuals I see are so debris-covered, as with the pollen-laden individual above.

REFERENCE:

Weirauch, C. 2006. Observations on the sticky trap predator Zelus luridus Stål (Heteroptera, Reduviidae, Harpactorinae), with the description of a novel gland associated with the female genitalia. Denisia 19, zugleich Kataloge der OÖ. Landesmuseen
Neue Serie 50:1169–1180 [pdf].

© Ted C. MacRae 2014

Baby box turtle on white

/ Ted C. MacRae / 5 Comments

Box turtles of the genus Terrapene are extraordinarily common in Missouri, especially in the eastern and southern forested regions of the state where the three-toed box turtle (T. carolina triunguis)—Missouri’s state reptile—is the most commonly encountered form. Despite this abundance and the author’s more than a half-century spent scrabbling through the sticks of Missouri, I have never encountered a youngster as tiny as the one shown in this post (shell length about 2 inches). In fact, I didn’t even find it—my daughter rescued it from our dog, who had found it crossing the gravel driveway at our family’s cabin west of St. Louis. Such overwhelming cuteness demanded a photo session, and rather than deal with the active little hatchling’s persistent efforts to duck into the leaf litter I decided to photograph it on a clean, white background and arrange some of the photos in a “Naskreckian” collage. My daughter wanted to keep the little guy, but eventually she agreed that it would be better off released back into the forest. While it may lead a more perilous life in the forest, the opportunity to dine on fresh earthworms and strawberries should make up for it, and from these photos my daughter can always remember it for the little pup it once was.

Box-turtle-collage_1080x1407

Copyright © Ted C. MacRae 2014