"What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked." -Aldo Leopold
I’m sharing three different slugs tonight. First up is arguably one of the more attractive of this group, the Crowned Slug.
Next up is the spineless, Yellow-shouldered Slug.
Last of all is the Purple-crested Slug. This is the only individual of this species I was able to find this year.
-OZB
Way back in April, Steve and I grabbed the canoe and took another adventure into Mingo. We believe we were a bit too early in a long spring to catch a lot of wildlife activity, but we did catch a few sites worth remembering. For instance, this single Coot allowed us to get pretty close as we were just getting inside Monopoly Marsh.
Along with water-loving avifauna, certain reptiles can usually be a sure thing to find at Mingo. I heard the expected usual whimpering from the back of the canoe as I attempted to get a steady shot of this Cottonmouth that was trying to absorb some sun on this cool April morning. 😉
One of the more destructive and unfortunate of invasive species to be found in Missouri, the Feral Hog has a strong foothold at Mingo. Polluting water, destroying vegetation, negatively altering natural communities and competing with native wildlife for acorns and other food sources are the major examples of the damages caused by this invasive. The Missouri Department of Conservation has recently announced new policy that should make significant improvements in reducing the numbers of Feral Hogs in the Missouri Ozarks.
Finally, we have one of the expected and desired of Mingo’s mammals – the Virginia Opossum. This nicely colored possum didn’t mind that Steve and I watch as it had a mid-day snack.
-OZB
The next slug to make your acquaintance is the Red-crossed Button Slug. This species is quite similar to one or two others as both larvae and adult, but given that most lists I have seen from Missouri list this one and not the others, I am pretty confident in this ID. This species lacks the stinging, protective hairs, going instead with a more camouflage approach of looking like a bit of leaf blight as it passes over leaves of oaks, hickories and quite a few other known woody, deciduous host plants.
The image above gives a glimpse into how the slugs get around – on a substance described as liquid silk. See the winding trails?
Here I caught one in the act. From what I’ve read, slugs leave distinctively shaped (indented) frass that is different from that of other caterpillars. I didn’t pause long enough to investigate.
Finally, the adult slug moth is pictured above. Slug moths are strongly attracted to lights and, from what I have read, are often some of the first species to show up when setting up a light and sheet/trap. I have a theory that this may be why I find many less slug caterpillars the closer I look near St. Louis. Although I found very similar habitats with the same composition and numbers of sapling oaks and hickories (the favored host plants), the closer I came to the city the number of slug caterpillars dropped significantly. Perhaps the city lights are sucking in the adults before they are able to reproduce? Probably a too simplistic idea, but it is a trend I noticed. It could just as well be due to fragmented habitat and overall less habitat available the closer one gets to the city.
While searching for arthropod subjects to photograph on Steve’s property, we decided to check the compost/midden pile and found something completely unexpected.
These beetles were crazy to watch – super speedy while flipping their gold-tipped abdomens over their backs in display. These guys yield even more support to my contention that the vast majority of ideas used in the sci-fi genre (particularly the creature-features) were taken from somewhere within the natural world.
Check out those chompers!
-OZB
We were quite fortunate during our first summer of hunting for “slug” caterpillars – members of the moth family Limacodidae who get their name from their absence of prolegs, which are replaced by a sucker that enables them to move quite similarly to a true slug. We (Sarah, Steve and I) were fortunate because we were able to locate and photograph ten species of slugs. I had read about these fascinating animals before, but never realized how abundant and diverse they actually were in the Missouri Ozarks. Yes, a good amount of work and patience is necessary to find them – I don’t want to tally up the hours, but it was time well spent outdoors.
I’ve decided to begin sharing these images with a species that is probably most well known of those who have heard of the slugs – the aptly named saddleback caterpillar. As can be seen in the image below, the saddleback wears a green saddle, bordered with white. Also apparent in these images are the urticating (stinging) hairs that are concentrated along fleshy nobs located at both ends of the caterpillar. These spines are found on a number, but not all of the caterpillars in this family and are capable of delivering a painful sting that is quite similar to that of the stinging nettle plant.
The image below shows the ocellus, or eyespots, which are actually on the posterior end of the animal.
Finally, the anterior end – the animal’s head is nicely hidden under a few fleshy folds that are armed with spiny protuberances.
I look forward to sharing more examples of this fascinating group of Missouri slugs in the near future.
-OZB
…comes the newest in reality based, sustainable living instructional programming: Corruption Construction!
In a previous post I wrote a bit about the Warty Leaf Beetle (Neochlamisus gibbosus), a member of the Cryptocephalinae subfamily. Fascinating due to the fact that the adult form seems to be a perfect mimic of caterpillar frass, this species is much more interesting than I had imagined.
This species is highly, if not solely, associated with blackberry as a host plant. While watching these guys and looking for other insects on these plants I kept noticing gall-like structures, usually on the undersides of the leaves.
Paying closer attention, I noticed that these structures were not galls, nor were they attached directly to the plant tissue – they moved. On closer inspection, I could sometimes see the legs of the creature that resided within the house.
I had to crack one open to see if I could get an idea of what sort of organism built and resided within. As you can see in the photograph below, the animal appeared to be a beetle larvae.
It took me a while to put it together, but eventually I confirmed that the larvae belonged to the same species as the adult beetles that I observed all over the blackberries. My next question was, on what materials did the larvae use to build its shelter? Usually, an insect will use detritus or perhaps fresh plant tissue that it processes to make a protective enclosure like this. These guys do it a bit differently.
It starts with mom. As she oviposits, she encases each egg with a layer of her own feces and some rectal secretions. As the larvae hatches and grows, it continues to expand its home by building with its own feces to accommodate its increasing bulk. Here is a photo of an adult and larvae close together.
References and Further Reading
This tiny and speedy ichneumon wasp, which I am calling a Theronia species, has been hanging around my patch of wild strawberries for a couple of months. If I am close to correct in the identification (with more than 100,000 described ichneumons, how close could I be?), then this species parasitize tent caterpillars along with a number of other lepidopterans.
“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars …”
-Charles Darwin-
-OZB
Belonging to the family of moths called Saturniidae, the Imperial Moth can reach up to six inches. Many members of this family are large-bodied and short-lived as adults – typically living only one or two weeks and not feeding in this stage. This female was attracted to lights during a national moth week event at Cuivre River State Park on July 31, 2016.
While investigating a patch of Maypop (Passiflora incarnata) I could not find my goal of the Passion Flower Flea Beetle, but I was still happy to find a number of Shiny Flea Beetles – Chrysomelidae – Asphaera lustrans.
Hidden along the Eleven Point River in the south-eastern Missouri Ozarks lies Greer Spring (the 2nd largest spring in the state). This location and surrounding areas of bottomland and riverfront forest are widely heralded among birders in Missouri as being prime for easily picking up a number of forest species. Cerulean, Swainson’s, Worm-eating, Kentucky, and Hooded Warblers, to name a few, are documented as nesting in this area. These clips were recorded during a trip that Steve and I made this past May.
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 