"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
The Leafcutter Bees are an interesting group of native solitary bees found within the Megachilidae Family along with Mason Bees, Resin Bees and Carder Bees. There are approximately 200 species of Leafcutter Bees (Megachile genus) found in North America and several of these species can be easily found in gardens throughout the eastern United States where they favor the plant families Asteraceae, Campanulaceae and Fabaceae.
Leafcutter Bee – Megachile sp.
Leafcutter Bees get their names from an obvious behavior. These bees line their chosen nest cavities (stems, cracks, wood-boring beetle borings, holes of all kinds) with circular discs that they cut from green leaves or flower petals. When a cavity has been sufficiently lined, the bee will deposit an egg along with a provision of nectar and pollen, afterward abandoning the nest.
Leafcutter Bee – Megachile sp.
Bees in this family are abdominal pollen collectors, as can be seen in the photo above. Unlike most bees that hold pollen in brushes on their legs, the Megachilidae hold their pollen on the underside of their abdomens that consist of course, unbranched hairs that curves towards the tail.
Leafcutter Bee – Megachile sp.
A diagnostic behavior of the Leafcutter Bee is their habit of extending their abdomen vertically while they forage. I have not been able to find an accepted reason that they do this.
Leafcutter Bee – Megachile sp.
This is a group of native insects that anyone can help in their own backyard. Consider making, purchasing and installing nesting structures for your native pollinating bees. It’s quite easy to do and will help out a lot in suburban where natural sites for nests are often hard to find.
Almost reflexively, I pull the baby rattle-shaped seed pod from the stately White Wild Indigo (Baptisia alba) as I meander through Shaw Nature Reserve’s prairie trails. I can’t help it. I make sure the pods are always black, mature and any seeds left unravaged I simply help to disperse along my walk. But in doing this so often in the late summer and autumn for so many years I have come to notice that this common forb cannot disperse many seed. Because, inside the seed pods, like the one pictured above, I usually find multiple seed predators – the short-snouted weevils, Trichapion rostrum (Family Brentidae).
Trichapion rostrum
Baptisia seed are favored among other insects as well, but what they may lose in this stage of life, they pick up as they grow, for the false indigo are long-lived, drought-tolerant perennials that contain large amounts of secondary compounds that make them absolutely unpalatable to grazing mammals. The photo below shows these tiny beetles (3.0 – 3.5 mm) among the husks of a number of seeds. I have not been able to find a source that suggests if both larvae and adults feed on these seeds, or just one of the growth stages.
Destroyer of Seeds
Here is an image of a couple, shortly after I split their double-wide…
It’s the Visitors, Martha!
These little one have been a source of fascination for me. I hope to learn more about them someday.
I’m finally ready to share a few more images from a float down the upper third or so of the Current River that Steve and I had the great fortune to experience this past October. We started at navigable mile 8.0 at Cedar Grove Access and pulled out three days later at mile 51, the confluence of the Current and that other, oh-so desirable, Ozark stream – the Jacks Fork. If one floats slow and quiet, the opportunity to see wildlife is very high in this National Park (Ozark National Scenic Riverways N.P.). I’v shared a couple of images of these guys previously. I believe we found 8-9 Mink during the first day of this float. It was enjoyable watching them busily hunt along the stream banks, mostly oblivious to our presence. As usual, Steve did a great job in keeping us quiet and pointed in the optimal direction for capturing some images.
American Mink
It was quite a challenge to keep up with these guys as they fished. This one below had caught a nice-sized crayfish and barely slowed to stop and enjoy his snack.
Ozark Lobster!
Here is a photo of one investigating the water prior to dipping back in.
Testing the Water
Not only does a float down the Current allow for great observations of wildlife, but many geological features are most easily seen by being on the river as well. Cave Spring can now be accessed via a nice newer trail, but it is much nicer accessing it by boat. The endpoint of a vast and interesting karst drainage system, Cave Spring rises from the back of a short cave. At the rear of this cave one can guide a boat over the vertical conduit of the spring, which is ~155 feet deep! What an eerie sensation it is to shine your light down and still see no more than a fraction of the length of the conduit shaft. In the image below, I am on a dry exposed shelf adjacent to the spring’s outlet and Steve is guiding the canoe towards the river.
Cave Spring
Pultite is a spring found on this upper stretch of the Current River that is surrounded on all sides except the river by private property. This means that one must boat or wade/swim to visit it. At only ~ 1/10 the output of Big Spring, Pultite is still quite a good-sized spring with and average daily output of ~ 25 million gallons. The effluent channel on this one is quite attractive and I hope to visit more often.
Pultite Channel
If day one was for the Mink, day two was our River Otter day. We had no Mink, but 5 or 6 of these large weasels were spotted.
North American River Otter
Not to forget the birds! These days, a trip to nearly any permanent Missouri water source will likely bring an encounter with a Bald Eagle. Observing these guys in the Ozarks will never get old to me.
Bald Eagle
Another constant companion on these floats are the Fish Crows, here pictured finishing up a little Ozark lobster.
Fish Crow
We were fortunate in having mostly clear and dry skies on this trip, which allowed us to throw our bags directly on whatever gravel bar that struck our fancy and sleep directly underneath the stars. A morning fire was necessary – not only to burn the dew off of our sleeping bags, but of course, for the river-water French-press coffee. Dark skies on these streams afford great opportunities for astrophotography. My only wish for this trip is that I was a little more tolerant of the cold, tiredness and laziness that limited my patience for getting better nightscape images… 😉
Nightscape on the Upper Current
I will be posting more images of this trip on my Flickr account in the near future. Thanks for visiting and I hope to post again in the near future.
Most of us are familiar with many of the parasites that infect animals, since we, as animals, are susceptible to many. Tonight I am sharing a few easily spotted and recognizable forms of parasitism in the plant kingdom. The photograph above was taken, as were all in this post, at Shaw Nature Reserve and shows a relentless parasite that can infect a number of prairie plant species. Dodder (Cuscuta sp.) is an obligate parasite, meaning it must find a specific living host plant to infect in order to survive and reproduce. One can see by the orange coloration, this plant does not contain chlorophyll and must pull the necessary nutrients from its host plant.
Silphium Wasp Gall
The next parasite is of a form that I am just beginning to study and am finding quite interesting. Plant galls are simply growths of plant tissue, formed not by the host plant, but by other organisms. The variety of gall former as well as gall formation is astounding, to put it mildly. Insects are the primary organisms that cause gall formations, but other arthropods, fungi, bacteria and viruses form galls as well. Researchers are just beginning to learn the basics behind how these parasites cause the formation of such specific, and often beautiful galls.
The particular gall that is found on this poor Rosinweed plant pictured above is caused by a Silphium Gall Wasp (Antistrophus sp.). One of the gloriously interesting facts about galls, much like other forms of parasitism, is the specificity most commonly found between host and gall former. Most often a gall former can infect only one species of plant, or sometimes a group of closely related plant taxa. Such is the evolutionary arms race between host and its necessarily specific parasite. In the case of so many prairie host and gall former relationships, the outcome is sad for both. The near elimination of this habitat has caused dramatic reductions in the variety and abundance of prairie plant species, and accordingly, has had similar effects on the insects that form galls on these plants.
Silphium Gall Wasp
Having observed these galls for so many years, I decided to cut one open to see the developments within. A single gall can host many developing was larvae. In this small section I was able to count no fewer than five wasp galleries, each harboring a developing wasp. The two examples of parasites presented above are just a small example of the number of parasitic species that the Silphium support. A number of other insects/arthropods use Silphium for food and shelter. Birds love the seed and use the plants’ long strong stems for perches. In many ways the Silphium are keystone species and can be considered as important to the prairies as trees are to the forests.
Grape Phylloxera
Grape Phylloxera is caused by an aphid-like insect and is a parasite to native grapes. In the mid-1800s this species was accidentally released in Europe and nearly destroyed the French wine industry. The life cycle of this insect and its relationship to its host is mind-boggling. As many as 18 different life stages have been identified – from sexual to asexual, winged, foliage feeding to root feeding. This complexity, as with so many other multi-stage, specific host-parasite relationships creates major problems in man’s attempt at developing commercial controls. To date, this parasite cannot be controlled with any pesticide solution; the only remedy is still resistant stock that nature has developed in this host-parasite arms race.
For today’s post I am presenting a few photos taken of a very common arachnid found in glades and drier forests of southern Missouri – the Striped Bark Scorpion. No, there is no reason to fear these secretive scorpions; they are only dangerous if you happen to be an arthropod smaller than they are. They are, however, much more common than I ever would have expected. Steve and I had much success finding them in the glades of Hughes Mountain Natural Area this past summer. Wait until the sun has well set, turn on your blacklight and walk around for a while. We were finding them easily every few steps.
The Striped Bark Sorpion
The photo above shows what they look like to the naked eye (illuminated by flash). These guys are extremely fast as well as stealthy. The use of blacklight is almost mandatory to efficiently find them. These lights as well as a typical flashlight/torch brings all sorts of other arthropod visitors to the glade top as well.
So, why do they glow under ultraviolet light? This is an interesting question that has not yet been satisfactory answered by those who study these creatures. Hypothesis range from helping to attract prey, to aiding in their ability to see and sense light. I took the photo above soon after we watched this guy sprint approximately a meter towards us in the blink of an eye. At the time, Steve and I assumed it was a defensive run (or lunge) in reaction to us being near it. It was not until days later that I discovered what the real purpose of that dash had been…
Can you see what that reason was? Here’s a closer look…
Yes, I believe its dash was in capturing a prey – this small wolf spider – probably the only other predator that might be as common or more common than the scorpions themselves in this nocturnal food web.
In keeping with the flies, I thought I would share this photo of a Robberfly (Asilidae – Dioctriinae – Dioctria sp.) that we found and photographed at Shaw Nature Reserve this summer.
I find the flies to be one of the more interesting groups of insects and I was constantly on the lookout for new species to photograph this summer. There is such diversity in the flies, from size to form and function. There is still so much to learn about some flies, including some rather common species that researchers have still not described where or on what the larval forms live. To start, here is a closeup of a true giant of the flies, a Robber Fly (Family Asilidae). The Robberflies are true predators, with an intimidating beak that they use to inject neurotoxic and protein-dissolving cocktails.
Trichopoda pennipes
The photograph above showcases a fly that should be a favorite of gardeners and farmers. Flies in this family (Tachinidae) parasitize a number of different insects and this species specializes in many of the plant-feeding true bugs like Stink Bugs and Leaf-footed Bugs. The generic name can be translated from Greek to mean “hairy foot” and the specific name “pennipes” means feather. This namesake feature can be seen on the rear legs of this fly in the photograph above.
Thick-headed Fly
The Thick-headed Flies are extremely interesting and a joy to watch. These guys not only mimic bees and wasps, but they also parasitize the hymenoptera by depositing their eggs on the stinging insect, sometimes attacking the host to place their egg. The eggs hatch and the larvae become internal parasites of their host.
Geron Bee Fly
The minuscule Bee Flies in the genus Geron parasitize moth caterpillars. The adults of these flies feed almost exclusively on yellow-flowered Asteraceae.
Scorpion Fly
Don’t be threatened by the sting-like structure that this Scorpionfly (Family Panorpidae) has arched over its back. This is simply the male genitalia and is quite harmless. Scorpionflies primarily make a living by scavenging on dead insects, and like many flies, exhibit elaborate behaviors to attract mates. These flies will perform various dances in front of females and will often provide a ripe insect carcass as a prenuptial gift.
So Long!
Finally, here is a rather different view of a Greenbottle Fly. I hope this helps to describe some of the fascinating diversity in form, function and behavior that can be found within the Diptera. These are but just a few of the easier to find and photograph! I hope to continue my exploration of these fascinating insects next year.
Steve and I just returned from five fun filled days in which we spent some great time floating the upper Current. Of course, I will be processing images for some likely months, but I wanted to share a couple now. We found five American Mink along the banks of the river during our first day. They were mostly unconcerned with our presence as we floated along, following them as they fished and foraged.
American Mink
We were fortunate to find most favorable weather during this break. The nights were cool and clear and the days warm and blue for the most part. We were able to find and follow a number of forest friends and I’m looking forward to sharing them.
A recently born Timber Rattlesnake was “found” by Steve during an outing we had in Cape Girardeau County.
Rattlesnakes are ovoviviparous, and young are usually born in September or October. This little one was not long out of mom when we came across it.
In the photo above the heat sensing pits that give pit vipers their name are easily seen.
Finally, the little nubbin of a rattle that these guys are born with. Typically, rattlesnakes will add a rattle every time they shed their skin, which this guy has not done yet.
Tonight’s post all share a theme of the challenges of being a pollinator on prairie wildflowers. The first photo above shows a lovely-colored, ambush predator known as a Crab Spider. Crab Spiders do not spin webs, but lay in wait, often on a flower for a pollinator to visit.
Attacked!
This Assassin Bug has captured a syrphid fly and is having himself a meal.
Ambushed!
In the image above, this goldenrod flower came to life to ambush a Honeybee. I find that Honeybees are the most often caught in traps like this. Native bees seem to be constantly on the move and much more defensive, most likely due to the fact that they are solitary and there would be nobody to care for the brood if they were more care free like the honeybees.
Ambush Bug
The creature is actually called an Ambush Bug. What an interesting face this one has! I can imagine the potential conversation.
Robberfly
Finally, this gigantic Robberfly is finishing off some small prey.
A Thousand Acres of Silphiums 