Sometimes you are the windshield, and sometimes you are the bug.

Wagner (2021) wrote an alarming and convincing paper about insect population declines. Living in DC, we find we almost never need to clean the car windshield of bug carcasses. Our 6,100 mile vacation car trip pointed out that automobile/insect collisions can still be a major issue.

Ladybug, Hippodamia sp., part of our vehicular insect carnage. Minnesota. 10 July 2023.

Cars are not the only issue here, but as the photos show we have killed quite a few insects on our journey and that doesn’t help the issue. As the USFWS endangered species act (ESA) listing of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is a distinct possibility, the ramifications of roadside milkweed plantings and 75 mph interstate highway speeds will need to be revisited. Most of the time the collisions are only noticed after the fact when the windshield gets smeary, but I know I hit a monarch here in Minnesota and wonder what this unintended take would involve in paperwork and fines? How many motorists could seperate monarchs from viceroys (Limenitis archippus) 75 mph to avoid one and smash the other to oblivian? Perhaps some public service announcement TV ads could point this out to help motorists do the right thing?

Dragonfly,  Celithemis eponina, part of our vehicular insect carnage. Minnesota. 10 July 2023.

Clearly in the case of motor vehicle collisions it is clearly better to be the windshield than it is to be the bug. However, the windshield is also impaired by the insects it has smashed. This isn’t just a loss of beauty, this is a loss of the ecological services that these insects could have provided if allowed to live. E,O. Wilson famously called ants: “the little things that run our world” and I think we can extend this concept to insects in general.

The front of our car is covered with smashed insects (front license plate view) – part of our vehicular insect carnage. Minnesota. 10 July 2023.

Our car was just one of many on the highways we traveled. If the monarch were listed, the incidental take by motorists would need to be considered: slower speed limits, roadside buffer strips to force insects to travel over traffic, reduced vehicular frontal areas to reduce impact potential, or some other engineering solution (public transit?) may help. Perhaps we shouldn’t wait for the ESA and start trying to solve the problem now? The canary in the coal mine just might be an orange and black butterfly. Perhaps listening to this canary might just save us.

Reference: Wagner DL. Insect Declines in the Anthropocene. Annu Rev Entomol. 2020 Jan 7;65:457-480. doi: 10.1146/annurev-ento-011019-025151. Epub 2019 Oct 14. PMID: 31610138.

Woodpecker crimes against bees

A friend in Woodbridge, VA had something happen I had never heard of and it is cool enough that I want to share it with you. They had bee boxes that attracted woodpeckers, who destroyed all the efforts of the bees and really disturbed my friend. This is a circle of life moment. It points out how difficult it is to be a bee – on addition to loss of habitat, loss of floral resources, and ubiquitous pesticide use, there are bloodthirsty woodpeckers who can’t wait to slurp up your larvae!

A happy bee box filled with larvae in a simpler, innocent time. Woodbridge, VA. 21 April 2023.

Bee boxes are really cool and let you get a peek at the lives of these fascinating creatures. The Xerces Society has some great information about bee boxes and bee box management (https://www.xerces.org/publications/fact-sheets/nests-for-native-bees). Like most of nature, if you take the time to observe and learn about any aspect of nature, then you will find wonder, amazement, and joy in the organisms you know. My friend mourns his bees.

Oh! The humanity! A post woodpecker carnage bee box. Woodbridge, VA. 26 May 2023

When the woodpeckers (there were two) found the bee boxes, they were likely very excited to find such an abundance of food. Now my friend has choices to make.

#1 a simple enclosure that limits woodpecker access, but not bee access could be constructed.

#2 take the nest box contents and distribute nest sites diffusely throughout the yard such that woodpeckers can’t destroy them all at once. Be small and sneaky.

#3 plant the entire yard to native plants and put up 100’s of bee boxes. Go big! Make it impossible for the woodpeckers to destroy all of the bee larvae.

#4 quit entirely and never fall in love with nature again.

Good Grief!!

Obviously, this comic is drawn by someone else. This is how I started in comics: rewriting other people’s comic strips back when I was in middle school. This comic started because of the common grackles in the neighborhood. I have provided footnotes so you can go to the websites and read more about what the characters are talking about.

1.https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/state-of-the-birds-2014-common-birds-in-steep-decline-list/#

2.https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/

3.https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118

4.https://www.amnh.org/shelf-life/six-extinctions

5. Don’t despair.

A scrappy native plant

Ageratina altissima is an awesome native plant that can be found in very urban environments. It is in the sunflower family, Asteraceae, and blooms late in the year to the delight of all the butterflies and bees in the vicinity. What I think is cool is it has a very low key presence and then suddenly in late summer/early fall our fence line is hidden by 4′ tall plants and an explosion of tiny white flowers! Of course, it goes without saying, that being a member of the Asteraceae, the tiny white flowers are made of a composite of tinier white flowers, hence the older botanical epithet: ‘Compositae’

Ageratina altissima tiny white flowers made of composites of tinier white flowers. NE DC. 21 September 2022.

Ageratina altissima has toxic properties. It has killed cattle who graze on it and people who drink milk from those cows. Because of this it has been subject to eraditication efforts. Most plants in the Asteraceae taste bitter and cows will avoid them. Under heavy grazing pressure plants that taste good to cows drop out, because continued grazing is similar to weeding, meanwhile plants that taste bad to cows are left intact, are freed from competition, and actually increase population under heavy grazing pressure. By this mechanism cows are eventually forced to consume plants that they would otherwise avoid. The plant isn’t at fault as much as poor grazing practices. If Ageratina altissima graces your yard, remember not to eat it yourself and not to let your cattle graze upon it.

A bee just hanging out on Ageratina altissima. NE DC. 24 September 2022.

The really cool thing is Ageratina altissima  only becomes obvious in the fall, even though it is present all year. It will provide the local pollinators and I a month or so of enjoyment, then I will pull and compost the stems in late fall. Of course, you can always beat an opportunistic plant like this just by weeding ruthlessly throughout the growing season, but why? It is so much fun to enjoy the show!

Ageratina altissima taking over the fenceline and wood pile with a sudden ‘pop’ of white flowers. NE DC. 21 September 2022.

Dung beetle battle royale

Lately I have been locked away in our secret laboratory, identifying our dung beetles from a couple projects in the Missouri Bootheel. The specimens are moved from the boxes the have resided in the past couple of years, sorted into groups that roughly look alike, and then run

A group of dung beetles ready for keying under the microscope.

through a dichotomous key to confirm they are alike or separated. When most people think of dung beetles, they think of scarabs. If you pay attention to the dung you will find that many of the beetles you find will not be scarabs, but will be adapted for a dung lifestyle.

In a previous blog post I talked about the need for the correct key, and because many of the non-scarab dung beetles look like scarabs you will be tempted to run them through scarab keys. A close look at the antennae should keep you safe from falling into a morass of KEY FAILURE, where nothing works. Among the non-scarab dung beetles are Hydrophilids, or water scavenger beetles. These ‘dung beetles’ have a major distinction that makes them different from the scarab dung beetles – they are predatory as larvae (but this feature never shows up in any key – thank goodness). I know you have always thought of a piece of poo as tranquil, nice place to raise up a brood of kids, and I hate to ruin this idyllic notion, but predators run rampant in this environment. The hydrophilids in poo are beneficial because they help control fly populations, which came be a problem in livestock production.

Cercyon quisquilius, a tiny, but voracious, predator in the poo

A favorite poo hydrophilid is Cercyon quisquilius. Carl Linnaeus, a botanist, (and the first modern taxonomist) initially named this species Scarabeus quisquilius putting it firmly in the family Scarabaeidae, because the family Hydrophilidae didn’t yet exist. As our understanding of these beetles grew, so did our taxonomy. As I work with these beetles, my understanding of their roles, my appreciation of their innate grooviness, and realization that a poo is not a nice place to live increases.

Documenting Biodiversity

Today while picking veggies in the garden, I noticed Pieris rapae (Cabbage White) sheltering

Pieris rapae 18 July 2013 Weakley County, TN

from a light rain in the tomato plants. According to Butterflies and Moths of North America this common, ubiquitous, invasive species had not yet been documented in Weakly County, so this photograph provided documentation of occurrence.

Sure, it would have been cool to see a super rare species, but even the most common and non-native/invasive species need to be documented. It also would be cool to not have P. rapae larvae competing for our bok choy. The first step in conserving biodiversity is knowing the patterns of distribution. Consider submitting photos from your backyard to http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org – you might be surprised at how poorly documented your home county is.

On a ‘the bok choy is lost’ note, earlier this month I documented caterpillars of Evergestis rimosalis (another Weakley County first record) in our brassicaceous garden crops. We have also had Murgantia histrionica also come in to enjoy our brassicaceous plants.

You do not enjoy a garden alone…

For the love of insects

This blog post is written by Kelly Tindall, the top entomologist in our household. The title of this blog post is also the title of an excellent book by Thomas Eisner.

The first photo posted by Margaret Balfour – the poor parsley is being eaten by no less than eight Papilio polyxenes caterpillars!

A friend posted a picture of a parsley plant covered by swallowtail larvae on Facebook with the following caption “Eek! These evil creepy crawly creatures have eaten all my Italian parsley! Need to debug my garden apparently…”. Of course I replied that it was cool and explained to her who they were and what it represented, i.e., a beautiful crop of butterflies!

Few people approach gardening (flower beds and food) like Kent and I do. We garden for insects (check out the recent post about all the beneficial insects in our garden)! For whatever reason, people love to enjoy butterflies, but miss the fact that the caterpillars have to feed on something to grow and develop into the adult stage – the butterfly. With that in mind, consider what insects you would enjoy in your yard and plant their host plants. For instance, if you like monarch butterflies – plant some milkweeds.

So the next time you find a bunch of caterpillars on your flowers, be like my friend Margaret, and celebrate them – take one for the team and let have what they are feeding on! And if you are really lucky you may find a chrysalis that you can bring in and watch the butterfly emerge!

The second photo posted by Margaret shows total parsley destruction by the caterpillars – how cool is that?

By the way, in case you are curious as to what happened with Margaret’s parsley…she said, “I decided to love, not hate, my swallowtail caterpillars”, and she looked at her garden as a “butterfly hatchery”. Unfortunately, her parsley it was decimated, but as one of her friends commented – “nobody actually eats the parsley anyway!”

Butterfly and vehicle interactions

As a cyclist, it is common to encounter animals that have been struck and killed by cars along roads. It appears the frequency with which these encounters are made is influenced by traffic volume, traffic speed, and quality of roadside habitat. While a big, bloated deer or reeking skunk will attract the attention of the most unaware road users – the carnage is not limited to mammals. Striking insects with a car is inconsequential to a motorist and it is not until the carnage has reached epic proportions that the motorist takes note and the windshield wipers will be engaged. Otherwise insect collisions are meaningless to most motorists.

Butterflies can be a common part of the roadside insect milieu. McKenna et al. (2001) estimated that 20 MILLION Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) were killed in one week on the Illinois road network.

Recently, while out on my bicycle, I noted a dark swallowtail dead on the shoulder along highway 45E south of Martin, TN. The Lepidoptera fauna from this part of Tennessee is

30 June 2013, highway 45E, Weakley County, Tennessee

poorly known, so I doubled back and documented the insect with my cell phone. This photograph was submitted to BAMONA, and provided documentation of Papilio troilus in Weakley County. The simple documentation of species within an area is the first step in conserving species.

The riders in the Tour de France are probably not looking for dead insects along roadways as they ramble through the French countryside and I would hate to see the peloton crash because a leader saw a cool roadkill butterfly (like Parnassius apollo). However, the Tour de France does go through some spectacular habitats and this year’s tour has had quite a few crashes already…

Keep your eyes open and be safe!

Update on Monarchs

Recently I posted on the plight of the monarch butterfly. Today I was looking at some

30 June 2013 Obion County, Tennessee

Asclepias syriaca (milkweed) in a ditch bank in Obion County, Tennessee. I am pleased to report that in addition to numerous Tetraopes tetropthalmus, i found one Danaus plexippus (monarch) caterpillar! While this doesn’t represent a complete recovery, it is significantly more than zero caterpillars. I keep looking – I hope you will too!

The plight of the Monarch butterfly

Danaus plexippus, the monarch butterfly is an iconic North American migratory insect that has exacting requirements of the environment. I was discussing butterflies with my friends Milus and Wanda Wallace recently and Milus pointed out how few adult monarchs he has seen so far this year AND that he has seen zero monarch caterpillars on milkweeds (Asclepiadaceae). 2013 had the lowest population of overwintering monarchs ever recorded. An NPR news report blames this on herbicide tolerant GMO crops and drought creating a severe loss of habitat (milkweeds) in the midwest.

S,o for the past couple weeks, I have been examining every milkweed patch I come across. I have found no monarch caterpillars, pupae, or eggs – even though I am living someplace new this seems abnormal. However, I doubt NPR has the correct cause(s). While habitat loss has no doubt impacted the monarch just like it has impacted most wildlife, there are other insects that are milkweed specialists that I am finding on the milkweeds I have examined. Milkweeds and milkweed habitats have not become so rare in the landscape that Tetraopes tetropthalmus and Oncopeltus fasciatus are absent. Perhaps the loss of monarchs has more to do with the difficulties of long distance migration and overwintering than it does midwestern milkweeds and milkweed habitats.

Tetraopes tetraopthalmus on Asclepias syriaca in Obion County, TN June 2013

Hopefully, this year I will find monarchs, it will make me sad if I do not. Even though I think NPR has it wrong, Kelly has planted a few species of milkweed seeds and we are in the process of giving our home a native plant make over. Consider spots in your yard where you can enjoy a small milkweed patch(es). There is no doubt that there is much less habitat today than in the past. Your small milkweed patch can make a difference for monarchs and also attract some very interesting creatures for you to

Oncopeltus fasciatus on Asclepias syriaca in Obion County, TN June 2013

enjoy in your yard.