Where Nuns meet Witches

 Mantispid Climaciella brunnea

Some Batesian mimicry works well on me. Whenever I see a harmless (to me) mantispid in the exact colors of our most common paper wasp Polistes comanchus I am instictively careful of a powerful stinger - which the mantispid, a relative of ant lions,  just doesn't carry.

Climaciella brunnea and Polistes comanchus

On Tuesday I took Caroline and Martin, two young German scientists, into the field to look for this paper wasp mimic, the Mantispid Climaciella brunnea. I had found one last week in Madera Canyon on Desert Broom during the day, but Peppersauce Canyon on the north side of the Catalina Mountains (Pinal County, Arizona) is the only place where I knew them to show up reliably at the black light.

1 and 2 Climaciella brunnea, 3 Plega sp., 4 Mantispa sp., 5 Ant Lion  Brachynemurus sp, 6  Owlfly  Ululodes sp.

We  really got one single specimen, but at least it was a different color morph than the one from Madera Canyon.  We also got many more interesting Neuropterans - other mantispids like Plega and Mantispa and many ant lions and an owlfly.

Hyalophora columbia gloveri (Glover's Silkmoth),  Eupackardia calleta  (Calleta Silkmoth )
Strategus aloeus (Ox Beetle), Dynastes granti (Hercules Beetle)  

Peppersauce Canyon is one of my favorite collecting places and it lived up to my expectations. There were no other people except one Jeep driver slowly negotiating the rocky road, but lots of impressive insects.

But as the night went on the sheet completely filled up with moths. Mostly hundreds of small Twirler Moths and the Tigermoth Virbia ostenta and too many blister beetles in the genus Epicauta. (they got Martin's ankle)

Caroline and Martine braved the onslaught and coughed through a mist of dislodged moth scales, but I left to rather investigate the surroundings.

There is an old oak tree in a clearing that is bleeding sweet fermenting juice from many scars. When we first arrived we saw so many yellow jackets on the bark that Caroline mistook the location for a nest entrance. Now the still warm night air seemed loaded with the heavy yeasty fragrance of a brewery. Ants, beetles, moths and roaches were competing for room at the source of the fermenting juice. Big longhorn beetles rustling and chewing, click beetles pushing their way in, carpenter ants forcing ants of a smaller more agile species out of the way.
Even small, delicate moths claimed their spots against the sturdier beetles, their eye-shine eerily flashing back to my head light.

 

 Catocala perhaps delilah (Underwing Moth) and  Enaphalodes hispicornis (Oak Borer)

After a while a larger Underwing moth joined the feast. During the day these moths sleep on the bark of trees where they are extremely hard to spot due to their camouflage pattern. While fighting for its place at the seeping tree juice the moth showed its colors, aggressively flashing its wings at beetles and roaches.

Black Witch, Ascalapha odorata 

Then a huge dark shadow interrupted the beam of my flashlight. I thought a bat was swooping in to grab one of the intoxicated insects that showed neither fear nor caution. But the shadow descended - landed - and turned out to be a moth as well: a huge Black Witch. It was much larger than the big silk moths that we'd seen earlier. It's wingspan exceeded the length of my hand which is 6.5 inches.

Black Witch, Ascalapha odorata 

This witch was very tattered and old - telling a story of narrow escapes from bats and birds and survived monsoon storms. These moths were long believed to be all border crossers from Mexico, but by now freshly emerged specimens are found far north of the border, proving that many Black Witches are legal -  born US citizens.

(A word to explain 'Nuns' of the title: when I was a kid in Germany, we called Underwing Moths 'Nonne' - 'nun' in English - though the official name for the genus is Ordensband (after the colorful sash worn by ordained Catholics).

I think my friends from Berlin were as happy with their mantispid catch as I with my observations in the dark and mysterious forest.

June Beetles on Mt. Lemmon (sorry, no June Bugs!)

Blister beetle Epicauta liebecki, Sap-feeding beetle Carpophilus sp., and Net-winged beetle Lucaina discoidalis all found on Wait-a-Minute Acacia

It's June, and Tucson and the lower desert are parched. No rain, and none to be expected till July, and temperatures daily above one hundred. So I took a ride up Mt Lemmon yesterday. Surprisingly, not very high up, around Molino Basin, the insect world was buzzing with activity around blooming acacias, and I had to tear myself away to make it all the way up into the conifer area (over 8000 feet) that was my target.

Iphthiminus sp. (Tenebrionidae) and Ealaterid pupa

At Middle Bear I ripped loose bark off a fallen Ponderosa Pine to collect some big Tenebs that I knew would be there. They are for Alejandro Castro Tovar from Spain.

Chalcolepidius apacheanus

 The same piece of bark revealed a huge pupa of an Elaterid. I hope it will hatch. I have collected Chalcolepidius apacheanus there before. Yessss - I was right: C. apacheanus emerged a week later.

View fro Meadow Trail, Mt. Lemmon over Tucson to Mts Wrighston and Hopkins in the Sta Ritas

I always drive all the way up and park high above the ski area to hike the Meadow Trail, even though it leads soon into a jumble of fallen trees from the last big fires that hit the area. Most of the beetles I found were old acquaintances, but one can always get better photos!

Magdalis lecontei, a well hidden  Orimodema protracta, and on a Robinia leaf two Tachygonus centralis

 On the blooming pines there are always weevils, and a very special, tiny species, Tachygonus centralis, can be found on the Locust trees (Robinia neomexicana) that are colonizing burned spots on sunny slopes a little further down.

Enoclerus moestus and Gibbifer californicus

Freshly dead Pine trees are always a great source of Clerids that are hunting for wood boring insects. I had seen Enoclerus moestus in the Chiricahuas last year and recognized him right away when he was rolling around in my beating sheet with his read abdomen flashing. That's of course hidden when he's posing upright with his wings closed.  I also found my first-of-the-year Gibbifer californicus, the pleasing fungus beetle that breeds on shelf fungi on dead or dying trees.
 

Cosmosalia chrysocoma

A gorgeous specimen of Cosmosalia chrysocoma fell out of a blooming pine branch. As it was getting late in the afternoon the beetle was inactive and content to pose for my camera.

After the short hike on top I still couldn't make up my mind to descend back into the heat of the valley, so I stopped in Summerhaven. The big Heracleum along the creek was in full bloom.  I hung around there so long that my favorite pizza and brownies cottage closed in the meantime. Too bad!

Strophiona laeta

But I did find another Cerambycid also in the tribe Lepturini. Several of my friends had described a big wasp-mimicking longhorn beetle from the wildflower meadows of the Huachucas and the Chricahuas, but they were all just 'lep people' or they couldn't find their notes...so I had been curious what they were talking about. The only black and yellow Lepturine that I found so far, Judolia instabilis,  didn't qualify as big. But I think this Strophiona laeta might be it. The id is by Vassili Belov who calls it tentative, but checking A Photographic Catalog of the Cerambycidae of the New World by by Larry G. Bezark I find that of the three species in the genus S. laeta is the only one to occur this far east. Surprisingly there is only one other BugGuide entry for the species, from Miller Canyon, Huachucas, by Charles Melton. Charles always seems to be just one step ahead of me.

Black Lighting in Peppersauce Canyon, Catalina Mountains

On the north side of the Catalina Mountains a service road connects the town of Oracle to the top of Mount Lemmon. Connecting may be the wrong term. None of my vehicles seems appropriate to negotiate the steep rocky, barely maintained road. The entrance to Peppersauce Canyon, however, is on the lower part of the road that is smooth and easy to drive. Last week Jeff Eble, a college from the entomology department, and two students asked me (and my black light) to join them on a collection trip. Jeff wants to study genetic shifts among isolated beetle populations of the sky islands, so he is mainly interested in flightless species that can't mingle as much as their more mobile counterparts.

Black lights, of course, draw the good fliers first. That evening, we were immediately inundated by hundreds of Phyllophaga vetula, a chunky, hairy June beetle. Scores of Anomala delicata followed soon after.

Soon a bristletail and a stick insect walked up, and a slim beige Mantis with surprisingly dark eyes, and a mantispid came to prey on 'our' bugs.

The most common Cerambycid was Methia mormona (top, middle), but we were also visited by a huge Prionus heroicus  (left), several delicately spotted Orwellion gibbulum arizonense  (right) and a tiny Sternidus decorus mMiddle, bottom). A number of Bycids in the the genera Aneflus and Oeme are still unidentified.

Weevils were represented by two Curculio spp (left). and the broadnose weevil Pandeleteius buchanani.

 Surprisingly several Sunburst Beetles Thermonectus marmoratus (right) and two Whirligig Beetles Dineutus sublineatus (left), all living in shallow ponds, showed up. We couldn't find any water close by, but the beetles are good fliers who often approach shiny surfaces like car roofs and lights.



The only carabids appearing in numbers looked like Selenophorus which we ignored because they are impossible to id. We also got several specimens of a tiny Bombadier Beetle that hopefully will be a new species for me. Jeff collected Lebia mimics of the Bombadier Beetles even though they do fly - he needs some control groups for his flightless stuff.

Walking along the trail with flash lights, we found two larger cerambycids, Enefalodes hispinicornis and a Prionid.  Both are good fliers, so I got them for my photo collection.

Jeff was happy with his collection of large flightless Darkling Beetles like Eleodes subnitens and longicollis on the trail, and Strongylium atrum (above) on tree trunks.

We also found several very attractively shaped Embaphion sp.  I hope to keep one of them alive and happy for the U of A Beetle festival on the 27th of September (Tucsonans, mark your calendars!).

Windscorpions (Solifugiae) were racing about at top speed, with Jeff in hot pursuit.

Under a rocky overhang an impressive  Cat-faced Orbweaver, Araneus illaudatus, was hanging out in her over 20 in wide net.

Meanwhile at the black light, interesting moths  had arrived: Clock-wise: Manduca rustica, Gerrodes minatea, Euclidia diagonalis, Syssphinx hubbardi, Datana sp.

While we were observing arthropods, fellow vertebrates were spying on us: A Woodhouse's Toad, two Gray Foxes and a gang of  Havelinas  took their turns.

Maybe we were set up right in the path of their evening rounds.