Backyard Black Light in May

At the beginning of the arid, hot pre-summer in the desert, our moths are small but intricately patterned

Graceful adult Antlions hang around, recently emerged from the pupal stage of pit-trap building, ant-eating doodle bugs that gave the group the name.

The Running Crab Spider is probably a harmless neighbor for the Darkling Beetle Eupsophulus castaneus. The beetles mate  is a tap dancer. He uses his whole body, not his feet, to produce a 'tatatptaptaptap' that can be heard several feet away.

Darkling Beetles of the genus Triorophus emerge covered in a waxy blue layer that wears of as they age.

A male Glowworm Beetle, Distremocephalus opaculus is winged and has feathered antennae, but no functional mouth parts. The larva-form females may, like the larvae, feed on millipedes. The Twirler Moths, Faculta inaequalis, may be  responsible for the tubular webs that I noticed a couple of weeks ago around the twigs of Palo Verde.

 

Checkered Beetle Enoclerus quadrisignatus

 Pseudopamera nitidulain the family of the Dirt-colored Seedbugs. Really? Dirt-colored?

Apatides fortis (Horned Powderpost Beetle). We leave dead trees lying around so all borers, cavity breeders (bees), macro-shredders and decomposers get their natural turn. Just before the dead wood finally falls victim to termite activity, there are still Bostrichids like Apatides emerging from their big, saw dust filled tunnels. Once I placed freshly wnd broken Palo Verde branches into a tight box to catch everything that emerged.  First I got buprestids and a few cerambycids. But up to three years after the wood was sealed in A. fortis still emerged. So the female had not oviposited  on very old dead wood. The development of the larvae just took so long.

Cyclocephala longula, Acoma sp. and Hybosorus illigeri

 On 5/16 the night was quite warm (daytime temps close to 100F) and it was slightly overcast. The summer scarabs began to appear, especially Acoma emerged in great numbers. Males only. I've never found a female. Hybosorus illigeri is a Scavenger Scarab Apparently introduced into the U.S. prior to the 1840's from Europe

I'm feeling watched; Ground mantis

Mediterranean Gecko

Sonoran Desert and Red-spotted Toads are faster at my black lights than I. They can live for more than 20 years. So they are probably old acquaintances from all those years of bug collecting at our garage wall.

Moth Night at the BTA: Two snakes that stole the show

Marceline Vandewater invited me to give a talk about insects and a black-light presentation at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum (BTA) in Superior, AZ. Macro-photographer Paul Landau opened the program with a show of his beautiful insect photos. The attendance was such that only half of the crowd could fit into the lecture room at a time.

The weather for the event couldn't have been better: warm and muggy, the moon hiding behind the clouds. The BTA is an oasis in a desert canyon at about 2400 feet elevation. This is a very old and established park, one of the oldest west of the Mississippi, and its trees are huge. Many of them are imports from Australia, though, and I was curious how that would impact the insect fauna. As it turned out, there was one Eucalyptus Leafbeetle, but the other insects were surprisingly similar to what I find at my own house in the foothills of the Tucson Mountains. The same group of moths and beetles, katydids,  antlions, mantispids, mantids and spiders. (you can click here to see the whole collection of my photos on Flickr)
Terry Stone took a video - I hope this will link to it.

Chilomeniscus stramineus, Variable Sandsnake

But for me, the greatest finds were not insects but two beautiful snakes that were found close to the black light. I only saw them after they were already captured, so my photos are not of the 'in situ' kind that I like best. The snakes were actually rather agitated and trying to escape.... But both species were 'lifers' for me, at least in the wild.

Micruroides euryxanthus, Sonoran Coralsnake

The stout little Sandsnake was a great find, but the Coralsnake was even better. I can see why kids would be found playing with this  dangerous little beauty. It may have the poison of a cobra, but it has the charm of living jewelry. We did handle it carefully to keep it in photo range. It did not even threaten to bite.

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.