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.

Velvet Mites, Trombidioidea and Chiggers

With this post I am going out on a limb. I got an e mail request to identify a small red bug. I am using bug here as a general term for arthropod, because:

Question:
'Hello Dr. Brummermann,

My co-worker and I were on Mt Lemmon today, in the Marshall Gulch area and we came across thousands of tiny red insects. Our first thought was chiggers, but after looking into it, these insects were too big to be chiggers.

They were bright red, had 6 legs, and large antennae. About 25% of the ones I looked at appeared to be dead (curled in on themselves and dry), but this could have just been the case for the one location that I was seriously investigating them in.
While I don't have any pictures, I can guess they were approximately the size of this "o" (San Serif, 12pt font). They were found in areas with large amounts of dead leaves, and when we dug under the leaves, they appeared to be moving through the soil.
Do you have any ideas as to what we saw?'

Answer:
Without a photo there is not too much to go on. What seemed to be dead ones could be exuviae - in that case I would guess that they were some early instar true bugs or other hemipterans. But since they seemed to be soil related and bright red, how about mites instead of insects? Their front legs could be mistaken for antennae. Here is a photo of a giant velvet mite: http://bugguide.net/node/view/200679
They are usually bigger than your 'o' but.... There are often outbreaks with thousands of them. They are predators as adults.
Let me know what you think and consider carrying a camera for documentation!

Trombidiidae (Velvet Mites) from my backyard. These live in sandy soils, are huge, around 5 mm in length and show up only after rains

Question:
Thank you very much for the speedy reply!

They could have been mites; we didn't have any magnifying lenses on us at the time, so I could have mistaken the front legs for large antennae. Will they bite humans (or other large mammals) or do they only go after other insects? If I'm up in the area again within the next few weeks, I'll take a picture!

Thank you again,

Answer:
At first, I was going to say
Your observation that the bugs were in the leaf litter makes me think that they are really in the family Velvet Mites (Trombidiidae) and not the so called 'Red Spiders", also mites, that live and feed on plants and can become pests.
Velvet Mites (Trombidiidae) may be parasitic on insects as young instars. As adults they will become predators of insects. This is the info in BugGuide, Wikipedia and other web locations.

But I am now looking at John Henry Comstock's 1948 Spider Book, revised in 1965 by W.J. Gertsch. I know that is ancient for a science book, but while a good part of the older taxonomy had to be  revised according to more recent phylogenetic research, the life history of the described organisms has not changed and the old biologists were famously thorough observers.

This last paragraph sounds suspiciously like chiggers, doesn't it?

I moved on to the 1998 Review: Biology and Ecology of trombiid mites (Acari: Trombidioidea) by Zhi-Qiang Zhang, Experimental and Applied Acarology, 22 (1998). The paper first states that the systematics of the group are in flux, and many of the old subfamilies that Comstock still included have since been accorded family status.

Euryopis sp. Spider with a trombidioid larvae (red) and trombidioid adult on the left

 These mites are of economic importance and may be used for biological pest control. But identification even to the genus can be difficult and in many cases either the larval stages and hosts are not known or the larvae are described but not the adults. Trombidiid larvae have been found as parasites on many different arthropds. Some seem very host specific, others can use a variaty of hosts.

If you can read this table that I copied out of the Zhang paper, you'll find that two of the families do use vertebrates as their larval hosts: Leeuvenhokiidae and Trombiculidae They are Chiggers!
So the chiggers that chew into the vertebrate skin (not burrow under the skin) are larvae of Velvet Mites, but not all Velvet Mites are chiggers. Here is a link to the blog of Dragonfly Woman where she explains how the young chiggers actually feed on vertebrate skin.
The mites I was asked about are probably not chiggers, for two reasons: First, It is far too early and cold for chiggers on Mt Lemmon right now. We still had snow a couple of weeks ago.  Second, chiggers (the parasitic larvae) are very tiny, much smaller than the observed mites. But I cannot tell whether these mites could be the adults of what we call chiggers.

 Classification:
Arthropoda (Arthropods) » Arachnida (Arachnids) » Acari (Mites and Ticks) » Acariformes » Trombidiformes » Prostigmata » Anystina » Parasitengona » Trombidiina » Trombidioidea » Trombidiidae (Velvet Mites)

Mt Lemmon Highway in October

American Lady Vanessa viginiensis

On October 18th the Desert Broom bushes at Molino Basin in the lower elevation of the Catalina Mountains are in full bloom and surrounded by clouds of insects. I am glad I stopped on my way to the top of Mt Lemmon.

Soldier Beetles Chauliognathus profundus

and Chauliognathus misellus

Female Longhorn Beetle Tragidion densiventre

I am only showing a few samples of the abundance of species here, I think I will devote a whole blog chapter to the annual event of the Baccharis bloom that is like a final feast of the year for all entomologists from Arizona to Texas.

Hummingbird Trumpet Zauschneria californica

Other wildflowers are putting on a great show because of the unusually late rains.At Molino (Oak zone) there are still Hummingbird Trumpet, Flee Bane and Turpentine  Bush.

Turpentine Bush (Ericameria laricifolia)

Higher up under the Ponderosa Pines along General Hitchcock Highway the air is filled with the fragrance of Tagetes lemmonii. It evokes childhood memories of catching butterflies in 'Studenten Knopf' (Tagetes) beds in my mother's garden.

Tagetes lemmonii

But at this elevation the floral show is out-competed by the colors of the autumn leaves. The dark conifers that are in the majority here form a beautiful contrasting backdrop for a sprinkling of Mapels.

The Maple trees are only just turning fiery orange. The photo below is from October 15th 2009, when the deep crimson color was already fully developed. This year a few cold nights will have to add the finishing touches.

At the ski run some Aspen are glowing golden, while others were still green. That's a rare sight, as the trees are genetically identical and clones off the same stock.

A beautiful palette and I am glad I didn't miss it this year. Luckily the Aspen and Maples of Ski Valley escaped the devastating firestorm that raced through Summerhaven some years ago. It is sad to see that for the safety of the rebuilt community many slopes are kept bare. The houses grew back much bigger than they used to be, but the forest is not allowed back.

On the narrow road from the ski run to the top of Mt Lemmon the low standing sun made driving a challenge but the light changed the young Aspen into pure enchanted gold.

The burned slopes further up are a stark contrast but they allow for a beautiful view over the valley. It must have been quite cold up here already: there were nearly no grasshoppers, bees, or robberflies around even though a few flowers were still holding out.