I love organic gardens!

The citizens of the little town of Patagonia in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, maintain a beautiful butterfly garden and a lush community garden with vegetables. We never fail to visit there on our insect field trips.

These gardens seem to be kept under a strictly organic regimen. While this keeps the produce healthy and delicious, it comes of course with some trade-offs for the gardeners and bonus points for the entomologists.

Melanoplus differentialis nymph

One gardener philosophically watched his cobs of sweet corn disappear into the stomachs of countless juvenile Differential Grasshoppers. Smartly, he had planted his plots in three time intervals, and only one set of corn coincidet with the hungry hoppers, so next year he will just skip that planting date.

Black Swallowtail caterpillar - Papilio polyxenes

The Dill plants sported beautiful and undisturbed Black Swallowtails caterpillars of all ages.  These guys aren't shy. They flaunt their warning colors in front of all the hungry birds on those nearly bare branches - the must taste really awful.

Zygogramma exclamtionis, the Sunflower Leaf Beetle.

The leafs of the annual sunflowers were eaten to shreds by the larvae of Zygogramma exclamtionis, the Sunflower Leaf Beetle.

Disonycha politula

Pigweed, maybe grown for use in salads at a younger age, was hopping with Amaranthus-feeding Flee Beetles. Some folk with 'Careless Weed' allergies may even like to see these guys at work.



Deloyala lecontei

Morning Glory leaves were punctured by the iridescent tortois beetles Deloyala lecontei. They were hatching from pupae and mating right away.

Lema daturaphila (Three-lined Potato Beetle)

Tomatillo plants had all but disappeared under the onslaught of Lema daturaphila. The beetles seemed to be much more restrained on their name-giving host, the Sacred Datura.


Leptinotarsa haldeman

Bell Peppers were attacked by the blue relative of the Potato Beetle, Leptinotarsa haldemani, here  shown on a wild Nightshade.

Gratiana pallidula: larva, pupa, adult. Here on Silverleaf Nightshade

For a keen observer, the full life-cycle of a the tortoise beetle Gratiana pallidula was displayed on the leaves of Egg Plants. All stages were very cryptic.

Epilachna varivestis (Mexican Bean Beetle)

Bean leafs were skeletonized by bright yellow, spiny larvae which I first mistook for those of another tortois beetle. But because I hadn't seen this particular one before I collected some. They pupated, and out came - yellow Ladybugs. I know. They are supposed to be the gardener's little helpers and devour aphids and other pests. Not this species. The Mexican Bean Beetle is a Cocinnellid, but also a vegetarian and can become a pest of its own when he gets into big commercial bean growing areas. In the US, there is one more vegetarian Ladybug, also genus Epilachna, that feeds on the leaves of cucumbers, squash and related plants.

I met Fred an Mary Heath who were doing an annual butterfly species count and ecitedly noted that they had 90 species total in the Patagonia area, and 60 of those just in the gardens. There are no butterflies without caterpillars, and they need to feed on plants!

Visiting the Patagonia Community Garden reminded me of the difficulties and joys (if you come from the angle of a bug-lover or of an insectivorous bird) of organic gardening.
Yearly crop changes or under-plowing of left-over plant material could probably prevent a part of the infestations. But organic gardening faces more challenges  in Arizona  than for example in Germany. One reason is the lack of really cold winters that annually kill scores of insects in more northern climates.
But there is another factor that cannot be overlooked: The Americas are the original home of many cultivated crops. Potato, tomato, tobacco, corn (mais), sunflower, squash, many species of beans, all were first cultivated here thousands of years ago. The wild ancestors or relatives of those species are still all around us, and so are many of the insects that evolved with these plants as their hosts. Those were the ones that I found at work in the Patagonia garden.

In the sequel of this blog, I will discuss the advantages of gardening with locally derived plants as opposed to cultivating imported species.

Until then, here's a great article by one of my BugGuide Friends: http://nativeplantwildlifegarden.com/a-healthy-garden-is-a-buggy-garden/

Our Peppersauce Field Trip Made the News

 The Arizona Daily Star sent a photographer to join our first Audubon insect field trip. He stayed for hours, interviewing and photographing. The images that were published today in the Northwest section of the paper capture very well what one participant called a magical night.

Black Lights to draw Moths and the Public

Since the beginning of August I have been quite busy. After those heavy monsoon rains there were a lot of insects to photograph and collect and in addition I had gave an insect themed power point presentation at South West Wings in Sierra Vista, combined with a black-lighting field trip to Ramsey Canyon.

Dysschema howardi (Northern Giant Flag Moth - Hodges#8040)

 Last Thursday I was leading an Audubon field trip to Peppersauce Canyon on the north side of the Catalina Mountains. We had a nice list of sign-ups through Audubon, Flickr and facebook.  The local newspaper, the Arizona Star, surprisingly sent a photographer, and local author and moth expert Mike Wilson joined us in the canyon where he and Doug Mullins were collecting caterpillars.

 Fellow BugGuide Member Patrick Coin from Durham, NC, was staying in Tucson and took the opportunity to see more of the local fauna.  Muriel Béchu, a young German Scientist at the U of A College of Optics came to see the structural prismatic colors of moths in real life. She stayed to the very end at around 11 pm and actually discovered the prize of the night, the beautiful Northern Giant Flag Moth (She posed with Glover's Silk Moth)

Chrysina gloriosa

The beauty of Chrysina gloriosa, the Glorious Jewel Scarab made up for the lack of  variety of beetle species. Either the drought of the last years is taking its toll or the Mercury Vapor light that I am using now is more appealing to moths than to beetles.

Males of the tribe Dynastini

 We got scores of Rhinoceros Beetles walking all around us, two Dynastes grantii and one Strategus aloeus. The last three were females, I'm showing the males above.

Amblycheila baroni (Montane Giant Tiger Beetle) and Leptinotarsa rubiginosa (Reddish Potato Beetle)

 Very special to me were the Giant Tigerbeetle and the Tomato-red Potato Beetle. We also had smaller tigerbeetles, fungus and darkling beetles, and several scarabs. Please refer to my flickr gallery for picture of those species.

 After a couple of hours, our two sheets were so covered in moths, that it took a lot of enthusiasm to get close to them.

Kerrah Cutter was especially undeterred: decorated with moths all over she took a great series of photos to post on her facebook page. I'm sure we will meet again in the field to have some more interesting adventures with bugs and herps.  My friends Collins Cochran, Doug Mullins and Carol Tepper saved the night by keeping my new generator running and helping with set-up and take-down. Hanging the sheets from an easy-up tent frame and using three lights driven by a generator is too involved an undertaking do manage by myself, especially in a hurry with lots of people around who expect to hear me say something interesting while waiting for the slowly arriving bugs just after sunset.

I hope everybody enjoyed the trip and saw something interesting and new. I haven't had time to do a species count, but Patrick, who is a founding member of BugGuide and has a lot of experience from other parts of the world, was very impressed with the diversity of insects.

We were speculating why Arizona is ranked so very highly among all US states, and bordering Sonora, Mexico is even one of the locations with the highest species diversity world wide. There are many reasons:

1.The geological history here has been quite dramatic, so we are living on a mosaic of many different soil types, and hence among a patchwork of vegetation types, providing hosts for many different insect species.
 2.Our sky islands rise from the surrounding desert high enough to provide along their slopes everything from lowland sandy desert to pine forest and tundra like bare mountain tops at over 10,000 feet.
 3.Our two rainy seasons and high temperatures give us growing conditions for different organisms all year round.
4. We are at the border between temperate zones and the tropics.
5. We are experiencing a phase of climate changes that cause the spread of Mexican species into Arizona and may lead to the extinction of some long-term residents. The species distribution along the elevation levels of the mountains is most likely going to shift with rising temperatures and prolonged droughts.

I have collected images of most species that we saw last Thursday in Peppersauce Canyon in a flickr file. I will add additional identifications over the next week.

I have lapped filthy water from a hoof print

"I have lapped filthy water from a hoof print and was glad to have it."
"If I ever meet one of you Texas waddies who says he had never drank water out of a horse track I think I'll shake his hand, give him a Daniel Webster cigar."
In Charles Portis' True Grit the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf tries (and fails) to impress U.S. marshall Rooster Cogburn.

Couch's Spadefoot, Scaphiopus couchii

 In the real West in Arizona, the filthy water of a hoof print could well be your amniotic fluid, cradle, bathwater, and hunting ground -- if you are a young Couch's Spadefoot.  

Land-under in the bajada of the Tucson Mountains (our backyard)

On July 29th a huge thunderstorm rolled over our land and brought nearly three inches of rain in one hour. It poured down so hard that most of the water just raced down hill, carving out old arroyos, piling up new sand dunes, and slicing through flat areas to form new washes. For a couple of hours the sound of rushing water swallowed everything else.

Calling male Couch's Spadefoot by Seth Patterson

As soon as that din calmed down, a faint bleating like from a herd of sheep lost in the dark could be heard. The mating concert of Couch's Spadefoots.  

Mating spadefoots by Manuel Nevarez

 Spadefoots are also called toad-like frogs (Pelobatidae). While their shape is toad-like (short-legged, squat, with a bluntly rounded snout) their skin is smooth like a frogs and they lack the obvious paratoid glands of the Bufonids (most of our toads). But their vertical pupils and the spade-like tubercle on the underside of each hind foot set them apart from both frogs and toads. If you set a spadefoot on loose substrate you can watch how quickly he disappears backwards by shuffling those hind feet. These amphibians hold endurance records: they can stay under ground for years during droughts, nearly dried up and motionless in a little chamber plastered with their own skin excretions.

Spadefoot tadpoles Photo by Jeff Mitton

 Drumming raindrops of a substantial monsoon storm get the Spadefoots up and ready to find temporary rain pools to mate and lay their eggs. Tadpoles can be found a day later, feeding on organic debris and quickly developing algae.

The surface of the desert soil is reshaped by the heavy hoofs of horses.

Today, on the 8th of August, all rain pools have disappeared. But every morning, depressions in the soil are still visibly moist.

A tiny youngster in a hoof print

Walking our dogs around sunrise, we found tiny spadefoots emerging from those muddy spots,  scrambling for cover under freshly green Triangular-leaf Burr Sage bushes. Most of the deeper mud spots were the hoof prints of our neighbors' rodeo horses.

The little amphibians are still smaller than grasshoppers, not much more than a quarter inch. They are able to absorb moisture through their skin, but they have to leave the exposed muddy tracks before the morning sun reaches them.

Some will try to risk the heat of the day in the cracks that open up as the mud in the hoof impression dries. I hope they make it!

Young Red-spotted Toad (Bufo punctatus)?

When I went through this morning's photos, I realized that some of the larger anuran kids seemed to have horizontal pupils and looked rather toad-like. These are young Red-spotted Toads.

Adult Red-spotted Toad (Bufo punctatus)

They supposedly need more permanent creeks and pools for breeding, but the adults are around, and those rainwater pools are all our desert here has to offer. I may  have even heard their monotonously trilling mating call and mistaken it for the purring of some of the local Night Hawks.

National Moth Week - not much going on in AZ, or is it?

At the end of July, National Moth Week is coming up. It's a first for the US and many organizations like for example Bugguide are sponsoring it. While 'Lep' experts in most states offer many special 'mothing' events to the public, Arizona seems to be sadly lagging behind: One event in the Grand Canyon area but nothing in our famously biodivers  SE corner of the state. I think I know why we have ignored repeated suggestions to organize and sponsor an event: We are too busy, too busy mothing, that is.

On my camera after black lighting at the garage wall at our house in Picture Rocks Arizona in early June

 Iam no Lepidopterist. I was originally much more interested in beetles, but this year I have been following the appearance of moths species at our house, documenting over  80  species since March. By now the species numbers and the amount of individuals are just exploding after the early monsoon rains, and the diversity should increase for at least another month.

Mercury vapor light at Florida Canyon very early, later the density increased tremendously, but were to busy to take photos

At this time of the year, I try to go on bug safaris several times a week. That means coordinating participants arriving from different directions, driving to the canyons through washes and over protruding rocks, dragging around generators, batteries, mercury vapor lights, black lights, stands, sheets, cameras, and collection vials, hiding from thunderstorms and smugglers, chasing off bats and skunks, seeking out day-active species during three digit temps and raising humidity, staying out all night, coming home at dawn, identifying or posting the haul, counting chigger bites, accommodating collected ovipositing females and shipping the eggs to scientists across the continent,  ....who wants to actually organize a Moth Watching Week event?

But I'll be leading several public black lighting tours that are sponsored by Southwest Wings in Sierra Vista and by the Audubon Society of Tucson in August and September.

Pasimachus californicus prowling for bugs around the black light

During those events we will be looking for other insects and arachnids as well, but I know that even a big headed Pasimachus crawling onto the ground sheet has a hard time competing with the tumbling arrival of a big beautiful Polyphemus Silk Moth.

Carol swimming in moths

Last Thursday my friend Carol Tepper and I tried out my new MV light, taking advantage of the electricity outlets at the Santa Rita Experimental Ranch in Florida Canyon. Around the cabins and labs are rolling hills of mesquite grassland with ocotillos, yuccas, agaves, opuntias, and acacias, and  Mexican Blue Oaks, some sycamores and stands of hack-berries are lining the creek. Wild Cotton is now leafed out and as tall as I. Seep Willow emits its pungent swamp smell.
We left the black lights close to the creek and exercised our legs and lungs while carrying the MV stuff to the top of the hill, hoping that light would draw in an ocotillo specialist from the opposite slope (it didn't).


 Still, at both lights we were surrounded by insects, mostly moths, and they also covered the walls around several porch-lights that Mark, the station manager, kindly left on for us. I was noticed some distinct differences to my black light collection a week earlier at Madera Canyon (upper parking lot, juniper-oak habitat.

Chrysina beyeri, Jewel Chafers

Antheraea oculea

 Chrysina beyeri was the dominant beetle species at Madera Canyon, and of the great moths, the big polyphemus silkmoth Antheraea oculea was most impressive and numerous.

Hyalophora columbia gloveri

In Florida Canyon we didn't see any C. beyeri  and only one  cercopid Silkmoth moth, Hyalophora columbia gloveri. We waited in vain for its ocotillo-feeding relative, the dark Eupackardia calleta.

Eacles oslari, above and below

Instead, many specimens of Eacles oslari in a wide variety of color combinations came mostly to the MV light.

Caterpillar of Citheronia splendens on Wild Cotton

Last year we found this huge bizarre caterpillar on its host, a wild cotton plant in Florida Canyon. This year I finally got to see the big, plump adult moths Citheronia splendens sinaloensis.

While the big Silk Moths are most impressive, I also like the colorful Tiger Moths. I remember meeting a scientist in Portal who was collecting the pretty Bertholdia to study its ability 'to talk back to the bats'. This moth not only perceives the sonar of an approaching bat like many other insects who simply try to drop out of earshot, but it actually emits sounds of its own to throw off the bats echo beam.

Arachnis aulaea, Apocrisias thaumasta and Bertholdia trigona

Three Tiger Moths that were flying at Madera Canyon when I black lighted there a week ago..

Hypercompe suffusa and the delicate looking Halysidota davisii

Two representatives of the same subfamily at Florida Canyon. (When the taxonomy of this group of moths was revised lately, the Tigermoths became part of the family Erebidae).

Neoalbertia constans, Tetraclonia dyari (Madera) and Acoloithus novaricus (Florida)

Moths don't have to be huge or prettily patterned to be interesting. Here are some small Leaf Skeletonizers that are mainly day-fliers but also come to light traps. At Madera, there were two red Lycus (Net-Winged Beetle) mimics.  Fittingly, the beetles danced their mating flight around the oaks before sunset. At Florida only the little dark one on the right came to the light at night in numbers. This species is supposed to be mostly distributed in the eastern US.

Madera and Florida are geographically close to each other. They are two parallel canyons of the western Santa Rita Mountains, similar in orientation and both containing a stream that flowed only intermittently over the last drought years. Although oaks grow along most of both canyons, Madera is shadier and home mostly to Silverleaf Oaks while Florida is famous for its beautiful old Mexican Blue Oaks. The moth populations, though with many overlaps, also clearly express  the differences between the canyons. 

Net-winged Insects and the Strategies of their Predatory Offspring

There is great variety of species in the order Neuroptera, the net-winged insects, but they all have in common thin lacy wings, with forewings and hindwings of similar in size and shape, and biting chewing mouth-parts. Many species show some superficial similarity to Dragonflies, but they rest with their wings folded roof-like over their bodies. Their predacious larvae are terrestrial, except in Sisyridae. It's the larvae that show the most amazing strategies, from ambush in pits to chemical warfare. Neuroptera larvae pupate, often in a silky cocoon, and undergo a complete metamorphosis before hatching as winged adults.

Life cycle of a Common Antlion

Antlions are known to most people as the devious creatures that dig funnel-shaped pits in loose sand and not only sit in the bottom waiting for an unsuspecting ant that may fall in, but even throwing sand at their victims to make them loose their footing. I found them very difficult to photograph so I'm showing here an old illustration from Brehm's Thierleben (1895). The artist cheated: the larva on the left should be burried so only the pincer-shaped mandibles stick out of the sand. But I like the image because it shows the larva (left), the pupa (right) and the adult, winged antlion in the middle.

In North America only the antlions of the genus Myrmeleon dig those ant trapping pits. The larva in my picture was walking around openly catching insects under our porch light at night.

Vella fallax

An adult antlion Vella fallax was resting close by, but I'm not sure that this over 2 inch long adult was related to the larva.

Glenurus luniger

The diversity of antlion species in the desert around us is very high, they seem to be well adjusted to sandy soil and dry conditions (and lots of ants). But to see the pretty Glenurus luniger I have to take a trip to the mountains. This one is from Peppersauce Canyon in the Catalina Mountains.

Owlfly larvae

In Molino Basin, also part of the Catalinas, I found something that looked at first like a grass with dark seeds but turned out to be a group of first instar larvae of an owlfly. These young ones typically remain in a group with the original egg clutch for several days before dropping to the ground below and going their own predatory ways.

'trophic' eggs (left) and fertile eggs of Ululodes sp. photo by Hannah Nendick-Mason

 In the genus Ululodes the female provides her offspring with a series of club-shaped infertile eggs fastened below the regular eggs. These trophic eggs  (repagula) serve as the larvae's first meal and may prevent them from eating each other.

Owlfly

Also at Molino, this big owlfly was clinging to its perch so tightly that I could move it to find better light for my photos. Smaller species often appear at the black light, so they all seem to be night-active. Again, I do not know whether this is the same species as the clutch of larvae above.

Larvae of Brown and Green Lacewings

Meanwhile, at home, a strange shape is climbing a dried-up Brittle Bush. From above only a bunch of ant-body parts and exoskeletons is visible. The side view reveals legs and fangs that give away a Brown Lacewing larva. Probably very similar in built to the Green Lacewing Larvae that lived on the Brittle Bush flowers in spring, just smarter with its camouflage.

Green Lacewing eggs

Green Lacewing

 Adult Golden-eyed Green Lacewings are day-active and common year round. They feed on Aphids and other small insects. Their eggs sway on long stalks, protected from predators that come crawling along on the plant surface which may include their own older siblings.

Lomamyia sp., Berothidae (Beaded Lacewings)

Adult Beaded Lacewings are nocturnal and come to lights around our house in the desert bajada. They lay stalked eggs on wood surfaces near termite nests. The larvae move in with and prey on the termites. They discharge a gas containing an allomone  from their anus (Johnson and Hagen, 1981) to immobilize their prey.The gas is potent enough to paralyze several termite larvae and even adults at a time, but reportedly it has no effect on other non-termite 'house guests'.

Climaciella brunnea (Wasp Mantidfly)

When black-lighting for insects in the mountains, I often encounter several species of Mantid Flies.
They look and behave very much like small Praying Mantids. They use their raptorial arms to grab moths and other small insects that are also attracted by the light. In Arizona, the impressive Wasp Mantidfly lives in the canyons of the sky islands. While other morphs of that same species show brown and yellow banding of typical wasp mimicry, ours seems to mimic the coloration of Polistes comanche, the most common paper wasp of those habitats. Their larvae live as parasitoids in spider nests.