Longhorn and Jewel Beetles at Portal, Arizona

Many of my bug safaris are just naturalists' explorations of anything crawling or buzzing around or hiding under cow dung. At other times, the participants concentrate on a certain family of insects, which helps my blog writing tremendously. This focus may develop inadvertently because habitat, season or a weather event favors the appearance of certain groups of insects.  Or it develops because my excursion companion arrives with an interest in certain taxonomic groups, and we seek out habitat that supports those groups. Hopefully weather patterns and moon phase don't work against us. For several weeks now, I joined the Arizona tour of my friend and co-author for the book Arizona Beetles, Dr Arthur Evans. We looked for all kinds of beetle species in places that Art already fondly remembered from the past and a few that I introduced him to. At the same time we hoped for more monsoon activity.  On the last July weekend, the arrival of Ted MacRae made us concentrate somewhat more on his favorite groups, Cerambycids and most of all Buprestids. We all met in the Southfork Creek area near Portal in the Chiricahuas. In Portal I always enjoy the lovely hospitality of my friend Barabara Roth, definitely a great added bonus to the breathtaking beauty and the ecological richness of the area.

Many Cerambycids are night-active forest creatures and come to black lights quite willingly. Of course they have been much more active in wetter years, and I had many more species at my lights then. This year I strung my light's out in Barbara's back yard.

There, Ted and Art also found a very small Hardwood Stump borer that may have emerged from a cavity riddled stump, left in place from a tree that died,  and that is now part of Barbara's entrance steps.

Styloxus bicolor, a cerambycid with short elytra. From Barabara's place in Portal. Photo Steve Lingafelter

Tetraopes discoideus

Rhopalophora meeskei and Lycids

Tetraopes femoratus

Luckily the Southwest Research station further up Southfork Creek Canyon uses its leach field to create a wet meadow with an abundance of Narrow Leaf Milkweed. There we found at least  2 more species of Cerambycids, and I am adding here the larger Tetraopes femuratus that I have found in that location a couple of years ago.Tetraopes means Four-eyes, and in the portrait you see what that name points to.

Ericydeus lautus, my personal rain weevil

I used my big beating sheet to find out what's hiding in shrubbery along Sunny Flats CG. One beat delivered dozens of cm long grey weevils into the sheet and I knew immediately that the monsoon would get serious that afternoon: when these weevils climb vegetation in big numbers they are trying to stay away from serious flooding.

Mwcas rotundicollis

We discovered a couple more Longhorn species along the trail from Steward to Sunny Flat Campground, visually by gleaning grasses and leaves like a warbler would. It's my favorite collection method because I learn more about behavior and host plants and I can often take in situ photos. Though that tendency can easily result in the loss of a rarely encountered bug. As many beetles first drop and then fly, I held my sheet under the mysterious Acanthocine that is still unidentified. The more formal photo on white with better lighting shows more detail, for example the pronotal thorns that  indicate that it's not for example Pseudastylopsis  but rather Sternidius or another 'armed' genus.

Far more flighty and shy than the morning-sluggish Cerambycids are the Buprestids. Tiny  Pachyschelus secedens is the exception, usually clinging tightly to its legum host Desmodium.

On the soft, sunflower-like leaves of an as yet unidentified Asteraceae we found, as I had expected,  a number of red-necked Agrilus. There are 2 similar spp. around in SE AZ, so I have to wait for Ted to work on the exact identification.  A few Acmaeodera cazieri turned up on the very few flowering plants at Sunny Flats and along the road.

Leptinotarsa rubiginosa, arguably the prettiest of the 'Potato Beetles' diverted even Ted's intense buprestid-focus for a while.  The bright red bug really screams for attention, but I have never found more than a single one and never on its supposed host plant the ground cherry.

Leptinotarsa rubiginosa

After the pleasant canyon hike along the dry creek, always towards some threatening, grumbling clouds just beyond the towering cliffs, we moved out into the flats between Portal and Rodeo. Ted knew records of  Sphaerobothris ulkei (LeConte) on Mormon Tea plants Ephedra trifurca.  It grows among rather low scrubby Mesquite Trees and Sweet Acacias, some of which were blooming. But everything else, including the Ephedra bushes, seemed dried out and barely alive. The heat was quite oppressive in those open flats.

Desert flats below Portal, Arizona – dominant woody vegetation is mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), sweet acacia (Acacia rigida), and three-pronged joint-fir (Ephedra trifurca). Photo and description Ted MacRae

Still, sudden buzzing noises announced some rather active beetles: big Hippomelas males and even larger females  were zipping around those   knee-high mesquites.

Hippomelas shenicus

 From Santa Ritas I am quite familiar with Hippomelas planicaudata. Especially in the evening, I often see dozens of them on the pink blooming Mimosa. They are blueish grey with a yellow wax exudant. The Hippomelas at Portal were larger, more brassy in color and the exudant was orange: Hippomelas sphenicus (above).  Compare to H. planicauda from Florida Canyon, Santa Rita Mnts, below

Hippomelas planicauda

Acmaeodera gibbula were sitting on flowers and branches of the one blooming Acacia rigida. 

These Acacias are also the host plant of the large large, yellow powdered Gyascutus caelatus, and Ted and Art found a few of those, too.

Gyascutus caelatus

But our target species was hard to find, until Art spotted the first two Sphaerobothris ulkei  running in their characteristic bursts of speed on the stems of a good-sized Ephedra plant. The beetles were a shiny, metallic blueish green, chunky and nearly a cm long. They actually stood out from the leaf-less grey-green plant branches to be visible from several meters distance. But I was also spotted easily by these highly visual creatures, so it still took me a long time to catch one female of my own.

Sphaerobothris ulkei

 I missed the first one because I tried to photograph her in situ. I learned that  they easily fly off when discovered, but land predictably on the next nearest Ephedra bush. They zoom right towards this target, even when it is hidden behind  dense taller vegetation. So I figured out how to find them again and followed. Hunting these beautiful beetles was very exhausting even though the area was flat. The upcoming thunderstorm made the air oppressive and hard to breathe. After our hunt we were happy to retreat to Barbara's living room to photograph our beetles

Sphaerobothris ulkei female

Art and Ted at work

And the rain storm that the 'rain' weevils had announced? Just before dinner at the South West Research Station, it hit the Southfork Creek area. When after dinner Art and Ted wanted to cross a wash on Foothills Rd they were stopped by racing water. Surprisingly, at Barbara's house the creek showed not even a trickle.

Minor flash flood and easterner, easily impressed

From San Simon to Paradise

Last Saturday I drove towards the Chiricahua Mountains following the narrow, straight, partly unpaved Road from San Simon on Interstate 10 to Portal at the eastern. edge of the Chiricahuas. The landscape was very flat and nearly uniformly covered in creosote bushes. But in some ares these were in full bloom, telling of recent rains, and at the horizon promising (or threatening)  clouds hung over a beautiful mountain panorama. My friends had indicated that there could be interesting insects in this bleak habitat, but they were delayed by not quite understanding the difference between the Tucson Airport and the Phoenix one - for Easterners they seem to be close to each other - so I struck out on my own with beating sheet and camera. I concentrated on non-creosote areas, mainly along washes that were lined with Mesquites, White Thorn Acacias, ans some herbal plants that began hesitantly to responded to recent rains.

   Shotgun like patterns on Datura leaves indicate the presence of leaf notcher weevil Trichobaris. I found 2 species of the genus.

 The Hawkmoth Manduca sexta (Carolina Sphinx) is not really a tomato specialist, it in fact prefers the local Datura.

Several similar looking Lema species could all be called Datura-phila, Datura-loving. Their larvae protect themselves with fecal shields, this one is just beginning to build one.

 Datura is also the host plant for this tortoise beetle, Plagiometriona clavata

Gratiana pallidula the egg plant tortoise beetle was introduced with agricultural products but is now quite at home on the local Silver-leaf nightshade.

I'm sure that  several leave beetles that like curcubitaceae  were drawn by patches of Coyote Gourd along the road. Paranapiacaba tricincta and Diabrotica undecimpunctata (Spotted Cucumber Beetle)

Very few knee high Acaciella angustissima were in bloom, so all nectar and pollen feeders concentrated on those few bushes. Here a big Sand wasp

Lycus fernandezi, the netwing beetle that can be separated from L. arizonensis by the little nodge in the black end-spot on the elytra. It is smoothly rounded in L. arizonensis

Finally an early Metalmark. There may be thousands when the desert begins to bloom and waves of these butterflies come up from Mexico.

On Mesquite trees I found a form of Cushion Scale. The white fluted part of the insect is an egg sac that can contain up to 1000 eggs. The insect is hermaphroditic, producing sperm that can fertilize its own ova, but in an alternate reproductive strategy it can also make winged males that can fertilize the female part of other individuals.

Two typical mesquite longhorns are Plionoma suturalis and the big black Stenaspis solitaria.

My best find of the afternoon was this little Ripiphorus sp. beetle. With long clear hind-wings and very reduced (orange) elytra, it could easily be mistaken for a wasp or a syrphid and also flies like one.

By the time Cathedral Rock and the entrance to Southfork Canyon came in sight, the wind had picked up enough to turn my beating sheet into kite and I was grateful to be heading straight for Barbara Roth's cozy Bavarian cottage. I never made it to the little town of Paradise, but guess what?

A Weekend of Rare Cerambycids

This week a visit of my friend and co-author of the Arizona Beetle Book in preparation, Dr. Arthur Evans, and Pat Sullivan's annual Infestation party for entomologists promised a lot of fun field work and the probable discovery of more species to photograph for our book  (is that good or bad by now?) But the first exciting news came actually from a herpetologist and facebook friend in Clinton, Greenlee County, AZ. Terry Johnson informed us that 5 specimens of a striking looking Longhorn Beetle had been found there, and he got photos for us and promised me a specimen. It later turned out that there was only ONE specimen, not 5. But I did get it.

Megaderus bifasciatus, found in Clinton, Greenlee County, AZ

 Robert Velton identified the beetle as Megaderus bifasciatus. There were some few reports of this mainly Mexican and central American species from SE Arizona and from Texas. So I was quite happy, looking forward to adding this striking species to the AZ Beetle Book. But Terry's discovery coincided with the reviewing process of a paper whose authors were doubting that any of those old observations were valid. Luckily our community is small and close-knit so they were informed of the find and right now they are asking good questions about the provenance.. Five living specimens in situ are not easily explained as mislabeled or misidentified,  but were they maybe found right next to a pile of imported logs? That would raise the suspicion that they were recent adventives. I will report the result of this interesting story as soon as I know it. edit: only one pristine, newly hatched looking specimen in a residential development of 5 year old houses. Dan Heffern is now doing detective work to find out how our bug got there. Home Depot wood delivery for fences seems to be under suspicion.

 Meanwhile, we had our potluck feast at Pat's and I was working off some calories in his beautiful garden that slopes up the side of Ramsey Canyon behind his house.  I  picked mainly small leaf beetles from his perennials, all chosen for their attractiveness to insects I am sure. The diversity was delightful, even if they were all old friends.

But then I came across a little grey Cerambycid wit anulated antennae.

Mecas menthae. on  Salvia leucantha

  If it had been on a sunflower leave, I would have disregarded it as  the well-known Dectes texanus. But I have learned to trust the botanical knowledge of bugs implicitly.  I also remembered that lately a friend had compared species in the two Flat-faced Longhorn genera Dectes and Mecas because they resemble each other. Bingo! Genus Mecas! I showed it to Steven Lingafelter and with the help of Pat's house-synoptic collection, we had the species: Mecas menthae. Sure enough, not only did the plant turn out to be Salvia leucantha (Mexican Sage) in the Mint Family (Labiaceae) but we found 5 more specimens on the bush, making it clear that the beetles do consider it their host plant.

After a trip to Copper Canyon where our lights were inundated with scarabs from tiny Diplotaxis to sturdy  Phileurus truncatus and Strategus aloeus and a restful night's sleep in the back of my Subaru
I visited the garden again. This time I found a nice number of leaf beetle species on Sacred Datura and some morning glories whose leaves were just about skeletonized.

Elytroleptus luteus in situ

But then a little streak of orange on a leave of a tall evening primose where I had been watching pinhead sized jumping weevils. Another Cerambycid? Or a very narrow Netwing? From the expert came the e mail shout 'Holy cow, that is a fascinating beetle! ' We both tentatively talked of Elytroleptus sp., but none that we knew.  What Steven Lingafelter then found looked all wrong at first glance: A beetle not red, but yellow and even called E. luteus. But as an experienced collector and taxonomist he knows that dried specimens may change from red to yellow, and that species are sometimes described from dry museum specimens. Maybe the author was never lucky enough to see our bug alive and beautifully contrasted by a green leaf.  The other details, like proportions, leg coloration, and costae on the elytra fit very well. So I guess he got the correct id!

Elytroleptus luteus

 
Check out the distribution for this beetle: it just makes it across the Mexican Border into Arizona, but it's found all through Central America.

Longhorns in the genus Elytroleptus are considered mimics of toxic beetles in the family Lycidae whom they closely resemble.
Close to the Longhorn imitator, I found a Jumpingspider that was trying to take down one of the toxic Lycids. It released the beetle unharmed. I do not know if my camera disturbed it or if it found the beetle unpalatable.