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.

BugGuide Gathering 2013 in Arizona

This year the insect enthusiasts and members of the BugGuide community will hold their annual get together at the Santa Rita Experimental Range (SRER) in Arizona on July 25 to 28, 2013.

View into Florida Canyon from the SRER

The SRER is located in Florida Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains, in the heart of SE Arizona, one of the most arthropod-species rich areas of the United States. Located in the juniper-oak belt of this sky island the station provides easy access Florida, Madera and Montosa Canyon and to habitats ranging from dry grasslands to high elevation mixed conifer stands. SRER not only provides us wirh affordable bunk style housing, but also with great meeting facilities and electricity and space for black lighting. The station is part of the experimental range of the University of Arizona.

Caterpillars from a night hike at the SRER

 U of A Professor Wendy Moore, curator of the Insect Collection of the University of Arizona (UAIC), functions as our official host who made the use of the station possible.

Since it was conceived in 2005 by Troy Bartlett, Mike Boone, and Pat Coin, BugGuide has developed from an on-line identification help into a citizen science project par excellence. It is now hosted by John K. VanDyk at Iowa State University. Daily thousands of contributions come in from all over the US and Canada, a devoted team of volunteer experts works tirelessly on identifications, and the collected data are easily accessable for lay people and experts alike. I know a number of scientists who value BugGuide as a source of first hand distribution information, links to collectors, and identified on-line images that can be licensed from the individual photographers.

 Wendy Moore at the U of A (a land grant university) has been promoting the local insect collection (UAIC) as a museum for the public and has made many efforts to further public interest in insects, their ecology, and their natural history. She has been instrumental in the creation of the very popular Arizona Insect Festival and is actively supporting many citizen science projects like for example the BioBlitz in the local Saguaro National Park and the online Encyclopedia of Life. So when the BugGuide community needed a sponsor in the U of A faculty to be able to use the SRER, Wendy was the obvious person to turn to and she graciously agreed.  

 The BugGuide Gathering 2013 in Arizona will be an opportunity for established BugGguide members to finally meet each other or see each other again in an environment full of opportunity to find bugs, hike, black light, get sun burned, and mostly to enjoy each others company. With Troy Barlett and Patrick Coin we will have two of the founding members of BugGuide at the meeting!
But we also hope that many newer BugGuide members can take the opportunity to get into the field with a lot of the experts who have been identifying so many of their entries over the years. We will let them in on the secrets of finding our favorite bugs in desert and mountains and let them watch how we get puzzeled by new unexpected finds. It should be great fun! BugGuide members, please sign up by going to the BG home page, column on the left, Gathering in AZ 2013, then click on 'My Account' to input your info and choices, which will appear under 'Who is coming' (make sure you are logged into your account). 

Eric Eaton, Robyn Waayers, Art Evans, and I - all looking forward to the BugGuide meeting at the SRER in July

This is also a chance for local bug enthusiasts and entomologists to take part in the trips we will be organizing and to meet some interesting people. We don't have a fixed program yet but on Thursday afternoon both Art Evans (Author of 'An Inordinate Fondness for Beetles and several other insect books) and Eric Eaton (Author of  Kaufman's Insect Guide for North America) will be at the SRER where we will set up several black lights and mercury vapor lights to attract beetles, moths and more.
Charles O'Brien, our world renown weevil expert, his wife Lois, equally accomplished fulgorid scholar, will also join us at the meeting.   Chip A. Hedgecock a great nature photographer and connoisseur of the local insect fauna will set up his photo studio and allow us to watch his technique. Warren Savary will also demonstrate his new photo equipment and  help with our questions about scorpions. Fred Skillman will add his expertise about cerambycids and Pat Sullivan will help with scarabs, bombylids, and his general knowledge of the area. 

Oh, and the gathering is also registered as a  National Moth Week event!

I hope to see many of you in July

Margarethe Brummermann
reluctant organizer but excited participant of the BugGuide gathering 2013
  

Bird Pointers

Artistic freedom: the ptarmigan covey is flushed. A good bird dog would NOT do that, he'd just freeze on point

In the late eighties I studied circulatory adaptations in the brood patch of Ptarmigan in Norway. To find these secretive birds, I often relied on the sensitive noses and natural pointing instinct of bird dogs. Every family in Trondheim seemed to own a couple of Setters or Pointers.

Pointing Gambel's Quail family click for better video quality

To my surprise, I recently observed very similar pointing behavior not in dogs, but in Gambel's Quail. Coincidentally, these birds are close relatives of the northern Ptarmigan. Both species are galliformes,  chicken like ground dwellers with short wings, strong running legs, and strong family bonds that outlast the breeding season so you find them all year round in their typical coveys.

This morning I watched a couple with two fairly grown chicks at the feeding station in front of my studio window. They were long and thin with excitement, their necks stretched and their beaks pointing. They held this pose and focused on a spot on the ground that from my view point was obscured by a rock and an agave. Clearly the chicks were learning to fine tune their maybe instinctive pointing by this concerted effort. In social animals, learning and memory are facilitated by highly-emotional situations. These chicks were learning their lesson well.
But what was triggering the excitement? Different from most bird mobs these guys were quiet and the other bird species were not drawn into the melee. The Mourning Dove seems hardly interested, the Thrasher keeps eating, only a sparrow seems ready to chime in.

Diamondback Rattler

But I got up from my desk and got my snake stick knowing exactly what was hiding under the agave. A Diamondback Rattler was tightly curled, absorbing heat from the warm sand and the morning sun. It is now so hot during the day that he is most likely night-active. The feeding station is visited at night by rodents, so this is a popular spot for rattlers.

This one was a small guy and his rattle didn't make any sounds. The small ones tend to wander straight west from that location, right into our dog run. So we decided to move him several hundred meters north. When he resumes his journey next night, he will hopefully bypass our house and the dog beds.

La Pura Vida!

So I'm finally back to blog-writing after an excellent, exciting, 8 day trip to Costa Rica. For the following week I was busy trying to identify my hundreds of Costa Rican bug photos and posting them on Flickr. Right then Yahoo decided to really make things difficult for those of us who value information as much as pretty pictures...Oh, well, there is no way I can move my 17 000 pictures with all their ids and collection info, so I'm staying with Flickr.
Last week, my last art show for the season, the Phippen Museum Western Art Show and Sale in Prescott required a lot of preparation - and it (the sales) turned out so much better than expected! It was great fun, too, with beautiful art, artist friends from all over the country, warm hospitality of the Phippen Family and a greatly expanded Museum...more about it on my Watercolor Blog.

But now a big shout-out for the people who organized my Costa Rica adventure, Mark Deering (US) and Ernesto Rodriguez (CR).
Mark had advertised this tour on Facebook. According to his own background it was geared towards ecologists with special interest in insects. (In fact, most of the participants were managers of American and European butterfly houses) The proceeds would go partly to the butterfly farm El Bosque Nuevo in Guanacaste whose manager Ernesto was our other competent guide.

Palo Verde National Park

This was Mark and Ernesto's first attempt at organizing eco-tours. While they certainly didn't lack professionalism where it was needed, they handled the whole trip more like an adventure among good friends or a family outing than a business venture. From the time we set foot on CR soil to the time our planes took off again, we were all taken care of so completely that I never got around to exchanging and using any of my spending money.
 On arrival and departure days Mark was constantly shuttling between hotel and Liberia Airport because we all arrived at different times. Still, he even filled every minute of the waiting time for early arrivals with trips to nature parks and beach...
Mark was joined on this trip by his mother who very much enjoyed herself. She had brought along a step-counter and found out that the bouncy dirt roads that we were traveling by car added many miles to her daily activity count.

During the entire trip there was no down time. Excursions covered different habitats, from riparian areas with waterfalls, to dry forest, cloud forest, places that reminded of deserts, the beach, volcanoes   ... always interspersed by opportunities to take a refreshing dip in a hot spring or a clear creek between fern trees and mossy rocks where basilisks were staring at us.

Rio Celeste

The diversity of the natural world was breath taking. All participants were accomplished naturalists and so many trained eyes were spotting White Witches, iguanas, army ants, monkeys, Puff Birds, Motmots and Trogons in nearly every tree. Cameras were clicking constantly, the collecting of specimens is mostly prohibited in CR.
So Mark and Ernesto kept us busy. From early morning bird walks to nightly (!) bug-lighting there was a constant stream of interesting activities and we only sat down to travel to new destinations and for scrumptious meals. The delicious Costa Rican cuisine consists of fresh fruit, rice and beans, freshly caught fish and grass-fed beef, did I mention rice and beans?

Finca Mariposa el Bosque Nuevo, Butterfly Farm

 The warmest hospitality greeted us at the Butterfly Farm El Bosque Nuevo itself. In the beautiful airy building constructed of homegrown teak we felt at home within hours. The people living and working there seemed a great community and took us in like old friends. They showed us their intricate work with beautiful butterflies, caterpillars and their host plants, and fragile pupae that were prepared for shipment to butterfly houses all over the world.

Ernesto shared the difficult history of a farm struggling to be ecologically sustainable but yet profitable enough to nurture the little community that depends on it. After little success with teak production, butterfly farming seems to be a profitable solution that is easy on the environment and in fact allows the owners to return much of the plantation area to a natural state and even buy surrounding areas to be protected as a preserve.

After three nights at the farm we spent two nights at a hotel at the foot of the active volcano Rincon de la Vieja. The mountain sides are covered in beautiful old-growth cloud forest. Smelly gases bubble from mud pools and hot springs. I hope I get around to detailed descriptions of our hike there. But I also very much enjoyed the gardens of the hotel shaded by flame trees, where trogons greeted us in the morning, parrots screamed in the canopy and jacanas stalked around a pond full of mating Cane Toads (I know, ecologically disastrous, but fascinating). Some of the best beetles showed up at the black light there.

The last two days took us to a very nice beach for snorkling (wear t-shirts in the water, most of us got sun burned, because one ALWAYS forgets the time when the puffer fish are being really cute!) and to a new, posh resort in a desert-like dry area. Close by, lush jungle in a deep-cut canyon provided a most striking contrast, complete with Howler Monkeys and Anolis.
So during our trip we were introduced to many extremely different habitats even though it all happened within only one state, Guanacaste, so we never entered the true rainforest on the Atlantic side of the country.

Along Rio Perdito

Overall, I find it difficult to chose what I liked best. Black lighting in three incredibly rich habitats with fellow insect enthusiasts like Mark Deering and Marty Feathers was definitely among the highlights (especially since Mark sacrificed himself to absorb most of the stings of those hyper-night-active Costa Rican wasps and bees.) Hours of riding with Ernesto in his truck, watching old Costa Rican cowboys (every Costa Rican boy once wanted to be one), learning about the huge Brahman cattle ranches,  butterfly breeding on small family farms, citrus orchards, rice fields, volcanic ash layers, endemic grasses that were mostly just roughage for the cattle and should be replaced by more nutritious grasses- which reminded me vividly of our AZ buffel grass problem - made the whole experience very real and personal.

What I didn't like: how fast the time flew by. I guess I just have to go back next year.

Monstrous!

I'm going to be out of the country for a short while without access to my blog, I expect. So this is an opportunity to publish a few short blogs that were planned but not executed before. For example, when I found those big Bot Flies in Sabino Canyon they exited me and a very select few of my entomologist friends to the point, that a much more popular monster was left by the wayside. Literally: just watch him walking along.

Our Gila Monsters were unusually visible this year, at least in Sabino Canyon. For several weeks the Group of the Friends of Sabino Canyon met on or two on each of their Wednesday hikes. No idea whether it was the same individual that took a liking to the group? I think the monsters are rather oblivious of people. Mostly they want food at this time. After all, they spend most of the year under ground, hiding from drought and food shortage between the rainy seasons.
When they are out, they gobble up whole clutches of quail eggs,  whole litters of rat pinkies...I once surprised one that was chewing down a whole rather grown-up pack rat. This venomous lizard  (the only  in the US) has to chew with their formidable jaws to release venom along a grove in their teeth.

On the lower jaw of my friend here you can see the big, bulging glands. Although I didn't get my nose too close to him, after all, Gila Monsters are said to suddenly lunge, bite, and then hold on for good, I noticed a peculiar chemical smell -  ok, all smells are chemical, but his perfume seemed nearly inorganic: a little like chlorine in a pool...   A pheromone? It is mating season.

 The smell of his poisonous droolings? But he wasn't drooling. He was only testing the air with his forked purple tongue. He was certainly not interested in me or my hiking boot standing between him and whatever he had to do before going into hiding once more.

The background is most important

Western Corsair, Rasahus biguttatus

The Western Corsair is an impressive Assassin Bug. He is fast, nicely marked, night-active, and a hunter of other insects. He runs them down, paralyzes them with his poisonous bite and sucks up their liquified tissues.

But there is something else in the picture that is at least as important as this predator for the ecosystem that we call desert: the cryptobiotic soil crust, those dark green specks he is walking on.

The spots are communities of cyanobacteria, green algae, lichens, mosses, liverworts, and other microorganisms that colonize the surface of bare soil.  "Cryptobiotic" means "hidden life."  This crusts in our backyard goes mostly unnoticed. and does not even look alive when it is very dry (as it usually is).  When it rains enough, though, the crust looks greener and more three-dimensional, like many little mounds of moss. There are more impressive and well studied examples in moister shaded areas in many national parks. But this unassuming variaty that covers the drier desert habitats may be of special importance and is probably the most fragile.

Haboob over Eloy AZ

 The crust is vital to the health of soils and ecosystems.
It holds the soil in place and protects underlying sediments from erosion. Lately we have seen our mountains disappear behind dust clouds that were blown in all the way from the Californian desert were agricultural use has laid the soil bare. Last year haboob clouds rose up horrifyingly from the Phoenix area. The thin living layer that covers undisturbed desert soil can prevent many of these events, but it is very fragile. Agriculture, development, motor vehicles, even grazing cattle will destroy it. Also, I am not sure how the current ongoing drought conditions will impact it. Once disturbed it may take decades for the fragile system to grow back to its former productivity, even under 'normal' weather conditions.

Where the layer is intact it can be the first start of organic soil development on bare inorganic sediments, absorbing water and, through photosynthesis and fixation of atmospheric nitrogen, enriching the surface with nutrients and organic matter. This in turn creates a favorable environment for seeds to germinate and for insects and other soil organisms to live. For more info and great photos go to this link.

Here in the arid Southwest we are learning the hard way that this fragile, living component  of our soil deserves diligent protection. As a kid in Germany I would not have thought that I would ever come to value this kind of ground cover so much. I remember that there was a particularly shady area in the yard behind my grandmother's house where we were not supposed to play because the ground was slimy and green and to our mothers 'full of germs' (these were the sixties). But I did see my first liverworts (probably Marchantia sp.) there and marveled at their shapeless not-quite-floral not-quite-fungal existence that sometimes did give hints of a higher organization. Even at four years old (the house was sold when I was five) it peaked my curiosity.   

First sightings for this year

Yes, I know. The first of May is a funny date to start this attempt to record some phenological data for our area in SE Arizona. I think there is still enough of my northern European upbringing in me to feel that this date is special. I will try to begin every month with a little summary of the season's best observations that haven't made it into a blog of their own.

So here goes:

Iron Cross Beetles, Tegrodera aloga, in Sabino Canyon, April 27 2013, Photo by Ned Harris

All week in Sabino Canyon we found big groups of mating and feeding Iron Cross Beetles. Most of them congregated around nearly dried up Whooly Star plants.

Gambel's Quail, Callipepla gambelii, with chicks

Yesterday, April 30, the first very tiny baby Gambel's Quail. The parents made such a ruckus that I actually went and checked whether it was a snake alarm. But eventually they coaxed some very young chicks out of the brush, so I knew what the excitement was about.

Centris pallida on Ironwood and Centris rhodopus on White Ratanay

The first Saguaros bloom and the first Ironwoods are covered in pink. The deep humm of Centris bees can be heard from a distance. Centri pallida visits the leguminous trees, the flowers of the White Ratany and Creosote are attracting the darker Centris rhodopus.

Mesquite flowers in Saguaro National Park West are covered in mating Netwing Beetles of the genus Lucaina, and the first Lycus sanguinea showed up, too. No group leks for this species.

Creosote Bush Katydid, Insara covilleae, nymph

I also found a very camouflaged last instar nymph of the Creosote Bush Katydid, Insara covilleae, feeding, as it should, on creosote leaves.

Enallagma civile (Familiar Bluet)

At a pond at the Desert Museum, another nymph had just left its old skin and its former element behind to spread its wings as a Damsel Fly. But first it had to patiently wait until its teneral paleness transformed itself into the beautiful color of an adult Bluet.

Today: May 1, the first Lesser Nighthawk swooped out of his hiding spot in a Palo Verde in the State Land. In the evening they were courting, a pair gracefully dancing over our backyard while continuously making a sound like a melodious purr.

White-throated Swifts Aeronautes saxatalis) adapted from a photo by Alexander Viduetski

 In the morning four White-throated Swifts were also very active over our yard, but their shrill, twittering calls drove the dogs crazy and their ballet soon deteriorated into a wing-on-wing battle, with two of them (a couple, two males??) tumbling repeatedly all the way to the ground. I had never before seen them do anything but catch bugs so high above that they seemed to belong to another reality...not earthbound as they suddenly seemed. The things we do for sex...

Prickly Pear Cacti and Chollas are in full bloom. The flowers are full of Diadasia bees, the digger bees that are specialised on cactus flowers.

Little swarm of feral, Africanized Honey Bees. The wandering swarm (left) is very peaceful and approachable. The one that found a cavity in the saguaro will build a hive there and then may get aggressively territorial

This year we seem to have fewer feral Honey Bees than usual. Our Africanized version is not as freeze tolerant as the European stock (that's why they never became a problem in Europe and further north in the US, just here in the Southwest where the winters are usually warm). The species is otherwise very robust and there are enough bees left to increasetheir population again to compete with our native bees.

Male Black-tailed Gnatcatcher

From my studio window I'm watching the antics of four or five fledgling Black-tailed Gnatcatchers. They are probably learning to glean the Palo Verde tree for small caterpillars of the Palo Verde Looper.

Palo Verde Looper, Faculta inequalis

The adult moths are coming to my black-light at night where they are eagerly awaited by several small Red-spotted Toads who were joined last night by the first huge Sonoran Desert Toad.

Western Banded Gecko, Coleonyx variegatus

I have never seen a Banded Gecko this big and colorful. I think he must be in his mating-season best!