Bug Fair 2023 Recap

I had not attended the annual Bug Fair at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (California) since about 2011, so I was overdue in seeing old friends and making new ones. Heidi and I had a wonderful time, and stayed in the area for the week afterwards to enjoy some of the natural areas in the greater Los Angeles region, as well as spend time socializing. The fair itself is a major event, one that regularly sets museum attendance records for the year. During the global pandemic, there was no Bug Fair until 2022, and even then it was a scaled-down version. This year it was back to full strength.

My table at the Bug Fair

Bug Fair happens the weekend before the Memorial Day weekend every year, and takes over two halls, plus the rotunda, and various outdoor extensions of the museum. It includes vendors of entomological supplies, live specimens, and preserved specimens. Many organizations and government agencies have tables as well, and there are a fair number of artists. I was the only author with a dedicated table.

Monarch Art, if I recall correctly

BioQuip Bugs, which was purchased when BioQuip folded

Greg Lewallen's booth

Micro Wilderness live insects and arachnids

We were next to a vendor selling carnivorous plants

The museum rotunda featured some educational exhibits

UC Riverside booth in the rotunda

Beetlelady's table display

Outside, on the back patio, museum personnel dressed as bugs played music for lunching guests

Lisa Gonzalez, one of my friends from prior Bug Fairs, is now the Program Manager of Invertebrates. Among her multiple talents is macro photography. Her images of museum specimens, taken with a focus stacking camera apparaatus, were on exhibit during the fair. I love that the interpretive text was in both English and Spanish.

I grossly underestimated the enduring popularity of the printed word, and sold out of some of my books the first day. The following day, we were taking prepaid orders and promising free shipping. I will know better next time, but when that will be is anyone's guess. I am currently working on another book, for which I do not yet have a publisher. An agent is reviewing the proposal, and hopefully we can begin shopping it around to various houses in the near future.

What do you do after a long day at the Bug Fair? Enjoy dinner out with Beetlelady, of course.

It was rejuvenating to see old friends like the Beetlelady, Dr. Stephanie Dole, who has built a pop-up insect museum she deploys at various venues upstate. She is also a gifted artist, cosplay enthusiast, and mother to two wonderful children.

Business cards I collected during the fair

I would highly recommend Bug Fair as an event worth planning a vacation around. The greater Los Angeles region has a surprising number of parks with unique flora and fauna, a perfect complement to the exotic specimens to be found at the fair. There are plenty of cultural experiences, too. Shoot, I'd go back for the churro cart in Long Beach alone.

Wasp Wednesday: Cerceris sextoides

My recent trip to southern California in late May yielded some fine additions to my image database of wasps. One of the most photogenic species I encountered was a “weevil wasp,” Cerceris sextoides. These members of the family Crabronidae are known to hunt weevils and other beetles as food for their larval offspring. I didn’t find any females this time, though, only the territorial males.

Male solitary wasps tend to emerge before the females, the better to establish territories or seek out burrows where virgin females are likely to pop out. The male C. sextoides that I observed repeatedly perched on vegetation and maintained a vigilant eye for potential competitors. They would frequently fly out in pursuit of similarly-colored eumenid wasps, eventually resuming a perch, usually in a different spot. Some members of the genus are known to scent-mark stems and other objects to reinforce their territorial boundaries, but I am unaware if that applies to the males of this species.

Cerceris sextoides is a common wasp in the Pacific coast states, and extreme south-central British Columbia. It ranges inland through Idaho, northwest Utah, and northern Nevada. Look for it from May to October in a variety of life zones, from Lower Sonoran desert to high elevation Canadian.

The weevils Sitona californius and Trigonoscuta pilosa are recorded as prey for this wasp. Females ferret out their prey, paralyze it with their sting, and ferry it back to their burrow. Nests are typically excavated in sandy clay or gravelly clay. The horn-like process on the clypeus (“upper lip”) of the female probably assists her in digging.

Sources: Bohart, R. M. and A. S. Menke. 1976. Sphecid Wasps of the World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 695 pp.
Bohart, R. M. and E. E. Grissell. 1975. “California Wasps of the Subfamily Philanthinae (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae).” Bulletin of the California Insect Survey. Vol. 19: 92 pp..

Spider Sunday: Silver Argiope

I have no idea just how “regular” this feature will be, but I do have plenty of spider stories to tell, more than a year’s worth already. My involvement with the website SpiderIdentification.org has shown me just how much I have yet to learn about these amazing arachnids. Why not start out with a really spectacular species, then? The Silver Argiope, Argiope argentata certainly fills the bill.

Kim Moore, a nature photographer in Long Beach, California was kind enough to introduce this species to me last month at Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach. I was surprised when she told me she usually sees the adult spiders about the same time as the Great Blue Heron chicks in the spring. Every other species of Argiope that I am familiar with does not mature until late summer.

Kim quickly found one amid a large patch of prickly-pear cacti on a steep embankment above the tidal marsh….then another….and another. There had to have been hundreds of them, and most of them mature females and males. They hung in the center of their orb webs the weight of the females warping the plane of their webs a bit.

The males look nothing like their mates. They are vastly smaller for one thing, only 4-5 mm in body length compared to the female’s 12-16 mm length. Males are also not as brightly colored. Some were already paired up with females when we found them.

This species is known to range from southern Florida to southern California. According to Mandy Howe, my comrade at SpiderIdentification.org, adults of Argiope argentata can be found at almost any time of year. Males mature very quickly, as early as February and as late as June. Mandy cites a paper by Herbert W. Levi that suggests this species may not be “annual” like the other members of the genus that range farther north.

The web is a characteristic “orb” web, round with radiating spokes and a spiral of sticky threads. The central “hub” is where the spider sits, her abdomen tipped back away from the plane of the web (except, I observed, when closely approached: then she plasters her abdomen against the hub).

The genus Argiope typically incorporates a zigzag band of silk down the middle of the web. This decoration is called a stabilimentum, and its function is the subject of continuing debate. It may act as an advertisement to prevent birds from tearing through the web, but a more likely theory is that it is a fake flower designed to attract pollinating insects. Indeed, the thick band of silk reflects ultraviolet light much as many flower petals do.

While other Argiope species generally have only a vertical stabilimentum, the Silver Argiope usually employs an X-shaped version. The female spider aligns two pairs of legs with each of the silk bands. Her own silvery body also reflects UV light, perhaps turning her into the perfect faux blossom. Oddly, the population at Bolsa Chica seems to have eschewed the silken “X” in their webs. I observed no decorative silk at all.

Keep an eye out for these if you find yourself in the geographic range of this arachnid. It is certainly hard to beat as one of the most ornate spiders in North America.

Sources: Kaston, B. J. 1980. How to Know the Spiders (Third Edition). Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Company Publishers. 272 pp.
Levi, Herbert W. 1968. “The spider genera Gea and Argiope in America (Araneae: Araneidae),” Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard 136: 319-352 (cited by Mandy Howe).