Spring (Butterfly) Beauties

Spring has definitely “sprung” here at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. Many flowers are in bloom, and native butterflies are taking full advantage of the bounty of nectar. We are now up to forty (yes, 40) confirmed butterfly species seen on the grounds. Recent observations have yielded some surprises, including one supposedly rare species of skipper.

The “usual suspects” are here: Pipevine Swallowtail, Giant Swallowtail, Checkered White, Southern Dogface, Sleepy Orange, Dainty Sulphur, Gray Hairstreak (image above), Marine
Blue, Reakirt’s Blue, Fatal Metalmark, Gulf Fritillary, Texan Crescent, American Snout, and Painted Lady. What is new, then? Plenty.

One of the more startling species I spotted a couple weeks ago was a Desert Orangetip, Anthocharis cethura. Just as I focused my camera on it, away it flew. That figures. I haven’t seen one since, either.

Another mild surprise was a Mourning Cloak, Nymphalis antiopa (image below). This large, black butterfly with a creamy border is more typical of riparian areas since it feeds on willow in the caterpillar stage. This male specimen was frequenting the bird garden. He perched where he had a good vantage point and darted out after any intruder, especially other butterflies like Pipevine Swallowtails. After a brief chase he returned to the same area he started from. He even alighted on a visitor’s ballcap while I was watching.

The real shockers have come from the skippers in the family Hesperiidae. Sure, the Fiery Skipper, Orange Skipperling, Common Checkered-Skipper, and Eufala Skipper are common enough, but I’ve seen other species that I would not expect here. The first of these was a Sleepy Duskywing, Erynnis brizo, seen on March 4 (image below). This species feeds on oak as a caterpillar, so it really belongs a couple of thousand feet higher in elevation. There it was, though, on a Dalea blossom in the butterfly garden.

The Funereal Duskywing, Erynnis funeralis, is a much more likely species here at the Gardens. I finally spotted one on March 19, but failed to get a picture. This fast-flying skipper is fairly large. Mostly black, it has a blazing white border along the edge of its hind wing which makes it easily identifiable.

Another surprise was an Arizona Powdered-Skipper, Systasea zampa (image above), sitting on a brick in the barrio garden late in the afternoon of March 6. I initially figured it for a Fatal Metalmark, to which it bears superficial resemblance.

The Golden-headed Scallopwing, Staphylus ceos, also resembles a metalmark at first glance.

The most amazing of all the spring skippers was a Violet-clouded Skipper, Lerodea arabus. It is relatively non-descript (see image below), save for a distinct dark brown patch on the underside of its hind wing. Certainly no violet to be seen! You would think that this would be among the more abundant of butterfly species given that the caterpillar feeds on Bermuda grass, barnyard grass, and other weedy plants. Instead, most reference books list it as “rare.”

Last but not least, I added a species by proxy. One of the visitors to the Butterfly Magic greenhouse, Carolyn Vieira, mentioned to me that she also takes pictures of butterflies on the TBG grounds. I told her I had yet to see a Great Purple Hairstreak, Atlides halesus, and as luck would have it she had a picture she took a couple years ago or so. I still expect to see this spectacular butterfly here myself, but it is nice to have an existing record.

The diversity of wildlife to be found at the Tucson Botanical Gardens continues to astound me. Just in cursory observation I’m closing in on 200 species of animals, from arthropods to apes (we Homo sapiens). The wide variety of plants, and the constant watering no doubt provides a literal oasis for all.

Medical Entomology Today!

I was delighted to be a presenter at the inaugural “Medical Entomology Today!” conference held in Tucson January 6-8. Organized by the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute, and sponsored by Rare Disease Therapeutics, Inc., it was a modest but promising success.

The Doubletree Hotel in central Tucson was the site of the conference, occupying two rooms. The registration table out front was admirably staffed by Polimana Joshevama, a gifted and energetic young lady who volunteers frequently at SASI.

Throughout the conference, one room was devote to exhibits and vendors, while the other was reserved for presentations. Shane Burchfield, representing Hatari Invertebrates and Eco Books had perhaps the most popular table, complete with live spiders, scorpions, and centipedes.

The conference kicked off Thursday evening with keynote speaker Dr. Rick Vetter of UC Riverside. His talk, entitled “The Myth of the Brown Recluse: Mythidentifications, Mythconceptions and Mythdiagnoses” was highly informative and entertaining, and free of lisps after pronunciation of the title. Rick has a great sense of humor, but he is also dedicated to achieving accuracy in the assessments of mysterious skin lesions all too often attributed to “spider bites.” Rick has documented fifty (yes, 50!) causes of necrotic wounds other than bites of recluse spiders. Some of those maladies can be far worse than a spider bite if treated incorrectly.

Friday’s morning paper sessions and afternoon workshops covered subjects as diverse as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections and their treatment through maggot therapy, to the physical and mental health effects of bed bug infestations.

Saturday morning’s papers addressed United States kissing bug species (Triatoma, pictured above) and their potential for the transmission of Chagas disease, plus an introduction to why insect stings cause pain; the development of scorpion antivenom for the stings of Centruroides sculpturatus (shown below) was another topic. The stings of this species can pose a lethal threat to infant children, but treatment with antivenom can result in a child patient being discharged from the hospital in mere hours.

Yours truly gave the final paper, “Social Media and Self-Diagnosis: How the Internet Has Changed Medical Entomology for Better and Worse.” It was an honor to present at this conference, which attracted attendees from Chicago, South Carolina, Tennessee, and New Mexico as well as Arizona.

Another great thing that came of the conference was that I got to meet Barbara Roth, wife of the late Vincent Roth, a beloved arachnologist and good friend of my mentor Jim Anderson and his wife. Barbara and I delighted in talking about our mutual friends and look forward to getting together again in the neighborhood of Portal, Arizona where she still lives and works.

Plans are already in the works for the next installment of Medical Entomology Today!, this time with the offering of continuing education credits for members of the medical community, and perhaps pest control operators as well. Please visit SASI to find proceedings of this conference as well as pending announcement of future meetings.

Butterfly Time (Part 1)

The seventh annual installment of “Butterfly Magic” opened last Monday at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. The live, flying butterflies (and a few moths) will be occupying the tropical greenhouse through April, 2011, open daily from 9:30 AM until 3:00 PM, save for the obvious holidays.

This year I find myself in the position of Assistant Butterfly Curator, but Dr. Elizabeth Willott, Curator of Butterflies, is the person responsible for the success of this event. We also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the many volunteers who actually staff the exhibit day in and day out, and who ensure that the butterflies make it from the Chrysalis Room to the greenhouse. More importantly, they make sure no butterflies escape the confines of the greenhouse. They also interpret the exhibit, sharing their knowledge of the insects with visitors and making sure our human guests have a pleasant experience. The volunteers also protect the butterflies from unintentional harm at the hands of overzealous visitors.

Our first shipment of butterfly chrysalids (pupae) arrived Friday, October 1. Elizabeth and I picked them up from the nearby FedEx store where they arrived via overnight shipment from a butterfly distributor in Denver, Colorado. At some point I hope to document the receiving and handling such shipments and sharing that with all of you. It is a very labor-intensive process. October first’s extraordinarily hot temperatures may have spelled doom for many of the specimens in the shipment. We humans were certainly sweating our way through sorting and pinning them. I finished the day pretty dehydrated and a bit light-headed.

The end result is worth the trouble, though. Among our first crop of butterflies was the Danaid Eggfly or “Mimic,” Hypolimnas misippus. The females (see image above) mimic the African Monarch and other distasteful butterflies. The males, on the other hand, look radically different (image below). Yes, those really are the same species!

Among the most populous of our new arrivals is the Mocker Swallowtail, Papilio dardanus. As you might have guessed from the common name this, too, is a species exhibiting dramatic sexual dimorphism. The females lack tails, looking very much like the milkweed butterflies they are impersonating. Males have the familiar “tails” on the wings and are boldly marked with black and white on the top side of the wings. Here is a mating pair (below).

Enjoy this species while you can, as it was denied on our United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) permit this year. Fortunately, that decision was not retroactive to our current permit with our U.S. distributor. We will be unable to import Papilio dardanus directly from its native Africa from now on, however. The caterpillars feed on citrus and are thus deemed a potential threat to that industry.

Yet another spectacular butterfly on show is the Flame-bordered Charaxes, Charaxes protoclea. It, too, is a native of Africa. This is a powerful flier, its robust body packed with muscles to operate those fiery wings.

Be sure to check out images of some additional species in Part 2 of this article, over at ”Sense of Misplaced”. Thanks, hope to see you pass through the Tucson Botanical Gardens one of these days.

Update.

Once again I find myself apologizing for the relatively sporadic nature of my posts here lately. No excuses, really, though I have been working rather random hours at the Tucson Botanical Gardens, and consequently eating randomly, sleeping randomly, and writing randomly. Maybe I need to take a class on time management.

I also just concluded a project in which I reviewed chapters for a forthcoming self-published book on the natural history of Virginia Beach, Virginia, by Scott Bastian. He has been a delight to work with, and he will be turning out a pretty unique book that has a wealth of information stretching far beyond the locality of Virginia Beach. You'll hear more about this once it is off the presses.

A relative lack of rain this year in Arizona (except for the area immediately adjacent to the Mexican border) has meant that many insects have been lacking, or at least less numerous, than usual. Perhaps because the Tucson Botanical Gardens is heavily watered, I have found a surprising diversity of things there, and expect the trend to continue through October.

Best wishes to my readers for a fruitful fall of exploring, image-taking, and enjoyment of autumn colors.

(Wild) Butterfly Magic

Anyone visiting the Tucson Botanical Gardens lately who is disappointed to learn that the Butterfly Magic event begins in October hasn’t been paying enough attention to the butterflies that are flying freely around the garden outside of the tropical greenhouse. I tallied twenty-two species over the past month, most of those seen in the last week or so. Here’s the list:

• Pipevine Swallowtail, Battus philenor
• Giant Swallowtail, Papilio cresphontes

• Checkered White, Pontia protodice
• Southern Dogface, Colias cesonia
• Sleepy Orange, Eurema nicippe
• Dainty Sulphur, Nathalis iole
• Cloudless Sulphur, Phoebis sennae
• Gray Hairstreak, Strymon melinus
• Leda Ministreak, Ministrymon leda

• Marine Blue, Leptotes marina
• Western Pygmy-Blue, Brephidium exile
• Reakirt’s Blue, Hemiargus isola
• Fatal Metalmark, Calephelis nemesis
• Palmer’s Metalmark, Apodemia palmeri

• Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae
• Variegated Fritillary, Euptoieta Claudia

• Empress Leilia, Asterocampa leilia
• American Snout, Libytheana carinenta
• Queen, Danaus gilippus
• Common Sootywing, Pholisora Catullus
• Fiery Skipper, Hylephila phyleus
• Orange Skipperling, Copaeodes aurantiaca

The TBG has a dedicated butterfly garden, but there is such a diversity of plants on the grounds that something is blooming somewhere almost all the time. Water and shade are also plentiful, which benefits both the butterflies and the comfort of human patrons.

Please visit the Tucson Botanical Gardens whenever you can. There is literally something for everyone, from a Children’s Garden to a Zen Garden, to the Tropical Greenhouse. You can even bring the dog on Tuesday mornings, or stay late on the Third Thursday when you can hear a musical performance.

News Flash

I will be starting a new, part-time job shortly at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. My title will be "Assistant Butterfly Curator" for the Butterfly Magic exhibit of live butterflies that runs from October through April. Elizabeth Willott, Curator of Butterflies, will be my supervisor there. I am very much looking forward to learning how to better train and manage volunteers, which will account for most of my duties.

I am still actively seeking full-time work online, in media, and museums, but am very grateful to TBG for extending me this offer. I will still have time to continue freelance work as well.

Wasp Wednesday: Pacific Cicada Killer

I have noticed for a long while that many nature bloggers and photographers dedicate one day a week to a particular type of organism. There is “Fly Day Friday” and “Moth Monday” to be sure, so I have decided to institute my own version of this, which I dub “Wasp Wednesday.” This will be a challenge since I don’t have many wasp images in my archives. Nevertheless, may I welcome you to the debut of this weekly feature and introduce the Pacific Cicada Killer, Sphecius convallis.

Many people are familiar with the Eastern Cicada Killer, Sphecius speciosus, as illustrated by the male specimen below. I took this image in the Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area in Franklin County, Massachusetts last year. This is only one of four species that occur in the United States. There is also the Western Cicada Killer, Sphecius grandis, and the Caribbean Cicada Killer, Sphecius hogardii, which ranges into southern Florida.

Cicada killers are named for their prey: Solitary females of this genus sting adult cicadas into paralysis and carry them back to their individual burrows as food for their larval offspring. The sight of one of these wasps flying back to its nest while carrying an equally large cicada will leave you in awe.

When not engaged in hunting or digging a nest burrow, or guarding a territory as the males do, Pacific Cicada Killers will seek refuge from the heat of the day in dense stands of vegetation. Here in southern Arizona, one can find them clinging to Desert Broom (Baccharis sarothroides) for example. I have found them nestled among cattails at an artificial riparian area in my neighborhood park here in Tucson.

Female cicada killers differ from males in behavior and morphology. Males are territorial, perching in places that overlook nesting aggregations of females, or sitting on the ground amongst the females. Males act aggressively toward other males, and other intruding organisms. They are “all bark,” however, since they possess no stinger. The spines at the tip of the tibia (“shin”) on the hind leg are short and not terribly obvious on males.

Female cicada killers have the spines on the hind tibia modified into heavy, blade-like appendages, clearly visible in the image below. They use these blades to help kick soil out of the burrow as they dig with the front legs. The female wasps are generally larger and bulkier than the males as well, but are too busy nesting and hunting to bother attacking people or any other animal.

Despite the solitary nature of their nests, cicada killers do tolerate each other’s company, and many females may nest in large aggregations in a small area. The burrow entrances are surrounded by the excavated soil (called “tumulus”) and are easily mistaken for the work of small rodents. Underground, the burrow may extend up to four feet, with individual cells branching from the main tunnel. Each cell is provisioned with one to four paralyzed cicadas. One cicada yields one male cicada killer. More cicadas will feed a future female.

Each cell is sealed after completion, and the entire nest burrow is eventually completed and sealed. The female does not stick around to care for her offspring. Instead she may start a new burrow.

Pacific Cicada Killers are known to use Apache Cicadas, Diceroprocta apache, and Silver-bellied annual cicadas, Tibicen pruinosus as hosts. It probably has other hosts in the Pacific Northwest where neither of these cicadas occurs.

Sphecius convallis ranges throughout the United States west of the 100th meridian (roughly west Texas, the Oklahoma panhandle, western third of Kansas and Nebraska, and the western half of the Dakotas). Please let me know if you find this species in your area, or in your travels. Please consult Professor Chuck Holliday’s Cicada Killer Page for information on how to tell this species apart from the Western Cicada Killer. His research is also suggesting there may be a cryptic species within the currently recognized Sphecius convallis, so your observations and/or specimens could prove quite valuable.

False Chinch Bugs

I like to turn on the porch light at my Tucson, Arizona apartment to see what insects (and sometimes other organisms like Mediterranean Geckos) show up to visit. Well, most of the time I like to do this. Right now it is an exercise in annoyance as the porch light is quickly overwhelmed by tiny true bugs known as “False Chinch Bugs,” Nysius raphanus.

At only 3-4 millimeters, each individual bug is not terribly imposing. It is the sheer numbers of them that are a nuisance. They fly well and before you know it everything in the immediate vicinity is covered in them: you, your camera, your clothes, and any other objects close to the light source.

This tendency for Nysius to aggregate extends to their feeding habits as well. Hordes of them may literally suck the life out of certain plants, though they subsist for the most part on weeds. Severe damage to a variety of crops does occur on the rare occasions of large outbreaks of the false chinch bug. Their combined feeding, coupled with toxic secretions they inject in the course of feeding, can wilt foliage rapidly.

These insects are quite capable of migrating like a miniature swarm of locusts, too. They have been observed flying several hundred feet above the ground. It is suspected that an “aggregation pheromone,” a specific chemical compound emitted by the insects, is responsible for the mass behaviors.

Like all true bugs, false chinch bugs undergo “incomplete” metamorphosis. They hatch from the egg looking like miniature versions of adults, but lacking wings and reproductive organs. These babies are called “nymphs,” and they are sometimes mistaken for ticks by folks that find them on their clothing after a walk in a weedy area. They grow quickly, maturing in about three weeks. In some parts of North America they can produce three generations annually, overwintering as adults.

Thankfully, an onslaught of false chinch bugs is a brief phenomenon. They disperse within a few short weeks of their initial appearance. Meanwhile, they can be discouraged by keeping outdoor lighting to a minimum, and weeding in the spring to deprive them of the plants that they favor as nymphs.

There are many informative and reassuring internet resources for learning more about false chinch bugs, such as this fact sheet from Colorado State University Extension.

So far, my little population explosion seems minor by the standards I have read about, and until the monsoon rains kick in the diversity of species at my porch light will likely remain low anyway. Plus, leaving the light off should help ease my electric bill, or at least allow me the luxury of turning up the A/C a little higher.

Meet Mary Jane

I owe a big thank you to my friend Joshua Stuart Rose for suggesting that I become friends with Mary Jane Epps via Facebook. Mary Jane (“MJ”) is currently a PhD student here at the University of Arizona. She came to know Josh when they were undergrads in biology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She is a wonderful young lady with many talents and an endless fascination for the natural world.

I got to meet her in person last week when we made a spontaneous half-day journey up the Mount Lemmon Highway in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. She was due to leave in two days for her “field season” in southwest Virginia and wanted to make a quick getaway here before she left. I was honored to join her.

MJ grew up in Virginia with a brother, sister, and parents who both teach at the University of Virginia. She decided to attend Duke in part to avoid student-teacher conflicts with mom and dad, but she also has a great love of the longleaf pine forests of the Carolinas. No matter where she goes, MJ excels in academics. She recharges her batteries by literally “fiddling around.” She is an accomplished musician who jams with friends playing traditional Appalachian music as well as a bit of bluegrass here and there.

There are many qualities I admire in Mary Jane, not the least of which is that she takes initiative in meeting other people. She has a warm smile and friendly personality that is instantly disarming. It is impossible not to feel relaxed and welcome in her presence.

She also uses all of her senses to familiarize herself with the flora and fauna wherever she finds herself. She reawakened my own sense of smell by crushing leaves to help her identify a particular plant and then sharing the scent with me. She literally looks closely at the tiniest of organisms, carrying a magnifying loop and using it liberally, like here in Molino Canyon last Wednesday during our outing together.

Mary Jane is studying the relationship between fungi and beetles (the beetles to be found in mushrooms for example), and is two years into what she expects will be at least a four year doctoral thesis project. She told me she dissected over 1,500 tiny rove beetles (family Staphylinidae) to identify them to species by differences in their genitalia. I told her I would have just handed her the degree already. That is the kind of dedication she applies to her passions. I can only imagine what her musical talents must be like.

I’m already looking forward to spending more time afield with MJ when she returns here in the fall. Meanwhile, I wish her well with her studies.

Hatched!

Remember the “Carpet Cocoon” story I did back in March, and the one on the “Carpet Caterpillar,” too? Well, the story has come full circle now.

Sometime last night, an adult moth emerged from the pupa that the caterpillar formed in the yogurt cup I had it in. I remember thinking that I needed to put a paper towel or tissue around the inside of the smooth cup so the moth could climb up and fully expand its wings for a successful molt. Naturally, I had the lid off the cup, covering a small, live beetle on my drafting table last night….So, this is what I found this morning:

An empty cup, with a now empty pupal case (and caterpillar head capsule at the left). No moth to be seen anywhere. Terrific. I looked high and low, and finally, by sheer luck, discovered the surprisingly large, perfectly healthy moth tucked neatly in the door jamb of the front door, at about ankle level. It had managed to eclose (the scientific term for emerging as an adult insect from a pupa) perfectly, in the most imperfect circumstance, with no further intervention from me. Astounding.

The comments I received on my initial post about the caterpillar were mostly directed to my assertion that the moth was nothing much to behold. I only had images from BugGuide.net to go by, and I was not impressed. Suffice it to say that seeing the living creature has changed my opinion. It seems to have actually transformed the carpet fibers into the shimmering scales on its wings.

I had errands to run today and was in and out of my apartment frequently. On the last, late afternoon return home, the moth flew out the door. Ah, freedom! Well-deserved, too, I might add.

More Hilltopping Insects

I finally got the full effect of a hilltopping experience on March 25 when I hiked to the summit of Sentinel Peak (“A” Mountain), just west of downtown Tucson, Arizona. At only 2, 897 ft. (883 meters) above sea level, and rising a mere 522 feet off the desert floor, it is more of a butte than a mountain. Still, its relative isolation makes it an effective magnet for hilltopping insects.

“A” Mountain is named for the immense concrete letter on its eastern slope, painted in the red, white, and blue colors of the University of Arizona. Most folks visit the top for the spectacular panoramic view of Tucson and its surrounding mountain ranges. It can be a romantic setting at dusk, too. Male insects of many species come there for romance as well, but usually have to defend territories or otherwise repel rival males in the process.

Among those insects are bumble bee-sized bot flies, Cuterebra austeni. The big, black and white adults are not often seen during their brief existence. They have no functional mouthparts and are fueled only by burning the fat reserves they accumulated in the larval stage. As larvae they are subdermal parasites of either rodents or rabbits, depending on the species. I’ll spare you the gory details.

The male flies conserve their energy and will allow you to approach extremely closely if you do so carefully. Once startled, or when they detect a rival or a female, they jet off at warp speed. Eventually they return to the same spot, or very close by.

A more typical, larger, and colorful hilltopping insect is the black swallowtail, Papilio polyxenes. These butterflies are in seemingly constant motion, flying swiftly across the summit and only pausing to perch for very brief periods.

They are incredibly aggressive, chasing each other mercilessly. You can actually hear their wings and bodies colliding, so violent are their aerial duels.

Perhaps the most unexpected and unusual insect I discovered was the pollen wasp Pseudomasaris maculifrons. Pollen wasps are solitary insects in the same family as potter wasps, mason wasps, and the social hornets, yellowjackets, and paper wasps. While her cousins feed their larval offspring with other insects, the female pollen wasp stores pollen and nectar in her mud nest.

Males are easily recognized by their peculiar antennae: long and clubbed. Females have much shorter, clubbed antennae. Males of this particular species are known to perch repeatedly in the same small area, day after day, for as long as 29 days (Alcock, John. 1985. “Hilltopping Behavior in the Wasp Pseudomasaris maculifrons(Fox),” Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society, 58(1), pp 162-166). Between February and May, different generations of males occupy the same locations in different years. They are very active insects, but do not appear to be nearly as belligerent as bot flies or black swallowtails.

It turns out the top of the peak also attracts other insect photographers. I crossed paths there with my friend Philip Kline, who I hadn’t seen in probably two years! We had a great time catching up, and helping each other identify the insects we were seeing.

May your own hilltop experiences be just as rewarding and enjoyable. You could very well discover something new (especially regarding bot flies), to yourself or the scientific world.

Sometimes you become the best perch on the peak!

Hilltopping

One of the more interesting types of insect behavior is something called “hilltopping.” While hiking along a ridge in Tucson Mountain Park on Friday, March 5, I witnessed this firsthand.

Hilltopping describes the mating strategy of male insects of some species that will fly to the highest point in their immediate landscape. This may be a mountain, a butte, or even a small hill, provided it is sufficiently elevated above the surrounding terrain.

Once at the summit, the insects pursue one of several courses of action. Males of some species will defend a small territory such as a perch on a boulder, shrub or tree that affords the best view for spotting approaching females of the species. Competing males will be driven off. Butterflies in the family Lycaenidae, such as the Great Purple Hairstreak, Atlides halesus, and the Gray Hairstreak, Strymon melinus, both pictured below, defend perches.

Another method employed by males is “lekking,” in which several males congregate in an area where they display to females. Females then choose what they perceive as the fittest male specimen and mate with him. A “lek” is the term for the “stage” on which the males “perform.”

Still another form of hilltopping is when a male “patrols” a route along the summit of a hill or ridge, hoping to intercept a passing female. Many butterflies in the family Pieridae exhibit this behavior, also known as “scramble competition polygeny.” Males don’t have territories, but will actively compete when two of them spy the same female. The battle may consist of spectacular vertical flights, the two males spiraling around each other until one ceases to ascend further, conceding defeat. On my own hike, I noticed several males of the Desert Orangetip, Anthocharis cethura patrolling along the ridge, together with what I believe were Sleepy Orange butterflies, Eurema nicippe. Also seen at the summit of the ridge was a male West Coast Lady, Vanessa annabella, that repeatedly returned to the same patch of ground.

Besides butterflies, major hilltopping insects include several species of Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants) and Diptera (true flies). Flesh flies in the family Sarcophagidae, such as the one pictured below, were present on my afternoon sojourn.

To see the most variety of species, I would recommend spending all day at the very top of a likely hill, ridge, or mountain. The fauna will change as the hours pass and conditions change. Here in the desert at least, some species hilltop for only a few hours in the morning, then disappear. Other species are present all day, or may be most active in the afternoon.

Especially at this time of year, early spring, hilltops may be the only places to find an abundance of insects. Not only will you see hilltopping species, but other species that come to prey on them. I’m sure that is the only reason that dragonfly was up there, perching on a cactus of all things.

NOTE: I highly recommend reading the works of Dr. John Alcock for more about hilltopping insects. His books include Sonoran Desert Spring and Sonoran Desert Summer, both being collections of outstanding literary essays.

"Bee-Bop"

When photographing normally active, fast-moving insects like bees, it often pays to catch them when they pause to groom themselves. On March 1, while retrieving the mail, I discovered this exhausted worker honeybee on the steps of my apartment building. She gave me a great opportunity to get some nice close-ups while she cleaned herself.

Another advantage to shooting images of grooming insects is that the creature often displays features of its anatomy not normally visible when it is simply resting, or going about its regular business of pollinating, eating, mating, or transporting itself. For example, a bee’s abdomen is usually concealed by the wings folded over its back at rest. As she shifted her weight to allow her to rub her hind legs together, this worker revealed her abdominal pattern.

The little dance she was doing was cute and amusing to me, but all business to her. Bees, both social and solitary, easily become gummed up in residual nectar and other floral exudates, or damp soil that adheres to their bodies in the course of excavating a nest burrow. “Setae,” the sensitive body hairs that aid a bee in navigating its environment, must be kept free of such debris in order to function properly.

It might look here like the bee is insulting me by sticking out its “tongue,” but her mouthparts need to be kept clean as well. While bees have chewing mouthparts, they also have highly modified segments, some of them fused into a tongue-like appendage that lets them lap up nectar.

This bee eventually re-energized, and redeemed herself by giving me a respectful salute before flying off to resume pollinating flowers and/or scouting for a new nest site.

Carpet Cocoon

One day after I discovered the ”Carpet Caterpillar,” I discovered the remains of its cocoon in my living room carpet. This also explains why the caterpillar was so lethargic when I found it: a great amount of energy is expended in preparing to pupate.

Actually, there were the remains of two cocoons. Since I did not find another caterpillar, I suspect that I disrupted the one animal on two occasions. I was using boxes that had been in that spot for ages, and the caterpillar, once exposed, probably sought refuge under another box that I also eventually used.

You can even see the “trail” between the two pupal cells, a tiny trough in the carpet. Whether this represents actual damage to the fibers I have yet to find out (hey, I’m blogging, not vacuuming).

Carpet Caterpillar

At this time of year, even here in southern Arizona, I am always a bit surprised to find insect activity. Imagine my shock then at finding a caterpillar on my living room floor today. It was a familiar species, but still a bit early I think.

Tucson is landscaped with a plethora of ornamental fan palms, and it is from these trees that my caterpillar came. Known as the “palm flower moth” or “palm budworm,” depending on its life stage, Litoprosopus coachella is a frequent home invader in urban areas.

The mature caterpillars (roughly 25 millimeters in length) crawl off the tree to find a suitable place to spin a cocoon, and this sometimes takes them indoors. High winds will also dislodge them by peeling bracts off the trunk of the tree and sending them flying across the yard and against buildings. Any attached caterpillars will fly away with those botanical missles.

Despite their abundance, and appetite for the blooms of their host plant, the caterpillars are generally considered more of a nuisance than a bona fide pest. They may do minor damage to carpets once they get indoors and chew off fibers to incorporate into their silken cocoon.

The caterpillars are not terribly attractive, being a dusty greenish or pinkish color, devoid of much hair, and can be mistaken for a beetle grub at first glance. Look at the head. The two tiny spots near the corner of its mouth are one set of eyes. Most caterpillars are nearly blind, though, relying on tactile and chemical cues to navigate their world.

The remainder of the head capsule, that round, hardened area at the front, is filled mostly with muscles to operate the jaws. What jaws they are, too! The first time I found one of these, I made the mistake of trying to simply pick it up. I got a nasty nip out of it, and my reflexes sent the poor creature flying across the room. Ouch! Gila woodpeckers and northern mockingbirds are not as easily dissuaded as I, and feed heavily on these larvae.

Unfortunately, this insect does not redeem its appearance much through metamorphosis. The adult moth is equally dull and drab. Well, I suppose beggars (for signs of spring and the company of other animals) can’t be choosers, at least not in February.

The Saga Concludes

Like I haven’t written enough already about the brown-banded cockroach (see All Grown Up and The “University Roach”), along comes another chapter.

I was visiting the insect collection in the Department of Entomology at the University of Arizona in Tucson yesterday, when in the process of moving a cart to get to a cabinet, I discovered a cockroach, belly-up on the floor. I could tell it was a brown-banded roach even before I turned it over. I had seen another dead one here before (before I had a camera). The neat thing about this one was that it was a male.

Oddly, I have never seen a living adult male of this species. Then again, until I saw live ones at the University of Massachusetts, I had not seen a living example of either gender. I suspect they are less populous than other “domestic” roaches, and maybe more secretive, too.

In any event, Supella longipalpa is an outstanding example of sexual dimorphism in the order Blattodea. While the females are broad-bodied with shortened forewings (called tegmena), males are more slender, with long tegmena and fully-functional hindwings as well.

Other cockroach species have even more dramatic differences between the sexes, males being fully winged and females totally wingless. The sand roaches in the genus Arenivaga come to mind. They occur here in the Arizona outdoors, so maybe I’ll eventually be able to share their story here on my blog as well. For now, though, I can close the book on the brown-bandeds.